{"id":14158,"date":"2026-07-10T20:08:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T01:08:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=14158"},"modified":"2026-07-10T20:08:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T01:08:19","slug":"mfdj-7-10-26-the-second-victim-of-jack-the-ripper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=14158","title":{"rendered":"MFDJ 7\/10\/26: The Second Victim of Jack the Ripper"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s Short, Stout, Big-Nosed, Gap-Toothed Yet Truly Morbid Fact!<\/h3>\n

And here’s the story of the discovery of the second victim of Jack the Ripper:<\/p>\n

Eight days later [after the murder of Polly Nichols], behind a lodging house at 29 Hanbury Street, less than half a mile from Buck’s Row, short, stout, big-nosed, gap-toothed, brown-haired, blue-eyed, forty-five-year-old Annie Chapman was also prepared to engage in the “world’s oldest profession” as she went down three stone steps into a backyard. Her companion, seen by a park keeper’s wife on her way to early morning market, was a man around forty, dark, genteel-looking, and wearing a brown deerstalker hat. Possibly, the witness said, the man was a foreigner. She’d heard him and Annie speaking to one another. “Will you?” he asked. “Yes,” Annie replied. The time was 5:30. Annie’s body was found at six.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nAnnie Chapman, in life…<\/em><\/p>\n

“The wretch must have then seized the deceased,” reported a coroner, “perhaps with Judas-like approaches. He seized her by the chin. He pressed her throat, and while thus preventing the slightest cry, he at the same time produced insensibility and suffocation. There was no evidence of any struggle.” With the woman unconscious, he lowered her onto the ground and with her lying on her back cut her throat in two places. When found, she was face up with the left arm resting on the left breast, legs drawn up, and abdomen sliced open with the small intestines and a flap of abdomen lying on the right side above the right shoulder attached by a cord with the rest of the intestines inside the body. Two pieces of skin from the lower part of the abdomen lay in a large pool of blood above the left shoulder. The cuts in her throat ran deeply in a jagged manner all the way around, left to right.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nAnnie Chapman in death.<\/em><\/p>\n

Abberline had never seen anything like it in all his years with the police.\u00a0 Summoned to the scene by telegraph by Inspector Joseph Chandler of the Commercial Street police station, he also found a carnivallike mood at the place where Annie had met so vicious a death. People learned from windows of the surrounding houses to see what they could. Hanbury Street was mobbed by the curious, eager to observe. What they saw was police painstakingly combing the muddy yard for clues. One thing stood out. The killer had arranged some of the victim’s possessions in what appeared to be a ritualistic display. Two rings, some pennies, and two new farthings lay neatly at her feet. A piece of muslin, a comb, and a paper case were aligned near the body, as were an envelope dated in London on August 28 and a piece of paper containing two pills. They also found a leather apron lying near a water pump.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nThe entrance to the yard of 29 Hanbury Street. Chapman’s body was found lying parallel to the fence, with her head almost touching the rear steps of this property, on 8 September 1888.<\/em><\/p>\n

Culled from: Bloody Business: An Anecdotal History of Scotland Yard\u00a0<\/em>by H. Paul Jeffers<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Wyoming Territorial Prisoner Du Jour!<\/h3>\n

The\u00a0Wyoming Territorial Prison<\/a>\u00a0is a former federal government prison near Laramie, Wyoming. Built in 1872, it is one of the oldest buildings in Wyoming. It operated as a federal penitentiary from 1872 to 1890, and as a state prison from 1890 to 1901.<\/p>\n

Today we feature prisoner #62, from the Warden\u2019s record book:<\/p>\n

Edward Samuel Woodruff\u00a0<\/strong> – December 28, 1875 – Manslaughter (shot and killed his employer, ranchman John Freel with a Needle gun in November, 1874, at the ranch on the crossing of the Horse Creek Agency Road when he became intimate with Freel’s wife) – Laramie County – 10 years – Stone mason – Iowa – wife and baby in Fairfield, Iowa. Good conduct. Pardoned on December 13, 1877, by Secretary of State George W. French on the recommendation of Warden Spicer, Convict served 1 year and 11 1\/2 months. Remarks: After two months of pursuit by the Rocky Mountain Detective Association officers, Woodruff, alias Tom Johnson was captured in Fairfield, Iowa, and taken to the jail at Golden, Colorado, for the murder of Reuben B. Hayward on September 10, 1879, for his team and wagon. He was taken out of jail with ex-Convict #36, Jules Seminole (Charles Clark) and lynched by mob on December 28, 1879.<\/p>\n

You know, it blows me away how casual and light the sentences were back in the old west days.\u00a0 He served less than two years for killing his boss?\u00a0 No wonder these mobs felt like they had to take justice into their own hands when he killed again!\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

And here’s a newspaper snippet showing the attitude of people at the time:<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\n(The Democratic Leader,<\/em> December 31, 1879)<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Garretdom!<\/h3>\n

CARVED EACH OTHER.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A Cook and Waiter in a Chicago Restaurant Horrify the Diners.<\/strong><\/p>\n

CHICAGO, Sept.10.\u2014While supper was being served to about fifty people in a restaurant on West Madison street last night, the guests were horrified by two figures pushing through the place\u2014one with the blood streaming from him and flourishing an ugly-looking butcher knife, the other running for life.<\/p>\n

John Morris, the cook, and Frank Foster, a waiter in the place, had quarreled about an order when Morris grabbed a carving knife fourteen inches long and plunged it into Foster’s abdomen. The weapon inflicted a frightful gash, penetrating from the left side to the right, and coming out directly below the right lung. Morris then coolly pulled the knife from the wound and laid it down on the table from which he had taken it. He then started to run, when Foster grabbed the knife just in time to dash Morris across the heel as the latter was running up stairs. The cut severed tendons and arteries of the leg. Foster was taken home, where physicians pronounced his injuries fatal. Morris, who became very weak from loss of blood, was sent to the county hospital.<\/p>\n

Amazingly, I couldn’t find an update on this crazy story!\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
\n1886 Morbid Scrapbook<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s Short, Stout, Big-Nosed, Gap-Toothed Yet Truly Morbid Fact! And here’s the story of the discovery of the second victim of Jack the Ripper: Eight days later [after the murder of Polly Nichols], behind a lodging house at 29 Hanbury Street, less than half a mile from Buck’s Row, short, stout, big-nosed, gap-toothed, brown-haired, blue-eyed, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14158"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14167,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14158\/revisions\/14167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}