What can you tell us about the man at the centre of this case?
Hawley Harvey Crippen was born in Coldwater, Michigan in 1862. In 19th-century America, it was easy to leave your past behind and become somebody else – and Crippen did that a lot. He trained as a doctor and specialised in homeopathic medicine, which was seen as a legitimate, progressive field at the time.
At some point, though, Crippen gave up on being a respectable doctor and decided to work in patent medicine, which was a huge industry at the turn of the 20th century. You could open any newspaper and find adverts for nostrums or cure-alls that claimed to be able to resolve anything from rheumatism to acne.
Crippen decided that this was how he would make his fortune – as a snake-oil salesman, essentially. From that point on, he fell deeper and deeper into medical fraud, which proved a slippery slope into fraud in general. Eventually he ended up in London, the white-collar fraud capital of the world at the time.
During your research, you also explored the story of Crippen’s first wife, Charlotte Bell. What happened to her?
Charlotte was a nurse, which is how she met Crippen. They married in 1887 but, less than five years later, while she was still in her early thirties, Charlotte died suddenly. It was claimed that she died of heart failure and “paralysis of the nervous system”. Her death certificate was signed by a friend of her husband, and within 72 hours Charlotte had been buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave.
This all happened in the middle of winter, when the ground was frozen. Why the rush? Crippen was a proud man – why did he not bury her properly?
After Charlotte’s mysterious death, Crippen met his second wife, Belle Elmore. How did their paths cross?
Born to a poor Polish family in Brooklyn, Belle was originally called Kunegunde Mackamotzki. She went on to change her name several times during her life – to Connie, Concordia, Cora and then Belle. Names were essentially disposable at that time, and Belle got the measure of this point. It was quite an American way of looking at the world: you could be whoever you wanted, and you were what you made of yourself.
When she met Crippen, Belle was living with another man. He was actually her employer but, in spite of this, he had got her pregnant. We can’t know whether this was a consensual relationship or not, but lots of servants at the time were victims of sexual violence. New York had strict anti-abortion laws, but Crippen worked for an abortionist nonetheless – and this is how they met.
Later, Belle’s ovaries were removed on Crippen’s orders, even though nothing was wrong with her. Crippen did this because he didn’t want children, but Belle was devastated for the rest of her life.
What was Belle like as a person?
In the wake of her murder, Crippen did everything he could to blacken Belle’s character. He wanted to promote the idea that he had been pushed into murder by this terrible woman – but he must have loved her at some point.
After learning that she couldn’t have children, Belle decided to pursue a career on the stage, which was incredibly progressive for a woman in the 1890s. When the couple moved to London, she threw herself into the music-hall scene.
She was part of a circle of seriously famous music-hall performers, and became involved with a fascinat-ng group of women called the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild. This was a social organisation and charity raising money for performers who had fallen on hard times. Here, Belle really found her métier. She was outspoken, colourful and well-loved by her friends, often attending parties and having people round to her house.
Crippen was an outwardly respectable man, taking the tram to work every day – while in private he had chopped up his wife’s body and hidden it in the basement
Belle was an incredibly flamboyant woman, with an enormous wardrobe, and this was one of the criticisms later levelled against her. But people don’t realise that a lot of these clothes were stage outfits; performers at the time had to buy their own costumes. Yes, she liked jewellery, and Crippen bought her lots of it. But Crippen wore diamonds, too – he also enjoyed the trappings of wealth.
Another important character in this story is Crippen’s mistress, Ethel Le Neve. Who was she?
Ethel Le Neve – or Ethel Neave, as she was born – was such a complex character. All of the people in this story are fascinating to me, but Ethel positively haunted me. Her story also offers an interesting insight into the changing landscape for women at the time.
By the turn of the 20th century, women were working in shops, factories and domestic service, but Ethel went to secretarial college. Working in an office allowed working-class women like Ethel to enter the middle classes. Although they were paid much less than their male contemporaries, these women could earn (and spend) their own money. They could live apart from their parents, as Ethel did. It was an exciting, empowering time – and as a so-called ‘New Woman’, Ethel was right in the thick of it all.
Crippen initially hired Ethel as his secretary but, over time, she became his right-hand woman in all of his fraudulent schemes, and the pair became lovers. Their relationship lasted around six years; all the while, he was promising to marry her. He told Ethel that Belle was going to leave him for another man, but there’s no proof of that.
Eventually, Ethel got pregnant; she, too, had an abortion, but this was a real tipping point. She started pushing Crippen for answers about the marriage – and he decided to take matters into his own hands.
How did Crippen plan to kill his wife, Belle?
First, he bought a sedative called hyoscine hydrobromide. Crippen’s plan was to make it look as if Belle died in her sleep, and then get a doctor friend to sign the death certificate. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Then, Bob’s your uncle – he could marry Ethel.
But it didn’t quite work out like that. Crippen gave Belle too much hyoscine hydrobromide. Though it’s a sedative, at very high doses it can create the opposite effect – it makes you sick and act crazy, then stops your heart. Crippen gave Belle five grains, when one would have been sufficient.
Belle probably started screaming, or there may have been a physical fight; in any case, by the time she died, there would have been evidence on her body revealing what had happened, and he couldn’t pass it off as a peaceful death in her sleep. Suddenly, in the middle of the night, Crippen had to get rid of a body.
How did he try to cover up the murder?
He had a real problem, because now he had to make up an excuse for his wife’s disappearance. And the members of the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild were beginning to ask questions. Crippen decided to tell them that Belle had gone to America at late notice to visit a dying relative. But he kept changing the story – he was constantly pivoting.
Without a shadow of a doubt, Ethel knew exactly what was going on in this cover-up. She always knew Crippen’s secrets – they were partners in crime, quite literally. After Belle was gone, Ethel moved into the Crippens’ house at Hilldrop Crescent in north London, and started calling herself Mrs Crippen. She also appropriated Belle’s enormous wardrobe of clothing, running around town in her furs.
But what really gave her away was a distinctive diamond brooch called the Rising Sun. This brooch had belonged to Belle, and all of her friends were familiar with it. After Belle had ‘gone to America’, Crippen bought two tickets for a charity ball hosted by Belle’s friends. He took Ethel, his secretary, who was dressed in Belle’s clothes and wearing this Rising Sun brooch.
The first time I read this, I couldn’t believe it. All of the people at the ball were performers with quite rackety lives, so the idea of someone having a mistress wasn’t that shocking. What was brazen was that these were Belle’s friends. It was rude, and it was obnoxious, like sticking two fingers up at everybody. Of course, it transpired that Belle hadn’t gone to America; in fact, she’d never left the house.
The terrible way in which Crippen disposed of his wife’s body would really come back to haunt him in court. Remember, this was a man who understood anatomy. He removed all of Belle’s bones, as well as her head and sex organs, and disposed of them piecemeal. We don’t know where these ended up, but Hilldrop Crescent was close to a polluted canal and an abattoir. He then put the remaining viscera under the floor of his coal cellar, covered it with quicklime and assumed it would disintegrate.
Ethel was always complaining that Belle and Crippen hadn’t kept a servant, and moaning about how much cleaning there was to do. But curiously, although she moved into Hilldrop Crescent in March, they didn’t recruit a servant until June. Mysteriously, lots of things were being burned, and huge amounts of rubbish were removed. The local dustmen later said that they’d never seen anything like it, and visitors reported that the house had a strange smell. So Ethel must have known what was in the basement.
Was the shocking treatment of Belle’s body the reason why this domestic murder became known as the ‘crime of the century’?
That was part of it. But this also happened in middle-class suburbia, where everybody was worrying about their sherry glasses and Christmas cards. The idea that Crippen was an outwardly respectable man, taking the tram to work every day in his bowler hat, while in private he had chopped up his wife’s body and hidden it in the basement of his tree-lined street, was grotesque and horrifying. The middle classes were shocked, because the Crippens could be their neighbours. No one was safe.
How did Crippen’s crimes get uncovered?
This is where the story takes a real turn. After being dismissed by the police several times, Belle’s friends at the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild finally convinced Scotland Yard to investigate. Inspector Walter Dew was assigned to the case and interviewed Crippen, which basically spooked him. So Crippen and Ethel decided to go on the run, dis- guised as father and son. He shaved off his moustache, while she cut her hair and dressed in boy’s clothing. They sailed to the Hook of Holland and travelled on to Antwerp and Brussels, where they hid out in a hotel for a while before boarding a ship called the Montrose and sailing to Quebec.
By then, Dew had discovered what was in the basement of Hilldrop Crescent. Bulletins were issued all over the world: every port was watching out for the couple, and the newspapers were going absolutely mad. The whole world was looking for them. This story was unfolding in real time, like some kind of reality drama. People became completely wrapped up in it.
Meanwhile, aboard the Montrose, Crippen and Ethel had caught the attention of the captain. He realised that something was amiss with this odd father-and-son duo, and used his Marconi wireless transmitter to contact Scotland Yard. Inspector Dew jumped on the Laurentic – one of the fastest ships in the world – to try to beat them to Quebec. This case really highlighted the explosive innovations in transport and communication happening at the time.
Dew did beat Crippen and Ethel to Canada – and arrested them as soon as the Montrose came into port. They were brought back to Liverpool, where they were met with wild crowds as they got off the ship – throngs pushing and shoving and booing and hissing. People climbed in through the skylights at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court to witness the hearing. The trial was similarly sensational; even Winston Churchill went to watch.
Crippen and Ethel were tried separately. Crippen was found guilty, based on toxicology – which was fairly new at the time – and pathology reports. Meanwhile, the murder charges against Ethel were dropped, and she was instead charged as an accomplice to murder. But she played up to an image of a poor, quivering girl who had known nothing – and was acquitted. There was no attempt
to gather more evidence against her.
For the rest of her life, Ethel remained completely unrepentant. She never once demonstrated remorse or expressed any sadness for Belle’s family or friends. Crippen was executed, but Ethel went on to lead an ordinary life – changing her name, disappearing into the ether and dying in the 1960s. Even her children never knew her previous identity.
How has this case been misrepresented in the past, and why did you want to rectify that?
I wanted to challenge the way the women involved have been portrayed – Belle, especially, who has been maligned and even blamed for her own murder. The first account of this case was written by Alexander Bell Filson Young in 1920. It’s important to remember what was going on at the time. The Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act was passed in 1919, which meant that women could enter the professions. Women were bobbing their hair, wearing make-up, shortening their hemlines. Massive change was afoot, and a lot of people were perturbed.
You can see this reflected in the way Filson Young writes about the trial: he demonises Belle Elmore as a horrible, shrewish woman who destroyed her husband’s life. According to his narrative, Ethel was a good girl, and Crippen was a good man, because he was respectable and educated. Belle Elmore was the monster who needed to be slain in order for them to be together.
Every account that came out afterwards followed suit. Belle was a slut and a peacock, they said: she deserved to die. But this is just utter rubbish and unadulterated misogyny. There’s absolutely no proof that she was that way. And even if she were, in what world is it okay to say that a woman deserved to be murdered?
More generally, we need to reconsider how we approach and discuss historical true crime, because we tend to take all of the prejudices of a previous era, frozen in aspic, and regurgitate them. But we should treat true crime as we would any other historical event – something that’s worthy of dissection and proper examination. Consider this my clarion call to historians to take historical true crime seriously.
Hallie Rubenhold is an author, historian and broadcaster. She is the author of Story of a Murder: The Wives, the Mistress and Doctor Crippen (Doubleday, 2025). Her previous books include The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper (Doubleday, 2019)
This article was first published in the April 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
