The Story of Three Lives Wrecked

 On Hallie Rubenhold's "Story of a Murder" (Doubleday, 2025).

I wanted to review this book heere as a portrait of women's lives in the Edwardian era. Hallie Rubenhold's study of the Dr Crippen case is fascinating and a thumping good read. No, you really could thump a chauvinist with it and get satisfying results. But though it is a heavy book in weight terms, I immersed myself in the text and it was over far too soon.

As you would expect from the author of books such as "The Five" - about the Jack the Ripper case from the perspective of the victims - this book concentrates on the three women in Crippen's life, arguably all of them victims of his quietly evil self-regard. We all know his name, but how many knew the name of the wife that he butchered?

First of all, we are introduced to Charlotte, Crippen's first wife. Her death was suspicious but never investigated. Was this a "successful murder" that gave him the confidence to do it again? Charlotte, like most women of that time, soon shrunk into oblivion. It could be said that no-one investigated her death because as a woman she just wasn't important enough and her husband's word was accepted without question by the authorities. He moved to a different part of the US soon after, abandoning his son to his mother's care and never taking an interest in him again.

Crippen then married a woman who, as a stage performer, had a few names but is generally referred to as Belle Elmore. At the very beginning of their marriage, he forced her to undergo a sterilising operation. This alone is heinous...but Crippen would eventually dispose of her life and body as if she were a possession he no longer cared for. If it weren't for the fact that Belle had friends with the self confidence that a life on the stage brings to not take no for an answer, he might have got away with it. Belle's friends pestered the police until they began to investigate Belle's disappearance, but they remained sceptical for some time - taking Crippen's word that she had left him and gone to the US.

Crippen had replaced Belle with a typist from his quack remedy company - Ethel. Hers is the most interesting story of all. Hallie leads us into contemplating whether the contemporary attitudes towards women allowed her to get away with being an accessory to murder. Did Ethel know all, did she help Crippen dispose of Belle's remains - but then play up to the standards expected of her to save her own bacon? She did survive where Crippen was executed - but her life was anything but happy ever after. He ultimately destroyed her life too.

The book shows what women were up against when they got married, as society pretty much forced them to do. Subject to their husband's will and under the protection of someone who might wish to do anything but protect them. Those who were clever enough played up to it to get their own way - but the consequences could be terrible. 



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