ANNIE (a daughter, wife and mother)
By Richard Banks
Annie
Eliza was born out of wedlock in 1841, the first child of George Smith and Ruth
Chapman. Her father was a soldier in the 2nd Regiment of the Queen’s
Life Guards, stationed at Regents Park Barracks. The Regiment provided the
mounted guard for ceremonial parades and processions in London,
such as those for Queen Victoria’s
coronation and marriage. Ruth, had come to London
from Sussex
to work as a domestic servant. George would, no doubt, have cut a dashing
figure on horseback and Ruth was one of many young women exposed ‘to the all
powerful redcoat’ and ‘succumbing to Scarlet Fever’.
Although the army actively discouraged
marriage for enlisted men George and Ruth were given permission to marry a year
after Annie’s birth enabling the three of them to live together in barracks and
later in lodgings. One of the benefits of George’s employment was that Annie
would have been educated at the Regimental
School well before the
introduction of mandatory schooling. The school sought to instil notions of
discipline, duty and respect in line with military ideals as well as teaching
practical skills that would have equipped their pupils for future employment.
By the standards of the time the children also received a good academic
education, including spelling, reading, writing, diction, grammar, English
history, geography, arithmetic and algebra. George would have been paid
two-pence a month for Annie to attend and one penny for each of his children
that came after her.
Growing up in salubrious areas such as
Knightsbridge and Windsor put Annie in close proximity to a world of privilege
and wealth seldom glimpsed by other working class children. From a young age
Annie would have learned to take a pride in her father’s position and espouse
regimental values of honour and dignity. How she spoke and comported herself
would have conveyed the impression, even in later life, that she was from a
good family.
By 1854 Anne had been joined by five siblings.
The family was living in lodgings near to barracks when epidemics of scarlet
fever and typhus arrived in London.
Within weeks four of Annie’s siblings died, sparing only herself and one
sister, Emily. Despite the trauma of these deaths family life continued and
George and Ruth had several more children, including a son named Fountaine. By
now Anne was in her teens and almost ready to begin working life.
At the time of the 1861 census she was
working as a housemaid in the Westminster
home of an architect; a few doors away was living Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Her
duties as a maid of all work were many and involved long hours. The pay was
poor and it is unlikely she had very much free time. However, for the first
time in her life she had her own room.
In 1862 tragedy again entered her life
when her father, now in civilian life, working as valet to a former officer,
committed suicide by cutting his throat. The reason or reasons why he did so
are unclear but since leaving the army it appears he had become a heavy
drinker.
In 1869 Annie’s life took an upward
turn when she married John Chapman, a lodger at her mother’s house. He was a
private coachman, a job that put him near the top of the hierarchy of servants.
They lived reasonably well by working class standards of the time. Indeed it
was observed that many coachmen and their wives harboured delusions of
grandeur, especially those who, like John, worked in the West End of London. In
1870 Annie’s first child was born to be followed by seven more.
In 1879 John became head coachman to
Francis Tress Barry, a man of considerable wealth with a country estate, St
Leonards Hill, near Windsor. John’s duties now extended to the supervision
of the estate’s stable block. The family’s accommodation in the coachman’s
house would have been a significant improvement on previous lodgings and Annie
may well have employed a charwoman or day maid.
Barry’s house was only four miles from Ascot racecourse and in 1881 was visited by the Prince
and Princess of Wales, plus other royals, attending the races. They were often
to return for dinners and shooting parties. Living close to high society, and
benefiting from John’s well paid employment, the family had all but become
middle class – what could possibly go wrong?
The answer is to be found in a letter
written in 1889 to the Pall Mall Gazette by Annie’s younger sister, Miriam. She
wrote: ‘Just before I was six years old, my father cut his throat, leaving my
mother with five children, three girls older, and one younger than myself.’
All, she wrote, had signed the
abstinence pledge to forgo ‘fermented spirits’ but her eldest sister [Annie]
was unable to adhere to this commitment. ‘We tried to persuade the one given to
drink to give it up. She was married and in a good position. Over and over
again she signed the pledge and tried to keep it. Over and over again she was
tempted and fell.’ Annie’s struggle, according to Miriam, had been a lifelong
one and that she had inherited ’the curse’ of alcoholism from their father.
Her letter further states that of Anne’s
eight children, ‘six of these have been victims of the curse.’ Indeed, all died
within days or weeks of being born or suffered medical conditions likely to
have been a consequence of Annie’s addiction. In 1882 after her eldest child,
Emily Rose, had died of meningitis Annie began to acquire a reputation for
public drunkenness. In the December of that year she was persuaded by her
sisters to enter a sanatorium in Spelthorne, West London.
One year later she was discharged and according to Miriam, ‘came out a sober
wife and mother’.
However, after a year of abstinence she
was again observed wandering the St Leonards Estate the worse for wear. John
was presented with an ultimatum by his employer, either to remove her from his
estate or face dismissal. With two surviving children to consider, including
one who was severely disabled, John and Annie agreed too separate. It was
agreed that John pay her 10/-s a week maintenance and that she return to the
family home in Knightsbridge. With the help and support of her mother and
sisters there was still hope she could overcome her addiction, but within weeks
Annie’s inability to stop drinking caused her to leave the home of her pledge
adhering family.
It is likely she relocated to Notting
Hill, a poor working class area, where she met a Jack Sievey and the two of
them became a pair, probably on account of their mutual love of alcohol. In
1884 they moved to Whitechapel in search of work. Known as Mrs Sievey she was
described by a friend as a respectable woman, never using bad language, clever,
and industrious when sober. They lived in Dorset Street, a road the social
reformer, Charles Booth, described a few years later as ‘the worst I have seen,’
on account of its poverty, misery and criminality. As Annie and Jack almost
certainly had enough money between them to afford better lodgings it would seem
that most of what they had was spent on alcohol.
In December 1886 her situation worsened
when John’s maintenance payments ceased. Learning that he was gravely ill Annie
set-off to walk the twenty-five miles to Windsor
where John, now retired from Barry’s service, had taken a house. Their reunion
was a brief one, John dying on Christmas Day. Back in Whitechapel she seemed
genuinely remorseful although her grief may have had more to do with the loss
of her maintenance money. Early the following year Jack Sievey deserted her,
leaving Annie without a protector, imperative in a neighbourhood renown for its
criminality.
Annie’s life became increasingly
affected by drink, despondency and ill health that included tuberculosis.
Nevertheless she attempted to earn money by selling matches, flowers and her
own crochet work. Occasionally, she would return to her family who would give
her clothes and, in Miriam’s words try to, ‘win her back, for she was a mere
beggar’. Annie’s brother, now resident in Clerkenwell, was also approached for
help and likely gave her money as well as buying her the occasional drink. Like
Annie he was an alcoholic whose addiction later led him to steal from his
employers.
In 1888 Annie began to spend her
weekends at the Dorset Street
lodging house of Crossinghams in the company of Edward Stanley, a brewery
worker, who paid for their accommodation from Saturday through to Monday
morning, also paying for Annie to stay there a night or two more. Their
relationship appears to have been an exclusive one and Annie, trying to affect
an appearance of marital respectability, purchased and wore rings which Stanley described as a
wedding ring and keeper, ie an engagement ring.
On 7 September 1888 Annie’s friend
Amelia Palmer saw her lingering on Dorset
Street looking unwell and apparently penniless.
Asked if she would be going to Stratford Market to sell her crochet work Annie
replied, ‘I am too ill to do anything’ and then, ten minutes later, when their
paths crossed again, ‘I must pull myself together and get some money or I shall
have no lodgings.’ By this time she may well have been sleeping rough on some
of the nights she was not with Stanley.
On the evening of 7th
September Annie appeared at Crossinghams having apparently begged five pence.
By 1.45 am when the kitchen was cleared of those unable to pay for a bed her
money had largely been spent on alcohol and a meal of potatoes. With
insufficient money to pay for a bed Annie wandered out into the night with no
other option but to sleep rough.
Her murder in the early hours of 8
September 1888 was the second of five thought to have been committed by the
serial killer, Jack the Ripper.
*****
It was generally assumed in 1888 that
the Ripper’s five victims were prostitutes. That belief has persisted into
modern times. The available evidence indicates that only one was. All had
problems with alcohol which for four of them wrecked stable relationships
contributing to their slide into desperate poverty. Sadly nothing of Annie’s
tragic life would be remembered today had it not been for her brutal murder.
[Bibliography:
‘The Five. The untold lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper.’ A book
written by Halle Rubenhold and published by Transworld Publishers (part of
Penguin Random House UK
group of companies.]
Copyright Richard Banks
