Tag: Bow Cinema Murder

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The Bow Cinema Murder – Aftermath

This is the eleventh and final part in the investigation into the 1934 ‘Bow Cinema Murder’. You can read all entries in the series here.

After John Stockwell’s execution on 14 November 1934, the Bow Cinema murder case had formally come to a close – but its impact on the people caught up in it lasted beyond the execution. Most significantly, Maisie Hoard continued to recuperate from the substantial injuries that Stockwell had inflicted on her. The psychological damage was naturally also serious. On the day of the execution an interview with Maisie appeared on the front page of the Daily Mirror, under the headline ‘Life Ruined by Murder’. Still in hospital at this stage, Maisie revealed that she would have a scar in her face for the rest of her life. She also pointed out that, as a new cinema manager had been appointed to the Eastern Palace Cinema, she was now effectively homeless:

I have now no home – nothing. I have nowhere to go, for I have no mother, brother or sister. My husband was uninsured – so I have no money. I do not ask for charity. All I want is work. Will someone give me a job as housekeeper?[1]

In the end, Maisie did not have to work as a housekeeper, or at least not for long. By 1939 she had remarried to a Henry White and moved to Ashford in Kent.

The other woman whose life had been most affected by John Stockwell was his girlfriend, Violet Roake. As noted in the previous instalment of this series, she had also gone public and was interviewed in the Daily Herald, reframing her story as a romance novel. Violet was only 18 in 1934 and although she had anticipated marrying John Stockwell before he committed his crime, she clearly had enough opportunity to find another life partner. It is possible that her reputation in the East End was irrevocably tainted though; while her brother and sister stay local, Violet marries a Navy officer and moves to Portsmouth. The couple married in 1939 and had a son in the same year, and a daughter ten years later. Violet lived until 1991. Her husband, Joseph Brimley, survived her and lived until 1995.

For Fred ‘Nutty’ Sharpe, the Chief Inspector who investigated the case, the Bow Cinema murder investigation was significant enough to warrant a full chapter in the memoirs he published in 1938. Sharpe retired from the CID in 1937. In his book, Sharpe of the Flying Squad, he calls Stockwell ‘the calmest, most coldblooded individual I have ever met and he wasn’t the least bit nervous.’[2] Throughout the chapter Sharpe uses superlatives to stress the violence of the murder: it was ‘one of the most savage [murders] a man has ever committed’ and the attack had been committed with ‘utmost violence.’[3] He juxtaposes this with his descriptions of Stockwell as’ completely unmoved and in entire possession of his nerve.’[4]

Sharpe’s descriptions reinforce the newspaper reporting that had taken place during the case, which also largely described Stockwell as calm and weirdly devoid of emotion. Despite this, though, John Stockwell never entered the popular imagination as a notorious calculating killer. There are plenty of well-known murder cases from the interwar period, but this is not one of them. For a case that was considered at the time to be extremely brutal, and a killer who was unusually young and unemotional, it may seem surprising that this case did not gain the same notoriety as others.

It is not because this case was satisfactorily solved – most of the best-known interwar murders were resolved at the time and their convictions are largely considered sound. Like many of the other famous cases, celebrity pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury worked on this case, and it received extensive press reporting. It raised concerns about the callousness of youth, and whether it was appropriate to execute a 19-year old.

I suspect that it is the combination of victim and killer that has made this murder less appealing than others of the same period. Unlike many of the most famous interwar murders, there was no love or domestic angle to this case. There were no betrayed husbands or deserting wives; Stockwell hadn’t murdered a girlfriend like Patrick Mahon or Norman Thorne, or tried to fake his own death due to having too many girlfriends, like Alfred Rouse. He also had not been convicted of killing his own mother, like Sidney Fox. Instead, he was a man killing another, unrelated man, for financial gain. Most years during the interwar period, a handful of men got executed for similar crimes, yet the cases are largely forgotten. Instead, the interwar years are remembered for their colourful domestic dramas, with cases like Edith Thompson’s being so well-known she has a dedicated website.

As this series has demonstrated, the killing of a man by another man can be no less interesting than a murder case involving a jilted lover; and it can reveal much about the attitudes towards masculinity, class, money, and local communities.

[1] ‘Life Ruined by Murderer’, Daily Mirror, 14 November 1934, front page

[2] Frederick Sharpe, Sharpe of the Flying Squad (London: John Long, 1938), p. 126

[3] Ibid., pp. 126-7

[4] Ibid., p. 131

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The Bow Cinema Murder – Execution

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

On 14 November 1934, just over three months after an intruder had repeatedly hit Dudley Hoard over the head with a hatchet to access the safe of the Eastern Palace Cinema, which he managed, John Frederick Stockwell was executed for the murder in Pentonville Prison. Because John had pled guilty to the charges, the death sentence was automatically passed under the provisions of the Capital Punishment Amendment Act 1868.

This Act set out that executions had to take place within prison walls; until 1868 executions in Britain had been public events. It also described the administrative provisions around the execution, proscribing the presence of ‘The Sheriff charged with the Execution, and the Gaoler, Chaplain, and Surgeon of the Prison, and such other Officers of the Prison as the Sheriff requires’. Although not explicitly spelt out in the Act, the method of execution was hanging.

The archival documents relating to the execution of John Stockwell show the extent to which capital punishment was part of the administrative business of state. Although there were relatively few executions in Britain during the interwar period (never more than 21 in a year, and some years as few as 3 across the whole country), the process was supported by proformas and other formal documentation.

On the day of Stockwell’s trial, the Governor of HMP Pentonville put in a formal request to the Prison Commission for a list of available executioners and records of their “conduct and efficiency”.[1] Two days later, on 24 October, the High Sheriff of the County of London formally fixed the time and date of the execution as 9am on 14 November (subject to appeal). On 12 November the Home Office formally notified the Prison Commission that Stockwell’s appeal was not upheld.

The day before the execution, Violet Roake visited her former boyfriend in prison one last time. She sold her story to the Daily Herald, who gave her a front-page article on 14 November in which she related her goodbye to John. The article claimed that Stockwell had been quite calm on the eve of his arrest, and had explained that he had committed the violent attack because he wanted to offer Violet a better life and future. The article further claimed that Stockwell accepted the consequences of his actions. The tone of the article was romantic, bordering on soppy. Violet was quoted as saying that Stockwell had looked ‘so well and handsome’ and that the prison wardens were ‘taking him away from [her]’.[2]

The article caused a stir in HMP Pentonville, and caused the Governor to write to the prison office and dispute some of the assertions made in the article, particularly around allegations made by Violet that she had struggled to get approval to visit John. Of course, by the time most people read the article, the execution had already taken place; it was an attempt to capitalise on the ‘human interest’ of what was framed as a tragic love story, not any serious protest against Stockwell’s execution.

The executioner was Mr R Barter of 25 Wellington Road, Hertfordshire. His assistant was Mr R Wilson of 15 Barnard Road, Manchester. Executions were always conducted by two men; due to the low numbers of executions each year, executioners usually had day-jobs and were called up as appropriate. As part of the proceedings, the Governor confirmed that the executioners were ‘respectable and of appropriate demeanour’; would not ‘lecture, interview or otherwise discuss the execution and thus discredit their office; and would not ‘create a public scandal through their (mis)performance of the execution.’[3] Just over ten years’ prior, the execution of Edith Thompson was rumoured to have gone badly wrong; clearly the Home Office were keen to avoid any scandals. The executioners’ responsibility to keep all details of the execution to themselves further worked to create an aura of mystery around capital punishment.

In the formal Notice of Execution completed the day after the execution, it was noted that John Stockwell had died of a broken neck, specifically because of a fracture between his 5th and 6th vertebrae. It was much preferred that prisoners died of a broken neck rather than of asphyxiation – the latter took longer and would be more uncomfortable for the prisoner. The British government prided itself on what it considered to be a most efficient and therefore superior system of capital punishment.

In line with the provisions made in the Capital Punishment Amendments Act, an autopsy was conducted on Stockwell’s body; this was undertaken by Bernard Spilsbury, who had also co-operated in the autopsy on Dudley Hoard’s body. Stockwell was then buried in the grounds of Pentonville Prison. At Scotland Yard, Detective Inspector Frederick Sharpe made his final report on the case, putting forward nine of the officers who had worked with him for rewards. All officers involved in the case received a commendation. Frederick Sharpe retired from the police in July 1937.

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

[2] ‘Smile Recalled Many Times We Kissed’, Daily Herald, 14 November 1934, p. 2

[3] PCOM 9/333

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The Bow Cinema Murder – Crown Court and beyond

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.

[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

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The Bow Cinema Murder – the Magistrate’s Court and Newspaper Reporting

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

As alluded to in previous instalments in this series, the Bow Cinema Murder was heavily reported on in the popular press. The murder itself was brutal enough; but the fact that a nation-wide man-hunt was called for the prime suspect, and that it took several days to locate and arrest John Stockwell, gave the press irresistible material. The press quickly framed the events in a recognisable narrative format, featuring colleagues and acquaintances of John Stockwell as an ensemble cast of characters. Although the initial press interest culminated with Stockwell’s arrest in Yarmouth on 11 August, and return to London the next day, journalists continued to report on the case as it started to progress through the legal system. Stockwell himself changed from a mysterious figure to a named suspect who could be interpreted through his appearances in court.

As I have described previously on this blog, interwar newspapers reported on court cases on a daily basis, and the reporting conventions in this area provided the reading public with a framework through which to understand criminal and deviant behaviour. The reports on the Bow Cinema Murder both worked within these established conventions and further contributed to them.

In 1934, as today, the English justice system had two ‘tiers’ of courts: the police or magistrate courts, which dealt with minor crimes, and the crown court, which considered more serious crimes. Cases at the crown court were decided by a jury; at the lower court a magistrate heard the case and decided the outcome. Unlike today, however, all cases had to first be heard in the police court, where a magistrate would establish the facts of the case. He would then formally decide whether a case should be referred to the crown court to be heard by a jury. Also unlike today, proceedings in the police court started almost immediately upon arrest, and as the name implied, the majority of the evidence heard was provided by the police officers who had investigated the case and made the arrest.

In the case of the Bow Cinema Murder, Inspector Fred Sharpe played a key role in the magistrate court proceedings. Already during the early stages of the investigation, whilst he and his men were tracking down John Stockwell, they were also ensuring that they had sufficient evidence to put the case forward to trial. The police inspectors continued with this after Stockwell’s arrest – (re)interviewing witnesses to ensure that there were no gaps in their narrative that could be exploited by the counsel for the defence.

Stockwell made his first appearance in the Thames Police Court on 13 August, only two days after his dramatic arrest in a Yarmouth hotel. That was a Monday, and from then on the case was heard weekly on Tuesdays until 18 September, when Stockwell was formally committed to trial at the Old Bailey. All of these hearings were reported on in the national press. The reports were standalone articles, outside of the regular ‘today in court’ columns. This underlined the relative importance the press gave to this particular criminal investigation, which was set apart from the daily churn of magistrate court proceedings.

Stockwell’s appearance in court gave reporters the first opportunity to have a good look at him. Although the attack on Dudley Hoard was described as ‘A murder as grim and mysterious as any enacted on [the Eastern Palace Cinema’s] flickering screen’[1], its alleged perpetrator was repeatedly described as quiet, ‘very pale’ and even physically weak.[2] The Daily Mirror went further than most in describing Stockwell as ‘a young man of medium height, with wavy blonde hair, and as he faced the magistrate he stood with his hands clasped behind his back and started straight in front of him.’[3] The reference to ‘wavy blonde hair’ makes Stockwell akin to a romantic hero. He was also noted to be wearing an open-necked shirt and tennis shoes – hardly the outfit of a killer. At the end of the proceedings Stockwell was reported to have asked ‘in a quiet voice’ for leave to see his girlfriend and some other friends.

Even more than John Stockwell’s hair and clothes, newspapers made repeated references to his young age – he was only 19 at the time of the murder and trial. His age usually appeared with the first line of every article about the case. The Daily Mail landed upon the description of him as a ‘lad’.[4] Multiple headlines in the paper referred to the ‘Cinema Lad’ throughout his arrest and trial. ‘Lad’ provides a compromise between ‘man’ and ‘boy’: it refers to Stockwell’s relative youth without suggesting that he should be tried as a juvenile.

The police court proceedings heard evidence of Inspector Sharpe, setting out week by week the case against Stockwell. He first established that Hoard had been murdered; and then that Stockwell had made a full confession to him in the drive back from Yarmouth. The court was also presented with a letter which John Stockwell had sent to Lowestoft police, when he was attempting to fake his own death through suicide. This letter contained another confession of the murder. The people Stockwell interacted with in Lowestoft and Yarmouth were called to give their evidence, as was Sir Bernard Spilsbury, who had been involved in the autopsy of Dudley Hoard.

At the final hearing, Violet Roake, John Stockwell’s one-time girlfriend, was called to testify. Stockwell had written her a letter while he was in Lowestoft, claiming that he was not guilty but also asking her to call him by a different name going forward.[5] Although Stockwell had been granted permission to receive visits from Violet, it appears that she had retained her distance from him; the Evening Standard reported that Violet did not look at Stockwell when she entered court.[6]

Although the police court hearings had given the press and public a first overview of the details of the murder and manhunt, they were considered a preliminary to the inevitable referral of the case to the Crown Court. There, at the Old Bailey in central London, the real drama of the case was expected as a jury of twelve men and women had to decide whether John Stockwell was guilty of murder – and a guilty verdict would automatically lead to a death sentence.

[1] ‘Midnight Murder in a London Cinema’, Daily Mail, 8 August 1934, p. 9

[2] ‘Stockwell Accused of Cinema Murder’, Evening News, 13 August 1934, front page; “I did not mean to kill Mr Hoard”, Daily Mirror, 14 August 1934, p. 8

[3] “I did not mean to kill Mr Hoard”, Daily Mirror, 14 August 1934, p. 8

[4] For example: ‘Cinema Lad Found’, Daily Mail, 11 August 1934, p. 9; ‘Cinema Lad in Court’, Daily Mail, 14 August 1934, p. 10

[5] ‘Cinema Tragedy’, Daily Mail, 19 September 1934, p. 6

[6] ‘Girl’s Talk on Crime with Stockwell’, Evening Standard, 18 September 1934, p. 12

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The Bow Cinema Murder – The Manhunt

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

The murder on Dudley Hoard took place on Tuesday 7 August 1934. For John Stockwell, the cinema attendant who had committed the crime, Tuesday was his regular day off work. The police and his colleagues where therefore not surprised that John did not show his face around the Eastern Palace Cinema on that day. Instead, it later transpired that John that day found somewhere to stash the money he had stolen; took a brief trip to the Essex seaside; and in the evening took his girlfriend Violet to a West End cinema.

On Wednesday morning, John was still behaving like everything was normal. He knew, however, that the police were still investigating the crime scene, and he was not keen to return to the cinema. So on the morning of 8 August, he pretended to leave for work as usual, but instead took a train from Liverpool Street to Lowestoft, on the Suffolk coast. He made sure to buy a return ticket; John may have read some of the popular crime stories in which culprits often buy return tickets to avoid raising suspicion. John had no intention of coming back to London any time soon, however. He had packed most of his meagre belongings in a small suitcase, which he had managed to carry out of the house unnoticed.

Back in London, the fact that John did not show up for his regular shift at the cinema immediately raised the suspicions of the police. They started questioning the other cinema employees about Stockwell, and also questioned the family with which John was lodging. In the evening, police officers were stationed at the small house where John lived, in case he decided to return for the evening.

John had no such plans, however. He had taken a room in Lowestoft with a Mrs Alice Alberta Tripp, a short-sighted housewife. He gave his name as Jack Barnard, and claimed he wanted to stay in Lowestoft for a month’s holiday. ‘Jack’ paid 35 shillings for the first week without any protest. The first day in Lowestoft passed without incident, but by 10 August Scotland Yard had circulated a photo of John Stockwell to all the major newspapers; descriptions to all police stations; and had even arranged for an announcement to be broadcast on the BBC. They were using all modern media and technology at their disposal to circulate John’s description. It was unusual for the police to coordinate such an intense campaign, but the murder of Dudley Hoard was considered especially violent and heinous.

Mrs Alberta Tripp, left, with a friend

The popular newspapers were grateful for the copy provided by the police, and in that second week of August the hunt for the Bow Cinema Murderer dominated the front pages of all the tabloids. In Lowestoft, John Stockwell read the Sketch newspaper with his breakfast, and then told Mrs Tripp he was going to go to nearby Yarmouth for the day. After he’d left, Mrs Tripp went to see her daughter, who ran a newsagents across the road. Mrs Tripp’s daughter showed her John’s picture in the newspaper. After Mrs Tripp had returned home to pick up her glasses, she had a good look at the photograph, and realised that her lodger was the man wanted by the police in connection with a violent murder. Lacking a phone, Mrs Tripp asked her next-door neighbour to ring the police for her. When they arrived, they were able to confiscate the clothes that John had left behind; but the wanted man himself had eluded them.

Later that day, John Stockwell walked into the Metropolitan Hotel in Yarmouth, and asked for a room. When he signed the hotel register, he wrote that his name was J.F. Smith, and that he was from Luton, Hertfordshire. The hotel receptionist, Kenneth Margetson Dodman, thought he recognised ‘Mr Smith’ from the description given in the newspaper. Additionally, he noticed that ‘Smith’ had made a mistake when he was signing in: Luton was in Bedfordshire, not Hertfordshire – something that anyone from Luton would surely know. Keeping his wits about him, Dodman put ‘Mr Smith’ in a room and then rang the police. John Stockwell was arrested by a local police officer at the hotel around 6.30pm. The manhunt which had gripped the nation was finally over.

Kenneth Dodman (left), the receptionist at the Metropolitan Hotel in Great Yarmouth

At Great Yarmouth police station, ‘Mr Smith’ admitted that he was John Stockwell, and also that he had murdered Dudley Hoard. The local police chief put a call through to Scotland Yard, and Chief Inspector Fred Sharpe drove up to Yarmouth that very evening to collect his suspect. On the way back to London on 11 August, Stockwell told Sharpe how he’d committed the crime, where he had hidden the money, and how he had spent the days between 7 and 11 August. Sharpe, not wanting to put Stockwell off, decided not to take any notes in the car. Instead he listened, and wrote up Stockwell’s confession from memory as soon as he got back to the station.

The Metropolitan Hotel in Yarmouth, where John Stockwell was arrested

This decision would later cause some headaches: because Sharpe had not properly cautioned Stockwell, and had not given him the opportunity to check his statement, the information Stockwell had provided in the car could not be admissible in court. For now, though, the police were relieved that they had gotten their man. When Sharpe’s car arrived back at Bow Road police station just before 9pm on 11 August, a great crowd had gathered, keen to catch a glimpse of the Bow Cinema murderer, who until so recently had been living in their midst.  

The Bow Cinema Murder – Forensic Evidence

FeaturedThe Bow Cinema Murder – Forensic Evidence

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

Once the police were on site at the Eastern Palace Cinema, they started gathering forensic evidence. This was partially to aid the investigation, but also to start building an evidence base to use if and when the case would go to court. The items which were recovered from the crime scene included a piece of flooring; human hair and samples of bloodstains. After a thorough search of the cinema, the police also recovered the murder weapon: a small axe, or hatchet. This was also handed over for investigation. Forensic investigations were undertaken by the same specialists who also did the post-mortems of the victims of crime: forensic pathologists.

The pathologist initially appointed to the Bow Cinema Murder case was Dr Francis Temple Grey, a retired Royal Navy surgeon and previously employed as pathologist for the Ministry of Pensions. He was in his late 40s in 1934 and had a deep scientific interest in biochemistry. On 8 August, the day after the murder, he presided over the autopsy of Dudley Hoard at Poplar Mortuary. The post-mortem was also attended by Donald Summers, the police surgeon who had attended Hoard immediately after the attack; Dr Normal Brown, who had treated Dudley in St Andrew’s Hospital; and the most famous pathologist in Britain, Sir Bernard Spilsbury.

Dr Temple Grey (left), pathologist assigned to the Bow Cinema Murder

Bernard Spilsbury was a Home Office pathologist and a celebrity. He had made his name during the notorious murder trial of Dr Crippen, where Spilsbury’s expert evidence nailed Crippen’s conviction. Spilsbury was also responsible for the conviction of a host of other notorious killers, from George Smith, the ‘Brides in the Bath murderer’, in 1915; to Patrick Mahon in 1924. Spilsbury was a workaholic and a brilliant orator, which made him successful both as a pathologist and as an expert witness. His reputation remained untarnished during his lifetime, although in recent years some of his assertions, including those on which basis Crippen was convicted, have been refuted.

In 1934 though, Bernard Spilsbury was considered the best pathologist to have on a case. He was specifically asked to attend the postmortem of Dudley Hoard, and undertake forensic examinations, by Norman Kendall, the Assistant Commissioner for Crime at the Metropolitan Police. As Kendall later wrote to the Director of Public Prosecutions, Tindal Atkinson, he considered Temple Grey a ‘notoriously untrustworthy witness’ when it came to giving evidence in court.[1] Kendall was worried that, if the case were to go to court, Grey would potentially make incorrect or unclear statements that may confuse the jury and jeopardize a conviction. To avoid having to call Grey to the stand, Kendall wanted to make sure that Spilsbury was involved in every step of the forensic investigation, so that he could act as a witness instead. Throughout the investigation, the police continued to worry that they had not built a sufficiently strong case, and be on the look-out for anything that may undermine a ‘guilty’ verdict.

There’s no record of how Temple Grey felt about having Sir Bernard Spilsbury watching over his every move. His report of Dudley’s autopsy noted that Dudley had suffered from nine cuts, six fractures, and three brain injuries. It seemed that Dudley got hit on his head from behind; fell onto the carpet; then got up again; and moved with his assailant out of his flat and up the stairs to the cinema balcony, where he eventually collapsed. There were copious amounts of blood on the floors and walls of the flat and cinema which marked out this trajectory. The pathologist took a photo of Dudley’s skull, and drew a diagram to indicate where the cuts and fractures had been found.

When examining the axe, it was found that it mostly contained blood on the back and left-hand side, implying that Dudley and Maisie had been hit with the blunt back of the axe head. Hairs of both Maisie and Dudley were found on the axe; his below hers, which showed that he had been attacked first. It provided irrefutable proof that the axe had been the weapon used in the attack; that both Dudley and Maisie had been attacked with the same weapon and therefore presumably by the same person; and that Maisie’s initial statement on how the attack had panned out matched the evidence. It did not, however, bring the police any closer to catching their killer.

The murder weapon, a small hatchet

DNA was of course completely unknown during the 1930s, so there was no possibility to match any of the blood found in the cinema to either the victims or the perpetrator. Fingerprints were known, and had first been used to successfully convict two murderers in 1905. That case, the murder of a shopkeeper and his wife in Deptford, bore some striking resemblances to the Bow Cinema Murder.[2] Yet as soon as fingerprinting evidence became commonplace, would-be criminals knew to wear gloves. The Bow Cinema murderer had followed this advice too, and fingerprints played no significant role in the investigation. Instead, the police were to rely on the killer’s behaviour after the murder, which was so erratic that it very quickly made them sure they had found the guilty man.

[1] ‘Defendant: Stockwell, John Frederick. Charge: Murder’, CRIM 1/734, National Archives

[2] Colin Beavan, Fingerprints: Murder and the race to uncover the science of identity (London: Fourth Estate, 2002), pp. 1-19

The Bow Cinema Murder – the Police Investigation

FeaturedThe Bow Cinema Murder – the Police Investigation

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

When Dudley and Maisie Hoard were found, critically wounded, around 8.30am on 7 August 1934, the first police officer on the scene was PC Duncan Mackay. He was patrolling the local area at the time, and was therefore able to get to the cinema quickly. PC Mackay was part of the army of patrolling Bobbies who worked all over London, each walking their regular ‘beat’ so that they could be on hand if anyone in the neighbourhood needed police assistance. After arriving at the cinema, PC Mackay quickly rang his local station for back-up. The Metropolitan Police had divided London in a series of divisions; Bow Road was part of ‘H’ Division, which covered the wider Whitechapel area. There were a few police stations near the cinema – Bow Road station was the closest, but there was also a station at Arbour Square, a short distance away.

Each police division had a team of detectives: plain-clothes officers who were tasked with investigating crimes and tracking down criminals. In addition, there was the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), commonly known as Scotland Yard. This team worked across all of London and specialised in the most difficult crimes, as well as criminal activity that was not confined to one area – for example, during the 1920s Scotland Yard spent a fair amount of time investigating crooked racecourse betting gangs.[1] Working for Scotland Yard was prestigious, as the small team often dealt with high-profile cases.

After PC Mackay’s phone call, the first officers to arrive at the cinema were the detectives attached to ‘H’ Division. Most of these men were born locally, and they would spend many hours over the next weeks to not only catch the murderer, but also put together sufficient evidence to ensure a conviction. In the interwar period, the police’s remit was wider than it is today, and the police took on some tasks which would now sit with the Crown Prosecution Service. Detectives were responsible for ensuring that all the evidence fit together and made a convincing court case. This meant that even after a criminal was caught, they would still have significant work in (re)interviewing witnesses, tying up loose ends, and getting additional expert opinions.

The detectives who were the first to arrive at the cinema were Detective Sergeant James Rignell, a 34-year old born in Poplar who had joined the Met shortly after the First World War; Detective Inspector Henry Giddins, who had only been promoted to this rank less than a week before the murder took place; and Detective Sergeant Claud Smith, who was born in Mile End and also joined the police immediately after completing his First World War service. Between them, they started a physical investigation of the murder scene and questioned the cinema staff who had started to arrive for their shifts. James Rignell went to the hospital and took the very first statement from Maisie Hoard.

One of the detectives, possibly James Rignell

Very quickly, a decision was made that Scotland Yard needed to be involved in the investigation. The attack had been brutal, and DI Giddins was very new to his role. Around 3pm on the same day, Detective Inspector Fred ‘Nutty’ Sharpe of Scotland Yard arrived at the cinema. He would be in charge of the investigation from that point onwards, leading the ‘H’ Division team and drawing on staff in other parts of London as needed. As it transpired, the investigation would lead the police out of London to the Norfolk/Suffolk borderlands, and Sharpe’s position in the CID gave him the authority to instruct police forces outside of the capital, too.

Frederick Sharpe, from his memoir Sharpe of the Flying Squad (1938)

Fred Sharpe had joined the Metropolitan Police in 1911, and spent most of the first decades of his police career chasing criminal gangs, pickpockets and car thieves. In his memoirs, which he published in 1938 after his retirement, he advocated that police detectives should cultivate friendly relations with professional criminals. He argued that there was a reciprocal relationship and a level of respect between criminals and the police, in which both groups knew the rules of the game they were involved in. This approach got him in hot waters after his retirement, when Sharpe himself came under police investigation for engaging in bookmaking activities.[2]

Murder, however, appears to have been a separate category for Sharpe. He devoted an entire chapter to the Bow Cinema Murder in his memoirs, in which he referred to the murder as ‘one of the most savage a man has ever committed.’[3] He underscored this supposed savagery by describing his physical reaction to the crime scene: “The flat itself and the hall presented a horrible and ghastly scene, showing that the utmost violence had been used in the attack on this unfortunate couple. (…) the sight of that room and the passageway nearly made me sick.”[4] Sharpe ensured that the details of the crime scene were captured by ordering a police photographer to attend the scene on the day of the murder. These photographs show copious amounts of blood on the staircase where Dudley was found, as well as the blood-soaked bedsheets which Maisie had left behind.

At the close of 7 August, the police did not yet have any clear leads. The staff who had been arriving at the cinema had not been able to share much useful information. Most of the crimes they investigated were committed by criminal gangs, and this guided their initial thinking. Newspaper reports stated that the police were speaking to their contacts in criminal gangs to gather information – using that network which Fred Sharpe often relied on.[5] Police officers remained stationed at the cinema overnight, and some materials had been taken away for forensic examinations. It was not until the next day, however, that a clear suspect would emerge.

[1] Heather Shore, ‘Criminality and Englishness in the Aftermath: The Racecourse Wars of the 1920s’, Twentieth Century British History, vol. 22, no. 4 (2011), 474-497

[2] ‘Ex-Chief Inspector Sharpe of the Flying Squad: bookmaking activities under the name of Williams’, MEPO 3/759, National Archives

[3] Frederick Sharpe, Sharpe of the Flying Squad, (London: John Long, 1938), p. 126

[4] Ibid., p. 127

[5] ‘“Yard” reconstructs the crime,’ Daily Herald, 8 August 1934, p. 2

The Bow Cinema Murder – the East End family

FeaturedThe Bow Cinema Murder – the East End family

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

When John Stockwell decided to attack and rob his employer, he was living as a lodger with a local East End family. He had met Eliza Roake, the head of the family, through the charitable activities she undertook for her Church. After John lost his place in the Salvation Army Boys Home after being convicted of theft, Ellen took him in. After the events of 7 August 1934, their association with John drew this poor but respectable family into a police investigation and a tabloid press sensation.

Ellen Eliza Roake was born Ellen Hoare in 1876; when she was 26, she married Henry George Roake who was five years her junior. The couple had five surviving children: Nellie, born in 1903; William, born in 1906; Eva, born in 1909; Frederick, born in 1913; and Violet, born in 1915. In addition, there were at least two other sons who did not survive past early childhood. All the children were born in Bromley-by-Bow, where Ellen and Henry settled after their marriage. Henry worked as a railway porter in nearby Liverpool Street Station.

Ellen Roake. This photo appeared in the Daily Herald on 12 Sept 1934

In 1926, Henry passed away; five years later, William and Eva both married and moved out of the family home on Empson Street in Bromley. The space that was freed up by their departure is perhaps one of the reasons why Ellen felt able to invite John Stockwell to move into the family home in early 1932.

The Empson Street house was considered small even at that time; the police inspector investigating the murder of Dudley Hoard commented on the house’s small size in one of his reports. There was only one bedroom, which Ellen shared with Nellie and Violet. Beyond the bedroom, there were no other rooms on the house’s first floor. The ground floor consisted of a sitting room, kitchen and scullery. John and Frederick had to make up their beds in the sitting room floor every night. The toilet was attached to the back of the house and needed to be accessed through the garden.

Nellie Roake, who was around 30 at the time of the murder, worked as a ‘chocolate finisher’ in Millwall, an adjacent neighbourhood. The manufacture of chocolates and sweets was an industry that typically employed women, who were believed to be better suited to the detailed work. In addition to her job, Nellie also took care of part of the household chores including cooking meals. She was engaged to William Hilsdon, a labourer who lived around the corner from the Roakes with his parents. William was also born in Bromley; also had a number of siblings; and his parents were also working-class. Although he and Nellie moved in together (with William’s mother) some time in the late 1930s, they did not get married until 1953, after Ellen Roake passed away. There does not appear to have been any bad blood between Ellen and William, however; on the night before the murder on Dudley Hoard in 1934, William spent the evening at the Roake’s house playing cards with the family until nearly midnight.

Unlike his elder sister, Frederick Roake appears to have provided less support to the family. At the time of the murder, he was unemployed due to a knee injury for which he was receiving outpatient treatment at St Andrew’s hospital, where Maisie and Dudley were also taken after the attack. Beyond that, Frederick seems to have spent considerable time loafing around the neighbourhood; he was able to immediately go over to the cinema once news of the attack broke. Frederick and John were not friendly; after John’s arrest, Frederick reported that he usually did not have ‘a lot to say’ to the other man. Despite sharing a bed together every night, the pair appear to have tried to avoid one another as much as possible. Frederick had a girlfriend, Henrietta, who was also born locally. They married in 1938 and stayed in the East End, where Frederick ended up working as a transporter of goods on horse cart.

Violet Roake was the youngest of the family, and the one most closely involved with John Stockwell. They were of the same age, and had been going out from around 1931, when they were both 16. Violet worked as a biscuit packer in a Bethnal Green factory; for many young working class women, light factory work had replaced domestic service as the career of choice. Every morning, John walked Violet to the bus stop around 7.30am. Her shifts started at 8am and finished at 6pm. Because John’s hours at the cinema did not finish until 11pm, most days the only time they had together was that half hour in the morning. The exception was Tuesday, when John was off work and they could do something in the evening. If they were at home, it was likely that there were other people around, and the small size of the house would have afforded them no privacy.

Violet Roake. This photo appeared in the Daily Herald on 14 November 1934

Until the murder, Violet had assumed that she and John would be getting married some day. She eventually married a naval officer in 1939 and moved down to Portsmouth with him. They had a son in 1939 and a daughter in 1949. Unlike most other participants in this story, Violet left the East End definitively when she was in her early twenties. It is possible that her association with a murderer, however unwitting, left a lasting mark on her reputation in the local area.

The Roakes were a typical East End family, with blue collar jobs, little money, a small living space, and a lot of family and friendship ties to the local area. Despite their small house, Ellen invited John to live with them when he became homeless, which speaks to her civic-mindedness. If it had not been for their involuntary involvement in the story of the Bow Cinema murder, they would have been absorbed in history without a trace. The case no doubt had a lasting impact on Violet in particular, whose expectations for her life were radically changed as a result of the case. As part of the fall-out, the family were exposed to police investigators, which came onto the scene within minutes of the crime being discovered. The next blog post will unpick who got involved in the police investigation, and how they approached the East End community in which the crime had taken place.

The Bow Cinema Murder – the Killer 

FeaturedThe Bow Cinema Murder – the Killer 

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

So who was the man who rang the Hoard’s doorbell on the morning of 7 August 1934 and attacked Dudley and Maisie with such deadly consequences? The initial police investigation assumed that the crime was committed by one or perhaps two criminals, who potentially allowed themselves to be locked into the cinema the night before. Investigators were reported to be questioning known criminals in the East End for clues.[1]

The truth was somewhat different, and closer to home. The attack on Dudley and Maisie was committed by a nineteen-year-old employee of the Eastern Palace Cinema: John Frederick Stockwell. John had only worked at the cinema for a few months, after being hired by Dudley. As an attendant, it was his duty to check tickets and show patrons to their seats. Like many neighbourhood cinemas at the time, the Eastern Palace operated on a ‘continuous performance’ basis, meaning that once the first screening of the day started, screenings continued on a loop until the end of the day. Patrons could show up at any time and stay as long as they liked. A crew of male and female attendants were therefore constantly occupied with letting people in and out of the auditorium.

Like many people in the East End, John Stockwell came from an impoverished background – but he was not brought up locally. He was born on 2 March 1915 near King’s Cross. His father had died at the front at Mons before John was even born. His mother re-married, but died in 1926 when John was 11. John had a brother, Horace, who was three years’ his senior – by the time the men had grown up they were no longer close. After his mother’s death, John went to live with an aunt, Elizabeth Brown. Because John’s father had died in the war, Elizabeth received a financial contribution from the state for John’s upkeep. Elizabeth decided around 1930 to move away from central London, and out to Bromley in Kent.

For the teenage John, who was no longer required to attend school, the change from Kings Cross to Bromley was not beneficial. Elizabeth reported that John no longer accepted her as a parental authority; he appears to have been out and about with a group of other young men. Eventually, Elizabeth decided she could no longer support John living with her, and he moved to a Salvation Army Boys Home in Bow Road some time in 1930. These homes were designed exactly for people like John: young men who lacked family or community support. They intended to give these men the skills to get employment and become independent. The SA arranged for John to get a job at a cloth manufacturer at Barbican. During his time there, John stole some cloth; he was caught and appeared before the Magistrate’s court in December 1931. John was sentenced to two year’s probation, meaning he had to meet up with a probation officer regularly.  

The Salvation Army had a zero-tolerance policy when it came to criminal activity, so John lost his lodgings. He had met, through the Army’s church activities, a local widow, Ellen Roake, and had become particularly close to Eliza’s youngest daughter Violet. Ellen agreed to take John on as a lodger, and he moved into the tiny Roake family home in early 1932. John and Violet became an official couple. After a short period working for a pastry chef, John was unemployed until he found the job at the Eastern Palace Cinema, which was only a 15-minute walk from the Roake’s home. One of the cinema’s other attendants, Charles Whitnell, lived practically next door to the Roakes.

 

As an attendant, John earned 32 shillings and sixpence a week. He paid 15 shillings a week for his board and lodging, leaving him with less than £1 a week for any other expenses. At the time of the murder, he did have a savings account with the Post Office, but it contained only 30 shillings (£1.50). Clearly, John had always lived in poverty. The nearly £90 that he stole from the cinema safe after attacking Dudley and Maisie was probably more money than he had ever seen together in his life; it was certainly more than he could ever imagine to save up himself. By August 1934, John and Violet had been going out for several years, but he could probably not imagine how he would ever make enough money to enable them to get married and start their own family.

He also had virtually no contact with his family at this point, and no social community to fall back on; he’d been removed from the community in King’s Cross in which he had grown up. The East End neighbourhood in which he lived from 1930 was one in which family ties counted for a lot, and he was perceived as an outsider. During the police investigation, his colleagues reported that they had found John odd, and his previous conviction for theft was known and made people suspicious of him.

None of these things justify his attack on the Hoards, but they do illustrate that the lack of structural social care in interwar Britain left individuals vulnerable. If you did not have a strong personal support network, you could very quickly find yourself in a situation that felt interminable. Once John committed the theft of cloth in 1931, what little social support he had been able to count on was also removed. In addition, rigid class boundaries made it even less likely for someone in his position to materially improve his circumstances. It is understandable, then, that someone of his young age, with little adult supervision to guide him, came to the conclusion that the only way to get ahead was to break the rules and commit a theft.

Once John had committed his attack and stolen the money, he managed to leave the Eastern Palace Cinema unseen. Tuesday was his weekly day off work. That evening, when Violet finished her shift at the Kearley & Tonge biscuit factory in Bethnal Green, John treated her to a trip to the Stoll cinema in the West End. Unbeknownst to Violet, he used part of the stolen money to pay for the tickets. On the way to the cinema, they discussed Dudley Hoard’s murder, as it was splashed over the evening papers. It would be the last evening they spent together, as the next day John used his stolen money to escape London, triggering a multi-day manhunt that captured the attention of the nation.

[1] ‘“Yard” reconstructs the crime,’ Daily Herald, 8 August 1934, p. 2