Chelsea Bridge. Author’s collection
The Cross Keys was a brick-built beer house about 50 yards from the Chelsea Embankment. It was three storeys high and had a broad frontage, being described as a ‘large gloomy building of the early Georgian period’. At the front of the house was a large public bar, which would have been mainly patronized by men. At the back was the saloon and private bar, where women and men mixed more freely. Mrs Buxton slept alone in the house, on the second floor. She employed two women as barmaids: Mrs Mitchell and her daughter, Lily Mitchell, who also worked in a jewellery shop. There was a potman, one Henry Whitehead, who was about 60. For company, she had a little Pomeranian dog.
PC George Hammond had passed the pub twice late on Saturday night, 17 January 1920, and found the doors were locked, though there was a light burning inside somewhere. Checking whether premises were locked was a major part of the night beat at this time, and continued to be so until at least the 1960s. On Sunday morning, at 12.35, his replacement on the beat, PC Leslie Betts, visited the pub, again, presumably to check that the premises were secure, rather than to have a drink, and found that the door to the saloon bar, at the side of the pub and through an archway, was open. He later made the following statement:
I went in and found the place smothered with smoke inside. I blew my whistle, and went straight upstairs and looked in all the rooms. I could find none, so I came down again and looked over the house, and found smoke was coming from the cellar. Curtains were drawn across the top of the cellar doors. I tried to go down, but I was driven back by the smoke.
He then summoned the fire brigade by going to the nearest fire alarm, which was close to Chelsea old church. Station Officer Mr C J Brown, of the Brompton Fire Station, Chelsea, received a call at a quarter to one that morning. He and his men arrived on the scene. They went down to the cellar and extinguished the flames with ease. Brown recalled what happened next:
I went down to the cellar. In the back cellar and basement, the door was open and I saw a heap of what appeared to be sacking or rubbish in front of me. The light was bad, but when I examined the heap I found it to be a body. There was a quantity of sawdust, two bundles of bedding, some siphons of soda water and some odds and ends.
The upper portion of the body was covered in sawdust and the other part partially so. At the foot of the body was a shovel and there was also some sacking under the corpse’s legs. Although the sacking had been on fire, the sawdust was not. He found traces of a silk dress and white underclothing. The body was one of a fully clothed woman. Her head and face were battered and covered with blood. Brown called to Betts that he had found someone who was almost dead and that he should try and find a doctor. Betts did so, and brought Dr Grosvenor back with him, who lived at Ogle Street, Chelsea, and was the police surgeon for the division. They arrived at the pub shortly after one.
Betts recalled the changed scene:
To my surprise, I saw a woman lying on the floor [he had thought the firemen said that it was a man’s body, but Brown denied this] in the saloon bar. She had been carried up by the firemen, who were trying artificial respiration. I saw that she had been knocked about the head.
The landlady’s dog was running around the bar and was quite lively. It did not bark at the constable. In the mean time, the doctor was examining the body, which was of Mrs Buxton, and he pronounced that life was extinct. He thought that she had died less than an hour before, namely some time after midnight. The body was still warm, though the hands were cold. He was shown a broken bottle and a pool of blood in the cellar where she had been found and concluded that she might well have been killed by the bottle. The wounds included slashes on both cheeks, several to the back of the head, one to the nose, and also slight burns on the calf of the left leg. She had been dead before the sawdust was set alight.
The Cross Keys pub, 2008. Author’s collection
Police made initial enquiries, questioning various men and talking to Frank Buxton, but none could help. Details of another man whom they sought were issued. He was tall, dark and wore an overcoat and a soft felt hat, and had been in the pub on the night of the murder. None of the neighbours heard or saw anything suspicious.
Mrs Buxton probably ate after closing the pub, as the remains of a meal were found. She had not gone to bed; it had not been slept in. Her dog did not seem unduly alarmed, which was seen as significant, as it had a shrill bark, yet had raised no outcry. Her black cat did nothing, either.
Mrs Barford, who lived in the tenement buildings opposite the pub, was one of the last to leave and recalled that all in the pub were regulars. Two men were playing dominoes. She thought that the landlady ‘seemed in the best of spirits’. She said that Mrs Buxton was popular but was not very communicative. Her pub had been burgled recently and she had allegedly purchased a revolver as a precaution.
The inquest was held on 20 January at the offices of the Chelsea Board of Guardians. Mr H R Oswald was the coroner for the Western District of London and he presided. Superintendent Carlin and Inspector Burton represented the police. There were also men there to represent the brewery who owned the house, Messrs Barclay, Perkins & Co.
The estranged husband of the deceased gave his limited evidence about the couple’s history as previously described. PC Betts and Mr Brown followed with their testimonies. Mrs Mitchell, the wife of a jeweller, was one of the barmaids and had been working on the Saturday evening. She and her daughter had helped to wipe the glasses and tidy up after ten o’clock, before leaving at about half past ten. She recalled that Mrs Buxton was the only one in the pub when she left, ‘She was quite alone. She stood in the doorway leading to the saloon bar from the parlour [near to the stairs leading to the cellar] as we were leaving and said to us, “Good-night. God bless you”’.
Mrs Mitchell thought that the pub had been busy that night. Takings had been as much as between £18 and £20. The takings were put into a little basket after they had been through the till and Mrs Buxton then took these upstairs to her bedroom. Usually £6 in change was left in the till. Mrs Mitchell also mentioned that Mrs Buxton often wore jewellery in the bar, and on that evening wore a diamond crescent brooch on her breast and a diamond star above. She also wore a gold curved bracelet, a wedding ring, a keeper ring and a single stone diamond ring.
She was then asked about a number of named individuals. Mrs Mitchell said that Whitehead had left at nine that Saturday night and had not returned. She knew nothing of Cutting. She said that Penn, who had occasionally been employed at the pub, had not been there for about a month or six weeks, because she had done bar work and so he was not needed. He was not there that Saturday.
Lily Mitchell was the next to speak. She had been working there from a quarter to nine, but had been sitting in the saloon bar as a customer up to ten o’clock. She remembered a man coming to the pub just before ten, when the bar was otherwise empty. When asked to describe him she said, ‘He had a cap well down on his face. He was tall and his cap was a peaked cap of fairly light grey cloth. He was wearing something dark.’ Apparently he ordered a pint of bitter and Mrs Buxton served him. He was fairly well dressed and slightly grey haired. She was unsure whether she would recognize him again, and said that he might have been able to have concealed himself in the pub, probably the cellar, without being seen, for he was by himself for at least ten minutes.
Whitehead made the brief comment that he had been there on the Saturday, doing some odd jobs for Mrs Buxton. He had checked the cellar before he left at nine and had found that nothing was out of order.
Contrary to what Mrs Mitchell had said, Penn declared that he had been in the pub on the Thursday afternoon preceding the murder. On being asked if he had seen any strange customers, he answered readily. He had seen a tall man in the private bar. This character was about five feet ten or eleven inches. He was wearing a brown coat and a blue suit. He was in his mid-thirties, but Penn could not recall whether he was wearing a cap or a bowler (in this period men almost always wore
headgear, unless they were very eccentric). The man’s hair was not grey, but he had a fair moustache, was dark-eyed and had a very long face. This sounds like a younger man than the one described by Lily. Penn had never seen him before or since and said that he was not a regular. Apparently the man was sitting at the back and was moving about, looking at the landlady’s jewellery, which she wore as usual in a conspicuous manner. Whitehead thought ‘there was something funny about him’ and that he had eyes for Mrs Buxton only.
Apparently, when the pub closed for the afternoon, Whitehead stayed behind with Mrs Buxton and he referred to the stranger, in a jocular fashion.
‘I see there was someone in the bar trying to give you the glad eye.’ ‘
‘Yes. That man has been in the house three or four days, and he had been foxing me. I have got him set.’
He had left the pub at half past six, after putting the lights on for her. He thought that Mrs Buxton had the habit of keeping a lot of money on the premises and only banking it when she had amassed a great deal.
Another guest at the pub on the fatal Saturday was Mrs Wehrle, arriving between half past eight and a quarter to nine and leaving alone at ten. She, too, saw a man in the saloon bar whom she had not seen before. Her description of him was similar to Lily’s and her comments about him were also similar. However, she thought that her mother might have been acquainted with him. She thought the man spoke like a Londoner and was well educated. She had also seen two men in the bar together about half an hour earlier, one of whom was rather drunk and had asked for two double whiskies. The first man seemed to be of a better class than his drunken friend, and had a pale, thin face with protruding eyes and wore a cap and overcoat. His companion was broad, tall and stout, with a fat face and a thick neck. Both left the premises before ten. These two men were James Ballardie, a 40-year-old director, and James Bell, a clerk. It was verified that both men went home after leaving the pub.
Finally, there was the medical evidence. Although Dr Grosvenor had been the first doctor on the scene, it had fallen to Dr Reginald Robert Ellworthy to conduct the post mortem, which he had done on the Monday after the murder. He said that there were many marks of extreme violence on the face and there was a piece of coloured glass in one of these. Apart from the blows by a bottle, the nose had been damaged by a fist and there were also indications of strangulation. ‘It struck me that it was done by a thin cord of a tough nature’. The doctor added: ‘A lot of unnecessary violence was used to make sure’ that the woman was dead. Yet the cause of death was heart failure due to shock and concussion due to the blows to the head, and this had been accelerated by the strangulation.
The inquest was adjourned until 3 February. Yet no one was ever charged with the crime. The witnesses suggested that the man in the saloon bar may have been responsible. Could he have been an opportunist thief, who had heard of Mrs Buxton’s money and jewellery? Or was it someone else?
Glebe Place, once home of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, 2008. Author’s collection
Mrs Buxton had had several men in her life. Perhaps the most surprising of all was the following. Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868–1927), the famous Scottish architect and artist, was one. He lived in Glebe Place, Chelsea, from 1915 to 1921 (this street leads south to Lawrence Street) and had borrowed money from Mrs Buxton on several occasions – he owed her £7 10s at the time of her death. Mackintosh first became acquainted with Mrs Buxton in about 1915. Furthermore, when his wife (Margaret MacDonald, a fellow artist) was away in July 1917, he had had a brief affair with her. He also had a key to the saloon bar at one time, but said he had returned it. However, his name was kept from the public and he does not seem to have been a likely suspect. The police checked his movements on the night of the murder and he had an alibi.
Buxton himself was a suspect, as he resembled one of the strangers seen at the pub, but his movements that night were checked and he was cleared. As Penn was the sole beneficiary of her will, to the extent of £1,436 8s, he was a suspect, but as the police report stated:
Having ascertained that Penn was practically the only person who would benefit by the death of Mrs Buxton, thorough investigation was made into his movements during the week preceding Saturday 17 January and particularly upon that day and night, but we confirmed his statement in every detail.
Arthur Cutting had lived with Mrs Buxton for eight months during the recent war, before joining the army. She was known to be afraid of him and Mackintosh testified that this was true. During their liaison, they had quarrelled and hit each other, and were often drunk. Cutting claimed not to have seen her for three years, ‘I can assure you I have not been in Chelsea for some three years.’ But George Thurgood and one Miss Thompson independently claimed to have seen him with two other men in the vicinity of the pub three weeks before. Cutting claimed that on the night of the murder he had been with his girlfriend, Miss Bella Dick, and her family in Shepherd’s Bush and these people corroborated this. Nor could he have been seen by the two witnesses, for he had been at work each day in January and for most of December, save for the brief Christmas holiday. This was confirmed by his boss, Mr Lacey, ‘a highly respectable man’, and he had work timesheets to prove it. Even the police were convinced. ‘Enquiries were at once made by careful officers and the whole of the persons mentioned by Cutting were seen. They all corroborated his story and as we had absolutely no evidence against him, he was allowed to go.’
A more mysterious figure was Mr E F Walker, who was lodging in Kennington. He had left there on the Saturday evening of the murder and returned the following morning. He was in his thirties and was a tall man. He was never traced. Yet there was no direct proof that he was the killer, or that he was ever even at the pub at any time.
A number of other suspects also emerged. William Welling pointed the finger at one Joseph Dixon, a 33 year old employed at the Ministry of Pensions. Apparently, Welling’s girlfriend, one Miss Gwennie Gadd, told him ‘It’s funny, Dick (Dixon) told me that he read Buxton’s hand and told her she would meet with a violent end – now she is murdered.’ She added that ‘I am afraid of that man Dick’. On enquiry, the police found there was ‘not a tittle of evidence’ against Dixon and, furthermore, Miss Gadd was an unreliable witness, being ‘of intemperate habits’. Finally, none of the witnesses identified Dixon as the man they had seen in the pub.
William Lawton, an assistant cook on board the SS Valencia, thought that a fellow cook, George Lux, a man in his forties, was suspect. He told the police, ‘I thought by Lux’s actions and the way he behaved that he might know something about the affair’. Lux appeared shifty and had been doing a lot of washing before the ship left London. He also mentioned the murder. Yet none of the witnesses identified Lux.
Arthur Stephens was in the Duke of York pub near Victoria railway station and heard four men have a suspicious conversation. They were discussing the murder and when they noticed Stephens was taking an interest, one said, ‘Don’t say too much, take care, he might be a detective’. One pulled off his glove and revealed a bandaged hand. One of his companions remarked, ‘Yes, and I would murder someone myself if I thought they had the means and I hadn’t.’ One of the others then remarked, ‘We had better clear off’ and so they did. Stephens recalled that one was wearing a Canadian army uniform.
In 1922, Polly Wilson of Forest Gate named Charles Clay, a railway employee, as being guilty of the crime, claiming that he and Emily Higgins, the woman he lived with, had some of the jewellery taken from Mrs Buxton. Clay was questioned and he did indeed recall the murder and said that Mrs Buxton was his cousin’s wife, though he had not seen her for 16 years. He attended the inquest, but denied murder. Although he resembled a suspect, he was found to be at work at the time of the murder. Detective Inspector Hedley concluded that ‘no evidence whatever had been obtained which would show that Clay was in any way connected with the murder of Mrs Buxton’.
Five years later, Netley Lucas, a writer, contacted the police on behalf of John Fra
ncis O’Connor. The latter had recently been released from prison on the Continent. He was from Liverpool and was a thief who told Lucas that he had killed Mrs Buxton. There was some press coverage of this, but it was found to be a hoax, though whether Lucas was O’Connor’s dupe or his confederate was never ascertained. Lucas (born in 1904) was a fraudster and confidence trickster. He had been in trouble with the law since his early teens and was to be sentenced in 1932 to 18 months hard labour for fraud, so this was probably yet another of his money-making schemes.
The final communication on this matter came in the form of an anonymous letter of 14 April 1932, which was sent from New York to the Commissioner, Viscount Byng, and read as follows:
The man who killed Mrs Frances Buxton in January 1920 of the Cross Keys Inn on Laurence Street, Chelsea is Edward Cooney ex convict of Brooklyn, New York, when you arrest him I will testify against him not before.
Your servant,
One Hoo Knows.
Edward Cooney, an American, had indeed been in a New York prison until 1931, but his present whereabouts could not be ascertained.
If the killer could not be identified, was the motive clear? It may have been robbery, as money and possibly jewellery was missing. Yet Dr Grosvenor claimed, ‘A lot of unnecessary violence was used when she was dying.’ And the police concluded, ‘After the most exhaustive investigation we have failed to obtain a tittle of evidence against any particular person. We feel inclined to believe that the motive for this crime may have been more than robbery.’ They thought it may have been revenge. Mrs Buxton had suffered from venereal disease and may have passed this on to one of the men she had been intimate with, though all those who we know of were cleared; perhaps there was another man. As Detective Inspector Alfred Burton concluded, ‘it is quite possible that one of them may have committed this offence for revenge’.
Unsolved London Murders Page 3
