over me when I descended—it was so dark and dreary, although it was on a level with the back garden.”
Harrison recalled visiting the house on a day when the contradictions of Belle’s nature became strikingly evident. “I followed her into the kitchen one morning when she was busy. It was a warm, humid day, and the grimy windows were all tightly closed. On the dresser was a heterogeneous mass, consisting of dirty crockery, edibles, collars of the doctor’s, false curls of her own, hairpins, brushes, letters, a gold jeweled purse, and other articles.” In the kitchen the gas stove was brown with rust and stained from cooking. “The table was littered with packages, saucepans, dirty knives, plates, flat-irons, a washing basin, and a coffee pot.” And yet in the midst of this clutter, a white chiffon gown with silk flowers lay draped “carelessly” across a chair.
At the window, which was closed, stood one of Belle’s cats. “The little lady cat, who was a prisoner, was scratching wildly at a window in a vain attempt to attract the attention of a passing Don Juan.”
OUTWARDLY, THE CRIPPENS seemed to have an idyllic marriage. Neighbors in the houses on either side and in back reported often seeing the couple at work together in the garden, and that Belle often sang. One neighbor, Jane Harrison, who lived next door at No. 38, reported, “They always appeared on very affectionate terms and I never heard them quarrel or have a cross word.” On four occasions Harrison came over to help Belle prepare for parties, including one large affair that Belle hosted for the birthday of George Washington “Pony” Moore, manager of the blackface Moore and Burgess Christy Minstrels.
But those with a closer view saw a relationship that was not quite so idyllic. For one brief period Belle did try having a servant, a woman named Rhoda Ray. “Mr. and Mrs. Crippen were not altogether friendly to each other,” Ray said, “and they spoke very little together.” And a friend, John Burroughs, noticed that Belle could be “somewhat hasty” in her treatment of her husband. One change in how they configured their home appeared to cause no great concern among their friends, though within a few years it would take on great significance. For the first time in their marriage the Crippens occupied separate bedrooms.
What Belle’s friends and neighbors did not seem to grasp was that Belle was lonely. She stayed at the house most of the time, though she often left for lunch, typically departing at about one o’clock and returning about three. She found comfort in pets, and soon the house was full of mewing and chirping and, eventually, barking. She acquired two cats, one an elegant white Persian; she bought seven canaries and installed them in a large gilt cage, another common feature of homes in the neighborhood. Later she and Crippen acquired a bull terrier.
At one point soon after moving into the house, she decided to take in boarders and placed an advertisement in the
He told his story in a letter that is now in the possession of Scotland Yard’s Black Museum, accessible only to police officers and invited guests:
The house had a “beautiful garden,” Reinisch wrote, and was situated on “a quiet, better street.” He considered himself lucky to have been accepted as a tenant. “It counted at that time as a certain distinction to obtain board and lodging in the house of Dr. Crippen,” he wrote. Crippen was “extremely quiet, gentlemanly, not only in thought but also in behaviour, not only towards his wife but also to me and everyone else. He idolized his wife, and sensed her every wish which he hastened to fulfill.” That first Christmas, 1905, offered an example. “Dr. Crippen wished to give his wife a big surprise, one that would make her very happy, namely a gramophone. These were then very costly. Mrs. Crippen, a good piano player, was as pleased as a child at this attentiveness, and Dr. Crippen was even happier at the joy of his wife. He had gone to a great deal of trouble to procure the gramophone.”
Crippen and Belle had opposite natures, Reinisch wrote. He found Crippen to be “extremely placid” and Belle “very high-spirited. Blonde, with a pretty face, of large, full, may I say of opulent figure.” She was, he wrote, “a good housewife, unlike many other English women. She cooked herself, quite excellently.” He noticed that despite the couple’s “good financial circumstances,” they had no servants.
Often Crippen and Belle recruited Reinisch and one of the other tenants for whist. “Mrs. Crippen could be extremely angry if she lost a halfpenny or a penny, and on the other hand extremely happy if she won a similar sum. The penny was not the most important thing here, but ambition. Merely so that his wife should not be angry, Dr. Crippen asked me…to play often intentionally badly, as he also often did, just to allow the mistress of the house to win and thus to make her happy.”
Overall, however, the couple struck Reinisch as being reasonably content. “The marriage, at least during my time there, was very harmonious,” he wrote. “I never once perceived any misunderstanding or bad feeling between the couple. I must mention that they lived a comparatively retiring life. It was only for this reason, so as not to be always alone together, that they took me into their household. I felt myself very much at home with this family, and never had the feeling that I was just an object to be made money out of, as was often the case elsewhere.”
It was the absence of children, Reinisch believed, that had compelled Mrs. Crippen to seek lodgers.
“As a ‘substitution’ for offspring someone was to be in the house who was trustworthy and sociable,” he wrote. “Thus the condition was made, on my being taken into the house, that I was not to go out every evening, but should rather stay in the house for the sake of the company…. It was not easy for me, as a young man who wished to enjoy himself in the big city, to agree to this. I had no need, however, to regret it, as the society of the two cultured people had only a good influence on me, and the frequent conversations beside the fire were very varied, stimulating and interesting.”
Another tenant, however, had a different perception of the Crippens and told Belle’s friend Adeline Harrison about a number of quarrels that always seemed one-sided, “Mrs. Crippen, excitable and irritable, chiding her husband; Crippen, pale, quiet, imperturbable.”
THOUGH THE PRESENCE of Reinisch and the other tenants might have eased Belle’s loneliness, it inserted extra tension into her relationship with Crippen. She made Crippen tend to their needs every day, and even on Sunday, which was Crippen’s one full day off from work. “He had to rise at six o’clock in the morning to clean the boarders’ boots, shovel up the coal, lay the breakfast, and help generally,” Adeline Harrison wrote. He had to make beds, wash dishes, and on Sundays help prepare the tenants’ midday dinner, all this without servants. “It was a trying time,” Harrison wrote, “and quite unnecessary exertion for both, as Crippen was earning well, and gave his wife an ample supply of money.” Belle used the income from the tenants to buy more clothing and jewelry.
In June 1906, after less than a year, Belle evicted the Germans. The work had become too much, a friend said, though it is possible too that the mounting fear of German spies influenced her decision. At nine-thirty on Saturday morning, June 23, Belle wrote, “As my sister is about to visit me, I regret exceedingly I shall want the house to ourselves, as I wish to do a great deal of entertaining and having Paying Guests in the house would interfere with my plans. I therefore hope you will find comfortable quarters elsewhere. Kindly do so at your own convenience as I do not want to rush you off and want you to feel thoroughly at home while you remain with us. I hope you will honor me with your presence at my weekly Receptions while my sister visits me.”
THE ASPECT OF BELLE’S nature that most colored life at No. 39 Hilldrop Crescent was her need for dominion over Crippen. Placid and malleable, he was almost on a par with the household’s other pets. He awaited definition. “He was a man with no apparent surface vices, or even the usual weaknesses or foibles of the ordinary man,” Adeline Harrison wrote. “Restraint was the one and only evidence of firmness in his character. He was unable to smoke; it made him ill. He refrained from the consumption of alcoholic liquor in the form of wines and spirits, as it affected his heart and digestion. He drank light ale and stout, and that only sparingly. He was not a man’s man. No man had ever known him to join in a convivial bout; he was always back to time, and never came home with a meaningless grin on his face at two o’clock in the morning attended by pals from a neighbouring club.”
Soon after the move to Hilldrop, Belle insisted that Crippen convert to Roman Catholicism. She determined how he dressed. On January 5, 1909, she bought him three pairs of pajamas at the annual winter sale at Jones Brothers, a clothier, soon to prove among the most significant purchases of her life. She specified the color and cut
