When Hitler Took Cocaine and Lenin Lost His Brain (19 page)

Thus began a court case that was marked by callousness, cynicism and sheer human greed. The jury were in agreement with the owners and insisted that the insurers pay up the money for the drowned slaves. But the insurers appealed against the decision and asked for the case to be retried. This time, it was to be heard before the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Mansfield.

Those who hoped for a more enlightened approach from Lord Mansfield were quickly disappointed. ‘The case of slaves,' he said, ‘was the same as if horses had been thrown overboard. The question was, whether there was not an absolute necessity for throwing them over board to save the rest.'

A hitherto unknown fact was now brought before the court. The ship's owners had argued that the slaves were killed because there was not enough water on board. But this was not true. When the ship arrived at Jamaica, it still had more than 420 imperial gallons of stored water.

This ought to have proved the turning point: Collingwood and his crew were clearly guilty of cold-blooded murder. Yet the new evidence was deemed to be of no consequence and the
Zong
's owners ultimately won the day. The insurers were forced to pay up for the ‘cargo' that had been dumped at sea.

The English abolitionist Granville Sharp was appalled by the verdict and tried to bring forward a case of murder. This was brushed aside by Lord Mansfield.

‘What is this claim that human people have been thrown overboard?' he said. ‘This is a case of chattels or goods. Blacks are goods and property; it is madness to accuse these well-serving honourable men of murder.'

 

20

The Suspicions of Inspector Dew

In the early hours of 1 February 1910, the inhabitants of Hilldrop Crescent in North London were shaken from their sleep by a muffled scream. It was followed by a short silence and then an anguished plea for mercy. A few seconds later there was a loud retort that sounded like a gunshot.

The commotion came from number 39, home to Dr Hawley Crippen and his wife, Cora. It was obvious to everyone that something deeply disturbing was taking place inside the house. But no one thought to intervene and on the following morning, when everyone left their houses for work, they chose not to mention the noises in the night.

Dr Crippen greeted his neighbours as usual and found himself warmly greeted in return. He then took himself off to the Music Hall Ladies Guild where his wife, who used the stage name Belle, was honorary treasurer.

He handed the guild a letter, purportedly written by Belle, in which she tendered her resignation. The letter explained how she had to make an urgent voyage to America in order to visit a near relative who was gravely ill.

This news caused surprise but no suspicion. Belle was American, like her husband, and there was no reason to suppose that either of them were telling anything but the truth.

A few weeks after Belle's supposed departure, a new woman moved into Dr Crippen's home. Her name was Miss Ethel Le Neve, a demure and attractive secretary. Aged twenty-seven, she was twenty years younger than him.

Ethel caused quite a stir when she attended the Music Hall Ladies Ball later that month. Not only did she accompany Dr Crippen as his apparent partner, but she was also noticed to be wearing one of Belle's brooches.

Belle's music-hall friends were by now deeply suspicious of what might have happened to their old friend. They went so far as to make enquiries in America as to her possible whereabouts. But it was to no avail. There were no records of Belle having returned to her homeland.

They were now so concerned for her safety they contacted Scotland Yard to inform them of her disappearance. The case was assigned to Chief Inspector Walter Dew, whose first port of call was Dr Crippen's office in New Oxford Street.

Crippen proved a master of composure. He told the inspector that Belle had run off with a lover, a boxer named Brice Miller, and that he'd been too humiliated to admit the truth to his friends.

Inspector Dew swallowed every word. He asked for permission to search the house in Hilldrop Crescent, but only as a formality, and found nothing to awaken his suspicions. As far as he was concerned, the doctor was in the clear.

Crippen was deeply shaken by the enquiries from Scotland Yard. He was concerned that Inspector Dew would find holes in his story and question him again. This was something he wanted to avoid at all costs.

He took the dramatic decision to flee the country with Ethel in tow. He explained to her that they would be happier, and safer, in America. They would also be away from Scotland Yard.

When Inspector Dew attempted to make contact with the doctor about some minor discrepancies in his account – and learned that he and his secretary had left England – he ordered a more thorough search of the house. This time, events took a more serious turn.

On 13 July, police found a decaying human body in the cellar. It was headless, limbless and in a gruesome state of decomposition. The rotting remains were found to contain traces of hyoscine. Detectives next discovered that Dr Crippen had purchased just such a poison days before his wife's supposed departure.

Two days after the exhumation of the body, Scotland Yard issued a warrant for Dr Crippen's arrest.

But Crippen and Ethel were by now on their way to Canada, having boarded the SS
Montrose
sailing from Antwerp. They registered themselves as father and son – Ethel looked remarkably boyish – and might have deceived everyone on board had it not been for their indiscreet behaviour.

Just hours after setting sail, the ship's captain, Henry Kendall, noticed ‘father' and ‘son' behaving in an intimate fashion behind the lifeboats. Alarmed by their behaviour – and deeply suspicious – he checked the ‘wanted' descriptions in the newspapers. He realized that they answered to the description of Crippen and his lover.

Kendall wired his suspicions to Scotland Yard, whose officers acted immediately. Inspector Dew was able to board the SS
Laurentic
, which was on the point of setting sail across the Atlantic, and found himself in a desperate chase to overtake the
Montrose
before it reached Canada.

At around 9 p.m. on the morning of 31 July, in thick St Lawrence fog, the inspector boarded the
Montrose
, purporting to be one of several ‘pilots' helping to steer the ship to its berth.

Sighting Dr Crippen, he removed his pilot's hat and shook the doctor by the hand. Crippen froze: he immediately recognized Dew and realized the game was up. ‘Thank God it's all over' were his only words as allowed himself to be handcuffed.

Dr Crippen and Ethel Le Neve were immediately charged with ‘murder and mutilation' and sent back to England in order to be tried by London's Central Criminal Court.

Crippen protested his innocence, but to no avail. He was found guilty of wilful murder and hanged in prison in November 1910.

Ethel Le Neve was acquitted of any wrongdoing and subsequently fled to America, sailing on the day that Crippen was hanged. And that seemed to be the end of a brutal and tragic story.

But there was to be a surprising postscript, one that has turned the case on its head. Recent mitochondrial DNA evidence suggests that Crippen may have been innocent after all. Working from a sample of blood held at Royal London Hospital Archives, a team of American forensic scientists have compared Belle's DNA with samples taken from one of her surviving relatives.

The results are startling and highlight two key facts: first, the body in the cellar was not Belle. Secondly, it was not even female.

According to Dr David Foran, head of forensic science at Michigan State University, ‘that body cannot be Cora [Belle] Crippen, we're certain of that'.

If he is correct, and no one is doubting the results of his tests, then Crippen may be innocent of the crime for which he was hanged.

Two weeks before his execution he wrote: ‘I am innocent and some day evidence will be found to prove it.'

The recent DNA analysis may yet clear his name.

 

21

Dead as a Dodo

They had endured nine long days adrift in a longboat with only their own urine to drink. They were half-crazed by dehydration, hunger and the relentless tropical sun.

But now, as Dutch seadog Volkert Evertszoon and his fellow mariners were washed ashore at a remote islet, they rubbed their eyes in disbelief. The place was home to scores of flightless birds. They waddled along the beach in a most undignified fashion and showed no fear when confronted by the newly arrived men. ‘They were larger than geese but not able to fly,' wrote Evertszoon. ‘Instead of wings they had small flaps.'

Evertszoon and his comrades could scarcely believe their luck. They had watched their crippled vessel
Arnhem
sink beneath the waves, convinced that they would die a lingering death in their longboat. But here on the Ile d'Ambre, off the east coast of Mauritius, there was enough food to keep them alive for months.

They were to be the last eyewitnesses of the hapless dodo, a bird on the verge of extinction. Indeed, it was almost certainly their empty bellies that led to the dodo's final demise in the spring of 1662.

Ever since the bird had first been sighted in Mauritius in the 1590s, it had been ruthlessly hunted for food. The introduction of pigs had further depleted their number. Indeed the only reason why the bird had survived on Ile d'Ambre – but nowhere else in Mauritius – is that it was the last remaining islet without any pigs.

The dodo did not make for an appetizing feast: it was widely known as the ‘loathsome bird' on account of its disgusting taste. But it was extremely easy to catch and the sailors who hunted it were often so hungry that anything was better than the putrid salt-pork they had on board.

One ship's commander declared that dodos were at their most palatable if cooked slowly and over a low heat. ‘Their belly and breast are of a pleasant flavour and easily masticated,' wrote Wybrand van Warwijck in 1598.

Such culinary delights were far from the minds of Volkert Evertszoon and his men when they stepped ashore on Ile d'Ambre. Their needs were simple – food – and they were delighted to find that the native dodos were so tame.

‘They were not shy at all,' wrote Evertszoon, ‘because they very likely were not used to see men pursuing them, and which became us exceedingly well, having neither barrel nor ammunition to shoot them.'

The birds seemed intrigued by the unwashed mariners who had intruded on their realm. ‘They stared at us and remained quiet where they stood, not knowing whether they had wings to fly away or legs to run off, and suffering us to approach them as close as we pleased.'

The slaughter began within hours of landing. Evertszoon and his men drove a flock of the birds into one place ‘in such a manner that we could catch them with our hands'. No sooner had they caught one lot than another flock ‘came running as fast as they could to its assistance, and by which they were caught and made prisoners also'.

A diet of dodo meat was neither appetizing nor balanced, but it kept the men alive for the three months until they were rescued by the English ship
Truro
.

Evertszoon did not record whether he and his men killed all the dodos on the islet. But it is highly probable that they did, for there were no further sightings in the years that followed. When the Dutch hunter Isaac Lamotius recorded seeing dodos in 1688, he was referring to a different bird. By the time he was writing, the flightless red rail had been given the same Dutch name:
dodaers
.

Unless new evidence comes to light, it seems likely that Evertszoon and his men ate the hapless dodo into extinction.

 

PART VIII

The Great Escape

Laden with the weight of human blood and believed to have banqueted on human flesh

THE
HOBART TOWN GAZETTE
'S OPINION OF ESCAPED CONVICT (AND SELF-CONFESSED CANNIBAL) ALEXANDER PEARCE.

 

22

A Sting in the Tale

Walter Harris had a nose for a good story and this one seemed better than most. As Morocco correspondent for
The Times
, he knew that violent battles and skirmishes always made good copy.

On a blistering afternoon in June 1903, he was brought news of a bloody onslaught taking place near the town of Zinat. Not wishing to miss out on the action, he climbed onto his horse and headed towards the fighting.

As he approached Zinat, the air was filled with an ominous silence. ‘The whole country was absolutely deserted,' he wrote. ‘Not a single person, not a head of cattle, was to be seen.'

He was riding across the empty plain when a single volley rang out. Sensing danger, he spurred his horse and rode away from the spot where the gun had been fired.

But as he entered a deep gully, he saw he had fallen into an ambush. ‘From every side sprung out tribesmen and in a second or two I was a prisoner, surrounded by thirty or forty men.'

It did not take long for Harris to discover the identity of his captor. It was the dreaded Mulai Ahmed er Raisuli, the most powerful bandit of northern Morocco.

Raisuli ruled his fiefdom with appalling brutality. His favourite punishment was burning out his captives' eyes with heated copper coins. ‘By nature he was, and is, cruel,' wrote Harris, ‘and the profession he had adopted' – that of bandit – ‘gave him unlimited scope to exhibit his cruelty.'

The Englishman's life was in great danger. Raisuli and his bandit tribesmen were convinced that Harris was a supporter of the Moroccan sultan, whose troops had only recently regained much ground in the area.

Raisuli had often argued that capturing Christians was entirely legitimate. He also said that torturing them or even killing them were not crimes, ‘because they were commissioned by Allah'.