George Joseph Smith - Popular Culture

Popular Culture

In his book "Why Britain is at War", Harold Nicolson used the behaviour of George Smith and his repeatedly murderous behaviour as a parallel to Hitler's repeatedly acquisitive behaviour in Europe in the 1930s. In Evelyn Waugh's book "Unconditional Surrender", which is set during the Second World War, General Whale is referred to as "Brides-in-the-bath" because all the operations he sponsored seemed to require the extermination of all involved. The Smith case is mentioned in Dorothy L. Sayers' mystery, Unnatural Death. It was also mentioned in Agatha Christie's Miss Marple's "A Caribbean Mystery". Margery Allingham's short story "Three Is a Lucky Number" (1955) adapts the events and refers to James Joseph Smith and his Brides. The Smith case was dramatised on the radio series The Black Museum in 1952 under the title of "The Bath Tub". Czechoslovak Television's series Adventures of Criminology (1990), based on famous criminal cases in which new methods of investigation were used, depicts this case in the episode Reconstruction. There was also The Brides in the Bath (2003), a British TV movie made by Yorkshire Television, starring Martin Kemp as George Smith and the play Tryst by Karoline Leach, first produced in New York in 2006, starring Maxwell Caulfield and Amelia Campbell. This story is the basis for the play The Drowning Girls by Beth Graham, Charlie Tomlinson, Daniela Vlaskalic.