This is the second in a 11-part investigation into the 1934 ‘Bow Cinema Murder’. You can read all entries in the series here.

One of the effects of a well-publicised murder investigation is that it can put ordinary people into the press spotlight. This was as true in the interwar period as it is today. The Bow Cinema murder was briefly on the front pages of all major newspapers, and the victims, the perpetrator, and the people around them all got dragged onto those front pages too. This can make a murder story a valuable source for the historian: it highlights and preserves the stories of ordinary people as they are put into extraordinary circumstances.

Dudley Henry Hoard, the victim of the Bow Cinema Murder, was one such an ordinary person. If not for the extremely violent end to his life, it’s unlikely his name would ever have entered into the annals of history. He was born in Wandsworth, south-west London, in 1892. His family moved to Croydon when Dudley was a child, and his parents remained in that area. Dudley had an elder sister, Dorothy, and two younger sisters, Avery and Winifred. His father, William, was born in Devon; his mother Mary was from Chelsea in London. Dudley’s father worked as a clerk, indicating the family were in the lower middle class. This is also borne out by the fact that Dudley attended the independent Whitgift School in Croydon.

By the time he was eighteen, Dudley considered himself to be an actor. At 5 ft. 9.5in he was quite tall, and he may have cut a dashing figure on stage. According to his father, Dudley left school to take part in a production at Sadler’s Wells theatre, and toured the country as part of a travelling theatre group. At the same time, he was interested in cinema, which was becoming increasingly popular. Dudley briefly ran his own cinema, the Hippodrome, in Sutton (near Croydon) in the early 1910s.[1]

During the War, Hoard served as a Private in the London Regiment. He did not have a distinguished war record; the most the newspapers can say about it after his death is that he served in France and Greece, and got gassed in an enemy gas attack.[2] After the war he returned to repertoire acting, including a stint working for the Melville Brothers, who were part of a theatre producing dynasty.

At some point, Dudley met Maisie Tait, a native of Newcastle who was close to him in age and also an actor. According to Dudley’s father, the pair met when they were in their late teens; however, they did not get married until 1933, when Dudley was 41 and Maisie was 38. Details of Maisie’s early life are difficult to trace; she was also known as Maisie Robson, and it is not clear whether either Tait or Robson was her birth name, or whether both were assumed names. One thing that is certain is that Maisie had a daughter from a previous marriage; after the attack in 1934, this adult daughter came to visit Maisie in hospital. Her existence may be what stopped Dudley and Maisie getting married any sooner.

Around the time of their wedding, Dudley apparently decided to give up the touring life and to return to the cinema. In 1933, he got his first appointment as cinema manager in London, at the Brittania Picture Theatre in Camden. By the 1930s, cinemas had become enormously popular in Britain, and the industry had professionalised significantly since Hoard’s last foray into cinema management in 1911. The average cinema had upwards of a dozen staff members, and cinema managers were required to ensure that all operations went smoothly; staff were trained appropriately; and the cinema drew as many patrons as possible. Marketing was a significant part of the cinema manager’s role. Trade magazine Kinematograph Weekly highlighted in each issue the innovative and successful marketing stunts that managers up and down the country came up with to draw in audiences.

At the same time, cinemas became increasingly consolidated into chains, such as Odeon and ABC. Within the chains, the patrons’ experiences were increasingly homogenised. Rather than being rewarded for originality and innovation, managers in chains were expected to comply with central directives on how their cinemas should be managed. Dudley never worked for a chain cinema; at the Brittania in Camden he had to make two men redundant to save the cinema money. These men had families to maintain, and they threatened Dudley after he had fired them. This probably was one of the reasons why Dudley swiftly moved on to work at the Cinema House in Oxford Street and then, finally, the Eastern Palace Cinema in Bow.

These three posts in the space of 18 months indicate how fast-moving and insecure the work of cinema management was. For Dudley and Maisie, the job at the Eastern Palace was a step up, as it came with their own private apartment (although they had to pay rent for its use). With it, though, they arrived into a close-knit East End neighbourhood, where many of the staff were neighbours or even family members of one another. The Hoards were outsiders; and as it turned out, so was the man who attacked them.

[1] ‘London Manager Murdered’, Kinematograph Weekly, 9 August 1934

[2] ‘Actor and Producer’, Daily Mirror, 8 August 1934, p. 2; ‘London Cinema Outrage’, Evening Standard, 7 August 1934, p. 2