Surdus in Search of his Hearing: An Exposure of Aural Quacks and a Guide to Genuine Treatments and Remedies, Electrical Aids, Lip-Reading and Employments for the Deaf.

CRIPPEN, Hawley Harvey - YELLON, Evan.

Edité par London: The Celtic Press, 1906

A propos de cet article

First edition of this scarce account of an encounter with Dr Crippen in his guise as a homoeopathic ear specialist. Evan Yellon, resident in 1906 at Eton Wick and in 1910 in St Albans, had made it his business to expose the quacks who preyed on people with deafness or hearing difficulties, luring them with promises of miraculous "cures". Himself deaf and editor of The Albion Magazine for the Deaf, Yellon was well placed to recognise fraudulent practices. Drouet's Institute for the Deaf was one such enterprise. Purporting to have been founded by a Dr Drouet in 1888, it operated from 72 Regent's Park Road and advertised aggressively in late 19th-century newspapers, which also carried planted articles extolling its virtues. In the opening section, Yellon recounts his visit to the Institute, by then relocated to 10 Marble Arch. He describes the secretary's office: "Open upon the desk was a huge ledger, and standing by it was a pile of cards. Just above the ledger a number of labelled bottles were arranged in careless order; while over the fireplace was affixed a great frame containing a selection of letters thanking Drouet's for wondrous in fact, staggering 'cures.' All very artistic!" Yellon was then shown in to meet Dr Cuppen. "The carpet was fine, really fine, and the chairs were good specimens of modern Chippendale, and upholstered with refined regard to fitness. A pair of tapestry curtains hid from my wandering eye a room adjoining that I was seated in." When the curtains were drawn back, a shortish man beckoned him into the consulting room, which "was one better than the secretary's office, and more than one below the waiting room; for that was a really nice drawing room, while by all the signs this was a quack's den." On the desk lay a set of dirty instruments. The man himself was "got up in a fantastic fashion": "His frock-coat was orthodox enough; but he wore with it a shirt of startling hue, adorning the front of which was a 'diamond' as big as a marble; and the jaunty butterfly tie vied in hue with the shirt. His patent leather shoes were a trifle cracked, and his face a warning to all observant beholders. The flabby gills, the shifty eyes, and the man's appearance generally, would effectually have prevented me from being taken in, even had all else failed to do so." The doctor examined Yellon's ears with a filthy speculum. "He took altogether not five minutes to make an examination a famous aurist took twenty-five over; and without the least regard for nose and throat." Back in the reception room, Yellon proposed a "no cure no payment" arrangement. The secretary, who had apparently been preparing a bill, hurried upstairs with the offer and returned to write "charge you nothing" in red ink. Yellon left, marvelling that anyone could fall for such "transparent fakery" and amused by "the secretary's disgusted look when reading my offer to pay by results". Behind the Drouet Institute stood the fraudster J. H. Nicholson, imprisoned in 1902. The French Dr Drouet, whose name gave the institute a spurious legitimacy, was an obscure Parisian practitioner who died of drink. Henry Labouchere, the formidable journalist-politician, led the campaign against the Institute in his weekly Truth. During the 1904 libel action Dakhyl v. Labouchere (Surdus 1906, p. 8), much was exposed about its activities, Lord Chief Justice Mathew calling it "a disgraceful institution carried on for unworthy objects by discreditable means." In the second volume of his enquiry, published in 1910, Yellon revealed that "Dr Cuppen" had been none other than the murderer Dr Crippen. Crippen served as London manager of the disreputable Drouet's Institute for the Deaf from 1901 until its bankruptcy in 1908. He subsequently adopted the name Franckel in New Oxford Street in 1908, selling a "Catarrh Tonic", and also used his wife's maiden name, styling himself "Barron [sic] Mackamotzki". That Franckel, Cuppen (or Kupfinn), and Crippen were one and the same only becam.

N° de réf. du vendeur 135206

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: Surdus in Search of his Hearing: An Exposure of Aural Quacks and a Guide to Genuine Treatments and Remedies, Electrical Aids, Lip-Reading and Employments for the Deaf.
• Éditeur: London: The Celtic Press, 1906
• Édition: Edition originale