If you love true-crime podcasts, subscribe to the Murder Mile true-crime podcast on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podbean, Pocketcast, Stitcher, Acast, Tune-In, Otto Radio or Libsyn

Welcome to the Murder Mile true-crime podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous (and often forgotten) murder cases, set within one square mile of the West End. 

• 30 minute weekly true-crime podcast - EVERY THURSDAY
• 300+ untold or often forgotten true murders
• Based on Soho's FIVE STAR rated Murder Mile Walks
• Research collected from original and first-hand sources
  
• Authentic sounds recorded from the location itself
  
• An audio guided walk... all from the comfort of your home

To accompany your audio guided walk, what follows is a series of photos, videos and maps, so that no matter where you are listening to this podcast, you'll feel like you're actually there. 

EPISODE EIGHT

CLICK HERE to download the Murder Mile podcast via iTunes and to receive the latest episodes, click "subscribe". You can listen to it now by clicking the green PLAY button on the embedded media player below. All transcribed versions are available in "Podcast Transcripts" (right).

THE LOCATION

Using the interactive Murder Map, you can find every murder location from each episode, which are all marked with a multi-coloured dots, Bedfordbury is the bright green dot on the middle / left. Simply click on the map to zoom in and scroll left/right. 

Episode 8 – The Brutal Death of Ginger Rae

INTRO: Thank you for downloading episode eight of the Murder Mile true-crime podcast, with a special thank you going out to those who took part in the Murder Mile “listen live” event last Sunday. If you fancy listening to the latest episode, chatting with fellow listeners and asking me any questions, simply press play on this episode at 9pm GMT on Sunday, and follow the hashtag #MMPodLive via Twitter. Of course, if you can’t wait till Sunday? Then enjoy 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 one square mile of the West End.

Today’s episode is a guided walk of the brutal murder of ‘Ginger Rae’; a veteran sex-worker with a sweet smile and a kind heart, whose bloody death remains shrouded in so much myth and mystery, that almost 70 years on, her murder may remain unsolved forever.  

Murder Mile contains vivid descriptions which may not be suitable for those of a sensitive disposition, as well as photos, videos and maps which accompany this series, so that no matter where you’re listening 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 8: The Brutal Death of Ginger Rae.

Today, once again, I’m standing on Broadwick Street, W1; a monstrously modern and yet curiously cobble-stoned side-street, just two hundred feet from the surgery of Isidore Zeifert, the deadliest dentist in Soho, as witnessed in episode six. But the Broadwick Street of today has been renamed, renumbered and rebuilt so many times, that it now has no idea what it is, being dotted with an odd mix of stubbornly antiquated pubs with strangely sticky floors, non-descript buildings full of faceless office drones and quirky cosmopolitan coffee shops which require you to take out a loan to buy a latte.

Three years after the end of World War Two, Broadwick Street (like most of Soho) was a hotbed of prostitution, as with the city’s severely depleted police force already stretched-to-capacity as they struggled to regain control and quell the escalating crime-wave. And although the second world war for most people was a distant memory, the financially crippled and emotionally broken people of Britain were still living in the grip of rationing, which meant as many enlisted service personnel returned home to find they had no job, no money and no food; being distraught at having won the war and yet – struggling and starving – they started to question whether they’d won at all, even many an honest man and woman turned to crime simply to stay alive.

So by 1948, eight years after rationing began, with everyday essentials like butter, sugar, eggs, milk, meat, flour, fuel and even clothes in a strictly limited supply, a black market was flourishing, theft was endemic and prostitution was rife. And owing to Broadwick Street’s proximity in London’s West End, given the many pubs which peppered the streets and the ridiculously cheap rent of its dilapidated and bomb-damaged houses, after four Nazi bombs (which had landed within 150 feet of each other) had reduced the street to a mangled mess of structurally unsafe slum-houses, by 1948 the street was still strewn with rubble and littered with precariously cheap lodgings, many of which had become brothels.

One of those lodgings was at 46 Broadwick Street, a shabby two-roomed flat where a seasoned Soho prostitute would miraculously survive the war, only to die during “peacetime” at the hands of a maniac. (INTERSTITIAL)

Today, 46 Broadwick Street looks similar to how it did seventy years ago; a tall thin four-storey brown-bricked townhouse subdivided into small flats, with two white windows on each level, and accessed by a black door on the ground floor, all of which overlook the junction of Lexington Street, a murky side-street that heads to the infamous Brewer Street (a place still famed for prostitution), but back in 1948, the lodger in the second-floor flat was a lady-of-the-night known locally as “Ginger Rae”.

Born Rachel Annie Hatton in Hoxton (East London) on the 19th August 1907, Rae was one of three siblings, with a brother Richard and a sister Maria who she remained close to and would meet on a weekly basis for meals. Nicknamed “Red Rae” or “Ginger Rae” on account of her bright red hair, she was often described as a bright, breezy and easy-going girl who was very sociable and friendly.

Although she had an extensive criminal record, having been a prostitute for twenty three years, during which time she’d amassed a whopping eighty-four convictions for soliciting, including two charges of larceny (having pickpocketed two drunken punters) and two charges for brothel-keeping, Rae didn’t have any drink or drug issues, she didn’t have any debts, and oddly she actually seemed to enjoy and even embrace the lifestyle that prostitution had given her, including money in her pocket, food in her belly, an active social life and a nice warm flat.

And yet, having been in the sex trade for more than two-thirds of her life; Rae knew how to handle herself; she was feisty, sharp and street-smart, as well as a lady who (everyone who knew her widely agreed) was not one to be trifled with, especially after she’d had a few drinks. But at the tender age of just twenty-six, having been cruelly widowed one year into her marriage to an African American stage actor named Herbert Fennick who’d tragically died in a Parisian car crash, Rae kept his name, and never re-married. Instead choosing to lavish the malnourished street kids with sweet treats, sharing her flat with friends in need and being a loyal, loving and caring companion to her many gentleman callers.

Rae lived in Soho for over twenty years, and during the summer of 1945 she moved into the bomb-damaged but equally serviceable second-floor flat at 46 Broadwick Street. Three years later, she would be dead. (INTERSTITIAL).

Saturday 25th of September 1948 was the last day of Ginger Rae’s life, and like most of the days leading up to that, it was unremarkable. As was her regular Saturday routine, she’d hopped on a bus and had taken the 40 minute trip to Dalston Junction to go shopping in the East End of London and have a spot of lunch in a café near the Metropolitan Hospital with her gentleman friend, “Ted”.

“Ted” or “Eddie” as he was also known, was born Edwin George Peggs. He was a 41 year old, bulky but sweet-natured man who lived in a small lodging in the Samuel Lewis buildings in Dalston Lane, and although he was trained as a tailor’s outfitter, the post-war years had been cruel and therefore he hadn’t worked in twelve months. But with Rae having such a strong maternal instinct towards her many gentleman callers, she’d always treat him to lunch on a Saturday, a roast chicken dinner on a Sunday and a few little gifts during the week to keep his strength up, as well as providing him with money, food and a warm bed when he needed it. And although they were never a couple, Ted and Rae neither argued nor fought, as their friendship was built on companionship, love and trust.

After a delightful lunch, they both parted ways with a kiss and a hug, with Rae taking a short walk to Hoxton to visit her beloved sister Maria, and Ted heading back to his Dalston flat. And having agreed that Ted would call-in on Rae the following day for Sunday lunch, on her way home, Rae picked up a chicken, a few potatoes and some salad.

But as Rae returned home to her second floor flat - being such a social person - she couldn’t help but feel how quiet and empty her flat (and even her life) felt when there was no-one there to share it. Up until a few weeks prior, Rae had opened her doors to a friend in need, a lady called “Kay” (who was born Kathleen Mary Tiley), but with Rae having helped get Kay get back on her feet and moved her into her own rented lodging just one street away on Wardour Street, even though they still met for drinks at the Sun and Thirteen Cantons public house most nights, it wasn’t the same.

Maybe it was fuelled by the fear of loss and loneliness having been widowed at such a young age, that made Rae so keen for companionship but so reluctant to commit, which drove her to have so many men-friends in her life, as by the time of her tragic death, Rae had three; Ted, the unemployed outfitter from Dalston; Antonios Ioannou, a 28 year old Greek Cypriot chef, who lived with Rae for five weeks just one year prior, but being unable to pay his share of the bills and with pride getting the better of him, he moved out, and yet they remained on good terms. And the third of her gentlemen callers was 23 year old Arthur William Steed. (PAUSE / SILENCE)

Hmm. Now, it’s normally around this point in the story where – having mentioned a name – that I’d usually play this (INTERSTITIAL), signifying that the person in question is a villain, a wrong’un and a no-good worthless piece of poo who is most likely to be our chief suspect in the murder of Ginger Rae… but he isn’t. In fact, all of the gentleman-friends who Rae shared those last few days with, all were sweet, polite and pleasant; delicate little flowers who needed a mother-figure to protect and pamper them and who were all attracted to her big heart, her gentle smile and her kind streak which was a mile-wide. And as mentioned before, she had no debts, no drug issues and no dark past or dodgy dealings. She was loved not loathed. She was caring not cruel. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened. And yet, just a few hours later, Ginger Rae would be brutally stabbed to death.

That evening at around 8:00pm, as Rae was getting herself ready for her usual Saturday night, to sell her body for sex whilst also finding time to socialise with friends, Rae would eat a light meal which (according to her autopsy) mostly consisted of peas. And although she was drinking, in the few hours up until her death she would only consume one pint of beer, meaning she drank but she wasn’t drunk.

At 8:15pm, having donned a dark dress, a white blouse, white heeled shoes and a white raincoat, with her bright auburn hair brushed up and over her head, Rae headed out of the black front door of 46 Broadwick Street and walked south along Lexington Street towards the infamous red-light district of Brewer Street, which was her usual patch for picking up punters. This sighting was made by Mrs Francis Slater, a resident in the top floor flat at 15 Lexington Street, who knew Rae, her occupation, her routine and many of her regular customers, and confirmed that between 8:15pm and 10:00pm, (as per usual) she saw Rae repeatedly walking a procession of men back to her flat for the purposes of sex.

According to Arthur William Steed, the 23 year old storesman, who was the third of Rae’s current slew of gentleman callers, she had previously agreed to meet him at 10pm in the Sun and Thirteen Cantons public house on Great Pultney Street, a side-street which runs parallel to Lexington Street and is half way between her Brewer Street and her flat, just a three minute walk away. Having arrived early, Steed sat at the bar supping a cold pint with his friend Reginald Dutton, who Rae knew, as Dutton used to date Rae’s former flat-mate Kay and would often make-up a foursome, but tonight with Kay being away in Leytonstone to meet a male friend, it would just be the three of them.

But by 10:40pm, Ginger Rae hadn’t shown up.

For those who knew her, Ginger Rae was a creature of habit, who saw prostitution as merely a means to an end and would work a maximum of two-to-three hours a day, six days a week and never on a Sunday. And yet, even though she wasn’t the most punctual of people, she would never let her sex-work interfere with her social life, she was not known to let her friends down, and (according to Steed’s own witness testimony) it was her habit to have “packed up business by 10pm” so she could go “for a drink”. A statement which was clarified by Patrick Joseph Lyster, the licensee of the Sun and Thirteen Cantons public house, who confirmed that Rae was a regular there, who usually drank a light ale in the public bar between 9pm and 11pm on most weekdays, with either Steed, Kay or Ted.

With her flat at 46 Broadwick Street being just one street away, Steed and Dutton swung by and noticed that the lights in her flat were on, something she would always do whenever she was out soliciting, so assuming she was either inside with a client, or still out on the streets, they parted ways.

The next morning, on Sunday 26th of September 1948 at 11am, sensing that Rae’s failure to turn-up was so out of character, and living in Silver Street (just one road away), Steed and Dutton stopped by her flat to check that she was okay. As per usual, the front door was locked and as hard as they knocked there was no reply, but through her partially open curtains, they saw that the flickering gas-lamp which illuminated her flat was still on, suggesting that either she was in, or that she hadn’t come home.

Ten minutes later, Steed and Dutton decided to try again, but this time as they approached the flat, they noticed that the black front door on the ground-floor was now open, and with this being the only entrance or exit to the flats above, they walked up two flights of stairs and knocked on Rae’s door.

But once again, there was no reply.

At 12:45pm, a full fifteen minutes early for their pre-arranged lunch-date, Rae’s regular gentleman caller, “Ted” arrived at her flat, only to be greeted in the hallway by William Yates, a stableman who lived with his wife (Margaret) in the top floor flat and shared his grave concerns with “Ted”.

Not having a key, Ted used his sixteen stone bulk to break a panel in a side door and entered the flat via the kitchen, calling her name. “Rae?”, he hollered, getting no reply but noticing the uncooked chicken she’d bought for their Sunday lunch and the salad ready to be washed in the basin. “Rae?”, he bellowed into the bathroom, his frantic voice echoing into its inky blackness. And yet, as he pushed open the last door which lead to her front-room, he saw no sign of Rae, only a set of folded clothes on her dresser, an unmade bed and a crumbled eiderdown on the floor, and as he went to shout out her name (one last time) in the empty flat, his voice was cut short by the shocking sight before him.

Detective Sergeant Bilyard of West End Central police station was the first officer on the scene at 1:15pm, followed by Detective Inspector Watts and Dr Kennedy, the divisional surgeon at 1:55pm, who confirmed that Rachel Annie Fennick (alias Ginger Rae) was dead.

Underneath the softness of the crumpled eiderdown, the lower half of Rae’s pale and bloodied torso was sticking out; and although she was partially clothed, wearing stockings, a slip and a brassiere, her legs were splayed akimbo, her abdomen exposed and her bare genitals on show, with no-one knowing whether she had been hastily hidden, or deliberately posed for effect.

Across the fingers and palm of her left hand, Rae had sustained severe lacerations, suggesting either defensive wounds as she fought to protect herself or as she grabbed the blade to fight off her attacker. Over her throat, a deep dark bruise in the shape of a thumb had made an indentation across her wind-pipe, suggesting she’d been strangled. And in total, Rae had been stabbed six times, with such violence and force, that the full length of the seven inch blade had penetrated her torso, rupturing her stomach, liver, kidneys, bowel and causing both lungs to collapse, with the blood-spatter which had sprayed and pooled around her mouth signifying that during the painful and terrifying last two to three minutes of Rae’s life, that whilst struggling to breathe, she choked on her own blood.

Police surmised that she had been stabbed with a seven inch “stiletto” style blade, which is like a flick-knife, only with a sharp edge on both sides of the blade, but sadly the knife was never found. Robbery was considered as four £1 notes were stolen from her purse as well as two pairs of camiknickers from her drawer. And rape was ruled out as there was no signs of sexual violence, no sex had taken place and no semen was found on her vaginal pad. Whoever had killed her, had done so with a lot of violence, a lot of anger and a lot of hatred.

So, who killed Ginger Rae?

Quickly, the Police ruled out her gentlemen friends, as not only did they have no hatred for Rae (only love), but also all three of them had alibis. Edwin George Peggs, also known as “Ted”, the 41 year old tailor’s outfitter who had discovered her body was in Dalston on the night of her death, as confirmed by multiple witnesses. Antonios Ioannou, the 28 year old chef who lived with Rae for five weeks, had his clothes and a similar knife examined by the police, but being a commis-chef who owned loads of knives (and even though his whereabouts that night were a little vague) he was not deemed a suspect. And William Steed and Reginald Dalton, the two drinking pals who’d agreed to meet Rae at the Sun and Thirteen Cantons pub, were both witnessed in the pub until 10:40pm and having been unable to find Rae, they returned home at 11:15pm, a sighting of which was confirmed by their mothers.

So, what about witness statements?

Well, as we know, according to Mrs Francis Slater who lived in the top floor flat of 15 Lexington Street, Rae left her flat at 8:15pm, walked south to Brewer Street and ushered numerous men back to her flat for sex, many times over the next two hours.

Then, at 9:30pm, Mrs Margaret Yates, who resided with her husband William in the top floor flat at 46 Broadwick Street, one floor above, heard Rae walking up the dark-lit staircase with a softly spoken man, to whom she said “This way darling”, to which he quietly replied “This way?”, before entering her flat. At 9:45pm, fifteen minutes later, Mrs Yates heard a woman scream… although, with a raucous party taking place in the Newcastle public house (now the John Snow) immediately opposite, it’s impossible to tell whose scream that was, but the likelihood is, it wasn’t Rae.

At just after 10pm, Mrs Francis Slater saw Rae walking with a tall gentleman towards her flat, but owing to the streets being dark and him wearing a trilby hat, she couldn’t see his face. And yet, at 10pm, this was the time when she was supposed to be meeting Steed & Dutton in the Sun and Thirteen Cantons pub, but didn’t, and neither would she attempt to, as between 10:30 and 10:40pm, she would be seen by Irene Hughes, another local prostitute on Brewer Street.

At 10:45pm, Rebecca Howland, a prostitute on Brewer Street saw Rae meeting a regular customer; a Petty Officer in the Navy, who was in his late 20’s, with light hair, he was clean shaven, who was well-built and wearing a white topped hat.

And yet, even though none of these men could ever be traced, it’s unlikely that any of them were the culprit, as with Dr Kennedy conducting his initial examination of Rae’s body at 3pm, and concluding that with rigour mortis having set in that she must have been dead for 12 to 16 hours? This puts her time of death at between 11pm and 3am.

After 11pm, there is only one confirmed sighting of Ginger Rae alive. Between 11:10pm and 11:25pm, three prostitutes on Brewer Street (Thomasina Ingram, Alice Nolan and Rebecca Howland) all witnessed Rae engaged in a conversation with a customer, and their descriptions of him are excellent; he was in his mid-30’s, six foot tall, well built, with a dark complexion, he had dark brushed back hair, he was clean shaven, with a roman nose, thick lips and had uneven and unclean teeth. He was wearing a well-cut dark brown suit (which looked expensive), a white shirt, tan shoes and he was carrying a light tan raincoat over his shoulder. Having spoken to that very same man just moments earlier, Rebecca Howland later stated that “he kept looking at my mouth as if he was deaf and lip-reading”, and even though all three women confirmed the man was “foreign”, Rebecca was able to narrow down his accent to either being “Spanish, Greek… or Maltese”.

So who was this man? Still to this day, nobody knows and the case remains unsolved.

Rachel Annie Hatton alias Ginger Rae was a 41 year old Soho prostitute with no enemies, no debts and drug habit. She was loved by many and (supposedly) loathed by no-one. And yet someone had so much hatred for her that they subjected her to a brutal and bloody death, their right hand squeezing her throat, their eyes staring at hers as the life drained from her body. But why?

Maybe she was murdered by a stranger who was stalking Soho’s prostitutes? Maybe the Police had already questioned her attacker, only to disregard him as a suspect and let him go? Maybe the veteran Soho sex-worker Ginger Rae was caught-up in something secret, deadly and dangerous? Or maybe, there’s more to learn about this mysterious Maltese man?

The brutal murder of Ginger Rae continues next week.

OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile. If you have any fingernails left and feel that this episode has asked more questions than it’s answered, please join us for Murder Mile live this Sunday @ 9pm GMT, where you can ask me any questions and suggest your own theories, all by using the hashtag #MMPodLive. And, if you’re in London, pop along to Murder Mile Walk, my guided walk of Soho’s most infamous murder cases, featuring 12 murderers, 15 locations and 75 mysterious deaths over one mile, in just two hours.
Tickets are available via www.murdermiletours.com
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.
Next week’s episode is the concluding part of The Brutal Death of Ginger Rae
Thank you and sleep well.

DOWNLOAD this episode of Murder Mile Episode #8 - The Brutal Death of Ginger Rae. 
​You can also listen to the podcast live, by clicking PLAY on this embedded player above

The next episode: Who Killed Ginger Rae? (due 7th December 2017). 

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” and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totaling 75 deaths, over just a one mile walk.

If you love true-crime podcasts, subscribe to the Murder Mile true-crime podcast on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podbean, Pocketcast, Stitcher, Acast, Tune-In, Otto Radio or Libsyn

Welcome to the Murder Mile true-crime podcast and audio guided walk of 300+ untold, unsolved and often long-forgotten murders, all set within one square mile of the West End. 

• 30 minute weekly true-crime podcast - EVERY THURSDAY
• 300+ infamous, untold or often forgotten true murders
• Based on Soho's FIVE STAR rated Murder Mile Walks
• Research collected from original and first-hand sources
• Authentic sounds recorded from the location itself
• An audio guided walk... all from the comfort of your home

To accompany your audio guided walk, what follows is a series of photos, videos and maps, so that no matter where you are listening to this podcast, you'll feel like you're actually there. ​

EPISODE SEVEN

Episode Seven: The Identikit Killing in the Curiosity Shop is about Elsie Mae Batten, a part-time shop assistant who would be murdered over a matter of just fifteen pounds. And yet, how the culprit was caught would be a watershed moment in British Policing which would change murder investigations forever.

• Date: Friday 3rd March 1961
  
• Location: 23 Cecil Court, off Charing Cross Road
  
• Victims: 1 (Elsie May Batten)
  
• Culprit: Edwin Albert Arthur Bush
  

CLICK HERE to download the Murder Mile podcast via iTunes and to receive the latest episodes, click "subscribe". You can listen to it now by clicking the green PLAY button on the embedded media player below. All transcribed versions are available in "Podcast Transcripts" (right).

THE LOCATION

Owing to copyright issues, I am unable to post a photo of Edwin Albert Bush and his image which was created using Identikit, but click here to see it on the Metropolitan Police's own website.

Episode 7 – The Identikit Killing at the Curiosity Shop

INTRO: Thank you for downloading episode seven of the Murder Mile true-crime podcast. I love listening to true-crime podcasts, but I wish there was a way I could interact with other listeners and the host whilst the episode plays? Well, I can. Every Sunday at 9pm GMT, Murder Mile will be hosting a “listen live” event, meaning all you have to do is press play on your iPod at 9pm precisely, and by using the hashtag #MMPodLIve via Twitter, you can listen to the latest episode, ask me any questions, and chat to other listeners, all by following the Twitter hashtag #MMPodLIve. Of course, if you can’t wait till Sunday, and you want to listen to episode seven now, that’s fine too. Enjoy 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 one square mile of the West End. Today’s episode is a guided walk of the brutal murder of Elsie Mae Batten, a part-time shop assistant who would be murdered over a matter of just fifteen pounds. And yet, how the culprit was caught would be a watershed moment in British Policing which would change murder investigations forever. Murder Mile contains vivid descriptions which may not be suitable for those of a sensitive disposition, as well as photos, videos and maps which accompany this series, so that no matter where you’re listening 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 7: The Identikit Killing at the Curiosity Shop.

Today, I’m standing in Cecil Court, WC2; a long, dark, windy little cut-through connecting the busy city streets of St Martin’s Lane and Charing Cross Road; it’s situated smack-bang in the middle of tourist hot-spots like Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square and Covent Garden and is just one street away from the home of the Bedfordbury Baby-Batterer (a heart-wrenching case we discussed in episode 3).

Although this alley is bookended by two of London’s busiest roads, as long lines of cars stuck in traffic jams belch a great plumes of polluted fumes, with horns tooting, engines revving and the obligatory cockney cab-driver calling a dangerously-weaving cyclist a “c**t”, Cecil Court is in complete contrast to the city that surrounds it. It’s very quiet, very clean and it’s very posh.

Widely regarded as Bookseller’s Row; Cecil Court is a strangely thin, deceptively tall and eerily long Victorian shopping arcade with a series of unnervingly similar book-shops on the ground-floor, matching mansion flats above which loom over both sides, and is dotted with 19th century gas-lamps, almost as if electricity was never invented. Here, time has stood still, and the only people who seem to wander down this pedestrianised precinct are lost tourists looking for loos, the poor who peep in at the unpriced prints, and the upper classes who shop for dusty books, tatty maps and arty lithographs – all of which they’ll display but never read - in a desperate attempt to appear intellectual.

And yet, it was here that two unlikely people would meet for the very first and the very last time; Elsie Mae Batten and her killer Edwin Albert Bush. (INTESTITIAL)

Today, 23-25 Cecil Court is the home of Goldsboro Books, an independent book-dealer specialising in first editions and out-of-print rarities, all neatly displayed in high and wide windows and tall elegant cases, with the façade painted in British Racing Green, the door protected by wrought iron gates and ornate gold lettering above, which proudly displays its name and number. But back in the early 1960’s, 23 and 25 Cecil Court were two entirely separate shops, with number 25 owned by Mr E. Seligmann, a purveyor of rare books and prints, and number 23 owned by Mr Louis Meier. It was a curiosity shop which (as its name would suggest) also sold a hotch-potch of quirky, curious and unusual items, such as African tribal masks, shrunken human heads and badly stuffed beavers, as well as a wealth of medals, maps, stamps and antique military weapons including spears, swords and knives.

And although the curiosity shop at 23 Cecil Court was owned by Louis Meier and managed by Marie Grey, it would often be left in the capable hands of 59 year old Elsie May Batten.

Born Elsie May Thorneloe in Oadby (Leicestershire) in 1902, Elsie was one of three siblings with two younger brothers, all who worked for the family’s wholesale textile business and lived the life of a well-do-to middle class family, complete with a cook, a nurse and two domestic servants. But by 1933, Elsie had married the man of her dreams, a sculptor named Mark Winifred Batten, and had settled down in the very affluent area of Castletown Road in West Kensington (London).

Although a deeply devoted couple who’d be married for 28 years; Mark’s artistic career and reclusive temperament meant that during the week, as he chiselled away in his country studio at Christian’s River in the wilds of East Sussex, Elsie was left alone at home with their young daughter Griselda. But as Griselda grew up and moved out, Elsie needed something to occupy her time. And so being a big fan of art, antiques and although she didn’t need the money, Elsie started work as a part-time assistant at Louis Meier’s curiosity shop at 23 Cecil Court…

…where eventually she would be found dead. (INTERSTITIAL)

Thursday 2nd March 1961 began like any other day, as with the ever-dependable Elsie being entrusted to open the shop and arrange window displays of assorted books, bits and bric-a-brac, she would also single-handedly manage the cash sales, inventory and any queries by the light sprinkling of customers, until around lunchtime when Louis and Marie would return from the local auctions.

Later that afternoon, as they were close to shutting up shop, a scruffy young man with beady little eyes, sticky-out ears and a tatty dark suit shuffled in and began to browse the knives, swords and daggers. Although the unkempt youth didn’t look as if he had tuppence to his name, Louis Meier engaged him politely about a piece which had caught his attention, but being unable to afford the £15 ornamental dress-sword, the dishevelled young man shuffled out of the shop, empty-handed.
His name was Edwin Albert Bush.

In contrast to Elsie’s privileged life, Edwin Albert Arthur Bush nicknamed “Eddie” was born in 1940, as London was gripped in the midst of the blitz, as German bombers pummelled the city with an eight month campaign of air-raids. And yet, from this point on, his short miserable life would only get harder, owing to Bush being a half-cast child born to a white British woman and an Asian father, during a racially hostile period in 1940’s Britain. So difficult was his upbringing, that in 1953 when a concerned charity investigated the squalid living conditions of his family - with two adults and six emaciated siblings all squeezed in just two tiny rooms - 12 year old Bush was taken into care and began a criminal career of burglary and theft, resulting in three stints in borstal (a brutal juvenile prison), all before he was 18. And although his criminal record listed his occupation as a “labourer”, by the age of 20, Bush was living in a squalid rented flat in the bombed-out slums of Honor Oak (South London); he was uneducated, unskilled, recently engaged… and he was broke.

On Friday 3rd March 1961 at a little after 9am, the ever-trustworthy Elsie arrived at 23 Cecil Court, she unlocked the door with the key she kept in her purse and began to arrange the window displays, just as she’d done many times before. As per usual, the curiosity shop was relatively quiet as there wasn’t much call for tribal masks, shrunken heads and umbrella-stands made from elephant feet at this time of the morning, so (whilst Louis and Marie were out at the auctions) Elsie went about her duties, hoping for an occasional customer to break-up the monotony.

At 11:15am, 15 year old apprentice sign-writer Peter Albert King was passing through Cecil Court when he spotted a second-hand billiard cue in the window display of Louis Meier’s curiosity shop. Although a timid young man, who was more adept at painting than talking, Peter tentatively walked into the shop to enquire about its price, a small bell above the door announcing his presence.

Inside, the shop was small, tight and dark; every shelf was stacked with dusty books, every wall was littered with portraits, and every drawer was stuffed full of trinkets, with a wealth of strange things either hanging from the ceiling, crammed into corners or piled high on desks. And having only one window at the front of the shop which was already chock full of stock, and illuminated by a small dim light, the tiny room was awash in an eerie mix of sickly yellow light from the tiny tungsten bulb which cast ominous dark shadows to the farthest parts of the shop. In the middle of it all, stood Peter, alone.

“Hello?” his tiny voice squeaked, wanting to be heard and yet not wanting to be a bother to anyone either, but there was no reply. “Hello?” he uttered louder, lightly projecting his voice towards long red velvet curtains which divided backroom from the shop. But as he ushered himself nearer, Peter peeped through a crack in the partially open curtains, and slumped face-down on the floor, he saw (what he initially thought was) a shop mannequin. Having started to shake, and thinking that perhaps this was maybe a lady who had fainted, Peter dashed out of the shop.

Almost an hour later, Louis Meier discovered the body of Elsie May Batten.

Owing to the usual clutter of the curiosity shop’s backroom, it was hard to tell if a struggle had taken place, as she lay splayed across the floor, a scattered stack of newspapers under her body. But owing to the copious pools of blood and arterial spray which had splattered the walls, the floor and even speckled parts of the ceiling in a fine red mist, there was no denying the fact that Elsie was dead.

Although unruffled, when pathologist Dr Keith Simpson attended the scene, he noted that Elsie’s clothes were pock-marked with a series of small slits, suggesting she’d been stabbed multiple times with a razor-sharp dagger. So hard was she stabbed, that the imprint of the handle had formed a dark bruise around each bloody wound as the full length of the blade had been buried deep into her body.

Elsie had four critical injuries, either one of which would have been sufficient to end her life; a deep stab to her back which had ruptured her lungs, a second stab to her chest which had pierced her heart (made using a white ivory-handled eight inch dagger), and just above her shoulder, a brown-handled dagger was sticking out of her neck, its full nine-inch blade embedded in her flesh. And still, as if this sadistic level of violence wasn’t enough either subdue or even kill this small-framed 59 year old lady? Her murderer had bashed her over her head with a heavy stone vase, crushing her skull.

At 8.35pm, that evening, through a mix of tears and disbelief, her husband Mark Batten identified the bruised, bloodied and bludgeoned body of his beloved wife, Elsie.

As a crime scene, it made very little sense. Although she’d been attacked with a shocking level anger, mild-mannered Elsie May Batten had no known enemies, no bad debts and no criminal record; she hadn’t been threatened, she wasn’t sexually assaulted and she hadn’t been robbed, as her handbag wasn’t stolen, the clasp was still shut and inside was her purse. And though there was very little cash in the till, it was all still there. The only thing that had been taken was an ornamental dress sword.

But with her death having occurred just after rush-hour, and most mornings in Cecil Court being unnaturally quiet, no one had witnessed the murder or the killer himself. Divisional Detective Superintendent Frank Pollard who headed up the murder investigation knew very little about Elsie’s assailant, based on the limited evidence before him… but what he did know was this.

Based on the violence shown to Elsie, her attacker was young, strong and angry.

Based on the way the knife had entered her body, her killer was not much taller than her.

Based on the fingerprints found on the handles of both knives, this wasn’t a premeditated attack as any forward thinking assassin would have worn gloves, and would not have left the knives behind.

And based on the partial bloody footprint her killer had left, the Police knew a few vital details; that he was a man, with size six feet, who was roughly five foot six inches tall, and that unless he’d destroyed that blood-soaked shoe, those very unique cuts and grooves which peppered the sole of his shoe would prove to be as identifiable as a fingerprint. But first they needed to find him.

When the daggers and the stone vase came back from the laboratory, owing to the thick bloodstains which has congealed about them, only the brown handled dagger held a decent enough fingerprint. But even that wasn’t enough to help find this maniac, as even if the Police had teams of highly trained officers, working day and night, trawling through miles of paper files with steady hands and well-trained eyes, it would still take weeks to identify the culprit… if he’d been fingerprinted at all.

What they needed to do was to find the ornamental dress sword and the man who had taken it.  

Luckily, a change in police technology was taking place, which would prove invaluable in identifying her killer, as having previously relied on sketch artists to translate a witness’s testimony into a facial portrait (the results of which could vary wildly) DS Pollard decided to try out a new innovation called Identikit. Invented by Hugh C Macdonald of the Los Angeles Police, Identikit used a standardised series of facial features (such as eyes, nose, ears, hair, chin and cheeks) which were imprinted onto interchangeable transparencies, so a witness could build an accurate facial likeness of the suspect.

On Saturday 4th March, Detective Sergeant Raymond Dagg interviewed Louis Meier and based on his testimony compiled an identikit profile of the “scruffy Indian youth” who’d come into his curiosity shop and had admired the missing ornamental dress sword just two days before. And having heard from Paul Roberts, the son of a local gun-dealer in nearby St Martin’s Lane that a youth fitting that description had attempted to sell him a similar sounding sword that same day, whilst in the company of a blonde female, DS Dagg compiled a second Identikit and showed the results to DS Pollard.

The results were remarkable; two facial likenesses, from two independent witnesses, of what was clearly one man. Both Identikits were issued to the press and printed side-by-side in the local newspapers in the hope that someone would recognise the man. And they did.

Miss Janet Edna Wheeler of Floyd Road in Charlton, the 17 year old blonde girlfriend of Edwin Albert Bush spotted the two Identikits in the paper, and reading that the Police were “looking for an Indian man with a blonde girl” she joked about how they fitted the description, unaware of her boyfriend’s heinous and bloody crime.

On Wednesday 8th March 1961, just five days after the brutal murder of Elsie May Batten; Edwin Bush and Janet Wheeler were out in London’s West End shopping for engagement rings. With his wallet flush with cash, having recently sold an ornamental dress sword for £15 (roughly £240 today), they walked hand-in-hand, up Charing Cross Road, passed Cecil Court and turned left into Soho.

On duty that day was Police Constable Arthur Cole (PC 341) of ‘C’ Division at West End Central Police station. With part of his beat being Old Compton Street, PC Cole patrolled his usual patch and spotted the strangely familiar sight of a couple browsing for rings in a pawn-shop window; she was a 17 year old blonde and he was a 21 year old Indian male, whose striking features exactly matched the Identikit image that he held in his hand.

Edwin Bush was interviewed by DS Pollard that evening, and although he denied any involvement in the murder; his palm print was found on the brown-handled dagger, his fingerprints were found on the ornamental dress sword, the unique cuts and grooves which peppered the sole of the bloody footprint exactly matched the shoes he was still wearing, and even though he had to agree that the Identikit was a remarkable likeness to his own face, Bush was positively picked-put in an ID parade by Paul Roberts, the son of the gun-shop owner who Bush had attempted to sell the dress sword to, and was charged with the unlawful murder of Elsie May Batten.

And yet oddly, Louis Meier, the owner of the curiosity shop at 23 Cecil Court, whose own description had helped compile the Identikit image which had ultimately captured the culprit, failed to spot Bush in a Police line-up of just six men.

Bush confessed that evening and made a full statement in which he stated: "I went back to the shop and started looking through the daggers, telling her that I might want to buy one, but I picked one up and hit her in the back. I then lost my nerve and picked up a stone vase and hit her with it. I grabbed a knife and hit her once in the stomach and once in the neck", later commenting that, "I am sorry I done it, I don't know what came over me. Speaking personally the world is better off without me."
Edwin Bush stood trial at the Central Crimin al Court (known as The Old Bailey) on the 10th May 1961, in a case which lasted just two days. And although he claimed that his attack on Elsie May Batten was motivated solely by her making unsavoury racial slurs against him as they haggled over the price, Bush was found guilty and sentenced to death.

Edwin Albert Arthur Bush was executed at Pentonville Prison on the 6th July 1961 by hangman Harry Allen, four years before the abolition of the UK Death Penalty. And yet, owing to an odd quirk in British Law, Bush was not charged with murder (a sentence which carries a mandatory life sentence of 25 years), but under section 5 of the 1957 Homicide Act, he was charged with “murder in the course or furtherance of theft”, a crime which carries the death sentence. Meaning that, if he’d killed Elsie, but hadn’t stolen that ornamental dress sword… he may still be alive today (having served his sentence).

OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile. If you like it, share it. And if you love it, then please do rate us. It only takes a second and is very much appreciated.

Don’t forget to join us for Murder Mile live this Sunday @ 9pm GMT, you can join in the conversation by following the hashtag #MMPodLive. And, if you’re in London, pop along to Murder Mile Walk, my guided walk of Soho’s most infamous murder cases, featuring 12 murderers, 15 locations and 75 mysterious deaths over one mile, in just two hours. Tickets are available via www.murdermiletours.com

Murder Mile was researched, written & performed by myself, with a special guest performance by (INSERT NAME), with the music written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name. Next week’s episode is entitled: The Brutal Death of Ginger Rae. Thank you and sleep well.

DOWNLOAD Murder Mile Episode #7 - The Identikit Killing at the Curiosity Shop. 
​You can also listen to the podcast live, by clicking PLAY on this embedded player above.

Credits: The Murder Mile 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 by Kevin Macleod, and used under the Creative Common Agreement 4.0. A list of tracks used and the links are listed on the relevant transcript blog here.

Next episode: The Brutal Death of Ginger Rae (available Thursday 30th November).

*** LEGAL DISCLAIMER ***
The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, therefore mistakes will be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken. It is not a full representation of the case, the people or the investigation in its entirety, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity and drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, therefore it will contain a certain level of bias to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated.
*** LEGAL DISCLAIMER ***

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” and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totaling 75 deaths, over just a one mile walk

If you love true-crime podcasts, subscribe to the Murder Mile true-crime podcast on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podbean, Pocketcast, Stitcher, Acast, Tune-In, Otto Radio or Libsyn

Welcome to the Murder Mile true-crime podcast and audio guided walk of 300+ untold, unsolved and often long-forgotten murders, all set within one square mile of the West End. 

• 30 minute weekly true-crime podcast - EVERY THURSDAY
  
• 300+ infamous, untold or often forgotten true murders
• Based on Soho's FIVE STAR rated Murder Mile Walks
• Research collected from original and first-hand sources
• Authentic sounds recorded from the location itself
• An audio guided walk... all from the comfort of your home

To accompany your audio guided walk, what follows is a series of photos, videos and maps, so that no matter where you are listening to this podcast, you'll feel like you're actually there. ​

EPISODE SIX

Episode Six: The Deadliest Dentist in Soho is the true-story of 41 year old Jane Farvish's first and last visit to local dentist, and yet, although she had a simple problem to solve, her agonising and painful death is not the most shocking element of this case, as the actions of the man who killed her and the outcome of this story is certain to make your blood boil

• Date: Saturday 18th January 1908
• Location: Soho Drug Stores, 54A Broad Street (now demolished)
• Victims: 1 (Jane Farvish)
• Culprit: Isidore Zeifert

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THE LOCATION

Ep6 - The Deadliest Dentist in Soho

INTRO: Thank you for downloading episode six of the Murder Mile true-crime podcast. A special thank you goes to everyone who has listened to this podcast, subscribed, left feedback and posted reviews on iTunes. Thank you. It really does mean a lot to me.

As always, this is much more than just a podcast, as on my website murdermiletours.com/podcast, you’ll find a dedicated blog for each episode, which contains photos, videos, a full transcript and even an interactive murder map. But before we start, a warning: this episode contains graphic descriptions of physical distress and death, and is not suitable for those who have a phobia of dentists. (DRILL SOUND) If you haven’t passed-out yet, please enjoy this episode.

SCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile; a true-crime podcast and audio guided walk of London’s most notorious (and often forgotten) murder cases, all set within one square mile of the West End.

Today’s episode is a guided walk of the little known death of Jane Farvish; a humble Soho resident with a simple problem to solve, and yet her agonising, lingering and painful death is not the most shocking element of this case, and although this isn’t a murder (as such), the actions of the man who killed her and the outcome of this story is certain to make your blood boil.

Murder Mile contains vivid descriptions which may not be suitable for those of a sensitive disposition, as well as photos, videos and maps which accompany this series, so that no matter where you’re listening 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 6: The Deadliest Dentist in Soho.

Today, I’m standing on Broadwick Street, W1; a heavily renovated part of Soho that is unrecognisable from the grotty, crumbling, tumble-down slum that it once was, a place where no-one would choose to live unless their life took an unfortunate turn for the worse. And yet hints of its former self still exist as much of this partly pedestrianised street is covered in cobbles, speckled with grade 2 listed buildings and dotted with an occasional Victorian street light or bollard, but the rest is all new, bright and shiny.

Looking supremely clean, neatly sculpted and painfully cosmopolitan, although barely the length of a football field, Broadwick Street today consists of two one-way streets which converge in the middle and confuse the hell out of every motorist who has stupidly turned off Wardour Street (to the east) and is either stuck in a rabbit’s-warren of impossibly tight side-streets, or has come-a-cropper at Carnaby Street (to the west) which only a local would know is a dead-end.

Being a very modern part of the metropolis, the pace of life on Broadwick Street is slow; here you can sup a posh coffee in the Nespresso café, sample a feta & red pepper pitta in London’s first vegetarian Pret-a-Manger, hobnob with the celebs at the exclusive Ivy restaurant, slink off for a snooze in a teeny tiny boutique apartment as well as queueing up for an hour to be suspiciously glared at by a steroid-fuelled security guard in a super snotty shoe shop which has literally ten pairs of shoes for sale.

Here everything is calm, sedate and serene; which strangely, is exactly how Jane Farvish was… after her swollen and bloody face has stopped twitching. (INTERSTITIAL)

On the corner of Broadwick Street, situated at no’s 15-17, sits a five-star rated contemporary Chinese restaurant called Yauatcha (yow-ee-char) which specialises in dim-sum, cocktails and handmade sweets. But it’s brightly coloured, pristine clean and supremely stylish glass-fronted façade is a far cry from the hideous hovel it once was, and so difficult was this location to find, it’s almost as if someone has deliberately and repeatedly attempted to erase it from history.

In the early 1900’s, on this site stood a three-storey dilapidated townhouse from the early 1700’s. It was in such a sorry state of disrepair, that the house (and most of this street) was entirely demolished, rebuilt, renamed and renumbered in the 1930’s, then decimated by two Nazi bombs in the 1940’s and rebuilt again in the 2000’s, with the latest phase of rebuilding continuing right up until today. But by 1908, in the final year of Jane Farvish’s life, this building was numbered 54A Broad Street.

Broad Street was a festering pocket of urban decay, where much of the city’s poorest were crammed into the crumbling remains of the slum housing; daylight was obscured by the belching fumes from the Lion Brewery, the stench of open cess-pits full of human faeces stung their nostrils, an infected water pump which (just fifty years earlier) had caused a Cholera outbreak so severe that 1/6th of Soho’s population had died, and under their feet stood a plague pit; five hundred feet wide, six hundred feet long, and packed with rotting corpses ten bodies deep, all whom had died of the dreaded Black Death. It’s safe to say that, unless they really had to, Broad Street was a place where no-one wanted to work, and no-one wanted to live.
And although he wasn’t a resident of Soho, having wisely decided to live in the more affluent Shepherd’s Bush (roughly 4 ½ miles to the west), by 1908, the ground floor of 54A Broad Street was a simple two-room premises, which went by the name of Soho Drug Stores; a chemists and a dentist’s shop with a wooden sign on the door which read “teeth extracted”. It was owned by Isidore Zeifert. (INTERSTITIAL).

Born in Moscow in 1875, Isidore Zeifert was a five-foot four inch Russian Jew of slender build, who – although he came from a relatively privileged background, and was blessed with a higher than average intelligence and a burning desire to succeed – he would always struggle to achieve the goals he felt he deserved, owing to an air of arrogance which surrounded him.

Having supposedly studied medicine in Vilna (which is now Vilnius in the former Russian republic of Lithuania) for seven years, all prior to his 22nd birthday, Zeifert was forced to flee during the Pogrom of the late 1800’s, when thousands of Russian Jews were persecuted, hunted and murdered for their religious and political beliefs.

With very few provable qualifications, Zeifert enrolled 300 miles away at Red Cross hospital in Warsaw (in the former Russian republic of Poland), where he undertook what he would describe as “a special course of medicine and surgery”, prior to studying for a bachelor’s degree in medicine. Sadly, having spent five years at Warsaw University, prior to his final examination, Zeifert was arrested on an unspecified charge for (what he would later refer to as) “political reasons”, and yet again, Zeifert was forced to flee, this time leaving his home country behind forever.

By 1902, 27 year old Isidore Zeifert had arrived in London, over 1000 miles from the border of his native Russia, with very few belongings, very little money and almost no medical credentials. So being unqualified, partially trained and woefully inexperienced, the best employment that Zeifert could get was by assisting a variety of medical practitioners in a strictly junior capacity; including Dr Glixman for just over 1 year, Dr Harvey for almost 3 years and another unspecified doctor for 2 years (where he helped administer a variety of powerful anaesthetics to their patients), before setting up his own chemists and dentists shop at 54A Broad Street.

And yet, during his trial, when questioned about his woeful lack of qualifications and experience, Isidore Zeifert, the 33 year old, slightly cocky but equally nervous prisoner, who had no medical degree, no chemists licence and who was not and would never be registered as a practicing oral surgeon, would later state in court “For about 13 years, I have been in constant practice as a dentist”.

Dentists today are heavily regulated, routinely tested and highly qualified, but up until 1879, Britain had no compulsory registration nor qualification for dentists, meaning anyone (whether a doctor, a teacher, a butcher or even a barber) could set-up shop as a dentist. Thankfully, with the British Parliament passing the first Dentist Act in 1878 and establishing a Dental Register in 1879, it was decreed that only qualified professionals who could prove they had practiced dentistry for the past five year were eligible to register. But somehow, Isidore Zeifert slipped through the net?

By 1908, Soho Drug Stores at 54A Broad Street had been open for less than a year and yet business was busy, as the poor condition of the average person’s teeth had begun to take its toll.

Most households had just one toothbrush per family (made from soft feathered twigs), which they all shared, but many families had none. And so, as the average person’s diet got sweeter, combined with a severe lack of fresh fruit to eat and clean water to drink, many of the poorest people by their early twenties, didn’t have a set of teeth, so much as they had a misshapen collection of swollen painful stumps, brown jutting shards and infected rotten holes.

Although Broad Street was a filthy rancid slum, by situating himself in the dead centre of Soho, Isidore Zeifert had truly found a niche for himself. As with many Russian Jews who’d escaped the horrors of the pogroms having settled this area, and being rightfully fearful of any outsiders, Zeifert was one of the few Russian Jewish dentists in this tight-knit community. And although he was inexperienced and unqualified; he was cheap, trusted, local and – best of all – he was one of their own.

For three painful days and three sleepless nights, 41 year old Jane Farvish of Church Street, Soho (now Romilly Street, near Old Compton Street); a woman who would be unflatteringly described as being “of generous proportions” had been suffering with chronic toothache, which had left her tired and weak. So much so that her constant moaning, groaning and writhing in agony had meant her husband (Nathan) and her daughter (Annie) were unable to sleep in the tiny one-roomed lodging they shared.

Like most people, Jane Farvish had never visited a dentist in her life and nor did she plan to do so, as although her toothy yellow stumps and red swollen gums were excruciatingly painful, a trip to the dentist was a notoriously unpleasant experience, especially if you were poor. As not only were many dentists unskilled, untrained and often unqualified, the instruments they had to work with were crude metal tools like the infamous “extractor”; a barbaric primitive stick with a sharp metal claw at the end, which (like a set of plyers) would wrench, twist and pull the rotten tooth out of its swollen hole, as blood poured down the patient’s face. Of course, you could always pay for an anaesthetic to dull the pain; such as gas, chloroform and nitrous oxide, but only if you could afford to? Where-as if you were poor, you’d have to be held down and hope you passed out before the pain got too bad.

Luckily for Jane Farvish, Nathan (her husband) had asked around and her closest friends in this tight-knit Jewish community had recommended a local dentist, situated just a few streets away, and had reassured her that “Isidore Zeifert, he is a good man, a good dentist, he’s one of us, you can trust him”. And with that, Nathan, Annie and Jane made that fateful six minute walk.

The icy winter wind blasted their frozen faces as they trudged through the knee-deep snow, along Old Compton Street and turned right into Wardour Street, but it wasn’t the blistering cold which slowed Jane’s pace to a crawl. As being too tired to eat and too weak to sleep owing to her chronic toothache, Jane was also riddled with rheumatism, wracked with headaches, as her lungs wheezed, her heart palpitated and her exhausted organs struggled to cope under the enormous pressure of her plump round body, meaning three times on that short journey, they had to stop so Jane could rest.

On Saturday 18th January 1908 at 3:20pm, all three members of the Farvish family entered Soho Drug Stores at 54A Broad Street which consisted of two wood-lined rooms; a chemist’s shop upfront featuring a rear-wall full of small wooden drawers and a long wide counter complete with a till, pills, a pestle & mortar and vials of potions, lotions and poisons. And behind the shop was the dentist’s surgery, which was staffed by Isidore Zeifert.

Being barely able to speak through her tiredness and pain, Jane Farvish let her daughter Annie do most of the talking. "My mother is very weak; she is suffering from rheumatics; she was up all night suffering from the toothache", she said, as her weak wheezing mother was led into the surgery and slowly sat in his hideously cheap dentist’s chair, which was made from an odd mix of wood and wicker.

As Jane lay back, her weight supported by the chair, her aching limbs no longer struggling and her frozen toes slowly soothed by the roaring log fire, Zeifert opened his patient’s mouth and instantly he was hit by the smell of rotten meat from the two impacted yellow stumps which – once upon a time – had been a tooth.

“I’ll need to remove those two stumps”, Zeifert huffed; something clearly on his mind as his eyes switched from his patient to his clock (although even today no-one quite knows why?), as she lay there, the pain causing her head to pound, her face to throb and her heart to erratically pump.

Seeing his wife’s agony grow and her body weaken, her husband Nathan requested she be given an anaesthetic so those two infected stumps could be removed without any pain, and asked the dentist for “gas”; a cheap and common pain-killer which although effective, often caused temporary oxygen starvation of the brain, which although not fatal (if done correctly) would result in the patient suffering from sickness and headaches for weeks… but then again, Zeifert was out of “gas”.

And so, although very poor but not wanting Jane to suffer any more, Nathan (her loyal and devoted husband) stumped up half a crown for the best anaesthetic his modest income could afford. That pain-killer of choice… was cocaine.

Before it became a favourite recreational drug for the middle-classes in the 1980’s, Cocaine had been in medical use in England since 1884 and although it was still in use in 1908, by then it was listed under the 1905 UK Poisons Act meaning it could only be prescribed by a licenced chemist. And although it worked fantastically fast as a pain-killer which left you with a wonderful feeling of euphoria, cocaine has a few small side-effects, such as sweating, fever, high-blood pressure and an erratic heart-rate, which for an average healthy person wouldn’t be too problematic, but for a person of “generous proportions”, like Jane Farvish, who was already at an increased risk of a stroke, lung disease and heart attacks, Cocaine could be deadly.

Sadly, Soho Drug Stores no longer had a licenced chemist (let alone a qualified dentist), as just two months earlier Dr Sellers had left following a heated argument with Isidore Zeifert over unpaid wages and “a matter of medical ethics”. And so, with his patient in pain; her face sweating, her chest wheezing and her heart pounding, Zeifert popped into the shop to prepare the pain-killer.

From one of the small wooden drawers, Zeifert pulled out a small glass syringe, a pipette of water and a brown bottle marked with the words “Poison” (which legally cocaine was) and prepared a solution of 10 drops of water and half a grain (roughly 90 milligrams) of cocaine. With her husband holding her head back, the syringe’s needle poked into her red swollen gums causing her to wince, but within seconds, her pain had gone.

A sense of calm descended over the dentist’s surgery, as (for the first time in three days) a small smile crept over Jane’s face, as she slowly relaxed and her moaning ceased… but moments later, she began to sweat, her pulse was heavy and her breathing was erratic. Naturally Nathan was concerned, as was Annie, but Zeifert reassured them this was simply a side-effect of the cocaine, and began preparing his tools to extract her rotten tooth.

The last words that Jane would ever utter, as she stared into a mirror at her strangely distorted face was "Look what he makes my face like; it is all crooked", she said, her speech barely audible and slurred. Yet again, Zeifert reassured them both how perfectly normal this was and replied "When the tooth is out, it will be all right again" and proceeded to painlessly wrench, twist and pull the first of the rotten yellowy stumps free with the metal claw of his trusty extractor.

But as Zeifert started to twist the second stump free, Jane’s mouth began to billow with a mix of red blood and white froth, suddenly her muscles tensed, her back arched, her eyes rolled and her whole body began to violently convulse; it shook so fiercely, she almost snapped the leg of the wooden chair she was sitting in, until eventually (drenched in sweat and physically exhausted) she passed out.

With no faith in his ability, Annie dashed into the street to find a doctor, as Jane was laid on the couch; her swollen face contorted and her lips bubbling with a reddening froth as a constant trickle of blood poured from the open wound in her gums onto the cold-stone floor. Under her nose, Zeifert pointlessly waved a small bottle of smelling salts, his nervous hands shaking, his voice quivering. And yet again, he protested his innocence and reassured Nathan how normal this all was, and said "Don't be afraid, your wife will be like this for about 10 minutes, no more". But after three quarter of an hour… Jane was silent, she was still, and was cold to the touch.

41 year old Jane Farvish was officially pronounced dead at 6:40pm.

At 8pm, Isidore Zeifert was taken to Marlborough Street Police Station and charged with unlawful manslaughter, to which he replied "I only administered half a grain; it was in 10 drops of water; I have done it hundreds of times; no harm has ever resulted… till now".

Dr Ludwig Freyberger conducted a post-mortem on the deceased and stated “her heart was small, fatty, pliable between the fingers and the mitral valve was thickened” and that the cause of death was “failure of the heart and respiration”. Given her size and age, a cursory examination of her heart would easily have indicated that she had a diseased mitral valve, as when it is listened to using a stethoscope, the valve makes a very distinctive sound. And with a fifth or a sixth of a grain of cocaine being a more than a sufficient dose as an anaesthetic, not a half a grain as Zeifert had administered, the pathologist concluded that “In my opinion, her death was caused by cocaine poisoning”.

Following his pre-trail at Westminster Coroner’s Court, he was tried at The Old Bailey on the 3rd March 1908, and even though Zeifert pleaded not guilty, he called no witnesses to his defence. After a short deliberation, the jury concluded that not only had Isidor Zeifert injected his patient with more than double the safe dosage of cocaine, but also having only checked the gums of this 41 year old woman of “generous proportions”, who’d arrived at his shop; too weak to stand, too tired to stay awake and too breathless to walk unaided, he had failed to check the state of her heart, which was standard practice when administering such a dangerous poison.

When the jury returned their verdict, for the unlawful manslaughter of Jane Farvish; Isidor Zeifert, the untrained, unqualified and woefully inexperienced dentist and chemist was found… not guilty. And even though the jury confirmed that he was guilty of “reckless and criminal negligence”, Zeifert was discharged “without hesitation” and allowed to walk free. The judge recommended that “in future, when administering cocaine, that he be more careful”.

DOWNLOAD this episode Murder Mile Episode #6 - The Deadliest Dentist in Soho. 
​You can also listen to the podcast live, by clicking PLAY on this embedded player above. 

​Credits: The Murder Mile 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. ​​With additional music by Sergey Cheremisinov (Fog, Dybbuk Box, When You Leave and Now You Are Here), used under the Creative Commons Agreement 4.0, via Free Music Archive.

Next episode: The Identikit Killing at the Old Curiosity Shop (Thursday 23rd November 2017). 

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” and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totaling 75 deaths, over just a one mile walk.

If you love true-crime podcasts, subscribe to the Murder Mile true-crime podcast on iTunes, Soundcloud, Podbean, Pocketcast, Stitcher, Acast, Tune-In, Otto Radio or Libsyn

Ever wondered what most of the world's most infamous serial killers and mass-murderers did as a day-job, when they weren't busy killing people? What did they do to earn money? Did they have a profession which some people would see as "useful" for a serial killer (a butcher, a bin-man, or maybe someone who's highly experienced at lying, such as a politician), or perhaps they simply did a dull boring day-job to blend in? Whether as a part-time job, a hobby or a full-time career? Murder Mile blog investigates.

As this is a pretty big list, and requires a lot of research, I've listed the serial killers and murderers in alphabetical order and have split it in three lists. Part two will be available here in two weeks.

As always, this is not a comprehensive or exhaustive list, and it will be updated as-and-when new information arises, so if any specific detail is missing, don't get "stressy", share your knowledge with the rest of us, via my twitter handle @mmiletours. Enjoy the blog. Mx

Serial Killer & Mass-Murderers - Day-Jobs, Careers & Occupations

• Aileen Wuornos - a career prostitute; abandoned by her mother aged 4, she was trading sex for cigarettes, drugs and food aged 11, she dropped out of school aged 14, and was thrown out of the family home aged 15, so became a prostitute to support herself. 
  
• Albert DeSalvo "The Boston Strangler" - having been convicted of assault & battery aged 12 and stealing a car aged 14, DeSalvo worked briefly as a delivery boy and following a stint in prison, he enlisted in the Army. After his "honourable discharge" whilst awaiting court-marshal" (go figure), he re-enlisted as a Military Police Sergeant in the 2nd Squadron, 14th Armoured Cavalry, and although some sources list Albert DeSalvo as having been a Petty Officer 3rd Class in the US Navy, this was actually a disguise he used to escape Bridgwater State Hospital. 
• Albert Fish "The Werewolf of Wysteria" - began as a male prostitute aged 20 years old, but during his twenties he began working as a house painter and odd-job man, basically any job which would give him better access to young children, who he'd already started raping. 
• Amelia Dyer - unofficially known as a "baby-farmer", Dyer was an illegal foster mother who would care for the child of unmarried-mothers (a scandal in the 1890's), but realising that most mothers couldn't afford to reclaim their babies and raising the child was too expensive, she resorted to drowning the children in the River Thames. Charged with the murder of one child, it is believed Amelia Dyer murdered as many as 400+ children, making her (possibly) the most prolific female serial-killer ever. 
• "Sister" Amy Archer-Gilligan - former caretaker, nurse to John Seymour (a widower) and ran a boarding house and nursing home - 'Sister Archer's Home for the Elderly and Infirm'.
• Anthony Hardy "The Camden Ripper" - qualified with a Engineering degree from Imperial College (London) and was manager of a mechanical engineering company.in Tasmania.
• Arthur Shawcross "The Genesee River Killer" - struggled to hold down a job during his life; he was briefly a butcher's assistant and a handy man at the Watertown Public Works Dept, before being drafted into the Army aged 21 where - although he boasted about his graphic combat exploits - he never saw active service as he was a supply parts specialist. Later he was stationed at Fort Sill (Oklahoma) as an armorer, before he descended into burglary.
• Beverley Allitt "The Angel of Death" - was a baby-sitter during school, upon leaving school she took a course in Nursing at Grantham & Kesteven Hospital (Lincolnshire) where she was later employed as a State Enrolled Nurse on the children's ward.
• William Burke & William Hare "The Body-Snatchers" - Burke began as an officer’s servant in Donegal Militia, before deserting and moving to Scotland to work as a laborer on the Union Canal, where he met William Hare. Struggling to make enough money, both became hawkers (selling second-hand clothes) and Hare briefly tried his hand at being a cobbler, before they turned to grave-robbery and selling corpses for dissection.
• Carol M. Bundy "The Sunset Strip Killers" - a vocational nurse at Valley Medical Centre in Van Nuys, before she met Doug Clark.
• Colin Ireland "The Gay Slayer" - having spent his teenage years in various borstals and reformatories, Ireland never held down a full-time permanent job and often drifted between unskilled labour, such as working at a shelter for the homeless in Southend-on-Sea and being a bouncer in a gay Soho nightclub, before turning to crime as a burglar.
• Cynthia Coffman - full-time mother and house-wife, but briefly worked as a waitress to earn money when she ran away from her abusive husband
• David Berkowitz "Son of Sam" - struggling with his internal demons, Berkowitz enlisted in the US Army in 1971 (aged 18), serving in the USA and South Korea for three years, but after his honorable discharged he held down a series of unskilled jobs as a security guard at IBI Security, a nighttime taxi-driver and a letter sorted for the US Postal Service.
• David Copeland "The London Nail-Bomber" - trained as an engineer's assistant on the Jubilee Line extension of the London Underground in Bermondsey (South London)

• David Ray Parker "The Toybox Killer" -worked locally as an auto-mechanic, spent two years in the US Army as a general mechanic, before he was honourably discharged
• Dean Arnold Corll "Houston Mass-Murders" - he worked in his family's confectionery shop in Houston Heights called 'Pecan Prince', was later promoted to vice-president of  'Corll Candy Company' (a small family firm), before he was drafted into the US Army as a radio repairman for one years before his honourable discharge.
• Dennis Nilsen "The Kindly Killer" - started as a canning operative in a factory, he trained as cook in the 1st Battalion the Royal Fusiliers (10 years+), a probationary policeman at Wilsden Police Station (6 months), factory security guard (a few months), a catering assistant at Angie's cafe in Covent Garden (2 months) and a Executive Officer at the Denmark Street and Kilburn job-centre (1975-83). Read a full profile about Dennis Nilsen. 
• Dennis Rader "The BTK Killer" - although clearly intelligent, he was unable to hold down a single career/job; he enlisted in the US Army (1966-70), was a trainee butcher at Leekers IGA supermarket, studied for associate degree in electronics, studied for a bachleor's degree in administration of justice, and post degree he worked as an assembler for the Coleman Company (outdoor supplies), an alarm installer fro ADT Security Systems and a census field-op' supervisor in Wichita, as well as a compliance officer and a dogcatcher.
• Derrick Bird "The Cumbria Killer" - a self-employed taxi driver in Whitehaven
• Donald Henry Gaskins - incarcerated during his teens, Gaskins only employment (outside of burglary) was when he briefly worked at a tobacco plantation and in a traveling carnival
• Donald Neilson "The Black Panther" - initially enlisted as a national serviceman in the British Army (King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry), he was briefly a jobbing builder in Bradford before his business collapsed and he turned to burglary and armed robbery
• Dorothea Puente - a brothel owner, boarding house manager and a nurse’s aide
• Doug Clark "Sunset Strip Killers" - aged 19 he enlisted in the US Air Force before he was discharged, he drifted between jobs as an auto-mechanic, then as a steam plant operator for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power at the Valley Generating Station and as a boiler operator at the Jergens soap factory in Burbank.
• Ed Gein "The Plainfield Butcher" - Gein had no career as his mother was over-protective but he earned extra cash (beyond farming subsidies) as a carpenter, a tanner, an insurance salesman, a handyman, as part of the road building crew, as a crop-thresher for local farmers and as a baby-sitter. Read a full psychological profile of Ed Gien.
• Edmund Kemper "The Co-Ed Killer" - Kemper always wanted to be a Police Officer, but was rejected owing to his height (6 feet 9 inches) and prior criminal record, so he held down a series of menial jobs before securing employment with the State of California Highway Department (known today as Caltrans).
• Fred West - worked briefly as an ice-cream man, but would later set himself up as a local builder in Gloucester, where he specialised in plastering and odd-jobs
• Gary Ridgway “Green River Killer” - aged 19, Ridgway enlisted in the US Navy and was sent to Vietnam where he saw active service, but by the time of his arrest he was working as a truck-painter at a Kenworth factory in Renton, Washington.

• George Joseph Smith "The Brides in the Bath" killer - having been incarcerated at the tender age of just 9 years old for theft, (with the exception of briefly being a baker's assistant) Smith never held down a "proper" legitimate job

• Graham Young "Teacup Poisoner" - after his release from Broadmoor psychiatric prison for poisoning his stepmother, Young got a job as a quartermaster at John Hadland Laboratories in Bovingdon (Hertfordshire). Unaware of his criminal past as a poisoner, Young went on to poison 70 colleagues with Antimony, 2 of whom died. Read more about Graham Young.

• Dr H H Crippen -  prior to his execution for the murder of his wife, Crippen specialised as a homeopath and an ear & eye specialist. Was Crippen innocent? Find out here
• Dr H H Holmes - aged 16, Holmes took a teaching job in Gilmanton and later at Alton (both in New Hampshire), and after graduating University of Michigan's Department of Medicine & Surgery, he worked as anatomy lab under Professor Herdman (chief anatomy instructor), having previously apprenticed under Dr. Nahum Wight, an advocate of human dissection, but after this he struggled to hold down permanent employment.

• Dr Harold Shipman "Doctor Death" - during his 24 years as a doctor, Shipman undertook the following roles; Junior Doctor at Pontefract General Hospital (Yorkshire), General Practitioner at Todmorden Group Practice, Clinical Medical Officer in South West Durham, General Practitioner at Donneybrook House Group Practice in Hyde (Cheshire), and finally as a GP at The Surgery in Hyde (Cheshire). His medical career took a hiatus of 1 year and 264 days after he was fined for counterfeiting prescriptions to feed his drug-habit and undertake rehabilitation. Read a full psychological profile of Dr Harold Shipman. 
  

• Henry Lee Lucas - was a drifter with no formal education, skills or employment
• Henri Desire Landru "The Lady Killer" - although a serial adulterer and embezeller, he previously worked as a second hand furniture dealer, and was conscripted into French army during World War One.
  

True-Crime Fans: The Murder Mile true-crime podcast is live and features 300+ untold, unsolved and (often) long-forgotten murder cases, all within one square mile. To listen to an episode or to subscribe to the podcast (it's all free), click here or PODCAST in the tab above.Or listen to episode one by clicking PLAY on the media player below.

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” and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totaling 75 deaths, over just a one mile walk.

If you love true-crime podcasts, subscribe to the Murder Mile true-crime podcast on iTunes, Soundcloud, Podbean, Pocketcast, Stitcher, Acast, Tune-In, Otto Radio or Libsyn

Welcome to the Murder Mile true-crime podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, set within one square mile of the West End. 

• 30 minute weekly true-crime podcast - EVERY THURSDAY
  
• 300+ infamous, untold or often forgotten true murders
• Based on Soho's FIVE STAR rated Murder Mile Walks
• Research collected from original and first-hand sources
• Authentic sounds recorded from the location itself
• An audio guided walk... all from the comfort of your home

To accompany your audio guided walk, what follows is a series of photos, videos and maps, so that no matter where you are listening to this podcast, you'll feel like you're actually there. ​

EPISODE FIVE

Episode Five: The Bombing of the Admiral Duncan is one of the West End’s deadliest terrorist attacks, instigated by a deluded neo-Nazi, who sought to drive London's many ethnic, religious and cultural communities apart with a series of three nail-bombs across the city. 

• Date: Friday 30th April 1999
• Location: Admiral Duncan, 54 Old Compton Street, Soho, W1
• Victims: 3 (Andrea Dykes, John Light and Nik Moore)
  
• Culprit: David Copeland 

CLICK HERE to download the Murder Mile podcast via i-Tunes and to receive the latest episodes, click "subscribe". You can listen to it now by clicking the green PLAY button on the embedded media player below. All transcribed versions are available in "Podcast Transcripts" (right).

THE LOCATION

Ep5 - The Bombing of the Admiral Duncan

INTRO: Thank you for downloading episode five of the Murder Mile true-crime podcast. To fully appreciate this audio experience, each episode comes complete with its own dedicated webpage and an interactive murder map, available via my website murder mile tours.com / podcast. And if you are easily upset, please be aware that this episode contains graphic descriptions of murder and realistic sound effects, some of which you may find disturbing. Thank you. Enjoy the episode.

SCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile; a true-crime podcast and audio guided walk of London’s most notorious (and often forgotten) murder cases, all set within one square mile of the West End.

Today’s episode is a guided walk of Soho’s deadliest terror attack, it’s the true story of how a deeply deluded neo-Nazi, fuelled by hatred, bigotry and ignorance, tried to divide the wonderfully diverse melting pot of London with a series of terrifying bomb attacks… and yet he failed miserably. But this is not his story, and neither should it be, as this is a story about friendship, tolerance and love.

Murder Mile contains vivid descriptions which may not be suitable for those of a sensitive disposition, as well as photos, videos and maps which accompany this series, so that no matter where you’re listening 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 5: The Bombing of the Admiral Duncan.

Today, once again, I am standing on Old Compton Street, in Soho, W1, a place that avid Murder Mile listeners will be very familiar with, as fifty paces to my left is the blood soaked bed of the West End prostitute known as “Dutch Leah”, and fifty paces to my right is the gutter where the West End gangster Tony Mella met a sticky end after a lifetime of cruelty.

And yet, if you walk down Old Compton Street today, having listened to our earlier episodes, you’d probably expect the street to be strewn with half-dissected whores, drooling dead-eyed stranglers and two-bit hoods decorating every wall with a funky new colour called “hint of brain”. But you won’t.

Old Compton Street is quite a nice place; it’s warm, fun, flamboyant, but best of all – it’s welcoming. Here, difference is embraced, creativity can flourish and sexuality blossoms, as with a wealth of gay-friendly bars such as Comptons, G-A-Y, Molly Moggs and the Admiral Duncan, Old Compton Street is very much the homosexual hub of London’s West End. It’s a place where men can hold hands, women can kiss, and regardless of what gender a person is, was or wishes to be, here they can be themselves, away from the bigoted sneers, the judgmental eyes and the disapproving looks of the uneducated.

Sadly, not everyone has come here with love in their heart, as one man brought only hatred.

For more than two hundred years, London’s West End and especially Soho has had a rich cultural history of acceptance. As being one of Europe’s cultural centres, it was also a place of sanctuary where many foreigners fled to escape persecution (whether political, ideological, religious or sexual).

What supposedly started with such a seedy beginning when in 1806 Edward Baker was prosecuted for poking his penis through a bog-house cubical, London’s West End soon became the place where the uptight British (whether gay, straight, or undecided) could come to get their thrills and explore their repressed sexuality; whether at a “mollie shop” (a club for men who enjoy the company of female impersonators), in infamous male brothels like at 19 Cleveland Street (as allegedly visited by Prince Eddy), or in a gay-sex cruising ground such as Covent Garden, Lincolns Inn and St James’ Park.

Often dubbed “The Dirty Square”, owing to its association with massage parlours, mucky book shops, nudie booths, clip-joints and knocking-shops, but mostly for dirty old men seeking sex with young girls, Soho’s openness established it as a safe-haven for artistic expression, hence why during the pre-war drabness and oppression of the 1930’s, the West End was swathed in the exciting new sounds of jazz and swing which emanated from The Caravan, London’s first gay-friendly member’s club, Billie’s on Little Denmark Street, an openly gay cabaret, and the controversial Shim Sham Club at 7 Wardour Street, a bar expressly for white women who liked to be entertained by black men.

Since then, gay-friendly clubs and pubs have flourished in Soho, including many famous haunts such as The Marquis of Granby, Chez Victor, The Ham Bone Club, the Black Cat, Madame JoJo’s, Golden Lion, Stallions, Heaven, Running Horse, The Salisbury, A & B and – of course – The Admiral Duncan.

But Soho’s place as a gay-safe haven has not been without its struggle, its sacrifice and even sadness.

Today, the Admiral Duncan, the four-storey, red-bricked, 180 year old pub which sits at 54 Old Compton Street, looks as it did almost twenty years ago; the blue double doors are wide open, the 80’s pop hits are pumping, internationally acclaimed drag-act Baga Chipz is warming up, and in his usual seat sits an elderly regular dressed as Elvis. And yet, if you walk passed the pub today, you’d be oblivious to its hideous history that occurred on Friday 30th April 1999, except for the discrete tribute to those who died and the ominous hushed silence as those who know, peek in and then pass-by.

By the late 20th century, terrorism in London had become common place, as the Irish Republican Army had undertaken 160 bombings over 40 years in the city alone, as well as a further 16 attacks connected to Middle Eastern politics, 26 to anarchist groups and a handful to lone nut-jobs with an axe to grind. And so, with the last IRA bomb attack having occurred on 29th April 1997, three years before the bombing of the Admiral Duncan, many Londoners had become complacent about their safety.

But unlike the attacks by the IRA, this bomb came without warning. Unlike the attacks by anarchist groups, this bomb had no obvious target. And unlike the attacks by lone nut-jobs, this bomb was not a one-off attack.

The first bomb exploded on Saturday 17th April 1999 at 5:25pm on Electric Avenue in Brixton (South London); a bustling street-market in a mainly West Indian neighbourhood, which being so tightly packed full of stalls, pallets and boxes was a nightmare to navigate, especially at that time of the evening, when the street was packed full of shoppers, commuters and families.

Seeing a black sports holdall with a green “Head” logo lying by a bin on Electric Avenue, an alert market trader moved the suspicious bag to a less crowded part of the market, examined its contents and promptly called the Police. But as the Police arrived… the bomb exploded. 

Although clearly a homemade device, the bag contained six pounds of an unsophisticated inorganic explosive (made from fireworks and fertiliser), a wind-up alarm clock in a transparent sandwich box as a crude timer, and as shrapnel the bomber had filled the bag full of over one thousand steel nails, so whoever the blast didn’t kill, these four-to-six inch high-speed projectiles would. Thankfully, owing to the quick-thinking trader who moved the bag, nobody died that day, but forty-eight people were injured (some seriously), including a 23 month old baby who had a six inch nail driven into his skull.

No-one claimed responsibility for the Brixton bombing and there was no Police intelligence of an anarchist attack. It came out of nowhere. No-one knew who had detonated the bomb, or – more importantly – why they’d picked here? But what they also didn’t knew was that this was just the start.

The second bomb exploded one week later on Saturday 24th April 1999 just before 6pm in Brick Lane (East London); a vibrant colourful street-market crammed full of stalls, shops and restaurants, in a largely Bengali community, as many Muslims gathered at the East London Mosque for prayers. Thankfully, having failed to properly research his intended target, the bomber was unaware that the market actually took place on Sundays, so instead of being bustling with shoppers, the street was ominously quiet. As before, being on high alert, a keen-eyed taxi-driver had spotted the abandoned black Reebok holdall on Hanbury Street, popped it in the boot of his maroon Ford Sierra and drove the device two streets away to the Brick Lane police station, where the bomb exploded.

Witnesses said they heard a loud bang, felt a large blast and saw a bright flash followed by flames and bits of flying debris, but with the car’s metal boot shielding the passers-by from the bulk of the six-inch steel shrapnel, only thirteen people were injured that day and luckily there were no fatalities.

DCI Maureen Doyle of Scotland Yard’s Special Operations Bureau headed up the investigation into the Brixton and Brick Lane bombings, codenamed “Operation Marathon”. And having received an anonymous 999 call allegedly from the bomber himself claiming both attacks on behalf of the neo-Nazi group Combat 18, she was now certain of four things.

He would attack again, possibly next weekend, in a densely populated and culturally sensitive area, and all without any warning. The clock was ticking. Teams of specialist officers worked in 24 hour shifts, trawling through 300 hours of grainy security footage to identify the bomber, as across London, the city’s ethnic minority enclaves were on high alert, as with the bank holiday weekend approaching, everyone lived in fear of a third and even deadlier attack.

By Thursday 29th April, with the Metropolitan Police’s Anti-Terrorism Branch having found footage of the Brixton bomber, DCI Maureen Doyle took the unprecedented step and released the grainy image of this unknown man to the press, in the hope that - being a non-descript white male, slim, in his early twenties, wearing a black leather jacket and a white baseball cap – she hoped that someone would see the image and come forward with a name.

Her bold strategy worked as on Friday 30th April, in a café opposite the construction site of the Jubilee Line Extension in Bermondsey (south London), engineer Paul Mifsud glanced down at the day’s paper and felt a chill down his spine, as he turned to his friend, pointed at the grainy CCTV image and said “doesn’t that look like Dave?” Being uncertain, he sat on this information, but at 5:15pm that day, having been coerced by his wife to do the right thing, he rang the Anti-Terrorism hotline.

The name he gave to the Police was David Copeland; a white, five-foot four, 22 year old engineer’s assistant with links to far-right groups like the British National Party, the National Socialist Movement and the neo-Nazi group Combat 18. Having identified the bomber, by 5:50pm, the Police were speeding towards the bomber’s rented flat at Sunnybank Road, in Cove (Hampshire)… but with his image splashed across every tabloid in the country, this mass-media attention caused him to bring forward his planned attack of the Admiral Duncan by one day, and so as the Police reached his house, the bomber was already walking into Soho, slung over his shoulder was a black sports holdall.

The evening of Friday 30th April 1999 was calm and warm, as many people began the bank holiday weekend in true British style with an evening pint. Outside the Admiral Duncan, standing by the blue double-doors, a few revellers were supping cold drinks and soaking up the last rays of the sun, as being a relatively small pub, it can quickly become hot and sweaty so the customers often spill out into Old Compton Street. Inside, the long thin room was slowly filling, as with the handful of bar-stools and tables already taken, most people mingled by the cabaret stage at the far end or around the bar on the right-hand side.

Serving that night was 31 year old Mark Taylor, who’d been bar manager of the Admiral Duncan for two years, and 32 year old barman David Morely, a popular face in the gay community who was affectionately nicknamed “Sinders”, and by all accounts, it was pretty regular night, as customers of all ages, races and sexual persuasions chatted, partied and drank.

For one group of friends, it had already been a great day, as having spent the day shopping for maternity dresses having recently discovered that she was four months pregnant, 27 year old Andrea Dykes and her husband of just two years, Julian Dykes, headed into the West End to watch the ABBA musical ‘Mamma Mia’, accompanied by three friends; John Light, who was best man at their wedding and soon-to-be the godfather to their unborn child; as well as Nik Moore, who was Andrea’s friend and John’s former partner, and Gary Partridge, who was John’s current partner.

As a group, they perfectly personified the attitude of Old Compton Street and the Admiral Duncan, as it didn’t matter whether you were gay or straight, old friends or new, here everyone was welcome and out to have a good time. And so with the musical not starting till 8pm, Andrea, Julian, John, Nik and Gary headed into Soho for a celebratory drink.

As the pub slowly filled, perched at the bar was a young man drinking a cold pint, dumped at his feet was a black sports holdall. He later stated “I felt no emotion, no sadness and no joy, seeing those I was about to maim or kill”. And as he stood there amongst 70-80 smiling faces, pretending he needed to find a cash machine, a kindly customer offered to watch his drink for him, but instead of returning, the bomber left the Admiral Duncan and disappeared into the bustling crowds on Shaftsbury Avenue.

At around 6:30pm, the kindly customer was getting worried for the young man’s safety, as with the nearest cash machine being barely three minutes away, he should have been back by now.

Alerted to the abandoned bag in the middle of the bar, manager Mark Taylor’s gut reaction was “this isn’t funny”. As seeing the familiar black sports holdall, which he’d recognised from the newspaper, he thought this was a practical joke, but the weight of the bag convinced him to investigate it further, and as he unzipped it, he was confronted by a sight he’d only read about just a few days before; a transparent sandwich box, a wind-up clock, a large bag of powder and hundreds of steel nails.

Andrea and John were the first of the group to walk through the double-doors of the Admiral Duncan, and seeing how busy it was, they headed deeper into the tightly packed pub to find seats, as Julian, Nik and Gary moved towards the bar to order drinks. The time was 6:37pm. (clock stops, bang).

An enormous rush of air filled the room, like a hot wall of fiery wind which blasted their faces and squeezed their lungs, as if an invisible suffocating force was strangling the very last breath out of the bodies. After that, was an intense orange flash which was initially blinding until it plunged the whole room into pitch blackness, followed by a sharp pop (that many described as sounding like a champagne cork), the quick fizz as shrapnel pierced the air, the crackle of breaking glass, the dull thud of nails embedding into walls, doors and soft flesh, and then suddenly, for a few seconds, everything was silent.

Amidst the inky blackness and the ominous quiet, a black acrid cloud filled the air, which slowly stirred those who’d survived. The first signs of life was the sound of choking… and then screaming.

With his trousers ripped, his shoe missing and his ears ringing, Julian Dykes stumbled to his feet and feeling the intense heat as fire enveloped his body, he ran out of the blown-out double-doors into Old Compton Street, desperately trying to extinguish the flames with his bare hands, unable to see his wife and friends amongst the carnage. Being badly burned, Gary Partridge crawled from the wreckage of the pub, hoping to see his friends, but they were nowhere to be seen, and seeing the injuries that many people had sustained in the explosion, he started to panic, fearing the worst.

Having bravely ushered customers to safety as the bomb exploded, both barman David Morely and bar manager Mark Taylor escaped with their lives. Although David was badly burned, he continued to assist the other victims with their injuries. Unfortunately Mark was badly injured in the blast, and as he lay in the street, struggling to remain conscious, he convinced himself that he wasn’t going to die, he later said “I stared death in the face and lived. It obviously wasn't my time to go. There was no words to describe that pain other than hell. My whole body felt like it was on fire".

Outside, Gary Partridge started to scream out the name of his partner, John Light, having seen him walk into the back of the bar with Andrea, and not emerge from the smoky hell. Suddenly, from the blackness, two men dragged John from the tangled mess of splintered wood, shattered glass and flames, his lower half was bleeding profusely and covered in burns, but there was no sign of Andrea.

Seventy-nine people were injured that day, sixty-five needed to be hospitalised, many suffered serious burns, breaks and lacerations, four lost limbs, and three people died.

Mark Taylor, the bar manager of the Admiral Duncan suffered second degree burns, as well as glass and shrapnel injuries, and although he was on the critical list, he went on to make a full recovery.

David Morely recovered from his injuries and would later work as barman in another gay-friendly pub (Brompton’s in Earls Court), but on the 30th October 2004, five years after he’d miraculously survived the bombing of the Admiral Duncan, David was savagely murdered by four teenagers in a homophobic attack near Waterloo Station. He was 37 years old.

Gary Partridge spent 13 days at Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford, a specialist burns unit where he was stabilised and was able to recover from his injuries, but sadly his partner, John Light, who was described as a “quiet but lovely man”, suffered 40 per cent burns and after four operations to save him, he died, aged 32, three days after his birthday. As well as John’s former partner, Nik Moore who having taken the full force of the blast, died at the scene, he was 32 years old.

Owing to the severity of his injuries, suffering third degree burns and with shrapnel in his chest, Julian Dykes fell into a coma at the Royal Free Hospital. When he regained consciousness three weeks later, it was then that he was informed that both his wife (Andrea) and their unborn son had died.

A service was held for Andrea (and their unborn son, who they’d named Jordan) on 15th July 1999 at St Mary's Church in Wivenhoe (Essex), where just two years earlier, Andrea & Julian were married. On the flowers he’d placed on his wife’s coffin, Julian attached a note which read "To my son, Jordan. You will never know just how much I could have loved you".

In Soho Square, just a few streets away, thousands of mourners laid flowers in memory of those who lost their lives at 54 Old Compton Street. In St Anne’s Churchyard, three maple trees were planted in memory of Andrea, John and Nik, along with a plaque emblazoned with the epitaph - “Goodness is stronger than evil”. And inside the Admiral Duncan, a chandelier hangs to this day which is decorated with brightly coloured lights and across it reads “we will always remember our friends”.

The deeply deluded bomber (whose name I have deliberately only mentioned once, as his cowardly actions don’t warrant the publicity he so desperately craved) claimed he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and pleaded guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, but following a short stint in Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital, neither the prosecution nor the jury accepted his plea, and on the 30th June 2000 he was found guilty of three counts of terrorism and three counts of murder, and was given six concurrent life sentences, meaning the earliest he can be considered for release is in 2049, when he will be 73 years old… or maybe, by then, he’ll be dead.

And even though his bombs murdered three people and injured a further one hundred and forty, his misguided aim to drive apart London’s diverse communities failed spectacularly. Beginning in 2003, the inaugural Soho Pride festival attracted almost 50000 people from a wealth of ages, races, genders and sexual orientations, who came together to stand-up against hatred, bigotry and ignorance.

By 2017, that number had swelled to over 1 million people. And as always, the Admiral Duncan pub, remains a vital and important focal point, which is embraced by everyone.

DOWNLOAD this episode Murder Mile Episode #5 - The Bombing of the Admiral Duncan. 
​You can also listen to the podcast live, by clicking PLAY on this embedded player above. 

​Credits: The Murder Mile true-crime podcast was researched, written and recorded by Michael J Buchanan-Dunne, with the sounds recorded on location (where possible). The music was written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name. ​​

*** LEGAL DISCLAIMER ***
The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, therefore mistakes will be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken. It is not a full representation of the case, the people or the investigation in its entirety, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity and drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, therefore it will contain a certain level of bias to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated.
*** LEGAL DISCLAIMER ***

Next episode: The Deadliest Dentist in Soho (due Thursday 16th November 2017). 

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” and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totaling 75 deaths, over just a one mile walk.

Welcome to the Murder Mile true-crime podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous (and often forgotten) murder cases, all set within one square mile of the West End. 

• 30 minute weekly true-crime podcast - EVERY THURSDAY
  
• 300+ untold or often forgotten true murders
• Based on Soho's FIVE STAR rated Murder Mile Walks
• Research collected from original and first-hand sources
• Authentic sounds recorded from the location itself
• An audio guided walk... all from the comfort of your home

To accompany your audio guided walk, what follows is a series of photos, videos and maps, so that no matter where you are listening to this podcast, you'll feel like you're actually there. ​

EPISODE FOUR

Episode Four: The Mysterious Death of "Dutch Leah" is one of Soho's most mysterious murder cases, which was not only shocking and brutal, but more than 80 years on, the case remains unsolved with no known suspects. Or is there? In this episode, we re-examine the case.

• Date: Saturday 9th May 1936
• Location: 66 Old Compton Street, Soho, W1
• Victims: 1 (Constance Smith/Hind aka "Dutch Leah")
• Culprit: Unknown?

CLICK HERE to download the Murder Mile podcast via i-Tunes and to receive the latest episodes, click "subscribe". You can listen to it now by clicking the green PLAY button on the embedded media player below. All transcribed versions are available in "Podcast Transcripts" (right).

​THE LOCATION

Episode 4 – “The Mysterious Death of Dutch Leah”

Intro:  Thank you for downloading episode four of the Murder Mile true-crime podcast. Don’t forget, that each episode comes complete with an interactive murder map, available via my website murder mile tours.com / podcast. Before we begin, please note, this episode contains graphic descriptions of murder and very realistic sound effects, some of which you may find disturbing. Thank you. Enjoy the episode.

SCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile; a true-crime podcast and audio guided walk of London’s most notorious (and often forgotten) murder cases, all set within one square mile of the West End. Today’s episode is a guided walk of the murder of the West End prostitute ‘Dutch Leah’, and even though her brutal and violent death is often attributed to the infamous Soho Strangler, her actual killer has escaped justice for more than 80 years, but by re-examining the evidence, many aspects of which the Police overlooked, maybe we can discover “who killed Dutch Leah”? Murder Mile contains vivid descriptions which may not be suitable for those of a sensitive disposition, as well as photos, videos and maps which accompany this series, so that no matter where you’re listening 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 4: The Mysterious Death of Dutch Leah.

Today I’m standing on Old Compton Street, in Soho, W1, in the pumping heart of London’s West End, wedged between infamous tourist traps like Piccadilly Circus (to the south), Oxford Circus (to the west), Tottenham Court Road (to the north) and Cambridge Circus (to the east).

If you’re an avid listener to the Murder Mile true-crime podcast, and this description sounds slightly familiar, that’s because I’m standing just two-hundred and fifty feet from where (in episode #2) the brutally cruel gangster Anthony Benedetta Mella met a sticky-end in a Dean Street gutter.

At just eleven hundred feet long and thirty feet wide, Old Compton Street consists of an odd mix of four storey buildings; all roughly identical in height and shape, but they are as uneven and discoloured as a toothy grin in a smashed mouth.

Currently, Old Compton Street (like most of Soho) is desperately trying to scrub itself clean and erase its seedy image, after decades of decline, having been a home to the destitute, the desperate, the debauched, the drugged and the drunk. The Soho of yesteryear was synonymous with one thing – sex – with some of its seedier street awash with a swarm of sex-shops, peep-shows, nudie-booths, clip-joints, walk-ups and brothels, amidst the dizzying haze of flashing neon signs all proclaiming “live sex”, “nude girls” and (everyone favourite euphemism) “massage”. Soho was dirty, grimy, exciting and dangerous. And yet, even today, above the dull drone of street sweeper, if you listen carefully… you may be able to still hear the screams of “Dutch Leah”.

Now neater, cleaner and slathered with a fresh lick of paint; booted out are the hotdog vendors, ushered in are the vegan delicatessens; out go the off-licences, in come the wineries; and shutdown are the sex-shops, only to be replaced by high-class S&M boutiques for Soho’s more discerning sadist.

But even today, Soho is still a hotbed of prostitution, hence the murder of prostitutes will be an all-too familiar recurring theme in Murder Mile, as with roughly 300 murders happening in the UK every year, if you are a sex–worker you are 42 times more likely to be murdered, and yet it’s 64% less likely that your death will ever lead to a conviction. And the death of “Dutch Leah” is a prime example.

Prostitution is a dangerous occupation – and “Dutch Leah” knew that – as it all revolves sex, money and secrecy; as a lone female ushers a procession of drunken strangers into her bedroom, with the lights off, the doors locked, a series of loud noises (maybe a moan, maybe a yelp, maybe a scream) and all topped off by silence… as he dashes away into the night, his hat on, his collar up, looking furtive, with no names given, no numbers shared and no paper-trail to follow, just a clandestine affair in exchange for untraceable cash. It’s almost the perfect situation for a murder.

And yet, the life of the Soho prostitute “Dutch Leah” is even more mysterious than her death. You see, “Dutch Leah” wasn’t Dutch, and neither was her real name Leah.

She was born Constance May Hinds in 1914 at the East Ham Hospital in East London, one of the most deprived areas in that era. Her father was unknown, she had no known siblings and her mother – Kathleen Hinds - was a career criminal, a convicted thief, a raging alcoholic and a seasoned prostitute, who would later mysteriously change her name to Doreen Sempler. Constance had a tough upbringing; being poor, hungry and unloved, she was often cared for by friends and neighbours during her mother’s frequent periods of incarceration and intoxication, as they ran from place-to-place, with no sense of stability in her young impressionable life, just a series of squalid lodgings and a slew of male strangers, all until the money ran out, the debts piled up and – once again - they’d both vanish.

By the tender age of 14, Constance was alone and living on the streets, having ran away from her hovel of a home to escape the worst role-model a young girl could ever have, but by then, the damage had been done. By the age of 18, she’d shacked-up with a rag-tag bag of unsavoury characters and already had eight convictions for prostitution, all of which funded her rampant alcoholism. And by the age of 22, she’d been married twice, once to a waiter from Margate called Robert Thomas Smith, and once (scandalously for this era) to a “black entertainer” called Jim Rich, with whom she had given birth to a baby-girl, who she later gave up for adoption.

By 1936, the year of her death, aged 22 years old, Constance May Hinds had been a prostitute for almost a decade and like many London-born prostitutes she’d adopted a street-name that made her sound more “exotic”, she had become “Dutch Leah”. She was short, slim, petite, with dark bobbed hair and dark brown eyes, all set within a sweet-face which belied her horrifying upbringing. But “Dutch Leah” wasn’t her only non-de-plume, as in every shop, on every street, she was known by a variety of names to disguise her deeds; including three different spellings of her surname, as well as Leah Hind, Leah Smith, Connie Smith, Connie May Hinds and Constance Smith, having officially signed her marriage certificate to Robert Thomas Smith as “May Constance Hind”, and she was also affectionately known as “Stilts Leah” on account of her love of wearing very high heels.

And just like her mother before her, everywhere that “Leah” went, she hastily ran from shabby lodging to hideous hovel, leaving behind a trail of unpaid bills, overdue loans and angry debtors. She’d spent her whole life running… but soon, her running would stop.

By the end of April 1936, she’d moved into a dilapidated second-floor lodging at 66 Old Compton Street. Today, over 80 years on, although pristine-white, the four-storey building has hardly changed; except it now houses Rushes Post-Production, with a series of high-end edit-suites where “Dutch Leah” breathed her last. But back then, it was rundown, leaky and cheap; with a seamstress called Shaw’s (who repaired ripped clothing) on the first floor, a chemists called Fraser’s (who sold cures, tonics and condoms) on the ground floor, and the house was smack-bang in the centre of Soho’s clubs, pubs and red light district. Either the best or the worst place for a hooker with an alcohol problem.

This was the thought of Stanley, Leah’s new boyfriend of just four weeks, who was now sharing the cost of this rancid little flat, and within a few short days of moving in, he wanted them both to move out, but having already paid a month’s rent upfront, they couldn’t afford to.

Born in Aldershot in 1912, Stanley Gordon King was a small-framed, sweet-natured, caring but easily-duped 24 year old semi-professional magician who performed conjuring tricks for a living in the local flea-pits to a series of disinterested punters as an easy distraction between booze and boobs. Having met her in a bar, just a few weeks prior, their courtship was brief, loving and passionate, but as much as Stanley was smitten with the still-married Leah, or Constance, or May, or whatever her name was that day, their relationship was built on a lie – as Leah had told Stanley that she was a waitress.

Therefore, with Stanley out plying his trade from dusk till dawn, it must have seemed to him perfectly reasonable that Leah (as a waitress) would know a lot of men, whether waiters, chefs or customers. It must have seemed perfectly reasonable that Leah (as a waitress) working shorter hours than Stanley should have the only key to their second-floor flat. And - of course - it must have also seemed perfectly reasonable that if Stanley wanted to enter his own flat, that he had to stand outside in the street and whistle up to the two windows of their bedroom… and wait to be let in by Leah.

Everyone knew about “Dutch Leah”; whether barmen, bouncers, club-owners or landlords, everyone from Charing Cross Road to Shaftsbury Avenue, right through Cambridge Circus, everyone knew that when Stanley was out “performing magic”, Leah was “turning tricks” for 10 shillings a pop. Everyone knew… except Stanley. No-one knows where, when or how Stanley found out the truth, no-one knows what was said, but what is known is that – being so smitten and seeing only the best in her – Stanley asked Leah to go straight and quit the sex-trade forever. She promised she would. But she never did. Leah was living a life which was all about lying and running. And not long after that, Leah was dead.

On Friday 8th May 1936 at 3pm, Stanley left for work carrying his magician’s bag containing cards, hankies, dice, cups, a wand, a top-hat and a cornucopia of conjuring tricks. Not long afterwards, Leah headed east on Old Compton Street, down Moor Street and onto Cambridge Circus (outside of the Palace Theatre which was her regular patch for picking-up punters).

By 11:30pm, she had already had sex with six men, and at 10 shillings each (which is roughly £32 in today’s money) she’d earned the equivalent of £192, which was enough to cover this week’s rent, buy some food and maybe pay off a few bills. But by midnight, she was short on cash, having squandered it on gin, trinkets and gambling, and then set-off down the slowly dying bustle of Shaftsbury Avenue, the theatres and pubs having emptied, the neon lights switching off, and “Dutch Leah” went looking for another punter.

At a little after midnight, Emilio Piantino, a 26 year old hall porter at the London Casino (which is now the Prince Edward Theatre), witnessed Leah walking west along Old Compton Street towards Wardour Street with a man, who he described as being of “fair complexion, slim, clean shaven, with light brown hair, brushed straight back which was thinning on top, who wore a dark raincoat but no hat” (a fact which was unusual for that era).

Roughly thirty minutes later, Lily Joyce and Nellie Few (a close personal friend of Leah’s) saw her turn off Wardour Street, walk east along Old Compton Street and enter her flat at number 66, she was accompanied by a man, described as in his 30’s, five foot eight, foreign looking, with long dark hair and a slouching gait, wearing a dark overcoat and a dirty cap.

This is the last known sighting of “Dutch Leah” alive.

At a little after 03:30am on the morning of Saturday 9th May 1936, Stanley finished his four-hour shift as a conjuror at Billie’s Club on Little Denmark Street (now renamed Flitcroft Street) and walked down Charing Cross Road and onto Old Compton Street, barely a five minute walk. As was his routine, and not having his own key to the flat, Stanley stood in the street and whistled-up to second floor windows, hoping to get his girlfriend’s attention, but there was no reply. “Maybe she was out?” he thought. “Maybe she was sleep? Or maybe she was drunk?” Either way, Stanley would have to wait.

At 08:45am, Stanley tried again, but still there was no reply, except inside he could hear their six-week old puppy whimpering, its child-like cries emanating from inside their bedroom. Growing concerned, Stanley started knocking on the communal door, his loud hammering alerting the seamstress from Shaw’s on the first floor, who’d arrived two hours prior and promptly let him in. Stanley raced up the stairwell to their flat and tried the door, but it too was locked. The harder he knocked, the more the puppy’s cries grew pained, desperate and terrified… and yet still his girlfriend didn’t answer.
With brute force, Stanley tried to break down the wooden door, but as a man of slight stature, more used to magic tricks than manual labour, the door barely budged, so he dashed across the street to a nearby café where his friend James Adams (a builder by trade) was eating breakfast. Moments later, with a loud CRACK, and a BANG, the door broke wide open. Inside the flat was the petrified puppy… and so was Leah.

Suddenly, the room was gripped with an earie silence as Stanley stood there, staring at his girlfriend; too scared to scream, too numb to run and too terrified to turn away.

Leah was lying across their double-bed, partially dressed, with her stockings rolled down and her slip rucked-up around her midriff, almost as if she was getting ready for her next punter, but no sex had taken place. Instead, around her neck, a thin copper wire from an electric light cord was tied, having been used to brutally garrotte her, the force of the strangulation causing the length of her tongue to jut out of her mouth like it was trying to escape the purple swelling of her screaming face, as the whites of her eyes ruptured, appearing almost black, as if they’d burst.

Beside the bed was a rusty flat-iron, which - being made of cast-iron and weighing over two kilos was as heavy as it was deadly – was found, matted with dried blood, skin and hair, having been used to repeatedly and brutally batter her over the head, rendering her senseless and splattering her blood up the walls, door and floor, as in her arms, lay the terrified puppy.

Constance May Hinds alias “Dutch Leah” was twenty-two years old.

A short investigation was conducted by Chief Inspector Sharpe of Scotland Yard, alongside the Home Office’s chief pathologist (and the pioneer of forensic science) Sir Bernard Spilsbury, as with four Soho prostitutes having been murdered in just a few short months, panic had started to spread that there was a serial killer on the loose. Hundreds of witness statements were taken, three sets of fingerprints were discovered on the stone mantelpiece at 66 Old Compton Street (two being Stanley and Leah’s and a third was never identified) and although the numerous men who had sex with Leah that night were asked to come forward, none of them ever did. Therefore on the 9th June, just four weeks later, the Coroner Mr Ingleby Oddie at Westminster Coroner’s Court concluded that the death of Constance May Hinds was inconclusive. And the verdict? “Wilful murder by person’s unknown”.

She was buried on Thursday 21st May 1936 under her married name Constance May Smith. The day after her funeral, her mother Kathleen Hinds (now renamed Doreen Sempler) who was living just a few streets away in Percy Street, was found slumped in her kitchen, next to an open unlit oven, having tried to kill herself, being wracked with grief at the death of her daughter.

So who are the suspects?

Stanley King, her boyfriend and the person who discovered her body, was initially the Police’s prime suspect, but was ruled out owing to a cast-iron alibi. One; Stanley did not have access to the flat as he didn’t have his own key. Two; Stanley was confirmed by three witnesses (Emilio Piantino, Nellie Few and Lily Joyce) as not being either of the men who entered the flat with Leah shortly before her death. And three; he was working at Billie’s Club on Little Denmark Street between 11:15pm and 03:30am, and the pathologist recorded Leah’s death as having occurred at 12:55am or a little after that.

The Police also interviewed her previous boyfriends, lovers and husbands, all of whom had alibis.  Robert Thomas Smith, the Margate waiter and her estranged husband had been out that night with friends in Kingston-upon-Thames (12.5 miles away), and as much as the tabloid journalists drooled over the detail that the Police were “seeking a coloured man in connection with the murder”; Jim Rich, Leah’s former boyfriend, father of her baby girl and a “black entertainer” at the notorious Shim Sham Club on Wardour Street, was proven not to be her murderer, as at the time of her death, he was in prison.

And as much as the tabloid press were less eager to actually report the facts, and were more fixated on attributing the violent death of another dead hooker to the infamous ‘Soho Strangler’, a maniac who had (allegedly) murdered three prostitutes over the previous nine months, which is a ridiculous theory I shall happily debunk in a later episode? The investigation ground to a halt.

So what about Leah’s last two customers? The man who Emilio Piantino saw with Leah on Old Compton Street just after midnight, described as “fair complexion, slim, clean shaven, with light brown hair, brushed straight back which was thinning on top, who wore a dark raincoat but no hat”, and the man who Lily Joyce & Nellie Few saw at roughly 00:30am and described as “in his 30’s, five foot eight, foreign looking, with long dark hair and a slouching gait, wearing a dark overcoat and a dirty cap”? Sadly, neither of those two men were ever traced.

And setting aside the suspects for a second, what was the motive? Why was “Dutch Leah” killed?

There are three possibilities.

#1 Rape? Not possible, as the murderer launched his brutal attack on Leah as she was sitting on the bed, rolling down her stockings, and the pathologist confirmed that sex had not taken place.

#2 Robbery? Possible, as Police found only two pence in her handbag, but given that she was “short on cash” before her final customer, why did her killer not steal anything else from the flat? And if this was a robbery, why did he strangle her, having bashed her over the head with a flat-iron?

#3 Murder? Also possible, as owing to the way the electric flex had been tied (crossed at the back of her neck and brought forward), her murderer clearly wanted to look into her eyes as the life drained from her body. But who’d want to murder her? Maybe someone who was angry? Maybe someone who was jealous? Maybe someone who was upset?

Let’s rethink the evidence.

#1 - If the murder was pre-meditated, why didn’t her killer bring a weapon with him, rather than using the flat-iron and the electrical flex from Leah’s bedside lamp, all of which were in the flat?

#2 - If the murder was a spontaneous crime of passion, why (having brutally bashed her head in) did he then take the time to stage a robbery, and lock both doors behind him, taking the only key?

#3 - If the murderer didn’t take the key, and both doors were locked from the inside, how did he get out of the second floor flat, given that there was no drainpipe nor ladder to climb down?

#4 - Home Office Pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury put Leah’s time of death as being “12:55am or shortly after, but no later than 3am”. But can any of this evidence be trusted? Given that Sir Bernard Spilsbury, the notoriously arrogant father of forensic science, whose own evidence (it is alleged) led to the infamous Dr Crippen being tried, convicted and executed for a crime (that modern pathologists agree) he did not commit?

So who killed “Dutch Leah?”

The Police’s original chief suspect was her boyfriend, Stanley Gordon King. His alibi was that he was performing magic tricks at Billie’s Club on Little Denmark Street between 11:15pm and 3:30am, which is just a five minute walk or a two minute run from 66 Old Compton Street, and yet how can anyone vouch for the whereabouts of one person, in busy nightclub, on a Friday night, for the full four hours that he was supposedly there?

He also claimed that he didn’t have a key. But why would a man who is (rightly) suspicious that his new girlfriend is still a prostitute - given that she’s a ten year veteran of the sex trade, who lives smack-bang in the middle of Soho’s notorious red-light district – why would he allow there to be only one key to the flat that they both shared?

Having discovered she’d broken her promise to quit the sex=trade forever, was he angry, was he jealous, was he upset that his girlfriend was sleeping with other men, in his home, in his bed and on his sheets, the sickening smell of a strange man’s fluid staining on her lips?

And having whistled up to Leah’s window several times between 03:30am and 04:40am to be let in (an unusual act in its own right), and then trying again at 08:45am? What did Stanley do during those five fours that he was alone? Why are there only three sets of fingerprints at the scene; Leah’s, Stanley’s and one other? And finally why, if Stanley was at work, did the Police remove from the murder scene and put into evidence something they would describe as a “conjuror’s apparatus”? Was this “apparatus” always in the flat, or (having used it in a show, and no-longer needing it) did Stanley return home with it earlier that night?

So who murdered “Dutch Leah”?

Was it Stanley King, her jealous boyfriend? Was her cruel and violent murder just a conjuror’s “trick” to make her disappear, and was his alibi simply a magician’s “slight-of-hand”? Unfortunately, that is something we shall never know, as now, over eighty years on, the murder of “Dutch Leah” remains unsolved.

A special thanks to Lottie for her acting skills, and even though she's an old dog, she played the part of a six-week old puppy to perfection.. when she wasn't licking her bits and eating poo.  :-)

DOWNLOAD Murder Mile Episode #4 - The Mysterious Death of "Dutch Leah". 
​You can also listen to the podcast live, by clicking PLAY on this embedded player above. 

Credits: The Murder Mile true-crime podcast was researched, written and recorded by Michael J Buchanan-Dunne, with the sounds recorded on location (where possible). The music was written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name. ​​​

*** LEGAL DISCLAIMER ***
The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, therefore mistakes will be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken. It is not a full representation of the case, the people or the investigation in its entirety, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity and drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, therefore it will contain a certain level of bias to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated.
*** LEGAL DISCLAIMER ***

Next episode: The Bombing of the Admiral Duncan (due on Thursday 9th November 2017). 

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” and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totaling 75 deaths, over just a one mile walk.