(September, 1841-September 8, 1888) Also known as "Dark Annie", the second recognized victim of Jack the Ripper.
Born Eliza Ann Smith, she was married in 1869 to John Chapman, a coachman, had two daughters and a son (Emily
Ruth, born 1870; Annie Georgina, born 1873; John Alfred, born 1880) with him, and they lived fairly comfortably for some
time.
Life went awry when young John was born crippled. Then in 1882, Emily
Ruth died of meningitis at age
12. Around this
time, the couple began drinking heavily. About 1884, they separated.
Annie somehow fell to the slums of Whitechapel by 1886. John continued to send her 10 shillings a week until
Christmas of 1886, when he died of cirrhosis. His
death shattered Annie's will to live.
In her last days, Annie was a homeless alcoholic, living in lodging houses, selling flowers and crocheting and occasionally prostituting herself (despite her plain features, plump figure, and poor health) to get by.
While the rest of the Ripper victims came from ordinary working class backgrounds, Annie Chapman's
family had a foothold in the middle class. Known by her
friends late in life as "Dark Annie", for her dark brown hair, Annie had become estranged from her surviving children and from her sisters.
Only 5
feet tall, plump, and never a classic
beauty, at age
47 Annie Chapman was malnourished, a homeless streetwalker, and suffering from tuberculosis and
brain diseases that would have killed her soon if
Jack had not killed her.
At 1:35 AM on September 8, 1888, Annie was turned away from her lodging house since she had no money for a bed. She was last seen alive at 5:30 AM outside 29 Hanbury Street, negotiating with a man who was probably her killer. Half an hour later, her body was found in the backyard of the same house, inches from the back steps.
Her skirt was hiked to her groin and her legs pulled up and leaning outwards, implying coitus; her throat was cut to the
bone, her stomach opened, her intestines pulled out and draped over her shoulder, and her uterus taken away.
