The second day of the trial was interrupted by the separate illnesses of two jurors, who had to be replaced. Two new ones were sworn in and the proceedings were recapitulated for their benefit. A third juryman then fainted, and a fourth asked to be excused. So another two jurors were sworn in and the prosecution’s case was outlined again before the trial continued.
On the third day, Thursday, Ethel Duncan sobbed hysterically as she took the oath, and when she was asked by the judge to identify the prisoner as the man she had met at Richmond she cried: ‘Oh, don’t! Please!’ and sobbed. When he stood up in the dock for her inspection, she stared at him fixedly, then burst into tears. When giving evidence, her voice was almost inaudible. Sir Bernard Spilsbury followed her. He supported the prosecution’s view that Miss Kaye could not have received any fatal injuries from falling on to the coal scuttle, as the scuttle – a cheap one with insubstantial, hollow legs – was undamaged. He did not think that her throat had been cut. But the absence of her head prevented anyone from proving the theory that she had been hit on the head with the axe, and possibly strangled.
Later that afternoon, Mahon himself gave evidence on his own behalf. In telling of his renting of the bungalow he said: ‘I promised Miss Kaye that we would go through with this experiment – this love experiment, we called it. I thought if I took the bungalow for two months it would kill two birds with one stone. After Miss Kaye had finished –’ The judge interrupted: ‘After Miss Kaye had finished?’ Mahon explained: ‘After we had finished our experiment and Miss Kaye had returned, my wife and I could use the bungalow.’
Later on he was overcome with emotion when he related how she had attacked him; he wept. Outside, the weather was close and sultry. During Mahon’s narration of the dismemberment of the body, lightning flashed and there was a clap of thunder. Mahon shuddered and blanched, reminded perhaps of the thunderstorm that had accompanied his burning of the head and limbs.
He was cross-examined for nearly three hours on the Friday morning. When asked by Sir Henry about Miss Kaye’s alleged assault on him, Mahon again broke down in tears. Towards the end of Sir Henry’s interrogation, Mahon’s face ran with sweat; he wiped his eyes repeatedly; he shuddered and seemed about to faint. When he was given a chair he sat on it with his left hand tucked under his right arm; his right hand shook.
Mr Justice Avory’s one-and-a-half-hour summing-up was delivered on the morning of Saturday, 19 July, For the entire duration, Mahon never raised his head. He was quite listless and seemed to be in despair. Found guilty by the jury, he suddenly became animated, making a passionate denouncement of ‘the bitterness and unfairness’ of the summing-up before he was sentenced to death.
Patrick Mahon was hanged by Tom Pierrepoint and William Willis at Wandsworth Prison on 3 September 1924. He weighed 141 lb and was given a drop of 7 ft 8 in. During his time in prison, unable to eat most of his meals, he had lost 9 lb.
On the day itself, he was quite composed, according to Tom Pierrepoint, unlike the day he had been taken to the condemned cell, when he had to be carried along before collapsing in the cell, crying and moaning. But as Pierrepoint pulled the lever, Mahon tried to avoid falling through the trap door by jumping upwards. As he fell, said Pierrepoint, his back struck the edge of the trap.
Later that morning, Sir Bernard Spilsbury performed the autopsy, noting that the neck had been broken in two places, as was usual.
When Spilsbury had arrived at the Officer’s House on 4 May, he found DCI Savage using his bare hands to pick up pieces of decomposing flesh. ‘Are there no rubber gloves?’ he asked, concerned about the risk of infection. There was none. But the Yard, in consultation with Spilsbury and other forensic experts, subsequently devised and assembled the Murder Bag that was thenceforth taken to the scene of any such crime.
23
NORMAN THORNE
THE MURDER OF ELSIE CAMERON, 1924
Sheer stupidity seems to be a characteristic of most murders – not surprisingly, as murder is seldom the act of a sensible person. But having committed the fatal deed, some behave so stupidly that even if not technically insane they would certainly seem to be abnormal. They are careless, they lie, they make a mess of disposing of the body and the evidence, and they cannot resist assisting the police. It sometimes seems they want to be caught, or else cannot believe they ever will be, as if they thought they had put themselves beyond the reach of society and the law.
Elsie Emily Cameron was far from being a typical pretty flapper. A London typist, aged twenty-six, she was small, plain, bespectacled, nervous, even neurotic, and very obstinate. Nonetheless, she was engaged to John Norman Holmes Thorne, a chicken farmer two years younger than she, who lived in a hut on a muddy, rundown small holding at Crowborough in Sussex.
They had met in 1920 at Kensal Rise Wesleyan Church in north London, and although Norman may not have been the brightest boy around, she decided he was quite good-looking and better than nothing. For besides being nice and amenable, he was also a Sunday school teacher, attended Band of Hope meetings and concerts, helped to run the local Scout group and was involved in all kinds of chapel work. Perhaps more than anything else, he had a certain physical attraction. Elsie began walking out with him and eventually determined to marry him.
Norman was then an electrical engineer with Fiat motors at Wembley. He was born in Portsmouth in 1902. His mother died when he was seven; his father, who remarried, was an engineer, an overseer and inspector for the Admiralty. In March 1918, Norman joined the Royal Naval Air Service as a mechanic. Stunned by a bomb blast after he went to Belgium in October 1918, three weeks before the end of the war, he was demobbed in November the following year and on returning to England became a civilian mechanic.
With thousands of others, he was forced to go on the dole in the summer of 1921. Norman, however, was not prepared to put up with this – he was made of sterner stuff – and having bought a field with money from his father for £100, he established the Wesley Poultry Farm, Blackness, Crowborough, Sussex, on 22 August 1921. To begin with, he used to lodge locally while he built his chicken runs and huts. At weekends he bicycled back to London. Then, to simplify matters, he turned one of his brooding houses into a shack for himself, where he set up a sort of home. At this point Elsie began travelling down by train to see him at the weekend, staying with local people at night and with Norman during the day.
They became engaged at Christmas 1922. The following month, Elsie was sacked from her job after being with the same firm for nine years: she was said to be moody and forgetful. Four other jobs followed in fairly quick succession. But in June 1923, she had something else to occupy her mind. It was about then, as Norman later told the police, ‘We became on intimate terms, that is feeling one another’s person and from that it went that I put my person against hers, but in my opinion I did not put it into her. This practice continued on almost all the occasions when Miss Cameron came to the hut. We had previously made up our minds that she should not become pregnant.’
Having given herself to him in this way Elsie, both sexually aroused and frustrated, wrote a long letter to Norman on 28 June, full of passion and repeated endearments such as ‘Oh my pet – lovey – beloved – dearie – treasure – sweetheart – darling’. She wrote:
Our courtship is like a fairy-tale and it will end with ‘They lived happily ever after’ Oh my treasure, how I adore you, you mean everything to me, and oh, if only we could get married. Oh pet, let’s try and do so this year and manage as I said, Lovey. We can manage in a little hut like yours; your Elsie is quite well now and there is no fear of any children for three or four years … Oh, my Darling, how I adore you, what you mean to me you cannot realise … For ever and always. Your own true little sweetheart Elsie. PS. Do not forget my weekend letter.
Elsie’s brother and sister both married in 1923, but the anniversary of her engagement came and went (she spent Christmas with Norman’s neighbours, Mr and Mrs Cosham) without Norman showing any inclination to name
the day – understandably, as the chicken farm wasn’t doing very well. It wasn’t a success, and Norman was in debt. But Elsie was quite prepared for any sacrifice. Love in a hut was, after all, still love.
Unfortunately, Norman’s interest was diverted in the spring of 1924 by a simpler, more immediate attraction. For at a local dance that Whitsun he met a jolly young dressmaker, Miss Elizabeth Coldicott (Bessie). He began to walk out with her, and she ventured as far as his shack in September, where she had tea with him. Norman found her to be warm and understanding, much more fun than Elsie and probably much more receptive to his ‘person’. Casting about for some way of diminishing and distancing his fiancée’s ardour, he took Elsie one day to the Wembley Exhibition, where they visited the stand of the Alliance of Honour. Norman, already a member, paid his subscription and persuaded Elsie to join the Women’s Section for one shilling. The Alliance was of those who pledged to keep themselves pure in deed as well as words.
By this time, Elsie had been out of work for months. Her mental and physical condition, which had never been stable, began to deteriorate. She became hysterical and abusive, or deeply depressed and lethargic, where before she had been merely moodily listless. A doctor diagnosed neurasthenia and prescribed sedative remedies. At the end of October, Elsie stayed in Crowborough for a week. She lodged with the Coshams, and according to Norman they had no sex. Nonetheless, towards the end of November, becoming desperate, Elsie wrote to him informing him she was pregnant – he would have to marry her now.
To convince him, and herself, she met him at Groombridge, between Crowborough and Tunbridge Wells, and talked repeatedly of her pregnancy and their forthcoming marriage. She urged him to fix a date for their wedding and to get the banns called at Tunbridge Wells. Norman was somewhat sceptical of Elsie’s pregnancy – in fact, it was imaginary – and by now he was quite enamoured of Bessie Coldicott, whom he was seeing every night between half-past eight and half-past ten, mainly at the shack.
He wrote to Elsie on Tuesday, 25 November, after the Groombridge visit: ‘You seem to be taking everything for granted. I shall not be going to Tunbridge Wells this week … There are one or two things I haven’t told you … it concerns someone else … I am afraid I am between two fires.’ Elsie replied on 26 November:
My own darling Norman … Certainly I take everything for granted, and especially after what you said on Friday, and I shall expect you to go and arrange our marriage as soon as possible. I really do think you might comfort me in your letters … This worry is very bad for the baby … I feel sick every day and things will soon be noticeable to everybody, and I want to be married before Christmas … I really think an explanation is due to me over all this.
He replied to this letter the following day.
What I haven’t told you is that on certain occasions a girl has been here late at night … When you gave in to your nerves again and refused to take interest in life I gave up hope in you and let myself go … She thinks I am going to marry her, of course, and I have a strong feeling for her or I shouldn’t have done what I have.
His clumsy letter destroyed her. She wrote on 28 November:
You have absolutely broken my heart. I never thought you were capable of such deception. You have deceived me, and I gave you myself and all my love … You are engaged to me and I have first claim on you … Oh Norman, I wouldn’t have believed it of you. It’s a poor thing for a man to let himself go because his girl has her nerves bad … You don’t seem to care how I feel. You don’t write a single word of love to me, and I have stood by you through all your out of work and farm trouble … Well, Norman, I expect you to marry me, and finish with the other girl, and as soon as possible. My baby must have a name, and another thing, I love you in spite of all … I have been told in times gone by that ‘You can’t trust no man,’ but oh Norman, I thought you were different … For ever and always, your own loving Elsie.
On Sunday, 30 November, Elsie arrived unexpectedly at the chicken farm before eleven in the morning. She was aggressive and demanding. Who was the other girl? Was she in trouble? Why hadn’t he gone to Tunbridge Wells? When were they going to be married? To pacify her, Norman assured her they would get married soon. He managed to defer the matter of the date by saying he had to sort that out with his father.
Mollified but still suspicious, Elsie left the farm at 7.50 pm, getting the 8.18 train from Crowborough back to London. Having seen her off at the station, Norman hurried back to the farm, where Bessie Coldicott duly arrived after half-past eight. He told her about his plight. She consoled him and was agreeably sympathetic.
Three days later, on Wednesday, 3 December, Norman’s father visited the hut in response to a letter from his son. They discussed his financial problems and his fiancée. Mr Thorne suggested that Norman, if he had doubts about the pregnancy, should wait until after Christmas before committing himself to any marriage.
Norman wrote a note to Elsie saying his father had been to the farm. On receiving it, Elsie made up her mind: she decided to force the issue. As far as she was concerned, she was practically married to Norman already, so she might as well burn all her boats and go and live with him.
On Friday, 5 December, she had her hair done in a new style. She was cheerful, according to a female lodger living in her parents’ home, and when she left the house, 86 Clifford Gardens, Kensal Rise, about 2.0 pm, she was wearing a green knitted dress, a new jumper and new shoes. She set off for Victoria Station carrying an attaché case containing no underwear but two pairs of shoes, toiletries, and a baby’s frock.
All she had when she walked from Crowborough Station towards the farm was a penny-halfpenny in her purse, and an iron resolve.
Early on 10 December, five days later, her father (a Scottish commercial traveller) sent a telegram to the chicken farm: ‘Elsie left Friday have heard no news has she arrived reply.’ Norman’s answer came by return: ‘Not here open letters cannot understand.’ Mr Donald Cameron waited for a day, then informed the police about his daughter’s disappearance.
On 12 December, PC Beck visited the farm and was given a photo of Elsie by her helpful fiancé. The following day, Norman called at Crowborough police station, eager and anxious to help. He gave them the following account of his movements around the time that Elsie disappeared. He said that on the actual day of her disappearance he cycled to Tunbridge Wells about 1.30 pm, and bought some shoes and a chess set. Returning home about 3.45 pm, he fed his fowls and got milk from the Coshams. He then had his tea. He was in the shack, he said, from about 5 pm to 9.45 pm, when he went to Crowborough Station to meet Bessie Coldicott and her mother. They had been to Brighton for the day and he had arranged to meet them on their return and escort them home from the station. He did so and was back in his shack by about 11.30 pm. On Saturday, 6 December, he went to Groombridge station, expecting to meet Elsie. She had written to him, he said, asking him to meet her there. On finding no sign of Elsie at the station, he got the next train to Tunbridge Wells, where he did some shopping and then came home. As usual about tea time he collected some milk from the Coshams, and learning from them that a party at their house that night had been cancelled, he went instead to the cinema with Bessie Coldicott. The next day he wrote to Elsie Cameron – ‘My own darling Elsie … Well, where did you get to yesterday?’
The police were able to confirm much of this. But they also discovered that Elsie, carrying her attaché case, had been seen by two homeward-plodding flower growers, Bert and George. She had been walking purposefully along a road that passed the chicken-farm at about 5.15 pm on the 5th. Meanwhile, Norman – ‘I want to help all I can’ – was showing policemen and reporters around the farm, inviting them into his shack (11 ft 8 in by 7 ft 5 in) and guiding them about the chicken runs. He talked freely with the reporters, posing for photographs with his dog and among his chickens. ‘What about here?’ he asked. ‘Feeding the chickens?’ And he was snapped in the very chicken run under which what remained of the unfortunate Elsie was
interred.
Questioned again by the police, Norman, though as helpful as ever, was definite: Elsie Cameron had never arrived at the farm – the horticulturists were mistaken. On New Year’s Eve he wrote to Bessie:
My darling Bessie. Looking back over the last few months I perceive many changes in my life … I have been in love twice … the second was with Elsie … had a strange disposition and strange parents … They tried to force her on me … Honour bright, darling, I never felt for any girl as I do for you … No one knows the struggle that has raged within, but dearest of pals, you have pulled me through. Love, Honour, Bessie – my watchwords for 25 …
A month had passed since Elsie disappeared, but the local police were still doggedly pursuing their enquiries. At the beginning of January 1925, they made a routine call on one of Norman’s neighbours, Mrs Annie Price, who when asked said she had actually seen Elsie walk through the chicken-farm gate on 5 December at about 5.15 pm.
Scotland Yard were called in by the Sussex police and before long Chief Inspector Gillan of the Yard decided he had no option but to arrest Norman Thorne on suspicion of having had something to do with Elsie’s disappearance or death.
At 3.30 pm, on 14 January 1925, he was picked up at the farm by CI Gillan and detained at Crowborough police station. When the police arrived at the shack Norman was sitting at a table with a letter to Bessie in front of him, in which he suggested that they should not see each other for a while. While he was in the police station, the farm buildings were searched, and an Oxo-cube tin, discovered in a toolshed, was found to contain Elsie’s wristwatch – damaged – some jewellery and a bracelet. Meanwhile, the police, armed with spades and shovels, had begun to dig.
Murder of the Black Museum 1875-1975: The Dark Secrets Behind a Hundred Years of the Most Notorious Crimes in England Page 29