Doctor Crippen: The Infamous London Cellar Murder of 1910 (30 page)

In the 2004 documentary, Lord Chief Justice Alverstone was portrayed as part of an establishment conspiracy to convict Crippen and was accused of directing the jury to find Crippen guilty. However, in the 2008 documentary he was praised for supposedly pointing out to the jury in his summing up that they had to decide whether the remains were male or female. John Trestrail was shown reading from the trial transcript: ‘Gentlemen, I think I may pass to the question of whether it was a man or a woman. Of course if it was a man, the defendant is entitled to walk out of that dock.’

This was presented as ‘final evidence of a miscarriage of justice’. Far from being ‘bombshell’ evidence, Alverstone’s summing up had been published in the Notable British Trial volume of Crippen in 1920, which was republished in 1933 and 1950.

Disconcertingly, the extract Trestrail was pointing to did not say what he had just read. Alverstone’s real words, which were shown on the screen, were, ‘Gentlemen, I think I may pass for the purpose of your consideration from the question of whether it was a man or a woman. Of course if it was a man, again the defendant is entitled to walk out of that dock.’ This could be interpreted as meaning the opposite to Trestrail’s misquote; that Alverstone was directing the jury away from the non-issue of whether the remains were male or female, rather than addressing them to the possibility.

In the previous paragraph on the same page that Trestrail was reading from, Alverstone said, ‘Gentlemen, that they are the remains of a woman now is really not seriously disputed’, and he points out that a woman’s clothes were found with the remains and the defence did not dispute that the hairs found were also a woman’s. The sentence following Trestrail’s misquotation was ‘Now, being a woman, was that Cora Crippen or not?’ Alverstone had no doubts that the remains were a woman’s. In his autobiography, published in 1914, Alverstone wrote, ‘The identity of the remains with those of Mrs Crippen was further proved by the presence of a scar,’ while the evidence ‘though purely circumstantial, left no doubt in the mind of any impartial man of the prisoner’s guilt.’
³⁵

It is worth remembering Alverstone’s ‘test applied in these Courts, and it ought to be applied. How did the man behave when the charge was brought against him?’ Dr Crippen:

Lied to the police about Cora running off to live with Bruce Miller.
Made no attempt to trace Cora as Inspector Dew had asked.
Pawned Cora’s jewellery.
Bought a suit of boy’s clothes to disguise his mistress as a boy.
Left his job without notice.
Left his house without notice.
Assumed a false name.
Shaved off his moustache and took off his glasses to change his appearance.
Fled the country.

As Richard Muir summed up at Dr Crippen’s trial, ‘Where is Belle Elmore? Is your answer to be that she is dead? Then, whose remains were those in the cellar? Is your answer to be Belle Elmore’s? If not Belle Elmore’s, what conceivable explanation is there? None in the world.’

39 Hilldrop Crescent

In December 1910, several residents wrote to Islington Borough Council asking them to rename Hilldrop Crescent as its new-found notoriety was affecting property prices and deterring tenants from moving in. Henry Trutch at No. 41 suggested Camden Gardens or Camden Crescent, but the council found no evidence of falling house prices and Hilldrop Crescent has retained its name to this day.
¹

The next occupier of 39 Hilldrop Crescent was the Glaswegian comedian Adam Arthur, who performed under the name of Sandy McNab. By his own questionable account, he guessed that the owner of the property would be keen to be rid of it as it now had a gruesome reputation. Even an official taxation record noted that ‘this house was occupied by Crippen and is notorious in consequence’.
²

McNab’s letter to the house’s owner had been returned undelivered, so he wrote to Inspector Dew, who passed it on to the property’s agent, who subsequently agreed to the sale. McNab was well satisfied with acquiring the property he claimed was worth more than £1,000 for £500. He may also have taken into account the publicity value of the story of his purchase, which saw his photograph splashed across the front page of a weekly tabloid with a circulation of over 430,000.

McNab described his new property:

When I went through it as I did from top to bottom, I felt fully convinced that the authorities had left not the slightest trace of the terrible crime behind them. Every wall had been stripped of its wallpaper and here and there the plaster and lath had been removed. Floor boarding had been taken up, and ceilings had been pierced during the search for clues.
    On my first visit I made my way all over the premises, and at last I came to the fatal cellar. I will not attempt to hide the fact that as my foot stepped upon the concrete floor, hardly yet dried, I felt a queer sensation at the pit of my stomach and a choking sensation in my throat. In my mind’s eye I could see again the culprit working with feverish haste to bury the last trace of the crime from the eyes of man. Then I imagined the officers of the law examining the dark, damp, dungeon-like cellar, while the culprit stood calmly upon the steps behind them. The detectives were probably wise to leave the cellar at that time without making farther examinations, and I felt I could do no better than follow their example.
³

He became known as ‘The Man Who Made Crippen’s Cat Laugh’, and allegedly opened a museum of Crippen relics, but public disapproval led him to convert the house into theatrical lodgings.
⁴
McNab soon became the subject of headlines himself. In 1912 he was attacked in Hilldrop Crescent by three men who robbed him of a valuable diamond-studded gold medal that had been presented to him by the South African Amalgamated Theatres Limited after a recent tour.
⁵

The following year his son William Arthur was fined £500 for breach of promise. He had proposed to his pregnant girlfriend, Lily Target, before joining his father’s South African tour. On his return William informed Lily he wanted to marry another woman, and the best thing she could do was blow her brains out. When he gave her a gun she fainted and upon coming round he took her to the railway station. When the train approached, William told Lily, ‘I would like to push you under there.’
⁶

The new residents of 39 Hilldrop Crescent were a vile family. In 1914, Sandy McNab was found guilty at the Kent Assizes of sexually abusing a thirteen-year-old girl. The trial judge was Mr Justice Darling, who had rejected Dr Crippen’s appeal.

When sentencing McNab to two years’ hard labour, Darling said, ‘I am satisfied from what has been brought to my notice since your conviction, that you are a man who makes a practice of this sort of thing.’ He then turned to the jury and apologised for not having the power to pass a more severe sentence.
⁷

After McNab’s departure, No. 39 was occupied by numerous other tenants. The house survived when a high-explosive bomb landed in the back garden of 40 Hilldrop Crescent on the night of 8 September 1940, damaging the rear of Nos 37–40.
⁸
Writer Eric Ambler visited the Crescent after the war and found No. 39 ‘a little shabby, perhaps a little run down, but still proudly intact’.
⁹
On a return visit Ambler was uninspired by the location, writing, ‘After ten minutes of Hilldrop Crescent in the wet, almost any explanation of the crime would seem credible. The visiting student is advised to take a raincoat and to keep his taxi waiting.’
¹⁰

It remained unoccupied and was eventually demolished around 1951. A block of ten flats was built on the site in 1954, named Margaret Bondfield House after the first woman to become a member of the British Cabinet.
¹¹
In 1969 the council considered erecting a blue plaque to commemorate Dr Crippen’s association with the property, but public opposition halted the scheme.
¹²

As recently as 2010 there were rumours that the house was haunted. One resident complained of a spooky atmosphere at night and possessions going missing without explanation.
¹³

Chief Inspector Walter Dew
¹⁴

The Crippen case had made Chief Inspector Walter Dew an international celebrity. He retired from the Metropolitan Police on 5 December 1910, with an exemplary certificate and some 130 commendations and rewards. He was forty-seven years old and had served a total of twenty-eight years and 176 days. Dew was considering resigning before the Crippen investigation, but he stayed on to see the job through to the end. He cited ‘special private reasons’ for his decision, and quite rightly thought it a ‘fitting moment to retire’.

One national newspaper printed the following tribute to the departing detective:

On the Continent, as in this country, his astuteness and tact have won him fame. His quiet, unassuming disposition secured him considerable popularity among his colleagues, and the intimation of his ensuing resignation has been received with universal regret.

Always sensitive to criticism, Dew sued nine newspapers for libellous comments they had made about his conduct during his final investigation. The
Daily Chronicle
paid out £400 in damages for having said that Dew told their correspondent that Crippen had confessed in Canada. Dew argued that this made it appear that he was failing in his duty and ignoring instructions not to speak about the case except as a witness at the trial.

Now working as a confidential enquiries agent, Dew was concerned that the scurrilous stories suggesting he was guilty of misconduct could damage his chances of gaining employment. Every libel action was judged in Dew’s favour. Even F. E. Smith, representing
John Bull
, could not secure a victory against Dew.

Dew’s son Walter, said by his father to have been the only other member of his family to have set foot inside a police station, joined the Metropolitan Police. He eventually rose to the rank of inspector in Special Branch and retired in 1933. His other son, Stanley, died in the First World War in France in 1915. In 1916 Dew was featured in a series of newspaper profiles on ‘The Twelve Greatest Detectives of the World’. He told the paper that being a detective ‘is the finest profession in the world, and if I could start life all over again I would rather be a detective than anything else’. Dew’s name was still inextricably linked with that of Dr Crippen. The paper commented, ‘Ask the average person who Walter Dew is, and he will answer, “The man who arrested Crippen.” Some will cut down the answer to “Crippen Dew”. Such is fame.’

Dew continued working as a private detective until the late 1920s. In 1926 he won a £100 prize in a
Daily Express
writing competition.
The title of his piece was ‘My Race With Crippen’.
¹⁵
It was to be his first foray into writing.

In 1927 Dew’s wife Kate died from cancer, and the widowed detective left London and retired to Worthing on the south coast. He moved into a bungalow called ‘The Wee Hoose’ that he had bought from a family named Hawley. Dew married widow Florence Idle in 1928.

He spent the remainder of his retirement gardening and writing. National newspapers would sometimes ask Dew for his opinion on sensational cases that were being investigated. In 1934
Thomson’s Weekly News
ran a series of lengthy articles entitled ‘The Whole Truth About the Crippen Case’. This was followed the next year by ‘My Hunt for Jack the Ripper’ and in 1936 by ‘From Pitch and Toss to Murder’, a series of articles about the variety of other cases Dew had worked on. These memoirs were published in a single-volume autobiography in 1938 called
I Caught Crippen
, which is today a valuable collector’s item.

Dew still remembered Crippen kindly. He recalled the arrest to his local newspaper, the
Worthing Gazette
: ‘Old Crippen took it quite well. He always was a bit of a philosopher, though he could not have helped being astounded to see me on board the boat … He was quite a likeable chap in his way.’

Walter Dew occasionally fired off angry letters to newspapers that printed articles criticising the Crippen investigation. He eventually died at the Wee Hoose on 16 December 1947, aged eighty-four, and was buried at Worthing Cemetery. In 2005 the Wee Hoose was renamed ‘Dew Cottage’ in his honour.

Sergeant Arthur Mitchell

Mitchell rose to the rank of Detective Inspector and became the head of CID for the Tottenham division. He later returned to Scotland Yard before retiring from the Metropolitan Police in 1925. A career as a private detective ended abruptly with Mitchell’s early death in 1929 aged fifty-one from double bronchopneumonia and cardiac collapse. He was buried at Tottenham Cemetery.
¹⁶

Superintendent Frank Froest

After thirty-three years of service, Froest retired from Scotland Yard in 1912 at the age of fifty-four. King George V sent him the following message: ‘Good-bye Mr Froest, and God-speed. The detective and police organization in which you have served so long is, in my opinion, the best in the world.’

Froest would later write several crime novels. He moved to Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, where he became a Justice of the Peace and an alderman. Frank Froest died on 7 January 1930 aged seventy-three at Weston-super-Mare hospital. He had been ill for a year and went totally blind shortly before he died. He was buried in the churchyard of Uphill Old Church.
¹⁷

Sir Melville Macnaghten

Magnaghten remained at Scotland Yard as Assistant Commissioner until his retirement in 1913, after two years of declining health. His memoir,
Days of My
Years
, was published in 1914 and he died in 1921.

Captain Henry Kendall

Captain Kendall’s celebrity status resulted in his being inundated with crank letters about Crippen. These included a marriage proposal from a woman in Philadelphia, and a plea from a Canadian woman to locate her husband who had run off with another woman. He was offered £4,000 for a twenty-week theatrical engagement in America, and was pestered by a man who tried to tempt him with £100 for a cast of his face that could be exhibited in a waxworks.
¹⁸