I hadn’t actually heard of this case before and came across it in a book I was given. Some of the details seemed to have got a bit muddled over the years but the general story remains the same. This story involves theft, bigamy, bathtubs, murder, and a really rather unpleasant creature called George…
George Joseph Smith was born 11th January 1872 in Bethnal Green, London. Even as a child, he showed little regard for the law, being sent to a reformatory at just 9 years old and serving 12 months for theft in 1896. At the age of 25, George had spent more time as an adult in prison than he had out of it. He decided he was going to open a bakery in Leicester. Now at first, I thought this may have been an attempt by him to ‘go straight’ but he used the alias George Oliver Love – and why would you need an alias to open a bakery? In 1898, one of the shop assistants introduced George to their daughter, Caroline Thornhill, a young 18-year-old women, and it didn’t take George long at all to pursue, seduce and marry her. In the long run, the bakery didn’t work out and the business was lost; not knowing what else to do, George returned to a life of crime – this time with the assistance of his young bride. Caroline would take a job working as a housekeeper for a wealthy family and, when it was safe for her to do so, she would steal as many valuables as she could. George would then sell the stolen property before the couple would move on to their next victims. They were finally caught after nearly 2 years, after a pawnbroker became suspicious of some silver Caroline was trying to sell him. Caroline was arrested and sent to prison for a year. Cowardly George ran off before he could be arrested, leaving Caroline rather annoyed and determined to leave him (unsurprisingly!).
George had escaped to London and was struggling to afford accommodation. He decided the best way to solve this was to bigamously marry his landlady (disclaimer: rent prices are high, and this may seem like a good idea, but bigamy isn’t the answer. Don’t be a George). I can’t find any more information about wife 2, including her name. Not too long after this marriage, wife 1: Caroline, happened to be walking along Oxford Street in London and she bumped into her estranged husband. Caroline alerted a policeman, informed him that George was wanted for theft, and George was arrested and sentenced to 2 years hard labour (shame for him). Caroline wanted to put the whole ordeal behind her and travelled to Canada to start a new life.
After finishing his sentence, George moved back in with his second wife. This didn’t work out (unsurprisingly) so he left her to continue a life of bigamy and crime. In June 1908, George met and married Florence Wilson, conned her out of her money, left her in the July and used the money to open an antiques shop in Bristol. Here he employed 28-year-old Edith Pegler as a housekeeper and (yet again, unsurprisingly), he married her on 13th July 1908. George would travel the country, leaving Edith in charge of the shop; he would claim he was looking for antiques to buy and sell. What he was actually doing was looking for unsuspecting women to take advantage of. Once he was away that long he made a story up about selling a £1000 Chinese figure that had taken months of negotiations. Edith would sometimes accompany her husband on his travels, and it was during one of these trips to Southampton, that Sarah Freeman caught George’s eye.
Unsurprisingly (!), George sent Edith home and he spent 4 months chasing Sarah, introducing himself as George Rose Smith, until she finally agreed to marry him in October 1909. After the wedding they decided to travel to London; Sarah had £90 (£11,071 in 2020) cash on her. While staying in Clapham, George suggested Sarah removed the £300 (£36,906) she had in her bank account and allow him to look after it. She agreed (serious eyeroll). Later that day, George took her to the National Gallery; whilst walking around, he sat her down and told her to wait for him while he nipped to the toilet. Over an hour later, Sarah asked a member of staff to check the toilets, but George had run off. She returned to the place that they were staying and found that all of her belongings, including jewellery and clothing, had gone missing, along with her husband.
George soon moved on to his next victim, a woman in her mid-thirties called Bessie Munday. This time he claimed his name was Henry Williams and they were very quickly married. George-Henry changed tack slightly this time; he stole her life savings and left her a note, claiming she had given him a sexually transmitted disease (how very rude). 18 months later she was walking along the promenade at Weston-Super-Mare when she saw George-Henry. Approaching him tentatively, she asked ‘is that you Henry’? George-Henry exclaimed with delight when he saw her, explaining what a terrible mistake he had made, that he had missed her so much. He told her that he had thought he had a sexually transmitted disease and didn’t want to risk her catching it (then why leave a note blaming her then George if that is your real name *narrowed eyes*) and that he had taken her money merely to pay back a loan. He explained that he actually didn’t have a sexually transmitted disease and had been looking for her all over ever since; he was only in Weston-Super-Mare as he had heard she was there. Bessie fell into his arms, declaring her love for him and went to tell her landlady she was getting back with her husband (sigh). The landlady warned Bessie, and even tried to warn Bessie’s aunt about this man, but by the time she had contacted the aunt, the couple had already left.
In a romantic gesture (!!), they had a solicitor draw them up new wills, each as the sole beneficiary of the others will. Bessie had £2,500 (£307,553) in savings. George-Henry had… yes, you guessed it, sod all. They moved to Herne Bay in Kent and George-Henry started dealing in art and antiques. They rented a house and George ordered a bath to be fitted. It was the day after the bath was fitted that George-Henry escorted Bessie to Doctor Frank French, claiming she had blacked out during a fit. There didn’t appear to be anything wrong with Bessie but the doctor prescribed bromide of potassium (a sedative) regardless. Just 2 days later, George-Henry was banging on the doctor’s door in the early hours of the morning; apparently Bessie had suffered another fit. When she was examined, there were no signs at all of a fit; she was a little warm, but it was a humid July night. And, yet again, despite there being NO evidence, the doctor prescribed more bromide of potassium. This really annoyed me; do you think at any point the doctor actually asked Bessie herself if there was anything wrong? Or was he typical of his day and only conversed with the husband? The next day Bessie was seen in good health out and about. However, the day after, 13th July 1912, the doctor received a letter demanding his attendance immediately. Poor Bessie was dead. George-Henry said he had gone out briefly to do some shopping and come back to find his wife dead. At 80 High Street, Herne Bay, the doctor found Bessie floating face up, her mouth and nose underwater and her right hand still holding the bar of soap. The inquest ruled that the death was accidental, and George-Henry had Bessie buried in a pauper’s grave. He stuck around to collect his money from her will and then (unsurprisingly) he moved on.
The next year in Southend, actually using his real name, George-Henry-Now-George-Again married Alice Burnham, a 25-year-old daughter of a rich farmer. He used her own money to take out a life insurance on her worth £500 (£59,000 - not suspicious at all…) He also had her change her will to leave everything to him in the event of her death (hmmmmm). George-Henry-George decided they should travel to Blackpool for a belated honeymoon and booked them into a boarding house. He then booked them into a second boarding house, after realising the first one didn’t have a bath (HMMMMM!!!!!). Within a few days, Alice began to feel ill; George went to the doctor and had him prescribe some tablets for her – are you spotting a little bit of a pattern here? On 12th December 1913, the landlady of the boarding house sat down to dinner and noticed a damp patch growing on the ceiling. Soon after, George-Henry-George entered the front door, said hello to the landlady, and went upstairs. As soon as he did, he started crying out for a doctor. Alice was lying dead in the bathtub. Yet again (!) the inquest returned an accidental death verdict, and, like Bessie, poor Alice was buried in a pauper’s grave. George-Henry-George inherited her £600 (£70,800) estate and left the area.
It was 1914 and World War I was in its infancy. In September 1914, Alice Reavil (I also read her name was Alice Reid) was in Bournemouth listening to a band, when she was approached by a Charles Oliver James. Plot twist – it wasn’t Charles but in fact it was George-Henry-George! George-Henry-George-Charles told her how he had a decent income from owning land in Canada to impress her and, it must have worked, because they were married within the week. He persuaded his new bride to give him £90 (£10,620) so he could start up an antiques shop, which she willingly did (a little strange considering the great income he was supposed to be earning). One day, George-Henry-George-Charles took Alice for a walk in a local park, before telling her to take a seat while he went to the toilet. I am sure you can guess what happens next. Although he left Alice penniless, she had at least escaped with her life.
It was in December 1914 when George-Henry-George-Charles met clergyman’s daughter, Margaret Lofty, in Bath. This time he called himself John Lloyd (are you keeping up with this?) and he nicknamed her Peggy. Unsurprisingly (!) they married and travelled to a boarding house at 14, Bismark Road (now Waterlow Road), Highgate, London for their honeymoon. The next evening the landlady boiled water for Margaret to take a bath and went downstairs to leave her in peace. The landlady heard splashing, followed by silence, then the front door closing. Not long after, George-Henry-George-Charles-John (and breathe) arrived back at the boarding house and went upstairs. Sadly, there are no prizes for guessing what happened next. Poor Margaret lay deceased in the cooling water. Margaret was buried in a common grave and the undertaker, Herbert Francis Beckett recalled that he said, ‘I don’t want any walking, get it over as quick as you can’ followed by ‘thank goodness that’s all over’. George-Henry-George-Charles-John returned to Bristol to spend Christmas with Edith (remember her?) and even had the audacity to give her one of Margaret’s dresses as a gift.
The murder of Margaret was to be his downfall. Alice and Bessie had been murdered in small seaside towns, and their deaths had only been reported in local newspapers. Margaret had been murdered in the capital city of London and the story had been picked up by national newspaper, the News of the World. The headline read ‘Bride’s tragic fate on the day of her wedding’. This national story caught the attention of Alice Burnham’s father, Charles Burnham; surely the similarities between the two deaths were not just coincidence? He contacted Joseph Crossley, the landlord of the boarding house in Blackpool that George and Alice had stayed in (and where Alice had died). They wrote to Detective Inspector Arthur Neil, of Scotland yard, with newspaper clippings of both deaths. Detective Inspector Neil started to investigate the trail. He even went to the boarding house in Blackpool to measure the bathtub; it was 50 inches long and he didn’t believe it was big enough for an adult to naturally drown in.
A month later, detectives arrested our murdering bigamist in Shepard’s Bush; he was actually at a lawyer’s office trying to hurry the process for receiving his inheritance from Margaret’s estate. George-Henry-George-Charles-John finally admitted to police that his real name was George Joseph Smith. George was held in Bow Street police station. There were over 150 witnesses interviewed and police found 13 points of similarity between the deaths of Bessie Mundy, Alice Burnham and Margaret Lofty. The women’s bodies were exhumed and examined by the Home Office pathologist, Doctor Bernard Spilsbury. It didn’t take him long to establish that each one of them had been murdered. He deduced that each of the women had been in the bath, when George entered the room. These women were naked and relaxed, they were in an extremely vulnerable position, but trusted their husband. George knelt by the bath, put an arm under the knees and pulled them upwards, while using his other hand to hold their head under the water. Spilsbury believed it happened so quickly that the women were more likely to have died from shock than of drowning.
On 23rd March 1915, George Joseph Smith was charged with murder. Despite World War I raging on, there was a massive interest in ‘The Brides in the Bath’ case. Even Caroline, his first wife (and technically his only true wife), made a 2-week journey back to London to attend the committal hearings at the Old Bailey. When it was announced that George would be going to trial, many women in the courtroom cried, including Caroline. I am going to assume this was out of relief and not pity for him, although Edith decided she was going to stand by George. Strangely, George was a bit of a Ted Bundy, and had hoards of female fans. They would protest his innocence and queue for ages in the hope of getting a seat in the courtroom. In the words of Bailey Sarian – Get. Better. Idols.
During the trial, the jury watched a demonstration of how Spilsbury thought the murders had occurred, A nurse in a bathing costume lay in a bath of water and Inspector Neil pulled her knees up with one arm and pushed her head under water with the other. The poor nurse had to be revived, despite only being under water for a couple of seconds. Strangely, George gave no evidence in his defence.
On the 1st July 1915, it took the jury just 20 minutes to find George guilty. He was sentenced to death. While awaiting his execution at Pentonville Prison he wrote to Edith, declaring that she was ‘his one true love’ (yes, of course she was George). He was hanged on the 13th August 1915 and his last words were ‘I am innocent’. He was 43 years old.
The very next day, Caroline married a Canadian man and I hope she lived happily ever after. Interestingly, the bath used to kill Margaret Lofty was bought by Madame Tussaud’s and was placed in the Chamber of Horrors, alongside a waxwork of George, for many years.
And that is the story of George and his tragic wives. Do you think he was innocent? I struggle to believe that he was, I think it would be too much of a coincidence for 3 wives to die in the same circumstances. And Bessie was found gripping the soap – surely if she had fainted or slipped under the water, she would have let go of it? Please do let me know what you think of this story in the comments, take care of yourselves and I will see you next time.
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