23rd November

You know my views on Crippen. Even before we realized that the body in the basement of his house at 63 Hilldrop Crescent couldn't have been Mrs Crippen (Belle Elmore) because it was make, I thought they should have given him a medal because she was so horrible. Everybody disagreed of course and they hanged him at Pentonville today in 1910.

The Tufnell Park One is innocent.

In other news ...
Bill Pratt was born today in 1887. Who he, I hear you ask. He became Boris Karloff in later life, legend of Frankenstein, The Mummy and The Body Snatcher. Other film stars who weren't going to make it with their own monikers include:-

• Laruska Skikne (Laurence Harvey)
• Issur Danielovitch (Kirk Douglas)
• Diana Fluck (Diana Dors)
• Frances Gumm (Judy Garland)
• George Crane (Randolph Scott)
• Bacteria Cuniculus (Bugs Bunny).

22 October

'Pretty Boy' Floyd was killed today in 1934 in a gunfight with FBI agents. They were actually trying to find 'Gorgeous Features' Mulwinnie after a tip-off from 'Impossibly Handsome' Bomperini.

In other news ...

Dr Crippen was found guilty of murdering his wife, Belle Elmore, today in 1910. I have blogged this once before because his execution was a gross miscarriage of justice. The body in the cellar was that of a man, we now know, not a woman so even if HH killed that individual, the corpse was not that of his wife so the case should have been dismissed. Why the error? A basic mistake by the pathologist Bernard Spilsbury who, even that early in his career, was revered by all and sundry as a God. And Belle Elmore? She later changed her name to Ann Widdecombe and the rest is History.