Britain's Unsolved Murders

By Kevin Turton

This true crime history spans a century of murder, exploring 13 of the UK’s most notorious cold cases from the Victorian Era to the 1950s.
 
This book examines some of the most horrifying, mystifying, and fascinating murder cases in British history. Expertly researched by true crime author Kevin Turton, these stories have endured and confounded both police and law courts alike. With a chapter devoted to each story, Turton examines the circumstances surrounding the crime, the people caught up in the investigation, and the impact it had on their lives. Though they span a century—from 1857 to 1957—these murders share one chilling fact in common: despite various accusations, arrests, and trials, no one has ever been proven guilty.
 
The volume begins with notorious cases from the Victorian Era, such as the questionable trial of Scotland’s accused murderess Madeleine Smith, and the failed investigation into the murder of John Gill—possibly by Jack the Ripper. It then moves into the 20th century with the murders of Caroline Luard, Florence Nightingale Shore, and others. In each case, Turton sifts the facts and poses the questions that mattered at the time of each murder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 30, 2019
• ISBN: 9781526726339

Kevin Turton

Born at Bradgate in Rotherham, Kevin Turton has been writing books on true crime and local history for over twenty years. Now based in Northamptonshire, where he has lived for twenty-five years, he has also written about the county's involvement in both World Wars and its murderous past and is currently researching his own family history.

Book preview

Introduction

When Edgar Allan Poe invented Detective Auguste Dupin, he created a genre that some 170 or so years later would dominate the visual, audio and literary marketplace, namely that of crime fiction. Seized upon by writers like Emile Gaboriau in France, James M’Govan in Scotland and London writer Mary Braddon, it began its steady rise to the top end of mainstream fiction throughout the nineteenth century. Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, Arthur Morrison and America’s Nick Carter, alongside various others, added to the list of writers who realized crime sold books and used it in various fictional formats.

For those with limited reading skills, and that would have included much of the population throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, publishers sought to develop highly illustrated magazines alongside their stories. This, in turn, gave birth to the ‘Penny Bloods’. These were wellillustrated, poorly written, sensational accounts of mayhem and murder. The more bloodshed the better. Sold to an unsophisticated public, their intent was simply to make money. So initially the stories told were pure fiction, but by around 1850 this had begun to change. Publishers realized that fiction and fact could be woven together to produce stories that were perhaps more realistic; this in turn gave birth to the serial, which allowed long-running stories to develop centred around real events.

When the Education of Act of 1880 arrived, ensuring every child had an education, the reading public had already begun to become more discerning. They wanted to understand more about the criminal mind. Sensationalism was no longer seen as being the most effective way to sell a story. The reading audience slowly widened and, through better education, became more sophisticated. Newspapers, ever aware of their readership, saw the change and seized upon it. They realized murder trials sold more copies, so these were more closely followed and reported in far greater detail than at any point in the past. In turn, that led to a major change in the world of crime fiction. The ‘Penny Bloods’ faded into memory and the erudite, puzzle-solving detective was born. It was the era of Sherlock Holmes, improved policing and the birth of forensic science.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle clearly led the way, basing his character Sherlock Holmes on Edinburgh surgeon Dr Joseph Bell. He developed a criminal investigator with a curious eye and a forensic mind; a thinking man’s detective who had a fascination for all things criminal and a perplexing ability to interpret crime scenes in a way readers had never believed possible. Others followed: author R Austin Freeman created scientific detective Dr John Thorndyke; Baroness Orczy was one of the first armchair detectives; then there was Ernest Bramah’s blind detective Max Carrados and, of course, G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown. Many more joined the list and, in various ways, through their fictional crime-solving techniques came the growth in a new genre, that of true crime.

By the dawn of the twentieth century, the belief that a criminal will always carry away some trace from the scene of a crime and leave behind a trace of their own presence had been born. So too had the realization that police are not always best placed to solve crime. Fiction writers turned more toward the private-eye. Raymond Chandler developed the eponymous Philip Marlowe, Erle Stanley Gardner gave us the unbeatable American lawyer Perry Mason, Chester Gould invented the Dick Tracy character and H.C. McNeile brought out Bulldog Drummond, to name but a few. Crime had essentially become an area of study where the reader was to be confounded by the perplexity of the crime, with the solution only to be found by the hero.

Agatha Christie took that idea to a whole new level with Poirot and the quiet village sleuth, Miss Marple. Then television took hold of the whole crime genre and visualized the written plot, and along came the TV detective, followed by a plethora of true crime from around the world. But as we know all too well, even though these enigmatic, often flawed characters seem infallible, the plain and simple truth is that not every crime is solved. Our heroes may crack every crime they meet, but for police forces up and down the country, murder is at times the most difficult crime to resolve.

Over the last 150 years, many of these so-called unsolvable murder cases have become the subject of books, films and docu-dramas, occasionally resurrected by local newspapers and re-examined on their anniversary, or their details reassembled to try to ascertain if modern forensic methods can make any impact. Generally, nothing new is ever found unless the case is within the last twenty or thirty years. But that is not to say we should leave these on the ‘unsolved’ pile. The victims of murder, regardless of time past, still deserve justice. I believe their voices should still be heard, and so I have selected a number of murder cases that over the years have both confounded and frustrated police and the law courts. Some are complex, others simply enigmatic, but for the families of the victims they remain forever unsolved.

Chapter 1

The Poisoning of Emile L’Angelier

The Madeleine Smith mystery, 1857

French-speaking Pierre Emile L’Angelier – Emile to those who knew him – was born in 1823 in the predominantly English-speaking Channel Island town of Jersey and spent the first eighteen years of his life living between the French coast and the British mainland. Like much of the Channel Islands at this time, an influx of British soldiers, brought in during and after the Napoleonic Wars, had changed the island’s culture and language. Many had chosen to settle in the islands at the wars’ end, while others decided to return at the end of their military service. As a result, Jersey had begun to develop as an agricultural exporter; something the L’Angelier family would have recognized and no doubt embraced, particularly as his father was employed as a nurseryman. But it seems that for Emile, whatever the personal career prospects offered by those burgeoning markets, his future lay elsewhere.

He took ship and left for Scotland in 1841, ostensibly to take up a position on a private estate in Dundee where he was to learn the skills of estate management. But it seems the death of the estate owner a few months after his arrival forced a change of plan and direction. By late the following year he was in Edinburgh working for a seed merchant, perhaps an initial drop down the employed ranks. However, he persevered, learned new skills and remained there for some three-and-a-half years.

My belief is that during this time he also embarked upon his first serious love affair. The woman concerned, only ever referred to as ‘the Lady from Fife’, was to have an enduring impact on the rest of his life. When it came to an inevitable end, she being of a higher status in society than he could have ever attained, he made plans to leave the city. He was back in Jersey by late spring 1846 and in France toward the end of that year. There he stayed for a number of years, joined the National Guard in Paris at some point in 1847 and played a part in the ‘June Days Uprising’ in Paris during the 1848 revolution.

The start of 1851 found him back in Edinburgh but in straitened circumstances, struggling for work and, without any financial means, needing a place to stay. A chance encounter with an old acquaintance from Jersey whom he had met five years earlier proved manna from heaven. Robert Baker, a waiter for his landlord uncle at the city’s Rainbow Tavern, offered a free bed. L’Angelier was in no position to refuse. It became his place of refuge and there he stayed for some nine months. It was a difficult period of his life. He was depressed, if his friend was to be believed, at times almost suicidal and obsessed with the love affair that had gone so wrong. Emile L’Angelier was in a bad place. It took until January of the following year to turn things around.

He moved out of the tavern at the end of that month and made his way to Dundee, where he took a job paying eight shillings (40p) a week with free board and lodgings working alongside nurseryman William Pringle. The financial side of his life had been resolved. But the past, like a festering wound, still irritated, and an embittered L’Angelier was all too ready to unburden himself to any who would listen. News of his affair in Fife had become common knowledge by mid-summer. So had his behaviour, which at times was disturbing, with threats of suicide, angry outbursts and wide mood swings being noticed more and more. There was even talk of his use and knowledge of arsenic, something that would eventually play a major part in his life. How much all of this affected his work is not known, but it must have had some impact because by late July 1852, he had left Dundee and begun a new life in Glasgow.

Scotland’s largest city at this time, Glasgow’s population was in excess of 300,000, with a large proportion Irish-born. The arrival of shipyards like Tod & MacGregor in Partick and Napiers in Govan, industrial expansion north of the Forth and the growth of the railways had brought wealth and skilled employment. For L’Angelier, it obviously offered more opportunity for advancement than Dundee. He took a job working at Huggins & Co., Commission Agents (essentially middlemen), on Bothwell Street, lodged nearby with Elizabeth Wallace and her family and set about carving out a better work and social life in what he perceived to be a vibrant new city. The Fife affair had been left behind and was no longer discussed. He became a regular in the Sunday congregation at nearby St Jude’s Church, built a number of friendships and proved himself to be a worthwhile addition to the Huggins workforce. Gone was the melancholia that had dogged him in Dundee, and in its place he found a renewed lust for life.

Early in 1854, and keen to improve his station in life even more, L’Angelier changed his lodging and moved in with Peter Clark, curator of the Royal Botanic Garden, and his wife. He had a higher status and better prospects. As a result, health, work, temperament and social standing all improved. So too did his finances. Working at Huggins had significantly increased his weekly income, which of course brought benefits, and by the start of 1855 he was probably feeling more secure than at any time in his life. All that was needed to complete the picture was a new woman on his arm, and he knew just who he wanted that to be.

Through his regular attendance at church he had met and formed a strong friendship with spinster Mary Perry. Throughout the latter part of 1854 and the early winter months of 1855, the friendship blossomed, though not as a love affair. She became his confidante. The two met regularly at her home on Renfrew Street, often dining together. When meeting was difficult or perhaps not possible, they wrote letters to each other. For L’Angelier, she became, over the period of a few months, perhaps the most important and certainly closest friend in his fast-changing world. So when he first saw near-neighbour Madeleine Smith, it was Mary whom he first approached for information. I have no doubt they discussed his attraction to Madeleine at length. But Madeleine Smith was never going to be easy to meet. Convention demanded a formal introduction, and Mary was not best placed to organize such a thing. He turned instead to brothers Charles and Robert Baird, both acquainted with L’Angelier through his work and both wellknown in the social circles that mattered in Glasgow because of their late father, prominent Scottish writer Robert Baird. Charles proved unhelpful, but Robert thought he could bring the two together through his uncle or, failing that, his mother. He was thwarted on both counts. Polite society in the 1850s was obviously not so easily circumvented. His introduction to her was eventually left to a contrived, clumsy meeting on the street. Perhaps not the best of beginnings, but it seemed to work and by April 1855, the two were corresponding with each other regularly. The love affair was up and running.

But this was never likely to be as successful as L’Angelier may have imagined. The Smiths were a wealthy, upper middle-class family of seven at this time, their daily lives governed by the social mores of the period and aided by in-house servants. L’Angelier, on the other hand, had little status and even less wealth. It is debatable whether he knew at the time how well regarded the family was amongst the affluent, moneyed class of established Glasgow society. It certainly never stopped him in his relentless pursuit of the Smiths’ eldest daughter, though at this early stage the relationship was clandestine, Madeleine all too well aware of how her father, James, would have reacted had he known of their meeting. Highly respected and exceptionally well thought of, James Smith was one of Scotland’s most widely admired architects. Born in Alloa in 1808, he followed his own father to Glasgow in 1826. A few years later he collaborated with David and James Hamilton (two renowned architects) on the design of the Royal Exchange Square and The Royal Bank of Scotland, and eventually married David Hamilton’s daughter, Janet. Between 1840 and the time of L’Angelier’s arrival on the scene in 1855, he had also designed the Victoria Baths, the Collegiate School at Garnet Hill and was about to begin work on the McLellan Galleries on Sauchiehall Street, not to mention other key design projects he had been involved with. He also owned two homes: one on Glasgow’s India Street, where the family spent the winter, and another, ‘Rowaleyn’, on the Gairloch near Helensburgh, the family’s summer home. Their’s was clearly a family name to be aware of amongst Glasgow’s elite, and one L’Angelier grew ever more familiar with as time passed.

Madeleine’s caution regarding their relationship was a constant reminder to L’Angelier of just how difficult it was likely to be to break into the Smith family in any serious way.Although it never put him off, it certainly tempered their meetings, which were usually kept short and always away from public gaze. In order to maintain contact and keep knowledge of her association with L’Angelier secret from her family, they wrote letters to each other on an almost daily basis. Trusted house servant Christina Haggart was used by Madeleine as the go-between. To keep all this correspondence away from her family, Madeleine had L’Angelier address his letters to the servant, or occasionally use an alias, Miss Bruce. Haggart would then pass them on. The system worked well for a while, but eventually a house servant receiving mail on a regular basis aroused suspicion and Madeleine decided to end the relationship. It was a half-hearted attempt, which made little impact on L’Angelier, and before the family went off to ‘Rowaleyn’ for summer they were back in touch, meeting whenever possible at the house in India Street. Haggart ensured she opened the gate at the back of the house to allow him access to the laundry room where Madeleine waited. If meetings proved difficult, they would leave letters by the garden gate.

Early that same summer (1855), swept along by his belief that their shared passion was genuine and enduring, L’Angelier asked Madeleine to marry him. She readily agreed. So in August, considering himself engaged, he arranged secretly for her to meet his great friend Mary Perry. The meeting was a success and within weeks Madeleine was corresponding with her, comfortable in the knowledge that Mary would keep their secret. But really it was all too fanciful. Marriage to Emile L’Angelier could never have held any real prospect of success, and Madeleine must have known that. Obtaining her father’s approval for the match, which she knew was of paramount importance, was beyond countenance. If they were to marry they must elope and do so secretly. It was the stuff of novels – romantic, idealistic and impractical – and Madeleine must have also known that. But they both revelled in the idea of being a married couple, Madeleine beginning to address her letters to ‘My own beloved husband’ or ‘My own darling husband’ and signing herself ‘Mimi’, a pet name given her by L’Angelier. All the time she maintained secrecy from all those she knew, with the exception of her servant and Mary Perry.

But that summer also brought its own problems. Because Madeleine followed her family out to ‘Rowaleyn’, it became difficult that first year to arrange any further meeting away from her parents. There followed a longenforced absence, during which the relationship could only be conducted by letter. L’Angelier, unhappy at the separation, and perhaps by late summer somewhat disillusioned, suddenly threatened to end the affair and move to Lima in Peru, a city whose fortunes had improved significantly at this time through the export of guano (excrement from seabirds), which European countries were buying, having identified it as an extremely effective fertilizer. It was probably no more than a hollow threat, but enough to prompt Madeleine to write to him in September 1855, saying: ‘It will break my heart if you go away. You know not how I love you, Emile. I live for you alone; I adore you.’

Reassured, he stayed in Scotland and by winter, with the Smiths back on India Street, their secret meetings were once again a more regular occurrence, though not always without incident