THE HOMOCIDAL HOMEOPATH

See Also: M LLERED; MURDERS

In his native America Hawley Crippen studied homeopathy. He then worked there for firms that supplied patent medicines of questionable efficacy. He married as his second wife Cora Turner. His employers sent him to London. Following her arrival in the metropolis, Mrs Crippen tried to become a music hall singer. Her husband devoted considerable time and effort to trying to promote her career. As a consequence, he was sacked. The Crippens stayed on in London. Such demand as there had been for her to perform soon dwindled. However, the Music Hall Ladies Guild provided her with a social network.

People who met Crippen found him to be a polite, thoughtful person. However, his marriage had been dysfunctional from the start; she had been another man's mistress when they had wed. During the marriage she cuckolded her husband repeatedly. At one of his places of employment Crippen fell in love with Ethel Le Neve, a young typist. For a number of years, the liaison was chaste. However, in 1906 he returned to his Kentish Town home and discovered his wife in bed with one of their lodgers. The incident prompted Crippen to make his relationship with Miss Le Neve a sexual one.

In early 1910 Mrs Crippen disappeared. Her friends at the Guild enquired as to what had become of her. Crippen stated that she had gone back to the United States. A couple of months later Le Neve moved in with him. The ladies of the Guild established that no one who had Mrs Crippen's name or her stage name had crossed the Atlantic. They informed the police of their concern about her whereabouts. In July Crippen was interviewed by Detective Inspector Walter Dew of Scotland Yard.

The experience prompted the American to panic. The following day he and Le Neve fled to Europe. The police returned to the Crippens home and searched it systematically. Underneath the kitchen coal cellar, they discovered the deboned, desexed flesh of a corpse. An attempt to destroy it had been made that had involved packing slaked lime around it. However, the material had been used by mistake. It was a preservative. Had quick lime been placed about the flesh then there would have been no identifiable evidence of it.

Crippen and Le Neve, posing as father and son, boarded a Montreal-bound ship at Antwerp. The vessel's captain promptly guessed who they might be and radio-telegraphed his employers about his suspicions. They contacted the police. D.I. Dew was placed upon a vessel that arrived in the Canadian port three days before Crippen's craft docked there. When she did so, the police officer boarded her and arrested the couple.

The pair were returned to London. Crippen was tried for murder. He denied the crime but there was too much evidence against him. Such testimony as he did give was intended to shield Le Neve. He was convicted, sentenced to death, and hanged. His lover was tried for being an accessory after the fact. She was acquitted of the charge.

Location: The Admiral Mann, 9 Hargrave Place, N7 0BP. A pub that the Crippens used to drink in.

39 Hilldrop Crescent, N7 0JL. A block of flats stands on the site.

Albion House, 61 New Oxford Street, WC1A 1BS. The site of the dental business of which Crippen was a partner in at the time of his arrest. (purple, blue)

David Backhouse 2024