A recent case where a husband was alleged to have given his wife sleeping tablets so that he could romp with his girlfriend reminded me of the Crippen murder, 100 years old last year, writes James Morton.

In July 1910, a decayed body which was probably that of Belle Elmore, the music hall artist wife of American dentist Harvey Hawley Crippen (pictured), was found in the cellar at their home in Hilldrop Crescent, north London. When Inspector Walter Dew went to arrest Crippen, he found that he and his paramour Ethel le Neve had sailed to Canada, with Ethel disguised as a boy.

The captain of the Montrose telegraphed that he thought that the man and his son were far too affectionate, and Dew set off on a faster ship to capture them. Meanwhile, the highly talented but corrupt Arthur Newton, who had a fashionable law practice in Great Marlborough Street, telegraphed Crippen to say, quite falsely, that he had been instructed on his and Ethel’s behalf.

Very sensibly, Le Neve went to other solicitors and was acquitted as an accessory. Newton tried to brief renowned barrister Marshall Hall, but there was a question of some unsettled fees. His clerk Bowker is said to have demanded 'cheque with the brief' and in a pique, Newton briefed the far less able Alfred Tobin.

The defence was that Crippen believed Belle had run off with another man, and knew nothing about the body in the cellar, which he claimed had been there before he moved into the house. This was difficult, because the body was in pyjamas bought from a local shop after Crippen moved in. There was also scientific evidence about a scar on the body which matched one on Belle. She had been poisoned with hyoscine.

Over the years, there has been a spirited defence of Crippen, and currently there is a suggestion that DNA will yet clear him. If so, whose body was it? Possibly Crippen was an abortionist, and it was the corpse of an unlucky patient.

Marshall Hall often said he would have run a manslaughter defence that Crippen had been giving Belle hyoscine as a sleeping draught while he dallied with Ethel. Newton pretended to have obtained a death cell confession from Crippen in Pentonville, which he sold to the Evening Times. When it was exposed as a fraud, the paper’s circulation collapsed. For his troubles, the Law Society suspended Newton. But more of his career another time.

James Morton is a writer and former criminal defence solicitor