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Tom Cullen (1913-2001)

Tom Alden Cullen was born on 16 May 1913 in Oklahoma City. His family then moved to Long Beach, California (about 1920) and he went to school in San Pedro before studying economics and political science at the University of California. His first job was as a journalist on the United Progressive News and, fatefully, he also joined the Communist Party which was then a very fashionable thing to do.

He joined the US Army in 1942 and served during the Second World War in Europe and Africa as a military journalist. After his discharge in 1946, he worked for a while on trade magazines and then used the GI Bill to attend the Sorbonne in Paris.

During the 1950s, Cullen freelanced in France, Germany and India, before arriving in Britain. When the American government confiscated his passport because of his Communist connections, Cullen stayed on in Britain on a visitor's passport, on the condition that 'he stayed out of trouble'.

His first book: Autumn of Terror: Jack the Ripper, His Crimes and Times was published in 1965. Several others followed including his investigation into the Honours Racket: Maundy Gregory: Purveyor of Honours (1974).

Crippen: The Mild Murderer appeared in 1977. It is important because, although, necessarily, he had to rely heavily on Filson Young's The Trial of H. H. Crippen (1920), Cullen had also researched newspaper articles on both sides of the Atlantic and he investigated the personalities of the main characters.

In the case of Ethel Le Neve, he was helped by Ursula Bloom (1892-1984), who had become friendly with Ethel as a consequence of having featured her in a novel: The Girl Who Loved Crippen (1955). Ethel died age 84 in 1963.

Curiously, Ursula Bloom's middle name was Harvey, like Dr Crippen, and this was also the name that Ethel had adopted as her surname, sometime before her marriage in 1915.

Tom Cullen died age 88 in Camden (of all places!) in June 2001 and the Daily Telegraph ran his Obituary.

 

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