Unsolved London Murders

by Jonathan Oates

  Perhaps the coroner wondered if this was a case of suicide? Other rumours were spreading in the press that this was a case of a foul play. Certainly the police were making enquiries and put out a general appeal on 18 March, outlining the basic facts and adding:

  The police are anxious to get in touch with all passengers who travelled from Barnehurst Station to London or intermediate stations by that train on the night in question, and are particularly anxious to get in touch with any person or persons who travelled on the train and who may have any particular reason for remembering the journey. Any information should be communicated to New Scotland Yard or to Superintendent Barrett, Blackheath Road Police Station, Greenwich SE 10.

  The inquest recommenced on 22 March. John Bradnam of the railway company’s surveyor’s department, outlined additional physical clues. He said that the distance between the body and Kidbrooke station was 603 yards. He also produced a plan of the carriage in which Mrs East had travelled. He said her powder puff was found ten yards from her corpse; her handbag was 12 feet six inches away and her handkerchief was 26 feet distant.

  Mrs Richards was able to supply further information about the man who entered Mrs East’s carriage. Unfortunately, she had no opportunity of taking a good look at him, and no reason to do so either. However, in answer to the coroner’s questions, she replied thus:

  I only saw him from the back but he struck me as being slightly built, of medium height and I know he had a cap on … it was light in colour … he was on the youngish side, between 20 and 30. I came to this conclusion mainly from his build and also from the way he got into the carriage.

  She added that he was wearing a fairly light coloured overcoat of thick cloth. She did not recall anyone else standing on the platform. However, it had been dark and it was possible that someone might have been in the waiting room, unseen by Mrs Richards. When asked about her friend’s mental state on that day, she said that she was ‘quite cheerful and seemed quite healthy’. There was no sign of depression, ‘She was most cheerful and in good spirits the whole time she was with me.’ She was looking forward to seeing her friend again.

  Passenger steam train 1920s. Author’s collection

  Two of the railway staff were next to give evidence. Charles Witcher, a carriage locks examiner, told that the locks on the train doors were in perfect working order. If the doors were opened between stations, they would close on arrival, as the application of brakes automatically did this. Leonard Debney was the booking clerk at Barnehurst station. He reported that six or seven people boarded the 7.43 train there. He did not see anyone board the train at the last moment though, in contradiction of Mrs Richard’s statement.

  However, two witnesses heard suspicious sounds and allegedly saw the killer leave the train at Kidbrooke. Miss Lilla Smallwood and Margaret Fleming, a typist, boarded the train at Eltham for the short trip to Blackheath. Miss Smallwood recalled that she heard the screams of children in the carriage next to theirs. Then she heard something smash, and that sounded like glass. The two of them looked out of the window in both directions, but could see nothing. At Kidbrooke, they saw a man leaving the train from that compartment. He banged the door shut and then went to talk to the platform porter. Because of the sounds they had heard, she paid close attention to the man, whom she described thus:

  He was of medium height, broad shouldered and well built, very pale complexion, clean shaven and dressed in a dark grey cap and a dark khaki garment with yellow buttons – the kind of tight khaki garment that officers wore during the War.

  The man was aged between 20 and 30. When she left the train at Blackheath (the next stop after Kidbrooke), she looked into the compartment, but could not see anything unusual about it; no broken glass; and they did not alert the railway authorities. They only got in contact with the police when they learnt the following day about the corpse being found. It should be recalled that trains did not have communicating corridors and so the only means of leaving a compartment was at stations. This could be very dangerous as it left passengers isolated.

  Margaret Fleming confirmed much of her friend’s statement, but thought that the screams had been those of a woman. There was then some discussion about different sounds, with the coroner saying that he thought that the banging of a carriage door sounded like that of breaking glass, but Margaret disagreed. Tabard said that the noise of the train would have drowned out most other sounds.

  Margaret gave her own description of the man they thought they had seen leaving the train. He was very pale and with a fair complexion. He was wearing an old grey cap and a long officer’s overcoat, which looked old and had leather buttons. At this moment, a grey-haired man, wearing a khaki overcoat and an old grey cap stood up in court and Margaret declared that the man she had seen was wearing these type of clothes. Margaret thought the man looked as if he might be a labourer and that he was still talking to the porter when the train left Kidbrooke. He was not seen giving a ticket to the porter, and Margaret assumed he was telling him about the screams they had heard.

  It was now time for William Ford, the Kidbrooke porter, to speak. He said that there was no one on the Kidbrooke platform waiting for the 7.37 train and that he did not issue any tickets. Indeed, he had locked the exit door as the train had arrived. According to him, no one left the train – in flat contradiction to the statements made by the two aforesaid women. Had anyone left the train, he would have seen their ticket or have issued them with one. He did neither. Ford did recall talking to a nightwatchman, who was on the platform with him. He admitted that a member of railway staff might have left the train there without his noticing.

  Then the elderly man wearing the khaki overcoat and a cloth cap, who had been pointed out to Margaret earlier, stood up. He was Charles Ford, a nightwatchman employed by Greenwich Council in connection with roadworks near to the station entrance. He went to the station each night for water, usually on three occasions. On the night of the 13th, he had been on the platform when the porter locked the door to the exit. The two men had a chat whilst the train arrived and departed. He agreed with the porter that no one left that train on that occasion.

  Dr Arthur Davies of Harley Street had carried out the post mortem. He announced that there were three types of injuries on the body. First, there were many bruises. Some of these were on her arms, some on her legs and some on the front of her body. There were burns on the head, neck, shoulder, thigh and knee. Finally there was the decapitation. The clothing was blood-soaked and the injuries were consistent with being run over by a train, with the burns caused by electrocution. The bruises were caused before death. He concluded, ‘she would fall, be electrocuted, and shortly after be decapitated. The bruises were not of sufficient severity to have caused death.’ Dr Walker agreed with his colleague on the cause of death.

  The coroner then pressed him for an analysis of the injuries. Davies said that he thought the bruises were ‘consistent with a struggle, whereby the arms were grasped or knocked by the assailant’. He demonstrated two blows on a court official and added that the two would have been standing up at the time of the blows.

  The inquest was then adjourned until 28 March, when it was concluded. It was a short hearing, lasting only an hour and a half. Albert Garr, the train driver on the train on 13 March, was first to give evidence. He noticed nothing unusual on the journey at all, but noted that no inspection of the train had been carried out between Eltham and Kidbrooke. Robert Gow was the train’s guard. He recalled that the train was made up of eight carriages. He said that several people boarded the train at Barnehurst and several alighted. A few people had boarded the train and alighted from it at the stations between Barnehurst and Kidbrooke. He had not noticed an open carriage door when he looked out of a window between Eltham and Kidbrooke. When asked if anyone left the train at Kidbrooke, he agreed with his colleagues that no one did, but unlike them he thought that someone had entered the train at that station; probably a man. According to him, ‘I am quite sure I saw no
one leave the train at Kidbrooke. It would be possible but very improbable to miss seeing anyone.’ The train waited at Kidbrooke for about twelve seconds. At Charing Cross, about 50–60 people alighted. He was asked whether it would be possible for a carriage door to be opened between Eltham and Kidbrooke, for a woman to get out and then for the door to be closed again, and Garr thought it was possible, but that it would have to be done quickly, for it was only about a minute and forty seconds between Eltham and where the corpse was found.

  Then the man whom Garr had seen board the train at Kidbrooke gave evidence. He was Joseph Colney, a civil servant at the Ministry of Aviation’s Aerodrome at Kidbrooke. Whilst he was standing on the platform he did not see anyone talk to the porter, but as to whether anyone did so as he was boarding, he could not be certain. He had been wearing a light rain coat and a bowler hat. He thought he might have seen a young woman in the booking hall on that or the following night, which was unusual. Various other railway and police officials also gave evidence, the essence of which has already been related.

  The coroner then began his summing up. He ruled out suicide as a possibility as Mrs East was not depressed or unhappy. He asked when it was that the young man who entered the compartment at Barnehurst left. Although the two female witnesses claimed he had left at Kidbrooke, their statements had been flatly contradicted by the railway staff and Mr Colney. The other question to ask was whether Mrs East opened the compartment door in transit of her own accord, or whether she was pushed out by another. If the former was the case, she might have used the door as an escape from another, and if so, this was still murder. It should be remembered that these compartments did not have communicating corridors and the only means of exit or egress was via the door onto the platform. The coroner did not think it could have been an accidental death, because that did not account for a number of her possessions being found in the compartment. He told the jury they could return an open verdict if they were not satisfied whether this was a case of accident, suicide or murder.

  Yet the jury made their decision in five minutes. They were unanimous in their decision that Mrs East had been pushed out of the train or had jumped out in order to escape her assailant. Mr Connolly, the solicitor employed by the railway company, expressed the company’s sympathy with the deceased’s family, and the coroner thanked the police and the company for their assistance.

  The case remained unsolved and was recalled in the local press in January 1931, at the time of the mysterious murder on nearby Blackheath of Louisa Steele (chronicled in the author’s Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in Lewisham and Deptford).

  In The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sherlock Holmes, having been told of the facts as expressed in the press, asks, ‘This article, you say, contains all the public facts?’ To which Dr Mortimer replies, ‘It does.’ Holmes puts another question, ‘Then let me have the private ones.’

  For this case, these can be found in the appropriate police file. However, much of this file consists of statements by the witnesses who gave evidence at the inquest and so is already known to the reader. The police hunt centred around a search for the man who entered Mrs East’s compartment at Barnehurst. The file contains a number of communications which were made to the police by the public, and these shall now be examined.

  One was an anonymous letter, received on 4 April, which read as follows: ‘If you go to 5 Rayner Place an see Mr F. Kallis, he is the man you want for Mrs East, between Kidbrooke and Eltham he worse a cote like the soldier he as been in prisen a lot.’ Frank Callis was the man named in the letter. He was an unemployed labourer, aged 35, and living in Islington with his wife and two children. He had been in prison for assault prior to 1914 and was known to wear an army greatcoat. Yet his wife said he had been at home on that night by half past seven. The police discounted the letter, believing it to have been written by an ex-landlady of Callis’s, who bore him a grudge.

  Other men came under suspicion. John Cross, a 36-year-old builder, who wore a khaki coat and worked in Orpington, was one. Yet his foreman vouched for him and Cross said he did not know Barnehurst station. A cleaner in Camden Town said an ex-miner called, asking for a pair of boots, and that he answered the description of the man. Thomas Baden-Powell, aged 25, of Brighton and of independent means, had travelled into London to see his solicitors on the day of the murder – he wore an officer’s overcoat. He came under suspicion, too. Bombardier Gun from Preston barracks also thought he saw a man in khaki at Victoria station on the day of the murder. Finally, a man answering the description of the wanted man, was seen leaving Lewisham station on the day of the murder. None of these leads came to anything.

  Tabard concluded, on 1 May in his report:

  I beg to report that enquiries have been continued with a view to trace the man who was said to have got into the railway carriage at Barnehurst station, occupied by the deceased, Mrs East, but no information has been obtained that would lead to his identity or throw any further light on the matter.

  After the murder, there were calls for greater safety arrangements on trains, such as sliding panels between compartments and special carriages. These were not heeded. One writer later noted that the public had little to fear, for between 1864 and 1929, only seven people had been murdered on trains in England. In fact, suburban trains did not have interior corridors until the 1970s, when rising crime led to them being installed.

  Was the young man seen entering the carriage at Barnehurst guilty of murder or was he innocent? If the latter, he presumably left the train before it arrived at Kidbrooke, either at Bexleyheath or at Eltham, and then was understandably reluctant to involve himself in a murder case in which he was prime suspect. If he was guilty he could have left the train after Kidbrooke, because it appears he did not do so there, despite the two women claiming he did. It seems fairly certain that the man they saw was the watchman, who was patently not the young man seen by Mrs Richards at Barnehurst. They probably did not see him alight from the train, because he did not do so, but saw the watchman on the platform and, not seeing anyone else there save the porter, made an incorrect assumption. The motive for the crime was probably robbery, though it may have been an attempted sexual assault.

  CHAPTER 12

  Did Frederick Field Kill Annie Upchurch? 1931

  There was no doubt that this case was going to be a bit of a stinker.

  As Spilsbury’s first biographer noted, ‘The 1930’s are particularly rich in notorious cases from the seamy side of life in the West End.’ Although the murder discussed here was officially unsolved, there is a strong possibility that the killer was known.

  Frederick H L Field, aged 27 and born in Tenterden, Kent, in 1903, was employed as a sign writer by Messrs Hilder & Co., sign contractors of Great Pulteney Street. He was a married man and lived in Sutton. He and his manager, Douglas W L Bartrum, went, on 2 October 1931, to an empty shop premises on Shaftesbury Avenue. They needed to gain access to the place in order to carry out some repairs to water pipes in the flat above. Unfortunately they did not have the keys and the place was locked. However, they were able to force open a wooden door at the rear of the premises on New Compton Street.

  Bartrum saw something on the passageway floor and later remarked, ‘It looked like a wax model’. His colleague thought that it looked more like a corpse, which indeed was the case. Bartrum told Field to fetch the police, which he duly did. Field found PS Ferridge on duty at Bloomsbury Street and told him, ‘Sergeant, will you come round the corner? There’s a woman in a shop, and I think she is dead.’ Senior officers were soon being assembled and Chief Inspector Sharpe, who was getting ready to go on holiday to the seaside, rang Superintendent George Cornish and demanded his presence at Shaftesbury Avenue. He recalled: ‘Well, the hunt had started when I got there.’

  The body was that of a partially unclothed unknown young woman. She was wearing a green dress, which had been provided by a firm in Bear Street, Leicester Square, and which had been pulled up behind her head. Her sil
k jumper had been used as a gag. Her watch had stopped at 8.20. From marks on the floor, it seemed that she had been dragged along by the feet for some yards to her present position. Her cloth belt had been used to strangle her. A woman’s hat lay under her corpse. Her handbag was missing and there was no sign of the keys to the premises. It was presumed that robbery was the motive, especially after it was stated by Mary Davis, housekeeper at the deceased’s lodgings, that she had had £4 in her handbag, as well as a ring and a cigarette case.

  Shaftesbury Avenue, c.1930. Author’s collection

  Dr Fairlie, the police surgeon, noted the cause of death. He also said that death had occurred about 36 hours prior to when he had seen the corpse on 2 October. There were no other marks on the body and there had been no sign of sexual interference.

  It was uncertain at first who the victim was and suggestions were made to the police. Doris Lynn, aged 30 from Leeds and who wore a green coat, was one possibility and another was Miss Elisa Wicks of Farnham. However enquiries revealed that the dead girl went by the name of Miss Norma Laverick (and others) and that she was allegedly a dancer. From 1930, she worked at Bear Street, but lived at Warwick Street, Victoria, and did not bring men back here. Her real name was Annie Louise Norah Upchurch, aged 20, who had been born in London in 1911. Her father had been a railway employee and she had lived with her parents at Cricklewood until she was 14. Apparently she had caused no end of trouble to her parents, chiefly with young men. She had spent time in a home in Sussex in 1925 and then in a Salvation Army hostel in Norwood. In 1927 she worked as a servant in Euston. Annie left home permanently in December 1927 and became a prostitute in the West End, aged 16. She gave birth to a baby girl, Marjorie Norah, in November 1928, who was looked after by one Mrs Callaway. As one commentator wrote, ‘She seems to have been a kindly and likeable creature, as are so many of these unfortunate women whose lives end tragically; the men involved in such cases are uniformly detestable.’ One Annie Norman described her thus, ‘I always found her to be a very nice girl. She was very kind and good natured.’