Bad Medicine

Thomas Neill Cream wanted nothing more than to leave the family shipping business to become a medical doctor. Having graduated with honors, his future seemed promising -- until the bodies began to appear. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
You're listening to American Shadows, a production of iHeartRadio and
Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
The most Beautiful Girl in New York City was, according
to the judges of the contest that decided such matters,
a dark haired, blue eyed young woman by the name
of Olive Duffy. It was nineteen fourteen, and with her
newly minted title and all of the attention that came
with it, Olive was on her way to fame and fortune.

(00:38):
She worked first as a showgirl on Broadway before moving
on to the silver screen, the public's newest and most
exciting form of mass entertainment. Olive was a natural fit
for the Hollywood set. A studio darling with both a
foul mouth and a mischievous air, she seemed to be
living out the fantasies of so many young girls. She

(00:58):
got jobs, and eventually she got the man. Olive and
John Pickford, one of the most eligible bachelors of the day,
began carousing, partying, and gaining quite the reputation around the sets.
They were madly in love, yes, but they were also
wildly volatile. Their pairing rife with a magnetic passion that

(01:19):
bound them together and seemingly endless, passionate affairs that tore
them apart. In September of nineteen twenty, Olive and Jack
set sail for Paris. It was supposed to be a
reconciliation of sorts, an attempt to quiet their quarrels and
quell their tempers. Oh. Once they got to town, they
checked into the hotel Writs and went off to explore

(01:40):
the city. And there they drank and danced as the
night ticked on, a stumbling back to their room in
the early morning hours. There's old wisdom that tells us
that nothing good can happen at this liminal time between
night and day. Some may beg to differ, but knowing
what we know now, we might assume that our ill

(02:01):
fated couple might agree. Jack would later claim that he
had already climbed into bed, half asleep and soaked and whiskey,
when suddenly, from the bathroom Olive began to scream. In
his haze. Jack stumbled out of bed and found Olive
leaning against the counter holding a bottle. As he would
recount later, she looked at him, pale with horror, and said,

(02:24):
oh my god, I'm poisoned. Allegedly, Olive had been trying
to take her sleeping medication, but in her drunken, exhausted state,
she mixed up her medication with Jack's. At that time,
Jack was treating his painful syphilis sores with bichloride of mercury,
which just so happens to be extremely toxic if ingested.

(02:46):
It seems that Olive had grabbed the wrong bottle, poured
a dose, and drank it down, but very quickly realized
her mistake. Jack scooped up his wife and carried her
to the bed. He grabbed the phone and called for
an ambulance. Olive was taken to the hospital, and shortly
afterward the story broke in the newspapers. Olive, the most

(03:06):
beautiful girl in all of New York, died in the
hospital five days later. The story of all of Thomas's
poisoning made the front pages of reputable newspapers and gossip
rags alike. Some believed Jack's affairs had finally been too
much for her, and that she had died by suicide
by deploying the precise medication he was using to treat

(03:27):
the infections had contracted from his string of infidelities. Others
claimed it was Jack himself, who had deliberately switched to
the bottles in order to avoid an expensive divorce. Police
immediately launched an investigation into the starlet's death and ordered
an autopsy. As it would happen, they quickly came to
the conclusion that it was, as Jack had reported, a

(03:48):
terrible accident. For all its tragedy, this poisoning is popularly
remembered not as something malicious or cruel, but in fact
a fairly ordinary accident that happened to someone of extraordinary circumstances.
She was known, and she was loved. There were many

(04:09):
eyes on the case. But others who don't have the
privileges of love and fame, they aren't so lucky. Some
tragic accidents, as we will soon see, have more to
them than meets the eye. I'm Lorn Vogelbaum. Welcome to
American Shadows. Thomas Neil Cream knew something about death. He was,

(04:36):
after all, coming of age in the Victorian era, at
a time where medicine often felt like magic and the
average life expectancy was much shorter. He'd lost more than
one sibling and would lose his mother shortly before he
turned twenty. Even though his family was a prosperous one.
His father had risen quickly through the ranks of a

(04:57):
Canadian shipping company, turning him into one of the cities
healthiest men. Mortality was something that even they couldn't buy
their way out of. By the time he was twenty one,
Thomas knew that he couldn't follow in his father's footsteps.
He informed his dad that he was going to become
a doctor. He enrolled in McGill University in eighteen seventy
two and earned a reputation among his schoolmates as quite

(05:20):
the dandy. He loved flash and he loved style. He
was sure of himself arrogant, even knowing his life would
be made easier by his charms and his family money.
At McGill, he straddled the line between the living and
the dead, dissecting bodies in his anatomy lessons. Most of
the cadavers he worked on were probably procured by crooked

(05:41):
grave robbers in the middle of the night. It was
an unseemly business, but it was considered the only way
to unlock the body's secrets, a small price to pay
to serve the living. The coursework captivated him, sparking all
kinds of intense curiosities. One of the subjects of his
fascination came in liquid form. It was chloroform, a new

(06:05):
wonder drug that had begun showing up in doctor's offices
and pharmacies across the world. Was prescribed to treat just
about everything from insomnia to alcoholism to sea sickness, and
call it still. How it worked exactly was somewhat of
a mystery. It seemed to slow the body down and
put a person to sleep. As more doctors began to

(06:27):
use it, patients began to die on operating tables. It
said that on average, one in three thousand surgical patients
died due to its application. But without being totally clear
on how it worked or what a safe dose was,
the doctors were at a loss as how to best
mitigate fatalities. It was a wildly unpredictable substance, asking all

(06:50):
those who dealt in it to partake of a game
of chemical roulette. For his part, Thomas was more fascinated
by chloroform than any other herb or drug. In his arsenal,
he wrote a thesis on the effects of chloroform and
graduated from University with honors in March of eighteen seventy six.
Soon after, Thomas met a woman named Flora Brooks, the

(07:12):
pretty daughter of a wealthy businessman. He observed all of
the proper courtship rituals that were demanded of him, even
though he wasn't marriage minded. He had bigger plans for himself.
You might imagine his surprise when Flora told him she
was pregnant. He demanded that she get an abortion, and
that he be the one to perform it. Soon after,

(07:33):
Flora fell sick and her family called in a local doctor.
He immediately diagnosed the consequences of the botched abortion. It
was clear to all at her bedside that Thomas was
responsible for this whole mess. Flora's father was livid, but
Thomas and Flora married two days later under the threat
of her father's gun. It wouldn't be long, though, before

(07:54):
Thomas get town under the pretense of enrolling in a
British medical school. Flora was behind in what we can
assume was a flurry of mixed emotions. She never made
a full recovery. Flora took to bed dutifully following a
regiment of pills that Thomas mailed her from overseas. When
her local doctor asked her where they came from, she

(08:16):
told him. He told her to stop immediately, he couldn't
identify them. Laura died soon after, succumbing to what appeared
to be consumption, But those little pills later aroused suspicion
in all who came to hear his story. Thomas Cream

(08:39):
arrived back on this side of the pond in eighteen
seventy eight. He had a bit of European education under
his belt and a need for cash. He settled down
in Ontario. It was here he thought that he would
set up his new practice. He became an active member
in his community of something that had long ago been
instilled in him by his father. He was a frequent

(08:59):
presence at Sunday morning church services and tutored children in
their lessons. His daytime hours would never have suggested that
his neighbors should wonder what he was getting up to
after dark. His habits had come with him. It was
whispered that he was seen out frequenting bars and carousing
with prostitutes. He drank, and it seemed that he had

(09:19):
picked up a morphine habit along the way. This all
was wholly unacceptable for a man of his station. Even still,
he was a doctor. His degree earned him clout in
the eyes of those who knew him, and created a
polished reputation that was sought by folks who wanted to
meet him. But all of that respectability that came with

(09:40):
his title couldn't save Thomas from what happened. In May
of eighteen seventy nine, one frosty morning, a young girl
tromped outside to use Thomas's backyard privy. When she pulled
the door open, she found a woman dead, slumped cold
and stiff against the wall. The woman in the privy
appeared to be in her mid twenties and wore a

(10:01):
faded purple dress, and next to her sat a small,
uncorked bottle. A doctor was called, who decided that she
probably had died before daybreak. He turned his attention to
the small bottle and gingerly took it in his hands.
He turned it around and lifted it to his nose.
He sniffed it and immediately recognized the cloying fumes of chloroform.

(10:23):
An investigation got under way and the identity of the
woman was discovered. Her name was Kate Gardner. And those
who were investigating theorized that she had taken her own
life after becoming pregnant out of wedlock, but an inquest
was held all the same. The coroner discovered marks on
her face bruising it was likely they thought that this

(10:44):
could have been from a chloroform soaked handkerchief being held
tightly against her mouth and nose. They came to the
conclusion that she couldn't have done that long enough to
kill herself, especially once the chloroform had taken effect. They
knew they were looking for a killer, and it didn't
take them long to set their sights on doctor Thomas Crean.

(11:05):
Thomas didn't deny knowing this woman. He admitted that she
had consulted with him about an abortion, but he did
deny having anything to do with the chloroform found at
the scene. It was finally declared that she was killed
by the administration of chloroform to her by an unknown person.
The investigation couldn't prove that he was guilty, but the

(11:26):
public opinion was of a different mind. He was extraordinarily
suspect in the eyes of his neighbors and the larger community,
which effectively put an end to his career in Ontario
not to be wholly dissuaded. He left for Chicago, a
much larger city, but he could disappear into and re
emerge anew in Chicago. Part of this new trajectory would

(11:48):
be a rebranding. He didn't aim for the same air
of respectability that had had in Ontario, but instead he
set up a practice near the booming red light district.
That abortion was still illegal in the United States and Canada,
Thomas was playing a dangerous, albeit profitable game. He was
a functional extortionist in charging what he liked by capitalizing

(12:12):
on the desperation of his patients. At the same time,
if something went wrong, the women were out of luck.
Seeking secondary medical attention for a botched abortion might cause
another doctor to report them for their crime. Because of
this underground illicit system, Thomas could ensure that his patients
wouldn't report him, and he felt confident that he could

(12:34):
continue to operate undetected unless something went wrong again, which
inevitably it did. In August of eighteen eighty, a resident
of an apartment building on West Madison Street noticed the
smell of death permeating the next door flat, and the
police were summoned and summarily broke down the apartment door.

(12:54):
There they found a young woman lying peacefully on a
blood soaked bed. Her body was in a state of
deep decay. The reporting neighbor told police and the attending doctor,
one Donald Fraser, that the apartment belonged to an African
American nurse and midwife named Hattie Mack. The dead woman,
whose name was mary Anne Matilda Faulkner, was said to

(13:16):
have been staying with her with an unknown doctor, making
frequent house calls. A note left by Hattie in the
apartment suggested someone It was addressed to one doctor Thomas
Neil Cream. When the police finally located Hattie, she started talking.
It was a botched abortion, she claimed, and she had
done everything she could to save the young woman. She

(13:38):
claimed that Thomas was in the business of abortions. She
claimed that Thomas had used chloroform on the young woman,
But when Thomas was confronted, he suggested that Hattie acted
alone and that he had been the one who was
called in to help. Thomas's word won out that day,
which would prove to be a grave mistake. Maryanne Matilda's

(13:59):
body wouldn't be the last associated with the doctor. The
next appeared in eighteen eighty one and belonged to a
domestic servant named Ellen Stack. She had been to see
a doctor who had written her a prescription. After taking
the pills, she was soon writhing in pain and soon
after that dead. The same doctor Donald Fraser, was brought

(14:20):
to the scene and quickly located the prescribing doctor as
one doctor Thomas Cream. Thomas naturally pointed fingers at the pharmacist,
accusing them of making a fatal error. Not long after,
a young woman named Alice Montgomery checked into a hotel
called Sheldon House on West Madison. She took some medicine

(14:40):
with dinner, but collapsed to the floor not long after,
screaming in pain. Doctor Seymour Knox was summoned to help her,
but it was too late. He declared that she had
likely died of strychnine poisoning. During the examination, he discovered
that she also recently attempted an abortion, and that it
was likely the same doctor who had with her medicine.

(15:01):
The prescription was written by doctor Donald Fraser, and when
Fraser was found, he confirmed the prescription was likely and aborrificant. However,
this wasn't his doing, the prescription wasn't written in his handwriting,
and his name was misspelled. Fraser was still interrogated at
the inquest, and though he was exonerated, newspapers continued to

(15:25):
speculate about his guilt. Others theorized that the guilty party
was indeed Thomas Cream, whose office was only a stone's
throw from Alice's hotel. They never could prove it, but
the abortion method of killing, location and time period made
Cream the most likely suspect. Still, Thomas carried on with

(15:45):
his life and affairs, including romancing a married woman by
the name of Julius Stott. They had met when she
diagnosed her husband with epilepsy. Cream's old pills that allegedly
cured his condition, and Julia picked them up for him regularly.
It's only when Julia's husband died with three times the
lethal dose of strychnine in his bloodstream did the police

(16:07):
turn more seriously to the neighborhood doctor. Thomas had promptly
written to the coroner, blaming the pharmacist again for batching
the man's prescription and attempting to claim life insurance funds
on behalf of his mistress. He was trusting. It seems
that his story would end here what they happily ever after,
But Julia, crushed under the pursuit of law enforcement, turned

(16:30):
on her lover, pointing the finger at Thomas. He was
charged and convicted guilty of second degree murder. He was
handed a life sentence. Thomas was furious. He had always
gotten everything that he wanted. Money, women, and the power
to decide life and death. This wouldn't be the end

(16:51):
of his story. He just knew it. It's important to
understand that even in all of this, Thomas still had connections.
He still had people who loved him and more importantly,
in this case, believed in him. And thanks to those

(17:11):
people and some very crafty lawyers, Thomas was given a
pardon and released in eighteen ninety one on the account
of good behavior. He returned home to his native Canada
and staying some time with his brother Daniel to get
his bearings. It soon became evident, however, that something was
not right. But the good doctor Thomas was increasingly volatile

(17:33):
and began lashing out at family members. He was erratic,
and soon the family began to discuss what to do
with him. It seemed at points that he was exhibiting
symptoms of intoxication and withdrawal. It was decided that his
old London stomping grounds would be a good place for
him to go for a while, and so his brother
made plans to help him get set up there. On

(17:55):
October first of eighteen ninety one, Thomas wrote a brief
note to Daniel to say he'd arrived and was getting
settled in Lambeth, a neighborhood with a seed reputation, though
he didn't mention that in his letter. He began frequenting
the restaurant's shops and other familiar amusements, including the best
spots to hire working women. On October thirteenth of that year,

(18:18):
Ellen or Nellie Donworth, a local sex worker, went off
with a tall man. When she arrived back at her
rooming house, she began to shake horribly. A medical assistant
was brought to examine her and explained that her condition
was dire. It appeared that she had all the symptoms
of strychnine poisoning. She refused to go to the hospital

(18:39):
and begged him to let her die at home. Even still,
they decided to bundle her into a carriage, but she
would pass before they reached their destination. It's important to
remember that the streets of Victorian London were cold, hard places.
Kindness was not found there in the twilight hours, nor

(18:59):
was it directed toward the women who worked the streets
in life or in death. They were a class of
people considered to be a moral scourge, often expendable in
the eyes of those who met them. This was the
attitude when Jack the Ripper had begun to stalk these
very same streets in eighteen eighty eight, and the papers
filled up with salacious stories of women brutally murdered. Even still,

(19:23):
the investigators couldn't make much of Nellie's story about the
tall Man and decided that she had poisoned herself. They
ignored a letter from someone named a O'Brien, who offered
to help in finding the killer for an exorbitant fee.
He strangely seemed to know a lot about her death.
A week later, a woman by the name of Matilda

(19:43):
Clover awoke her entire house with her screen. Matilda jerked
violently as she whispered that someone named Fred had given
her pills, claiming that they would prevent her from catching
an even aerial diseases. The doctor who arrived at her
bedside didn't believe her story. He believed Matilda to be
suffering from delirium tremends. She died the next day and

(20:06):
alcoholism was given as her official cause of death. Soon
another letter arrived to a local doctor offering help in
finding the real cause of Matilda's death, again for a price.
The authorities made note, but there was no follow up.
Two more women friends in boarding house flatmates, would die next,

(20:27):
but not before telling those of their bedside a tall
man with a top hat, mustache, and crossed eyes who
gave them pills after their sexual encounters. In late October
of eighteen ninety one, young Louise Harvey made a date
with the man, claiming to be a doctor who wore
a black overcoat and a top hat. She later reported

(20:48):
that he had the strangest eyes she had ever seen.
He told her he was a doctor at the local hospital,
and he made note of a few spots on her forehead.
He promised to bring her pills when they met the
next day. That following day, he brought her roses and
they strolled along the river towards the theater. While there,
he handed her two light colored pills and told her

(21:10):
to swallow them immediately. Suspicious, Louise only pretended to put
them in her mouth. The man immediately left, claiming he
had an appointment at the hospital and that he would
meet her later. He'd never returned. By this point, news
of the so called Lambeth poisoner was starting to spread
and everyone was taking notice. One or two bodies might

(21:32):
be chalked up to the causality of hard living, but
so many reports of debts and near misses could no
longer be ignored. The Scotland Yard was starting to sit
up and pay attention, making inquiries around the neighborhood and
hearing some disturbing stories. An American policeman soon approached Scotland
Yard after an unsettling encounter with a local doctor. It

(21:56):
seems that this policeman had met a tall man who
had taken him on a tour of where all of
these women were poisoned and died. With this tip the
eyewitness accounts and the letters, it didn't take long for
police to turn their attention to Thomas, who perfectly matched
the description of their killer. He was tall, often seen

(22:16):
wearing an overcoat, had a mustache, and crossed eyes. The
detectives approached him and asked for his help, but not
before sending for police and jail records from Thomas's time
in Chicago. They told him that the killer had been
writing letters. Thomas, in his arrogant delusion and willingness to
tempt fate, cheerfully provided them with samples of his writing.

(22:39):
By the end of their investigation, Scotland Yard was confident
that they had their killer, but the handwriting samples and
the records of his previous conviction for murder by poison
clinched it. Doctor Thomas Cream was promptly arrested. You can

(23:00):
imagine Thomas's surprise when Louise Harvey took the stand. Despite
his calculations, she had somehow survived, and her testimony was damning,
especially since he had casually and confidently mentioned people that
one of the poisoner's victims died at the theater. She
was supposed to have died at the theater, but here

(23:21):
she was in London's Central Criminal Court, in telling the
jurors about her run in with Thomas, and how he
had demanded that she take the pills, and how he
insisted on checking her hands to make sure she wasn't
holding onto them. She explained to her audience that she
and Thomas had planned to join up again that evening,
even though she suspected something was strange about him. He

(23:41):
never showed up and she was fairly relieved. Prosecutors made
a case that all of the women were poisoned with strychnine,
while Thomas's defense insisted he was only linked through gossip.
They insisted that there were many men in London who
dressed like Thomas and this was all simply a case
of mistaken idea entity, though they've had no explanation for

(24:03):
Thomas and the Lambeth poisoner sharing the same crossed eyes.
It took only ten minutes for the jury to find
Thomas Neil Cream guilty of murder and sentence him to hang.
While he was in prison awaiting execution, he finally admitted
to his crimes and claimed many others previously unknown. Thomas

(24:23):
stepped up to the gallows and into infamy on November
fifteenth of eighteen ninety two. The city breathed a sigh
of relief as a noose was looped around his neck
and the floor fell out from under him. There's more
to this story stick around after this brief sponsor break
to hear all about it. A good nurse needs a

(24:50):
good bedside manner. They need a warm disposition, a kind spirit,
and a confident mastery of any task at hand. Jane
Toppin seemed to have this. She was so good, humored
and beloved at the Cambridge, Massachusetts hospital where she worked
that she received the nickname Jolly Jane. What no one realized, though,

(25:11):
were what terrible secrets she kept. Jane was born Honora Kelly,
the daughter of Irish immigrants, on March thirty first of
eighteen fifty four. Her upbringing was a tumultuous one, with
her mother dying and father going mad as She and
her sister were sent to an orphanage when she was
only six. At that time, there were few systems in

(25:33):
place to help orphaned children, especially poor ones. The young
girls might be trained as domestic servants, which was often
the only career choice they had. In November of eighteen
sixty two, Honora was sent to live with the Topphin
family in Lowell, Massachusetts as an indentured servant. They re
christened her Jane and gave her their last name, though

(25:55):
they never officially adopted her into the family. Jane seemed
to adjust well and stayed on as a paid servant
when she was eighteen after being officially released from her
indentured status. As she lived there until she was thirty three,
when she decided that she would leave to take up nursing.
She began her career at Cambridge Hospital in eighteen eighty seven,

(26:16):
and though she was adored by her patients, her colleagues
didn't take as kindly of a liking to her. They
thought she was a gossip and dishonest, a beer guzzler
with a crass sense of humor. They kept their distance
and she kept her job. It would go on like
this for a good long while. Patients came in and
stayed for a time to recover. But after a while

(26:40):
the hospital staff noticed that instead of leaving out the
front doors, more and more patience were shipped out through
the morgue. No one suspected that during her downtime, Jolly
Jane was poisoning her patience. Her friendliness was really just
a cover for finding her next victim. It's thought that
Jane actually despised her patients, specifically the elderly. To this end,

(27:04):
she took to falsifying patient's medical records, mixing up drug
cocktails and injecting them into their veins. She would experiment with,
keeping them in a liminal space between life and death,
alive but barely conscious and most likely unaware of the
power at play. It said that doctors were generally so
impressed with Jane's diligence on the floor that they recommended

(27:26):
her for a position at Massachusetts General Hospital, one of
the most prestigious medical facilities in the country. Death followed
her there too, but her undoing wouldn't come from patients
dying on her watch, rather for handing out painkillers too liberally.
Jane was fired, but the doctors liked her, so they
began recommending her as a private nurse for wealthy clients.

(27:50):
Out from under the supervision of the hospital, Jane was
a free agent. She began earning twenty five dollars a week,
a mighty sum at a time when a working woman
could expect to earn at five dollars a week outside
of the home, and soon the bodies began to follow her,
first her landlords, then a patient, then a dear friend

(28:10):
of hers, then finally her foster sister who she had
grown up with, all found poisoned. Jane moved herself back
into the home she grew up in, with her eyes
set on marrying her deceased foster sister's husband, Ormond. Soon
upon her arrival, the housekeeper turned up dead. Jane got
to work in the home, a familiar space with familiar

(28:33):
tasks she had mastered years earlier, as she hoped to
impress Ormond, who wanted absolutely nothing to do with her.
She figured if he wasn't going to be impressed with
her homemaking skills, perhaps he would be impressed with her nursing.
She decided to poison him, but when he survived and
suspected what had happened to him, Jane was thrown out.

(28:56):
She was testing her luck but saw no reason to stop,
so soon took up residence with an elderly mister Davis.
She killed him and his two daughters, Minnie and Genevieve,
who had come to stay for two weeks, and she
might have gotten away with it, as she always had
if the daughters hadn't been married. Minnie's father in law
grew suspicious of such a short violent illness and requested

(29:19):
a toxicology exam for his daughter in law. Medical examiner
discovered Mannie had been poisoned. Local detectives began investigating Jane,
and on October twenty ninth of nineteen oh one, police
arrested her in Amherst, New Hampshire. She went to trial
in the summer of nineteen oh two. As she took
the stand, it all came out. She told the court

(29:41):
room of the thirty one murders she knew about, but
said there could be over a hundred. Patience from Cambridge
who had lived to tell the tale spoke of Jane
taking a perverse pleasure as she hovered beside them in
their beds as they fought to survive. Jane was sentenced
to life in an asylum. As she got older, she

(30:02):
only became more brazen, and it said that she could
be heard at all hours yelling down the halls. Get
some morphine, Dearie, and we'll go out in the ward.
You and I will have a lot of fun seeing
them die. Medical professionals hold an awful lot of power
within their domain, and few stop to question their actions

(30:23):
are intent. For Jane, the tables were turned. Her life
was now in the hands of fellow Nurses.

Speaker 1 (30:36):
American Shadows as hosted by Lauren Vogelbaum. This episode was
written by Robin Minitter, researched by Ali Steed, and produced
by Miranda Hawkins and Trevor Young, with executive producers Aaron Mankey,
Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. To learn more about the show,
visit grimminmile dot com. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit

(30:57):
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts.