Crippen was only too pleased to set the record straight. He admitted that he thought that his wife was alive. His statement seemed to ring true. On their arrival in England his wife kept criticising him and telling him he was not good enough for her. She developed an attachment with an American actor, Bruce Miller, who had since returned to America. Their marriage had become increasingly difficult and, after an argument when the Martinettis visited in January, she had left him the next day. He had covered her absence to avoid scandal, written letters, told of death and even placed an obituary in the Stage magazine. He suspected she may have joined Bruce Miller.
The statement was so long that Dew invited Crippen to an Italian restaurant for lunch, where Crippen tucked into a steak with great gusto. Crippen admitted his affair with Ethel, giving her some of his wife’s jewels, and living together in his house.
They then interviewed Ethel. She was surprised to hear of Belle’s death, but knew that the marriage was fractious. A quick check of the house revealed nothing. Dew and his colleague left late but not before Crippen had offered to have an advert placed in the American papers for his missing wife.
A description of Belle was telegraphed to all the London police stations and Dew returned to Albion House on Monday 11 July. Crippen and Ethel had gone! Crippen’s assistant, Long, explained that Crippen had arrived early on the 9th, asked him to go out to buy some boys’ clothes and cashed a cheque with the manager. Crippen and Le Neve left by 1 p.m. Both Long and Dr Rylance, a colleague of Crippen’s, had received letters that evening to wind up his household affairs. The house keys were enclosed.
Dew and Mitchell arrived at Hilldrop Crescent to find Mrs Long there. She had found the discarded draft of the advert for the American papers under the sofa. Once again the house revealed nothing. An all-points bulletin was sent to all ports at home and abroad and the policemen returned the next morning to search and question the neighbourhood, with no luck.
On Wednesday 13 July, Dew and Mitchell returned to the house, dug up the garden and checked the coal cellar under the front steps. A loose brick in the floor made them dig up the rest. There they found what they thought were human remains. They called for help from Kentish Town police station and two more policemen came to help. Some kitchen cleaner was used to keep the stench at bay, without adulterating the crime scene.
Augustus Pepper, a consultant surgeon, Dr William Wilcox, a toxicologist, and Bernard Spilsbury, a pathologist, arrived on Thursday. Certain items were recognisable: tufts of dark brown hair in a curler and small pieces of short, fair hair. The remains were taken to the mortuary and analysed.
It was the remains of a torso. It had been expertly filleted; only part of a thigh bone was discovered. The torso had belonged to a stout person and the dissector must have had an exceptional knowledge of human anatomy. A piece of flesh with what looked like marks corresponding to a scar and pubic hairs indicated that the person was female and had had their ovaries removed. Some of the hair was bleached but its roots were naturally brown – over the weeks the hair would resume its normal colour. Another piece of evidence was the remains of a pyjama jacket with the shop label ‘Jones’ in the collar. Lack of grey hairs indicated a young or middle-aged adult. The remains, despite the lime, had been in the cellar between four and eight months. Spilsbury eventually came to the conclusion that it was an old scar and a microscopical examination proved this. But how did this person die? William Wilcox would discover how.
Meanwhile the police issued descriptions of the two fugitives and sent wanted posters. The Home Secretary offered a £250 reward and the Press surmised. Two officers had spoken to an officer of a Canadian ship, the Montrose, bound for Canada via Antwerp, on Thursday 14 July, giving a full description of Crippen as a possible clergyman and Le Neve as a boy. The ship’s captain saw a man and a boy boarding the ship at Antwerp and noticed how the boy squeezed the man’s hand. It didn’t seem quite right to him. They were a father and son from Detroit. After he had talked to the man about seasickness the captain was convinced the man was the fugitive doctor and telegraphed Scotland Yard. Dew, in strict secrecy, took a faster steamer, the Laurentic, from Liverpool.
Dressed as a pilot, Walter Dew arrested Crippen and Le Neve at Quebec as the Montrose docked on 31 July. Crippen had already made a favourable impression on Dew. Dew realised that here was one of life’s tragedies – a decent, lonely, gentle hen-pecked man who had finally met someone who loved him for himself. The journey home was uneventful, except for the media attention. They arrived back on Saturday 27 August.
By then the toxicologist, William Wilcox, had found evidence that would seal Crippen’s fate. Sealed samples had been left at the mortuary in mid-July. Dr Wilcox found enough Hyoscine in the remnants to kill. It had been taken by mouth and death would have occurred in an hour. The experiment was repeated and the findings confirmed. Judicious enquiries revealed that Crippen had purchased, on behalf of Munyon’s, 5 grains of Hyoscine hydrobromide from a chemist on New Oxford Street on 19 January 1910. Munyon’s, however, never used Hyoscine – its drugs were made in America and shipped to England.
The two would be tried independently. Crippen’s trial was held on Tuesday, 18 October 1910. Arthur Newton, of Cleveland Affair fame, said he would act for him without a fee. His counsel was Alfred Tobin, whilst the prosecution’s counsel was Richard Muir. On hearing that Muir was to be his prosecutor, Crippen remarked, ‘I wish it had been anybody else … I fear the worst.’ And indeed it was! The prosecution had even paid for Bruce Miller and Belle’s sister to be brought to England. Whilst there was no definite proof that Crippen had killed his wife, the array of circumstantial evidence expertly sealed his fate. The prosecution had to have his guilt established by association. Bruce Miller refuted any impropriety with Belle and her sister remembered the scar Belle had after her hysterectomy. Jones Brothers had sold two pairs of pyjamas, of an identical pattern to the remnant found with the remains, to Mrs Crippen in 1909. The defence tried to prove that the scar was a fold, and was from the buttock, but the pubic hair disproved this.
Crippen and Le Neve in court.
The jury took twenty-seven minutes to find Crippen guilty. He was moved to Pentonville and hanged on 23 November. He always maintained he was innocent.
Ethel was tried as an accessory to the crime four days after Crippen was found guilty. Crippen had always maintained she was totally innocent of any wrongdoing. Her jury thought the same.
Had Crippen really killed his wife? No one knows for sure. A letter was sent to him from America whilst he was awaiting his sentence, but never opened. If he did administer the Hyoscine to his wife, was it just to make her sleep so he could see his mistress? Had he misjudged the amount and then panicked when he found her dead? At least he died in the knowledge that someone he loved, loved him back.
thirteen
THE FINAL CURTAIN
In the same week that Dew and Mitchell uncovered the remains of a body in Dr Crippen’s coal cellar at 39 Hilldrop Crescent, Camden in 1910, another drama unfolded at 17 Clifton Gardens, Battersea, in South London.
At 9.30 p.m., Saturday, 16 July 1910, Edward Noice, a chauffeur, was driving along Rosenau Road, Battersea, when he heard two gunshots. He looked in the direction of the shots and saw a man scaling the garden wall of a house off Clifton Gardens, Prince of Wales Road, and running towards the Thames. He drove to the nearest police station to report the incident. An officer was despatched to the house, 17 Clifton Gardens, and spoke to the tenant of the flat next door, a very attractive young woman named Elizabeth Earle.
Both Miss Earle and her dinner guest, 21-year-old Thomas Frederick Anderson, confirmed hearing gunshots and glimpsing a prowler as he vaulted over the garden wall. Anderson had rushed to the darkened flat next door, seen a sprawled body at the foot of the stairs and had alerted the local police.
Searching the garden at the back of the building, the officer heard heavy breathing and followed the sound to the foot of an interconnecting ext
ernal staircase between the two buildings.
There, sprawled on the ground, lay a fully-clothed man in slippers, dying of a bullet wound to the head. The policeman searched the dying man’s pockets, finding a life preserver (in this case a piece of insulated electric cable, looped at one end for the wrist, wrapped in paper and wool), a bus ticket from King’s Cross and a calling card identifying the bearer, one Thomas Weldon Atherston.
Plan of Clifton Gardens.
A more detailed search was made later, identifying imprints of a size 9 boot in the soft earth by the wall of the property and a spent bullet found in the woodwork of the scullery door of the empty flat.
The policeman returned to Miss Earle’s flat and asked whether she or her guest knew a Mr Atherston. At the mention of this name, Mr Anderson blanched. It was his father’s stage name! He then identified the body as that of his father. What, though, was Mr Anderson senior doing in bedroom slippers, and why did his son not immediately recognise him?
The story was certainly bizarre! Thomas Anderson was a trained actor, a bad one, with four children (two boys and two girls). His stage name was Weldon Atherston. He had been moderately successful in the dying decades of the nineteenth century, but his age and, quite frankly, lack of acting skills, made him leave his wife and take up with a much younger and impressionable actress, Elizabeth Earle, in 1900. He got the occasional jobs, including reciting poems in a booming, over-dramatic style in third- or even fifth-rate venues.
Thomas Weldon Anderson, aka Weldon Atherston.
Elizabeth, meanwhile, had realised that money could be made in teaching acting, rather than doing it, and made a comfortable living out of it from her flat in Battersea. Anderson made less and less. Arguments followed and he left, staying with his sons, William and Frederick, in Percy Street, King’s Cross. Frederick met Elizabeth and they became friends. Was it just a friendship?
A murder it certainly was … but questions asked by the police remain unanswered to this day. What business did Anderson have with his father’s ex-mistress? Did Earle and Anderson conspire to murder Atherston? Who was the gunman seen fleeing Earle’s garden after the fatal shots were fired? What were the marks on the wrists of the dead man?
The police seem to have established that Earle was more of a mother to the Atherston boys and regularly ate with Thomas. Weldon Atherston was certainly paranoid and had become increasingly so since a head injury in 1908 when he had fallen off a bus. He was also insanely jealous of Miss Earle and had taken to spying on her. Entries in his diary suggested that and more. One entry read, ‘Watched the lights until 11.30 when the lights went out.’ Another ran ‘found bunch of flowers in the ashbin’, a present Miss Earle categorically denied receiving. A significant passage in his diary read:
…if he had kept away from her, if he had broken from the spell of her fascination and remained out of reach, this would have never happened. He has no one to thank but himself. We all reap as we have sown.
Many entries in the diary referred to love and to personal observations on Miss Earle. Most details of her daily life were recorded. It was certainly the diary of a jealous man. But why was he wearing slippers, and why was he found in a darkened flat?
What the police surmised was that the marks on the dead man’s wrists showed that he had been held by a very strong individual while another may have shot him. Three witnesses saw a man running away from the flat down Rosenau Road. One described the unknown man as about 30, 5ft 5ins tall with a moustache and bowler hat. Another described a man by the river running from Rosenau Road, but with no moustache. Certainly the boot prints were not the same size as Thomas Anderson’s.
The police were at a loss to explain this. An article on the murder was placed with the New York Times on 22 August 1910 with an appeal for information, but none was forthcoming. One fact, though, was that this part of Battersea had been plagued by a spate of burglaries – maybe Atherston had tried to stop one? This murder in genteel Battersea was unfortunately overshadowed by the more shocking one at Hilldrop Crescent (see chapter 12).
By a strange twist of fate the Atherston and Crippen cases had something in common. Atherston took on the job of entertainer in a Vaudeville show in 1907. The roster of entertainers also showed another performer, a certain Belle Elmore, whose singing voice was as questionable as Atherston’s talent. Both were booed off the stage. Belle Elmore was the stagename of Cora – Mrs Hawley Crippen!
Elizabeth Earle moved to France and Thomas Anderson to New Zealand. On his deathbed, Anderson admitted to an £8,000 fraud!
The Enquiry.
fourteen
MAY GOD HAVE MERCY ON
YOUR SOUL
It was at Parkhurst Prison that the notorious conman, Harry Benson (1866-1917), met and befriended Steinie Morrison, the supposed killer of Leon Beron on Clapham Common in 1911. Benson was serving a five-year sentence for fraud and would be released in 1914.
A number of influential people thought that Morrison was innocent. Benson, seizing the moment, started claiming that he was starting a fund to set Morrison free. Once his sentence finished, however, he set about financing a fine lifestyle for himself! One gullible wealthy woman even gave Benson £5,000 to start a weekly newspaper that he claimed would be used to free Morrison. The more he asked the more she gave. In one instance, he bought a farm and hired some ex-convicts to work on it, bringing the woman down to see how he was helping to rehabilitate prisoners. This scheme was very successful and the proceeds were to afford Benson a fine lifestyle. Even Morrison was taken in, sending him letters of encouragement – unfortunately for Morrison, Benson died in 1917, just as he was about to be arrested for this massive and most successful fraud.
Map of Clapham Common, 1911.
Steinie Morrison’s crime was the most high-profile case of the early twentieth century. It not only permeated the East End and some of its most insalubrious natives, but it also brought the East End to genteel Clapham. The first of a series of crimes that have since made Clapham no stranger to controversy.
It was the battered body of the slum landlord Leon Beron, found in some bushes off the west side path of Clapham Common, leading to Lavender Gardens, early in the morning of New Year’s Day 1911, that eventually led the police to their prime suspect – Steinie Morrison.
PC Joseph Mumford was walking along the railed path past the woods when he noticed a trail of blood that led to a patch of flattened grass, where the body of a man had been dragged. There, with a handkerchief over the face, lay the body of a middle-aged man shrouded in a thick black coat. Mumford hurried to Cavendish Road police station.
The man had suffered heavy blows to his head with an angled instrument, had several stab wounds to his chest and bore two s-shaped cuts on his cheeks. Cards on his person established his identity.
Leon Beron was also a fence and habitually kept £30 on his person and carried a fob watch. Both money and the watch were missing. He lived in the East End, ate regularly at the Warsaw Restaurant – known as Snellwars after its owner – and had last been seen with Steinie Morrison the night before, according to various sources. Both men knew Clapham; Beron’s father was in accommodation down Nightingale Lane and Morrison used to work in Lavender Gardens. Morrison was arrested within a week, just as he was tucking into a meal at a restaurant in Whitechapel on 8 January.
The court case, which took place on 6 March 1911, was one of the most baffling ever. Not for the lack of witnesses, but the very opposite – and most, for the defence or the prosecution, were completely at variance with each other. Even the accused, whose aliases confused even more (Morris Stein, Moses Tagger, Alexander Petropavloff), was to dispute his place and date of birth. What we do know is that he was aged between 28 and 32, was Jewish, had been in England for at least ten years, spoke good English and was out on licence for a previous misdemeanour. He was a petty crook, and lived in the East End. He bought and sold cheap jewellery, did a bit of thieving and had also worked as a baker in Lavender Gardens. He had b
ought a revolver in Aldgate under the name of Petropavloff. He was also the last man to have been seen with the deceased, at Snellwars’ restaurant. They had both spent the major part of the day together.
The body of Leon Beron.
Where the murder took place.
Morrison was a personable and pleasant young man who was quite candid about his lifestyle and previous convictions. He also spoke well. On his arrest he immediately told the arresting officer, Inspector Wensley (who had been involved, in a minor role, in the Whitechapel murders), that it was for murder. This was seen as a confession of sorts until a police constable eventually admitted that it was he who had told Morrison what he was being arrested for. It was hardly an auspicious start for the prosecution! The irony was that he had only been arrested because he had failed to notify the authorities of a change of address. As a prisoner on remand he was required to do so. He had moved from his digs in the East End to Lambeth on 1 January, although he had told his landlady he was going to Paris. Maybe he had said this so as not to offend her – something he later mentioned in court.
Leon Beron.
Two witnesses retracted their previous statements. Eva Flitterman stated, on 1 January, that she had seen a £5 watch on Morrison but later retracted her statement when she realised that it was not the same as her father’s – Morrison’s had a Kruger half sovereign. A boy at the Police Court, Rosen, swore he had seen Morrison with a revolver at 1.30 a.m. on 1 January, but he later also retracted his statement.
Bloodstains on Morrison’s collar and shirt at the time of his arrest seemed to imply that he was the killer. But why would he wear these a week after the crime, particularly as he had boxes of extra collars? Could it have been because he was prone to nosebleeds – a fact that was shown in court? Blood from an attack would have been far more widespread on his clothing.
Murder & Crime in London Page 8