Thomas Neill Cream (27 May 1850 – 15 November 1892), also known as the Lambeth Poisoner, was a Scottish-Canadian medical doctor and serial killer who poisoned his victims with strychnine. Cream murdered up to ten people in three countries, targeting mostly lower-class women, sex workers and pregnant women seeking abortions. He was convicted and sentenced to death, and was hanged on 15 November 1892. A popular rumour, started by hangman James Billington, claims that Cream's last words were "I am Jack the...", seemingly a confession to being Jack the Ripper. However, Billington is the only source for this alleged statement, and official records show that Cream was incarcerated in Illinois during the Ripper murders.
Early life Thomas Neill Cream was born in Glasgow on 27 May 1850. Cream's family moved to Canada, then still a dominion of the British Empire, in 1854; he was raised outside Quebec City. Cream attended the now-defunct Lachute Academy before becoming a student at McGill University in Montreal, graduating with an MDCM degree in 1876. In 1876, while living in Waterloo, Quebec, Cream met and courted a woman named Flora Brooks. When Brooks became pregnant a few months later after Cream had promised to marry her, he attempted to perform an abortion but failed. With Brooks left severely ill, Cream attempted to escape to Montreal but was caught by Brooks' father, who forced him to return and to marry her. The day after the wedding, Cream left for England to continue his medical education. The Brooks family never saw or heard from him again. Brooks herself almost fully recovered but died of consumption in 1877. Cream, having gone to Great Britain, received his post-graduate training at St Thomas's Hospital Medical School in London, and in 1878 obtained additional qualifications as a physician and surgeon in Edinburgh. Cream then returned to North America seeking to practise in a community in need of physicians; after a brief experience in Des Moines, Iowa, he relocated to London, Ontario.
Murders
London, Ontario Cream returned to North America in 1878 and established a medical practice in London, Ontario. He was charged under Ontario's Medical Act with practising without a license and later pleaded guilty. However, this did not deter patients from visiting his office. In 1879, Catharine Hutchinson Gardner was found dead in a privy behind Cream's office at 204 Dundas Street. She was pregnant and had been murdered with a handkerchief soaked in chloroform. Cream had refused to help her with an abortion, instead urging her to accuse a local businessman of being the father. Cream claimed Gardner had threatened to poison herself when he had not agreed to perform the abortion, and that she had written him a letter in which she named the businessman as the father. However, Gardner's family and roommate denied that she had written it, as the signature and handwriting on the letter did not match her own, and it was dismissed as forgery. Despite rumours and overwhelming evidence against Cream, authorities took no further action and the case was never solved. Shortly after this incident, Cream relocated to Chicago.
Chicago Cream established a medical practice not far from the red-light district in Chicago, offering illegal abortions to sex workers. He was investigated in August 1880, after the death of Mary Anne Faulkner, a woman on whom he had allegedly operated; he escaped prosecution due to lack of evidence. In December 1880, another patient, Miss Stack, died after treatment by Cream, and he subsequently attempted to blackmail the pharmacist who had filled the prescription. In April 1881, a woman named Alice Montgomery died of strychnine poisoning following an abortion in a rooming house barely a block from Cream's office. The case was ruled a murder but never solved. The location, time period, and method make Cream a likely suspect. On 14 July 1881, Daniel Stott died of strychnine poisoning at his home in Boone County, Illinois, after Cream supplied him with an alleged remedy for epilepsy. The death was attributed to natural causes, but Cream wrote to the coroner blaming the pharmacist for the death after he again attempted blackmail. This time, Cream was arrested, along with Julia A. (Abbey) Stott, who had allegedly become Cream's mistress and procured poison from Cream to kill her husband. She turned state's evidence to avoid jail, laying the blame on Cream, which left him to face a murder conviction on his own. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in Joliet Prison. Daniel Stott's friends erected a tombstone at his grave, which reads: "Daniel Stott Died June 12, 1881 Aged 61 Years, poisoned by his wife and Dr Cream." After 10 years in prison, Cream was released in July 1891. Governor Joseph W. Fifer had commuted his sentence after Cream's brother pleaded for leniency and allegedly bribed the authorities.
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