Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in London's West End

by Geoffrey Howse

  The trial began at the Old Bailey on Monday 27 April 1942 before Mr Justice Asquith. The prosecutor was Mr G B McClure, KC. Cummins was defended by Mr John Flowers, KC. With overwhelming and conclusive evidence against him the trial ended the following day. The jury took just thirty-five minutes to find him guilty. Cummins was executed at Wandsworth on 25 June 1942. Cummins is believed to have committed at least one other murder. Police suspect that he strangled nineteen-year-old prostitute, Maple Church, in October 1941, as the pattern of the bruising corresponded with that of his other victims, indicating that the murderer was left-handed. The killer had also rifled her handbag.

  The Have-a-Go Hero, Charlotte Street 1947

  I’m alright … stop them … I did my best.

  A little after 2 pm on 29 April 1947, father of six, Alec de Antiquis, a thirty-four-year-old mechanic who ran a motor repair shop in Colliers Wood, South London, was in the West End on business, when he saw a robbery in progress at Jay’s Jewellers, situated at 73–75 Charlotte Street. As he tried to foil the robbery at the junction of Tottenham Street by driving his motorcycle in front of the fleeing three masked raiders, one of the gang shot him through the head. A surveyor, Charles Grimshaw, also tried to stop the thieves fleeing but he was knocked to the ground and kicked. Mr Antiquis, shot in the left temple, slumped over in the gutter. As he lay dying, the three robbers disappeared among the crowds and traffic. An ambulance and police arrived within a few minutes.

  The investigation was led by acting Superintendent Robert Fabian (who became a television celebrity after his retirement, with the programme Fabian of the Yard), assisted by Detective Chief Inspector Higgins and Detective Inspector Hodge. Fabian was quickly on the scene and as Mr de Antiquis was being lifted into the ambulance, heard the dying hero utter:

  I’m alright … stop them … I did my best.

  Mr Antiquis died in the ambulance before he reached hospital. It was established that the bullet that killed Alec de Antiquis was fired from a .32-calibre revolver. The gun, with five bullets still in the chamber, was discovered by an eight-year-old schoolboy, on the bed of the River Thames at Wapping, at low tide. This was tested by firearms’ expert Robert Churchill, who had given expert evidence at many high profile shooting trials, including the famous Fahmy case of 1923 (see chapter thirteen), who confirmed it was the murder weapon. A .555 Bulldog revolver, loaded with six rounds, one of which had been fired, was also found, similarly discarded. The missing bullet was dug out of the woodwork in the jeweller’s shop.

  The attempted robbery itself had been a violent one. Sixty-year-old Albert Ernest Stock, a director had angered the robbers by shutting the safe door. One of them had beaten him about the head with a pistol. The assistant manager, seventy-year-old Bertram Thomas Keates had thrown a heavy wooden stool at one of the men, who pointed a gun at him and fired a shot, which lodged itself in the woodwork. The sound of the shot alerted people in the street and shouts of ‘help’ and ‘murder’ were heard. The three men panicked and ran into the street only to discover that a lorry had blocked the path of their getaway car, stolen for the purpose the previous day. They escaped on foot, but to add confusion to the events, many eyewitnesses believed they had escaped by car.

  Statements were taken from twenty-seven people and descriptions issued of the wanted men. Two days after the shooting, a taxi driver, Albert Victor Grubb, turned up at Tottenham Court Road Police Station, and reported he had seen two men entering Brook House, 191 Tottenham Court Road, with handkerchiefs round their chins. When the police went to investigate, the discovery of certain articles of clothing in an empty room eventually led, after some very skilful detective work, to the arrest of twenty-three-year-old Charles Henry Jenkins (younger brother of Thomas Jenkins, involved in the killing of fifty-six-year-old retired naval commander Ralph Binney, run over following the robbery of a City jewellers, as he tried to stop the getaway car, on 8 December 1944. Jenkins was convicted of manslaughter and received eight years’ penal servitude). Two of his friends were also picked up by the police, Christopher James Geraghty, aged twenty (who had been in borstal with Jenkins) and John Peter Rolt, aged seventeen, and both incriminated themselves. All three were charged with the murder of Alec de Antiquis on 19 May.

  The trial of Geraghty, Jenkins and Rolt began at the Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey, on Monday 21 July 1947, before Mr Justice Hallett. It lasted a week. The prosecution was led by Mr Anthony Hawke. Geraghty was defended by Mr Wrightson, Jenkins by Mr Vick, KC, and Rolt by Mr O’Sullivan, KC. At the trial’s conclusion, the jury took just fifty minutes to arrive at a guilty verdict in all three cases. Sentence of death was passed on Geraghty and Jenkins. Although it was Geraghty who fired the gun that killed Mr Antiquis, Jenkins was an accessory engaged in a joint enterprise of armed robbery. Rolt, who was too young to be hanged, was sentenced to be detained during His Majesty’s Pleasure. Geraghty and Jenkins were hanged at Pentonville on Friday 19 September 1947 by Albert Pierrepoint. Ironically, on the day of the shooting Pierrepoint was walking down Charlotte Street on the way to meet some friends. He saw a lot of people gathered round a body in the road and continued on his way. There was a tremendous outcry at the executions, reinforcing the case of the abolitionists. Unfortunately, there was no such outcry at the lack of compensation that brave Alec de Antiquis’s widow and six children received. Mrs Antiquis received a medal from the police commemorating her late husband’s bravery, nothing else. After serving less than nine years, Rolt was released from prison on licence in June 1956.

  The Murder of Mrs Elsie May Batten by Edwin Albert Bush, Cecil Court, 1961

  … an eighteen-inch dagger was protruding from her chest.

  In 1961, the shops in Cecil Court, a narrow walkway which straddles Charing Cross Road and St Martin’s Lane, was then, much as it is today, occupied by mostly second-hand book, prints and curio shops. Seventy-two-year-old Swiss born, Louis Meier was the proprietor of an antique and curio shop situated at No. 23, run by his manageress Mrs Marie Gray. They were often away at auctions, so they had a part-time assistant, fifty-year-old, Mrs Elsie May Batten, who used to open the shop at about nine o’clock and put the displays of framed pictures outside. Mrs Batten travelled in each morning from her flat in Castletown Road, Fulham, and had been working at the little shop in Cecil Court for about two years. She didn’t actually need to work, as she was comfortably off, being the wife of renowned sculptor Mark Batten, who was usually away from London four days a week, working in his studio at Dallington, near Heathfield in Sussex.

  On the morning of Friday 3 March 1961, Mrs Batten kissed her fifteen-year-old daughter Griselda goodbye, before setting out for Cecil Court on the Piccadilly Line from Barons Court to Leicester Square. After unlocking the iron gates at 23 Cecil Court, and partially arranging the outside display, Mrs Batten was not seen alive again, except by her murderer. When Louis Meier arrived after midday to pay Mrs Batten’s wages, he found that the usual outside display was incomplete and when he entered the shop, he saw the light was on but Mrs Batten was nowhere to be seen. It was only when Mr Meier went into the curtained-off area towards the back of the shop that he noticed Mrs Batten’s legs sticking out from beneath the thick brocade curtain. As he drew back the curtain he discovered that Mrs Batten was dead and an eighteen-inch dagger was protruding from her chest.

  23 Cecil Court, where Mrs Elsie May Batten was murdered, seen here in September 2005. The author

  Detective Chief Superintendent John Bliss and Detective Superintendent Frank Pollard took charge of the case. Evidence at the scene suggested that a struggle had taken place. As well as the dagger in the chest, which had pierced her heart, there was also a wound to her neck, one to her shoulder and yet another to her back. She had also been hit over the head with a heavy stone vase, which was found nearby. Superintendent Pollard found a piece of board under Mrs Batten’s body. On it was the print of the heel from a man’s shoe.

  A fifteen-year-old boy, Peter King, came forward to say he
had called into the shop at 11.30 to buy a billiard cue. He saw the legs and hand of what he thought was a tailor’s dummy, and finding no one around left. This established the time of death as being between 9am and 11.30 am. Mr Meier provided some vital information. He remembered that the previous day a young Indian-looking man had expressed interest in a dress sword costing £15 and also several daggers. He had returned later that day with a young woman. Police enquiries revealed that a young Indian man had called in to Robert’s gun shop on the opposite side of Cecil Court and asked if they purchased ornamental swords. The following morning at about 10 am, the morning of the murder, the man called in at Robert’s shop with a sword which he said he knew was worth more but was prepared to accept £10. The man had left the sword with the proprietor’s son, Paul Roberts, but had not returned. This was the very sword which had inflicted injuries on the body of Mrs Batten.

  From the descriptions of the man given by Mr Meier and the Roberts the police were able to use a technique for the first time in England, the Identikit picture. This relatively new technique had been successfully used in the United States for about eighteen months. It was the culmination of research carried out under the auspices of Hugh McDonald of Los Angeles Police Department. Although the concept of Identikit had been introduced to Scotland Yard in 1959, this was the first time it had been put to practical use. On the front page of every national newspaper this new tool in the fight against crime was used to catch Mrs Batten’s killer. The jigsaw-like sections of the image had been assembled from the descriptions given. Along with the Identikit picture was a description of both the man and the girl who had accompanied him. On 8 March, PC Cole was on duty in Old Compton Street. He saw a young man who looked very similar to the Identikit picture. He was taken into custody and picked out in an identity parade. His name was Edwin Bush, a twenty-one-year-old Eurasian. The heel of one of Bush’s shoes was an exact match for the heel mark found at the murder scene.

  Bush’s trial began at the Central Criminal Court on 12 May 1961. The judge was Mr Justice Stevenson. Bush was defended by Mr Christmas Humphreys, QC. To gain sympathy with the jury, Bush claimed in court that he had killed Mrs Batten after she had made a racist remark but this contradicted his earlier statement when he admitted that he had killed her to obtain the sword. He was found guilty of murder on 13 May. An appeal failed and he was hanged at Pentonville Prison on 6 July 1961.

  Freddie Mills 1965

  … family and friends believed he had been murdered, most likely as a warning to other club owners who resisted extortion.

  The celebrated and popular pugilist Freddie Mills was born in Parkstone, Poole, on 26 June 1919. During his successful boxing career, he was the world light heavyweight champion from 1948 to 1950. In the nineteen-forties, he invested some of his earnings in a Chinese restaurant at 143 Charing Cross Road, which, after operating successfully for a number of years, he eventually turned into a club, in the belief it would be more profitable. Although Mills wanted to create an entirely different atmosphere, like other similar clubs, it attracted elements from the seedier side of life. Mills was ever hopeful that the hostesses he employed there would not be ‘on the game’, as they invariably were at other clubs. The club was frequented by the notorious Kray twins. On 25 July 1965 Mills was found dead in his car in Goslett Yard, a court leading off the northern end of Charing Cross Road, close to his club. He had been shot with a shotgun, which lay beside him. Although the verdict at the inquest was suicide, Mills’s family and friends believed he had been murdered, most likely as a warning to other club owners who resisted extortion.

  Frankie Fraser in Mad Frank’s London, mentions the Mills case in conjunction with a passage about the ‘Jack the Stripper’ case. The ‘Nudes-in-the Thames’, murders, as they were referred to in 1964, involved the murders of several prostitutes in West London, during 1964-5. They had been choked to death by their killer while they pleasured him with fellatio, evidence of this being provided by missing teeth (lost whilst struggling) and semen in the throats of the victims. Despite reports suggesting that the Stripper was a security guard at Westpoint Trading Estate, West Acton, where overwhelming evidence in a car spraying workshop linked the victims with flecks of paint found on the bodies, this did not stop a link, no matter how tenuous it might be, being made between the killings and Freddie Mills. Other commentators have mentioned Mills in conjunction with the Jack the Stripper case. Frankie Fraser says:

  … a married man from South London topped himself, leaving a note saying he was unable to stand the strain any longer.

  What is certain is that the killings stopped and the police put it about that this man was in fact Jack the Stripper. Then the rumours started, because it was about this time that the boxer Freddie Mills topped himself or got took out in Goslett Yard … round the corner from where Freddie had a sort of Chinese Restaurant club. There was [sic] all sorts of stories about that. Some people said he did himself because the place wasn’t doing well; that he was half gay and couldn’t cope; that he was upset because he wasn’t being used as a commentator for boxing on the radio no more; that he was being leaned on for protection and wouldn’t pay, or that the Twins did him or that the Chinese Triads did him. Pick any theory you want.

  Then there was the story that he was the Stripper. The tale went that some coppers knew it and told him he had to top himself because they didn’t want to have anyone arrest him …

  What actually happened to Freddie Mills, described as a courageous and humane man, will probably never be known.

  Lord Lucan 1974

  A bent, bloodstained bludgeon, made of lead piping with an elastoplast grip, nine inches long and weighing two and a quarter pounds, was laying on the half landing of the basement stairway.

  Thirty-nine-year-old Richard John Bingham, seventh Earl of Lucan, known as ‘Lucky’ to his friends, disappeared on the night of Thursday 7 November 1974, following an incident at his former Belgravia residence. At a little after nine o’clock that same night Veronica, Countess of Lucan, stumbled into The Plumbers’ Arms in Lower Belgrave Street, with blood streaming down her face. That night the pub was quiet, with almost as many staff as customers. As Lady Lucan entered the pub she blurted out to the alarmed customers and staff:

  Help me, help me. I’ve just escaped from a murderer … My children … my children … He’s in the house. He has murdered the nanny.

  Lord and Lady Lucan had separated in January 1973. While she remained at the house in Lower Belgrave Street, with their three children and nanny, he moved into a basement flat nearby at 72a Elizabeth Street. By the time the police broke open the door of 46 Lower Belgrave Street, Lady Lucan had been taken by ambulance to St George’s Hospital, Hyde Park Corner. In the basement breakfast room they found the battered body of the children’s nanny, twenty-nine-year-old Sandra Rivett, stuffed in a US mail sack. A bent, bloodstained bludgeon, made of lead piping with an elastoplast grip, nine inches long and weighing two and a quarter pounds, was laying on the half landing of the basement stairway. When Miss Rivett’s body was examined by pathologist, Professor Keith Simpson, he found six splits in the head, severe bruising on both shoulders, caused by the bludgeon and other bruising which may have been defence wounds.

  The Plumbers’ Arms, Lower Belgrave Street, where Lady Lucan went on the night of 7 November 1974 after being attacked. The author

  The Lucans’ eldest daughter, Lady Frances, aged ten, made the following statement, which helps to pinpoint the course of events, by the timing of various television programmes which were being watched in the household that evening:

  46 Lower Belgrave Street, the Belgravia home of Veronica, Countess of Lucan and her children and their nanny, Sandra Rivett. The author

  At 7.20 I watched Top of the Pops in the nursery. Mummy, Camilla, George and Sandra were downstairs watching The Six Million Dollar Man. I joined them at 8.05 and we all watched TV in Mummy’s room. When the programme finished at 8.30 I went back to the nursery and played with m
y games. Sandra brought Camilla and George upstairs and put them to bed. I had had my bath and was wearing my pyjamas. I stayed in the nursery about five minutes. I went downstairs again to Mummy’s room about 8.40. I asked Mummy where Sandra was and Mummy said she was downstairs making tea. After a while Mummy said she wondered why Sandra was so long. It was before the news came on at 9 p.m. I said I would go downstairs to see what was keeping her, but Mummy said no, she would go down. She left the bedroom door open, but there was no light in the hall. Just after Mummy left the room I heard a scream. It sounded as though it came from a long way away. I thought perhaps the cat had scratched Mummy and she had screamed. I was not frightened. I went to the door and called Mummy but there was no answer and I left it. At 9.05 the news was on TV and Daddy and Mummy both walked into the room. Mummy had blood over her face and was crying. Mummy told me to go upstairs. Daddy didn’t say anything to me and I said nothing to either of them. I don’t know how much blood was on her face. I didn’t hear any conversation between Mummy and Daddy. I didn’t see any blood on Daddy’s clothes. I wondered what had happened but I didn’t ask.

  At 9.50 pm Lord Lucan telephoned his mother, the Dowager Countess of Lucan, at her flat overlooking Lord’s Cricket Ground at St John’s Wood. He told her that while passing the house he saw a stranger grappling with Veronica and had let himself into the house and fought him off, only to have Veronica think that he had attacked her. After asking his mother to pick up the children, he drove to friends in Sussex and told them the same story about seeing an intruder attacking his wife. He also wrote letters to other friends stating the same and declared his intention of ‘lying doggo’ for a while.