East End Murders

by Neil Storey

  One of the gunmen stopped near the Mission Hall on Mitchley Road to reload. As he did so the factory car driven by brave chauffer Wilson swung into the road. With him was PC Newman 510N, and running alongside were the factory manager and PC Tyler 403N. PC Newman told Wilson to run down the gunman if he could. As the car accelerated towards the gunmen they coldly took aim and fired simultaneously – Newman was torn across the cheek and ear as the car windscreen shattered under the hail of bullets, while Wilson was cut across his neck and collar. Another shot burst the car’s water pipe. Tragically, at the moment the gunmen fired, a ten-year-old boy, Ralph Joscelyne, ran into the road and was caught in the crossfire. Grievously wounded, he was taken to hospital, but was declared dead on arrival.

  By this time word had been sent back to the police station to draw firearms. They had never been needed before and nobody knew where the key to the cabinet where they were kept was! The lock was smashed, weapons drawn, ammunition issued and the officers thrust the weaponry into the pockets of their tunics and set off in pursuit on bicycles.

  The gunmen were now on Down Road, running towards the marshes by the River Lea. The indefatigable PCs Tyler and Newman, with PC Bond, knew the area well and took a shortcut in an attempt to head off the gunmen at the railway footbridge. PC Tyler was about 20 yards behind the men; he shouted, ‘Come on, give in, the game’s up!’ One of the men (later identified as Paul Hefeld) turned and fired his Bergmann automatic pistol. PC Tyler’s head rocked from the force of the bullet’s impact and he fell, face down, onto the ground. He had been shot through the right side of his neck and was mortally wounded. The officers with him did what they could; they carried their fallen comrade to a nearby cottage where he died a short while later.

  The gunmen ran on, crossing over Stonebridge Lock where they caught their breath, fending off their pursuers with pistol shots. Workmen saw the gunmen and ran over, facing more bullets which wounded a number of them. At a bridge the gunmen stopped again and held back their pursuers with more shots. Another police officer managed to get within range, only to find his gun was faulty – he was wounded in the calf and thigh before he could get back. The men ran on by the Banbury Reservoir. A policeman spotted a party shooting for duck and called for them to shoot at the gunmen. This unusual request took a while to sink in but when it did the sportsmen fired through the hedges at the gunmen, one of them appeared to react as if shot (his cap was later found peppered with shot) but he ran on.

  With a revolver pressed to his head, tram conductor Charles Wyatt is ordered to drive the hijacked tram.

  After crossing more fields, even firing at a gypsy encampment, the two gunmen arrived at Salisbury Hall Farm where they spotted a tram. The tram driver, Joseph Slow, had seen the crowd, heard the cries of ‘Murder!’ and slowed down. Suddenly, one of the gunmen leapt out of a hedge and onto the platform of the tram. He ordered the driver to stop: the brakes were applied, and the other gunman caught up and jumped aboard. The pursuers – police, duck shooters and all – opened fire, shattering the tram windows and causing the passengers to fling themselves onto the floor; the driver fleeing to the upper deck. Seeing he had gone but not knowing where, one of the gunmen ordered the trapped conductor, Charles Wyatt, to drive the tram. The unfortunate conductor had never driven a tram, but with a gun pressed to his head was left with little option. He managed to get the tram to move off, and they left their pursuers behind.

  A little way on, the tram passed another, which, when it went further up the road, was commandeered and put in reverse by the pursuers. A horse-drawn advertising cart had also been commandeered by armed policemen and was gaining on the gunmen’s tram. One of the gunmen carefully took aim and shot the pony through the head, causing the cart to spill its occupants all over the road.

  There had been only a few passengers on the tram when it was seized and most had managed to jump off in the confusion, but one man, Edward Loveday (63), was not agile enough to get away quickly. Agitated by the events, at Kite’s Corner the old man appeared to make an attempt to snatch one of the gunmen’s weapons: we will never know his true intention, as he was met by a shot in the throat. As the old man slumped dying to the floor, the desperate gunman leapt from the tram and went to take a milk cart. Mr Conyard the milkman came running over, but was instantly shot and wounded in the chest and arm. The gunmen got aboard the cart, whipped up the pony and drove hell for leather down Kenilworth Avenue, in the direction of Forest Road. Still managing to fire a few shots at their pursuers, PC Zeithing was shot through his coat, and PC Rushbrooke’s bicycle was damaged during the pursuit. The gunmen turned this cart over at speed on a corner, but jumped clear and ran to Forest Road, where they forced a roundsman off the greengrocer’s van he was driving at gunpoint, and, whipping this horse up, off they went again. The police then commandeered a chauffer-driven car and kept up the pursuit.

  The gunmen probably wondered why they were not making the ground they desired as the cart struggled to make speed. It seems they had not realised the van’s chain brake was still on. On Winchester Road they abandoned the van and ran off on foot towards the Ching Brook. In their haste they chose badly and ran along a footpath that converged with a wooden fence. They were trapped. One of the men was unable to go on: he could not manage the climb and fell back over the palings. He called to his accomplice to save himself and, grasping his pistol for the last time, placed the end of the barrel against his head and fired. The bullet entered about half an inch above the right eye and exploded out through the forehead on the other side. When the police arrived he was still alive and able to struggle violently as the police removed him, drenched in blood, to the Prince of Wales Hospital – where he died, two weeks later, on 12 February.

  The remaining gunman ran through Beech Hall Estate, across Oak Hill, and then across fields to Oak Cottage at Hale End, on the edge of Epping Forest. Mrs Eliza Rolstone, who lived at Oak Cottage with her husband Charles and young family, had heard the police whistles and had hurried to her gate with her eldest child to see what was occurring. A policeman ran up to her and ordered her to, ‘Go in and shut your door. There is a murderer about.’ Mr Rolstone, a coal man, was at work and her younger children, aged 6 and 2, were inside at the table, so she hastened back up her path – but to her horror, she saw a man inside looking out at her. She ran into the field screaming, ‘My children! My children!’

  The gunman had bolted the front and back door. He paused for a drink from a mug on a table in front of the children before panicking and trying to climb up and hide in the parlour chimney. Failing in this attempt, he then fled upstairs. The man risked a glance out of the window, but was instantly spotted and greeted by a volley of shots from the pursuers that now surrounded the cottage, which shattered the window and wrecked much of the room inside. Seeing the gunman had gone upstairs, PC Dewhurst and Walthamstow baker Charles Schaffer, who had both been involved in the pursuit, seized their opportunity, smashed a window and got the children out. The building was surrounded.

  PC Eagles borrowed a double-barrelled shotgun from a bystander and went into the scullery; hearing a noise upstairs he went outside to look for a ladder. Detectives Dixon and Cater got in through the ground-floor window. They saw sooty handprints on the wall and wondered if the man had climbed up the chimney to hide. Firing a shot up the chimney simply brought more soot down – he must be upstairs. Dixon crept up the stairs and, gaining the landing, cautiously opened the front bedroom door. In an instant he saw the gunman – and fired. Dixon shouted to the man to throw out his gun and give himself up. The gunman muttered he would not.

  Meanwhile, PC Eagles had got his ladder from a neighbouring garden. He got into position and had the gunman in his sights. He pulled the trigger – and nothing happened. He quickly slid down the ladder again; there was no replying shot. What had seemed a never-ending supply of ammunition was now critically low: the gunman had just two shots left.

  The detectives began to fire through the bedroom door – throu
gh the holes they saw the gunman wildly flinging himself around the walls. When PC Eagles arrived he begged a pistol from Detective Dixon, found the bedroom door open, but not wide, thrust his arm through and fired. The gunman taunted ‘Come on now’ as Eagles barged into the room, and both men fired – the gunman at himself. He fell back, shot in the head. The police officers dragged the gunman out into the yard. He took some time to die but as he did, all who saw him would be haunted by the sick grin he held across his face.

  The chase had lasted over two hours and spread over six miles. Both gunmen had been using modern automatic pistols and it was reckoned that they had fired some 400 rounds of ammunition between them. Behind them they left a little boy, an elderly man and a policeman dead and about twenty-five people wounded by gunfire or injured as a direct result of the pursuit. For their bravery in the pursuit of the armed robbers, PC Eagles and Detectives Dixon and Carter were all promoted to Sergeant and were awarded the newly instituted King’s Police Medal for Gallantry. PC Tyler was given a funeral with full honours which passed along streets many deep in spectators, estimated to be as many as 500,000 in number, along the route from Tyler’s home on Arnold Road to Abney Park cemetery – where he was buried underneath a magnificent monument erected by the officers and men of the Metropolitan Police. Under a stone canopy, carved with remarkable detail, it shows his police helmet on top of his folded uniform.

  At the same time Ralph Joscelyne was buried just a short distance away. His grave was marked by a fine stone cross erected by his fellow scholars at Earlsmead School and a plaque was erected to his memory in Child’s Hill church. Ralph’s mother, Mrs Louise Joscelyne, brought up seven other children but never recovered from the loss of her son, and when she died in 1952 the shoes the boy had been wearing when he was shot were buried with her.

  The Rolstone’s cottage at Hale End: the bedroom where Jacob Lapidus died is marked with an ‘X’.

  Investigations soon revealed the gunmen were Paul Hefeld (nicknamed ‘elephant’) and Jacob Lapidus. Hefeld, who had attempted to take his own life after failing to climb the fence, spent most of his waking hours under police guard, glaring around the hospital ward to the degree that one officer recalled ‘the look in his eyes seemed so full of hate, I was in no doubt if he could move he would not give a second thought to killing the lot of us.’ Despite questions being put to him, Hefeld’s only comment from the time of his capture was ‘My mother is in Riga.’ The other gunman, Jacob Lapidus (also recorded as Lepidus, though this surname – whichever spelling you choose – is thought to have been false), killed himself in the children’s bedroom in the cottage at Hale End.

  Both were political refugees from Latvia and soon the word on the street and in the press was that these desperate men were no ordinary robbers but anarchists and part of a conspiracy to overthrow British society. The Daily Mirror even went so far as to claim that Hefeld was the emissary of the Anarchist Secret Service Corps. Across London, but particularly in the East End, suspicion and xenophobia against immigrants, particularly Russians, intensified.

  Almost two years later, the fears over anarchists were still grumbling on the street: and in the press if they had nothing better to print. Late on the night of 16 December 1910 it was blowing a gale and very few people braved the streets of Houndsditch. Max Weil, the owner of a fancy goods shop which adjoined H.S. Harris, Jewellers of 119 Houndsditch, had become concerned about noises which sounded like building works coming from the back of the shop, and, fearing someone was attempting to break in through the wall he sought out a constable. Finding City PC Walter Piper in Bishopgate, he brought the matter to his attention. Investigating the properties that adjoined the jeweller’s, one man’s furtive behaviour at 11 Exchange Buildings aroused Piper’s suspicions – he had opened the door too quickly and clearly just wanted to get rid of the policeman (this man was later identified as George Gardstein). Piper also spotted another man lurking in the shadows nearby, who walked off as Piper approached. Something simply was not right.

  Piper left the area and found two other officers from adjoining beats – PCs Walter Choat and Ernest Woodhams – who he guided to the shop, left them observing, and went to Bishopgate police station to summon more help. On his way there Piper encountered Robert Bentley, one of his duty sergeants, and two plain-clothed constables – James Martin and Arthur Strongman – who proceeded to the scene.

  Soon the station had been alerted to the suspected burglary attempt, Mr Harris the jeweller had been called by the Night Duty Inspector to come and open his shop, and Sergeants Tucker and Bryant and PC Smoothey were despatched. Intelligence had been received that a ‘suspicious group of foreigners’ were living in the building adjoining the jeweller’s where the noises were coming from.

  At approximately 11.30 p.m. Sergeant Bentley, a brave ex-Dragoon, went to the door of 11 Exchange Buildings and knocked. Again, the suspicious man encountered by PC Piper yanked open the door. Bentley enquired, ‘Have you been working or knocking about inside?’ Gardstein said nothing. Bentley, losing patience, pressed, ‘Don’t you understand English?’ Still there was no reply. Bentley was not going to give up. ‘Have you got anybody in the house that can?’ he asked. ‘Fetch them down.’

  Gardstein pushed the door closed a little and went upstairs. Still nothing was forthcoming so Sergeant Bentley pushed open the door and went inside, followed by Sergeant Bryant. Upon entering, the sergeants noticed three cups and saucers on a table. A man stood on the stairs inside: just his feet and the bottom of his trouser legs were visible. Bentley asked if they could look out the back and was directed by the man on the stairs with the words ‘in there.’ As Bentley crossed the room the back door burst open and a man walked briskly into the room. In his hand, at the end of his raised arm, was a pistol – and he had no compulsion about pulling the trigger. As he fired, so too did the man on the stairs. The first shots dazed more than damaged Bentley, but before he had time to recover himself the man from the door had walked to just the other side of the table and emptied two shots into Bentley at point blank range, one of which almost severed his spinal cord.

  Bentley reeled back and collapsed on the doorstep. Bryant saw the pistols turn on him, and more shots rang out: he instinctively raised his hands against the flashes, felt his left hand fall to his side and blundered towards the door. Stumbling over the dying Bentley, he fled onto the street. Only then did he fully realise he had been shot in the arm and wounded in the chest. PC Woodhams was outside and ran over to assist Sergeant Bentley – but as he did so, a bullet cracked into his leg, shattering his femur. He fell to the ground.

  Another man then ran out of the door firing a pistol. In the line of fire were Sergeant Tucker and PC Strongman. In an instant, Tucker was staggering and Strongman caught hold of him. Tucker managed to walk a few paces before he collapsed to the ground. He had been shot in the hip and the heart.

  Soon a hail of fire opened up from the premises and the gang made a break for it, running towards the entrance of the Exchange Building’s cul-de-sac which led onto Cutler Street. Here gang leader Gardstein had almost reached the exit when PC Choat grabbed hold of him and wrestled for the gun. Gardstein kept firing and Choat was shot in the leg. Other members of the gang then turned their guns on Choat: he was a big, strong policeman and used to handling himself on the streets, but with multiple bullet wounds, two of them in his back, he could fight no more and collapsed to the ground, dragging Gardstein with him. As he did so a bullet fired by the gang member and intended for Choat went into Gardstein’s back. He was bleeding profusely and mortally wounded, but even then Choat would not release his grip on Gardstein. Choat was kicked in the face to make him let go, and the wounded Gardstein was bundled off into the darkness by fellow gang members.

  The unarmed police were kept back by the blazing pistols of the gang and they got away into the night. Sergeant Bentley was removed to St Bartholomew’s Hospital, where he died the following morning. Sergeant Tucker was pronounced dead on arr
ival at the London Hospital. He was followed by PC Choat, who, despite suffering a total of eight bullet wounds, was still conscious and underwent surgery. Removed to a ward, he died on 17 December. Gardstein lingered on but he was not to survive his wound either.

  Dr John Scanlon had been called to attend a man suffering a bullet wound at 59 Grove Street. Upon examination the wound clearly showed it could not have been self-inflicted, and he informed the police. By the time Detective Inspector Wensley and Detective Sergeant Ben Leeson reached Grove Street, Gardstein was dead. Many clues were found in this squalid room: almost 100 rounds of assorted ammunition, a loaded Dreyse pistol under the pillow, bomb-making instructions and a pocket book containing Gardstein’s membership card for the Lettish Anarchist Communist Group ‘Leesma’. A representative meeting of the London groups of the Russian Revolutionary parties was quick to emphatically protest against any attempt on the part of the press or the police to link the ‘anarchist’ crimes to them, especially the recent Houndsditch Murders, and pointed out: ‘The London Congress of 1907 expressly forbids any participation whatever in deeds of expropriation and this resolution has been carried out to the letter.’

  The detective force had a massive task on their hands to identify and track down the other gang members. Informers were pressed to find out what they could, detectives worked round the clock following up leads, wanted posters were published and descriptions of those wanted circulated to police across London.

  Nicholas Tomacoff, a young Russian musician, was caught by police as he visited 59 Grove Street. He swore he was only a friend of Fritz Svaars and that they were working on a Christmas play together for the Anarchist Club. When police apprised him of the situation, Tomacoff revealed the names of others he had seen at the address. A number of those believed to have been involved were soon in police custody – namely Osip Federoff and Luba Millstein. It was assumed Luba was the woman sought by the police but, although she was implicated, the woman the police really wanted (and who was described on the posters) was Nina Vassilleva. She was brought in and questioned but later released and observed in the hope she would lead the police to other gang members. On 22 December, Tomacoff led police to the men who carried Gardstein from the scene of the Houndsditch Murders – Jacob Peters and Yourka Dubof.