By Toni Macy
Nux Vomica is a cure-all. Anything from heart palpitations, asthma, seizures, and depression, to a bad cough. Buyer beware, some side effects of Nux Vomica include vomiting, seizures, asphyxiation, and death. Nux Vomica, more commonly known as strychnine.
Thomas Neill Cream was born on May 27, 1850, in Glasgow, Scotland. Four years after his birth his family moved to Quebec, Canada. His father, William, managed a shipbuilding and lumber firm. William was able to make enough money for his family of 8 children to live very comfortably. In the fall of 1872, William sent his oldest son, Thomas, to McGill University in Montreal. Thomas graduated in March 1876 with a medical degree and an emphasis in pharmaceuticals.
During Cream's four years of college, he made sure he stood out from the crowd. One of Cream's professors told his students to be "god-like" and Cream took that to heart. He made sure to dress in expensive clothing, wear jewelry, and drive an expensive carriage. It's also believed that during his college years, Cream contracted syphilis.
Today, syphilis can be treated fairly easily with penicillin. In the 1800s the only treatment for it was slow mercury poisoning. We can assume Dr. Cream tried several of the treatments for syphilis. Some of the treatments included ingesting mercury or sweating in a mercury steam bath. When not treated, the end-stage of syphilis will manifest 10-20 years after being infected. An end-stage symptom of syphilis is insanity.
The same year Cream was set to graduate he began dating a young woman named Flora Eliza Brooks. Flora became very ill, to the point that she nearly died. She did recover, however. It was discovered by her family doctor that she had been pregnant and had an abortion. Cream, not wanting to take responsibility for Flora's pregnancy, had performed the abortion. Lyman Henry Brooks, Flora's father, literally walked Cream down the wedding aisle at gunpoint. Cream left the day after the marriage for Scotland to finish his education where he received his midwifery license from The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons. This school was not his first choice. Cream first had gone to London and applied at St. Thomas' Hospital. Other notables who once roamed those halls included Florence Nightingale, as well as Thomas Lister, who was a pioneer of antiseptics. Cream studied and prepared for six months for the entry exam, only to fail.
While Cream was in the British Isles, Flora supposedly contracted consumption and died. "Supposedly contracted consumption," because there has always been a question about Flora's death; before Cream left his young bride, he gave her a prescription bottle of pills and told her not to take any other medications.
While Cream took his studying seriously, he also found plenty of time to socialize. If he wasn't wooing well-to-do women, he was in the back alleys paying for pleasures. Even though Cream associated with prostitutes, he claimed a great disdain for these women and considered them something to be used and discarded.
In 1878, Cream returned to Ontario and set up a practice in the city of London. He also had a secret illegal abortion practice. In the early summer of 1879, one of Cream's patients, Kate Gardener, was found dead in an outhouse with an empty bottle of Chloroform, right behind Cream's office. During the inquest, Kate's roommate, Sarah Long, testified that Mary discovered she was pregnant and went to Cream to "bring her right." Cream stated that Kate did not come in for an abortion, he was treating her for "senescence" (aging). It was obvious to Cream that Kate's death was of her own accord and had nothing to do with him.
A Doctor testified there was no way Kate could have held a Chloroform-soaked rag to her own face long enough for her to die. There were also rumors spreading that Cream may have been having an affair with Kate, and the baby was his. The death was ruled a murder by an unknown person. After the verdict of not guilty, Cream quickly left town and headed to Chicago, Illinois.
By 1880, Cream had set up practice by the red-light district. It was known to the Windy City police that there was a booming market for illegal abortions. Doctors were rumored to go to private homes or neutral areas to perform criminal abortions. Doctors would hire women to act as nurses/midwives, where they would also set up the time and place of the procedures. Cream had hired one of these women named Hattie Mack, an African American. In August of 1880, Hattie hastily moved out of her apartment. She was quickly arrested after the decomposing body of Mary Ann Faulkner was found in her apartment. Without hesitation, Hattie turned on her boss claiming that Cream had performed approximately 500 illegal abortions. Cream had Hattie take Mary Ann to her home while she recovered from the abortion, where she died. Cream rebutted this claim stating that Hattie brought Mary Ann to him after Hattie had given her a botched abortion. Cream was tried for murder but was found not guilty because the jury was unwilling to find a handsome, educated doctor guilty from the account of an African American woman.
That same month another one of Cream's patients, Ellen Stack, died. There is very little information about her, other than Cream gave Ellen a "birth control" pill, laced with strychnine.
Cream started to expand his practice and make his own prescriptions to treat patients with epilepsy. In 1881, Daniel Stott was an epilepsy patient of Cream's. Daniel would send his wife to Cream's office to get his pills. It didn't take long before the good doctor and Mrs. Stott started having an affair. Once Daniel became suspicious of their relationship, it's thought that Mrs. Stott persuaded her lover to help her murder her husband. The murder was done by lacing Daniel's medicine with strychnine. Interestingly at first, Cream was not a suspect in Daniel's death. Cream wrote a letter to the coroner, telling him he believed the pharmacist was to blame for putting strychnine in the prescription. Then Cream began to try and blackmail the pharmacist. Unfortunately for Cream, the pharmacist was in good standing with the police and was a law-abiding citizen. Cream quickly became a suspect in the death. Daniel's body was exhumed and the tests revealed that there was indeed strychnine in his stomach. If the pharmacist had poisoned Daniel, then how would Cream have known? Cream was arrested for the murder of Daniel Stott and was sentenced to serve a life sentence in the Joliet State Penitentiary in Illinois.
After serving only ten years, Cream was deemed to be a "fit and proper subject for executive clemency". His sentence was shortened from life to 17 years. However, that same year Cream was released from prison for good behavior. After being discharged from prison, Cream began to search for Julia Stott to get his revenge on her. He believed it was entirely her fault he had been imprisoned. But his search was in vain. He never found her.
While Cream was in prison his father died and left him an inheritance of $16,000. With cash in hand, Cream traveled back to England. It would appear that syphilis, mercury poisoning, and time behind bars had paid its toll on the once handsome Doctor. His eyes had always been a little crossed, but it was now more severe. He had bad headaches, had developed far sightedness (he was given very thick glasses to improve his sight), was balding, had a sickly complexion, the whites of his eyes had yellowed and were watery, and he now had a very noticeable gate when he walked. Time and ill health had also played with Cream's mind. He had developed bad headaches and his psychosis was worsening. He had an even deeper hatred of women and carried around pornographic photos that he was quick to show anyone, even those who didn't ask to see them.
Cream settled down in a poverty-stricken city called Lambeth. Within a few weeks, Ellen Donworth, a 19-year-old prostitute, died from strychnine poisoning. One week later another prostitute, 27-year-old Matilda Clover, died from what was thought to be alcohol poisoning. Nothing at the time of the two deaths pointed to Cream. However, he began trying to blackmail Ellen Donworth's more well-known customers. He also had the idea to try and blackmail two other doctors for the murder of Matilda Clover.
After the murders of Ellen and Matilda, Alice Marsh and Emma Shrivel came to the scene. One evening, Cream went with them to their shared apartment. After spending the night with both women, he gave each of them three gel tablets and told them to take the pills before going to sleep. Both women died. Their cause of death: strychnine.
Louise Harris was no lady. But she was smart. After dinner and time with Cream in a room together, the two walked to a bridge at the Thames River. Cream gave Louise two pills, telling her they would help her complexion. Louise knew something wasn't right so she acted like she took the pills but instead threw them in the river. He told her he had to go to work and promised to meet her later that night. He never showed. Her testimony ensured that Cream would pay for his crimes.
Cream could have gotten away with these murders, but he got in the way of himself. Not only did he brag to others about how to murder people, when a former New York detective, John Haynes went to London for a visit, Cream took him on a Lambeth Poisoner tour. Cream took Haynes to the murder scenes and described the murders, a bit too well, to his new detective friend.
On October 21, 1892, at the age of 42, Cream was sentenced to hang by the presiding justice Henry Hawkins. Several years after the hanging, the executioner, James Billington, claimed Cream had some final words, but they were cut short, owing to the hangman's noose. Cream only said three words, but those final words still cause heads to scratch. "I am Jack..."
Editor's note: this article ran in Serial Killer Magazine and is reproduced as written. Thomas Neill Cream is recorded in this archive with two convictions, one in Illinois for the murder of Daniel Stott and one at the Old Bailey, with five or more deaths attributed in the Lambeth series. Two things in the article need marking. He was convicted on 21 October 1892 and hanged on 15 November; the article compresses the two dates into one. And the closing line, the famous “I am Jack…” on the scaffold, cannot mean what it is always taken to mean: Cream was serving his sentence in Joliet penitentiary in Illinois throughout the autumn of 1888, so he was in prison on the other side of the Atlantic while the Whitechapel murders were being committed. The story rests on the executioner's account given years afterwards, and this archive files Jack the Ripper as unsolved. The Chicago and Ontario deaths described before the Stott conviction, Kate Gardener, Mary Ann Faulkner and Ellen Stack, produced either an acquittal or no charge at all, and the article says so.