Infamous Scots. Thomas Neil Cream.

CONTAINS SENSITIVE MATERIAL.

Dr 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 claimed his first proven victims in the United States and the rest in Great Britain, and possibly others in Canada. Cream, who poisoned his victims, was executed after his attempts to frame others for his crimes brought him to the attention of London police.

Unsubstantiated rumours claimed his last words as he was being hanged were a confession that he was Jack the Ripper—even though official records state he was in prison in Illinois at the time of the Ripper murders.

Early life.

Born in Glasgow, Cream was raised outside Quebec City, after his family moved there in 1854. He attended McGill University in Montreal and graduated with an MDCM degree in 1876 (his thesis topic was chloroform). He then went for 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. He then returned to Canada to practise in London, Ontario.

In 1876, Cream married Flora Brooks, whom he had impregnated and almost killed while aborting the baby. Flora died, apparently of consumption, in 1877, a death for which Cream would later be blamed.

In August 1879, Kate Gardener, a woman with whom he was alleged to have had an affair, was found dead in an alleyway behind Cream’s office, pregnant and poisoned by chloroform. Cream claimed that she had been made pregnant by a prominent local businessman, but after being accused of both murder and blackmail, Cream fled to the United States.