Foul Deeds in Kensington and Chelsea

by John J Eddleston

  After leaving school, Haigh took a position as an apprentice to a firm of motor engineers, but a life of hard physical toil was not to his liking. Other, less grimy positions followed, in insurance and advertising, but in 1930, when he was twenty-one years old, Haigh was dismissed after being suspected of stealing some cash from a money box. He had, by now, discovered that if he lied, or stole, or committed some other crime, then God’s wrath didn’t strike him down or mark him for life. His belief in religion was waning and Haigh began to think that he was invincible and could get away with anything.

  On 6 July 1934, just before his twenty-fifth birthday, Haigh married twenty-one-year-old Beatrice Harmer, a union he would later say was nothing more than a marriage of convenience so that he could escape his parent’s influence. The relationship was not a happy one from the outset and soon afterwards, Haigh was arrested for a fraud he had committed, by selling cars that he didn’t actually own. For that offence, on 22 November 1934, he was sentenced to fifteen months in prison. During his incarceration, his wife gave birth to their child, a daughter, who was immediately put up for adoption. Beatrice then took the opportunity to leave her husband and it would be fifteen years before they set eyes on each other again.

  On his release from prison, Haigh moved to London where he took a position as secretary and chauffeur to William Donald McSwann, a wealthy owner of a number of amusement arcades. Haigh had not, however, settled down to a life of honest industry for he soon set up as a bogus solicitor and started perpetrating a fraud involving vehicles bought on hire purchase, which he then sold for cash. He was eventually caught and charged and, on 23 November 1937, almost three years to the day since his last court appearance, Haigh received another prison sentence, this time for four years.

  In 1941, Haigh was freed from prison and took a job as an accountant with an engineering firm. Soon after this, on 10 June 1941, he received his third prison sentence, one of twenty-one months, for looting and theft from bombed-out houses. It was during this period that Haigh, determined that he would never go back to jail, began to study the law, reading book after book on the subject. He managed to convince himself, erroneously, that if the police did not have a body, then there could never be a charge of murder brought against a killer. He therefore decided that when he was released, he would be better off embarking on a career of murder for gain because, as long as there was no body, a murder could not be proved. The problem was, that he needed to find a way of disposing of the body so that no trace would ever be found. Then, one day, he found the solution.

  Haigh worked in the prison workshop where he had access to equipment and chemicals. One of those chemicals was sulphuric acid and, having found a dead mouse, Haigh proceeded to experiment by placing the small body into a container of acid. To his delight, he found that the body dissolved within thirty minutes. Obviously, a fully-grown human being would take far longer than this but here, at last, was the way to make a body disappear and, with no body, there could surely be no charge of murder. It seemed to be the perfect crime.

  Released from jail in 1944, it was later that same year that a chance encounter led to Haigh putting his plan for that perfect murder into operation.

  In the late summer of 1944, Haigh called into The Goat public house on Kensington High Street, for a quiet drink. There, by pure coincidence, he bumped into his ex-employer, William Donald McSwann. The two fell into conversation and McSwann took Haigh back to see his parents, William and Amy, at their top-floor flat, 45 Claverton Street, Pimlico. They made the mistake of telling Haigh that they had recently done a lucrative property deal and had a good deal of money in the bank.

  Haigh spent the next few weeks ingratiating himself with the McSwann family and, one day, William Donald intimated that he was rather concerned that he would be called up to fight in the war. Haigh said he thought he might have the solution to his problem and also told McSwann about a new pin-ball machine he claimed to have invented. Haigh then invited McSwann back to a basement, which he had rented at 79 Gloucester Road, also in Kensington, to look at the machine and discuss his options on avoiding a call-up. There, on Saturday, 9 September 1944, whilst McSwann’s back was turned, Haigh bludgeoned him to death and disposed of his body.

  Haigh would later tell conflicting stories of how he managed this task. In some he claimed that he simply used a meat mincer to grind the body into minute pieces which he then flushed down the drain. In another variation, Haigh claimed that he placed McSwann’s corpse inside a forty gallon drum which he then topped up with sulphuric acid. Eventually, McSwann’s body was reduced to a sludge, which Haigh then tipped down the drain in the middle of the basement. Whichever method he actually did use, Donald McSwann’s body was completely disposed of.

  Haigh now took the opportunity to move into William Donald McSwann’s house.

  Haigh explained, to his victim’s parents, that their son had gone into hiding in Scotland, to avoid being called up, and had asked him to look after the house in order to deter burglars or looters. For a time the McSwanns believed everything, especially when they received letters from their son; letters which Haigh had forged. Eventually, however, as the war drew to a close, it was clear that McSwann would have to make a reappearance and, when he did not, his parents would ask some rather awkward questions. Indeed, they had already started to wonder why Haigh was disposing of some of Donald’s assets. Haigh decided that the best course of action was to remove them as well.

  William and Amy McSwann were last seen alive on 2 July 1945. Haigh would later admit that he lured them, separately, to the basement at 79 Gloucester Road where he battered them to death before putting the bodies into tanks filled with acid. Once they had dissolved, they too were flushed down the drain. After this, Haigh used his forgery skills to obtain the title to the McSwanns’ houses, businesses and other property owned by them. In all, he made around £8,000 from the murders, a considerable sum in 1945, worth about £208,000 pounds today. It was also about this time that Haigh moved to the Onslow Court Hotel, on Queen’s Gate, in South Kensington, where he occupied room 404.

  For some years, Haigh lived in comfort at the hotel, but in due course, most of the money had gone, due mainly to the fact that Haigh was a gambler, but not a very good one. By early 1948, financial concerns meant that another victim needed to be found; a victim with money.

  Dr Archibald Henderson was a very successful man, with property, money and a good position in life. He and his attractive wife, Rose, lived in a large house in Dawes Road, Fulham. They had recently converted their previous property, at 22 Ladbroke Square into flats and were in the process of advertising them for sale. One of the potential buyers who saw that advertisement was John George Haigh.

  Posing as a prospective customer, Haigh visited the flats and even made an offer on one of them. The deal, naturally, fell through, but Haigh had been so charming and plausible that the Hendersons decided to keep in touch with him. They even told him when they were going on a short break to Brighton, staying at the Metropole Hotel. Haigh said that he would join them and booked his own room in the same hotel.

  By this time, Haigh had given up the basement in Gloucester Road and had begun using a storeroom at Leopold Road, Crawley. This actually belonged to a man named Edward Charles Jones, who ran a company named Hurstlea Products. Jones and Haigh had first met in 1935 and Jones was fully aware of Haigh’s talent for inventing mechanical devices. Jones even gave Haigh an unpaid position as salesman and offered him the use of the storeroom at Leopold Road, which Haigh told people was his ‘factory’. Ostensibly, the storeroom would be used for industrial experiments, but Haigh had more nefarious plans for the building.

  On 16 February 1948, Haigh lured Dr Henderson to the factory in Leopold Road where he shot him dead, with Henderson’s own gun, which he had stolen from his house in Dawes Road. Haigh then returned to Brighton and informed Rose Henderson that her husband had been taken ill at Crawley. The kindly Haigh even offered to drive Rose to Leopold Road
, so that she could be with her husband. Once there, she too was shot, both bodies being then dissolved in acid.

  This was to be Haigh’s most successful killing to date. Using his forgery skills he managed to convince the Henderson’s family and servants that the couple had gone to South Africa. It was well known that the Hendersons had had their own marital concerns and Haigh’s explanation that they had gone abroad, to make a fresh start was readily accepted. He then went on to appropriate their property, earning himself another £8,000 or so.

  It was not until the following year that Archibald Henderson’s brother became concerned. He asked the BBC to make an appeal for his brother to return home, but so plausible and glib had Haigh been that the brother believed that if anything had happened to Archibald and his wife, it must have taken place in South Africa. Once again, no one suspected the charming and debonair Haigh of any involvement in the disappearance.

  By now, Haigh had murdered five people in as many years, and obtained property which today would be worth around half a million pounds, but it was still not enough. His considerable debts, mostly through gambling losses, had swallowed most of that money so that, later in 1949, he was again in dire financial straits. His hotel bill was unpaid and a cheque he had just written out for £32 5s 5d to cover that bill, would undoubtedly bounce when it was presented to his bank. This duly occurred and Haigh was now told that he must settle his bill, in cash, at the very earliest opportunity.

  On Wednesday, 16 February 1949, Haigh paid his hotel bill in full. It had now risen to £49 18s and Haigh, as the hotel had requested, paid it in cash. In fact, the day before, 15 February, Haigh had borrowed the sum of £50 from Edward Jones at Crawley. However, Jones had told his friend that he must have the money back by the coming weekend at the very latest, as he had an insurance premium to pay. Haigh had paid one debt by raising another and since he had less than a week to pay this money back, time was now running out for him.

  One of the other guests at the Onslow Court Hotel was a lady by the rather grand name of Olive Henrietta Helen Olivia Robarts Durand-Deacon. Mrs Durand-Deacon had been a resident of the hotel for some two years and she was interested in a new business venture. She had had the idea of producing false fingernails and needed someone to give her some advice on how this might be achieved. She knew that Haigh was something on an inventor and had approached him with the idea. He had said that he might be able to assist her and invited her to come with him to his factory in Crawley, once he had made up some prototypes. An arrangement was made, and the date for the visit set for Friday, 18 February 1949.

  That same night, a friend of Mrs Durand-Deacon’s, another guest named Constance Lane, noticed that she did not come down for dinner at her usual time. This might not have been a cause for concern, but Mrs Durand-Deacon was a creature of habit and it was certainly not like her to be absent without some sort of explanation.

  The following morning, at some time between 9.00am and 10.00am, Haigh had approached Miss Lane, whilst she was enjoying her breakfast and asked if she had seen any sign of Mrs Durand-Deacon. When Miss Lane said she had not, Haigh reminded her of the appointment he had made with her the previous day. He then claimed that Mrs Durand-Deacon had said she was just going to the Army and Navy Stores in Victoria Street and asked him to meet her there. He had arrived at the store at 2.35pm, but there had been no sign of Mrs Durand-Deacon, so he had driven down to Crawley alone.

  By the following morning, 20 February, Olive Durand-Deacon had still not appeared and Haigh again approached Miss Lane, to see if she had any news of her friend. Not only had Constance heard nothing, but she had now grown so concerned that she told Haigh she must go to the police and report her disappearance. At first, Haigh seemed to be a little concerned, but he had certainly recovered his composure a couple of hours later, when he returned to Miss Lane and said that he would go to the police station with her. That same day, Olive Durand-Deacon was reported as a missing person at Chelsea police station.

  On Monday, 21 February, Divisional Detective Inspector Shelley-Symes, called at the Onslow Court Hotel, as a matter of routine, to interview Haigh. Asked for further details of the appointment they had had, Haigh was only too happy to supply what details he could. He pointed out that the last time he had actually seen the missing woman was at 1.50pm on the 18th, when she had told him where she was going. He had waited for her outside the store, but when she hadn’t appeared after an hour or so he simply assumed that she had changed her mind and so went to his workshop in Crawley by himself. After doing some work there, he had enjoyed a meal in a local hostelry, before leaving Crawley at around 7.00pm.

  Inspector Shelley-Symes thought that there was something rather too glib about the charming Haigh and decided, again as a matter of routine, to run a police check on him. This revealed Haigh’s criminal record and his three prison terms. It made such interesting reading, that the inspector decided to dig a little deeper.

  A talk to Hilda Kirkwood, the book-keeper at the hotel, brought forward the information that one of Haigh’s cheques had recently bounced, but that he had settled his bill with £49 18s in cash on 16 February.

  The next step was to look at the workshop in Crawley. Since the premises actually belonged to Hurtslea Products, the police visited their offices, in West Street, Crawley first. There they spoke to Edward Jones, who confirmed his relationship with Haigh and also that he had lent him £50 on 15 February, the day before Haigh paid his hotel bill.

  Jones was also able to say that on 17 February, Haigh was back at West Street and asked Jones if he could take the leg off a stirrup pump for him. Jones did as his friend asked, assuming that the pump was needed for one of Haigh’s experiments. At the same time, Haigh mentioned that he was bringing someone down from London to look at an idea for producing false fingernails. Jones held the keys to the premises at Leopold Road and Haigh arranged to pick them up the next morning.

  On the morning of 18 February, Haigh arrived at Crawley very early. Jones had to collect some steel stored at Leopold Road and Haigh took him down there in his car. The steel was loaded and it was Haigh who then took the keys, and locked the doors. Later that same day, Jones saw Haigh again, and was told that Haigh’s potential business partner had not turned up for their meeting. He had, however, repaid £36 of the money he owed.

  Where had Haigh obtained that £36? He had been so short of cash that he had had to borrow money from his friend to pay his hotel bill, but now he suddenly appeared to be in possession of a good deal of cash. Perhaps there was some sort of clue at Leopold Road. So it was that on 26 February, Detective Sergeant Patrick Heslin entered the storeroom and began a search of the premises.

  There were a number of interesting items in the storeroom. Heslin noticed three large carboys containing sulphuric acid, standing in the centre of the floor. On the bench nearby lay a rubber apron and a pair of rubber gauntlet gloves, as well as an Army-type respirator or gas mask. The stirrup pump Edward Jones had referred to was propped up against a wall and on another bench, in the far corner of the room, was a square, leather hat box, which was locked.

  Sergeant Heslin also found some papers, which he thought might be of interest. One of these was a receipt, from a dry cleaners in High Street, Reigate. This appeared to be for a fur coat. What on earth was Haigh doing with a hat box and a fur coat? The items were taken away as possible evidence and later that same day, when officers visited the premises in Reigate, and spoke to Miss Mabel Marriott, they found that the fur coat had been brought in by a well-dressed and very charming gentleman. Miss Marriott said that she would be unable to positively identify the gentleman, but she did produce the fur, a Persian lamb coat of the type Mrs Durand-Deacon had been wearing when she disappeared on 18 February.

  On 28 February, Inspector Shelley-Symes was back at the Onslow Court, this time accompanied by Detective Inspector Albert Webb. They asked Haigh to go with them to Chelsea police station, so that he might clear up a few matters. Haigh was more than happy
to oblige. There, questioned again about Mrs Durand-Deacon’s disappearance, Haigh kept to much the same story as before, until faced with the evidence of the fur coat left at the Reigate cleaners. Haigh fell quiet and seemed to be considering his position.

  After some time in custody, Haigh was left alone with Inspector Webb. After remaining silent for a few minutes more Haigh suddenly asked, ‘Tell me frankly, what are the chances of anybody being released from Broadmoor?’ The remark shocked Webb and he replied, ‘I cannot discuss that sort of thing with you.’

  Haigh was not to be stopped now and continued, saying, ‘Well, if I tell you the truth you would not believe me. It sounds too fantastic for belief.’ He then paused before adding, ‘Mrs Durand-Deacon no longer exists. She has disappeared completely and no trace of her can ever be found again. I have destroyed her with acid. You will find the sludge that remains at Leopold Road. Every trace has gone. How can you prove murder if there is no body?’ Later, when Inspector Shelley-Symes returned, Haigh made a full written statement describing in detail how he had killed and disposed of Olive Durand-Deacon.

  Despite the fact that they now had a confession, the police needed more to prove that a murder had been committed. They also had to prove that the victim of that murder was none other than Olive Durand-Deacon, and that the person responsible was John George Haigh. With that in mind, Dr Keith Simpson, the pathologist, visited the alleged murder scene on 1 March.

  One of the first things Simpson noticed was that on the whitewashed walls, between the two windows, was a group of what appeared to be blood spatters. Scrapings of those stains were taken for further analysis. Outside, some 475lbs of dirt, the entire top soil to a depth of three or four inches, was loaded into wooden boxes and taken back to the laboratory for examination. Meanwhile, the locked hat-box was forced open, to reveal a Webley revolver, which had recently been fired.