Great Train Crimes: Murder and Robbery on the Railways (23 page)

There was some question over Gills’s mental state. Dr Lotinya was senior medical officer at Wandsworth prison. He assessed Gills as ‘emotionally an unstable person, abnormally impulsive and egocentric, who is unable to learn from experience and who, having failed to develop normal moral and social standards, cannot conform to accepted social usage’. He thought that Gills was fit to plead, but that his abnormal mind had substantially impaired his mental responsibility at the time of the offence. Gills was tried at the Surrey Assizes held at Kingston upon Thames on 27 October. He pleaded not guilty to murder, but guilty to manslaughter. Although cleared of murder, he was found guilty of manslaughter due to diminished responsibility. The judge admitted, ‘your mind was greatly disturbed by mental troubles’. His sentence was 15 years, to run concurrently with his existing two-year sentence for assault.

Gills was an unpleasant character and it was Patricia’s fatal misfortune to meet him – entirely by chance – on the Gatwick train. Once Gills was in the same compartment as her, or probably almost any young woman, the outcome was probably inevitable. Perhaps the only fortunate aspect to this case is that Gills confessed in the following year, because had he not done so, this murder would almost certainly have remained unsolved. If that had been the case, perhaps Gills would have killed again.

The railway crimes already recounted are not the only ones in British crime history. There have been many more and it is impossible to cover them all in much details. Here is a synopsis of some of them.

The first female victim, 1897

Elizabeth Camp was aged 33, and planned to marry Edward Berry, a Walworth fruiterer. She worked in the Good Intent Tavern, on East Street, Walworth. She was deemed a reliable employee and seemed a very ordinary young woman. That is, until Thursday 1 February 1897.

She spent the afternoon of her day off in Hammersmith and then Hounslow, with her two married sisters. On entering a second class carriage at Hounslow station at 7.42 that evening, her sister warned her that ‘the third class is safer for women’. Ignoring this well-meant advice, Elizabeth travelled on this stopping service to Waterloo, in order to meet her fiancé.

Unfortunately, when the train pulled into its destination at 8.25, she did not alight from it. Her corpse, with its head battered, was found in the carriage. The police soon found the weapon – a bloodstained pestle – which had been thrown out of the train between Putney and Wandsworth. The head porter at Putney recalled seeing a man in her carriage there. It was thought that she had been killed between these two stations.

It was unclear why she had been killed. She had spent the day shopping, but her purchases had all been sent on to her home. She had very little money on her. No one was known to have had a grudge against her. However, there were a number of suspects.

Berry himself had been waiting at Waterloo for her. Furthermore, he was with two other men for the hour previous to that. A former boyfriend, William Brown, was also ruled out, because he was at work in the Prince Albert that evening. Thomas Stone, a Hounslow resident and a friend of one of her sisters, and who had spent some time with both of them prior
to Elizabeth’s departure, came under suspicion, especially because he could not account for his movements for the remainder of the day. However, there was no proof against him, so he could not be detained.

Other witnesses spoke of seeing suspicious-looking men, some with bandaged hands, leaving the train that evening. One had gone for a drink in a nearby pub, but when found, it transpired that he had injured himself repairing a bicycle. One Mr Marshall, a young man from Reading, was also questioned. The police thought a wandering lunatic on Blackheath might be responsible. As late as 1906 a soldier confessed to the crime, but was found to be lying.

The train company offered a reward of £;200 to anyone who could identify Elizabeth’s killer. It was never claimed. Sir Melville Macnaghten, a senior police officer, offered the following judgement on the case:

The murder of Miss Camp was wholly without motive, and was no doubt perpetrated by some homicidal maniac. Such men, I believe, have no recollection of their guilty acts, which pass out of their minds as soon as they have been committed.

Presumably the murder was an impulsive act, though clearly the killer had violence on his mind, for he was carrying a pestle on his person. But as to who and why, we are no wiser more than a century later and Elizabeth has the dubious distinction of being the first woman to have been killed on a train in Britain.

Underground murder, 1914

The Starchfields were a poor family. John Starchfield, the father, was popularly seen as a hero, having tackled an armed robber in 1912 and being wounded in the process. But in private he was a different man. He stole from his wife and had hit her. This helps account for the fact that he and his wife had separated, with Mrs Starchfield and their 5-year-old son, Willie, living in lodgings in Hampstead Road, whilst he sold newspapers and lived near Tottenham Court Road.

On Thursday 8 January, Willie was being looked after by a neighbour. Just after noon, he was sent out on an errand to a nearby shop. He never returned. Later that afternoon, at 4.30 pm on a third class Underground carriage, a terrible discovery was made. Willie had been strangled. This
crime had taken place between Mildmay Park and Dalston Junction. He was probably taken to either Camden Town station or Chalk Farm station before entering the Underground. A post mortem examination revealed that the boy had been given a cake that afternoon, perhaps as a way of enticing him away.

Later, a cord was found and this was thought to have been the murder weapon. It was unknown as to why he had been killed, since robbery could not have been a motive. Nor had he been interfered with. Perhaps someone had a grudge against either or both of his parents. One theory was that the associates of the criminal whom John Starchfield had helped apprehend two years ago might have been responsible.

However, during the investigation, John Starchfield himself was identified as the killer. He lacked an alibi for the time of the murder and was seen by witnesses with his son that afternoon. Yet this identification was not confirmed by other witnesses, and under cross-examination, one witness was unable to properly identify Starchfield. Others came forward to say they had seen the doomed lad with a woman. Starchfield was dismissed as innocent. Chief Inspector Gough concluded, ‘Neither Starchfield nor his wife bears a good character, but, so far as we have gone, there is no evidence to associate them in any way with the crime, and in fact, no witnesses of any importance have been traced.’

The boy’s father died two years later. Curiously enough, a few weeks previously, a bottle had been found in the Thames, bearing a confession from him. Yet, the handwriting did not match his, and so it was deemed a hoax. John Fitzpatrick, a porter, also confessed to the murder, claiming his motive was robbery. Willie, though, had no money on him so Fitzpatrick was dismissed from enquiries.

It is impossible to know what really happened. Any man, woman or child could have taken the boy away to the Underground and either killed him on the platform or on an empty carriage. Why anyone would want to do so is unknown, and one policeman assumed it must have been the work of a homicidal maniac.

The Kidbrooke mystery, 1929

Mrs Winifred East and her husband parted on the morning of Wednesday 13 March 1929; he to his work and she to take trains to Bexleyheath to see an old friend of hers. Unbeknown to either, this was to be the last time they would see each other alive.

Mrs East spent a pleasant day with Mrs Margaret Richards. They said their goodbyes at Barnehurst station so Mrs East could catch the 7.43 train to London Bridge. From there, she would travel to Liverpool Street and meet her husband, before catching a train back home to Leytonstone. Mrs East sat alone in a third class compartment. Mrs Richards described what happened next:

I stood at the carriage door talking just a moment with my arm across the entrance to the compartment, and as I stood there, I felt a slight touch on my arm. I immediately let my arm fall and a young man stepped into the compartment. He sat on the same seat as Mrs East, but he sat at the further end. The train started at once.

Mrs East never arrived home that night. It was the following day that a train driver saw her corpse. It was lying near the track between Kidbrooke and Eltham stations. She had been killed by being run over by a train after falling onto the line. Yet it was soon concluded that this was neither accident nor suicide, but murder. There were bruises on her body that would indicate that a struggle had occurred before she had been pushed from the train – or had jumped out in a desperate attempt at escape.

Mrs Richards could not give much help, except to say that the man she saw enter the compartment was aged between 20 and 30 and that he was slightly built and of medium height. He was wearing an overcoat and a cap. Other witnesses claimed to have heard noises in a compartment between Eltham and Kidbrooke. They thought the killer alighted at Kidbrooke, but in this they seem to have been mistaken.

It was presumed that the young man seen by Mrs Richards was the killer, but not necessarily so. He could have alighted before the train reached Eltham, allowing some other man to enter and kill Mrs East. Why anyone should want to molest her is another question. Was it an attempt at robbery or rape? Various candidates were suggested to the police over the next few years, but none was ever charged. The mystery remains to this day.

The death of a countess, 1957

It is rare for members of the aristocracy to be killed, despite what one
may read in detective fiction. However, the 73-year-old Countess Teresa Lubienska, once possessed of landed estates in Poland, had fallen on hard times. She had survived the concentration camps and by 1947 was living in a small rented flat on Cromwell Road, London. Much of her time was spent lobbying to help former Polish prisoners of war and concentration camp survivors.

On the evening of 25 May 1957, she had been attending a birthday party of a fellow countrywoman of hers in a house in Florence Road, Ealing. She took a Piccadilly line train from Ealing Common and parted with her travelling companion, a priest, at Earl’s Court tube station, while she rode on alone. She alighted at Gloucester Road station just after 10.19 pm.

What exactly happened next we do not know. But a member of Underground staff saw her staggering towards the lift. She had been stabbed. She said that she had been attacked by a bandit or bandits. Although taken to hospital as fast as possible, she died of her wounds that night. They were caused by a short-bladed knife or knives.

There was a very extensive police investigation. Thousands of people who lived in that part of London, tourists, known criminals and railway staff were interviewed. The police assumed that the killer must have stabbed her near the platform when the other alighting passengers had left there. He must then have run up the back stairs and so left the tube station that way. He could not have used the lift because that was manned and the attendant saw no one suspicious.

No one was ever convicted of the murder and the police never had any named suspect. One theory was that this was a political assassination, perhaps by a Soviet agent or by someone in the Polish organizations for whom she worked and was a traitor. This view is still held to this day by some Poles.

However, the reality is almost certainly far more prosaic. Countess Teresa was a fiery and outspoken individual. She had strong views on bad behaviour and foul language which were all too prevalent among the youth of London. And she was not afraid to make her views known and to reprimand youngsters in the street. This was not always a safe policy for an elderly and vulnerable old lady. Two witnesses told the police that they had seen a group of young men of the ‘Teddy Boy’ type in the vicinity of the tube station that evening. One group had been indulging in horseplay in the station itself; later a few youths had been seen running away from the murder scene. These lads were never identified, but it
seems fair to surmise that the countess was caught up in an argument with them and one or more fatally attacked her with penknives.

The Great Train Robbery, 1963

It would be impossible to write about railway crime in Britain and omit any reference to perhaps the best known railway crime of all. This is so famous that it has been thought just to include a brief outline of events. As with its predecessor in 1855, it was well planned, competently executed and yet it ended with all the gang being apprehended. It was also the biggest value robbery in Britain until the Brinks Mat heist of 1983.

On 8 August 1963, the Glasgow to Euston travelling post office train was on its way south. It was composed of a diesel locomotive and twelve carriages and had run on this line since 1838. It was used as a mobile sorting office and also carried cash – the largest amounts being carried just after bank holidays. On board were almost £;2.6 million worth of old notes ready to be delivered at the Bank of England for destruction. These were in the second carriage after the locomotive in the carriage known as the High Value Package Coach. The train was approaching Sears crossing near Ledburn, near Mentrose in Buckinghamshire. It was about 3 in the morning.

Jack Mills, the driver, saw the red signal on the lights ahead at the crossing and applied the brake. He told David Whitley, the locomotive’s fireman, to get out and telephone the signalman. What neither of them knew was that the gang had tampered with the signals; by temporarily powering the red light and covering up the green one. Mills was hit on the head and fell down the railway embankment (he died in 1970, perhaps as a result of the injuries he then sustained); he then was forced to drive the train to Bridgeo railway bridge. Here the fifteen strong gang, wearing helmets and ski masks and armed with sticks and iron bars, overcame the four postal workers in the coach and loaded all the money from the train into their waiting lorry and fled to their headquarters.