I first read about the infamous Dr Crippen when I was researching the work of the Scotland Yard detective, Walter Dew, who wrote about his investigation into this notorious homicide in his memoirs. Since then, I’ve given talks on this fascinating case, which includes an exciting cross-Atlantic chase and some fascinating early forensic science. It was also the first time that a murderer was caught by wireless technology.
On the evening of 31 January 1910, music hall artiste Cora Crippen, known on stage as Belle Elmore, disappeared from her home in Holloway, after a party. Initially believing that she had returned to America, her friends began to worry when they hadn’t heard from her for some weeks.
Born in America with a Russian-Polish father and a German mother, Cora, whose birth name was Kunigunde Mackamotzki, had a precarious adolescence and by the age of 17, she was living alone in an apartment, which was paid for by a married man. She suffered a miscarriage which led to her meeting her future husband, Hawley Harvey Crippen.
Dr Crippen was a homeopathic doctor and eye and ear specialist. Born in 1862, he enjoyed a privileged childhood in Coldwater, Michigan. Dropping out of medical school in the early 1880s, he came to London to finish his studies, after which he returned to the US, where he opened his own practice. Widowed with a young son, he married Cora in 1892, and the couple eventually moved to London where, in 1905, they settled at 39 Hilldrop Crescent in Holloway. Cora at last fulfilled her long term ambition to become a music hall performer assuming the stage name, Belle Elmore.
After her disappearance on New Year’s Eve in 1910, Hawley told Cora’s friends that she had gone home to the States to nurse a sick relative and, while she was there, she had contracted pneumonia and died. However, the friends were still suspicious and eventually went to Scotland Yard to ask for help. This puzzling case was placed in the capable hands of Detective Chief Inspector Walter Dew.
The experienced police officer began by interviewing Cora’s friends and making general inquiries. He also decided to visit Hilldrop Crescent to see if he could speak to her husband. The door was opened by Crippen’s lover, Ethel Le Neve, who told the officer that she was the housekeeper. The doctor was at his work, so Dew asked Ethel to accompany him to the office. When they arrived, she introduced Dr Crippen. Dew later recalled:
And I found myself looking into the short-sighted eyes of the man who was already a murderer.
The conversation came to nothing. Dr Crippen was polite, convincing and persuasive. He explained to the detective that his marriage to Cora had been tempestuous and they had quarrelled continuously. He admitted openly that he had begun cohabiting with Ethel Le Neve after his wife had disappeared. Chief Inspector Dew then invited Dr Crippen to join him for a spot of lunch. They dined in an Italian restaurant. Crippen ordered steak and, according to Dew, he ‘ate it with the relish of a man who hadn’t a care in the world’.
As Detective Dew gained no incriminating information about the missing woman from his conversations with Hawley Crippen or Ethel Le Neve, he decided that the next step would be to search their home. The first time that Walter Dew visited 39 Hilldrop Crescent, he found nothing suspicious in the eight rooms, including the coal cellar, which was underneath the kitchen and which was so dark that he had to strike a match in order to look around.
However, the following day saw a dramatic turn of events, when Crippen and Le Neve also disappeared. This led to the detective returning to Hilldrop Crescent to take another look. He and a colleague began in the cellar. On their hands and knees, they probed the mortar between the flagstones with a poker. One of the stones was loose so they decided to try to dig them out. Using a spade, the two officers excavated a hole in the cellar floor. As they dug down, they eventually came across what looked like human remains. There was no head or bones, just ‘masses of flesh’ as Dew later described. The police also found some other items under the floor, including a pyjama jacket, part of a woman’s undergarments and some hair curlers. Could they have belonged to Cora Crippen?
Chief Inspector Dew found some long dark hair in the curlers, which matched Cora’s hair colour. He showed the undergarments to her friends, who identified them as belonging to the missing woman. In the Crippens’ bedroom, he discovered a pair of pyjama trousers which seemed to correspond with the top found under the floor. All this evidence was circumstantial so far, but Walter Dew was about to make a breakthrough.
After attending the inquest into the body found under the cellar floor, he was outside the courtroom when he overhead a group of women discussing the case. One of them mentioned that Cora had had a scar on her abdomen following an operation when she was younger. Dew rushed to the doctor who had examined the remains and on closer inspection, they found a scar on some of the tissue. This was analysed and it was revealed that the flesh contained a poisonous substance called hyoscine. The police soon discovered that Dr Crippen had ordered five grains of the drug from a chemist. This vital evidence placed Dr Crippen firmly in the frame for murder, but Detective Dew still had to track him down. Two weeks later, another breakthrough would put him on the right trail.
Detective Dew received a telegram from the Liverpool police, who had had a message from a Captain Kendall onboard the SS Montrose, which was travelling from Antwerp to Quebec. After seeing their descriptions in the press, the captain believed that Dr Crippen and Ethel Le Neve (who was dressed as a young boy) were onboard the vessel as passengers. However, by the time the message was passed to Detective Dew, the ship was in the middle of the Altlantic.
Using a false name, Dew booked a passage on a fast steamer, which was due to leave Liverpool the following day. Knowing that the stakes were high, he kept his mission secret, even from his wife.
Dew was hoping to intercept the SS Montrose when it landed at the St Lawrence River. Whilst he was waiting for the ship, he sent a wireless message to the captain to make arrangements for the arrest. Then, disguising himself as an old pilot of a boat, the detective boarded the vessel and spotted Dr Crippen emerging from behind a funnel. He then went to Crippen’s cabin, where he found Ethel Le Neve.
The trial of Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen began on 18 October 1910 at the Old Bailey. The court was packed and there were thousands of people gathered outside, all desperate to catch a glimpse of this infamous man. It had been decided to try Dr Crippen and Ethel Le Neve separately, so Crippen was brought alone from the cells below into the courtroom and placed in the dock. After five days of testimonies and cross-questioning, the trial ended and the jury retired to consider the evidence. After just 27 minutes, they returned to the courtoom to deliver a verdict of guilty. Hawley Crippen was sentenced to death and hanged a month later, on 23 November. Ethel Le Neve was acquitted.
Cora Crippen’s remains were buried in the St Pancras and Islington Cemetery in London and, in a final twist, the slide containing her tissue from the trial has since been tested using DNA technology. It was concluded that the sample is not related to her and in fact, the skin was that of a man and not a woman. The mystery of the body under the cellar at 39 Hilldrop Crescent, and what actually happened to Cora Crippen remains unsolved.