Delighted to include this title in Crimes & Misdemeanours, the true crime and mystery list in my thematic seasonal holiday gift books guides for Zoomer magazine. It appeared in the Books section in December. (The listicle feature is online at related link.)

In the late 1800s, Dr. Thomas Neill Cream killed at least 10 people in Canada, the United States, and Britain. He often murdered women through botched abortions and altered prescriptions. One thing I found strange was that he would give women pills, but then leave before they actually died, so he was left to assume they died. His fatal mistake was blackmailing wealthy men into believing they were the ones who murdered these women.

I’m not a huge true crime fan, but I find Victoria serial killers fascinating. These murders happened in fairly recent history, only about 150 years ago, yet they were able to get away with so much. There wasn’t the tracking data, such as fingerprints and DNA to keep track of past offenders or to identify suspects. Since the women he preyed upon were often prostitutes, the police didn’t spend much time investigating their deaths. It was amazing how Dr. Cream could murder, mostly undetected, across three countries for many years.

The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream is a fascinating look at this Victorian serial killer.

Thank you Algonquin for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The Case of the Murderous Dr.Cream is a true crime novel about Dr.Cream, a doctor who doubled as a serial killer across Canada, the US, and and the UK.

I requested this one as I was interested to see an early Canadian serial killer, and was curious about someone who could have such a wide range of victims, and still not be a well known name when you hear true crime fans talk.

Now that I’ve read this, I see why Dr.Cream isn’t one of the more popular killers in history. He really wasn’t anything we haven’t heard before. Doctors really like poison. I do have to give a nod to Jobb for managing to make this book interesting and engaging, despite it following a man who I didn’t find particularly interesting. The research and information within was well done, managed to be keep you interested and never felt dry even when sifting through dry parts of Dr.Cream’s past.

The writing is what made this book what it was. True crime can fall into the trap of being too technical, or too dry, and even too heavy, but this managed to feel concise and interesting. I appreciated the writing more than anything else, and am interested to read other works by Jobb. I’m just not really interested in reading more about Dr.Cream.

The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream: The Hunt for a Victorian Era Serial Killer (Harper Collins, 2021) by Dean Jobb is an excellent and comprehensive historical true crime narrative that integrates the crimes of one man into a social, political, and cultural context. Historically rich and shockingly poignant, Jobb’s text is not one to miss.
The book recounts the life and crimes of Dr. Thomas Neill Cream (1850 – 1892). A Scottish-Canadian medical doctor-turned-serial killer, Dr. Cream’s crimes span over many years and several countries. For detectives at the time, and for Jobb now, untangling the circumstances of Cream’s crimes and his motives is no easy task. Cream was notorious for causing the poisoning deaths of several women in Canada, the United States, and Britain. He also had, according to Jobb, a strange penchant for committing murder and then sending anonymous blackmail letters to prominent political, literary, and medical figures in London, threatening to blame them for the murders. As Jobb notes in his book, the women Cream poisoned were often women he was in a position of power over as both a Victorian man and a doctor. However, Jobb points out that Cream did not commit his crimes without a certain lack of institutional oversight. Cream had an ability to manipulate the imperfect systems of the law in order to secure the poisons he required and to flee from one country to the next.
What I particularly enjoyed about this book was its comprehensive attention to detail. As Jobb writes in the early pages,
“none of the dialogue, scenes, or details have been invented or embellished. Every word enclosed in quotation marks is drawn from a court or police file; a newspaper report, memoir, or historical study; or a letter or other document preserved in an archive or museum. Wording and spellings within quotations have been preserved, uncorrected, so the past can speak to the present.”
Jobb’s dedication to presenting things as they were is admirable, and he is certainly able to paint a vivid picture of both Dr. Cream’s crimes and life in late-nineteenth-century England/Canada through records alone. In weaving a web of connections, Jobb points out that Cream’s crimes did not occur in a vacuum.
As the dangers of certain pharmaceuticals such as arsenic or strychnine became more widely known, Cream was killing during a time when the purchase of these substances was becoming more regulated and policed. He was also a criminal and an inmate in a United States prison during the rise of criminology, when French police were developing and implementing theories around cataloging and identifying repeat offenders. Travel between countries had never been easier. Moving from one place to another—and changing identities as easy as one might change clothes—almost guaranteed a fresh start. Cream was also a doctor, and medical practice, including medical training, is the partial subject of Jobb’s book. Where Cream would have learned and understood the manner of death he was inflicting upon these women is significant for Jobb. And of course, no spectre looms larger in 1880s and 90s London than Jack the Ripper. Jobb integrates Cream’s crimes, as well as the public’s obsession with murder and mayhem in the press, with other famous nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century deaths that shocked the nation. The comprehensive and thorough nature of Jobb’s book is part of what makes it so compelling—it serves as a full picture of nineteenth-century London and I encourage anyone who is interested in this history to read this book.
Another aspect of Jobb’s book that I was particularly interested in was its attention to the circumstances of the victims. While Jobb does not belabour this point, he does acknowledge that
“the pervasive sexism and inequality of the times isolated prostitutes and pregnant, unwed women alike, relegating them to the margins of society. Women came to Cream for an illegal abortion, or seeking medicine too induce a miscarriage, to escape the stigma … of having a child out of wedlock. Poverty, unemployment, and the limited opportunities available for unmarried women drove or lured other women into prostitution. … in Cream's twisted mind, however, prostitutes were not just offensive or immoral. They were less than human …. Behind the names of each of Cream’s known or suspected female victims was a story of hardship, struggle, or despair.”
Jobb identifies the social and cultural power dynamics that influenced both Cream’s ability to commit his crimes for so many years and the status of his victims. Furthermore, Jobb takes this discussion further. Although Cream’s crimes were not the vicious, deeply personal violence that we might see in the Jack the Ripper case, Jobb points out that this does not mean the crimes are any less motivated by a hatred of women and marginalized people, and that Cream’s crimes are still important to remember today.
“Serial killers continue to target those living on the margins— sex workers, the homeless, transients, drug addicts, teenage runaways. Many lead lives filled with desperation an risk, and their lifestyles make them worry of the police and vulnerable to attack. If they disappear— and assuming there is anyone to report the disappearance—police may have few leads to go on an little incentive to investigate. … Cream’s shocking crimes resonate in a time when murderous predators still lurk in the shadows and in a culture obsessed, like that of our Victorian ancestors, with tales of crime and detection.”
Employing Steven A. Egger’s theory of the “less-dead” (The Killers Among Us: Examination of Serial Murder and Its Investigations 1997), Jobb relates it back to Cream’s victims and the society they lived in. Jobb’s interest in connecting the past to the present through his detailed history, accurate representation of events, and contemporary connections makes The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream a must-read.
Please follow Dean Jobb on Twitter and add The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream to your Goodreads shelf.
Don’t forget to follow True Crime Index on Twitter and please visit our Goodreads for updates on what we’re reading! You can find Rachel on her personal @RachelMFriars or on Goodreads @Rachel Friars.
About the Writer:
Rachel M. Friars (she/her) is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of English Language and Literature at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. She holds a BA and an MA in English Literature with a focus on neo-Victorianism and adaptations of Jane Eyre. Her current work centers on neo-Victorianism and nineteenth-century lesbian literature and history, with secondary research interests in life writing, historical fiction, true crime, popular culture, and the Gothic. Her academic writing has been published with Palgrave Macmillan and in The Journal of Neo-Victorian Studies. She is a reviewer for The Lesbrary, the co-creator of True Crime Index, and an Associate Editor and Social Media Coordinator for PopMeC Research Collective. Rachel is co-editor-in-chief of the international literary journal, The Lamp, and regularly publishes her own short fiction and poetry. Find her on Twitter and Goodreads.

"When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals. He has nerve and he has knowledge." - Sherlock Holmes, in Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Adventure of the Speckled Band," 1892

The Case: Dr. Thomas Neill Cream also known as the Lambeth Poisoner was a medical doctor and a serial killer, preying on women in Canada, Chicago and London since 1876 until his capture in 1892. In this book, the author gives a comprehensive account Dr. Cream's crimes and his personal life - from family background, and medical education, his victims, arrest, trial and finally his execution in November 1892.

My thoughts: For a case that happened so long ago, I must say that this was a really well-researched book. It took me a few days to finish it as there were a lot of information in this book. I really liked that there were photos and illustrations included in this book.

The writing held my interest although the second half of the book did slow down a bit.

It was fascinating to know that Dr. Cream went to the same medical school - The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and may at some point met him too.

There was speculation that Dr. Cream was Jack the Ripper!

In a nutshell, this was an interesting read and if you enjoy old cases, you may want to read this!

Pub. Date: June 1st, 2021

***Thank you Harper Collins Canada, author Dean Jobb and NetGalley for gifted review copy to read & review. ***

Some people seem to be purely evil. Dr. Cream was one of them. This gripping and fascinating book details his upbringing, education in medicine, extreme depravity and the investigations into his crimes (both botched and brilliant) which were mostly murder. Dr. Cream lived and died during the Victorian era, close to the time of Jack the Ripper, and was every bit as barbaric, if not more so. His method of murder was poison, carefully planned.

Dr. Cream was a Canadian who killed several people, most of whom were "unfortunates" who sought medical treatment. He killed in Canada, America and London (quite a lot of the book's focus is his time in London) but managed to elude police for ages. After finally serving a sentence in Joliet prison, he killed soon after his release. Dean Jobb explains he used all facts, no fiction, in writing this epic book. He describes Dr. Cream's character, motivations, chemical dependence, attempts to cover his tracks, reasons for killing and his fate. And a lot more.

From explanations of physically measuring criminals to discussing handwriting to blackmailing to prison life at the time, this book is intense but absolutely compelling. So many answered questions but also conjured up others in my mind, very thought provoking. Some of the "investigations" are so frustrating yet we must remember the very limited technology and the fairly new idea of investigating.

Nonfiction and True Crime readers ought to read this remarkable look into a murderous mind, his intentions and motivations. It is not for everyone (some graphic details) but definitely for those who have a thirst for knowledge and to learn more about life and death in Victorian London. The photographs and illustrations are so helpful!

My sincere thank you to HarperCollins Canada and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this riveting book in exchange for an honest review. Much appreciated.