Hawley Harvey Crippen

Dr. Hawley Crippen

Hawley Harvey Crippen (11 September1862 – 23 November, 1910), usually known as Dr. Crippen, was hanged in Pentonville, England, on November 23, 1910 for murdering his wife. He has gone down in history as the first alleged criminal to be captured with the aid of wireless communication. In 2007 DNA evidence cast doubt on his conviction although it remains true that a dismembered body was found underneath his house.

Brief biography

Crippen was born circa 1885 in Coldwater, Michigan, USA to Andresee Skinner and Myron Augustus Crippen. Crippen became a homeopathic doctor and started working for a homeopathic pharmaceutical company, Dr. Munyon's. His second wife was Cora Turner, born Kunigunde Mackamotski to a German mother and a Polish-Russian father. She was a would-be opera singer, who went under the name of Belle Elmore. A rather overbearing woman, she tried to control every aspect of her husband's life. She openly had affairs, about which he did not complain very much. In 1900, Crippen and his spouse moved to England. Unfortunately, his U.S. medical qualification was insufficient to obtain a doctor's position in the UK. After having changed multiple addresses in London, the couple finally moved to 39 Hilldrop Crescent, Camden Road, Holloway, London where they had lodgers to compensate for Crippen's meagre income. Crippen used many potions besides homeopathic remedies.

Murder

After a party at their home on January 31, 1910, Belle disappeared. Hawley Crippen told everyone she had returned to the United States, and later added that she had died in California and had been cremated. Meanwhile, his lover, Ethel le Neve, moved into Hilldrop Crescent and began openly wearing Belle's clothes and jewelery. The police were informed of Belle's disappearance by her friend, strongwoman Kate Williams, better known as Vulcana. The house was searched but nothing was found, and the doctor was interviewed by police Chief Inspector Walter Dew. After the interview (and a quick search of the house) Dew was satisfied and had no doubts regarding the truth of his 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 took the SS Montrose to Canada.

Transatlantic arrest

Their disappearance led Scotland Yard to perform another three searches of the house. During the fourth and final search, they found the remains of a human body, buried under the brick floor of the basement. Sir Bernard Spilsbury found traces of hyoscine, a calming drug. Mrs. Crippen had to be identified from a piece of skin from her abdomen, because her head, limbs and skeleton were never recovered. Crippen and le Neve fled across the Atlantic on the Montrose, with le Neve disguised as a boy. Unfortunately for them, Captain Henry George Kendall was keeping abreast of the news by wireless and was mingling among the first class passengers. He recognised the fugitives. Just before steaming out of range of the land-based transmitters, Kendall sent a wireless telegram to 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 traveled second class he would have probably escaped Kendall's notice. On board the Montrose a wait of several days ensued because the ship was out of range of wireless communication. Dew boarded the faster White Star liner, the SS Laurentic, arriving in Quebec ahead of Crippen, where he contacted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

As the Montrose entered the St Lawrence River Inspector Dew, disguised as a pilot, came aboard. At that time Canada was a British crown dominion, so Dew was a Scotland Yard detective on duty in territory of the British Empire. If Crippen, a U.S. citizen, had sailed to the United States, even if he had been recognised, an international arrest warrant followed by extradition proceedings would have been required to bring him to trial.

Captain 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 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 the Montrose on 31 July 1910. After discovering the circumstances of his arrest, when Crippen alighted he cursed both Kendall and his ship. Crippen was returned to England on board the Laurentic's sister ship, SS Megantic.

Trial and execution

Sketches from the trial of Dr Crippen

Crippen and le Neve were tried separately at the London assizes held at the Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey, London E.C. After just 27 minutes of deliberations, the jury found Crippen guilty of murder and he was hanged by John Ellis in November. Ethel le Neve was acquitted.

Crippen's trial revealed the startlingly meticulous manner in which the body, which has since been shown not to be his wife's, had been had disposed of. After death, her bones and limbs were professionally removed, and burned in the kitchen stove. Her organs were dissolved in acid in the bathtub, and her head was placed in a handbag and thrown overboard during a day trip to Dieppe, France. Throughout the proceedings and at his sentencing, Crippen showed no remorse, only concern for Ethel's reputation and prospects. At his request, her photograph was placed in his coffin and buried with him.

Although Crippen's grave on the prison grounds is not marked by a stone, tradition has it that soon after his burial a rose bush was planted over it.

Many people consider that during the trial Crippen was shamefully bullied by Mr R.D. Muir, one of the three prosecuting counsel. Some accounts relate that during his trial Crippen made Masonic signs appealing for assistance, namely interlaced fingers held above the head. True or not, the judge, Lord Chief Justice Richard Everard Webster, 1st Viscount Alverstone, renowned for his leniency towards prisoners, definitely changed his stance towards Crippen at one point during the trial. In his support for Muir, it could even be claimed that he bullied the accused.

Shortly after the execution, Muir made a visit to the United States where he was very aggressive toward the press. One journalist asked if he thought he would have won his case if Crippen had been tried in the US. Muir snapped back, "Since I know nothing of American law I can hardly answer that question." That evening the headlines ran: "Man who hanged Crippen boasts that he knows no law."

Question of doubt

There remains some dispute over whether Dr Crippen did, in fact, murder his wife. One theory, which was first propounded by Edward Marshall Hall (who had initially been engaged to lead Crippen's defence, although he later gave up the brief), was that Crippen was using hyoscine on his wife as a sexual depressant but accidentally gave her an overdose and then panicked when she died. In 1981, Hugh Rhys Rankin claimed to have met Ethel le Neve in 1930 in Australia. On that occasion, she is said to have told him that Crippen murdered his wife because she had syphilis.

Raymond Chandler, the novelist, commented that it seemed unbelievable that Crippen would successfully dispose of his wife's limbs and head, and then, rather stupidly, bury her torso under the cellar floor of his home.

Dornford Yates, the novelist, who was involved with the trial as a junior barrister, records that Crippen put the remains in lime so that they would be destroyed, but failed to realise that while dry quicklime destroys, if water is added it becomes slaked lime and preserves. Yates used this fact in the plot of his novel The House That Berry Built and told the story of the trial from his viewpoint in his memoirs As Berry and I Were Saying.

Close examination of the press reports and the transcript of his trial (18 to 22 October 1910) leave open the suggestion that Belle Elmore may not have been his only victim, although no evidence was ever presented concerning this theory.

In October 2007, Michigan State University forensic scientist David Foran announced that mitochondrial DNA evidence conclusively showed that the body found beneath the cellar floor in Crippen's home was not actually Cora Crippen. This research was based on genealogical identification of three matrilineal relatives of Cora Crippen (grandnieces), whose mtDNA haplotype was compared with DNA extracted from a slide taken from the torso in Crippen's cellar. This has raised new questions about Crippen's guilt and the actual identity of the body found in the cellar.

In popular culture

• John Boyne's novel, Crippen, portrays a (fictionalized) account of Crippen's life.
• The Erik Larson book, Thunderstruck, interweaves the story of the murder with the history of Marconi's invention of radio.
• In "Why the Tuesday Afternoon Bridge Club Met on Thursday," an episode of Ironside first aired on January 13, 1969, Arthur O'Connell plays a wife-murderer who, obsessed with the Crippen case, tries to re-enact it. In the course of the drama, he comes to believe that Chief Ironside, played by Raymond Burr, is Inspector Dew.
• The protagonist of Peter Lovesey's novel, The False Inspector Dew, is a traveler on a trans-Atlantic cruise who's mistaken for the detective who arrested Crippen, and called upon to solve a similar murder during the voyage. The novel won the Gold Dagger from the British Crime Writers Association.
• In Episode 33 (third season, episode 7, "Salad Days) of Monty Python's Flying Circus, in the skit entitled Climbing the North Face of the Uxbridge Road, a team of mountaineers appears to be climbing a sheer rock wall, which, when the camera pans out, turns out to be the gutter of an ordinary street. They are "climbing" horizontally, lying on the ground. The BBC interviewer (John Cleese) asks one of the climbers (Graham Chapman), "Isn't this crazy?", to which the climber replies, "Aye, well but they said Crippen was crazy didn't they?" The interviewer pointedly replies, "Crippen was crazy", to which the climber responds, "Oh, well there you are then."
• In the BBC sitcom, Coupling, the character Steve cites Crippen and his wife as a good example of a couple that should never have been together while desperately trying to break up with his girlfriend, Jane. The slightly unhinged Jane counters that they probably had a lot of good times before her murder, though.
• In the video game, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, is the hospital in the fictional village Montgomery named "Crippen Memorial".
• In the comic book The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the invisible man is named Hawley Griffin, after Crippen.
• In the BBC comedy Blackadder Goes Forth, Captain Blackadder refers to the magazine King and Country as, "about as convincing as Dr. Crippen's defence lawyer".
• Mystery writer John Dickson Carr references Crippen in a number of his books, most notably in Poison In Jest.
• A hardcore punk band, Dr. & the Crippens, performed and recorded in the UK throughout most of the 1980s and 1990s.
• In the Ken Ludwig play, Leading Ladies, the character Florence uses the name Dr. Crippen as an insult to her physician Doc Myers.
• In the British TV show, Jericho 2: The Hollow Men, Detective Jericho says a lonely false confessor named John Bull would confess to being Dr. Crippen or the iceberg that sank the Titantic if you asked him.
• In the Kate Bush song "Coffee Homeground" from her Lionheart album, the lyrics are generally about poisoning and mention "pictures of Crippen".
• During the 1931 Dogger Bank earthquake the head of Crippen fell off his waxwork at the London Madame Tussauds.

References

• J.H.H. Gaute and Robin Odell, The New Murderer's Who's Who, 1996, Harrap Books, London
• The World's Most Infamous Crimes and Criminals. New York: Gallery Books, 1987. ISBN 0-8317-9677-4
• Nicholas Connell, Walter Dew; The Man Who Caught Crippen, Sutton Publishing (2005), ISBN 0-7509-3803-X

External links

• Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen: Of Passion And Poison at the Crime Library
• Dr. Crippen: One Night In Camden
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