Hawley Harvey Crippen

Hawley Harvey Crippen was an American-born homeopath who settled in London with his second wife, Cora, a music-hall performer known as Belle Elmore. After Cora disappeared in 1910, police found human remains beneath the cellar floor of their home. Crippen fled with his lover and secretary Ethel Le Neve aboard the SS Montrose .

Crippen's marriage to Cora was troubled, and in 1910 he told acquaintances that she had gone to the United States and later died there. Suspicion grew when Ethel Le Neve began wearing some of Cora's possessions; a renewed police search found human remains beneath the house. Crippen fled with Le Neve aboard the SS Montrose, was arrested in Canada after a pioneering use of ship-to-shore wireless communication, convicted of Cora's murder and executed in November 1910.

In Erik Larson’s Thunderstruck, in a parallel narrative, London doctor Hawley Harvey Crippen lives unhappily with his wife, music-hall performer Belle Elmore, while beginning a relationship with his secretary Ethel Le Neve. In John Boyne’s Crippen, London at the beginning of the twentieth century. Hawley Harvey Crippen, an American doctor practising dubious patent medicine, lives unhappily with his wife Cora, a music-hall performer known as Belle Elmore.