Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week. 
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-SIX:
On 1st January 1932, in the attic room of 27 Old Compton Street in Soho, 19-year-old domestic servant Edith McQuaid gave birth to a baby boy. Whether he died of natural causes, or she took his life by infanticide will never be known. But she wasn't alone. Edith was one of 1000s of women who concealed the pregnancy, the body of the dead babies or murdered them at birth across the United Kingdom, and yet, it wasn't there fault, as this national scandal had been raging for centuries.
THE LOCATION:
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SOURCES: a selection sourced from the news archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Old Compton Street in Soho, W1; ten doors up from the bombing of the Admiral Duncan, three doors west of the Battle of Frith Street, opposite the gangland hit at the Golden Goose, and two doors from Charles Bertier and the deadly ‘big arms’ quip - coming soon to Murder Mile. At 27 Old Compton Street currently stands a five storey Georgian townhouse from 1781, with high windows and a shop on the ground floor. Today it’s an Italian restaurant called Pepe, where customers waddle out rubbing their bellies groaning “why did I eat so much”, having only planned to nibble a Caesar salad, but was ‘forced’ (they claim) into wolfing down a bowl of antipasti, six loaves of olive-topped bruschetta, a battalion of gnocchi, a metric tonne of pasta, a fistful of parmesan, a pizza so big they had to demolish a whole wall to get it in, and a tiramisu so colossal you could bathe in it. Heaven. But from 1927 until at least 1932, the four floors above was the luxurious West End des-res of wealthy widow, Mrs Lewis. With a whopping 10 rooms, the 1st and 2nd floor was Mrs Lewis’ private abode with its own bathroom, sitting room, dinette and kitchen, on the 3rd floor was her stylish bedroom, and in the loft space was storage, a room for her housekeeper, and a box bed for her servant, Edith McQuaid. As an unmarried 19 year old working-class girl struggling in an era where unfair laws were against her, she was doomed to failure as society decreed what she could or couldn’t do, what was right or morally wrong, and like many women that year, a death sentence hung over her for the infanticide of a child. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 286: The Black Cap Farce. March 1932, The Old Bailey. It had been a short trial, almost perfunctory with the evidence of her guilt as clear as the tears which flowed from her sullen eyes. Judged by a jury of her peers, many of whom (being both men and women) couldn’t look in the eyes as the foreman proclaimed her ‘guilty’. Behind the bench, the Judge nodded with a resigned sigh, he declared “for the killing of a bastard child, I sentence you to death” and upon his white wig, he donned his black cap, a silk square of black silk which the terrified young girl knew what it meant. Judge: “you will be taken from here to whence you came, and there be kept in close confinement, and upon said day, you shall be taken to a place of execution and there be hanged by the neck until you are dead. May God have mercy on your soul”. Barely able to stand as fear ravaged her pale limbs, she sobbed like she had never sobbed before, as the guards dragged her down to the cells to await her fate. She was barely a child, but it wasn’t her fault, as the same law which condemned her to death, condemned her to a life which wasn’t her own. The killing of an infant by its mother has been a tragic phenomenon throughout history, but it wasn’t until 1624, in the reign of James 1st, that an act of law ‘to Prevent the Destroying of Bastard Children’ required that “if a lewd” (meaning an unmarried) “women could not prove that her child had been born dead, she would be tried for its murder, without a need for the prosecution to prove a live birth”. In 1803, Lord Ellenborough, the Lord Chief Justice sought to clarify the term ‘abortion’, and introduced an Act in the all-male House of Lords to crush a woman’s right to decide what she could do with body or her unborn baby. Any termination before 16 weeks, any concealment of a pregnancy and any failure to report a baby’s death during child birth, resulted in transportation for a minimum of 14 years... …or death. Tuesday 2nd of February 1932, Hull in the north of England. At the back of an allotment on Selby Street, a plate-layer working on the railway line spotted a small delicate bundle wrapped in brown paper. He often found junk cast among the bushes, but it was as he unwrapped it, that he saw a tiny pale foot. An autopsy confirmed that this baby boy was not even a day old, and with “no marks of violence, the body had been treated gently” by someone who clearly loved him, but knew she couldn’t care for him. Three weeks later, CID arrested 28-year-old Miriam Forsyth who confessed “it was born upstairs when mother was out. It cried very little, I put it under the bed, then it went quiet", and being charged with the “unlawfully disposing of a child and concealing the birth", her sentence was passed. “Guilty”. But what has this got to do with Edith McQuaid and her dead baby? Nothing… and everything. 1932 was an era of change. With the world still struggling from the Great Depression and the seeds of a second World War looming, that year saw the founding of the British Union of Fascists, the National Hunger March saw street battles by millions of unemployed men, John Logie Baird had demonstrated a precursor to television two streets east in Soho, and even though, Amelia Earhart became first woman to make an non-stop transatlantic flight, the world was pushing towards a brighter and more technological future, yet the laws which governed women’s bodies remained centuries in the past. Born in 1913, Edith was a working-class girl from East London, whose family (it is said) originated from Ulster in Northern Ireland. Her start in life was as unremarkable as most therefore we know little about her life. Educated to a basic level, aged 14, she left school, only she was not expected to have a career, just a low-paying job as a domestic servant to a lady of the kind of class she could never hope to be. Raised as a Protestant to Victorian parents in the progressive 1920s, whereas some girls experienced a sexual freedom unlike those before them, being poor, it’s uncertain what Edith knew of love or sex, if she even knew anything as the life she lived was dictated by society and those who made the laws. In 1930, aged 17, she started working for Mrs Lewis as a servant at her main home in Golders Green. Scrubbing and serving 14 hours-a-day, 6 and a ½ days a week in a job which was physically demanding, given basic food and board with next to no time for herself, and paid a paltry sum of just £3 per week. That was her life, but it was about to change forever. In April 1931, having met an unnamed man – maybe a friend, a lover, a fellow servant, or a relative of Mrs Lewis – what began as a friendship blossomed into something bigger and with hormones raging, their bodies entwined in a loving embrace. The love was exciting and the sex was brief, but with Edith soon discovering that she was pregnant, before those words left her lips, the child’s father was gone. She never uttered his name at the inquest or the criminal trial, but as a young unmarried girl, she was in a predicament she had never experienced before, and she would face it alone; if her family found out she was pregnant, they’d disown her; if her employer found out, she’d lose her job; if the law found out, her baby would be taken from her and she’d be branded as sinful, and left homeless and destitute. This was a scandal which could ruin her life… it also forced her to make a deadly decision. Friday 5th of February 1932, three days after the baby’s body was found in Hull, on the western side of Southwick Green in West Sussex, George Stevens, a greenskeeper found a small parcel. Wrapped in newspaper, he too drew his breath as protruding was a tiny pale foot. Again, an autopsy showed no marks of disease, disability or violence on this baby boy who was carried to full term, but around its neck, a long bandage had been wound three times to strangle him. An investigation failed to find its mother, and although unrelated, it was the second of two dead babies found here within three days. Was this a murder? Yes. Was the culprit evil in the eyes of the law? Yes. Did the public see her as cruel? No. But what has this got to do with Edith McQuaid and her dead baby? Nothing… and everything. Edith’s scandal was one not of her own making, and she could do almost nothing about it. She couldn’t keep the baby as she was unmarried, and she couldn’t terminate it as the law prevented it. She had two options; carry it to full term, and either face the consequences, give it up for adoption, or kill and dispose of it herself, or (illegally) try and terminate it, before anyone knew she was due. It’s easy to say ‘well why didn’t she not have sex’, but with sex education almost no-existent (especially in a Protestant family of the 1930s) and with even basic contraception not available for the masses via the NHS until 1961, between 1923 and 1933, 15% of all maternal deaths were due to illegal abortion. For thousands of women every year, across the 1920s and 30s, many had no choice but to resort to a back street abortionist; an unnamed man of dubious qualifications who – for a substantial fee - sluices out her womb with a caustic solution of acids and disinfectant, fishes out the foetus with a wire scraper and flushes it away, with every unsanitary action risking infection, injury, coma and her own death. A less risky but equally dangerous option were purgatives, which – as an open secret – were advertised in newspapers as “a cure for menstrual blockages”, and although many were illicit compounds of ergot and tansy oil, many resulted in seizures and organ failure. Some women tried even harsher methods, like overdoses, vaginal plunging, a stomach punch or a fall down a flight of stairs. Some were fatal but many did nothing but injure, and although we can’t be certain, it’s likely Edith had tried these too. Which is not to say that these women were alone. Many doctors were sympathetic to every woman’s plight and - sick of seeing the untold suffering and death sweeping the land in the name of morality and religion - disagreeing with the law, although abortion was illegal, risking their own careers, many doctors signed off the baby’s death certificate as ‘puerperal sepsis’, a severe (and incurable, before the invention of penicillin) bacterial infection, also known postpartum infection or childbed fever. Across the 1930s, women’s rights groups and Members of Parliament repeatedly called for changes in the law as the death toll rose. In 1934, with the Conference of Co-operative Women calling for the legalisation of abortion, this led to the establishment of The Abortion Law Reform Association in 1936, and – with the tide of public opinion turning – to cut the number of mothers and babies unnecessarily dying every year, in 1967, the Abortion Act was passed, allowing legal terminations up to 28 weeks. It was centuries too late, but a start, and to ensure that it wasn’t prohibitive for the poorest of women, along with contraception, all abortions were free through the National Health Service, as it is today. Sadly, these changes in the law and society came too late for Edith McQuaid and the unwanted baby in her belly, as across 1932, more babies meant more deaths and more grieving women, who – given the chance - could truly have loved their children rather than being so terrified of the consequences… …of being single mother. Wednesday 3rd February 1932, two days before the dead baby was found in West Sussex, and one day after the one found in Hull, an unmarried 25-year-old woman walked into Cinderford police station in Gloucestershire, having been seen throwing her baby into the River Severn. Jilted by her fiancé, she had tried to put it up for adoption, but with her homelife unpleasant, she later claimed “my child could do better off elsewhere”. The icy cold river was searched, but all that was found was the baby’s glove. By the August of 1931, being (she guessed) three or four months pregnant, Edith was lucky to be able to hide her sin and disguise her changing body as her uniform was baggy and she was short and a little bit plump. No-one noticed an ounce added daily as this insignificant little girl grew, just as long as she scrubbed, polished and fetched over long days with very little breaks, but her body couldn’t cope. Whereas once she was a small but sturdy girl, hormones had loosened her ligaments making standing, lifting and bending difficult, as stabbing pains and cramps gripped her legs, pelvis and back. Headaches and congestion left her sluggish, piles and constipation left her distracted, and along with dizziness, confusion, leaking breasts, vaginal discharge, as well as swollen ankles, hands and feet, it wasn’t long before Mrs Lewis was alerted by the daily sounds of Edith retching and enquired “are you expecting?”. In the 1930s, there was no sick pay, no maternity cover and no employee tribunal, you were hired to do a job, and if you couldn’t do that job, you were sacked, losing your wage, and in Edith’s case, food, a warm bed and a safe place to hide from the bitter wind and wagging tongues as the scandal brewed. Whether she had a plan will never be known, but the same month she was tried for murder, more babies were found dead having been murdered by their mothers, stuck in a dire situation like Edith’s. Tuesday 2nd of February, the same day that the baby boy was found in Hull, a dead baby girl was found in Leicester wrapped and dumped in a discarded pan. Thursday 18th of February, a baby boy was found in Bayswater, dead for five days and its skull fractured. Sunday 21st of February, Leeds, 19-year-old domestic servant Doris Dowling was arrested after her dead baby boy was found hidden in a suitcase. And on Wednesday 24th of February in Belfast, Annabella Hunter confessed that over five years, she had “unlawfully concealed the bodies four newborn babies by enclosing them in a box or a suitcase”. Across the early 1930s, dead babies were being found dumped at a rate of one every few days, having been concealed and miscarried, or murdered by their mothers before they breathed their first breath. Those cases of infanticide you’ve heard from across February of 1932 were just the tip of the iceberg. Was this an epidemic? Yes, so much so it was debated in Parliament, but unlike a disease, it was one that could be cured with the stroke of a pen to eradicate the unfair laws which ruined so many lives. The final months of Edith’s pregnancy were the worst, as alone and frightened, she hid the truth from her parents, employer, and possibly her friends for fear that one of them would blab. With her lungs, heart and stomach twisted and displaced into a part of the body it didn’t belong, she was exhausted. But it would have been the psychological consequences of the changes in her body which hit her worst. It wasn’t understood in the 1930s, but prenatal depression affects 10 to 15% of women, being caused by physical and emotional changes, increased stress, broken sleep and exhaustion, all of which Edith would have suffered as a lone young girl with no experience of childbirth and no-one to protect her. It wasn’t a failing in her mental make-up, as anxiety, panic attacks, irrational fears and mood swings are common in pregnancy, and although many women who murder their babies may have a history of depression, psychosis or schizophrenia, a rapid drop in hormones like oestrogen and progesterone can trigger mania, psychosis, paranoia, hallucinations and – in some cases – it can lead to infanticide. In fact, babies under the age of 1 are the demographic most likely to be murdered. Edith confided in no-one about her fear as she lay alone in her coarse horsehair bed at 27 Old Compton Street, feeling every kick as the baby grew bigger, and knowing there was nothing to stop its arrival. Whether she was in the grip of depression or if her mind was unbalanced will never be known, but we know one thing for certain, had those unfair laws been changed, the baby inside her may have lived. Friday 1st of January 1932, New Year’s Day. As the sun rose across Soho’s frosty streets, the New Year's revellers staggered home with booze on their breaths as their sozzled merriment made way for a piddle against a wall. That night, Mrs Lewis had held a party at her flat, but with her guests and herself having gone, it was Edith’s job to tidy up. At an unknown hour, in the quiet of the attic, having laid newspapers on the floor to soak up the blood, standing upright (for fear of staining the sheets), Edith gave birth to a baby boy as silently as she could, clenching her fists to fight back the pain and gritting her teeth so her screams became just a muffle. Her boy was pale, tiny, but weighing just 5lbs, he went to full term but was badly malnourished. At her inquest, she said little about his death, except “the baby did not move or cry. I thought it was dead”, which could have been true as the mortality rate of babies in the 1930s was almost one in ten, and with no-one to help her – no midwife, no mother, no friends - we only have her word to go on. The Coroner would ask “did you hit the baby with an object?”; as skull fractures suggested to the pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury that “considerable violence caused these injuries... likely caused by a fall” as Edith claimed having given birth standing up, “by banging it’s head on some hard object” such as the floor, “or even an axe” as in the course of her duties, Edith admitted she used one. The baby was alive when it was born, we know that, but if she had committed neonaticide, the wilful murder of a baby by its parent in its first 24 hours, according to those who knew her, she was cold, distant, emotionless and confused, she would state, “if I had murdered my child, I cannot remember it” as that day and all of the days since had become a blur as if none of it had ever happened. But there were other reasons why the baby could have suffered such horrific injuries. Fearful that Mrs Lewis or the housekeeper would discover her shameful secret, believing the baby to be dead when in fact (Sir Bernard would state) “it was alive but in a coma”, she had wrapped the silent baby in her bloodied petticoat, put it in a hessian shopping bag, hung it on the back of a kitchen chair, and – being unaware of its contents – the housekeeper admitted she had dropped it, at least twice. The baby in the bag was found by a neighbour on the 4th of January, four days later, having spotted its tiny pale foot sticking out, and although a doctor said it was “cold, but alive”, it died moments later. As was procedure, Edith McQuaid was arrested, taken to Vine Street police station, and charged with the concealment of a pregnancy and a body, denying a burial, and the wilful murder of a bastard child, which – 33 years before the abolition of capital punishment – was punishable by a death sentence. She refused to name the father (but possibly she didn’t know him), she said that no-one knew about the baby (but perhaps she was protecting them), and although she claimed she had given birth at Charing Cross Hospital, she couldn’t recall any details, she wasn’t listed as an admission, and described as “in a state of shock and confusion”, although a prisoner, the officers didn’t treat her like a criminal. On Thursday 18th of February 1932, the same day that a baby boy was found dead in Bayswater, Edith pleaded ‘not guilty’ but was charged with wilful murder at Great Marlborough Street Police Court. Permitted to sit in the dock, the magistrate Mr R E Dummett quietly listened as she wept through her testimony. Sympathetic to her plight as he had heard many cases similar to hers in the preceding years, and - that month alone – so had most magistrates from Hull, West Sussex, Leicester, Gloucester and Belfast to London, but with enough evidence to convict, she was committed for trial at the Old Bailey. Clerk: “Foreman of the jury, how do you find the defendant?”, Foreman: “Guilty”. And with a resigned sigh, the judge declared “for the killing of a bastard child, I sentence you to death” and upon his white wig, he donned his black cap, and proclaimed her fate “you will be taken from here to whence you came, kept in close confinement, and upon that day, you shall be taken to a place of execution and there you will be hanged by the neck until you are dead. May God have mercy on your soul”. (End) As with so many mothers whose poor mental health or dire situation resulted in infanticide, Edith’s punishment was her execution, only she never made it as far as the gallows or even the Old Bailey. In 1922, 10 years prior, the Infanticide Act was introduced to differentiate it from murder and recognise the socioeconomic stresses put on pregnant women, especially those who were poor and unmarried. It effectively “abolished the death penalty for a woman who deliberately kills her newborn child while the balance of her mind is disturbed”, but with the law slow to catch-up, women like Edith still had to be sentenced to death, even though in most cases the charge was often later reduced to infanticide. It was a cruel pantomime caused by the laws failure to catch up, and even among the judges who were duty bound to enforce it while the lawmakers dithered, it became known as ‘the black cap farce’. With the magistrate deciding that murder could not be proven, and with Edith in a very clear state of distress, she was charged with infanticide and the lesser offence of concealment, and taking pity on her, she was bound over for two years, and sent to a convalescent home for six months to recover. Her trial was not unique, many of the women we mentioned whose babies were found dead were sentenced to death, but few saw prison time, some were sent to asylums, many were acquitted, but the last women to be executed for wilfully murdering her own child was back in 1849. That’s how long the tide had been changing, but with the lawmakers slow to react as society changes, it took a century. After her release from convalescence, Edith McQuaid disappeared from records, it is unknown if she married, had children and went on to lead a happy and fulfilling life as a mother… but let’s hope so. 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.
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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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