It would not be totally inaccurate to say that Crippen was tried by the press, as they seemed to immediately agree with the conclusion that he was guilty, without even considering the lack of evidence that the body was that of Cora Crippen. The newspapers called Crippen ‘The London Cellar Murderer’, even before he was brought to trial, or even arrested. The newspaper headlines about the ‘mad’ Doctor Crippen are probably what doomed him to being convicted. Almost as soon as they found the body under the cellar, the newspapers implied that Crippen was an evil, wife murdering monster. Around the time of the trial, Arthur Newton sold a forged “confession” to John Bull, a magazine published by Horatio Bottomley. Even the Times, Britain’s least sensationalist newspaper, covered the trial exhaustively, with articles on the trial almost every day it was held on, yet the story from the day of his execution was very brief, only two or three paragraphs. It was featured both in English newspapers and American newspapers, because Crippen himself was an American.
