Michael Ostrog
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Michael Ostrog |
Michael Ostrog is the last and least plausible of Sir Melville Macnaghten's three suspects. He was a thief and confidence man who used many aliases. He often represented himself as an impoverished Polish nobleman. He spent a good amount of his life in jail, but he was completely unrepentant. In 1874, the Buckinghamshire Advertiser, after Ostrog was convicted of stealing a dozen books, summed him up: |
Ostrog is no ordinary offender, but a man in the prime of life, with a clever head, a good education and polished manners, who would be certain to succeed in almost any honest line of life to which he might devote himself, but who, nevertheless, is an inveterate criminal...It is impossible to gauge the mental condition of a man of such intellectual and personal advantages, who would run the risk of ten years' penal servitude for such a miserable stake.
He spent the next ten years or so in various prisons. It worked to Ostrog's favor to occasionally show a little insanity during his trials so that his behavior could be looked at in a softer light. Many people believed that he was acting, but the ruse worked and he was transferred from prison to a lunatic asylum where he registered himself as a Jewish doctor.
At the time of the Whitechapel murders, he was wanted by the police for failure to report his whereabouts. Why was Ostrog even a suspect? He had claimed to be a surgeon; he was a known criminal; and he had been in a lunatic asylum. His lying had made him a suspect even though he was no more a surgeon than a Polish nobleman. His insanity was conjured up when it suited him.
It is worthwhile to compare Ostrog as a suspect anyway. He was not a violent criminal and there is no record that he ever assaulted a woman. More importantly, he was too old -in his fifties or sixties -in 1888 and he was too tall -5 ft 11 inches-to fit any of the eyewitness descriptions of the killer.
Ostrog, like Druitt and Kosminski, are not plausible candidates and may reflect the propensity of high police officials to deny that they failed to catch such a high profile criminal despite all the resources they had to use.
George Chapman's real name was Severin Antoniovich Klosowski when he was born in Poland in 1865. He was apprenticed to a surgeon and later went on to complete his studies at a hospital in Warsaw. His records show that he was "diligent, of exemplary conduct, and studied with zeal the science of surgery."
For reasons that are not clear, he immigrated to London early in 1887. He took a job working as a hairdresser's assistant for five months and then opened a barbershop of his own at 126 Cable Street, St. George's-in-the-East. He was most likely at this Whitechapel address during the Ripper murders. In 1890, he worked in a barbershop at the corner of Whitechapel High Street and George Yard, very close to where Martha Tabram was murdered in August of 1888.
Klosowski married Lucy Baderski, expecting that the wife he left in Poland wouldn't find out about it. The first wife moved to London for awhile, but appeared to give him up after Baderski bore him a son in 1890. The son died of pneumonia in March of 1891 and the couple moved to Jersey City in New Jersey.
He first showed his violent streak when he attacked his wife. She claimed that he "held her down on the bed, and pressed his face against her mouth to keep her from screaming. At that moment a customer entered the shop immediately in front of the room, and Klosowski got up to attend him. The woman chanced to see a handle protruding from underneath the pillow. She found, to her horror that it was a sharp and formidable knife, which she promptly hid. Later, Klosowski deliberately told her that he meant to have cut her head off, and pointed to a place in the room where he meant to have buried her. She said, 'But the neighbors would have asked where I had gone to.' 'Oh,' retorted Klosowski, calmly, ' I should simply have told them that you had gone back to New York.'"
Lucy went back to London alone and bore him a daughter in May of 1892. In June of that year he returned to London, but his relationship with Lucy did not continue long. In 1893, he moved in with and impregnated Annie Chapman (obviously not the woman who died at the hands of the Ripper in 1888) but the relationship ended in 1894 because of Klosowski's philandering.
He changed his name to George Chapman and soon lived in a common law arrangement with Mary Spink who turned over to him her inheritance of 500 pounds. They set up a barbershop, which prospered because of their "musical shaves." Mary played the piano while George took care of the barbering.
While they prospered financially, their domestic life was turbulent. George beat his wife frequently. He bought some tartar emetic, a colorless, odorless and nearly tasteless poison containing antimony. In small doses it brings on a gradual painful death. Interestingly enough, the drug has the effect of preserving its victim's body for years after death.
When the musical barbershop's novelty wore off, it went out of business and George ended up working as manager in a pub. About the same time, Mary Spink began to suffer from severe stomach problems, which caused her death in 1897. Tuberculosis was the cause of death listed.
Soon he had a live-in arrangement with Bessie Taylor, but treated her with the same abuse as his former women, once threatening her with a gun. Bessie experienced the same stomach problems as her predecessor and died in 1901 from "exhaustion from vomiting and diarrhoea."
George found another "wife" called Maud Marsh and treated her just as badly as his other wives. Maud began to suffer from the same stomach illness. Her mother was suspicious and called in another doctor. Chapman was frightened and gave Maud a huge dose of poison, which killed her the following day. Chapman was arrested when Maud's body was found to contain a lethal amount of antimony.
His other two wives were exhumed and found remarkably preserved from the amount of antimony in their bodies. While Chapman was charged with three murders, he was convicted only of Maud's. He was hanged on April 7, 1903.
Retired Chief Inspector Abberline told the Pall Mall Gazette:
As I say, there are a score of things which make one believe that Chapman is the man; and you must understand that we have never believed all those stories about Jack the Ripper being dead, or that he was a lunatic, or anything of that kind. For instance, the date of the arrival in England coincides with the beginning of the series of murders in Whitechapel; there is a coincidence also in the fact that the murders ceased in London when Chapman went to America, while similar murders began to be perpetrated in America after he landed there. The fact that he studied medicine and surgery in Russia before he came over here is well established, and it is curious to note that the first series of murders was the work of an expert surgeon, while the recent poisoning cases were proved to be done by a man with more than an elementary knowledge of medicine. The story told by Chapman's wife of the attempt to murder her with a long knife while in America is not to be ignored.
There were other factors that led to Chapman being a suspect: He was single at that time and had the freedom to roam around at all hours of the night and morning; he worked a regular job which kept him occupied during the week but allowed him weekends free when the murders all occurred. He was violent and homicidal with women and committed multiple murders of women.
