His labours came to an end at about noon, and in need of a drink he went out to a local pub, where he fell into conversation with a Mr Judd. They chatted about property. Robinson told Mr Judd about a flat that he had to let and the two men returned to the office, where Judd was furnished with the flat’s particulars. He was then asked if he would mind giving Robinson a hand with the trunk and help him take it downstairs to the hall. Judd obliged. The trunk was very heavy. ‘Are you travelling in lead?’ he puffed. ‘No, I’m taking some books to the country,’ replied Robinson.
A few minutes later Robinson hailed the taxi that had just stopped under the blue lamp of the police station. It seems incredible that he could behave so matter-of-factly and yet be so stupid. For after having acted with such deliberation and care that morning and the day before, he now publicly associated himself with the trunk and left it where it was bound to be discovered before long. The knife, as he later showed the police, was buried under a hawthorn tree on Clapham Common.
The trial of John Robinson began at the Old Bailey on Monday, 11 July. The judge was Mr Justice Swift. Mr Percival Clarke led for the Crown, assisted by Mr Christmas Humphreys. Robinson was defended by Mr Lawrence Vine.
Robinson himself gave evidence, in which he admitted more or less everything, except an intention to kill. When asked why he did not go to the police, he said: ‘Because I was in a blue funk and did not know what to do.’
Dr Brontë was called by the defence to combat Sir Bernard Spilsbury’s evidence. Spilsbury had said, and was supported by the police surgeon who did the post mortem, that the bruises on Mrs Bonati had been caused by direct blows and pressure, probably from a knee. Congestion in the lungs, Spilsbury had maintained, showed that she had lain on her back for some time and that no coal-gas poisoning, heart disease or epilepsy was involved. He concluded that she had been asphyxiated after a violent assault. And a cushion found in the office seemed the most likely object to have been used to silence any cries she made.
Brontë, supporting Robinson’s contention that on returning to the office he had found Mrs Bonati face down on the floor, suggested that she could have suffocated with her face in the folds of the carpet (which was threadbare), or in the crook of her elbow. He disputed Spilsbury’s timing of the bruises, saying they could have been caused several hours before death, before she and Robinson met.
Another witness for the defence was the dead woman’s former husband, Frederick Rolls, who said Minnie Bonati was much addicted to drink and was sometimes very violent – she had attacked him many times.
The jury were not convinced by Dr Brontë’s vigorous assumptions, nor was the judge impressed. As in Thorne’s case, the judge asked the accused why he did not summon help and inform the police when he found the woman dead in his room. Robinson replied: ‘I did not look at it in that light.’
After being out for an hour, the jury returned a verdict of ‘Guilty’. John Robinson was sentenced to death on Wednesday, l3 July and hanged at Pentonville Prison on 12 August 1927.
25
BROWNE AND KENNEDY
THE MURDER OF PC GUTTERIDGE, 1927
Apart from soldiers, the uniformed men most likely to be killed are policemen. Unarmed, unless in special circumstances, for well over a hundred years they had little defence against the law-breakers they attempted to apprehend in the execution of their duties.
At dawn on Tuesday, 27 September 1927, a post-office worker called Bill Ward was driving north across Essex from Romford to Abridge, delivering mail. He stopped at Havering and Stapleford Abbotts. His next port of call was Stapleford Tawney. Just before six o’clock, as he approached Howe Green, he came to a right-hand bend in the road on a slight incline and on rounding the bend he saw a man propped up against the opposite bank with his legs sticking out into the road.
Mr Ward stopped his car and investigated. A thick trail of blood led across the road to where the body lay; it was that of a uniformed and caped policeman. His helmet lay near him, as did a pocket book. A pencil was still clutched in his right hand. Despite the fact that the policeman’s head was a bloody mask, Mr Ward recognised the dead man as PC George Gutteridge.
Ward ran back up the road to Rose Cottage. His knocking awakened Alfred Perritt, an insurance agent, who dressed and went back to the body with Ward. Mr Perritt, picking up the feet, swung the body round so that it lay parallel to the hedge and was not in danger of being run over. Next on the scene was the driver of a country bus. Ward drove on to Stapleford Tawney, from where he telephoned Romford police station.
By about quarter to eight, Detective Inspector Crockford had arrived. He saw that PC Gutteridge had been shot in the face. The dead man seemed to have been taken completely by surprise by the attack, as he was clearly about to make a note in his pocket book: his truncheon was in its place at his side, his torch was in a pocket. His whistle hung loose, however, outside his tunic.
Dr Robert Woodhouse was called out from Romford by nine o’clock and surmised that the murdered policeman had been dead for four or five hours. The body was removed to a cart-shed at the Royal Oak public house and taken the following morning to Romford mortuary, where Dr Woodhouse made a post-mortem examination. He found that PC Gutteridge had been shot four times at close range, twice through the left cheek near the ear – and once in each eye.
PC Gutteridge had lived with his wife, Rose, at Stapleford Abbotts. He had been out on night patrols on the 26th and 27th, covering his beat on foot. It was his custom and duty to meet up with another policeman PC Taylor, for a conference about 3 am outside Grove House at Howe Green. Taylor was a little late in the early hours of the 27th and when he turned up at the rendezvous the two men stood chatting in the quiet autumnal night until 3.25 am. ‘It was not an exceptionally dark night,’ said PC Taylor. ‘But it was fairly dark. There was a fog, or what I would describe as a summer mist, in certain of the lower places … but not on the high hill.’ Taylor was home and in bed by half-past four. Gutteridge set off homewards along the Ongar-Romford road, passing Rose Cottage and walking downhill as the road turned left. As he approached this bend, a car came speeding towards him.
Less than an hour before this, 10 miles to the east, a blue four-seater Morris-Cowley car, TW 6120, had been stolen from the garage of Dr Edward Lovell’s house in London Road, Billericay. He had parked it in the garage about 7.30 pm on Monday the 26th and had locked the garage door, leaving two cases of surgical instruments and dressings and a small case with some drugs inside the car. The following morning, after breakfast, he found the garage door had been forced and the car had gone. Later, neighbours remembered a car being started up about half-past two and passing with headlights ablaze down the Mountnessing Road. Dr Lovell reported the theft of his car to the police and was able to tell them that the mileometer must have read about 6640.9 when the car was stolen.
The Morris had already been spotted, 42 miles away in south London, in a narrow passage behind 21 Faxley Road, Brixton. Albert McDougall, a crippled clerk, who lived at that address, left home by the back door at about half-past seven on his way to work. ‘It was a very cold morning,’ he said, ‘with a mist.’ He edged around the car, and happening to touch it ‘on account of my disability’, noticed that the radiator was ‘very warm’. When he returned home at about 5.50 pm, the car was still there. He noticed that the nearside mudguard had been torn off, and after some thought reported his find to a policeman he chanced to find in Brixton Road. PC Alfred Edmonds casually inspected the car – it was empty of any cases – and telephoned Brixton police station.
At about 6.45 pm, Sergeant Hearn arrived, and as it was now dark he drove the car to the police station yard, where he and DC Hawkyard examined it by the light of a torch. Having checked the registration number, they now knew that it was Dr Lovell’s stolen car and had come from Essex. They discovered an empty cartridge case under the front nearside seat, marked RLIV on the cap, indicating it was a Mark IV made at the Royal Laboratory in Woolwich Arsenal – a typ
e of flat-nosed bullet that had been issued to the British Expeditionary Force in 1914. It was later noticed to have been scarred by a fault in the breech-block of the gun that had fired it. The two policemen also discovered bloodstains on the running-board by the driver’s door. The mileometer read 6684.3. The distance from Dr Lovell’s house to Brixton police station, via Faxley Road, was later found to be about 42 miles.
There were no further developments for four months, although hundreds of policemen were employed in a determined hunt to find the killer of PC Gutteridge. The murder weapon had been a Webley revolver, according to the expert gunsmith Robert Churchill, and two Webleys were found in the mud of the Thames. But it was proved that neither had fired the cartridge found in the car, for neither left the same small mark on the cartridge cases of test bullets fired by Mr Churchill. Meanwhile, a watchful eye was kept on known car thieves and associated criminals in south London.
One of these suspects was Frederick Guy Browne, whose real name was probably Leo Brown. Aged forty-six, he was described as a ‘tall (5 ft 7 in), well-built, dark-complexioned man with a heavy moustache’ and grey eyes. A strong, powerful man, born in Catford in 1881, he was a very capable mechanic, was easily provoked to anger and as easily assuaged. He suffered from complex feelings of resentment against society and the law – not surprisingly, as he had been in and out of jail (four sentences of hard labour and four years’ penal servitude) since the age of twenty-nine, when he had been living with his widowed mother in Eynsham, repairing bicycles by day and stealing them at night.
His first conviction was in 1910 for carrying firearms. In 1915, he married a cook-housekeeper called Caroline. They had a daughter and settled in Clapham. ‘With all his faults,’ said Mrs Browne later, ‘my husband has been decent to me.’ Indeed, he was not a typical ruffian, being a teetotaller, a non-smoker, and faithful to his wife. During the Great War, in March 1917, he joined the Royal Engineers, serving in the Railway Operating Department; he never went overseas. ‘I was never a soldier,’ he said. ‘I was a worker in khaki.’ Convicted for stealing a motorcycle in Petersfield, he was discharged from the army on 5 November 1918 – ‘character, indifferent’ – after which he worked in garages in Clapham and Essex, stealing and altering cars and fraudulently claiming the insurance on them. For this he was arrested with others on Christmas Eve 1923 and sentenced at the Old Bailey on 20 February 1924 to four years’ penal servitude.
He became too violent for Parkhurst Prison and was eventually moved to Dartmoor. There he met and made friends with Fred Counter, who was serving three years for burglary, and was released in March 1927. In June, Browne rented what had been a milk yard next to the Globe cinema in Lavender Hill and turned it into a garage/repair-yard/paint-shop, also called the Globe, at 7a Northcote Road. ‘I profess to be a motor-engineer,’ said Browne in court. ‘And my instruments, I say, are far different to the average garage man. That is to say, I do better-class work, finer things.’ There were spaces for seven cars, a fitter’s shop, and a primitive office at the back in which there was also a bed. Here slept a man employed to keep the books and do odd jobs, of whom Browne said: ‘I got him from the Salvation Army to give him a start.’ This was forty-two-year-old Pat Kennedy.
They had probably already met, in Dartmoor Prison. Kennedy, whose Christian names were either Patrick Michael or William Henry, was born in Ayrshire in 1895. His parents were Irish, though, and he retained an Irish accent all his life. Trained as a compositor, he worked mainly in Liverpool, where in 1911 his first conviction (for indecent exposure) earned him two months’ hard labour. Before that, he was a teenage soldier in South Africa from 1902 to 1903, and for the next eight years served with a Lancashire regiment as William Herbert, ending up as a Lance-Corporal (‘character, indifferent’). Other fines and convictions soon followed the first one: for theft, for being drunk and disorderly, for loitering, for house-breaking and larceny, and again for indecent exposure. For the larceny he was sentenced to three years’ penal servitude. On his release in April 1916 he enlisted in the Hussars, deserted, enlisted in the King’s Liverpool Regiment, deserted, rejoined the King’s under a different name and was discharged with ignominy. His petty criminal career continued from 1920 to 1927. He was hardly ever out of prison, doing time as before for theft, indecent exposure and burglary.
In 1927, the Discharged Prisoners’ Association got him a job on a farm in Cheshire. He was there when he received a letter from Fred Browne. Said Kennedy later:
He invited me to come down and act as manager. He said he would probably have a number of boys under him later, and that he would want me to look after them whilst he was away on repair jobs. He said he could not offer me much money at first, but it would cost me nothing for board and lodgings, as I could live at the garage. He sent me my fare, exact amount, and I borrowed ten shillings … My duties consisted of attending to correspondence, keeping the books, making and dealing with accounts. The man Fred Browne was also sleeping on the premises at the time.
Mrs Browne was still in service then. A handyman, John Dyson, came to work at the garage in August for 25s a week, and Curly Billy, aged twelve, helped here and there.
Business prospered, and on Saturday, 24 September, Browne and his wife rented two rooms in 33a Sisters Avenue, Lavender Hill. Mrs Browne later told the court: ‘Occasionally, if anyone was coming into the garage late, so as not to disturb me he slept in the garage.’ But, she said, on the night of 26 September ‘he returned from work between nine and ten that night … He was at home all night.’
Kennedy told the police a different story, in a very carefully considered and lengthy statement he made after his arrest. ‘I well remember the day of 26th September,’ he said. ‘Browne suggested that I should accompany him to Billericay, to assist him in stealing a Riley car at the end of the High Street, away from the station.’ They went there by train from Liverpool Street station, arriving about 8 pm. They hung about waiting until people went to bed. But Browne was unnerved and deflected from his purpose of taking the Riley from its garage by the barking of a dog. He told Kennedy: ‘We’ll try somewhere else.’ They walked off down the road – both were wearing overcoats and trilby hats – and at the other end of the village they came to Dr Lovell’s house, which had a garage. They waited in a field until well after midnight. Then Browne forced the doors of the garage. Inside was a Morris-Cowley with plenty of petrol in the tank. They pushed it down the gravelled drive on to the road and then for another hundred yards along the road before getting in, Browne in the driver’s seat, Kennedy beside him. The car started noisily and they raced away, avoiding the main roads, having to check signposts as they drove westwards through country lanes, heading back to London. They were on a road leading to Ongar when a man by a bank ahead of them flashed a light as a signal for them to stop.
Kennedy continued:
We drove on, and then I heard a police whistle and told Browne to stop. He did so quite willingly, and when the person came up we saw it was a policeman … He came up close to the car and stood near Browne and asked him where he was going and where he came from. Browne told him we came from Lea Bridge Road garage, and had been out to do some repairs. The policeman then asked him if he had a card. Browne said: ‘No.’ The policeman then again asked him where he came from and Browne stammered in his answer, and the policeman said: ‘Is the car yours?’ I then said: ‘No – the car is mine.’ The policeman flashed his light in both our faces, and was at this time standing close to the running-board on the offside. [PC Gutteridge could also see the occupants by the dim light from the dashboard. Being 6 ft tall, he had to stoop to talk to them.] He then asked me if I knew the number of the car and Browne said: ‘You’ll see it on the front of the car.’ The policeman said: ‘I know the number, but do you?’ I said: ‘Yes, I can give you the number,’ and said: ‘TW 6120.’ He said, ‘Very well, I’ll take particulars,’ put his torch back in his pocket, pulled out his notebook, and was in the act of writing when I heard a report,
quickly followed by another one. I saw the policeman stagger back and fall over by the bank at the hedge. I said to Browne: ‘What have you done?’ and then saw he had a large Webley revolver in his hand. He said: ‘Get out quick.’ I immediately got out and went round to the policeman, who was lying on his back, and Browne came over and said: ‘I’ll finish the bugger,’ and I said: ‘For God’s sake don’t shoot any more – the man’s dying,’ as he was groaning. The policeman’s eyes were open, and Browne, addressing him, said: ‘What are you looking at me like that for?’ and, stooping down, shot him at close range through both eyes.
They returned to the car, driving on into London. Browne told Kennedy to reload the gun, and in his excitement Kennedy dropped a spent cartridge. The other three he threw out of his window. Hitting a patch of fog, Browne smashed the car into a tree, sheering off the nearside mudguard. The car was abandoned about 5.30 am in Brixton, and laden with the doctor’s cases, the pair returned by tram to the Globe garage, where ‘business carried on as usual’.
As the days passed, Kennedy had moments of panic, wanting to flee when he read accounts of the murder in the papers. Browne told him: ‘You’ll stop here and face it out with me.’ Kennedy said later that Browne also threatened him with a gun.
But after two months had passed Browne must have thought they were safe, and Kennedy, whose drinking habits had begun to distress the older man, was told to go. Said Browne: ‘He was a persistent drunkard. I tried all I could – I kept him short of money. I watched him from half-past nine to ten at night, and I could not stop him from drink, and I gave him the sack.’ On 17 December 1927, Browne drove Kennedy to Euston Station, where Kennedy got on a train for Liverpool. Kennedy remained in West Kirby until 13 January 1928 when he returned by train to London with a woman whom he had married on 18 January.
Murder of the Black Museum 1875-1975: The Dark Secrets Behind a Hundred Years of the Most Notorious Crimes in England Page 31