Pathway to Japanese Literature

1

In the town of Blackpool, England, a young man and woman who appeared to be a newlywed couple were walking around looking for a room to rent.
The first house they entered seemed to meet their approval regarding the room, and particularly the woman appeared quite taken with it. However, upon learning there was no bathtub, the man dismissed it outright, promptly urging his wife to leave with him.
On Kokkaa Street, an elderly woman named Mrs. Crossley kept lodgers.
Next, the couple went to Mrs. Crossley’s house; upon finding a splendid bathroom on the same floor there, Bradon grew quite enthusiastic and promptly arranged to rent it.
The rent, including the bath usage fee, was ten shillings a week.
The man’s name was Ernest Bradon—a man who did nothing more than occasionally contribute to provincial newspapers—effectively unemployed.
The woman was Alice Bannam, a nurse and daughter of a coal merchant living in Aston Clinton.
Alice was a healthy and cheerful country girl, while Bradon was a tall man with a pale face who seemed nervous.
Both were dressed neatly in inexpensive clothes, but while the woman seemed resolute, the man had the air of an idler.
This was the testimony given years later by Mrs. Crossley, landlady of the Kokkaa Street boarding house, at London’s Bow Street court.

After retrieving their luggage that had been temporarily left at the station, the Bradons moved in that same day.
Early the next morning, they prepared to go out and came downstairs.
As Mrs. Crossley, the landlady who was about to bring breakfast to the other lodgers, encountered them at the foot of the stairs, Bradon asked if there was a doctor nearby.
Mrs. Crossley was startled, thinking someone had fallen ill so soon after moving in.

“Is something wrong?”

“Oh, it’s nothing.
It’s just that she’s been having a bit of a headache.”

Bradon glanced back at his new wife Alice.
Alice seemed reluctant about something, but she smiled cheerfully nonetheless.

“It’s really nothing.
I know I’ll be better soon enough, but he insists I should see a doctor while it’s still mild.”

Mrs.Crossley wanted to say that it was because Mr.Bradon loved you, but having just moved in and not yet being familiar enough to make such jokes, she merely told them about a doctor practicing nearby.
That was Dr.Billing.
Dr.Billing—who had received a visit from the Bradons—examined Alice and found nothing particularly wrong; while her headache wasn’t serious, she did seem somewhat nervous, so he advised her to rest accordingly.
Alice typically experienced mild headaches like this for several days before menstruation, so when she explained this pattern, Dr.Billing nodded in agreement, gave her some simple painkillers, and concluded the examination.
Having been informed that his beloved wife—or so she seemed—was in no danger, Bradon returned to Kokkaa Street’s boarding house with Alice in a show of great relief. Yet these seemingly ordinary actions—those of a husband attending to his bride’s health with meticulous care—were all carefully orchestrated. As the oblivious Alice gladly acquiesced to Bradon’s attentiveness—obediently accompanying him to doctors’ visits—her death drew nearer with every passing moment.
In truth, visiting a doctor immediately before committing murder was Ernest Bradon—George Joseph Smith—’s habitual method: a fixed pattern in his crimes that had become procedural.
This occurred on a Wednesday—forty-eight hours later being Friday evening—

Since Mrs. Alice Bradon wished to take a bath, preparations were made, and the Crossley household gathered in the kitchen to sit down for dinner.
Before that—since the bath had been prepared—Mrs.Crossley went to inform the Bradons in their second-floor room. Though Ernest Bradon seemed absent, she saw Alice emerge wearing only a nightgown and immediately enter the bathroom across the hallway.
The bathroom was on the second floor, constructed in the same manner as many boarding houses in England and positioned directly above the kitchen.

When Mrs.Crossley came to inform them that the bath was ready, Bradon had been in the room; yet upon hearing the landlady’s voice, he subtly positioned himself behind the door as if to hide—trying not to be seen.
As Mrs.Crossley descended downstairs and Alice entered the bathroom, he immediately followed and knocked on the bathroom door.

“It’s me, Alice.”
“Why don’t we take a bath together?”

Recognizing her husband’s voice, Alice turned the key she had just locked and gladly let Bradon into the bathroom.
She stood completely naked, one leg in the bathtub, smiling coquettishly.
Being a Western-style bathtub—oblong and narrow—it was designed for a single person to lie down.
Bradon watched as the young Alice, formerly a nurse, lay supine in the tub without a stitch of clothing.
The shallow transparent water shimmered against her peach-colored skin.
While pretending to remove his own clothes, Bradon tested the water by dipping his hand in.
Declaring it slightly lukewarm, he turned on the hot water tap.
Then, claiming there wasn’t enough hot water, he opened the cold tap too.
The gushing sounds from both taps served to mask any noise before his next move—a thoroughly methodical approach.
Alice, soaking with only her head above water, looked up smiling when her husband’s hand touched her head.
She felt pleased he’d come to the tub for what she assumed would be passionate caresses.
Bradon pinned her upper body with one hand while forcing her head toward his thighs with the other.
At first thinking it a joke, Alice panicked when his grip tightened to submerge her.
Soon her head sank beneath the water; she thrashed wildly before going limp, hair splayed across the tub.
The commotion remained hidden by running water as intended.
Certain she’d drowned, Bradon quietly returned to their room, grabbed six eggs in their store bag, and slipped out Kokkaa Street’s front entrance unseen.

At that moment, in the kitchen directly below the bathroom, the group gathered around Mrs.Crossley for their meal were thrown into an uproar as hot water leaked from the ceiling and streamed down the walls.
Mrs.Bradon must have left the faucet running, causing the bathtub to overflow.
As they all shouted in unison to warn Mrs.Bradon, Bradon opened the back door and entered the kitchen.
He said he had just bought them to prepare for tomorrow’s breakfast and showed six eggs from the store’s paper bag he was holding.
Evidently having hurried over, his face was red and his breath was heaving.
He began idle chatter about how egg prices had dropped, but with water dripping from the second-floor bathroom and the group making an uproar, he hurried upstairs and shouted loudly from midway up the staircase.

“Alice, the hot water’s spilling out, isn’t it?”

Bradon peeked into the room, then entered the bathroom—only to rush back out moments later—and shouted from the top of the stairs that Mrs. Bradon was lying “as if dead” in the bathtub, urging them to urgently call Dr. Billing.
The doctor came immediately.
When they entered the bathroom under Mrs.Crossley’s guidance, Bradon stood there in a daze, staring at his wife’s body in the bathtub.
Mrs. Bradon lay dead with half her face submerged in the water, one hand and one leg hooked over the edge of the bathtub, frozen in a posture of writhing as if trying to escape the bath.
Evidently having suffered terribly, Mrs. Bradon had swallowed and clenched a mouthful of her loosened hair in the water.
When Dr. Billing informed Bradon after a glance that there was nothing to be done, he clung to the doctor and repeated over and over.

“Doctor, is there really no hope? Can’t you do something?”

Dr. Billing answered with dignity.

“I’m afraid it’s too late.”
“To ensure this wouldn’t happen, I gave you ample warning.”

Through the alibi of having gone out to buy eggs and this display of grief, Bradon skillfully deceived Mrs.Crossley and the other lodgers, carrying out this charade without ever revealing the truth.
Above all, the most cunning part was that he had visited Dr.Billing two days before the incident to request Alice’s diagnosis.
No matter how healthy a person may be, if a doctor examines them, there is sure to be some imperfection.
Things like signs of neurasthenia or a slightly weak heart—such vague ailments are something anyone could have.
Moreover, if one were to put oneself in the doctor’s position—having been asked to conduct an examination and bound by professional duty—there would also be a psychological compulsion to forcibly seek out one or two problematic areas, exaggerate them somewhat, and thereby urge the patient’s caution.
Since the patient had soon met a sudden death in this manner, Dr.Billing—though inwardly puzzled—even seemed to outwardly take pride in his professional insight.
Of course, he wrote and signed the death certificate on the spot.

“The late Alice Bradon, on December 12, at the bathtub of Mrs.Crossley’s residence on Kokkaa Street, Blackpool, Lancashire, is hereby determined to have suffered a heart attack induced by overheated bathwater, resulting in accidental death.”

Once he had this in hand, Bradon could rest assured.
Alice Bannam was thus laid to rest amidst her husband Ernest Bradon’s “tears.”

2

It went without saying that not a single soul had suspected Bradon.
Of course, Dr.Billing and Mrs.Crossley—who themselves had directed him to the doctor and knew he had taken Alice there—saw Bradon, to all of them, as nothing but a quintessential devoted husband: absurdly so, given how he fretted over his bride’s health despite her being hardly unwell.
It was only natural that the entire boarding house’s sympathy gathered around Bradon, who had lost his “beloved wife” Alice.

However, shortly after Alice’s death, Bradon’s attitude underwent a complete transformation, showing no signs of mourning his wife’s passing. This deeply displeased the Crossleys, who ultimately ostracized and expelled him from the boarding house after repeated confrontations.
Bradon was merely revealing his true nature, but the people of Lancashire—stubborn and morally rigid even among country people—could not overlook this man who now behaved cheerfully, as though he had already forgotten his recently deceased wife.
When Bradon departed the boarding house and Mrs.Crossley confronted him with a scathing rebuke, he replied nonchalantly.

“When they’re dead, they’re dead.”

The phrase "When they're dead they're dead"—uttered by Ernest Bradon, aka George Joseph Smith—remained famous among crime researchers as the definitive expression encapsulating the pathologically cold-hearted psyche of him and his ilk among serial killers. Indeed, George Joseph Smith dispatched women who appeared before him as brides with the casual ease of tilting a glass of wine. With everyday nonchalance, he slaughtered bride after bride who entered his orbit. With each murder, he must have muttered inwardly: “When they’re dead, they’re dead.” This breed of criminal perpetually operates from ruthless self-interest, further distinguished by unshakable faith in their own criminal genius and concealment artistry. Thus when murder served their ends, they executed it without hesitation or remorse—then dismissed it with a “that’s that.” Bradon’s statement—Smith’s true name—left nothing unexplained regarding this psychological calculus. Truly, this Smith ranked as history’s preeminent mastermind among serial killers. His meticulous planning and actor’s gift for deceiving bystanders during crimes were deemed unparalleled in annals of crime. Moreover, he invented what became criminal history’s quintessential “domestic” murder method—the so-called “Brides of the Bath,” an ingenious innovation that long evaded detection.

Rather than sexual motives, Smith’s killing of women was primarily aimed at financial gain as an occupation.
This aspect made him seem even more like a cold-blooded creature, but when it came to woman-killers, this Smith was the true woman-killer.

Ernest Bradon, an alias of George Joseph Smith, and nurse Alice Bannam first became acquainted in the coastal town of Aston Clinton in southern England.
The Bannam family ran a substantial coal business, with parents and five siblings besides Alice, but Smith—operating as Bradon—had from the outset made a poor impression on every one of them.
His slovenly appearance and demeanor failed to endear him to the family.
Particularly, old Mr.Bannam so detested Bradon that he outright refused his visits to see his daughter.
This occurred on October 31st.
Then, four days later, Alice—coaxed by Bradon—defied her family’s fierce opposition and married him.
And the very next day, Bradon promptly enrolled his “beloved wife” Alice in a life insurance policy for five hundred pounds—approximately five thousand yen.

Thus, a price of five hundred pounds had been placed on Alice’s breath, but she also possessed modest assets in her own name.
One hundred pounds—approximately one thousand yen.
Most of it had come from her father, but the remainder was her own savings.
Since this money had been managed by her father, old Mr. Bannam, a few days after their marriage, Alice wrote to her father requesting that he immediately transfer the entire sum—but when no transfer came despite waiting, she sent a follow-up letter on November 22nd urging him again.
Still, there was no reply.
Two days later, Alice went to consult a lawyer, determined to sue father.
It is easy to imagine Bradon, lurking in the shadows, pressuring Alice to secure the cash as quickly as possible.
In this situation, Old Mr. Bannam was not backing down either.
Having similarly consulted a lawyer and taken countermeasures, Old Mr. Bannam—who felt uneasy about unclear aspects of his daughter’s husband Bradon and thus refused to transfer funds—had the lawyer, acting on his behalf, send Bradon a formal letter demanding a satisfactory explanation regarding his birth, family relations, occupation, and assets. Yet the reply Bradon sent back was a characteristic display of this criminal’s irresponsible malice and mockery.
Bradon knew full well that Old Mr. Bannam’s refusal to send Alice’s money—under the pretext of disapproving her marriage to him—held no legal ground, for Alice had reached adulthood, rendering her marriage valid without paternal consent; he also understood that the opposing lawyer was fully aware of this fact, which made his written reply a masterpiece of malicious mockery.
In this letter, Bradon claimed—likely intending to be humorous—that his mother was a cart horse, his father its driver, his sister a circus horse trainer, and all his brothers dashing sailors manning steam rollers for road leveling, but it all came across as nonsensical as the trendy nonsense literature of the time, utterly failing to make a coherent point.

In the end, having no other choice, Old Mr. Bannam conceded and sent a check for 104 pounds—which of course ended up straight in Bradon’s pocket.
On December 8th, Alice’s insurance policy arrived from the company.
That very day, he persuaded Alice it was merely a formality and proceeded to exchange wills.
Through this, it had been legally established that whichever spouse died first would leave all property to the survivor—though which would die first had been decided from the moment Bradon first laid eyes on Alice.
With all preparations complete, Bradon set out for Blackpool with Alice.

This was December 9, 1913, and just three days later, on the 12th, Alice’s will was already set to take effect.
After gathering Alice’s belongings, savings, and insurance money, Bradon—now using his real name Smith—returned to his mistress Edith Pegler and spent several months living a sluggish existence, shuffling around the house in nothing but slippers, not even bothering with a collar.

Then came August of the following year, 1914.

Alice Reevil—a maid whose name coincidentally matched that of a previous victim—became acquainted with a man named Charles Oliver James in Bournemouth.
Charles Oliver James—a name as generic as John Doe amid his flurry of aliases, hardly an artful pseudonym—had proposed marriage to Alice Reevil with lightning speed on the fourth day of their acquaintance.
Alice Reevil, though working as a maid, had diligently saved seventy pounds in bank deposits while owning some furniture and a piano.
She promptly accepted Charles Oliver James's proposal, sold her piano for fourteen pounds, and on their September 17th wedding day handed both the cash and a signed withdrawal authorization for her savings to her husband Charles Oliver James.
The wedding ceremony took place at Willwich Church.
That same day, the couple soon appeared at Lavender Hill Bank to withdraw the entire deposit.
They immediately secured lodgings at a boarding house near Blockwell Park run by an elderly woman named Mrs. Delfield—a residence that naturally contained a bathtub.
A few days later, Mr. Charles Oliver James inevitably escorted his perfectly healthy wife Alice James to consult Dr. Alexander Rice, a local physician.
The bride's bath ritual, James's alibi of briefly stepping out for errands, the bride's bathtub drowning, Dr. Alexander Rice's cursory death certificate, the tearful funeral arrangements—that every detail mirrored previous cases went without saying.
When they're dead they're dead. The clarity bordered on vulgarity.

3

Bessy Constance Annie Mundy—a woman with an excessively long name—was the thirty-three-year-old spinster daughter of Reginald Mundy, manager of Lloyd’s Bank branch in Bristol.
She had inherited £2,500 from her father’s estate, but as her uncle and legal guardian Patrick Mundy managed it—dividing the sum into portions invested in reliable ventures—Bessy Constance Annie Mundy’s actual annual income amounted to barely £100 in interest.
However, Bessy Mundy was undeniably a conservative, timid woman. Content with this modest annual income, she left all matters of her inheritance entirely to her uncle Patrick Mundy, maintaining a life of almost religious quietude as a resolutely single woman.
Yet Bessy Mundy was still a woman, and at thirty-three—not yet considered an old maid in England where late marriages were common—she must have harbored an unconscious, persistent hope that a knight would one day appear before her.
In pre-war cities, what passed for adventure among women amounted to little more than moving between boarding houses—and Bessy Mundy too lived this transient existence, drifting from one lodging to the next in a semblance of freedom that was no freedom at all. It was a life that seemed poised for thrilling possibilities yet offered none—a solitary spinster’s rootless journey through the metropolis, chasing her own shadow with peculiar fragility.
This Miss Bessy Mundy encountered Henry Wiliams—an alias as transparently false as John Doe—at one of these amateur boarding houses she frequented during her nomadic phase.
Smith did seem to have a habit of choosing unimaginative aliases—she had encountered him at one of these amateur boarding houses she frequented during her nomadic phase.
If this were a Japanese story, one would likely envision a boarding house in Kanda or Hongō—a setting easily conjured for the stage—but the West proved no different.
Boarding-house romances inevitably progress at a rapid tempo.
Especially when one’s partner was Henry Williams—a professional “woman-killer.”
If what Bessy Mundy had been seeking was adventure and relief from boredom, then she had finally encountered its ideal incarnation.
After such an outrageous adventure, she had finally gone to a place where boredom could no longer reach her.
As was customary, she had departed naked from the bathtub to heaven.

Henry Williams was a tall, neatly dressed gentleman.
He was described as possessing keen, darting eyes and romantic features.
To Miss Bessy Constance Annie Mundy—a proud woman—he seemed somewhat lacking in education, but sexual union inherently required no preconditions.
Moreover, the fact that she had been moving from one boarding house to another like this meant that Bessy Mundy was thirty-three years old and lonely.
In the modern metropolis, a lonely woman who reigned as her own queen carried a higher risk factor than a queen surrounded by a lively crowd of admirers.

However, this time Henry Williams required considerable effort to finalize the marriage.
As Bessie Mundy was an unusually old-fashioned woman of strong religious conviction, he had to observe a traditional engagement period spanning many days.
Ultimately they traveled to Weymouth, where three days later they quietly held a ceremony at a local church.
Miss Bessy Constance Annie Mundy had at last been bound by holy chains to Henry Williams.

Looking at their marriage registration from that time, the woman’s details were clear, but Henry Williams’ entry read as follows.

“Henry Wiliams, Picture-restorer, son of Henry John Wiliams, commercial traveller.”

His occupation was listed as “picture-restorer,” though in practice this involved replacing frames, maintaining paintings, and performing cleaning tasks—work akin to menial labor at an antique shop.
In truth, George Joseph Smith had long operated an antique shop in Bristol as his ostensible profession.

As was customary, the two left the church and immediately visited a nearby lawyer to make their marital property matters "clear."
This act of swiftly settling the "necessary formalities" alongside marriage had become Smith's standard procedure.
Immediately after marriage, the woman was still euphoric and moreover highly motivated to embark on their new life together, making it easy for him to arrange everything to his liking.
However, in Bessy Mundy's case, Henry Williams was met with a surprise when they visited the lawyer.
It turned out that while she had given the impression of possessing considerable assets, only £138—set aside gradually from her monthly allowance by her uncle and guardian Patrick Mundy under Bessy's name—were freely accessible, with her uncle controlling all other assets so strictly that even Bessy herself couldn't touch them.
This proved a complete miscalculation, leaving Henry Williams significantly inconvenienced—though £138 remained £138 nonetheless.
When he promptly had his lawyer notify Patrick Mundy of his niece's marriage and demand the money's transfer, the uncle began making excuses through his own legal proxy—but ultimately couldn't refuse transferring funds legally held in Bessy's name. Days later, the money reached not Bessy's hands, but those of her husband Henry Williams.
That very day, he executed his disappearance.
Having left under the pretense of a brief errand only to vanish completely, Bessy Constance Annie Mundy—now spiritless from disillusionment and grief—soon moved to Mrs. Tacket's boarding house in Weston-super-Mare to quietly nurse her wounded heart alone.
Meanwhile, George Joseph Smith—alias Henry Williams—returned to Bristol and the arms of his waiting mistress Edith Mabel Pegler.
With funds extorted from Bessy Mundy, their life of passionate indolence continued undisturbed for some time.

That continued for two whole years.
During that time, there were no victims.

During this period, Smith lived in Bristol, Southend, Walthamstow, and London with Pegler before finally returning to Bristol.
This was February 1912—approximately two years before the “Alice Bannam Case” noted at the beginning of this account.

The author would like to take this opportunity to note that this account focuses on incidents rather than following a strict chronology.

When Smith returned to Bristol in February, he faced severe financial strain.
He immediately set out to find a woman and traveled to Weston-super-Mare.
There he met Bessy Mundy again—though she had likely never fully forgotten Henry Williams, the man she had first known.
The adage that love defies reason holds true across cultures.
Though he had married her, drained her funds, and vanished, Bessy cast aside all resentment upon their reunion and promptly resumed living with him.
Before this reconciliation, however, Henry insisted that financial matters must be clarified even between spouses, formally issuing a promissory note for the money he had stolen from Alice two years prior.
He even stipulated a four percent interest rate—a characteristically meticulous detail.
When Henry declared, “It may seem overly fastidious, but I must have all formalities properly observed as such,” Bessy wept joyful tears at her “returned husband’s” “manly integrity.”
This settled matters smoothly for Bessy, but despite his show of scrupulousness, he still failed to win favor with her uncle Patrick Mundy.
While Uncle Patrick grew increasingly suspicious and anxious about Henry Williams, he adamantly maintained his role as legal guardian, refusing to release even a single penny from Bessy’s assets under his control.
Thus, as long as Bessy lived, Henry Williams stood absolutely no chance of accessing her £2,500.
Her death would make inheriting through her will comparatively simple.
Another urgent motive for his haste stemmed from his fear that her uncle might leverage his authority as trustee to convert Bessy’s entire estate into a government annuity.
If her uncle sensed danger, he could indeed take such action.
By doing so, he would not only reduce his own liability but also render Henry powerless—while securing Bessy’s lifelong welfare—making this course alarmingly plausible.
Panicked, Henry Williams began methodical preparations for the “Brides of the Bath.”

While he waited for an opportunity, the days passed mercilessly.
Mid-May arrived.
Spring comes late in England, but this was the finest season of the year.
The park’s lawn swelled with green so intense it seemed ready to burst, while skylarks sang over the residential district.
Lilacs perfumed the air as tree shadows deepened.
Henry Williams and his wife had been living in Herne Bay until then, but having become acquainted with neighbors there—and dreading post-incident gossip—they abruptly relocated on May 20th to a quaint small house in High Street, rented at Henry’s insistence.
It was a red-brick building, dilapidated and impractical.
When securing this house—perhaps foreseeing their brief tenancy—Henry moved in after paying only a small deposit from the annual rent.
It was an utterly sinister relocation.

On July 8th, the couple visited a lawyer in the same town, where Henry first drafted and signed a will stating his intention to bequeath all his possessions to his wife Bessie—what he called a mere "formality."
Bessy prepared a will of identical intent, and following standard procedure, the couple exchanged them under a lawyer’s supervision.
As a long-term consideration, Bessy was pleased with her husband’s measure—but unexpectedly, it proved to be an immediate one.
Relieved by this, Henry Williams immediately hurried to make his second preparation.

First, he had bought a bathtub.
In the cheap rental house that lacked a bathtub, he went to a hardware store on Hill Street—since it only needed to serve its purpose once, a crude one would suffice.
He purchased the cheapest tin bathtub for £1 17s 6d.
Moreover, he had stubbornly haggled down the initial asking price of two pounds until they relented.
Being a man who believed capital should be kept as minimal as necessary within required limits, he obsessed over trivial details.

4

Three days later, on July 11th, Henry Williams visited Dr. French—a physician practicing in the same town—accompanied by his wife for a consultation.
When asked, it was explained that his wife had experienced minor seizures.
These words came not from Bessy Mundy herself, but from her husband Henry.
A brutal heatwave had struck two or three days prior, causing a spike in sudden illnesses and leaving even healthy individuals susceptible to physical strain. Though Bessy Mundy—now Mrs. Williams—had lightly protested at the doctor’s office that this was merely temporary discomfort, Dr. French’s examination, perhaps colored by Henry’s prior description of symptoms, swiftly yielded a diagnosis of suspected epilepsy.
Henry had likely studied epilepsy’s early symptoms beforehand and tailored his account accordingly.
That Dr. French had only recently graduated medical school—still in his twenties and green—worked decidedly to Henry’s advantage.
Thus, Bessy Mundy found herself externally branded with signs of epilepsy against her will.
Feigning profound “concern,” Henry confined her to bed from that day forward.
When Dr. French made a precautionary house call on the 12th, he found Mrs. Henry Williams—perfectly healthy—playing the invalid in her bed.
Amused by the overcaution, the doctor remarked that even if epilepsy were present, the mild symptoms warranted no such measures, then departed.
But come dawn on the 13th—truly an unlucky thirteenth for Bessie Mundy—Dr. French was startled by Henry Williams barging in “in frantic disarray.”
“Mrs. Bessie—the ‘epileptic’—is ‘lying dead’ in the bathtub! Come at once!” he cried.
At that moment, Henry appeared so deranged—so pitifully unhinged—that onlookers would have averted their eyes.
Rushing to the High Street house, they found Bessie indeed rigid and cold in the £1 17s 6d tin bathtub installed in the attic, a bar of soap still clutched in one hand.
Thus did Bessy Constance Annie Mundy achieve her “splendid ascension” mid-bath via an “epileptic seizure,” her state of undress deemed an “impolite fashion” for such celestial departure.
“She’d no time to dress in the commotion,” George Joseph Smith—alias Henry Williams—later jeered at the judge.
“But angels in paintings are all nude anyway,” he added with indecorous levity, coaxing strained smiles throughout the courtroom.
This occurred later; at the time, he’d taken such pains to show her to doctors precisely to prevent this outcome.
Yet here he stood “half-mad” with grief, lamenting how her insistence on bathing despite assurances had led to irreversible tragedy.

This was one of Smith’s most skillfully executed schemes.
Before killing her, he had incited Bessie to write letters to various relatives stating that she had begun suffering occasional seizures.
Among them were phrases mingling amorous boasts about Henry and their life of love.
...and reported that she loved her husband and that he treated her well, so she had drafted a will naming him as sole inheritor of all her assets.
Since the deceased had written this while still alive, these letters became invaluable for Henry.
Consequently, demands by her uncle Patrick Mundy—who had insisted on an autopsy—were rejected, and Dr.French’s one-page death certificate stood unchallenged.
From the fourth day after the incident, he initiated inheritance procedures.
Though some relatives harbored doubts about the cause of death—with Patrick Mundy leading calls for litigation—they ultimately relented when no legal flaws were found in Bessie’s will.
£2,500—¥25,000—was transferred to Henry Williams.

At this time, Edith Pegler—Smith’s mistress—was waiting in Margate for his return.
Edith remained entirely unaware of Smith’s exploits, steadfastly believing he was traveling around dealing in antiques for business.
Even after this murder of Bessy, we find George Joseph Smith immediately returning to Edith’s embrace and living with her.
As for Bessie Constance Annie Mundy, he had already brushed her from his mind.
When they're dead, they're dead.
He explained to Edie that he had come into a relatively large sum of money, claiming he had made an unexpected profit from a lucky find in Canada.
For approximately two years, the two lived carefree, idling away their days.

However, once again finding his pockets emptied, Smith set out once more in search of a "lucky find," this time heading to the southern coast of England.
It was the autumn of 1913.
And in that October, he approached Alice Bannam at Aston Clinton there.

It was November 1914.

It was the town of Clifton.
Margaret Elizabeth Lofty—a twenty-three-year-old woman, daughter of a pastor working as a maid for another household—happened to become acquainted with a man named John Lloyd—John Lloyd.
At this very time, Margaret Lofty was nursing a broken heart when John Lloyd—a lanky, tall, fair-skinned man—offered sympathetic words. Her gratitude inevitably transformed into affection, and when Mr.Lloyd proposed marriage, the two abruptly held their wedding ceremony in Bath on the seventeenth of that same month.
Immediately after the ceremony, Mr.Lloyd took the bride to an insurance company and secured a seven-hundred-pound life insurance policy.
He then withdrew a mere nineteen pounds from the bank—funds belonging to the bride—and from this sum paid for two train tickets to London.
Before traveling to the capital, Mr.Lloyd had written to Mrs.Wildhagen’s boarding house on Orchard Street in Highgate and reserved a room.
However, upon arriving at the house, they found the room unprepared and were told to return in two or three hours.
With no alternative, Mr.Lloyd led his provincial bride through London’s streets, idling away the time.
Yet Mrs.Wildhagen—the landlady—had resolved to refuse them from their initial room viewing, their shabby appearance striking her as excessively destitute.
Mrs.Wildhagen was German, as her name made evident.

The year was 1914.
For the four years following that year, needless to say, police across Britain kept close watch on all Germans and those bearing German names.
At the Wildhagen household too, detectives constantly came and went, smoking in the kitchen like family members.
When Mrs. Wildhagen expressed her desire to refuse the returning young couple, a detective who happened to be present readily agreed to handle it—rolling up his sleeves as he waited.
As Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd returned at the appointed hour, the detective rushed out in place of the landlady and, with practiced efficiency, threatened them into leaving.
Though refusing lodgers was one matter, having a detective answer the door defied comprehension—yet John Lloyd turned ashen-faced and slunk away, tugging at his bride’s sleeve.

At 155 Bismark Street was a Mrs. Blatch who ran an amateur-run boarding house. Soon after, the Lloyds appeared at this house to request lodging. Whether strange or eerie, it was Mrs. Lloyd—Margaret Elizabeth Lofty—who now became oddly concerned about the bathtub and asked detailed questions.

The plan progressed smoothly. Following his established method, Lloyd took Margaret to visit a nearby doctor—Dr. Bates—claiming his wife suffered from severe headaches requiring examination. As her husband spoke these words, Margaret stood beside him wearing a puzzled expression, as if wondering who this headache-afflicted wife could possibly be.

Dr. Bates examined Margaret despite his reservations about her "alarmingly robust health," yet pressed by her insistent husband about the headaches, asked directly: "Are you experiencing such severe pain?" After a brief pause, she replied that now that he mentioned it, she did feel a slight ache. Though finding her response peculiar regarding her own body, he noted a mild fever and concluded it must be a minor cold.

With an ailment finally identified—putting Lloyd at ease and preserving Dr. Bates’ professional dignity—he wrote a standard prescription and instructed her to return to her room to rest. The couple departed—not for their lodgings, but straight to a lawyer’s office where they drafted reciprocal wills naming each other as heirs.

Though inheriting from Margaret Elizabeth Lofty—who owned neither property nor assets—seemed meaningless, this man clearly relished "maintaining formalities for formality’s sake." Moreover, he resolved to claim every last item on her person—clothes, shoes—once she died (though she remained oblivious, as humans seldom foresee their demise). After all, these possessions would otherwise go to waste unless he "inherited" and monetized them.

He was nothing if not thorough.

5

It was the very day they had gone from Dr.Bates’s office to the lawyer.
It was around 7:30 in the evening.
Because Mrs.Lloyd said she wanted to take a bath, preparations were made, and Mrs.Blatch, the landlady, called out from downstairs.

“Mrs.Lloyd, the bath is ready.”

She answered, and soon there was a sound of someone entering the upstairs bathroom.
Lloyd and Margaret said they would take a bath together.
First, Margaret removed the gown she was wearing and, with bashful modesty, sank her youthful body—still retaining a virginal quality—into the bathtub.
A Bride of the Bath.
Lloyd was so entranced by the sight that he made no move to remove his clothes.
When Margaret urged him, he rolled up his shirtsleeves as he was and approached the bathtub.
Then, as he gently placed his hands on Margaret’s face, she—thinking he might kiss her again—smiled sweetly and turned her face toward the man.
At that moment, Lloyd suddenly grabbed her head and forcibly shoved it between his thighs.
And for a while, he kept pressing down with all his strength.
Mrs.Blatch, who was downstairs, heard what sounded like dancing footsteps in the bathroom above her head.
It fell silent for a moment.
Then came a laugh-like cry, followed by the sound of water splashing.
What on earth were they up to in the bathroom?
As she resigned herself to the young ones’ antics, before long, a long, sigh-like sound reached her ears.
Mrs.Blatch was going about her tasks without paying particular attention when, before she knew it, the lodger Lloyd had come downstairs, and the sound of his piano playing echoed from the parlor below.
The sound of the piano continued for about ten minutes.

Before long, Lloyd appeared to have left through the entrance.
The front door slammed shut with a loud noise. Almost immediately, the bell rang at the entrance.
When Mrs. Blatch went out and opened it, the one who entered was Lloyd—the very same man who had just left moments before.
He had gone shopping to the main street nearby, but in his haste to rush out, he forgot to bring the key to get back in.
Apologizing for having them ring the bell and open the door, he laughed heartily.
The items he had bought this time were not eggs.
They were tomatoes.

“Hasn’t my wife come down for dinner yet?”

“No.”

“That’s a long bath.”
“What could she be doing?”

While climbing the stairs, Lloyd called out loudly.

“Come out already, that’s enough.”

There was no reply.
There shouldn’t be one.
By then, Margaret Elizabeth Lofty had already joined what Smith called his “naked angels,” but Lloyd—who had entered the bathroom calling his wife’s name—came tumbling out moments later and let out a cry in a voice meant for shock.

“Please come here— My wife—.”

He seemed unable to speak.
When Mrs. Blatch and the gathered lodgers rushed upstairs, they found John Lloyd—his face pale—frantically trying to lift his wife’s corpse from the bathtub, heedless of his soaking clothes.
The posture of hauling that wet naked body from the water was, for George Joseph Smith, an old professional pose honed through years of practice.
Margaret had pressed her nose against the narrowing end of the bathtub’s base and thrust her buttocks above the water, lying dead in a posture resembling a Muslim worshipper’s prayer.
No matter their death pose—When they’re dead, they’re dead.

Having been promptly summoned, Dr. Bates shook his head repeatedly to express condolences as he dashed off the death certificate "for Lloyd’s sake."
The number of bathtub drowning cases attributed to personal negligence had increased by one more.
When suffering from a cold and a weakened heart, remaining submerged in hot water for too long was dangerous.
She must have felt dizzy and fainted, never to rise again.
A lamentable negligence.
Comforted by everyone’s words, Lloyd would sit there gaping blankly at the sky one moment, then continue calling Margaret’s name with violent intensity the next.
Due to fears that he might go mad or commit suicide, the busy Mrs. Blatch was temporarily tasked with keeping watch over Lloyd.
However, three days later, Lloyd—with crocodile tears—commissioned a lawyer in Jepaanz Bush to gather Margaret’s belongings through the will and "tearfully" received seven hundred pounds in insurance money.
However, this murder of Margaret would prove to be George Joseph Smith’s final “haul” as a Bristol antique dealer.
He himself must have been greatly surprised.
You never know where the trail begins.

It is said that many criminals belonging to this category—murderers or homicidal maniacs—are mentally disturbed, but George Joseph Smith was an exception. As evident from his meticulous methods, he possessed a remarkably systematic mind that far surpassed ordinary people in its lucidity during critical moments. While one might argue that his usual laziness contrasted with his abnormally vigorous precision exclusively in cases of the “Brides of the Bath” was itself pathological, even after thorough scrutiny of his daily behavior and repeated expert evaluations, the reports consistently came back negative, showing no signs of mental aberration. All the more reason that when he was exposed, the public’s hatred and terror reached staggering heights. He designed murders with an architect’s regard for balance, acted with a strategist’s foresight, and executed crimes with a ship captain’s precision, making the destruction of lives and embezzlement of their assets his lifelong profession. The exact number of women he drowned in bathtubs would never be known. The reason given was that Smith himself never published a catalog—but the fact remained there had been enough victims to fill one. When these crimes came to light, it was little wonder the public turned pale and shuddered.

George Joseph Smith was born in the home of an insurance company employee in Bethnal Green.
Upon leaving the military in 1896, he immediately began his hunt for women—a new method he called the "Brides of the Bath"—which continued until his execution eighteen years later.

Due to his frequent name changes, tracing his movements after military discharge has been deemed exceedingly difficult.
In 1897, a man named George Beecher—marking Smith’s first known alias—was imprisoned for crimes involving women and later ran a confectionery shop in Leicester.
What followed was his marriage under the alias George Olive Love—a name worthy of a penny dreadful protagonist—to eighteen-year-old Caroline Beatrice Thornhill.
For that marriage registration, Smith listed his father’s occupation as detective.
This was likely intended as irony.
As Caroline Thornhill’s subsequent whereabouts remain unknown, she too is presumed to have become one of the “Brides of the Bath.”
However, Smith’s true criminal enterprise began in 1903, launching six years of relentless activity where he pursued women across the country without respite.
The victims included May Belisford, Margaret Gossap, Ruth Hofi, among others.
Yet even this monster maintained one genuine love throughout his life—a relationship untouched by financial motive.
This was Edith Mabel Pegler, his longtime mistress mentioned earlier.
Since meeting her—a former prostitute—in Bristol during 1908, Smith displayed uncharacteristic humanity, returning to Pegler like an arrow whenever he secured funds through his “Brides of the Bath.”
His establishment of a Bristol antique shop with ninety pounds capital existed solely for her sake.
He used his real name, George Joseph Smith, only when marrying Pegler.
This remained his sole such instance across his entire life.
Evidently harboring real affection, Smith took extreme measures to keep Pegler ignorant of his crimes.
During periods when he irregularly absented himself to cohabit with other women, he claimed business trips abroad—a ruse that kept Pegler oblivious until the end.
In 1909, Mrs. Sally Rhodes of Southampton coincidentally fell for a man calling himself George Rhodes—sharing her surname—only to meet a “sudden demise” in her bathtub shortly after cohabitation began.
Simultaneously, George Joseph Smith returned to Edith in Bristol clutching roughly £350.
For three years thereafter, they likely maintained an ordinary domestic life.
This marked a brief lull in the “Brides of the Bath.”

That such a bizarrely cold-blooded fiend had the sole person he ever truly loved on this earth felt strange to contemplate.
But Smith, too, could not remain settled as a householder indefinitely.
“Business” tore him from Pegler’s embrace and sent him traveling.

It was not long after that when “Henry Williams” met Bessie Constance Annie Mundy.

It must have been Mark Twain’s words.
There is no place more dangerous to human life than a bed.
As evidence for this—after all, isn’t it true that most people die in their beds?

Indeed, this holds true: given how in recent years women—and specifically those recently married—have been dying suddenly in bathtubs across the country, there is no place more dangerous to a bride than a bathtub.
Sooner or later, they will have to enact a law strictly prohibiting brides from bathing.

As if someone had started it as a joke, such gossip began circulating—centered around fog-shrouded London—about brides meeting their ends in bathtubs.
A senryu likened brides entering baths to disposable chopsticks—though Westerners, given their cultural background, wouldn’t recognize such wordplay—but with nude brides stepping into bathtubs only for those tubs to become coffins here and there, it was as if some peculiar bridal epidemic had broken out, stirring faint tremors of social panic.

Smith had forgotten one thing.
It was a newspaper article.
However, since none of the cases were treated as anything more than mere accidents with no suspicion of foul play whatsoever, they did not make headlines.
They remained nothing more than perfunctory reports in six-point type—mere local incidents.
But thinking a small article would escape notice proved a grave miscalculation.
Newspapers are read with terrifying thoroughness—cover to cover.
After all, there were countless eyes.
Countless idle people.
The articles about brides dying in bathtubs were peculiar enough that surprisingly many remembered them long after.
When such incidents kept recurring every few years or months as “local news” across different regions, it was only natural that faint unease and suspicion began permeating society—as if murmuring *Here we go again*.

In truth, it was from these small, periodically recurring newspaper articles that Smith was finally caught.

6

Charles Bannam, brother of the late Alice Bannam, was reading that week’s Sunday newspaper at his home in Aston Clinton when he exclaimed, “Oh!”
There, a small article reported Margaret Lofty’s suspicious death in a bathtub.

Smith had not only forgotten the ubiquity of newspapers in the modern era but had also underestimated—though not outright ignored—the fact that his several “tragic marriages” had created many enemies among the relatives and acquaintances of the women he targeted.
When this suspicious death of Margaret Lofty appeared in the newspapers, two people in different regions of England tilted their heads in unison.
Both of them felt an uncanny shudder at how strikingly similar the circumstances were to cases they had known before and at the nearly identical wording of the doctors’ death certificates.
That uncanny shudder immediately transformed into a curious interest, and driven by the same motive, both of them took identical actions as if they had agreed upon it.
One was Charles Bannam—brother of the late Alice Bannam of Aston Clinton, mentioned earlier—and the other was Mr. Crossley, owner of the boarding house on Cocker Street in Blackpool.
Charles Bannam promptly clipped out the newspaper article about the Margaret Lofty incident and sent it, along with the Blackpool newspaper that had covered his sister Alice Bannam’s case, to the Aylesbury police for comparison.
Almost simultaneously, Crossley gathered the two newspapers and sent them directly to the London Metropolitan Police to alert them, bypassing the local authorities.
It was there, for the first time, that the London Metropolitan Police pricked up its ears.

The chief investigator who took charge on the front lines was the future Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and then-Inspector Arthur Neil—Mr. Arthur Neil—himself.
This investigation is said to have been an unprecedented endeavor, requiring truly prolonged and unseen efforts over an extended period.
It was akin to groping through a mountain path in the pitch-black darkness of a long night, only to finally emerge onto a ridge and witness the first pale light of dawn breaking in the eastern sky.
Step by step, they gathered evidence, layering fact upon fact.
The upcoming “Brides of the Bath” incidents—already seized by journalism and swiftly sensationalized under the detective novel-esque moniker “Brides of the Bath Mystery”—being unrelated despite their numerous commonalities, with all deemed independent accidents lacking any connective thread between them, might theoretically be dismissed as coincidence, yet strained credulity to its limits.
The initial assumption—that there must inevitably be something at the bottom connecting them all—advanced within Neil’s mind toward conviction, step by step with the investigation’s progress.
Arthur Neil achieved fame through this case and reached his current position in the police world, but in truth, his handling of the Smith case was a perfect match of man and task.
“I was merely testing my own perseverance with that case,” he would later tell people, but that perseverance was no small feat.
To track the dizzying array of aliases back to Smith, investigate documents from each insurance company, scrutinize the backgrounds of victims across every case, and conclusively establish irrefutable proof, Neil raced through forty-three municipalities and made daily visits to twenty-one banks.
During that period, the number of witnesses he interviewed and took statements from reached 157 people.
Needless to say, Smith remained utterly unaware that the legal noose was stealthily tightening around his own neck, all the while living in leisurely comfort with Edith Pegler in Bristol as usual.
Of course, detectives under special orders had been staking out and tailing him day and night without fail.

He was arrested at that very house in Bristol.

Neil himself led three subordinates on the assignment.
When they rang the bell requesting entry, Edith came to the front door.
The four officers—disguised as gas company inspectors—easily entered the house.
George Joseph Smith—sloppily dressed and now elderly with a well-groomed mustache—was splitting coal before the kitchen hearth.
At Neil's signal of a hand on his shoulder, three detectives simultaneously lunged from left, right, and behind.
The immediate arrest charge wasn't murder.
They'd concealed that angle, engineering charges over unpaid legal fees instead.
Smith remained utterly composed, his expression unchanging even during arrest.

The trial lasted nine days, beginning on June 22, 1915.
The presiding judge was Mr. Scrutton, the prosecutor Sir Archibald Bodkin, and the defense attorney the late Sir Edward Marshall Hall—a star-studded lineup—but no matter how skilled Sir Edward’s defense was, facts as hard as steel could not be bent.
The memorandum of key points that Judge Scrutton presented to the jury eloquently testified to the nature of this crime.

1. That in each case, death occurred suddenly within the bathtub.
2. That in each case, the bathroom door was not locked from the inside.
3. That in each case, the deceased had created a will favorable to the defendant immediately prior to their death.
4. That through many of the cases, the deceased had been enrolled in life insurance immediately prior to their death.
5. That in each case, all movable property capable of being converted had been exchanged for cash in advance.

6. That in each case, the deceased had been made to visit doctors immediately prior to their death,
and that in each case, those same doctors had invariably been summoned concurrently with death to write the death certificates.

7. That in each case, notification had been dispatched to the deceased’s family home and relatives within twenty-four hours of death,
and that in each case, the handwriting exhibited uniformity across all documents, with examiners certifying it as belonging to the defendant.

8. That in each case, immediately preceding the discovery of the bodies, the defendant had absented himself briefly under pretexts of purchasing evening newspapers and groceries.

9. That in each case, the defendant had left the bodies unattended inside the bathtub until family members came up to discover them.

10. That in each case, death occurred immediately following fraudulent marriages conducted by the defendant under aliases.

11. That in each case, the one who directly benefited financially from the deaths was the defendant, and the defendant alone.

12. That in each case, the corpses had been buried with the minimum expense, the maximum speed, and the most obscure method.

13. That in each case, the defendant had returned immediately after the incident to Edith Mabel Pegler.

Unfortunately for Smith, the number of these items was thirteen.
With all these gathered, it was more than enough.

There was just one thing that remained unclear: practically speaking, by what method had Smith succeeded in killing those women one after another in the bathtub? The technique itself defied clarity.
This murder had undoubtedly been carried out swiftly—in silence and with minimal struggle.
In many cases, the corpses were discovered positioned with their legs oriented toward the wider part of the bathtub.
In a posture opposite to that of ordinary bathing, it was decidedly unnatural.
When they measured the bathtub from Alice Bannam’s murder in Blackpool, the narrow end of its tapered shape had a diameter of eleven inches, while the wider part measured nineteen inches.
Therefore, when they measured the waist circumference of a woman with nearly the same height and weight as the deceased Alice in a seated position, they were able to conclude that sitting in the bathtub’s narrow section would be too cramped and utterly impossible.
To solve this mystery, Sir Bernard Spilsbury, a forensic scientist commissioned by the Home Office, traveled to the courtroom, brought out a bathtub filled with water, and with a nurse from London Hospital dressed in a swimsuit, reenacted Smith’s crime.
As a result, Smith’s murder method involved first abruptly pressing down on the victim’s head with one hand while they were innocently immersed in the bathwater, submerging their face between their thighs.
At the same time, he would insert his other hand under both of the woman’s knees and sharply lift her lower body upward.
When this was done, the woman would have her face pressed against the bottom of the bathtub, her body taking on an S-shape.
He would firmly press down on the kneeling woman and keep her in that position for a while.
Then, once he had waited for complete drowning and quietly returned her to the bathtub, the corpse would submerge headfirst through the water and end up in the bathtub’s narrow section instead.
When asked by the judge whether this was accurate, Smith laughed and did not answer.

After all appeals and petitions were rejected, the execution was carried out at Kent State Prison.
He was sentenced on July 29 and executed on August 13; he was hoisted onto the gallows in a state of unconsciousness.

When he was dead he was dead.