Doctor Crippen: The Infamous London Cellar Murder of 1910 (12 page)

The prisoners were hastily removed from the court by a side door and taken away by taxicab. Crippen’s destination was Brixton Prison while Le Neve was driven to Holloway Prison.

An anonymous Bow Street gaoler later recalled Crippen’s time there. Crippen

looked tired and jaded, completely worn out, but conscious of the great ordeal which he knew he must face once he was in the grip of the police.
    I spoke to him about his journey, and he told me how glad he was in one way to have all the anxiety ended. But he never complained through all the monotony of the police-court proceedings, which lasted for many weeks. He was very keen to know what kind of treatment he might expect in Brixton Prison, and afterwards during his various visits to Bow Street he never once complained of the routine or the food or sleeping accommodation. In fact, he declared that the governor and warders did everything possible for his comfort and convenience. He had a great partiality for tea, and he always looked forward to this each afternoon of the Magisterial hearing.
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The case was attracting huge interest in the press all over the world. Melville Macnaghten observed, ‘So far as my experience goes, no case has ever fascinated the British public, and, indeed, engaged the attention of the whole world, in quite the same way that the case of Dr Crippen did.’ He dismissed it in one respect for ‘from a detective point of view, it had no particular interest’. However, ‘in its developments there were very many dramatic touches such as the man in the street loves to imbibe with his coffee at breakfast, and to inhale with his after-dinner cigar’.
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A
Times
editorial attempted to explain this:

It is due in part to the fact that Scotland Yard took the whole world into its confidence with unprecedented thoroughness. It enlisted not only the services of the official police of other countries, but also the formidable though unofficial detective service supplied by the extensive publicity afforded by the Press.
    The other reason for the keen interest with which this chase has been followed is the unprecedentedly large part played in the capture by wireless telegraphy. The ordinary telegraph has enormously increased the difficulties of fugitives from justice. It has frequently confronted an escaping criminal with a detective and a warrant just when he thought that he had baffled pursuit. But it could never have accomplished what has been done in this case by wireless telegraphy.
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Filson Young, who edited the
Trial of Hawley Harvey Crippen
for the Notable British Trials series, proffered another explanation of the appeal of the case. This was the paradox of Crippen’s character. On the one hand he was utterly devoted to Ethel Le Neve, and regarded as a most kindly and mild-mannered man by those who knew him. On the other hand, he had just been arrested for a cold-blooded murder that was leaving the newspaper-reading public aghast with horror. Young observed that ‘there are two sides to the story – the physical, which is sordid, dreadful, and revolting, and the spiritual, which is good and heroic’, and Young observed it was rare in England to have a
crime passionel
. Furthermore, it was the newspaper ‘silly season’. Summer was traditionally a quiet news time so the press had used the Crippen story to fill their pages, allowing their readers to know everything about the hunt for Crippen, while he and Le Neve were unaware of what was happening. Criminologist Nigel Morland suggested the timing of the story resulted in ‘a vulgar intrigue’ being blown out of proportion:

To start with, the story broke in July, a time when editors seek a freakish event – preferably slightly lunatic – to blow into epic proportions. Ready for it are millions in a holiday mood, which is certainly slightly lunatic; thus, a good beginning is soundly laid – and – let it be remembered – more than one murderer owes his permanent fame to the dog days of July.
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George Orwell would later suggest that the ‘enormous ready-made fascination’ with the case was due in part to ‘the fact that the murder took place in the stable pre-1914 world, against a background of respectability’.
¹⁴

Dew had his own theory to explain the unusual interest the case was attracting:

Think of the circumstances! The callous way in which the Doctor killed his actress wife, and the mutilation of her remains; the part played by Miss Ethel Le Neve, the ‘other woman’ in the case; the flight of the couple with the girl dressed as a boy, and their dramatic arrest on the other side of the Atlantic.
¹⁵

The Americans were just as fascinated as the British:

Everywhere one goes in New York to-day – in the streets, tramway-cars, hotels – people congregate – men, women, and children – apparently interested in nothing else. Every feature of the case is eagerly discussed, often by persons entire strangers to each other.
    The bulletin boards of the newspapers were again surrounded this afternoon by crowds clamouring for the latest details, just as they were last week when the pursuit by wireless across the ocean was in progress. As the edition of the evening papers follow each other in quick succession they are snatched from the hands of the swarming newsboys. Nothing like it has been seen since the days of the Spanish–American war. All classes seem to be equally affected.
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While Dew had been chasing Crippen and Le Neve across the Atlantic, investigations into the events at Hilldrop Crescent continued unabated. The drains and sewers of No. 39 were checked for human remains but none were found. The building, now under the constant supervision of a plain-clothes officer, had become something of a tourist attraction as scores of people filed past each day, while those with cameras took commemorative snapshots.

A statement was made at the end of July by metalworker Frederick Evans, who lived in Brecknock Road, Camden Town. Evans was ‘fairly sure’ that it was on the night of 4 February when he was returning home from the Orange Tree public house on Euston Road when, at around 1.20 a.m., he heard ‘a terrible screech which terminated with a long dragging whine’ that emanated from the direction of Hilldrop Crescent. Evans’ first thought was of the Whitechapel murders, despite it being over two decades after the killings. Evans’ back garden was some 3–4 yards away from the Crippens’ and he frequently used to hear Cora singing. The Sunday after he had heard the screams Evans smelled burning from the garden of No. 39, which continued for several days.

Crippen had certainly been busy burning something. Islington dustman William Curtis recalled that, for three weeks from mid-February, he had to remove an unusually large amount of rubbish from 39 Hilldrop Crescent. The first week it consisted of burnt paper and women’s clothing. In later weeks he removed quantities of a light, white ash that was not paper ash nor was it from a fire grate. Curtis was given a 3
d
tip for his efforts by a woman he thought might have been Ethel Le Neve.

Similar disturbances had been heard around the time of Cora’s disappearance. Franziska Hachenberger of 36 Hilldrop Road was ‘certain that when I heard the screams at the back of Hilldrop Crescent, was either on the early morning of the 1st or 2nd of February last … It was an awful scream, it was not easily forgotten.’ Her father had also heard the scream which he thought happened at around 2 a.m. Miss Isaacs of 36 Brecknock Road had a garden that was adjacent to the Crippen’s. She wrote a letter to a friend saying that she had heard ‘a loud scream’ coming from that direction. Lena Lyons and her lodger May Pole lived at 46 Brecknock Road which overlooked 39 Hilldrop Crescent. They both thought they heard two gunshots around seven o’clock one morning either at the end of January or the beginning of February.

The re-adjourned magistrates’ court hearing took place on 6 September. Detailed medical evidence was put forward by Dr Pepper. His first impression had been that the remains
in situ
‘roughly corresponded in shape, breadth, and length with an adult human body’. After closer examination he came to the conclusion that they were from a human in the prime of life and stout of build. The remains bore signs of an old operation in the form of a scar.

Dr William ‘Wilks’ Willcox, senior Home Office scientific analyst, told the court that he had detected traces of an alkaloid poison in all of the organs he had been given to examine. He determined through his tests that the poison was hyoscine, amounting to just under one third of a grain. Hyoscine was usually given in doses of one one-hundredth or one two-hundredth of a grain as a last resort to quieten someone who was delirious, suffering from delirium tremens or acute forms of insanity. Willcox thought that whoever had given the victim the fatal dose of hyoscine must have administered a very large dose for so much to have remained in the body after such a long period. The large amount of poison in the intestines indicated that it had been taken by mouth and the person would have lived for an hour or more before succumbing to the effects of the drug. Once consumed in a large dose the poison would almost instantly put a person into a stupor, and possibly make them delirious. They would then become paralysed and comatose before death arrived.

Willcox thanked his good fortune that the remains had been covered with quicklime. ‘That,’ he said, ‘was just what the expert wanted, because quicklime is an antiseptic, and it helped to preserve the viscera, without which I doubt if the hyoscine would have been discovered.’ After carefully extracting the hyoscine, Willcox put some into a cat’s eye and exposed the cat to bright light, resulting in its pupil dilating widely. For Willcox this was conclusive evidence. The cat, who became known as ‘Crippen’ to Willcox’s students, made a full recovery.
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It was ascertained that on 19 January 1910 Dr Crippen had purchased five grains of hydrobromide of hyoscine at Messrs Lewis & Burroughs chemist’s in New Oxford Street, saying it was for 500 individual doses. This was a vast quantity and there was no good reason why Crippen would require it under normal circumstances.

The revelation of the discovery of hyoscine came as a great shock to Crippen. Barrister Cecil Mercer watched as ‘the blood rose into his face, as I have never seen blood rise into a face before. It was like a crimson tide. It rose from his throat to his chin in a dead straight line … from his chin to his cheeks … from his cheeks to his forehead and hair … till his face was all blood-red, a dreadful sight. And then, after two or three moments, I saw the tide recede. Down it fell, as it had risen, always preserving its line, until his face was quite pale.’
¹⁸

The case was adjourned until the next day. A large crowd outside the court booed and shouted at the prisoners when they left.
¹⁹
The coroner’s inquest was resumed at the Central Library in Holloway Road. However, this new, larger venue made it difficult for everyone present to hear the evidence being given. The evidence was of a more gruesome nature as Dr Pepper gave a detailed description of the remains:

At the examination on July 15th he found one portion of skin 11in. by 9in., with some subcutaneous fat. The lower portion of the piece of skin was, in his opinion from the upper portion of the abdominal wall, and the upper portion from the chest. There was also a piece consisting of the covering of the lower part of the back and buttocks, a large piece from the upper part of the back, and a further piece measuring 7in. by 6in., which was from the lower part of the abdominal wall, and upon the skin of which there was a mark. There was also a piece of skin 15in. long, with fat and muscle attached, from the hip, and another piece of skin, with fat and muscle, from the thigh. There were several other smaller pieces. There was nothing except the hair which could be identified as coming from the scalp, or from the forearms, from the leg below the knee, from the hands, or from the feet. There was no trace either of the genital organs or of bone. There was one large mass, which comprised the liver, the stomach, the gullet, the lower 2½ in. of the windpipe, two lungs, the heart intact, the diaphragm, the kidneys, the pancreas, the spleen, all the small and the greater part of the large intestines. All this mass was removed in one piece.

Dr Pepper was asked whether he thought the mutilations could have been done by someone without anatomical knowledge or training. Pepper was sure that ‘he must either have had real anatomical knowledge or have been accustomed to the process of evisceration of animals’.
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The penultimate hearing took place two days later. Arthur Newton questioned Dew about his intention to arrest Crippen. Dew explained that at their first meeting at Albion House he had no intention of arresting him. If he had he would not have put a number of questions to Crippen which he did:

Newton: Did the question of whether you arrested him or not depend on the answer she gave to your questions?
Dew: The question of arresting him did not enter my mind. I went there for information.
Newton: ‘Dr’ Crippen’s manner and from the details which he gave you at that time did you believe his statement?
Dew: No, not altogether.
Newton: Did you in substance believe it?
Dew: No, otherwise I should not have searched his house.
Newton: The search took place with his consent?
Dew: It did. I could not have gone to the house without his consent.
Newton: At any rate, after the statement he had given you and after the search did it then occur to you to arrest him?
Dew: I could not arrest him.
Newton: On the face of it, speaking generally, did you not at the time consider the statement a reasonable one?
Dew: No, I could not say I did not absolutely think that any crime had been committed. I thought it my duty to continue my inquiries, and I did so because I was not satisfied with his statement. I wanted to keep a perfectly open mind and to satisfy everybody – both ‘Dr’ Crippen and the public.
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The final hearing at Bow Street magistrates’ court took place on 21 September. Crowds still milled around, waiting for the appearance of the prisoners. On this day Le Neve was taken to court by a four-wheeled cab, accompanied by a warder. She was spotted by a group of women who ‘screamed out at the prisoner, and one of the knot pursued the cab to the gates of the station, shrieking opprobrious epithets. Miss Le Neve, leaning back in a corner of the closed vehicle, hid her face behind an open umbrella.’
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