Pod Insights British Scandal The Notorious Dr Crippen | Why Belle Still Gets Blamed | 4 About this episode Historian Hallie Rubenhold has spent years dissecting the case of Hawley Harvey Crippen and she's here to clear a few things up.
Hallie tells Alice and Matt why she believes there's no real doubt about his guilt, the twisted reason why his victim, Belle Elmore ended up cast as a villain, and why true crime fans are still buying into the myth.
And his mistress, Ethel Le Neve? Hallie says her role in the crime deserves a closer look.
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Transcript 6,282 words · 10 speakers
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0:00 Alice Levine? Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of British Scandal ad-free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app.
0:10 Alice Levine? I'm Alice Levine.
0:11 Matt Forde? And I'm Matt Ford.
0:13 Alice Levine? And this is British Scandal, an Audible original.
0:27 Alice Levine? So, Matt, in summary, we've met Dr. Crippen, found a corpse, followed him and his typist over the Atlantic, heard him deny murdering his wife, and then he got hanged. What have you learned?
0:37 Matt Forde? Oh, a number of things. Stick with the NHS, stick with my wife, stick with my natural teeth.
0:44 Alice Levine? And are you an all-time stan of Inspector Dhu?
0:49 Matt Forde? I do question some of his choices. I mean, dressing up as Sherlock Holmes while undercover on a boat wasn't his greatest moment, but all things considered, he caught Crippen. Yes, I'm a fan.
1:00 Alice Levine? A shining star in the force. But telling the story, I think you will agree, opened up a lot of questions, not a straightforward one, one of them being, are we 100% sure that Crippen actually did it, was Dhu right? So I thought we could enlist an expert who knows this story probably better than anyone else in the whole world. We're speaking to historian and author Hallie Rubenhold after this.
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1:57 Speaker 03 Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of American History Tellers. In our latest series, US Army Lieutenant Adolphus Greeley and 24 other men embark on a scientific expedition to the Arctic in 1881. But despite achieving several triumphs of discovery, the men will soon face tragedy. Listen to American History Tellers on Audible or wherever you get your podcasts.
2:22 Alice Levine? So I have to ask, what got you interested in the Crippen case in the first place?
2:27 Speaker 04 Well, it's such an interesting story and it occurred just at this time in both the history of Britain and the United States, where everything was really sort of at this point of change. And this whole case seems to reflect this, this sort of exciting moment, you know, just before the First World War, when people felt very positive about the future, about technology, about scientific discoveries, all of these things happening, and rights for women, and social change. This crime, and looking at this crime is a really good way of taking the temperature of what this era was about.
3:10 Matt Forde? I know I'm diving in very early with this, but do you think Crippen murdered his wife?
3:15 Speaker 04 There's no doubt that Crippen murdered his wife. Why would you ask that?
3:20 Matt Forde? Well, because, you know, some people, not me, but other people, may say that, you know, there's sort of elements of doubt hung over it.
3:28 Speaker 04 There was never any doubt that hung over it. There was never any doubt. A jury of his peers found him guilty in less than 30 minutes. The evidence was overwhelming. They found his pyjama jacket wrapped around the remains in the gravesite. Actually, there was so much evidence, I would suggest that anybody who ever said, "Oh, there's some doubt", and I know the history behind this, I know why people say, "Oh, well, there is some doubt", this is because in 1920, Alexander Bell Filson Young wrote an introductory essay
4:06 Speaker 04 to the trial transcripts of the Crippen trial, and he made Bell Elmore into this monster, and he turned Crippen and Ethel into these kind of poor pathetic characters, and suggests that Crippen was driven to kill his wife because he was such a nice man, and a nice man couldn't have done this. Alexander Bell Filson Young was an extraordinary misogynist, and stated before he even wrote this, and this was, I mean, in 1910, when they were fleeing on the Montrose, that no matter what Crippen and Ethel had done...
4:49 Speaker 04 Their love was the most important thing and should be respected. Killing another human being was less important than romantic love. This is the position that he's coming from. So he invents this absurd notion that Crippen was bullied by his wife, which he wasn't. Every single thing that was written from that point on referenced Filson Young's story and built a fiction on top of this, that he was somehow this little harmless man. And his wife was this terrible, shrewish, unfaithful alcoholic.
5:30 Speaker 04 I have done four years of research and I have absolutely no evidence of any of this. And to the contrary, I have found tons of evidence that Crippen was a fraudster, was a practiced con man and a criminal and highly capable of killing his wife.
5:51 Alice Levine? And what do you think it tells us about wider society? That rewriting of the narrative and the eagerness of people to accept it?
6:01 Speaker 04 Because people want to believe that women push men to kill them. And really, that has been with us from, you know, the beginning of time. You know, people want to believe that Eve was the one who tempted Adam. Women make men do terrible things. Well, I don't think so. I think we're all human beings and men are completely capable of making their own decisions. They don't need women to tempt them into things. And so this is just, you know, something that plays out really well. And unfortunately, a lot of people have bought into this because people don't question true crime. A crime that happened in the past is a historical event and should be interrogated as a historical event.
6:46 Speaker 04 You know, it's not just a good story to tell.
6:50 Matt Forde? So you think as well as the underlying misogyny, that there's an issue with effectively the genre of true crime creating a sort of illicit thrill around alternative narratives around all sorts of criminal cases?
7:02 Speaker 04 Well, one of the problems is with historical true crime in particular is a kind of, you know, it's a freeze frame of an era and an era's values. The way it's reported, the way it's prosecuted and defended is about an era's values. And all of those values tend to be kind of frozen in aspect, and that aspect is newspaper reports. You know, the newspapers reflect back to us what we want to see. They reflect ourselves back to us and our own values. So if we're talking about a crime that happened in 1910, what we're just doing, if we don't ask questions about who's telling this story, we are parroting back the values of 1910.
7:45 Speaker 04 And we're all familiar with what the values of 1910 were, you know, and they're not very savoury in 2026.
7:52 Alice Levine? To move on from who's writing the narrative, it's also interesting to look at whose point of view we're looking at these stories from. Your area of interest is the women in these stories. Why are the victims of murders always such a minor part in the narrative?
8:08 Speaker 04 Well, you know, that's a really interesting question. Again, it's about how we tell these stories because we are fascinated more with the killer than we are with the weaker party, as it's believed, who just happened to get caught up in the killer's machinery. We are fascinated with the psychology of the killer. We're fascinated with the idea that a killer can outsmart ordinary people, that a killer is sometimes superhuman. I think, you know, the focus is on the killer because the killer is... Thought to be extraordinary, whereas the victims are very ordinary. And sometimes,
8:51 Speaker 04 you know, the way in which the narrative is always spun is that the victims had to have done something to have asked for it. So they were deserving of it. So they're less deserving of being remembered. And, you know, this is completely untrue.
9:05 Matt Forde? Do you think part of it, as well as, you know, the different power dynamics playing out around gender and class and race and everything, is that there is something in human nature that in a way wants to understand killers so that we can avoid getting killed ourselves?
9:20 Speaker 04 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that plays a huge role in it. And I think this particularly speaks to this very female interest in true crime. Women listen to true crime. They're drawn to true crime. There are all sorts of statistics that show, you know, that women listen to true crime podcasts, they read true crime books and watch documentaries. There is a desire to actually see who this type of person is and how we can avoid them.
9:49 Alice Levine? I have to say, we've done it. We've fallen into the perpetrator trap. This series is called The Notorious Dr. Crippen and not The Murder of Belle Crippen. The women are victims and lovers. I feel like I want to know so much more about them. What can you tell us, Hallie, about Belle Crippen?
10:07 Speaker 04 Well, first of all, I call her Belle Elmore in my book because that's how she chose to be known. Her name was Cora Crippen. She had a number of different names. She changed her name throughout her life. Her stage name was Belle Elmore, and that's how her friends knew her, and that's how she wanted to be remembered. I think she's quite an extraordinary person, really. She was born to immigrant parents into a kind of Polish-German family in Brooklyn in the 1880s and grew up in a tenement and got a pretty good education, education for Americans at that time, much better than what was available here. And so she grew up and And about the age of sixteen seventeen, went to work and worked as a domestic servant.
10:52 Speaker 04 And we don't know exactly what happened, but she ended up getting pregnant by the man who employed her. And um and his wife at the time was in an insane asylum. Um. He had put her there, so God knows he has an interesting past with women. Belle ended up having an abortion and her abortion doctor, and abortion was legal at the time, was actually Dr. Crippen and a colleague of his. And weirdly, the relationship between them blossomed from there. Crippen had only recently become a widower. His wife Charlotte died under mysterious circumstances in Salt Lake City. And they were quickly married.
11:36 Speaker 04 They were not very well suited to one another. Belle had a very vivacious personality. I mean, she was a performer and she was much younger than him. And he decided he didn't want any children. And so he had her sterilized. He had her ovaries removed when she was about twenty one. And I mean, that's pretty shocking because if you're a woman in the Victorian era, the one thing you are told you're supposed to be is a mother and a wife, and she couldn't be a mother. So as a real testament to who she was, she could have really wilted under that major disappointment in her life. And instead, she decided to reinvent herself as an opera singer.
12:20 Speaker 04 And she took opera lessons and she fashioned herself into an opera singer. And then when they moved to London, she decided to uh again reinvent herself as a musical performer. Because that part of her life didn't take off. She didn't become as successful, famous as she wanted. She then threw herself into charity work and became the treasurer of the Musical Ladies Guild and devoted her life to fundraising for poor women and children in the music hall and raised an enormous amount of money and to the point where she was actually recognised by the Musical Ladies Guild. And there was a a big celebration held in her honour and there were photos of her in the newspaper.
13:05 Matt Forde? What do you think she saw in Crippen?
13:07 Speaker 04 I think she saw. A man who had all the makings of what would be an ideal husband in the Victorian era. So, you know, Crippen may not be too appealing to women today. I mean, at least I hope he isn't appealing to women today. But he was cosmopolitan, he was educated, he was a doctor, therefore he would, you know, earn a good salary and a good income. And for young women who were of the working class or lower middle class, this was a pretty steady man. And women were looking for steady men because women didn't technically have careers. They weren't supposed to.
13:50 Speaker 04 So they saw Crippen as a quite a nice looking meal ticket.
13:55 Alice Levine? And would that have been an unusual pairing in Edwardian times? A music hall star and a doctor?
14:01 Speaker 04 Not in the least. In fact, there were many such combinations. When they lived on Store Street, there was another couple who they knew, who were also similar in their match. Musical performers could lead completely normal lives. I mean, they often led bohemian lives as well, and they were noted for that. And people were always rather suspicious of performers and their so-called morality as well, and the raucy lives that they led. But a lot of them, you know, lived in the suburbs, like the Crippens did.
14:36 Matt Forde? How was Belle portrayed in the media after she disappeared?
14:40 Speaker 04 Well, she wasn't portrayed in the media after she disappeared. She was portrayed in the media after her remains were uncovered. Because Scotland Yard was not interested in investigating her disappearance. And in fact, it took her friends at the Musical Ladies Guild months before they could get Inspector Dhu interested at all in investigating this case. Because, you know, here's this musical floozy, as they would think. And God knows what these people get up to. And she's probably run off with somebody or she's gone somewhere. And she probably hasn't really disappeared. And then it was down to the Musical Ladies Guild to actually start the investigation.
15:24 Speaker 04 They hired a private investigator. So nobody really cared that she had disappeared. The media only started to care once her body had been uncovered, or parts of her body had been uncovered.
15:37 Alice Levine? The Guild's proactivity is really incredible.
15:40 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, it is. Again, this speaks to this really damaging lie that has always been put out about Belle Elmore by Phil Sin Young and others, which is, oh, nobody liked Belle Elmore. You know, she was just a rotten piece of work. She was just, you know, disgusting, useless, nasty woman. She had no friends. That's completely untrue. The women of the musical Ladies Guild fought for her. They adored her. They loved her. They were her friends. And they took every aspect of this case to the furthest point it could go. I
16:21 Speaker 04 mean, they didn't even let it rest after the trial. They wanted to make sure that Ethel didn't inherit any of Belle's personal belongings through Crippen. And so they had the law changed, inheritance law in Britain changed. They paid for Belle's funeral. They testified at the trial. They testified at the coroner's inquest. They, you know, sacrificed their own health to help their friend. Many of them found this really, really traumatic and had to take time off work. You know, it cannot be underestimated just how loved she was and just what lengths these women went to to ensure that justice was met.
17:06 Alice Levine? It's really amazing. We should talk about Ethel then, because you sort of can't talk about Belle, really, without talking about Ethel.
17:13 Speaker 04 Yeah.
17:13 Alice Levine? She was young. She was naive. I think we can all agree. She had terrible taste in men. Do you have any sense of who she was beyond this scandal?
17:23 Speaker 04 Ethel is such a complex and fascinating person and was absolutely intertwined in this crime in every way. As much as Belle has been depicted as this kind of herodan, Ethel has been portrayed as her foil, really like this meek.
17:42 Speaker 04 Wilting Violet, and she, just like Belle, she was nothing like that. Ethel was as strong of a character as Belle was. But she learned how to play into the Edwardian expectations of being a meek and quiet little woman who stared at her shoes and did what she was told. Ethel came from an impoverished background, much like Belle as well. And she was born in Dis in Norfolk, in a, basically a two-room cottage with a dirt floor. And her father, who had some foresight, he was quite progressive, which is
18:23 Speaker 04 pretty amazing for a Victorian man, decided that his children were going to make something out of their lives in the way that he had, because he was a railway clerk. And it meant that he had a slightly better life than everyone who came before him, who were agricultural labourers. And so he took his kids to London, he took his family to London. And he put his daughters into secretarial college, which was, as I said, quite progressive for the eighteen nineties. And it allowed Ethel and her sister to enter into white collar work. They didn't have to be shop girls or domestic servants or work in a factory. By this means, they were able to make, well, it was believed that they would be able to make good marriages.
19:08 Speaker 04 Ethel was, I hate to use this term, but she was very avaricious. There's nothing wrong with wanting a better quality of life, which she did want. But even her parents described her as very materialistic, quite covetous, quite secretive, quite jealous. And all of these things kind of turn up later in life when she's with Crippen. And I think, to be honest, the two of them bring out the worst in each other. And it was a kind of perfect match. Really, if he had never met Ethel, Belle Elmore would have died of natural causes, I'm sure of it.
19:46 Matt Forde? And did Crippen really get her new teeth?
19:49 Speaker 04 Yeah, he did. I mean, this was some weird thing. You know, Crippen was a homeopathist. And first of all, Ethel was a hypochondriac, and even her children in later life commented that Ethel was a hypochondriac. Crippen, as a homeopath, thought that the way of curing Ethel's neuralgia was to remove her teeth. This must have been common practice, because I can't imagine that he just invented this as a cure for that. But yeah, she did have false teeth, but so did a lot of people. You know, dental bills were expensive and people had their teeth extracted sometimes before they got married, so they wouldn't have the added expense of paying for dental bills. If you just have dentures, you don't have to worry about tooth decay.
20:35 Alice Levine? Easy breezy.
20:36 Speaker 04 Yeah.
20:37 Alice Levine? The guilt of Crippen, as discussed, should be under no question, but should we have any question marks around Ethel?
20:44 Speaker 04 Oh, we should absolutely have question marks around Ethel. I mean, Ethel was acquitted, and her barrister gave the most extraordinary speech about this innocent girl who was seduced by this kind of Svengali and was completely ignorant of everything and was helpless. And, you know, all the evidence pointed to exactly the opposite. I mean, Ethel was absolutely involved in this. She knew this was going to happen. Crippen bought her an engagement ring, which she hid away and she showed her landlady, Emily Jackson, who she was quite close with. But other than that, she kept it hidden away until the week before Crippen
21:29 Speaker 04 murdered Belle. And then she brought it out at her birthday party and showed everybody that she was engaged and she was getting married, but she wouldn't say to whom. But the timing was quite amazing because Crippen at that point was buying the hyacinth hydrobromide. So obviously she knew what was going on. She had this total nervous breakdown about Belle Elmore around the time of her murder. I have no doubt that she was there. She would not have been there during the poisoning, but she would have been there for the cleanup because Crippen couldn't have done it himself and he couldn't have done it in that short span of time and he would have needed Ethel's help. And there
22:10 Speaker 04 was plenty of evidence of some pretty extreme cleaning going on in the wake of this murder. You know, the dustmen were all interviewed and said they were taking away piles and piles of ashes, which both Crippen and Ethel were burning in the garden at Hill Drop Crescent.
22:28 Alice Levine? Wowee.
22:29 Speaker 04 Yeah.
22:30 Matt Forde? What happened to Ethel after the Crippen trial?
22:34 Speaker 04 Actually, interestingly, this was the part of writing my book that I thought I was going to find quite dull. And in fact, I found quite fascinating because Ethel tries to reinvent herself. And it's kind of hard to reinvent yourself when you were once the most scarlet woman in the world. She was in every newspaper around the world as this woman who ran off with with Crippen. And she changed her name to Ethel Harvey. And she had to go back to being a lady typist again. But I think there was something about this murder, this period of her life, which was the most awful and also the most exciting thing ever to have happened to her. And also, you know, she's carrying the burden of what
23:17 Speaker 04 she knew with her in secret. And she goes and tries to move to Canada and she has a nervous breakdown when she's in Toronto, literally has an episode of what is called dissociative amnesia, which is when you can't even remember who you are. Apparently, this is quite common with people who have committed murder.
23:42 Speaker 04 And she was carrying a lot of stuff with her and then has to return to England, lives with her sister for a while and just is in a state of complete nervous collapse, has a total nervous breakdown, can't even leave her room. And eventually she gets better. She has several episodes of paranoia where she believes people are trailing her, where she believes the police are going to come and arrest her at any moment. Bearing in mind, she also stole money from Belle's bank account. She posed as Belle Elmore and took about nearly £200 out of a bank account, drained a bank account. You know, this was a profound act of fraud, which would have seen her in prison doing hard labour.
24:21 Speaker 04 Ethel never, ever forgets this, but at the same time, eventually quietly just disappears into anonymity and becomes Ethel Smith. She marries a man called Stanley Smith, lives in South London, and every once in a while pops up to give an interview, which is so odd about her life, until her children get too old and would figure out what was going on. And then she never says anything again. It's such a weird coda to this story.
24:54 Alice Levine? That's extraordinary, isn't it, to just never talk about it ever again?
24:57 Speaker 04 Yeah.
24:58 Alice Levine? If you could correct one misconception, of which I imagine there are many, about the Crippen case, what would it be?
25:05 Speaker 04 The only misconception that seems to be in the ether is this idea that somehow the remains found in the basement of Hilltop Crescent were not Belle's. That is just, it's rubbish. In the back of my book, there is an appendix, and Professor Turi King, who was involved in the identification of the Richard III remains, has looked at the white paper produced by this scientist in Michigan in, I believe it was 2007, who had tested a skin sample that had remained. From the remains that were taken out of Hilltop Crescent and somehow miraculously
25:43 Speaker 04 found that the DNA seemed to indicate that this was neither a female body nor was it of any relation to Belle Elmore. And Professor King looked at this and said, the white paper doesn't make sense. You know, the techniques they used are not the normal techniques that would have been used for the identification of this. Not only that, but if you pour bleach on a gravesite on remains, you're going to break down the DNA. You're not going to be able to get a reliable test sample from it. So the very idea of even going back and testing these remains, and there was no doubt that Crippen was guilty, but it's been a kind
26:24 Speaker 04 of legacy of misogyny that has led to this point. And the absurdity of this is that the result of these spurious test results is that we've now got to the point in the story where we've turned Crippen into the victim and Belle into the killer because she was then questioned for, well, why didn't she come forward and stop his execution? You know, she was alive. That wasn't her body in the basement. She's the killer. He's the victim. Ridiculous.
27:00 Alice Levine? Some incredible mental gymnastics, isn't it?
27:02 Speaker 04 But, you know, I mean, it starts with women hatred. It starts with a desire to turn a woman who was bold and strong and outspoken into a villain. And about a hundred years later, this is the sort of apotheosis of that. You know, this is the apex of that. That's where we get to.
27:26 Alice Levine? And you won't be surprised to hear that this is a theme of. Almost all British scandals, actually.
27:33 Speaker 04 Really?
27:34 Alice Levine? It just comes up over and over again, this sort of attempt to villainize the women at the centre of these stories who clearly have been victimized.
27:44 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, it's really interesting. But, you know, having said that, I mean, it's a really important thing to point out also, that, you know, although women have been victimized, it doesn't mean that women can also be villains, you know.
27:56 Alice Levine? Well, yeah, there's lots of rotten ones, for goodness sake, Hallie.
27:58 Speaker 04 Absolutely, and I think that Ethel is one of them. And I think Ethel should be known for her involvement in this murder. Ethel shouldn't have been acquitted.
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30:18 Matt Forde? OK, let's think about the policing for a moment.
30:20 Speaker 04 Sure.
30:21 Matt Forde? Do you think, with what he had, Inspector Dew did a good job?
30:26 Speaker 04 I suppose, yeah, he did. I mean, I think he made some errors. First of all, I think one of the major errors with this was they should have pursued Ethel. There was so much evidence that Ethel was guilty, and they just decided not to pursue it because they wanted Crippen. They figured this was the sort of crime a man would commit. You know, get rid of his wife so he can be with the young mistress. Let's not overcomplicate it. Let's not get her involved. And so, you know, a decision was taken to separate out the two trials. And the DPP eventually decided, you know, Ethel isn't that important. We'll just go for Crippen, you know, with the evidence they had. But that whole process really started with Dew and really started with the way in which he treated Ethel.
31:11 Speaker 04 There is this one moment, which I just think is just anybody who watches crime stories on television, who reads them, who's in any way involved with policing, will look at this one error that Inspector Dew made and just kind of facepalm. Because after going to Hilltop Crescent, And meeting Ethel at the door and then questioning her about whether Crippen was there. No, they decide to go down to the office at Albion House. And Ethel says, oh, can I call him on the phone and tell him you're coming? And he said, absolutely not, because he didn't want her to warn him that the police were on the way. And then, you know, they go down together.
31:53 Speaker 04 And then as they get close to Albion House, Ethel says, oh, oh, I don't think he's here. He's probably at the office in Kingsway and tries to get them not to go into the office and still. Ju says, no, let's go into the office. And then they get to the foot of the stairs at Albion House. And Ethel says, oh, um, I should just go up and warn him that you're coming. Now, there are a number of accounts of what happened, I mean, kind of two accounts of what happened. And in Inspector Ju's memoirs, he said, he let her go and tell Crippen that the police were there. So, you know, she could forewarn him after trying to stop her from doing that all the way through. And in another version, he says that she escaped from him and basically charged up the stairs
32:39 Speaker 04 and warned Crippen that they were coming. That, I mean, was a catastrophic error because they had obviously between the two of them. It's so obvious in the statements they give and everything they say from that point on was so well rehearsed. And it was like, okay, pull the emergency lever, you know, the police have arrived. Let's do this. And they were concerted in their responses and everything they did and they said from that point. God, I mean, he should never have let her run up those stairs.
33:11 Alice Levine? That is just a schoolboy error.
33:13 Speaker 04 Really?
33:14 Alice Levine? It feels like the Crippen case was very new age compared to something like Jack the Ripper, which considering it's only 20 years later is a huge leap. So international manhunt, new tech, forensics. Did this sort of signal the arrival of modern policing?
33:30 Speaker 04 Well, I think modern policing was in a state of evolution. I don't think there's any one point where modern policing arrives. It's in a state of constant flux and refining and changing. Obviously Scotland Yard, the police are getting better resourced. Technology comes in, it makes things a bit easier. But also the police respond to the law and the laws that are passed and how those laws are implemented. So I don't think there was anything particularly tricky about this case, other than the fact that one thing that this case is very famous for is of course the use of Marconi wireless. And Inspector Ju getting on the Lorentic and beating them into port.
34:16 Speaker 04 And in that sense, it is, you know, that is quite modern, that is quite a step forward. But I think that's more of an accident. It wasn't something which profoundly changed policing.
34:26 Alice Levine? And do you think that the public had already decided Crippen was guilty before the trial started?
34:31 Speaker 04 Yes, I believe that the public thought that Crippen probably was guilty. Most of the coverage seemed to indicate that if your wife goes missing and then some remains are found in your basement in a state of decomposition, that's kind of a no brainer.
34:48 Matt Forde? Let's move on to the legacy of Crippen and the trial and the crimes. Do you think men are effectively always going to be the protagonists when retelling the stories of past murders?
34:58 Speaker 04 Men won't always be the protagonists. However, in this case, all the lawyers who were involved in the case, you had Inspector Ju, you had members of the press, all sorts of people, even performers, writing their memoirs and writing about their interactions with Crippen, what they thought of him, how they judged him, what the experience was like being involved in the trial, what the experience was like of the manhunt, all of these things. So, you know, this is all very much told from a male perspective. But that's very, very unique to this particular case.
35:36 Alice Levine? So why do you think it is that as the years go on, we forget the grisliness of these murders and cases like Crippen? And it becomes so much more titillating, like on British scandal, we don't really cover murders, but we do cover murders from 100 years ago.
35:53 Speaker 04 I think there seems to be enough distance between ourselves in the past. It's something that we do as human beings, you know, we tend to kind of disassociate from things that we can't immediately relate to. It feels distant and therefore we perhaps have less empathy, less ability to connect. I think if we pause and really think about it, then that changes. When we're dealing with historical murder, I think that's a really important thing to do because these people are still people. And, you know, how we respond to death and tragedy and stories of death and tragedy really says something about us as human beings.
36:33 Matt Forde? You know so much about how criminals cover their tracks after committing terrible crimes, so you know all the tricks of the trade. So would you be the ideal criminal?
36:44 Speaker 04 No.
36:48 Speaker 04 Absolutely not, no.
36:50 Alice Levine? That's exactly what the perfect criminal would say.
36:54 Speaker 04 No, I wouldn't get very far because I'm married to a King's Counsel criminal lawyer and he would sniff me out instantly.
37:01 Alice Levine? Or defend you.
37:02 Speaker 04 Oh, no, no, he's far too principled.
37:05 Matt Forde? For money?
37:07 Speaker 04 Not in criminal law.
37:08 Alice Levine? You've got all the answers, haven't you, Hallie? This is very stuff. Thank you so much for talking to us about this. It's completely fascinating and it's been brilliant to have you on.
37:18 Speaker 04 You're welcome.
37:23 Alice Levine? Matt, my love, my life, what do you have for me next time?
37:27 Matt Forde? Okay, I want you to think crowns, think banquets, think big time squabbles.
37:32 Alice Levine? My 30th birthday.
37:35 Matt Forde? You need to go back a little further, although that was very long ago. You need to go back to when England and Scotland were separate kingdoms.
37:43 Alice Levine? No comment.
37:44 Matt Forde? So I have for you the most exciting fight for the throne in British history, the battle between two queens, Elizabeth I and her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots.
37:54 Alice Levine? Oh my God, this is such a great story. And then, of course, it ends with a buffet.
37:58 Matt Forde? Right, don't ruin it.
37:59 Alice Levine? Ah, okay, don't bite my head off, ding. From Audible Originals and Samus Audio, this is the fourth and final episode in our series, The Notorious Dr. Crippen. British Scandal is hosted by me, Alice Levine.
38:12 Matt Forde? And me, Matt Ford. For Samizdat, our series producer was Chika Ayers. Our assistant producer was Louise Mason. Our senior producers were Joe Sykes and Dash Alisit Sina. Our engineer was Jai Williams. Executive producers for Audible were Theodora Leludis and Destel Doyle.
38:36 Speaker 07 Hi, I'm Kenya Barris.
38:37 Speaker 08 And I'm Malcolm Gladwell. We're back for season two of our Audible original podcast, The Unusual Suspects.
38:43 Speaker 07 We're bringing you fresh, new conversations from guests like Anderson Paak, Davis Zedares, Ryan Howard, Rich Roll, Amy Sheldon, and many more.
38:49 Speaker 08 Sign up for a free trial to Audible to listen to season two in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.
38:57 Speaker 09 Dr. Seuss's Cat in the Hat and Fish are back for a whole lot of wonderfully whimsical fun. What happens when you switch bodies with your best friend? Discover a caveman frozen in ice? Or make an alien so angry he threatens to destroy the planet? Find out in season two of the Cat in the Hat podcast. The Cat and Fish are traveling the world in the great catastrophic cacophony cruiser, meeting genies, clown professors, cave trolls, and extraordinary characters along the way. With clever wordplay, imaginative rhymes, original songs, and stories celebrating curiosity, empathy, and creative problem solving, every adventure brings something new to discover.
39:39 Speaker 09 It's a world of wonderful words, big imaginations, and plenty of heart for the whole family. Listen to the Cat in the Hat podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all 20 episodes early and ad-free right now.
Previous The Notorious Dr Crippen | Devil's Breath | 3 Next An Exciting Announcement from Alice and Matt | 5 Page updated October 30, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated