A new book about some   of the capital’s most infamous murders takes another look the case for two killers’ innocence, writes Peter Gruner

The case for the defence of two of Britain’s most notorious murderers, who both lived locally, is presented in a new “True Crime History” book. 

Hampstead’s Ruth Ellis, the last woman to hang, and Dr Crippen, from Holloway, feature in Linda Stratmann’s Greater London Murderers. 

Evidence in the cases of both defendants has been re-examined in recent years and it is often suggested that had capital punishment been around today they would never have been subjected to the rope. 

Stratmann’s compendium brings together 33 murderous tales – one from each of the capital’s boroughs – that shocked the public and made headline news. 

On the day Soho hostess Ellis was due to hang, July 13 1955, an angry crowd of 500 protested outside Holloway prison and the governor was forced to call for police reinforcements. 

Her story is the stuff of folklore today. She had taken a pistol and shot her lover, racing driver David Blakely, five times outside the Magdala Tavern in Hampstead. 

Although she didn’t defend her actions, friends argued that she had been seriously provoked by Blakely. He was said to have abused her and been unfaithful to her. 

At Ellis’s trial, which opened a month before she was hanged, the defence barrister had submitted that the provocation she had received had affected her mind to such an extent that it justified a verdict of manslaughter. 

A psychologist was called to testify that when Ellis killed Blakely she was “very disturbed”, although he also stated that she was sane and mentally capable of forming the intent to kill. 

If the jurors had wavered towards a verdict of manslaughter,  Justice Havers swiftly crushed the hopes of campaigners, directing that the evidence did not support such a verdict. 

Public opinion was in favour of a reprieve. Letters flooded into newspapers, which were against the death penalty, or stated that women shouldn’t be hanged. Many sympathised with what Ellis had suffered at Blakely’s hands. 

Six years ago her daughter Georgina brought the case to the Court of Appeal asking for the conviction to be reduced to manslaughter. But the verdict was upheld on the grounds that Ellis had been correctly convicted under the laws as they stood at the time. 

For more than a century Dr Hawley Crippen has been a byword for evil. He was hanged in November 1910 for the murder of his wife Cora. 

Shortly before he was put to death he wrote a letter to his mistress Ethel, expressing the hope that some day evidence would be found to prove his innocence. 

Crippen and Cora were living at Hilldrop Crescent when friends reported that the couple had mysteriously disappeared. He was later discovered, not with Cora, but with his mistress on a ship bound for Canada. 

Police found human remains at the house along with some women’s underclothes and a pyjama jacket matching one found in Crippen’s bedroom. 

It was argued that he first poisoned his wife to sedate her and then cut her into pieces. Despite his plea of not guilty, he went to the gallows. 

It wasn’t until 2007 that an American forensic toxicologist was able to demonstrate that DNA taken from the original slides made from the cellar remains was not that of Cora. In fact it was later confirmed that the remains were male. Had that fact come to light during Crippen’s trial he would have been acquitted. 

Also included in the book is George Chapman, who was hanged in 1903 for poisoning three women, and who is widely suspected of having been the notorious serial killer Jack the Ripper; lovers Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters, executed for stabbing to death Thompson’s husband Percy in 1922; and Donald Hume, who was found not guilty of the murder of wealthy businessman Stanley Setty in 1949, but later confessed to killing him, chopping up his body and disposing of it by aeroplane. 

Ms Stratmann also reveals previously unpublished information that sheds new light on the infamous Craig and Bentley case. 

• Greater London Murders: 33 True Stories of Revenge, Jealousy, Greed and Lust.
By Linda Stratmann.
History Press £14.99.