Walter Dew: The Man Who Caught Crippen

by Connell, Nicholas

  The Times explained the importance of the wireless in the Crippen case:

  In the absence of wireless telegraphy the fugitives would have reached Canada in comparatively favourable circumstances. There would have been no apparatus of detention ready for their arrival. No doubt the captain’s suspicions would have been made known in the proper quarters, and means might have been found to keep them under observation for a time. But there would have been no means of absolute identification, and the action of the authorities would plainly have been very much hampered. Wireless telegraphy enabled the captain, without altering his course, and without giving the alarm to the fugitives, to communicate his suspicions to his owners, who promptly handed them on to Scotland Yard.4

  The Montrose arrived in Quebec early on the morning of 1 August. As with all the events surrounding the case, a crowd had gathered, this time numbering around 500. Amid the flashes of camera lamps they saw a handcuffed Dr Crippen, holding his head down low, following Walter Dew down the gangplank. Ethel Le Neve followed, her boy’s attire replaced by ill-fitting garments that belonged to the stewardess of the Montrose. Crippen and Le Neve were taken to the city gaol.

  In his report on the arrest of Crippen and Le Neve Dew insisted, ‘Whatever may have appeared in the press to the contrary I may say that my identity was not known until about a day before my landing at Father Point.’ He was dismayed by the behaviour of the press, who were hungry for a story:

  I was absolutely mobbed. Cameras were thrust in my face and I was practically at their mercy. I was importuned to say something, but I need hardly say that I refused.

  In passing I cannot refrain from saying that the whole affair was disgraceful and should and could have been avoided and I was fearful lest this should in any way mar the success of my mission.

  Dew further revealed that he found it ‘difficult to believe that any person with an average amount of intelligence could ever have believed her [Le Neve] to be a boy’. Dew requested that he be allowed to have a free hand when it came to arranging the return voyage. He said that Crippen would never be left alone (no doubt fearing he may try to attempt suicide) and expressed concern that heavy bribes may be offered by the press to the matrons in order to get to Le Neve. Dew emphasised that Crippen and Le Neve would be kept entirely apart.

  At the initial Police Court hearing a crowd of 3,000 women blocked the entrance to the court in the fight for admission. All the available seats were occupied by women, with forty or fifty others standing. Crippen’s physical appearance came as a disappointment to the expectant spectators. He was not ‘the hypnotic marvel which cabled stories had held up. Instead, the cringing figure with stooped head gave the lie to expectations. Crippen whined where criminals with more backbone would have answered smartly and posed serenely. He rolled his swollen eyes and twitched his head.’5 Le Neve was no more inspiring. She ‘leaned weakly upon the arms of her guards like one who had risen from a sick bed’, before fainting and being carried out.

  The hearing itself was merely a formality. Crippen confirmed his name and acknowledged he knew Le Neve and the reason they were there. He also stated that he was an American citizen, and that he would not fight extradition. The 1881 Fugitive Offenders Act meant that fugitives from British justice wanted for offences carrying a sentence of twelve months or more could be arrested on a warrant in any part of the British dominions. When caught, the fugitive would appear before a magistrate and if the evidence presented ‘raise[d] a strong or probable presumption that the fugitive committed the offence’, they would then be sent to prison for fifteen days to allow them to appeal, before being extradited. This is what happened with Crippen, and it meant that he and Dew would miss the resumed coroner’s inquest in London.

  Dew had anticipated a stay in Canada after Crippen’s arrest. The intensity of the Canadian public’s feelings of revulsion towards Crippen came as a surprise to him:

  I had plenty of opportunities for sensing public opinion in Quebec. The people there were incensed against Crippen. They looked upon him as a monster in human form. By some he had already been judged and found guilty. The ghastly murder and mutilation of Belle Elmore, followed by his flight from justice with Miss Ethel Le Neve as his companion, had roused public feeling against him to fever pitch.

  It was the same the world over. I have never known anything like it. Only those who can remember the case and the intense excitement and bitterness it engendered, can have any conception of the widespread antipathy towards the little man who was now in my charge.

  Another rumour emerged on 4 August that Crippen had confessed to the murder of his wife. Dew stoutly denied this, saying ‘there is not an iota of truth in the rumour’. Froest described the rumour as ‘absolutely untrue’, and the Canadian Provincial Premier, Sir Lomer Gouin, described the stories as ‘tissues of lies’. They were; and this would later prove costly for the newspapers that had made the claim. This story had followed hotly on the heels of a bogus report that Dew had been sent a telegram from Scotland Yard saying that the remains had been positively identified as being female. An ‘absolute invention’, was the exasperated Froest’s response. Dew had not received any communications from Scotland Yard, and they had not had any more from Dew.6

  The foreign journalists were bemused by Dew’s reluctance to talk to them. At one point he warned them, ‘If you chaps don’t stop pestering me about this confession business I’ll have to leave town.’7 However, Dew’s success had put him in a state of high spirits. He reportedly ‘delighted the pressmen by abandoning a little of his reserve’ and told them he thought Le Neve knew nothing of Cora Crippen’s death, and that he ‘had been absolutely fascinated by Crippen’.8 Nevertheless, the constant harassment from the press was wearing Dew out:

  My first and most pressing bother was the newspaper men. When they came on board the Montrose they began to badger me to be allowed to interview and photograph the prisoners.

  I flatly refused and, because of my attitude, I am afraid I became somewhat unpopular. They seemed to think they should be allowed to carry on just as they would have done in the United States. I had very different views and expressed them pretty strongly.

  All they got from me was that the suspected passengers had been identified as Crippen and Miss Le Neve, and had been placed under arrest.

  As there was some time to spare before Crippen was due to reappear in court, Dew allegedly took the opportunity to escape journalistic attention by visiting the Niagara Falls with Captain Kendall.9 The trip caused much comment, and many could not believe that such an astute officer as Dew would be relaxing before the Crippen case had closed. It was suggested that Dew was in fact secretly arranging the return trip to England, ensuring that it would be carried out with the utmost discretion. Dew did not mention a trip to the Niagara Falls in his memoirs.

  More bizarre stories were emerging. Le Neve was offered £200 a week to star in a twenty-week tour, which included a music hall sketch called ‘Caught by Wireless’. Crippen was offered a massive £1,000 a week for another twenty-week engagement if he was acquitted.10 At this time one of the most bizarre stories concerning Dew’s investigations emerged from Buffalo, New York. It was reported that Dew’s wife Kate had expressed the opinion that Belle Elmore was still alive, and that the whole Crippen case had been arranged as an advertising stunt.11 Stranger still, Dew was reported as saying that the remains had not even been identified as human, let alone female. If Cora Crippen were to have reappeared alive, she would have been a great attraction on the stage, and could have named her price.12

  Detective Sergeant Mitchell had left Liverpool, and was making his way to Quebec aboard the Lake Manitoba to deliver extradition papers.13 He was accompanied by two stern-faced wardresses from Holloway Prison (there were no police matrons), Miss Stone and Miss Foster, to accompany Ethel Le Neve back home.

  When Mitchell was reunited with Dew on 14 August he handed him a letter from Chief Constable Bigham of Scotland Yard. Dew replied to Bigham, sa
ying that he had received the two cables that the letter referred to. One of the cables appears to have contained instructions from Home Secretary Winston Churchill, for Dew wrote:

  The wishes of H.M. Secretary of State were anticipated by me, and I would remark that I have always made it a practice to treat prisoners with courtesy & consideration no matter what their position in life.

  If I have erred in this case it has been on the side of consideration and humanity, and at great cost to my own personal convenience & comfort.

  Churchill had also expressed a desire that Crippen and Le Neve should be protected from the reporters and photographers. Dew was very pleased to report that ‘so far as I am personally concerned I succeeded in preventing all annoyance from these people, and I also think succeeded in preventing their photographs being taken, but no one except myself can ever realise at what a cost this was done’.

  Dew went on to inform Bigham that he was ‘devising a scheme’ to get the prisoners back to England, as he was concerned about the strength of feeling the Canadians had against Crippen. They saw him ‘as a monster in human form’, and this jeopardised Dew’s chances of bringing him back home safely:

  This of course will depend to some extent on the Police here, to whom sooner or later I must divulge my plans, but bluntly speaking, I don’t trust them too much in respect to reporters, however, I shall do my best to avoid publicity and annoyance to fugitives.

  Dew signed off by thanking Bigham for communicating with his wife on his behalf. The Canadian journalists hoped that Sergeant Mitchell might be more forthcoming than Dew, but their hopes were dashed when Dew told them in no uncertain terms that ‘Mr. Mitchell is acting under my instruction, and I have instructed him not to discuss the case’.14 Mitchell remained silent.

  The adjourned coroner’s inquest went ahead in London as planned on 15 July without Dew, Crippen or Le Neve. Also absent was the original coroner, Dr Danford Thomas, who had recently died. He had been suffering from ill health and decided to take a holiday during the adjournment of hearings, but died suddenly at the coastal town of Hastings. It was agreed that the assistant coroner Walter Schroder should replace him. Frank Froest appeared and said that he could not predict exactly when Dew and Mitchell would return with the prisoners, but that it would probably be in about three weeks’ time, and suggested that the inquest be adjourned until then. While Crippen was under arrest in Canada a friend of his had obtained the services of solicitor Arthur Newton, who had previously represented Crippen in a less serious matter in 1906. Newton suggested a month’s adjournment. Travers Humphreys, of the Director of Public Prosecutions’ office, agreed with this, as did Schroder, who set a date of 12 September at the Central Library, Holloway Road.15

  Travers Humphreys’ junior, Cecil William Mercer, constructed the case against Crippen. Years later Mercer wrote a series of books under the pseudonym Dornford Yates. Several were written as conversations between a local magistrate named Berry and a barrister (Mercer) called Boy. In ‘As Berry and I Were Saying’, Mercer wrote about his experiences in the Crippen case. Mercer’s conclusions are interestingly at odds with those of many subsequent commentators on the case, who have portrayed Crippen as a poor, hen-pecked husband with a monstrous and overbearing wife who made his life unbearable and drove him to murder:

  Attempts have actually been made to palliate the crime. What is the truth? It was the sordid and barbarous murder by her husband of the Honorary Secretary (or Treasurer) of the Ladies’ Music Hall Guild, to whom her many women-friends were deeply attached. Crippen had fallen for his typist: but, because a man falls for his typist he doesn’t have to murder his wife. I have read that Mrs. Crippen led him a dog’s life. Of that, there is not a tittle of evidence. She certainly had her interests, and he had his. What was their private relation, nobody ever knew.16

  Dew’s plan to leave Canada unseen was successful. Dew’s ‘neat little scheme’ involved boarding a small steamer at a wharf which would meet the liner Megantic downstream. There was one small mishap as Crippen walked the gangway between the steamer and the Megantic, handcuffed and with his hat pulled down over his eyes. He walked into one of the ropes holding the gangway. It struck him on the chin and jerked him backwards, but fortunately Dew caught him before he fell into the sea.17 On 20 August four people boarded the White Star liner Megantic under false names. Inspector Dew was Silas P. Doyle, Dr Crippen was Cyrus Field (Dew remembered the name as ‘Nield’), Ethel Le Neve was Miss J. Byrne, and Sergeant Mitchell was F.M. Johnson.18 On board, Dew read Crippen and Le Neve the warrant that charged them both with the wilful murder of Cora Crippen; Le Neve was also charged with being an accessory after the fact to that murder. After hearing the charge again, Crippen simply said ‘Right’, while Le Neve said ‘Yes’.

  One American newspaper, perhaps frustrated by Dew’s refusal to speak to the press, launched a scathing attack on the departing detective:

  That ridiculous Inspector Dew has taken his two prisoners and departed. Atlas with the weight of the universe on his shoulders was never more impressed with the importance of his job than Mr. Dew has been for the last twenty days. Pomposity and overwhelming conceit apparently pass at Scotland Yard for cleverness and efficiency.

  Dew has been very funny while in America. And he has done a good service in destroying that traditional American awe and reverence felt for Scotland Yard and London police methods in general.19

  Dew described the return voyage aboard the Megantic:

  Crippen ate well and apparently slept well. I found him a good conversationalist, able to talk on almost any subject. For the most part we confined ourselves to general topics – books, the weather, the liner, the progress we were making, and so on – but several times every day he asked about Miss Le Neve.

  One would never have guessed from Crippen’s demeanour and manner, on that homeward voyage, that he was under arrest for murder, and that he had on his conscience a burden which few men could have borne without wilting.

  The more I saw of this remarkable man the more he amazed me.

  I was greatly impressed on the voyage home by the unswerving loyalty of Crippen to Miss Le Neve.

  Every morning he asked first thing how Miss Le Neve was. He never seemed to care much what happened to himself, so long as her innocence was established.

  One incident sticks out in my memory. When off the coast of Ireland we ran into a heavy storm. Most of the passengers became ill, including my girl prisoner.

  Crippen was a good sailor. He remained unperturbed through it all, or would have remained unperturbed had he not learned of Miss Le Neve’s condition. The news that she was seasick caused him great concern. He told me the best remedy was champagne, and that the patient should lie flat.

  For a moment it didn’t strike me that he had it in his mind that champagne should be given to Miss Le Neve.

  He saw this, and looked pleadingly at me as he said: ‘Oh, Mr. Dew, please give her a little champagne and I will be eternally grateful to you.’

  Dew obtained a bottle of champagne, which restored Le Neve immediately. Crippen ‘was like a dog in his gratitude. He could scarcely have expressed greater pleasure had I told him that he could go free.’

  Crippen never showed the slightest sign that he might lose his nerve as the ship neared England. Dew did not even notice any sign of depression, which might have been expected:

  His nerves must have been made of iron. Except that he was under constant supervision and was handcuffed when he was taken out for exercise, he lived the life of a normal passenger.

  He mystified me. He seemed quite happy. He gave no trouble, and never once tried the patience of Sergeant Mitchell or myself.

  The impression he gave me was that of a man with a mind completely at rest. Most of his time he spent reading. I used to fetch his books myself from the ship’s library, being careful, of course, never to get him one with a crime or murder plot. He loved novels, especially those with a strong love interest.

 
Sergeant Mitchell also found Crippen an easy prisoner to deal with. ‘He chatted with me from time to time on various matters’, Mitchell recalled, reporting that throughout the voyage Crippen ‘seemed quite bright + jolly’.

  Dew kept a close watch on Crippen during the return voyage, and several times he saw his prisoner stripped. To his surprise the diminutive Crippen was strongly built, and Dew was relieved that his prisoner was so well behaved. Dew was not a physical coward but he told Cecil Mercer, ‘Well, I’m a much heavier man, but I should have been very sorry to have had to take Crippen on.’20

  Crippen never mentioned his wife, and never showed any animosity towards his captor. Dew recalled, ‘He was intelligent enough to realize that I had only done my duty.’ He was often asked in later years why he treated Crippen with such kindness after his arrest. Dew did not consider that he had shown Crippen any more consideration than he had hundreds of other prisoners throughout his career. Dew thought that it was his duty to consider a prisoner innocent until he or she appeared before the proper tribunal and was found guilty. Despite this, Dew had ‘never wavered from the opinion that Crippen was guilty’.

  Dew also spent a lot of time during the return voyage with Ethel Le Neve, who had fully recovered after the initial shock of her arrest. He made frequent visits to her cabin every day to see if there was anything she wanted. He found her ‘almost as calm and collected as Crippen himself’. Le Neve showed great composure throughout the journey. Dew thought that this was because she had a clear conscience, and that ‘[h]er fortitude was born of the knowledge of her own innocence and her faith in the integrity of the British Justice to which she was being surrendered’. Le Neve had protested her ignorance of the murder of Cora Crippen to Dew. When the detective asked her if she had not seen a letter her father wrote in the newspapers, she said that she had not seen any newspapers since leaving London, and that she had intended to write to her sister as soon as she and Crippen reached Quebec.