Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen's prayer book sells for £240 at auction
A prayer book that once belonged to notorious killer Dr Crippen who poisoned and dismembered his wife before burying her remains beneath their home has been sold at auction.The leather-bound book, signed by Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen, who was hanged in 1910 for killing his wife Cora, sold for £240 at the Staffordshire auction.The American homeopath claimed Cora, a music hall singer, had left him, but police later found her boneless torso hidden under their cellar floor.The grisly case scandalised Edwardian London and is one of the most infamous of the 20th Century.
Cora's disappearance subsequently captured the imagination of writers and dramatists, not least because Crippen went to the gallows protesting his innocence, and it has been suggested he was wrongly hanged.An attempt by a descendant to secure a posthumous pardon for him in 2009 failed, after the Criminal Cases Review Commission refused to send the case to the Court of Appeal.
It is alleged the doctor had the book of common prayer in prison before his execution.It was estimated the lot could reach between £250 and £350, however Crippen's prescription books have previously failed to sell at auction.The sale of the prayer book was handled Richard Winterton Auctioneers at Lichfield Auction Centre.
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