Crippen Murder Case

In July 1910 police searching the London home of Hawley Harvey Crippen found human remains beneath the cellar floor after the disappearance of his wife, the music-hall performer Cora Crippen, known as Belle Elmore. Crippen had already fled with Ethel Le Neve aboard the SS Montrose, where she travelled disguised as a boy.

The ship’s captain used wireless telegraphy to alert Scotland Yard, enabling Chief Inspector Walter Dew to cross the Atlantic on a faster vessel and arrest the couple in Canada. Crippen was returned to Britain, convicted of Cora’s murder and executed in November 1910; Le Neve was acquitted as an accessory.

The case became a landmark of modern crime reporting and communications technology. John Boyne’s Crippen fictionalises the marriage, affair and voyage while retaining the documented structure of the disappearance, pursuit and trial.