Blood on the Tracks: A History of Railway Crime in Britain

by Brandon, David

  He quickly rifled through Pearson’s pockets. Even before the train had drawn to a halt Parker had leapt out onto the platform, rushed to the barrier, shoved the ticket which he had removed from Pearson’s pocket into the ticket inspector’s face, and before the latter had recovered from the sudden whirlwind that overwhelmed him Parker was running full tilt down the ramp to the street level.

  By this time, Rhoda, bleeding profusely but not seriously injured, had raised the alarm. Various he-men took off in hot pursuit of the rapidly retreating Parker who tried to hide, but his pursuers quickly found, seized and overwhelmed him. Parker appeared at the Old Bailey, was found guilty of murder and executed at Wandsworth Prison on 19 March 1901.

  From a distance of more than a century, one is left pondering over the essential stupidity of Parker. Riding around on trains with no intention of paying the full fare was one thing but thinking that he could get away with robbery and commit murder on a train was completely different. However, this is a kind of myopic arrogance often found among murderers who convince themselves that they are so clever that they are somehow immune from the fate of ordinary individuals.

  Murdering for Coal

  Birmingham is one of those places that contradict the admittedly rather glib and simplistic generalisation that rapid urban and industrial growth in Britain was a result of the coming of the railways. Places such as Middlesborough, Crewe, Barrow-in-Furness and Springburn in Glasgow come readily to mind in support of this assertion. Birmingham, however, was the hub of England’s canal system and a leading industrial centre from the eighteenth century well before the coming of the railways. It went on to become a major centre of the railway system.

  A prime contender for the title of least-loved station in Britain is Birmingham New Street. East of New Street and visible on the north side of the line from trains leaving Birmingham for such places as Leicester, Stansted Airport, Derby, Sheffield, Coventry and London Euston is a grand building standing in glorious isolation in distinctly dystopian surroundings. This is the former Curzon Street station, the original terminus of the London & Birmingham Railway.

  It opened in 1839 and was designed by Philip Hardwick as a counterpart to his Euston station in London fronted by the famous Doric Arch. It has somehow managed to evade the modernising barbarians who did for the whole of the old Euston, good bits and bad. Curzon Street closed to regular passenger traffic when the more convenient New Street was opened in 1854. It became part of a large railway goods depot being used as offices until 1968.

  Coal has been described as ‘black gold’, and while actually having more utility than gold it is nevertheless generally regarded as less valuable. In the age when it was the only major source of domestic heating it was frequently stolen – sometimes by opportunist individuals who wanted to cut down on their fuel bills but also by professional thieves who found a ready sale for cheap coal on the black market – no pun intended.

  In 1901 coal had been disappearing from wagons in coal merchants’ sidings at Curzon Street. Not the odd lump but entire sacks. This is the reason why a detective officer in the London & North Western Railway’s police force was patrolling on the evening of 10 August. His name was Hibbs. He knew the area well and realised that he was almost certainly up against professionals because the thieves had so far evaded all attempts by the police to catch them. Hibbs was well aware of the danger that went with his solitary patrol but he was experienced and had a whistle which he hoped would bring quick assistance if needed.

  He spotted three men dragging sacks of coal out of the depot and called on them to stop. They abandoned the sacks and ran off along the nearby canal with Hibbs in hot pursuit. Realising that he was on his own, they turned to face him. Hibbs drew his truncheon as all three of the thieves went for him. It was a brave action but it proved to be an unwise one. It was never a fair fight and he was knocked down and rendered unconscious by a heavy blow to the back of the head. Callously they then picked him up as if he was no more than a bundle of rubbish and threw him into the canal where he drowned.

  The Coroner’s Court returned a verdict of ‘wilful murder by persons unknown’. The London & North Western Railway offered a reward of £100 for information leading to the conviction of those responsible. The police already had three young local men in custody but they needed more evidence. Some of the witnesses who had come forward had complained of anonymous threats and clearly felt intimidated. Would they be prepared to testify in court? The civil police felt sure that these were the three men responsible but the evidence was largely circumstantial and would be unlikely to stand up in court.

  The railway police, however, were prepared to take the risk, understandably anxious not to allow the murder of one of their number to go unpunished. To their chagrin, however, the case against the men was conditionally discharged on the grounds of insufficient evidence. The case remains unsolved to this day.

  Found: Body in a Tunnel

  The original Merstham Tunnel was built for the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway in 1839. A new tunnel was built in 1899 alongside and it was in this later tunnel that a gang of track workers made a gruesome discovery around 11p.m. on Sunday 24 September 1905.

  The men were doing routine maintenance work on the track by the fitful light of oil lamps which cast weird shadows on the sooty walls of the tunnel. It was dangerous and uncongenial work but it had to be done, and the fact that there were fewer trains about at this time of the evening did at least reduce the ever-present fear of all platelayers and gangers which was, of course, that of being run down by a fast-moving train, always a possibility even with vigilant lookouts.

  In charge of the gang was William Peacock, who was moving somewhat ahead of the rest of the men when he discovered something lying by the side of the track. As he moved nearer he realised to his horror that it was the badly mutilated body of a woman. One leg had been severed cleanly, the face was badly knocked about and bloodied and the left arm brutally crushed. The stationmaster at Merstham was immediately informed as were the police. The body was removed and temporarily housed at the Feathers Hotel where an inquest would take place. There was nothing on or around the corpse which gave any clue to its identity.

  The original theory was that the woman had committed suicide but foul play could not be ruled out. Large numbers of people were interviewed by the police, some of them giving answers which were unsatisfactory and needed to be checked out. This took several days and the police acknowledged that they were no nearer identifying the woman. Then, out of the blue, a man came forward asking to be allowed to view the body. This was an unusual request, and given that there were many odd people about the police took a lot of persuading before acceding.

  Obviously it was not a pretty sight but the man told them that it was the remains of his sister Mary Sophia Money. She had been just twenty-two years old, was unmarried and had worked in a dairy in a clerical capacity. She lived at Lavender Hill in south-east London. She was small, although well-built and altogether an attractive young woman. Men would have wished to get to know her but she certainly did not seem to have a regular ‘admirer’. Her brother could not furnish any reason why she might have committed suicide.

  What began to militate against the suicide theory was that she had clearly been gagged. It was hard to believe that someone contemplating suicide would gag themselves so as not to make any noise. Examination of where the body was found suggested that she had been thrown from the train and had hit the tunnel wall where there were marks as if she had slid down the tunnel-side, her fingers gouging out the soot. As she slid down the wall it was likely that one of her legs fell over the rail and was severed when the wheels went over it.

  Enquiries revealed that on the day in question Mary had told a friend that she was going out for a short while but she never returned. At about 7p.m. she had gone into her local sweet shop as she did regularly on Wednesdays and Sundays. She had chatted briefly and told the shopkeeper that she was going to Victoria. Evidently
Mary had told two different stories about what she meant to do and the police concluded that the deception was intentional and that she was going to a clandestine meeting with a person unknown at a destination equally unknown.

  She certainly did go to Victoria because a ticket collector recognised her from a photograph. What seemed odd was that she was not dressed for walking or for going any great distance. What then had she been doing on a train destined for Brighton? Did she meet up with a paramour unknown to her family? Did she get on the Brighton train with this man and why? What happened between the couple in what was presumably an otherwise empty compartment? Did he make sexual advances which were rejected whereupon he lost his temper and threw her out of the train in a fit of pique? Questions, questions, but no answers.

  It did emerge that a signalman on duty watched a train go past that day and saw what he thought was a struggle taking place in one of the compartments but even this was not much help. The murderer of Mary Sophia Money was never found.

  Murder on the North Eastern Railway

  In the age of relative innocence that was Britain in the years leading up to the First World War, it was a common practice for clerical workers to travel around on public transport carrying bags containing the wages of the employees of the companies they worked for. Sometimes they carried amounts that by today’s values would be tens of thousands of pounds.

  On 10 March 1910 John Nisbet, who lived in Heaton Road on the north-east side of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, was at the city’s Central station carrying a leather bag containing £370 9s 6d for the workers of the Stobswood Colliery Company. He was on his fortnightly trip from the colliery to Newcastle with a company cheque which he had cashed at Lloyd’s Bank. This involved a return journey on the North Eastern Railway from Stannington station, the closest station to the pit where he worked. Although the line on which the train ran was a main line, this particular train was a humble and lightly used stopping train calling at all stations to Alnmouth, where it terminated. Such trains often had average speeds of little more than twenty miles per hour.

  Newcastle central station is by some distance the largest nineteenth-century building in the city. Much of it is the work of John Dobson, who designed many of Newcastle’s finest buildings of that time.

  Nisbet, who was well known, was seen by a number of people at Newcastle Central station before he caught the stopping train back to Stannington. They included two other cashiers working for colliery companies who were engaged in the same duties as himself. These witnesses saw Nisbet walking the platform with a man called Dickman with whom he got into a compartment towards the front of the train. Dickman was wearing a light-coloured overcoat.

  Nisbet was an uxorious husband and it was the regular practice for his wife to come to Heaton station to meet the train. It usually halted there for a few minutes, during which time he lowered the carriage window and the couple then perhaps proceeded to whisper sweet nothings to each other. On this occasion the train halted only briefly and she just had time to note that another passenger was sharing her husband’s compartment. He was wearing a light-coloured overcoat but his collar was raised and it was impossible for her to tell whether she knew him.

  At Stannington the two other cashiers alighted from the train, one of them giving a nod to Nisbet as he passed the compartment in which he was travelling. He noted a man sharing Nisbet’s compartment. He wore a light-coloured overcoat. If the cashier thought it odd that Nisbet was apparently making no effort to leave the train himself he said nothing and had soon forgotten the matter.

  The train puffed wearily on its way calling a few minutes later at Morpeth. There were few passengers alighting but one who did handed the ticket collector half of a return ticket from Newcastle to Stannington and he proffered the excess fare. It was our man in the light-coloured overcoat. Eventually the train steamed into Alnmouth where the practice was for a porter to examine all the compartments before the train was prepared for its return trip. He opened a compartment in the leading coach and then staggered back, vomiting violently.

  The body of a man was lying spread-eagled and face downwards on the floor in a pool of blood. Clearly a murder had taken place but it was also immediately evident that a violent struggle had also occurred. An initial examination by the local police, quite excited because they could not remember the last time they had had to deal with a murder, showed that the man had been shot five times in the head. Two bullets were still lodged in the victim’s skull. Various items belonging to Nisbet – it was of course he who lay prostrate on the carriage floor – were quickly identified. The post-mortem showed that the two bullets in his head had been fired from different guns.

  With admirable promptness the Stobswood Colliery Company offered a reward of £100 for anyone providing information that would lead to the arrest of Nisbet’s killer. Very quickly, Dickman became the focus of attention. The police started with an informal chat. Dickman was only too anxious to help in any way he could, or so he said. Yes, he said, he had indeed been at Newcastle Central station with Nisbet but had parted from him before the train left and had travelled in the same train but in a different compartment. Again he was apparently happy to co-operate with the police when they suggested that he should accompany them to the station and provide a signed statement. So far it was all a bit too glib.

  The wheels soon started coming off the information that Dickman volunteered. Why, if he had booked to Stannington, had he somehow contrived to miss that stop and been carried on to Morpeth, the next station down the line? The incredulity of the police gathered momentum as he explained that, after paying the excess fare and leaving Morpeth station with the intention of walking back to Stannington, he had felt poorly and had rested by the side of the road. The purpose of his journey, Dickman said, was to see a man at the Dovecot Colliery. While he had been resting by the wayside, Dickman said that he had met and chatted with a man called Elliot who would vouch for him. The police took careful note of all this but decided to search his house.

  Various items were removed for examination. They included some gloves which were bloodstained and some paraffin stains which might have suggested that attempts had been made to remove the traces of blood. No firearms were found. Dickman had something of what might be described as an ‘alternative’ lifestyle, spending a lot of money gambling – and usually losing. However, this was not illegal and there was nothing to suggest that the money he spent feeding his habit had been acquired dishonestly. His financial affairs were chaotic, largely it seems because he was grossly incompetent and he used a number of aliases, but again that was not actually illegal either. He admitted that a parcel containing a gun had been delivered to offices he rented in Newcastle but he claimed that it was a mistake by the company, to which he had immediately returned the gun.

  Alnmouth is lucky still to be on the railway network after decades which were so unkind to small wayside stations situated on main lines. Here an express of the erstwhile Great North Eastern Railway enters Alnmouth station.

  All the police had were various items of largely circumstantial evidence, a suspect who they felt certain was their man and a deepening sense of frustration. The issue was how to get a case that would stand up in court. Oddly Mrs Nisbet had not at first mentioned seeing Dickman, who she knew, in the same compartment as her husband when the train had called briefly at Heaton, and she only made this revelation under closer questioning later. This was only one of a number of questions that served to confuse. However, as the days gave way to weeks it was clear that the case was going cold.

  On 9 June the leather bag in which Nesbit had carried the wages was found at the bottom of a mineshaft, not far from Morpeth station and adjacent to the road along which Dickman would have walked to Stannington station. Unfortunately this bag failed to furnish any useful clues. The case went to court and Dickman was found guilty of murder. This verdict caused a storm of protest and the Home Secretary felt obliged to allow the case to be referred to the Court of Appeal.


  In spite of the anomalies this court confirmed the initial verdict and the result was that Dickman was hanged at Newcastle Prison in August 1910. His last words were, ‘I declare to all men I am innocent.’ Forensic science was in its infancy at the time. Had modern techniques been available to them, Dickman’s counsel would almost certainly have persuaded the jury to return a verdict of not guilty.

  Murder at Kidsgrove

  The station at Kidsgrove in North Staffordshire has experienced several changes in its name. As well as its existing name, it has also been known as Kidsgrove Junction (Harecastle), Harecastle & Kidsgrove, Harecastle and also Kidsgrove Central. This is all very confusing but in 1911 the station seems to have been named simply Harecastle. The station which was built by the North Staffordshire Railway Company still exists and is at the junction of the Crewe – Stoke and Manchester – Stoke lines, both electrified on the overhead system.

  The area around Kidsgrove was formerly heavily industrialised and nearby was the very extensive Birchenwood Colliery dating back to the eighteenth century. Coking took place at the colliery complex and in 1911 an additional set of coke ovens was being constructed. It is interesting to note that the employment of foreign workers is the object of discussion in the UK in the current economic recession (2009), and that a number of German workers were employed on the contract for the building of the coke ovens. The foreman was named Lehr and among the small group of Germans was a Karl Kramer. He had been taken on because he had lived in England for some time and so he acted as an interpreter and intermediary when his fellow countrymen needed to communicate with English officialdom.

  The gang of German workers were lodging in digs in Kidsgrove but Lehr, perhaps conscious of his relative status vis-à-vis his colleagues, decided to distance himself from them and take accommodation in a fine late Victorian villa not far away. He recruited Kramer and another man to help him with the removal and it is evident that during this operation Kramer had made a mental note of a cash box belonging to Lehr and the fact that it was kept in a particular drawer of a dressing table.