BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at British Podcast Awards, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25. Subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Acast, Stitcher and all podcast platforms.
EPISODE ONE HUNDRED AND THREE:
On Tuesday 4th October 1853, in a squalid first-floor lodging at 6 Little Dean Street, the beating of baby Richard began… and ten days later, he would be dead. Described as a ‘bastard’ child, his widowed mother struggled against insurmountable odds in the hope that he would survive, only those she was forced to trust with his care, became his killers.
THE LOCATION
As many photos of the case are copyright protected by greedy news organisations, to view them, take a peek at my entirely legal social media accounts - Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
The location of The Coach and Horses public house at 42 Wellington Street, WC2 is where the dark blue triangle in Covent Garden is. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, such as Soho, King's Cross, etc, access them by clicking here.
I've also posted some photos to aid your "enjoyment" of the episode. These photos were taken by myself (copyright Murder Mile) or granted under Government License 3.0, where applicable.
Photos left to right: a rare article on the case itself, two photos of Bourchier Street today, one where 6 Little Dean Street is belived to have stood and a photo of 3 Peter Street where Elizabeth Higgs lived
Credits: The Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast was researched, written and recorded by Michael J Buchanan-Dunne, with the sounds recorded on location (where possible), and the music written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name. Additional music was written and performed as used under the Creative Common Agreement 4.0.
SOURCES: This case was researched using the original declassified court transcripts from the Old Bailey, as well as the British History website, local knowledge, and several news sources from the time. . https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t18531024-name-363&div=t18531024-1123#highlight MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE:
SCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile; a true-crime podcast and audio guided walk featuring many of London’s untold, unsolved and long-forgotten murders, all set within and beyond the West End. Today’s episode is about the tragic little life of an eleven-month-old baby boy known only Richard. Described as a ‘bastard’ child, his widowed mother struggled against insurmountable odds in the hope that he would survive, only those she was forced to trust with his care, became his killers. Murder Mile is researched using the original police files. It contains moments of satire, shock and grisly details. And as a dramatization of the real events, it may also feature loud and realistic sounds, so that no matter where you listen to this podcast, you’ll feel like you’re actually there. My name is Michael, I am your tour-guide and this is Murder Mile. Episode 103: The Beating of Baby Richard. Today I’m standing on Bourchier Street, in Soho, W1; one road west of the brutal attack on Parisienne sex-worker Jacqueline Birri, several doors down from the sex-shop slayer Richard Rhodes Henley, two hundred feet west of the deaf/mute murder of Rosa O’Neill, and with the rear windows of the Admiral Duncan pub and Dutch Leah’s pad peering over, we are only a one minute walk from The French House where William Raven met his lovers, his robbers and his executioners - coming soon to Murder Mile. Hidden amidst the gloomy darkness of Old Compton Street and Meard Street, Bourchier Street is little more than a side-alley between Dean Street and Wardour Street. First known as Milk Alley; from 1838 until 1937, it became Little Dean Street before being renamed after the late rector of St Anne’s church, and having been demolished three times - once by a bomb - nothing of historical significance remains. Seeing only the backs of four-storey buildings on both sides, Bourchier Street has no houses, no shops, no life nor colour. It’s little more than a series of brick walls, backdoors, fire escapes, gates, a bin store, the locked entrance to an underground car-park, a public relations firm, a set of flats, a single solitary tree (which looks lost) and half of a road which stops dead, smack bang in the middle, for no reason. Being grey, dark, gloomy and drab, it’s only used as a quick cut-through for savvy locals, a hidey-hole where taxi-drivers take sneaky tea-breaks, a little snook where embarrassed skateboarders repeatedly fail to do even the most basic of tricks, a breathing space where editors get high having wasted another day editing shite like ‘Britain’s Wackiest Celebrity Pet Patio Makeovers from Hell’, but - mostly – it’s a place where incontinent men come to piddle having just left the pub and wishing they wore Tenalady. It truly is a pointless part of Soho, a place so forgettable it’s almost as if someone has deliberately tried to erase its past. And maybe they did, as many years ago, when Little Dean Street was an impoverished slum, a desperate woman came here to put her cherished child in the care of another couple. And although, the street, the building and the people have long since been reduced to dust, unable to erase the horror of the crime, some people say that – even today - you can still hear the baby scream. As it was here, on Tuesday 4th October 1853, in a squalid first-floor lodging at 6 Little Dean Street, that the beating of baby Richard began… and ten days later, he would be dead. (Interstitial) Richard was doomed to live a sad and tragic life before his life had even begun… History is primarily concerned with four things; kings, colonies, creations and conquests, almost all of which are the pre-occupation of the prosperous and the privileged, and no matter how little they’re lives have amounted to, their drooling biographers detail the minutia of their frivolously pampered existence in microscopic detail. Where-as the poor and the ordinary? Unless their crime or their death is particularly cruel or grisly, they will only ever be listed a statistic, a footnote or entirely forgotten. Richard’s mother was a nobody, a nothing, a faceless worthless wretch whose name, age and place of birth wasn’t worth the courts recording correctly, so although she was known as Eliza Ryall (possibly the surname of the child’s father), Miss Banks (probably a mistake) and Elizabeth Higgs (supposedly her married name), as her birth name was unknown, all we do know was that Elizabeth Higgs was a middle-aged single-mother with dark ragged hair, pale anaemic skin and a gaunt haunted face. She was tatty, frail and weak, but her look made sense given the stress of her miserable little life. With so much confusion over her names, there are a few possibilities we can assume. If she was born Elizabeth Banks and became Mrs Higgs but was now an unmarried mother called Miss Ryall – with the life expectancy amongst the city’s poor being in the mid-to-late forties – it’s likely she was a widow. Being uneducated, unskilled and recently bereaved, with no known next-of-kin, no home, no savings and no regular income – beyond the meagre money she could scrape-up by toiling away in a series of poorly-paid jobs and being reduced to the shamed indignity of pleading poverty - Eliza was the poorest of the poor, who lived from day-to-day and penny-to-penny, never knowing how long she could last. According to her own account, she has three young children, but as none of them were listed as living in her squalid leaky lodging at 3 Peter Street, the only other option is that (being deemed by the state that she was incapable of raising them alone) all three were condemned to a life in the workhouse; where they would work hard, eat poorly, be beaten, and the odds of their survival was slim. And yet, these were her children who had survived, as this frail widow had three more who had died. Still being only babies, it began as flu-like symptoms; first with tiredness, restlessness and redness of the skin, descending into the agonising swelling of the baby’s body and brain, and gripped by a high fever - as hospitals were not a place for the poor to get well, they were only the sanctuaries for those whose money earned them the right to live – three of Eliza’s babies had died of ‘water on the brain’. On an unrecorded date in November 1852, in the district of Marylebone – being described by the court as a ‘bastard’ (as if his fatherless status meant that rightfully his life should be worth less) - the fourth of Eliza’s surviving children was born and she named him Richard. Being too poor to be baptised, his birth was sparsely recorded and he never received a surname - whether as Banks, Ryall or Higgs. With his birth father absent and the government having enslaved every woman into a marriage merely to survive - as the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1831 penalised and demonised all single mothers to be the sole-breadwinner of their brood of bastards or be condemned to a slow death in the workhouse – this morally self-righteous law had created an unjust system, which was hailed by the law-makers, but was ripe to be abused by cruel people keen to make money out of poor women in a bad way. Earning a pittance, working days and nights, in a series of menial demeaning jobs - where each day Eliza would race across the city to earn a few pennies, only being hired on a ‘first-come first-served’ basis, if she was too late, the job would be gone - so money, food and lodging was never guaranteed. At the start of November 1853, as a mild autumn slunk behind the thick brooding clouds and the sharp winter winds and bitter rains drew in earlier than expected, eleven-month-old Richard caught a cold. He had a little sniffle, a raspy cough and his putty white skin was all warm, red and sticky to the touch. And although his symptoms were mild, as Eliza knew, in 1853, a simple cold could kill. Her baby needed medicine, but without money, Eliza needed to work, but to work - as a single mother - she would be forced to find someone trustworthy but cheap to look after her baby. The young couple she was recommended lived at 6 Little Dean Street, and they were called Mr & Mrs Birch. (Interstitial) On the bitterly cold morning of Tuesday 4th October 1853, at a little after dawn, having wrapped baby Richard in several woollen layers – as still being sniffly, his blue eyes, red nose and pale cheeks were the only features which peeped out of this thick toasty bundle - Eliza left her lodging at 3 Peter Street, crossed over Wardour Street and entered Little Dean Street, a distance of less than one hundred feet. Working seven days-a-week, sixteen hours-a-day, just to afford the basics; food, lodging, a doctor’s fee, medicine and the half-a-crown-a-week the carer would cost, Eliza had to work flat out. But being local – although it ripped her soul apart to be parted for so long from her baby - knowing this was only a temporary measure until he was well and that a good woman would feed him, bathe him and wean him, she could still see her boy two or three times a day, and - when she needed to - she could sleep. As yet another dark and dingy Soho slum, Little Dean Street was a thin airless alley barely one hundred and fifty feet long by five feet wide with two long wooden lines of rickety ramshackle buildings stretching four and five storeys high on both sides. But as each tier overhung – so that every tossed bucket of festering human waste didn’t slop and drip down the window’s below – with barely a crack of skylight above, as both roofs almost touched, the sun rarely (if ever) shone on Little Dean Street. It was leaky, dirty and cold. It was overrun with rodents, over-flowing with effluent, every stair was a death-trap and the back-alley below was a seedy hideaway for gin-swiggers and the sexually depraved, as the feted air hung with the stench of an abattoir, tannery and an open cess pit - and although a rat-infested hovel prone to outbreaks of Typhoid and Cholera was not uncommon - for many, it was home. As planned, part way down Little Dean Street, Eliza knocked at the wooden door of house number six. Greeted by Mrs Birch, she handed the young woman (who she barely knew) a half-crown, a blanket, a woollen shawl, a small sack of food and – as many women would be forced to do - her baby too. That night, just shy of midnight, as a gaunt and haunted woman who was weak with exhaustion having worked from dawn-till-dusk, Eliza made the last of her three trips that day to see her baby boy in the Birch’s first-floor back-room lodging. She cradled him, she breast-fed him, she put him to bed, and she stumbled the short walk home back to Peter Street, for a few scant and anxious hours of sleep. Eliza’s day was as ordinary as many other working-class women in that era who had been forced into a very desperate situation simply to ensure the safety and the future of their families. By chance, putting trust in a stranger, Eliza had sealed her baby’s fate, and ten days later, Richard would be dead. In the ensuing trial into the death of a “bastard child” known only as Richard, as was common practice, Mr & Mrs Birch were permitted to face, question and interrogate their accuser – Miss Elizabeth Higgs – a mother still in grief as nature cruelly continued producing her dead baby’s milk in her aching breast. During the trial, many details would emerge, some were expected, others would be truly horrifying. Going under the seemingly respectable guise of Mr & Mrs Birch, neither were married and both were born liars. Described as ‘dirty-looking’, twenty-two-year-old Joseph Birch was a thief, a layabout and an abusive drunk with a fiery temper, spawned from a close but dishonest family of petty crooks. With a nine-month-old bastard of their own to feed, his girlfriend Caroline Nash claimed to be a carer, but lacking patience and cursed by a cruel and nasty streak, she was less of a mother, more of a monster. Earning a paltry fee, Caroline couldn’t care a hoot for some other woman’s sprog, let alone her own who was left to lie in his own filth, crying and sore, as she’d scream “shut up” and “be quiet” whenever it wailed. And yet, when Eliza was due, pretending to be all sweetness and cuddles, both babies were miraculously calm, quiet and a little bit sleepy, as their milk had been laced with a large slug of rum. So, by the end of the first night, as an exhausted Eliza fed her baby in the dark of the Birch’s backroom - although this clammy tot still wheezed and sneezed - as she put him to sleep, she was reassured as her little boy soundly slept… but his silence would bely the abuse that this helpless baby would suffer. On Wednesday 5th October, as the first of two visits this determined but drained woman could make that day - with three dead babies plaguing her thoughts and seeing similar symptoms return – in those few precious moments that her work would allow, she was focussed on keeping him fed, warm and soothed, so (as far as we know) she was unaware of what had and would happen to her baby. At two o’clock in the afternoon, although it always echoed with the hubbub of everyday life - a shout, a scream, a laugh and a cry - inside the wooden walls of 6 Little Dean Street, the familiar pained wailing of this feverish and restless boy had grown more even heart-rending, as the viscous scorn of two unfit adults (“shut up”, “bloody child”, “little devil”) did nothing to soothe or stifle his screams as Caroline & Joseph repeatedly slapped, smacked and beat Eliza’s helpless baby boy. From across the landing, fellow lodger and mother-of-three Ann Dakin shouted "for God's sake, don't beat the baby so", only to bruskly feel the hot lash of Caroline’s curt tongue, as she barked back “I will do as I see fit” and threatened “shut it, or I’ll hurl you down the stairs and snap your bloody neck”. All of which were backed-up by the drunken brutal bulk of a slurring bottle-swigging Joseph who kicked open Ann’s door and unleashed a volley of holy abuse, as she shielded her babies. And although Ann did threaten to call for a constable - fearing for her life - she didn’t. In fact, no-one said a word; not to the Police, the landlord, or even to Eliza. Moments later, the baby’s screams were smothered. Just shy of midnight, as an exhausted Eliza fed her subdued child – with his wheezing deep, his little chest rattling and his pallid skin all hot and blotchy – sensing the kind of fever which had already stolen half her brood, Eliza only saw the symptoms she feared the most, and not the obvious signs of abuse. In court, with the cruel couple’s litany of lies backed-up by his dishonest family, Joseph dismissed this beating as being just a few light pats on the bottom, Caroline claimed that when the baby came into her care that it was sicker than it actually was (saying “he was almost at death’s door”), and with her boyfriend’s next-of-kin concocting an alibi that neither Caroline nor Joseph were there that night, or any of the subsequent nights when similar beatings took place, often it was their word against Eliza’s. Twice that week, Eliza had taken Richard to see a doctor, and although this professional’s fee for five minutes of prodding was more than she earned in two days’ work, as the diagnosis was uncertain, the wheezing boy was given a mild decongestant and Eliza was told to bring him back if he got any worse. On the odd nights she had him home; sporadically sleeping, always screaming and with his mottled skin a vivid mix of reds, purples and blacks - as the common curse of bed-sores, lice and fleas nibbled at his flesh and as a spiking fever inflamed his swollen blotchy torso - even the doctor didn’t see the bruises, and so – crippled by the expense of doing her best - she returned her baby to Mr & Mrs Birch. Every day eleven-month-old baby Richard would cry, and every day the Birch’s would beat him… On Friday 7th October, at roughly 4pm, just three days into their care, two lodgers at 6 Little Dean Street would witness the abuse - Ann Dakin who lived opposite and Lydia Armstrong one floor above. Within the hard echoey confines of the tiny first-floor backroom, every sound echoed; from the baby’s cries, to the couple’s viscous screams, to the hard slaps as rough hands smacked soft bare flesh as the little boy endlessly cried until it could cry no more. By now, through threats and fear, the whole house had reluctantly become accustomed to its tears, but what Lydia would see next was truly awful. Having pulled a pitcher of water from the communal drum in the basement, as Lydia slowly crept back up the creaky stairs – for fear of incurring the Birch’s wrath – hearing its pained screams muffled for an interminably long time, only to cut the air as sharp and loud as ever (as if the little boy was fighting for his life), as Caroline screamed “it won’t silence, make it quit” and a furious drunken Joseph barked at the boy “you little bastard, I am the master of you”, Lydia peeped through a small crack in the wall. Inside their pitiful little lodging, she witnessed Joseph; his brown toothy shards all bared, his reddened glassy eyes all glared, his heaving brutal bulk towering tall as the tiny wailing tot cowered between his feet on the rough splintered floor. Yanking up the terrified boy by its thin pale arms like it was a rag-doll, being gripped in his hairy fist, Joseph smacked the little boy’s soft head against the hard-wooden skirting-board, a total of eight times, smashing his skull down again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again and again, until having cast him aside, the little boy lay limp and silent. Once more, nobody did anything or said anything to Eliza or the Police. Joseph denied he was there that night “I was at my brother’s in Borough Road”, Caroline pleaded ignorance “I never touched it, not once. I love my baby I do”, and their family swearing in court and on the Bible that both were elsewhere at the time of each beating… (add “we was at the theatre”, “he was helping me out down the market”, “our mother can vouch so he was”)… as all the while, baby Richard got sicker and weaker. On Saturday 8th October – as Eliza had eaten less to afford more, only to earn less as her work slowed - during one of her brief visits, whilst washing her wheezing boy, the fatigued woman thought she saw bruises on the mottled swollen skin of his skull. Paying more than she could afford for a doctor to dismiss this as abuse and state the obvious - “babies do fall” - seeing all of the symptoms she dreaded in her little boy – aches, swelling, limpness, sweating, shivers and a high fever – just as she had with her three dead babies before him, Eliza suspected that baby Richard had a swelling on the brain… …and he did. Only this fatal swelling of the brain wasn’t caused by a fever, but by his carers. And with his frail little body too weak to fight off his injuries, as his broken mother was tossed back into the viscous circle of an unjust system from which she would never escape - in order to work, to earn, to (barely) live, and (if she was lucky) to survive - she was forced to return her baby back to the Birch’s. In court, the Birch’s and their deceitful kin trotted-out an endless sluice of excuses to provide alibis for Joseph & Caroline’s crimes on the days in question. On Monday 10th, Joseph said “I were in Borough market, my brother’s a costermonger, I was pushing his barrow cos of his bad foot”, with George Birch affirming under oath “that’s true, he didn’t leave till gone nine”. On Tuesday 11th, their excuses were much the same. And on Wednesday 12th, Caroline testified to the court “me and him was at his mum’s all day”, which both parents swore blind was true. Only the lodgers (Lydia and Ann) would tell a very different story to the court, one about the slaps, the smacks and the screams they heard, every single day, at 6 Little Dean Street. But by Thursday 13th, everything would change… At one o’clock, from the first-floor back-room of 6 Little Dean Street, the caustic scorn of Caroline and Joseph was as loud and abusive as ever (“you little devil”, “shut that bastard up”), their slaps were as hard, their wrath was as bitter, and although muffled, the little cries from the baby’s lungs was weak. Being silent and still, suddenly his tiny body tensed, and as a foam of frothy white liquid formed about his lips, with every one of his little muscles trashing violently like he was possessed by a demon, baby Richard was enveloped in a convulsive fit. And for once, Caroline and Joseph’s mouths fell silent. An hour later, Caroline went to 3 Peter Street to tell Eliza that her child was “unwell”. Not dying, not fitting, not beaten to within an inch of its life, just “unwell”. Seeing the silent tot wrapped-up in his cloak with a barely a few pale features visible, she held him in her arms, cradling her limp baby boy. But by the morning, having suffered a second fit, eleven-month-old baby Richard was dead. (End) Grieving the loss of her fourth of seven babies, Eliza viewed her little boy’s cold body in the surgery of Dr Wakem, but even as a layman - having witnessed death by brain fever three times prior - in the stark light of unimaginable loss she could see that his symptoms were not right. With his body cooled, less red and swollen, the mottled bruises to his legs, arms, back and head were unmistakable. A post-mortem confirmed that his bruising was caused by beatings over several days, and – although his symptoms were consistent with a ‘brain fever’ – with no evidence of any diseases except for a cold, the fits and bloody congestion in his brain were attributed to his head being smacked hard against the skirting board. And although he had been a healthy little boy, with his stomach empty, it was clear that the food Eliza had provided, to feed and wean him, Caroline had given to her own boy instead. At the Coroner’s Inquest held at the Globe Tavern in Southwark, Caroline Nash and Joseph Birch were found guilty of manslaughter. Tried at the Old Bailey on the 27th October 1853, for the charge of “slaying a male ‘bastard’ child named Richard”, although Eliza was interrogated by her accusers and condemned as an unfit mother and a liar, she stood her ground and both were found guilty of murder. The life of baby Richard - a bastard whose surname was never determined - was deemed so unworthy that although they should have been executed, Joseph and Caroline were sentenced to just four years in prison. Joseph was sent to HMP Portland in Dorset, Caroline to Brixton Prison, and on their release, they married and moved to Warwickshire, where they had three more children and died in the fifties. Being too poor, baby Richard was buried in an unmarked grave, with several strangers, somewhere in London. And although his mother - Elizabeth Higgs - had done everything she could when faced with a difficult and insurmountable situation where the odds were always stacked against her, sadly being a nobody who meant nothing to no-one, she has vanished from history and her fate is unknown. OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile. The episode is complete, so feel free to switch off now… but if you’d like to know more details about this case, as well as listen to some meanderingly aimless unscripted waffle about cakes, coots and canal things, please stay tuned for Extra Mile, after the break. Before that, a big thank you to my new Patreon supporters who are Svetlana Bezverkhaya, Philippa Chapman and Paul Morrissey, I thank you all for your support. And thank you to everyone who continues to listen to the podcast, review it, share it, all the thing that keep it alive. Murder Mile was researched, written & performed by myself, with the main musical themes written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name. Thank you for listening and sleep well.
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BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at British Podcast Awards, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25. Subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Acast, Stitcher and all podcast platforms.
Coach & Horses publiuc house at 42 Wellington Street, WC2. There's two entrance doors, to the left is to the (former) public bar and to the right was the entrance to the salloon, where James McCallum shot the barman Morris Sholman
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, set within and beyond the West End.
EPISODE ONE HUNDRED AND TWO:
On Friday 20th December 1940, James Forbes McCallum robbed the Coach & Horses public house in Covent Garden; he was a desperate man whose first and only robbery was ill-judged, unplanned and such a catastrophic failure that it ended in death. And yet, when he was arrested, he was so panicked, he gave the Police five plausible alibis. But which alibi was right?
THE LOCATION
As many photos of the case are copyright protected by greedy news organisations, to view them, take a peek at my entirely legal social media accounts - Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
The location of The Coach and Horses public house at 42 Wellington Street, WC2 is where the dark blue triangle in Covent Garden is. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, such as Soho, King's Cross, etc, access them by clicking here.
I've also posted some photos to aid your "enjoyment" of the episode. These photos were taken by myself (copyright Murder Mile) or granted under Government License 3.0, where applicable.
Crime scene photos taken on the day of the murder and robbery, marked with red arrows so you can see where the bullet fragments hit, and the cracked panel on the serving hatch.
Left to right; a photo and map of the bombing of 24 Greek Street, 24 Greek as it looks today, 2 Bedford Place (the billet which James & Mac shared and where the gun was left), the Canadian Police HQ at 30 Henrietta Street in Covent Garden and The TRafalgar Hotel on Craven Street.
Credits: The Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast was researched, written and recorded by Michael J Buchanan-Dunne, with the sounds recorded on location (where possible), and the music written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name. Additional music was written and performed as used under the Creative Common Agreement 4.0.
SOURCES: This case was researched using the original declassified police incvestigation files from the National Archives and form the Old Bailey.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE:
SCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile; a true-crime podcast and audio guided walk featuring many of London’s untold, unsolved and long-forgotten murders, all set within and beyond the West End. Today’s episode is about James Forbes McCallum, a desperate man whose first and only robbery was ill-judged, unplanned and such a catastrophic failure that it ended in death, and yet, when he was arrested, he was so panicked, he gave the Police five plausible alibis. But which alibi was right? Murder Mile is researched using the original police files. It contains moments of satire, shock and grisly details. And as a dramatization of the real events, it may also feature loud and realistic sounds, so that no matter where you listen to this podcast, you’ll feel like you’re actually there. My name is Michael, I am your tour-guide and this is Murder Mile. Episode 102: The Five Alibis of James Forbes McCallum. Today I’m standing on Wellington Street, in Covent Garden, WC2; one street west of the brutal baker Alexander Moir, two streets north-west of the last days of Mary Ann Moriarty, a short walk from the home of the First Date Killer, and barely one hundred feet south of the former Bow Street Magistrates Court, where an infamous forensic scientist would categorically prove, without a single shred of doubt, that Dr Hawley Crippen had murdered his wife… only he hadn’t - coming soon to Murder Mile. East of Covent Garden is Wellington Street, a thin one-way street from The Strand to Bow Street which is home to the Royal Opera House, the Lyceum theatre and a wide variety of restaurants, cafés, bars and pubs. And although there’s also a museum, being British, the most important places are the pubs. We celebrate everything in pubs, whether births or deaths, commemorations or condolences, week days, weekends or (for those who don’t work hard enough) bank holidays. In fact, if an apocalypse was brewing, the British would probably all head to the pub to drown our sorrows in plop. Like most places, Wellington Street has many watering-holes; some are hideous hipster hovels serving Hoxton’s finest ale in tiny thimbles, some are brewery-owned dumps slopping-out factory produced drinks and nibbles to dull patrons who are allergic to imagination, and some are unashamedly fake boozers, where the décor of Guinness signs, old bikes, potatoes and cheeky leprechauns is so culturally insensitive they might as well have added some burned out cars, kiddie-fiddling priests and insisted that the band wears orange sashes, as the polish bar staff all utter “ta be shar”, as the St Patrick’s Day crowds flock to celebrate a world famous teetotaller by swigging back a mouthful of the “de black stuff”, only to grimace, struggle to swallow and dilute the rest of it with blackcurrant. “Aaah Jayzuz”. Thankfully, at 42 Wellington Street is a real pub. Established in 1753, The Coach & Horse is a staple of Covent Garden life. With its red-fronted facade, greenery above, a left door leading to the public bar and the right door to the saloon, this free-house is authentic, real and hospitable. It’s a great place for a pint, but eighty years ago, it was also the scene of an unplanned robbery and an unexpected murder. As it was here, on Friday 20th December 1940, that a good and decent man called James Forbes McCallum would be driven by a desperate decision to steal money and take a life. (Interstitial). James Forbes McCallum, known to his pals as ‘Jimmy’ was born on 20th Sept 1920 in Dalmuir, Scotland; a few miles north of the bustling ship-yard city of Glasgow. With his father working as a steel riveter- in the docks - being recently married with one boy born and a second soon to join their brood – his mother worked several jobs just to keep a tumbledown tenement over their heads. Known only as ‘Mrs McCallum’, his mother was a short but solid woman made of sturdy Celtic stock, who toiled away from dawn-till-dusk, from job-to-job, with one boy on her knee and one strapped to her chest. For the first few years of his life, James’ whole world revolved around his mother; she was all he would ever see or know. When she wasn’t there he screamed, but when she returned, he was soothed. As a neat and decent woman, seeing poverty as no excuse not to raise her boys well, they always knew their p’s and q’s, their manners and morals, and although she was undoubtably hard-working, she was also a little haughty. Contrasted by her rough callused hands, she wore a fine hat, a neat shawl, she spoke with an upper-class affection, and - to everyone, even her own sons – she was ‘Mrs McCallum’. On 1st December 1922, desperate to flee their grimy Glasgow slum, the McCallum’s set sail to Canada, having arrived in New Brunswick, just three days before Christmas, and set up home in Quebec. As a slightly-sickly intensely-pale child, having taken the bold but wise decision to raise her boys in the crisp fresh Canadian air, although – for the rest of his life – James would always be thin, frail, weak and prone to every cold and infection, his chance of survival was ten times better than in Glasgow. Being an average student, James was decent, likeable but unremarkable, he didn’t excel, but then, he was never in any trouble. And raised well by Mrs McCallum, after school and every weekend, James earned a small wage as an errand boy, half of which he always gave to his mother to earn his keep. In 1931, when James was eleven, his father died, leaving his mother a widower with no income. Being industrious, she turned their home at 391 Third Avenue into a boarding house, aided by her sons. But by his teens, living and working day-and-night alongside such a controlling woman, James felt trapped; he had no future, no fun and – under the harsh scrutiny of his disapproving mother - no girlfriend. Mrs McCallum wasn’t mean, she was just scared, as once her boys had grown-up, she knew she would be left with nothing. In 1938, having become unwell, she shut the boarding house. This was James’ chance to escape, and yet, it was a world-changing event which would provide him with freedom. On 5th September 1939, with Europe at war against the Nazis, eighteen-year-old James did his bit and signed-up to fight as part of Royal Canadian Regiment. Barely passing his medical, as a five-foot eight-inch, skinny and pasty-faced boy who would never see the battlefield, as part of the Canadian Provost Corps, he was assigned to protect London, as the city’s own police force had been decimated. Starting as a Private, within the year he was promoted to Acting Corporal on a wage of $80 a month, $50 of which he sent to his mother in his regular letters. Described by his seniors as a “sober, respected and an excellent officer”, he rarely drank and was never in any trouble. And as a welcome sight, being dressed in the easily Identifiable uniform of the Canadian Provost Corps - a peaked cap with a bright red top and a long grey gratecoat with a bright red emblem – being armed with a .455 calibre Smith & Wesson revolver and based out of nearby 30 Henrietta Street, James and his fellow officers were a familiar and reassuring sight, as they patrolled the streets in and around of Covent Garden market… …just one street from The Coach and Horses pub. James Forbes McCallum was well-mannered, polite and decent; he had a good career, a steady income and a bright future ahead; he didn’t argue or fight, and he had no criminal record or history of violence. And yet, fifteen months after his arrival in England, for the first time ever, in a totally unprovoked and spontaneous attack, he would commit an armed robbery and a homicide. (Interstitial) In a state of panic, as his terrified brain fumbled to find an ounce of logic in his truly abhorrent actions, James give the Police five logical (but equally plausible) alibis as to why he did what he did. Alibi #1 – Drink. Most crimes are committed whilst the culprit is intoxicated, causing a lack of judgment, co-ordination and a misguided confidence. James wasn’t much of a drinker, but in the weeks (and especially in the days) leading up to the incident, his best-friend – 44-year-old Lance Corporal John Osborne, known as ‘Mac’ - said that James had begun drinking heavily, just as he had the night before the robbery. If he was intoxicated, that could explain why his memory is so hazy, why he shouted “hands up! paper money!” but didn’t steal a penny, why he hid his face with a thick woollen balaclava but forgot about his long grey grate-coat emblazoned with a bright red emblem of the Canadian Provost Corps, and – more bafflingly – how James got shot in the arm, when he was the only person in the pub with a gun? And yet, if the barman had fought back (as James would later suggest); why did no-one hear a fight, where were the fingerprints if the barman had wrestled away the weapon, and how could two men have struggled together if there was a bulky set of brass and glass screens between them? That aside, we know that James wasn’t drunk, as – having got his dates wrong - he’d actually drank with Mac two nights earlier, barely drank the night before, and when he was arrested, he was stone cold sober. Alibi #2 – Money. Many crimes are perpetrated for financial gain, as too often, greed and needs can overrule a person’s morals and make even the most sensible do silly and spontaneous things. Sadly, a few weeks after his promotion to Acting Corporal – declared physically unwell – James was demoted to Lance Corporal. If he was broke, that could explain why he robbed the pub, why he felt forced to loan ten shillings off Mac just two days prior, why (as a good boy) he could only send $25 dollars to subsidise his sick mother in November, and why, by 14th December, just one week before, those regular payments would cease. And yet, it seems unlikely, as James wasn’t a greedy man, if anything, he was generous and charitable. Yes, he drank a little heavier, but he wasn’t a drunk or on drugs. And as a Lance Corporal, he still made a good wage, as – with his clothes, food and accommodation all paid for by the military - for the three weeks prior - he was living in a modest double-room at the Trafalgar Hotel, just off Trafalgar Square. Alibi #3 – Illness. As witnessed, thirty-two-years earlier, in the bank of Cartmell & Schlitte, just half a mile west of Covent Garden, a long history of illness and the weakened immune system of a sickly young boy had (possibly) triggered petit-mal seizures - under the grip of which - he robbed a bank, but could recall nothing. Always being pale, weak and frail, having moved from the crisp air of Canada to the chocking smog of London, James’ health had deteriorated. One year prior, having been struck down with pneumonia and pleurisy, the Army doctor had assessed James four times over the last four months – and being declared unfit – he was forced to take unpaid leave, and he was demoted, owing to his poor health. If he was ill, that could explain could explain the robbery, the shooting, the vagueness of the incident without being drunk, and how a good man could be driven to heinously break his own moral codes. And yet, even that seems a stretch, as James had no history of epilepsy nor any mental illness, he was never aggressive, delusional or disorientated. In fact, he was fully conscious of his actions. Being fit to stand trial, he didn’t take the insanity plea and although his memory was a little vague, he pleaded ‘not guilty’ to murder, as he knew the barman, he liked him and the two men had never had any issues. So, the question wasn’t if he had consciously done it. He had. The question was why? Alibi #4 – Trauma. The human body is a marvel of self-repair; skin can heal, blood can clot and bones can mend, but the hardest injury to recover from after an incident isn’t the physical affects but the psychological ones, as although the brain may escape unscathed from an unimaginable horror, trauma can still remain. On Friday 11th October 1940 at 12:35am, three days into the Blitz, a high-explosive bomb hit 24 Greek Street in Soho. It demolished the building, erupted the gas main and trapped dozens in the wreckage. Three people died, eight were injured and countless others escaped unhurt, but were left traumatised by this first brutal wave of bombings from the skies, as innocent civilians (going about their everyday lives) witnessed skin burned, limbs scattered and bodies blown apart, right in front of their eyes. One of those affected was James McCallum. Being psychologically traumatised by the bombing, seeing the Army doctor and complaining of a series of justifiable symptoms – such as tiredness, headaches and nerves - James drank to ease his pain, took sick leave on 16th December, and was recuperating well in quiet of Room 6 in the Trafalgar Hotel. And yet, it was unlikely that his trauma resulted in either the robbery or the murder, as the personality, behaviour, morals and attitude of James had not changed. Those who knew him said, he was still his same old self; quiet, calm, caring, keen to get back to work and was making a slow but steady recovery. Without doubt, all four alibis had (in their own small way) contributed to the crime; money had made him desperate, drink had clouded his judgment, illness had made him weak and trauma had fuelled his fragmented emotions. But these weren’t the main motivations for his crime… …as his fifth alibi was love. Strangely, having first met on the night of Friday 11th October 1940, the bomb which had blasted Greek Street apart had ignited a passion inside a passing couple and driven these two young lovers together. Swept-up in a whirlwind romance - as war-time sweethearts - twenty-one-year-old James McCallum had fallen for nineteen-year-old Irene Turnball, a local waitress and recent orphan. As a perfect match, both were quiet, shy and caring, and just as she was his first love, he was hers. In just nine weeks, they had met, fallen in love, moved into a hotel together and - one week before Christmas - they planned to be married. James had finally met ‘the one’, only there was one obstacle ahead of him… his mother. ‘Mrs McCallum’ would never approve of this girl, or any girl, as no girl would ever be good enough for her little boy, and - as she always feared - once he was gone, this lonely widow would be all alone. On Monday 16th December 1940, having slipped the best ring he could afford onto his beloved’s finger, James and Irene got engaged in the shadow of Trafalgar Square, with their plan to be together forever. On Tuesday 17th, having drank till he was insensible and being in a distressed state, James poured out his woes to Mac – his best-friend and a surrogate father-figure - who he always turned to for help, as - having telegrammed his mother to get her permission to marry - he anxiously awaited her reply. On Wednesday 18th, the day of their wedding, James received a telegram, it read; “Ridiculous idea. Seems very thoughtless towards me. I need your help”, and it was signed “Mrs McCallum”. The young lovers were distraught, their wedding was cancelled and the money they’d saved to marry was gone. On Thursday 19th, with his heart ripped apart by the gut-wrenching decision between disobeying his mother or finally finding love, although Irene was happy to wait, a furious James fired back a telegram to Canada, standing-up and damning her, with a curt “I shall marry, with your permission… or not”. That night, having prematurely signed into the Trafalgar Hotel as Mr & Mrs McCallum, the two timid lovers lay in bed, curled-up in each other’s arms, only James couldn’t rest. After months of illness, days without sleep, still half-hungover, and another night of reawakened trauma as bombers pummelled the West End, having loaned ten shillings off Mac, he knew this wasn’t enough money to get married. At 4am, James left saying he was going to buy some cigarettes. But instead, he did the unthinkable. The Coach & Horses at 42 Wellington Street had long been a family business; owned by Daisy & Harry Phillips, the pub was managed by their nephew David Sholman, with his brother Morris as bar-man. Described as a sweet and kind man, forty-one-year-old Morris, known as ‘Morry’ had only worked in the pub for the last nine months, having lost his job to the war, and although he wasn’t outgoing, the customers liked him, as he was a good man, who loved his wife, his family and kept to himself. Set on the ground-floor of a four-storey red-brick building, most of its regulars would perch with a pint on the pavement, as this small single-roomed pub was barely twenty-foot-deep by twenty-five feet wide. Dominated by a large central bar, the room was split into two; with the larger public bar to the left, and - separated by a partition - a small saloon to the right, which stands twenty people, at a push. And that’s it. With lines of tap-handles for pulling pints, spirit bottles with optics, water jugs as mixers and a tea urn for lightweights, it was a very regular pub. And as a way to serve food and to act as a security measure which kept any drunks from the booze, the bar-staff and the till, above the counter, from waist to head-height, were large brass and glass grilles with a series of spring-loaded windows. Licenced to serve from 5am, having put a £20 float in the till, Morris opened the doors and the day started as it always did… slowly. At 5:10am, fifty-four-year-old John Anderson, a short one-armed lift-operator entered the public bar, ordered a pint and sat reading the paper - he was the only customer. David was in the cellar, Dolly (Morris’s wife) was upstairs and Morris was cleaning the glasses. Less than one minute later, Morris would be dead. As James staggered up Wellington Street, with his mind clouded by equal measures of love and anger and his body stumbling with exhaustion, as this love-sick boy could only see a single solution to his problem – without his mother’s permission - he would be forced to commit his first and only crime. Only, being ill-judged and unplanned, this spontaneous robbery would end in a catastrophic failure. Outside the pub, James’ terrified fingers nervously pulled his woollen balaclava over his pale face. His breathing was fast and frantic, his head was thumping hard, and – having forgotten that his long grey grate-coat was emblazoned with the bright red emblem of the Canadian Police - fumbling his Army-issue revolver in his cold sweaty hands, James dashed into the empty saloon, intent on a quick robbery. Inside, James stammered “hands up! paper money”, only his order didn’t make sense, as with the pub having just opened, the till was full of coins. And yet, amidst the darkness of the sparsely-lit pub, with a bulky brass grille in their way, the two men couldn’t see each other, so although Morris had put his hands up and his eyes shut (in the hope that this would all go away), as James couldn’t tell if he had seen the gun, he swung open the glass of the head-height serving-hatch and poked his gun through. Only, not realising that the window was spring-loaded, the second his left hand let go, it swung back, the glass smacked the muzzle, and flipping his revolver ninety-degrees, James shot himself in the arm. The bungling bandit was dazed, confused and profusely bleeding from a self-inflicted flesh wound. The robbery was a catastrophe and – right then - he should have fled… but with his nerves frayed, his body tense and his hot balaclava riding up his sweat-soaked face, with the eye-holes obscuring any view, he hadn’t realised his mistake and thinking that the unarmed Morris had shot him, James retaliated. A single shot ripped through Morris’ throat, hitting the hard bone of his spine, the bullet then fractured into three pieces – one hit a glass panel, one hit a picture and one hit the tea urn – but the bulk of the lead had severed the barman’s spine, and – before he had even hit the floor – Morris was dead. (End) Being too panicked and traumatised by his actions, James fled empty-handed. Shaken-up, James called Mac, who rushed back to the billet they shared at 2 Bedford Place, and reassured by James that this was nothing serious, he had just “accidentally shot himself, off Covent Garden”, having dressed his wound with a field dressing and iodine, the two pals parted company. Mac went back to their base at nearby Henrietta Street, and James returned to the Trafalgar Hotel and his blushing bride-to-be. At 8am, hearing a bulletin that detectives were seeking a young Canadian Police officer in a long grey greatcoat, with a bullet-wound to his left arm – although they were friends, as Mac was a professional – he called it in. At 9:30am, four hours later, James was arrested for the murder of Morris Sholman. In a state of panic, confusion and exhaustion, being desperate to aid the Police with their investigation, although his memory of this traumatic event was a little hazy, James gave five possible (but equally plausible) alibis to his crime, all of which were back-up by witness statements and irrefutable evidence. Held at Brixton Prison, he was found fit to stand trial. Having refused the insanity plea and (as was his right) pleading ‘not guilty’ to the murder, James Forbes McCallum was tried at The Old Bailey on Tuesday 11th February 1941. After a two-day trial, he was found guilty, he was sentenced to death. On Friday 28th February 1941, a few days before his execution, Mrs McCallum died. Being distraught at the grief of losing his beloved mother, James’ won his appeal on compassionate grounds and owing to the trauma he had suffered in the bombing, and with his execution commuted to life in prison, James was deported back to Canada to serve his time. James Forbes McCallum was denied love by his mother, marriage to his lover, and being short of a few pounds for a very simple wedding, he would be forced to pay the ultimate price. James never married Irene and – being separated by a vast ocean - the two young lovers would never meet ever again. OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile. That was the episode, and next is Extra Mile, the non-compulsory extra bit which you can choose to listen to, or you can choose not to, I’m good either way, it’s no biggie if you don’t. Before that, a big thank you to my new Patreon supporters who are Kelly Cook, Caroline King, Neill & Sharon Waugh (happy belated birthday Sharon) and Sioned Jones, I thank you. All of you will be receiving a thank you card full of goodies, and some lucky people will receive very rare Murder Mile key-rings too. Oooh. Murder Mile was researched, written & performed by myself, with the main musical themes written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name. Thank you for listening and sleep well. Michael J Buchanan-Dunne is a writer, crime historian, podcaster and tour-guide who runs Murder Mile Walks, a guided tour of Soho’s most notorious murder cases, hailed as “one of the top ten curious, quirky, unusual and different things to do in London”, nominated "one of the best true-crime podcasts at the British Podcast Awards", one of The Telegraph's top five true-crime podcasts and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totaling 50 deaths, over just a one mile walk.
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84 Shaftesbury Avenue, on the corner of Macclesfield Street in Chinatown, where the bank of Cartmell & Schlittle once stood, which was robbed by John "Jack" Esmond Murphy
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, set within and beyond the West End.
EPISODE ONE HUNDRED AND ONE:
On Saturday 7th November 1908, at 11:40am, John Esmond Murphy walked into the bank of Cartmell & Schlittle at 84 Shaftesbury Avenue. Overwhelming evidence pointed to the fact that he bungled a heist, pulled a gun, shot and stabbed the manager dead, and was then captured, arrested, convicted and executed. But did he actually do it?
THE LOCATION
As many photos of the case are copyright protected by greedy news organisations, to view them, take a peek at my entirely legal social media accounts - Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
The location of Cartmell & Schlittle at 84 Shaftebury Avenue is where the purple triangle in the middle between Soho and Chinatown is. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, such as Soho, King's Cross, etc, access them by clicking here.
Here's two little videos to aid your enjoyed / understanding of this week's episode; on the left is the murder location at 85 Shaftesbury Avenue, and on the right is a little video showing you what a typical petit mal seizure looks like. This video is a link to youtube, so it won't eat up your data.
Credits: The Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast was researched, written and recorded by Michael J Buchanan-Dunne, with the sounds recorded on location (where possible), and the music written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name. Additional music was written and performed as used under the Creative Common Agreement 4.0. SOURCES: This case was researched using the original declassified police incvestigation files from the National Archives and form the Old Bailey.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE:
SCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile; a true-crime podcast and audio guided walk featuring many of London’s untold, unsolved and long-forgotten murders, all set within and beyond the West End. Today’s episode is about a very ordinary robbery, as the overwhelming evidence pointed to the fact that John Esmond Murphy walked into a bank, bungled a heist, pulled a gun, shot and stabbed the manager dead, and was then captured, arrested, convicted and executed. But did he actually do it? Murder Mile is researched using the original police files. It contains moments of satire, shock and grisly details. And as a dramatization of the real events, it may also feature loud and realistic sounds, so that no matter where you listen to this podcast, you’ll feel like you’re actually there. My name is Michael, I am your tour-guide and this is Murder Mile. Episode 101: The Fatal Seizure of John Esmond Murphy. Today I’m standing on Shaftesbury Avenue, off Chinatown, W1; one street north of the fiery death of Reginald Gordon West, one street west of the hushed-up shooting at the Rose n Dale club, a few yards from the first failed assassination on Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko and one street south of stabbing of Savvas Demetriades and the Cypriot code of silence - coming soon to Murder Mile. This bit of Shaftesbury Avenue lies on the border between Soho and Chinatown, only being little more than a busy road from Piccadilly Circus to Holborn, it has all of the traffic but none of the footfall. With nothing to see here and nowhere to go, the tourists pass through this West End wasteland as it’s a bit of a cultural dead zone, as there are no theatres, pubs, or sights of historical interest, just two long lines of very grey, very vague buildings and a lot of exhaust fumes. And with the bustling theatres deliberately keeping their distance, it’s as if this bit of Shaftesbury Avenue is an architectural leper. Of course, to anyone who loves staring blankly at some obscure arty subtitled twaddle, losing a shirt (and a hand) in a not-so legal Chinese casino, paying £3 for a warm flat can of Kosher Cola, wasting a night being yah-d at (“yah-yah-okay-yah”) in a pretentious club by some TV tossers, or overcharged by a Chinese herbalist for an extract of tiger anus to cure your piles, then this is your promised land. A high point is at 84 Shaftesbury Avenue; a five-storey mansion block with red-brick and cream colour pillars, built in the late 1800’s, which is now home to Olle – a Korean barbeque, where many satisfied munchers (like myself) have gorged themselves silly on a wide array of mouth-watering delights. And although, this is a fabulous place to fill your belly - as it was once the bank of Cartmell & Schlitte - it is also the site of a bungled robbery, an unfortunate death and a very strange miscarriage of justice. As it was here, on Saturday 7th November 1908, that John Esmond Murphy would be fatally seized with an uncontrollable urge to steal and kill for the very first and the very last time. (Interstitial) But did he actually do it? Well, yes, he did and the evidence was irrefutable. (Dizzy sounds) It’s a fact that on Saturday 7th November 1908, at 11:40am, twenty-one-year-old John Esmond Murphy of Paddington – having purchased a four-inch sheath knife and a .455 calibre Webley Fosbery revolver one day prior – entered the bank of Cartmell & Schlitte. Being penniless, he shot the manager once, stabbed him six times in the hands and chest, a struggle ensued, Murphy fled, and in his desperation to escape, he stabbed a van-driver and a police constable, who wrestled him to the ground, and he was swiftly arrested within sight of the bank and just a few seconds after the robbery. The incident occurred in broad daylight, on a busy city street, he wasn’t wearing a disguise and he was positively identified without hesitation by several eye-witnesses who all gave detailed statements. His fingerprints were found in the bank, on the gun, on the knife and the blood had stained on his clothes. Seven weeks later, being deemed medically fit to stand trial, although he pleaded his innocence by claiming that he had no memory of the event, with his insanity plea rejected and his laughable defence being down to a dose of malaria, two bouts of sunstroke and a hereditary form of epilepsy – as the robbery was clearly premeditated - he was found guilty in a court of law and executed for his crimes. If ever there was an open-and-shut case of robbery and murder, it was this. But did he actually do it? Well, no. I don’t think he did. John Esmond Murphy, known as Jack was born in Calcutta (India) in the summer of 1886, as the second of two siblings to British parents; his mother was a housewife, his father was a sergeant-major in the Army and he had one sister called Kathleen. Originating from Ireland, the Murphy’s were a loving but ordinary lower-middle-class family seeking a better life, as the British Empire expanded across Asia. Being a sensitive little boy, with a small thin frame, brown wavy hair and a beak-like nose, Jack was neat and clean, polite and calm, quiet and meek. He didn’t shout, cry or cause a disturbance, and being an intelligent lad with a love of engineering and poetry, he had a bright future ahead of him. But sadly, the Murphy’s were a family who were cursed with bad luck, illness and tragedy. In 1896, when Jack was aged ten, the Murphy family were struck down with Malaria; a deadly disease of the blood carried by mosquitos resulting in shivers, fever and death. And although not a cure, a lifelong course of Quinine would prove an effective treatment, sadly his father would not survive. As a small sickly boy, Jack would battle typhoid, scarlet fever, cholera and severe bouts of sunstroke which would almost take his life, and even though he bravely soldiered on, his life was to get worse. In 1902, when Jack was aged sixteen, having contracted pleurisy, his mother died of a brain fever. Jack & Kathleen were two grieving teens, all alone in India and four thousand miles from their nearest living relative. Anyone else would have struggled and failed, but being educated, hard-working and fluent in Bengali, gifted a small inheritance in their parent’s will, they would thrive for two more years. Only, unbeknownst to them, both parents had bequeathed them something more than money and a home, as the biggest inheritance the two siblings would receive was the hereditary curse of epilepsy. Initially Jack & Kathleen didn’t know they were epileptic, as with its onset often occurring in puberty, to the best of their knowledge they had never had a seizure. But then, there are two very distinct types of epileptic seizure; one which affects the whole body and the other which affects the brain. Commonly known as ‘grand-mal’ seizures, these attacks have familiar symptoms like a rigid stiffening of the body, a frothing at the mouth, a loss of bladder control, consciousness, and sometimes the ability to breathe, and (most noticeably) the violent uncontrollable spasm of the whole muscular system, which can last for seconds, take hours to recover and may require medical assistance. And although both types are caused by a violent electrical disturbance in the brain, ‘petit mal’ seizures are incredibly subtle, so subtle that sometimes even the sufferer and those around them are unaware that a seizure has taken place. Known as ‘absence seizures’, although symptoms vary, often being triggered by moments of emotional stress, an ‘absence seizure’ is typically denoted by a vacant look in the eyes, a slight fluttering of the eyelids, the ceasing of a conversation mid-sentence and - being physically unharmed - they often return to normal with no memory of those missing seconds. But sometimes, an atypical ‘petit mal’ seizure may be preceded by mood swings, aggression and (like a Jekyll & Hyde) a severe shift in personality. And although during a seizure they can still walk, move and interact with the world, unlike the people around them, they have no control over their actions. Thankfully, suffering intermittently from typical ‘petit mal’ seizures, neither Jack nor Kathleen let their disability stop them from leading an active and productive life, which would make their parents proud. In 1903, aged seventeen, Jack & Kathleen returned to the UK, first to Glasgow, and then to London. Having served eighteen months as a conscientious and dedicated Private in the British/Indian Army, being trained as a mechanic, Jack earned a good reputation as "reliable, trustworthy and hardworking engineer". In 1904, he trained as a driver and mechanic for the Automobile Market on Oxford Street where the manager praised him as “an asset to the company” and “quite a gentleman”. In 1905, he became a sub-station attendant for the Underground Electric Railways Company, responsible for the power supply at Ravenscourt Park tube station, where his supervisor said he was “steady, reliable and intelligent”. And remaining in employment until March 1908, as assistant to a civil engineer, Jack was only laid-off owing to an engineering strike, where his last employer hailed him as “a very well-trained engineer, perfectly sober and the meekest and quietest individual I have ever met”. He rarely drank, he didn’t do drugs, he didn’t lead a lavish lifestyle and had no expensive tastes; he never swore, shouted or stole, he didn’t have a bad bone in his body and he had no criminal record. And as a quiet lad with few friends – outside of engineering and poetry - his one passion was target practice. Once a week, having trained as a keen and careful marksman in the Army, he enjoyed the thrill of shooting at paper targets at the King’s Rifles shooting range in nearby Oxenden Street. Keen to develop a solid career, to live a good decent life and to aid his sister who had been diagnosed with a brain tumour, Jack had never taken a day-off sick. In fact, although an epileptic would never have been hired for such roles, his petit mal seizures were so infrequent, his colleagues barely noticed. On rare occasions he appeared forgetful, distracted,tired and sometimes had a glazed and vacant look about his eyes, and one time - having loaned the boss’s bike – whilst cycling, he fell off, and was found wandering aimlessly, unaware of how he’d got there, or where the bike was… but that was it. Six months later, a court of law would conclusively prove that John Esmond Murphy had robbed a bank, inflicted two violent assaults and brutally murdered a man for money. But did he? (Interstitial) It is said that atypical seizures are often triggered by moments of great stress. By the middle of October 1908, having eked-out a meagre existence in a series of part-time jobs, even though he had moved into a modest basement flat at 145 Shirland Road in Paddington, having pawned off his personal possessions, Jack couldn’t afford to pay his six shillings-a-week rent, or even to eat. Having deliberately moved one street away to be near his only surviving relative – his beloved sister, three times-a-day Jack would visit Kathleen. Having married well, she lived in a pleasant mansion block called Delaware Mansions in Maida Vale, but living apart from her husband and with a three-year-old daughter, Kathleen required constant care as she awaited an operation on her brain tumour. Burdened by no work, no money and no purpose, with the threat of homelessness looming, no bright prospects on the horizon and his last surviving family member knocking at death’s door, although Jack was still his usual self – a meek, placid and thoughtful boy - all too often, a cloud would descent over his head, as he morphed into someone else; someone darker, more depressive and unusually angry. Over the weeks, as his frequent seizures grew stronger and longer; his eyes were cold and dead, his face was vague and distant, and his lids fluttered almost imperceptibly, as if he was on auto-pilot. And yet, now there were new symptoms; as sometimes he would scratch his left wrist until it was red-raw and bleeding, often he’d rock back and forth on his feet muttering in an incoherent mumble, as waves of epileptic attacks came one-after-the-other, and then there were his dark and violent moods. In an instant, having been the epitome of meekness and compassion, who (just seconds earlier) had been supping his tea whilst reading poetry to soothe his sister, Jack would suddenly snap and change into someone unrecognisable; who was aggressive, violent and threatening. And then, just as quickly as it had begun, it would end; he would return to his normal self, unaware that time had passed, that an incident had occurred, and unable to apologise for his actions, as he had no idea what he had done. As the rapidity of his petit-mal seizures escalated, as Jack became physically and emotionally drained by the persistent electrical assaults on his brain, it became almost impossible to work-out where old Jack ended and new Jack began. And yet, just two weeks before the robbery and the murder of the man who Jack had never met, something very sinister and out-of-character would happen. On Monday 19th October 1908, at 12:45am, Kathleen and her live-in carer called Stella Lynne had been out to Rayner’s bar in Haymarket and had returned by taxi to Delaware Mansions. Just as they had left it a few hours earlier, the door was locked, the fire was out, the lights were off and the flat was empty. Or so they thought. Having heard an odd noise; a creaking then a breathing, as if inside Kathleen’s bedroom someone was waiting, opening the door, they saw no-one but the sounds didn’t cease. And with no stranger hidden behind the door or inside the wardrobe, there was only one last place to check - underneath the bed. Striking a match, as Stella peered into the dark recess beneath, with his beak-like nose touching the bed-springs, Stella saw Jack; semi-clad, motionless and grinding his teeth, almost catatonic (as if he was asleep), but with his open eyes fluttering, and tightly gripped in his hand was a cutthroat razor. Stella was rightly terrified, as – barely a few days earlier – whilst sharing a cab into the West End with Jack, as another black mood descended, he had muttered “I am sick of this world. I am going to find my sister and end her life, and mine, and her child's". He didn’t. In fact, seconds later, he was fine and had forgotten everything he had just said, but Stella had forewarned Kathleen of this threat. That night, as Stella snatched away his razor, in an instant Jack snapped out of his strange slumber, wrapped both of his bloodied hands around his sister’s throat, and as Kathleen screamed in terror, he strangled her; his mouth wide and silent, his eyes vacant and dead, as if it meant nothing. Kathleen’s death was only stopped by Stella. And as swiftly as this attempted murder had begun, it had stopped. The incident was reported to the Police, two constables (PC Sanders and PC Hammond) attended the scene, a statement was made, but as Kathleen did not wish to press charges and Jack was now calm and unthreatening, the matter was dropped. For the next three days, although Kathleen’s throat was bruised and she couldn’t swallow, he refused to apologise, as (in his eyes) nothing had happened. This incident only formed a small part of Jack’s defence, as it was deemed irrelevant, but according to the prosecution, what happened next would clearly constitute premeditation of the robbery. On Friday 6th November 1908, at 9am, Jack reassured his landlady that he would pay his outstanding rent the very next day, only he had no money and no job. At 2pm, having loaned £4 off his sister to pay his back-rent, instead he went to the King’s Rifle gun range on Oxenden Street and bought a .455 calibre Webley Fosbery revolver, twenty-five bullets and a black handled four-inch switchblade knife. At 8pm, he sat with Kathleen, gave her a Quinine pill, took her temperature and read her Indian poetry to soothe her, as although the operation to remove a brain tumour was due the next day, being five guineas short of the full fee, her treatment looked unlikely. At 10:30pm, as she slept, he kissed her goodnight and assured her that everything would be okay, but that night, the cancer almost took her. The next day, for the first time ever, this timid boy would rob a bank and commit a brutal murder. All of the evidence proves that he did it. But was this Jack acting out of desperation in a moment of high emotional stress, or – as a ‘petit mal’ epileptic - was he caught in the grip of an absence seizure? At 84 Shaftesbury Avenue, on the corner of Macclesfield Street in Chinatown was Cartmell & Schlitte, a bank and foreign currency exchange, ran for fifteen years by George Cartmell and Fredrich Schlitte. Being barely twelve feet square, it was small and practical, but undeniably a ‘Bureau de Change’, as with large black lettering above, although impossible to see inside owing to its lightly frosted glass on both sides, in the windows (behind a locked screen) sat thirteen bowls of foreign notes and gold coins. Inside, through a thin wooden door, in an even smaller foyer was a large wooden counter with a heavy brass grille above, which kept the staff, the customers and the money at a distance. Across the counter was a neat array of banker’s books, paper bags, weights and scales, a cheque perforator and a till. And beyond an unlocked inner door to the left, behind the counter were rows of currency drawers and two safes. In total, the bank held almost £2000 in coins, notes and gold (roughly £250,000 today). With co-owner George Cartmell on leave and the manager George Calderwood heading out, the bank was left in the very capable hands his partner, 47-year old Fredrich Schlitte, a married father of two. Witnessed on the corner of Dean Street - dressed in a plain brown suit and a dark overcoat but nothing to disguise his face (not a mask or a hat) - Jack stood silently, rocking on his heels, as a trickle of blood ran freely down the red rash of his left wrist. But when questioned later, Jack could recall none of this. At 11:40am, as Benjamin Goodkin, the bank’s last customer exited the door, being unphased by any sound or sight, as if in a trance, Jack calmly crossed the busy street, a loaded gun by his side, and entered Cartmell & Schlitte; a place he had never been to before, nor had any reason to visit. The robbery was unlike any other; as with the gun outstretched and poking through the brass grille at the chest of Fredrich Schlitte, Jack never once shouted “hands up”, “this is a robbery” or “give me your money”, he didn’t utter a single warning or instruction, instead – with wide fluttering eyes – he fired. This sweet-natured and sensitive boy who had never fired a single bullet in his life at anything but a paper target, had – without provocation, emotion, words or sounds – shot Fredrich above his heart, and having fallen to the floor, as the bespectacled banker tried to defend himself with the hefty bulk of the cheque perforator, Jack – who had no history of sadism or violence – pulled out a black handled switchblade knife, and plunged the four-inches of steel into his chest, slashing at the terrified man’s hands, as the blade pierced his stomach, his bowel, his intestines, his shoulder and his left lung. And although Jack’s teeth were bared, Jack didn’t seem to be grinning with glee, but grinding his teeth. Desperate to raise an alarm as the pale boy with the vacant expression plunged the knife deep into his torso, having grabbed a brass weight, with all of his might, Fredrich hurled the half kilo lump and having smashed the locked screen and frosted front window, it landed with a thump on Shaftesbury Avenue, scattering shattered glass and almost hitting Benjamin Goodkin who’d forgotten something. Seeing Fredrich in an ever-increasing crimson pool of blood, Benjamin screamed “Police! Murder!”, alerting a constable, but the second he looked back, Jack had fled. And although the floor was strewn with almost £200 worth of paper money and gold coins, he didn’t steal a single penny. Instead, he fled down Shaftesbury Avenue towards Piccadilly Circus, at the corner of Wardour Street, he stabbed van-driver George Carter and Police Constable Albert Howe, but having his short pursuit cut-short by several passers-by, Jack was swiftly arrested, just yards and seconds after the robbery. In his cell, this small meek boy didn’t seem like a robber and a knife-wielding maniac, but having seen it all unfold with their own eyes, there was no denying that he was. Even as the constable commented that “he looked perfectly cool and calm, as if he had been out for a walk”, and yet, when questioned this placid young man always looked bemused, as he had no memory of the incident, what-so-ever. Two days later, Fredrich Schlitte died of his injuries and Jack was charged with murder. (End) The investigation was simple. Conducted by Inspector Fogwill, the robbery was conclusively proven to have been pre-meditated as Jack had purchased both weapons. His motivation was money for his rent and his sister’s operation. And although there was an abundance of irrefutable evidence to prosecute Jack – such as the gun, the knife, the fingerprints and multiple eye-witness statements from PC Howe, George Carter and (before his death) Fredrich Schlitte – there was very little evidence to defend him. Having apologised for his actions, although many colleagues testified to his placid character, they all admitted he had unusual quirks, ticks and (in recent weeks) was prone to unnatural violent outbursts. With an insanity plea dismissed, on 8th December 1908, at the Old Bailey, the medical experts (none of whom had any direct experience of absence seizures or petit mal epilepsy), all dismissed his claims. Dr Phillip Dunn, the Police surgeon stated “in my opinion, his condition was perfectly consistent with nervousness arising from his situation”. Dr James Scott, medical officer at Brixton Prison said “he was conscious of his acts and he knew whether they were right or wrong”. And with the judge deeming his sister’s deposition into his mental and physical health as inadmissible, having pled ‘not guilty’ to all charges, a unanimous jury found him guilty of murder, and on 6th January 1909, Jack Esmond Murphy was executed at Pentonville Prison for a crime the evidence proved that he did commit. But did he? OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile. After the break, I go blah-blah blah, slurp-slurp-slurp, munch-munch-munch, and then we all switch off, if you haven’t already. Before that, a big thank you to my new Patreon supporters who are Christine Klassen and Beverley Cadel, I thank you. With a special thank you to Damian Twarogowski for the very kind donation. I thank you. Plus everyone who has recently left a lovely review of Murder Mile on your favourite podcast app’, it is hugely appreciated. Murder Mile was researched, written & performed by myself, with the main musical themes written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name. Thank you for listening and sleep well. Michael J Buchanan-Dunne is a writer, crime historian, podcaster and tour-guide who runs Murder Mile Walks, a guided tour of Soho’s most notorious murder cases, hailed as “one of the top ten curious, quirky, unusual and different things to do in London”, nominated "one of the best true-crime podcasts at the British Podcast Awards", one of The Telegraph's top five true-crime podcasts and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totaling 50 deaths, over just a one mile walk.
BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at British Podcast Awards, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25. Subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Acast, Stitcher and all podcast platforms.
Caxton Hall where the assassination of Sir Michael O'Dwyer took place
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, set within and beyond the West End.
EPISODE ONE HUNDRED:
On Wednesday 13th March 1940 at 4:30pm, in the Tudor Room of Caxton Hall, Udham Singh would murder Sir Michael O'Dwyer, a man he had never met before, but fuelled by hatred over twenty-one years, Udham’s reason to kill would make him not just a murderer, but a martyr.
THE LOCATION
As many photos of the case are copyright protected by greedy news organisations, to view them, take a peek at my entirely legal social media accounts - Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
The location of Caxton Hall on 10 Caxton Street is where the bright green triangle near Westminster, just off The Thames. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, such as Soho, King's Cross, etc, access them by clicking here.
I've also posted some photos to aid your "enjoyment" of the episode. These photos were taken by myself (copyright Murder Mile) or granted under Government License 3.0, where applicable.
Left to right: Sir Michael Francis O'Dwyer, Udham Singh and General Reginald Dyer
Credits: The Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast was researched, written and recorded by Michael J Buchanan-Dunne, with the sounds recorded on location (where possible), and the music written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name. Additional music was written and performed as used under the Creative Common Agreement 4.0.
SOURCES: This case was researched using the original declassified police incvestigation files from the National Archives - https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C1257785 MUSIC:
SOUNDS: Spent Cartridges - https://freesound.org/people/shelbyshark/sounds/501566/ 22 Rifle - https://freesound.org/people/gezortenplotz/sounds/19514/ Old Time Rifle - https://freesound.org/people/craigsmith/sounds/438581/ Enfield 303 - https://freesound.org/people/kyles/sounds/450854/ Chambered Round - https://freesound.org/people/shelbyshark/sounds/505203/ Sikh Music - https://freesound.org/people/CasaAsiaSons/sounds/240820/ Sikh Celebration - https://freesound.org/people/bangcorrupt/sounds/486622/
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE:
SCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile; a true-crime podcast and audio guided walk featuring many of London’s untold, unsolved and long-forgotten murders, all set within and beyond the West End. Today’s episode is about the assassination Sir Michael O'Dwyer by Udham Singh; two strangers from very different worlds, who had never met before the day of his death. To many, his murder seemed almost random, and yet Udham’s reason to kill would make him a martyr. Murder Mile is researched using the original police files. It contains moments of satire, shock and grisly details. And as a dramatization of the real events, it may also feature loud and realistic sounds, so that no matter where you listen to this podcast, you’ll feel like you’re actually there. My name is Michael, I am your tour-guide and this is Murder Mile. Episode 100: The Martyr and the Massacre. Today I’m standing on Caxton Street, in Westminster, SW1; four streets north of the left luggage kiosk where Patrick Mahon dumped the hacked-up bits of Emily Kaye, three streets west of the mysterious murder house of Lord Lucan, five streets south-west of the infamous Spaghetti House siege and three streets north of the hammer-wielding butler Victor Ford-Lloyd - coming soon to Murder Mile. Westminster is the heart of the British political system, as within spitting distance (a feat tested by so many protestors) is 10 Downing Street, the Foreign Office, the relevant Ministries and the Houses of Parliament; where laws are made, lies are spouted and the same useless toothless morons are made into Ministers, swiftly sacked for being crap and punished by being promoted – and that is democracy. Infamous for its protests, Westminster is often filled with more placards than people, as everybody’s voice has the right to heard… even the idiots. Except recently, when a very astute Police Constable saw five knuckle-scraping skinheads staggering towards the Black Lives Matter protest, and instead of riling them up by suggesting they weren’t welcome, she hit them were it hurts by saying “sorry lads, you can’t bring booze into Parliament Square”. And with that, they toddled off to The Jolly Racist pub, unaware that everything they love (beer, football and curries) was invented by the “bloody forunuz”. Two streets away from Parliament Square is Caxton Street; a small side-street crammed full of new offices, old houses, renovated flats, a single tree and Caxton Hall, a place not of protest, but of debate. Built in 1883, Caxton Hall is a five storey, grade II listed, former town hall with a history as colourful as the red and pink sandstone its sculpted from; having witnessed many musicals, speeches and the weddings of Peter Sellers, Ringo Starr, Elizabeth Taylor and Joan Collins (not to each other), as well as political movements, such as first Pan African Conference, the Women’s Social & Political Union and the first public meeting of the Homosexual Law Reform Society. And although, almost all of these events (except the marriages) ended peacefully, it was also home to a very political murder. As it was here, on Wednesday 13th March 1940, in the Tudor Room, where Udham Singh would come face-to-face with Sir Michael O'Dwyer, for the very first time… and would shoot him dead. (Interstitial) So, what connected the Indian killer and his Irish victim? Well, on the surface… nothing. Michael Francis O'Dwyer was born 28th April 1864 in Barronstown; a remote windswept farmstead in County Tipperary in the south-west of Ireland, four thousand miles from the Punjab in northern India. As the sixth of fourteen siblings to John, an affluent landowner and his wife Margaret; as Irish farmers who had struggled in the wake of the Great Famine which left almost a million people dead - with their country torn between independents and nationalists - the O’Dwyer’s turned their backs on their own homeland to climb the greasy pole of prosperity, having sided with their brutal British oppressors. From an early age, Michael was raised and educated to be British, not Irish. To be cold, ruthless and ambitious. To never give-in or give-up, no matter how unfair, unkind or inhumane his orders or goals. And being an Irish farm boy, his only assured route to success was through the Indian Civil Service. With India under the tyrannical boot of the British Empire, the careers and wealth of many infamous leaders and politicians - whose statues still stand tall on our streets – were forged in India’s blood, as seeing its people as uncivilised savages to subjugated, Michael adopted this attitude of supremacy. In 1884, having passed his Indian Civil Service exam, he was posted as an ICS officer to Shahpur in the Punjab, where – later promoted to the euphemistically titled ‘Director of Land Records’ – he oversaw the resettlement of Indian land to native people and tribes, but mostly British landlords and investors. With a total disrespect and disregard for Indian life, culture and sensitivities, he lived as the British did, with the invaders in privilege and the natives in poverty, their country ravage by colonialism. In 1887, assigned to ‘re-organise’ the separation of the North-West Frontier and the Punjab, after quarter of a century of re-writing laws, rules and boundaries for Westminster, in May 1913, he became Lieutenant Governor with total control over the Punjabi people, for which he would be knighted. Upon his succession, Viceroy Penshurst warned Sir Michael that “the Punjab was highly flammable and (if an explosion was to be avoided) it required careful handling”, a skill he was not blessed with. In 1914, with Britain losing the bloody conflict with Germany, although countless Indians had died in the fight for independence, now the master come crawling to its slaves for help. Under the Defence of India Act of 1915, 360,000 Punjabi men were enlisted to die for their captor’s King and country, in return for land, money and the promise of a better future. It was a promise which was agreed with a metaphorical handshake, only once they had turned, that same hand would stab them in in the back. Being short on soldiers, sensing an uprising of Punjabi nationalism and with the country on the brink of unrest, under “emergency war-time measures”, the Defence of India Act 1915 limited the civil and political liberties of the Indian people, a draconian act strongly favoured and enforced by Sir Michael. But by 1918, with the war over and the “emergency measures” obsolete, as Indian soldiers returned from the battlefield to their homeland with a sense of loss and every promise broken, seeing a rise in radical thought, the British sought to supress India’s freedom, by extending those war-time rules. The Rowlatt Act was passed by the British Government on 10th March 1919, and although Sir Michael wouldn’t be murdered for another twenty-one years, the date is significant, as just five weeks after it was signed, his actions would invoke of the one of the world’s bloodies and most shocking massacres. So, who was Udham Singh and why did he kill? Born on the 26th December 1899, in the impoverished Sangrur district of the Punjab, Udham’s birth name was Sher Singh. With his mother having died in child-birth, he was raised as the second of two sons to Sardar Tehal Singh Jammu, a widowed watchman of a railway crossing in the village of Upalli. Aged three, following the tragic sudden death of his father and with no family to raise two sensitive little boys who had nothing and no-one, Sher and his older brother Mukta were sent to the Central Khalsa Orphanage in Amritsar, where Sher was initiated as a Sikh and given the name of Udham Singh. Of those first two decades of his life, that is all we know; in 1916 he attended Khalsa College, in 1918 he graduated, and in 1919 he left the orphanage. Living under the brutal British boot, with the Rowlatt Act curbing his rights, Udham was conscripted to fight in the Third Anglo Afghan war against the Afghan rebels who would win their independence from the British. He served in Basra, East Africa and after four years’ service, he returned home to India to nothing but broken promises. With ‘killing in cold blood’ outlawed in Sikhism and with murder not a part of his curious heart, Udham wanted to see the world, develop his skills, expand his mind and escape his poverty. So, over the next sixteen years, he would travel far and wide, but the things he had seen would eat away at his soul. Setting sail to Mexico, under the alias of a Costa Rican seaman called Frank Brazil (as Indians weren’t permitted to sail on a US vessel), he lived in California, Chicago, Detroit and New York for several years, as well as France, Belgium, Germany, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Switzerland and Italy, only to earn his passage back to India, in July 1927, by working as a carpenter onboard SS Jalapa. Seeing his besieged country from afar, whilst in the US, Udham had become deeply influenced by the revolutionary nationalist Bhagat Singh, who sought to overthrow India’s colonial oppressors. Upon his return to his birth-place of Amritsar, Udham was arrested for possessing two unlicensed revolvers and a large stash of the prohibited Ghadar Party paper called ‘Ghadr-i-Gunj’, which in Punjabi means ‘Voice of Revolt’. Admitting in court a desire to murder his British oppressors, even though this was his first crime and the only time he had ever killed was in combat, he was sentenced to five years in prison. In 1931, he was released, and after that, everything fell apart. Being under constant surveillance - via Kashmir and East Germany - Udham came to England. For six years, as a committed nationalist, he was literally in the belly of the beast… but his life was in chaos. With no-one to guide him, he was indiscrete about his anti-British attitude; he used several aliases, lodged with known Bolsheviks, and applied for and received travel visas to Holland, Germany, Poland, Austria and Italy, as well as Eastern Europe and Russia, during the rise of Hitler’s fascist dictatorship. Living in a white protestant city, Uhdam wasn’t exactly anonymous; as being an Asian Sikh with a big beard and a bright turban, who drifted from job-to-job, bragged about smuggling arms to India and spouted extremist views, by the end of 1936, having embraced a British way of life, he was cohabiting with a “white woman in the West End” and was making his living as jobbing carpenter and a film extra. By 1938, he was charged with demanding money with menace. By 1939, being unemployed, he was living off benefits of just 17 shillings per week. And by 1940, with World War Two in full force and London ravaged by the blitz, the revolutionary wind had gone out of his sails and he felt like a failure. And yet, his martyrdom was just around the corner. But how? His motivation began more than two decades earlier, in the year that he left the orphanage, as 1919 was a flash point in the collapse of the British Empire and India’s struggle for Independence. With the country crippled by strikes, riots and mutinies, in the five weeks since the Rowlatt Act, seeing Amritsar as a city in revolt, as Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab, Sir Michael had implemented strict draconian rules to maintain his tyrannical strangle-hold on the people and deny them any freedom in their own city; protests were outlawed, leaders were exiled and curfews were brutally enforced. To impose his will and quash any rebellion, the policing of Amritsar was overseen by Acting Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer; a cruel sadistic cold-blooded bully who ruled with an iron rod and no emotion. On Sunday 13th April 1919, given a blank sheet by Sir Michael to enforce the rules at will, General Dyer banned all public meetings of more than four people, and imposed an 8pm curfew starting that night. Only this would be a warning which few locals would heed; as Amritsar was a city of many languages, where few people were literate enough to read the sparsely dispersed leaflets, and - more importantly - it was a key day in the Sikh faith. This was the festival of Baisakhi (Bah-saki); a sacred day where thousands of pilgrim families descend from the hills, to the city, for prayers, food and the cattle fair. Incensed that these peasants had flagrantly ignored his rule on public meetings, at 2pm, General Dyer shut down the cattle fair. But the people didn’t disperse. Instead, with nothing to do and nowhere to go, having already prayed and reluctantly heading home, many drifted aimlessly into Jallianwala Bagh. Jallianwala Bagh, known as the Bagh is a six-acre garden with a twenty-foot well, surrounded by ten-foot high walls and accessed by one entrance and five narrow alleys with lockable steel gates, as during the rainy season, the garden is used for farming, but being flat and arid for the rest of the year, it is also a public meeting place, a Sikh cremation site and somewhere to peacefully protest and debate. At 4pm, estimating the crowd at between 6,000 and 20,000 people, General Dyer did nothing to disperse this crowd, as in his mind, he had already warned them and they had chosen to ignored it. The evening was warm and peaceful, as although densely packed with a small but peaceful protest over two exiled leaders, the Bagh was full of thousands of families playing games, eating picnics and savouring the last few hours of sunlight; the mood was calm, happy and good natured. Only General Dyer didn’t see it that way. This wasn’t a picnic; this was a rebellion, an uprising and a revolt. At 8pm, as decreed, with his curfew in-force and these anarchic peasants deliberately disobeying his direct order, having blocked the main entrance, locked all of the side alley gates and formed a line of ninety Sikh and Gurkha soldiers, armed with .303 Lee–Enfield rifles, General Dyer gave no warning of his bloody intentions, except for his men to “make ready”, “take aim” and “fire”. (Mass shooting) It was like shooting fish in a barrel, as even as the terrified people fled, so thick were the crowds that Dyer ordered his men to fire at the densest part, so each bullet wound penetrate several bodies deep. Panicked, frightened but unable to escape - with nothing to hide behind but a bloody pile of mounting corpses –the fittest were shot climbing the locked gates, the elderly and the sick were crushed in the stampede, mothers died diving into the deep dry well to shield their babies, and with not a single shot being fired back, as the people were unarmed, the troops continued the slaughter for ten whole minutes, manually loading every single one of the 1650 bullets, until their ammunition was spent. With the carnage ceased and the Bagh bathed in blood, Dyer ordered his men to retreat. They didn’t offer any aid, or count the dead, instead with Dyer’s deadly curfew in-force until the morning and the city too terrified to enact a rescue effort, many of the wounded were condemned to lie there, dying. 192 were injured, 379 were dead, the eldest was eighty-two and the youngest was just six-weeks-old. The Amritsar massacre traumatised a nation and having witnessed to one of the worst atrocities ever inflicted by the British, many people were scarred for life. One of whom (it is said) was an 18-year-old boy from Amritsar orphanage, who was serving water at the festival - his name was Udham Singh. To cover his tracks, Sir Michael O’Dwyer initiated martial law in the Punjab on 15th April 1919, two days after the massacre, but backdated the paperwork to 30th March, two weeks before, giving a legal justification for General Dyer’s atrocity. And having re-enforced his side of the story to the British high-command, he sent a telegram to General Dyer saying “your actions were good, right and I approve”. Under the protection of Sir Michael, General Dyer was found innocent of any criminal charges, he was removed from duty, denied a promotion and he retired from the Army on a pension provided by the British people who felt what he had done was right. He died in 1927, unrepentant for the massacre. Arrogant to the end, Sir Michael O’Dwyer was relieved of his office by Edwin Montagu, the Secretary of State for India, to which he replied “well, that’s what comes of having a Jew in Whitehall”. He returned to London with his wife and children, to live out a comfortable retirement as a public speaker. Twenty-one years on, with Germany as the new enemy, many had forgotten about the massacre… but one man had not. And although murder was against his religion, Udham Singh still harboured enough hatred to kill. On Wednesday 13th March 1940 at 3pm, in the Tudor Room of Caxton Hall, a meeting of the East India Association and the Royal Central Asian Society was held to debate the conflict in Afghanistan. Hosted by Brigadier-General Sir Percy Sykes, chaired by Lord Dundas (2nd Marques of Zetland and Secretary of State for India) with lectures by such luminaries as Lord Lamington (2nd Baron and former Governor of Bombay), Sir Louis Dane (former Under Secretary for the State of Punjab) and Sir Michael O’Dwyer (former Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab). All were titled, all were white and all were British. Entering via the wooden double-doors of the red and pink sandstone of this former town-hall, Udham Singh was given a wide-birth as he cut through the throng of the white and privileged; as although he wore a dark suit, was clean-shaven and had swapped his turban for a trilby, to many Westerner’s eyes this brown skinned man seemed a strange addition in this discussion of Asian affairs. With his ticket in hand to this sold-out event and ushered into the small but snug wood-panelled room, as all one-hundred and thirty of the rickety wooden chairs were occupied, Udham stood with a small group of late-comers, in a thin aisle to the right of the room, a few feet from the speaker’s platform. Stood slightly behind, Bertha Herring, a self-described spinster from Wraysbury, later stated “I saw a dark coloured man five yards ahead. I wondered who this man was and how he came to be here. He appeared to be of very unpleasant appearance”. Being dressed in a clean white shirt, shiny black shoes and a smart woollen suit with bulges in both jacket pockets, Udham shrugged-off this racism, as her bigotry simply set the tone of the afternoon and besides, given what needed to do, he needed space. At 3pm, the lectures began, with a dull Anglo-centric diatribe by Lord Zetland; who exalted the British, vilified the Afghans and reminded the room of how “we know what’s best for them and their kind”. And although his crass comments were well-received with a polite applause, he wasn’t why the people were her. As the next speaker was Sir Michael O’Dwyer. Two decades on, this seventy-five-year-old former Governor of the Punjab was thin, grey and frail but fervently unrepentant for his past. In a twenty-minute speech, delivered in his notoriously “racy Irish manner” and littered with the kind of unabashed bigotry, lazy stereotypes and hate-filled xenophobia which (today) would end a career, Sir Michael was cheered and harrumphed as he frivolously joked about the Afghan invasion of India and his crushing of the Punjabi uprising – a tyrannical action for which he was awarded the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Empire – whilst he conveniently side-stepped the tricky topic of the hundreds of unarmed civilians slaughtered, under his orders, at the Amritsar Massacre. As Sir Michael concluded his racist rant to a rapturous applause, a standing ovation and then took his seat on the right of the stage, although barely inches away from his would-be killer, through it all, Udham had remained stoic and remarkably calm. So calm, that he listened to the rest of the lectures. At 4:30pm exactly, as the meeting was concluded by Lord Lamington - and the densely-packed room echoed to the familiar hubbub of dying applause, appreciative murmurs, the shuffle of papers and the creak of wooden chairs as the audience slowly filed out and the speakers on stage all congratulated each other on how marvellous they were – clutching a British issue Smith & Wesson .455 calibre six-round revolver, Udham dashed forward and (from just eighteen inches away) he fired six quick shots. Caught off-guard by the gun’s sharp recoil, his last four shots missed their mark – as one nicked Lord Lamington’s right wrist, one grazed Sir Louis Dane’s forearm, one caused a superficial abrasion to Lord Zetland’s left lower ribs and one missed the stage entirely – but his first two shots were bang on target. Fired into Sir Michael’s back, the second bullet smashed through his 12th rib, his right kidney, his stomach and came to rest inside the front of his crisp white shirt. The first smashed his 10th rib, ripped through his right lung, the right ventricle of his heart and exploded out of the left of his chest. Unlike those who had been murdered at the Amritsar Massacre; his killing was by one man, not ninety; his injuries were caused by two bullets, not an exhaustive wall of shredding lead; and his death would be quick, not a ten-minute terrifying slaughter, followed by a long night of pain, tears and fear. Instead, he staggered, he collapsed and he died almost instantly; with no time to feel pain, to ask why, to face his killer, to apologise, or even to regret his decisions which sent countless thousands to an early grave. As the room erupted into panic, a stampede of screaming people tumbled over chairs and formed a bottle-neck by the only exit. Before Udham could reload or escape, having shouted to her sister to “bar the exit”, Bertha Herring had blocked the packed aisle, later stating “I did nothing. I merely put my fat body in the way to stop him”, and as Mr Wyndham Riches threw a coat over Udham’s head and wrestled him to the floor, although the assassination had descended to the depths of an old-fashioned farce, Udham Singh, the Indian Nationalist had surrendered, as his mission was finally complete. (End) Smiling and composed, Udham was arrested moments later. In his pocket, they found a linoleum knife, a box of twenty-five rounds, two French Francs, sixty Russian Roubles and a small red diary in which he had written the addresses of Lord Willingdon, the Marquez of Zetland, Sir Michael O’Dwyer, and in that day’s entry, it read - “3pm, Caxton Hall” and “Action. Only the way to open the door”. Under the alias of ‘Ram Mohammad Singh Azad’, a name which represented the three major religions of the Punjab and his anti-colonial views, Udham Singh was tried at the Old Bailey on Monday 3rd June 1940. After a two-day trial, being found guilty of murder, Mr Justice Atkinson sentenced him to death. Judged by his colonial masters and asked if he had anything to say, Udham made his protest, as angrily thumping the dock, he shouted about the brutality, the slavery, the indecency and the legalised murder of men, women and children, under the so-called flag of democracy and a civilisation drenched in blood. And as he was led away into the cells, cursing “down with British Imperialism, down with the dirty British dogs”, the Judge directed the press not to report a single word that Udham had spoken. With his appeal dismissed, on Tuesday 30th July 1940 at 9am, forty-year-old Udham Singh was hanged at Pentonville Prison, having befallen the same fate as any common killer, traitor or spy, which to the British he was. But to the Indian people, he was hailed as a hero. Posthumously, the humble carpenter and orphaned boy from Amritsar was honoured by the Indian people, the Punjabi press and Indian Prime Minister Nehru, who praised his selfless action by stating “he kissed the noose so that we may be free”. Udham was awarded the title of Shaheed (which means "the great martyr"), a district in the Punjab was named in his honour, and just seven year’s after his death, with the British Empire little more than a crumbling ruin, India had won its independence. OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile. After the break, I shall yawn for a bit, I shall waffle about things I’ve done, I’ll make a tea, I’ll do a quiz which I’ll probably ruin, I’ll tell you some things which weren’t in the episode and then I shall stop. Whoopie-do. Before that, a big thank you to my new Patreon supporters who are Jennifer Cowles, Carol Gavin and Jane Louise Braun. I thank you all. With an extra thank you to Anne-Marie Griffin and Deryck Hughes for the very kind donations. As well as everyone who listens to Murder Mile and writes a lovely review on your favourite podcast app’, as without listeners, Murder Mile is nothing. Murder Mile was researched, written & performed by myself, with the main musical themes written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name. Thank you for listening and sleep well. Michael J Buchanan-Dunne is a writer, crime historian, podcaster and tour-guide who runs Murder Mile Walks, a guided tour of Soho’s most notorious murder cases, hailed as “one of the top ten curious, quirky, unusual and different things to do in London”, nominated "one of the best true-crime podcasts at the British Podcast Awards", one of The Telegraph's top five true-crime podcasts and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totaling 50 deaths, over just a one mile walk.
BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at British Podcast Awards, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25. Subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Acast, Stitcher and all podcast platforms.
EPISODE NINETY-NINE:
On Sunday 29th May 1887, in the first-floor flat of 29 Great Windmill Street in Soho, twenty-year-old Amelie Pottle had a "little accident" with an oil-lamp which would lead to her slow and painful death. But was it a mishap, or a murder?
THE LOCATION
As many photos of the case are copyright protected by greedy news organisations, to view them, take a peek at my entirely legal social media accounts - Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
The location of 29 Great Windmill Street, W1, is where the black triangle is - the one in the middle of Soho. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, such as West London, King's Cross, etc, access them by clicking here.
I've also posted some photos to aid your "enjoyment" of the episode. These photos were taken by myself (copyright Murder Mile) or granted under Government License 3.0, where applicable.
It's impolssible to get into the back yard or the cellar of 29 Great Windmill Street, as it's a private property, but here's a few photos of the street, number 29 and the the side-street neatr the back yard. As well as an image of the Red Lion, and mentioned in the episode
Credits: The Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast was researched, written and recorded by Michael J Buchanan-Dunne, with the sounds recorded on location (where possible), and the music written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name. Additional music was written and performed as used under the Creative Common Agreement 4.0.
SOURCES: Sadly, there was no police file in the National Archives, so I used the original transcripts of the court case at the Old Bailey, the Coronor's Court file, local knowledge and several other sources, which also included:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE:
SCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile; a true-crime podcast and audio guided walk featuring many of London’s untold, unsolved and long-forgotten murders, all set within and beyond the West End. Today’s episode is about an accident with an oil-lamp, an everyday mishap which was so common in Victorian London, that it was listed as one of the highest causes of unintentional death in the home. The deceased even admitted that it was all her fault. So where was the murder? Murder Mile is researched using authentic sources. It contains moments of satire, shock and grisly details. And as a dramatization of the real events, it may also feature loud and realistic sounds, so that no matter where you listen to this podcast, you’ll feel like you’re actually there. My name is Michael, I am your tour-guide and this is Murder Mile. Episode 99: The “Accidental Death” of Amelia Pottle. Today I’m standing on Great Windmill Street in Soho, W1; two streets south-west of the bludgeoned sex-worker Jacqueline Birri, one street west of the stabbed hostess Camille Gordon, one street south of the sweet-natured ‘Ginger Rae’, five houses north from The Unfortunate Mr Johnson, and two streets west of the tragic death of eleven-month-old Richard Higgs – coming soon to Murder Mile. Situated just off Piccadilly Circus, Great Windmill Street is a gloomy one-way road used by taxi-drivers as a sneaky cut-through to whizz from Shaftesbury Avenue to Oxford Street without being asphyxiated by the rush-hour smog. Back in the 17th century when Soho was a hunting ground, this small hillock known as Windmill Field was named after a wooden windmill which stood at its top end. But like many parts of a bustling city like London, over the decades, as the people change, so do the places. Back in the 1980’s, at the peak of Soho’s sleaziness, as a seedy side-street still living off the reputation of the defunct Windmill Theatre - where mucky-macked men watched tastefully posed nudie ladies in a ‘tableaux vivants’ with both eyes jutting out of their heads and one eye peeping out of their pants -Great Windmill Street was smut from top-to-bottom, as each business was listed like this; pub, porn palace, sex club, pub, sex club, sex club, brothel, porn palace, sex club, brothel, brothel, brothel, primary school, brothel, pub, pub, theatre, brothel, brothel, pub. And yes, I said primary school. Today, being barely three hundred feet long, although recently gentrified, it still packs in a lot for such a little street; being full of swanky cocktail bars, traditional boozers, slightly pretentious clothes shops for hipsters who love to show-off that they have no genitals, and only one lap-dancing club where a slew of very heterosexual lads pay for the privilege of getting a boner whilst sat next to their buddies. Near the top sits 29 Great Windmill Street; a three-storey flat-fronted brown-bricked terraced house built in the mid 1700’s; it’s simple, basic and forgettable. Just as it was in the 1880’s, today it has a shop on the ground-floor and accommodation above, and although these flats are much sought-after today, they were once lodgings for Soho’s most impoverished in a place of poverty, sadness and death. As it was here, on Sunday 29th May 1887, that twenty-year-old Amelie Pottle had a little accident with an oil-lamp which lead to her slow painful death. And yet, it wasn’t a mishap but a murder. (Interstitial) The life of Amelia Pottle was short, tragic and unremarkable. She was a nobody, a nothing, just one of thousands of working-class immigrant girls living in Soho whose pitiful little life took place in an anonymous slum more than one hundred and thirty years ago; she was raised in poverty, died in pain, dumped in a pauper’s grave and she was forgotten. The only reason we know about her life is because of her death, and the only reason we know about her death is because her injuries made it newsworthy, as the pain she endured became a grisly hook for an insatiable media with a few columns to fill… and nothing more. You may ask “why should I care? I didn’t know her and I’ve got nothing in common with her”, but you do. Amelia’s story is a poignant tale as resonant today as it was the day she died, but it’s not about death. It’s a very everyday story about love, trust, abuse and how far someone is willing to go to protect the person they love. Amelia Pottle was born in 1867, although the day and month we don’t know, as on different records she was listed as Amelie, Emily and even Eliza, although it could also have been her middle name, as being so common, there were six Amelia Pottle’s in and around the West End during that era. The likelihood is it wasn’t her real name, as with the parish records inaccurate, her birth details missing, her death certificate wrong and having arrived and died before the 1881 and 1891 census, as she had only lived in London for a few years, according to locals, she wasn’t English but French. As many immigrants did, it’s likely that she anglicised her birth name to blend-in, so although Emily or Amelie could have been correct, as an English name, Pottle may have been a misspelling of the French names Poulin, Poitile, or perhaps as a nod to her hometown of Poitier? But that we shall never know. Knowing almost nothing about her life prior to her seventeenth birthday, we don’t know why she left France, why she came to England, where her family were, or who (if anyone) she was running from. But with no loved-one’s to visit her in hospital, to attend her trial, or to lay flowers on her grave, with her meagre belongings claimed by her uncaring boyfriend, we can only assume that she was alone. In truth, as an immigrant girl, no-one cared when she was alive, and three years later, she would die. By 1887, aged just twenty, Amelia Pottle had become a shadow of the girl she once was. It is said, with dreams of being a dancer, she was lured to the West End and its burgeoning theatreland. Set at the back of Shaftesbury Avenue, twelve years before the Windmill Theatre was built as a picture-house for the latest films by Mutoscope & Biograph, Great Windmill Street was encircled by the Trocadero Music Hall, Dr Hunter's Anatomical Theatre, the First London Pavilion Music Hall and the stage doors of The Lyric theatre. But as close as she may have got to her dream, her life would become a nightmare. Although a mystery, her physical description tells us everything we need to know about Amelia. According to locals, she was an ordinary girl of an average height and weight, who walked with a slight limp in her left leg, which flared up during the cold winter months, but whether it was caused by illness or injury is unknown. Her hair was brown and tangled, her eyes were blue and bloodshot, her pale skin was a sickly pale yellow with mottled purple bruises, and – although her stick-thin arms and legs were as skinny and brittle as autumn twigs - with a large scar across her belly and a plumpness about her midriff, this told the sorry but all-too-familiar tale of a woman whose absent children had either been placed in a workhouse, far from their unfit mother, or that none of them had survived. She spoke French with a French accent, her German was good and her English was passable, but being unable to read or write, she hadn’t the skills or the education to pull herself out of poverty. As many women did, with blistered fingers, Amelia took on piece-work, working long hours for short pay, stitching decorative accessories for the garments she could never afford to wear, to be used by the tailors on Berwick and Wardour Street, and sold in the fashion stores on the nearby Oxford Street. Life was hard. Some days she ate and some days she didn’t, but forced to make that choice whether to live or die, what she could earn in a day by sewing, she could make more in an hour by selling sex. For at least the last two years of her life, Amelia Pottle had been a sex-worker, a ‘street walker’ as she was known, who sold her body for pennies in the local haunts of Regent Street and Leicester Square, and brought her many punters back to her squalid little lodging, limping passed the endless lines of adoring fans outside of the packed theatres where her dreams were now nothing but a faded memory. She sold sex to eat, she ate to live and - to forget her life - she drank, which she paid for with sex. It was a vicious circle of which she would never escape, but with some level of sex-work undertaken by at least one third of woman in that era, she was lonely, but she was not alone. With a pitiable story, like so many women, the misery of her life was not uncommon; she would be born, she would work, and she would die. Joy would be fleeting; dreams would be only dreams and hope was a lost cause. The best thing in her life was that she loved to be loved and wished one day to be married, but with only a string of short-term lovers, in August 1886, during one of her boozy sessions in a local pub, she met the man she would love, loathe and would defend with her very last breath. (Interstitial) Franz Schultz was a nobody, but unlike Amelia, he was once a somebody… or so it seemed. Although a mystery, his physical description tells us everything we need to know about Franz Schultz. According to locals, the thirty-two-year-old German arrived from Bremen half a decade earlier, having settled somewhere in the East End with a woman and several children, only now he was alone. Fuelled by an intense pride; his voice was gruff and Prussian, his pals were all Germanic, he never anglicised his name (although he was also known as Josef) and as a fervently political man, it is said he was once a teacher, but whatever he taught, it was no longer of practical use. He was too stubborn to give up, too angry to go home and too useless for manual labour, so with nothing but his education, he earned a pittance as an interpreter… only his command of the English language was pitiful. Being tall, broad, bearded and bespectacled, looking like an academic, he wasn’t a powerful man, but he could be loud, frightening and imposing. A passionate bookworm with a fiery temper, a selfish streak and uncontrollable emotions which swung from happiness to anger to tears in an instant. Maybe once he was something, but now, he was nothing; a failure, a leach and a drunk from dusk-till-dawn; with a slurred rhetoric, a threadbare suit and a foul mood clouded by booze, who stumbled from pub-to-pub all along Great Windmill Street - angry at a system which had failed him - from the Stone public house at number 50, to the Catherine Wheel at 45, from the Duke of Argyll at the top, all the way down to the Red Lion pub, where forty years earlier, the great Karl Marx had outlined the Communist Manifesto, just five doors down from where he would live at 29 Great Windmill Street. Amelia Pottle and Franz Schultz were two failures bound together by desperation; she was a hopeless dreamer in search of a happy life and her forever lover, where-as he was a homeless drunk. Amelia was trapped in a bad relationship, in a bad place, with a bad man, but she always had hope. In October 1886, after a week together, Amelia & Franz moved into a small shabby lodging at 29 Great Windmill Street; with a communal yard out back, a water-tank in the cellar, a cess-pit shared by the four streets and on the first floor, a cramped sparsely-furnished room with a stove for heating, water by the bucket, a coarse horsehair bed for sleeping (and sex-work), and the only light was by oil-lamp. Amelia worked hard to provide them both with a home, food, furniture and drink. And where-as she only drank to steady her nerves, to drown her sorrows and to get herself through another rotten day, he drank himself into oblivion. She provided everything for their lives and (she hoped) their future, she presumptively called herself Mrs Schultz. And where-as he provided nothing, but a big mouth, an angry face and – as a supposedly principled man - an intense jealousy anytime he saw her with another man. In his eyes, she was a whore and he hated it, but he didn’t have a problem living of her earnings. Over the next few months, as much as Amelia tried to make peace, pick up the pieces and stitch back together the ragged fragments of their disintegrating romance, Franz would never back down. Their love was gone, their fights were bitter, and of the few personal possessions of hers he hadn’t smashed in a drunken rage, what pieces she had left, he would pawn-off to buy himself some more booze. Their first-floor room so often echoed to the sounds of screams, squeals and smashes, that the other tenants often ignored it, as although Amelia gave as good as she got, she often came off worse. Her sickly pale skin was now a kaleidoscope of abuse; her blue and bloodshot eyes were lost behind two puffy black lumps, the fresh red welts on her back blended-in with the day-old purple sprains and the week-old yellow sores, and - with her stick-thin arms weak, her belly sore from being kicked, the mottled bruises down the length of her limping left leg made her more likely to stumble and trip, and with her fists swollen and her fingers fractured - she was now more prone than ever to “mishaps”. The days when he felt enough pity to stop the beating had passed. What held his anger back was that she was his meal-ticket, and he knew was that the more he beat her, the worse she looked and the less she earned. So, if he kept on thumping her, he knew nobody would pay to fuck that. After every brutal and sustained fight, with her body too woozy to feel the pain and her face so swollen it absorbed the punches, having fled to the safety of the communal yard, under the windows of several prying eyes, to keep the peace, it was always Amelia who apologised, blamed herself and when asked what had happened, she always lied to protect the man that she would love with her dying breath. Sunday 29th May 1887 was an ordinary day. For the wealthy, they rested. For the devout, they prayed. And with three breweries perched at the top of the street, for many locals, it was an excuse to booze. But for Amelia? She worked. The cupboards were bare, the rent was due and she was struggling. Burdened by a multicoloured mess of blotchy lumps, her battered face could no longer command the twelve shillings it once could, and – even in the dark and at a discount – it would fail to raise any punter’s passion, so Amelia had returned to piece-work while her bruises healed. Hours were long, pay was short and her work-rate was slow, as stitching was impossible with her fingers so swollen. Luckily, Amelia still had a regular customer who (no matter what) would visit her lodging every Sunday. He was never named in the court records, perhaps because of his status, all we know is he was young, decent and polite. He was a little lonely but he treated her well. And as an admirer of hers, he often treated her to something special, whether a wild flower, a love poem, or (as a rarity amongst the poor) a fresh tomato from the Berwick Street market, or sometimes a citrus fruit. Each fleeting visit was brief, but afterwards, buried in the midst of her mangled face, she could be seen to crack a smile. At 5pm, on the coarse horse-hair bed in her first-floor lodging at 29 Great Windmill Street, Amelia and her admirer were engaged in sex. On a bedside table, by a glass oil-lamp, lay ten shillings as payment. It’s unknown whether she charged him less because of the way she looked, or because she liked him, but (for that brief moment) he was a little ray of joy in her miserable little life… …a life ruined by Franz. While Amelia had been working, Franz had been boozing, and having been booted out of several pubs for spouting his angry political rhetoric, now he was drunk, broke and in need of more money. Staggering down Great Windmill Street, stumbling into number 29 and banging his way up the wooden stairs, on the first-floor landing, he stood silent and seething, as inside he heard Amelia making money. (Squeaking bed/sex) He knew what she did, how she did it and how much she charged, as not only did he contribute nothing to their food or rent, but to him; every pump was a pint, every suck was a shot and every fornication was a flagon. So, no-one really knows why it angered him so much this time. Having heard the squeals, screams and smashes, Theresa Marshall, a matronly Prussian woman had thundered down from the floor above. Seeing the door hanging off its hinges, the young man hurled out and the couple bitterly cursing one another, being furious - not only at Amelia’s infidelity having shagged another man, but being even angrier at how little she had charged him - before Franz could belt Amelia with the hard back of her broken wooden chair, Theresa had stopped him. Disarmed and alarmed by this strong-willed woman, who tossed aside the chair-back, Theresa ordered Franz to shut-up, calm down and to go to bed. And for the rest of the evening, he was silent. (Silence) A few hours later, from her death-bed and through the pain of her last gasping breath, Amelia Pottle who presumptively called herself ‘Mrs Schultz’ would insist that what happened next was an accident caused by her sore fingers, a fumbled oil lamp and that it was all her fault. But we know that it wasn’t. At roughly 1:30am the next morning, 29 Great Windmill Street was once again awoken by an almighty fight with furniture breaking, a single oil-lamp flickering the angry shadows as Amelia was beaten black and blue, and over it all, the gruff Germanic bark of obscenities like “dirty beast” and “you are whore”. With the tenants so used to her screams, many simply curled-up and waited for the inevitable to blow over, as a tearful Amelia would flee to the safety of the communal back yard, and under the scrutiny of the neighbour’s windows, she would apologise, he would calm down and silence would return. Only this time, it didn’t. Dressed in nothing but a red flannel nightdress, a stark shade which mirrored the blood which seeped from her busted nose, as Amelia’s bare feet hammered down the wooden stairs, screaming the whole house down with the words “Murder!” and “Police!”, behind her followed a furious Franz, his enraged face illuminated by the single oil-lamp and - in the dark of the unlit passageway, a few steps before the sanctuary of the back yard - neighbours heard the smashing of glass and a never-ending scream. The night was dark and the lamp was broken, but somehow the whole back yard was bathed in a bright orange glow, as if the sun had mistimed a new dawn. Struggling to adjust to this blinding light, the tenants heard no song-birds, only the screams of a young girl being burned alive, as with only the flailing of her terrified arms and legs to be seen, Amelia was enveloped by an intense ball of fire. Sunk to his knees and sat beside her, every time that Franz tried to extinguish the inferno, the panicked flapping of his hands just fanned the flames, as when he touched her, her hair sizzled-up into tufts of black ash and her nightdress fizzled as it melted into her bare skin, which came off in thick red clumps. Dampening her slightly down, as Franz scooped-up Amelia in his arms, the disintegrating remnants of her clothes, hair and skin littering the floor, as he carried her down into the cellar to dowse in water her scorched body, she was heard to whimper “take me to the hospital; I will say that I did it myself". Hand-cranking an old water-pump, filling a bucket and hearing it hiss as the cold liquid hit the burning skin of the blackened and charred woman, again she pleaded “Please. I am dying. Take me to the hospital. I will say I did it”. But instead, he dithered, filling a second bucket, pump-after-pump. Moments later, as a stranger had shouted “Police!”, hearing the distant sound of a police whistle and the murmur as crowds congregated outside, Franz changed his mind. And with her nightdress burned off, as well as much of her skin, having wrapped Amelia’s smoking and smouldering body in a blanket, he carried her out into the street, hailed a horse-drawn cab and took her to the hospital. After an interminably long thirty-minute journey, from Soho to Fitzrovia, over a series of cobbled and bumpy roads, Amelia finally arrived at Middlesex Hospital. Collapsed and barely conscious, a porter carried this unsightly steaming lump inside; her hair was gone, her features unrecognisable and – from her face to her feet - her purple and yellow bruises had all been replaced by a red and black mottling. Seen by the house surgeon (Dr Hedley Bartlett) her condition was described as “dangerous” and it was feared that she may not survive the night, but even before she was led in, Franz’s excuses had begun. To anyone who would listen – from the cab-driver, to the porter, to the surgeon and to the neighbours – he would forcibly argue his side of the story, angrily insisting against all evidence that “she did this”, “she threw a lamp at me”, “we burn, we both burn”, and although he only returned to the hospital once - to see if she was dead - it was clear that he didn’t care about her, he only cared about himself. At 3:40pm, that day, Inspector Edmund Burke arrested Franz Schultz for the violent assault of Amelia Pottle, to which he said almost nothing except “very well… is she dead?”. At 9pm, barely alive, used her last breath to make a statement to the Police. But by 10pm, having suffered more than 50% burns to her head, face, limbs and most of her torso, Amelia died of her injuries. (End) The Police investigation was simple, as although Franz would try to bribe several onlookers to change their story by gifting them some of his dead girlfriend’s personal affects, and with his sole defence being that she had accidentally tipped the oil-lamp over herself whilst in bed, all of the witnesses and all of the evidence – from the screams to the scorch marks, from the broken lamp to the paraffin residue, not a single thread of which was found in the bedroom – would find his guilt irrefutable. At the Coroner’s inquest held at the Marlborough Street Police Court on the 3rd June 1887, instead of trying him for the lesser charge of violent assault, the jury returned a guilty verdict for manslaughter, and the case was committed to a criminal trial, with the possibility of a death sentence looming. Held at the Old Bailey on the 27th June 1887, just four weeks after her death, thirty-two-year-old Franz Schultz was tried for the wilful murder of twenty-year-old Amelia Pottle. His defence was farcical, the evidence was damning and with single every eye-witness recounting the incident, the many times he had mercilessly beat her, and assassinating his character by describing him as “a drunk”, “a bully” and “a pimp”, a unanimous jury should have found him guilty of murder and watched as his pathetic little body dangled from a rope, with his neck snapped. But they didn’t. One witness would change everything, and she wasn’t in court that day, or even alive. To the Police Inspector and the hospital surgeon, keeping a promise from her death-bed, Amelia had made a statement that it was all “an accident”, that it was “her fault” and with that, Franz Schultz (the man who she loved and one day hoped to marry) was found innocent of her murder. Upon his release, he pawned off her personal belongings for booze, and that was the last time he was ever seen. OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile. After the break, I shall tell you all the secrets of life, that’s if the secrets of life all involve tea, cake, coots and lots of waffling. Before that, a big thank you to my new Patreon supporters who are Len Adams, Roisin McGettigan and Matt Munnery. I thank you all. With an extra thank you to Sharon Brereton for the very kind donation. I know that now and the days ahead are hard for everyone, so I really do appreciate all of your support for this small independent podcast, whether as a Patron, by sharing the podcast with your pals, or by giving it a nice review on your favourite podcatcher. Murder Mile was researched, written & performed by myself, with the main musical themes written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name. Thank you for listening and sleep well. Michael J Buchanan-Dunne is a writer, crime historian, podcaster and tour-guide who runs Murder Mile Walks, a guided tour of Soho’s most notorious murder cases, hailed as “one of the top ten curious, quirky, unusual and different things to do in London”, nominated "one of the best true-crime podcasts at the British Podcast Awards", one of The Telegraph's top five true-crime podcasts and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totaling 50 deaths, over just a one mile walk. |
AuthorMichael J Buchanan-Dunne is a crime writer, podcaster & tour guide of Murder Mile Walks, hailed as one of the best "quirky curious & unusual things to do in London". 
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