Hawley Harvey Crippen

Hawley Crippen was born in Coldwater, Michigan,[2] the only surviving child to Andresse Skinner[3] and Myron Augustus Crippen,[4] a merchant.[5] Crippen studied first at the University of Michigan Homeopathic Medical School, then graduated from the Cleveland Homeopathic Medical College in 1884.[6] After his first wife, Charlotte Jane (née Bell), died of a stroke in 1892, Crippen entrusted his parents, living in San Jose, California, with the care of his son, Hawley Otto (1889-1974).[6]

Having qualified as a homeopath, Crippen started to practice in New York City. In 1894 he married his second wife, Corrine "Cora" Turner (born Kunigunde Mackamotski), a music hall singer who performed under the stage name Belle Elmore.[5][7] That same year, Crippen started working for Dr Munyon's, a homeopathic pharmaceutical company.

Crippen and his wife moved to England in 1897,[5] although his US medical qualifications were not sufficient to allow him to practise as a doctor in the United Kingdom.[8] While Crippen continued working as a distributor of patent medicines,[9] Cora socialised with a number of variety players of the time, including Lil Hawthorne and her husband/manager, John Nash.[10]

Crippen was sacked by Munyon's in 1899 for spending too much time managing his wife's stage career. He became manager of Drouet's Institution for the Deaf, where he hired Ethel Le Neve, a young typist, in 1900. By 1905, the two were having an affair.[5] After living at various addresses in London, the Crippens finally moved in 1905 to 39 Hilldrop Crescent, Camden Road, Holloway, where they took in lodgers to augment Crippen's meagre income. Cora had an affair with one of these lodgers, and in turn, Crippen took Le Neve as his mistress in 1908.[5]

Belle Elmore

After a party at the Crippen home on 31 January 1910, Cora disappeared. Hawley claimed that she had returned to the US and later added that she had died and had been cremated in California. Meanwhile, Le Neve moved into Hilldrop Crescent and began openly wearing Cora's clothes and jewelry.

Police first heard of Cora's disappearance from her friend, the strongwoman Kate "Vulcana" Williams,[11] but began to take the matter more seriously when asked to investigate by Nash and Hawthorne, personal friends of Scotland Yard Superintendent Frank Froest.[12] Crippen's house was searched, but nothing was found. Under questioning by Chief Inspector Walter Dew, Crippen admitted that he had fabricated the story about his wife having died, claiming that he did so to avoid personal embarrassment because she had in fact left him and fled to the US with one of her lovers, a music hall actor named Bruce Miller. Dew was satisfied with Crippen's story. However, Crippen and Le Neve did not know this and fled in panic to Brussels, where they spent the night at a hotel. The following day, they went to Antwerp and boarded the Canadian Pacific liner SS Montrose, bound for Canada.

The couple's disappearance led police to perform further searches of the house. During the fourth and final search, they found the torso of a human body buried under the brick floor of the basement. William Willcox (later Sir William Willcox, senior scientific analyst to the Home Office) found traces of the calming drug scopolamine in the torso.[13] The remains were identified as Cora's by a piece of skin from the abdomen; the head, limbs, and skeleton were never recovered. Her remains were later interred at the St Pancras and Islington Cemetery, East Finchley.

Transatlantic arrest

Crippen, disguised, after his arrest

Meanwhile, Crippen and Le Neve were crossing the Atlantic aboard Montrose, with Le Neve disguised as a boy. Captain Henry George Kendall recognised the fugitives and, just before steaming beyond the range of his ship-board transmitter, had telegraphist Lawrence Ernest Hughes send a wireless telegram to the British authorities: "Have strong suspicions that Crippen London cellar murderer and accomplice are among saloon passengers. Mustache taken off growing beard. Accomplice dressed as boy. Manner and build undoubtedly a girl." Had Crippen travelled third class, he probably would have escaped Kendall's notice. Dew boarded a faster White Star liner, SS Laurentic, from Liverpool, arrived in Quebec ahead of Crippen, and contacted the Canadian authorities.

As Montrose entered the St. Lawrence River, Dew came aboard disguised as a pilot. Canada was then still a dominion within the British Empire. If Crippen, an American citizen, had sailed to the US instead, even if he had been recognised, it would have taken extradition proceedings to bring him to trial. Kendall invited Crippen to meet the pilots as they came aboard. Dew removed his pilot's cap and said, "Good morning, Dr. Crippen. Do you know me? I'm Chief Inspector Dew from Scotland Yard." After a pause, Crippen replied, "Thank God it's over. The suspense has been too great. I couldn't stand it any longer." He then held out his wrists for the handcuffs. Crippen and Le Neve were arrested on board Montrose on 31 July 1910. Crippen was returned to the UK on board the SS Megantic.[14]

Alleged scar tissue used in evidence at the trial, claimed to be that of Cora Crippen

Crippen was tried at the Old Bailey before the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Alverstone, on 18 October 1910. The proceedings lasted four days.

The first prosecution witnesses were pathologists. One of them, Bernard Spilsbury, testified they could not identify the torso remains or even discern whether they were male or female. However, Bernard Spilsbury found a piece of skin with what he claimed to be an abdominal scar consistent with Cora's medical history.[8][15] Large quantities of the toxic compound scopalamine were found in the remains, and Crippen had purchased the drug before the murder from a local chemist.

Crippen's defence, led by Alfred Tobin,[16][17] maintained that Cora had fled to America with another man named Bruce Miller and that Cora and Hawley had been living at the house only since 1905, suggesting a previous owner of the house was responsible for the placement of the remains. The defence asserted that the abdominal scar identified by pathologist Spilsbury was really just folded tissue, for, among other things, it had hair follicles growing from it, something scar tissue could not have;[18] Spilsbury observed that the sebaceous glands appeared at the ends but not in the middle of the scar.[8]

Other evidence presented by the prosecution included a piece of a man's pyjama top supposedly from a pair Cora had given Crippen a year earlier. The pyjama bottoms were found in Crippen's bedroom, but not the top. The fragment included the manufacturer's label, Jones Bros. Curlers, and bleached hair consistent with Cora's, were found with the remains.[19] Testimony from a Jones Bros. representative, the store that the pyjama top fragment came from, stated that the product was not sold prior to 1908, thus placing the date of manufacture well within the time period of when the Crippens occupied the house and when Cora gave the garment to Hawley the year before in 1909.[18]

Sketches from the trial of Dr. Crippen

Throughout the proceedings and at his sentencing, Crippen showed no remorse for his wife, only concern for his lover's reputation. The jury found Crippen guilty of murder after just 27 minutes of deliberations. Le Neve was charged only with being an accessory after the fact and acquitted.[5]

Although Crippen never gave any reason for killing his wife, several theories have been propounded. One was by the late Victorian and Edwardian barrister Edward Marshall Hall who believed that Crippen was using hyoscine on his wife as a depressant or anaphrodisiac but accidentally gave her an overdose and then panicked when she died.[8] It is said that Hall declined to lead Crippen's defence because another theory was to be propounded.[20]

In 1981, several British newspapers reported that Sir Hugh Rhys Rankin claimed to have met Ethel Le Neve in 1930 in Australia where she told him that Crippen murdered his wife because she had syphilis.[21]

Questions have arisen about the investigation, trial and evidence that convicted Crippen in 1910. Dornford Yates, a junior barrister at the original trial, wrote in his memoirs As Berry and I Were Saying, that Lord Alverstone took the very unusual step, at the request of the prosecution, of refusing to give a copy of the sworn affidavit used to issue the arrest warrant to Crippen's defence counsel. The judge without challenge accepted the prosecution's argument that the withholding of the document would not prejudice the accused's case. Yates said he knew why the prosecution did this but – despite the passage of years – refused to disclose why.[24] Yates noted that although Crippen placed the torso in dry quicklime to be destroyed, he did not realise that when it became wet it turned into slaked lime, which is a preservative,[25] a fact that Yates used in the plot of his novel The House That Berry Built.

The American-British crime novelist Raymond Chandler thought it unbelievable that Crippen could be so stupid as to bury his wife's torso under the cellar floor of his home while successfully disposing of her head and limbs.[26]

Another theory is that Crippen was carrying out illegal abortions and the torso was that of one of his patients who died and not his wife.[27]

Waxwork of Dr. Crippen in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussauds in London (pictured 1984)

• The murder inspired Arthur Machen's 1927 short story "The Islington Mystery", which in turn was adapted as the 1960 Mexican film El Esqueleto de la señora Morales.
• The gang defeated by Elsa Lanchester in the H.G. Wells-scripted crime comedy Blue Bottles (1928) is revealed to be related to the Crippen case.
• It is thought to have inspired the 1935 novel We, the Accused by Ernest Raymond.
• The German 1942 feature film Doctor Crippen on Board, directed by Erich Engels, stars Rudolf Fernau in the title role. (A 1958 Engels film Doctor Crippen Lives is neither a sequel nor about Crippen.)
• The character of Mr. Pugh in the radio drama Under Milk Wood, by Dylan Thomas, is described as sporting a "nicotine-eggyellow weeping walrus Victorian moustache worn thick and long in memory of Doctor Crippen". Throughout the play, he obsessively fantasises about murdering his wife, but never attempts to do so.
• The 1961 Wolf Mankowitz-Monty Norman musical Belle, or The Ballad of Dr Crippen at London's Strand Theatre was based on the case.[35]
• The British 1962 feature film Dr. Crippen stars Donald Pleasence in the title role and Samantha Eggar as Le Neve.
• The British 1968 film Negatives features Peter McEnery and Glenda Jackson as a couple whose erotic fantasies involve dressing up as Crippen and Ethel le Neve.
• The American TV series Ironside presented an episode (season 2, episode 16, January 23, 1969: "Why the Tuesday Afternoon Bridge Club Met on Thursday") in which a neurotic man assumed Dr. Crippen's identity and committed a similar murder.
• In Carry On Loving, which was made and set in 1970, there is a jokily anachronistic reference to the Crippen case: Peter Butterworth appears in Edwardian costume as 'Dr Crippen', visiting a marriage bureau to seek a third wife, having dispatched both his first two.
• In the 1972 season of Australian TV soap opera, Number 96, a plot line involving the death of Sylvia Vansard (in which her estranged chemist husband and his mistress are the main suspects), deliberately homages the Crippen story. It was referenced in the official synopses provided to the screenwriters.
• The Crippen saga is the basis for 1982's The False Inspector Dew, a detective novel by Peter Lovesey.
• The 1989 BBC series Shadow of the Noose, about the life of barrister Edward Marshall Hall, includes an abortive attempt on Hall's part to defend Crippen (played by David Hatton).
• John Boyne wrote the 2004 novel Crippen – A Novel of Murder.
• Erik Larson's 2006 book Thunderstruck interwove the story of the murder with the history of Guglielmo Marconi's invention of radio.
• Martin Edwards wrote the 2008 novel Dancing for the Hangman, which re-interprets the case while seeking to adhere to the established evidence.
• The PBS series Secrets of the Dead episode "Executed in Error" (2008) explored new findings in the Crippen case.
• Dan Weatherer's stage play Crippen (2016) explores the life and crimes of Dr. Hawley Crippen while taking into account new evidence and presenting an alternative theory as to who lay buried beneath the cellar floor.

• John Reginald Christie, English serial killer
• John George Haigh, English serial killer known as the "Acid Bath Murderer"
• Michael Swango, American serial killer
• John Tawell, British murderer and the first criminal to be captured with the use of telecommunications technology
• Dorothea Waddingham, English nursing home matron and murderer

• Coniam, Matthew (2021). Mr Crippen, Cora & the Body in the Basement. Pen & Sword Books Ltd. ISBN 978-1-399-009720.
• Connell, Nicholas (2005). Walter Dew; The Man Who Caught Crippen. Sutton Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7509-3803-7.
• Cullen, Tom (1977). The Mild Murderer: The True Story of the Dr. Crippen Case. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 978-0-395-25776-0.
• Dalrymple, Roger (2020). Crippen: A Crime Sensation in Memory and Modernity. Boydell Press. ISBN 978-1-7874-4677-9.
• Goodman, Jonathan, ed. (1985). The Crippen File. London, New York: Allison & Busby, Ltd. ISBN 978-0-85031-636-0.
• Gaute, J.H.H.; Odell, Robin (1996). The New Murderer's Who's Who. London: Harrap Books. ISBN 978-0-245-54639-6.
• Smith, David James (2005). Supper with the Crippens. Orion Books Ltd. ISBN 978-0-7528-7772-3.
• Larson, Erik (2006). Thunderstruck. New York: Crown Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4000-8067-0.
• Saward, Joe (2010). The Man who Caught Crippen. Paris: Morienval Press. ISBN 978-0-9554868-1-4.
• The World's Most Infamous Crimes and Criminals. New York: Gallery Books. 1987. ISBN 978-0-8317-9677-8. OCLC 17304744.
• "Crippen, Hawley Harvey". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/39420. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
• Finn, Pat (2016) Unsolved 1910. ISBN 978-1535461856

Media related to Hawley Harvey Crippen at Wikimedia Commons

• Geringer, Joseph (2014). "Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen: Of Passion and Poison". truTV Crime Library. Archived from the original on February 11, 2003. Retrieved September 1, 2014.
• "Dr. Crippen: One Night In Camden". marconicalling.com. 2014. Archived from the original on May 7, 2013. Retrieved September 1, 2014.
• "Crippen mystery remains despite DNA claim". BBC News. London: BBC. October 18, 2007. Retrieved September 1, 2014.
• "Hawley Harvey Crippen: Witness statements and edited proceeding from records held at The Old Bailey". Old Bailey Online. 2014. Retrieved September 1, 2014.
• Le Queux, William (May 1930). "The Girl, the Doctor – and the Missing Wife". True Detective Mysteries. Retrieved September 1, 2014.
• Hilton, Chris (July 31, 2010). "Murder, he telegraphed". Wellcome Library. Retrieved September 1, 2014.
• "Hawley Harvey Crippen was convicted of the murder of his wife Cora Crippen and sentenced to death". Black Kalendar. October 16, 2019. Retrieved October 16, 2019.