Foul Deeds in Kensington and Chelsea

by John J Eddleston

  The authorities had refused one of Lal Dhingra’s last requests: that his body be granted Hindu burial rites, and he was interred in a grave within the prison. There he remained until December 1976 when his body was exhumed, along with that of Udham Singh, another Indian hanged in 1940 for a political assassination.

  Both bodies were then repatriated to India.

  Chapter 26

  The Murder of Frances Buxton

  1920

  It was a matter of routine for the constable on the beat around Lawrence Street, Chelsea. He would patrol the area, trying the doors of the various business premises, in order to make sure that all was secure. Things were no different on the morning of Sunday, 18 January 1920.

  The officer came to the Cross Keys public house, a curiously isolated building, within the borough of Chelsea. The pub stood alone with a passageway at each side. One of those passageways led to a piece of wasteland, which led to the back of All Saints’ Church. The other separated the Cross Keys from a fairly new block of flats. With such a position to consider, the officer thought that it would be better to check the back door of the pub, as well as the front. The front door was securely locked but, when he tried the rear door, the constable found, to his surprise, that it was open.

  The police officer entered the pub, calling out if anyone was there. Then, suddenly, he noticed the smell of burning and it seemed to be coming from the direction of the cellar. Going to investigate further, the constable found smoke issuing from a pile of what appeared to be sacks and sawdust in the cellar. He immediately called in the fire brigade.

  It didn’t take long for the brigade to douse down the sacking but, when it was removed, they found a woman’s body underneath the sawdust. Further investigation showed that the woman had been battered about the head, by some sort of blunt instrument. Dried blood and sawdust were caked about the woman’s head and it was clear that this was no tragic accident. The police were looking at a case of murder and the victim was the landlady of the premises, fifty-five-year-old Frances Buxton.

  The inquest on the dead woman opened on Tuesday, 20 January. Frank Charles Buxton, the owner of the Sussex Hotel, near Bexhill, testified that he was Frances’s husband, but added that they had not lived together for eleven or twelve years. He had asked her, on more than one occasion, to give up the Cross Keys, or at least to stop living on her own, but she had been a most strong willed woman and made up her own mind.

  Evidence was given that when Frances’s body had been found, the upper portion of it was buried in sawdust. In addition to the sacking thrown over the body, there was also more stuffed beneath her legs. The wounds on the head were extreme and the weapon used to inflict them was, almost certainly, a bottle. Pieces of glass had been found scattered about the body, which had been lying in a pool of blood, and a broken bottle had been found in a passageway close by.

  Elizabeth Mitchell was a barmaid at the Cross Keys and she had left the premises at her usual time, after the bar had closed, on the night of Saturday, 17 January. At the time, there would have been around £20 in the till, being that day’s takings. Elizabeth was also able to say that, during the time she served in the bar, Frances was in the habit of wearing quite a lot of jewellery and some of this now seemed to be missing.

  Continuing her testimony, Elizabeth stated that, after the bar closed each night, it was Frances’s routine to go down to the cellar to sort out the barrels and other matters for the next day’s business.

  Lily Mitchell was Elizabeth’s daughter and she also helped out behind the bar. Lily had been there on the Saturday night and she remembered that not long before closing time, a man came in. The pub was empty at the time, which was why Lily noticed him in particular. The man was still there when Lily finished work for the night. Lily was able to furnish at least part of a description. The man was tall and fairly well-dressed with greying hair. Unfortunately, he wore a cloth cap, which he kept pulled well down so that Lily did not get a good look at his face.

  Lily was also able to give details of two other possible suspects. Some years before, Frances had taken on a man, as a working partner, at the Cross Keys. The partnership had not lasted long and had not been helped by the fact that one day, the man had attacked Frances and held her down. Finally, Lily was able to tell the court of a man she had seen in the bar on the Thursday before Frances died.

  The man was simply enjoying a quiet pint but he kept looking up, at Frances. In fun, Lily had said to her employer, ‘I see there is someone in the bar trying to give you the glad eye.’ Frances, however, seemed to be quite concerned. She told Lily that the man had been in for the last three or four days, had been following her, and that she had seen him standing outside, looking up at the house.

  The inquest was then adjourned to Tuesday, 3 February, to allow the police to continue with their enquiries. They had the ex-partner to check out, the tall man who had been in the bar on the night Frances was last seen alive, and the mysterious admirer who may or may not have been the same man. They also had clues to go on. Some banknotes, with bloody fingerprints on them, had been found scattered about the bar and matching prints had been found in the blood spatters on the cellar wall. Unfortunately, those prints did not match any known criminals and the police were unable to trace either the tall man, or the admirer.

  When the inquest re-opened, the first witness was Anne O’Connor. She had been a customer of the Cross Keys on Saturday, 17 January and she too had seen the tall man. However, she was also unable to give a detailed description, meaning that her evidence did not take the investigation any further forward.

  Mrs Harvey was a regular customer at the pub and a good friend of Frances’. On Friday, 16 January, they had been in conversation and Frances remarked that a man had been trying to thrust his companionship on her. Foolishly, she had told him that she lived alone. If anything, this seemed to encourage him and he became even more obsessive. On one occasion, Frances had even had to throw him out of the private parlour of the bar, when he became too forward. Was this man the same tall man, who had been in the bar that fateful night, or perhaps the man who had given her the ‘glad eye’?

  By now the police had to admit that all avenues of inquiry had been explored and all had come to nothing. They had not been able to trace any of the men referred to and it was highly likely that no arrest would ever be made. Having heard all that evidence, the jury had little choice but to return the expected verdict of, ‘wilful murder against some person or persons unknown’.

  The murder of Frances Buxton is still listed as unsolved.

  Chapter 27

  Ronald True

  1922

  On 17 June 1891, a sixteen-year-old unmarried girl, Annabel True, gave birth to a son, whom she named Angus Ronald. As he grew up, the boy dropped his first name and would, for the rest of his days, be known simply as Ronald True.

  In 1902, things improved greatly for Annabel, when she married a wealthy man who then became Ronald’s step-father. Determined that something should be made of the somewhat feckless eleven-year-old boy, he determined that Ronald should be sent to Bedford Grammar School. It did nothing to help Ronald, for he was by now a liar, a confirmed truant and displayed signs of cruelty towards animals.

  In 1908, at the age of seventeen, Ronald left school and, no doubt, would simply have been content to be idle and living off his step-father’s money, but that gentleman was having none of it. Through his influence, a number of jobs were found for Ronald, but he either lost them all, or walked out after a month or so. Thus, Ronald tried sheep farming in New Zealand, where one day he earned himself a criminal record by stealing a bicycle in order to travel to a boxing match that he was taking part in. From there he moved on to Argentina, followed by Canada, where he spent a short time as an officer in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. From Canada he moved on to Mexico and also spent time in Brazil.

  By 1914, Ronald was in San Francisco, earning a precarious living as a prize-fighter, until one day he forged s
ome money orders, for which he was arrested. Claiming that he was the Honourable Arthur Reginald French, also known as Lord De Freyne of Scotland he was, nevertheless, sentenced to fifteen months in prison, being released early in 1915.

  By this time, of course, the Great War was raging in Europe and, somewhat uncharacteristically perhaps, Ronald decided that he would join up and serve his country. He joined the Royal Flying Corps but, yet again, this was not to lead to the making of Ronald True. In February 1916, he crashed his plane on his first solo flight, at Farnborough. Luckily he was not seriously injured, though he did suffer some severe concussion. He was back in the air the following month but then managed to crash again. This second crash was followed by a nervous breakdown and, in October 1916, Ronald True was invalided out of the service.

  Still with no real purpose in life, Ronald then moved to New York where, using his talent for lying to its fullest extent, he regaled all who would listen with tales of dog-fights he had had with German pilots on the Western Front. Those tales attracted, amongst others, a young would-be actress named Frances Roberts. She and Ronald started walking out together and they married, honeymooning in Mexico, then travelling on to Cuba and, finally, returning to England.

  Ronald’s step-father was still determined that something should be done for his rather idle step-son and yet another position was found for him, this time with a mining company in the Gold Coast. Ronald started working there in February 1919 but had managed to lose the job within six months. The family had had enough. Ronald was given a generous allowance and told to fend for himself.

  By this time, Ronald True had developed another problem. Soon after his two crashes in 1916, he had started experimenting with morphine and by 1919, he was addicted to the drug. A number of spells inside various nursing homes followed, but it did nothing to wean Ronald from his habit. In fact, this led to another brush with the law when, in September 1921, Ronald was fined by Portsmouth magistrates for using forged prescriptions to satisfy his habit.

  Things were growing steadily worse and by this time, so dependent had Ronald become, that his behaviour, always rather erratic, began to deteriorate still further. He began to show hostility and violent behaviour towards his wife and his mental state grew ever worse. Now, whenever anything went wrong in his life, Ronald blamed it on another man named Ronald True who was following him, impersonating him and doing all the bad things he was being blamed for. This second Ronald True was a complete figment of Ronald’s imagination, but real enough to Ronald himself.

  In early 1922, Ronald disappeared in London. He spent his time living in various hotels and was out every night drinking, dancing and womanising. In February of that year he met up with an out of work motor mechanic named James Armstrong and the two became instant friends. Now Ronald had a companion with whom he spent most days and nights and the two became well known in the watering holes of London’s west end. One day, Ronald even bought a gun from Armstrong, to protect himself in case he should bump into the other Ronald True.

  On Saturday, 18 February, Ronald met a new woman, an attractive twenty-five-year-old prostitute whose real name was Gertrude Yates, but who worked under the assumed name of Olive Young. They spent that night together at her well-furnished, basement flat at 13a Finborough Road. However, perhaps confusing the normal arrangements in such cases, Ronald did not pay his companion, but instead stole a £5 note from her purse before he left the flat.

  On 2 March, Ronald decided that it would be better if he had some transport to take him to his various haunts around the capital. So, on that day, he contacted a hire company and booked a chauffeur-driven car. The gentleman detailed to drive him, and James Armstrong, around London was Luigi Mazzola. The two men would spend the day being driven from bar to bar, finally dismissing the driver late each night.

  At the same time, Ronald became rather eager to renew his acquaintance with Gertrude Yates. Completely ignoring the fact that he had stolen money from her, Ronald ordered Mazzola to drive him to Gertrude’s flat each night, just before midnight. This visit occurred on three consecutive nights: 2-4 March, but on each of these occasions, Gertrude was out. However, on the night of Sunday, 5 March, Gertrude was home and, for some unknown reason, she let Ronald True back into her flat.

  On Monday, 6 March, at around 7.10am, the paperboy delivered the Daily Mirror to 13a Finborough Road. Some twenty minutes later, at 7.30am, the milkman delivered a pint of milk. Soon after this, Ronald True used some of that milk to make two cups of tea. He placed one on a bedside cabinet and handed the other to Gertrude Yates who sat up in bed to drink it. Then, without any warning, Ronald took a rolling pin he had picked up from the kitchen and battered Gertrude five times about the head. Satisfied that she was dead, he then dragged or carried her body to the bathroom where he left her.

  At 9.15am, Emily Steel, the daily maid, arrived to clean the flat. Emily was fully aware of her employer’s occupation, so was not surprised to see a man’s coat and scarf in the kitchen. No doubt a client had been invited to stay the night. It was none of Emily’s business, so she set about cooking some sausages for Gertrude’s breakfast.

  As the sausages sizzled in the pan, Ronald True entered the kitchen. Emily recognised him as a man she had seen there before, so was not alarmed in any way. Indeed, the considerate gentleman even remarked, ‘Don’t wake Miss Young. We were late last night. She’s in a deep sleep. I’ll send the car round for her at twelve o’clock.’ He then picked up his coat and scarf and, with a smile, went out into the street.

  At 9.30am, Emily Steel decided to check on her employer. She knocked on the bedroom door and entered the room only to find it in disarray. There was blood everywhere, splashed up on the walls and all over the bedclothes and there seemed to be someone lying in the bed. Tentatively, Emily pulled back the bedclothes only to find that the shape she had seen was formed by two, heavily bloodstained, pillows and the rolling pin. Going to investigate through the rest of the flat, Emily finally found Gertrude’s naked body in the bathroom. A towel had been rammed down her throat and a dressing-gown cord tied tightly around her neck.

  Ronald True, meanwhile, had telephoned both James Armstrong and Luigi Mazzola and the three spent the rest of that day driving to various cafés and bars around London. At 8.40pm, Mazzola dropped the two friends off at the Hammersmith Palace of Varieties and was told that he would not be needed again that night. He then drove the car back to his garage, arriving there at 9.45pm, only to find the police waiting for him.

  Emily Steel had told the police about the chauffeur-driven car Ronald True had hired. That car was duly traced and Mazzola interviewed as to Ronald’s whereabouts. That, in turn, led officers to the Hammersmith Palace where Detective Inspector Burton saw Ronald and Armstrong in a box. Having arrested his quarry, Inspector Burton took him to the police station and interviewed him at length, Ronald claiming that there had been another man at the flat and he must have been the one who committed the crime.

  On Tuesday, 7 March, Ronald True was charged with the murder of Gertrude Yates. His circumstances did little to alter his behaviour and one day, held on remand in Brixton prison, he attacked a fellow inmate, who he believed was trying to steal his food.

  The trial began on 1 May, before Mister Justice McCardie, and lasted for five days. The defence was one of insanity, but in the event, the jury ruled that he was guilty of murder and sentenced to death. An appeal was heard on 26 May, and dismissed. Ronald was then moved to Pentonville prison to await his execution.

  Ronald True did not, however, die in the execution chamber of Pentonville prison. The medical officer of the prison submitted a report stating that he believed Ronald to be insane and the Home Secretary, Mr Shortt, ordered a panel of medical experts to examine the prisoner and determine whether or not he was sane. They all agreed that Ronald was not sane and the sentence was commuted to one of confinement in a secure hospital.

  This decision caused a public outcry, because another case at the time seemed to
indicate that there was one law for the rich and another for the poor.

  On Tuesday, 14 March, Lady Alice White had been found battered to death in her room at the Spencer Hotel, in Portman Street. A young pantry-boy at the hotel, eighteen-year-old Henry Julius Jacoby had been arrested, tried, found guilty and sentenced to death. He too had lost an appeal against that sentence but Jacoby had been hanged on Wednesday, 7 June. The public now demanded to know why a poor servant had been hanged for the murder of a titled lady whilst a rich man had, apparently, been let off after killing a common prostitute. The scandal almost cost the Home Secretary his job but the decision stood and Ronald was free of the noose.

  Ronald True was moved from Pentonville to Broadmoor where he spent the rest of his life, dying there in 1951, at the age of sixty.

  Chapter 28

  Joseph O’Sullivan and Reginald Dunne

  1922

  The early 1920s was a troublesome time for politicians in Britain. Ireland had, for some time, been arguing for independence and, in 1918, a sign of the intense Irish feeling could be seen in the general election results. The vast majority of the Irish seats had been taken by Sinn Fein, who demanded Home Rule for Ireland.

  Britain resisted all such overtures and an undeclared war then broke out between the British and Irish nationalists. The troubles dragged on for the best part of three years before a treaty was signed, in 1921, granting Ireland dominion status within the British Empire.

  The Treaty provided an Irish Free State and a separate Loyalist area in Northern Ireland but this in turn led to other problems. There were many Catholics in the north who supported Home Rule, and this led to clashes between them and the Protestant loyalists. During this bloody period more than 500 Catholics in Northern Ireland were murdered and, in many cases, the police seemed to do little to bring the killers to justice.