Murder & Crime in London
Page 9
He claimed that he had gone to the Shoreditch Empire at half past nine on the evening of 31 December 1910 – this was corroborated by Snellwar, a Jack Taw and the Brodsky family, but denied by the manager of the Empire. He couldn’t remember what he had paid but he came back to his digs at about midnight, his landlord bolting the door after him – this was substantiated in court by his landlord. The iron bar (if indeed it was an iron bar he had brought to the restaurant the night before) did not have the same shape as the indentations on the head of the deceased.
The most telling evidence was that of three cabmen, Hayman, Stephens and Castlin, who had described their fare in great detail. Hayman swore he had picked up the accused and a smaller man at 2.30 a.m. from the Mile End corner of Sidney Street and taken them to Lavender Hill. He altered the time to 2 a.m. in a later statement, to fit in – otherwise he couldn’t have picked him up. Stephens and Castlin had picked up Morrison at Clapham Cross and Kennington respectively. Both had seen Morrison’s face in the papers prior to identifying him on 17 January and Stephens had not recognised Morrison’s portrait. Could identification be made at that time of night?
Steinie Morrison in the dock.
The problem with this trial was that according to the Criminal Evidence Act of 1884, no question may be put to the prisoner which tends to show previous bad character or convictions. This was not adhered to. It is also, even today, a common weakness of juries to think that a man is more likely to be guilty if he has been guilty of other crimes. The accused should be convicted solely on the evidence directly relevant to the crime he is charged with.
Finally, on 15 March, the presiding judge, Mr Justice Darling, aware that there was no direct evidence linking Morrison to the crime, said that there was reasonable doubt as to whether the evidence established the guilt of the prisoner. Thirty-five minutes later the jury gave its guilty verdict. A petition to the Home Secretary, Winston Churchill, commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment. The dejected Morrison, claiming his innocence to the end, starved himself to death, eventually dying in Parkhurst on 21 January 1921.
The arresting officer, Inspector Wensley, was to have an exceptional career, ending up as Chief Constable of the CID. His involvement in the Steinie Morrison case was, however, contentious, as he has been accused of trying to shepherd the witnesses to try to create a watertight case.
fifteen
TRUE TO YOURSELF
The following case would probably have been consigned to the dustbin of murder cases had it not been for an outcry from the Press at the disparity of the outcome of this trial and that of another.
Finborough Road, SW10, is a soulless, long traffic corridor in the West Brompton district with tall crumbling late Victorian/early twentieth century terraced houses. It was a street of relatively cheap housing within easy access to the centre of London and near to the Earl’s Court tube station. The end of the First World War also saw the resurgence of serious crime caused, in part, by post-war deprivation and a serious case of demoralisation. This road would certainly court this.
Twenty-five-year-old Gertrude Yates had been a shopgirl in a furriers in the West End, but found that her looks and youth attracted a better class of gentlemen who would pay her well for more personal services in her basement flat, festooned with ‘sateen weeping Pierrot dolls, shiny pots, reminders of daytrips to seaside resorts and sequinned greeting cards that were too pretty to throw away.’ Olive Young, as she preferred to be called, earned enough money to employ a daily maid, Emily Steel, who also lived on the same road. She was, as she put it, ‘a lady with male friends’.
Ronald True (1892-1951) was one of these ‘male friends’. He was the epitome of a man with Byronic good looks. He was tall, dark and handsome with large eyes, an airman’s moustache and more dash than cash. He was a twinkly-eyed gregarious man with a fund of stories about his Flying Corps days and his wealth. The reality was sad and desperate. He was a morphine addict, with violent mood swings, who had been invalided out of the Flying Corps following a very bad knock on the head.
Ronald True.
Born to an unmarried young girl of 16 who had the good fortune to make a very advantageous marriage some eleven years later, Ronald went to the local grammar school. He had led a nomadic existence, with a liberal allowance from his mother, until the First World War, when he decided to join up. Despite failing most of his exams he managed to get his wings and, on the war’s completion, went to America where his banter, lying and easy charm got him jobs and also lost him jobs. He also acquired a wife. His progressive morphine abuse made his already delicate mental balance even more fragile. He returned to England with his wife and continued his aimless existence, punctuated with frequent absences, to dream, lie, con and satisfy his increasing addiction to morphine.
Despite the birth of a son, his frequent absences made his family very uneasy. They were right to be so. His increasingly erratic forays into the London demimonde, signing dud cheques, stealing and leaving hotels without paying, made ‘Major’ True not just an embarrassment but a liability. His occasional returns enabled the family to have him sent for various cures – but to no avail. His addiction continued to spiral out of control, and affected his sense of reality. He invented an alter ego who was responsible for all his failings – possibly when his addled brain realised just how far he had degenerated. In short he was mad. His family even alerted Scotland Yard, with no success.
Olive and the ‘Major’ met for the first time on 18 February 1922. She took him back to her basement flat where he stayed the night, only to steal £5 from her purse on his departure. He had made her feel uneasy and the theft had made her resolve never to see him again.
She managed to elude him for two weeks despite his continuous telephone calls, but he finally caught up with her just before midnight on Sunday 5 March. She had just caught the tube back from Piccadilly Circus. Despite her misgivings, she let him in and they spent the night together. In the morning he made her a cup of tea and as she sat up in bed to drink it he struck her with a rolling pin, rammed a towel down her throat and strangled her with a dressing gown cord. He left her naked body in the bathroom and stole all the jewellery and cash he could find.
Ronald True, the aviator.
At about 9.15 a.m. Emily Steel, Miss Young’s daily maid, arrived. She made herself a cup of tea and started tidying the sitting room. True appeared, smiling, and said that her mistress was asleep. She was not to be woken up and he would have her collected at about midday. She helped him on with his coat as he was leaving and he gave her half a crown. They both left together, he getting into his chauffeur-driven car, she to return about half an hour later.
Emily knocked on the bedroom door and walked in. She thought someone was sleeping in the bed, but on pulling back the counterpane she found two blood-soaked pillows placed vertically down the bed, and a bloodied rolling pin.
Hurrying out of the bedroom she looked in the bathroom, only to find her bloodied employer’s body lying beside the bath. She phoned for the police, telling them about the chauffeur-driven car.
True continued the day as if nothing had happened, ending up at the Hammersmith Palace of Varieties in the evening, where he dismissed his driver, Mazzola. This man had been driving him around for several weeks and had yet to receive any payment. The police were waiting for Mazzola at his garage. He told them where he had dropped off Major True. Ronald True was arrested at the Hammersmith Palace of Varieties. Items of Miss Young’s jewellery were found in his pockets. He was charged with wilful murder and his trial started on Monday, 1 May 1922.
The story, however, does not end here. Yes, here was a man who needed money. Miss Young had cash and valuables. He murdered her and stole what he could find. He sold what he could, changed his bloodied clothing and tried to avoid detection. This was an act that might be done by a sane man, not an insane one. This is what the police rested its case on.
It was, however, patently obvious to the police when they took him into cu
stody that here was a very deranged and quite possibly insane man. He was placed under the care of Doctors East and Young at the Brixton Prison Hospital, where his sleeplessness and occasional outbursts of violence persuaded the doctors to give him sedatives. He was popular, though, with his fellow inmates, including one Henry Jacoby, but his delusions and highs and lows, followed by periods of intense agony and feelings of persecution, enabled separate medical opinions to judge him as insane. The prosecution was in a quandary. It had True examined by yet another expert, Dr Cole. Dr Cole declared that True was not insane, but with important reservations. The prosecution’s course of action was to not have Cole put in the witness box but to rely on cross-examination and the application of the M’Naghten’s Rules.
The M’Naghten’s Rules are clearly defined for a plea of insanity; the jurors ought to be told in all cases that every man is presumed to be sane, and has sufficient mental faculties to be responsible for his crimes, until the contrary is proved to their satisfaction. It must be proved clearly, to establish a defence on the grounds of insanity, that at the time of committing the act, the accused was labouring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or if he did know it, that he did not know that what he was doing was wrong.
Despite a plea of insanity the jury found him guilty. The Court of Criminal Appeal found no different and the case was then referred to the Home Office. An independent medical panel reviewed the case and reinforced what previous doctors had opined – that the man was a true lunatic. True was accordingly removed to Broadmoor for life.
The public outcry over True’s reprieve was caused by the death penalty meted out to 18-year-old Henry Jacoby five days before True’s trial. Henry Jacoby had been sentenced to death over the murder of an elderly lady guest in the hotel in which he worked. He had planned to steal her valuables when she was asleep but had been forced to silence her when he found her awake.
Henry Jacoby.
The jury who had found Jacoby guilty also made strong recommendations for mercy because of his youth. The public fully expected a reprieve due to Jacoby’s age and the fact that his action was not premeditated. Jacoby, however, was hanged despite his solicitor pleading his case at the Home Office and a petition with thousands of names, including some of his jury, being handed in. The public and the Press thought this was a case of there being one law for the poor and one law for the rich. The Home Secretary was pilloried in the media and in Parliament.
The fact remained that True’s state of mind was constantly referred to in court, whilst Jacoby’s was not. True spent the rest of his life in Broadmoor, popular to the end.
sixteen
SAVED BY THE RAIN
Sir Richard Muir (1857-1924) was widely regarded as the greatest prosecutor of his time. He was originally a reporter for The Times newspaper but turned to law, becoming a Crown Prosecutor. He represented every notable trial until his death and was known for his meticulous research.
His methodology was quite simple and very laborious. He would make notes on small cards with different coloured pencils; one colour for examination in chief, one colour for cross-examination and so on. His card system became notorious in his department and with the police. He had little time for eyewitness testimony but relied on physical evidence and would always visit, and carefully annotate, the scene of crime. In one instance it would fail him miserably, because, for once, he did not follow his golden rule.
It was early evening on Wednesday, 9 May 1923. The West End was busy. People were returning from work and crowds were beginning to assemble for the evening’s entertainment. Shaftesbury Avenue’s Globe Theatre was showing ‘Aren’t We All’, a delicious Lonsdale comedy starring Marie Lohr. The cab ranks were piling with empty cabs waiting for their fares.
Thirty-nine-year-old Jacob Dickey, a cab driver, was ranked outside the Trocadéro. A young man hailed him and asked to be taken to Brixton. It was a fateful and fatal journey for Mr Dickey.
Brixton’s Baytree Road, a quiet shortcut from Brixton Hill to Acre Lane, is an innocuous road even nowadays. It boasts tidy two-storey terraced houses with small front and back gardens. That evening, however, its suburban calm was punctured by two gunshots. Furtive eyes behind the muslin curtains viewed a man running away from an open-doored cab – and a body lay on the ground.
Sir Richard Muir.
Baytree Road.
Jacob Dickey.
A telephone call alerted the Brixton police. The cab was stationary in the middle of the street; the body, that of the unfortunate Jacob Dickey, lay on the ground, as did a bloodied suede glove, a gold-topped ebony cane, a jemmy wrapped in a newspaper, and the murder weapon – a pistol.
Witnesses saw a man running towards 28 Baytree Road and indeed, a torch was found on the ground of its open garage. Footprints in the back garden and scuff marks on the wall showed that a person had jumped over in a hurry. An elderly and frightened woman living at 15 Acre Lane had seen a man jump off the wall into her back garden. He had asked gruffly if he could go through her house to get to Acre Lane. She was too terrified to say no and he disappeared.
The police had some clues. The local Superintendent, Frank Carlin, told them to contact the local newspaper to print a photograph of the unusual cane, it might bring results. He wasn’t wrong. A cane in those days was part of a man’s wardrobe. This one, besides, was a very unusual one. An informant rang in to say it looked very much like the cane of a small-time American crook going by the name of Eddie Vivian. He was a professional housebreaker who sometimes carried a gun. The informant had seen him in Soho with a similar stick.
Mr Vivian was found in Charlwood Street, Pimlico, in his girlfriend Hettie Colquhoun’s flat. Once back in Brixton he recognised his cane and his torch. He was very candid in his interrogation. On 9 May he had been in bed with an upset stomach. He’d eaten some bad sardines on Sunday. He had lent the cane to a friend, ‘Scottie’ Mason.
His story was that ‘Scottie’ (Alexander), a 22-year-old from Lanarkshire, and a Canadian deserter from the First World War, was a good friend of his. They had both done a job and been caught and sent to prison but kept up their friendship. Mason had just got out of jail for another job the preceding Saturday and visited Vivian on Sunday. They made plans to do a few more burgling jobs and had done some reconnaissance in South London on Monday and Tuesday. They were to do a ‘job’ on Wednesday but Vivian’s stomach was still too sore so he opted out. Mason decided to do the job on his own. He borrowed the stick ‘to look posh’, the gloves, the torch and the jemmy, and left Mason at 7.30 p.m. that evening.
Superintendent Frank Carlin.
Mason returned dishevelled, bloodied and dirty at 11.30 p.m., claiming that he had botched the job and ‘shot a taxi driver’. He stayed the night and left the next morning.
Vivian was kept in police custody and on Saturday 12 May a police sergeant recognised Mason in the street and arrested him. Once at Brixton, Mason acknowledged that he had been arrested because of his connection with Vivian. They were both put in an identity parade on Sunday where the two ladies of 15 Acre Lane recognised Mason. Vivian was released and Mason pleaded his innocence at the Police Court but made no written statement.
Prior to the Old Bailey trial on 7 July 1923, the Crown Prosecutor, Sir Richard Muir, visited the scene of the crime but never got out of the car to check it because of heavy rainfall. He requested, instead, that a policeman take a scaled diagram of the scene.
The trial lasted four days. On the second day, Mason’s legal aid counsel, Arthur Fox-Davies (also known for his books on heraldry), cross-examined Vivian. He put it to him that the pistol was his. Vivian refuted this. Fox-Davies continued his attack, suggesting that Vivian was not ill on Wednesday as he had eaten the sardines on Sunday. The whole story was concocted to allay Hettie’s suspicions. Vivian refuted this too.
Vivian acknowledged buying the jemmy. Fox-Davies contended that Vivian used a shady taxi
driver by the name of Jakey to take him to ‘jobs’. Vivian denied knowing any taxi driver by that name, or knowing Jacob Dickey. Fox-Davies then suggested that once Hettie had left the flat, Vivian got dressed, arranged to meet Mason at the corner of Baytree Road and hailed a cab at the Trocadéro. He then had an argument with the cab driver at Baytree Road and shot him. Vivian also disputed this.
Mason would later deny he had a pistol, saying that Vivian had showed him one on Monday at which Mason had said, ‘I won’t work with anyone who’s got a gun’. He also maintained he had tried to stop Hettie worrying and told her that Vivian was ill on Wednesday. Mason also said that he had waited for Vivian at Baytree Road, saw him arriving with the cab driver, heard the quarrel, saw Vivian jump out with the cabbie in hot pursuit and then heard the gunshots. Mason then ran, climbing over the front wall of 28b Baytree Road and into the garage yard. He heard Vivian ask for help, as his legs were injured, but Mason thought better of it and ran on through the house at 15 Acre Lane.
Mason, the murderer.
When Mason arrived back at the flat Vivian was there. Vivian explained that he had climbed over some garden walls into a street, mingled with crowds and taken a taxi from Kennington Road. Jacob Dickey’s sister was brought to the stand and refused to countenance that her brother was dishonest.
Vivian’s evidence was the prosecution’s sole weapon. After a four-day trial the jury took just seventeen minutes to find Mason guilty. His appeal was also dismissed. The Home Secretary, William Bridgeman, however, thought that there was enough room for doubt and reprieved Mason five days before his execution.
There had, it transpired, been an error in court. The police had been negligent. The tracing of Baytree Road and Acre Lane was inaccurate and out of date. The constable charged with the drawing had taken the tracing from the Ordnance Survey without checking for any changes. The map had shown an opening between the houses fronting Acre Lane at the back of the garage yard through which Vivian and Mason could easily escape. The opening no longer existed! It had been fully blocked by a new building, meaning Vivian could never have got out if he had been injured.