True Crime

George Chapman, also known as Severin Klosowski, was a London poisoner who was hanged in 1903. During his trial, a number of people began to suspect that he was, or had been, Jack the Ripper. These people included Frederick Abberline, who had been an important detective on the Ripper case back in 1888. Abberline became convinced that Chapman was his man. This book takes Abberline's theory and runs with it.

Aesthete, decadent poet, misogynist and violent drunk, Ernest Dowson has been long-listed as a Jack the Ripper suspect for nearly twenty years.

Simon Webb's new book takes a fresh look at the evidence, and examines the possibility that Dowson's consumption of epic quantities of absinthe may have turned him from a woman-hating brawler into the terror of Whitechapel.

A native of County Durham, Mary Ann Cotton is regarded as the most prolific female serial killer in British history. This book from Simon Webb and Miranda Brown re-tells her story, re-examines the evidence and includes a startling new theory about the so-called West Auckland Poisoner.

Long regarded as a possible Jack the Ripper suspect, the Victorian poet Francis Thompson lived in London at the time of the Whitechapel murders, and may have had motive, means and opportunity to commit at least some of those horrific crimes. At one time, he even lived with a prostitute who subsequently disappeared.

Considering known facts about Thompson's life and personality, and searching for clues in the darker corners of his poetry, Simon Webb's new book offers a balanced view of the case for Jack the Poet.