Contents

• The murder of Sarah Hart 1845
• The first railway murder: the murder of Mr Briggs by Franz Muller 1864
• Murder on the Brighton line: the murder of Mr Gold by Percy Lefroy 1881 
• The Netherby hue and cry 1885
• The murder of Elizabeth Camp 1897
• The murder of William Pearson by George Parker 1901
• The Merstham Tunnel mystery: the murder of Mary Money 1905
• A case of mistaken identity? The murder of John Nisbet by John Dickman 1910
• The murder of Master Starchfield 1914
• The strange case of Arthur Mead 1936
• The murder of a child by Marguerita Eastwood 1938
• The murder of Geoffrey Dean by John Alcott 1952
• The unknown bandit: the murder of Countess Lubienska 1957
• The murder of Marguerite Van Campenhout 2002

 

 

The murder of Sarah Hart 1845

Written by PC Kevin Gordon

 

 

The telegraph

In the 1970s, I worked at Victoria Station where throughout the day ‘boat-trains’ would arrive from the south coast ports. At the docks, the names of people entering the country would be checked against ledgers held by Special Branch but often a suspect person would have left by train before it was realised they were wanted.

 

The BTP at Victoria would be telephoned and asked to meet the train in order to arrest the suspect. With a colleague I would often put on a ‘civvie jacket’ and try to identify and arrest the offender, often from a vague description. Luckily we frequently succeeded.

 

Today criminal records are computerised and CCTV can capture the image of a person which can then be sent anywhere in the world within seconds. We now take communication for granted. But who made the first arrest using technology? Many people will cite the arrest of Dr Crippen who was arrested after a wireless message was sent to the ship in which he was making his escape. That was is 1910 but the first arrest using technology was 65 years earlier and was made by a railway policeman using the telegraph.

 

The railways were pioneers of the use of the telegraph. On 24 July 1837 an electric telegraph was invented by Professor (later Sir) Charles Wheatstone and Sir William Cooke. It was demonstrated along the railway line between Euston and Camden stations when a message was successfully sent the one-and-a-half miles between the two stations.

 

Directors of the Great Western Railway witnessed the demonstration and arranged a further trial between Paddington and Hanwell in April 1839. This was also a success and the experiment was extended to West Drayton by July the same year. The telegraph was transmitted along wires insulated in cotton and buried alongside the track but when the cable became wet the connection failed. When Wheatstone and Cooke were invited by the GWR to extend the system to Slough they changed their design and suspended the wires from posts along the line. The railway insisted their messages were transmitted free of charge but the inventors recovered some of their money by allowing members of the public to send messages at a shilling a time.

 

By 1844 the telegraph had been purchased by the Government and a further line had been strung along the railway connecting the Admiralty with the navy base at Gosport near Portsmouth. On 6 August the same year the telegraph was in the news when the announcement that Queen Victoria had given birth to her second son was conveyed by telegraph from Windsor to London.

 

A few months later however the case of John Tawell was to give the invention even more publicity.

 

John Tawell

At the age of 14, John Tawell worked in a shop owned by a Quaker widow who persuaded him to attend the monthly ‘friends’ meetings held by the Quakers. Six years later he went to work in a drapers shop in Whitechapel owned by another Quaker. At the age of 22 he seduced a servant girl called Mary and when she became pregnant the couple married much to the disproval of the Quaker community they were members of.

 

Tawell got another job with a druggist in Cheapside where he was quick to learn the trade of the chemist. It was in 1814 that he committed his first known crime when he attempted to forge a £10 note of the Smith's Bank of Uxbridge. Forgery was a capital offence and at his trial he was sentenced to death. However the victims, Smith's Bank were a Quaker company and they opposed the death penalty, so luckily for Tawell, his sentence was commuted to transportation to the colonies for 14 years.

 

For a few years Tawell worked his sentence on coal ships around the Australian coast but his skills with medicine were identified and he was given a job in a convict hospital. He later obtained work as a clerk to a Isaac Wood of the Sydney Academy who was impressed by this knowledge and faith. He petitioned the Governor for Tawell’s pardon which was granted in 1820.

 

Now a free man, John Tawell set up a small shop selling drugs and chemicals. Although he had no formal pharmaceutical training or qualifications he was examined by the local medical board who pronounced that he was authorised to dispense medicine. With this accreditation business boomed and he had to move the shop to move to larger premises. Tawell became financially stable and acquired land and property sponsored in part by the sale of fancy goods imported from England. He also became involved in the export trade and cornered the market in whalebone which was sent to London where it was used to make combs and toothbrushes.

 

In 1823 Tawell’s wife and two children joined him in Australia and despite the fact that he had had entered the country as a convict, managed to get the trip paid for by the Crown.

 

Tawell appears to have been well respected in the community and wore the uniform of the Quaker which included a wide brimmed black hat. In 1837 he donated the first Friends Meeting House in Sydney which bore a plaque “John Tawell – to the Society of Friends”. He also made a public display of his temperance by pouring casks of gin and rum into the sea at Sydney Cove. However, despite his apparent piety he was never fully accepted by the Quakers maybe because of his criminal past and the fact that prior to his family arriving from England, he had kept a mistress.

 

In 1831 Tawell and his family returned to London but their health suffered badly in the bad atmosphere of the largest city in the world. The younger son, William, died in 1833 followed by their elder son, John (who had trained to be a doctor), in 1838. Heartbroken, Tawell’s wife Mary also became ill and he employed a young nurse, Sarah Lawrence to care for her. Mary died in 1838 and Tawellbegan an affair with Sarah which resulted in the birth of two children.

 

The London Society of Friends continued to bar Tawell from full membership despite his continued charitable work. It was through this work that he met a Quaker widow, Mrs Cutforth who ran a school in Clerkenwell. Despite the reservations of her friends and family, the pair were married in 1841.

 

Tawell moved his potentially troublesome former lover, Sarah (who had changed her name to Hart) into a cottage at Salt Hill near Slough. He made regular visits to her to pay a weekly allowance of £1 for the upkeep of her children.

 

By 1843 the previously affluent Tawell was beginning to experience financial difficulties mainly due to the failure of his business interests in Australia. One means of relief was the disposal of the financial burden that was Sarah Hart.

 

The murder

On 1 January 1845, Tawell went to a chemists shop on Bishopsgate Street where he purchased two bottles of Steele's Acid from the proprietor Mr Hughes. The preparation was used for the treatment of varicose veins and contained the poison prussic acid. He travelled across London to Paddington station where he caught the train to Slough and went to see Sarah. He found her in good spirits and, having received her allowance, went to a local inn to buy a bottle of stout.

 

Maybe Tawell managed to distract Sarah long enough to tip the acid into the newly purchased beer but a short time later her next door neighbour heard loud groans and moans through the party wall. The neighbour, Mrs Ashley, saw Tawell (who she recognised as a frequent visitor) leave the house and went to see if Sarah was alright. She found her writhing on the floor, frothing from her mouth. Mrs Ashley quickly raised the alarm but poor Sarah was dead before a doctor could attend.

 

The chase

Among the persons to respond to the cry for help was the Reverend E. T. Champnes, the vicar of Upton-cum-Chumley. The quick thinking cleric took a description of Tawell and raced to the station to intercept him. He got there just in time to see the suspect board the departing 7.42pm service. He was too late to stop the train.

 

Tawell sitting on the speeding train may have been smug enough to think that he had got away with murder and at most other locations that might have been the case but Slough was equipped with the telegraph.

 

The quick thinking vicar consulted the station master, Mr Howell, who arranged for a message to be sent from the Telegraph Cottage just outside the station. The historic message to Paddington read:

 

“A murder has just been committed at Salt Hill and the suspected murderer was seen to take a first class ticket to London by the train that left Slough at 7.42pm. He is in the garb of a Kwaker [sic] with a brown great coat on which reaches his feet. He is in the last compartment of the second first-class carriage.”

 

The telegraph did not have the letter ‘Q’ hence the odd spelling of the word ‘Quaker’.

 

At Paddington a clerk ran the message to the Great Western Railway Police office where it was passed to the duty Sergeant, William Williams. He “put a plain coat over his police dress” and met the train in. A few minutes later the Telegraph House at Slough received a message from the capital:

 

“The up train has arrived and a person answering in every respect the description given by the telegraph came out of the compartment mentioned. The man got into a New Road omnibus and Sergeant Williams into the same.”

 

Sgt Williams sat in the conductor's seat of the bus and Tawell must have mistaken him for the conductor as when he alighted at Prince’s Street (alongside the Bank of England) he handed the Sergeant his fare. Tawell was followed by Sergeant Williams along the darkened streets of London. He first went to a sweet shop in Cornhill and then on to the Jerusalem Coffee House. (A haunt of East Indian and Australian Merchants) The Sergeant kept him under observation as he left and then walked along Birchin Lane and thence to a Lodging House in Scott's Yard. He stood outside Tawell’s lodgings for over an hour before returning to Paddington. Here, he visited a colleague, Inspector Wigginsof the Metropolitan Police at Paddington Green Police Station and the next morning the two men, having confirmed details of the crime, went in search of the murderer.

 

He was gone from his lodgings but they located him back at the Jerusalem Coffee House where he was arrested. Tawell protested saying: “I wasn't at Slough yesterday,” but Sgt WILLIAMS replied: “Yes you were sir, you got out of the train and got onto an omnibus and gave me sixpence.” Tawell haughtily retorted: “My station in society would be sufficient to rebut any suspicion against me.” He was wrong.

 

An apple pip defence

While in custody he sent for the best lawyer that money can buy and engaged the services of Sir Fitzroy Kelly, a promoter of the Appeals Court and the Chief Baron of the Exchequer. On hearing Tawell’s testimony he pronounced that his client was innocent of all charges.

 

The trial opened at Aylesbury County Court on 12 March 1845 presided over by Judge Baron Parke (who as Lord Wensleydale was later to become the first ever life peer). Sergeant Byles opened the proceedings and the jury soon heard how a post mortem had revealed that the cause of death for Sarah Hart was “poisoning by prussic acid”.

 

Other witnesses were called including Sergeant Williams, who gave a full account of his actions which led to the arrest of the accused. Sir Fitzroy Kelly then opened his defence with just one word: “apple pips.”

 

He explained that prussic acid occurred naturally in apple pips and that Sarah Hart’s death could be explained by her eating a large amount of fruit over the festive season. His arguments were interesting but not enough to sway the jury who after two days of deliberations took just half an hour to find Tawell guilty. The judge donned his black cap and the former convict (maybe with a feeling of déjà vu) was for the second time in his life sentenced to death.

 

Awaiting execution Tawell apparently made a full confession to a priest and at 8am on Friday 28 March 1845 he was publicly hanged on a gallows erected outside the court. Around 10,000 people came to watch the gruesome spectacle and a print showing the execution is on display at Slough Museum.

 

Consequences

There were several consequences of the case. His defence lawyer obtained the nickname of ‘apple pip’ Kelly because of his unusual defence and it is said that because of this the sale of apples in England dropped considerably.

 

The Crown who had seized Tawell’s English assets allowed his widow to keep their Birkhampstead home and following a discussion in The Times, Sarah Hart’s children were placed into care.

 

In Australia it was discovered that the hall given to the Quakers by Tawell had not been formally gifted and it was subsequently purchased by the Jewish community for use as a synagogue. His estate was held by the governor but there was considerable argument as to how it should be disposed of. It took more than sixteen years for the matter to be resolved.

 

But the main benefactor was the telegraph which had received a massive amount of good free publicity. The Times declared: “Had it not been for the efficient aid of the electric telegraph, both at Slough and Paddington, the greatest difficulty, as well as delay, would have occurred in the apprehension [of Tawell].”

 

Other railway companies soon took on the new system. In 1847 the telegraph was again used in connection with a murder case. A man was under sentence of death at Maidstone Prison when a Home Office message was received at London Bridge station asking for a message to be telegraphed to the gaol to stay the execution.

The message was sent and the hanging was delayed. Shortly afterwards the railway received a further message to be sent to Maidstone authorising the execution to continue. Realising the message was the prisoner's death warrant, an official was sent to confirm that the message was correct and when this was done the telegraph message was duly sent. The way the South Eastern Railway had handled the matter made a very good impression with the press.

 

Sgt Williams

One may wonder why the Sergeant did not arrest Tawell as soon as he stepped from the train but I think it is reasonable that he did not apprehend the man until he had received confirmation from an official source; the telegraph after all did call the man a “suspected” murderer. And why did he seek the assistance of Inspector Wiggins of the Metropolitan Police to arrest the man? “Because,” said Sergeant Williams, recalling the arrest, “I am no officer off the station.”

 

This would not be a problem for today's British Transport Police officer who has full jurisdiction anywhere.

 

There have been many accounts of this case but few make reference to the fact that it was a railway policeman who was responsible for the arrest of the murderer.

 

Sources

Communication and Crime, an article (probably by former Chief Constable WO Gay) in the British Transport Police Journal July 1957.

Famous murderer caught by the wire, an article by Geoff Miller in The Pharmaceutical Journal 21st December 2002

 

 

The first railway murder: the murder of Mr Briggs by Franz Muller 1864

This article was written by William Owen Gay (former Chief Constable of British Transport Police) and was part of a series Murder in Transit published in the BTP Journal.

 

 

When the railways began to spread across England and became increasingly popular with the travelling public, the criminals of the time were not slow to take advantage of the opportunities which the passengers and their luggage presented. Luggage thefts were common and robberies with violence occurred from time to time. Many opponents of the railways painted a gloomy picture of the prospect which faced the lone passenger in the then unlighted carriages and the dark tunnels. Trains in those days were not corridor connected (such trains were not introduced until 1890) but although men were robbed and women assaulted often enough to provide the pessimists and the hostile sections of the press with plenty of material. The first railway murder, however, did not occur until 1864. It was a cowardly crime and one of the most sensational of the century, partly because it concerned the railway which always had news value, and partly because of the exciting chase which led to the arrest of the murderer.

 

On the night of Saturday, 9 July 1864, the 9.50pm train from Fenchurch Street on the North London Railway arrived at Hackney at about 10.11pm. Two bank clerks entered an empty first class carriage and sat down. One immediately called the other's attention to some blood on his hand. They alighted and called the guard who made an examination of the compartment and found blood all over the cushions and on the off-side door. He also found a black beaver hat, a stick, and a bag. The guard, locked the door, telegraphed Chalk Farm station, and on arrival there told the stationmaster. The carriage was detached and sent to Bow for examination and the hat and other articles were handed to the Metropolitan Police.

 

At 10.20pm the driver of a train travelling in the opposite direction saw something in the six-foot between Hackney Wick and Bow Stations. He stopped the train and found an unconscious, severely injured man, who was taken to a nearby public house. The victim of what had obviously been a murderous attack proved to be Thomas Briggs, chief clerk of a bank in Lombard Street. He was nearly seventy years old and died of his wounds the following night.

 

The bag and stick found in the compartment were identified as the property of Briggs. The hat was not identified and provided an initial clue in the form of the address of the maker at Crawford Street, Marylebone. Robbery was evidently the motive for the murder because Briggs’ gold watch and chain, and gold eye-glasses could not be found. The publicity given to what was then a unique crime caused considerable agitation for better protection to be given to railway passengers. The Government and the bank which employed Briggs offered substantial rewards for information.

 

The first important information came from a jeweller named, curiously enough, John Death. He gave a description of a man, believed to be a German, who called at his shop in Cheapside on 11 July and exchanged a gold chain which was identified as that of Briggs. Next, on 18 July, a cabman told the police (after some delay which was never satisfactorily explained) that he had seen in his house a small cardboard box bearing the name 'Death', which had been given to one of his children by a young German named Franz Muller, formerly engaged to his eldest daughter. Enquiries showed that Muller had sailed for New York on 15 July in the sailing ship ‘Victoria’.

 

The cabman also stated that the black beaver hat found in the train was one purchased by him on behalf of Muller at the Marylebone address. He gave police a photograph of Muller and this was identified by Death, the jeweller, as that of the man who had exchanged the gold chain.

 

Muller was now linked with the property stolen from the murdered man and with the hat found in the compartment. The mechanism of detection had functioned well. A warrant for his arrest was granted by the chief magistrate at Bow Street and on 19 July Inspector Tanner and Sergeant Clarke left Euston for Liverpool. On 20 July they sailed for New York in the steamship ‘City of Manchester’ and reached there on 5 August, three weeks before Muller. When Muller arrived he was arrested and searched and in his possession were found the missing watch and a hat believed to be that of Briggs.

 

Extradition proceedings were begun on 26 August and on 3 September the officers left for England with their prisoner. When they reached Euston on 17 September a large and angry crowd awaited them but LNWR Police dealt with the situation successfully.

 

On 27 October 1864 Muller appeared at the Old Bailey and evidence for the prosecution was given by several railway witnesses including the ticket collector who punched Briggs’ ticket at the beginning of his fateful journey, by the guard of the 9.50pm train, and by the driver who found the body.

 

Muller’s defence was an alibi, ie. he tried to prove that he was elsewhere at the time of the murder. One defence witness stated that he had seen Briggs in the compartment with two other men, neither of whom he recognised as the prisoner. Another witness, a prostitute, said Muller was with her at the material time. Prosecuting counsel said: “Little reliance should be placed on a clock in a brothel,” although it is difficult to see what connection there could be between a clock on the mantelpiece and what went on in some other part of the room. There was also a suggestion by the defence that the hat left in the compartment might have belonged to the cabman who could easily have been the murderer. Muller, who had a previous conviction for larceny, asserted his innocence to the end but was found guilty on the strongest possible evidence. He was publicly executed amid scenes of drunkenness and disorder which contributed to the ultimate abolition of these exhibitions.

 

The crime aroused, and has continued to arouse, great interest for several reasons. It. was the first murder on a British railway and the pursuit across the Atlantic caught the imagination of the public in much the same way as the Crippen case fifty years later. The extradition proceedings in New York were very lively because the British were not popular in America at this time as a result of the 'Alabama' incident and the trial in England demonstrated once more the weight of circumstantial evidence.

 

The murderer himself will go down to posterity as the prime cause of an agitation which led to the compulsory installation of a means of communication between the passenger and the train crew, as required by Section 22 of the Regulation of Railways Act 1868. If Briggs had been able to pull the communication cord he might have been able to save his life.

 

 

Murder on the Brighton line: the murder of Mr Gold by Percy Lefroy 1881 

This article was written by William Owen Gay (former Chief Constable of British Transport Police) and was part of a series Murder in Transit published in the BTP Journal.

 

 

When the 2pm train from London Bridge arrived at Preston Park Station just outside Brighton on the afternoon of Monday 27 June 1881, a ticket collector saw a man step unsteadily on to the platform from a first class carriage. He was covered in blood, hatless, without a collar and tie, and very distressed. The collector went to his assistance and he told the collector that he had been attacked just before the train entered Merstham Tunnel. He gave a description of two men who had travelled in the same compartment and said that after receiving a blow on the head he remembered nothing more until the train reached Preston Park. The collector saw nobody else alight from the compartment but he observed that a piece of watch chain was hanging from one of the man's boots. He pointed this out and the passenger remarked that he had put it there for safety. The condition of this strange and somewhat battered passenger, who gave his name as Percy Mapleton Lefroy, was such that the station master arranged for the platform inspector to take him to the police station at the Town Hall, while the collector was sent to advise the railway police. Thereafter the situation developed in such a way that the obtuseness of the railway officials and of the borough and railway police became the subject of editorial comment in The Times while other newspapers said unkind things in less polite terms.

 

Lefroy made an official complaint at the police station and was then taken to the county hospital for his injuries to be treated. The doctor wanted to detain him but Lefroy insisted upon returning to London where he had an important engagement (although he had only just arrived in Brighton). However, he went to the police station first (buying a collar and tie on the way) and was interviewed by several officers, including the chief constable. Lefroy made a statement and also generously offered a reward for the capture of his assailant. He then went to Brighton station and at this stage somebody seems to have been a little suspicious because he was taken into an office and searched. Two old (counterfeit) coins were found in his possession. He denied all knowledge of these.

 

In the meantime the carriage was shunted into a siding and an examination made. Three bullet marks were found and there was blood everywhere – on the footboard, mat, door handle, and also on a handkerchief and newspaper left in the compartment. There was, in fact, every sign of a fierce struggle. There were also some coins similar to those found on Lefroy.

 

In spite of obvious inconsistencies in his story and of the highly suspicious circumstances, neither the Brighton Police, nor the railway police considered it necessary to detain Lefroy. But they were uneasy and although Lefroy was permitted to join a London train, arrangements were made for him to be accompanied by a detective named George Holmes.

 

At this period some of the railway undertakings, including the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, supplemented their own police staff by the employment of Metropolitan Police officers who were seconded by Scotland Yard for the purpose. The salaries of these officers were paid to Scotland Yard by the railways concerned. Detective Sergeant George Holmes was one of these officers and the widespread criticism of his negligence in this case caused Scotland Yard to disown him by issuing a public statement to the effect that he had been a Metropolitan Police officer for eleven years but was now working for the railway. It is always easy to be wise after the event but perhaps poor Holmes was a little slow as will be seen.

 

While Lefroy and Holmes were travelling back to London a search of the line was organised. In Balcombe Tunnel, railway staff found the body of an elderly man, later identified as a retired corn merchant named Gold, who lived in Brighton. Gold had been shot and stabbed and near his body was found a knife smeared with blood. It was soon learned that he had been robbed of his watch and chain and a considerable sum of money. The news of the finding of the body was passed along the line and at Three Bridges the station master told Holmes what had happened. Holmes was also instructed by telegram from Brighton not to let Lefroy out of his sight. Lefroy had recovered his balance by this time and an the pretext that he wanted to change his clothes he talked Holmes into accompanying him to an address at Wallington, Surrey where a relative kept a boarding house. They arrived at the house at 9.30pm and Holmes waited outside. He waited a long time because, while his attention was otherwise engaged, Lefroy left the house and disappeared.

 

A countrywide search was made for Lefroy and his description was published in all the papers. The Daily Telegraph made newspaper history by publishing the portrait of a wanted man for the first time. As usual, men answering the description were seen all over the country and one man was arrested but later released. A conference was held at London Bridge Station and all the railway staff involved were questioned by detective officers. The inquest on Gold was opened on 29 June and lasted several days. Holmes and other officers had a bad time in the witness box and a verdict of wilful murder against Lefroy was returned. The railway company then offered a substantial reward for information leading to his arrest.

 

Great interest was taken by the public in the daily hue and cry for the missing Lefroy and at last on 8 July he was found in a house at 32 Smith Street, Stepney, where he was lodging in the name of Park. He had kept the blinds down in his room all day and gone out only at night. Bloodstained clothing was found in his room and since he had already been identified as a man who had exchanged some counterfeit coins and also pawned a revolver, the evidence against him was overwhelming. He was a journalist by profession and a plausible type. When arrested, he said: “I am not obliged to say anything and I think it better not to make any answer.” The arresting officer wrote this down in his note book and read it over to Lefroy who added: “I will qualify that by saying I am not guilty.”

 

Lefroy appeared at Cuckfield Police Court and in due course was tried at Maidstone Assizes before Lord Chief Justice Coleridge. The jury found him guilty after a retirement of ten minutes. Evidence was given by a number of railway witnesses including Holmes, the booking clerk who issued a ticket to Lefroy, the guard of the train, the ticket collector at Preston Park, and also by a woman living at Horley who saw two men struggling violently in a train as it passed her cottage.

 

Lefroy (whose real name was Mapleton) was hanged at Lewes on 29 November, 1881. At the time of the murder he was desperately short of money and went to London Bridge for the purpose of robbing a passenger. He had hoped to find a lady who would yield to threats but he met a courageous old gentleman who compelled him to murder. Lefroy was a poor specimen and incredibly vain. He asked for permission to wear full evening dress in court because he thought it would impress the jury. He was allowed to take his silk hat and took more interest in this than he did in the proceedings.

 

It was a long time before the press and public forgot the strange lapse of the officials concerned in the case. The LBSC railway was subjected to a great deal of ridicule and no doubt many police officers were urged to greater care in future. But they had little cause to worry because it was sixteen years before the next murder on the railway.

 

 

The Netherby hue and cry, 1885

This article was written by William Owen Gay (former Chief Constable of British Transport Police) and was part of a series Murder in Transit published in the BTP Journal.

 

 

Until the internal combustion engine gave criminals greater speed and mobility they made their escape from the scene of crime as fast as they, or horses, could run. When the 19th century made it possible, they headed for the nearest railway station. Criminals, in fact, were not slow to take advantage of the fresh fields and avenues of escape which the railways provided and they reaped a rich harvest until the telegraph and later the telephone began to increase their handicap.

 

In 1885 four of the most notorious criminals of the day planned to burgle Netherby Hall, the Cumberland seat of Sir Frederick Graham, a few miles from Carlisle. There is nothing new under the sun so far as criminal methods are concerned, and these men were members of a successful ‘ladder gang’. They had numerous aliases but at this time were known as Anthony Benjamin Rudge, John Martin, James Baker and William Baker. Rudge, described as a dog trainer, was a notorious dog thief, had served many terms of imprisonment and was wanted for robbery at Brixton, South London. Martin was wanted for the murder of a police inspector at Romford in the county of Essex, whom he had shot when an attempt was made to arrest him for burglary. James Baker kept a greengrocer's shop in Bethnal Green and was a receiver. William Baler, who was no relation of James, had served several sentences of imprisonment and had been concerned in the theft of the jewels of the Duchess of Montrose at Newcastle a few years before. In short, they were an enterprising and ruthless gang and would stop at nothing.

 

At 9.10am on Tuesday 27 October 1885, Rudge, Martin and Baker arrived at Gretna station by a special train which brought passengers for the Longtown Coursing Meeting. Each man carried a case and the three cases were left in the care of the stationmaster. The men were not dressed in a way which marked them out from other passengers, although their accents showed they were from the south. All three dined at the Bush Hotel, Longtown, that night. At 3pm the following day Baker collected one case from the station and joined the other two men in the Graham Arms Inn about 100 yards from the station.

 

While they were at the inn, a relative of the proprietor saw one of the men doing something with a bundle of keys, possibly making a wax impression. Later in the afternoon Baker returned to the station and asked the stationmaster to forward the case to “A. Smith, Carlisle Station, until called for”. During the morning the men had made a reconnaissance and had learned from various enquiries that the family at the big house were in residence. They entered the grounds and got into the house without being seen. At 8.15pm a housemaid at the hall discovered that the door of Lady Hermione Graham's room was locked and she gave the alarm. A butler entered the room from outside and it was soon discovered that valuable jewellery was missing from a dressing case which had been forced open. Access had been gained by a ladder and finger marks were seen on the window sill. In those days burglars left fingerprints all over the place but the police had not yet learned their value.

 

Sir Frederick Graham sent grooms on horseback to advise the police at Kingstown and also to search the countryside. Information was also sent to Carlisle eight miles away, and all roads north into Carlisle were watched. The burglars were first seen near Kingstown in the late evening by Sergeant Roche and Police Constable Johnson of the local constabulary. There were now four of them for the other three had been joined by William Baker. The officers challenged the four men and were greeted with two revolver shots. The men ran, the officers in pursuit. Three of the men then turned and fired again, and the two officers were wounded, one in the shoulder and the other in the thigh. The burglars went down the embankment on to the railway line and disappeared in the direction of Carlisle. At 11.15pm Police Constable Handley at Gosling Dyke stopped four strangers. One man pulled a gun and Handley, helpless, had to let them pass. He was lucky to escape with his life. By this time the police were acting, as the press said at the time, “with unusual energy” and the countryside for miles around had been roused. About 2am in the morning of 29 October, a signalman at Dalston Road Crossing on the North Eastern Railway heard footsteps on the ballast and saw three men going along the line towards Carlisle. He opened his cabin door and as he did so they made off. Police Constable Fortune then came to the signal box and the signalman reported what he had seen. The officer went in pursuit whereupon the four men turned on him together and beat him into insensibility with sticks and pistol butts. They then left the railway line for the road. The constable recovered consciousness after half-an-hour or so and made his way with difficulty to the signal box. By this time the thieves were well away.

 

Two of the men were next reported to have been seen in a goods yard near Carlisle and some time afterwards a blood-stained jemmy was found in a wagon at Blencowe which was known to have been standing empty in the yard near the point where the men were seen. After this the four desperadoes were not seen together again during the day and they were obviously hidden up somewhere, possibly in empty goods wagons. About 7.10pm the same night the stationmaster at Southwaite station (now closed) was approached by a man who asked the time of the next train to London. The stationmaster told him and the man replied that it was too long to wait. The stationmaster was somewhat suspicious and reported accordingly. At 8.20pm the stationmaster at Plumpton saw three men on his station and he quietly sent somebody to tell the local constable, Police Constable Byrnes. Byrnes sent a youth to get assistance and then went in search of the men. About 8.25pm two men, afterwards identified as Rudge and James Baker, entered the bar of the Pack Horse Inn and had some bread and cheese and beer. They left after a short time and not long afterwards a shot was heard by the signalman at the station and also by some other people at the nearby vicarage. Half-an-hour went by and then a man passing along the road about two hundred yards from the Pack Horse Inn heard moaning and on looking over a dry wall he found Police Constable Byrnes. The constable had intercepted the men and been shot through the head. Bloodstains and other traces indicated that he had been rolled down the bank. Assistance was obtained as quickly as possible, but Byrnes was beyond all aid and he died shortly afterwards.

 

The next news of the wanted men came shortly after 10pm when a constable on duty at a bridge near Penrith saw three strangers whom he thought were behaving suspiciously. They were then about 4½ miles from the Pack Horse Inn. He lost sight of them in the darkness. A goods train due to leave Keswick Junction for the south was searched without revealing any sign of the men. The guard, Christopher Gaddes, was advised and asked to keep a sharp lookout. As his train moved off, Gaddes saw three men break cover from the side of the line and climb into a truck. Gaddes, a resourceful man, did nothing to indicate that he had noticed anything unusual. In his van by the light of his lamp he wrote a brief account of what he had seen and made several copies on blank waybills. The first scheduled stop of the train was Tebay. Near Shap he threw out one of his notes hoping that a pointsman would see it and pick it up, but he was unsuccessful. The second time he succeeded and the note was retrieved by the driver of a passing engine. The driver pulled up at Shap Box and a message was telegraphed to Tebay asking for the police to meet the train.

 

What happened to the message is not recorded, but when the train reached Tebay there was no official reception committee. It must be remembered, however, that there were no police cars then and a small force was spread out on foot over many square miles.

 

When the train pulled up, Gaddes spoke quietly to a plate layer who was near his van and all the available railway staff were mustered and armed with every weapon they could lay their hands on, principally sticks, sprags (a wedge of wood used to check the movement of a wheel) and shovels. Gaddes then jumped from truck to truck. Unfortunately he was not quite certain which truck the men were in and he stepped on the back of one of them. All three then jumped from the train and a desperate struggle took place. Martin broke away but an engine driver managed to chase and hold him although he himself was badly injured in the process. A revolver was found in Martin's possession. Rudge was also caught after a chase and violent struggle, and he too was carrying a revolver. Both revolvers had been fired fairly recently. The railwaymen got some rope and lashed both of them to telegraph posts to await the arrival of the police.

 

The third man, Baker, escaped in the darkness and confusion and concealed himself in another truck. Near Oxenholme two footplate men saw him leave the train and they passed the word on. Later, at Lancaster Station, a guard named Cooper saw a man come from the direction of the goods yard and approach the night express standing at the platform. The man approached Cooper and said: “Is this going Crewe way?” “Where are you going?” replied Cooper. “Crewe, Liverpool, anywhere,” said the man. Cooper then challenged him and after a severe struggle Baker was secured. His clothes were found to be bloodstained.

 

The fourth man, William Baker, had not been seen with the other three for some hours and he was definitely not with them at the time of the murder of Police Constable Byrnes – a fact which saved his neck. He was later arrested in Manchester on suspicion and taken back to Carlisle where he was identified by one of the constables who had been wounded and also by several persons who had seen him in the neighbourhood the day before the burglary. In due course he received a sentence of penal servitude.

 

When the other three prisoners arrived at Carlisle by train thousands of people assembled in and near the station. The chief constable had some difficulty in preventing a lynching. The case addressed to the Carlisle cloakroom and handed in at Gretna Station by Baker was subsequently opened and found to contain skeleton keys and other housebreaking tools. None of the stolen jewellery was found on the prisoners but a few days later a tobacco pouch later proved to be the property of Rudge was found in some grass near Tebay station and in it were all the jewels except a valuable diamond star. The star was afterwards found under a railway arch where it was probably thrown by Rudge during the struggle preceding his arrest.

 

After a trial lasting three days before Justice Day at Carlisle Assizes (18 to 20 January 1886), the three men were found guilty and sentenced to death. Great public interest was shown but there was nothing particularly outstanding about the trial itself, for the result was a foregone conclusion. It is interesting to note, however, that when giving evidence on the third day, the Governor of Carlisle prison said he had put Baker in an ‘association cell’ with two unconvicted men. One of these men was subsequently called as a witness to give evidence of a conversation he had had with Baker concerning the crime. The defence contended that this conversation could not be given in evidence. Justice Day replied: "I have no doubt that the evidence is admissible."

 

The judge highly commended the police and railway staff and ordered that the sum of £170 be divided among them as the authorities thought fit. Rudge, Martin and James Baker were hanged at Carlisle on 8 February 1886. In those days, although executions were carried out in private, much more detail was provided than is now the case. Readers of certain papers were always interested in the technical details and were told, for example, that Rudge, the heaviest, had a drop of four foot, Martin six foot. and Baker six-and-a-half foot. Martin, on the scaffold, confessed that he fired the shot that killed Byrnes but in law, of course, all were equally guilty as parties to a joint felonious enterprise. The story was afterwards told that Sir Claud de Crespigny, the famous sportsman, acted under an assumed name as an assistant to Berry, the hangman, at this execution.

 

A memorial was erected to Police Constable Byrnes near the spot where he met his death. Byrnes was a competent, courageous, and highly respected officer. The writer has not seen this memorial but Inspector Hutte of the BTC Police, Carlisle, reports that it is of red sandstone measuring approximately six foot by four foot, and is let in the wall on the left-hand side of the by-road between Plumpton Station and the Pack Horse Inn about two hundred yards off the main Carlisle-Penrith road at which point it is 13-and-a-half miles to Carlisle and four-and-a-half miles to Penrith. The inscription reads: "Here Constable Joseph Byrnes fell on the night of October 29, 1885, shot by the three Netherby burglars whom he singlehanded endeavoured to arrest." Above the inscription is a cross with the words “Do or Die.” A constable cannot do more than that.

 

 

The murder of Elizabeth Camp 1897

This article was written by William Owen Gay (former Chief Constable of British Transport Police) and was part of a series Murder in Transit published in the BTP Journal.

 

 

On the night of Thursday 11 February 1897, Edward Berry, a fruiterer living in East Street, Walworth, waited on the platform at Waterloo for the arrival of the 7.42pm train from Hounslow. He was in the best of spirits because he expected to meet his fiancée off this train and they were going to discuss the arrangements for their wedding. At 8.25pm the train arrived and a few passengers alighted. Berry waited until the last of them had gone but he saw no sign of the lady. He hung about for a minute or two and was turning to leave the platform when he saw what appeared to be a commotion outside a compartment some distance down the train. Porters, various railway officials, and finally some police officers arrived and, curious as anybody else would have been in the circumstances, Berry asked what was going on. He was told that a body had been found underneath the seat of a second class carriage. A carriage cleaner, walking along the train as a matter of routine, had seen some legs protruding from beneath a seat and on examination had found the body of a woman. It was an unpleasant experience for the railwayman, but for Berry it was a terrible shock, because the body was that of his future wife, Elizabeth Annie Camp, housekeeper of the Good Intent public house at Walworth.

 

The body was taken to St. Thomas’s Hospital and there, a little later, Berry formally identified it. The cause of death was plain enough and even the carriage cleaner had no hesitation in saying that it was a case of murder because the head of the woman had been badly smashed and there was blood all over the furnishings. The investigation was taken up immediately by Superintendent Robinson of LSWR Police and Chief Inspector Marshall of Scotland Yard. The medical report was that the victim had been killed by heavy blows on the head with a blunt instrument. There were no signs of sexual interference but Camp’s pockets had been rifled and the motive was therefore considered to be robbery. Reconstruction of the circumstances suggested that she had put up a brave fight for her life.

 

Camp, a well-built woman, 33 years old, used to pay occasional visits to her relatives on her day off and on the afternoon of the 11 February she first visited a sister at Hammersmith and then went on to Hounslow where another sister kept a shop. She stayed at Hounslow for two hours and then went to the station, accompanied by her sister, where she boarded a second class compartment on the 7.42pm train. The sister said afterwards that she was positive the compartment was empty when Camp entered it and this was confirmed by a porter who had helped them with some packages. In the course of the journey to Waterloo the train stopped at Isleworth, Brentford, Kew Bridge, Chiswick, Barnes, Putney, Wandsworth, Clapham Junction and Vauxhall.

 

A search of the compartment after the discovery of the crime did not help a great deal. A broken umbrella belonging to Camp and a pair of bone cuff links were the only objects found. The articles missing, and never found, were a green purse containing a small sum of money, and a ticket, which Camp was known to have had when she boarded the train. The primary task of the police was to search the line from Hounslow to Waterloo. This was not easy but it was done patiently and methodically, and with success because on the embankment between Putney and Wandsworth the officers found a chemist's pestle (an implement for pounding chemical substances in a vessel known as a mortar). The pestle was stained with blood and there were hairs adhered to it. The doctors said that the injuries could have been inflicted with it. It was not tested for fingerprints because at this time the science of dactyloscopy was in its infancy and there was no fingerprint bureau in England.

 

The case caused something of a sensation as railway murders usually do and there was a crop of rumours including one which proclaimed that a man had been seen running from Vauxhall station with blood dripping from his hands. The inquest was opened by the Lambeth Coroner on 17 February and after the body had been identified and the jury had visited Waterloo to see the carriage, the proceedings were adjourned for a week. The inquest was thereafter adjourned from week to week to enable the police to complete its enquiries. The brother-in-law of the dead woman was asked to give a detailed account of his movements on the night of the murder and some significance seems to have attached to the fact that Camp had been lending her relatives money. The landlord of the Good Intent was interrogated firmly and the line taken is indicated by the fact that at the inquest he was asked if he had ever asked Camp to marry him. He denied the suggestion strongly. Witnesses were found who could give a clear picture of Camp’s private life. One former male acquaintance named Brown, a barman at the Portland Arms, Edgware Road, was put through the hoop pretty thoroughly. He had been engaged to Camp but the engagement had been broken off because, he said: “they had had a few words.” He denied the suggestion that he owed Camp at least £20. The bone cuff links, unfortunately, did not connect with a man at all because they were proved to have been lent to Camp by one of her sisters. Enquiries about the origin of the pestle also proved unsuccessful.

 

The police were not without a description of a suspect. A pastry-cook named Burgess had joined the train at Chiswick and told the police that at Wandsworth a man had left very hurriedly. The man was said to be of medium height, aged about 30, with a dark moustache, and wearing a top hat and frock coat. Two porters confirmed this description but the man was never traced. While the police was actively engaged on these enquiries, a man walked into Wandsworth Police Station and announced that he had committed the murder. He was found to be mentally defective and to have no connection with the crime. Another large red herring was a handkerchief that a member of the staff at Waterloo had found stuffed in a speaking tube and had taken home. When his wife ironed it the initials ‘E.C.’ appeared. Unfortunately, the handkerchief was not identified as the property of the victim. Needless to say, all the railway staff at the stations en route were questioned but apart from the porters at Hounslow and Wandsworth none was able to assist. The guard of the train said that he was busy with the mails and saw nothing unusual.

 

Apart from those previously mentioned, many other men were asked to explain their movements on the night of the murder. Enquiries bore fruit as far afield as Reading where it was learned that a young man named Arthur Marshall had left home on the 11 February and had tried to buy a false moustache at Guildford on the same day. He did not return home until the 15 February but he had apparently been making an attempt to join the army. He was questioned by the Reading police and he and his family were called to give evidence at the inquest. He was a freckless individual and in consequence the finger of suspicion pointed at him strongly. It was noted that the coroner cautioned him before he took his statement. But all the enquiries came to nothing and on the final day of the adjourned inquest on 7 April, 1897, the jury returned a verdict of: “wilful murder against some person or persons unknown.” The police, it must be said, had their suspicions but they could not connect any of the suspects with the weapon or with the train.

 

 

The murder of William Pearson by George Parker 1901

This article was written by William Owen Gay (former Chief Constable of British Transport Police) and was part of a series Murder in Transit published in the BTP Journal.

 

 

It is not a pleasant experience to sit in a compartment on an express train in the company of a dead body and a cold-blooded murderer, armed with a revolver, who has already wounded you and threatened to kill you if you make a movement of any kind. On Thursday, 17 January, 1901, that was the situation in which Rhoda King found herself when she travelled on the 11.20am train from Southampton to Waterloo.

On this particular day King was travelling to London to visit a sick relative and joined the train at Southampton where she entered an empty third-class compartment. At Eastleigh a young man entered the compartment and sat down but King took no special notice of him. At the next stop, Winchester, an elderly gentleman entered and took a seat facing King who was sitting in a corner with her back to the engine. The three passengers did not speak to each other. The gentleman read his newspaper for a while and then dozed off and King changed her seat and sat looking out of the window. Time passed and when the train was near Surbiton the young man entered the train lavatory, the old gentleman was still asleep and King was still looking out of the window. A few moments later two shots were fired. King felt blood running down her face and realised she had been hit. She saw the young man rifling the pockets of the third passenger and cried out: “My God, what have you done?” The man replied: “I did it for money. I want some money. Have you got any?” King, bleeding from a wound in the cheek and greatly agitated but doing her best to keep her head, rummaged in her handbag and handed him a shilling. When he moved to take it she saw that the old man had been shot in the head. It was a ghastly sight and she told the murderer to put a handkerchief over the face, which he did.

 

The victim was William Pearson, a farmer whose home was near Winchester. The murderer was George Henry Parker, aged 23, an ex-soldier, tall, and good looking. He had never seen Pearson or King before. He had been associating with a young woman in Portsmouth and on 16 January he travelled with her to Southampton where they stayed the night. The following day, the day of the murder, the girl wanted to go home and Parker went to Southampton station with her. He had been spending money heavily and quite a lot of it had gone on drink.

 

While they were at the station he left her for a while and went to a shop in Bernard Street where he bought a revolver and ten rounds for seven shillings and fivepence. He then returned to the girl and they booked their tickets. She took a ticket to Portsmouth but Parker told her he was going to London and he took a ticket to Eastleigh although she did not know this. They travelled to Eastleigh together and there the girl changed into the Portsmouth train.

 

Parker saw her off and then rejoined the London train in which King was travelling. Parker, having killed Pearson and taken his purse and other property, left King in no doubt that he would kill her too if she did not keep quiet. She pleaded with him not to shoot her, and Parker, in a state of nervous tension and conscious of what he had done, seems to have been glad to talk to her. He waved the gun at her and said: “I must not keep it about me. I have a good mind to put it in his hand and then they will think he did it himself.” King, to humour him, told him it would be better to throw it out of the window. He went to do this but saw some men working on the line and decided to wait. Later, urged again by King, he threw out the gun and the remaining rounds. By this time the train was approaching Vauxhall, where it was due at 1.29pm, and as it slowed down Parker climbed out on to the running board. He told King not to say anything about what had happened and then, as the train pulled into the platform, he jumped off and ran away as fast as he could. King was in a state of collapse, but when the train stopped she stumbled out of the carriage and shouted to some railwaymen: “Stop that man. He has killed someone in that carriage.” A hue and cry was set up as Parker ran down the steps, rushed past the collector on the gate, and out into the street, followed by four or five men.

 

Near Vauxhall Bridge he was headed off by a constable on point duty and he turned into the gas works. After a hectic pursuit round the works he was cornered behind some trucks, arrested, and taken to Larkhall Lane Police Station by PC Thomas Fuller. To this officer, Parker said: “I wish I had killed that woman, then I should have got away.”

 

In the meantime Platform Inspector Goodey and other railway staff examined the carriage. Pearson was beyond human aid but King was taken to St. Thomas’s Hospital for treatment. Railway and Metropolitan Police were soon on the scene and Superintendent Robinson of the London and South Western Railway Police took charge. A systematic search of the line was made and near Wandsworth Bridge a platelayer found a revolver which was later identified as the one sold to Parker in Southampton. At the police station Parker was searched by Sergeant Thorley and found in possession of a purse and other items which were the property of Pearson. Parker was then charged with the murder of Pearson and the attempted murder of King. Rumours began to spread and, at his home in Southampton, King’s husband was told by some ill-informed idiot that his wife had been murdered. He collapsed on hearing the news.

 

Parker confessed to the crime but enquiries were made to gather up the loose ends. It was found, for example, that as he rushed through the barrier he gave up the ticket taken by Pearson at Winchester. Parker’s own ticket was found on the floor of the compartment. He owed the excess fare from Eastleigh, but he paid a much more severe penalty. The medical evidence showed that Pearson had been shot at point-blank range and King had escaped death by an inch. She recovered quickly and gave evidence at the inquest and the subsequent criminal proceedings when she was strongly, and deservedly, commended for the courage she had displayed.

 

On Friday, 1 March 1901, Parker appeared before Mr. Justice Phillimore at the Central Criminal Court. He pleaded not guilty on the advice of his lawyer who attempted to persuade the court that his client was insane as a result of alcoholism. He was found guilty, however, sentenced to death, and executed three weeks later.

 

While Parker was awaiting trial he wrote a lengthy letter entitled The Wretched Murderer of Your Husband which he addressed to Mrs Pearson. He handed it to one of the prison staff and asked him to give it to “any editor”. He was resigned to his fate from the start. His motive was robbery and nothing more and he had intended to kill King with his second shot. Had he succeeded he might have escaped detection. After Peasron entered the compartment at Winchester, Parker sat thinking out his course of action and it was only King’s steadiness in the face of extreme danger that discouraged him from completing his plan after his shot at her had only scored a near miss.

 

 

The Merstham Tunnel mystery: the murder of Mary Money 1905

This article was written by William Owen Gay (former Chief Constable of British Transport Police) and was part of a series Murder in Transit published in the BTP Journal.

 

 

At 10.55pm on Sunday 24 September 1905, Sub-Inspector Peacock was walking through Merstham Tunnel on the Brighton line when he found the body of a woman on the up side. The body was terribly mutilated. Peacock reported the matter immediately to the Merstham station master who advised the local police. Three constables were soon on the scene with a stretcher and the body was taken to the Feathers Hotel to await an inquest. There were no letters or papers of any kind on the body to assist identification and even more significantly there was no money and no railway ticket. No report was received of any doors being found open on trains which had passed through the tunnel and in the early stages of the inquiry there was no indication that any untoward incident had occurred on a train. The first theory was that the woman had walked into the tunnel to commit suicide. A preliminary medical examination, however, revealed that a scarf had been thrust down the woman's throat and this, coupled with the fact that certain marks were found on the wall of the tunnel, gave the case a sinister turn. A description of the dead woman was circulated and on the Monday morning a young man named Robert Money identified the body as that of his sister, Mary Money.

 

A Home Office expert expressed the opinion that the woman had been dead approximately one hour when found and that bruises and other injuries must have been caused before death, probably as a result of a violent struggle. He also stated that there had been no sexual interference. The 9.33pm train from London Bridge was scheduled to pass through the tunnel at the crucial period and the guard was able to assist to some extent although he did not recollect certain vital points until some days after he was first interviewed. At East Croydon, he had noticed, in a first class compartment, a young man and also a young woman answering the description of Money. At South Croydon he had seen them again, this time sitting close together. Beyond the tunnel, at Redhill, he had seen the man alight from what he believed to be the same compartment and walk towards the exit. Further information came from a signalman at Purley Oaks who reported that when the 9.33pm train passed his box he saw a man and woman struggling in a first class carriage. The signalman seems to have been accustomed to passengers wrestling amorously in first class carriages because he did not attach much importance to it at the time. The police thought that it was merely a question of checking up on Money’s male acquaintances and the case was solved. But Money did not appear to have any boyfriends.

 

She worked for a dairyman named Bridger and lived in at premises in Lavender Hill, Clapham. On Sunday 24 September, she was on duty and according to a fellow employee named Emma Hone she announced, at about 7.00pm, that she was going for “a little walk” and would not be very long. The police set about the task of tracing her movements from the time she left Emma Hone to the time her body was found. A Miss Golding who kept a sweet shop in the station approach at Clapham Junction told them that shortly after 07.00pm Money, known to her as a regular customer, visited the shop and bought some chocolate. In conversation with Golding it seems Money mentioned that she was going to Victoria. Enquiries at the Junction produced a ticket collector who identified Money from a photograph as a young woman he had seen on number six platform at 7.20pm. She told him she was going to Victoria. From that moment there was nobody who could say positively that they saw Miss Money until Sub-Inspector Peacock found her in the tunnel.

 

Hone, who lived with Money and knew her very well, had no knowledge of any male acquaintances. The brother, Robert Money, made a few suggestions and at the adjourned inquest before the East Surrey Coroner on 2 October, a young London and North Western Railway clerk was asked to account for his movements on the day of the murder. He had known Money for about five years, and had ‘walked out’ with her. He was able to show that he was miles away at the vital time and was cleared from all suspicion. When the inquest was resumed once more on 16 October, Money’s employer and his brother also gave evidence to refute certain suggestions that they had associated in more than friendly fashion with the victim. Superintendent Warren of the London and South Western Railway Police gave evidence on this occasion of various experiments which had been carried out in the tunnel with the actual carriages which were on the 09.33pm train on the night of the murder. The verdict, rather surprisingly, was that Money “met her death by severe injuries brought about by a train but the evidence was insufficient to show whether she fell or was thrown from a train.”

 

There seems little doubt that Money, unknown to her family (with the possible exception of her brother), had a man friend whom she went to meet on that fatal Sunday night. Perhaps she met him at Victoria or at some other station and after they had eaten somewhere (for the autopsy showed that she had had a meal about three hours before her death), the friend suggesting a short journey in a first class carriage. It is well known that a first class carriage on an evening train is a very satisfactory way to secure a little privacy. The friend no doubt booked, and retained the tickets, and perhaps there was a struggle when he was unable to achieve the real purpose of the journey. Money had a purse and money when she left Clapham; the purse was never found. Was it taken to give the impression that robbery was the motive? Or was robbery the motive after all? Was the murderer an acquaintance, or was he a casual pick-up? Who was the man who left the train at Redhill? He was described as thin, with a moustache, and wearing a bowler – not a very helpful description at a time when bowlers and moustaches were commonplace. He was never traced and must have gone the same way as the man with the dark moustache who left the train at Wandsworth in the case of Elizabeth Camp in 1897.

 

An unsatisfactory feature of the case was the character of Robert Money. He was proved to be an unscrupulous liar and it is worthy of note that his own end was a tragedy. On 19 August 1912, in a burning house at Eastbourne, were found the bodies of a man, his wife, and one child, and two other children, all of whom had been murdered. Another woman, the mother of the two children, had received two bullet wounds in the neck, but survived. The man, who had killed the others, was known as Robert Hicks Murray and there was a revival of interest in the case of Money when it was learned that Murray was none other than Robert Money.! He had married the two women, who were sisters and incredibly enough, neither knew of the marriage of the other.

 

People asked themselves in 1905 and again in 1912 did Robert Money tell all he knew about the death of his sister?

 

 

A case of mistaken identity? The murder of John Nisbet by John Dickman 1910 

This article was written by William Owen Gay (former Chief Constable of British Transport Police) and was part of a series Murder in Transit published in the BTP Journal.

 

 

On Friday 18 March 1910, a train left Newcastle (Central) Station at 10.27am for Alnmouth, a distance of 34 miles. It was a slow train and made 14 stops before reaching Alnmouth. It consisted of a luggage van and three carriages and in the carriage next to the engine there sat a cashier named John Innes Nisbet who was an employee of the Stobswood Colliery Company. On alternate Fridays it was Nisbet’s duty to travel from Newcastle to Widdrington where he paid the wages at a colliery about half a mile from the station. On this particular day Nisbet carried cash to the value of £370 in a small leather bag. At Newcastle, Charles Raven saw Nisbet making for platform five where the train was standing. Nisbet was accompanied by another man whom Raven knew by sight but not by name. At the rear of the train an artist named Hepple had taken a seat. He knew John Dickman and he saw him pass with a stranger. Also on the train were two other colliery cashiers named Hall and Spink. Just before the train started Hall saw Nisbet, whom he knew, walk along the platform with a man wearing a light overcoat. He saw the two men get in the compartment behind the one in which he was sitting with Spink.

 

At Heaton, the second station from Newcastle, Mrs Nisbet used to meet her husband and have a brief talk with him before the train went on its way. Nisbet usually travelled in the rear but on this occasion he was in front so that it took Mrs. Nisbet a little time to find him. When she did find him she saw another man in the compartment with him. The train had, unfortunately, stopped in the shadow of a tunnel but she saw the man's profile and also saw that the collar of his light overcoat was turned up. The train went on and at Stannington the two cashiers, Hall and Spink, alighted. As he passed Nisbet, Hall nodded in friendly fashion and Nisbet responded. Both Hall and Spink saw that Nisbet was not alone. Morpeth was the next stop, a distance of 24 miles, and on arrival there a man alighted and handed the ticket collector the forward half of a Newcastle to Stannington return ticket, together with 2d, the correct excess fare. The collector did not pay much attention to him but he did observe that he was wearing a loose overcoat. The train stood four minutes at Morpeth to take water and John Grant, a platelayer, joined it as a passenger. He walked passed the carriage in which Nisbet had been sitting and said later in evidence that he saw nobody.

 

When the train reached Alnmouth the foreman porter examined it and in so doing opened the door of the third compartment of the first coach. It appeared empty but he saw three streams of blood oozing across the floor and found under the seat the body of a man, face downwards. There was a hard felt hat beside the body and a broken pair of spectacles. The porter called the guard and also the station master. The body was that of Nisbet and there were five bullet wounds in the head.

 

The Stobswood Colliery Company offered £100 reward for information leading to the arrest of the murderer. Rumour spread and the newspapers soon reported that a man answering the description of the wanted man had been seen on a London bus. Information had reached the police, however, that Dickman, a bookmaker and former company secretary, had been seen in company with Nisbet.

 

On 21 March, Inspector Tait of Newcastle City Police went to 1 Lily Avenue, Jesmond, where Dickman lived. Dickman told him that he had travelled on the same train but not in the same compartment. He was ‘invited’ to the police station where he was interviewed by Superintendent Weddell. He was not cautioned and made a long statement accounting for his movements. He said that he had intended to go to Stannington but passed the station without noticing it and alighted at Morpeth. He started to walk to Stannington but was taken ill and returned to Morpeth where he caught the 1.40pm train back to Newcastle. The statement did not agree with certain evidence already in possession of the police and Dickman was charged. He said the charge was “absurd”.

 

The case against Dickman depended largely on the question of identification. As has been said, Charles Raven knew Dickman by sight but not by name. He knew Nisbet quite well and he saw both men walk towards the platform at Newcastle. But he did not see them enter the compartment together. Hepple, the artist, knew Dickman but did not know Nisbet. He was able to say he saw Dickman on the platform but that was all. Hall, one of the cashiers, knew Nisbet but not the prisoner. In evidence later he said that on 21 March he was taken to the police station and asked to pick out the prisoner from nine other men. He said that he picked out Dickman, saying as he did so: “If I was assured that the murderer was in amongst the nine men I would have no hesitation in picking the prisoner out.” Counsel for the defence smelt a rat when this came out but nothing could be done at the time. After the trial enquiries were made on Home Office instructions and it appears that while Dickman was being questioned at the police station there were a number of policemen including two North Eastern Railway officers, in a corridor where Hall and Spink were waiting. An officer (never identified) suggested that Hall and Spink should go and have a look through the window of the room where Dickman was, and they did so. The door was also opened slightly for them to get a better view. In a report to the Home Office the Chief Constable of Northumberland Police said that Hall and Spink, when interviewed on the matter, denied that they had ever seen more than the back of the prisoner or that their identification had been influenced. There is not much doubt, however, that the evidence would not have been accepted at the trial if the circumstances had been known.

 

Mrs Nisbet was also involved in a curious incident. When giving evidence before the magistrates at the preliminary hearing she fainted twice. Eight days afterwards she explained that on looking at the prisoner in the dock she saw his face from the same angle as she had seen it in the train and the shock of recognition caused her collapse. After the trial it was learned that Mrs Nisbet had known Dickman by sight for years and had seen him not long before the murder. If this had been known the defence would probably have been able to knock the bottom out of her evidence.

 

The bullets found in Nesbit’s head were of two different calibres and at the times and all through the trial, it was assumed that two revolvers had been used by the murderer. It is now known that only one was used and that the murderer had made the smaller bullets fit by packing paper round them. The weapon with which the murderer was committed was never found and the only evidence tending to show that Dickman had ever possessed a gun related to a strange parcel sent to an accommodation address for him to collect, an address used by him for betting purposes.

 

A fortnight after the murder, a professor of medical jurisprudence at Durham University examined the prisoner's clothing. There was a dark stain on the left front of the coat and efforts appeared to have been made to rub it off. The professor could not say whether it was blood or not but there was definite traces of blood on a pair of gloves and inside the pocket of a pair of trousers.

 

It was obvious that robbery had been the motive and enquiries about Dickman’s financial position revealed that he was in low water in March. But the prosecution, of course, were under no obligation to prove motive because, as Lord Coleridge said at the trial: “motive, if the facts are clear, is irrelevant.” About a month before the trial a colliery manager found, at the bottom of an air shaft at the Isabella Pit about one-and-a-half miles from Stannington, the bag which Nisbet had been carrying at the time of his death. It had been cut open and the money, apart from a few coppers, was missing. The manager had spoken to Dickman, whom he knew, about the difficulty of working the pit because of water.

 

When Dickman went into the box on 5 July 1910, he was cross-examined at length. He admitted that he knew colliery wages were paid on Fridays and that he had travelled over the route on a previous Friday. He denied that he was wearing the overcoat described by witnesses and produced two others. He said that the gloves had not been worn for at least three months but could not explain the comparatively fresh bloodstains. The marks on the trousers, he said, might have occurred when he was cutting his corns and the oil on his coat could have come from his bicycle. He denied that he knew of the existence of the Isabella Pit.

 

He said that after leaving Morpeth Station he walked for about half an hour and then was forced to lie down in a field because he suffered from piles. Dickman made a bad impression on the jury. The judge summed up fairly lucidly with, perhaps, a slight suggestion that he thought the prisoner guilty. The jury took two and a half hours to find Dickman guilty.

 

Many efforts were made to save him. The Court of Criminal Appeal had not long been established and an appeal was lodged on three grounds: (a) misdirection; (b) comment by prosecution on failure of Dickman’s wife to give evidence for the defence; and (c) withdrawal of certain evidence from the jury. The appeal was dismissed but considerable publicity was given to the alleged skullduggery at the police station. A petition for reprieve was organised and on the day before the execution London was flooded with leaflets exhorting the public to ‘Wire Home Secretary at once and wash your hands of complicity in the legal crime’. When the agitation was at its height Dickman’s brother, of all people, wrote to the Newcastle Daily Chronicle and asked if anybody could possibly believe his brother was innocent unless they “looked at the evidence through smoked glasses”.

 

Dickman was hanged on 10 August 1910. It was said afterwards that he had been strongly suspected of the murder of a Jewish moneylender at Sunderland in 1909. There was an interesting sequel for in the case of Nisbet v. Rayne and Burn 1910. It was held that the murder of Nisbet was an accident arising from his employment as a cashier, which involved more than ordinary risk, and that therefore his widow was entitled to receive workmen's compensation.

 

 

The murder of Master Starchfield 1914

This article was written by William Owen Gay (former Chief Constable of British Transport Police) and was part of a series Murder in Transit published in the BTP Journal.

 

 

On the 8 January 1914, a young errand boy was sent to deliver a parcel and on his way back to his place of employment he boarded a train at Mildmay Park station on the North London Railway. The train was the 4.14pm from Chalk Farm (it runs to this day) and it left Mildmay Park at 4.27pm. The lad entered a third class compartment and, as the train was approaching the next station, Dalston, he suddenly noticed a small hand protruding from under the seat. He was frightened out of his wits and when the train stopped he tried, without success, to attract the attention of a porter. The train went on to Haggerston and on arrival there the boy bolted from the station and out into the street. He recovered himself, however, went to the station master's office and reported what he had seen. The station master took the necessary action and the train was stopped and searched. Beneath the seat of the compartment in which the lad had travelled was found the body of a five or six year old boy with long golden curls. The face was dark and suffused with blood, the lips were bruised, and marks on the neck suggested that a band or cord of some kind had been applied.

 

In due course, Chief Inspector William Gough took the case up and initiated enquiries on the assumption that the boy had been strangled. His opinion was soon confirmed by Doctor (afterwards Sir Bernard) Spilsbury who examined the body. Doctor Spilsbury also reported that the child was in a condition of ‘status lymphaticus’ and would have died more quickly from sudden shock than any normal child. This condition is characterised by an enlargement of the lymphoid tissues throughout the body and particularly by enlargement of the thymus gland. It results in a lowering of a person's powers of resistance and has accounted for a number of cases of sudden death. There is not much doubt in fact, that before medical science diagnosed the complaint persons who had been subjected to a mild assault were sometimes regarded as having been killed by supernatural powers.

 

It did not take long to identify the child. He proved to be the son, and the only son, of John and Agnes Starchfield. John Starchfield sold newspapers on Tottenham Court Road and was quite a famous character. In 1912 he had received a pension of £1 a week from the Carnegie Heroes Fund for his bravery in dealing with an Armenian named Stephen Tiyus who entered the Horseshoe Hotel and shot down a man and woman. As Titus rushed out of the hotel still firing his revolver, Starchfield tackled him and was wounded in the struggle. But even heroes have their domestic problems and Starchfield was separated from his wife. Willie, their little boy, lived with his mother and about 12.50pm on the day of the murder she sent him out on an errand. He never returned.

 

According to the medical evidence death took place some time between 2pm and 3pm so that unless somebody had carried a dead body into the compartment the train had shuttled several times between Chalk Farm and Broad Street after the murder had been committed. The important question was – where had the child been between 12.50pm and shortly after 4pm? All the railway staff on duty along the route at the material time were questioned but nobody appeared to have seen the child before. Was the child murdered off the railway somewhere, or in a waiting room, or a station lavatory, and taken into the train in a suitcase or sack? This, and many other lines of inquiry, were followed up without success.

 

The inquest opened on 15 January 1914, and evidence was given by the guard of the train, the errand boy who saw the body, and the porter who first searched the train. John Starchfield was then asked to account for his movements on the day of the murder and he did so. The pith of his story was that on the afternoon of the murder he was in his bed in a lodging house and he had not seen the boy for three weeks. The inquest was adjourned and enquiries continued with some degree of success. When the inquest was resumed on 22 January, two signalmen gave evidence relating to a piece of cord they had found on the line on the day of the murder. This cord, it was suggested, bore some resemblance to the twine used to tie bundles of newspapers and Doctor Spilsbury said that it could have been responsible for the marks on the child's throat. A third signalman testified that when he was on duty at the St. Pancras Box as the 2.14pm train from Chalk Farm passed, he saw a man in a compartment bending over what he thought was a young girl. This signalman examined the body of the murdered boy and said that he recognised the face as the one he had seen, the long curls had misled him as to the sex. Another witness was the driver of a shunting engine in Camden Coal Yard. He stated that between 2.30pm and 3pm he had seen a man stooping over something in a compartment and that the man appeared to be tying up a parcel.

 

The most important witness was Clara Wood. She said that on the afternoon of the murder she had seen a man leading a little boy by the hand. The boy was eating a piece of currant cake. The post-mortem had in fact disclosed one and half ounces of partially digested food which contained currants. Wood was asked if she could identify the man. She pointed to John Starchfield. “Me?” said Starchfield. “Yes,” said Wood. “It's a lie,” shouted Starchfield. The coroner adjourned the inquest at that stage and remarked the further enquiries would be made in Starchfield’s interest.

 

When the inquest was resumed again on 29 January, witnesses from the lodging house gave evidence on behalf of Starchfield. Then a commercial traveller named John White was called. He described how he had seen a man and boy together at Camden Town Station. He identified Starchfield as the man. “It's a lie,” shouted Starchfield, “a damned lie.” One of the lodging house witnesses said: “It is too, he was in bed at the time.” Things did not look too good for Starchfield, however, and the jury returned a verdict of wilful murder against him. He was taken into custody and taken to Old Street Police Station.

 

In due course Starchfield appeared at the Central Criminal Court. In the meantime one of the essential witnesses had attempted to commit suicide and the prosecution suffered a further setback when Wood failed to stand up to cross-examination. She created the impression that she had seen a photograph of Starchfield in a newspaper before she had identified him. She was very confused about the hat he was wearing when she saw him she admitted that when shown a photograph of the boy she could not identify him as the boy she had seen. Then the judge had some things to say about the inquest proceedings. Among other things the coroner had read to the jury statements made to the police without formal depositions or questioning the witnesses. The judge went on to say: “In addition I find that the depositions were not taken down at the time by the coroner, or at any rate they were not read over to the witnesses. Then, apparently, the coroner’s officer who took them round to be signed was permitted to allow the witnesses to correct them. That procedure seems to me to be an entire mockery and an abuse of the duties entrusted to any coroner.” The judge then said that the prosecution should be withdrawn and the jury was instructed to return a formal verdict of not guilty.

 

Starchfield died in the St. Pancras Infirmary early in 1916. He always protested his innocence and used to say that some friend of Stephen Titus killed his son as an act of revenge.

 

Chief Inspector Gough advanced the theory that Starchfield met the boy by accident, tried to induce him to leave his mother, and while in the train lost his temper and struck him. When the boy screamed, and continued to scream, Starchfield tried to quieten him by putting the cord round his throat. When he realised what had happened he threw the cord out of the window, left the train at the first opportunity, and hurried back to his pitch in the Tottenham Court Road, whence he went to his lodging house. Whatever the explanation the case illustrates once more the difficulty of solving railway murders.

 

 

The strange case of Arthur Mead 1936

This article was written by William Owen Gay (former Chief Constable of British Transport Police) and was part of a series Murder in Transit published in the BTP Journal.

 

 

The former Great Western Railway was singularly free from homicide, but on 3 February 1936, a case broke the peace in dramatic fashion. At 6pm on the evening of that day, Violet Fuller, a machinist, boarded a Paddington train at Princes Risborough. She took a seat in a coach near the front of the train. The only other occupant was an elderly lady. Just outside Risborough Station as the train passed through a tunnel Mrs Fuller heard a sharp crack. The elderly lady asked: “What's that?” and Fuller replied: “Something hit the carriage in front.” Almost immediately there was another crack and Fuller thought a carriage door was open. At Saunderton she looked out of the window but saw nothing wrong. At High Wycombe she left the train and as she did so noticed a man sitting in the corner of the compartment next to the one in which she had been travelling with the old lady. He appeared to be asleep.

 

The train on which Fuller travelled was the 5.42pm train from Aylesbury to Paddington, worked by Guard Phipps from Aylesbury to High Wycombe and by Guard Wood from High Wycombe to Paddington. When Wood relieved Phipps at High Wycombe he walked the length of the train and looked in every compartment. There were 25 passengers in all and in the corner of a third class smoking compartment at the front of the train, Wood saw a man apparently asleep. He looked pale and ill, in fact shortly afterwards Wood remarked to the booking clerk: “I have got a passenger that looks a bit queer. You will have to get the ambulance ready.” Wood did not mean this seriously and certainly did not realise how true his words were.

 

At 6.35pm the train stopped at Beaconsfield and Wood, rather anxious after all, went to the compartment. The man had moved and was sitting with his head bent forward. Saliva dropped from his mouth but there was no blood to be seen. “Don't you feel well?” asked Wood. “No,” mumbled the passenger. Wood asked him where he was going, “High Wycombe,” said the passenger. Wood realised the man was seriously ill and with the assistance of two porters carefully removed him from the compartment and took him to the waiting room. Wood saw nothing unusual in the compartment but as a precautionary measure locked it on both sides. He then rejoined the train and went on to Paddington, arriving at 7.35pm.

 

While the train was on its way to Paddington, Porter Bingham at Beaconsfield carried out some first aid and sent for a doctor. While he was waiting for the doctor the man suddenly said: “A man shot me with a revolver.” Doctor Kipping arrived at 6.45pm and made a thorough examination. He found a gunshot wound in the left chest just below the heart with an exit wound at the back some two or three inches lower and much nearer the middle line. The man regained consciousness during the examination and volunteered the information, in halting words, that he had been shot.

 

The doctor telephoned the county police immediately. Sergeants Jennings and Foster went to the station and in the presence of the wounded man the doctor said to the officers: “This man is in a critical condition. He has been shot through the abdomen and he will die very soon. He states that he was shot by a strange man when travelling in the train.” Sergeant Jennings asked the man a few questions. He was Arthur Mead of 39 Easton Street, High Wycombe. He was travelling in the train from Aylesbury, and said that a man got in at Risborough, pulled out a revolver and shot him. He was dark, about 24 or 25, short and thick, wearing a grey trilby hat, no overcoat and a grey suit. On hearing this Sergeant Jennings immediately telephoned the railway police at Paddington.

 

He conferred again with the doctor and then said to Mead: “Your condition is very serious. The doctor knows that you will die very soon. Do you understand?” Mead said: “Yes.” The sergeant then said he wanted to take a statement. The statement was taken down by the sergeant in his pocket book and it read as follows:

 

“I, Arthur Mead of 39 Easton Street, High Wycombe, having the fear of death before me and with no hope of recovery, make this declaration. I got on the train at Aylesbury where I went to see my brother-in-law. The man who shot me was not on the train at Aylesbury. Nobody was in the carriage with me. I do not know where he got in. I think it must have been Risborough. There was no argument. He got up from his seat, pulled out a revolver and shot me. I had tried to push him off. He must have been a maniac. He was about 24 or 25 of stocky build. He had on a sort of grey suit and he was clean shaven, wearing a trilby, grey colour. I had never seen him before in my life. I am aged 52 years and I am a butcher. I think it was before we reached Wycombe that I was shot. It must have been, otherwise I should have got out there. I had a 10/- note in my waistcoat pocket. It was all the money I had.”

 

The dying man tried hard to sign this declaration but could not do so. The doctor with the two sergeants and other officers remained in the waiting room with him but at 3.45am he died, having said nothing further. In the meantime the machinery of detection was at work. Detective Sergeant OC Griffin met the train at Paddington. Guard Wood took him to the compartment which he examined. On the floor in the gangway was a copy of The Times dated 3 February 1936. There were no signs of a struggle and no trace of any weapon, but behind one of the seats Sergeant Griffin found a spent bullet. It was resting on the frame board under the seat nearest the front of the train on the left side. It was 18 inches from the window and immediately below a small hole in the upholstery at the back of the seat. The hole corresponded with a small indentation in the woodwork behind the seat. The hole in the upholstery was eight inches from the seat cushion level and allowing for the weight of an average man was consistent with a man having sat in the window seat and having been shot from the front when in a sitting position. Shortly afterwards the fingerprint and photographic experts arrived from Scotland Yard and Sergeant Griffin told them of his findings.

 

Detective Sergeant Rawlins from the county police examined the body at Beaconsfield mortuary. The clothing consisted of a fairly thick overcoat, jacket, waistcoat, shirt and undervest. There were clear signs of a firearm having been placed close to the overcoat beneath the heart and fired. The cloth was burnt and there was a faint circular mark which indicated that the mouth of the weapon had been pressed against the cloth. The circumstances suggested in fact that the weapon had been pressed against the body of the dead man and fired, the bullet passing through his body, through the upholstery and finally coming to rest where it was found by Sergeant Griffin. The immediate question was what and where was the weapon.

 

In view of the statement made by the man, all platforms at Paddington had been closed and many people interrogated. Enquiries were made at intermediate stations by Detective Sergeant Bradfield and other officers. No man answering the description given had been traced. At daybreak a search of the line was instituted and an interesting discovery was made by the ganger responsible for the length between Princes Risborough and Saunderton. About half a mile from Saunderton on the up line resting on the ballast and covered with frost he found an object which appeared to be a gun of some kind. He picked it up and noticed a smell of fired powder. The position in which it was found suggested that it had been dropped from the window of a London bound train.

 

The ganger did not know it, but the object was in fact a humane killer gun. It was sent to Mr Churchill, a well known firearms expert, and he said that the bullet found by Sergeant Griffin had been fired from the humane killer and could not have been fired from any other weapon. Sir Bernard Spilsbury made a post mortem examination of the body and said the bullet produced the injury and that the weapon must have been firmly pressed to the body when the bullet was fired.

 

It was clear from a statement made by Fuller who had come forward, that the fatal shot had been fired between Risborough and Saunderton. She said (and it was confirmed by the engine driver) that no-one entered or left the compartment in which Mead was travelling between Princes Risborough and High Wycombe. Close investigation was made of Mead’s private life and background. His wife said she had known him since she was a child. He was by trade a butcher and for a good many years had been in business as a knacker. He had served in the army during the First World War and in consequence his health had deteriorated badly. He had been receiving hospital treatment for some time and his doctor had in fact advised his removal to a mental hospital. Mrs Mead also said that her husband had two humane killers, one of which she had taken to her brother-in-law. The second one she knew was in the possession of her husband but she did not know where he kept it. She thought it was the one that had been found on the line.

 

The landlord of the White Lion at Waddesdon had known Mead since 1919 and last saw him on the morning of the tragedy. He said that Mead was very depressed and had tried to borrow money from him. All the enquiries suggested that the case was not one of murder after all, but that Mead’s wound had been self-inflicted.

 

On Wednesday, 19 February 1936, an inquest was held at Beaconsfield by the coroner for South Buckinghamshire. “One difficult point,” said the coroner. “Is that Mead stuck to his statement right to the end. The only suggestions I can make are perhaps that he did not wish the stigma of suicide to fall on the family or he may have thought in spite of what the doctor said that he would recover and that he would be charged with attempted suicide.” Whichever is the correct solution, it seems extraordinary that he should have stuck to it right to the end. Evidence was given at the inquest by all those mentioned in this account of the case and the jury returned a verdict that Mead took his own life at a time when he was not of sound mind.

 

Mead had sufficient will power to drop the weapon from the train after he had shot himself. He had probably prepared his story in advance but it will be noted that he did not tell it until some time after he had been removed from the train. It is probable the unhappy man wrestled with his conscience a good deal before he decided to die with a lie on his lips.

 

The case is of some interest because it indicates very clearly the circumstances in which a declaration made by a dying person will be admissible in evidence. Such a declaration is deemed to be relevant when it relates to the cause of death or to any of the circumstances of the transaction which resulted in death but only when the person making it has shown to the satisfaction of the court to have been in actual danger of death and to have given up all hope of recovery at the time when his declaration was made.

 

In the case of R v. Jenkins (1869), a dying person was asked if he agreed to the statement which began: “I make the above statement with the fear of death before me and with no hope of recovery.” When it was read to him he corrected the statement to read “with no hope at present of my recovery”. He died 13 hours later and the statement was held to be irrelevant. On the other hand, in R. v Mosley (1825), a man made a statement accusing another of murder at a time when he had no hope of recovery, although his doctor had such hopes. He actually lived 10 days after making a statement and the statement was admitted in evidence.

 

The law has always looked tolerantly upon statements made by dying persons. In Richard II, Shakespeare gives expression to the traditional attitude:

 

“The tongues of dying men

Enforce attention like deep harmony

Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain;

For they breathe truth who breathe their words in pain.”

 

Unfortunately, dying men can, on occasion, as the case of Arthur Mead demonstrates, tell lies as well as anybody else.

 

 

The murder of a child by Marguerita Eastwood 1938

This article was written by William Owen Gay (former Chief Constable of British Transport Police) and was part of a series Murder in Transit published in the BTP Journal.

 

 

It was just about daybreak on a morning in September 1938, when the 4.45am parcels train ex Waterloo was running between Putney and Barnes stations and, when passing a spot known as Dryburgh Road Bridge, the driver of the train noticed what appeared to him to be a white bundle lying in the cess between the down through and up local lines.

 

Although not due to stop at Barnes Bridge station, he did so and reported the matter to the staff on duty there. They in turn telephoned the staff at Barnes station and, in consequence of the message, the station foreman walked along the track to the point indicated. He there found that the white bundle was, in fact, the body of a male child clothed in just a white vest, and it was obvious that death had taken place some hours previously.

 

It should here be mentioned that both sides of the railway track were bounded by long gardens of a select residential area, the track consisting of four sets of rails, ie. up and down through, up and down local, with at least six yards from the fences of the gardens to the nearside rail either side. The foreman having made his discovery, left the body lying where he found it and immediately informed Railway and Metropolitan “V” Division Police of the facts.

 

Police officers, together with the divisional surgeon removed the body to the local mortuary, the spot where the body was found being appropriately marked. Kingston District railways police headquarters instructed detective Sergeant Reding and Detective Smith to place themselves at the disposal of the Metropolitan CID to give whatever assistance they could, as Putney and Barnes formed part of their district.

 

A short conference was held at Putney police station, with the result that before the day was out all railway stations within a given radius, especially where stock had been stabled overnight, were circularised and given details of the finding of the body. They were asked to search for any child’s clothing that might have been discarded, and also to search ladies waiting rooms at the stations concerned. The railway officers, quite pertinently perhaps, enquired how long before the finding of the body death had ensued, and they were told at least eight hours. It was pointed out to the CID officers that if the post mortem revealed that death was caused by the child having been thrown from a train, then the estimation of eight hours was exaggerated, as it was still light the previous evening up to about 9.45pm and twilight up to about 10.30pm. Crews of passing trains up to that time could hardly have failed to see the body.

 

The question was then asked if there were any burn marks on the body, and upon being informed that the right buttock and arm were slightly burned enquiries were instituted to ascertain what time the electric current had been switched off, the lines being electrified at this spot. It was established that the current was switched off at about 1.45am.

 

As a result of these enquiries it was possible to narrow the time down, and it was established that if the child had been thrown from a train – and it transpired that such was the case – only three trains could have been involved.

 

The last train on the up local line was the 10.33pm from Barnes Bridge station and, upon questioning the staff there it was elicited that a woman, of whom only a very poor description could be given, was carrying a child wrapped in a blanket and had booked a ticket to Vauxhall.

 

Despite constant enquiry an impasse was reached until on Saturday 17 September, after a conference with the Divisional Detective Inspector Jack Henry, his immediate subordinates – Inspectors Reynolds and Nicholson – an Irishman, Welshman and Scotsman in that order – together with the railway officers, it was decided that authority be obtained to put out a broadcast on the nine o’clock news that night, giving as much detail as possible.

 

The broadcast had the desired effect.

 

On Sunday evening, the 18, a man and woman who kept a boarding house in Vauxhall Bridge Road, called at Rochester Road police station. The tale they unfolded was to the effect that a young woman – Marguerita Eastwood – who had been staying there had, one day in the week, been seen with a baby, but without the baby the following day. When asked where it was she had said that she had placed it with foster parents. She had left the address and was believed to be in the Caterham area.

 

Immediate enquiries were instituted in the Caterham area, with the result that Eastwood was located and taken to Putney police station. Her first statement was to the effect that the child – Peter Rampson, aged eight months – was the illegitimate offspring of her husband and a prostitute named Rampson. The husband was a serving soldier in the Coldstream Guards and had failed to support it. The woman – Rampson – had taken it to her stating that if Eastwood did not take it in she would go to her husband’s commanding officer. Eastwood took the child but, owing to the fact that she was without employment, she could not care for it. The statement then went on that in desperation she went for a walk and left it in a doorway in Edgware Road.

 

She later made a further statement which was tantamount to a full confession. In it she said that she went for a walk, taking the child with her. At Hyde Park Corner she joined a bus and alighted at Barnes Bridge, booking a ticket to Vauxhall. When in the train she held the child out of the window with the intention of dropping it, but her courage failed her. This she did three times, and on the last occasion the train lurched and the child fell from her arms.

 

A charge of murder was preferred against her. After the hearings at South Western Police Court before C. Mullins Esq., she was committed for trial at the Central Criminal Court and appeared before Mr. Justice Du Parcq. The late J. Eastwood Esq., KC, who, up to the time of his death was a magistrate at Bow Street Magistrates Court, appearing for the defence.

 

The jury returned a verdict of guilty and sentence of death was passed. Later this was commuted to penal servitude for life.

 

The railway police officers concerned saw the case to finality and were commended for their work by the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis.

 

 

The murder of Geoffrey Dean by John Alcott 1952

This article was written by William Owen Gay (former Chief Constable of British Transport Police) and was part of a series Murder in Transit published in the BTP Journal.

 

 

Most of the murders described in this series were committed for personal gain, in other words, the motive was robbery. Transport undertakings must always face this risk and those who handle money as well as goods offer a double temptation to desperate criminals. It is not surprising, therefore, that from time to time, although happily not so frequently as might be supposed, somebody will make an attempt to rob a railway booking office instead of a bank in the hope, and perhaps in the knowledge, that a considerable sum of ready money will be available. There is always a risk in exchanging stolen goods for money, but money itself can be circulated, at any rate in small amounts, without much difficulty. In England and Scotland (but not in Wales so far as the writer is aware) booking clerks have been murdered while resisting an attempt to rob their office. The most recent case occurred at Ash Vale in the Southern region and it was one of the worst of its kind. The booking clerk trusted the murderer because he was a fellow railwayman and lost his life as the result of a savage and unexpected attack.

 

The British Transport Commission Police played its part in the successful investigation and the writer is happy to introduce the following account of the case by Superintendent John E. Shearing. Mr Shearing, now in charge of the Reading Division of the South Western Area, was formerly an officer of the Great Western Railway Police and has a wide experience of police work, serving in London, Liverpool, Wales and the West Country. He holds the MBE for meritorious service. Below is his own account of the murder at Ash Vale:

 

In the early part of August 1952, Geoffrey Charles Dean, a young man of 28 years, lived quietly with his wife and small child in the neighbourhood of Ash Vale near Aldershot in the county of Hampshire. He was employed as a booking clerk at Ash Vale railway station, and had been so employed by the rRailway for about 15 months. Life for the Deans passed quietly and without undue incident; but on the night of Friday, 22 August 1952, tragedy overwhelmed their little world, for Geoffrey was brutally murdered in the booking office whilst on duty at his station. Dean was stabbed by his assailant 20 times for the sum of £160, which was stolen by the murderer from the office.

 

The background to the crime was commonplace enough. It appears that the murderer, one John James Alcott, a 23 year old railway fireman from Hither Green Depot, near London, commenced his annual holiday on Monday 18 August 1952, and before leaving home that day, discussed with his wife their proposed holiday in France to start on the following day. When he left home on that Monday morning he told his wife he was going to the depot to collect his holiday pay. He did not, however, return to his home and that was the last his wife saw of him prior to his arrest.

 

Alcott travelled to the Aldershot/Farnborough area and stayed the night of Monday 18 August, 1952, in a hotel there. One of the first things he did that day was to purchase in Aldershot a dagger type of sheath knife. It can be safely assumed, in the light of subsequent events that he was already planning the murder he committed four days later.

 

The first time he was seen at Ash Vale station was around 11am on Wednesday 20 Augus, 1952, when he went to the booking office to enquire the time of the boat trains to Dover from Victoria. According to his own statement later, he spent the night of Wednesday 20 August, 1952, in a shelter at Clapham. However, he arrived at Ash Vale station by train at about 6.30am on Thursday 21 August, when he made some enquiries from the porter on duty concerning a railway lineman. This, no doubt, was merely an excuse to visit the station. At about 7am he was seen in the porter’s room at the station, and was then cleaning his finger nails with the dagger type knife, the sheath of which was lying on the table. This was the knife he had purchased two days before and he told the porter that he had bought it for his young nephew.

 

On the afternoon of Thursday 21 August, Alcott was again at Ash Vale station, at about 5pm, when he went to the booking office and asked to use the service telephone. He showed the booking clerk (not Geoffrey Dean on this occasion) a railway pass and was given permission to enter the booking office to use the telephone. It appears he rang his depot at Hither Green to enquire after a fireman who had been injured a few days before. He could get no information and told the booking clerk that they were going to ring back. He left the office but returned there at about 7.10pm when he was told that there was no message. He remained talking to the booking clerk until the office closed at 8pm. It was learned afterwards that he had been at the station during the whole afternoon from 5pm onwards, and during a conversation with a porter, had shown him a passport. It would appear that he was watching the movements of the staff, and later remained in the booking office in conversation with the clerk in order to see just how the cash was dealt with. He was first seen at the station on the day of the murder (Friday 22 August 1952) at about 6.30pm, when he was again seen in the booking office using the telephone, and later at 7.30pm when booking clerk Dean was on duty.

 

It was the usual practice at Ash Vale station to close the booking office at 7.45pm and any tickets required after that time were issued from the waiting room on the platform. The office in the normal way was closed at 8pm, but on this day it had been arranged for Dean to work late in order to clear up some outstanding business.

 

On that fateful Friday, conforming to usual practice, booking clerk Dean handed over the tickets and date stamps to the senior porter at about 7.45pm and he told the porter that although he was closing the office he would be working late on his accounts. Alcott was then in the office and was seen by this porter. The porter was the last person to see Dean alive, except, of course, the murderer.

 

It seems that Alcott remained in the booking office talking to Dean from that time until the crime was committed at approximately 8.45pm. It was established that about that time a soldier went to the booking office, but found it closed. As he stood there, he heard some shuffling of feet inside the office which he described as like two men larking about in a barrack room, and what he thought was two voices. The soldier rapped on the ticket window (the shutter was closed down) and then saw the notice on the window informing passengers that tickets were issued by the porter on the platform after 8pm. He left and went in search of the porter. He thought no more of this matter until told about the murder early the next morning and after seeing one of his officers reported what he had heard at the station to the police.

 

The murder was actually discovered at about 8.55pm by a young junior porter employed at the station. He noticed a light was still on in the booking office, and thinking this unusual, he mentioned the fact to another porter. He then climbed on to the outside sill of the booking office window and on peering through, saw the legs of a man lying on the floor in a pool of blood. He also saw that the safe was open. The station master was called and upon his arrival at about 9.20pm he ordered the door of the booking office to be forced open. Upon entering, he saw the body of young Dean lying on the floor, face upwards, covered with blood, and large pools of blood on the floor. The office safe was wide open and on the floor near to the safe was a bunch of keys, some paper bags containing coppers and other articles. The local police at Ash were at once informed, and officers arrived at the station about 9.45pm. In a short time Divisional Superintendent Roberts and other officers, including BTC Police of the South Western Area were on the scene.

 

Intensive and widespread enquiries were at once set afoot. A waiting room at Ash station was commandeered and a police incident room was set up there. Early the next morning (Saturday, 23 August 1952), GPO engineers connected a special telephone line to the room. One of the lines of enquiry initiated was a systematic check of all hotels, lodging houses etc. in the neighbourhood, including the town of Aldershot. During the Saturday morning two officers visited a house in Victoria Road, Aldershot, the occupier of which was known to occasionally take in lodgers. As a result of this visit, the officers went to a first floor bedroom of the house. On the bed they found a blood-stained jacket, in the pocket of this jacket they discovered, inter alia, a blood-stained wallet containing a British passport and two 10/- treasury notes badly stained with blood. The superintendent in charge of the incident HQ at Ash Vale station was immediately informed and the officers were instructed to remain at the premises and question the owner of the jacket, should he return. At 11.15pm that night, Alcott returned to the room and was arrested. In his pocket was found a roll of treasury notes (£109 l0s.0d.) secured with an elastic band. Alcott said: “That's some of the money,” and made a statement implicating himself in the crime. While awaiting transport to take him to the police station he told the officers that the knife with which he had committed the crime was hidden in the chimney of the room he had occupied. The chimney was searched, and the knife in a leather sheath and a number of railway documents were found there. Alcott had been in Aldershot all the time between the murder and his arrest and during that day had purchased a new sports jacket, a pair of grey flannel trousers and a pair of shoes. These articles had replaced those worn when the crime was committed. The jacket was found at his lodging, the trousers had been hidden in some gorse bushes in the neighbourhood and the shoes had been left at a local shop for repairs. Persistent search and enquiry traced them all.

 

Apart from his admission, a long chain of evidence was built up and twenty four witnesses, including the soldier, bus conductors, tradesmen etc. were called to give evidence at the trial. Dr Arthur Keith Mant, of the Department of Forensic Medicine, Guy's Hospital, giving evidence on his autopsy of the body, said he found a stab wound behind the right ear which had severed the jugular vein and the lingual artery, nine stab wounds in the back of the chest and seven in the front of the chest, one of which had been done with great violence and had passed through the breast bone and the heart. There were also wounds on the face, in the abdomen, arms and legs.

 

The director of the Metropolitan Police Laboratory gave evidence that the blood stains on the jacket, trousers and shoes of the accused, on the sheath knife and towel in the booking office were all of the same group ‘O’ as that of the deceased. Also that maroon-coloured fibres found on the knife were similar to the fibres of the pullover which Dean was wearing when he was murdered.

 

Investigations into the murder were carried out under the direction of Detective Superintendent Roberts of the Surrey Constabulary, with the co-operation of the Hampshire Constabulary, and the BTC Police. Superintendent Roberts, in his report to the Director of Public Prosecutions, stated: “Many of the Hants officers, as well as our own men worked from the early hours of the morning of the 23 August until after midnight on the 24th with very little respite and they all did it willingly, readily doing anything asked of them.”

 

The same remarks as those made about Hampshire apply also to the British Transport Police. Chief of Police Walter E. Wood and Detective Superintendent John Shearing, Reading Division, attended the scene of the crime and put themselves and other officers at our disposal for any enquiry we wished them to carry out. They also helped us in many ways by getting us proper facilities for office accommodation at the station, etc. Again on the morning of the 23rd, they made themselves available and have since carried out many useful enquiries for us among the railway staff. With their help, and the assistance of the GPO a large waiting room on the station platform was turned into an office and was ready for our use by 8am on the morning of the 23rd and by 10am the GPO had the telephone installed. Although only required for forty eight hours, this proved to be a most useful arrangement, as we were able to make many contacts and interview people right on the spot, which, without the above facilities, would have been very difficult.

 

The Director of Public Prosecutions also paid a similar tribute in a letter to W. B. Richards, Chief Officer (Police), Railway Executive.

 

Alcott was duly committed from the Farnborough Magistrates’ Court and stood his trial at the Surrey Assizes held at Kingston on the 18 November 1952. He was tried before Justice Finnemore, found guilty and sentenced to death. His appeal on the grounds of insanity was dismissed, and he met his due on 2 January, 1953. If he had been hanged for a murder he had committed while serving with the Army in Germany, Geoffrey Dean would have been alive today.

 

 

The unknown bandit: the murder of Countess Lubienska 1957

Written by PC Kevin Gordon

 

 

There were three members of railway staff on duty at Gloucester Road Underground station on the night of Friday 24 May 1957. One of them was Emanuel Akinyemi whose role as foreman included operating the lift and collecting tickets.

 

At 10.20pm that evening he heard footsteps on the emergency stairs which usually indicated a passenger avoiding their fare. Shortly afterwards he heard a woman's voice shout "bandit". He went to investigate and found a woman slowly walking towards the lift. She was clutching at her chest. He said to her: “What about the bandits?” and as her helped her towards the lift she replied: “I have been knifed.” He then noticed blood running down her jacket.

 

Akinyemi quickly operated the lift and asked the woman where the bandit was but she said she didn't know. At street level he immediately put her in the care of Station Inspector Clark and dialled 999 on a nearby public phone.

 

The London Transport Police Control room was advised and DC Chick was despatched by PC Dean (occurrence book entry 7750 was placed in the typewriter and a running log was commenced).

 

Back at the scene, PC 171 Ron Sherfield of the Metropolitan Police was passing the station and was called inside. He accompanied the injured woman to St. Mary's Hospital and en-route she said he last words: “I was on the platform - then stabbed.” She died shortly after arriving at the hospital. An examination established that she had five wounds caused by a single bladed knife no longer than two inches long. She had been stabbed three times in the chest (two piercing her heart) once in the stomach and once in the back. A tattooed number 44747 on her arm gave a clue to her identity and past.

 

The woman was Teresa Lubienska, a 73 year old Polish countess. She lived in a flat in Cromwell Gardens, Kensington but at one time had belonged to an aristocratic family and lived on a large estate in eastern Poland.

 

During the Bolshevik uprising in 1918, the estate had been seized and her husband stabbed to death. She moved to Warsaw with her son but he joined the army and was killed in 1939 when the Nazis invaded the country. In defiance Teresa joined the resistance but when escaped prisoners were found in her home she was arrested and sent to Auschwitz where the Germans had a number tattooed on her for identification as a political prisoner. She spent two years living in a cramped cell but was released and fled to London where, determined to help others she had set up the Police Association of Ex-political Prisoners in German Concentration Camps.

 

On receipt of news of the countess’ death the London Transport Police Control room despatched Detective Sergeant Tinsley to the scene and Chief Inspector Peedle was called from home. Being a homicide, the case was to be led by the Metropolitan Police under DCI John John DuRose of the murder squad.

 

At Gloucester Road, Peedle and DuRose were joined by Superintendents Ron Vivian and Law of the Metropolitan Police. The men arranged a meticulous search of the station but the only blood found was near the lift so the exact location of the attack was never established, nor were any weapons recovered.

 

In common with serious crime at this time the local force led the investigation and the transport police were left to handle the railway side of the enquiries. The train on which the countess had travelled on was identified (train set 155 ex Uxbridge to Cockfosters – due at Gloucester Road at 10.19½pm). The driver and guard were unable to assist. Adjacent tunnels were thoroughly searched with no trace although it seems clear that the attacker had decamped via the emergency stairs. It was established that a fit man could avoid the lift attendant and beat the lift to the top. The jurisdiction of the London Transport Police at this time included London buses and enquiries traced the drivers and conductors of all buses in the area at the time. More extensive track searches were made and total of 214 Piccadilly Line trains were examined. Hundreds of railway staff were interviewed including 64 train crews. Every knife found on the underground for the next few months were handed to police for forensic examination.

 

Several suspects were identified including an Underground worker who had booked a room at a local hotel but had not used it and a school worker who had turned up the next morning with a black eye and scratches to his face. Both were eliminated. A man who had been loitering on the station on days prior to the assault was found but was in care at a mental hospital at the time of the crime.

 

By the time of the inquest, which was held on 19 August 1957 a staggering 18,000 people had been interviewed by police including many who lived abroad. The jury returned a verdict of murder by a person or persons unknown and the killer of Countess Lubienska remains unidentified to this day.

 

So who did kill this unfortunate woman and why? Friends of the deceased suggested that she had been the subject of a political assassination and an article in the Sunday Express at the time reported that the Polish word “bandyci” means “someone who kills intentionally” – an assassin. Her friends suggested that she might have unearthed a Polish collaborator who worked for the Germans in one of the concentration camps but this seems pure conjecture.

 

A relative of hers however said that she often used the word ‘bandit’ but used it to mean any sort of hooligan, maybe a Teddy Boy who were prevalent at this time.

 

There had appeared to be no attempt to steal property from her (her handbag was intact) so the motive was unlikely to have been robbery. A small knife (probably a pen-knife) seems an unlikely choice of weapon for an assassination and a well-lit platform is an unlikely venue for a pre-meditated murder.

 

I think it is likely that the feisty and sometimes outspoken 73 year old had become involved in a fracas with a young man (her friends said she was never afraid to speak her mind) and Teddy Boys were known to carry knives. The Prevention of Crime Act 1956 was passed specifically to counter this problem, perhaps she met one of them. In any case he was able to sprint up the emergency stairs unnoticed and unidentified. Today we would hope that CCTV would have prevented or detected such a crime.

 

Source: Papers held in the Force archives

 

 

The murder of Marguerite Van Campenhout 2002

This item has been re-printed from the Police Review.

 

 

Carol Jenkins of the Police Review reports on how British Transport Police secured a conviction in a murder case on the Underground, even sending officers to Greece to check on the offender.

 

The conviction of Albanian immigrant Vaso Aliu for the fatal stabbing of his former girlfriend on a packed Underground platform proved to be a significant case for British Transport Police. The crime, which took place at the height of the evening rush hour on 11 January 2002, was the first ever murder case in which BTP officers took the lead.

 

DCI Mark Newton from BTP, the deputy senior investigating officer on the case, explains that prior to this case a protocol drawn up between his force and Home Office forces stated that Home Office forces would have primacy over the investigation of murders taking place within BTP jurisdiction. However, this changed in this case when the Met agreed it should be BTP which took the lead, due, primarily, to the Met's heavy workload. BTP officers were responsible for the HOLMES file preparation and managing the case through to a successful prosecution. Consequently, this case has led to a rewriting of the protocol between BTP and Home Office forces. The protocol now states that the primacy issue in respect of murders will now be decided between the relevant two chief constables.

 

“This was a totally mould-breaking [case] because we had never done this before,” says DCI Newton. “It gave a tremendous boost to the officers on the ground; they were highly motivated and keen to bring the case to a successful conclusion.”

 

Vaso Aliu had been having a relationship with Marquerite Van Campenhout for four years until she decided to end the relationship. And, according to DCI NEWTON, Aliu could not accept the relationship was over and began following and harassing her. “She ended the relationship because of his controlling manner,” says DCI Newton. “She decided to end the relationship in the run up to Christmas last year but he continued to follow her, text her and harass her. He was absolutely captivated by her. She even had to change her routes to and from work in order to avoid him.” Van Campenhout even moved house to escape his unwanted attention. She also began changing the route which she took to get home. But on the night of the murder, Van Campenhout and her work colleague Thomas Pontifex, who she now lodged with, decided to take their normal route home from work.

 

CCTV footage captured the pair walking along the road with Aliu following closely behind them. He followed them onto the platform at Euston Underground station. Aliu then began pleading with Van Campenhout to take him back, but each time she refused, insisting their relationship was over. When she refused for the final time, he pretended he had got a present for her and began unwrapping something under his coat which turned out to be a knife. He lunged forward and stabbed it straight into Van Campenhout’s chest. She collapsed and died.

 

As Pontifex then stepped forward to try to stop Aliu stabbing anyone else, he was slashed on his arm. “The cuts were so deep you could actually see the bone,” says DCI Newton. Meanwhile, Christopher Kiely, a commuter who witnessed the incident from a passing Tube train, jumped off the train and tackled Aliu. Aliu then stabbed him in the chest and ran away. DCI Newton adds: “[Aliu] ran off past his ex-girlfriend who was lying on the ground dying. He stopped and looked down at her before saying: “You won't do that to me again.”

 

Aliu then ran up the escalators and into the booking hall chased by staff and an off-duty security guard. When he reached the booking hall, he stabbed himself in the neck – the knife went through both sides - and his chest, but he still managed to survive.

 

DCI Newton, who at the time of the incident was a detective inspector, was the first detective on scene and his initial challenge was to try to preserve both the station platform and also the booking hall from contamination while hundreds of passengers filed by on their way home. “I was the duty detective inspector for London Underground that day for BTP,” he says, “and the call came in that there had been multiple stabbings at Euston Underground station.

 

“What greeted me was a scene of absolute devastation. There were three people who were seriously wounded; Marquerite dead on the Northern Line platform; and other people – including staff and passengers – who had collapsed through shock. The biggest issue for me was the scene. This was not a rural location, where it would be relatively easy to preserve the scene. Here we had one of London’s busiest stations – a major part of the whole transport infrastructure for London – and I made the decision to shut it during rush hour. I was conscious that this decision meant 5,000 people were trapped in trains in tunnels, and that the Northern Line was brought to a halt. We knew we had to act quickly get the scenes of crimes officers in and get the scene forensic harvest under-way.”

 

Despite Aliu confessing to the murder several times in the booking hall, officers did not leave anything to chance, interviewing 600 people and running identity parades. DCI Newton says: “At first it seems like an open and shut case: we have got a body, eyewitnesses and a man making verbal admissions but we did not take anything for granted. We ran an identity parade to get the proof that Aliu was the man, and then linked the knife to him. We needed to prove that the man admitting it in the booking hall was the man on the platform.”

 

The officers’ caution proved well founded because, just weeks before the case was due to come to trial, the defence put forward a plea of diminished responsibility. It was argued by the defence that Aliu had committed the crimes because he had an abnormality of mind that supported the assertion that he suffered from diminished responsibility at the time of the offence. Aliu stated to the Immigration Service, the police and examining psychiatrists that this abnormality occurred because he was an ethnic Albanian who was born and raised in Kosovo. At the time, Kosovo was a war zone and ethnic Albanians were being persecuted by the Serbian authorities. Aliu claimed he and his family had been persecuted, beaten and tortured. He also claimed he had been singled out because of his involvement in a subversive group. He also said he had suffered head injuries earlier in life and abuse as a child.

 

DCI Newton took the unusual step of sending two of his officers – a detective constable and a detective sergeant – to Greece to interview Aliu’s mother about the claims. DCI Newton says it was the only way the prosecution could check out the claims and build up an accurate picture of what had truly happened. The two officers visited Aliu’s mother and interviewed her about his claims which she said were untrue. His mother told officers she had no knowledge of the abuse or head injuries he said he had suffered. He had had a fall but had fallen in a ditch and not off a cliff as he claimed. As a result, officers were able to disprove his claim of diminished responsibility.

 

“The decision to visit Aliu’s family in Greece was the right one and it certainly paid off,” says DCI Newton. “It gave us the chance to build up the true picture. We wanted to produce our own report that reflected the true facts.” Officers also carried out checks on Aliu’s immigration status. He had been granted residency in Britain because he claimed he had been an immigrant who fled Albania for Britain to avoid persecution. These checks discounted that claim. Officers discovered Aliu had been living in Greece for two years before coming to Britain and had not fled Albania as he had claimed.

 

“What this taught us is that you cannot take on face value anything that is told to the immigration service,” says DCI Newton. “They were unable to conduct the independent inquiry in order to establish the truth. If we had accepted what Aliu had claimed on face value, it would have built up a picture of a man who has suffered considerably, but that was complete nonsense.”

 

As a result of a successful investigation and a close working relationship with the Crown Prosecution Service, the case was brought to court and was heard at the Old Bailey. Aliu was convicted for the murder of Van Campenhout, for which he received a life sentence. He was sentenced for eight years for wounding Christopher Kiely and sentenced to seven years for wounding Pontifex. Aliu was found not guilty of the attempted murder of Christopher Kiely.

 

The Old Bailey judge in the case commended the work of BTP officers for the professionalism they had shown in the case.