Blood on the Tracks: A History of Railway Crime in Britain (24 page)

The investigating officers were understandably a little sceptical about his story, but when Kerith Scott picked him out in an identity parade as the man who had shot him at Pollokshields East on that dreadful night the previous December, they knew they had their man. He was a railway fireman and they charged him with the murder of Joan Bradshaw and Robert Brown and a number of other offences connected with the murder.

Immediately the issue of insanity was raised. The young man was examined by a panel of experts who concluded that while he was definitely mentally abnormal, he was not certifiably insane and had known the difference between right and wrong when he had committed the murder. The issue of insanity went on to be at the centre of the subsequent trial but a majority of the jury did not accept the plea of diminished responsibility and found him guilty. He was sentenced to death but reprieved on appeal, receiving a life sentence instead. Was he a young man living in a fantasy world of gun-toting or was he a cold-blooded killer prepared to murder entirely without conscience in the pursuit of robbery?

An Inhumane Killer

On a February day in 1936 Mr Arthur Mead took an early evening train at Aylesbury heading up to London, though his destination was High Wycombe. A Mrs Fuller joined the train at Princes Risborough and sat in an adjacent compartment. Just as the train was heading southwards through the tunnel near Saunderton on the Great Western & Great Central line she heard a sharp report followed by another shortly afterwards. She could not say exactly what the sound reminded her of but it made her uneasy.

She stuck her head out of the carriage window but there was nothing to be seen. When she arrived at her destination, High Wycombe, she alighted and noticed a man slumped on the seat in the compartment next to the one she had been travelling in. Perhaps he was asleep because he certainly looked dead to the world. Miss Fuller continued on her way, thinking nothing more about it.

The train changed guards at High Wycombe and the man who was taking over, Wood by name, walked the length of the train peering into each compartment to get an idea of the number of passengers and to ensure that all was as it should be. He spotted a man who was slumped in a compartment and looking distinctly unwell. He alerted one of the station clerks. The train left High Wycombe but when it arrived at Beaconsfield, Wood decided to take another look at his woebegone passenger. His condition was clearly deteriorating and Wood decided that he needed to be taken off the train.

He enlisted the help of a porter. Bingham, for that was the porter’s name, knew first aid and did what he could for the man who seemed weak and confused but who then suddenly blurted out that he had been shot by a stranger toting a revolver. A doctor soon arrived and confirmed that he had indeed been shot in the chest and that he was in such a bad way that he would not last long.

Two police sergeants arrived at the station and had to try to extract as much information as they could decently do before the victim of the shooting expired. They established that he was Arthur Mead from High Wycombe and he had got on the train at Aylesbury. He told them that at Princes Risborough a man who he did not know had entered his compartment and shot him with a revolver. He provided a description of a man in his mid-twenties and details of his appearance. Mead provided all this information with almost his last dying breath and his life was extinguished shortly afterwards.

The compartment of the carriage in which Mead had travelled was subjected to minute scrutiny by the police. There was no sign of struggle but a spent bullet was found in the kind of position consistent with the victim being shot from the front while being in a seated position. Mead’s overcoat
provided evidence that the muzzle of a gun had been placed against it and fired from that position. Where was this weapon? If it could be found, it might elucidate some of the unanswered questions.

They did not have to wait for long but they were mightily surprised when it turned up. A track worker found a gun lying by the side of the line along which Mead’s train had travelled. Like a good citizen he handed it in and the police were, to use that ugly but descriptive modern word, gobsmacked. It was a humane killer of the sort used to despatch animals in an abattoir. It had not been very humane in this instance because it had fired the bullet that fatally injured Mead. What kind of a murderer used such a weapon? Was this the first time in history that a humane killer had possibly been used for the purposes of murder?

Question now piled on top of question. Miss Fuller said that she had distinctly heard two reports. If the gun had been fired twice, where was the second bullet? If it had actually only been fired once what, if anything, was it that she heard the second time? How come there was no trace of Mead’s supposed killer? What kind of a killer would apparently just pick a victim in such a random fashion or did Mead have an enemy? Did Mead actually kill himself? If so it stretched the bounds of credibility to suppose that he had held the gun against himself, fired it sustaining his appalling injury, got up onto his feet, lowered the compartment window and thrown the gun out.

Additionally the gun was found further down the line than Saunderton, which was just to the south of Princes Risborough. Even more incredible was the notion that he had shot himself and received the fatal injury, sat in agony for some minutes and then, almost as an afterthought, had thrown the gun out of the train. If he had fired the gun himself in the act of committing suicide, why lie about the stranger who shot him? Those people who are aware that they are dying do not usually lie when uttering their valedictory words. If Mead had killed himself, what was the reason?

Mead was a butcher by trade but had been working in a knacker’s yard. He had fought in the army during the First World War and, although physically uninjured, he had been mentally scarred and was unable to get over the sights and sounds he had experienced. He had severe mental health problems and his doctor had only recently recommended that he should undertake treatment as in-patient in an appropriate hospital.

He had owned two humane killers and although he had got rid of the more modern of the two, which was of the captive bolt type, he had kept the old-fashioned bullet one. His wife felt almost certain that the gun retrieved by the police was of this sort. As the police pursued their enquiries they found that Mead had been trying to borrow some money. What for?

An inquest was held which concluded that Mr Arthur Mead took his own life when he was not of sound mind. At the time many people felt that this
was a not an appropriate verdict because it left so many questions unanswered. No further evidence has come to light that could be used to answer those questions.

Murder on the Aberdeen Express?

Britain was still in a state of post-war austerity in 1950. The London & North Eastern Railway had been in dire financial straits before the Second World War, despite the glamorous image of the streamlined expresses reaching speeds of 100mph and more on the East Coast Main Line. The demands of the war had just about brought it and the other three companies of the ‘Big Four’ to their knees, and nationalization just after the war had been necessary to prevent them collapsing completely.

Great efforts were being made to improve things although there were still many disgruntled passengers. Not so the young Women’s Royal Air Force Corporal stationed at RAF Leuchars who was standing on the down platform at Leuchars Junction waiting for an afternoon train to Aberdeen. With her was the young man, also in the RAF, who was ‘dating’ her. She was a widow and he was married but estranged from his wife who refused to divorce him. Both of them were travelling northwards to spend Christmas with their respective families in Aberdeen. Their relationship was not an easy one despite the various interests they shared. They had frequent rows.

They joined the already crowded train and had no option but to stand in the corridor where they proceeded to have an audible row, embarrassing for nearby passengers. Soon after the train left Arbroath a passenger complained to the guard that the toilet had been occupied for what seemed like half an hour or more. The guard knocked on the door to be answered by a man’s voice. He opened the door, coming out looking somewhat bothered and confused. The guard could also see a woman in the tiny compartment but it was quickly established that she was dead. The man was arrested and charged with murder which was quickly changed to ‘culpable homicide’.

Medical examination of the woman demonstrated that she had a heart condition which made her especially vulnerable to the effects of shock. It seems that the couple had gone into the toilet to carry on their argument away from prying eyes, and as tempers rose she probably hit him and he retaliated by seizing her round the throat. The shock of this proved fatal and the court held that he had killed her, although obviously without having intended to do so.

The court took this into account in handing out a lenient sentence of just nine months’ imprisonment. A niggling doubt remained in the minds of
some of those affected by the young woman’s death. Had the man used his knowledge of her heart condition to kill her? If this was true, it seems odd to choose the toilet compartment of a crowded train as the place to bring his relationship with the woman to such a drastic and sudden end. We shall never know.

A recent view of Leuchars station. The Inter-City 125s may now look a little outdated but they have proved to be a superb investment.

An Appointment with Albert Pierrepoint

Railway ticket offices at small, quiet stations late at night used to be tempting targets for robbers. Nowadays most small, quiet stations do not have ticket offices at all, let alone ones that are open in the evenings.

Ash Vale, next station along the line after Aldershot going towards London Waterloo, was a small but busy station, though by eight in the evening most of the remaining passengers using the station were eagerly making their way home from London or wherever else they had been. Few of them wished to book tickets at that time of the night and so the Southern Region of British Railways as an economy measure in the 1950s closed the booking offices at
stations like Ash Vale around eight in the evening. A porter then issued what few tickets might be required.

So it was that about eight in the evening on 22 August 1952 the clerk, whose name was Dean, locked up the office at Ash Vale leaving the porter the means of issuing tickets to any belated travellers who wanted them. The clerk told the porter that he would be staying in the office for an hour or more to catch up with some paperwork. About an hour later a soldier saw the light on in the office and knocked on the window whereupon the confused sounds coming from inside stopped abruptly. He knocked on the window again but received no response.

Another railwayman on his way to work saw the light on in the office, and thinking that it had been left on by mistake knocked on the door. He must have been the inquisitive sort because he then climbed up in order to look through a chink of space left by the blind. What he saw horrified him. A man’s body lay on its back in a pool of blood. He could even see that the door of the small safe was open.

The unfortunate Dean had been subjected to a ferocious attack in which he had received over twenty stab wounds on his body and elsewhere. The motive had clearly been robbery because the safe was empty. Many heavy coin bags lay on the floor but about
£
168 was missing. The railway police and the county constabulary immediately started a murder investigation. Aldershot was close by and the military personnel stationed there were quizzed and a search was undertaken of all hotels and boarding houses in the area. This proved to be unrewarding work until a tip-off persuaded two officers to make a return visit to a multi-occupied boarding house.

Here, in a rather seedy bed-sit, they found a number of blood-stained articles – clothing and money and a passport. They waited for the occupant of the room to turn up and promptly arrested him when they did. He was caught completely by surprise and could not take the pressure. He surrendered a knife secreted in the chimney, gave them some pieces of paperwork taken from the safe at Ash Vale station and showed them his wallet which contained rather more money than a man living in such a place would normally be expected to have legitimately on his person. He also had a set of new clothes which he had clearly bought to replace those stained with the blood of the unfortunate railway clerk. There could not have been much more obvious evidence of guilt. The attacker’s name was John James Alcott.

It was clear that the robbery had been some time in the planning. Alcott was a locomotive fireman and he used the fraternity so common among railway workers to make friends with and win the trust of the clerk in the ticket office at Ash Vale. His opening gambit had been to ask Dean about the times of boat trains from Victoria to Dover. He became a familiar face and in particular he used the relationship to get access to the office and, with the
clerk’s permission, to make short telephone calls, always, at least so he said, to other railwaymen. Clearly this was his way of casing the joint.