u (/ TRotable English Griate Hawley Harvey Crippen NOTABLE TRIALS SERIES. H. H. Crippen. Edited by Filson Young. Madeleine Smith. Edited by A. Duncan Smith Advocate. Dr. Pritchard. Edited by William Roughead. The Stauntons. Edited by J. B. Allay, Barrister- at-Law. Franz Muller. Edited by H. B. Irving. The Annesley Case Edited by Andrew Lang. Lord Lovat. Edited by David N. Mackay. Captain Porteous. Edited by William Roughead. William Palmer. Edited by Geo. H. Knolt, Barrister-at-Law. Mrs. Maybricfc. Edited by H. B. Irving. Dr. Lam son. Edited by H. L. Adam. Mary Blandy. Edited by William Roughead. City of Glasgow Bank Directors. Edited by William Wallace, Advocate. Deacon Brodie. Edited by William Roughead. James Stewart. Edited by David N. Mackay. A, J. Monson. Edited by J. W. More, Advocate. Oscar Slater. Edited by William Roughead. Eugene Marie Chantrelle. Edited by A. Duncan Smith, Advocate. The Douglas Cause. Edited by A. Francis Steuart, Advocate. Mrs. M'Lachlan Edited by William Roughead. Eugene Aram. Edited by Eric Watson, Barrister-at-Law. J. A. Dickman. Edited by S. O. Rowan- Hamilton, Barrister-at-Law. The Seddons. Edited by Filson Young. Sir Roger Casement. Edited by Geo. H. Knott, Barrister-at-Law. 2N PREPARATION. The Wainwrights. Edited by H. B. Irving. Thurtell and Hunt Edited by Eric Watson. Burke and Hare. Edited by William Roughead. Particulars may be had from the Publishers. [Photo, by Ruasrll. The Right Hon. Lord Alverstone, Lord Chief Justice of England. 3? The Trial of Hawley Harvey Crippen 'I/O EDITED WITH NOTES AND AN INTRODUCTION BY FILSON YOUNG " Editor of The Trial of the Seddons" S-v., &c. EDINBURGH AND LONDON WILLIAM HODGE & COMPANY, LTD. PRINTED BY WILLIAM HODGE AND COMPANY, LTD. GLASGOW AND EDINBURGH 1920 KV W? C7S T7 TO SIR BASIL HOME THOMSON, C.B. IN KESPECT FOR HIS WORK AND IN FRIENDSHIP FOR HIMSELF PREFATORY NOTE. THE "Notable Trials Series" is now well enough established, and has been sufficiently welcomed by the legal as well as the general reader, to make unnecessary any explanation of the appearance in it of the trial of Dr. Crippen. In a case of such world-wide notoriety, the theme inevitably of much speculative and imperfectly informed discussion, it is more than ever useful to have the facts, in so far as the trial revealed them, set forth exactly as they were unfolded to the judge and jury; and it has been possible in the Introduction to enlarge upon some other aspects of the case which were not, and could not, be discussed at the Old Bailey. If the trial is less interesting from a legal point of view than some others, this defect is atoned for by the extraordinary human and dramatic interest with which the story is packed, and which has placed Dr. Crippen in the front rank, so to speak, of convicted murderers. I have to thank Sir Edward Marshall Hall, K.C., Sir Richard Muir, Mr. Herbert Austin, Clerk of the Central Criminal Court, the Home Office authorities, the Governor of Pentonville Prison, Dr. Rylance, Crippen's former business partner, Inspector Mitchell, Mr. (late Inspector) Dew, and Mrs. Harrison for information, material, and assistance in arriving at the conclusions on which the narrative part of the Introduction is based. A. B. P. Y. LONDON, November, 1919. CONTENTS. CONTENTS. FOURTH DAY FRIDAY, 21si OCTOBER, 1910. Evidence for the Defence (concluded). H. H. Crippen (recalled), - - 94 Dr. R. C. Wall, .... 138 Dr. G. M. Turnbull, - - - 130 Dr. A. W. Blyth, - - - - 141 Further Evidence for the Prosecution. W. J. Chilvers, - 144 Mr. Tobin's Closing Speech for the Defence, 145 FIFTH DAY, SATURDAY, 22ND OCTOBER, 1910. Further Evidence for the Defence. PAGE H. H. Crippen (recalled), - 151 Mr. Muir's Closing Speech for the Crown, - 153 The Lord Chief Justice's Charge to the Jury, 161 The Verdict, - 183 The Sentence, 183 APPENDICES. Appendix A Captain Kendall's Message, 187 Appendix B Published Statement of Dr. Crippen, 188 Appendix C Letter from Dr. Crippen to Ethel le Neve, 190 Appendix D The Trial of Ethel le Neve at the Old Bailey, - - - - - 192 Appendix E Court of Criminal Appeal Rex v. Hawley Harvey Crippen, - - 209 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. The Right Hon. Lord Alverstone, Lord Chief Justice of England, - Frontispiece - I fl 30 Hilldrop Crescent, ------ facing page xvii Mrs. H. H. Crippen, 22 of Police Reproduction Bill, , , 40 H. H. Crippen and Miss le Neve in the Dock at Bow Street, ,, 94 A. A. Tobin, K.C., 146 R. D. Muir, 154 THE TRIAL OF H. H. CRIPPEN. INTRODUCTION. I. MOST of the interest and part of the terror of great crime are due not to in it in with #hat is abnormal, but to what is normal ; what we have common the criminal, rather than that subtle insanity which differentiates him from has us, is what makes us view with so lively an interest a fellow-being who wandered into these tragic and fatal fields. A mean crime, like that of the brute who knocks an old woman on the head for the sake of the few shillings in her store, has a mean motive; a great crime, like that of the man who murders his wife and little children and commits suicide because he can see only starvation and misery before them, gathers desperately into itself in one wild protest against destiny what is left of nobility and greatness in the man's nature. It is not that his crime has any more legal justification than that of the murdering robber; it has not. On the contrary, it is more of an outrage upon life, and far more damaging in itsi results upon the community. Yet we do not hate or execrate the author; we profoundly is even sometimes to a certain terrible pity him ; it possible recognise beauty in the motive that made him thus make a complete sweep of his little world when it could no longer cope with the great world. There are, at the least, reasons for a great crime; for a mean one there are, at the most, excuses. The region of human morality is not a flat plain; there are hills and valleys in it, deep levels and high levels; there are also certain wild, isolated crags, terrible in their desolation, wrapped in storms and glooms, upon which, nevertheless, a slant of sunshine will sometimes fall, and reveal the wild flowers and jewelled mosses that hide in their awful clefts. Somewhere between these extremes, far below the highest, but far above the lowest, lies the case of Dr. Crippen, who killed his wife in order to give his life to the woman he loved. His was that rare thing in English annals, a crime passionel. True, the author of it was an American, and the victim a German-Russian-Polish-American, but the theatre and setting were those of the most commonplace and humdrum region of London life, and all the circumstances that contributed to its interest were such as are witnessed by thousands of people every day. The trial that followed it is in no sense remarkable from a legal point of view, except possibly with regard to the medical evidence; its chief interest lies in the story itself, in the characters of the people concerned, and in the dramatic flight and arrest at sea of Crippen and his mistress. xiii Hawley Harvey Crippen. 11. In the year 1900 there came to London an entirely unremarkable little man, describing himself as an American doctor, to find some place in that large industry that lies on the borderland between genuine healing and the commercial exploitation of the modern human passion for swallowing medicine. This was Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen, a native of Coldwater, Michigan, where he had been born in the year 1862, his father being a dry goods merchant of that place. It was not his first visit to England; he had previously been here in the year 1883, when at the age of twenty-one he had come to pick up some medical training. His education had followed the ordinary course of studies for the medical profession in America. After receiving a general education at the California University, Michigan, he proceeded to the Hospital College of Cleveland, Ohio. After a little desul- tory attendance at various London hospitals in 1883, Dr. Crippen had returned to New York, where in 1885 he took a diploma as an ear and eye specialist at the Ophthalmic Hospital there. He afterwards practised at Detroit for two years, at Santiago for two years, at Salt Lake City, at New York, St. Louis, Philadelphia, and Toronto. These movements covered twelve years, from 1885 to 1896. In 1887 he had married at Santiago his first wife, Charlotte Bell; the following year was born a eon, Otto Hawley Crippen, who at the time of the trial was living at Los Angeles. In the year 1890 or 1891 his wife died at Salt Lake City; and from there he returned to New York, where two years later he made the acquaintance of a girl of seventeen, whom he knew as Cora Turner. He fell in love with her, and although at the time he met her she was living as the mistress of another man, he married her and took her with him to St. Louis, where he had an appointment as consulting physician to an optician. He had found out that his wife's real name had not been Cora Turner at all, but Kunigunde Mackamotzki, and that her father was a Russian Pole and her mother a German.