Oddity of the Week: Dr Crippen, We Presume Guilty
Created | Updated Oct 7, 2012
'Oh, what a tangled web we weave. . . ' This week's Oddity concerns a remarkable murder trial – and a first.
Dr Crippen, We Presume Guilty
There's nothing new about the Trial of the Century. Or year, or whatever.
This picture was taken in the Old Bailey in 1910. Although there was no date on the picture in the Library of Congress, that's when the trial was. Hawley Crippen was a homeopathic doctor from Michigan, USA. Ethel Le Neve was his girlfriend, and the alleged murder victim was Crippen's wife, born Kunigunde Mackamotski, who went by the name of Corinne 'Cora' Turner Crippen, although her stage name was Belle Ellmore. No matter what you called her, she seems to have been bad news, at least for her husband: she ran around with the music-hall crowd, and then she took up with a lodger in their boarding-house on the Camden Road.
Not to be outdone, apparently, Dr Crippen had an affair with Miss Le Neve. Then Cora disappeared. Crippen gave out that she'd left town, then that she'd died in California (and been cremated). People got suspicious. When Scotland Yard searched the house (eventually finding a torso in quicklime in the cellar), Crippen and his gf panicked and fled, first to Belgium, then on a steamer headed for Canada. Here's where the 'first' comes in.
If the lovebirds had settled for travelling third-class, they might have got away: but a sharp-eyed Captain Kendall spotted the fugitives and – for the first time in history – used wireless technology to alert the authorities. The radio-telegraph message caused Scotland Yard Inspector Dew to catch a fast ship of the White Star Line and beat them to Canada, where he arrested the pair. Back to London for trial. Crippen was hanged, Le Neve was acquitted and left the country.
Was Crippen guilty of murder? Forensics of the time were rather primitive. In 2007, Michigan State University researchers claimed their DNA studies showed that the body in the cellar was a) not Mrs Crippen, and b) male. We may never know. The case has not been re-opened.
But it was a famous media hubbub, back in the day, and the story about the wireless message? Well, it was the 'white bronco event' of its time.
Crippen was 'honoured' with a waxwork in Madame Tussaud's. Fame, such as it was.
