Great Train Crimes: Murder and Robbery on the Railways (16 page)

Although a railway official thought that a man looking like him left the train at Hastings on the day of the murder, no one else identified him, so he was not thought to be guilty, however. Finally another man tried to leave the country who had a passing resemblance to the suspected man, but was soon cleared.

At the inquest, which was begun at Hastings Hospital on 19 January, what little evidence there was was examined. First, though, the coroner, Mr W J Glenister, paid tribute to the victim, describing her thus ‘a lady of philanthropic disposition a nurse of many years’ standing’. The jury saw the corpse at the mortuary. They also expressed their sympathy. Miss Rogers told of her escorting her friend to the station and of the young man in the compartment. She then wondered if her friend’s appearance was a possible reason for her death. She said:

Miss Shore was wearing a new fur coat and looked nicely dressed, and I expect that the assailant – whether it was the man in the same compartment I couldn’t say – thought she was well off.

If this was the case, then the thief/killer would have been disappointed. The only money she had with her were three one pound notes, and these were missing. On the other hand, the thief did leave the gold rings on her fingers and the brooches in her possession. Jewellery in her case was also left. However, these items might have been difficult and dangerous to dispose of. If this were not the motive, it is unclear what was, for, as Miss Rogers stated, her friend had no enemies. One possibility was that the man was mentally deficient. The only obvious gainer by her death was Brigadier Clarence James Hobkirk, presumably a relation. Miss Shore’s will left him a large sum: £14,279 18s 5d. She was the richest person ever to have been killed on a train. It is not thought that the brigadier had any involvement at all in her death.

After Miss Rogers’s evidence had been given, the inquest was adjourned until 4 February and was not concluded until 4 March at Hastings Town Hall. There was some discussion as to whether the jury should view the compartment where the crime occurred, but this was decided against.

Henry Duck, the guard on the train, recalled that he had seen a man alight at Lewes. He had come from one of the rear carriages – possibly the one in which Miss Shore had travelled. He jumped from his
compartment and walked along the track and then up the platform, clearly in a hurry to leave. Apparently, ‘He had a dark, drab mackintosh coat on and I think he wore a cap, but I am not certain’. Duck did not see the man’s face. He was about five feet eight and aged between 26 and 30. But Duck paid little attention to him because at that time there was no reason why he should. It did not seem likely that this was the same man as Miss Rogers had seen at Victoria, though there were some similarities.

Spilsbury was once again called upon to examine the corpse on 18 January and gave the jury the benefit of his findings. He said that the deceased was five feet three and well nourished. There were three wounds to the head. Death had been due to a coma because the skull had been fractured and the brain had been damaged. According to Spilsbury, these injuries ‘were caused by very severe blows by a heavy instrument having a fairly large striking surface’. She had been struck whilst she was seated. Possibly the butt of a revolver had been used to injure her. He added that there was no sign of any sexual interference or any attempt at the same.

The last sitting of the inquest lasted two hours and fifty minutes. It was noted that the police had questioned ten men and had taken statements from at least 100 people. There were many more tributes to the deceased. There were hopes expressed that an arrest would be made. The jury could only make the verdict that this was a case of murder by person or persons unknown.

It seemed fairly certain that the murder occurred between Victoria and Lewes and that the killer probably left the train at the latter, the first stop after Victoria. Clearly he was not in the compartment at Polegate, since he did not leave there, according to the platelayers; so he must have alighted at the previous station – Lewes. The killing must have taken place some time before Lewes was reached, because the man had had time to rearrange his victim’s body to make it look as if she was asleep; giving him more time to escape before the hue and cry was raised.

The train was a long one, of eleven carriages, and was longer than the relatively short platform then at Lewes station. The passengers in the two back carriages, if they wished to alight there could wait until the train moved on a little. Or they could simply leave and walk along the track and on the platform at the latter’s end, as the killer, eager to escape, would have done.

The next question is, after he left the train at Lewes, what did he do next? He could have taken a return train to Victoria. Or he could have travelled on by another train, to Brighton. Or, as the train split at Polegate, he could have joined the forward portion of the train which was bound for Eastbourne. Or he could have just left the station there and gone into Lewes proper by going over the railway fences to the junction of Station Road and Friars’ Walk. Mr Marchant, the stationmaster, ridiculed this idea because he thought it would have brought more attention to the man, which he would have wanted to avoid. None of the railway staff noticed anything obviously unusual, but then none of them was aware that a brutal assault had just occurred on the train. Although the line was normally busy, on this dark and wet day, which was not in the tourist season, there were not many travellers.

Mr McMaster MP asked the Minister of Transport what was being done to prevent crimes of this nature. He was told that the railway companies provided designated compartments for ‘ladies only’ and female passengers would be made aware of this option.

It seems highly probable that the man seen by Miss Rogers in the same compartment as Miss Shore must have been the killer. No one else had entered, and there was no one else there after the train left Lewes. The motive was certainly robbery. He was ready to commit an assault, having a weapon with him already, and took the opportunity to attack his victim, as she was alone and thus vulnerable. He struck, taking her completely by surprise, and left at his first opportunity, but whoever he was, he easily escaped.

It has also been suggested that Miss Rogers was the killer, presumably inventing the man seen in Miss Shore’s compartment, which we only have her word for, but the motive is unclear.

‘I have killed my girl. I have stabbed her in one of these compartments,
I don’t know which.’

Passion, in all its forms, as well as financial gain, has been a common motive for murder. It is usually easy to detect, for either the criminal acts without thought to evade the police, as in Chapter 10, or confesses. Furthermore, the killer is someone well known to the victim and so will be a name which crops up as the police begin to talk to their family and friends. This case is no exception to the general rule.

Daisy Dorothy Mays was aged 25 in 1927 and was a typist, employed at Ortweiler’s works in East London and lived at Grinstead Road, Deptford. She had ‘been keeping company’ with one James Frederick Stratton. He was a 26-year-old warehouse packer who lived in Homerton Terrace, Homerton. His history was not an altogether happy one. He had been born on 10 February 1901 in Hackney. His mother, Ada Marion Stratton, had died of appendicitis when he was 6 months old. James was looked after by his grandmother, Mrs Mary Padley, and he lived with her throughout his life. James attended the London County Council School on Chatham Place, Hackney, until he left, aged 14, in 1915. He had an unexceptional record there. His working life began in a Hackney printing firm for a few months. Then he worked for Mr Marsh, a confectioner, at Bethnal Green, again, for a few months. From about 1916 he was employed by a woollen goods merchant near Aldersgate Street. Then, from 1919, he worked as a warehouse packer at Mr Ortweiler’s, a fancy leather goods merchant, whose works was based at Great Arthur Street, Golden Lane, EC. It was undoubtedly here that he and Daisy met. In 1905, two men by the name of Stratton had killed a shopkeeper and his wife in Deptford (see the author’s
Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in Lewisham and Deptford
) – but presumably James was no relation.

His character was variously assessed. According to Mr Ortweiler, he ‘was a very good servant and always well behaved’. His 75-year-old grandmother gave a more ambivalent statement, ‘her grandson was usually well behaved, but at times gave way to violent fits of temper, also that a few months ago, after having had a argument with his uncle, Stratton threatened to go upstairs, get his revolver and blow out his uncle’s brains’. It should be stated, as no gun was ever located, that the threat was likely made more in anger than in any serious intention to carry it out.

His family history, as pointed out already, was not entirely happy. A few more points can be made. First, his father, Frederick, who lived in Richmond Avenue, Southend on Sea, in 1927, had only seen his son twice after 1909. There might also have been some degree of mental instability in the family. Frederick’s sister, Deborah McGarth, had shot herself in 1894. His mother had died in 1909 in some kind of institution in Birmingham.

Daisy had not introduced James to her family, as her brother, although he knew of her association with him, did not know his name nor where he lived. In fact, relations between the lovers was deteriorating, although no one quite knew how drastically. Matters came to a crisis in February 1927.

Stratton had hoped to see Daisy on the evening of Sunday 20 February. She did not keep the appointment. He went around to his house in Hackney, but she was not there. He then went to Deptford to try and find her. After walking around some of the streets there, near her home in Grinstead Road, he saw her with another man. Stratton did not make himself known to them and wandered off.

The man in question was one Clement Freeman, a 22-year-old plater’s mate, who lived with his parents in Windmill Lane, Deptford. He had known her for seven years, but had been walking out with her since 26 January 1926. He claimed, ‘I have seen her practically every night’. They used to meet at Deptford Park Gates, just around the corner from where she lived, Daisy arriving from Shoreditch by the 47 bus and later he would see her home. On that evening, they had met at 6.30 and were together for the next five hours. In this time they went to the New Cross Cinema (on the day before they had been to the Prince of Wales cinema in Lewisham). They arranged to meet on the following evening at the Polytechnic on Regent Street at 10 pm, where Freeman attended the gymnasium.

Initially, Daisy did not tell her new boyfriend about Stratton. She claimed that the weekend afternoons she spent with Stratton were afternoons spent with girlfriends. However, in April 1926, she did begin to tell him about her worries. He said, ‘She was afraid he would get to know that she was walking out with me.’ In June of that year, Stratton began to make threats. Freeman suggested that she tell her brother, or the police, but she did neither. Yet by early 1927, Daisy thought life was looking up, as Freeman stated, ‘Daisy had seemed happier than ever since Christmas and I took this as a sign that the fellow had left her alone.’ This was because, although Stratton threatened her if she did not spend Christmas with him, she had ignored him and spent it with Freeman instead, and apparently Stratton had not carried out his threats. Yet this was to dwell in a fool’s paradise.

On Monday 21 February, Stratton was at work. In the morning, he asked Edmund Hearn, an errand boy employed by the firm, to take a message to Daisy from him (she was working at the British Industries Fair at White City). The message read as follows:

Dear May,
Must see you tonight, I have some good news for you Jack will be coming along send word back with him what time can you see me at Liverpool Street If you can’t I will be there at 7.30 and stay till you come, Don’t fail
Jim

Stratton pledged the lad to secrecy, telling him, ‘Will you give this to Miss Mays? Don’t let anyone else up there see it, or they might turn funny.’ That afternoon, at one, he asked John Welch, another colleague, who drove lorries for the firm, if he could ask Daisy if she had a message for him. Since he was driving towards White City that afternoon, it was no trouble for him. They arranged to meet that night at Liverpool Street station at 7.30. At 1.45 that afternoon, he went home and gave his grandmother some money. He then left, with murder in mind, as he later said, to ‘get ready to do Daisy in’. He met Sidney Cameron, an old friend, and they went to the Prince of Wales pub for a drink and played bagatelle there. Then Stratton told Cameron, ‘I feel queer, I am going out for a walk and may see you later’. He did not tell Cameron where he was going. Meanwhile, Daisy left White City at 7 pm.

That night, Stratton and Daisy met by appointment and travelled
from Broad Street station, which was to the immediate west of Liverpool Street station, and handled suburban North London traffic, to Hackney by train (on the London, Midland and Scottish Railway). Perhaps Daisy hoped the meeting would be short so that she could then meet Freeman later that night – clearly she thought she had the situation in control, a fatal mistake, because she was unaware that Stratton knew that she was seeing another man. Leaving the station, Stratton went to the Pelican pub for a drink, leaving Daisy briefly in the street. They met on the platform again and boarded a third class compartment on the next train. Stratton took her to task over why she had not seen him the night before. She lied: ‘I stayed in because it was raining.’ Stratton replied: ‘If you want to go home anymore, you have got to tell me the truth.’ He then asked her who the man she had been with was. Daisy answered, ‘I was not with any fellow and I have not been with anyone.’ Stratton knew that this was a lie and it was then that he completely lost his temper.