According to both the lodging-house deputy, Timothy Donovan, and the watchman, John Evans, shortly after midnight on 8 September, Chapman had been lacking the required money for her nightly lodging. She drank a pint of beer in the kitchen with fellow lodger Frederick Stevens at approximately 12:10 a.m. before informing another lodger that she had earlier visited her sister in Vauxhall, and that her family had given her 5d. Stevens then observed Chapman take a box of pills from her pocket. This box then broke, whereupon Chapman wrapped the pills in a section of envelope she had taken from a mantlepiece before leaving the property. At approximately 1:35 a.m., Chapman returned to the lodging-house with a baked potato which she ate before again leaving the premises with a likely intention of earning the money to pay for a bed via prostituting herself, stating: "I won't be long, Brummie. See that Tim keeps the bed for me." Evans last saw Chapman walking in the direction of Spitalfields Market.