Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in Southampton

by John J Eddleston

  Mrs Joan Mary Ware had made the formal identification of Charles Barrett’s body. Joan was a widow and the daughter of the dead man. She had last visited her father the previous winter and at that time he had been in good health.

  After the attack, Dennis Charles Barrett, the dead man’s son, had been taken to the house in Belmont Road by Inspector Masters. The safe was opened and whilst Dennis was present, Inspector Masters took possession of £250 of Premium Bonds. The numbers were the same as those written on the back of the receipt found in the wallet in Spring Crescent: WB 222001 to 222200 and PB 288751 to 288800. Further, Dennis was able to say that the numbers had been written in his father’s hand.

  Gladys May Cole was the wife of the licensee of the Royal Oak and on 16 January she had said that she believed Tatum was in her pub on the night Charles Barrett was attacked. Gladys had now retracted that and now testified that she did not think she had seen Tatum on the night in question. However, the Trevor and Don that Tatum had referred to had both made statements admitting that they had indeed met up with him.

  Trevor Graham Toughill lived at 96 Portswood Road and on 5 January, he had been in the Gordon Arms when he met ‘Mike’, the name by which he knew Tatum. Trevor was a lodger at Dons parent’s house and he now confirmed that all three of them had been out for a drink on 5 January. Mike had told them that he was in the Australian navy and was a single man. On 15 January, the three new friends went out to a number of pubs including the Gordon Arms and the Belmont Hotel, which they left at 8.30pm. They caught a bus into town and on that journey, Mike admitted that he was broke. He borrowed some money off Don, saying that he would pay him back on Friday, when he got his wages. The three men had a drink in town before returning to the Gordon Arms where they arrived in time for last orders. All three then went back to Portswood Road and Mike left at around 11.35pm.

  The next morning, 16 January, Mike returned to Don’s house at 10.20am and returned the £1 he had borrowed the night before. Trevor and Mike then went to the Gordon Arms again at which point Mike, maintaining the idea that he was in the Australian navy, said that he had exchanged some currency and was disappointed with the rate he had received. Mike then pulled out a wallet, which Trevor now said looked very much like the one produced as an exhibit in court; the one identified as belonging to the dead man.

  Later that day, Mike had asked if he might borrow a brown suit, though he gave no reason for this request. Trevor was also able to say that Mike had never mentioned meeting anyone else after he had left Don’s house, nor had he ever mentioned anyone named Terry Thatcher.

  The next witness was Keith Donald Russell, the Don in Tatum’s story, and he backed up much of what Trevor Toughill had said. He was also able to confirm to the court that Mike was none other than the prisoner in the dock.

  Trevor Turley lodged at 36 Cambridge Road and had shared his room with Tatum since the latter had left Belmont Road. Trevor had not known Tatum’s surname and he too only knew him as Mike. He had been told, by Mike, that he was in the Australian navy.

  On the evening of 15 January, Trevor had left his lodgings at 6.00pm. Mike was still there at the time but when Trevor returned home at 11.00pm, Mike was out. He was still out when Trevor went to bed. When he woke at 8.00am the next morning, Mike was in bed.

  Edward Thomas Stacey worked at the Employment Exchange and he confirmed that there was no one registered with the name Terry Thatcher. Tatum was registered, from 3 December 1958 and had last signed on 17 December.

  Eric Dermott Sweet was the Principal Scientific Officer at the Metropolitan Police laboratory at New Scotland Yard. On 17 January, he had received the knobkerrie, samples of the dead man’s hair, and items of Tatum’s clothing including a dark grey overcoat, a pair of trousers, and a pair of gloves.

  The head of the knobkerrie was some three and three quarter inches long by two and a half inches thick. There were several bloodstains observed on the head but only a small amount on the part of the shaft that the assailant would have held. The weapon had broken in two places during the attack. Two human hairs had been found on the shaft, and these were similar to the samples removed from Charles Barrett after death. As for the clothing collected, no blood was found on any of the items, apart from the gloves. These appeared to have been dyed recently but traces of blood were found in the stitched seams.

  In effect, Tatum’s defence was two-fold. In the first place, it was claimed that he had not entered the house alone and that Terry Thatcher was the man who had struck the fatal blows. Tatum had had no idea that violence would be used. The second part of the defence was that Tatum was showing signs of schizophrenia and therefore had impaired mental responsibility. These two factors meant that he should be found guilty of manslaughter and not murder.

  The first line of defence has already been mentioned. The local employment exchange had no record of a Terry Thatcher but the police were not prepared to let the matter rest there. A much wider net had been cast and a Terry Thatcher was, eventually, found, living in Chiswick, London. He testified that he did not know Tatum and had only ever been in Southampton once in his life. That was to a football match some eight years previously. Even Tatum had to admit that this was not the Terry Thatcher he claimed to have known.

  Of more import, perhaps, was evidence called as to Tatum’s mental state. The court heard that up to 1956, Tatum had been a good and conscientious worker but then, for no apparent reason, had started to tell lies. Dr Atkin testified that such episodes were symptomatic of the early stages of schizophrenia. Examples of these lies had already been given in court, when witnesses stated that Tatum had told them he was in the Australian navy. Other examples were also given. On one occasion, Tatum had visited a cinema projectionist in Kensington and told him he was a policeman. On other occasion, when he worked at the Renown Cinema in London he had failed to turn up for work one day and sent a messenger to tell his employer that his wife was very ill. Later, another message said that she had died. The staff organised a collection and purchased a wreath to show their sympathy and support when, a day or two later, Mrs Tatum walked in and asked for her husband’s wages! Not surprisingly, Tatum was sacked.

  In due course the jury retired to consider their verdict. They found that Tatum was guilty as charged and, since this was a capital crime, the only sentence possible was death by hanging. An appeal was entered against that sentence but this was dismissed on 27 April and Tatum’s fate was sealed.

  On Thursday, 14 May 1959, twenty-four-year-old Michael George Tatum was hanged at Winchester by Robert Leslie Stewart and Thomas Cunliffe. It was the fourth execution of the year and three more men would face a similar fate before the year was over.

  Chapter 9

  Cowboys and Indians Keith Ridley 1960

  Saturday, 20 February 1960 was a perfectly normal day in Mayfield Park, Southampton. There were three separate football matches taking place on the pitches and in all, around one hundred people cheered on the various teams. In the woods nearby, a group of eight or ten children were enjoying a game of Cowboys and Indians in an area known locally as Smuggler’s Den.

  Two of the children playing in the woods were thirteen-year-old Malcom Dawkins and his nine-year-old sister, Iris Margaret. The brother and sister were very close and Malcolm had even loaned Iris his precious Rustler Gem toy pistol so that she could join in. Then, suddenly, in the excitement of the game, Iris slipped and fell into a small stream. The little girl got her feet wet and some mud on her legs. With a sigh, she said she would have to go home to get changed. It was then around 4.00pm.

  At around 4.45pm, Malcolm decided that it was about time he headed off for home too. Arriving at the family house at 7, Sparsholt Road, Weston, Malcolm naturally asked how Iris was and was surprised to hear that his parents had seen nothing of her. He explained about her accident and said that she had left the woods about forty-five minutes before and should have arrived home well before him.

  Iris Dawkins was a shy girl and not one to talk
to strangers. This immediately raised concerns with her parents, Percy and Maisie, who wasted no time in taking their concerns to officers at Bitterne police station. A search was organised and, at 11.00pm that night, Iris’ body was found in Mayfield woods, a few hundred yards from where she had been playing her game. Iris lay face downwards on a piece of boggy land and she had been stabbed repeatedly. The toy gun she had borrowed from her brother was found amongst the folds of her clothing. A later examination would show no less than thirty-nine stab wounds, of varying degrees of severity. It would also show that no sexual assault had taken place.

  A public appeal was made for anyone who had been in the area of Mayfield Park that afternoon. A description of the clothing Iris had been wearing was also circulated and this informed the public that at the time she had met her death, the little girl had been dressed in a pale blue woollen jumper, dark blue jeans, black plimsolls and a white hat. Anyone who had seen a girl wearing those clothes was asked to contact the police without delay.

  The response was all the investigating officers could have hoped for. By 22 February, two days after the murder, more than one hundred people who had been watching the football matches, playing in them, or just walking in the vicinity of the woods, had come forward. Most of them had seen nothing untoward but they were able to pass on descriptions of other people they had seen in the area.

  Officers were drafted in to the enquiry and visited no less than fifteen local schools. The children were spoken to and asked to answer three questions. First, had they been in the park on the previous Saturday? Second, could they describe anyone they had seen there? Third, if they had already been interviewed by the police, had they thought of anything else since?

  The funeral of the tragic victim took place at Weston Church in Weston Lane, at 3.30pm on Friday, 24 February. It was well attended and, in the meantime, it looked as if the police might well have got the breakthrough they so badly needed.

  Malcolm Hughes was, like Iris, nine years old and he attended the same school as the dead girl. He had been a friend of hers and told officers about a ‘big bully’, a larger and older boy who had been in the woods a week before Iris had met her death. This boy, who Malcolm said was about thirteen or fourteen, had pushed Iris down a grassy bank in the woods and when Malcolm bravely went to help his friend, the boy had thrown a knife at him. Luckily the knife missed but the boy made it plain that if they spoke to anyone about what had happened, he would hurt them. Malcolm described the boy as being about five feet seven inches tall, with ginger or auburn hair. He had freckles on his face and a scratch near one eye. He was wearing a black leather jacket. Could it be that this bully had been in the woods the following week too? It was certainly someone the police needed to speak to.

  Other people had also come forward to describe individuals they had seen in the woods on that fateful Saturday. Many of these people had, in their turn, also been traced, interviewed and eliminated but, by 26 February, the police had issued descriptions of two young men they wished to interview.

  The first of these was the bully described by Malcolm Hughes but the second was a boy seen, at about 4.00pm, leaning against a tree on a wooden slope at the back of the goalposts near the Barnfield Road end of the park. This was only about forty yards from where Iris’ body was later found. He was described as being about fifteen years old, had fair, untidy hair and a round face which was either dirty or muddy.

  The following day, Saturday, 27 February, the game of Cowboys and Indians was reconstructed, in the hope that further memories would be jogged. A total of ten children were in the woods at the time; five who had been playing with Iris and five others who had come forward with some information about people they had seen in the area.

  Still the investigation continued. On Monday, 29 February, a team of fifty police officers started making door to door enquiries in the Weston, Itchen and Woolston areas. It was on that day, as a result of those door to door interviews, that a ten year old boy came forward to say that he had seen Iris as she was heading home from her playmates.

  This was a crucial statement for, up to this time, no one had been found who had seen Iris alive after she had parted from her brother and the other children. The boy was taken to the Bitterne police station on the afternoon of 29 February and given a room overnight so that he could be interviewed at length.

  As a result of what this boy said, a report was prepared and sent to the Chief Constable of Southampton, Mr C G Box. He considered that report and then forwarded it on to the Director of Public Prosecutions. The report was digested and as a result, the boy who had come forward was arrested and charged with the murder of Iris Dawkins.

  Throughout all the various legal proceedings and court appearances, the accused boy would never be formally identified to the public. In press reports he was always referred to by only his first name, which the court said could be revealed. So it was that on Monday, 21 March 1960, ten-year-old ‘Jeffrey’ made his first appearance before the magistrates, to be remanded for one week.

  Various other remands followed until eventually Jeffrey was sent to face his trial at the next Wiltshire assizes, at Salisbury. They opened on 10 May and Jeffrey duly appeared before Mister Justice Pilcher who listened to legal arguments and then transferred to case to the Hampshire assizes which would open in July. After all, this had been a Hampshire crime and should be dealt with by the authorities in that county.

  The case finally opened, at Winchester, on Tuesday, 12 July and again the judge in charge was Mister Justice Pilcher. The case for the Crown was led by Mr Peter Rawlinson, who was assisted by Mr A C Munro Kerr. Jeffrey’s defence was led by Mr Norman Skelhorn, assisted by Mr Terence Read. The jury consisted of three women and nine men.

  Details of the game the children had been playing, and of Iris’ subsequent accident in the stream, were given not only by her brother, Malcolm, but also by Pamela Craddock and Russell Otto, two of the other children. They said that Iris had slipped and got her feet wet in the stream. She also had a little mud on her clothing and said she was going home to change. The last time any of them had seen her was when she headed off, towards her home in Sparsholt Road.

  In the early part of the investigation, much import had been given to the story of the ginger-haired bully, related by Malcolm Hughes. Subsequent investigations had shown that Malcolm’s entire story had been an invention. A number of young children had given false accounts to the police and it was surmised that they had not told tales out of malice but simply wanted their moment in the spotlight. They were, after all, only very young. No charges were ever made against Malcolm Hughes or any of the other children who had made up stories.

  The time came to give details of Jeffrey’s involvement in the case. He and his family had first been interviewed on 26 February by Detective Constable Nicholson, as part of a door to door enquiry. The officer had seen Jeffrey in the presence of his mother and the boy had volunteered the information that he was in Mayfield Park on 20 February. Further, he admitted that he had a black leather jacket like that mentioned in one of the descriptions and added that he thought he might have seen Iris leaving the woods.

  Constable Nicholson reported what Jeffrey had said and visited the house for a second time, again as part of the door to door investigations on 29 February. Now Jeffrey elaborated on his story saying that when he had seen Iris, he had also seen another boy close by. It was then that Jeffrey was escorted to Bitterne police station so that he could be formally interviewed. He was accompanied by his father and Jeffrey was there overnight, not leaving until 1 March.

  During that interview, Jeffrey had talked of watching stabbings on television and added that it wasn’t real because you could see someone killed in one episode but then next week they’d be back in another play. The conversation continued and Jeffrey then admitted that when he had been in the woods, he had had a knife with him. Further questioning had Jeffrey admit that he had asked Iris to play ‘chase’ with him and at one stage they had fall
en together. He had his knife in his hand at the time and it might well have gone into Iris, but Jeffrey wasn’t sure. Finally, he admitted that it might, after all, have gone into her more than once.

  Jeffrey then made a full statement. He said that he had had a football with him and was kicking it about when it went into the woods. He went to retrieve it and saw Iris walking up the embankment. He described the chase game in detail and then added: ‘When she fell over I fell on top of her and I think the knife went into her shoulder when I fell on her. Only a little though.’

  ‘She was lying down and her eyes were open and she was breathing normally. I thought she was playing.’

  Jeffrey’s testimony did seem to fit with that of Hilda Rosemary Elizabeth Connis who had been in her kitchen at 84 Achery Grove, at around 4.00pm on 20 February. She had looked out of the window and seen a little girl, who may have been Iris, being chased by a boy wearing a black leather jacket.

  On 8 March, Jeffrey had been interviewed for the final time, again at his home. Now he withdrew his statement, said that he hadn’t seen Iris at all. He did play with a girl who looked a bit like Iris but he didn’t have a knife with him at the time.

  Medical evidence was given by Dr Richard Anthony Goodbody, the pathologist who had performed the post-mortem on Iris. He said that many of the thirty-nine wounds inflicted upon Iris were superficial and some were obviously defence wounds. There were three serious wounds, any one of which might have caused death and some of the other wounds appeared to have been inflicted after death.

  There were, however, problems with Jeffrey’s admission to killing Iris. He had described her clothing as different to the items she was actually wearing. He also said that he met her coming from a certain direction when all the evidence pointed to her having walked directly from the woods towards her home. The various medical witnesses could not agree on a precise time of death with opinion now saying that Iris could have been killed as late as 9.30pm that night. Finally, there were the many examples, including the ‘evidence’ of Malcolm Hughes, of children who had invented stories about the murder.