London

THE POSTMAN DELIVERS … The Thieves of Threadneedle Street

YOU CAN GO VIA THIS LINK to the excellent feature our guest writer Nicholas Booth has written about one of the most daring attempts at fraud ever attempted in England. Had the gang succeeded, the British banking system might well have collapsed. As it was, those running The Bank of England were just made to look rather foolish.

THE THIEVES OF THREADNEEDLE STREET is a beautifully produced book, and the cover shows a contemporary version of our modern court room sketches, and we can see the gang in all their bristling moustachioed glory.

TOTS

SOME BOOKS feel good in the hands and are pleasing to the eye, even before you have turned the first page. This, published by The History Press, is one such book. It is impeccably researched and well sourced, with a comprehensive index. Nicholas Booth’s guest feature on Fully Booked is entertaining as it is, but it merely scratches the surface of an amazing episode in Victorian financial and criminal history.Head over to Amazon to see your options if you want to get your own copy of this book.

BIDWELL DID THE CRIME and served the time, but when he was finally released from prison, he didn’t waste a moment in putting his remarkably tale into print to try and cash in on his infamy. His book sits alongside the lovely back dustjacket of Nicholas Booth’s modern version of the story.

BidBooks

August 19, 2016 0

AUSTIN BIDWELL – The fraudster who fooled The Bank of England

GUEST WRITER NICHOLAS BOOTH tells the tale of a plausible and devious rogue who made some of the modern chancers in The Square Mile look like boy scouts.

Prison

The two Americans who were jammed into the cramped cell of Havana’s military jail (above) had been adversaries for years – but only now, in the spring of 1873, had they finally caught up with each other. And the circumstances were extraordinary.

One had masterminded an astonishing heist, defrauding nearly £10m in today’s money from the Bank of England during a two-month window of opportunity. (Among the most audacious of daylight robberies, it was accomplished by trading forged foreign promissory notes for cash.) The other was, by repute, the greatest detective in America, who had instigated the remarkable manhunt leading to this meeting.

william_portrait Stout, florid and perspiring in the heat, William Pinkerton, (left) scion of the famous detective dynasty, had been characteristically indefatigable in tracking down his quarry, travelling from New York to London, and thence to Havana. Glassy eyed, hollow -cheeked and very tired, his prisoner was, in one estimation, “a smooth, easy talker and a person who is likely to inspire confidence with anyone with whom he talked”.

As bankers all over the world – in Frankfurt, Liverpool, Manhattan, Rio, Paris and Chicago – could attest, that was putting it mildly. It was the prisoner’s incredible charm that explained how he had conned them in the past – and why he had been able to relieve more than £100,000 from the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, where he had been known as Frederick Albert Warren. To the others who had fallen over backwards to lend him money, he was known as Charles J Horton. So far as bewildered officials were concerned, he was an international man of mystery. Following his plan’s collapse, they had discovered at least more 20 aliases. But his real name was Austin Biron Bidwell (below right), Bidwell he was just 27, and along with his eldest brother George (a serial womaniser and ne’er do well) and a couple of accomplices, he had – in Willie Pinkerton’s judgement – carried out the most daring forgery and fraud the world had ever known.

On the first day of March 1873, it was only the accidental omission of the date on a forged document that exposed the Bidwell operation. What resulted was “a worldwide hue and cry”, as one newspaper said at the time, playing out as a cross between Ocean’s Eleven and Sherlock Holmes. Except in this case, the real-life sleuth was Willie Pinkerton who, even now, had only caught up with Austin Bidwell after yet another escape, a chase across Cuba and a dramatic sabre fight.

Austin Bidwell’s life, to date, had “surpassed the imaginations of our famous novelists” in another contemporary appraisal. Indeed, Anthony Trollope would start The Way We Live Now a few weeks later as a thinly disguised parable based on his exploits. As one of his later prosecutors aptly put it, his story was a “capital instance of misapplied genius” – which in this case included silencing their best witness by marrying her. Jeannie Devereux Jeannie (left) was a beautiful, naive girl of 18 who had fallen for Austin in the summer of 1872. Austin was a professional American criminal who had recently moved his operations to London. Her family were living in genteel poverty near Marble Arch; and though he would have preferred her as his rich man’s plaything, she declined. It was marriage or nothing. Though assuaged by his self-evident wealth, only later did she find out that her honeymoon had been paid for with stolen money. But by then, it was too late to do anything.

Austin Bidwell was one of the most elusive criminals in history. However, throughout late 1872, his various unexplained disappearances and hastily-written letters from all over the world convinced Jeannie’s mother that he was up to no good. And so it was that, one January day in 1873 – when Austin and Jeannie were about to head for St. Martin’s-in-the-Field to get married – the screaming banshee that was Mrs Devereux suddenly appeared out of nowhere. “Just as I was stepping into a cab with my fair bride,” Austin later told Pinkerton, “along came the cruel mamma”, who grabbed her daughter and gave her “a fearful pounding”.

Prevented from marrying, the couple eloped to Paris, with Austin’s assurances buoying Jeannie up: “You will have plenty of money in your pocket, and that makes all the world your slaves and you can never be embarrassed.” And so it might have been, but for a simple slip. After the February ceremony in Paris, the rest of the gang returned to London, to complete the scam before the forged bills became “due”, while the newlyweds headed via Spain for the West Indies. When it all fell apart three weeks later – because a date was left off a forged document – one accomplice was arrested and the others scattered. And Willie Pinkerton had a pretty shrewd idea of who was behind it all.

Chicago

Pinkerton had first encountered the Bidwell gang in his native Chicago (above) and followed their forgeries, swindling and defrauding of banks for the best part of a decade. “So ingeniously were their schemes planned and so cleverly was their work executed,” he marvelled, “that for a long time, they escaped detection.” But thanks to his own unparalleled network of informants, in 1872 he learned something big was being planned in London and travelled there. In November of that year, he would later tell Austin, he had actually seen him on the Strand – to which his imprisoned charge, all colour drained from his face, replied: “Pinkerton, for God’s sake, why did you not speak to me? I would have given you $50,000 to mind your own affairs and not do as you have done.”

The article first appeared in The Independent in 2015,
and is used with the permission of the author

PART TWO OF THIS FEATURE IS HERE

August 16, 2016 0

THE HOLBORN MURDERS

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AUGUST, 1865. Queen Victoria was in the 28^th year of her reign, but had become a virtual recluse after the death of Prince Albert in 1861. Palmerston was Prime Minister, and the Salvation Army had been founded in Whitechapel. In America, the Civil War was over, but Lincoln was dead, and Andrew Johnson ruled in his stead.

On the evening of Monday 7^th August, a man brought three children, aged six, eight and ten, to the Star Coffee House and Hotel, Red Lion Street, Holborn, London. He had previously arranged accommodation, saying that they would all shortly be leaving for Australia. On the Tuesday evening, he put the children to bed and left the hotel, stating that he world return shortly. On the Wednesday morning, neither the man nor the children came down for breakfast. Sensing that something was wrong, the hotel manager entered the rooms occupied by the children, and found a terrible sight. All three were quite dead, and there was no sign of the man.

Red Lion Street

The testimony of Dr George Harley, physician, (below right) was this:

“On the 9th of August last I was requested by Dr. ROBERTS, of Lamb’s Conduit-street to visit Star’s Hotel, where, as he informed me, three children were supposed to have been murdered, and that in case of so serious a nature he deemed it advisable to have a second opinion. On the third floor, in the front room, No. 6 of the above-named hotel I saw two boys lying on their backs in bed quite dead. The younger of the two, ALEXANDER WHITE, aged eight was near the back, the elder, THOMAS WILLIAM WHITE, aged nine years, toward the front part of the bed. The bodies of both were cold and stiff, and although their countenances wore the placidity of slumber they nevertheless bore the pallor of death. The eyes were half open; the pupils semi-dilated. On turning down the bedclothes both bodies presented a mottled appearance, from the extreme lividity of some parts, the deadly pallor of others. The attitude of the youngest child was that of a comfortable repose. The head slightly inclined to the left side. The hands were folded upon the abdomen. The legs gently crossed. The fingers of the right hand still retained within them a penny-piece, which fell from their stiffened grasp while the body was being turned upon its side, with the view of detecting marks of violence.”

He continued:

Quote “In the back bedroom, No. 8, of the same floor lay the dead body of a somewhat emaciated but handsomely featured boy, HENRY WILLIAM WHITE, aged ten years. The attitude and complexion of this child closely resembled that of his brothers. His expression was calm, the eyelids were closed, the pupils were natural, the face was deadly pale. A small quantity of fluid had flowed from the mouth on to the collar of his shirt, and that part of the left cheek in contact with it was mottled red and purple. The legs and toes were slightly bent the hands partially closed, the nails and finger tips intensely livid. A spot of feculent matter soiled the sheet. The rigidity of death was well marked in every l imb, and livid discolorations in all the depending parts of the body. No marks of violence were observable, but a slight odor was perceptible about the mouth. The whole chamber had a peculiar ethereal smell.”
He concluded:

“I have to add that the history of the cases, the appearance and attitudes of the bodies after death, the result of the post mortem examinations, and the chemical analysis lead me to the conclusion that Henry William White, Thomas William White, and Alexander White died from the mortal effects of a poisonous dose of prussic acid.”

The three dead children were identified as Henry White, aged ten years,Thomas White, aged eight years and Alexander White, aged six years. The parenting of these three children had been bizarre, to say the least. Their father – or at least the man who accepted them as his own – had been married to the boys’ mother, and by an awful coincidence was a schoolmaster in Featherstone Buildings, only a stone’s throw from the hotel where they died.

The boys’ mother had been living with a man called Ernest Southey, and the three lads had been passed backwards and forwards several times between Mr William Henry White and his wife. Finally, they had been ‘in the care’ of Southey and Mrs White, as it was put about that they intended to emigrate to Australia. Not only did Mr White’s description of Southey match that of the hotel staff, Southey was known to the police. Earlier in the year, Southey, who was, by occupation a billiard marker, had been involved in a strange case where Mrs White tried to inveigle money from a member of the aristocracy, and Southey had intervened on her behalf.

220px-GeorgeEdwardGrey01 The Home Secretary, Sir George Grey (left), announced a £100 reward for the apprehension of Southey. It was to prove unnecessary. Having poisoned the three boys, the fugitive, who obviously subscribed to the old adage about sheep and lambs, had traveled down to the Kent seaside town of Ramsgate where, it transpired, his real wife and daughter lived. Having met them, and pleaded for their forgiveness for his long absence and neglect, he then shot them both dead with a pistol. He was caught red-handed, and gave himself up without a struggle.

At this point it became clear that Ernest Southey was none other than Stephen Forwood, his latest victims being Mary Ann Jemima Forward, and her daughter Emily. He was brought to the magistrate in Ramsgate, but then produced an astonishing document, apparently penned in the interval between his arrest and the court appearance. He proclaimed to the court;

“On Monday, the 7th instant, I took three children, whom I claim as mine by the strongest ties, to Starr’s Coffee-house, Red Lion-street, Holborn. I felt for these children all the affection a parent could feel. I had utterly worn out and exhausted every power of mind and body in my efforts to secure a home, training, and a future for those children, also the five persons I felt hopelessly dependent on me. I could struggle and bear up no longer, for the last support had been withdrawn from me. My sufferings were no longer supportable. My very last hope had perished by my bitter and painful experience of our present iniquitously-ineffective social justice, and for this I shall be charged with murder, for criminal murders as well in the truest, strongest sense of the charge. I deny and repudiate the charge, and charge it back on many who have by their gross and criminal neglect brought about this sad and fearful crisis. I charge back the guilt of these crimes on those high dignitaries of the State, the Church, and justice who have turned a deaf ear to my heartbroken appeals, who have refused me fellow help in all my frenzied efforts, my exhausted struggles; who have impiously denied the sacredness of human life, the mutual dependence of man, and the fundamental and sacred principles on which our social system is based. Foremost among these I charge the Hon. D. Lord Palmerston, the Attorney General, Sir George Grey, the Hon. Mr. Gladstone, the Earl of Shaftesbury, Lord Ebury, Lord Townshend, Lord Elcho, Lord Brougham, Sir E. B Lytton, Mr Disraeli, Sir J. Packington, Earl Derby, Lord Stanley, Mr Crossley, and the Bishop of Bath and Wells. I Under all the terrible run of my life I have done for the best.”

Whether the wretched man was exhibiting an early version of what we would come to know as The Blackadder Defence – wearing underpants on the head and sticking knitting needles up the nostrils, in the hope that he would be considered totally mad – we shall never know. Forward’s lawyer half-heartedly went for a plea of insanity, but his efforts were ignored.

The authorities in London wanted Forward returned to them, but the Kent police had him under lock and key, and they had no intention of letting him go. Regarding the murder of the boys, Forward’s trial produced evidence that Mrs White had grown tired of him, and he had threatened her with dire consequences should she not take him back. He was sentenced to death, and was eventually executed in January 1866. A local newspaper takes up the story.
THreat

On 11 January 1866, at the County Goal in Maidstone one of the most notorious murderers of Victorian Kent paid the final penalty for his crimes. This was Stephen Forwood (or Forwood) also known as Ernest Walter Southey. He was the last person to be publicly executed at Maidstone Goal (below)

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A contemporary account tells us:

The morning of Thursday 11 January 1866, was very cold, a severe snow storm driven by a harsh wind prevailed and this kept the usual crowd that gathered for this occasion down to about 1500 persons. The execution was presided over by Mr. F Scudamore, the Under-Sheriff of the County of Kent accompanied by some of his officers.

Arriving at the Gaol just before midday they immediately went to the cell where Forward was held. The executioner was Calcraft who acted as executioner at Stafford and in the “Midland Counties”. The prisoner asked for permission to speak and “exclaimed in an audible voice”, ” I desire to say in the presence of you who are now assembled, and in the presence of Almighty God, into whose immediate presence I am now about to depart, that I die trusting only to the merits of the God-man Jesus Christ”.
Calcraft

The prisoner was now “pinioned” by Calcraft (above) and as he was lead to the scaffold he could be heard praying loudly. Just before he was placed on the drop he shook hands with Major Bannister, the Governor of the Gaol, and with the chaplain. To the chaplain he made his last request that when he was upon the scaffold the chaplain would only utter the following prayer” Lord, into thy hands we commend the soul of this our brother, for thou hast redeemed him. Oh Lord, thou God of Troth.”

Forward said that his reason for this request was that he wished to “concentrate the whole powers of his soul and spirit into one mighty act of volition, and render himself up to God in the words mentioned.” The request was granted and as the chaplain began to speak, the drop opened and Forward “ceased to exist”.

The Maidstone and Kentish Journal describes the scene so:

The scaffold was hung round with black cloth to such a height that when the drop fell only just the top of the convict’s head was visible to the crowd. The body, after hanging an hour, was cut down and a cast of the head taken. In the afternoon the body was buried within the precincts of the gaol.

Edwin Ruck, the Registrar for the East Maidstone District, registered the death on Saturday 13 January 1866. The informant being the Governor of the Gaol, Major C W Bannister, the cause of death was stated as “Hanging for Murder’.

We cannot know if Stephen Forwood’s piety on the scaffold stood him in any stead in the place where he was heading, but we can state that it did absolutely no good to the four children and the woman for whose deaths he was responsible. Of the London sites connected with the case little or nothing remains. Where The Star Coffee House and Hotel once stood, at 21 Red Lion Street, we now find a nondescript, but doubtlessly very expensive block of flats. The Featherstone Buildings, where William White taught his grammar lessons, was totally destroyed by German bombs during the Blitz.

Just as tabloid newspapers, even in this digital age, still hope that a juicy headline will shift a few more copies, the ballad writers and hacks who turned out broadsides may have seen a temporary upsurge in sales, as they dramatised the terrible events of August 1865.

Broadside

July 24, 2016 0

BEN KINSELLA

As they say, in America, “School’s Out!” On the evening of Saturday 28^th June 2008, school was pretty much out for a group of teenage London boys. Their GCSE exams were finally over and, despite nor being legally old enough to drink, they were having a night out to celebrate. They went to Shillibeers (left), a popular bar and brasserie in Holloway. Among the group was Ben Kinsella, a 16 year-old pupil at Holloway School.

During the course of the evening an argument broke out between one of Ben’s friends and a group of other young men. It seems it was yet another chapter in the sorry tale along the lines of “Who d’you think you’re looking at?” Apparently peripheral in the row, but eager to get involved, was Jade Braithwaite. 19 years old, and 6’6” tall, he already had an extended criminal record for various offences involving drugs, robbery and violence.

Ben Kinsella was at no time involved in the disturbance, which was eventually broken up by the pub doormen. In the small hours of the morning, Ben’s group decided to call it a day, and set off to walk home, unaware that Braithwaite had ‘phoned two friends – Juress Kika and Michael Alleyne, both 18 years-old, and with similar histories of violence – to say that he had some unfinished business and needed their help. Below, left to right, Kika, Braithwaite and Alleyne.

Killers

When Braithwaite, Kika and Alleyne reappeared, Ben’s friends – who had been involved in the original fracas – decided to run for it. Ben, wrongly believing that he had nothing to fear, simply carried on walking. In a short but savage attack, lasting just a matter of seconds, the trio kicked Ben to the ground and inflicted a flurry of stab wounds to his body, puncturing his lungs and pulmonary artery. He was able to stagger from the scene, and collapse into the arms of his friends. Despite the best efforts of the medical services, he died later that morning, from catastrophic and irreplaceable blood loss. The moments before and after the attack were captured on closed circuit security cameras.

The map below shows the location where Ben was stabbed.

BK murder site

The three killers were quickly captured by the police, but during the resultant investigation, Braithwaite and Alleyne first denied knowing each other, and then tried to blame each other. Throughout the process, and during the trial, Kika, exercised his right to silence. Each was sentenced to 19 years in jail, and this was later upheld when they appealed against what they said was the severity of the sentence.

It is worth adding, in full, the complete victim statement made to the Old Bailey court by Ben’s mother, Deborah.

“I make this statement and the feelings and emotions are felt by all my family but no amount of words could ever express the daily pain we feel for the loss of Ben. On 29 June 2008 our beautiful son Ben was brutally and savagely stabbed to death. We as his family have been left devastated and in total despair. Our whole world has been totally turned upside down. Ben went for a good night out and never came home again.

Ben had only just finished school – a straight-A student, he had a job and had got his place in college (he never learnt of the wonderful exam results he had achieved and worked so very hard for). Ben loved life, he loved living and he had so much to live for. He knew where he was going and where he wanted to be.

Ben loved nothing more than to make people laugh, he was a fun-loving, happy-go-lucky boy with a heart of gold and would do anything for anyone. A testimony of this was his funeral that was attended by so many friends who filled the church and pavements outside.

Ben loved art and wanted to be a graphic designer, he loved his family, cooking, football, music and girls. The people who murdered him knew nothing about our Ben, not a hair on his head, a bone in his body, not anything about our wonderful son. They had never met him before or spoken to him – they just cruelly took his life away with knives for no apparent reason.

We had brought Ben up to always walk away from trouble. This sadly cost him his life. He walked away to get safely home and they took advantage of that – he was one boy on his own. It seems unfair their intent was to stab someone that night.

We were a big, happy, loving family (we are one down, one missing). We are hard-working and just wanted the best for all our children in life. There are now just three of us at home. We have had to move house because it broke our hearts to not see Ben in his bedroom curled up sleeping and safe in his bed. We so miss Ben’s love and laughter and most of all the boy thing in our family. Ben was our precious son that we cherished and were so immensely proud of, and by the way we had brought him up.

He had values and respected everyone he met. We as a family will never know the man he would have become, the wife he would have met and the children he would have had. This has all now been taken away from siblings, his grandmothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and us.

No parent or sibling should ever have to go through or see what we have seen with our son. He died in front of us, we then had to visit him in a morgue, the undertakers and finally to bury him. We can now only visit Ben at a cemetery, our beautiful son who so loved life.

We cry every day for the loss of Ben, we do not sleep like we did before. Nearly a year on our nights are still filled with nightmares, of our son’s last moments and what he went through that fatal night. Our lives will never be the same – we have all been so deeply affected. We as a family will never get over the loss of our Ben. We are just trying to get through it. Our family now face a lifetime of feeling this way.

Nothing we can say or do will ever bring Ben back. All we can hope and pray for is that justice will prevail, maybe then we can find some form of closure to this awful event that has devastated our family’s lives.”

BELOW – BEN KINSELLA’S FUNERAL

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July 10, 2016 1

MURDER MILE, or HIPSTER PARADISE?

London E5 – the next ‘most desirable address in London’, or still Murder Central? For more than a decade, the streets around the outwardly unlovely Clapton Rd (Upper and Lower) have had a reputation even worse than its snaggle-toothed strip of down-at-heel takeaways, pond shops and other hard scrabble retail joints might suggest.

Of course, the borough of Hackney prides itself as being a very ‘right-on’ place to live. It has a high profile MP, and estate agents work night and day to suggest that it is full of ‘must-visit’ eateries and cafes, where slim chaps of a certain age are keen to be seen, alongside what the Hackney Post describes as “Macbook-tapping, gourmet coffee-swilling hipsters.”

Clapton Road

The area has a lamentable history for violence. Just four of those killed in recent years are pictured below, left to right:

Clapton Murders

Prince Joseph Burke Monerville: On 16^th February 2013, the 19 year-old was sitting in a car with his brothers, in Hindry Road, Clapton. Shots were fired into the car, and the teenager died after being taken to hospital. Scott Andrews, 27, and Roshane Reid, 20, from Hackney, were charged with the murder of Joseph Burke-Monerville and two counts of attempted murder, but later acquitted through lack of evidence.

Moses Fadairo: He was shot dead on 26^th September 2015, in broad daylight, outside a butcher’s shop in Chatsworth Road. Christopher Erunse, 28, of Chalcombe Road in Greenwich, was sentenced to 18 years in prison for shooting the 25-year-old young father. His accomplice, Bradley Wynter, 28, of the Pembury Estate in Clapton, was jailed for five years for possession of a gun.

Jeremie Malenge: On 6^th January 2015, the young man was lured to his death by a gang of youngsters, one of whom was just 14 years-old. He was stabbed to death in Ponsford Street. The ring-leader of the murder plot was Tariq William-Dawodu of Woodford. A young woman, Sanaa Sayed Ibrahim provided the sexual element in this killing, and she was the bait to trap Malenge. These two, plus Tre Morgan, and the 14 year-old, who was never named, were sentenced to a total sixty years in jail for the killing.

Mehmet Degirli: On Wednesday 8^th June, 2016, the beaten and lifeless body of the Turkish father of two children was found in a car park. 20 year-old Mustafa Alparslan and Huseyin Akkoyun, aged 46, have been charged with Mr Degirli’s murder.

Crime map If you are a law-abiding person who stays away from dubious places after dark, and you have a good security system in your home, Hackney is probably a safe place to live. Provided, however, you are prepared to take your chances when out shopping, or otherwise about your lawful business. If you are a writer or artist who likes the kudos of having an address in a place which is seen as rather dangerous, and ‘cutting edge’ (literally) then your aspirations will be fulfilled. If you’re an estate agent who is selling the area as a vibrant, safe and stimulating place to bring up a family, then best of luck with that one.

You can always type in the postcode on Police Crime Maps to see what the Metropolitan Police say is the current state of play. The live website can be accessed here, and here (left) is a graphic of what you might find. The numbers in the circles show all reported crimes for May 2016.

July 9, 2016 0

RUTH ELLIS

WHEN YOU ARE OLD AND GREY – if not full of sleep, there will be times when images from youthful days reappear in the mind’s eye. When I was young, there was no internet, little television and, in terms of images, newspapers were King. Mostly, it is the faces of notorious criminals that I remember. Gunther Podola, long forgotten now, but at the time a notorious cop-killer; Harry Roberts, sneering out at us from the newsprint, while he evaded capture for so long; the baleful peroxide glare of Myra Hindley; the troubled but defiant ‘Jack The Lad’ face of James Hanratty. The one face, and figure, that entranced me most, however was the earliest – the sharp, brassy, night club features of Ruth Ellis.

Ruth Posing Ellis chose her path in adult life based on her natural vivacity and an appreciation that she could earn more from nude modelling and ‘clipping’ punters in a night club than she could by working in the typing pool or in a factory. As a child her home life had been chaotic, so she had developed the necessary survival skills to make her own way in the austere world of post-war Britain.

Ellis became manager of her own club, The Little Club, and it seems that the clientele included a number of ‘Tim-Nice-But-Dim’ gentlemen, products of minor public schools, but with aspirations way in excess of their capabilities. One such was David Blakely although, to be fair, his wealthy background meant he had attended (and failed at) one of the country’s top schools, Shrewsbury. His passion was racing cars, and although he would never come close to emulating the feats of his friend, Mike Hawthorne, his death could be viewed as equally tragic as that of Hawthorne, four years later.

ruth_ellis_david_blakely_murderer_hanged_lewes_prison

MagdalaTavern Ellis and Blakely became lovers, if not partners, but neither was faithful to the other. Blakely was physically violent; Ellis was violently jealous. On 10^th April, 1955 – Easter Sunday – Ellis waylaid Blakely as he left a Hampstead pub, the Magdala. She shot him dead with a .38 Smith and Wesson revolver. Despite the day, there was to be no resurrection.

Ellis was arrested at the scene and made no attempt to deny her crime. The trial was something of a formality, and in 1955, the death sentence was mandatory for premeditated murder. Despite various attempts to have the sentence revoked, Ruth Ellis was hanged on Wednesday 13^th July, 1955. The hangman was Albert Pierrepoint. (below, a scene from the film Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman, with Timothy Spall and Mary Stockley)

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July 8, 2016 0

DR CRIPPEN

THERE ARE SOME MALEFACTORS down the years whose names only make us shudder because we know the deeds with which they have become associated. In themselves, they are just ordinary names, commonplace even. West, Brady, Hindley, Sutcliffe, Shipman, Haigh – take a look in your local telephone directory, and you will find them by the dozen, all, we assume, leading blameless lives. But our man here is something of an exception – Crippen. It has a nasty little bite to it, consonants crunching into vowels. Say it over. It sounds sinister, doesn’t it?

crippen Hawley Harvey Crippen was never a doctor, in the accepted sense. He was at best, a purveyor of quack medicines and homepathic cures to the gullible. He may even have been a backstreet abortionist, but that has never been proved. He was born in Michigan in 1862, but emigrated to England in 1897 with his second wife Cora. Cora was a second rate music hall entertainer and Crippen, tired of her charms, took up with a young typist named Ethel Le Neve.

In 1910, Cora disappeared. Crippen claimed that she had left him and returned to America. Ethel Le Neve was duly installed in her place at 39 Hilldrop Crescent, Hollway (sketch, right). A friend of Cora Crippen eventually raised the alarm, as she suspected foul play. The house was searched, and nothing was found. Crippen and Le Neve, however, were spooked, and fled to the continent, where they bought a passage on a steamer bound for Canada.

The guilty couple’s disappearance triggered more exhaustive searches of the house and , eventually, the remains of a woman were found under the basement floor. The discovery filled newspapers around the English speaking world. Meanwhile, on board the SS Montrose, Le Neve had cropped her hair and disguised herself as a boy, but the Captain had his doubts and sent a radio telegram to Britain. With great alacrity Chief Inspector Walter Dew, no doubt smarting that he had accepted Crippen’s earlier story at face value, took an express boat to Canada, and arrived in Quebec before the SS Montrose.

Crippen and his ‘boy’ were duly arrested, brought back to England, and were duly tried. Crippen was found guilty and was hanged at Pentonville Prison on 23^rd November 1910. Le Neve? She escaped with a minor conviction and left for Canada on the morning of her lover’s execution. The mundane is never far away in these dramas, however, and Le Neve returned to England, changed her name, and died in relative obscurity in 1967, in Croydon of all places. Below is a composite of Ethel Le Neve contrasting her feminine and boyish modes.

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