A history of crime (England) part 3

In part 3 of this series I am going to take a look at a case that is famous in England, though is perhaps less well-known elsewhere in the world. Dr Crippen is a name that many people in the UK know, they will even know that he was a killer, but most will know little about his case; it comes as a surprise when they discover that for all his infamy he was hanged for the murder of only one person, his wife.

Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen

Hawley Harvey Crippen was an American Homeopathic doctor who came to England, with his second wife Corinne (Cora), in 1897 as part of his work with Dr Munyon’s Homeopathic Pharmaceutical company.

In 1899 he was sacked from Dr Munyon’s for spending too much time managing his wife’s career as a would-be music-hall singer. He then became manager of Drouet’s Institution for the Deaf, while there he met Ethel Le Neve in 1903.

In 1908 Crippen and Ethel became lovers, after Cora cuckolded him with one of the tenants they took in to supplement Crippen’s meagre income.

It was January 31st 1910, following a party, that Cora Crippen disappeared. Her husband claimed that she had returned to the US, and had then died and been cremated in California. Following this Ethel Le Neve moved into Hawley’s house on Hilltop Crescent and began to openly wear Cora’s clothes and jewellery.

It was Cora’s friend, Kate Williams, who worked as a strongwoman, that alerted the police to her disappearance, but it wasn’t until they were asked to investigate by John Nash and his entertainer wife, Lili Hawthorne, that the police took it seriously.

Crippen was interviewed by Chief Inspector Walter Dew, and the house searched, but nothing was found. During the interview, Crippen admitted that he had made up the story about his wife dying to avoid the embarrassment of having to tell people that she had left him and returned to America with one of her lovers, a music hall actor by the name of Bruce Miller.

Dew was satisfied, both with the interview and the search of the house, unfortunately, Crippen didn’t know that and he and Le Neve fled to Brussels. They stayed there for a night before boarding the SS Montrose in Antwerp and heading for Canada.

Had he just remained calm, there’s every chance Crippen would have got away with murdering his wife, his sudden flight convinced the police to search the house again, which they did several times. On their fourth search, the third following Crippen’s departure, the remains of a body was found under the brick floor of the basement.

Although only a small portion of the body was found, the head, limbs and skeleton were never located, it was enough for the pathologist to discover traces of scopalmine.

Had he travelled in 3rd class, it’s doubtful that the discovery would have resulted in Crippen’s arrest, but he chose to travel in 1st, with the result that he was seen by the captain, Henry George Kendall, who wasn’t fooled, either by the beard Crippen had grown, or by Le Neve’s disguise as a boy.

Before the ship sailed beyond range of his transmitter, Captain Kendall telegraphed Scotland Yard to report his suspicions that the London cellar murderer and his accomplice were on board and disguised.

Upon receiving this news, Chief Inspector Dew board the SS Laurentic, a faster ship than the SS Montrose, which enabled him to reach Canada ahead of his susect. He boarded the Montrose in the guise of a pilot, and Captain Kendall, who invited Crippen to meet the pilots, brought the two together.

Crippen seemed relieved to be arrested, saying, “Thank God it’s over. The suspense has been too great. I couldn’t stand it any longer.”

He was returned to England for trial, and was hanged at Pentonville Prison on November 23rd 1910.

Le Neve, who was tried separately as an accomplice after the fact, was acquitted. She emigrated to America the morning of her lover’s execution.

Crippen was almost certainly relieved by this outcome since it is apparent that his chief concern throughout his own trial was the reputation of his lover. At his request, he was buried with a photograh of Le Neve.

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Why such a relatively simple case has endured in the minds of the British public, I cannot say, but the fact that Dr Crippen was the first criminal to be caught with the aid of radio telegraphy certainly makes it worth remembering.

 

A history of crime (England) part 2

I have a a website bookmarked, one which lists a variety of crimes that have taken place in England since the 1800s, to help me with this series of articles, and I was looking through it for this week’s post when I came across the story of Fanny Adams (30 April 1859 – 24 August 1867)

Normally I wouldn’t have done an article on the murder of Fanny Adams, as you can see from the dates of her birth and death, she was only 8 when she was killed, and I’m not keen on child murder stories, especially gruesome ones; one of my criteria for selecting what I’m going to write about, though, is if there’s anything interesting connected to the story, and in this case there is – the murder of Fanny Adams resulted in the birth of the English phrase ‘Sweet F.A.’ which means ‘nothing’.

Sweet Fanny Adams

The murder of Fanny Adams was a relatively simple affair; on 24 August 1867 the young girl was out with her sister and a friend when they encountered Frederick Baker, who worked as a clerk in a solicitor’s office.

Baker gave Fanny’s companions money to go and spend, while he gave Fanny some money to come with him. Fanny took the money but then refused to go with him, Baker’s response to that was to carry Fanny into a nearby field, out of sight of her friends.

When Fanny’s sister and friend returned home around 5, their neighbour, Mrs Gardiner, asked where Fanny was, at which time they told her what had happened. Mrs Gardiner immediately told the story to Harriet Adams, Fanny’s mother, and together they took the girls and returned to where Fanny had last been seen to look for her. They encountered Baker as he returned but because of his position and seeming respectability they accepted his story that Fanny had left to rejoin her friends and he regular gave kids money to buy sweets.

With Fanny still missing at 7 p.m. a further search was made, this time involving more people, and her dismembered body was discovered in a hop field a short distance from where she had last been seen. Harriet immediately ran to find her husband, who was playing cricket, he in turn hurried home to get his shotgun and went in search of his daughter’s killer, but was stopped by his neighbours.

Baker was arrested that evening at his place of his work, blood was found on his clothes and two small blood-stained knife were discovered on his person. A search of the office where Baker worked, which took place in the days following his arrest, led to the discovery of his diary in which the police found this entry

24th August, Saturday – killed a young girl. It was fine and hot

On 27th August the coroner determined that Fanny Adams had been wilfully murdered, her head having been bashed in with a rock found in the field and then dismembered. Following the verdict the police found themselves hard-pressed to protect Baker, who was committed for trial at the Winchester County Assizes, from the mob who were outraged by what had happened.

When it came to the trial, which took place early in December, the defense tried many tactics: they contested the identification of Baker, claimed the knives found on Baker were too small to have been used in the crime, and even tried to claim insanity based on his family history (he had attempted suicide, his sister had died of a brain fever, a cousin had been committed to an asylum, and his father had been violent). The defense also attempted to claim that the phrasing of Baker’s diary entry meant it could not be considered a confession.

In summing up the case the judge, Justice Mellor, said this

‘If you come to the conclusion he murdered the child, you must consider whether it was under such circumstances as would render him not responsible on the grounds of insanity. This must not be used as a means of escape, and you must exercise the greatest care before you give effect to such a plea as that’¹

The jury did not entertain the insanity defence presented by Baker’s counsel and in no more than 15 minutes they found him guilty.

So notorious had the case become that 5,000 people are estimated to have attended the hanging.

Results of the case

In terms of crime prevention and investigation, even of prosecution and defence, the case is unspectaculae. The murder of Fanny Adams, though gruesome and notorious in its time, would no doubt have become little more than an historic footnote in the annals of crime, were it not for an incident that occurred some 2 years after the event.

In 1869 new rations of tinned mutton were introduced for British seaman and, for reasons that are now unknown, the seaman, who were unimpressed by the rations, suggested that the mutton might in fact be the butchered remains of Fanny Adams. Fanny Adams then became slang in the navy, and then elsewhere, for mutton, and then stew, before coming to be slang for anything that was considered worthless, with the phrase eventually becoming Sweet Fanny Adams, or Sweet F.A. intended to mean ‘nothing at all’.

I can’t say that I have used the phrase Sweet F.A. in some time, nor have I heard anyone else using it, but now that I know the origins of the phrase, you can be sure I won’t be using it again.

¹https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:5792882$1i

Details of this article have been sourced from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Adams and the Harvard library linked above.