Against the backdrop sketched in the previous chapter, January 1910 found Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen navigating the streets of the metropolis each weekday to pursue three professional endeavours. First, he had some remaining business to complete for Munyon's Homeopathic Remedies Company, an American pharmaceutical agency which dispensed patent medicines through the post and with which Crippen had been connected since 1894. This would be the doctor's last month with homeopathic field-leader Munyon’s. Since November of the previous year his role had diminished from London manager, receiving £3 per week, to mere agent working on commission and his connection with the firm was to cease completely at the end of January 1910.

Crippen's second venture operated from the same premises as Munyon's in Albion House, New Oxford Street. Here Crippen was also partner in a dental practice with fellow American Dr Gilbert Rylance, the pair operating under the name ‘The Yale Tooth Specialists’ and offering a ‘painless dentistry’ clinic. From Rylance's subsequent witness testimony it appears their partnership agreement, formed in 1908 and renewed as recently as March 1910, ascribed to Rylance the greater knowledge of dentistry: ‘Dr. Crippen agreed to put £200 into the business, and I was to put in my experience, knowledge and skill.’

If Rylance's description rather cast Crippen as the sleeping partner in the business, perhaps his proper specialism was better reflected in his third line of employment: since the autumn of 1909, operating from a small office in Craven House on the aforementioned Kingsway, Crippen had also been acting as ‘consulting physician’ to another patent chemist operation, the Aural Remedies Company, where he prescribed and dispensed remedies through the post for deafness and ‘head noises’ or tinnitus. To lend gravitas and market edge to this venture, Crippen had even published a short pamphlet, The Otological Gazette, which claimed the efficacy of his deafness cures and sported testimonials from apparently satisfied customers. Masquerading as a special issue of an established periodical (while actually a sui generis publication cooked up by Crippen and his business partner Eddie Marr), the Gazette was widely advertised in the London press in November 1909 and free copies were despatched to correspondents who expressed interest in the Aural Remedies Company’s treatments and cures, together with a letter from Crippen typically offering discounts, ‘try-now-pay-later’ opportunities, and other incentives.