Hawley Harvey Crippen was an American who had come to London to sell patent medicines and stayed to make a life there with his second wife, Cora Crippen, who sang on the music hall stage under the name Belle Elmore. In the summer of 1910 her friends went to Scotland Yard. Within weeks Crippen had left London, warrants had gone out across Europe, the government had offered a reward for news of where he was, and members of Parliament were asking the Home Secretary why the police had let him go. A ship's captain at sea recognized him and said so by wireless, the first time the new technology had been put to police work, and a Scotland Yard inspector crossed the ocean on a faster liner to meet him. He was arrested in Canadian waters at the end of July and brought back to stand trial.
At the Old Bailey, in the session that began on October 11, 1910, he faced a charge laid on the coroner's inquisition: the wilful murder of his wife. The jury took less than half an hour to find him guilty, and he was sentenced to death. His appeal failed. A petition carrying more than 15,000 names asked the Home Secretary to spare his life, and no reprieve came. On November 23, 1910, aged 48, Crippen was executed in London. He insisted to the end that he had not killed her.
Crippen was born on September 11, 1862, in Coldwater, a town in southern Michigan. He trained in homeopathic medicine, graduating in 1884 from the Michigan School of Homeopathic Medicine.
Whatever his training, he never held a full medical degree, and the title of doctor that followed him to London was largely his own. In the court record of 1910 his occupation is entered as dentist. For years he made his living selling homeopathic remedies across the United States. He and his second wife settled in London in 1897, where he worked for a time at the Drouet Institute, a business that sold cures of doubtful worth, and in 1900 the patent medicine firm of Munyon's put him in charge of its London office.
He married again in 1894. His second wife was American-born and had ambitions as a variety singer, and for about seven years she worked the music halls, with her husband managing her career. Her real standing came in the world around the halls. In 1907 she became treasurer of the Music Hall Ladies' Guild, the charity through which the women of the profession looked after their own, and the couple moved in company that included Marie Lloyd and Dan Leno. Her friends were drawn from the guild's members. She was socially ambitious, filled her rooms with stage costumes and gave parties with an American flavor.
The couple lived first in Bloomsbury and in 1905 moved to north London.
From February 1910 her friends in the guild grew uneasy at her absence. Her husband's explanations did not satisfy them, and their unease hardened into suspicion. Two of them, a theatrical manager and his wife, a performer, finally took the matter to a superintendent at Scotland Yard whom they knew personally and asked him to open an inquiry. A member's question in the House of Commons later put the start of that inquiry at June 30, on information brought by her friends.
The case went to a chief inspector of the Criminal Investigation Department. On July 8, 1910, he questioned Crippen, who admitted that he had told people around him things that were untrue, to spare himself embarrassment. The truth, he said, was that his wife had left him and gone to America with another man. The inspector looked over the property in north London, found nothing out of place and accepted the account.
Crippen did not wait to learn that. On July 9, the day after the interview, he left London, and his secretary went with him. They crossed to Belgium and, at Antwerp, booked passage on the Montrose, a Canadian Pacific liner due to sail for Quebec and Montreal on July 20. When the police returned to their inquiries, he was gone.
His flight changed everything. On July 13 a further police examination of the property produced the evidence on which the case was later tried, and the inquiry became a murder hunt. The Metropolitan Police obtained warrants for the arrest of Crippen and his secretary and sent their photographs and descriptions to police forces across Europe, to seaports and to the captains of ships sailing abroad.
The flight became a political matter at once. On July 20, 1910, the member for West Ham South asked the Home Secretary who was responsible for allowing Crippen to slip out of police hands, and the next day another member asked whether anyone had kept him under observation between July 8 and July 11. The Home Office declined to discuss the inquiry while it was running. On July 27 the House learned that the Home Office had offered a reward for information about where Crippen was, the first such reward, the Home Secretary believed, since 1889. On July 29 the member for West Ham South returned with a written question accusing the chief inspector of neglect of duty. The Home Secretary declined to discuss it while the officer was abroad on duty and could not answer for himself.
By then the officer was at sea. The Montrose had left Antwerp on July 20 with Crippen and his secretary aboard, traveling under assumed names. Her captain had studied the descriptions circulated from London, and on July 21, just before his wireless set passed out of range of the English coast, he sent a message to his company's office saying that he strongly suspected the London fugitive and his companion were among his second-class passengers. The company passed the message to Scotland Yard.
It was the first time wireless telegraphy had been used for police purposes, and the consequences reached far beyond the ship. Other vessels and shore stations in the United States, Canada and Europe picked up the traffic, and from then on newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic printed the positions of the ships every day. The captain kept up a stream of reports as the crossing went on. On board, only he, his wireless operator and one or two officers knew who the two passengers were, or that they would be arrested when the ship reached Canada.
The chief inspector hurried to Liverpool and on July 23 sailed on the Laurentic, a fast, modern White Star liner also bound for Quebec. The whole world followed the race. The Laurentic overtook the Montrose in the Strait of Belle Isle and reached Pointe-au-Père, the pilot station on the St. Lawrence downriver from Quebec, on July 29, two days ahead of her.
The inspector had no power of arrest in Canada, and the arrest itself belonged to Canadian officers. The Dominion's chief commissioner of police had at first directed the police chief of Rimouski, the small town beside Pointe-au-Père, to make the arrest and escort the prisoners up the river. When the inspector arrived the plan changed: the federal authorities assigned the task instead to a chief and a detective of the Quebec provincial police, acting for the province's attorney general. More than fifty journalists from Canadian and American cities gathered at Rimouski to wait, and the inspector spent two days trying to keep his arrangements from them. He tried at first to keep the press off the ship altogether, but several reporters simply bought tickets for the last stretch of the voyage from Pointe-au-Père to Quebec, and the Canadian Pacific Line instructed the captain to let them board. Through the night of July 30 he sat beside the wireless operator at Pointe-au-Père, in contact with the ship.
Sunday, July 31, 1910, filled Rimouski, a town of some 2,000 people, with visitors from the surrounding parishes. That morning, when the Montrose stopped off Pointe-au-Père to take on her river pilot, the two provincial officers, who had come down from Quebec City for the purpose, and the Scotland Yard inspector went aboard, and Crippen and his secretary were arrested. The ship went on up the river and reached Quebec City just after midnight. The next day the arrest led front pages around the world.
The prisoners were held in custody in Quebec City while their extradition to England was arranged, a process that took a little more than two weeks. The chief inspector, with an assistant and two matrons sent out from London, then escorted them back across the Atlantic. When they reached England, thousands of people crowded the docks to see them.
The two prisoners were brought before the magistrate at Bow Street, where the hearings drew crowds from sunrise. At the end of the evidence both were committed for trial. A coroner's inquest was held as well, and on its inquisition Crippen was charged with his wife's wilful murder. His secretary was charged separately, as an accessory.
Crippen was tried at the Old Bailey in the session that began on October 11, 1910. The charge, as entered in the court record, was that he was charged on the coroner's inquisition with "the wilful murder of" his wife, giving both her married name and her stage name. The indictment against his secretary fixed the date of the alleged murder as February 1, 1910. He was 48, and he was entered in the record as a dentist.
Crippen denied murder. His case was that he believed his wife had gone off with another man and that he knew nothing of how she had died. The prosecution called expert witnesses. The jury retired for less than half an hour and returned a verdict of guilty. He was sentenced to death.
Ethel Clara Le Neve was tried separately, later in the same October session. She had been arrested with him off Pointe-au-Père and brought back with him from Quebec, but she had engaged different solicitors from his, and her defense was separate. The indictment charged that, Crippen having murdered his wife on February 1, 1910, she, "well knowing the said Hawley Harvey Crippen to have committed the said felony, did on that day and on divers days thereafter feloniously receive, comfort, harbour, assist, and maintain him." In law that was the charge of being an accessory after the fact. Her counsel presented her to the jury as a picture of innocence. The jury found her not guilty, and she walked free.
Crippen appealed to the Court of Criminal Appeal, the court created in 1907 to hear appeals against verdict and sentence in criminal cases. His appeal failed, and the sentence of death stood.
His solicitor then drew up a petition to the Home Secretary praying for a remission of the sentence in favor of imprisonment for life. Copies circulated across the country, and the original lay open for signature at the solicitor's offices in London through the working day. By the time it was handed in it carried more than 15,000 signatures. The Home Secretary did not grant a reprieve.
Hawley Harvey Crippen was executed in London on November 23, 1910. In a letter to his secretary written before his death, he set down his belief that "facts will be forthcoming to prove my innocence." He maintained that he was innocent until the end.
After the execution, the solicitor who had acted for him produced what he claimed was a confession Crippen had made while awaiting execution and sold it to a London evening paper. The confession was his own invention, and the Law Society later suspended the solicitor.
Crippen never admitted the killing. His only confession was the one his solicitor fabricated and sold after his death, and it has no standing.
In October 2007 a team at Michigan State University, led by a biologist and working with a toxicologist and a genealogist, announced the results of a DNA study that, they said, showed that the evidence on which the prosecution had relied to identify the victim did not come from her. These are research claims, not findings of any court. The conviction stands.
September 11, 1862: Hawley Harvey Crippen is born in Coldwater, Michigan.
1884: He graduates from the Michigan School of Homeopathic Medicine.
1892: His first wife dies.
1894: He marries his second wife.
1897: The couple settle in London.
1900: The Munyon's firm puts him in charge of its London office.
1905: The Crippens move from Bloomsbury to north London.
1907: His wife becomes treasurer of the Music Hall Ladies' Guild.
February 1, 1910: The date of the murder as alleged in the indictment.
February 1910: Her friends in the guild grow uneasy at her absence.
June 30, 1910: The police inquiry begins, by a member's account in the Commons.
July 8, 1910: A Scotland Yard chief inspector questions Crippen.
July 9, 1910: Crippen leaves London with his secretary.
July 13, 1910: A further police examination of the property turns the inquiry into a murder case; warrants follow.
July 20, 1910: The Montrose sails from Antwerp for Quebec; the first Commons question on the case is asked.
July 21, 1910: The captain of the Montrose sends his wireless message; the Commons hears a second question.
July 23, 1910: The chief inspector sails from Liverpool on the Laurentic.
July 27, 1910: The Home Office confirms a reward for information on his whereabouts.
July 29, 1910: The Laurentic reaches Pointe-au-Père; the Home Secretary declines to discuss a charge of neglect against the inspector.
July 31, 1910: Crippen and his secretary are arrested aboard the Montrose off Pointe-au-Père by Quebec provincial police officers.
August 1910: After extradition proceedings in Quebec City, both are escorted back to England.
After their return: Bow Street committal hearings; both are committed for trial.
October 11, 1910: The Old Bailey session begins at which he is tried for the wilful murder of his wife; he is found guilty and sentenced to death.
October 1910: Ethel Clara Le Neve, tried separately as an accessory after the fact, is found not guilty.
Late 1910: The Court of Criminal Appeal rejects his appeal; a petition for a reprieve gathers more than 15,000 signatures, and no reprieve is granted.
November 23, 1910: Crippen is executed in London.
October 2007: A Michigan State University team announces a study disputing the identification; the conviction stands.