Murder at the Inn E-Book

James Moore

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 398

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

In which pub was the notorious murder that led to the Kray twins becoming Britain's most feared gangsters? Where is the hostelry in which Jack the Ripper's victims drank? How did Burke and Hare befriend their victims in a Scottish watering hole before luring them to their deaths? What is the name of the pub where the Lord Lucan mystery first came to light? And how did a pub become the scene of the murder that led to Ruth Ellis going to the gallows? For centuries, the history of beer and pubs has gone hand in hand with some of the nation's most despicable and fascinating crimes. Packed with grizzly murders – including fascinating little-known cases – as well as sinister stories of smuggling, robbery and sexual intrigue, Murder at the Inn is a treasure trove of dark tales linked to the best drinking haunts and historic hotels across the land.

Leseprobe

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Without the help and support of a whole host of people, this book would not have been possible. So I’d like to raise a toast to the following: Jim Addison, Gurdish Bansal, Peter Biddle, Fran Bowden, Adele Clay, Philip Cutter, Deborah Dickeson, Sophie Enever, Alex Evans, Michael Evered, Leila Gibson, Susannah Harvey, Felicity Hebditch, Jan Hebditch, Kate Hebditch, Max Hebditch, Rick Hebditch, George Hoare, Gary Hodgson, Catrina Hudson, Judi James, Kevin Kemp, Rod Leitch, Lana Matile Moore, Alex Moore, Charlie Moore, Geoff Moore, Laurie Moore, Philippa Moore, Sam Moore, Saskia Moore, Tamsin Moore, Dr Tom Moore, Tommy Moore, Paul Nero, Dr Claire Nesbitt, Fiona Poole, Will Poole, Sarah Sarkhel, Daniel Simister, Robert Smith, Peter Spurgeon, Jason Stredder, Samm Taylor and Julia Wherrell.

CONTENTS

Title

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part One: A Drinker’s Guide to Crime

1 Homicide and the Hostelry

2 Murderous Landlords

3 Hold-ups, Hideouts and Heists

4 Plots, Riots and Rebellions

5 Bodies in the Bar, Post-mortems and Inquests

6 Courtrooms and Prisons

7 Inns and Executions

8 Landlords and Hangmen

9 Signs of the Crimes

10 Policing the Pub

11 Catch Them While You Can

Part Two: The Cases

1 Golden Age of the Scoundrel: 1600–1700s

2 From Georgian Dramas to Victorian Scandals: 1800s

3 Murder Most Modern: 1900s

Select Bibliography

Copyright

INTRODUCTION

In the early 1930s, archaeologists working at Housesteads Roman fort on Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland made a shocking discovery. Underneath the floor of a building in the civilian settlement, just outside the main fort, which was believed to be the remains of a Roman tavern, they found two skeletons. One was a man and the other was a woman. The male skeleton had the blade of a knife still stuck in its ribs. The bodies had been buried in the back room under a clean layer of clay. Not only did they appear to have been hurriedly hidden, but it was usual Roman practice to bury the dead outside the walls of a town or military post. The archaeologists came to a gruesome conclusion – that they had uncovered a double murder thought to have been committed before the year AD 367.

The origins of modern-day pubs and inns in Britain can be traced back to Roman ‘tabernae’ that sold wine and food to travellers and advertised their wares by displaying vine leaves outside. These were often rowdy places where arguments could suddenly erupt, leading to brawls and, sometimes, death. And, for the next 2,000 years, the development of drinking institutions across the nation would go hand in hand with the history of both crime and punishment. Our pubs and hotels have long been places of solace offering good company, welcome liquid refreshment, a hearty meal and perhaps a bed for the night. Yet they have always had the potential to be crucibles of crime too.

With a need for drinks that were safer than water and places where the community could meet and relax, the alehouse thrived in Saxon times and into the medieval era. Inns, which grew out of the tradition of monastic hospices, were, from around the twelfth century, places where you could not only get a drink but a bed for the night. And by this time there were a few taverns too, selling wine to a well-to-do crowd. By the nineteenth century all these hostelries had become part of the fabric of the nation and begun to morph into the pubs and hotels we recognise today. The word ‘pub’, or ‘public house’, was first coined in the late seventeenth century, but did not become common until 1800, while inns only began being called hotels from the eighteenth century. The modern-day equivalent of the tavern is the wine bar. The distinctions between all these establishments have, however, become blurred over the years.

Sir William Harcourt, a nineteenth-century Home Secretary, once said that ‘As much of the history of England has been brought about in public houses as in the House of Commons.’ It is also true that many of the most dramatic episodes in both English and British criminal history feature pubs and hotels. Over the centuries they have acted as dens of thieves, pirates, smugglers, highwaymen and those plotting terror. They have also been the scenes of mass brawls, riots and grisly murders. Serial killers, too, have often made them their haunts as they search for more victims. Yet pubs and hotels have also served the community when it comes to solving and punishing crime. For they have been used as venues for post-mortems, inquests, court sessions and even as places of execution.

In Murder At The Inn the fascinating connection between crime and the hostelry is brought to life in detail for the first time. Part one, a drinker’s guide to crime, explores the different kinds of felony that have been linked to pubs and hotels and the different functions they have performed in the legal process throughout history. Part two looks at fifty criminal cases from the last 400 years where pubs and hotels were at the heart of the story. These include half-forgotten but gripping tales of wrongdoing as well as celebrated cases involving the likes of Dick Turpin, Jack the Ripper and Lord Lucan. In all of the examples at least one pub or hotel was involved. Some, like The Blind Beggar in London’s East End, where one of the Kray brothers shot a gang rival in 1966, have achieved international notoriety. Most of the pubs and hotels mentioned in this book can still be visited to this day and, where they are still open, directions on how to find them are included. All provide a vital link with an important aspect of our shared history and are still places in which to enjoy a drink, along with a good yarn, serving just the same purpose as their forerunners did in ancient times.

James Moore, 2015

DISCLAIMER …

Writing about the history of pubs and hotels is a slippery business. The names of venues change, sometimes frequently, while others suddenly close. Some reopen, only to move to new locations. And, like many of the good bar room tales told within their walls, the exact truth about a pub’s past is often tricky to pin down. I have endeavoured to stick to the facts, where they are known, and to correctly link old hostelries and inns to the crimes in question, but apologies for any inaccuracies that may have crept in. These will, of course, be corrected in future editions.

PART ONE:

A DRINKER’S GUIDETO CRIME

1

HOMICIDEANDTHE HOSTELRY

For many years The Crown and Dolphin pub in Shadwell, East London, displayed a macabre item of memorabilia behind the bar – a genuine human skull. It was purported to be that of John Williams, the man supposedly responsible for the Ratcliff Highway murders which had rocked the capital in 1811. The story goes that in the 1880s his skeleton had been dug up near the now closed Crown and Dolphin during building works. They knew it was Williams’ body not only from the location in which he was known to have been buried, but also because the skeleton had a wooden stake through it – just like Williams when he’d been buried.

The Ratcliff Murders saw seven people killed in two separate incidents over twelve days within a square mile of each other, and were later described as ‘the sublimest and most entire in their excellence that ever were committed’. The first murder occurred on the night of 7 December 1811 when a 24-year-old draper, Timothy Marr, along with his wife, Celia, 22, their 3-month-old son and a shop assistant were all found dead at their shop in Wapping. The adults’ skulls had been crushed in and the baby’s throat cut. Then, on 19 December, 56-year-old John Williamson, landlord of the nearby King’s Arms, along with his wife and a servant, were murdered in their own pub. A serial killer appeared to be on the loose and initially the Bow Street Runners, a precursor of the Metropolitan police force, had little to go on. However, John Williams, who lodged at another defunct Wapping pub, The Pear Tree, became a suspect when he was linked to a ship carpenter’s hammer thought to be the murder weapon in the first killings. The evidence was shaky, but Williams was arrested. He was never brought to trial, committing suicide in jail. The public were outraged that Williams had cheated the hangman, and to assuage them the Home Secretary ordered that his body be paraded through the streets. An estimated 180,000 people attended the procession before Williams’ dead body had a stake hammered through the heart according to ancient custom, and was unceremoniously buried in a hole at a crossroads.

The case became a media sensation and was instrumental in the growing fascination with murders among the nineteenth-century public which saw many high profile killings such as the Red Barn Murder of 1827 (see here) dramatised in plays. Our obsession with murder has continued to this day, fuelling countless TV dramas, films and books. But one aspect that has been largely ignored is how pubs and inns have often provided backdrops or even the stage for murder, just as they did in the Ratcliff Highway killings. Indeed it is startling just how many of the famous murder cases in history involve a pub or hotel in some capacity. Sometimes they feature as murder scenes, sometimes as places where despicable crimes are planned or simply as locations where the villains have been arrested. In other cases they provide vital evidence to police and prosecutors as places where victims or suspects were last seen.

Sharing a drink can bring people together and induce a convivial, friendly atmosphere. Yet too much drink can get the better of any of us, and the records of the earliest alehouses show that beer and blood have always been bedfellows. Just as now, fights and brawls could break out over anything from religion and politics to sex or money. In 1641, for example, the constable of East Grinstead found people fighting in an alehouse. He reported ‘a great deal of bloodshed’ and the ale-wife ‘covered with gore’. At worst, of course, this behaviour could lead to murder. For many years it was said that the famous playwright Christopher Marlowe had been killed in a simple tavern brawl, though this is now in dispute among historians. Whether or not the esteemed author of works like Doctor Faustus was indeed stabbed in a row over a bar bill as it is alleged, there are plenty of other examples from history where violence flared up in drinking venues and led to death. On 10 February 1355, two university students drinking in the Swyndlestock Tavern in Oxford complained about the quality of the wine. In the argument that ensued they ended up throwing the jug at the head of the taverner, John Croidon. What had begun as a low-level row soon erupted into a full-scale riot in the streets of the city, with hundreds of scholars taking on groups of locals. The trouble lasted several days and only ended after the deaths of ninety of those involved. During the English Civil War, inns and alehouses were often melting pots for heated debate, and in 1648 at The Bull in Long Melford it may well have been a disagreement over politics which led Roger Greene to stab Richard Evered. The murder took place in the entrance hall of the half-timbered inn, which dates back to 1580. Greene was swiftly tried and executed.

The Bull Hotel in Long Melford, Suffolk, which was the scene of a shocking murder in 1648. (Courtesy ofthe Bull Hotel)

Disputes over more trivial matters can always get out of hand too – but never more spectacularly than when Lord Byron, an uncle to the famous poet, killed his cousin William Chaworth in a disagreement over who had more game on their respective estates. On 26 January 1765 the pair fell out over the issue whilst drinking at the Star and Garter tavern in London’s Pall Mall, and a duel in one of the rooms of the building resulted in Chaworth being run through with a sword. Although Byron was brought to trial he got special treatment, being a peer of the realm. He got off with a conviction for manslaughter and a small fine.

Although often outlawed, or the subject of regulation, gambling in alehouses and pubs has been popular for more than 1,000 years. It has also led to murderous disputes. The Maid’s Head in Norwich, Norfolk, has a proud history going back 800 years, but in 1519 it was the setting for a shameful episode when John Ganton was slain with a dagger in a disagreement over who was winning in a game of dice. In the following century a game of shove ha’penny, still a bar room favourite today, resulted in a man being stabbed to death in a Hertfordshire alehouse, while the ghost that is reputed to haunt The Grenadier, in London’s Belgravia, is said to be of a former soldier murdered there after cheating in a game of cards.

Money is often a motive for murder and plain old robbery has accounted for plenty of killings linked to hostelries. In 1734, for instance, a pedlar called Jacob Harris slashed the neck of the landlord at the now demolished Royal Oak in Ditchling Common, West Sussex, killed his wife and maid too and then made off with the night’s takings. Before he died, however, the taverner named his victim and Harris was tracked down to the Cat Inn, West Hoathly, where he was found hiding in a chimney. Another murder and robbery, that of William Stevenson, in 1859, by two men with whom he had been drinking in The Ship at Sibsey, Lincolnshire, even gave rise to a ditty:

At the public-house he called for ale,

His lowly spirits for to cheer,

He little thought that night to die,

And being to his home so near;

But he was followed from that house,

By some ruffians you shall hear,

Who robbed and murdered the poor old man,

In Sibsey village in Lincolnshire.

An equally invidious crime took place in June 1922 when an 18-year-old pantry boy at the Spencer Hotel in London, today known as the DoubleTree, went to the gallows after killing a guest there, Lady Alice White. Henry Jacoby had battered the 65-year-old to death with a hammer in Room 14 of the hotel. She had made the mistake of waking up during his attempt to rob her. Seven years later, Sidney Harry Fox was also hanged after he strangled his mother in the Metropole Hotel in Margate, Kent, to cash in on an insurance policy. His attempt to disguise the murder by lighting a fire in her room had failed.

Plans to bump people off have often been hatched over a drink in a pub. In 1551 Thomas Arden, the mayor of Faversham in Kent, was strangled, beaten and stabbed to death in his own home. His wife Alice and her lover, Richard Mosbye, planned the murder at an inn called the Fleur-de-Lis, now a museum. Alice was burned at the stake and others who took part were also executed. In another case, from 1741, a captain in the Royal Navy, Samuel Goodere, ordered some of his men to assemble in the White Hart in Bristol before kidnapping his own brother, Sir John Goodere, who was then murdered aboard the HMS Ruby.

Pubs can be the venue for criminal ‘hits’ too, most famously in the case of the Krays (see here). That case took several years to solve. But the police have had even more difficulty in bringing anyone to justice for the murder of Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko. After taking tea at the Millennium Hotel in London on 1 November 2006, in the company of two other Russians, the 44-year-old former secret service agent fell ill. He died a few days later. His death was attributed to poisoning with the radioactive substance polonium-210, traces of which were found at the hotel. While British police identified a Russian man as the main suspect, no one has, to date, faced charges.

It’s always worth being wary about whom you’re talking to in a pub or hotel bar. In the last 200 years they have been the haunts of a number of serial killers, many of whom appeared to be charming characters on the surface, as they lured victims to their doom. Among these were Neville Heath, John George Haigh and Dennis Nilsen.

Numerous pubs crop up in the evidence surrounding the most famous serial killer of all, Jack the Ripper, whose murders shocked London in 1888. Many Whitechapel watering holes were later declared as places where possible suspects and victims were seen drinking in the run up to the crimes. And, while the Ripper murders have remained frustratingly unsolved, sightings of murder victims in pubs just before their disappearance have been crucial in many a murder trial. In April 1937, Ruby Keen, 23, was killed in a lane near Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, by a former boyfriend, Leslie George Stone. The pair had been seen drinking in several pubs in the town including the Golden Bell, the Cross Keys and the Stag in the hours before the murder, and witnesses were able to testify that Stone, well-oiled with beer, had been trying to persuade the port-drinking Ruby to break off her engagement with a local policeman on the night she died. Stone, 24, was eventually hanged at Pentonville Prison on 13 August 1937.

In an earlier case, heard at the Old Bailey, George Foster denied killing his wife and child by drowning them in the Paddington Canal. He swore that, though he had been in the Mitre tavern with them on the day in question, he had left alone. A waiter at the pub testified that he had seen them leaving together. Foster was hanged on the 18 January 1803.

Sometimes, however, such evidence would lead to the wrong verdict. In March 1949 the Cameo Cinema Murders rocked the city of Liverpool when the manager and assistant at the picture house were robbed and shot dead. Chillingly, the plot of the film that had been showing that night involved a double murder. The police made little headway with their investigations until 23-year-old local prostitute Jackie Dickson and her boyfriend, pimp James Northam, came forward. The couple said that they had seen labourers George Kelly, 27, and Charles Connolly, 26, both of whom had minor convictions to their name, planning the crime in a pub called The Beehive in Mount Pleasant that night. According to them, Kelly had been showing off his gun in the bar. Kelly and Connolly claimed not even to know each other and to have alibis. They both maintained that they had not been in The Beehive on the evening in question. Despite more shaky evidence from a convict who had claimed to have overheard the two accused men plotting whilst behind bars, Kelly and Connolly were put on trial. While Kelly was convicted and hanged in March 1950, Connolly got ten years behind bars. Both convictions were eventually quashed in 2003.

Sex and troubled relationships account for a vast number of murders, and again pubs and inns play their part in these tragic episodes, perhaps most famously in the case of Ruth Ellis (see here) but also in the case of another female killer, poisoner Mary Blandy (see here). A man who could not bear to see his relationship fail was behind a less famous murder in Catton near Norwich in 1908. Horace Larter killed his 19-year-old sweetheart Nellie Howard and later that night stumbled into The Maid’s Head in Old Catton, dripping blood and spilling beer. He pleaded guilty to the crime, telling police, ‘In a fit of passion I stabbed her in the neck.’

Some murders do, of course, seem completely senseless, such as the 1922 murder by 15-year-old Jack Hewitt of Sarah Blake, the landlady at the Crown and Anchor pub, which was located by the aptly named Gallows Tree Common near Pangbourne in Berkshire. Before Hewitt was convicted he put his actions down to watching too many movies, telling police to ‘blame it on the pictures’.

For some reason, after committing their crimes, murderers often seek refuge in the comforting surroundings of pubs and hotels. When Harry Roberts and two accomplices killed three police officers in 1966 in what would become known as the Massacre of Braybrook Street, the felons went on the run. Roberts checked into London’s grand Russell Hotel. While staying here he bought camping equipment, subsequently managing to avoid capture for three months before being apprehended and locked up for life. Thankfully the long arm of the law usually does catch up with murderers, and they have often been arrested in pubs, such as William Wilton who killed his wife, Sarah, in Brighton in 1887. He was picked up just hours later in the Windmill, now The Dyke Pub & Kitchen, confessing there and then.

Murder victims have even turned up in pubs many years after the event! In October 2010, workmen were redeveloping a derelict pub in Richmond-upon-Thames called the Hole in the Wall for the naturalist and filmmaker David Attenborough who lived next door. They discovered a skull which had been buried where the pub’s stables had once stood. Scientific tests concluded that it was the missing head of Julia Martha Thomas, a widow who was known to have been murdered by her maid, Kate Webster, on 2 March 1879 in a house nearby. Webster first pushed her victim down the stairs, then boiled her body before disposing of the body parts around south-west London. She even tried to sell the fatty remains of the dead woman as dripping to the landlady at the Hole in the Wall. Webster was hanged in July 1879 at Wandsworth Prison.

LOCATIONS:The Bull, Hall Street, Long Melford, Sudbury, Suffolk, CO10 9JG, 01787 378494, www.oldenglishinns.co.uk; Maid’s HeadHotel, No. 20 Tombland, Norwich, NR3 1LB, 01603 209955, maidsheadhotel.co.uk; The Grenadier, No. 18 Wilton Row, London, SW1X 7NR, 020 7235 3074, www.taylor-walker.co.uk; The Cat Inn, Queen’s Square, West Hoathly, West Sussex, RH19 4PP, 01342 810369, www.catinn.co.uk; Double Tree, No. 4 Bryanston Street, Marble Arch, London, W1H 7BY, 020 7935 2361, doubletree3.hilton.com; Millennium Hotel, No. 44 Grosvenor Square, London, W1K 2HP, 020 7629 9400, www.millenniumhotels.co.uk; TheGolden Bell, Leighton Buzzard, No. 5 Church Square, Leighton Buzzard, Central Bedfordshire, LU7 1AE, 01525 373330, www.thegoldenbell.co.uk; The Stag, No. 1 Heath Road, Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, LU7 3AB, 01525 372710; The Beehive, No. 14 Mount Pleasant, Liverpool, L3 5RY, 0151 525 8967; The Maid’s Head, No. 85 Spixworth Road, Old Catton, Norwich, Norfolk, NR6 7NH; HotelRussell, Nos 1–8 Russell Square, London, WC1B 5BE, 020 7837 6470; Dyke Pub & Kitchen, No. 218 Dyke Road, Brighton, East Sussex, BN1 5AA, 01273 555672, www.connaughtpub.co.uk

2

MURDEROUS LANDLORDSCT

Most pub landlords and landladies are genial folk. They are people with whom you can share a joke and enjoy a chat. Sometimes they even provide a shoulder to cry on. But there are exceptions to this rule, and a few have been truly villainous. Tales of murderous landlords date back centuries and the concept of the psychopathic innkeeper has a rich heritage in literature and film. This tradition first arose because travel, until relatively recent times, was an extremely hazardous business. There was not only the threat of being robbed by bandits or highwaymen on your journey, but it was difficult to know whom you could trust as you bedded down for the night in an unfamiliar place. At even some of the best inns you could awake to find your possessions gone in the morning, only taking comfort from the fact that you hadn’t been murdered in your bed too.

The Ostrich Inn at Colnbrook, Berkshire, can trace its history to around 1100 when it was a hospice for travellers, though the present building dates to around 1500. It was probably the Crane Inn, mentioned in Thomas Deloney’s 1600 work, The Pleasant Historie ofThomas ofReading. This tome included the anything but pleasant account of a landlord by the name of Jarman who robbed rich travellers by boiling them. He constructed a special bed in one of the chambers of the inn above the kitchen. When he was sure his unwitting guest was asleep, the poor soul would then be tipped through a trapdoor into a bubbling cauldron beneath. Jarman, aided by his wife, did away with some sixty people before his ruse was finally rumbled when enquiries were made about one of his missing guests, Thomas Cole. His body was found in the local brook, supposedly giving the village its name. Deloney’s work was, in fact, designed as a fictional tale, but the tale about Jarman, which is supposed to have happened in the reign of Henry I, may well have been based on a true story. After all, serial killers are not a new phenomenon and some of Deloney’s details are quite specific.

The Ostrich Inn, Colnbrook, West Berkshire, was the setting for the story of a killer innkeeper. (© James Moore)

Just a few years after Deloney’s work was published, there was a true story of a murder by an innkeeper. In 1654 Thomas Kidderminster, a farmer from Ely in Cambridgeshire, was travelling to London and happened to stay at the now lost White Horse in Chelmsford, Essex. Here he was robbed of the £600 he was carrying and killed by a Mr Sewell, who subsequently gave up running the inn. The murder did not come to light until 1663 when some remains were dug up in the inn’s yard by its new owner, a Mr Turner. They appeared to be of a man who had a hole in the side of his skull. Kidderminster’s widow read a report in a newspaper asking if anyone might have information regarding the case and realised that the rough date of the supposed killing matched the time that Thomas had gone missing. She conducted her own enquiries and in the end witnesses who had been working at the inn spilled the beans about the crime. Sewell and his wife, who was also implicated, died before they could be tried, but Moses Drayne, the inn’s ostler (stableman) at the time of the killing, who had helped bury the body, was hanged for his part in the bloody business.

Other very real tales of killer landlords are not difficult to come by. William Wyatt, landlord of the former Rose and Crown in Fowey, Cornwall, went to the gallows in 1812 after robbing and murdering Isaiah Folk Valentine, drowning his victim near the quay. In January 1878 James Donoghue, the 31-year-old landlord of the Spinner’s Arms in Bradford, was convicted of killing Michael Dunn after an argument. Dunn’s body was discovered at the back of the pub. In December 1899 Samuel Crozier, landlord of the Admiral Rous Inn at Galleywood Common, Essex, was hanged for murdering his wife, Ann, in a room above the bar. The pub is now a private home.

Perhaps the most infamous publican to have been convicted of murder was George Chapman, a man later linked to the Jack the Ripper murders. His real name was Severin Koslowski and he was thought to have left his native Poland for England in 1888, the year that the Ripper killings began. What is more, he was living in Whitechapel, the area in which the murders took place. By 1890 he was working as a barber underneath the White Hart pub on Whitechapel High Street. He married a Polish woman called Lucy Baderski but another woman from Poland turned up accusing him of already being her husband. Chapman soon left for America. Strangely, around the same time the Ripper murders dried up too.

By 1895 he was back, without his wife, and hooked up with a woman called Mary Spink. They lived in Hastings, Sussex, where he worked as a hairdresser while she played the piano. Soon they were back in London where Chapman became landlord of a former pub, The Prince of Wales in Bartholomew Square. Mary soon became ill with vomiting attacks and died in December 1897. Her death was put down to consumption. Chapman employed a new barmaid, Bessie Taylor, who soon became his ‘wife’. The couple moved to the now demolished Grapes in Bishop’s Stortford, Herts, where they lived for eighteen months before moving back to London. In 1900 they took on the Monument Tavern in Union Street, Borough. In February 1901, Bessie died too, with similar symptoms to Mary’s. Again Chapman moved on, this time to The Crown in Borough High Street, taking on another new barmaid, Maud Marsh. The pair were soon living as husband and wife, but within a year she would be dead. Maud’s symptoms were largely the same as the others, but this time the victim’s mother, who nursed her, became suspicious and alerted the authorities. A post-mortem found that Maud had been poisoned with antimony. An investigation followed and the bodies of Mary Spink and Bessie Taylor were exhumed. They, too, were found to have been poisoned, and in March 1903 Chapman was found guilty of murder. He was hanged at Wandsworth Prison on 7 April. While Chapman may have been in the right place at the right time and was clearly a man who was habitually cruel towards women, his method of murder, using poison, does not seem to fit with the violent attacks attributed to the Ripper.

A much more modern serial killer also had a history as a landlord. Steve Wright is currently serving life for the murder of five prostitutes in a horrendous killing spree in Ipswich, Suffolk, in 2006. Discovering that their former publican had been a serial killer sent shivers down the spines of drinkers at The White Horse in Chislehurst, south-east London, a pub which has more recently been called The Lounge. Wright also ran two other pubs, the now defunct Ferry Boat Inn at Norwich and the Rose and Crown in Plumstead, south-east London.

Of course being a landlord or landlady can be a dangerous business in itself and they have, themselves, often been the victims of murder. For example, on 10 December 1827, James Winter was executed at Chelmsford for the murder of Thomas Patrick, who ran the Yorkshire Grey pub in Colchester. Patrick had called a constable to the pub after a fight had broken out involving Winter, who then struck the unfortunate landlord with a board. In 1832 William Bradbury, the landlord of the Moorcock Inn, also known as Bill O’Jacks, on lonely Saddleworth Moor, was murdered along with his son Thomas. As he lay dying, the 84-year-old William managed to mutter the words ‘pats’ before expiring. It was not enough information to help solve the killings and the case remains unsolved. The pub was demolished in 1937. A policeman, Herbert Burrows, was the culprit in 1925 when he shot Ernest and Doris Laight, the landlord and landlady of the Garibaldi Inn, Worcester, along with their son. The 23-year-old, who lived across from the pub – which has since become a takeaway – had done it for the meagre sum in the till and managed to give himself away when he foolishly asked fellow officers if they had heard anything about the killings. They hadn’t, as the crime had yet to be reported by anyone else. Burrows was hanged at Gloucester in February 1926.

LOCATIONS:The Ostrich, High Street, Colnbrook, West Berkshire, SL3 0JZ, 01753 682628, www.theostrichcolnbrook.co.uk; White Hart, No. 89 Whitechapel High Street, Aldgate, London, E1 7RA, 020 7247 1546

3

HOLD-UPS, HIDEOUTSAND HEISTS

Whilst most alehouses, pubs and hotels have been primarily venues for a bit of honest drinking and relaxation, some have seethed with thieves and rogues. For centuries they have been convenient places in which criminals of all types have congregated to plan crimes, get some Dutch courage before their exploits and even share out their ill-gotten gains. As early as 1370 it was recorded that Juliana Fox of Thornbury, Gloucestershire, was charged not only with running a brothel in her alehouse (once a very common practice) but knowingly using it as a rendezvous for robbers. Alehouses, which were often little more than rooms with a few benches before the eighteenth century, were places where impoverished tipplers could make a bit on the side by hiding goods or fencing them. By the early 1600s alehouses were being denounced as ‘dens of sheep stealers and robbers’. The concerns were not without basis. During the reign of James I, for instance, a villain called Hampshire Will and fellow thieves met up at a hostelry called The Old Chopping Knife at Wokingham to plan their crime sprees. Yet the role of pubs as places where criminals gathered did not diminish – by the early nineteenth century writers were referring to certain pubs as ‘flash houses’ where thieves would congregate. Indeed this function has continued right up to the present day, and in the last 400 years the types of crime linked to pubs have only multiplied, while the concern about the link between drink and illegality remains as strong as ever.

Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part One includes a robbery carried out by Falstaff and his lowlife associates at Gad’s Hill in Kent, near Rochester. Indeed there is now a pub, the Sir John Falstaff, named after the character at the spot. After the hold-up they retreat to the Boar’s Head Tavern in Eastcheap, London, a watering hole which really existed and burned down in the Great Fire of 1666. At the time the play was written, in the 1590s, Gads Hill was already an infamous haunt of robbers who regularly preyed on travellers, and Shakespeare’s comic device reflected a serious real-life problem. The proliferation of alehouses and inns during Tudor times went hand in hand with the increase in highwaymen. In 1537, for example, an innkeeper at The Bear in Hungerford testified that three highwayman had lodged with him after robbing a clothier between Bagshot and Windsor Park.

Of course brigands had always held up travellers but during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries bold new ‘knights of the road’ found rich pickings among the new stagecoaches and mail coaches which criss-crossed the country. The highwaymen used a multitude of drinking venues as their hideouts. They were both places to gather information and divide up the proceeds of their endeavours. One might think that after committing a robbery they would immediately head to the baser alehouses where a friendly tapster would be in on the act. While this was often the case, they also headed to upmarket inns on the basis that they were less likely to be searched. And whilst inns were grander than common alehouses, the reformed seventeenth-century highwayman John Clavell warned that even here the staff could be in league with the criminals. Clavell particularly highlighted the role of the ostler who, he said, was often a little too eager to help with a guest’s bags in order to weigh them up and work out if they would make a good target on the road for the highwayman who would then give him a commission on a good haul. The Bull Inn at Shooter’s Hill towards the south-east of London, which was first built in 1749 and still exists today, was legendary as a place where highwaymen would size up their victims – it would also be a spot where they were gibbeted once caught and executed. The sheer audacity of some highwaymen in the eighteenth century is exhibited at the Black Horse in Cherhill where there hangs a painting of the Cherhill Gang, a group of robbers who terrorised the roads west from London, apparently holding up travellers whilst totally naked.

The most famous of all highwaymen is Dick Turpin, the son of an innkeeper who was active in the early eighteenth century. During his years as a criminal, Turpin used many pubs and even lodged in them (see here). But there were plenty of other rascals of the road who made inns and alehouses their headquarters. George Lyon was one of the so-called ‘gentlemen highwaymen’, though by all accounts a rather cack-handed one. He was hanged at Lancaster in 1815 for holding up the Liverpool mail coach, his only successful robbery, which was planned at the Legs of Man in Wigan, a pub which closed in the 1970s. Lyon used horses loaned from the innkeeper at the Bull’s Head Inn in Upholland, also now gone, where he returned to share out the loot with his accomplices. The Royal Anchor Hotel in Liphook, Hampshire, which survives as part of the Hungry Horse chain, was used by the highwayman Captain Jacques. He died there when shot whilst trying to make his escape using a secret passageway behind a fireplace. Meanwhile the highwayman Edward Higgins mixed with polite society at the George and Dragon in Knutsford, Cheshire, an inn which became the Royal George and is now a restaurant. Few of his fellow carousers realised that he was leading a double life as a criminal until he was arrested and hanged in November 1767.

However, as both inns and more humble drinking establishments became more refined towards the end of the eighteenth century, they themselves could be the victims of highwaymen and other robbers. By this era there was often plenty of cash and expensive chattels on the premises. In 1772 at The Sun Inn, Hitchin, three robbers held up the customers and landlord at gunpoint. On the way out with their loot they scratched their initials in the brickwork which can still be seen today. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, many innkeepers began to inform on the highwaymen as they had much to lose in terms of licences and reputation. By the 1830s the era of the highwayman had died out thanks to the development of better roads, tolls and more patrols. Thefts from ‘victualing houses’ continued, however, with figures showing that they made up the third largest type of robbery in Preston that same year.

During the heyday of smuggling in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries bootleggers also used networks of pubs as bases for their activities, often with the cooperation of the publicans. Indeed in 1739 a government agent put the success of smugglers down to the fact that innkeepers often harboured them. Of course, the most famous of all smugglers’ pubs is the Jamaica Inn on Cornwall’s lonely Bodmin Moor, where there is even a museum dedicated to its treacherous history. The writer Daphne Du Maurier put Jamaica Inn on the map with her tales of ships being lured onto the rocks and wrecked so that their cargoes could be plundered. The inn, built in 1750, really was used by smugglers who used 100 different routes across the moors when transporting their contraband, and often made for the isolated Jamaica as a place to store the goods. Among the illicit items were tea, tobacco and brandy. In fact there were hundreds of pubs along England’s south and east coasts which provided the cover for smuggling. The Lobster Smack on Canvey Island, which dates back to 1600, is one of the best known, while the history of the inns in the village of Alfriston in Sussex is interwoven with that of smuggling. Both the fourteenth-century Star and The Market Cross Inn were used by smugglers operating in the English Channel. The latter, which has now cashed in by renaming itself Ye Olde Smugglers Inn, was the headquarters of smuggling leader Stanton Collins. Like many such pubs it has a network of secret tunnels used to escape the beady eyes of the excise officers. It was one of these that met an untimely end when Collins’ gang pushed him off a cliff nearby. Collins was finally arrested and transported to Australia for sheep stealing.

In more recent times, pubs have played roles in cases of organised crime. Members of the gang that took part in the Great Train Robbery of 1963 hatched their plans in the pubs and clubs of London. Chief among these was the Star Tavern in upmarket Belgravia, the favourite drinking spot of the heist’s suave mastermind Bruce Reynolds. Other pubs, including The Spencer Arms in Putney and The Angelsea Arms in South Kensington, claim to have done their bit as the caper was organised. The robbers, who held up a Royal Mail train in Buckinghamshire, got away with £2.6 million. Then there was the Brinks-Mat robbery in 1983, which saw £25 million in gold stolen at Heathrow Airport, most of which was never recovered. George Francis, one of those thought to have laundered the loot, was gunned down dead in 2003. He had only narrowly avoided being killed in 1985 when he was shot by a hooded gunman at his pub, the Henry VIII, in Hever Castle, Kent.

The Star Tavern, Belgravia, West London, where the Great Train Robbery was planned. (©James Moore)

LOCATIONS:Sir John Falstaff, Gravesend Road, Rochester, Kent, ME3 7NZ, 01634 717104, www.sirjohnfalstaff.co.uk; The Bear Hotel, No. 41 Charnham Street, Hungerford, West Berkshire, RG17 0EL, 01488 682512, www.thebearhotelhungerford.co.uk; TheBull, No. 151 Shooters Hill, London, SE18 3HP, 020 8856 0691; The Black Horse, Main Road, Cherhill, Calne, Wiltshire, 01249 813365, www.theblackhorsecherhill.co.uk; Royal Anchor, Nos 9-11 The Square, Liphook, Hampshire, GU30 7AD, 01428 722244, www.hungryhorse.co.uk; The Sun Hotel, Sun Street, Hitchin, Hertfordshire, SG5 1AF, 01462 432092, www.oldenglishinns.co.uk; Jamaica Inn, Bolventor, Launceston, Cornwall, PL15 7TS, 01566 86250, www.jamaicainn.co.uk; The Lobster Smack, Haven Road, Canvey Island, Essex, SS8 0NR, 01268 514297, www.thelobstersmackcanveyisland.co.uk; The Star, High Street, Alfriston, East Sussex BN26 5TA, 01323 870495, www.thestaralfriston.co.uk; Ye Olde Smugglers Inne, Waterloo Square, Alfriston, Polegate, East Sussex, BN26 5UE, 01323 870241, www.yeoldesmugglersinne.co.uk; The Star Tavern, No. 6 Belgrave Mews West, London, SW1X 8HT, 020 7235 3019, www.star-tavern-belgravia.co.uk; The Spencer Arms, No. 237 Lower Richmond Road, Putney, London, SW15 1HJ, www.thespencerpub.co.uk; The Angelsea Arms, No. 15 Selwood Terrace, South Kensington, London SW7 3QG, 020 7373 7960, www.angleseaarms.com; The Henry VIII, Hever Road, Edenbridge, Kent, TN8 7NH, 01732 862 457, www.shepherdneame.co.uk

4

PLOTS, RIOTSAND REBELLIONS

On 20 May 1604, a group of five men met for a secret meeting at an inn called the Duck and Drake near The Strand in St Clement’s parish of London. The inn was the place where a Catholic called Thomas Winter usually stayed when he was in the capital. Joining Winter were a small band of co-conspirators: Robert Catesby, the leader, along with John Wright, Thomas Percy and Guy Fawkes. It was here, no doubt fuelled by a little wine, that they formulated their plan to kill King James I. As Thomas Winter later confessed:

So we met behind St. Clement’s, Mr. Catesby, Mr. Percy, Mr. Wright, Mr. Guy Fawkes, and myself, and having, upon a primer, given each other the oath of secrecy, in a chamber where no other body was, we went after into the next room and heard Mass, and received the blessed Sacrament upon the same.

As every history student knows, the plot involved hiding barrels of gunpowder in a cellar underneath the House of Lords. The intention was to blow up everyone inside, including the monarch, on 5 November, during the opening of parliament. The scheme was uncovered at the last moment thanks to a tip-off.

Jack Straw’s Castle, a former pub which got its name from a fourteenth-century rebel. (©James Moore)

It was not the first occasion when one of the nation’s inns had been at the centre of an attempt to overthrow the ruling elite, nor would it be the last. An earlier rebellion, which originated in Kent, had seen Jack Cade head a popular uprising against King Henry VI and lead an army to London. He made the White Hart in Southwark his headquarters before storming across London Bridge into the city. The revolt was soon put down after a battle on the bridge itself. The White Hart, which was next door to the existing George, a similar inn on Borough High Street, was pulled down in the nineteenth century. Another failed rebellion, that of Thomas Wyatt against Queen Mary in 1554, ended outside another of London’s most historic lost inns, the Belle Sauvage. It was here that Wyatt rested in despair on a bench, realising that the game was up. Beheaded for treason, Wyatt didn’t get the accolade of having a London pub named after him like former rebel Jack Straw. One of the leaders of the Peasant’s Revolt, in 1381, Straw was also executed. But he was remembered at the Jack’s Straw’s Castle in Hampstead, North London. The pub, which closed in the 1990s, commemorated an earlier speech to followers made on the heath from a hay wagon.

In 1780, London was rocked by the Gordon Riots, which erupted after the government proposed legislation to reduce the restrictions imposed on Catholics. During the unrest 700 people were killed and 12,000 troops had to be deployed to put down the uprising. The leaders of the riots would meet at The Boot tavern in Cromer Street near King’s Cross. At one point during the disturbances a mob marched on Kenwood House in Hampstead, the home of the pro-Catholic Lord Chief Justice, the Earl of Mansfield. They intended to burn the villa to the ground, but on the way they stopped at The Spaniards Inn, already nearly 200 years old, for refreshments. The Spaniards has since been mentioned in both Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. On this occasion, a shrewd landlord plied his rowdy customers with free drink until cavalry arrived to protect the house. There were more religious disturbances in the Midlands in 1791 when the Birmingham Hotel in the city’s Temple Row was attacked because it was the venue of a dinner held by dissenters to celebrate the French Revolution.

The Spaniards Inn, Hampstead, North London, where eighteenth-century riots were thwarted by the landlord. (Courtesy of Mitchells & Butlers)

The Boot in Cromer Street, London. Leaders of the Gordon Riots assembled in a previous incarnation here. (©James Moore)

In the early nineteenth century another pub, the Horse and Groom in Cato Street, London, played a role in foiling the so-called Cato Street Conspiracy, an attempt to kill the Prime Minister Lord Liverpool and the cabinet. The conspirators were Spencean Philanthropists who believed in the common ownership of land and met in pubs like the Cock in Grafton Street and Nag’s Head in Carnaby Market as well as the Horse and Groom in Marylebone. The latter overlooked a stable where, on 23 February, in a hayloft, the plotters assembled to finalise their plans. However, a police spy was watching them arrive from the Horse and Groom. A magistrate and some soldiers were alerted and arrived to arrest the gang. A scuffle ensued in which one man was killed. Five of those involved in the plot, including Thistlewood, were hanged for high treason at Newgate Prison on 1 May 1820. The Horse and Groom is long gone, but there is a plaque in Cato Street to show the location of the original hayloft.