Dr Crippen in the dock

CHRISTOPHER BRAY

Story of a Murder By Hallie Rubenhold Doubleday £25 It is 79 years since George Orwell wrote Decline of the English Murder. Orwell dissected those 'murders whose story is known in its general outline to almost everyone and which have been made into novels and rehashed over and over again by the Sunday papers'. Yet those same cases – Dr Crippen, Jack the Ripper – are still being retold. A few years ago Hallie Rubenhold's The Five gave us a feminist take on the Whitechapel killings. Now, in Story of a Murder, she takes on the Crippen case. Crippen's story is quickly told. Michigan-born, Crippen was a quack homeopath who fetched up in London in 1897 at the age of 33. His wife, Belle, was a music-hall singer of Polish…

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The Oldie (Digital) - 1 Issue, April 2025

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