Thomas Neill Cream

Between October 1891 and April 1892 a series of murders in London racked the city with a terror reminiscent of the fear surrounding Jack the Ripper’s murders, just three years earlier. Once again the victims were prostitutes but this time the method was poisoning. The killer was captured and identified as Dr. Thomas Neill Cream, who had already been convicted of murder by strychnine in the United States. In fact, if he had not been released early from Chicago’s Joliet Prison, four young London women would have been spared excruciating death.