Doubts Regarding The Verdict
Whether Dr. Crippen murdered his wife has been a dispute.
The novelist Raymond Chandler commented that it seemed unbelievable that Crippen would successfully dispose of his wife's limbs and head, and then, rather stupidly, bury her torso under the cellar floor of his home.
Dornford Yates, a novelist who was a junior barrister at the trial, records that the remains were placed in lime so that they would be destroyed, but suggests that Crippen failed to realise that while dry quicklime destroys, if water is added, it becomes slaked lime and preserves. Yates used this fact in the plot of his novel The House That Berry Built and told the story of the trial from his viewpoint in his memoirs As Berry and I Were Saying.
Read more about this topic: Hawley Harvey Crippen
Famous quotes containing the words doubts and/or verdict:
“I don’t have any doubts that there will be a place for progressive white people in this country in the future. I think the paranoia common among white people is very unfounded. I have always organized my life so that I could focus on political work. That’s all I want to do, and that’s all that makes me happy.”
—Hettie V., South African white anti-apartheid activist and feminist. As quoted in Lives of Courage, ch. 21, by Diana E. H. Russell (1989)
“Americans are notorious for looking to their children for approval. How our children turn out and what they think of us has become the “final judgment” on our lives. . . . We imagine that the rising generation is rendering history’s verdict on us. We may resent children simply because we expect a harsh judgment from them.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)