In early 1910, Dr Hawley Crippen, a conman and purveyor of quack medicines, killed his wife Cora and dismembered her body, leaving only a torso (which had been sickeningly stripped of its bones) buried in his coal cellar. As the Daily Mail on Friday showed, the case appalled and gripped Edwardian England. Here, we pick up the story as Crippen and his pretty young lover Ethel Le Neve prepare to go on the run…Â
At his office in a seedy block in New Oxford Street that he shared with betting agents and fly-by-night stock and share dealers, Dr Hawley Crippen sent an assistant on an odd errand. He was to go to Charles Baker, a gentlemen’s outfitter on nearby Tottenham Court Road, with a list of things to buy – a boy’s suit of clothes, a pair of boots, two collars, a tie, two shirts, a pair of braces and a matching brown bowler hat.
After telling his secretary, Ethel Le Neve, who had become his lover, that they needed to get away, he showed her the clothes. He wanted her to wear a disguise. She thought the idea was ridiculous.
She was thin and petite but she could not ‘pass muster for a minute as a boy’, she told him. ‘If it’s necessary to disguise myself, why not do so in some feminine way?’
But Crippen – determined to do whatever it took to confuse anyone hunting him down – was in no mood to argue and, under pressure, she complied, slipping out of her blue skirt, white starched blouse and matching jacket, her underskirt and slip. But she kept on her corset and drawers as she stepped into her new male identity. ‘Now for the hair,’ Crippen announced, reaching for a pair of scissors and ‘with one or two snips’ her ‘mop fell to the floor’.Â
She put on the bowler hat and attempted to assume a male gait. ‘I shall never be able to face the world in these things,’ she said. But Crippen insisted, ‘rather roughly’ as she recalled, and after assurances from him that she was unrecognisable, she complied.
Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen, an American physician who poisoned his wife and buried her in the cellar of their London home
The murdered Mrs Crippen as she appeared on stage. She was professionally known as Belle Elmore
First stop for the doctor and his ‘son’ after fleeing London on July 9 was the Essex port of Harwich, from where they took the ferry to the Hook of Holland and a train on to Rotterdam.
There, they were sitting in a cafe when two Dutch girls began casting admiring glances in their direction and declaring, ‘Oh the pretty English boy!’, which convinced the runaways that her disguise was working.
But it wasn’t. They moved on to Brussels, and at the backstreet Hotel des Ardennes, the proprietress, Madame Henry-Delisse, could see straight away that the so-called boy had ‘a girl’s figure’, and her suspicions were confirmed when she caught sight of his beautiful hands and well-kept nails.
According to Ethel, their sojourn in Brussels was joyful and carefree. But Crippen was driven to distraction by the thought that back in London there was a chance the police had combed through his house and discovered the rotting remnants of his wife under the floor of the coal cellar.
After three days in Brussels, an anxious Crippen decided it was best to move on. At the booking office of the Red Star Line shipping company, he enquired about a passage from the port of Antwerp to Canada. He was looking for a vessel ‘that sailed at once’, he told the clerk. There was none available, nor the next day when he went back, by which time the news of the body in the cellar had appeared in the international press, confirming his worst fears.
It was not until July 15 that his luck changed. At the booking office he was told that the SS Montrose would be sailing in five days’ time. He booked two tickets to Montreal and reserved Cabin 5.
By the time they came to embark, their faces were everywhere, photographs and descriptions of the fugitives in wide circulation in handbills, posters and advertisements. The Antwerp police had alerted the port authorities and all staff had been shown Crippen’s and Ethel’s images.
Fortunately for the runaways, though, the Red Star Line clerk who stamped their tickets on the early morning of July 20 barely looked at them. It was a small miracle that they even made it up the gangway of the Montrose without being stopped.
But make it they did, she in her boy’s clothes, trotting alongside him as they went to their cabin, their haven for the 12-day journey.
They headed out on deck to enjoy the spectacle of the steamer travelling along the Scheldt estuary to the North Sea. But Ethel was uneasy and upset, and Crippen ushered her to a quiet spot behind a lifeboat to comfort her.
It was a bad move, because this was directly in view of the ship’s captain, Henry Kendall. He had navigated the Montrose through a particularly treacherous part of the estuary and then left the bridge for a quiet moment and a smoke in his cabin.
Through the porthole, he ‘observed the lower portions of two men’ and was astonished when one of them squeezed the other’s hand. After a while, the elder of the two emerged from around the lifeboat and peeped along the deck to see if anyone was looking before returning to his position.
Kendall formed certain conclusions. Although homosexuality was not unlawful in Belgium (and the Montrose was still in Belgian waters), the ship was registered in England, where gross indecency laws had recently sent Oscar Wilde to prison for ‘the love that dare not speak its name’. As the keeper of law and order on board, Captain Kendall had a duty to investigate.
He walked over to where the couple were standing. At his approach, the two men stepped away from the boat. Not wishing to alarm them, Kendall engaged them in polite conversation and together they discussed the scenery and the many windmills on either side of the river.
As they were chatting, Kendall noticed the man’s eyes ‘protruded’ and there was a deep mark on the bridge of his nose, and yet there were no spectacles’. (Crippen had ditched his glasses.) The captain detected an American accent.
The ‘boy’, on the other hand, was ‘very reserved’ and said nothing but coughed rather harshly. The man apologised for his son: ‘My boy has a weak chest and I am
taking him to California for his health.’ Kendall returned to the bridge. He had a strange suspicion he had seen this pair before.
‘After telling his secretary, Ethel Le Neve (pictured), who had become his lover, that they needed to get away, he showed her the clothes. He wanted her to wear a disguise’
He picked up the English newspaper he had just been reading and turned to the page which featured photographs of Crippen and Ethel, their physical descriptions and samples of their handwriting. ‘More than ever I was convinced that Dr Crippen and Miss Le Neve were these two passengers.’
He checked the passenger list, on which the man had given his name as John Philo Robinson. His son was John George Robinson, 16. Anxious now to keep a close eye on them throughout the voyage, Kendall invited the Robinsons to sit at his table for their meals. This was a tremendous honour, and they could hardly refuse.
That first day, Kendall waited until he saw them go into the dining saloon for lunch, then hurried to Cabin 5 and let himself in. Inside, two hats were on the settee. The smaller one was packed with newspaper to make it fit more tightly – something women routinely did to make sure their hat stayed on.
Another object caught his eye: a white bit of fabric had been left out to dry. He looked more closely and saw that it was the sleeve of a woman’s under-bodice that was now being used as a flannel or a rag. (It was probably a makeshift sanitary dressing.)
Kendall returned to the dining saloon to take his seat, Ethel on his right with Crippen next to her. She had been strategically placed, he believed, so no one could converse with her. Now certain that the boy was really a girl, he studied her intently, noticing how Master Robinson ate, the ‘careful handling of knife, fork, and spoon together with the dainty fingering of fruit’. There was nothing male or adolescent about ‘him’. By the end of lunch he was fairly sure she was a woman in her 20s. (Ethel was 27.)
For the next 48 hours, the captain pursued his enquiries with ploys contrived to catch them out. As ‘father and son’ strolled along the deck, he called out to Mr Robinson, but Crippen had forgotten himself and his supposed identity. It was only after Ethel tugged at his sleeve that he recognised his name and responded.
Kendall also invited them to his cabin for tea and found an excuse to get Crippen to write down his details. When he compared this with the handwriting that had appeared in the newspaper they were a perfect match.
Dr Hawley Crippen and his mistress, Ethel Le Neve, on trial for the murder of his wife
He then performed one final test. As the Robinsons were stretched out on deckchairs not 20ft from his cabin porthole, the captain pinned up the newspaper photograph of Crippen and with a piece of chalk deleted the moustache and spectacles. He regarded the man, and then the photo, and ‘had no hesitation’.
He did the same with Ethel’s picture. Her image displayed a woman with a profusion of dark hair and a stylishly large hat, but he blotted out these details, then glanced at young Master Robinson seated outside and knew ‘there could be no mistake’. They were definitely Crippen and Le Neve.
He knew that it was his duty as a ship master and as a law-abiding individual to turn them in by letting Scotland Yard know. At the time, wireless telegraphy was a relatively new technology, having been around only since 1896. Now, though, there were wireless stations in England, Ireland, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and along the north-eastern coastlines of Canada and the United States.
When they were within range of radio antennae, the small number of ships fitted with wirelesses – possibly as few as 60 in the entire world – could send and receive messages in Morse code. Fortunately, the Montrose was among them.
Kendall had to act fast because the ship was steaming out of range. He sent for his wireless operator, swore him to secrecy and then gave him the message to tap out to the managing director of the shipping company in Liverpool. It read: ‘130 miles west Lizard. Have strong suspicions that Crippen London cellar murderer and accomplice are amongst saloon passengers. Accomplice dressed as boy.
Voice manner and build undoubtedly a girl. Travelling as Mr and Master Robinson.’
The message was passed through to Chief Inspector Walter Dew at Scotland Yard. The officer, who was leading the case, had interviewed Crippen and Ethel about Cora’s disappearance and later physically unearthed her remains in Crippen’s cellar.
Dew took the first train to Liverpool, where the White Star liner Laurentic, due to sail for Canada that evening, was waiting for him to board. The Laurentic was a faster steamer than the Montrose and Dew’s daring plan was not only to pursue the fugitives but to arrive in Canada before them.
The ship would arrive at Father Point (Pointe-au-Pere), at the mouth of the St Lawrence River, the day before Captain Kendall’s vessel. Dew proposed to alight there and board the Montrose before it came into its first port, Quebec City, and arrest Crippen and Ethel.
It was a strategy of high risk. If the Laurentic was caught in a storm and delayed, or if somehow Crippen got word of the pursuit and slipped away, Dew would have squandered a vast amount of police resources.
He therefore was absolutely circumspect about his plans. He had not even told his wife where he was headed and why. On board, only the captain and a handful of trusted officers knew who he was and the nature of his business. He would be known as ‘Mr Dewhurst’ during the journey – but his disguise lasted less than an hour. News had just broken in the papers that Crippen and Miss Le Neve had been discovered on a Quebec-bound boat.
From the moment he boarded, Dew was in the wireless cabin trying to contact the Montrose, pulsing out urgent messages to Captain Kendall. But the two ships were out of range of each other, and for now Dew received nothing in return.
Instead, the line sparked with endless enquiries from the press. The race across the Atlantic had begun, and the Laurentic was towing the entire world’s fascination behind it.
On the Montrose, now pushing further out to sea, a message was intercepted on the airwaves. It was to the Laurentic and was a cheeky request from a journalist enquiring about Chief Inspector Dew. ‘What is he doing? Is he playing games with passengers? Are passengers excited over the chase? Rush reply.’
Having no signal, Captain Kendall could not reply, but he at least had established for the first time that his message had got through to Scotland Yard and they were acting on it. He felt it incumbent upon himself to keep the Robinsons close and to maintain the convivial charade.
He continued to dine with them, noting the odd familiarity that existed between father and son, the way the elder shared his beer with ‘his boy’ and politely cracked nuts for his teenaged ‘child’.
Kendall and Crippen spent a good deal of time sitting together on deck discussing books and recommending titles to one another. The ‘elder Robinson’ told him that ‘Master Robinson’ was consuming Dickens’s Pickwick Papers, and mentioned how they both enjoyed Edgar Wallace’s Four Just Men, about a London murder. Not a hint of unease crossed Crippen’s features when he said this.
The Robinsons also attended the passenger concerts in the saloon and Mr Robinson joined in the singing, appearing relaxed and even jolly. Not ‘the boy’ though. Kendall observed that he never ran, shouted or played and talked very little, even when a young man of his age attempted to befriend him.
Ethel did her best to keep up with the discussions about cricket and football. ‘The girl was playing her part well, even though in great distress,’ the captain wrote. ‘The strain of make-believe, the suppressed excitement, the secret anxiety, imposed on her a great mental and nervous strain.’
As the Montrose slowly approached Canada, Crippen’s relaxed demeanour changed. He had a premonition that the police might be waiting for them when they disembarked. Suddenly he was subdued and serious.
By now he must also have suspected that Kendall’s cordiality was not simply because the captain had taken a liking to him. Standing on deck, Crippen had heard the electrical crackling as messages sparked off the antennae. ‘What a wonderful invention!’ he exclaimed to Kendall.
Witness Miss May, Secretary of Music Hall Ladies Guild, giving evidence at the inquest in August 1910
He must have feared that some of what was zipping through the ether concerned him. And that was indeed the case when the first hint of land appeared on the horizon on July 29 and the Montrose’s wireless suddenly juddered awake with a deluge of press enquiries.
There was also a message from Dew: ‘Will board you at Father Point.’ This desolate, fog-bound outpost with a large lighthouse was where ships were joined by pilots to guide them up the St Lawrence River. When the Laurentic stopped there, Dew was the sole passenger to disembark.
From then on he was in constant telegraph contact with Kendall. They agreed that when the Montrose arrived at Father Point at around 6am on July 31, Dew, disguised as one of the pilots, would come on board in a small boat.
This would enable him to evade notice by Crippen and spring on the pair unannounced.
Kendall passed the evening of July 30 on tenterhooks, uneasy that their plan would be foiled if Crippen caught sight of the unusually large number of ‘pilots’ expected to board the ship. Reasoning that it would be a good idea to have Crippen in his sights that morning, he suggested to Crippen that he might like to get up early the next day and go on deck to admire the beauty of the St Lawrence River.
Dawn broke around 4am, the full glare of day stifled by mist. Crippen dressed and told Ethel he was going to watch the ship enter the St Lawrence. Up on deck he leaned against the rails, closely watched by Kendall from the bridge.
Just as the Montrose approached Father Point, the fog suddenly rolled back, revealing the jagged beauty of the Canadian coast but also the boat of ‘pilots’ approaching the starboard side of the ship. Crippen suddenly turned to the Montrose’s surgeon, who was standing beside him, and asked: ‘Isn’t it unusual for so many pilots to come aboard?’ His question went unanswered. In a peaked pilot’s cap, Dew, accompanied by a posse of Canadian police, scaled ladders and entered the ship. Kendall was waiting for them. He and the chief inspector shook hands.
‘Where is Crippen?’ Dew asked. Kendall pointed to the saloon deck where a small, slight man emerged from behind a funnel.
Crippen was invited to the captain’s cabin. ‘Let me introduce Mr Robinson,’ said Kendall. Dew reached out his hand. ‘Good morning, Dr Crippen.’ It took Crippen a moment. Then his eyes suddenly widened and his Adam’s apple began to twitch before he spoke. ‘Good morning, Mr Dew.’
The chief inspector spoke the words he had been rehearsing for weeks. ‘You will be arrested for the murder and mutilation of your wife, Cora Crippen, in London, on or about February 1st last.’ Crippen did not respond as handcuffs were snapped around his wrists and he was taken away to a vacant cabin.
Crowds gather outside the Old Bailey law court during the trial of Dr Crippen for the murder of his wife
In Cabin 5, Ethel was lounging on the settee reading when there was a rap at the door. She expected to see Crippen. Instead, the door opened and three gentlemen stepped over the threshold. ‘Good morning,’ said the tall man at the front. He removed his pilot’s cap. ‘Do you know who I am?’
Ethel recognised Dew instantly and screamed and screamed until she nearly passed out. Dew read out the charge: ‘You are arrested with Dr Crippen and charged with the murder and mutilation of Mrs Crippen.’
Ethel always maintained – not totally convincingly – that she had never been party to the killing of Cora. She claimed the moment of her arrest by Dew was the first time she knew that Cora was dead, and not just dead, but murdered.
But Ethel’s accounts didn’t add up. She never expressed any surprise when learning of Cora’s true fate. There is no record of her uttering sentiments of disbelief, pity or revulsion. Nor did she protest her innocence or ask any questions. She never spoke a word.
Instead, for the rest of the day, ‘paralysed with fear and astonishment’, she wept hysterically, her sobs audible all over the deck.
Back in London, the charge of murder against her was dropped. Though there was compelling evidence that Ethel was an accomplice, it was Crippen they wanted and trying Ethel alongside him would only complicate matters.
They downgraded the charges to being an accessory to murder, and Ethel’s role was never given the igorous scrutiny it deserved.
Crippen was hanged.
© Hallie Rubenhold, 2025
- Adapted from Story Of A Murder by Hallie Rubenhold (Doubleday, £25), to be published March 27. To order a copy for £22.50 (offer valid to 05/04/25; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.
