Book review: Story of a Murder by Hallie Rubenhold

In Story of a Murder, Hallie Rubenhold once again shines a spotlight on the women often forgotten in a famous historic murder. In this case, it's Dr Crippen's murder of his wife, Belle.

As a lover of women's history, I'm just going to come right out and say that I love Hallie Rubenhold's work. In Story of a Murder and her previous book, The Five, she dives into the story of a famous murder case (the Dr Crippen case in Story of a Murder, Jack the Ripper in The Five). But instead of focusing her attention on the male perpertrator, as history has tended to do, she puts the women centre stage.

The women in these cases have tended to be marginalised in the narrative, shunted to the side and dismissed with simplistic (and sometimes inaccurate) labels: prostitute, wife, mistress, victim. Rubenhold puts her significant talents as a historian to work breathing life into these women and their stories, often shaking up our assumptions about these crimes we thought we knew so much about.

In Story of a Murder, we focus primarily on three women:

• Charlotte

• Belle Elmore

• Ethel Le Neve

Charlotte was Crippen's first wife (did you know he had a first wife? I didn't!), a long-suffering woman saddled with an unreliable husband, until her untimely (and suspicious) death.

Belle was his second wife and the woman he was eventually hanged for murdering. Dismissed for decades as just 'the victim', Belle bursts forth from these pages as a fascinating, vibrant woman. A music hall performer (and energetic advocate for other performers), she provides a rich glimpse into the Gilded Age theatrical world, and the close bonds that formed amongst the performers. Her friends, many of whom were fellow members of the Music Hall Ladies' Guild, were the people who kept pressure on the police after Belle disappeared, using their connections to ensure the case was properly investigated, whent he police themselves were very ready to just accept Crippen's claim that his wife was travelling. These women are the reason Belle saw justice, and they made sure of it because they loved her.

Ethel is most famous for being 'the mistress'. Hired by Crippen as a typist, her story explores the experiences of young women entering white-collar professional spheres that had been primarily dominated by men, with the attendant anxieties and dangers. When Crippen was caught, she played the victim herself, painting herself as an innocent young woman taken in by a more worldly man, though the truth, of course, is far more complicated.

It's a wonderful book, not only detailing these women but also the times they lived in, which shaped the crime and the narrative that came out of it, a narrative that very much needs to change. Well worth a read for any true crime, history, or women's history fans!