The case of the murderous Dr. Cream : the hunt for a Victorian era serial killer

Title:

Author:

Jobb, Dean, 1958- author.

Summary:

"In the span of fifteen years, Dr. Thomas Neill Cream murdered as many as ten people in the United States, Britain, and Canada, a death toll with almost no precedent. Poison was his weapon of choice. Largely forgotten today, this villain was as brazen as the notorious Jack the Ripper. Structured around the doctor’s London murder trial in 1892, when he was finally brought to justice, The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream exposes the blind trust given to medical practitioners, as well as the flawed detection methods, bungled investigations, corrupt officials, and stifling morality of Victorian society that allowed Dr. Cream to prey on vulnerable and desperate women, many of whom had turned to him for medical help. Dean Jobb transports readers to the late nineteenth century as Scotland Yard traces Dr. Cream’s life through Canada and Chicago and finally to London, where new investigative tools called forensics were just coming into use, even as most police departments still scoffed at using science to solve crimes. But then, most investigators could hardly imagine that serial killers existed—the term was unknown." -- Amazon.com.

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

xiii, 416 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Genre:

Biographies.

True crime stories.

Personal Subject:

Cream, Thomas Neill, 1850-1892.

Subject Term:

Serial murders.

Serial murderers -- Biography.

Physicians -- Biography.

Publisher:

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill,

Publication Date:

2021

ISBN:

9781616206895

Publication Information:

Chapel Hill, North Carolina : Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, [2021]

Call Number:

364.152 JOBB

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607003509240	Adult Nonfiction	364.152 JOBB	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

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Summary

A true crime page-turner about a Victorian doctor, a serial killer ahead of his time, using poison for an international murder spree that kept ahead of the burgeoning field of forensics. "A tour de force of storytelling." --Louise Penny, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Chief Inspector Gamache series

Winner of the 2022 CrimeCon True Crime Book of the Year Award

Longlisted for the American Library Association's Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence

Don't miss Dean Jobb's A Gentleman and a Thief: The Daring Jewel Heists of a Jazz Age Rogue, coming June 25, 2024!

"When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals," Sherlock Holmes observed during one of his most baffling investigations. "He has nerve and he has knowledge." In the span of fifteen years, Dr. Thomas Neill Cream murdered as many as ten people in the United States, Britain, and Canada, a death toll with almost no precedent. Poison was his weapon of choice. Largely forgotten today, this villain was as brazen as the notorious Jack the Ripper.

Structured around the doctor's London murder trial in 1892, when he was finally brought to justice, The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream exposes the blind trust given to medical practitioners, as well as the flawed detection methods, bungled investigations, corrupt officials, and stifling morality of Victorian society that allowed Dr. Cream to prey on vulnerable and desperate women, many of whom had turned to him for medical help.

Dean Jobb transports readers to the late nineteenth century as Scotland Yard traces Dr. Cream's life through Canada and Chicago and finally to London, where new investigative tools called forensics were just coming into use, even as most police departments still scoffed at using science to solve crimes. But then, most investigators could hardly imagine that serial killers existed--the term was unknown. As the Chicago Tribune wrote, Dr. Cream's crimes marked the emergence of a new breed of killer: one who operated without motive or remorse, who "murdered simply for the sake of murder." For fans of Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City , all things Sherlock Holmes, or the podcast My Favorite Murder , The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream is an unforgettable true crime story from a master of the genre.

"Jobb's excellent storytelling makes the book a pleasure to read." -- The New York Times Book Review

Author Notes

Dean Jobb is an award-winning author and journalist and a professor at the University of King's College in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he teaches in the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction program. He is the author of eight previous books, including Empire of Deception , which the New York Times Book Review called "intoxicating and impressively researched" and the Chicago Writers Association named the Nonfiction Book of the Year. Jobb has written for major newspapers and magazines, including the Chicago Tribune , Toronto's Globe and Mail , and the Irish Times . He writes a monthly true-crime column, "Stranger Than Fiction," for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine . His work as an investigative reporter has been nominated for Canada's National Newspaper and National Magazine awards, and Jobb is a three-time winner of Atlantic Canada's top journalism award.

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Jobb (Empire of Deception) provides the definitive account of serial poisoner Thomas Neill Cream in this enthralling real-life thriller. Born in Scotland in 1850, Cream moved with his family to Montreal, Canada, where he earned his medical degree at McGill University. He became a respected member of his London, Ontario, community, while leading a murderous double life. After the body of a woman with whom Cream was alleged to have had an affair was found near his office in 1879, a victim of chloroform poisoning, he became a suspect and fled to the U.S. In Chicago, he became a person of interest in several deaths and was convicted in 1881 of poisoning a patient. When his life sentence was commuted in 1891, Cream immigrated to England, where his murder of several prostitutes in London with strychnine led to his arrest and execution in 1892. (It was also mooted that he could have been Jack the Ripper, though he was in prison in Illinois at the time of the Ripper killings.) Jobb nicely places this grim story in context, as Cream's London trial created a precedent for the admission of similar uncharged crimes as evidence and exposed massive Scotland Yard failures that left Cream free to kill more people until he was finally apprehended. Jobb's extensive research pays off in a true-crime masterpiece that will easily sit alongside The Devil in the White City. (July)

Library Journal Review

Jobb (creative nonfiction, Univ. of King's Coll., Halifax, Nova Scotia; Empire of Deception) profiles the physician Thomas Neill Cream, a serial killer who was a contemporary of Jack the Ripper. Between 1877 and 1892, Cream poisoned victims in Canada, the United States, and England, using strychnine capsules that he created himself. Cream, known as the Lambeth Poisoner, targeted mostly sex workers or women in need of his abortion services, but he was not averse to killing closer to home--his young wife numbered among his victims. Jobb's research is excellent, though his frequent use of quotations can be jarring to the narrative flow. Even after Cream sent detailed blackmail letters trying to shift the blame for the murders to wealthy and influential public figures, and became overly friendly with officials at Scotland Yard, he nevertheless went undiscovered for years due to shoddy police work and misogyny, Jobb argues, because police often dismissed Cream's victims as undeserving of justice. Period photos and reproductions of Cream's letters round out the work. VERDICT Jobb's compelling account of Cream's reign of terror will appeal to readers interested in Jack the Ripper or Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper.--Jessica Hilburn, Benson Memorial Lib., Titusville, PA

A Note to Readers	p. xiii
Prologue: Ghosts	p. 1
I "The First of Criminals"
1 "A Great Sin-Stricken City"	p. 11
2 "Detective-Fever"	p. 20
3 Ellen Donworth	p. 28
4 Matilda Clover	p. 33
5 "A Human 'Were-Wolf	p. 39
II The Lambeth Poisoner
6 Louisa Harvey	p. 47
17 Blackmail	p. 51
8 "A Bad Man with No Refinement"	p. 59
9 Alice Marsh and Emma Shrivel!	p. 66
10 Bitter Medicine	p. 71
11 "A Strange Customer"	p. 83
12 The Suspect	p. 91
13 "You Have Got the Wrong Man"	p. 98
III The Trusted Hand
14 Jarvis of the Yard	p. 105
15 "A Young Man of Rare Ability"	p. 109
16 "The Animal Spirits Within"	p. 119
17 Flora Eliza Brooks	p. 130
18 Student No. 2016	p. 136
19 A Premature Death	p. 143
20 The Licentiate	p. 147
21 Catharine Hutchinson Gardner	p. 152
22 By Some Person Unknown	p. 161
IV Inquest
23 Missing Links	p. 171
24 Resurrection	p. 183
V Crimes and Punishment
25 Mary Anne Matilda Faulkner	p. 193
26 "Pure Cream"	p. 206
27 Ellen Stack and Sarah Alice Montgomery	p. 213
28 A Despicable Scheme	p. 223
29 Daniel Stott	p. 226
30 "Crooked Cream"	p. 235
31 Inmate No. 4374	p. 244
32 "As Innocent as the Child Unborn"	p. 257
33 Chasing Shadows	p. 265
VI "Jack the Poisoner"
34 "A Systematic and Deliberate Course of Action"	p. 273
35 "A Murder So Diabolical"	p. 286
36 "Insane in No Legal Sense"	p. 290
37 Dead Man's Walk	p. 301
38 "I Am Jack..."	p. 305
Epilogue: An Elizabethan Tragedy of Horrors"	p. 312
Cast of Characters	p. 323
Acknowledgments	p. 329
Sources	p. 333
Index	p. 403

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Bound With These Titles

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Summary

Summary

Author Notes

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Library Journal Review

Table of Contents