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EPISODE ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-THREE:
At a little after 11:30pm on Friday 14th September 1945, Captain John Ritchie of the Canadian Army was attacked on Bourchier Street by two British soldiers clutching half a brick. But why? This is a case less about the man who died, or the men who did it, but how a war had shaped and then broke them?
THE LOCATION
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The location is marked with a black raindrop in Soho (it's the big covered he lots of coloured dots). To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, access them by clicking here.
SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below. Liverpool Echo - 29 Dec 1945 Daily Mail - 29th Dec 1945 Nottingham Evening post - 29 Dec 1945 Derby Evening Telegraph - 29 Dec 1945 Western Daily Press – 29 Dec 1945 The Birmingham Mail - 29 Dec 1945 Coventry Evening Telegraph - 29 Dec 1945 Evening Standard - 29 Dec 1945 The Ottawa Journal · 25 Oct 1945 Evening Standard · 16 Nov 1945 Evening Standard · 23 Oct 1945 Liverpool Echo · 29 Dec 1945 Daily Mail - 29 Dec 1945 Citizen - 29 Dec 1945 The Nottingham Evening Post - 29 Dec 1945 Derby Evening Telegraph - 29 Dec 1945 Evening Chronicle -29 Dec 1945 Birmingham Mail - 29 Dec 1945 MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today I’m standing on Bourchier Street in Soho, W1; we’re at the back of the unsolved murder of Dutch Leah, a few doors down from baby Richard’s beating, the failed poisoning of Henry Hall’s family, and one street north of the Stockholm Syndrome of Susan Latterney - coming soon to Murder Mile. Bourchier Street is grim. It sounds posh as the name originates from the French ‘boursier’ meaning ‘keeper of the purse’; except the only purses unveiled in this drab little alley are the one’s a little scrote has robbed so he can blow a tenner on enough scag to make a lightweight microbe mildly merry, or the kind a drunk gent’s widdle dribbles down as he struggles to paint his own shadow in wee-wee. Oh yes, this is a real hovel, being little more than a dark alley hidden by the backs of brothels. Apparently. Stand here and except; a stench, a sticky foot, an indecent proposition and possibly several STDs. In 1945, Bourchier Street was worse than it is today, as 60 to 64 Old Compton Street had been hit by 25 kilo bomb which reduced it to piles of rubble and burnt-out facias. With no shops, this was little more than a place to take a sneaky detour, to empty your bladder, or to lay in wait for your next victim. At a little after 11:30pm on Friday 14th September 1945, Captain John Ritchie of the Canadian Army was attacked on Bourchier Street by two British soldiers clutching half a brick. But why? This is a case less about the man who died, or the men who did it, but how a war had shaped and then broke them? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 183: Captain J A Ritchie and the End of the War. (Celebration). 8th May 1945, VE Day. Hitler is dead, Berlin has fallen, the Axis of Evil has been crushed by the might of the right and the Second World War was just four months from its official end. For the first time in six years, as Big Ben rang out, street parties erupted as a grey gloom of people rejoiced. It had been a long-fought battle in which so many died and so much had been lost. But now, for those who had survived, their lives would return to some kind of normality. (The celebrations die down) Twelve days later, Captain J A Ritchie would be beaten to death – possibly - by Robert Blaine. Born on 3rd August 1920, Robert Blaine would be a life-long resident of Southwark, a borough just south of the river Thames. Formerly of Borrett Road in Walworth, few records survive of his early years, except that he was an average working-class man who had little or no contact with his family. On the 29th September 1939, three weeks into the war, the National Registration Act was introduced; every British subject was issued an identity card and their details taken. Robert was listed as a 19-year-old general labourer living at 6 St Clare’s Chambers on Silvester Street. Like the Peabody Buildings, St Clare’s Chambers was a seven-storey tenement block providing affordable living for those dubbed ‘the industrial classes’; such as hawkers, joiners, porters and traders, of mostly men, but some women. Barely scraping by on a basic wage, with very little to call his own, his life was tough and exhausting. Like so many others, Robert Blaine was ordinary man living an unremarkable life… … and yet, his life was about to become extraordinary, whether he liked it or not. When we think about the lives of those who lived through the Second World War we think of rationing. Mistakenly believing this skirmish would be “done by Christmas”, in January 1940, the Ministry of Food introduced rationing and each person was limited to a weekly allowance of 8oz of sugar, 3oz of sweets, 4oz of ham, 3 pints of milk, 2oz of tea, cheese and butter, with 1 egg and a pack of dried eggs every four weeks. In comparison to today, if the average coffee-shop patron guzzles a large café latte, a muffin and a cheese & ham toastie, they would have annihilated their weekly ration in one sitting. With other items, like tinned goods, dried fruit, petrol, clothing and soap rationed on a points system. But there were many more measures and ramifications which impinged on the people and their lives. War-time memories are often littered with the rose-tinted recollections of those who cherry-picked the chaos to create a myth of ‘blitz spirit’. It’s romantic, but it’s inaccurate. It’s true that amidst the bombing and destruction, that we – the plucky British people with our stiff upper lips – flipped a mid-digit to Adolf by refusing to be defeated as his Luftwaffe rained down death from the skies. But the same was true of the Germans whose cities our bombers failed to cripple and its people to break. We are all human, we are all alike, and we are all flesh and blood, regardless of geography or politics. Another myth was that “there was no crime, you could leave your doors open”. But as we know, with history written by the victors who believed they’d won the right to edit the bits they didn’t like, the ‘good old days’ are often remembered for what they should have been, instead of what they were. In reality, war is brutal and life during any conflict is oppressive. Within the blink of an eye, the world of so many decent people was turned upside-down, with everything they had known either changed or gone; livelihoods had ceased, families were split, and the familiarity of routine was a memory. For criminals, it was a boom-time, which is why the prisons were emptied of anyone with three months or less to serve, making space for spies, but mostly for ‘real criminals’ like looters, spivs and deserters. But even for the average Joe with good morals who could still proudly claim “I never broken the law”, low-level criminality was absolved as the buying of black-market goods was the equivalent of a “little white lie”. It’s no myth, that good women turned to prostitution and good men turned to robbery. On a single day in November 1940, the Old Bailey heard 20 of the 56 cases for looting during the blitz. Across just four months, 4584 cases were tried of those who had stolen from the bombed-out homes of their neighbours, often stepping over the dead or dying to ransack the remnants of their shattered lives. So rife was the looting, that – when a building was bombed – the police had to spend more time protecting the property than searching for survivors, as a home could be stripped in twenty minutes. Life was hard, ethics were a grey area and the rationale of the living was that they had families to feed. Rationing had led to one of the most lucrative black-market activities, the forging of ration coupons. In 1944, 14000 ration-books were stolen in a raid, many of which were sold on Oxford Street for £10 a sheet, with a value today of £400 each, or £3million for the entire haul. Again, many ordinary people wouldn’t have seen this as an offence, “as it’s not a crime, if everyone’s at it… besides we’re at war”. By March 1941, 2300 people had been prosecuted for fraud and dishonesty. In 1943, 5 million clothing coupons were stolen. And by 1945, there were more than 114000 prosecutions for black market sales. With the government compensating those who had lost their homes to the tune of £500, the system was open to abuse (as we’ve seen during Covid). In one case, Walter Handy of Wandsworth made a successful claim for the bombing of the same house, 19 times over five months. In the end, he received three year’s free food and accommodation courtesy of the British government in Wandsworth prison. But the prisons weren’t only full of pilferers, as in war-time, standing up for your rights had become a crime as it was illegal to go on strike. In 1942, miners at the Kent colliery went on strike over working conditions; their leaders were arrested but - unable to imprison the 1000 strong pit – many were fined. Even boredom led to spates of criminality - as with many places of entertainment closed, families displaced, father’s serving overseas and mother’s working multiple jobs to maintain a basic income – conviction rates for hooliganism among the under 17s leapt from 52000 to 72000 in just two years. And as for the notion that “we knew everyone” and “all looked out for one another”? The facts don’t back that up. In so many murders – as with the Blackout Ripper – the neighbours of these lone women who were living in the same building would comment how strange it was that they had been seen for days, as parcels stacked-up on their doorsteps. And yet, no-one went to see if they were okay. Which is not to say that today we are any better or worse, but that we haven’t had the luxury of time to gloss over the inconvenience of truth. War-time was difficult, existence was hard, and it forced even ordinary people to do desperate things. That was the world that Robert Blaine was living in… …only with one big difference. Being in his early twenties… …he had been conscripted to fight. On the 3rd September 1939, the day Britain declared war on Germany, Parliament passed the National Service Act ordering all medically-fit males aged 18 to 41 to fight for King & Country. One of the one and a half million men conscripted was 19-year-old south London labourer Robert Blaine. Like anyone else; we don’t know his morals, his ethics, his hopes, his dreams or his politics. But it can’t have been easy. Overnight, he was uprooted, his life ripped apart, as – given limited training – he was forced to fight, to shoot and to kill. To murder a mass of strangers in a foreign country for a reason he may not have fully understood, with the knowledge that he may end up dead, disabled or deranged. As children, we are taught the difference between right and wrong, good and bad, and that no matter what - murder is strictly forbidden. And yet, as a soldier, he was legally obliged to kill a fellow human. Everywhere he looked, he was told “it is your duty to fight, to kill, to give your life for your country”. And although millions of soldiers did, this trauma would stay with them for the rest of their lives. Through the privileged prism of our modern-day lives, you may think he had the right to say no. But he didn’t. With prisons cleared for deserters and contentious objectors (regardless of their political or religious beliefs), they were seen as the ‘true enemy’. Many men would be shamed into fighting by loved-ones, even though the Fifth Commandment is “thou shalt not kill”, in a Christian faith which during World War Two, 64% of the British population claimed they were. By the war’s end, 500 objectors were court-martialed, 17 were sentenced to death (none were carried out), 150 objectors were imprisoned for life, many were harassed and beaten, and the bulk would suffer a huge stigma. If a serving soldier committed a criminal offence – theft, assault or drunkenness, even a rape or murder – their status as a ‘valued member of society’ (valued over many others, especially their female victims) meant that the police and law-courts often downgraded or turned a blind eye to their crime. And yet, for the crime of not ‘doing your duty’, the sentence could be severe. During World War One, 306 British soldiers were shot for desertion – not murder, not terrorism, just for refusing to fight – but with this deemed illegal according to the 1929 Geneva Convention, other punishments were enacted. During World War Two, if you went Absent Without Leave and were convicted by a military court, you could serve anything from two years to life. For pretending to have an illness or injury to avoid service, the crime of malingering was also punishable by two years in prison. And for the crime of misconduct towards a superior officer (whether violence or threats) you could expect up to ten years in prison. Conscripted in 1939, Private Robert Blaine was an infantryman in the British Army. As a labourer, who harboured no dreams of an army life, he had endured the harsh regiment of the military for six years. That’s six years of chowing down on sub-standard rations, marching like drones at the crack of dawn, being barked at by bullies who were too shite to fight, and routinely punished for minor misdemeanors like not bulling his boots to a mirror shine, or daring to speak his own mind in the earshot of a Sergeant. With very little freedom and no idea when this legally-enforced torture would end, we know that Robert Blaine sometimes adopted the alias of Reginald Douglas Johnson and often deserted his post. (Celebration). 8th May 1945, VE Day. With the war as good as over, many enlisted men faced several futures. Some tried to return to the civilian lives they had left behind, but their lives had gone; no job, no home, no wage and no purpose. For others, with the war technically over, many serving soldiers had their pay-cut, the government hadn’t considered given them a pension for their sacrifice, and – for many –as new regimes popped up as old enemies died, their conscription had only just begun. Rationing remained for another decade, with bread added to the list of rationed basics in 1946, and as a new crimewave swept across Britain; unemployment rose, goods were slim and to make a few quid many soldiers sold off their guns which flooded the streets. During the post-war years, it was said it was safer to fight for your country overseas, than to live at home on the streets of our cities. The Second World War officially ended on the 2nd September 1945. During the celebrations, Robert Blaine went AWOL… …the war was over, but – still under conscription – he was classified as ‘a deserter’. As a born-and-bred Londoner, now 25, Robert Blaine returned to the one place he knew – London. He had left behind a pristine city and what he had returned to was a smouldering ruin of black smoke, bomb craters and chaos. Everything he knew or owned was gone; his home, his job and his belongings. And worse still, having left the battlefields behind, the city was now a sea of death and destruction. In the year prior to his conscription, the annual homicide rate in England and Wales was roughly 400 people per year. One year later – as bombers obliterated the city – that rose to 400 people per day. Mortuaries were overwhelmed, bodies lay unburied, the dismembered limbs of loved one’s littered the rubble-strewn streets, morgue vans became as familiar as ice-cream trucks once were, and the city’s swimming pools were drained to keep the dead bodies cool until their remains could be claimed. A new epidemic would ravage the streets, and its name was death. Between 1939 and 1945, the crime rate in England & Wales rose by 57%, with the number of reported murders doubling in just five years. With a decimated police force, many cases went unsolved, as it was almost impossible to prove or disprove a person’s disappearance during war-time and the blitz. Rape was up, robbery was up, manslaughter was up, and – with many citizens and servicemen seeing a black person for the first time, London experienced race-riots and even lynchings in the West End. And yet, more than eighty years after the event, there was one other conspicuously silent massacre which is rarely spoken by those who lived through those darkest of days. When Robert returned home, he would have sensed an odd emptiness on every street, as one specific family member was absent. When war was declared, the British Government formed NARPAC (the National Air Raid Precautions Animals Committee) whose job was to advise pet owners. Worried that many people could not afford the ‘luxury of a cat or dog’, their freely distributed pamphlet advised “If you cannot place them in the care of neighbours, it really is kindest to have them destroyed", along-side an advert for a bolt pistol. Appealing for calm over this unnecessary hysteria, veterinarian groups like the PDSA and the RSPCA were against such drastic instructions, but - with their hospitals swamped by worried owners - more than 750000 pets were legally destroyed, many in the first few weeks of the war. It is still unclear how many family pets were murdered during the panic, as many were drowned, shot or strangled. It was hardly a welcome home for Robert, but everyone’s life had been altered forever. With nothing but the uniform on his back and a few shillings in his pockets, he couldn’t just restart his life; as without discharge papers, he couldn’t get work; without a National ID card, he couldn’t get a ration book; without a furlough pass, he risked being arrested for walking the streets; leaving him with one option – to commit crime. For which – as a deserter – he could serve up to ten more years inside. During his desertion, Robert had met up with 19-year-old Charles Connelly, known as ‘Jock’; a stockily-built Glaswegian who had been arrested as a stowaway onboard the HMS Europa. Fleeing from the military police at Plymouth, he had broken free of his handcuffs resulting in a wound to his right hand. They were hungry, broke, on the run, and their only crime was wanting their old lives back… …but that doesn’t (and shouldn’t) absolve them of the crime they would commit… ...as this is just context. On Friday 14th September 1945, the night that Captain J A Ritchie would die, Robert Blaine and Charles Connelly were in Soho; a dangerous den of iniquity, but – with bars and brothels on each street, where syphilis-raddled servicemen spread the diseases that sex-workers were often unfairly blamed for – the intersections of Old Compton Street was the perfect place for a deserting soldier to hide in plain sight. Soho, especially at night, was deadly. Dubbed ‘London’s murder spot’, over the previous 18 months, Scotland Yard and the Home Office had become “gravely concerned” about this “deadly square mile”. With many people describing Soho as a no-man’s land, the unlit streets of this patch renamed ‘little Chicago’ was awash with theft, looting, drunkenness, assault, extortion, drugs, prostitution and death, as gangs of civilians and servicemen engaged in street fights with guns, knives and knuckle-dusters Prior to this little-known murder, which barely bothered many journalists’ ink, Superintendent Parker and Divisional Detective Inspector Stevens of West End Central, informed the military authorities that they were “busy enough with civilian crime, without needing to deal with these military hooligans”. That night, with Canadian and US military police patrols having been doubled on the streets from Soho down to Victoria - in a bid to clean-up the West End and “to whisk away any trouble-makers” - so seriously was this taken, that all US military police had been re-issued with loaded fire-arms. The streets were dangerous and the troops were hungry… …only this desperate measure would come too late for Captain Ritchie, as the Sunday Pictorial would state “his murder was a climax to weeks of knife and razor battles, and near-riots involving US and Canadian troops and coloured civilians”. And yet, it had all begun, six years earlier during conscription. In short, this wasn’t a murder, it was a bungled robbery in an act of desperation. At roughly 11:30pm – for whatever reason - Captain John Alexander Ritchie, a 41-year-old Canadian officer was taking a short-cut from Dean Street to Wardour Street through the bombed-out remains of Bourchier Street. It was dark, isolated and he had enjoyed a few drinks that night, as being on leave from the Hampshire Depot at Tweedsmuir, he was due to be repatriated back home to Montreal. The thin unlit alley was (and still is) a bottle-neck at the best of times. Once you’re in, it’s hard to get out, especially if you’re cornered by two hoods hidden in the shadows, as there’s nowhere else to run. Being drunk and outmanned, Captain Ritchie was robbed, and – possibly having fought back - one of the desperate deserters had smacked the officer over the head with half a brick, and as he lay bleeding and unconscious, the other rifled his pockets, stealing £5 in notes, or two weeks of their Army wage. Found a few minutes later, Captain J A Ritchie died on his injuries at 11:45pm. (End) Pursued by two constables, Charles Connelly escaped and was never found. Seen hiding in a doorway, Robert Blaine (who was thin, hungry and had clearly been sleeping rough for weeks) was arrested and the half-a-brick found inside his jacket was taken into evidence. When questioned, he stated “I didn’t do it. He hit him while I was holding him”, admitting to the robbery but blaming Connelly for the killing. Tried at the Old Bailey on the 16th November 1945, he pleaded ‘not guilty’ to murder, but admitted that he had helped Jock (who he said had held the brick) to steal from the dying man’s pockets. The prosecution would allege that although it could not be proven whether he had struck the fatal blow which killed Captain Ritchie, there was clear evidence “that he taken part in the assault”. Summing up, the Judge would state “where two persons are engaged a robbery with violence and the victim dies, they are both guilty of murder. It is quite immaterial which of them gave the fatal blow”. Being sentenced to death, and with his appeal dismissed, Private Robert Blaine (formerly of the British Army) was executed on 29th December 1945 at Wandsworth Prison by hangman Albert Pierrepoint. The cruel irony being that – in a roundabout way - he was executed for desertion. For many, the end of the war did not mark a return to normality, as their lives and their trauma would last a lifetime. As the victors, it’s easy to romanticise the conflict and to cherry-pick the facts, but what that does is to erase and devalue the hardship and the struggle that the average person endured. War was hard, life was hard, and many people made sacrifices both physically and morally to survive. To forget the real truth is a disservice to those who gave up their life and sanity to protect us… …as during desperate times, even good people were driven to kill for just a few pounds. ** 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, which are freely available in the public domain, 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, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast 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 to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of. 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 nominated "one of the best true-crime podcasts at the British Podcast Awards".
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AuthorMichael J Buchanan-Dunne is a crime writer, podcaster of Murder Mile UK True Crime and creator of true-crime TV series. 
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