A Husband, Homeopathy, and Homicide — The Case of Dr. Crippen
Did someone frame the first criminal caught by wireless telegraphy?
Cora Crippen was a woman of many names, some of them theatric, and some of them relating to her character as a flamboyant, domineering wife to homeopathic doctor Hawley Harvey Crippen. He doted on her prior to infamously poisoning and dismembering her body, protesting his innocence until his death by hanging on Nov. 23, 1910.
She preferred to be referred to by her late stage title, Belle Elmore. It’s the one that brought her little to no attention in her unsuccessful professional life, with Crippen buying his wife singing lessons, extravagant dresses, and anything of material wealth she desired.
What remained of her was a mass of flesh bearing an unmistakable scar.
Yet, from scientific advancements, one cannot help but wonder if Dr. Crippen even committed the crime, and whether what investigators found had been planted or possibly belonged to the identity of another person, not the missing woman.
Crippen was born in Coldwater, Michigan, in 1862, later qualifying as a doctor with a degree in homeopathic medicine back before it became widely regarded as a pseudoscience. He met his first wife, Charlotte Jane Bell, while interning…
