Walter Dew: The Man Who Caught Crippen

by Connell, Nicholas

  Mr Justice Darling again presided. He agreed with Gill that ‘[t]he words would certainly bear the interpretation put upon them; indeed, if that were not the meaning, I cannot see what they did mean’. John Bull’s barrister was F.E. Smith. F.E., fresh from his triumph of defending Ethel Le Neve, quipped that ‘they had offered a prize to any one who could suggest what the words did mean’. Darling dryly responded that if there was a prize, it was Dew who had won it, for the ex-Chief Inspector had been awarded a ‘small solatium’ by the paper.17

  20

  The Wee Hoose

  Ask the average person who Walter Dew is, and he will answer, ‘The man who arrested Crippen.’ Some will cut down the answer to ‘Crippen Dew.’ Such is fame.

  Saturday Post, 29 January 1916

  The Dews left Allfarthing Lane in Wandsworth in 1911 after living there for over ten years, and moved to Perrivale Lane in Greenford, Middlesex. Dew paid 200 guineas for a house called ‘The Nook’,1 where he spent much of his time gardening.2

  On 22 May 1913 Dew’s eldest son Walter, who was living in France at the time, married Gertrude Florence Gifford at Southampton. His father believed that the younger Walter was the only other member of the family to have set foot inside a police station. He had joined the Metropolitan Police in June 1908, and eventually became an inspector in the Special Branch before retiring in 1933.3 Walter jnr had spent twenty-four of his twenty-five years’ service at Scotland Yard, and had accompanied the Prime Minister to America and Canada in 1929.4

  Tragedy struck in 1915 when, on 26 May, the Dews’ young son Stanley (known as Tom), a private in the 23rd Battalion of the London Regiment, was killed in action at Givenchy, France. This calamity came soon after the death of Dew’s mother Eliza, who had been living in Fulham, and passed away at St George’s Hospital at Hyde Park Corner on 21 September 1914. His father had died in 1884 of renal disease.

  In 1916 Dew was featured in a series of newspaper profiles of ‘The Twelve Greatest Detectives of the World’, which reviewed his career. Dew told the newspaper’s representative that being a detective ‘is the finest profession in the world, and if I could start life all over again I would rather be a detective than anything else’. The journalist described Dew’s appearance as follows:

  Mr Dew suggests the retired army officer rather than the detective. Imagine a man just above medium height, with a dark moustache, hair turning grey, a strong face tempered by a pair of kindly eyes, a clear-cut figure reminiscent of the barracks, and you have Mr Dew as he is to-day at the age of fifty-three. A major in mufti is as good a description as any. You will find many like him in the famous military clubs in West End London.5

  In 1920 the Crippen case was added to the series of Notable British Trials volumes. These excellent books contained transcriptions of the trials of famous criminals, with introductions to the cases and appendices. The editor, Filson Young, included Walter Dew in his acknowledgements, and he referred to receiving information about the case from Dew in his introduction. This included Dew telling Young that after searching 39 Hilldrop Crescent on 8 July in Crippen’s presence and finding nothing, the investigation ‘was to all intents and purposes finished’, indicating that if Crippen had not fled, then perhaps the murder of Cora Crippen might have remained a missing person case.6 Years later Dew contradicted this statement. His new version of events put him in a better light:

  Yet it has been stated in print that following the happenings of that day my inclination was to drop the inquiry on the ground that I was satisfied with the doctor’s explanation.

  What actually happened completely disproves any such suggestion.

  Next day – Saturday – one of the first things I did was to circulate a description of Mrs. Crippen as a missing person to every police station in London. I spent the remainder of the day on further inquiries, and on the Sunday occupied myself by analysing in detail the statement Dr. Crippen had made.

  As a final proof that I was far from satisfied, I went early on the Monday morning to Albion House with the object of seeing Crippen again.

  By now the Dews had moved again, to a house called ‘Hollywood’ at 3 Vincent Road, Croydon. On 15 July 1924 Dew’s youngest daughter Ethel married accountant Albert Martin at the parish church of St James in Croydon. It was in Croydon that Dew’s wife Kate died on 12 July 1927, from cancer, at the age of 61. One year after the death of his wife Dew moved house for the final time. He went to the southern coastal town of Worthing in West Sussex. Dew bought an attractive small bungalow at 10 Beaumont Road named ‘The Wee Hoose’. Ironically its previous inhabitants had been a family called Hawley. Dew retained the house’s name and shared the Wee Hoose with two women: a widow called Florence Idle (née Beadle), and her spinster sister-in-law Iris.7 On 10 December 1928 Dew married Florence, who was twelve years his junior, at Broadwater in Sussex.

  Although Dew would soon start writing on criminological matters, he admitted that he seldom read detective novels as he had seen too much of the real thing during his long career.8 In his retirement years Dew was occasionally consulted by newspapers and asked to give his views on the sensational events and crimes of the day. While he had always remained tight-lipped when approached by journalists during the Crippen case, he readily gave his opinions when asked during his retirement. Even decades after his retirement from the Metropolitan Police, the name of Dew was still recognised by the tabloid-reading public as being that of the man who had caught Crippen.

  In December 1926 the well-known author of detective stories Agatha Christie mysteriously disappeared. The newspapers made much of the disappearance of the writer, whose work was so closely associated with crime and mystery. The Sunday Express asked Dew what his opinion was of the incident, and he was forthcoming:

  Foul play is possible, but I do not think there has been foul play. It is just conceivable that she has been murdered, and that her body will soon be discovered, hidden, say, in some spot near the house, or perhaps where her car was found.

  Those who support this theory say that it must be the secret belief of the police, or they would not have carried out such a thorough search in the case of a missing woman. They point out that this is not usual in all cases of disappearance.

  Even if the missing woman is safe and well, and, as some think, laughing in hiding at the hullabaloo she has caused, I think the police are justified in the course they are taking. They would look ridiculous if they had given up on the search and the body of the woman – possibly murdered – were found subsequently.

  I cannot subscribe to the theory of foul play, however. I have had experience of one famous case of a woman’s disappearance – that of Belle Elmore – and of her murderer, Crippen. This case is altogether different.

  Agatha Christie has been writing detective stories, and one suggestion is that the publicity of a disappearance would be good for the sales of her books. That might be the view of an unknown actress out for publicity, but no clever woman novelist of her standing would believe that to disappear for publicity’s sake would be of service to her in her work.

  I reject the theory of voluntary disappearance for pecuniary advantage, as I do the murder theory.

  She may have had other motives for disappearing besides publicity, such as that of causing annoyance to some one else. That time may prove or disprove.

  I am content to accept loss of memory or hysteria as the likeliest reason for her absence.

  Agatha Christie is a woman whose work focussed her attention on crime and things sinister. She wrote detective stories, thought about crooks and murder all day, and possibly her subconscious brain was at work on these subjects all night.

  These reflections might affect the minds of strong men; even public executioners have gone crazy. Agatha Christie may have had other, possibly smaller, things than plotting novels to worry her. Those together may have brought on a condition of hysteria.

  All women are subject to hysteria at times. If Mrs Christie’s mind became hysterical she may
have gone wandering over the country, on and on, with the false strength of the half-demented, until she dropped in some spot miles away from where she is being sought now.

  She even may have found her way to London, or some other town.

  It is said there had been so much publicity that it would be impossible for her to hide in London. I do not believe it. London is still one of the easiest places in which to hide.9

  Dew had certainly hedged his bets over what had happened to Christie. The writer had indeed had other matters on her mind: her mother had recently died and she had also discovered that her husband Archibald had fallen in love with a friend’s secretary, named Nancy Neele. Christie had booked into a hotel in Harrogate under the name of Neele, and was recognised nine days after her disappearance. The Christies divorced in 1928.

  The year after Agatha Christie’s disappearance Dew was once again asked by the Sunday Express to comment on a headline-grabbing story. This time it was the murder of PC George Gutteridge on the Romford-to-Ongar road in Essex on 27 September. The murder was particularly shocking, as the killer had shot Gutteridge in the head several times, including in both eyes. James Berrett, whom Dew had worked with on the case of Conrad Harms eighteen years earlier, was investigating the case:

  Were the murderers of Police Constable Gutteridge, the Essex rural policeman who was shot dead in the lonely lane between Stapleford Abbots and Romford, desperate and experienced criminals, or were they comparatively inexperienced men, one of whom shot the constable under the nervous tension of fear and apprehension caused by his unexpected appearance and probable questions?

  Why were these men in the neighbourhood, and why did they stop their car in that lonely road just before dawn?

  These are the questions which present themselves to my mind in connection with this, the latest murder mystery, which the police have to unravel.

  I have no actual experience of this crime or of the clues which are being followed, but as an interested member of the public, and as one who has assisted to unravel many murder mysteries – from that of the notorious Dr. Crippen to many lesser-known ‘lights’ of crime – I feel inclined to put forward my own hypothesis of the probable cause of the crime.

  But, it must be remembered, it is only a hypothesis. I do not pose as an authority on this latest mystery, or even as one possessing any inside information.

  My theory, then, for what it is worth is this. We may assume that the murderers were out for robbery on a far more important scale than the mere theft of the car itself. Strangers would not travel to an obscure county town merely to steal a small car.

  Many large houses in the neighbourhood contain objects of considerable value, and one or more of these houses may have been the object of the projected raid. We will assume for the sake of argument, that it was either Lord Lambourne’s house, Bishop’s Hall, or that of a woman who is known to possess a valuable object of art.

  I do not believe that they stopped because the murdered constable called on them to do so. No desperate man in a car at night would be likely to stop for a pedestrian.

  My view is either that in the fog they missed a side turning – there is such a lane leading to Lord Lambourne’s house, I believe – or that they halted for some adjustment to the car.

  Then the constable came on the scene. He saw the stationary car and stopped to examine it. Possibly he recognised it.

  Again, his suspicions may have been aroused by the mere appearance or demeanour of the men in it.

  Whatever the reason he apparently thought that the circumstances warranted his taking a note of the car and the passengers.

  He stood well in the light of the lamps and pulled out his notebook and pencil to do so. Then some one shot him.

  He staggered, clutched at the car for support, and fell forward. The murderer or murderers realised that desperate circumstances needed desperate measures, turned him over on his back and shot him again twice, through the head. They wanted to make sure that he was dead. Then they fled.

  Why was the constable shot?

  Every sort of theory has been advanced, but mine is simply that he was shot by a man in a bad state of nerves, whose fears and apprehensions were doubled by the sudden appearance of a policeman and the production of a notebook.

  The murderer, I believe, was a young and possibly inexperienced man, jumpy and nervous, and so obsessed with the further crime which he and his companions had in view that the appearance of Police Constable Gutteridge acted on him like a shock.

  He shot the policeman in blind fear.

  This theory, is, I think, borne out by the fact that many criminals, particularly burglars, are in a highly nervous condition while they are committing their crimes.

  The public conception of the criminal as a man of callous, cold-steel nerves and unshakeable calm is by no means correct.

  He is often in a state of bine [sic] funk the whole time. I have known case after case of this description. I have even known men who had committed a burglary almost faint with fright when the policeman’s hand fell on their shoulders to arrest them.

  Crippen was one of the rare exceptions, but he was a man of great intellectual qualities and iron self-control.

  When I stepped aboard the ship to arrest him on his arrival in America, six months after he had committed his crime, I said, ‘Good morning, Dr. Crippen.’

  He replied, ‘Good morning inspector,’ but, although he must have known that I had come for him, he never flickered an eyelid. The only sign of emotion was that his Adam’s apple moved convulsively up and down, as though he was gulping.

  But I do not assume that the man or men in this case are criminals of the calibre of Dr. Crippen.10

  Early in 1928 two violent car thieves, Frederick Guy Browne and William Kennedy, were arrested. It had been Browne who had shot Gutteridge after he had stopped them in a stolen car but at their Old Bailey trial both were sentenced to death. They were executed on 31 May 1928.

  In 1929 Dew was interviewed by the Sunday Express and asked to give his views on the Croydon poisoning mystery which was enthralling the nation. Three members of the same family living in Birdhurst Rise had died from poisoning within a period of eleven months.11 The murders in Dew’s former home-town were never officially solved. The retired detective inspector had a great deal of sympathy for the Scotland Yard officers engaged on the case. Having been involved in perhaps the most famous poisoning case of all, Dew knew just what they had to contend with. His comments on the case contained echoes of his feelings towards the Whitechapel murders and the Crippen case:

  Scotland Yard – in the Croydon poison mystery – is faced with a problem which might have been staged by the creator of Sherlock Holmes, and it is a problem which will require the assistance of a good many Dr. Watsons, if it is to be solved.

  Poison is elusive – particularly so far as a criminal investigation is concerned. The bullet or the knife finds its mark, but must leave behind the source of its origin, and therefore provide a clue to the murderer – a clue which incidentally seldom fails to reveal the culprit.

  The poisoner, however, is the most difficult murderer with whom the police have to contend. He is subtle and cunning, and he is aided by the fact that his crime is rendered comparatively easy.

  The victim may be attacked in a thousand different ways. I believe, in fact, it is on record that a subtle poison has even been impregnated into a glove, by which means the person who wore it met with an untimely death.

  Now, what is the problem which presents itself to Scotland-yard? The accusing finger has failed to point itself to any particular individual.

  The coroner, in his particular careful analysis of the cases to the juries, bore on the point that it might be ‘this, that, or the other person’ who had committed the crimes.

  And as there was not a scrap of evidence to point to a murderer or a suggestion of motive the verdicts do not help the police in the slightest.

  One is tempted to the conclusion, however, t
hat one hand must have been responsible for the deaths of all three members of the family.

  Whose hand then? Assuming that since at the inquests no new facts have come into the possession of the detectives in charge of the case, then, indeed, it looks as if the police are faced with such an unfathomable mystery that no blame could possibly be attached to them if it passed into the lists of unsolved crimes.

  The public little dream of the enormous amount of work entailed in endeavouring to solve such a mystery as this – of the heartbreaking disappointments in following clues which breathe success, and which are shattered after sleepless nights of investigation.

  In all cases of poisoning, however, the chief difficulty is to prove, not that the person was poisoned, but that the accused person possessed the poison, had the opportunity and actually administered it.

  The apparent absence of motive in the Croydon case might lead to the supposition that the crimes have been the work of some person with the poison mind – that mysterious individual who kills without motive or idea of gain.

  We shall see.12

  In May 1936 Dew wrote an article for Thomson’s Weekly Newspaper after the murder by strangulation of two young women in the Soho district of London. Dew dismissed the suggestion that the murders were part of a series, like the Jack the Ripper murders. He said that murders of this kind occurred periodically among women ‘of a Bohemian character [who] invite strange men sometimes to their rooms or flats’.

  While Dew did not think a serial killer was at large in Soho, he did digress and recall the cases of two multiple murderers. His thoughts on them may give some further indication of the type of person he thought his old adversary Jack the Ripper may have been:

  Personally, I have never come in contact with a person of weak intellect who committed murders on a wholesale scale.

  There have been a series of murders committed by one individual in the past.