Notes
1. c H arlotte
1 New York American, 16 July 1910.
2 Farmer’s Gazette and Journal of Practical Horticulture, 13 February 1862.
3 Leinster Express, 27 June 1863.
4 National Library of Ireland: MS 39, 027: de Vesci estate papers, letter from Arthur Bell to Viscount de Vesci, 9 May 1860.
5 Ibid.: 24 June 1867.
6 Ibid.: 30 June 1860.
7 James Kelly (ed.), The Cambridge History of Ireland, Vol. III, 1730 –1880 (Cambridge, 2018), pp. 664–7.
8 John Clarke, Victorian Brackley (Stroud, 2018), cited at https://www. magdalen.northants.sch.uk/general/welcome-and-introduction/ history/.
9 Ibid.
10 Oscar Wilde, Impressions of America (Sunderland, 1906; Project Gutenberg, 2013, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/41806/41806-h/ 41806-h.htm).
11 New York Times, 22 September 1881.
12 By way of comparison, in 1879 rent at the Smithsonian, a modern apartment block in midtown Manhattan with six to seven rooms and a bath, could be had for $33 –$40 per month (New York Daily Herald, 30 October 1879).
13 Trow’s New York City Directory (1886).
14 Arlene W. Keeling, John Kirschgessner and Michelle C. Hehman (eds), History of Professional Nursing in the United States: Towards a Culture of Health (New York, 2017), p. 53.
15 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 16 June 1889.
16 Ibid.
17 Mary Roberts Rinehart, My Story (New York, 1931), p. 43.
18 Ibid., p. 53.
19 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 16 June 1889.
20 New York American, 16 July 1910. In the interview, William suggests that Charlotte either began her nursing studies in 1885 or completed them in that year.
21 American Homeopathist, vol. 13 (1 April 1887), p. 157.
2. t H e crippens
1 State of New York Marriage Certificate for Myron Augustus Crippen and Ardesee Crippen, 28 September 1891.
2 Chapman Bros. (ed.), Portrait and Biographical Album of Branch County, Mich. (Chicago, 1888), p. 277.
3 Los Angeles Evening Post-Record, 18 November 1910.
4 Los Angeles Herald, 23 October 1910.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Michele Aaron, ‘The Historical, the Hysterical and the Homeopathic’, Paragraph, vol. 19, no. 2 (July 1996), pp. 114–26, p. 116.
8 John S. Haller, The History of American Homeopathy: The Academic Years, 1820 –1935 (Binghamton, NY, 2005), p. 15.
9 San Francisco Call, 3 August 1910.
10 Catalog of the University of Michigan: 1882–83 (Ann Arbor, 1882), p. 116. Crippen is listed in the 1882–3 catalogue as a student with Breyfogle as his preceptor.
11 ‘Personal Points’, American Homeopathist, vols 11–12 (1885), p. 205.
12 An oophorectomy and an ovariotomy were interchangeable terms at this time. Both involved the removal of a woman’s ovaries.
13 Crippen would later suggest that he had first visited London in 1883, but this date may have been given in error.
14 ‘Personal Points’, p. 192.
15 American Homeopathic Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, vol. 1 (1885). See Crippen’s contributions during his European trip: ‘Our Berlin Letter’, p. 242; ‘Our Paris Letter’, p. 192; ‘London Notes – Methods – The
Hospitals’, p. 141; ‘Diseases of Women as a Case of Insanity’, p. 42; and ‘Foetal Nutrition’, p. 164.
16 Ibid., pp. 44–5.
17 Ibid., pp. 46–7.
18 ‘On the Relation of Diseases of the Ear to Abnormal Conditions of the Female Generative Organs’, American Homeopathic Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, vol. 8 (Detroit, 1886), pp. 429–33.
19 ‘Another New Hospital’, The Chironian, vol. 3, no. 9 (11 March 1887), pp. 129–30.
20 Rinehart, My Story, p. 46.
21 New York Tribune, 12 July 1899.
22 Ibid.
23 The photographer N. L. Merrill’s photo of young Crippen appears in Roger Dalrymple’s book, Crippen: A Crime Sensation in Memory and Modernity (Woodbridge, 2020), p. 50.
24 Detroit Free Press, 3 August 1910.
25 Cincinnati Medical Advance, vol. 20 (1888), p. 80. The journal gives the date of their marriage as 13 December, but the date of the marriage licence is given as the 12th (Ancestry.com: Michigan, US: County Marriage Records, 1822–1940 [database online], Lehi, UT, USA). How Charlotte was related to John Butler is open to question. His name is not immediately obvious in either the Bell or Madden family trees.
26 Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, vol. II (1889), p. 313.
27 Los Angeles Evening Express, 20 December 1887.
28 San Diego Union and Daily Bee, 22 December 1887.
29 Coronado Historical Association, www.coronadohistory.org. As the Crippens were residing at the Hotel Josephine, what would become the famous Hotel del Coronado was being built a bit further down the beach.
3. paralysis of t H e sympat H etic
1 Medical News and Abstract, vol. 42 (1883), p. 452; T. S. Van Dyke, County of San Diego: The Italy of Southern California (National City: 1887).
2 Based at 845 5th Street, as well as selling eyeglasses, glass eyes, opera, field and marine glasses, it advertised as ‘the largest and finest selected stock of watches, clocks and jewellery in Southern California’. Crippen was
listed as ‘MD and surgeon in charge’ (San Diego Union and Daily Bee, 14 March 1890). In 1888, Crippen advertised himself in the California Homeopathist as having an office at 1248 5th Street and 5th Avenue.
3 Monteith’s Directory of San Diego and Vicinity: 1889–90
4 According to Philo H. Crippen’s will, Myron appears to have been living in Chicago at the time.
5 ‘The Insanity of Pregnancy’, Homeopathic Journal of Obstetrics, Gynaecology and Paedology, vol. 10 (1888), p. 33.
6 New York American, 16 July 1910.
7 Times-Picayune (New Orleans), 7 April 1890; Memphis Avalanche, 8 April 1890.
8 105th Annual Report of the Regents for the Year Ending September 30, 1891 (Albany, 1893), p. 578. (Crippen was appointed for the academic year starting 1 October 1890). Also announced in the Medical Era, 8 October 1890.
9 New York City Police Census, 1890.
10 New York Daily Herald, 30 September 1879.
11 New York American, 16 July 1910.
12 Ancestry.com: Michigan, US: Wills and Probate Records, 1784–1980, case files 3117–3207, 1833–1923, Philo H. Crippen, 1890.
13 Samuel H. Williamson, ‘Seven Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a U.S. Dollar Amount, 1790 to present’, Measuring Worth (April 2024), www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/.
14 Crippen signed the promissory note in October 1890.
15 Crippen arrived at Liverpool on 1 July 1891 (Ancestry.com: The National Archives in Washington, DC, USA: London, England, UK; Board of Trade: Commercial and Statistical Department and Successors: Inwards Passenger Lists; Class: Bt26; Piece: 12; Item: 39). He departed on 24 July 1891, travelling via Amsterdam (ibid.: Washington, DC, USA; Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at New York, NY, 1820–1897; Microfilm Serial or NAID: M237; RG Title: Records of the US Customs Service; RG: 36).
16 New York American, 16 July 1910.
17 Dundee Courier, 22 July 1910.
18 Salt Lake Tribune, 8 November 1891.
19 Dart lived at 533 East Second South, and the Crippens were at 565 South First West. As Salt Lake City’s extremely confusing historic street plan has been renamed and numbered, it is difficult to identify exactly where these addresses were. James Dart was also an amateur musician with a large collection of violins, which undoubtedly impressed Hawley Crippen, a dedicated fiddler.
20 Salt Lake Tribune, 16 July 1910.
21 Reno Gazette-Journal, 16 January 1911.
22 New York American, 16 July 1910.
23 Southern Journal of Homeopathy, vol. 11 (February 1892).
24 By 1910 Crippen had long given up practising as an ob-gyn and made an effort to hide that he had once been an expert in this field of medicine. William Bell was the only person to disclose this information to the press in relation to what he believed was the true cause of Charlotte’s death.
25 Reno Gazette-Journal, 16 January 1911.
26 Salt Lake Tribune, 16 July 1910.
27 New York American, 16 July 1910.
4. kunegunde
1 Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie (New York, 1900).
2 Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (New York, 1943), p. 43.
3 The Mersingers attended Most Holy Trinity Church in Williamsburg, where a baptismal record can be found for Katie. This is the same church attended by Betty Smith, author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and her protagonist, Francie Nolan.
4 St Louis Post-Dispatch, 16 July 1910.
5 Times-Union (Brooklyn), 1 August 1910; Sun, 15 July 1910.
6 New York Times, 15 July 1910.
7 Ibid., 17 June 1894.
8 KSU: Special Collections and Archives: Jonathan Goodman papers: Series 1: Publications by Goodman: Nonfiction, 1685–2005: Sub-Series 8: The Crippen File, 1845–1999: box 2, folder 3: Letter from Louise Mills to Filson Young, 8 December 1952.
9 Detroit Free Press, 16 July 1910.
10 KSU: Goodman papers: box 2, folder 3: Mills.
11 Detroit Free Press, 16 July 1910. Other family members said she ‘went to work for a family’ as a servant, but not in what capacity.
12 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 20 March 1887.
13 New York Times, 29 September 1896; Ancestry.com: Norfolk County, MA: Probate File Papers, 1793–1900 Page(s): 28814:2 Volume: Norfolk Cases28000-29999, ‘Estella H. Lincoln’.
14 On the weekend before Easter in 1892, the Lincoln brothers appear to have been out of town and Cora had been allowed to have her sister
Notes
Katie to stay with her for several days. For some unknown reason, her fourteen-year-old sister left the house on Lafayette Avenue on Easter Sunday morning but did not immediately return home to the Mersingers. A Mrs M. Turner then went to the police to report a missing person. Eventually, Katie did return home but where she had disappeared to remains a mystery (Standard Union (Brooklyn), 20 April 1892; Brooklyn Citizen, 20 April 1892).
15 Smith, A Tree Grows, pp. 227–34.
16 The Comstock Act made even advertising an abortifacient, or an ‘instrument of contraception’, punishable by law.
17 Ivy Anderson and Devon Angus (eds), Alice: Memoirs of a Barbary Coast Prostitute (Berkeley, 2016), p. 152. Alice’s story was serialized in 1913 in the San Francisco Bulletin, a campaigning newspaper. Under a promise of anonymity, Alice told her story to journalists, who turned it into an exposé on prostitution. The series was so successful that it encouraged other women who had had experience of sex work to write letters to the newspaper, relating their stories.
18 Ibid., pp. 166–8.
19 Standard Union (Brooklyn), 13 December 1894.
20 NA: DPP 1/13: Rex v Crippen trial transcripts.
21 Filson Young (ed.), The Trial of Hawley Harvey Crippen (Edinburgh and London, 1920).
22 Ibid.
23 See also the Medical Century: The National Journal of Homeopathic Medicine (January 1893).
24 Ibid.
25 Chicago Daily Tribune, ‘Marriage by Wholesale’, 2 June 1890.
26 Detroit Free Press, 16 July 1910. If Cora did appear on the stage of the Star Theater, it is more likely to have been the Star in Brooklyn, with its associations with German-language performance.
27 Sun (New York), 15 July 1910.
28 Medical Century, vol. 1, no. 2 (February 1893).
29 Ibid. (April 1893).
30 Champaign Daily Gazette, 19 December 1891.
31 St Louis Globe-Democrat, 16 July 1910.
32 St Louis Post-Dispatch, 16 July 1910.
33 St Louis Globe-Democrat, 16 July 1910.
34 Brooklyn Citizen, 1 August 1910.
35 Ibid.
36 St Louis Post-Dispatch, 16 July 1910.
37 Los Angeles Herald, 15 July 1910.
38 Weekly Dispatch, 15 February 1920.
39 Ibid.
5. grand opera
1 Phil Porter, ‘Ovariotomy’, American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (Ann Arbor, 1885); Phil Porter, ‘Double Ovariotomy’, Ann Arbor Medical Advance (1884).
2 William Goodell and W. Constantine Goodell, ‘Diseases of the Ovaries and Tubes’, Annual of the Universal Medical Sciences, vol. 4 (Philadelphia, 1888), p. 94.
3 Phil Porter, ‘Ovariotomy’, p. 201.
4 Sally Frampton, ‘Defining Difference: Competing Forms of Ovarian Surgery in the Nineteenth Century’, Technological Change in Modern Surgery: Historical Perspectives on Innovation, ed. Thomas Schlich and Christopher Crenner (Rochester, NY, 15 May 2017), ch. 3; Ornella Moscucci, The Science of Woman: Gynaecology and Gender in England, 1800–1929 (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 148–9.
5 Phil Porter, ‘Neurasthenia-Oöphorectomy’, American Homeopathic Journal for Obstetrics and Gynaecology, vol. I (1885), p. 90.
6 The Medical Advance, vol. 14 (1884), p. 673; H. H. Crippen, ‘From Our London Correspondent’, The American Journal for Obstetrics and Gynaecology, vol. 1 (1885).
7 NA : HO 144/1719/195492: Crippen’s explanation of his wife’s scar, 1910.
8 Ibid.
9 NA: DPP 1/13: Teresa Hunn police statement, November 1910.
10 KSU: Goodman papers: box 2, folder 3: Mills.
11 NA: DPP 1/13: Anonymous ‘Friend’ police statement, n.d.
12 Ibid.: Adeline Harrison further police statement, n.d.
13 Ibid.: Hunn statement.
14 Ibid.: Antonia Jackson, boarding-house keeper in Bath, police statement, 18 August 1910.
15 Ibid.: Maud Burroughs further police statement, 16 September 1910.
16 Elinor Cleghorn, Unwell Women (London, 2021), p. 144.
17 NA: MEPO 2/10996: Gifts to the Metropolitan Police ‘Black’ Museum: translated letter from Paul Martin, ‘Crippen on Board’, Sun (New York), 15 July 1910. Crippen’s employer Munyon remembers Cora as weighing ‘160 pounds’ when they lived in Philadelphia.
18 Thomas Spencer Wells, Modern Abdominal Surgery: The Bradshaw Lecture Delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, December 18th, 1890 (London, 1891), p. 43.
19 H. H. Hahn, ‘Electricity in Gynaecology’, Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 20 (1893), p. 328; Lawrence D. Longo, ‘Electrotherapy in Gynaecology: The American Experience’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, vol. 60, no. 3 (Fall 1986), p. 351.
20 Daily Telegraph, 16 July 1910.
21 Charles Morris (ed.), Men of the Century: An Historical Work (Philadelphia, 1896), p. 193.
22 New York Times, 11 March 1918.
23 Samuel Hopkins Adams, ‘The Great American Fraud: The Patent Medicine Conspiracy Against the Freedom of the Press’, Collier’s Weekly, 4 November 1905.
24 Philadelphia Inquirer, 15 July 1910.
25 NA: DPP 1/13: Teresa Hunn, further statement, 15 October 1910.
26 Probably intended to be the Journal of Ophthalmology, Otology and Laryngology, of which Crippen was an assistant editor.
27 Philadelphia Inquirer, 3 March 1895.
28 Philadelphia Times, 25 March 1894.
29 William Armstrong, Lillian Nordica’s Hints to Singers (New York, 1922), pp. 88–9.
30 NA: DPP 1/13: Hawley Harvey Crippen statement to Inspector Dew, 8 July 1910.
31 New York Times, 15 July 1910.
6. lady typewriter
1 E. T. Cook, Highways and Byways in London (London, 1920; Project Gutenberg, 2012, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/39875/39875-h/ 39875-h.htm).
Notes
2 ‘Female Clerks and Book-keepers’, The Girl’s Own Paper, vol. 1, 15 May 1880, p. 309.
3 Gregory Anderson (ed.), The White-Blouse Revolution: Female Office Workers Since 1870 (Manchester, 1988), p. 34, table 2.3.
4 Michael Heller, London Clerical Workers, 1880 –1914: Development of the Labour Market (London, 2010).
5 Walter Neave said he performed at St Andrew’s Hall, a concert venue in Norwich, in ‘The Life Story of Ethel Le Neve, by Her Father’, Answers, 27 August 1910.
6 ‘I nursed Le Neve: Chesterfield man’s story’, Derbyshire Courier, 29 October 1910.
7 Neave, Answers, 27 August 1910.
8 Ethel Le Neve: Her Life Story: With the true account of their flight and her friendship for Dr. Crippen; also startling particulars of her life at Hilldrop Crescent, told by herself (London, 1910).
9 Nancy Jackman and Tom Quinn, The Cook’s Tale (London, 2012), p. 22.
10 Ethel’s brother Bernard was born in 1890.
11 Hampstead & Highgate Express, 21 January 1888.
12 Le Neve, Life Story.
13 Ibid.
14 Neave, Answers, 3 September 1910.
15 Le Neve, Life Story
16 Neave, Answers, 27 August 1910.
17 Musical Times, 1 March and 1 May 1901. Walter was also advertising himself as both an alto and soprano soloist in the 1902 Musical Times: ‘Sacred and Ballad songs a speciality’. His performances were reviewed favourably in the Paddington Times and the Church Times
18 Daily Mail, 1 August 1910.
19 Neave, Answers, 27 August 1910.
20 Ibid.
21 Deborah Gorham, The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal (Oxford, 2013), p. 52.
22 Neave, Answers, 17 September 1910.
23 Clara Collet, Educated Working Women (London, 1902), p. 53.
24 B. C., ‘Stenographers – not “Type-Writers”: A Protest’, Shorthand Review (August 1892).
Notes
25 It seems that Christ Church School, where Ethel attended, was already offering lessons in shorthand by 1891 and increased demand for lessons meant that an outside teacher had to be hired in 1895. Contrary to her story, it may be that her first exposure to this subject was through school (NA: ED 21/11578: Correspondence from Christ Church School).
26 Thomson’s Weekly News, 18 September 1920.
27 Neave, Answers, 27 August 1910.
28 Thomson’s Weekly News, 18 September 1920.
29 Neave, Answers, 10 September 1910.
30 Thomson’s Weekly News, 18 September 1920.
31 Ibid.
32 Neave, Answers, 27 August 1910.
33 Thomson’s Weekly News, 18 September 1920.
7. belle elmore
1 Mary H. Krout, A Looker On in London (New York, 1899), pp. 9–10; T. C. Crawford, English Life Seen Through Yankee Eyes (New York, 1889), pp. 7–8.
2 NA: DPP 1/13: Crippen statement.
3 William Archer, The Theatrical World: 1895 (London, 1896), p. 100.
4 National Review, vol. 17 (1891), p. 258.
5 Adeline Harrison, ‘Belle Elmore, a Character Study’, John Bull, 10 December 1910.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid. In the Music Hall and Theatre Review, 9 September 1909, Adeline, writing her column ‘Frocks and Fancies’ under the name of ‘Marjorie’, describes selfitis as ‘a very prevalent disease, which if not checked in time becomes chronic. The majority of people are absorbed in self, dream self and worst of all constantly talk self.’
10 Weekly Dispatch, 15 February 1920. Adeline Harrison enjoyed a very short stint on the stage in the 1890s performing her own work, but appears to have given up after receiving lukewarm reviews suggesting she was still young and had ‘time to improve’ (The Referee, 4 April 1897).
11 Harrison, John Bull, 10 December 1910.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
Notes
14 Ibid.
15 NA: DPP 1/13: Crippen statement.
16 Adeline later claimed she had written An Unknown Quantity for Cora, but it seems she first debuted the piece at the Bayswater Bijou on 29 March 1897 and played the female lead herself. The music was composed by her then lover, Denham Harrison (The Era, 20 March 1897).
17 Harrison, John Bull, 10 December 1910.
18 Melbourne Argus, 20 August 1910.
19 Daily Mirror, 3 August 1910.
20 London Evening Standard, 24 September 1898.
21 North American, 15 July 1910 and Nottingham Evening Post, 30 July 1910.
22 Strand Magazine, vol. 19 (1900), pp. 340–44.
23 The date of when precisely Miller met Belle changes from statement to statement. During his cross-examination, he insists it was December 1899, but in his official police statement he claims that he and Belle celebrated the night of their meeting on 6 January, when ‘their friend’ left for the United States. Crippen claims he departed in November 1899.
24 NA: DPP 1/13: Rex v Crippen trial transcripts, cross-examination of H. H. Crippen.
25 Ibid.
26 NA: DPP 1/13: Bruce Miller police statement, n.d.
27 The Crippens first lived at 34 Store Street and later at number 37.
28 NA: DPP 1/13: Miller statement.
29 On the 1901 census, Miller was living at 18 Colville Place, a small street of Georgian housing on the opposite side of Tottenham Court Road from the Crippens on Store Street.
30 NA: DPP 1/13: Miller statement.
31 Ibid.: Rex v Crippen trial transcripts, cross-examination of Bruce Miller.
32 Ibid.
33 This was based out of an office at 13 Newman Street, off Oxford Street.
34 Daily Mail, 30 July 1910.
35 Daily Mirror, 19 July 1910.
36 NA: DPP 1/13: Melinda May police statement, 3 August 1910.
37 NA: DPP 1/13: Crippen statement. An anonymous former clerk to Crippen’s solicitor wrote an article for The People that appeared on 23 April 1933 in which he told an apocryphal story about seeing Belle one night in a pub with some entertainment friends who commented:
Notes
‘Calls herself Belle Elmore . . . thinks she can dance too. Holy Pete! We’ve got a lot of outside competition on the halls but we haven’t sunk to that. They did put her on for a few shows and she got the bird –feathers, beak and spurs.’
38 Melbourne Argus, 20 August 1910.
39 Music Hall and Theatre Review, 23 January 1902; The Era, 29 September 1900.
40 Portsmouth Evening News, 8 December 1903 and 5 January 1904; Derbyshire Times and Chesterfield Herald, 23 August 1902; Ealing Gazette and West Middlesex Observer, 11 October 1902; The Stage, 13 September 1900.
41 Weekly Dispatch, 15 February 1920.
42 Daily Mirror, 3 August 1910.
8. ‘t H e business wit H dr crippen’
1 Evan Yellon, Surdus in Search of His Hearing (London, 1906), pp. 6–7.
2 Hepar sulphuris calcareum appears in the Materia Medica as a homeopathic remedy for various types of hearing loss and afflictions of the ear. The Drouet plasters were found to contain iodine, cantharides and mustard powder. Physicians who testified at the libel trial of a former Drouet doctor, Hanna Nasif Dakhyl (Dakhyl v. Labouchère, 1907), stated that a sticking plaster placed behind the ear would effect no treatment at all but was likely to cause skin irritation.
3 Truth, 21 June 1900.
4 Ibid., 18 February 1904.
5 The Times, 5 November and 8 November 1907.
6 Ibid., 9 November 1907.
7 Truth, 18 February 1904.
8 Thomson’s Weekly News, 18 September 1920.
9 Le Neve, Life Story
10 Thomson’s Weekly News, 18 September 1920.
11 Daily Mirror, 21 July 1910.
12 Detroit Free Press, 16 July 1910.
13 KSU: Goodman papers: box 2, folder 3: Mills.
14 Thomson’s Weekly News, 18 September 1920. The assertion that Crippen had forged a close relationship with Ethel’s father is also confirmed in Walter Neave’s own version of events as related to the police in 1910, in
Notes
which he confirms that he had ‘known Dr Crippen for 8 to 10 years’ in 1910 (NA: DPP 1/13: Walter Neave police statement, 14 July 1910).
15 NA: DPP 1/13: Neave statement; ibid.: Adine True Brock police statement, 21 July 1910.
16 Le Neve, Life Story
17 Neave, Answers, 27 August 1910.
18 Dundee Evening Telegraph, 5 August 1910.
19 Lt Col. Nathaniel Newnham-Davis, Dinner and Diners: Where and How to Dine in London (London, 1899).
20 James Tyson, The Practice of Medicine: A Textbook for Practitioners and Students with Special Reference to Diagnosis and Treatment (Philadelphia, 1897), p. 67.
21 Southland Times, 26 August 1910.
22 KSU, Goodman papers: box 2, folder 3: typescript ‘Notes of post-tape talk, March 1985’ with Ethel Le Neve’s children.
23 J. C. Ellis, Black Fame (London, 1928), p. 318.
24 Tom Cullen, Crippen: The Mild Murderer (London, 1988), p. 214.
25 Neave, Answers, 3 September 1910.
26 Thomson’s Weekly News, 25 September 1920.
27 Le Neve, Life Story.
28 Thomson’s Weekly News, 25 September 1920.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.
31 Le Neve, Life Story.
9. t H e garden of eden
1 George H. Duckworth’s Notebook: Police District 2 [Strand and St Giles], Booth/B/355, p. 57, https://booth.lse.ac.uk/notebooks/b355.
2 NA: DPP 1/13: John Herbert Burroughs police statement, n.d.
3 Ibid.: Maud Burroughs police statement, n.d.
4 Daily Express, 15 July 1910.
5 Ibid.
6 Islington Daily Gazette, 15 July 1910.
7 George H. Duckworth’s Notebook: Police and Publicans District 10, Booth/B/349, https://booth.lse.ac.uk/notebooks/b349.
8 Jessica H. Foy and Thomas J. Schlereth (eds), American Home Life, 1880–1930: A Social History of Spaces and Services (Knoxville, TN, 1994), p. 70.
9 Young, Trial, p. 13.
10 Ibid.
11 Various inventories of the Crippens’ furniture sold at auction in 1910 and comments about the items can be found in numerous newspapers, including the Daily News, 21 September 1910, and the Daily Chronicle, 21 September 1910.
12 Foy and Schlereth, American Home Life, p. 54.
13 Le Neve, Life Story
14 Harrison, John Bull, 10 December 1910.
15 NA: DPP 1/13: Rex v Crippen trial transcripts, testimony of Maud Burroughs; KSU: Goodman papers: box 2, folder 3: Mills.
16 Daily Express, 15 July 1910.
17 Ibid.
18 NA: DPP 1/13: Rhoda Ray police statement, n.d.
19 Daily Express, 15 July 1910.
20 ‘With the Men and Women of the Twice a Day’, New York Times, 6 May 1906.
21 Harrison, John Bull, 10 December 1910.
22 Ibid.
23 KSU: Goodman papers: box 2, folder 3: Mills.
24 Evening News, 15 July 1910.
25 KSU: Goodman papers: box 2, folder 3: Mills.
26 Patricia Cornwell Private Collection: Letter from H. H. Crippen to ‘Lady Henry Somerset’, 7 October 1910.
27 Weekly Dispatch, 15 February 1920.
28 NA: MEPO 2/10996: Gifts to the Metropolitan Police ‘Black’ Museum: Reinisch correspondence and article.
29 Daily Telegraph, 6 August 1910.
30 Ibid.
31 NA: MEPO 2/10996: Reinisch correspondence and article.
32 KSU: Goodman papers: box 2, folder 3: Mills.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid.
35 Filson Young. Young invented many anecdotes about the Crippens and how Belle misused her husband which have gone on to become
Notes
accepted ‘fact’. The assertion that Crippen had to carry the coal upstairs is proved untrue by Crippen himself during his crossexamination. The couple had gas fires upstairs at Hilldrop Crescent and they only used coal for the kitchen range. Crippen said he ‘very seldom ever carried it’.
36 KSU: Goodman papers: box 2, folder 3: Mills.
10. petty rat swindlers
1 Truth, 4 August 1904.
2 Ibid., 4 June 1903 and 6 April 1905.
3 John Bull, 11 April 1908.
4 Yellon, Surdus, pp. 4–5.
5 In a separate case, Kennedy was also found guilty of writing fraudulent cheques and served concurrent sentences for this crime as well as for the American and Parisian massage scam.
6 John Bull, 17 December 1910; The Globe, 8 July 1902.
7 The Dental Annual (London, 1906), pp. 290– 96.
8 NA: BT 31/11768/91259: Chemical Blood Manufacturing Company Ltd.
9 Truth, 24 July 1907; Cornubian and Redruth Times, 21 March 1907.
10 Western Mail, 6 April 1925.
11 Daily Mail, 16 July 1910.
12 NA: DPP 1/13: Gilbert Rylance police statement, 19 September 1910.
13 Ibid.: Rex v Crippen trial transcripts, testimony of Marion Curnow.
14 Ibid.: Edward Marr police statement, n.d.
15 Evening Star (Washington DC), 16 July 1910.
16 W. Buchanan-Taylor, Shake the Bottle (London, 1946), p. 91.
17 Western Times, 29 July 1910.
18 Detroit Free Press, 16 July 1910.
19 Ellis, Black Fame, pp. 113–14.
20 Neave, Answers, 10 September 1910.
21 Buffalo Commercial, 22 April 1915.
22 Patricia Cornwell Private Collection: Letter from Crippen to ‘Lady Somerset’, 5 October 1910.
23 Neave, Answers, 10 September 1910.
24 Ellis, Black Fame, p. 318.
25 Royal Commission on Population, 1949, in Robert Jütte, Contraception: A History (Cambridge, 2008), p. 186.
26 NA: DPP 1/13: Brock statement.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid.
29 NA: DPP 1/13: William Burgh police statement, n.d.
30 New York Tribune, 16 July 1910.
31 Detroit Free Press, 16 July 1910.
11. 80 constantine road
1 NA: DP 1/13: Emily Jackson police statement, 15 July 1910.
2 Ibid.
3 Los Angeles Herald, 15 July 1910.
4 Barbara Brookes, Abortion in England: 1900–1967 (Oxford, 1988), p. 4.
5 In 1916, in the city of York, it was estimated that ‘at least seven and probably eight in ten’ working-class women used abortifacient drugs at least once in the course of their reproductive lives. Prosecutions for abortion were also on the rise throughout England between 1900 and 1910 (Brookes, Abortion, p. 5 and p. 28).
6 Le Neve, Life Story.
12. ladies of t H e guild
1 Music Hall and Theatre Review, 8 March 1907.
2 Pony Moore was a celebrity noted as much for his ‘generous nature’ as he was for breaking speeding laws and beating up waiters and tram operators. Michael Bennett Leavitt calls him a foul-mouthed rough diamond. See Michael Bennett Leavitt, Fifty Years in Theatrical Management (London, 1912), and George Robert Sims, My Life: Sixty Years of Recollections of Bohemian London (London, 1917).
3 The Stage, 26 November 1908.
4 Music Hall and Theatre Review, 9 September 1909.
5 Ibid.
6 Andrew Lamb, Leslie Stuart: Composer of Florodora (Abingdon, 2020).
7 Weekly Dispatch, 15 February 1920.
8 The Crippens had become so close to Pony Moore and Eugene and Annie Stratton that in October of that year, they were listed among the chief mourners at his funeral.
9 Weekly Dispatch, 15 February 1920.
10 NA: DPP 1/13: Maud Burroughs statement.
11 Weekly Dispatch, 15 February 1920.
12 Walter Wood, Survivors’ Tales of Famous Crimes (London, 1916), pp. 263–4.
13. promises
1 Daily Mirror, 3 March 1910.
2 NA: DPP 1/13: Emily Jackson coroner’s deposition, n.d.
3 Staffordshire Sentinel, 18 July 1910.
4 NA: DPP 1/13: John William Stonehouse police statement, n.d.
5 Censuses, 1901 and 1911. Stonehouse eventually remarried in 1914, though there is no record that he ever divorced, and his first wife, Dorothy Ann Graham (whom he married in 1893), was still alive at the time. His second wife had been a fellow lodger at the house where he had lived after leaving Mrs Jackson’s.
6 NA: DPP 1/13: John Young Sellar police statement, n.d.; NA: MEPO 3 /198: Police report 28 July 1910 re. John Young Sellar.
7 David James Smith posits this theory in his book Supper with the Crippens (London, 2005).
8 NA: WO 363: Soldiers’ Documents, First World War: Horace George Brock conscription records; Ivy Ethel Brock birth certificate (Ancestry. com: London, England, UK: Church of England Births and Baptisms, 1813–1923 [database online]).
9 NA: DPP 1/13: Stonehouse statement.
10 NA: MEPO 3/198: C. J. Thompson of Harvey & Thompson Ltd police statement, n.d.
11 Sheffield Evening Telegraph, 16 July 1910 (originally printed in the Daily Mail).
12 Staffordshire Sentinel, 18 July 1910.
13 The date of Crippen’s order varies – Hetherington says he recalled it being the 17th, but the British Drug Houses Ltd., the wholesaler from where he sourced the hyoscine, had a record of the order being made on the 15th
14 NA: DPP 1/13: Pre-trial Brief to Counsel: Charles Hetherington statement.
15 Ibid.
16 The Daily Chronicle, 18 July 1910.
17 Ibid.: Lydia Rose describes a different engagement ring, ‘a lovely diamond ring, with four nice-sized stones in it, set on the cross in pairs’.
It’s possible that Crippen had bought Ethel more than one engagement ring, though Ethel later showed the solitaire to Mrs Jackson and said, ‘That is my proper engagement ring.’ (DPP 1/13: Emily Jackson further police statement, 21 July 1910.)
14. potluck
1 NA: DPP 1/13: Rex v Crippen trial transcripts, cross-examination of H. H. Crippen.
2 NA: DPP 1/13. The entire account of events is documented in a detailed letter written by Clara Martinetti on 20 July 1910 and addressed to the police (Inspector Dew).
15. rising sun
1 NA: DPP 1/13: Letter from Clara Martinetti to Inspector Dew.
2 The Era, 22 February 1892.
3 NA: DPP 1/13: Rex v Crippen trial transcripts, cross-examination of Melinda May.
4 Ibid.
5 Bristol Times and Mirror, 7 September 1910.
6 http://kurtofgerolstein.blogspot.com/2020/07/cartesians-murder-shesaid.html.
7 NA: DPP 1/13: John Nash coroner’s deposition, 18 July 1910.
8 Bristol Times and Mirror, 7 September 1910.
9 NA: DPP 1/13: Clara Martinetti coroner’s deposition, 18 July 1910.
10 NA: DPP 1/13: Paul Martinetti police statement, 4 July 1910.
11 Ibid.: Paul Martinetti further police statement, 18 July 1910.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.: Rex v Crippen trial transcripts, cross-examination of Clara Martinetti.
14 Ibid.: Rex v Crippen trial transcripts, cross-examination of Louise Smythson.
15 NA: T 1/11282/6329: J. E. Nash application for compensation in respect of losses incurred by himself and his wife.
16 NA: DPP 1/13: Annie Stratton police statement, n.d.; ibid.: Rex v Crippen, cross-examination of Clara Martinetti.
17 Morning Leader, 18 July 1910.
18 NA: DPP 1/13: John Nash police statement, 30 June 1910.
19 Daily News, 18 July 1910.
16. ‘brazen t H e w H ole t H ing out’
1 Thomson’s Weekly News, 9 October 1920.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Le Neve, Life Story.
5 Thomson’s Weekly News, 9 October 1920; Le Neve, Life Story.
6 Thomson’s Weekly News, 9 October 1920.
7 Ibid.
8 NA: DPP 1/13: Paul Martinetti further statement, 18 July 1910; BuchananTaylor, Shake the Bottle, pp. 92–3.
9 The Era, 26 February 1910.
10 Thomson’s Weekly News, 20 October 1920.
11 Ibid., 9 October 1920.
12 Ethel gave four ‘official’ versions of her story: one to the police in July 1910; another for the publication of her memoirs (her Life Story) in the second half of that year; a third one to Thomson’s Weekly News in 1920, which ran as a serialization between September 1920 and January 1921; and a fourth to Thomson’s Weekly News again in 1928, in which much of her narrative from 1920 is repeated. Other versions of her story have appeared, including one by Ursula Bloom (1954), which was fictional.
13 Thomson’s Weekly News, 1 October 1920.
14 Le Neve, Life Story.
15 NA: DPP 1/13: Emily Jackson further police statement, 18 July 1910.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.: Emily Jackson coroner’s inquest statement, n.d.
18 Ibid.: Jackson further statement, 15 July 1910.
17. mrs crippen
1 NA: DPP 1/13: Jackson further statement, 18 July 1910.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.: Jackson coroner’s deposition.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.: Pawn slips from Jay Richard Attenborough & Co.
6 Despite the enormous publicity the case received in the press, only Attenborough & Co. came forward with items of Belle’s property. No more than a fraction of her jewellery was ever recovered.
7 NA: DPP 1/13: Jackson further statement, 21 July 1910.
8 Nottingham Evening Post, 16 July 1910.
9 NA: DPP 1/13: Caroline Elsmore police statement, n.d.
10 Ibid.: Jackson further statement.
11 Ibid.: Brock statement.
12 Le Neve, Life Story
13 NA: DPP 1/13: Brock statement.
14 Ibid.
15 Staffordshire Sentinel, 18 July 1910.
16 Daily Mail, 1 August 1910.
17 NA: DPP 1/13: Neave statement.
18 Ibid.
19 Arthur Symons, Cities and Sea-Coasts and Islands (New York, 1919), pp. 228–9.
20 NA: DPP 1/13: Brock statement.
18. observations and enquiries
1 NA: DPP 1/13: Rex v Crippen, testimony of Clara Martinetti.
2 Ibid.: Clara Martinetti statement.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.: Paul Martinetti further statement, 18 July 1910.
5 Ibid.: Clara Martinetti statement.
6 Gilbert Rylance in fact did know that Mrs Crippen was unwell, as he later confessed in his witness statement, but for whatever reason chose not to reveal this knowledge to Mrs Martinetti.
7 NA: DPP 1/13: Clara Martinetti statement.
8 Ibid.
9 https://www.playingpasts.co.uk/articles/football/and-i-meanthat-most-sincerely-theatre-and-the-birth-of-womens-football/.
10 https://pasttopresentgenealogy.co.uk/2019/06/12/pioneers-of-the-fifawomens-world-cup-the-first-football-internationals/.
11 NA: DPP 1/13: Clara Martinetti statement; ibid.: Louise Smythson police statement, 14 July 1910.
12 Ibid.: Rex v Crippen, cross-examination of Clara Martinetti.
13 Ibid.: Clara Martinetti statement.
14 Los Angeles Herald, 15 July 1910.
15 Ibid.: Smythson statement.
16 The Performer, 21 July 1910.
17 NA: DPP 1/13: Smythson statement.
18 Ibid.: Marion Curnow coroner’s deposition, 26 September 1910.
19 Wood, Survivors’ Tales, p. 271.
20 The Performer, 21 July 1910.
21 NA: DPP 1/13: Clara Martinetti statement; also ibid.: Rex v Crippen, testimony of Clara Martinetti.
22 Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 17 July 1910.
23 NA: DPP 1/13: Michael Bernstein police statement, 17 July 1910.
24 Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 17 July 1910.
25 The Globe, 15 July 1910.
26 Wood, Survivors’ Tales, p. 272.
27 Ibid.
28 Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 17 July 1910.
29 NA: MEPO 3/198: Walter Dew Missing Person’s report, 6 July 1910.
30 NA: DPP 1/13: Rex v Crippen trial transcripts, testimony of Louise Smythson.
31 Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 17 July 1910.
19. t H e bad girl of t H e family
1 NA: DPP 1/13: Jackson statement.
2 Ibid.: Letter from Ethel Le Neve to Emily Jackson, n.d.
3 Ibid.: Brock statement.
4 Ibid.: Elizabeth Burtwell police statement, 29 July 1910.
5 Ibid.: William Curtis police statement, 19 August 1910.
6 Symons, Cities, p. 227.
7 The Graphic, 23 July 1910.
8 NA: DPP 1/13: Letter from Ethel Le Neve to Emily Jackson, n.d., probably mid-June 1910.
9 A Post Office clerk who discovered the withdrawal slips among the files in 1911 and recognized the name Belle Elmore noted that the signatures had been made after her death. An investigation was made by the Post Office and the Treasury Office, who determined that the handwriting
Notes
seemed closest to Ethel Le Neve’s specimens, but ‘the forgeries were very good’. The Treasury decided not to press charges (NA: T 1/11335).
10 NA: DPP 1/13: Curnow coroner’s deposition. Mention of the piece of blotting paper with Belle’s signature designed for Ethel’s use was omitted from Marion’s deposition statement and deliberately avoided during her cross-examination on the witness stand.
11 Ibid.; also MEPO 3/198: Sergeant Arthur Mitchell’s report. On 11 July Sergeant Mitchell found a sheet of paper with Belle Elmore’s name written on it several times, as if somebody had been practising writing it.
12 Old Bailey Sessions Papers Online: Gwendoline Howell, Deception; forgery, 16 October 1905. Annie Warner, Deception; forgery, 8 October 1912.
13 The DPP decided when charging Crippen with murder that they would not further investigate the possibility he forged her signature on these cheques, as it would require an additional set of charges to be brought and possibly a further trial.
14 Staffordshire Sentinel, 18 July 1910.
15 Strabane Chronicle, 23 July 1910.
16 NA: DPP 1/13: Neave statement.
17 Neave, Answers, 3 September 1910.
18 Ibid.
19 NA: DPP 1/13: Paul Martinetti further police statement, 1 August 1910.
20 Ibid.: Paul Martinetti further statement, 18 July 1910.
21 Daily News, 20 September 1910.
22 NA: DPP 1/13: Jackson statement.
20. ‘some little town in san francisco’
1 Camden Courier-Post (New Jersey), 25 October 1910.
2 Boston Globe, 16 August 1910.
3 NA: DPP 1/13: Letter from Frank Wiggins to Mr Van S. Roosa, n.d.
4 Daily News, 18 July 1910.
5 NA: DPP 1/13: Nash coroner’s deposition.
6 NA: MEPO 3/198: Dew, Missing Person’s report.
7 Probably a misspelling of Alamo, California, 22 miles from San Francisco.
8 NA: MEPO 3/198: Dew, Missing Person’s report.
9 Ibid.
10 NA: T 1/11282/6329: Nash application for compensation.
11 Nicholas Connell (ed.), The Annotated I Caught Crippen: Memoirs of Ex-Chief Inspector Walter Dew, C.I.D. (London, 2018).
12 Ibid.
21. serious trouble
1 Thomson’s Weekly News, 16 October 1920.
2 NA: DPP 1/13: Walter Dew investigation report, 5 September 1910.
3 Connell, I Caught Crippen.
4 Thomson’s Weekly News, 16 October 1920.
5 Le Neve, Life Story; Thomson’s Weekly News, 16 October 1920.
6 NA: DPP 1/13: Walter Dew ‘Information’ laid for arrest warrant, 16 July 1910; Walter Dew deposition, 18 July 1910; Arthur Mitchell investigation report, ‘Crippen and Le Neve wanted for murder’, 25 July 1910.
7 Connell, I Caught Crippen; Thomson’s Weekly News, 16 October 1920.
8 Le Neve, Life Story
9 Connell, I Caught Crippen
10 Le Neve, Life Story; Thomson’s Weekly News, 16 October 1920.
11 Le Neve, Life Story.
12 Dew later covered for his error by claiming, ‘I am quite sure Miss Le Neve had no ulterior motive in forestalling us in this way. All she was thinking of was Dr. Crippen and his business.’ (Connell, I Caught Crippen.)
13 Connell, I Caught Crippen
14 NA: MEPO 3/198: Dew Missing Person’s report.
15 Connell, I Caught Crippen.
16 Ibid.
17 NA: DPP 1/13: Crippen statement.
18 Ibid.
19 Connell, I Caught Crippen
20 NA: DPP 1/13: Crippen statement.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 Dew in his memoirs claims it was 6 p.m., and Ethel in her 1910 account claims it was nearly 4 p.m. If Dew had spent five hours with Crippen,
Notes
and had begun his interview around 12 noon, 5 p.m. would be more accurate.
24 Connell, I Caught Crippen
25 Ibid.; NA: DPP 1/13: Crippen statement.
26 Le Neve, Life Story
27 NA: DPP 1/13: Le Neve statement.
28 Ibid.
29 Le Neve, Life Story.
30 Thomson’s Weekly News, 16 October 1920.
31 Le Neve, Life Story
32 Thomson’s Weekly News, 16 October 1920.
33 Connell, I Caught Crippen
34 Ibid.
35 In Dew’s memoirs he imagines that Crippen had a revolver in his pocket which he would have been prepared to use should Dew have discovered anything suspicious (Connell, I Caught Crippen).
36 NA: DPP 1/13: Dew investigation report.
37 NA: DPP 1/13: Wanted ad.
38 Daily Mail, 18 July 1910.
39 Le Neve, Life Story.
40 Ibid.
22. ‘just a little scandal’
1 Ibid.
2 Ibid.
3 Evening Star (Washington DC), 16 July 1910.
4 Daily Mail, 18 July 1910.
5 Ibid.
6 NA: DPP 1/13: Brock statement.
7 NA: DPP 1/13: William Long deposition statement, 18 July 1910.
8 NA: DPP 1/13: Marion Curnow deposition statement, 26 September 1910.
9 Ibid.
10 Thomson’s Weekly News, 23 October 1920.
11 Ibid.; Le Neve, Life Story; Yorkshire Evening Post, 4 August 1910.
12 Le Neve, Life Story
13 Ibid.; Thomson’s Weekly News, 23 October 1920.
14 Thomson’s Weekly News, 23 October 1920; Le Neve, Life Story.
23. pieces
1 NA: DPP 1/13: Exhibit 16 in Rex v Crippen, letter from H. H. Crippen to Gilbert Rylance, 11 July 1910.
2 Connell, I Caught Crippen.
3 Jonathan Goodman, The Crippen File (London, 1985), p. 21.
4 Manchester Guardian, 19 July 1910.
5 Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 17 July 1910.
6 Ibid.
7 Connell, I Caught Crippen.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Old Bailey Sessions Papers Online: George Hume Killing, 12 January 1909.
11 In his statement, Mitchell claimed he was the one who dug with the poker and found the loosened bricks (NA: DPP 1/13).
12 Connell, I Caught Crippen.
13 DPP 1/13: Dew investigation report.
14 Connell, I Caught Crippen.
15 Ibid.
16 NA: DPP 1/13: Augustus Joseph Pepper coroner’s inquest statement, 19 September 1910.
17 British Medical Journal, Obituary, 13 August 1910, pp. 416–17.
18 The Times, 19 July 1910.
19 The Crippen murder inspired a number of experienced police officials and lawyers to offer ridiculous theories about various aspects of the case in their memoirs. Melville Macnaghten suggested that Crippen might have taken his wife’s head in a bag with him on his getaway to Dieppe and, eight weeks after the murder, thrown it overboard during the Channel crossing (Melville L. Macnaghten, Days of My Years (London, 1914), p. 201).
20 Wood, Survivors’ Tales, p. 275.
21 Ibid., p. 277.
22 Bristol Times and Mirror, 7 September 1910.
23 NA: T 1/11282/6329: Nash application for compensation.
24 ‘Badgered by the Press’, Walter Neave, Answers, 1 October 1910.
25 Daily Mirror, 1 August 1910.
26 Los Angeles Times, 15 July 1910.
27 Ibid.
24. man H unt
1 Connell, I Caught Crippen.
2 The Sun (New York), 15 July 1910.
3 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 14 July 1910.
4 The Sun (New York), 15 July 1910.
5 Ibid.
6 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 15 July 1910.
7 Ibid., 14 July 1910.
8 Brooklyn Citizen, 15 July 1910.
9 New York Times, 16 July 1910.
10 New York American, 16 July 1910.
25. titine and old quebec
1 Daily Mail, 26 July 1910.
2 Thomson’s Weekly News, 23 October 1920.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Le Neve, Life Story.
6 Daily Mail, 26 July 1910.
7 Ibid.
8 Le Neve, Life Story
9 Thomson’s Weekly News, 30 October 1920. In an interview with Reynolds Newspaper on 31 July 1910, Madame Henry-Delisse claims that the Robinsons told them they never went to the Exposition, and explained ‘we are rather eccentric’.
10 Thomson’s Weekly News, 30 October 1920.
11 Ibid.
12 Daily Mail, 26 July 1910.
13 Reynolds Newspaper, 31 July 1910.
14 Ibid.
15 NA: DPP 1/13: CID/Scotland Yard report on John Robinson and John Robinson Junior, 24 July 1910.
16 Ibid.
17 Reynolds Newspaper, 31 July 1910.
18 NA: DPP 1/13: List of jewellery and furs.
19 Daily Mail, 26 July 1910.
20 NA: DPP 1/13: Belgian police interviews with Louisa Delisse Henry and Vital Henry, 30 July 1910.
21 Thomson’s Weekly Newspaper, 30 October 1920.
22 NA: DPP 1/13: Port of Antwerp, Metropolitan Police report, 25 July 1910.
23 Thomson’s Weekly Newspaper, 30 October 1920.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 H. G. Kendall, Adventures on the High Seas (London, 1939), p. 155.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid., p. 156.
29 Ibid., p. 157. By 1910, commercial sanitary napkins were widely available to purchase in shops and by mail order; however, while dressed as a man, Ethel would have raised suspicion and drawn attention to herself if she had walked into a shop in Brussels and bought these necessities. The pair would be on the run for twenty-three days and it is not difficult to imagine that, within that time, Ethel would have had to contend with her period without the appropriate products, and while wearing men’s clothing.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid., p. 160. Interestingly, Ethel’s mother later admitted that the photo which appeared in all the newspapers purporting to be of Ethel was actually a picture of Nina. Ethel never liked any photos that were taken of her and destroyed them all. When the police came looking for an image of her they could use, Charlotte and Walter Neave could only offer a photograph of Nina as a near likeness.
32 Ibid., p. 163.
33 Ibid., p. 164.
34 Ibid., p. 165.
26. crime of t H e century
1 San Francisco Bulletin, 30 July 1910.
2 Brooklyn Citizen, 30 July 1910; Montreal Daily Star, 30 July 1910.
3 Kendall, Adventures, p. 165.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid., p. 168.
6 Daily Mirror, 2 August 1910.
7 Le Neve, Life Story
8 Thomson’s Weekly News, 6 November 1920.
9 Le Neve, Life Story.
10 Kendall, Adventures, p. 166.
11 Ibid., p. 172.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid., p. 176.
14 Le Neve, Life Story
15 Ibid., p. 178.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid., p. 179.
18 Connell, I Caught Crippen
19 Ibid.
20 Thomson’s Weekly News, 16 November 1920; Le Neve, Life Story
21 Connell, I Caught Crippen
22 Thomson’s Weekly News, 16 November 1920.
23 Le Neve, Life Story.
24 Daily Mirror, 2 August 1910.
25 Illustrated Police News, 13 August 1910.
26 Connell, I Caught Crippen
27 Illustrated Police News, 13 August 1910; Daily Mirror, 2 August 1910; Ottawa Free Press, 2 August 1910; Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 7 August 1910; Thomson’s Weekly News, 6 August 1910.
28 New York Times, 1 August 1910.
29 Daily Mirror, 2 August 1910.
30 Kendall believed differently. As no stranger to the tricks deployed by stowaways, he was convinced that Crippen had planned to leave the card in order to fake his own death. He would then hide on board until they had come into port and, under cover of darkness, creep ashore, thereby avoiding the scrutiny of the Canadian authorities.
31 Connell, I Caught Crippen
32 Ibid.
33 Kendall, Adventures, p. 182.
34 Reynolds Newspaper, 7 August 1910.
35 The Laurentic was fitted with three propellers powered by triple expansion engines for the starboard and port propellers, and a turbine for the central propeller. At the time, this innovation had become the fastest and most economical method of powering a ship. White Star Line used this technology, making slight adjustments when it launched the Titanic two years later.
36 Daily Mail, 17 July 1910.
37 Ibid., 18 July 1910.
38 Islington Daily Gazette, 15 July 1910; Nottingham Journal, 18 July 1910.
39 Islington Daily Gazette, 15 July 1910; The Globe, 15 July 1910.
40 Daily Mail, 31 July 1910; Staffordshire Sentinel, 1 August 1910.
27. H omecoming
1 Sun (New York), 2 August 1910.
2 San Francisco Examiner, 2 August 1910.
3 Ibid.
4 Daily Telegraph, 2 August 1910. Interestingly, the New York Times on that same date reported that Ethel had read the messages ‘without comment’.
5 New York Times, 2 August 1910.
6 San Francisco Examiner, 2 August 1910.
7 New York Times, 2 August 1910.
8 Daily Mail, 2 August 1910; Sun (New York), 2 August 1910.
9 Ibid.; New York Times, 2 August 1910.
10 Connell, I Caught Crippen.
11 Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 7 August 1910.
12 As David James Smith points out in Supper with the Crippens, pp. 177–8, these were also the precise words that Crippen used upon his arrest: ‘She knows nothing about it.’
13 Thomson’s Weekly News, 20 November 1920.
14 Ibid.
15 Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 7 August 1910.
16 Ibid.
17 Thomson’s Weekly News, 20 November 1920.
18 Ibid.
Notes
19 Ibid.
20 Moments before, Crippen had had a mishap and walked into a ship’s rope which would have thrown him from the gangway had Dew not caught him.
21 Contrary to Dew’s assertion, the surviving passenger list has them under their actual names. NA: BT26/422.
22 Connell, I Caught Crippen.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Le Neve, Life Story. Ethel also claimed in her 1920 interview in Thomson’s Weekly News (27 November) that she asked Dew if she could see Crippen and he said that it would prove difficult as he didn’t want to alert other passengers to their presence on board. He suggested they might see each other once they were off the ship.
27 Connell, I Caught Crippen
28 Ibid.
29 Dornford Yates, As Berry and I Were Saying (Cornwall, 2001), p. 258.
30 Le Neve, Life Story.
31 Thomson’s Weekly News, 27 November 1920.
32 Connell, I Caught Crippen
33 Reynolds Newspaper, 28 August 1910.
34 Thomson’s Weekly News, 27 November 1920.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid., 4 December 1920.
37 Ibid.
38 Reynolds Newspaper, 28 August 1910.
39 Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 28 August 1910.
40 Ibid.
41 New York Times, 3 August 1910.
28. spectacle
1 George R. Sims, The Mysteries of Modern London (London, 1906; Project Gutenberg, 2015, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/49701/49701-h/ 49701-h.htm).
Notes
2 Percy Hetherington Fitzgerald, Chronicles of Bow Street Police-Office (London, 1888), pp. 214–15.
3 According to Thomson’s Weekly News, 4 December 1920, this was the first time in the history of Bow Street Magistrates’ Court that a filmmaker was present to record the day. How much they caught on camera is unknown. At this time photography was not yet banned in the courtroom, but was also not encouraged.
4 S. T. Felstead and Lady Muir, Sir Richard Muir: A Memoir of a Public Prosecutor (London, 1927), p. 1.
5 Nicholas Connell, Doctor Crippen: The Infamous London Cellar Murder of 1910 (Stroud, 2013), p. 133.
6 The Times, 7 September 1910.
7 Yates, Berry and I, pp. 256–7.
8 The People, 4 January 1925.
9 Buchanan-Taylor, Shake the Bottle, p. 94.
10 Thomson’s Weekly News, 4 December 1920.
11 Reynolds Newspaper, 25 September 1910.
12 The Times, 22 September 1910.
13 NA: DPP 1/13: Note from the Director in Rex v Crippen and Le Neve, 6 October 1910.
14 Louise Mills later stated in her letter from 1952 that originally she had been asked to come to London to testify but fell ill and could not make the journey (KSU: Goodman papers: box 2, folder 3: Mills).
15 NA: MEPO 3/198: Special Officer’s Special Report, C.I.D., concerning Teresa Hunn’s appearance at Crippen’s trial, 23 August 1910.
16 Ibid.: Special Officer’s Special Report, C.I.D., concerning the burial of the remains of Belle Elmore, 10 October 1910.
17 The Globe, 11 October 1910.
18 Joseph Meaney, Scribble Street (London, 1945), pp. 58–9.
19 Thomas Grant, Court Number One: The Old Bailey Trials that Defined Modern Britain (London, 2019), p. 417.
20 Daily Mirror, 18 October 1910.
21 Women only became eligible to serve on English juries with the passing of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of 1919. It would be a further two years before this act was implemented in 1921.
22 Daily Mirror, 19 October 1910.
23 American Law School Review (1920), p. 557.
24 Young, Trial, pp. 43–4.
25 Ibid., p. 53.
26 Ibid., p. 87.
27 NA: DPP 1/13: Rex v Crippen trial transcripts.
28 NA: DPP 1/13: Rex v Crippen trial transcripts. When Travers Humphreys had put this same question to Burroughs at the committal on 6 September, he had amended his statement by saying ‘she was at times hasty towards him, but not more so than one often sees in life’ (Westminster Gazette, 6 September 1910). In his police statement, Burroughs went further to say that while they were neighbours, he had ‘never heard any quarrels’.
29 Black mourning ribbons or ‘love ribbons’ were often worn by poorer families who could not afford to purchase full sets of mourning clothes when grieving a family member.
30 Daily Mirror, 19 October 1910; London Evening Standard, 19 October 1910.
31 NA: DPP 1/13: Rex v Crippen trial transcripts.
32 Tobin would again raise the issue of her ethnic identity during his opening speech for the defence, encouraging the jury to ‘consider . . . who she was, what she had been, her characteristics, what was her life at home with Crippen. Belle Elmore was the daughter of a Pole.’ (Young, Trial, p. 188.)
33 Young, Trial, p. 188.
34 Daily Mirror, 19 October 1910.
35 NA: DPP 1/13: Rex v Crippen trial transcripts; The Globe, 19 October 1910.
36 Daily Mirror, 19 October 1910.
37 Evening News, 19 October 1910.
38 Daily Mirror, 19 October 1910.
39 Wood, Survivors’ Tales, p. 279.
40 NA: DPP 1/13: Rex v Crippen trial transcripts.
41 Max Constantine-Quinn, Dr Crippen (London, 1935), p. 45.
29. ‘a kind- H earted man’
1 Morning Leader, 20 October 1910.
2 Westminster Gazette, 21 October 1910.
3 Young, Trial, ‘Charge to the Jury’, p. 332.
4 Yates, Berry and I, p. 261.
Notes
5 Young, Trial, p. 174. Willcox said that, overall, the total amount of hyoscine extracted from all of the organs was one-fifth of a grain.
6 The defence called Dr Alexander Wynter Blyth, the author of Poisons: Their Effects and Detection (London, 1895), in an attempt to question Willcox’s testing methods, but Blyth demonstrated himself to be woefully lacking in the experience of either Willcox or Luff.
7 Young, Trial, p. 280.
8 Ibid., p. 186.
9 Sunday Express, 27 February 1927. Arthur Newton regularly instructed Edward Marshall Hall in the defence of his clients. Marshall Hall was offered the brief to defend Crippen, but turned it down when Crippen would not allow him to run the line of defence he thought was best. Marshall Hall wanted Crippen to admit to poisoning Belle, but that he did it accidentally. He suggested that Crippen’s intention had been to sedate Belle so he could sneak Ethel into the house. Apparently, Crippen refused this out of hand, as he did not want Ethel implicated in any aspect of Belle’s death. In reality, this argument would not have withstood much scrutiny, as Mrs Jackson attested that Ethel was at home that night. Crippen would have found it extremely difficult to have summonsed her on the night of the party, especially as there was no set departure time for the Martinettis.
10 Young, Trial, p. 187.
11 Young, Trial, pp. 188–9.
12 Ibid., p. 190.
13 Daily Mirror, 21 October 1910.
14 Young, Trial, p. 208.
15 Connell, I Caught Crippen.
16 Young, Trial, pp. 209–10.
17 Ibid., p. 211.
18 Ibid.
19 Yates, Berry and I, p. 260.
20 NA: DPP 1/13: Rex v Crippen trial transcripts.
21 Ibid.
22 Crippen had claimed that he and Belle had stopped sharing a bed after they moved to Hilldrop Crescent, though Louise Mills said they were still sharing a bed when she visited in 1907.
23 NA: DPP 1/13: Rex v Crippen trial transcripts.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Yates, Berry and I, p. 260.
27 NA: DPP 1/13: trial transcripts.
28 Young, Trial, p. 304.
29 Ibid., p. 319.
30 Ibid., p. 320.
31 Daily Graphic, 24 October 1910.
32 Ibid.
33 Young, Trial, p. 370.
34 S. Ingleby Oddie, Inquest (London, 1947), p. 79.
35 Ibid., p. 80.
36 Ibid.
37 NA: DPP 1/13: Louie Davis police statement, n.d.
38 Ibid.: Lillian Nash (aka Hawthorne) police statement, 30 June 1910; 19 January also being the date when Crippen collected the hyoscine he’d ordered from Lewis & Burrows.
39 NA: DPP 1/13: Franziska Hachenberger police statement, 9 August 1910.
40 Islington Gazette, 18 July 1910. In her statement, Lena Lyons cautioned the police that Mrs Glackner was ‘an old gossip’.
41 NA: DPP 1/13: Lena Lyons and May Pole police statements, 27 July 1910.
42 Daily Mirror, 31 January 1910.
43 Smith, Supper, p. 300.
44 Engaging in anything beyond this general level of speculation about the details of the disposal of Belle Elmore’s body is, for reasons of personal choice, not something I wish to explore.
45 NA: DPP 1/13: trial transcripts.
46 Thomson’s Weekly News, 1 October 1920.
47 NA: DPP 1/13: Maud Burroughs further statement.
30. ‘a little H ysterical’
1 In 1910, when Ethel entered Holloway Prison, a temporary stop was put to the violent practice of force-feeding suffragettes who went on hunger strike.
2 Thomson’s Weekly News, 18 December 1920.
3 Ibid., 11 December 1920.
4 Ibid., 25 December 1920.
Notes
5 Morning Leader, 26 October 1910.
6 Thomson’s Weekly News, 25 December 1920.
7 Ibid.
8 Frances A. Kellor, ‘Psychological and Environmental Study of Women Criminals, I’, American Journal of Sociology, vol. 5, no. 4 (January 1900), pp. 527–43.
9 NA: DPP 1/13: Memo to the Director, Rex v Crippen and Le Neve, 6 October 1910.
10 Young, Trial, p. 392.
11 Ibid., pp. 401–2.
12 Ibid., p. 406.
13 Ibid., p. 407.
14 Ibid., p. 408.
15 Ibid.
16 Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830 –1980 (London, 1987), p. 134.
17 George Henry Savage and Edwin Goodall, Insanity and Allied Neuroses (London, 1891), p. 90.
18 Showalter, Female Malady, pp. 134–5.
19 Young, Trial, p. 411.
20 Ibid., p. 407.
21 Ibid.
22 Michael Arntfield, ‘Trilby: Forensic Victimology and the Svengali Defense’, Gothic Forensics: Semiotics and Popular Culture (New York, 2016), p. 217.
23 Young, Trial, p. 410.
24 Ibid., pp. 413–14.
25 Morning Leader, 26 October 1910.
31. darling wifie
1 Thomson’s Weekly News, 1 January 1921.
2 Ellis, Black Fame, p. 309.
3 Thomson’s Weekly News, 1 January 1921.
4 Ibid.
5 When Newton became Ethel’s solicitor, Crippen also arranged to pay for her defence along with his own.
6 Philip Gibbs, Adventures in Journalism (London, 1923), p. 75; J. P. Eddy, Scarlet and Ermine (London, 1960), p. 49.
7 Thomson’s Weekly News, 8 January 1921.
8 Eddy, Scarlet, p. 57.
9 Thomson’s Weekly News, 8 January 1921.
10 Thomson’s Weekly News, 11 December 1920.
11 Private Collection: Letter from Ethel Le Neve to Governor MyttonDavies, 29 October 1910. Contrary to Ethel’s advice and perhaps out of desperation, Crippen would continue to correspond with Ada Fricker. However, Pentonville would carefully screen the letters and withhold those which they believed contained coded messages about Ethel. Fricker also tried to entice Ethel ‘into her protection’ directly after her trial.
12 Daily Mail, 6 November 1910.
13 Thomson’s Weekly News, 8 January 1921.
14 Seymour Hicks, Between Ourselves (London, 1930), p. 74.
15 Ellis, Black Fame, pp. 315–17.
16 Thomson’s Weekly News, 8 January 1921.
17 Connell, Doctor Crippen, p. 180.
18 Thomson’s Weekly News, 8 January 1921.
19 Cullen, Crippen, p. 184.
20 Ellis, Black Fame, p. 308.
21 Ibid., p. 312.
22 Gibbs, Adventures, p. 76. These letters have disappeared. Extracts from approximately nine of them appear in Ellis’s Black Fame and in Cullen’s Crippen.
23 The New York American had promised him £500 for his manuscript, but the deal never seems to have been honoured.
24 Ellis, Black Fame, p. 313.
25 Ibid., pp. 315–16.
26 Ibid., p. 311.
27 The Globe, 13 February 1911; Brian Sloan, Borkowski’s Law of Succession (Oxford, 2017), p. 253.
28 The Globe, 13 February 1911; Thomson’s Weekly News, 8 January 1921.
29 Newton’s petition that Crippen should receive a reprieve failed to sway the Home Office and he was notified of this on 21 November.
30 Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 20 November 1910.
31 Felstead and Muir, Muir, p. 117.
32. ‘mad for me’
1 Thomson’s Weekly News, 22 January 1921.
2 Cullen, Crippen, p. 184.
3 Thomson’s Weekly News, 15 January 1921.
4 Ibid., 22 January 1921.
5 The address that appears for her on Crippen’s will is 313 Hornsey Road.
6 Thomson’s Weekly News, 5 February 1921.
7 Ibid., 18 August 1928.
8 Ibid., 22 February 1921.
9 Ibid., 22 January 1921.
10 Ibid., 29 January 1921.
11 Richard Harris, ‘A Working-Class Suburb for Immigrants, Toronto 1909–1913’, Geographical Review, vol. 81 (July 1991), p. 324.
12 Thomson’s Weekly News, 18 August 1928.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/conditions/dissociativeamnesia.
18 NA: T 1/11335/19725: Savings Bank account of Belle Elmore, forged withdrawals therefrom.
19 Ibid. The Treasury decided they would not prosecute Ethel for these offences and no action was taken to inform her of the information they held.
20 Mrs Bull, 3 December 1910.
21 Thomson’s Weekly News, 25 August 1928.
22 https://www.cdc.gov/tb/worldtbday/history.htm.
23 Thomson’s Weekly News, 25 August 1928.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid., 1 September 1928.
27 Smith, Supper, p. 270. Ethel remained at Coalbrook Mansions, moving to 14a (formerly number 13) on 1 February 1914. She remained there at least through March 1916.
28 Ibid.
Notes
29 At this time, a strychnine and bromide tonic was recommended by Dr Paul Bousfield for patients suffering from ‘nervous diseases’ (Paul Bousfield, The Pathology, Diagnosis and Treatment of Functional Nervous Diseases (London, 1926), pp. 132–3).
30 Thomson’s Weekly News, 1 September 1928.
31 KSU: Goodman papers: Series 18: Audio Visual Materials: box 36, folder 16: Audio: Goodman’s Interview with Ethel Le Neve’s Children, 1985.
32 Thomson’s Weekly News, 8 September 1928.
33 Ibid., 5 February 1921.
34 Ibid., 8 September 1928.
35 Ibid., 22 September 1928.
36 The family moved several times. They appear on the 1921 census at 107 Harrington Road, on the 1939 register at 28 Shirley Road, and at 10 Parkview Road in 1941, as stated on Walter Neave’s death certificate.
37 KSU: Goodman papers: box 36, folder 17: Audio: Interview with Ethel Le Neve’s Children, 4 October 1999.
38 Ibid.
39 KSU: Goodman papers: box 2, folder 3: ‘Notes of post-tape talk, March 1985’.
40 Ibid.: box 36, folder 15: BBC Radio 4: ‘Living with the Legend: Ethel Le Neve’, recording.
41 62 Burford Road, Lewisham.
42 KSU: Goodman papers: box 2, folder 3: ‘Notes of post-tape talk, March 1985’.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid.: box 36, folder 15: BBC Radio 4: ‘Living with the Legend’.
45 Private Collection: Typescript note accompanying H. H. Crippen’s watch and ring, written by Rex Manning in 1967.
46 Charles Upwood Manning was the son of Charles Robertson Manning, for whom Ethel’s grandfather once worked.
47 Ibid.
48 Smith, Supper, pp. 274–5.
49 KSU: Goodman papers: box 2, folder 18: Crippen: Correspondence, undated.
50 Ibid.: box 36, folder 15: BBC Radio 4: ‘Living with the Legend’.
51 Ibid.: box 36, folder 17: Interview, 4 October 1999.
52 Thomson’s Weekly News, 29 September 1928.
53 Gibbs, Adventures, p. 76.
54 Ibid.
55 Wood, Survivors’ Tales, p. 282.
t H e final word
1 Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 17 July 1910.
2 http://richarddnorth.com/archived-sites/filsonyoung/biography/ part-6-editor-1919-24/31-attacking-the-admiralty/.
3 Young, Trial, p. 14.
4 Ibid., p. 11.
5 Ibid., p. 27.
6 Edward Marjoribanks, The Life of Sir Edward Marshall Hall (London, 1929), p. 277; Kendall, Adventures, pp. 114–15.
7 Leonard Gribble, Adventures in Murder: Undertaken by Some Notorious Killers in Love (London, 1954), pp. 114–15.
8 Horace Thorogood, East of Aldgate (London, 1935), pp. 97–8.
9 Ursula Bloom, The Mightier Sword (London, 1966), p. 88 and p. 90; Sunday Times, 7 October 1934.
10 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ‘Monster Culture (Seven Theses)’, Monster Theory: Reading Culture (Minneapolis, 1996).
11 Ibid.
12 Young, Trial, p. 15.
13 Ibid., p. 7.
14 In the UK the documentary was entitled Revealed: Was Crippen Innocent?
15 See appendix for Professor King’s response in full.