Yorkshire Writers' Lunch

The last people to see Dr Crippen’s wife alive, were their friends Clara and Paul Martinetti, retired music-hall entertainers who were at the Crippen’s house on the night of 31 January 1910 for supper and a game of cards.  Cora Crippen knew the couple through her involvement with the Music Hall Ladies Guild of which she was Treasurer. The Crippen’s house was on Hilldrop Crescent, Holloway, less than half a mile from Holloway women’s prison. It is likely that Cora Crippen was murdered later that night or on the following morning.  Her husband, Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen, who was called Peter by his friends, was hanged at Pentonville in November 1910 for her murder. He had poisoned her and then removed her limbs and head and the bones from her body.  She was buried in the coal cellar of the house. The Crippens lived with a number of cats and, at the time of her death, a dog which she had recently purchased. ‘He is rather cute, don’t you think? Another hopeless boy to feed and...

Margaret, a spinster, mid-fifties, is at the kitchen sink washing up and looking out of the window. She is thinking of the passing of an acquaintance. Well, of all the things I could think of, one of them was not watching that woman from number sixty-two parading herself on the arm of a swanky looking man in full daylight. Has she no common decency? No sense of grief? And she is wearing red shoes! What is the world coming to, I blame it on the television.   Mind you, I always knew it would come to this. I had a feeling when the funeral was on, not that I attended, not for all the tea in China. Not that I didn’t like the husband, no. It was more I that disliked her.   He was as regular as clockwork. Walked past me every morning at 7.45 on his way to the station and back in the evening at 5.55, always had a cheery smile for me. He worked in the city, Leeds, in one of the big banks, Midland, I think. I hear he was a big noise in property too. Their house is nice eno...