Cambridgeshire Murders

by Alison Bruce

  12

  THE LITTLE SHOP OF SECRETS

  Cambridgeshire’s most famous unsolved case is known as the Cambridge Shop Murder that occurred on 27 July in the summer of 1921. It bears marked similarities to another case, the 1919 murder of Mrs Ridgley, a shopkeeper from Hitchin. Although no conviction was made in either case the crimes were not connected.

  In the 1920s King Street was narrow and busy. No. 70 was a general store selling a variety of items including tobacco, bread, cheese and margarine and was run by a spinster named Alice Maud Lawn. Miss Lawn was about 50 years old and the shop had been hers for at least twenty-one years. Although she lived alone with her cat she had relatives nearby. Her youngest brother, a motor mechanic named Horace, lived directly opposite at No. 79. She also had another brother and sister-in-law living in Cambridge.

  Miss Lawn’s shop was an end terraced two-storey property backing onto a green called Christ’s Piece.1 It had originally been a private house before being converted into a shop. There were two first floor bedrooms but Miss Lawn used the attic bedroom. A narrow alley called Milton Walk ran along the side of the building, with a pub called Champion of the Thames on the opposite side of this passage. There were two entrances to her property from Milton Walk; the first was a side door to the private part of the property and the second a gate to the rear garden.

  Running along the back of the terrace was a public footpath that separated the gardens from the tennis courts on Christ’s Piece. Miss Lawn’s garden was fenced by trellis and according to the local paper it was easy to get a good view of the garden from this path. The shop was small but well stocked with one door leading from the street and a second internal door, which allowed the proprietor access to the shop from her sitting room. She seemed to live happily in King Street; she was a quiet and gentle person but popular and much respected by her neighbours.

  Although Cambridge already held a market, on Market Hill, a second Wednesday market was being held in King Street. The only concern Miss Lawn seemed to have was that this market and other events attracted a large number of strangers. She was not overly confident with men and felt nervous when bands played on Christ’s Piece. She told a customer: ‘When the band performances are on there is such a rough crew who come here that they worry me. They rush into my shop for all sorts of things and make me very nervous indeed.’

  She felt similarly worried about the Wednesday markets, which attracted strangers from as far afield as London. It was part of her routine to keep her back door locked and she would have been particularly careful on a market day. Another habit she had developed was to go out at idiosyncratic times during the day. No regular customers would have found it odd if the shop had been closed during opening hours, they would have assumed that she had just popped out for a while. If Miss Lawn planned to go out for more than a few minutes she would tell her brother or sister-in-law living opposite.

  So when, at about 11.30 a.m. on Wednesday 27 July 1921 the shop was found locked it caused no real surprise. The husband of a neighbour noticed that the shop was still locked after lunch and notified Mrs Horace Lawn. She was not aware that her sister-in-law had gone out and with some apprehension contacted her husband who was working nearby.

  At about 3 p.m. Horace and his next-door neighbour, Mr Kirkup, went to investigate. They entered through the back door and immediately noticed a cupboard door open and clear signs of disturbance. Within seconds they found her body; she was lying at the foot of her stairs in a pool of blood. She had been dead for some time and had suffered a violent assault. There were savage wounds to her head and a gag hung loose around her neck.

  The police were called. First on the scene was Constable Alfred Flint, an officer who had been on point duty outside a nearby post office. By the time he arrived Horace thought he had heard some noise coming from upstairs. Flint made a thorough search of the first floor and attic rooms but found nothing. The only thing of any note was a bowl in the scullery sink that contained water, dyed a colour consistent with blood being washed from something. A nearby tea cloth was also marked with similarly coloured smears.

  The borough coroner, Mr G.A. Wootten, opened the inquest on 29 July at the Guildhall in Cambridge. After hearing the basic details of the case and hearing Horace Lawn identify his sister’s body the inquest was immediately adjourned for ten days.

  At this stage the police were not prepared to comment on their lines of enquiry. They had made no arrest and none looked imminent although popular opinion was that an outsider must have committed the crime. A local reporter clearly supported this view and went as far as to state: ‘The police are satisfied that the murder was not the work of a local man. Jews and foreigners frequent the town, and it is possible that the man for whom the police are searching was one of the market day crowd of strangers. If the crime had been premeditated then the assailant had evidently waited for market day, when, owing to the noise in the street, any cry his victim might have uttered would have been drowned.’

  The Cambridge police were quick to call for assistance from Scotland Yard; two CID officers arrived on the evening of the murder.

  In the days after her death two theories were discussed, the first was that the killer had gone to the shop, posing as a customer, and had asked for something that would have required Miss Lawn to go through to her sitting room. While she was out of sight the outside door could then be locked before she was followed. The second theory was that the killer had gained access through the rear of the property and hidden there until he had had the opportunity to attack.

  Meanwhile, on Saturday 30 July 1921 Miss Lawn’s funeral took place at the cemetery in Cambridge’s Mill Road. The Cambridge Chronicle and University Journal estimated that 1,000 people attended; the family mourners were her sisters, Mrs Lincoln from Great Yarmouth and Mrs Charlton from Hendon, and her two brothers, Ernest and Horace Lawn, and their wives.

  On Friday 5 August a man calling himself Jack Varden handed himself into Tottenham Court Road Police Station and claimed he was the Cambridge Murderer. He signed a statement and was then interviewed by Chief Inspector Mercer who immediately realised that the confession was a hoax. It was apparent that Varden had never even been to Cambridge. He later retracted his statement, claiming he was really called Ernest Shaw Watson and had just needed food and shelter.

  When the inquest reopened on Monday 8 August the coroner first asked for post-mortem details. Dr Henry Buckley Roderick, the police surgeon, described the injuries to Miss Lawn’s body: ‘On examination – of course the woman was quite dead – I could see a wound on the forehead extending from the inner side of the left eyebrow upwards to the right. It was two inches long and reached down to the bone.

  Her hair was matted with blood and there was obviously – although I did not examine the body at the time – a number of wounds to the scalp. The exposed parts were quite cold and as there were no signs of rigor mortis I should say she had been dead something under four or five hours.

  Her head was on the mat and on the first step there was a considerable amount of blood and some had trickled down to the corner formed by the doorway into the angle at the foot of the stairs. There was of course blood on the mat and underneath the head as well – a considerable amount.’

  At that point he had neither looked for nor seen a likely murder weapon and he next arranged for the body to be removed to the mortuary. It was on the following morning that he performed the post mortem. He reported:

  In addition to the wound on the forehead there was another star-shaped wound about an inch above that, in the middle line of the top of the head. There were also several other wounds on the right side of the parietal2 region, as if several blows had been struck. All of these were down to the bone, and must have been caused by considerable violence. Under one of the wounds there was an obvious depression of the skull, as though the bone had been broken, smashed in by some instrument.

  The wounds must have been caused by some blunted instrument. There were other wo
unds further back and contusions of the left hand.

  The coroner asked whether, in Roderick’s opinion, the blow to the forehead was the first struck to which the doctor replied, ‘from its appearance I should say it was.’ But despite this he did not think it was the cause of death:

  . . . it did not crack the skull. But on further examination of the skull I found a depressed fracture extending deeply into the cavity of the skull. There was a considerable depression on the side of the fracture. The first blow would have stunned her but the second one wound have stunned her a good deal more.

  I should think after the first blow she was stunned – it was not an absolutely knock out blow, but stunned her for a time, and she came round, or would have come round, I should say – and then the subsequent blows were given. There was an interval between them.

  She could have moaned – it was quite possible. The other blows were all made about the same time (as one another), several of them at the back. After the second and the blows at the back she would not have moaned.

  Her eye suffered a light hemorrhage. It was of no importance.

  I removed the gag and examined the mouth. The gag had been forced into the mouth very forcibly, so much so that it broke one of the teeth – a molar tooth – not a very strong one – smashed it off at the base and pushed the denture forward in front of the gag. Some of the lower teeth had been loosened and the tongue had been torn, lacerated, probably by the teeth.

  All the internal organs were healthy, the heart and lungs showed no evidence of death by suffocation. The cause of death was hemorrhage to the brain.

  Wootten, the coroner, asked whether Roderick had been shown a small chopper. Roderick replied that he had and their exchange continued with Wootten asking, ‘Do you think the chopper could have inflicted the wound you have described?’

  The doctor responded: ‘Yes, because the back of the chopper would have given the long wound on the forehead and the others on the skull. The same instrument could have done both injuries.’

  The chopper had been discovered on the day after the murder in the cupboard under the scullery sink. It had had a damp patch on it. The back of the chopper exactly fitted the large wound on Miss Lawn’s forehead. Although Roderick had given his estimate of the time of death the coroner was keen to call other witnesses to help to establish a more precise time.

  A baker named Albert Ding was making deliveries and one of his drops was to Miss Lawn. He had left the bakery at 10.20 a.m. and estimated that he would have been at the shop by 11.45 a.m. She had ordered a dozen 2lb loaves and paid him 6s with money from the till. He had delivered to her on numerous other occasions and knew that if she had needed to pay him a larger amount she would have gone into the back kitchen where she obviously kept more cash.

  Another witness to confirm when Miss Lawn had still been alive was Mrs Ada Webb who had sent her two daughters to the shop with half a crown to buy soap and blue. The girls had left her at 11 a.m. and returned twenty minutes later with the items. The elder of Webb’s daughters, Elizabeth, had said that they had been the only customers in the shop.

  At 11.05 a.m. a telephonist named Arthur Sexton went to the shop to buy cigarettes and found the shop door locked. He timed his visit by the passing of the Newmarket Road bus. Although the timing of the Webb girls’ visit was also approximate, they must have missed each other by only a short time.

  Rose Rolph gave the next evidence. At 11.30 a.m. she cut through Milton Walk when she noticed a small sound: ‘I heard a little muffled noise of some description – a sort of dull noise. I thought it was a child crying. It was a quiet noise.’ She admitted that she was not sure that the noise was being made by a person but was nevertheless drawn to the sound. This evidence tied in with the account a 13-year-old named Jack Cornwell gave to the police. He had seen someone go through Miss Lawn’s back gate at some time between eleven and twelve o’clock and had run to the gate hoping to ask for the return of a ball that he had lost in the garden a few days earlier. By the time he had reached the gate it was re-locked.

  Miss Lawn’s best friend, Elizabeth Papworth, described her as someone who would talk freely to customers but be guarded in relation to her private affairs. She was shown the chopper but was unable to identify it. Other witnesses who knew Alice Lawn well were also unable to recognise it, but the police eventually found proof that it was the same or similar to one Miss Lawn had kept on a table next to her scullery. The inquest was then adjourned leaving the police to ponder two possible leads.

  Firstly, a young man named Leonard Marshall, an under gardener on Christ’s Piece, had seen a man standing near the shop. It was between 2.30 and 3 o’clock and Leonard thought he would ask the correct time. As he approached the man he realised that he was counting some coins and decided not to interrupt him. He described the man as well dressed, wearing a light grey suit with a trilby hat. The man was of Jewish appearance and biggish built with a dark complexion. Leonard recognised the man as someone he had seen before but only on market days.

  Secondly, and in seeming contrast to her private nature and her brother’s observation that ‘she was always nervous of any man’, it transpired that she had had a lodger. The man was called Mr Grundy and had lived at the house for almost two years. He, however, had left two years previously. He had been a clerk at the Correspondence College and had suffered a mental breakdown, leaving 70 King Street after being admitted to the Fulbourn asylum. He had since been discharged from there and, as far has anyone was aware, had had no further contact with Miss Lawn.

  While the second line of enquiry proved to be a dead end, Leonard’s sighting of a man with a dark complexion gave the public something to focus on.

  The inquest re-opened at 10.30 a.m. on Friday 19 August. The following Wednesday’s edition of the weekly paper, The Cambridge Chronicle, blared the headlines ‘WILFUL MURDER!’ and ‘GUARDED MAN IN COURT’. The paper gave not only the verdict of the inquest, but also the details of the arrest and committal of the new name in the case: Thomas Clanwaring.

  Clanwaring was 23 and claimed that he had come to Cambridge to look for work as a French polisher. In fact Clanwaring was in such a habit of inventing stories that it soon became evident that it was almost impossible to tell when he was telling the truth and when he was just amusing himself or seeking attention.

  He made several statements to the police, and in the first of these he claimed the following:

  My home address is 66 New Street, Silvertown. I was born at Bethnal Green, then moved to Silvertown and have lived there ever since. I came from Baldock to Cambridge on Friday night. I have been in the town just over a week. I stayed at the Black Bull, Baldock; was there for four days. I came from Manchester to there. I had come through Manchester; I walked from Manchester to Baldock. I did not sleep a night in Manchester. From Manchester to Baldock is, I think, about 400 miles. I slept at nights under stacks. I have been from Silvertown over 31/2 years. During that time I have been working for chaps on the road, shovelling up and sweeping. I came to Cambridge trying to get work as a French polisher. I tried for work at Leavis’ and other places. I have only been with two chaps on two occasions since I have been in this town. Twice I have been with the two, making three persons, otherwise I have always been by myself. I can show you where one lives. Once when I was with them, the two chaps and I went into a public house in this road where it said Under New Management. I don’t know where I was on Wednesday. I know where I was on Saturday; I was in the town selling postcards.

  The two chaps he referred to were Albert Briggs and Frank Turner who were also out of work labourers. This part of his statement was reasonably accurate, but virtually nothing else was; Clanwaring had been in Bedford gaol until 16 July when he had been released with the sum of 7s 6d. He had been in prison charged with the theft of five bicycles.

  He had been in Bedford for five days but had no luck finding work and soon his money had run out. He went to Baldock and pretended to be deaf and dumb for three days,
then went to Letchworth Baths and proclaimed: ‘Oh God! Ain’t it rotten.’ He then told anyone who would listen that he had miraculously recovered his speech after 41/2 years. He took this story to the Daily Sketch and hoped he would get paid for it. Part of this story was that he had originally lost his speech and hearing after the Silvertown explosion3 and therefore gave his address as 66 New Street, Silvertown. It transpired that this was an address he had invented and he really had no home in England. When questioned in court he denied telling people he was Jewish and said, ‘I don’t know whether I am a Hottentot;4 my mother was a North American and my father a South African’. When Clanwaring arrived in Cambridge he carried on telling the same deaf and dumb story and, even on the morning of Alice Lawn’s murder, had been attempting to con The Cambridge Chronicle with it.

  Clanwaring made a long statement at the inquest and was followed by Inspector Mercer who gave a detailed account of all the various and inconsistent statements that Clanwaring had made since his arrest. Other witnesses were called, many establishing the probable time of Miss Lawn’s death and others pinpointing Clanwaring at various locations throughout the Wednesday of the murder.

  Clanwarings Statement of Offence document from the Assizes. (Authors Collection)

  The coroner warned that, of the total evidence given, only a proportion could be relied upon at a trial and that the case against Clanwaring was circumstantial. The inquest jury retired for twenty minutes and returned the verdict that they were unanimously agreed that Alice Lawn had met her death by wilful murder and that they were convinced that Thomas Clanwaring was guilty of the crime. Clanwaring was therefore committed for trial at the next assizes and held at Bedford gaol.

  The trial opened on 17 October 1921 before Justice Bailhache. H.O. Carter, a London lawyer hired by a woman described only as ‘a wealthy North Country lady’, defended Clanwaring. She had felt moved by Clanwaring’s predicament and was keen to ensure that he had the chance of a fair trial.