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| Why it’s tough to pity
Dr Crippen’s vile wife |
An enjoyable book reveals the gory history of the
murders that covered north London in blood, writes Lew Matthews
North London Murders by Geoffrey Howse
Sutton Publishing, £12.99
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Geoffrey Howse
The Crippen house at 39 Hilldrop Crescent, off Camden Road
Dr Crippen
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ON DECEMBER 18, 1914, newly-married Peggy Lofty died mysteriously
in the bathtub of a house in Bismarck Road, now called Waterlow
Road, just off Highgate Hill.
It would probably have been deemed to have been an accident, but
a short report of the incident appeared in the News of the World
– where it was seen by relatives of another woman who had died
equally mysteriously some years before, and they smelled a rat.
That was the beginning of the downfall of George Joseph Smith, one
of England’s most notorious serial killers, later to be known
as the ‘Brides in the Bath’ murderer, who was finally
hanged for his crimes in 1915.
“George Smith was a dreadful man, really awful,” says
Geoffrey Howse who takes another look at some of the appalling crimes
that have been committed in this part of London, starting with a
murder in Primrose Hill in 1878.
“Of all the cases that I researched, this is the one I really
found most disturbing,” Mr Howse, 50, adds.
“It really quite upset me, because of the callousness of the
man. When you are writing about murder, you expect to come across
some pretty unsavoury things, but he was not only a serial killer
but also a serial bigamist who constantly found vulnerable women,
usually with some money, and sometimes within a fortnight he would
be married to them. Then he would fleece her and leave her, or kill
her.
“He killed three women that are known about, but the evidence
suggests that there were probably many other victims.
“There are whole episodes of his life which can’t be accounted
for, and judging by what was known later, it would seem that there
are many sad stories that were never uncovered.”
The author was born in Sheffield and came to London to study at
the Mountview Theatre School in Crouch End.
He was subsequently involved in a number of productions, both as
an actor, producer and impresario before an injury to his back put
paid to his theatrical career.
He turned to writing, and has published a number of books about
the history of Sheffield, its industries and surroundings and this
is his first excursion into the “true crime” field.
“I have always been very interested in history, historic houses
and old churches,” he said. “Even when I was an actor
I always found myself in churchyards, looking to see who was buried
there and trying to find out about people, and in the end you just
can’t help but come across these kinds of things.”
The book begins with a puzzling mystery about the murder of magistrate
Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey in Primrose Hill in 1898, an affair intricately
caught up in the famous plot to blow up Parliament, and is often
described as one of the greatest unsolved crimes of the 19th century.
But the book also takes another look at more recent, and more celebrated
murders, such as the case of Ruth Ellis, who shot dead her lover,
David Blakely, outside the Magdala pub in South End Green, Hampstead,
in April 1955.
Just three months later, after a trial that lasted just one and
a half days, Ruth Ellis became the last woman to be executed in
Britain.
“When I was writing the book, I had to wait for the outcome
of the recent posthumous appeal against her conviction, in which
three Appeal Court judges found that there were no grounds on which
an appeal could be based. “And, sad as her case is, I can’t
help but agree,” says Mr Howse. “At the time she committed
the crime there was no such thing as a crime of passion or diminished
responsibility.”
Famously, the prosecution counsel Melford Stevenson asked Ruth Ellis
only one question: Whether when she shot Blakely she intended to
kill him.
Ruth Ellis confirmed that she had, and that was the end of the cross
examination. Later, 50,000 signatures on a petition for clemency
were dismissed by the home secretary.
Another fascinating section of the book deals with the murderer
Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen, who killed his wife Cora in Hilldrop Crescent,
very close to where Mr Howse lives in Pemberton Crescent, Holloway.
And one thing that comes across very strongly is what an awful woman
Mrs Crippen was – a large, bullying person who forced her diminutive
husband to get up early to clean and polish the grates, make fires
and cook breakfast for everyone.
She denied him access to her bedroom while openly taking lovers
from among her theatrical friends and even lodgers.
“When I first wrote this chapter, my editor asked me whether
I had any sympathy for the poor wife, but the I really couldn’t
find anything to say in her favour,” Mr Howse continues.
“Crippen himself was a meek and mild-mannered little man who
was generally well-liked.” Nevertheless, Crippen poisoned Cora.
He then removed her head, dismembered her body and buried the remains
in the coal cellar before running off with his lover, Ethel Le Neve
to Canada. He was arrested on arrival in Quebec and returned to
England – and the hangman.
Other murders chronicled in the book include the tragic murder of
playwright Joe Orton in Noel Road, Islington, by his deranged lover,
Kenneth Halliwell, in 1967.
Then there was the suspected miscarriage of justice which resulted
in the execution of Frederick Seddon in 1912 for the murder by arsenic
poisoning of a wealthy spinster who, among other things, owned a
barber shop in Camden Town.
Mr Howse believes that it is much more likely that Mrs Seddon committed
the murder – but she was acquitted.
Other chapters concern murders in Highgate, Camden Town, Muswell
Hill, Tottenham, Finsbury Park, Stoke Newington, Southgate, Islington,
Kentish Town and, again, Primrose Hill.
Why was Mr Howse, who is also working on a book called Foul Deeds
and Suspicious Deaths in London’s East End (out later this
year), so fascinated by these murders?
Was there a dark side to his soul? “I am an easy-going, passive
sort of bloke,” he says.
“But these crimes are so different from the way I live my life
that I suppose that I am fascinated by the opposite world, in the
sense that opposites often attract each other.” |
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