When Crippen's legal team contested his conviction in November 1910, five grounds for the appeal were set out. These included discontinuity in jury scrutiny (one of the jurors had briefly been taken ill at an early stage of the trial, thus missing a portion of the proceedings); two substantive points regarding the forensic evidence and the disputed scar; and the suggestion that the identity of the remains at 39 Hilldrop Crescent remained unestablished. The appeal was prefaced with an objection that bears closely on the current chapter: it held that Crippen's right to a fair trial had been jeopardised by sensational and speculative press coverage which had recklessly linked his name with known criminals of notorious memory. Even before the prisoner had returned to England to face trial, certain newspapers with mass circulation ‘published false and misleading evidence about him, actually alleging in the most precise and detailed manner that he had confessed to having murdered his wife – one newspaper classing him with a number of well-known Murderers, who have long since been executed’.

This chapter will detail just how sound was the basis for this claim. Crippen was indeed associated in that summer and autumn of 1910 with a lineage of criminal forebears. His case was effectively characterised as an Edwardian manifestation of an older criminological pattern. The appeal's claim that journalism was a central force in this process is surely true, but it is not the entirety of the picture. Police communications at the start of the manhunt summoned an atmosphere of sensation reminiscent of the Ripper crimes; press coverage of the fugitives’ flight and capture saw frequent evocation of poisoners past; Crippen's own trial defence and certain of his actions and writings evoked gothic sensation and criminal romance; finally, the dedicated criminological section of a popular waxworks emporium enlisted Crippen amongst the ranks of notorious criminals of the past one hundred years, indelibly fixing Crippen in memory.

Murder, Mutilation and Mesmerism

The first classic crimes to be recalled were the Ripper murders. As we have seen, the association of the Crippen and Ripper crimes was forged from the outset by some curious coincidences of police personnel, with both Walter Dew and Melville Macnaghten closely involved in both investigations.