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1888: Jack the Ripper Claims His Second Victim: the Mutilation of Annie Chapman

Annie Chapman was a heavy drinker who had turned to prostitution in London’s Whitechapel after her marriage collapsed and her daughter died, using the earnings to pay for drink and a bed for the night. On the night of her death she had no money for lodgings and went out to earn her rent; her body was found in the early hours in a backyard, her throat cut and her abdomen slashed open.

The killer had arranged her intestines over her shoulder and removed her uterus, taking it with him. An autopsy determined she had been sober at the time of her death, ruling out the drunkenness that had shaped so much of her life.

Her murder, following that of Mary Ann Nichols just over a week earlier, confirmed for police that a single killer, soon dubbed Jack the Ripper, was stalking the women of Whitechapel.

Portrait of Annie Chapman with her husband in 1869

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Cold Case London Murder Serial Killer UK Unsolved

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1863: An Escaped Convict Asked for Directions After a Fatal Attack, Then Was Hanged at Perth Gaol

John Thomas, a convict known as prisoner number 7279, escaped from a work party at Sutherland’s Bay in June 1863, taking a blanket, a carpenter’s axe and other items. He made his way to Peninsula Farm near Perth, where he entered the cottage of 70-year-old servant Duncan Urquhart and began helping himself to clothing.

When Urquhart returned and discovered the intruder, Thomas fled through a window armed with Urquhart’s own axe. He pursued the elderly man outside and struck him repeatedly, fracturing his skull. Despite his terrible injuries, Urquhart managed to make his way more than half a mile towards the farmhouse on his hands and knees, covered in blood.

Around noon, farmhouse owner Joseph Hardey stepped outside and saw a stranger walking up the cart road, coatless and carrying a bundle over his shoulder. The man calmly asked Hardey for directions to a property several miles further inland, apparently unconcerned that the man he had just attacked lay gravely injured nearby. Hardey later identified the stranger as Thomas.

Urquhart survived for more than two months, but died in the Colonial Hospital on 24 August 1863 from his injuries. Thomas was tried before Chief Justice Burt at the Supreme Court on 2 September and convicted of wilful murder. He was hanged in front of Perth Prison on 8 September 1863.

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Australia Escape Execution Murder Perth Prison Trial WA

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1792: Sydney’s First Grave: The Convict Buried Beneath What Is Now the Town Hall

When Governor Phillip and the Reverend Richard Johnson chose a quiet spot on the outskirts of town for a burial ground in September 1792, the first person laid to rest there is believed to have been a convict named Michael Dunn. The site, later known as the Old Sydney Burial Ground or the George Street Burial Ground, now lies beneath Sydney Town Hall.

For 27 years the cemetery operated with almost no formal oversight: it was never gazetted, no trustees were appointed and no burial register or plan was kept. The Reverend William Cowper later admitted that “the dead of all communions were interred indiscriminately”, though social distinctions persisted among the military, with non-commissioned officers of different regiments buried in separate corners of the ground.

Once the cemetery closed in 1820 and burials moved to Brickfield Hill, now the site of Central railway station, the old ground fell into grim disrepair. Headstones were vandalised, pigs, goats and horses wandered among open graves, and grave robbers were blamed for prising up leaden coffins. A committee report even noted men using the abandoned cemetery to relieve themselves, and in hot weather the stench became unbearable.

Despite public opposition to disturbing the dead, the City of Sydney eventually cleared the site to build its Town Hall, ending nearly a century of neglect over the city’s first burial ground.

Old Sydney burial ground historic cemetery illustration

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Australia Cemetery Colonial History Convict History Grave Robbing NSW Sydney

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1876: A Cashier’s Refusal Dooms the Jesse James-Younger Gang at Northfield, Minnesota

On September 7, 1876, the Jesse James-Younger Gang rode into Northfield, Minnesota, intending to rob the First National Bank. Inside, cashier Joseph Lee Heywood refused to open the safe even as a revolver was pressed to his head and he was pistol-whipped; he was shot dead at his desk for his defiance, having falsely claimed the safe was on a time lock.

Outside, armed townspeople grabbed rifles and shotguns and opened fire from doorways and windows along the main street. Two of the raiders, Clell Miller and William Stiles, were killed in the street, and several others were wounded before the surviving gang members fled empty-handed.

A massive manhunt followed through the Minnesota countryside. Jesse and Frank James eventually broke away and escaped, but Cole, Jim and Bob Younger were tracked down two weeks later, badly wounded, and captured. The disastrous raid effectively destroyed the gang as a fighting unit and ended its run of successful robberies.

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Gang Manhunt Minnesota Murder Outlaw Robbery USA

1888: Jack the Ripper Claims His Second Victim: the Mutilation of Annie Chapman

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1863: An Escaped Convict Asked for Directions After a Fatal Attack, Then Was Hanged at Perth Gaol

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1792: Sydney’s First Grave: The Convict Buried Beneath What Is Now the Town Hall

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1876: A Cashier’s Refusal Dooms the Jesse James-Younger Gang at Northfield, Minnesota

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