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

After numerous appearances in the Thames Police court, the presiding magistrate ruled that the case for the murder of Dudley Hoard and the theft of the Eastern Palace Cinema earnings, was to be heard at the Old Bailey. Compared to today, court cases in interwar Britain moved through the system very quickly. The murder had taken place on 7 August; the arrest was made on 11 August; the Police court completed its work on 18 September; and the case was set to be heard at the Crown Court on 22 October.

The key feature which distinguished the crown court from the police court was the presence of a jury. In England, the jury consisted of twelve individuals; since 1920, women could be called for jury duty as well as men. By 1934, the presence of women on the jury of a murder case was still considered worthy of comment in the newspapers, as women’s perceived delicate sensibilities were thought to suffer from having to hear violent testimony.

For the trial, John Stockwell was assigned legal counsel through the 1903 Poor Prisoners’ Defense Act: he had no means to pay for his own defense. He was represented by Frederick Levy; a Vincent Evans represented the prosecution. Although the police ostensibly had a written confession from Stockwell, they felt far from secure that he would get convicted. John Stockwell had made his main confession when he was being driven down from Yarmouth to London On the occasion, Detective Inspector Sharpe had decided not to explicitly re-read Stockwell his rights, as he did not want to put Stockwell off. Sharpe had also not taken notes during Stockwell’s confession, instead opting to jot Stockwell’s words down from memory upon arrival in London. A skilled lawyer could argue that the confession was inadmissible.

Additionally, the police were never able to confirm that the hatchet they found at the site of the murder, was the axe used in the household where Stockwell lived. Stockwell had said that he had taken this household axe, used for chopping down coals, and used it to hit Dudley Hoard over the head. Yet when the family Stockwell was lodging with, the Roakes, were shown the hatchet found at the crime scene, all of them separately confirmed that this was not theirs.

Maisie Hoard, who had been in hospital since the attack, was unable to identify Stockwell during an identity parade staged at Brixton Prison on October. There were also persistent rumours that the attack had been carried out by two people, and that John Stockwell was shielding the real attacker. There were enough question marks, in short, to allow a defense team to challenge the police evidence.

In the end, however, none of these issues were unpicked in the courtroom. On the morning of 22 October, after the jury were sworn in and the judge opened the trial, Frederick Levy announced that John Stockwell changed his plea from ‘not guilty’ to ‘guilty’.[1] This was unusual and unexpected, and left the jury no choice but to formally confirm the verdict. This, in turn, lead to an automatic death sentence, although the jury ‘strongly recommended him to mercy, taking in to account the parental guidance which he never received.’[2] The trial was over in a matter of minutes, allowing the court administrators to use the same jury to hear a second case on the same day.

Immediately after the verdict, John Stockwell’s defense team started up a petition. If one was found guilty of a capital offence, such as murder, and there was no question of perpetrator being found insane, there was only one route available to avoid an execution: for the King to offer mercy and commute the sentence to life imprisonment. In practice, the King would offer mercy at the recommendation of the Home Secretary, so applications were made to the Home Office. There was a distinct time pressure, as prisoners were traditionally given only ‘three Sundays’ between sentencing and execution.

One way to persuade the Home Secretary that a sentence should be commuted was to demonstrate widespread popular support for the prisoner. Frederick Levy and his team therefore immediately started a petition in favour of a mercy ruling. The petition primarily argued that Stockwell, at 19 years old, was still very young, and that execution would therefore not be appropriate. The lawyers visited the Home Office on 6 November to argue their case, and on 12 November presented several petitions. On 13 November they even delivered a letter of the foreman of the jury which had convicted Stockwell, pleading for a commuted sentence.

It was to no avail: the Secretary of State concluded that there was no sufficient ground in this case to justify advising the King to “interfere with the due course of law.”[3] The Home Office’s case was primarily one of precedent: the law considered everyone over the age of 18 to be an adult, and there had been cases in 1922, 1925, 1928 and 1932 where men of 18 or 19 years old had been executed.[4] Additionally, the Home Office considered it proven that John Stockwell had set out to kill or grievously harm the Hoards; this despite Stockwell’s insistence that he had no such intention. The Home Office’s thinking here was influenced by that of Inspector Sharpe, who in his final report noted that Dudley Hoard knew John Stockwell, and would have been able to identify him if Stockwell had let Hoard live.

Despite the efforts of John Stockwell’s defence team, then, his execution was scheduled for 14 November at Pentonville Prison. All condemned men who lived in London and north of the river were executed here; and executions always took place at 9am sharp. After the flurry of publicity around the murder, manhunt and police court proceedings, this final chapter of the story received very little public attention. Most papers did not report on the execution at all; it was, after all, the expected outcome which reaffirmed to the public that those who transgressed received due punishment.

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[1] ‘Two death sentences in one day,’ Daily Mirror, 23 October 1934, p. 23

[2] Ibid.

[3] PCOM 9/333 ‘STOCKWELL, John Frederick: convicted at Central Criminal Court (CCC) on 22 October 1934’, National Archives

[4] HO 144/19719. ‘CRIMINAL CASES: STOCKWELL, John Frederick Convicted at Central Criminal Court (CCC) on 22 October 1934 for murder and sentenced to death’, National Archives