Cold Open

It’s July 31st, 1910, near Quebec City, Canada.

A pilot boat cuts through the choppy waters of the St. Lawrence River. On board, 47-year-old Walter Dew steadies himself as the boat approaches a large ocean liner making its way upriver.

Compared to the SS Montrose, the pilot boat is tiny, and Walter worries for a moment that the enormous ship will surely crush them. But he puts his faith in the boatmen. Walter is a Chief Inspector with London’s Metropolitan Police and he’s here in Canada to do an important job.

A few days ago, Walter departed England on the trail of a fugitive. Self-styled “Doctor” Hawley Harvey Crippen is the prime suspect in the murder of his wife, and Walter has been tipped off that Hawley fled the country on board the Montrose. After a race across the Atlantic, Walter has caught up to the Montrose and intends to apprehend Hawley before he can set foot on dry land.

Walter jumps as the Montrose sounds its foghorn, but it’s just a signal to the pilot boat to come closer. As Walter’s boat comes alongside the giant liner… a hatch opens in the side of the Montrose’s hull, right beside the smaller boat. Arms reach down from inside the Montrose, grasping Walter… and hauling him on board.

As soon as he’s through the hatch, Walter flashes his police badge—but there’s no need. The captain of the Montrose has been briefed in advance of Walter’s arrival and is there waiting for him.

He leads Walter through passageways and up some stairs until they reach the luxurious first-class accommodation.

There, the captain opens the door to a lounge and points to a well-dressed man sitting at a table. Walter approaches his suspect and removes his cap with a flourish. Then, he informs Hawley Crippen that he’s under arrest for the murder of his wife.

The capture of “Doctor” Hawley Harvey Crippen ends a manhunt that stretched over three thousand miles and two continents. The dramatic arrest will be widely reported in Britain and North America, and not just because of the grisly nature of Hawley Crippen's crime. The arrest is also remarkable for the role played by wireless telegraphy—a new invention that allowed the long arm of the law to reach across the Atlantic and apprehend a killer on July 31st, 1910.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is July 31st, 1910: The Arrest of the Murderous Dr. Crippen.

Act One

It’s September 1905 in London, England, five years before Hawley Harvey Crippen is apprehended in Canada.

The 43-year-old Hawley maneuvers a box through the door of his new home. He’s a small man and it's a struggle for him, but eventually, he manages to haul the heavy box upstairs and into an airy room with high ceilings. He then carefully lowers the box to the floor and takes a moment to gaze out the window. Hawley is pleased to have secured this new property—and not just because it’s on a pleasant, tree-lined street. It’s bigger than his old house, and that gives Hawley something he’s wanted for a while—a separate bedroom from his wife.

Nineteen years ago, Hawley qualified as a homeopathic doctor in his native United States and started a practice in New York. There, he met music hall singer Cora Turner. The couple married in 1894, and three years later, moved to London. But life in Britain wasn’t easy. Although Hawley styled himself as “Doctor Crippen”, his qualifications weren’t recognized on the other side of the Atlantic. Few people were willing to try his homemade remedies, and many dismissed Hawley as little more than a quack. His practice quickly closed and afterward, he took on a new role as the manager of a school for the deaf. But constant money worries meant that his relationship with his wife Cora deteriorated. Now, the two live largely separate lives—and Hawley hopes that having his own bedroom will allow his budding relationship with his secretary, Ethel Le Neve, to blossom.

After unpacking their possessions, Hawley and Cora settle into a new routine to go with their new house. Hawley meets Ethel for regular liaisons. And Cora has an affair of her own with one of the lodgers the Crippens occasionally take in. To the outside world, they maintain the pretense of a happy marriage, but the couple’s friends can tell something isn’t right.

Then, on January 31st, 1910, more than four years after moving into their new house, the Crippens host two friends for dinner. But as the evening goes on, Hawley becomes increasingly annoyed by what he sees as Cora’s constant nagging and critical comments. The dinner descends into a bickering match, and the two guests squirm in their seats with embarrassment until they can finally return home at the end of the evening.

But back in the Crippen household, the night is far from over.

 *

It’s July 8th, 1910, at Scotland Yard, the headquarters of London’s Metropolitan Police, five months after the Crippens’ uncomfortable dinner party.

Sitting in his office, Chief Inspector Walter Dew flicks through a thin folder of notes. Walter is a seasoned detective - he was part of the team that investigated the Jack the Ripper murders two decades ago, and he’s just been handed a new case.

A music hall singer by the name of Cora Crippen has gone missing. It seems no one has had any contact with her since she and her husband, Hawley, hosted a dinner party at the end of January. In the months since, though, another woman has moved into the Crippen house and begun wearing Cora’s clothes and jewelry. Cora's friends have now finally reported their concerns to the police.

It all certainly sounds a little odd to Walter Dew. But there might be a perfectly reasonable explanation for Cora’s disappearance. So, before Walter does anything else, he travels to the Crippen household in North London where Cora was last seen.

Hawley Crippen is happy to show the detective around the property, and nothing seems amiss to Walter. Then, over a cup of tea, Hawley answers Walter’s questions. With some embarrassment, he admits that the woman who’s been seen at the house recently is his new partner, Ethel Le Neve - but he insists that Ethel only moved in after Cora deserted him. According to Hawley's account, Cora had been having an affair with another music hall singer and moved back to America with her lover.

At first, Walter sees no reason to doubt Hawley Crippen's account. The collapse of a marriage would certainly explain why a husband wouldn’t want to publicize his wife’s disappearance. And Cora’s friends can’t have been that worried about her if it’s taken them this long to report her absence. So, satisfied that he’s heard everything he needs to, Walter returns to Scotland Yard to type up his report. But the next day, there’s a puzzling new development. Now, Hawley Crippen has disappeared, too. He hasn’t turned up for work, and his house seems to have been abandoned in a hurry.

It seems Hawley might have become flustered by the investigation into Cora’s disappearance. Chief Inspector Walter Dew had been prepared to accept the story about Cora abandoning her husband. But now that Hawley’s disappeared, he’s not so sure. And Walter will decide to take a closer look at the case and what he’ll find in the basement of the Crippen household will soon launch a global manhunt for a murderer.

Act Two

It’s July 9th, 1910, at Hawley Harvey Crippen's home in London, two days after Chief Inspector Walter Dew was given the case of the disappearance of Cora Crippen.

For the second time in as many days, Walter Dew finds himself in the Crippen household. Yesterday, Walter conducted what he thought was a routine interview with a husband whose wife had left him. But Hawley Crippen’s own sudden disappearance has made Walter suspicious - and eager to take a more complete search of the property.

Walter walks through the house, checking it more thoroughly for clues as to what might have happened. He opens drawers, searches through cupboards, and checks the pockets of clothes. In it’s the small basement where he makes a shocking discovery. There, Walter notices that some of the bricks in the floor are loose.

Calling in extra officers to help, Walter excavates the basement floor - and soon finds the grisly truth to Cora's disappearance. Underneath the loose bricks are the remains of a body. It’s not possible to identify who it belongs to - the head, limbs, and sex organs have all been removed. But since it’s obviously been there for more than a day, Walter presumes that the torso belongs to the missing Cora Crippen. Her husband Hawley is the obvious suspect. And now, Walter just has to find him.

Over the next few days, Walter Dew circulates a description of Hawley Crippen to the press. He reveals details of the gruesome discovery in the basement, hoping it might encourage more reporters to write about the story and spread the word. This strategy is effective and eleven days after the torso was uncovered, a telegram arrives at Scotland Yard from the captain of the ocean liner Montrose, who has just set sail from Antwerp, Belgium bound for Quebec. The captain thinks he’s recognized Hawley Crippen and his lover Ethel Le Neve aboard the ship, although both seem to be in disguise.

Given the widespread public interest in the case, Walter isn’t surprised that Hawley has been spotted—but he is a little surprised by the method used to tip off the police. For the last seventy years, messages have been sent over long distances via telegraph—but it’s only more recently that it’s been possible to transmit these messages through the air rather than wires. It’s what has enabled the captain of the Montrose to communicate with the police in London while still at sea—otherwise he could only have raised his suspicions after the Montrose docked in Quebec.

Walter finally has a lead on his suspect. But he must act quickly. If Hawley Crippen and Ethel make it to Quebec, it’ll be easy for them to slip across the border to the United States. Hawley is an American citizen and if the British authorities want to put him on trial they’ll have to get an extradition agreement from the U.S. Government. That won’t be easy, so Walter is determined to intercept Hawley before he reaches land. He books a fast train from London to Liverpool, then takes passage on a more modern ocean liner than the Montrose. Although Hawley has a significant head start, Walter gets across the Atlantic before him on his faster ship, arriving in Canada and boarding the Montrose before it docks on July 31st, 1910.

Hawley Crippen and Ethel Le Neve are both transported back to England and less than three months later, the couple goes on trial in London. Hawley insists he is innocent and that the body found in his basement must be someone who was killed before he and Cora moved into the house.

So, the outcome of the trial rests on a relatively new science: pathology. Identifying the torso in Hawley’s basement has proved difficult. Pathologists can’t even be sure whether it’s a man or a woman. But scientists have been able to identify a scar on the body. And they say it matches one noted in Cora’s medical record. What’s more, the torso bears traces of a toxic poison which receipts prove Hawley bought two weeks before Cora disappeared.

To Chief Inspector Walter Dew’s great satisfaction, the pathologists’ evidence is enough to convince the court. It takes jurors less than half an hour to arrive at a verdict: the so-called Dr. Crippen is guilty of murder. His lover Ethel is found innocent and leaves the court a free woman. But Hawley Crippen will not have that luxury and will never taste liberty again. Instead, all he’ll have to look forward to is a date with the hangman.

Act Three

It’s 9 AM, on November 23rd, 1910, at Pentonville Prison, London.

36-year-old John Ellis stands respectfully to one side as Hawley Harvey Crippen is escorted into a cold, plain room by two guards. Usually, John earns his living as a barber in the north of England, but today he’s here in London on his second job, as Chief Executioner for the British state.

John takes his time as he carefully positions Hawley over a trapdoor, then directs the two guards to hold him steady.

Thanks to the transatlantic manhunt that led to his arrest four months ago, Hawley has become one of Britain’s most infamous murderers. But he has never confessed to killing his wife and has steadfastly maintained his innocence. Now, with just seconds left to live, John wonders whether Hawley will break down and admit what he's done. But Hawley stays silent, and doesn’t confess anything or show any remorse—he even has a slight smile on his face as John pins his arms, places a white hood over his head, and loops a noose around his neck.

The guards then step back. John waits for a few seconds before pulling a lever to open the trapdoor. Hawley Crippen drops a few feet before the noose breaks his fall. His body jerks, breaking the bones in his neck and killing him instantly. In John’s professional opinion, this execution was perfect.

Hawley Crippen’s death means that investigators will never find out exactly why he killed his wife, nor where he disposed of the rest of her body. In contrast, though, Hawley’s last resting place will be carefully recorded. He’ll be buried in an unmarked grave in the grounds of Pentonville Prison. And in accordance with his last wishes, he’ll be interred with a photograph of his young lover, Ethel Le Neve —the woman whose love sparked a murder, a transatlantic manhunt, and Hawley Harvey Crippen’s sensational arrest on July 31st, 1910.

Outro

Next on History Daily. August 1st, 1774. English philosopher and chemist Joseph Priestley discovers a mysterious new gas which will come to be known as “oxygen”.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Gabriel Gould.

Music by Thrumm.

This episode is written and researched by Scott Reeves.

Edited by Joel Callen.

Managing producer, Emily Burke.

Executive Producers are William Simpson for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.