The case of Dr. Crippen, detailed in Hallie Rubenhold’s “Story of a Murder,” would have been familiar to many in 1910. According to contemporary newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic, the London-based doctor — a meek, feeble, bespectacled man — fell so passionately in love with his typist, Ethel Le Neve, that he murdered his wife to be with her. At the time, Crippen was declared to be “kindhearted,” “good-tempered” and “amiable,” a victim of romantic urges beyond his control.
His murdered wife received no such accolades.
Née Kunegunde Mackamotzki, she was a music hall performer professionally known as Belle Elmore. At the trial, it was repeatedly noted that she had kept company with other men, even prior to her marriage. She spent her own earnings on jewelry and pretty clothing. She had, in her husband’s words, “an ungovernable temper.”
Certainly, Hawley Crippen had poisoned her, hacked her body to pieces and buried it in his cellar. Still, chroniclers of the crime would claim that she was “a flashy, faithless shrew, loud voiced, vulgar and florid” and dismiss her as “a worthless creature.”
This, as you might expect, is not the whole story.
It has taken over a century, but Rubenhold, an American British historian who has written extensively on social history, has at last delivered justice to Belle Elmore.
Belle emerges as a far more complex person in “Story of a Murder” than the frivolous would-be chanteuse the newspapers of the age depicted. Readers discover that she was a resilient Brooklyn native who made a new life for herself when her husband, Hawley, decided they would move from America to his native London. A talented singer who initially sought to become an opera diva, Belle found work at music halls in the city.
And far from being the untalented dilettante later reports — and her husband — described, she had a successful seven-year career and received numerous positive reviews. Through Belle’s work, she became the treasurer of the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild. She had a close-knit group of friends.
Hawley Crippen, meanwhile, was anything but “kindhearted.”
Rubenhold paints a vivid picture of a world dominated by patriarchal norms. The murder of Belle might be horrifying, but almost as disturbing are some of the atrocities Hawley inflicted upon other women in his life. Far from being a mild-mannered doctor, Hawley was a con man who sold snake-oil cures to vulnerable, desperate people. He not only physically abused his first wife, Charlotte, but pushed her into multiple abortions. Rubenhold suggests the possibility that her husband might also have been the cause of her untimely death — as Charlotte had written to family members that “if I die it will be his fault.”
Following Charlotte Crippen’s death, Hawley abandoned their young son before marrying Belle. Once he did — presumably out of a desire to avoid further offspring — he persuaded Belle to submit to an unnecessary ovariotomy, which he may have performed. This not only rendered her infertile (a cause of great distress to Belle, who loved children) but also left her with a “pus bag growing on the skin” and triggered early menopause and significant weight gain, which left her open to ridicule.
Ethel, the typist who would become Hawley’s mistress, fared little better. He removed 20 of her teeth and presented her with a “beautiful set” of dentures. While this was not an uncommon procedure for those looking to save on dental costs, Ethel’s father believed in this case it was intended to advertise Hawley’s work as a dentist. Afterward, remarkably, Ethel would not only conspire with the doctor to murder his wife, but also flee the country dressed as a boy so the couple could be together.
The two of them almost certainly would have gotten away with the murder had it not been for what Rubenhold terms “the affection of Belle’s friends.” Hers was a fascinating circle of bohemians, which included Clara Martinetti, a pantomime comedian; Isabel Ginnett, a circus equestrian; and the tightrope walker Violet Bartram. The commitment the group brought to unraveling the crime would put any true-crime-podcast aficionado to shame — and would prove instrumental in securing Hawley’s eventual arrest.
“Story of a Murder” is essential reading for anyone who may believe the past was a gentler, romantic time for women. Rubenhold’s work is a story of female resilience and solidarity in response to terrible circumstances, a theme that, alas, is as timely as ever. But as Ginnett, the president of the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild at the time, put it, “When a woman gets after a man in real earnest, she usually gets him.”
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