Blood on the Tracks: A History of Railway Crime in Britain (10 page)

The handcuffs used on Franz Muller when he was arrested. (Courtesy of Philip Hutchinson) 

Who got the
£
300 reward money? It was Jonathan Matthews. It has to be said that his action gave the police enquiries the kick-start they needed, and that without him those enquiries might not have really got started at all. He was, however, one of those people who somehow exuded an air of shiftiness and mendacity. The police took an instant dislike to him and he cut
a particularly poor figure in the witness box under relentless pressure from the defence counsel. Just after the Muller case Matthews was imprisoned for debt and much of the
£
300 went to pay off his creditors.

Cartoonist’s view of a ‘Muller Window’.

Muller had modified the hat he had stolen from Briggs into a kind of cut-down topper and these became fashionable among young men-about-town in London; ‘Muller’ hats enjoyed several years as fashion items.

On a positive note, some good can be said to have come of the murder of Thomas Briggs in that methods of communication between passengers and what would now be called ‘train crew’ began slowly to come into use across the railway system. These went under the generic name of ‘communication cord’ and when activated they notified the engine driver to stop the train as soon as it was safe to do so, but it was many years before such systems became mandatory.

At least one observer commented that a communication cord would not have saved the life of Briggs. The first blow to his head had probably rendered him unable to summon assistance. The London & South Western Railway put small openings, rather like portholes and known as ‘Muller windows’ in the dividing wall between compartments, and these at least offered some opportunity for frightened passengers to attract attention. Unfortunately these were often used by ‘peeping toms’ to observe the antics of courting couples.

In the words of the counsel for the prosecution, ‘The crime…is almost unparalleled in this country. It is a crime which strikes at the lives of millions. It is a crime which affects the life of every man who travels upon the great iron ways of this country… a crime of a character to arouse in the human breast an almost instinctive spirit of vengeance.’ The first British railway murder may have been a long time coming, but when it did it chilled and horrified the entire nation and, as we have seen, it had repercussions which crossed the Atlantic.

A Feckless Murderer

What does a murderer look like? Even a casual acquaintance with the history of crime makes it quite clear that there is no stereotype of the murderer in appearance or possibly in much else.

That aside, Percy Mapleton, who we shall refer to by his alias of ‘Lefroy’, definitely did not look like a killer. He was a generally rather nondescript man of feeble physique who possessed an aversion to hard work. He was a writer in a small way, with a few minor publications and plays to his name. His problem was one that he shared with many others. He had no regular income, and even when he got a small royalty he no sooner received the money than he spent it. Consequently he was more or less permanently broke. For most of the time he somehow just managed to keep his head above water, but 1881 was not his year and by June he was at his wits’ end. He pawned a few personal items and raised a few shillings. Desperate measures were needed if he was not to starve.

Knowing that he was neither strong nor of ferocious appearance, he had managed to get hold of a real working revolver which he intended to use for the purpose of robbery. If he threatened people with the gun, they would
quickly surrender their valuables and there would be no need for messy violence in which he might come off second best, or so he reasoned. Where should he look for victims? He could not simply walk down the street brandishing the revolver, and he did not fancy lurking in some dark alley loitering with intent. He hit on the idea of a compartment on a moving passenger train.

On 27 June he headed for London Bridge station and bought a ticket for a train going to Brighton on the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway. He paced up and down the platform looking for a compartment with only one occupant. Preferably his intended victim would look as if he or she was worth robbing and would be likely to co-operate quickly when being threatened with a pistol. Lefroy found his victim.

An elderly gentleman sat alone in a compartment, intent on reading his newspaper and totally oblivious to the impending horrible fate that awaited him. His name was Frederick Gold. He lived in Brighton, and, although largely retired from business, he maintained an interest in a shop in London so he travelled up to town every Monday. He would go to the shop, examine the books, talk to the manager and receive a share of the takings in the form of banknotes. He either banked these straight away or put them in his wallet. He enjoyed Mondays. They kept him in touch with the world of work and he usually made a few social calls at the same time.

On this particular Monday, Gold arrived at London Bridge before ten in the morning. He was, as always, smartly turned out. In a pocket was a trusty watch which went everywhere with him. Engraved on the back was the name ‘Griffiths’ and the number 16261. On this occasion his share of the takings was
£
38 5
s
6
d
, of which he banked all but the shillings and pence. He got back to London Bridge around two in the afternoon, found himself an empty compartment and sat back contentedly, drawing on a rather fine cigar and perusing the daily newspaper. He had exchanged a few pleasantries with the ticket collector as he headed for the platform and had nodded to another member of the station staff as he had settled down in his compartment.

Gold would have been less than pleased when another passenger joined him and sat down opposite. He did not acknowledge the newcomer but if he had he might well have noticed that he looked tense and excited. The train pulled out on time and rumbled over the viaducts of Bermondsey which gave a bird’s-eye view of the factories, warehouses and other industrial premises which were then such a feature of this part of south-east London. Soon there was plenty of greenery to be seen as the train traversed the leafy developing suburbs such as Forest Hill and Sydenham. South of Croydon it entered Merstham Tunnel.

It was in the blackness of this tunnel that Lefroy decided to launch an attack on his unsuspecting fellow passenger. A passenger in another compartment nearby heard four explosions as the train was passing through the tunnel. He
wondered why they should be using fog signals or detonators on a clear day and inside a tunnel but he gave the matter little more thought, and, as the train emerged into the daylight, returned to the penny dreadful he was reading.

A line-side observer near Horley noticed two men apparently engaged in a struggle as the train passed but thought it pointless to report the matter at the local station. Eventually the train reached Preston Park in the northern suburbs of Brighton where Lefroy got off. He was a terrible sight. He was bleeding and had bloodstains on his clothes which were ripped and tattered. Even his collar was missing as he staggered, clearly in pain, down the platform. Passengers were nudging each other and indicating in his direction. He seemed to be in a daze when a ticket inspector stopped him and pointed out that he had a pocket watch dangling from his shoe. Rather feebly Lefroy explained that he had put it there for safe keeping.

The excuse that he gave for his extraordinary appearance and the presence of a watch in an unwonted place was that just before the train left London Bridge two men had entered his compartment. He had not liked the look of them. One was elderly while the other looked like a countryman probably aged about fifty. One or both of them, he said, had set about him in Merstham Tunnel, and although he had fought back he had been knocked insensible and had only recovered consciousness as the train pulled into Preston Park.

On the matter of where these two assailants had gone, he was unable to comment. The bemused man allowed himself to be taken first to answer questions from the police and make a statement and then, with a police escort, to a nearby hospital to have his injuries seen to. He returned in the London direction, telling the police there that he was going to stay with a relation of his at Wallington near Croydon. Two burly constables went with him just to make sure.

By this time, what turned out to be Gold’s hat had been discovered by the side of the track and at Hassocks his umbrella had been found. At a quarter to four Gold’s body was found near Balcombe Tunnel. It had sustained frightful injuries. One bullet wound and various knife wounds could be seen, and it was evident even to an amateur that this gory corpse was that of a man who had been engaged in a life-and-death struggle. Somewhat later a detached collar was found which was later matched with Lefroy’s shirt.

A manhunt was now on, and the police quickly visited the house in Wallington. There they were told that Lefroy had gone to see a local doctor. In fact he must have known that the police would come looking for him and he had gone on the run. He turned up in Poplar in the East End of London, but the police were hot on his trail and he was soon arrested. The case against him was clear and he was found guilty.

As murders go, this had been an uninventive and mundane one. Lefroy was of previously good character and had never shown the least tendency towards
violence. Clearly he had been driven to desperate measures by his financial plight but it seems quite absurd that he could have thought that he would get away with it. When he left the train at Preston Park he could scarcely have been more conspicuous had he been stark naked. This was not a classic crime nor was its solution a masterwork in the annals of police detective work. The crime was a bit like Lefroy himself – fairly nondescript.

Preston Park station. A recent view.

Trouble in the Ranks

Railway employees, or at least those in the front line who have duties that involve them meeting the public, have always been vulnerable to insults, assault and even to murder. Fortunately, it has proved rare for them to assault or even murder each other. However, the Dover Priory station of the London, Chatham & Dover Railway Company was the scenario for just such an incident on 1 May 1868.

Thomas Wells was eighteen years of age and he worked as a carriage cleaner. His supervisor or line manager, as he would now be called, was Edward Walsh. It would not be unfair to say that there was little love lost between them, and mutual antipathy rose to a head when Walsh had instructed Wells a few days
earlier to deliver a load of manure to his garden. Junior employees were used to taking a fair amount of shit because it went with the territory. Nonetheless, being told to break off his designated duties in order to help Walsh out with his horticultural activities was rightly seen by Wells as evidence that his supervisor was pushing the other aspect of excretory functions to its extreme, and taking the piss.

A modern view of Dover Priory station. It takes its name from a nearby medieval monastery. A public school is built on the site and utilises some of the monastic remains.