George Chapman (December 14, 1865 - April 7, 1903) was the English name taken by serial killer Severin Antoniovich Klosowski. He was originally from Poland but later relocated to England, where he committed his crimes.

Early life

Born in 1865, in the village of Nargornak, Poland, he trained as a surgeon before moving to London sometime in 1887 where he eventually took the name George Chapman. Because he failed to fully qualify as a doctor, he started working at a barber's shop, eventually running his own hairdressers by 1889. Also that year, he married a fellow Pole, Lucy Baderski. Chapman already had a wife in Poland; although she came to England to try to claim her husband back she gave up and returned home after Chapman and his new bride had a baby, who subsequently died in infancy. George and Lucy Chapman briefly lived in New Jersey, although they returned sometime in 1892.

Crimes and execution

Not the sort of person to let his wife get in the way of his lustful ways, George Chapman took several mistresses, who often posed as his wife, three of whom he subsequently poisoned to death. They were Mary Spink (died in December 1897), Elizabeth Taylor (died February 1901) and Maud Marsh (died October 1902). He used a substance called antimony, which causes a painful death and symptoms similar to that of arsenic.

Suspicions surrounding the death of Maud Marsh lead to a police investigation. It was found that she had been poisoned, as had the other two women whose bodies were subsequently exhumed.

George Chapman was charged only with the murder of his final victim, Maud Marsh. He was convicted on March 20, 1903 and hanged at Wandsworth Prison on April 7 that same year.

Jack the Ripper?

One of the detectives at Scotland Yard, Frederick Abberline, is reported to have told the policeman who arrested Chapman: "You've got Jack the Ripper then?" Speculation in contemporary newspaper accounts and books has led to Chapman, like fellow killer Dr. Thomas Neill Cream, becoming one of many individuals cited as a possible suspect in the infamous Jack the Ripper murders of 1888.

Whilst it is true that Chapman apparently was living in London at that time, some criminologists have doubted his potential as a Ripper suspect on the basis of the known psychological motivations and behaviour of serial killers. Normally, serial killers select a single method of murder (e.g. stabbing, strangulation, poisoning) as well as associated rituals (e.g. torture, mutilation, and so forth). As such, it is generally considered unlikely that a serial killer would go from butchering and disembowelling victims to the less 'hands on' approach of poisoning. Also, most scholars believe that Jack the Ripper selected victims who were previously unknown to him, and Chapman killed acquaintances.

See also

• Jack the Ripper
• List of proposed Jack the Ripper suspects
• Serial killers
• List of serial killers