Glasgow Crime Stories: The tale of deadly doctor Thomas Cream

Thomas Cream - also known as the Lambeth Poisoner - was a doctor who killed his victims, including patients, with deadly strychnine.

The Glaswegian murdered up to 10 people in three countries, targeting mostly poor women, sex workers and pregnant women seeking abortions. 

He was convicted and sentenced to death in London, England, and hanged on November 15, 1892.

It's claimed his last words were a confession that he was Jack the Ripper shortly before he was hanged.

Born in Glasgow, Cream was brought up in Quebec City in Canada after his family moved there in 1854 for a better life.

He wouldn't return to Scotland or his native city for another 24 years.

Cream studied medicine in Montreal, graduating in 1876. 

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His training was at St Thomas' Hospital Medical School in London.

In 1878 he qualified as a physician and surgeon in Edinburgh, returning periodically to visit relatives in Glasgow. 

After complying his studies, he practiced in Iowa in the USA then relocated to Ontario in Canada.

By then he was already hiding a number of dark secrets.

In 1876, Cream had entered a relationship with Flora Brooks.

Brooks then became pregnant and Cream performed a failed abortion, leaving her severely ill. 

He fled back to Montreal, but was caught by Flora's father, who forced him to return and to marry his daughter. 

It was the day after the wedding that Cream left for Britain to continue his medical studies in London and Edinburgh.

The Brooks family never saw or heard from him again, with Flora dying of consumption in 1877 - abandoned by her husband.

Cream returned to Canada in 1878, and established a medical practice in London, Ontario.

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However, he was found guilty of practicing without a licence, but he continued to receive patients.

In 1879, Catharine Gardner was found dead in a toilet behind his Ontario office after she had consulted Cream about an abortion.

She had been murdered with a handkerchief soaked in chloroform and Cream was questioned by the local police.

He claimed Gardner had threatened to poison herself when he had refused to perform the abortion, and that she had written him a letter in which she named a local businessman as the father. 

Gardner's family said the handwriting on the letter did not match her own, and it was dismissed by police as a forgery. 

Despite overwhelming evidence that Cream had murdered the woman, the authorities took no further action.

However, the Glasgow man decided it was time to leave town and headed back to the USA.

He then established a medical practice near Chicago's red-light district, offering illegal abortions to prostitutes. 

He was investigated by police in August 1880, following the death of Mary Faulkner, a woman he'd operated on.

However, Cream again escaped prosecution due to a lack of evidence.

In December 1880, another patient, a Miss Stack, died after treatment by Cream.

Four months later Alice Montgomery died of strychnine poisoning following an abortion, in a house near Cream's office. 

Her death was investigated as a murder but never solved.

In July 1881, Daniel Stott died of strychnine poisoning at his home in Boone County, Illinois, after Cream supplied him with what he thought was a treatment for epilepsy. 

This time, Cream was arrested, along with the victim's wife Julia Stott.

She had become his mistress and obtained the poison from Cream to do away with her husband. 

However, Mrs Stott had the charges dropped after she agreed to give evidence against Cream.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder but released in July 1891 after only serving 10 years.

Using money inherited from his father, Cream sailed for England, arriving in Liverpool in October 1891. 

He went to London and found accommodation in Lambeth which was riddled with poverty, petty crime, and prostitution at the time.

On October 13, 1891, Ellen ‘Nellie’ Donworth, a 19-year-old sex worker, died from strychnine he had given her. 

A week later Cream met a 27-year-old prostitute named Matilda Clover, and offered her pills for a medical condition.

She began experiencing violent, painful spasms later that night, and died two hours later. 

Her death was assumed to be heart failure due to alcohol withdrawal. 

Cream, using a false name, wrote a letter to the prominent physician Dr William Broadbent, claiming to have evidence of his involvement in Clover's death and demanding £25,000 for his silence. 

Broadbent contacted Scotland Yard who then waited for the mystery blackmailer to collect the money. However, he never arrived.

In April 1892, after a holiday in Canada, Cream returned to London, where he met Louise Harvey, another sex worker who also had medical problems.

He offered her two pills, insisting she take them right away. 

However, Louise was suspicious of him.

Instead, she pretended to swallow the pills but secretly threw them away.

Later that month Cream met two more prostitutes, Alice Marsh, 21, and Emma Shrivell, 18, and spent the night with them in their flat.

Before leaving he offered them three pills each and some food. 

Both women died later that night from strychnine poisoning.

However, the net was now closing in on Cream.

Through his earlier blackmail letter, Cream had unwittingly incriminated himself. 

He had referred to the death of Matilda Clover as murder, despite it being recorded as death due to her drinking. 

The police quickly realised that the blackmailer was also the man who the press had dubbed the ‘Lambeth Poisoner’.

Around this time Cream met a policeman from New York City who was visiting London. The cop had heard of the Lambeth Poisoner, and Cream gave him a brief tour of where the various victims had lived. 

The American mentioned this to a local policeman who found Cream's detailed knowledge of the case suspicious.

Scotland Yard then put Cream under surveillance and soon discovered his habit of visiting sex workers.

They also contacted colleagues in the United States and Canada and learned about their suspect's history, including the conviction for murder by poison.

In June 1892, Cream was arrested for the murder of Matilda Clover, and the following month he was charged with the murders of Matilda, Ellen Donworth, Alice Marsh, and Emma Shrivell, the attempted murder of Louise Harvey, and extortion.

His trial in October 1892 lasted five days.

After only 12 minutes of deliberation, the jury found him guilty of all charges, and the judge Henry Hawkins sentenced him to death.

Less than a month after his conviction, Cream was hanged at Newgate Prison by public executioner James Billington.

As was customary with all hangings, his body was buried the same day at the prison along with other executed criminals.

His body was exhumed in 1902 and moved to London's municipal cemetery. He is now buried in an unmarked grave.

Following his death Mr Billington claimed that Cream's last words on the scaffold were that he was Jack the Ripper and then boasted to reporters he had executed the notorious Victorian serial killer.

However, police and other officials who attended the same execution said they hadn't heard him admit anything.

Jack the Ripper was the term coined by newspapers to describe a man believed responsible for the murders of eleven women - some prostitutes - in the Whitechapel area of London between 1888 and 1891. 

Some of the victims had their internal organs removed by the killer, suggesting he had anatomical and medical knowledge.

In fact, Cream was in prison in the USA at the time of the Ripper murders in 1888, serving his sentence for murder of Daniel Stott, so it was impossible for him to have been Jack the Ripper.

Or was it?

Ripper expert Donald Bell later claimed that Cream had bribed officials and been let out of prison before his official release.

Another expert, Sir Edward Marshall-Hall suggested that Cream's prison term had been served by a lookalike in his place. 

However, motivation for the series of poisonings has never been established. 

It is assumed that Cream was a sadist who enjoyed the thought of his victims' agonising deaths.

It is also possible that he committed the murders so that he could profit from them

The poisoning of Mr Stott was committed with the hope that Mr Stott's wealthy widow would share her dead husband's estate with him.

In addition to the five poisonings, Cream was suspected of the murder of his wife Flora in 1877 and at least four other women who died in his care while undergoing abortions.

If true, then he is the most prolific serial killer Glasgow has ever seen. Even eclipsing the more recent savagery of two other Glaswegian multiple murderers, Angus Sinclair and Ian Brady.