Foul Deeds & Suspicious Deaths Around Uxbridge

Introduction

There are many books about the history of Uxbridge and the surrounding localities, written by esteemed local authors such as Carolynne Cotton, Philip Sherwood, Eileen Bowlt and Ken Pearce, to name but four. Local history usually attempts to tell the story of a town or village and how they changed throughout the centuries, from earliest times to the present day.

This book is also about local history, but unlike similar books, it concentrates on the criminal past. Other books might refer to a particularly famous crime; such as the William Murray murder of 1869 in Carolynne Cotton’s Uxbridge Past, or that of John Brill in Eileen Bowlt’s Ruislip Past. The Krogers of Ruislip are not unknown either, partly due to the film and play concerning these spies. The geographical reach of this book is basically the current London borough of Hillingdon, including Hillingdon, Uxbridge, Ruislip, Northwood, Yiewsley, West Drayton and Hayes. On one occasion, I have stepped over the boundary into Buckinghamshire, but there was a crime committed there so terrible that it seemed worthy of inclusion – and it did feature Uxbridge.

Most of the crimes chronicled here have never been explored in detail, and in some cases have never appeared in print since they were first reported in the press (if indeed they ever were). There are few physical signs of these foul deeds left. The memorial in Uxbridge to the martyrs is not one that one would stumble across unaided, and directions are needed to find the grave of the family massacred in Denham in 1870.

It should be noted that this book is not an academic study of the whole gamut of crimes, from theft, to assault, to murder, from the sixteenth century to the present. Such a volume would have its uses, but would neglect the human dimension of the crime and replace it with the statistical. And for most people, crime is about people. Serious crime is one of the most intense human dramas there can be – a fact not overlooked by those writing crime fiction. This book concentrates on twenty instances of serious crime from the early sixteenth century to the sordid 1960s. Most are of murder, but one involves espionage, another martyrs and another a most turbulent priest. We see the drama unfold, meet the characters and discover their motivations, where known. If the case was unsolved, speculation is offered.

Crime fiction is rather different from crime in real life. The former will always tell the reader who was responsible for a crime and why, even if justice is not always done. There are a number of cases here where the killer was never identified. Furthermore, the role of the detective, so important in fictional crime, is often a minimal one – criminals give themselves up or leave so many clues that their capture is easy. Fictional crime once involved country houses and the upper middle class – now one would be forgiven for thinking that middle-class crime is the rule. Nothing could be further from the truth. Real crime usually involves people rather lower down the social scale, as will be seen here. Complex plots and carefully constructed alibis also belong to the fictional world of murder.

Finding the sources for this book was a little like detective work itself, though as always, it was a case of knowing where to look. The Metropolitan Police files at the National Archives and the index to murder and manslaughter from 1891 – 1963 were useful, as was the electronic catalogue. Yet to use this alone would have meant concentrating almost solely on the 1930s – 1960s. This is because, for the earlier cases, there are, unfortunately, no surviving case files. Where they exist, they include witness statements, doctors’ reports, police analysis and statements by suspects. So, useful though these were, the field of enquiry had to be broadened. In one case, the available files are still impossible to access, even though they recount a crime of several decades ago.

Newspapers, both national and local, are another a key source of local history. The Times on-line is an invaluable source and is available free of charge at many libraries. At a touch of a button, the keyword search allows you to see all the articles which feature that word. So cases between 1785 and 1985 can be located with ease. Local newspapers, such as The Buckinghamshire Advertiser and The Southall-Norwood Gazette, provided additional information, too. These are also easily available at local libraries, but the accounts they give are often limited. Comparing the witness statements in the newspapers and the actual ones in the police files, one can see that the former are incomplete.

Then, of course, there are the local historians, archivists and librarians. Their knowledge is invaluable in learning of interesting cases and in locating other sources of information. Mr Pearce pointed me in the direction of a number of criminal acts which I would otherwise have overlooked. The staff at Uxbridge Library, especially Gwyn Jones, have also been helpful in providing documents, books and microfilm of newspapers.

Once this information has been gathered together, the writer’s task is to put it together in an interesting way, sorting out which facts are more important than others, and avoiding the repetition that is inevitable in newspapers.

The author has written a number of books about real-life crime, as well as several concerning local history. He is not a criminologist, but has lived locally since 2002.

CHAPTER 1

Uxbridge and its Environs

It is impossible to offer anything resembling a complete history of Uxbridge and its environs in a few pages and the interested reader will note a number of books for further reading in the bibliography. What shall be attempted here is a very brief introduction to a few salient facts about the district’s past. The places to be briefly described here are those within the modern borough of Hillingdon, notably Uxbridge, Ruislip, Northwood, West Drayton, Yiewsley, Hayes and Harefield.

For most of its history, the district was rural and by twenty-first-century standards, very sparsely populated. At the time of the Domesday survey in 1086, there were a number of small hamlets here. There was the manor of West Drayton, with a population of about 100. The manor of Ruislip was also in existence. During the Middle Ages, however, Uxbridge became the foremost settlement in the area, though it was part of the manor of Colham and a chapelry of Hillingdon, with St John’s as its parish church. This was partly because of its location; being by the river Colne, it was along the main road from London to Oxford, the Oxford Road, later the Uxbridge Road. It also became a market town by virtue of a royal charter, and the centre of manorial administration in the thirteenth century. Flour milling and brewing became Uxbridge’s major industries. In Tudor times, West Drayton was the home of courtiers such as William Paget. The Revd Henry Gold of Hayes involved himself in the dangerous game of religious controversy in this period, too, though to tragic effects, as noted in Chapter 3.

In the seventeenth century, national events affected Uxbridge. There were a number of outbreaks of plague; in 1603, 176 people died of it and in 1625, there were another 136 fatalities. But the great plague of 1665 ‘only’ killed 40 inhabitants. Most in these localities seemed to be sympathetic to the Parliamentary cause in the Civil Wars, at least judging by the protestation rolls, where men attested their loyalty. In 1645, the two sides in the Civil War tried to make a peace treaty here, at a house later known as the Treaty House, though without success. In 1688, there was panic in Uxbridge caused by Irish soldiers deserting James II’s army as the invading William of Orange advanced towards London. It was feared that these desperate men would attack the town, though happily this was not the case. Uxbridge’s local prominence was noted by Daniel Defoe in the early eighteenth century, thus: ‘a pleasant large market town, famous in particular, for having abundance of noble seats of gentlemen and persons of quality in the neighbourhood’. John Loveday, an eighteenth-century antiquarian, noted the Crown as Uxbridge’s premier inn.

Most in the district were employed in agriculture, until the early twentieth century. But many worked in the brickfields in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, too. Giles Hutson recalled that these itinerant workers were rough and troublesome, especially when drunk. In 1861, 175 men in Yiewsley and West Drayton were ‘brickies’ and 238 worked in farming. By the 1930s, the brickfields were coming to the end of their existence, but farms persisted throughout this period. The completion of the Grand Junction Canal in 1805 facilitated the brick industry as it meant the finished article could be cheaply and easily sent to London to be used in the building trade; and rubbish, including manure, was sent back, thus fertilizing the cultivated land.

The Frays, Uxbridge, c 1900. Author’s collection

Schooling was limited until the nineteenth century. Private academies flourished, but the church was involved in schooling from the early Victorian era. St Matthew’s School in Yiewsley opened in 1872. One of its pupils was Sarah Higgs (see Chapter 13). By 1835, there were five day schools in Uxbridge and five boarding schools. Many schools were single-sex schools, such as Miss Jenning’s school for young ladies and the Cave House School, which prepared boys for the professions and universities. Clergymen often ran schools, and the Revd Sturmer taught at one in Hayes in the late 1830s, though with unhappy results as shall be seen in Chapter 8.

Until the late nineteenth century, these villages were very dark at night-time. Yiewsley Vestry did not agree to having gas lights in the High Street and Horton Road until 1897. Some thought that these lights were merely for the convenience of the councillors. Yet street lighting was rarely lit after midnight – to tragic consequences in south Ruislip in 1954 (see Chapter 20).

Although working hours were long, social life played an important part in most people’s lives. Indoor entertainments included concerts and theatricals, both by amateurs and by travelling companies. The first cinema came to Yiewsley in 1911. There were also sports clubs; such as the West Drayton Cricket Club, founded in the 1870s. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, there were hunt meets beginning in West Drayton and Ruislip. Membership of the Uxbridge Yeomanry appealed to those with a taste for playing at soldiers in the nineteenth century.

The villages in the district then were small rural settlements. In 1801, 951 people lived in Harefield, in 1891 the population was still under 2,000. Northwood, which was part of the parish of Ruislip, was smaller still, with 711 souls as late as 1891. Ickenham’s and Cowley’s populations were only in their hundreds by the end of the century, too. One reason for the small growth in population was that the villages here were relatively isolated from the outside world. There was a halt on the Great Western Railway at West Drayton from 1838 and a branch line from here to Uxbridge in 1856 (closing in 1962). This made very little difference. Life expectancy was low in any case; in West Drayton it was about 33 in 1866.

St Martin’s Parish Church, Ruislip, c.1905. Author’s collection

Charles Harper, in 1907, made a number of comments about the rural nature of these places, but he also hints about potential changes that the near future might bring. ‘Ruislip is a very queer, old-world place, that until quite recently was actually four miles from a railway station’. Of Hayes, he wrote, ‘still one of the most rural villages in this remarkably rural county of Middlesex. Hayes is beautiful. The surrounding country is flat, and was until quite recent times an uncultivated waste.’ Finally, ‘Uxbridge up to now has resolutely refused to be modernised; but now with the terminus of the electric tramway at the extreme end of its High Street and a new railway station just beyond – well, we shall see.’

It was at the turn of the century that developments in transport began to become more significant. The extension of the tramway from Shepherd’s Bush as far as Uxbridge in 1904 was one of these. The GWR Line (Central Line in 1948) was extended to West Ruislip in 1906 and the Metropolitan Line to Uxbridge in 1904. At first these lines were used by hikers and day trippers coming into the country for their Sunday treat. But it was now also possible to live in the suburbs and work in London, which had not been the case hitherto. The ‘Metroland’ of Sir John Betjeman now beckoned.

Ickenham Village, c.1900. Author’s collection

Hayes Railway Station, c.1950. Philip Sherwood’s collection

View from Northwood, c.1900. Author’s collection

Local government grew in its powers. Ruislip-Northwood Urban District Council was formed in 1904 from the civil parish of Ruislip. Uxbridge Rural District Council administered Harefield, Ickenham, Hillingdon, Cowley and, until 1928, Northolt. They took over responsibility for public health, town planning and roads, amongst other matters. Apart from Uxbridge (in 1955), however, none ever became an incorporated borough, as some nearby authorities, such as Southall, did.

The First World War had a major effect here, as elsewhere. Charles Mills, MP for Uxbridge, was killed in action in 1915. From Yiewsley, there were 120 fatalities, out of a total of 530 who enlisted. A searchlight unit was established at West Drayton, in case there was any bombing. Railway lines were guarded for fear of saboteurs. Neither of these dangers ever materialized.

Between the World Wars, the population of Uxbridge and its environs, as with the rest of Middlesex, expanded rapidly. But it developed in different ways. Hayes, West Drayton and Yiewsley, being situated by the GWR, and a branch of the Grand Union Canal, became centres of industry. Nestles, Kraft and EMI located in Hayes. Briggs, a contemporary chronicler, described Hayes thus:

Round the station rises the largest group of modern factories in Middlesex, one firm alone employing some fifteen thousand hands … The straggling main road north and south is a seething mass of cosmopolitan humanity and becomes almost impassable when the midday and evening whistles release an army of workers on bicycles.

A booklet produced in 1939 noted that Yiewsley and West Drayton ‘is becoming increasingly prosperous, both from a residential and commercial standpoint’. There was much that was unpleasant – the new sludge works erected at Heathrow by the county council covered 250 acres, and the ‘large and unpleasant refuse-dump’ at Yiewsley were hardly amenities. The latter, though, was a useful place to conceal corpses, as shall be seen in Chapter 17.

Ruislip and Northwood were described by Briggs, respectively, as ‘a veritable gem among villages’ and ‘one of the loveliest villages in the country’. In part this was because over 1,000 acres of woodland and other spaces, including an artificial lake of 80 acres, had been preserved from being built upon. These included Mad Bess Wood and Copse Wood. According to Briggs, writing of Northwood, ‘it appears conventional, prosperous, and ordinary, with a strong bias towards golf’. Yet ‘the standard of new building in Ruislip is far above the average, thanks to wise direction and artistic taste. Even the modern shops along the High Street are less blatant than usual, and the new post office is charming.’

Mount Vernon Hospital, Northwood, c. 1920. Author’s collection

Uxbridge was still the most important town in the locality, and its transport links were improved in 1938, by the Metropolitan and Piccadilly branches of the Underground railway having their termini here. Markets were still being held here twice weekly. As Briggs wrote in the 1930s:

The ‘quiet village’ of Ickenham is now disturbed by a constant thunder of builders’ lorries. Opposite the village church you can get a permanent wave or buy gramophone records, or even imbibe ‘morning coffee’. Hillingdon is no less sophisticated and Harefield is rapidly following suit.

Yet some of the countryside was being preserved, with 1,200 acres of open spaces in the Uxbridge urban district.

Suburban growth was a feature of the 1920s and 1930s, as it was for much of northern and western Middlesex, as some Londoners relocated from the dense city. In 1921, Uxbridge’s population was 10,643; by 1951 it was 55,960. Ruislip-Northwood’s growth was even higher; from 9,112 in 1921 to 68,238 in 1951. Between 1931 and 1961, Yiewsley and West Drayton’s population nearly doubled to 23,723 by the latter date and Hayes’s almost trebled, reaching 68,915 in 1961.

Council housing increased in this period. Yiewsley council had 246 houses built near Falling Lane for just over £100,000 in total. In Ruislip-Northwood 445 council houses had been built by