The ‘Brides in the Bath’ Murders That Shocked Edwardian London

Detective Inspector Arthur Neil of Scotland Yard thought he had killed the woman.

In the spring of 1915, Neil had summoned a volunteer to police headquarters in London. The woman, whose name Neil did not record, was a well-regarded swimmer and diver comfortable in and around water. This particular trait was key, as Neil intended to experiment with various methods of drowning her in the name of forensic science.

Neil arranged for three bathtubs of varying dimensions and water depths to be set up in the station. Soon, he and colleagues were busy seeing how the woman responded to being held under, how much water was displaced during her struggles, and whether she could manage to ward off her assailant.

It was a crude attempt to crack a mystery that would come to be known as the “brides in the bath” case. Three women in the UK had gotten married. Within days of their union, all three were found by their husbands dead in bathtubs. No signs of a struggle were present.

It would be little more than a tragic coincidence, save for the fact that drowning in a tub was an exceedingly rare event. Moreover, all three women were married to the same man—one careful to use different aliases. The mystery gripped the UK, garnering front page headlines even in wartime.

Neil wanted to know what this man had done. But there was virtually no physical evidence tying him to any crime, no confession, and no known methodology for how the brides had died. Perhaps the diver could provide a clue.

But the session, already unethical, quickly turned serious. After Neil tried a different technique, the woman gulped in water and lost consciousness. Officers scrambled to get her out of the tub. As she lay motionless on the floor, his men attempting to resuscitate her, Neil feared he had gone entirely too far.

Walking Down Multiple Aisles

If George Joseph Smith had been able to witness the scene in Neil’s office, he might have found it darkly humorous: He and he alone knew exactly what he had done and how. Smith was fundamentally, in the parlance of the era, a cad—a man skilled in the art of seduction with little regard for any emotional fallout. Few cads, however, were as remorseless and ruthless as Smith.

Born in the Bethnal Green area of London on January 11, 1872, Smith was a delinquent. From age 9 to 16, he was remanded to a reformatory for misbehavior, and from 16 to 27, he cycled in and out of prison, once for stealing a bicycle. As an adult, Smith was of average build and not terribly remarkable, save for prominent cheekbones. One adversary would later say Smith bore eyes like that of a mad dog; his oversized mustache partially concealed his cold expressions. He was said to be brusque and unpleasant to deal with and had few male admirers.

Despite this abrasive demeanor, Smith had little trouble attracting women. In 1898, he wed 18-year-old Caroline Thornhill, a bootmaker. Smith told her his name was George Oliver Love and that he owned a bread shop. When the couple experienced financial strain, he convinced her to get a job as a maid, then encouraged her to steal jewelry and silver from her employer. When she was arrested, he had already fled town. (She would eventually incriminate him, leading to another stint in prison.)

The marriage to Thornhill would be the only legitimate union Smith ever had—and as the two never got divorced, all of his subsequent weddings were unlawful bigamy. Given his larger lapse in ethics, it hardly mattered. After being released from prison, he entered into other marriages, each with the intent of liberating the women from whatever funds they had or could obtain. Often, Smith got little more than a few hundred pounds before he took off.

There was one exception. In 1908, he married Edith Pegler. The two met when Pegler answered an ad Smith had placed for a housekeeper, and unlike his previous brides, Smith appeared to take an uncharacteristic liking to her: He made no attempt to siphon off any of her money, nor did he seem to even consider the possibility. Instead, Smith constructed a relatively stable domestic environment for himself while still pursuing his con artistry. He told Pegler he was an antiquities dealer, which necessitated frequent travel. She believed him.

In fact, Smith needed to travel to find new victims. And while he had previously been content with simple theft, his thoughts soon turned to the far more lucrative world of collecting on the estates and life insurance policies of his dearly-departed brides.

Dark Water

In 1910, Smith—posing as “Henry Williams”—met and married a woman named Beatrice “Bessie” Mundy. Her most attractive trait was the £2500 (roughly $12,500 at the time) Smith knew she had available to her in a family trust. But numerous attempts to pry the funds away from her relatives netted nothing more than a tiny fraction of that amount. Smith was so irked by their obstinate refusals that he deserted Mundy in a particularly cruel way, accusing her of giving him a sexually transmitted disease and departing in a huff.

Smith returned to Pegler and presented the money garnered from Mundy as the profits from his antique sales—a lie he would continue to peddle as he swindled further victims. But Mundy, apparently, was never far from his thoughts. Nor was her £2500. In 1912, the two reconnected; Smith told her leaving her had been a mistake and vowed loyalty. He convinced her they should both sign wills that would provide for one if the other should pass away.

Mundy obliged. As a treat, Smith bought her a steel bathtub and had it placed at their home in Kent. Soon after, he took Mundy to a local physician, expressing concern that she had just been in the throes of a “fit,” or an epileptic seizure. She protested she had experienced no such event. The doctor, perhaps confused, sent them on their way. But soon Smith reached out a second and then a third time to complain of Mundy feeling unwell. 

By the time the doctor was summoned a fourth time, there was no longer any possibility for treatment. Smith said he had found Mundy dead in the bathroom. Apparently, she had been bathing when she suffered another “fit” that caused her lose consciousness and drown.

“I went out for a stroll and bought some fish,” Smith told the coroner’s inquest. “I returned about eight o’clock. No one was in the house except my wife when I went out. I locked the front door when I went out. We always did that, as the slam-to latch was out of order. I went into the dining room and called out for her; then I went upstairs, looked into the bedroom, and then into the bathroom. She said the night previously she would be having a bath that morning. On looking into the bathroom I saw her in the bath. Her head was right down in the water, submerged.”

Smith wasted few words informing her family. “Words cannot describe the great shock I had at the loss of my wife,” he wrote. “The doctor said she has had a fit in the bath, and I can assure you and all her relatives everything was done that was possible on her behalf. I can say no more.”

The coroner concluded there were no signs of foul play, and declared Mundy’s death accidental. As a result of the will Mundy had signed, Smith got his long-coveted £2500. The two had been reunited for less than a week.

Smith met his next victim in 1913, when a nurse named Alice Burnham fell for his peculiar charms. The two married, and this time, Smith used his real name. He quickly made sure her life insurance policy for £500 ($2500) and will were in order. Within days, the two were at the seaside resort of Blackpool looking for temporary lodging. One landlord would later recall that Smith’s primary curiosity was whether the available room had a bathtub. It didn’t, and he passed.

Finally, the couple found accommodations with the Crossleys, a family who had a room with a tub available. Margaret Crossley would later state that she, her husband, and her daughter noticed a growing water stain spreading over the ceiling. They thought that Alice might have overfilled the tub—but not wishing to bother their guest, they ignored it. Soon after, Smith enter the kitchen, explaining he had been out for groceries. Smith, Margaret later said, seemed “wild and agitated.”

Next came a gruesome but familiar discovery: Smith found his wife in the bath, unresponsive. A doctor was called to the scene; so were police. As with Mundy, Smith had earlier told the physician that Burnham was suffering, this time from headaches. The doctor was puzzled as to why Smith had not lifted Alice out of the tub—he claimed he couldn’t—or why he hadn’t let the water out. He said it hadn’t occurred to him. Again, the death was ruled accidental. Again, Smith profited from his wife’s demise.

The Burnhams were shocked at Alice’s death, but foul play may not have immediately been obvious. Alice had, after all, written them a letter declaring him “the best husband in the world.” She also mentioned in a postcard that she was suffering from “bad headaches,” a convenient bit of foreshadowing. It was, they would later learn, written at Smith’s behest.

Smith didn’t appear to need much time to grieve. Another marriage, this one to a woman named Alice Reavil, followed. He used the name Oliver Charles James Smith. Miraculously, Reavil suffered no ill effects of being in Smith’s orbit, though he still left her £90 poorer.

His next bride would be his last. In 1914, Smith met and quickly wed Margaret Lofty, this time using the name John Lloyd. A £700 ($3500) policy was taken out before the two exchanged vows. Lofty was found dead in her tub the day following the ceremony, just hours after she had signed a will leaving everything to her husband. Again, Smith made sure a doctor had heard a complaint about his wife not feeling well. The landlady reported hearing commotion upstairs, and then someone playing a piece of music in the sitting room: “Nearer My God to Thee.” She thought little of it. “The next sound I heard was the front door slam,” she later said.

Soon thereafter, the doorbell rang—it was Smith, who claimed he had been out buying food and that he forgot he had a key. As the doctor examined her body, Smith said “I hope the verdict will not be suicide, as I should not like it said that my wife was insane.”

In just three years, Smith had married three women, all of whom turned up dead after drawing a bath. All told, he had obtained in excess of $15,000 in payouts from wills and insurance, or more than $467,000 today.

Later, as he approached an office to collect on Lofty’s policy, he was greeted by police. Someone had finally come to realize that none of this was a coincidence.

Bodies of Evidence

It has been said that Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was among those who read newspaper notices of the Burnham and Lofty deaths and found their misfortunes oddly similar. Doyle dashed off a note to Scotland Yard, urging an investigation.

It is certainly possible this happened. But if so, Doyle was not the only one to have suspicions aroused. Alice Burnham’s father, Charles, had read of the Lofty discovery and was struck by how closely it matched his own daughter’s passing. Worse, the photo of the widower, “John Lloyd,” looked remarkably like Alice’s husband, George Smith.

Burnham clipped the articles and forwarded them to police in Aylesbury, who in turn forwarded them to Scotland Yard. Joseph Crossley, who lived in the property where Smith and Burnham stayed, had also seen both articles and reached out to the local police. His letter was directed to authorities in London.

Detective Inspector Arthur Neil read the clippings and letters and agreed it was peculiar. John Lloyd and George Smith were likely one and the same. What Neil needed was to find and detain the man—whatever his real name may be—pending further investigation.

On February 1, 1915, Neil set up a stakeout where they anticipated Smith would appear to collect on Lofty's insurance policy. Sure enough, he arrived. Neil ran up to him and asked if his wife, Alice Burnham, had recently drowned. Smith admitted she had. But when Neil asked if he was also John Lloyd, whose bride Margaret Lofty had also drowned, he professed ignorance before realizing denying it was futile. Neil had witnesses who could identify him.

Instead of playing dumb, he tried being sheepish. “I must admit that the two deaths like that form a phenomenal coincidence,” he told authorities. “But that is my hard luck.”

Still, Smith wasn’t about to confess to anything more serious than having an alias. Neil brought Smith in on a charge of providing a false entry on a marriage license—the false name of John Lloyd. What he needed now was to prove Smith was also a vicious murderer.

Neil enlisted renowned pathologist Bernard Spilsbury to assist. Spilsbury—who developed the “murder bag” that would change forensic investigations—exhumed Margaret Lofty, Alice Burnham, and Bessie Mundy to check for signs of a struggle. There were no telltale marks: no bruised necks or wrists. That was in line with Smith’s claims the women had suffered from health issues. Yet if they had experienced any “fits,” the body likely would have gone rigid and the head would have remained above water, not sunk beneath the surface.

Next, Spilsbury and Neil recruited a female swimmer. If the brides had not tried to defend themselves, then it was possible Smith had found a novel way to drown them. Neil played the role of the killer, trying various ways to hold the woman underwater. Nothing really worked until Neil grabbed her by the ankles and yanked them, rapidly submerging her upper body.

The swimmer, Neil later wrote, was unconscious almost instantly. She was removed from the tub and remained out before being brought around. She told Neil that upon going under, her mouth and nostrils filled with water and she blacked out in an instant.

Perhaps this was Smith’s technique. But Neil and Spilsbury still wondered if a jury could conclude Smith was exactly what he claimed to be: a man of hard luck, not a murderer.

The Trial

The trial of George Joseph Smith began in June 1915 at the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales (also known as the Old Bailey). The proceedings were strictly to address the charge of the Bessie Mundy death, though the prosecution was free to discuss the other tragedies. This was a huge advantage for the law: In the absence of physical evidence, the prosecution’s case hinged on the pattern behind the deaths. In all three cases, the women had drowned after Smith had arranged for a financial interest in their passing. Each happened quickly after marriage. All had some sort of illness claimed by Smith on their behalf. All seemed happy to bathe while leaving the door unlocked, an uncommon habit of the era and one that conveniently allowed for Smith to “find” them dead. In Burnham’s case, Smith had gone out of his way to locate a room with a bathtub.

Spilsbury was on hand to testify as to the manner of death. All the scenarios presented by the defense—that the women had somehow slipped, fainted while washing their hair, experienced an epileptic fit, or otherwise suffered an accident—were easily swatted away by the pathologist. Bessie Mundy was found with a bar of soap still clutched in her hand. Fainting or a gradual drowning would likely mean the soap would have been dropped, Spilsbury said, “but if death occurred immediately the contraction of the muscles of the hand might pass instantaneously into the death stiffening, and the object may be retained after death.” What’s more, if Bessie had suffered a fit, the soap would have fallen out of her hand “in the second stage, during the movements of the body ... and would certainly fall out in the third stage of exhaustion.”

Instead, Spilsbury theorized that Smith had grabbed all three women by the ankles and pulled, causing their heads to submerge and killing them almost immediately. If needed, he would gently push on their head until they stopped moving. The wives likely never suspected a thing, probably assuming that their new husband was interrupting their bath because he felt lascivious rather than murderous.

Scrutiny of Smith’s life also revealed his father had been a life insurance agent—not proof of wrongdoing, but a fact that certainly would have given Smith some knowledge of the ways a person could profit from such agreements.

Smith’s still-breathing wife, Edith Pegler, provided some character testimony, though it wasn’t really to his benefit. Smith used some of the proceeds from his crimes to pay off her mortgage. Some of his wives’ outfits were gifted to her. Speculation rose that he may have spared Pegler and others due to their lower-class status; the deceased brides were usually women of means. But the most chilling detail Pegler had provided to police was that he’d once cautioned her to be mindful around their bathtub. Women, he said, could faint and lose their life if they weren’t careful.

The jury needed to deliberate only 20 minutes before finding Smith guilty as charged. He offered only a meek rebuttal: “All I can say is, I am not guilty.” A reporter on the scene described his “little cunning eyes blinking nervously at the judge.”

The judge was also brief. “I think an exhortation to repentance would be wasted on you,” he said. “The sentence of the court is that you be hanged by the neck until you are dead.”

Smith was remanded to Maidstone Prison, where he had only weeks to live before he was brought to the gallows to accept his sentence on August 13, 1915. There were reports he sobbed often and sought solace in religion. His execution was closed to the press: Prison officials declared it was conducted in what one paper described as “a humane and expeditious manner.”

Smith never confessed to the crimes, which meant Spilsbury and Neil could never be entirely certain how he had murdered three of his unlawful brides. His attorney speculated after the fact that Smith could have used hypnosis to coerce the women into signing wills or even to take their own lives. Nor did Smith exhibit any kind of real emotion during the trial, save for an instance when a witness observed he had opted for the cheapest funerals possible.

Smith objected, but his thriftiness as a murderer was more than likely true. Following the death of Bessie Mundy, Smith returned the bathtub he had bought her for a refund.

Additional Sources: The Magnificent Spilsbury and the Case of the Brides in the Bath

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