The Tragic Family of Croydon is a newspaper article which Agatha Christie wrote for for the Sunday Chronicle 11 Aug 1929. It concerned an actual case of three murders taking place within two related families within a short space of time, a crime which was sensational in 1929 and which remains unsolved to this day.
When HarperCollins reissued their 1936 collection Six Against the Yard in 2013, this book reprinted Agatha Christie's article at the end. The original book was a collection of short stories by members of the Detection Club each describing a "perfect crime". Agatha Christie did not contribute to the collection. Presumably the editors of the 2013 edition thought that Christie's article on the Croydon crime came close to the theme of a "perfect crime" and included it.
Background[]
The crime concerned the poisoning by arsenic of three victims from two related families living in South Croydon, Surrey. The first was one Edmund Creighton Duff, son-in-law of an elderly lady Violet Sydney. He felt ill after supper on 26 Apr 1928 and died the next day.
Ten months later, on 14 Feb 1929, Edmund's sister-in-law and Violet's daughter Vera Sydney felt ill after lunch. The cook, her mother and family cat all felt ill but recovered but Vera died on 16 Feb.
The elderly lady Violet Sydney died on 5 Mar 1929.
Public speculation led the family to request an investigation. The bodies of Violet and Vera Sydney were exhumed and an autopsy found traces of arsenic. Edmund Duff was also exhumed and arsenic was also found.
It was considered a difficult case because there was no plausible motive or suspect that would apply to all three crimes. The Sunday Chronicle invited Agatha Christie to comment on the case and she agreed, writing the article which was published on 11 Aug 1929.
Agatha Christie's article[]
According to Christie, the case was "essentially a family drama". The Duffs and Sydneys appeared to be a harmonious family and for this reason the case is baffling. "Whichever way you start off to solve ityou find yourself in a blind alley". One could find a motive for killing Mr Duff, another for killing Vera and a third for killing Violet, but one could not find a motive for killing all three. While some people benefited from the deaths of Vera and Violet, no one seemed to benefit from the death of Mr Duff--everyone seems to have been left the worse off with his death.
As for opportunity, the cook Mrs Noakes prepared Vera's soup, a servant Amy Baker brought Mr Duff his beer and his wife also had an opportunity. Mr Thomas Sydney, Violet's son was at her house shortly before his mother became ill. Again, no one person in all three.
From Christie's point of view, "somewhere in the first murder must lie the clue". For example, the other two might have been put away because they began to suspect something about the first death. For the killer might have acquired a strange lust for killing and just moved on and on. Here Christie lists a few historical examples.
In concluding, Christie calls, above all, for sympathy for the surviving members of the family. "It is a case where the innocent suffer most horribly for sins they have never committed." For this reason, she i seager for the case to be solved for their sakes. Christie condemns the anonymous letter writers who had apparently written to the family. These letters were "written with the sheer malicious desire to hurt and wound".
Themes[]
The article is significant in that some of the themes in the case would find their way into Christie's stories. The theme of the tragedy of the innocents would feature strongly in Ordeal by Innocence and Crooked House. Several people would be poisoned, most will recover except for one would be an event in 4.50 from Paddington. A baffling lack of common motive would be a plot device in Three Act Tragedy.