The infamous Thomas Neill Cream was born in Scotland in 1850,
and his family emigrated to Canada a few years later. As a young man, he worked as a shipbuilder,
but eventually decided to study medicine. When he was 22, he enrolled as a medical student at McGill
University where he learned, among other things, about chloroform and its effects on the body.
Cream graduated with honors in 1876 and earned the medical degree that he always wanted.
Just a few months after graduation, Cream found out that a woman he'd been intimate with, named
Flora Elizabeth Brooks, was pregnant. Unluckily for her, the recent medical graduate decided to
perform an abortion himself. It did not end well, and Flora almost died as a result. When Flora's
father found out about this, he demanded that the newly minted Dr. Cream marry his daughter.
Cream gave in to his new father-in-law's demands, but he actually had no interest in married life.
It wasn't long before he escaped to London to keep studying medicine. Dr. Cream did eventually
return to Canada, but by that point Flora Brooks was dead, and Cream was once again a single man.
When he made it back to Canada, Dr. Cream got right to work,
founded a clinic and started performing illegal abortions. Unfortunately, not long after that,
he claimed his first victim, a patient named Kate Gardner. Gardner's body was found behind Cream's
clinic building with a bottle of chloroform nearby. Authorities questioned Dr. Cream,
and he said he saw Gardner to consult about an abortion, but denied giving her the chemical.
Kate Gardner's death was found to have been caused by chloroform, but by the time authorities got
back to Cream, he had already fled to Chicago. It was there that he began building the infamous
reputation that made him a legend portrayed in things like the BBC crime drama "River."
"I say abort them. Abort them all at birth."
It was 1879 when Dr. Cream arrived in Chicago to set up a clinic in the city's red-light district,
where sex workers often looked for abortions for unwanted pregnancies.
It wasn’t long before he had a steady stream of new patients. Unfortunately,
that also meant more bodies, including a woman who died from a botched procedure,
and another woman who died after taking medication from Dr. Cream. Authorities kept their eye on
the doctor, but no charges were ever brought against him. At least, not for those deaths.
In 1881, Dr. Thomas Neill Cream was convicted of murder, but not because of his medical practice.
According to a report from the Chicago Tribune, he killed the husband of a
woman he was having an affair with. The doctor was sentenced to life in prison,
but just 10 years later, he was released, most likely because he knew the right
people. He returned to England after his prison stint, and his crimes continued.
When he was back in London, he set up a clinic in a poor area of town where he was
sure to get abortion patients. Two women died of poisoning soon after Dr. Cream's arrival,
but the doctor wasn't a suspect that time. Then, not long after,
two more women were poisoned. Still, authorities didn't have their eye on Cream,
but that didn't stop him from being a part of the story. The doctor actually
inserted himself into the investigation by blaming one of the women's neighbors,
a man named Joseph Harper. He even claimed to have evidence against the man, and tried to blackmail
him. Of course, Harper knew he had nothing to do with the murders, so he turned Cream down.
But Dr. Cream wasn't done. He tried his blackmail scheme again on other people in the area,
claiming he had evidence on each of them connected to the dead women. In one desperate attempt,
he even befriended detective John Haynes and gave him a tour of the crime scenes
where the women died. Cream did the same with a police sergeant, and it was about that time
that investigators started to get suspicious. Of course, it didn't help that a witness also told
police about seeing two of the murdered women with a man that fit Dr. Cream's description.
The murders were eventually tied to Cream, and he was charged for the crimes. A woman who was
the doctor's patient testified in court that she was prescribed the same pills the dead women took.
Fortunately for her, she hadn't taken them. Dr. Cream was found guilty, and when he was,
the floodgates opened. He eventually confessed to many crimes, including some in which he'd
never even been a suspect. He was sentenced to death, and was executed at the gallows in 1892.
According to the executioner who hung him, Thomas Neill Cream's final words were, "I am Jack–,"
but he was never able to finish his sentence. Throughout the years, many have speculated that
Cream's dying words were a confession that he was the notorious London serial killer
Jack the Ripper, but that's very unlikely. Later investigations revealed that Cream was
actually in Chicago committing other crimes while the Ripper murders happened in London.
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