Great Train Crimes: Murder and Robbery on the Railways

by Oates, Jonathan

  There were additional pointers to this being a case of murder. A man in black was seen leaning over the railway bridge on the night of the murder. His identity was never established. Lowery’s money and ring were never found, pointing to this being robbery with violence. Two men were arrested, but were subsequently released due to lack of evidence. It seems probable that the young man was attacked on his way home that night for whatever cash he had with him, then pushed down onto the railway line. That said, it seems unlikely, unless further evidence comes to light, that his killer/s will ever be brought to justice.

  The criminal and the student, 2008

  It was once said, after nineteenth-century railway murders, that the introduction of open carriages, rather than ones divided into compartments, would prevent such crimes. Unfortunately, that was not to be and this instance is an example. Thomas Grant was a student in history and Arabic at St Andrew’s University. The 19 year old was popular, had everything to live for and much to offer. Having recently completed his first year exams, he was travelling home for a holiday. He took a train from St Andrews, changing at Carlisle in order to continue his trip home. Surprisingly, like Ian Lowery, he lived in Churchtown, Gloucestershire.

  Thus he was standing at a platform on Carlisle station. Hearing raised voices, he briefly turned to look at a group of three people nearby, two of whom were arguing. He then turned back to his own thoughts. The trio was made up of Thomas Lee Wood, aged 22, his girlfriend Sarah Chadwick, both from Skelmersdale, Lancashire, and who had recently been residing with Sarah Dunsheath near Carlisle. She was the third person. Wood had 21 previous convictions for 40 offences and had recently been released from a six-month sentence in gaol for burglary. He had also been known to be violent towards Miss Chadwick, whom he lived with, even though she might have been pregnant. Unbeknown to the others, he had stolen a knife from Sarah Dunsheath’s kitchen and had it in his inner pocket. Wood told his girlfriend that he would steal the food she was planning to eat later that evening.

  With the arrival of the southbound train, Grant, Wood and Miss Chadwick boarded the same coach. Grant sat by his bicycle and kept himself to himself. Wood and his companion continued to argue. Wood had changed the subject to railway tickets. He tore up his own and declared he would stab the ticket collector rather than be told to leave the train. His girlfriend began to cry. Then he stalked up and down the packed carriage.

  During this time he saw Grant and perhaps remembered him looking at him on the platform. He took the knife and lunged down, stabbing Grant in the chest. Panic-stricken passengers, including children, fled the carriage and the train manager had the intervening door locked. They saw Wood going berserk and feared he might break through. However, he failed and, realizing the train was stopping (at Oxenholme), he escaped through a train window. Running through the fields, he took a lift from a farmer and was taken to a bus station, where he was arrested.

  Wood was tried for murder at Preston Crown Court before Mr Justice Openshaw, who said, of Grant, ‘He did nothing more than just look and it cost him his life’. Wood claimed that he was feeling intimidated and only meant to threaten Grant, not kill him. The motion of the train had caused him to accidentally lunge at Grant, killing him. However, he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, and was told he would serve at least 21 years. It had been an unprovoked attack in a public place.

  The crimes briefly noted above, do not, of course, constitute the remainder of railway murders in the United Kingdom; others include Margaret Eastwood throwing her illegitimate baby off a train near Barnes in 1938, the killing of Paul Carberry by John Murray on a train to Wembley in 1979, a stabbing on a train near New Cross in 1973 and the murder by Vaso Aliu of his former girlfriend, Marguerite van Campenhout, on a busy Underground platform in 2002.

  We shall now turn, briefly, to the less unpleasant world of fictional vintage railway crime.

  Sherlock Holmes and railways

  Holmes and Watson would always take a train to any investigation of theirs which took place in the countryside. They travelled down to Dartmoor on a train from Paddington, for instance, in The Hound of the Baskervilles. Yet for travelling around London, they usually took a hansom cab. There is only one reference in the entire canon in which the Underground is taken. This may sound surprising, in light of the fact that the Baker Street tube station was very close to their lodgings at the north end of that thoroughfare. In ‘The Adventure of the Red Headed League’, apparently set in 1890, Holmes wished to see his client’s business premises in the City. Watson states, ‘We travelled by the Underground as far as Aldersgate’. Modern readers should not confuse this Metropolitan line station with Aldgate. The station is nowhere to be found on a modern Underground map. This is because it has since been renamed as the Barbican.

  There is only one crime on the railway network which Holmes is called upon to investigate. This occurs in ‘The Bruce Partington Plans’. It is 1895 and the corpse of one Arthur Cadogan West, a young man employed at Woolwich Arsenal, is found on the line just outside Aldgate station, which is on both the Metropolitan and Circle lines. His head ‘was badly crushed’. Initially it is believed that he may have fallen or have been pushed from a train (in those days, carriage doors could be opened at any point during a journey, not just at platforms as now). Of course, he could not have been carried onto the line because the ticket collector at the gates would have seen them.

  The problem is that on the young man’s body are part of some top-secret submarine plans (the Bruce Partington Plans, whose ‘importance can hardly be exaggerated’). However, the remainder of these plans is missing. The other problem is how could West have been found where he was? He did not have a ticket on his body. West had been in Woolwich earlier in the evening before his death. It is initially assumed that he left Woolwich and met a foreign agent in London.

  Once Holmes has begun his investigation, he learns that there is no sign of any violence in any of the carriages. Nor is there any blood on the line. He deduces that West was on the roof of a carriage and was thrown onto the line when the train swayed on the railway points. Once he has access to the names and addresses of a number of spies in London, he finds that the house of one of them is adjacent to part of the Circle line near Gloucester Road tube station. It transpires that West followed a traitor, who had stolen the plans, to this house, was killed there and his body dropped onto a carriage roof as a train halted at the nearby station. The traitor and his confederate are arrested, the plans recovered and West’s reputation saved.

  Agatha Christie and the railways

  Mention the two together and most people will think of the novel which has also been filmed, Murder on the Orient Express. Or perhaps The Mystery of the Blue Train, both of which are set on the Continent. But there are two home-grown tales, a short story featuring Hercule Poirot, ‘The Plymouth Express’, and a Miss Marple novel, 4.50 from Paddington (filmed in 1962 as Murder she Said, starring Margaret Rutherford).

  When Mrs Elspeth MacGillicuddy takes a train at 4.50 pm from Paddington, just before Christmas, the last thing she expects to witness is a murder. But that is exactly what happens when the train she is on passes another train. It is on a bend and the shutters suddenly shoot up. But all she can see is a tall, broad man strangling a woman and cannot see his face. When she reports this to the railway staff and the police, they are polite and go through the motions. This is because the police cannot find a corpse. Without a corpse, there can be no murder inquiry.

  Undeterred, she turns to her old friend, Miss Marple. She sets about trying to solve the mystery. With help from a young nephew who is an employee of British Railways, she concludes that the train that was passed was the 4.33 stopping service from Paddington. The trains would have passed near to the edge of the rambling country estate which surrounds Rutherford Hall. As she astutely observes, a murder on a train gives the killer the advantage of anonymity. She realizes that, if a killing occurs where someone lives, the killer mi
ght be seen coming or going, and if he drives his victim to a location, however, remote, someone may see him or notice the car. But on a train, with many passengers coming and going, all the killer needs to do is to leave at the next station, and if it is a busy one, he is unlikely to be remembered.

  Miss Marple then calls on the services of the astute young Lucy Eylesbarrow, who agrees to take a temporary post at the house whilst searching for clues. She finds traces of clothing near the brambles close to the railway line. She later discovers the body of a strangled woman in the Old Barn on the estate. Much of the book then concerns the identity of the victim. Could it be something to do with the Crackenthorpe family, most of whom do not live there, but are regular visitors?

  The killer turns out to be someone totally unexpected. He had been living apart from his wife. Then he sees the opportunity to marry a rich woman. So he contacts his wife and suggests a reconciliation and they meet in London and travel from Paddington. There he kills her, without having been witnessed, or so he thinks, and then throws the body out near Rutherford Hall. That evening he takes the body and hides it in the Old Barn. In the forthcoming weeks, he proceeds to murder other members of the family, so his hoped for future bride will be all the more wealthy. An excellent plan – but foiled by Miss Marple and her allies.

  George Stephenson’s Rocket at Newcastle station.Author’s collection

  One of the first trains, 1830s. Author’s collection

  Steam train, 1930s. Author’s collection

  The scene of the crime, 1900s. Author’s collection

  Metropolitan policeman, c.1914. Author’s collection

  London Bridge, 2009. Author

  Folkestone harbour. Author’s collection

  London’s financial hub, c.1890s. Reg Eden’s collection

  Clapton Square, 2009. Author

  Nelson Square, 2009. Author

  Hackney church, 2009. Author

  St George’s Street, 2009. Author

  Officers’ Headquarters, Aldershot, c.1900s. Author’s collection

  Charles Dickens and his Kent home, 1860s. Author’s collection

  Waterloo station, 2009. Author

  Brighton railway station, c.1900. Author’s collection

  Edward VII, 1900s. Author’s collection

  Charing Cross station, c.1900. Author’s collection

  Paddington station, c.1900. Author’s collection

  Ludgate station, c.1900. Author’s collection

  Windsor High Street and Castle, 1900s. Author’s collection

  Tower of London, c.1900. Author’s collection

  Winchester, 1900s. Author’s collection

  Old Bailey, 1900s. Author’s collection

  Portsmouth Town Hall, c.1900. Author’s collection

  Vauxhall Bridge, 2009. Author

  South Croydon station, 2009. Author

  Lavender Hill, 2009. Author

  Newcastle railway station, 1900s. Author’s collection

  Grey Street, Newcastle, 1900s. Author’s collection

  Morpeth, 1900s. Author’s collection

  Lovers in a train carriage, 1900s. Author’s collection

  Crawley High Street, 1900s. Author’s collection

  Electric train on the Metropolitan line, c.1910. Author’s collection

  Victoria railway station, 1920s. Author’s collection

  Lewes, 1900s. Author’s collection

  St Saviour’s church, Ealing, 1900s. Reg Eden’s collection

  Florence Shore’s grave, 2009. Author

  Homerton Terrace, 2009. Author

  Deptford Park gates, 2009. Author

  Liverpool Street station, 1920s. Author’s collection

  Hackney police station, 2009. Author

  Tottenham Court tube station, 2009. Author

  Train at Carlisle railway station. Author’s collection

  Train arriving at Basingstoke station, c.1960. Author’s collection

  Cambridge Hospital, Aldershot. Author’s collection

  Bognor Regis, 1950s. Author’s collection

  Memorial plaque at Russell Square tube station to victims of 2005 terrorist bombing, 2009. Author

  Conclusion

  Sherlock Holmes observed in A Study in Scarlet that ‘There is nothing new under the sun. It has all been done before.’ Whether it was Thomas Briggs being killed by Francis Muller in 1864 or Patricia Woolard falling victim to Michael Gills just over a century later, the pattern of the railway murder is depressingly the same. In almost all instances, the killer and his victim meet together in a railway compartment. The killer almost always is armed and takes his victim, usually a weaker individual as well, by total surprise. The motive is usually robbery, though not always. The weapon used is often a gun, but can also be a knife or a bludgeon. The victim has little chance. Then the killer either makes his escape or is caught.

  Of the twenty-five victims in this book, ten were men, eleven were women and there were four children. Four were shot, nine were stabbed or slashed, two were strangled, four were bludgeoned and six killed by trains. Twenty-one were killed by strangers and four by those known to them. Money was the motivation behind eight murders, sex/love by four and in eight murders the motive is unknown. Two resulted from arguments, one was due to insanity and two were accidental. Of these killers, fifteen were apprehended and ten escaped unscathed. This is a high proportion of unsolved crimes, because in the 1920s/1930s, the clear-up rate of murders in London was over 90 per cent. The reason for this is that most of these murders were crimes committed by strangers and these are the most difficult to solve, because there is no prior connection between killer and victim. Trains can be transitory and anonymous places, where people only spend a fleeting time and then depart. Almost all the killers, without question, were male – murder being predominantly a man’s crime. The exception, perhaps, is the killing of Willie Starchfield in 1914, where a woman might have been responsible.

  Compared to those crimes committed in detective novels, railway murders are not carefully thought out ones, requiring a master sleuth to unravel them. Serious thefts from trains, whether in 1855 or in 1963, did require much planning and nerve on the part of the thieves. Both succeeded in taking the money and escaping unscathed. However, in both cases, the criminals ended up being arrested and gaoled through their own idiocies thereafter.

  Is there any consolation for passengers on trains seeking to avoid the fates of Florence Shore, Beatrice Meadmore, Frederick Gold and the others whose deaths have been related here? First, travelling alone can be dangerous. Choosing a compartment to travel in which there are other people, preferably similar to the passenger, is advice given by police. The introduction of greater surveillance techniques, such as CCTV cameras may also assist in detecting crime after it has happened, though railway crimes still occur in the twenty-first century, as we have noted. One only has to think of the woman attacked and nearly killed for remonstrating with youths at a suburban station in London, or a gang of youths who attacked and robbed passengers on the Underground. But, as said, the percentage of crimes committed on board trains is very small, and the main risk to life and limb when railbound, and it is statistically a tiny one, is to be involved in a train crash. Bon voyage!

  Bibliography

  PRIMARY SOURCES

  The National Archives

  ADM159/29, 35, ASSI36/139 (Dean), ASSI36/522 (Woolard), CRIM1/1080 (Waters), DPP/2/4222 (Woolard), MEPO3/75-76 (Briggs), MEPO3/169 (Money), MEPO3/1627 (Mays), PCOM8/409 (Mays), RAIL635/196.

  The Wellcome Institute Library

  PP/SP1/2, 5 (Spilsbury autopsy index cards)

  Newspapers

  Aldershot News, 1952, 1965

  Annual Register, 1864, 1884

  Brighton and Hove Advertiser, 1914

  Brighton Times, 1914

  Croydon Advertiser, 1875, 1945

  Croydon Chronicle, 1875

  Croydon Times, 1945

  Cumberland Herald, 1962

  Hackney Gazette, 1927
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br />   Hants and Berks Gazette, 1964

  Hastings and St Leonards Observer, 1920