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The Crimes

On 17 January 1910, Crippen ordered five grains of the poison, hydro-bromide of Hyoscine, from a New Oxford Street chemist called Lewis & Burrows, who supplied medications for his dentistry practice. Hyoscine was a drug known for its sedative properties and, at the time, was used in extremely small dosages by doctors to subdue mental patients. It had no obvious dental applications.The last night that Belle was seen alive was 31 January 1910, when the Crippens had guests for dinner.Since Crippen denied the murder of Belle, the exact chain of events were never conclusively proven, but medical experts summoned at his trial surmised that Crippen’s intention was to fatally sedate Belle, and then summon his friend Dr. Burroughs, who had been previously primed with an illness story, when he ‘found’ her dead in their bed. Perhaps Crippen over-medicated whatever medium he used to administer the drug, but Belle became hyperactive, rather than sedated, and created a tremendous amount of noise. Crippen, in desperation, shot her with his revolver, and neighbours heard the sound, although they didn’t recognise it as a gun shot at the time.With Crippen’s neat execution plan now seriously awry, he decided that Belle’s body would have to be secreted in the cellar of the house. As the cellar was very small, and Belle a large woman, he dissected her corpse in the bath, removing her long bones and ribs, which he took down to the kitchen and burned in the open hearth there. He may also have used acid to dissolve her internal organs in the bath. He lifted the stone floor of the cellar, and buried her filleted torso there, before disposing of her head, and other remaining organs, in a weighted sack, in a canal near Hilldrop Crescent.The next day he attended to patients at his dental practice as though nothing was amiss. He told Ethel that Belle had left him, and made her a gift of some of her jewellery, pawning the rest of her jewellery later that day. He also asked Ethel to deliver a note to the Ladies’ Guild, in which ‘Belle’ resigned her post as treasurer, advising her friends that she had to travel to America to tend to a sick relative. The members of the Ladies’ Guild were suspicious from the outset, Belle having never mentioned any ailing relative to them. However, it wasn’t until 20 February, when Crippen attended a Guild Ball accompanied by Ethel, who was wearing Belle’s jewellery, that they voiced their concerns openly.Inundated almost daily by enquiries about Belle from various Guild matrons, Crippen tried to staunch the gossip by informing them that Belle had fallen seriously ill in California. He then sent a telegram to the Martinettis, the couple with whom he and Belle had shared their final meal, on 24 March 1910, saying that Belle had died. Crippen also disappeared for a short break to France with Ethel, which seemed unduly hasty, given the recent death of his wife.The Ladies’ Guild pressed Crippen for details of Belle’s funeral on his return; he claimed she was being cremated in the United States. As a Catholic, Belle would not have countenanced cremation so, armed with all the evidence they had amassed over the previous two months, they approached Chief Inspector Walter Dew at Scotland Yard, laying out their suspicions. He claimed that there was too little evidence with which to proceed.Undaunted, they continued their investigations, discovering that no boat had sailed to the United States on the day Belle was supposed to have left, and no one named Crippen had died in California on the day claimed in the telegram. Dew was forced to respond to the allegation, and he visited Crippen at home on 8th July 1910, questioning him about the death of his wife. Crippen admitted candidly that he had invented the story of her death: Belle, he claimed, had left him for another man, and he was merely trying to avoid the scandal and humiliation. Dew decided that he believed the story, and took his leave.

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The Arrest

Crippen, unaware of the good impression he had made on Dew, panicked. He told Ethel of Dew’s visit, and persuaded her that they would need to leave the country for a year, until the scandal surrounding Belle’s desertion had died down. They travelled to Antwerp the following day, to catch a boat bound for Quebec, in Canada.On a routine follow-up visit to Crippen’s dental practice, on 11 July, Dew discovered that Crippen and Ethel had disappeared. He returned immediately to Hilldrop Crescent, to find that the maid had been dismissed, and was in the process of preparing the house for an extended absence. Dew organised an extremely thorough search of the premises, conducted over two full days, which finally unearthed the rotting remains concealed beneath the floor of the cellar. A medical examination of the remains of the torso found an operation scar, which enabled them to identify the remains as Belle Crippen. They also discovered the presence of Hyoscine. On 16 July an arrest warrant was issued for Hawley Crippen and Ethel le Neve.The case made huge headlines in England, and the story, with pictures of the fugitives, was carried in European newspapers as well. Crippen decided that they would be best travelling incognito, and he boarded the SS Montrose in Antwerp, bound for Canada, on 20 July 1910, travelling as Mr. Robinson, with Ethel disguised, rather poorly, as his young son. Unfortunately for them, the Captain of the Montrose, named Kendall, took a local newspaper with him, on the day of departure, containing pictures of the fugitives. Ethel’s poor disguise drew attention; looking more closely, Captain Kendall recognised the similarity between the odd couple and the fugitives and, on 22 July, sent a wireless telegram to the White Star Line in Liverpool, claiming that Crippen and Ethel were onboard. It was the first time that this new means of communications was used in the apprehension of a criminal. The information was passed immediately to Inspector Dew at Scotland Yard.Fortunately for Dew, another White Star liner, the SS Laurentic, was due to leave Liverpool for Quebec the following morning; a faster ship, she would actually arrive at her destination before the SS Montrose. The thrill of the transatlantic chase gripped the media, and newspapers were full of stories about the love triangle, covering the lives of Belle, Ethel and Crippen, and plotting the progress of each ship, as the Laurentic steadily made ground on the Montrose.The Laurentic reached Quebec the day before the Montrose, as scheduled. When the Montrose reached Father Point, on 31 July 1910, and prepared to take pilots onboard to guide the ship into dock, Dew boarded the vessel, disguised as a pilot, and arrested Hawley Crippen and Ethel le Neve. He was able to do this in his capacity as a Scotland Yard detective, carrying out his duty within British Territorial Waters. Had Crippen decided to sail straight to the United States instead of Canada, Dew would have had no jurisdiction over Crippen, a US citizen, within United States territory.

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The Trial

Crippen and Ethel were tried separately, in October 1910, at the Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey in London.Crippen’s trial for murder commenced on 18 October 1910, and he hampered any hope of building a decent defence, by refusing to allow Ethel to stand as a defence witness. His only concern seemed to be the protection of her reputation. He might have avoided execution had he chosen to plead guilty, introducing testimony of Belle’s serial adultery, but he pleaded not guilty, and was mercilessly bullied by the prosecutor, Mr R.C. Muir K.C., who emphasised the lies told to the Ladies’ Guild and the police, and the concealment of the crime.On 22 October 1910 the jury returned a verdict of guilty, after only 27 minutes of consideration. The presiding judge, Lord Alverstone, sentenced Crippen to death by hanging.On 26 October the trial of Ethel Le Neve began at the Old Bailey, on charges of being an accessory to murder, after the fact, and a fugitive from justice. Lasting only one day, her defence successfully painted a picture of an innocent young woman merely following the instructions of her lover, and she was found not guilty, after only 12 minutes of deliberation by the jury.

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Timeline

Born 1862The Victim Belle Ellmore Crippen, 1 February 1910Arrested 31 July 1910Trial 18th October 1910Convicted 22 October 1910Executed 23 November 1910

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The Aftermath

An appeal of Crippen’s sentence was refused, and his execution was set for 23 November. Ethel visited Crippen in prison every day, and followed each visit up with a letter.When he was executed at Pentonville Prison in London, on 23 November 1910, he requested that the letters, and a photograph of Ethel, be buried with him. He also bequeathed his estate to her.On the day that he was executed, Ethel left the country by ship, bound for New York; from there she travelled to Toronto, where she worked as a secretary for 5 years, before returning to the UK, where she married and settled in Croydon. She died in hospital in 1967, aged 84.Given the publicity surrounding Number 39 Hilldrop Crescent, it is unsurprising that the house remained empty for most of the next 30 years. It was destroyed in a German air raid during the Second World War.Captain Kendall of the SS Montrose narrowly escaped death himself, when his ship, the SS Empress of Ireland, was wrecked in 1914, with the loss of more than 1000 lives, in the exact spot where Crippen had been arrested four years earlier, Father Point in Quebec. Kendall was one of the few to survive the disaster.

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