The Romance of Dr. Crippen

February 22, 2000

In 1910 London’s grisly Crippen murder case shocked the civilized world. It became a lasting legend of monstrous evil. Yet it contained a touching love story.

Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen was born in 1862 in Coldwater, Michigan. As a young man he moved to London, where he doubled as physician and dentist.

Small, ugly, shy, and gentle, Dr. Crippen married a harridan beyond the nightmares of James Thurber: a loud cow of a woman who fancied herself an opera singer. She humiliated him in every possible way, blaming him for her flop as a singer, insulting him in front of guests, and flaunting her numerous infidelities. She got fat, drank constantly, and vomited frequently. He bore it all without complaint.

Dr. Crippen had a secretary named Ethel Le Neve, a sweet, tiny young woman who was as timid as he was. She’d worked for him for several years when in 1909 they suddenly fell deeply in love. They carried on an affair for months; then, feeling happiness within his reach for the first time, he decided he could no longer abide his wife.

He bought a potent medicine which, taken undiluted, was deadly poison. Mrs. Crippen swallowed a fatal dose, probably administered by him, though some suspect she took it accidentally, mistaking it for liquor.

Explaining to everyone, including the trusting Ethel, that Mrs. Crippen had gone to California to visit relatives, Dr. Crippen carved up the remains and buried the torso in his cellar. Later he said she’d caught pneumonia and died during the journey.

Friends happened to see Dr. Crippen with Ethel, who was wearing jewelry they recognized as Mrs. Crippen’s. Meanwhile Ethel had moved into the Crippen residence. An Inspector Dew of Scotland Yard came to call and politely questioned the doctor, who politely repeated his story that Mrs. Crippen had died during her trip to America.

Unconvinced, Inspector Dew returned with further polite questions. When he broke down the story, Dr. Crippen came up with a new one. He said Mrs. Crippen had actually run off with another man; he’d invented the story of her death to hide his humiliation and to free him to marry Ethel. (Ethel accepted this new account as naively as she’d accepted the first one.)

Wary of Inspector Dew’s quiet persistence, Dr. Crippen decided to flee to Canada. In July 1910 he and Ethel boarded an ocean liner to Quebec under assumed names and with altered appearances, posing as father and son: the slight Ethel was disguised as a teenaged boy. Meanwhile, the police had ransacked the house and found Mrs. Crippen’s decomposed remains in the cellar, identifiable by a surgical scar. The case immediately became an international sensation.

Aboard the ship, the captain noticed the “father and son” furtively holding hands. After studying the pair for a few days, he sent wireless messages to Scotland Yard, which didn’t bother keeping them secret. Unbeknownst to the lovers, their story was being devoured by newspaper readers on both sides of the Atlantic. Nor did they realize that a detective was racing across the ocean in a pursuing ship.

One day, off the coast of Quebec, the captain summoned Dr. Crippen to his cabin. There, to his amazement, Dr. Crippen was greeted by none other than Inspector Dew. The arrest was polite on both sides. They seemed to regard each other as old friends.

Throughout his detention and trial, Dr. Crippen had one firm purpose: to protect Ethel. He insisted that he was innocent, that the body was not that of his wife, but it was no use: the torso was wrapped in his own pajamas. His futile denials seemed intended less to persuade the jury than to shield Ethel from the ghastly truth. She believed him to the end.

Four days after his conviction, Ethel was tried as an accomplice. To Dr. Crippen’s joy, a brilliant lawyer won her acquittal. And in fact she had probably known nothing of the crime until the arrest. Dr. Crippen went to the gallows on November 23, 1910, comforted by the knowledge that his beloved Ethel would be able to live out her life in freedom.

He left her enough money to start a new life. She eventually married and lived quietly until 1967.

Joseph Sobran

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