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By Root 199 0

Chapman. Her brother, Fountain Smith, was born in 1861. She supposedly had a sister, of whom little is known, other than Annie mentioning that she lived in Vauxhall. In 1869, Annie married John Chapman, a relative of her mother, at All Saints Church in Knightsbridge. They lived together in west London until 1881 when they moved to Windsor. Chapman is often referred to as a veterinary surgeon (this seems to have come from the inquest testimony of Annie’s acquaintance, Amelia Palmer), but he was in fact a domestic head coachman. Reportedly he lost his job due to Annie’s dishonesty, but there is no definite evidence of this.They had three children, a son (crippled) and two daughters (one died in 1882 and the other, Anna Georgina, ran away with a travelling circus).

Annie left the family before the daughter’s death and returned to London. Here she received an allowance of ten shillings a week from John, but the payment was often sporadic. It ceased altogether with his death in 1886.

The press were quick to blame the marital breakdown on Annie’s alcoholism and immorality. However, inquest testimony from acquaintances suggests that she was only occasionally drunk and that she was only an occasional prostitute. More often she survived through hawking her own crochet work, matches and flowers. Also, John Chapman died of dropsy and cirrhosis of the liver, further suggesting that Annie was not entirely to blame.

During 1886, Annie lived at 30, Dorset Street with a sievemaker named, or possibly nicknamed, Jack Sievey.Why they separated is uncertain. From May 1888 Annie lived mainly at Crossingham’s Lodging House, 35, Dorset Street where, by all accounts, she got on well with the other lodgers. The only exception was in the last week of August when Annie got into a fight with fellow lodger, Eliza Cooper. Their stories differed wildly, but it was definitely over a man and some money and Annie sustained bruises to her right temple and chest.

About 5 feet tall, stout, with dark wavy brown hair, blue eyes and a thick nose, Annie survived rather than lived. Dr Bagster Phillips who examined her after her death found that she was undernourished and had chronic diseases of the lungs and brain membranes that would soon have killed her if fate hadn’t intervened. Amelia Palmer, a friend of Annie’s, recalled seeing her on 3 September in Dorset Street where Annie had talked of her ill-health and showed Amelia her bruises. She also discussed the possibility of going hop pick-ing ‘if my sister will send me the boots’. The next day, Amelia saw her again, this time near Spitalfields Church. Annie told her that she felt no better and that she might go to the infirmary for a day or two. Amelia asked her if she had had anything to eat. When Annie told her she hadn’t even had a cup of tea, Amelia gave her tuppence, telling her not to spend it on rum. The last time she saw Annie was on 7 September. They met in Dorset Street at about 5.00pm. Asking her if she was going to Stratford, Annie told Amelia that she wasn’t as she felt ‘too ill to do anything’. Coming back that way some ten minutes later, Amelia found Annie still in the same place.‘It’s no use giving way,’Annie told her, ‘I must pull myself together and get some money or I shall have no lodgings.’

At 7pm Annie was back at Crossingham’s where she asked Donovan if she could sit in the kitchen. She told him that she had been in the infirmary although there is no record of her being admitted to either Whitechapel or Spitalfields Workhouse Infirmary. At about 12.12am, she was still in the kitchen, where William Stevens, a fellow lodger, found her ‘slightly the worse for drink’. He saw her take a box of pills from her pocket. The box broke and Annie transferred the pills to a piece of torn envelope taken from the floor. At this point, Annie left and probably went for a drink (Frederick Stevens, another lodger, recalled having a pint of beer with her at 12.30am). By 1.35am she had returned to Crossingham’s. Donovan claims that he found her drunk and eating a baked potato. A bed was vacant and Donovan