Recommended reading

In 1910, there were no rules governing the interviewing of potential suspects by the police; they did not have to be cautioned, and there was no obligation on the part of the police to offer a suspect the opportunity to be assisted by a lawyer (St. Johnston, 1966). When Crippen gave his statement to Inspector Dew, he had not been cautioned or arrested, and he did not have a solicitor present during the interview. If Crippen had been assisted by a solicitor, might his narrative to Inspector Dew have been different? What conclusion can we draw about the impact that the fi rst statement to the police has on the way in which a case develops and concludes?

Recommended reading

Undoubtedly the best account of Crippen’s trial is in Filson Young’s book Hawley Harvey Crippen published in 1920 as part of William Hodge’s Notable Trials series. It includes the transcript of the trial prepared by shorthand note takers at the Old Bailey which, while not including every word that was said, captured almost everything. A digital copy of the book is available at: https:// arch ive.org/ deta ils/ tri alof hawl eyha r00c ripi ala . For a useful overview of types of inconsistency in testimony and their eff ects on judgements of witness accuracy by police, lawyers and mock jurors, see Potter and Brewer (1999) .

Notes

1 Hawley Harvey Crippen, quoted in Young, 1920 : 103. 2 Although in court the victim was always named as ‘Cora Crippen’, for consistency with our preceding narrative we will continue to refer to her as ‘Belle Elmore’. 3 This was an example of using a story to present the evidence (see Chapter 2 ). 4 In very small doses, hyoscine hydrobromide is used to prevent travel sickness. 5 See Chapter 1 and the overview of Bennett and Feldman’s (1981) model of the requirements for establishing guilt. Like many lawyers, Muir did not explicitly refer to that framework, but his narrative covered all of the elements in the model. 6 The judge in this case was Richard Webster (Lord Alverstone) who was the Lord Chief

Justice of England. He directed the proceedings and also intervened from time to time to clarify the information being given by witnesses. 7 In 1910, juries were still all male. Women were only allowed to serve as jurors after 1919 ( Crosby, 2017 ). 8 Ethel Le Neve was put on trial at the Old Bailey on 25 October 1910, one week later than Crippen, for ‘being an accessory after the fact in the murder of Cora Crippen’.

Lord Alverstone and Richard Muir reprised their roles as judge and prosecution barrister, respectively, while Le Neve was defended by Frederick Smith. Le Neve did not take the stand, and in fact the defence called no witnesses. In less than a day, Le Neve was acquitted of the charge and released (see Young (1920 ) for a transcript of the proceedings). After

Crippen’s execution, she moved to Canada for three years, returned to London as ‘Ethel

Harvey’ and in 1915 married Stanley Smith. As Ethel Smith, she lived in anonymity in

East Croydon for the rest of her life, dying at the age of 84 in 1967. See: https:// web. archive.org/ web/ 20131029210448/ http:// www.drcrippen.co.uk/ whoswho/ ethel_ le_ neve.html

9 It is important to note that the term ‘witness’ describes everybody who takes the stand in a trial, including defendants – such as Crippen – who choose to give evidence in support of their cases. 10 The other meaning of contradiction is when one witness ‘contradicts’ another by affi rming something diff erent ( Schum and Martin, 1982 : 112). For example, Smith – a prosecution witness – might state that the defendant threatened to hit the victim, but

Jones – a defence witness – might state that the defendant never threatened the victim.

This kind of contradiction is not relevant to the topic of inconsistency, which relates to the incompatibility of two statements made by the same person. 11 This is probably particularly likely to happen when the witness is the defendant who has taken the stand on their own behalf and is cross- examined by the prosecution. 12 From the world of sales and business, Llewellyn and Whittle (2019 ) provided three good examples of the way in which contradictions were portrayed as mistakes rather than lies. Crucially, the success of the strategy depended on the cooperation of the other party, who was willing to accept the claim that it was a mistake in order to complete the transaction. In trials, the adversarial relationship between advocates and witnesses during cross- examination might make claims of mistakes more diffi cult to sustain if the advocate is trying to portray the witness as a liar. 13 The ‘friends’ that Newton mentioned in his telegram were apparently not friends at all, but the editor of the newspaper John Bull, Horatio Bottomley, who was interested in obtaining exclusive information about the case. In November 2010, Newton gave

Bottomley a letter supposedly written by Crippen just before his execution, saying that he had an accomplice in the murder of Belle. However, Newton later admitted that the letter was false, and for that he was suspended from practice. Some years later Newton was convicted of fraud and imprisoned for three years ( Symons, 2001 ). 14 It would have been an example of telling a story to fi t the forensic evidence (see Chapter 2 on stories in the courtroom). 15 Years after the famous barrister’s death in 1927, his clerk, Archibald Bowker, gave a diff erent reason for declining to accept the case, which was that Newton had approached

Bowker to see if Marshall Hall would represent Crippen but only collect his fee after the trial had ended. Bowker rejected this off er, and Marshall Hall later agreed that he had made the correct decision ( Bowker, 1949 ).