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 2^nd 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 7^th 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