Great Train Crimes: Murder and Robbery on the Railways (17 page)

At 8.20 the train stopped between Hackney and Dalston Junction stations because of a signal. It was here that the first outsider was to have any inclination at all that something was amiss. Walter Tidd, the train’s fireman noticed Stratton walking along the track. The following conversation ensued, with Tidd asking,

‘What is the matter?’

‘Take me to the police. I have killed a girl.’

‘Come along with me.’

‘I hope she is dead.’

‘Why?’

‘Because if she is not it will mean 10 years for me. I have killed my girl. I have stabbed her in one of these compartments, I don’t know which, one of these chaps will tell you because they have heard her scream.’ The ‘chaps’ referred to included John Poole and Frederick Griffiths, two clerks who were on their way to their evening class in Dalston.

Tidd took Stratton to the guard, George Blackmore, and told him Stratton’s story. They took him to the stationmaster’s office (at Dalston Junction station) and then sent for a doctor and the police. They also noticed that Stratton’s hands were bloodstained. Meanwhile, Joseph Poole, another railway employee, went to the compartment and found Daisy’s bloodstained corpse. He also found a piece of iron wrapped in brown paper and cloth. Constables Johnson and Hart were the first to arrive, the former leaving point duty on Graham Road to do so. A description of the murder scene was provided by PC John Hart:

I saw the body of a woman lying on the floor between the seats, the head was towards the platform lying against the right seat. A woman’s hat was lying on the seat, also a leather music case [which contained Stratton’s earlier note to her] and an umbrella, a piece of iron wrapped in cloth and covered with blood was lying by the feet and a knife, also covered with blood was lying by the head. A small piece of brown paper was lying near the bar of iron. The woman’s clothes was covered with blood, there were wounds in the front of the throat and the floor of the carriage was covered in blood.

Dr Homes was called and saw the corpse. He gave an official pronouncement of death. After the body was taken to the mortuary, it was examined by Dr Barlow, the divisional surgeon, and he noted that there were 24 wounds.

Stratton was taken to Hackney Police Station. On the following day he was officially charged with the murder of Dorothy Mays. He elaborated with a further statement:

We have been keeping company for about 7 or 8 years. Since Christmas I have noticed a change in her affections towards me and I was determined that if I could not have her nobody else should and I have been awaiting a favourable opportunity ‘to do her in’.

When the two were alone in a compartment on the carriage of a North London train, the opportunity had arisen. Stratton took his chance:

I then pulled the piece of iron out of my pocket and struck her several times on the head with it. She fell to the floor of the carriage and I then pulled out the knife and stabbed her several times. The train then stopped, as the signal was against it. I jumped out of the carriage and slammed the door, walking along to the driver of the train, and told him to call the police as I had murdered my girl. The fireman got off his engine and took me to Hackney railway station.

On 25 February, the inquest was held at Bethnal Green Coroners’ Court. Stratton wanted to attend and he was granted permission from
the prison governor to do so. Because of his injury on the previous day to his left hand, his arm was in a sling. Otherwise, he was described thus ‘a tall, good looking man of rather pale complexion’. John James May, brother of the deceased, identified her body. Dr Barlow, the divisional police surgeon, told the court that he had found ten wounds to the head, a severe bruise to the left ear, five punctures to the neck, and eight stab wounds in the middle of her back, below the shoulder blades. There was no evidence of any struggle. The jury concluded that this was a case of murder by Stratton.

The magistrates’ court, meeting on 1 March, sent Stratton for trial at the Old Bailey. The accused made no statement as the prosecuting counsel, Mr Clark, said that this was ‘a very cruel type of murder’. At the Old Bailey on 10 March, Stratton pleaded guilty. His defence counsel, Edward Pule, said that the crime was due to a serious mental abnormality, even though Hugh Grierson, prison doctor at Brixton, thought that Stratton was sane enough. He was found guilty and had nothing to say as to why he should not be executed. The death sentence was duly passed.

The force of the law acted quickly. There was thought to be no reason why the Home Secretary should advise the King to grant a reprieve. On 29 March 1927, at 9 am, Mr R Baxter of Balfour Street, Hertford, executed Stratton at Brixton prison. According to the inquest on Stratton’s body, ‘Death [was] due to dislocation of cervical vertebrae by hanging executed by law.’

This had been yet another case of obsessive love turning violent. Daisy had tried to break away from Stratton, by turning to Freeman. Unfortunately, this had led to dire consequences when Stratton found that she had been seeing another man. Stratton prepared himself to kill her. Finally, when she lied twice to him, he was unable to hold himself back and his anger became fatal for both of them.

‘A sudden impulse came over me and I wanted to
push someone under the train.’

Avril Ray Waters seemed to be an ordinary girl. She had been born on 31 March 1924 and lived with her parents in Broadfields Avenue, Edgware. Her father, Eric Knowles Waters, was the manager of a grocery in Edgware. Miss Waters had left school and in 1939 was learning secretarial skills at a Pitman’s College in London. She travelled there by tube, presumably on the Bakerloo line and changing to the Central line.

On the evening of 15 February, she had finished her studies for the day there and was standing on platform 4 of the Tottenham Court tube station. It was the rush hour and the platform was crowded with hundreds of people. Bernard Wilson Whiting was driving the train which was approaching the platform. He later told the police:

On 15th February 1939, at 5.04 pm I was driving an electric train into Tottenham Court Railway Station. At about 100 feet from the head wall of the west bound platform, I saw what appeared to be a woman falling in front of my train. I applied the emergency brakes at once and stopped, but went over the body for one and a half cars’ length. I got underneath and found a girl one and a half cars down, hanging feet downwards on the centre rail. She was on her stomach.

Just a moment before, Dr Robert Fisher had been among the waiting passengers. He recalled:

I was sitting down reading. I folded my paper as a train came in.
Just to my left and between me and the train a girl was standing. I noticed somebody push her and dash through the entrance almost directly behind. The girl screamed and fell in front of the train.

Edwin Hunt, the lift man employed at the station, saw the girl fall and the running man. He chased after him and caught up with him. His quarry said, ‘I didn’t mean it.’ Another member of railway staff joined Hunt. He was told by Hunt, ‘You had better take charge of this man as he has admitted pushing somebody on the line.’ Hunt added, ‘He was very much upset. I can’t say if he was sweating.’

It appeared the man was sick. Dr Fisher witnessed the capture of the assailant and then he went to see if he could help Miss Waters. He assisted in removing her to the platform and remained with her until the ambulance arrived. He administered morphine and helped her be taken up the escalator on a stretcher. By 5.45 the ambulance had taken her to Charing Cross Hospital. Dr Thomas McKelvey tried to help her, but she was beyond medical care and died there at 6.05. Her father was called upon to identify his daughter, which he did at 8 pm. Dr McKelvey then performed a post mortem. He concluded, ‘She died as a result of shock and haemorrhage from multiple injuries. She had a fractured skull and a severe crushing of the lower spinal vertebrae.’

Back at the scene of the crime, PC David John was the first policeman to arrive. He saw the accused man in the stationmaster’s office at about 5.10. One railway official told him, ‘This is the man who is supposed to have pushed the girl under the train.’ ‘Do you hear that?’ the constable asked the accused. He replied, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’ He later said, ‘I don’t know what made me do it.’ He was then taken to Tottenham Court Road Police Station, where he was interviewed under caution by Detective Inspector Peter Beveridge at 10.45.

On the following day, the accused man was formally charged at a magistrates’ court. He tried to give his interpretation of events, making the following statement, ‘I don’t know what made me do it. A sudden impulse came over me and I wanted to push someone under the train. I’ve been worried because I couldn’t get work.’

Who was the accused man who had acted so impulsively and fatally? His name was Leonard Ward Davies, aged 30 and living in Windsor Road, Holloway. Both his parents had been alcoholics and one of his
aunts had died in an asylum. On 7 September 1937, he was given a six-month gaol sentence for ‘causing a public nuisance’ by falsely confessing to a murder. During his incarceration he had tried to commit suicide. On 30 November he was sent to Bexley Heath mental hospital, it being believed he was insane. He was discharged on 5 March 1938.

In the next two months he was employed as a barman at the Archway pub in Holloway. Terrence Mahon, another barman there, recounted a conversation he had had with Davies:

I recalled that he seemed rather distressed in his mind. At one time he asked me if I believed in people having a split personality. I said my knowledge of psychology was insufficient for me to answer him. He asked me in a nervous tentative sort of way what I would think of a man who had an uncontrollable impulse to throw someone under a train. I believe I replied that no impulse need be uncontrollable if he exercised willpower.

After Davies had been committed for trial for murder at the Old Bailey for 21 March, he was sent to Brixton prison. Whilst there, Dr Hugh Grierson, the senior medical officer, formed his own judgement about him, based on continuous observation and some interviews. Davies conformed to prison routine and seemed unconcerned and unanxious about his own fate, even though he faced death if found guilty. Grierson made the following assessment:

He says he had to do it. He says a similar impulse came over him 10 minutes earlier when he was at St Paul’s station, but he did not act on it. He denies any hallucinations such as voices telling him to do it. He exhibits no regrets nor remorse, and though he does not say so, he gives the impression that he would do it again if given the opportunity. He even has no feelings for the parents of the victim. Both in words and writing he has expressed a lack of feeling and lack of any interest as to the outcome of the trial. I am of the opinion that he is insane and unfit to plead to the indictment.

Given this judgement, on 24 March, Justice Hawke had no hesitation in ordering Davies to be sent to Broadmoor. Miss Waters, like most victims of killers in trains or at stations, was unlucky enough to be in
the proximity of a man who was determined to kill. Caught by surprise, she had no chance. Davis was not the first nor the last man with mental problems who was released into the world and who would kill before being incarcerated. He received a conditional discharge on 6 March 1951, but this was revoked and he was readmitted on 7 April 1951. He was briefly at the North Wales Hospital in 1962–3, but returned to Broadmoor, dying there on 16 June 1965.

‘I heard a scream, some thuds and a man yelling as if he were laughing.’

Beatrice Nellie Meadmore was aged 61 and a married woman. She had once worked as a buyer for Messrs Peter Robinson Ltd in Oxford Street. She was still working at the time of her death, probably in a shop in Central London, too. Her husband was Otto, director of a Friendly Society. They lived at Barn Rise, Wembley Park.

On Wednesday 25 February 1942, Mrs Meadmore finished work and, as planned, went to the Classic Cinema on Baker Street. She had informed her husband of her intention and he had no problem with this. When the film was finished, she left and went to Baker Street tube station. It was about 8.10 pm when she boarded a northbound Metropolitan line train to take her to Wembley Park station. The train was one which was subdivided into compartments. This was a journey of about thirteen minutes, with only the one stop, at Finchley. She planned to be home at 8.30. The journey from Finchley to Wembley Park took eight minutes due to several delays.

However, just before the train stopped at Wembley Park, a man jumped off the moving train. This was a surprise to a group of three men who were standing on the platform, waiting for the train. One of these three was James Farhill of Harrow, who remarked, ‘That’s a fine way to get off a train.’ The man replied ‘yes’ and then stumbled when he reached the platform, but soon picked himself back up again and then rushed away to the station’s exit.

The three men entered the train compartment which the man had just left so hurriedly and there they saw a woman huddled into a corner. She was groaning and there was a newspaper over her face. At first they assumed she had been drinking. However, one of them became suspicious and called for a member of underground staff, after asking
her ‘Are you alright?’ and presumably receiving no response. Several officials eventually arrived at the still stationary train. They found that the woman was unconscious, having been attacked and then robbed. She was taken to the waiting room and first aid was administered.

An ambulance was summoned and the woman was taken to Wembley Hospital. It was soon ascertained that this was Mrs Meadmore. Her husband, who had returned home from work at 7.15, was told at 9.15 by the police of what had happened. He went to the hospital and kept a vigil by his wife’s bedside. Dr John Shipman was the resident medical officer and he saw her on arrival. Her scalp was bloody and he operated on her after anaesthetic was given. However, she died at 6 am on the following day, her husband by her bedside. She only very briefly regained consciousness and said, ‘it was a man’.