by James Moore
As the blood pumped out of Blakely’s lifeless body it mixed with the froth from the beer of the smashed bottles he’d been carrying. A last, sixth bullet, had injured bystander Gladys Yule in the thumb as she was walking with her husband to the pub. Gunnell burst back into the pub saying ‘she’s got him’. Colson phoned for a police and an ambulance. As chance would have it, an off-duty policeman, Alan Thompson, had been drinking in the saloon bar of the Magdala. When someone rushed in saying, ‘A bloke’s been shot outside,’ he rushed outside and found Ellis still there. She was standing with her back to the wall of the pub, still holding the gun and trembling slightly. Thompson calmly relieved Ellis of the gun and arrested her.
Ruth Ellis, who shot her lover David Blakely outside the Magdala pub in 1955. (© Getty Images)
The Magdala pub in Hampstead, North London, as it is today. (© James Moore)
At her subsequent trial at the Old Bailey in June, Ellis was convicted of murder in just twenty-three minutes. While her guilt was beyond question, the background to the case threw up questions about the verdict and the sentence. Just ten days before the shooting Ellis, already a single mother of two, had lost Blakely’s baby after he had punched her in the stomach. She’d already suffered sexual abuse at the hands of her father and physical abuse from her first husband. What is more, in between the trial and the hanging it had also emerged that another of Ellis’ lovers, Desmond Cussen, jealous of Ellis’ feelings for Blakely, had given Ellis the gun and even driven her to the pub on the day of the shooting.
Many felt that given her distressed mental state, Ellis should have been convicted not of murder but manslaughter. Or, at the very least, that she should have been allowed to end her days behind bars rather than at the hands of the hangman. Before she met her fate, Ellis wrote to Blakely’s parents saying, ‘I have always loved your son, and I shall die still loving him.’
There was fierce criticism of the decision by the Home Secretary at the time to deny Ellis a reprieve from the death sentence and her execution was widely derided. The American thriller writer Raymond Chandler branded it ‘medieval savagery’. The furore surrounding Ellis’ case helped lead to the permanent abolition of the death penalty in Britain in 1969.
If you look closely at the tiled wall of the Magdala today you can still see holes left by fragments of one the bullets fired by Ellis. In 2010 there were reports that Ellis’ ghost had been spotted in a churchyard at Penn, Buckinghamshire, where Blakely is buried. It is across the road from The Crown pub in the village that the pair often frequented.
LOCATIONS: The Magdala, 2a South Hill Park, London, NW3 2SB, 020 7435 2503, www.themagdalanw3.com; Crown Inn, Church Road, Penn, Buckinghamshire, HP10 8NY, 01494 812640, www.chefandbrewer.com
WHERE RONNIE KRAY SHOT GEORGE CORNELL, 1966
The Blind Beggar, Whitechapel, East London; The Carpenter’s Arms, Bethnal Green, East London
‘Well look who’s here,’ said a sneering George Cornell as Ronnie Kray walked into the Blind Beggar pub in London’s East End. They were the last words Cornell would ever say. Ronnie said nothing in reply. He simply took a 9mm Mauser pistol from his pocket, held it a few inches from Cornell and shot him in the head as he sat at the bar. The 6ft, heavyset Cornell spun sideways off his stool and fell fatally injured on to the floor. Still playing on the pub’s jukebox was ‘The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Any More’ by the Walker Brothers.
Cornell’s killing on 9 March 1966 was not the first time that crime and the Blind Beggar on Whitechapel High Street had been bedfellows. The pub was rebuilt in 1894 on the site of an earlier inn and got its name from Henry de Montfort, who was wounded and lost his sight in the Battle of Evesham in 1265. It was outside the inn that William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, had preached his first sermon. But by the turn of the century it had an association with a gang of thieves. And by the time George Cornell met his demise in the bar, there was already a legend about a former member of the gang called Bulldog Wallis. According to the story he had murdered a commercial traveller in a pub by thrusting an umbrella ferrule through his eye and into his brain. No witnesses were prepared to come forward and so he was acquitted, being carried triumphantly back to the East End from his trial at the Old Bailey. In fact this was a popular myth based on a real story from 1891 of a cabinet maker called Frederick Klein who had refused to fight with a 19-year-old gang member called James Ellis. Klein was fatally stabbed through the eye with an umbrella at Gower Street underground station. Ellis, whose real name was Paul Vaughan, did not get away with the killing. He was convicted of manslaughter and was sentenced to twelve months’ hard labour.
Ronnie and Reggie Kray, London’s most famous gangsters, photographed in 1964. (© Getty Images)
While the Blind Beggar may have had local notoriety before the 1960s, it would become world famous after Ronnie gunned down 38-year-old Cornell. The pub was one of the many which were on the patch of the Kray twins Ronnie and Reggie. With their gang, nicknamed The Firm, they already had a reputation for armed robbery, running protection rackets and casual violence. But they were also mini celebrities in their own right, running their own nightclub in London’s swanky West End and schmoozing with stars of the era including the actresses Barbara Windsor, Diana Dors and Frank Sinatra.
The Blind Beggar, Whitechapel, where Ronnie Kray shot George Cornell in 1966. (© James Moore)
The Carpenter’s Arms in East London, a pub once owned by the Krays. (© James Moore)
When the rival Richardson gang, based south of the Thames, began muscling in on the Krays’ act, the mentally unstable Ronnie, in particular, was out for revenge. The killing of an associate called Richard Hart in Catford on 8 March was the final straw. On the evening of the 9th Ronnie had been in another pub, The Lion, on nearby Tapp Street when he got a tip-off that Cornell was having a drink at the Blind Beggar with a friend called Albie Woods. Cornell had been visiting a friend in a nearby hospital who had lost a leg in a shooting. But he must have known he was taking a risk by hanging around afterwards on the Krays’ territory. He and Ronnie already had ‘beef’. Cornell had once called Ronnie, who was gay, ‘a big fat poof’.
At 8.30 p.m. Ronnie and another gang member, Ian Barrie, burst into the saloon bar, where only a few regulars were nursing drinks. Barrie was also armed and fired some shots into the ceiling of the pub. Along with the other drinkers, Cornell’s friend, Woods, jumped to the floor for safety. Ronnie later recalled how he raised the gun towards Cornell: ‘I shot him in the forehead. He fell forward … there was some blood on the counter.’ He and Barrie then promptly made their exit, jumping into a getaway car which was waiting for them outside. They ended up at another pub called The Coach and Horses in Stoke Newington where Ronnie asked another member to dispose of his gun and told Reggie about the shooting.
Cornell died shortly after being shot but police were in doubt as to the culprits. They brought the Krays in for questioning and organised an identity parade. Sadly the barmaid of the Blind Beggar failed to identify Ronnie as the killer. She, and the other witnesses on the evening, had already been intimidated into silence by The Firm. For now at least the Krays were in the clear.
The year after Cornell’s murder the Krays bought a pub for their mum, Violet, called The Carpenter’s Arms on Cheshire Street. It was just round the corner from Vallance Road where they’d grown up. Keen amateur boxers in their younger days, the Krays organised for boxing gloves to be hung behind the bar – which itself was said to be constructed out of coffin lids.
It was here that on 28 October the twins held a party for friends and family of The Firm. But Ronnie and Reggie were preoccupied with what to do about an associate called Jack ‘The Hat’ McVitie, a burly associate who had failed to fulfil a contract to murder a man despite being given down payment and a gun. They became determined that McVitie must get his comeuppance, and Ronnie was keen that Reggie should now notch up his own murder. McVitie was lured to a party on the promise of ‘girls and booze’ at a fla
t in Evering Road, Stoke Newington. Once he was inside, Reg pulled out his revolver, aimed it at McVitie and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. McVitie tried to escape through a window but other members of the Firm wrestled him back. Reggie then grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed McVitie to death while Ronnie held him down. The body was never found.
Meanwhile the police, under Inspector Leonard ‘Nipper’ Read, had been slowly building a case against The Krays. Finally, on 9 May 1968, the twins, along with their brother Charlie and fifteen other gang members, were arrested. As they had hoped, with the Krays now safely in custody, witnesses who had previously been too scared to testify now began to spill the beans.
Key to the case was the barmaid from the Blind Beggar who had originally maintained that she was in the pub cellar when Cornell had been shot. Only ever known as Mrs X, and something of an unsung heroine, she finally called time on the twins by identifying Ronnie and Ian Barrie as the men who had shot Cornell.
The Krays’ trial at the Old Bailey began in January 1969 and lasted thirty-nine days. In the end both twins ended up convicted of murder. Each was given thirty years behind bars with no chance of parole. Their other brother, Charlie Kray, got ten years for helping to dispose of McVitie’s body. Ronnie was subsequently certified insane and eventually died in 1995 from a heart attack. Reggie died in 2000 shortly after his release. On 11 October of that year his funeral cortège passed by the Carpenter’s Arms, which is still serving. The Blind Beggar is also still open and is now thoroughly respectable, sporting a plaque recalling Cornell’s shooting and welcoming in tourists who often drop in for a drink before embarking on Jack the Ripper tours. Another pub on Whitechapel High Street, where the Krays often drank, called the Grave Maurice, was recently closed and turned into a betting shop.
LOCATIONS: The Blind Beggar, No. 337 Whitechapel Road, London, E1 1BU, 020 7247 6195, www.theblindbeggar.com; The Carpenter’s Arms, No. 73 Cheshire Street, London E2 6EG, 020 7739 6342, www.carpentersarmsfreehouse.com
HEAD TO TOE IN BLOOD – THE LUCAN MYSTERY, 1974
The Plumbers Arms, Belgravia, London
Thursday 7 November 1974 was a quiet night in the Plumbers Arms with just eight customers taking refuge from the rain outside and chatting at the bar. Suddenly, at 9.50 p.m., the door opened and a woman burst in wearing only her nightdress. As head barman Arthur Whitehouse would later testify, she was ‘head to toe in blood’ and in a state of shock. Rushing to her aid Arthur got the woman to lie down on a bench and as he did so she turned to him crying, ‘Help me, help me, I’ve just escaped from being murdered.’ She continued, ‘My children, my children, he’s murdered my nanny.’
The woman would turn out to be Lady Lucan, who lived at No. 46 Lower Belgrave Street, a six-storey townhouse located just a few doors away. She had run to the pub for help after being attacked by a man whom she later claimed was her husband, Richard John Bingham – 7th Earl of Lucan. He, so her account went, had already killed their children’s 29-year-old nanny, Sandra Rivett, by bludgeoning her over the head in the basement moments earlier with a piece of lead piping. It seemed that Lucan had mistaken Sandra for his intended target – his estranged wife, Lady Lucan herself. She had been hit and half strangled by her husband before managing to free herself from his grasp by grabbing his testicles. Lady Lucan then pretended to want to help Lucan. And, while her husband was getting towels to help clean her wounds, she slipped out of the house to raise the alarm.
That evening, once police had arrived at the Plumbers Arms, Lady Lucan was taken to hospital while officers followed a trail of blood from the pub to No. 46. There they found Sandra’s body half stuffed into a mail sack and the murder weapon – a bloodied 9in section of piping – wrapped with tape. The Lucans’ three children were still at the house but unhurt.
By this time Lord Lucan, known as ‘Lucky’ to friends in his high society gambling set, had fled the scene. The Eton-educated 39-year-old was a former banker who had quit his job to become a professional gambler, taking up with the well-heeled Clermont Club run by John Aspinall. In fact ‘Lucky’ was a failure at his chosen career and by 1974 had serious money troubles. Meanwhile his relationship with his wife Veronica, Lady Lucan, had deteriorated and he had moved out of the family home. A fierce custody battle for the Lucans’ children had followed, with Lucan convinced that his wife was mentally unstable. In June 1973 a court ruled in favour of Lady Lucan.
On the night of the murder, Lucan had phoned his mother to report a ‘catastrophe’ at No. 46 and asked her to collect the children. Then he had driven a borrowed Ford Corsair to the home of some friends, the Maxwell-Scotts in Uckfield, Sussex, arriving at 11.30 p.m. There he told Susan Maxwell-Scott that he had been passing No. 46 earlier in the evening and had happened to see, through the basement window, a man attacking his wife. In a bid to come to her aid he had let himself in but slipped in a pool of blood while the attacker made his getaway. According to this version of events a hysterical Lady Lucan had then accused him of hiring a hitman to kill her. Lucan left the Maxwell-Scott house at 1.15 a.m. after writing some letters. In one, to his brother-in-law Bill Shand-Kydd, he wrote, ‘The circumstantial evidence against me is strong in that Veronica will say it was all my doing.’
Three days later, police found the Corsair parked at the port of Newhaven on the south coast. Inside the bloodied boot was a piece of tapped lead pipe similar to the one found at the Belgravia house. Police issued a warrant for Lucan’s arrest, but the trail went cold. Seven months later, in June 1975, an inquest into Sandra Rivett’s murder found that after being hit over the head she had choked on her own blood. Forensic evidence revealed that the blood on the lead piping found at No. 46 came from both Sandra Rivett and Lady Lucan. Experts also revealed that the lead piping found in the boot of the Corsair was probably from the same section as that found in the house. Blood from both women was also found on the letters written by Lucan after the murder and one was found to have come from a notepad found in the car. The inquest jury concluded that the nanny had been murdered and that the person responsible for her death was likely to be Lord Lucan. This later led to a change in the law which meant that inquests could no longer name murder suspects.
The Plumbers Arms, Belgravia, London, where the Lucan murder was first brought to light. (© James Moore)
Lucan had, however, disappeared without a trace, avoiding a trial. To this day, despite ‘sightings’ from as far afield as Australia and Mozambique his ultimate fate remains a mystery. In 1999 he was officially declared dead by the High Court. Many assumed that in the days following the murder he had committed suicide, probably by jumping from a cross-Channel ferry. Yet his body has never been found.
There are many theories about what happened to Lucan. One of the most popular is that he managed to escape to Africa. A personal assistant of John Aspinall recently claimed that she had helped arrange for his children to visit the peer there in the 1970s and 1980s. Another theory posits that he himself was killed by a hitman – hired by some of his rich friends to cover up their part in helping with the crime.
The person often forgotten in the debate about the whereabouts of the blue-blooded culprit is the victim, Sandra Rivett. She had been killed after offering to go and make tea for the family in the kitchen, located in the house basement. There, at around 9 p.m., with the lightbulb removed by her attacker, she was brutally murdered in the gloom. Twenty minutes later, when Lady Lucan went to see where Sandra was, she too was attacked. According to her account, when the attack was over, Lord Lucan admitted to her that he had killed the nanny. Sandra was supposed to have been on her night off, seeing her boyfriend, a 27-year-old Australian barman called John Hankins. But she had changed the night of her date to a Wednesday instead.
Ironically it was at the Plumbers Arms, in happier times, where she had met John. The couple had talked about starting a new life in Australia. Sadly for Sandra, she was to become the casualty of a domestic battle that had led the troubled and bungling Lucan to tur
n to violence, with disastrous consequences for all.
LOCATIONS: The Plumbers Arms, No. 14 Lower Belgrave Street, London, SW1W 0LN, 020 7730 4067, www.taylor-walker.co.uk
WHERE SERIAL KILLER DENNIS NILSEN LURED HIS VICTIMS, 1978–83
Golden Lion, Soho, London; The Salisbury, Covent Garden, London; The Black Cap, Camden, London; The Princess Louise, High Holborn, London
In the early 1980s The Golden Lion, in London’s trendy Soho district, was a well-known venue for homosexual men to meet each other. Paul Nobbs, a 21-year-old student, headed to the pub in November 1981 and struck up a conversation with an apparently genial older man. The pair then went to a bookshop together before ending up back at Nilsen’s flat. They went to bed together but were too drunk to have sex and fell asleep. The next morning Paul awoke with a terrible headache and bloodshot eyes. Paul left the flat, but felt so awful that he took himself to University College Hospital in Euston Road. When a doctor examined bruising around his neck, Paul was shocked to be told that he had been strangled. However, in an era when homophobia was still widespread, Paul decided against going to the police to report the crime.
It wasn’t the first time that Dennis Nilsen had used London’s bars and pubs to prey on and then attack young men. But many had not been as lucky as Paul Nobbs and escaped with their lives. Nilsen is now regarded as one of Britain’s worst serial killers and is reckoned to have killed fifteen people in a five-year period. A former army cook, police officer and civil servant, the Scottish-born murderer unleashed his callous killing spree after moving to a flat in Cricklewood, North London, in the mid-1970s.