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Article Excerpt
Paula J. Reiter Doctors, Detectives, and the Professional Ideal": The Trial of Thomas Neill Cream and Home Rule in Phineas Redux
The 1892 trial of serial killer Dr. Thomas Neill Cream put both Cream and the professionals involved in the case on trial. The judge simultaneously presided over Cream's conviction and the exoneration of the professionals. Controlling the terms of professionalism and repairing the damage to the professional image that this scandalous case caused became a critical subtext to the trial. The Cream murder trial and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes both grapple with questions of professional conduct, status, and worth becoming influential (if unrecognized) voices in the ongoing discourse surrounding Victorian male professionalism. The remarkable popularity of the Sherlock Holmes series is closely tied to the Holmesian performance of a professional ideal. Each tale incapsulates both a model of expertise and an implicit critique of men not fulfilling this model, thus contributing to the growing cultural power of the nineteenth-century professional male.
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When a doctor goes wrong he is the first of criminals. He has verve and he has knowledge. Palmer and Pritchard were among the heads of their profession. This man strikes even deeper, but I think, Watson, that we shall be able to strike deeper still. But we shall have horrors enough before the night is over; for goodness' sake let us have a quiet pipe and turn our minds for a few hours to something more cheerful. "The Adventure of the Speckled Band," (Doyle 1986, 364) (1)
On Monday, October 17, 1892, Dr. Thomas Neill Cream was indicted for the murders of Ellen Donworth, Matilda Clover, Alice Marsh, and Emma Shrivell; for the attempted murder of Louisa Harris; and for sending blackmail letters to Joseph Harper and William Henry Broadbent. Dr. Cream pleaded "not guilty."
The Cream trial provides a remarkably complete record of a Victorian serial killer and blackmailer. What is more remarkable, however, is the nexus joining this deviant Victorian with his society at large. The Cream trial remains important not as a picture of a singular maniac--"a doctor gone wrong"--but for traces of the anxieties felt by others that his crimes made visible. Specifically, Cream's murders of women working as prostitutes confused the moral distinction between respectable professionals (like doctors) and the disreputable work of prostitution. Furthermore, not only did Cream's actions turn the prostitute into a victim and the doctor into a criminal, they also pointed to an analogous relationship between prostitutes' earnings and professionals' earnings in general. In "George Eliot and Daniel Deronda: The Prostitute and the Jewish Question," Catherine Gallagher (1986) explores the long-standing parallels between authorship and prostitution. Professional work is a logical extension of that comparison because it, like prostitution and authorship, also generates income without a distinctive product. The Cream trial made all too visible this resemblance between the professional mode of production and prostitution.
In addition, the Cream trial effaced distinctions between the delinquent and the professional. Through a combination of apathy and incompetence, the police failed to respond to Cream's killing of Lambeth prostitutes. They did, however, vigorously follow up on his attempts to blackmail wealthy men. When pursuing Cream-the-blackmailer, the police performed the function that D.A. Miller sees as typical of the police in nineteenth-century fiction.(2) That is, the police and the criminal (often looking strikingly similar) busy themselves chasing each other and "thereby seem to leave us alone." As such, the police both "consolidate the field of delinquency as distinct from the realm of middle-class civil society" and do so without making a nuisance of themselves (Miller 1984, 174). Two things happened to break down that consolidation in the Cream case: The police did not chase Cream-the-murderer, and the prostitutes did. Consequently, the resemblance between Cream's professional work, the prostitutes' work, and professional labor in general became visible, and the prostitutes escaped the category of "delinquent" by becoming the police. That is, rather than the police chasing the criminals, the "criminals" (prostitutes) pursued Cream, thus collapsing all distinctions between criminal and police practices, the delinquent and the legitimate. (3) The first part of this piece reads the Cream trial, paying special attention to the Judge's dual task of presiding over Cream's conviction and the larger task of reimposing the distinctions that this case erased or confounded.
The second part of this piece examines detective fiction through the same lens. I read the remarkable popularity of the Sherlock Holmes series as intricately tied to the Holmesian performance of professionalism. The mystery or crime under investigation repeatedly brings Holmes to the brink of discovering that his work mirrors the crime and disruption against which he defines himself. Holmes solves the mystery and this problem of resemblance through the display of specifically professional characteristics: superior training, discretion, status, and disinterested service. In each of the Holmes tales I analyze, the collapse of distinctions between the professional and the "other" threatens and is defeated. In addition, the particular form of detective fiction, in which the text "hides" information and keeps the reader in suspense until the superior skill of the detective can provide answers, reproduces the disparity of knowledge between professionals and the laity. The popularity of the Holmes series proceeds from both the anxiety caused by the impending collapse of distinctions and the lack of textual information, as well as from the pleasure of Holmes' masterful solution to both problems.
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In the passage quoted from "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" as an epigraph, Sherlock Holmes reflects on masterful physician-criminals, mentioning the infamous Drs. Palmer and Pritchard. He could also have included Dr. Cream's name as a murderer with an especially long career. The 1892 indictment was not Cream's first indictment for murder, nor even his second. At age forty-two, Thomas Neill Cream was facing his third murder charge. He was experienced both at murder and at blackmail, but his actions escaped scrutiny, and he continually eluded the justice system. How many people he actually poisoned or attempted to poison is difficult to tally for multiple reasons. By employing poison (primarily strychnine) under the guise of "medicine," his violence could be misattributed or misinterpreted unless an autopsy was performed. He also moved frequently, living in Canada, the United States, and England, and although he literally left a trail of dead women in his wake, his victims' sudden and excruciating deaths repeatedly failed to trigger official investigation. Investigations lagged or were non-existent because Cream primarily targeted women seeking abortions and women working as prostitutes--women regularly vilified by society. He counted on the silence and shame associated with abortion and was protected by public indifference to the fate of prostitutes. Cloaked by this double screen of secrecy and apathy, Cream's criminal career lasted over a decade.
Trust Not Thy Physician: The Lambeth Poisoning Mystery
Cream earned a medical degree from M'Gill College in Montreal, and it was in Canada that he began his criminal career. Later, in the United States, he continued to practice medicine and murder. Starting with arson and insurance fraud, he moved to murder and blackmail. (4) During this period, Flora Eliza Brooks, Kate Hutchinson Gardener, Mary Anne Faulkner, and Ellen Stacks all died after consulting Dr. Cream, about procuring abortions. (5) In local papers, suspicion was strong against the Doctor, but while he was repeatedly indicted, the evidence was somehow never enough to convict him of these deaths. (6)
Not until Cream poisoned Daniel Stott, age 61 and Cream's only known male victim, was enough evidence gathered to finally convict him. One suspects that a male, middle-class, "respectable" victim (as opposed to a woman seeking an abortion) may also have tipped the scales in this case, an early indication that the gender and class of Cream's victims would be crucial in determining the response of law enforcement agencies. Cream was sentenced to life imprisonment at the Illinois State Penitentiary at Joliet. (7) On July 31, 1891, Governor Fifer released Cream, finding him "a fit and proper subject for executive clemency" (Fifer qtd. in McLaren 1993, 43). (8) On October 5, 1891, Cream arrived in London. There he somewhat altered altered his modus operandi. Instead of preying on women seeking abortions, he turned his attentions to prostitutes, perhaps influenced by Jack the Ripper's terrorism of London just three years earlier. (9)
His first victim, Ellen Donworth, died returning home on the night of October 13, only a week after Cream's arrival in London. She fell down in the street and was carried screaming in agony to her room. In a moment of respite from the pain, she told her landlady, "A tall gentleman with cross eyes, a silk hat, and bushy whiskers gave me a drink twice out of a bottle with white stuff in it" (Shore 1923, 9). A postmortem revealed that Donworth died of strychnine poisoning. (10) Six days later, Mr. George Percival Wyatt, the deputy coroner for East Surrey, received a letter claiming that the author had evidence that would lead to the conviction of Donworth's killer if the government were willing to pay [pounds sterling]300,000 for it. The letter (proven at the trial to be in Cream's handwriting) was signed "A. O'Brian, Detective." No investigation followed and the inquest closed with the verdict of death by poisoning by person unknown (10). At the same time, Cream sent a letter to W. D. Smith, claiming to have proof that Smith killed Donworth, and signed it "H. Bayne, barrister." While Donworth's murder went uninvestigated, this attempt at blackmailing a wealthy man prompted police protection for Mr. Smith's home.
This established a familiar pattern: a Lambeth woman who worked as a prostitute was poisoned, one or more blackmail attempts followed, and Scotland Yard responded only to the latter by assigning police protection. Matilda Clover died one week after Ellen Donworth, and despite her having told a servant and her landlady that she had been poisoned by the man she had been seeing, no autopsy was performed. An unqualified medical assistant, Mr. Choppin, examined Clover and declared she was suffering from excessive alcohol consumption. Dr. Graham signed a death certificate on this assistant's word without ever having seen the patient. Shortly following Clover's death, Countess Russell received a letter claiming that her husband, Lord Russell, murdered Matilda Clover. (11) Cream, a prolific letter writer, also sent a blackmail threat to Dr. William Henry Broadbent, an eminent physician. In the by-now-familiar routine, Clover was buried in a pauper's grave, and police protection was assigned to Dr. Broadbent's home.
On the morning of April 12, Emma Shrivell and Alice Marsh, both living at No. 118 Stamford Street, died, bathed in sweat and convulsing violently. Before dying, they told their landlady, Charlotte Vogel, that they had taken pills given to them by a doctor they had been entertaining that night (Charlotte Vogel, deponent, in CRIM 1/38/1). This time the police launched a nationwide investigation--of canned salmon. Although a May 5 inquest showed that Shrivell and Marsh died from strychnine, the police nonetheless were convinced that they had died from eating tainted salmon, an open can of salmon having been found in their rooms. They continued, even after the inquest, to search for further evidence of ptomaine poisoning in canned fish (McLaren 1993, 129). Although the Times reported, "Detective Jones stated that he had made every inquiry in the neighborhood, but had been unable to ascertain whence the tin of salmon was purchased," they also reported the findings of the inquest: "There was no sign of any disease, and the symptoms were not consistent with tinned or putrefied meat poisoning ... the cause of death was strychnine poisoning" (14 April 1892). Other papers, less thorough, followed the lead of the police and reported only that Shrivell and Marsh had died from eating tinned salmon (Pall Mall Gazette, 13 April 1892).
Cream might never have been caught had he refrained from openly declaring that he knew who murdered the women. The barrage of blackmail letters he sent, and the flurry of rumors he started that linked all the names of his victims together, eventually forced the police to investigate. Not only did Cream claim to know who had murdered Donworth, Shrivell, and Marsh, but he also claimed to know who had murdered Lou (Louisa) Harvey (an entirely new name in this case) and Clover (whose death had been attributed officially to alcohol consumption).
Finally, on April 30, Inspector Harvey applied for and received an order from the Home Office authorizing the exhumation of Matilda Clover's body. Not surprisingly, her partly decomposed body still clearly pointed to strychnine as the cause of death (Thomas Stevenson, M.D., deponent, in CRIM 1/38/1). (12) Cream was arrested June 1 for attempting to blackmail Dr. Harper, who lived in the same lodging house with Cream, and on July 18 he was formally charged with the death of Matilda Clover. His trial would end one year to the day after her death.
The Trial: Power and Poison
Cream's trial took place October 17-21, 1892 and commanded full press coverage. The courtroom was crammed with spectators waiting to catch a glimpse of the infamous Lambeth murderer or to hear the arguments of two of the most celebrated barristers of the period, Sir Charles Russell and Gerald Georghegan. (13) Attorney General Sir Charles Russell decided to try Cream for Matilda Clover's murder first because the most damning evidence concerned her death.
The prosecution presented three areas of evidence. First, coroners and doctors testified that strychnine caused the deaths of Clover, Donworth, Marsh, and Shrivell. Next, Cream's friends and acquaintances of Cream testified to his obsession with the Lambeth poisonings and his habit of discussing prostitution, abortion, and pornography with them (St. James Cazette, 24 October 1892). Strange as it may seem, these witnesses included Cream's two closest friends, John Haynes and Patrick Maclntyre, who were both connected with law enforcement. Haynes was a special agent for the British government, and Maclntyre was affiliated with Scotland Yard. (14) Because Cream was anything but shy in discussing the murders, and was fascinated with police work in general, he soon became intimate with Haynes and MacIntyre. (15) They, in turn, offered detailed testimony that the court found particularly convincing, coming as it did from one of their own. Cream's fiancee, Laura Sabbatini, deposed that at Cream's dictation she had penned several blackmail letters. Sabbatini and a handwriting expert identified the other letters as being in Cream's hand (Shore 1923, 118). (16) Establishing the cause of death and establishing Cream as a blackmailer were relatively easy, but the difficult task of connecting him irrevocably with the four murdered women lay ahead.
Because the police had failed to investigate Clover's and Donworth's deaths when they occurred, and because they had spent valuable time chasing apparitions of contaminated salmon following Marsh's and Shrivell's decease, they had little evidence to present about the deaths of these women. Women like the deceased, however, watched sedulously. They kept a sharp eye on each other, the police, and male customers. The bulk of crucial evidence came from watchful Lambeth prostitutes who presented themselves to the police and volunteered what they knew and what they had seen. Three women in particular sealed Cream's fate: Eliza Masters, Elizabeth May, and Lou (Louisa) Harvey. (17)
Eliza Masters was a streetwalker who met Neill Cream the evening after his arrival in London. They had drinks together and then went to her room. Later that evening they joined Elizabeth May, who boarded with Masters, at Gatti's Music Hall. The party split up with Cream promising to write to make another appointment. He kept his promise,to write to make another appointment. He kept his promise, and on October 17, 1891, as Masters and May sat looking out their window waiting for Cream to fulfill that date, they saw him following another prostitute, whom they knew slightly. The woman was Matilda Clover. Shown her photo in court, Masters declared:
This is a photograph of the woman I saw that day; I have no doubt about it. I noticed the prisoner following her, and I saw her turn around and smile at him. He had on a silk hat and dark clothes. I put on my hat and asked May to do the same, and we followed to the corner to see where he...
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