Robert Walsh

June 14, 2011

Dr. Thomas Neill Cream

The United Kingdom has a long history of doctors who foreswore the Hippocratic Oath and opted instead to commit at least one murder. During the time of Jack the Ripper, Dr. Thomas Neill Cream was both a serial killer and a blackmailer.                          

by Robert Walsh

”First Do No Harm…’”– A fundamental part of the Hippocratic Oath sworn by all doctors.

“I am Jack The…” – The last words of the “Lambeth Poisoner,” Doctor Thomas Neill Cream, as the gallows trapdoors fell.

The United Kingdom has, for some unknown reason, a long history of doctors who foreswore the Hippocratic Oath and opted instead to commit at least one murder. William Palmer, William Pritchard, “Buck” Ruxton, George Lamson and, most notorious of all, Doctor Crippen, right through to Harold Shipman a few years ago (although Crippen’s medical credentials are at best somewhat dubious as he was a purveyor of quack remedies and, some say, involved in illegal abortions),. Dr. Crippen is by far the most notorious, but he’s merely one of many. But Doctor Thomas Neill Cream, AKA the “Lambeth Poisoner,” while largely forgotten except by true crime enthusiasts, was once as infamous as any of them.

March 6, 2011

Mata Hari

To protect its deep infiltration into French intelligence during World War I, German intelligence conned the British and French into believing that Mata Hari was its superspy.  

by Robert Walsh

Dawn, Vincennes Barracks, October 15 1917.

Brought from her cell at the Saint-Lazare Prison less than an hour after hearing that her final appeal had been denied by the President of France, alleged superspy Mata Hari faced her firing squad seemingly calm and unafraid. She may well have led a somewhat ethically questionable life, but in death she seems to have shown considerably greater courage, fortitude and integrity than those who had conspired to place her there.

Mata Hari has long been the stuff of legend and myth, the glamorous, sexy superspy effortlessly using her feminine wiles and her physical charms to extract the highest level secrets from foolish, lecherous and indiscreet Allied officers through pillow talk before daringly passing the stolen secrets on to her German handlers. But how much spying did she actually do? What level of secrets, if any at all, did she manage to extract? Was she really the stuff of legend, a female James Bond with an equal talent for high-level espionage and flagrant promiscuity? Did she really cause the deaths of 50,000 Allied soldiers as her prosecutors claimed? Was she really, as has long been believed by so many, deserving of a place in the Pantheon of espionage legends?

May 16, 2010

Dartmoor Prison

   Opened in 1809 to hold French soldiers captured during the Napoleonic Wars, Dartmoor Prison became Great Britain’s version of Devil’s Island for the most hardened of British convicts.
by Robert Walsh

“There are two ways to enter Dartmoor Prison, and it is far, far preferable to work there.” – Anonymous

Her Majesty’s Prison, Dartmoor (known simply as “The Moor” to prisoners and guards alike) is the oldest, and by far the most notorious prison still in use in the Great Britain. Located in the middle of the Dartmoor National Park, it is also considered the most difficult prison to visit. It’s reputation as being a punishment prison for intractable  repeat offenders, coupled with various riots, murders, spectacular escapes and notorious inmates, make the word “Dartmoor” synonymous with brutality, harsh living conditions, even harsher discipline and a long-established (and well-deserved) reputation as the hardest time a British convict could do.

Dartmoor was designed by well-known architect Daniel Asher Alexander and constructed using local labor and local materials, especially the Dartmoor granite used in building the cell blocks. It was opened in 1809 and intended to hold French prisoners taken during the long-running Napoleonic Wars and as a replacement for their previous accommodation, the filthy disease-and-rat infested prison ship (known as ‘hulks’) then anchored 17 miles away in Plymouth Sound. Along with French prisoners, it also held U.S. prisoners taken during the War of 1812.

After the end of hostilities with America and France, the prison was closed down in 1816. During it’s time as a military prison it held between six and 10 thousand prisoners of which over 1,500 were to die, mostly from cramped conditions, harsh treatment, malnutrition, and disease.

June 01, 2008

Albert Anastasia (l) and Abe "Kid Twist" Reles (r)

On the eve of giving star witness testimony against mobster kingpin Albert Anastasia in 1941, Abe "Kid Twist" Reles plunges to his death from his "police protected" suite on the sixth floor of the Half Moon Hotel on Coney Island. Officially ruled a "suicide," the death of the former senior member of Murder Inc. turned canary was, most certainly, a push, not a hop.

by Robert Walsh

It's a cold and dark night on November 12, 1941. Abe "Kid Twist" Reles, once a senior member of Murder Inc. and now one of the most important canaries in American history, is preparing a makeshift ladder that will help him climb from the sixth floor of the Half Moon Hotel on Coney Island, N.Y., where he is being held in protective custody to turn state's evidence against that most vicious and notorious of New York's mobsters, Albert "Lord High Executioner" Anastasia.

He keeps his preparations as quiet as possible, to avoid attracting the attention of the half dozen detectives assigned to guard him around the clock while he gives evidence that could put Anastasia in Sing Sing's infamous electric chair. Having narrowly avoided a date with "Old Sparky" himself, he has no qualms about inflicting the same on his former friends if it will save his own skin.

October 26, 2008

Entrance to HM Prison Manchester (Strangeways) where, in a special execution room, Albert Pierrepoint carried out the famous "quickest hanging" in 7 seconds. (photo credit: Stemonitis)

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the Pierrepoints, first Henry, then Thomas and finally Albert, were chief executioners for Great Britain, responsible for hanging hundreds of British citizens. After World War II, Albert would hang some 200 Nazis on orders of Field Marshall Montgomery.

by Robert Walsh

"Prisoner at the Bar, you have been found guilty of murder and it is now my duty to pass sentence. It is the sentence of this Court that you are to be taken from this place to a lawful prison and thence to a place of execution, where you shall be hanged by the neck until you are dead, and that your body be afterwards cut down and buried within the precincts of the prison in which you were last confined before execution. And may the Lord have mercy upon your soul. Remove the prisoner."

To many British people over a certain age, the name Pierrepoint is an unusual one. Not so much because it is a rare name in Britain (although it's certainly an unusual one) but for what, and often who, it has come to represent. The best known of the Pierrepoint clan, (and subject of a recent biopic simply entitled Pierrepoint) was Albert Pierrepoint, who achieved a large measure of fame (and notoriety) as Britain's chief public executioner or "Master Hangman" as he sometimes called himself.