Girl Trouble

by Dyhouse, Carol

  The couple appear to have tried to impress each other with their recklessness and bravado. Hulten boasted of connections with a Chicago mob. Elizabeth professed an appetite for danger, fantasising about becoming a gangster’s ‘gun-moll’. They took to the road that evening in Hulten’s (stolen) heavy truck. Their first victim was a girl cyclist, whom they deliberately pushed off the road, robbed and left in a ditch. The following day they attempted to hold up and rob a taxi driver, but were frustrated by the sudden appearance of an armed American officer. Their next move was to pick up a nineteen-year-old girl. She had missed her train, and they offered her a lift to Reading. Hulten stopped the truck at Egham, claiming a fault with the back axle. The girl got out of the truck with Jones to try to see what was going on. Hulten hit her over the head with a steel bar. Jones and Hulten then robbed the girl of her possessions and lobbed her into a river. Amazingly, she survived to tell the story. The following night, Hulten and Jones, still short of money, decided to target another taxi driver. Their victim this time was George Heath, driving along Hammersmith Broadway. Heath, married with two young sons, was a good-looking man of distinctive appearance: he had a pronounced cleft chin. Hailed by Elizabeth, Heath stopped his car and the pair got in. When they reached the Great West Road, sometime after midnight, Hulten asked Heath to pull in. As Heath was opening the rear door to enable his passengers to get out, he received a bullet through his back from Hulten’s automatic. He was shoved into the front passenger seat, and as Hulten drove on, Elizabeth went through the dying man’s pockets stripping him of anything they might sell. They dumped Heath’s body in a ditch and drove back to Hammersmith.

  The next day, the pair celebrated. They treated themselves to a day at the races, a meal out, and the cinema. There seems to have been an easy familiarity between the two, but no sexual intimacy. Hulten later confessed that a rash on Jones’s body had made him wonder whether she was diseased. He commented that the American Army medical authorities had warned men against such things. Neither appeared remorseful after killing Heath. Rather, their recklessness increased. Jones expressed a whim for a fur coat. So they drove to the West End and hovered near a side entrance to the Berkeley Hotel. They watched women emerge until one appeared, resplendent in white ermine, which caught Elizabeth’s eye. Hulten leapt out and tried to strip the coat from the woman’s back. A policeman appeared at this point, so they made a quick getaway. The couple parted soon after. Within days, police found Heath’s body, and then his car. They closed in on Hulten. Elizabeth Jones began to panic, talked to third parties, and was soon herself arrested and charged.

  The trial drew crowds and attracted massive attention in the press. Hulten appeared nonchalant and unrepentant in court and doodled sketches of cars and aeroplanes on a pad throughout the proceedings. He blamed Elizabeth, Elizabeth blamed Hulten. Both were found guilty and sentenced to death, although in the case of Elizabeth there was a recommendation to mercy. Elizabeth sobbed convulsively as the verdicts were announced, and she left the court shrieking accusations at Hulten as ‘a brute’. Both parties appealed. Hulten’s appeal was dismissed.17 Elizabeth Jones was given a last-minute reprieve.

  There was a public outcry at this. Most of the objectors thought that the verdict should have been the same for both parties. Large numbers of protestors – including many women – thought that Jones should hang. Indeed graffiti to this effect, accompanied by crude drawings of a figure dangling from a scaffold, were chalked on to walls in her Glamorganshire home town. Factory girls in some parts of Britain threatened strikes over the judgment. Support for Elizabeth was muted, although interestingly she received several offers of marriage. Hulten was hanged on his twenty-third birthday in March 1945.

  What Orwell had found so squalid about the Cleft Chin murder was its pointlessness; there was no feeling in it. This was no crime of passion but a callous affair reflecting ‘the anonymous life of the dance-halls and the false values of the American film’.18 But this was precisely what caught the public imagination. Elizabeth Jones brought into focus widespread but diffuse contemporary fears about the good-time girl. Alwyn Raymond, a journalist who wrote a popular account of the case, represented Elizabeth in just these terms. She is described as a striptease artist who had been booed off the floor, but had discovered the lucrative potential of American servicemen.

  From this discovery can be dated the life of dancing, drinking and comparative luxury that she counted as success. In a few weeks, she had thrown away all her old clothes. Now it was silk stockings, high heels, American perfume, flashy jewellery and all the things that she thought made her ‘glamorous’. And she took upon herself what she called a ‘stage name’ – Georgina Grayson.19

  The Cleft Chin murder inspired a number of accounts and fictions. A. J. La Bern’s popular novel Night Darkens the Streets, first published in 1947, was inspired by the case.20 The story is that of Gwen Rawlings, a working-class girl from Pimlico. Gwen is described as gorgeous but empty-headed, easily seduced by the glamour of American film stars. There is a rather contemptuous, even sneering tone about her portrayal as a ‘back-street blonde’ with too much lipstick and ‘a gaudy soul’:

  Out of the wilderness of Pimlico came Gwen Rawlings, an ignoramus with starry eyes, a well-developed body and an undeveloped mind. She had no inherent vice, only a greed for the sweet things in life …21

  Gwen runs away from home, rents a room and secures a job in a nightclub. She poses as a sophisticate, but is soon out of her depth and taken advantage of: the city is shown as darkly menacing for girls. An affair with a jazz musician offers her a short period of happiness. This is soon interrupted as she finds herself falsely implicated in theft and unable to defend herself in the juvenile court. She is sent away for ‘moral protection’ in an approved school. Stripped of her feminine clothes and subjected to an austere regime, she becomes hysterical. Far from becoming penitent, she is corrupted further by the influence of other delinquent girls. Humiliation gives way to plotting and rebellion. Gwen runs away and hitches a lift to London. After a series of escapades she finds herself consorting with a set of dodgy, undesirable types in Brighton. One night she and her friends set out to drive to London for the races – they are all drunk. Gwen is at the wheel, swigging from a whisky bottle, when the car hits and kills a policeman. Desperately fleeing from all this, she takes up with a couple of American servicemen who have recently deserted. Like Hulten and Jones, they turn to robbery and violence. Gwen’s story ends with her being tried for murder and found guilty – with a recommendation to mercy.

  In May 1947 the popular paper Picture Post drew attention to a forthcoming film, based on the La Bern story but entitled Good Time Girl.22 The film was produced by Sidney Box for Gainsborough, an offshoot of the Rank Organisation. Picture Post’s article was headed ‘Fight in a Reformatory’, and consisted mainly of photographs of girls running amok: climbing over desks, kicking, slapping and biting each other, and tearing each other’s hair out. These photographs (by Bert Hardy) carried captions such as ‘Good-time girls become the tough-time girls’ and ‘The kind of scene that teachers have bad dreams about’. The feature unleashed a storm of controversy.23 A strongly worded complaint to the Home Secretary suggested that the film presented an appalling picture of what went on in approved schools: it was deemed near-libellous and detrimental to the government’s interests. The film was judged to be harmful to the interests of Elizabeth Jones (a former inmate of the approved school in Sale, Cheshire, and by May 1947 serving time in Aylesbury borstal). Equally, it was considered damaging to her parents.24 There were calls to Chuter Ede, as Home Secretary, to take action. Correspondence in the National Archives shows that the Home Office made contact with Gainsborough Pictures and explained these concerns. Chuter Ede had lunch with Mr Rank. However, the British Board of Film Censors did not consider that there was a case for censorship. Sir Sidney Harris, chair of the BBFC, maintained that ‘censorship cannot be used for the purpose of preventing misrepresentations�
�.25

  4.1 Girls in an reformatory run amok. Scene from the controversial film Good Time Girl (1948) (photograph © Bert Hardy/Picture Post/Getty Images).

  There was an attempt to reach some kind of accommodation. The Home Office wanted Gainsborough to portray the approved school in the film in a more sympathetic light. A letter to Mr Rank voiced a number of concerns, such as the harsh depiction of authority, and the out-of-date uniforms worn by the girls ‘which might have been seen many years ago in a reformatory’ but were argued to have no resemblance to the clothes worn in the schools of the 1940s.26 Some changes were made in response to these Home Office concerns. For instance, a short scene was inserted in which the school’s headmistress comments on the difficulties of securing the right kind of teachers committed to working with difficult girls. But these changes failed to reassure many government officials, who thought the scenes in the film showing what went on in an approved school were so well acted and convincing that they might provoke great disquiet.27

  The film told the story of Gwen Rawlings (played by Jean Kent) in the form of a morality tale, related by a female probation officer (Flora Robson) to a young girl (Lyla Lawrence, played by Diana Dors). Unhappy at home, Lyla was just beginning to go off the rails: ‘Why shouldn’t I have a good time?’ she asks petulantly. By the end of the film, the sad story of Gwen’s descent into damnation has convinced her to reform. Finally released in the spring of 1948, Good Time Girl met with a mixed reception.28 Some felt that it glamorised vice. The Daily Mail’s critic thundered against the film as ‘sordid’, ‘vicious’ and ‘loathsome’. The reviewer in the Sunday Dispatch alleged that it had made him vomit. Women’s groups in Newcastle protested vehemently, insisting that ‘Girls should not see this film,’ and asking, ‘Is it our desire to debauch our young people altogether, or do we really wish foreigners to think that this is the British way of life?’29 The Evening Standard was more phlegmatic: ‘Bad girl makes worse film,’ announced its opinion column.30 ‘The film has a MORAL,’ announced the Evening Standard:

  Today’s sermon tells us what happens to little girls who like dancing and jewellery and run away from their brutal daddies who beat them – as if you didn’t know.

  Dilys Powell in the Sunday Times was one of the few who considered the film a morality tale rather than an incitement to debauchery. But even she wondered whether its depiction of the workings of the juvenile courts was overly pessimistic.31 Comparatively few of the reviewers seem to have engaged with questions about the kind of treatment meted out to girls in approved schools, even though both Night Darkens the Streets and Good Time Girl were critical of current practice. It was the government’s reputation in this respect that had worried the Home Office.

  Approved schools for girls attracted a disproportionate amount of public interest. This was probably not unconnected with the subject’s potential to stimulate erotic imaginings and the regular production of second-rate films and bad novels.32 Markedly fewer girls than boys came before the juvenile courts.33 Girls were more likely than boys to be classified as delinquent for moral and sexual, rather than criminal, behaviour. Lilian Barker, Governor of Aylesbury Girls’ Borstal in the 1920s, judged that most of the girls in her care got into trouble because they were ‘over-sexed’. ‘Sex to my mind ought to be put in the same category as stealing and lying,’ she asserted, adding somewhat scarily: ‘It has to be got out of them somehow.’34

  Dame Lilian acquired a reputation for humane prison governance. But some reform schools (later approved schools) could be frightening places. Knowle Hill, originally a reformatory school for girls in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, housed up to fifty girls. There had been riots among the inmates in 1923: the school was said to be entirely out of control and the police were called in.35 An officer reportedly was badly bitten by one of the girls. Punishments were harsh. Some girls were whipped with the tawse on their hands or buttocks. Others were forced to swallow castor oil – a traditional punishment which produced cramp-like stomach pains. A few girls alleged that they were threatened with injections by the school doctor, which they were told would be painful and make them sick. The Home Office had been forced to intervene by visiting the school and carrying out an inquiry. Much of the girls’ testimony was denied. Notes on the case suggest that the injections may have contained apomorphine, sometimes used in cases of hysteria.36 The issue of corporal punishment was controversial: two female inspectors had strongly objected in the Knowle Hill case. But while discouraging the practice, the Home Office was reluctant to ban it altogether. An internal memorandum in 1923 submitted that the task of controlling difficult girls – especially when hysterical – could be formidable.37 The punishment book from Knowle Hill shows that canings and slappings continued into the 1950s.38 A boy from the local grammar school, who visited as part of an exchange in 1970, never forgot his sight of the ‘padded cell’ at Knowle Hill, a small lockable room with heavy padding on walls, floor and door.39 There were, no doubt, institutions run on enlightened and compassionate principles, but others found it hard to shed the punitive traditions of the reformatory.

  The good-time girl had become a folk-devil. Stereotypes of her appeared in surprising places, sometimes under the guise of ‘objective’ social research. In 1946, for instance, the British Medical Journal published an article on ‘The Unstable Adolescent Girl’ which had originally appeared as an appendix to a report of the Committee of Psychiatry and the Law, and had gained the approval of both the British Medical Association and the Magistrates’ Association.40 This urged attention to what it defined as a serious social problem, one which it contended had become worse since the end of the Second World War: that of ‘the good-time girl’, ‘unamenable to discipline and control’. These unstable girls often showed ‘precocious physical development, especially in the breast and hips’. They were cunning, and targeted good-looking men with money.

  They spend a great deal of time on making up their faces and adorning themselves, though they often do not trouble to wash and are sluttish about their undergarments. Their favourite reading matter consists of the weekly journals dealing with the love life of film stars, and they live in a fantasy world of erotic glamour. Frequently they are a good deal more intelligent and sophisticated than their parents, whom they outwit and despise.41

  This report has echoes of Cyril Burt, who had characterised girl delinquents as sometimes highly intelligent but ‘oversexed’: reckless adventuresses with no sense of shame.42 According to the British Medical Journal writers, such girls did not settle well in remand homes or approved schools, and needed medical and psychiatric treatment. These wayward girls, they submitted, were out of control.43

  Criticism of young girls’ appearance, their hairstyles, make-up and mode of dress is common in post-1945 accounts of wayward girls. H. D. Willcock’s report on juvenile delinquency, for instance, published in 1949, contained observations such as ‘the girls are all extremely heavily made up, with extra thick lipstick applied carelessly’, and ‘Their faces were heavily and inexpertly made up, one [girl] sported a pair of long ear-rings.’44 Writing about girls’ problems, and problem girls, is shot through with prejudice stemming from assumptions about class, aesthetics, taste and morality. With references to breasts and underwear, and accusations of sluttishness and nymphomania, these descriptions are also eroticised. This is apparent in the representations; it is also clear from the way in which they were read, both at the time and subsequently. An internet trawl for ‘reform school girl’ yields predictable results. And nearly a century later, accounts of the riots and of the punishments meted out to the hapless girls at Knowle Hill are detailed on semi-pornographic websites.45

  The post-war moral panic over good-time girls was fuelled by unease over the belief that they were earning ‘easy money’. Women who struck up relationships with men from upper- or upper-middle-class backgrounds often came in for particular vilification. They were resented as being ‘on the make’. Ruth Ellis, tried and hanged for shooting h
er abusive lover David Blakely in the mid-fifties, suffered from the class hostility of those who condemned her social ambition along with her sexual behaviour as a good-time girl.46 Like Gladys Mary Hall in the 1930s, most investigators maintained that girls traded sex for luxury, not out of necessity. Scotland Yard’s Detective-Inspector Robert Fabian, whose colourful tales inspired a popular BBC television series, Fabian of the Yard (1954–6), insisted that he knew what made a girl become a prostitute. It was ‘sheer laziness, and vanity’. These girls were as hard as nails, he asserted. His own hardened, man-of the-world tone blended with an American-crime-writerish misogyny:

  A whore is a bad apple. There is a big brown bruise on her soul, of self-indulgence and selfishness. I do not think that there exists in London any such person as an honest prostitute. They taint any flesh they touch.47

  But the pipe-smoking Fabian also set out to reassure. The Metropolitan Police made it their business to look out for runaway girls and wayward daughters, he contended. A big van (‘the Children’s Waggon’) did its rounds every evening, collecting young girls who had gone missing or escaped from remand homes, in order to deliver them to safety.48 Fabian’s writing bristles with double standards, demonising good-time girls, indulgent towards the men who would consort with them.