George Joseph Smith and the "Brides in the Bath"
England, 1912 to 1915
This case is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places and events in the game do not portray real people. The account below is a factual summary, based on public sources, of the case that served as inspiration.
Between 1912 and 1914, three newly married women drowned in the bathtub in lodging houses in different English towns, each a few days after making a will or taking out insurance in her husband's favor. There were three different names, but the same man: George Joseph Smith. The deaths were recorded as sudden illness.
A relative of one of the victims read a news report about another identical death and alerted the police. The pathologist Bernard Spilsbury demonstrated that pulling the legs of someone lying in a bathtub causes loss of consciousness and drowning with almost no marks. Smith was convicted and executed in 1915.
Sources
In the game
Thermal Waters
Aranykút Baths, Budapest, 7:53 pm on a Thursday in January. Tibor Kardos, 64, owner of a hotel chain, was pulled from the bottom of the indoor thermal pool.
The game borrows the drowning in the bath passed off as the sudden illness of a healthy person. The sedative, the spa, the characters and the outcome are fiction.
