Like other lady-killers in this book George Joseph Smith was a charmer, but the most cold-blooded and callous of them all. He was vile. Like many other murderers, he was a petty criminal before he began to kill.
A cockney, born at 92 Roman Road, Bethnal Green, in the East End of London on 11 January 1872, he was only nine years old when he was sentenced to eight years in a Gravesend reformatory: an upbringing and a background that may have developed his criminal tendencies and contempt for the law. When he came out he stayed with his mother. According to his first wife: ‘He said he had a stepfather whose name was Smith. He said he had a good mother, but he had broken her heart.’
More thieving and brief spells in jail were followed by three years with the Northampton Regiment. Next, after persuading a woman to steal for him, he was jailed for a year in 1896 for larceny and receiving stolen goods. Released in 1897, he went to Leicester, where he opened a baker’s shop at 28 Russell Square, using £115 (the equivalent of two years’ wages) from a cash box which the same woman had stolen for him from her employers.
In Leicester, on 17 January 1898, now calling himself George Love, he married Caroline Beatrice Thornhill, aged eighteen (he was twenty-six at the time), despite her bootmaker father’s disapproval. She later remarked of her then husband, ‘During the time I knew him I never knew him do any work’ and described him thus: ‘Complexion fair, hair brown, ginger moustache, peak chin, on left arm a very large scar, military walk, stands 5 ft 9 ins.’ What this fails to indicate is Smith’s evident sexual attraction. He had a masterful way with certain women. There was something hypnotic in the small dark eyes set in a bony face. His first bigamous wife, whom he married in London in 1899, said of him: ‘He had an extraordinary power … This power lay in his eyes … When he looked at you, you had the feeling that you were being magnetised. They were little eyes that seemed to rob you of your will.’
He and Mrs Caroline Love moved to London soon after their marriage in 1898. Posing as her employer and providing references for her, he began his peregrinations, finding jobs for her in London, Brighton, Hove and Hastings. Taught by Smith, she stole from the families who employed her as a maid. But in the autumn of 1899 at Hastings, she was arrested in a pawnbroker’s shop where she was trying to sell some silver spoons. Sent to prison for twelve months she was able on her release to find, identify and incriminate Smith, who was, on 9 January 1901, jailed at Hastings for two years for receiving stolen goods. One waggish local reporter wrote: ‘For his spooning at Hastings, Love has gone to prison.’
Released in 1903, Smith went in pursuit of Mrs Love. To escape him, she emigrated to Canada; though separated from him she remained, despite the pseudonym, his only legal wife. He returned to the middle-aged boarding-house keeper whom he had bigamously married in London before his incarceration. Having milked her of what money he could, he left, and having found what an easy way this was of acquiring bed, board and money without doing a stroke of work, he travelled about the south of England wooing, wedding, and walking out on an unknown assortment of lonely or love-lorn women, whose humiliation led them to say little or nothing of the disappearance of their erstwhile spouse.
Next to nothing is known about his activities for three years. But in June 1908, he met a widow from Worthing, Mrs Florence Wilson. After a three-week courtship they were married in London, where, after pocketing the £30 she withdrew from a post-office savings account, he took her to the Franco-British Exhibition at the White City, went to get a paper and walked out of her life – but not before removing and selling all her belongings, which were left in their Camden digs. That was on 3 July.
On 30 July he married Miss Edith Mabel Pegler in Bristol, using his real name. A dark-haired, round-faced, twenty-eight-year-old, she had replied to his advertisement in a local paper for a house-keeper: he now had a shop in Gloucester Road, Bristol.
From then on, using their various homes as a base for his operations, which necessitated frequent and lengthy absences in pursuit of his trade as an antique-dealer, they moved to Bedford, Luton, Croydon, London and Southend. It was not a regular life, but Edith Pegler accepted it without question. Her husband would disappear for weeks and months at a time, sometimes saying he was off on business or off to help ‘a young fellow’ with some business deals. During his absences he sent her occasional letters and postcards as well as the odd pound note. When she ran out of money she returned to her mother in Bristol, where he would pick her up or send her a note telling her to come to him. His added wealth after his absences he attributed to the selling of rare antiques, pictures or jewellery. Sometimes he said he had been abroad, to Canada or Spain.
In October 1909, he married a spinster clerk from Southampton, Miss Sarah Freeman. He called himself George Rose, claiming to be a man of means with a mythical monied aunt. He always dressed up for his wooings in a frock coat and top hat. The couple took lodgings in London and he had to wait a few days before she could withdraw all her post-office savings. He had told her he was short of the wherewithal to set up an antique business. She also sold some government stock. He pocketed the lot and took her on 5 November to the National Gallery. She sat and waited while he went to the lavatory. He never returned. While she waited for him he journeyed to Clapham, where he removed and sold her belongings, leaving her totally destitute. In all, he made about £400 out of Miss Freeman, the equivalent of the average wages of a working man over a four year period.
With that money, Miss Pegler and a second-hand furniture shop were for a time established at 22 Glenmore Street, Southend, bought for £270 with £30 remaining on the mortgage. Then the Smiths returned to Bristol, where he bought 86 Ashley Down Road, largely on a loan. Although he ultimately acquired eight properties and was worth a small fortune, he made a loss on the sale of all of them. He was too mean to be a good businessman, ever suspicious, arrogant and demanding in his many ill-spelt, ill-composed letters to solicitors, insurers, banks and building societies. He was also mean with his brides, travelling third class, lodging them cheaply and taking them by bicycle or on foot to places of free public entertainment.
In August 1910, a tall and winsome girl, Miss Beatrice (Bessie) Constance Annie Mundy, aged thirty-one, was living in a boarding house in Clifton. Her father, who had died in 1904, had been a bank manager at Warminster in Wiltshire and had left her well provided for, with over £2,500 in gilt-edged securities, managed for her by a family trust headed by her uncle, who thought her a fool where money was concerned and from whom she received £8 a month.
One day she happened to meet a picture restorer, Henry Williams (a.k.a. George Smith) when out for a walk, and in a matter of days they were on their way to Weymouth, she with no luggage but a hat box. They lodged at 14 Rodwell Avenue and were wed at the registry office on 26 August. ‘Dear Uncle,’ she wrote. ‘I got married today, my husband is writing tonight. Yours truly, B Williams.’ Smith wrote: ‘Bessie hopes you will forward as much money as possible at your earliest by registered letter. Am pleased to say Bessie is in perfect health, and we are both looking forward to a bright and happy future. Believe me, yours faithfully, Henry Williams.’
But Smith had to wait until 13 December before he could lay his hands on £135, which was the interest that had accrued on her securities. He then absconded, leaving a lengthy letter of instruction for Bessie, repeating everything as if she were a child and cruelly explaining his departure thus:
Dearest, I fear you have blighted all my bright hopes of a happy future. I have caught from you a disease which is called the bad disorder. For you to be in such a state proves you could not have kept yourself morally clean … For the sake of my health and honour, and yours too, I must go to London … to get properly cured of this disease. It will cost me a great deal of money, because it might take years … Tell the landlady and everyone else that I have gone to France. But tell your uncle the truth … If he happens to ask you about money, tell him that you kept all the money which was sent to you in a leather bag, and two day
s after I had gone you happened to go on the beach and fall asleep and when you woke the bag of money was gone … Whatever you do, stick to everything you say. Never alter it or else you will get mixed up and make a fool of yourself … Mark what I say. Now tear this letter up at once and throw the pieces in the road.
Smith went straight from Weymouth to Bristol, back to Edith Pegler. They moved once more to Southend, where he bought another house. From there they went to London and then back to another address in Bristol, which may have been financed by another ‘marriage’, for nothing is known about Smith’s activities in 1911.
Then, in March 1912, there was a fatal meeting in Weston-super-Mare. Bessie Mundy, who had been lodging with a Mrs Sarah Tuckett since February, went out at 11 am to buy some daffodils. By some extraordinary chance she happened to meet her vanished husband, Mr Williams. She returned at one o’clock. Mrs Tuckett later recalled:
She was very excited. She said as soon as she went out she found her husband looking over the sea.’ At 3 pm he arrived at the house. Some women, like Mrs Tuckett, took an instinctive dislike to Smith. ‘I asked him,’ she said later, ‘how it was he had left her eighteen months before at Weymouth. He replied that he had been looking for his wife for more than twelve months … He knew her relatives and knew where they lived … Miss Mundy said she wished to go back to her husband. She had forgiven the past. They had been to a solicitor, and she had promised to return to him. I told Mr Williams it was my duty to wire to her aunt to come at once … She left with him without taking away any of her belongings. She promised to come back that same night, but I never saw her again …
Smith took Bessie from town to town while he made official enquiries about how he might legally get possession of her fortune. In May, they were in Herne Bay, renting a small house at 80 High Street, which had neither bathroom or bath. On 2 July, Smith heard from his lawyer that if he and Bessie both made wills and she died, he would inherit everything. The information signed her death warrant. This time he had to kill his bride in order to get hold of her money and he had to act quickly, in case her relatives altered the terms of the settlement on her. Wills were drawn up and attested on 8 July. The next day, Smith bought a zinc bath (without taps) from an ironmonger, beating down the asking price of £2 to £1 17s 6d. In fact, he never paid for it, returning the bath six days later, its purpose served.
On Wednesday, 10 July, he took his wife to a young and newly qualified doctor called French, alleging she had had a fit – although all Bessie Mundy had complained of was a headache. At 1.30 am on Friday, Dr French was summoned to 80 High Street – Bessie had apparently had another fit and was in bed. The doctor found nothing amiss. She looked as if she had just woken up, was flushed and heavy-headed: it was a very warm night. The doctor prescribed a sedative. That afternoon he chanced to see the Williamses out of doors; she seemed in perfect health. That night, evidently on Smith’s instructions, she penned a letter to her uncle:
Last Tuesday night I had a bad fit, and one again on Thursday night … My husband has been extremely kind and done all he could for me. He has provided me with the attention of the best medical men here, who are … visiting me day and night … My husband has strictly advised me to let all my relatives know of my breakdown. I have made out my will and left all to my husband. That is only natural, as I love my husband.’
Poor Bessie. The following morning, about 7.30, she prepared to have a bath in a spare room, making about twenty journeys up and down the stairs with a bucket to and from the kitchen, while Smith went out to buy some fish. She got in the bath, her hair in curling-pins. Smith returned.
About 8 am a note reached Dr French as he was dressing – ‘Can you come at once? I am afraid my wife is dead.’ Delaying to snatch a quick breakfast, the doctor hurried to the house. Mrs Williams was lying submerged in the bath on her back, naked and dead. A bar of Castile soap was clutched in her right hand. When French left the house he informed the police of the fatality, and about ten o’clock PC Kitchingham arrived to take a statement from the bereaved husband. Bessie Mundy’s body still lay, bare and uncovered, on the floor by the bath, and it was still there when at 4 pm a woman came to lay the body out.
Smith wired Miss Mundy’s uncle: ‘Bessie died in fit this morning. Letter following.’ The subsequent letter began: ‘Dear Sir, words cannot describe the great shock I suffered in the loss of my wife. The doctor said she had a fit in the bath …’ There was no post mortem. The inquest, on Monday, 15 July – Smith wept throughout – found that she had died from misadventure. She was buried in a common grave at 2.30 pm on the Tuesday, before any of her relatives could get to Herne Bay. They tried to contest the will, but within six months over £2,500 was paid to Bessie’s sole executor and legatee, Henry Williams. He opened several bank accounts, bought seven houses in Bristol and an annuity for himself.
Edith Pegler was instructed in August to join Smith in Margate. She said later: ‘I told him I had tried to find him at Woolwich and Ramsgate, and he was very angry about it … He said I should not … interfere with his business, because he did not believe in women knowing his business … He remarked that if I interfered … I should never have another happy day.’
It seems she was not unhappy, although he used to beat her from time to time. From Margate, they moved to Tunbridge Wells, Bristol, Weston-super-Mare and back to Bristol. Then, in the summer of 1913, Smith disappeared again.
In October he was in Southsea, where he met and married short and plump, twenty-five-year-old Alice Burnham, private nurse to an elderly invalid man and daughter of a Buckinghamshire fruit-grower. Her father, Mr Charles Burnham, met George Smith before the marriage took place and was thoroughly repelled by him. However, there was nothing he could do to stop the marriage, which took place in a Portsmouth registry office on 4 November, Smith using his real name and describing himself as ‘bachelor, independent means’. But afterwards, when Smith wrote to Mr Burnham demanding the £104 that Mr Burnham was keeping for his daughter, the suspicious father-in-law got a solicitor to enquire about his son-in-law’s antecedents. Soon, Mr Burnham received a postcard from Smith, which read: ‘Sir – In answer to your application concerning my parentage, etc. My mother was a bus-horse, my father a cab-driver, my sister a rough-rider over the arctic regions. My brothers were all gallant sailors on a steam-roller.’
The day before the marriage, Alice’s life was insured for £500. Smith then set to work, and having got the £27 9s 5d that was in her savings bank, having extracted the £104 which her father owed her and having paid the premium on Alice’s insurance, he persuaded her to make a will. They then set off on an out-of-season seaside holiday.
This time Smith chose the main northerly English resort, Blackpool, where they arrived on Wednesday, 10 December 1913, a bleak and breezy day. The first lodging house they visited on spec, in Adelaide Street, had no bath. From here they were directed to 16 Regent Road, which had a bath. The rent was 10s a week. Again, a doctor – Dr Billing – was consulted about the buxom bride’s health: she had a headache, not surprisingly after the long and tiring train journey across England from Portsmouth. Mrs Smith was then persuaded to write to her parents – ‘My husband does all he can for me, in fact I have the best husband in the world’ – and on Friday evening, 12 December, the couple went out for a walk after asking the daughter of their landlady, Mrs Crossley, to prepare a bath. They returned just after eight o’clock.
The bathroom was partly over the kitchen in which, at about 8.15 pm, the Crossleys were having tea. They heard nothing untoward, but then observed that stains were spreading over the ceiling and down a wall – the bath had overflowed. Just about then Smith appeared in the kitchen door, seeming out of breath and rumpled. He had two eggs in his hand. He said: ‘I’ve brought these for our breakfast.’ He then went upstairs, and a few minutes later shouted from the landing: ‘Fetch the doctor! My wife cannot speak to me!’
The shocked Crossleys waited below as Dr Billing examined the unfortunate
Mrs Smith, her body still in the bath. ‘Oh, she is drowned – she is dead,’ Dr Billing told Mrs Crossley. She could not believe what she must have suspected, but the death in her house – and Smith’s evident callous indifference to it – were too much for her. She could not bear to have him stay there that night; she told him so and he slept next door.
But in the morning, Saturday the 13th, he was back, seeing to the burial and matters to do with his wife’s death. In the afternoon he played Mrs Crossley’s piano in the front room and drank a bottle of whisky. As a result he was able to be emotional – he wept copiously – at the inquest on Mrs Alice Smith, née Burnham, which was held at 6.30 pm. The verdict was accidental death.
Alice Burnham was buried in a common grave on Monday, 15 December, at noon. Smith refused to have a deal coffin, saying dismissively: ‘When they are dead, they are done with.’ Immediately after the funeral he took a train back to Southsea. Before he left he gave Mrs Crossley an address card. She wrote on the back – ‘Wife died in bath. We shall see him again.’ She thought him ‘a very hard-hearted man … I did not like his manner.’ And as he left the house, she shouted: ‘Crippen!’
After selling all Alice Burnham’s belongings that had been left in her Southsea digs, Smith rejoined Edith Pegler in Bristol and was soon £500 richer. He increased his annuity. Once more he and Miss Pegler set off on their travels, going to London, Cheltenham and Torquay. By August they were in Bournemouth, and were staying in Ashley Road when the First World War began. ‘While there,’ said Edith later, ‘my husband was out in the evenings. About the middle of September 1914, my husband said he was going to London for a few days.’ In fact, he remained in Bournemouth, and wooed and won another bride – a maidservant named Alice Reavil. Dressed in white flannels, white boots and a boater he encountered her as she sat listening to a band in the sea-front gardens. They were married in Woolwich by special licence on 17 September – he called himself Charles Oliver James – and they lodged in Battersea Rise. She was lucky – she wasn’t worth killing – and having made £90 out of her by stealing her savings and selling her belongings, Smith left Alice Reavil in some public gardens after a tram-ride. Some of her clothes he generously gave to Edith, saying he had ‘been to a sale in London and had bought some ladies’ clothing’. The Smiths then returned to Bristol, and he returned to his next victim, whom he had first met in June in Bath.
Murder of the Black Museum 1875-1975: The Dark Secrets Behind a Hundred Years of the Most Notorious Crimes in England Page 20