Hawley Crippen  was an American doctor who lived in London with his wife Cora, a London dance-hall girl.  She  was last seen by friends after a dinner at their house in January of 1910. She was known to brow-beat and demoralize her husband in public,  a soft-spoken and relatively meek man, who practiced homeopathic medicine. When asked about Cora’s whereabouts, Crippen’s story was inconsistent, and his paramour, a 19 year old co-worker called Ethel Le Neve, moved into the house just days after Cora’s disappearance. Crippen soon confided that, much to his embarrassment, Cora had gone to the US to be with her lover.

That Crippen’s girl was so much younger than him was not all that unusual.  His first-wife who died after giving birth to their son, Otto,  was 17 at their nuptials and Cora (nee Kunugunde Mackamotski) was 19, so Ethel at 20 was in that range.

Still, the police did not believe Crippen’s story and searched his premises.  The stench in the cellar was horrid and they dug it up, finding buried in the coal bin in the cellar, human remains– no head, no limbs, no bones, and no sexual organs, just remnants of skin. Also there was hair wrapped in curlers, torso skin and muscle, and the remaining viscera, removed with purported “surgical skill.”

Here is BBC dramatization of the Crippen case from Archive.org, which is how I learnt about it.  (I was looking for something else.)  It is short and enjoyable.

                                                  Exacavating Crippen

We have rectified Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen’s chart to 21 Virgo on September 13, 1862 at 5:45 AM in Coldwater, Michigan. This symbol is “health”  for his Ascendant and conjunct the fixed star Denebola (aka Bella Leonis for the tail of lion) — that has the combined nature of Venus and Saturn and burns very hot and bright and so will die out quicker than the heart of the Lion, the famed Regulus.

Crippen’s sixth house’s cusp is Aquarius whose Lord is found in its essential home at 21 Gemini. Both both the signs — Gemini and Aquarius are air signs, and associated with the intellect and modern science — proven (his medical in surgery)  and unproven (his second career as a homeopathic doctor).

Neptune the planet of social obligation is in the seventh house, Aries 3, a symbol of boldness, and passion and opposite a stellium in the first house, hinting at Dr. Crippen’s vanity.  The interesting part is his opposition is squared Uranus is in the 10th house, which we already know is his profession but also considering the crime shows great mental acuity in both committing & then hiding it from the police.

 Crippen — had no bona bide medical degree — but does have his Venus at 29 Leo conjunct the fixed star Regulus and squared his Part of Fortune at 22 Taurus in the ninth house of one’s higher self and long journeys. He met his wife, who had renamed herself once already to Cora Turner,  in New York City and the two took a long journey to London England where they moved for the rest of their 17 years of married life. We are not sure why he left the Cleveland Hospital, so that part of his history is a mystery, unless it is because of the Moon on the Ninth house cusp and he got involved with another doctor’s wife.  The other theory is a desire to learn optometric surgery, as suggested in the book, “The Trial of Hawley Crippen.”

Crippen’s Part of Fortune at 22 Taurus is at the critical degree of “Notoriety” that he shares with our aforementioned Circus Girl.  Another with this is Richard Loeb of the infamous Leopold & Loeb random killing (see a short from the Hitchcock movie based on it here on Youtube),  and the poet Coleridge best remembered for his melancholic “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”His temperament type is a rimmed bowl that spans from the seventh house of partners and opportunities to the very populated first house  of self-identity via the southern hemisphere.  That part is odd for a brow beaten man to have such an extarverted chart, and it seems that while Cora may have brown beaten, he was really quite flashy in his dress and outgoing demeanor:  the Crippens went out a lot and entertained lavishly.

                                                       The Spilsbury Connexion

Overall though, the coppers of London did not have much to go on until the prosecution requested the expert testimony of forensic  pathologist Dr. Bernard Spilsbury for it was his testimony  convicted Crippen and had the jury being in a verdict in less than a half hour.  Crippen  was hung on November 23, 1910, a picture of Ethel in his breast pocket,  and his part of fortune proven true : his notoriety” has intrigued criminologists, amateur sleuths, forensic pathologists and astrologers debating the merits of the case ever since.