The Camden Town murder was a murder which took place in Camden Town, London, England, in 1907. Robert Wood, an artist, was tried for the murder of sex worker Emily Dimmock and acquitted after a defence by Edward Marshall Hall. [1] [2] [3]
On 11 September 1907, Emily Elizabeth Dimmock (known as Phyllis), a part-time sex worker in a relationship with Bertram Shaw, a railwayman, was murdered in her home at Agar Grove (then 29 St Paul's Road), Camden, having gone there from The Eagle public house, Royal College Street. [4] Her attacker had slit her throat while she was asleep, then left in the morning. [1] On the 12th, Shaw returned home during the evening to find his room locked. He borrowed a key from a neighbour, and upon entering found Phyllis lying naked on the bed, throat cut from ear to ear. It was a savage but skilful attack on her from the nature of the wound. Nothing much had been taken from the flat, and the motive was a mystery; the case quickly became a sensation.
After initial difficulty, the police investigation led by Inspector Neill centred on Robert Wood, an artist. A former girlfriend of Wood's, Ruby Young, recognised his handwriting on a postcard found in Dimmock's room, which had been published in many newspapers; she mentioned the similarity of the handwriting to a friend who worked in Fleet Street. [5] Wood was put on trial for the murder, during which Marshall Hall displayed the kind of effective and dramatic cross-examination for which he was known. Marshall Hall was convinced of Wood's innocence, and also of the fallibility of the prosecution case. The judge Mr Justice Grantham departed from the pro-conviction stance he was expected to take mid-summing up, and made it clear he thought the jury should acquit. They did, after retiring for 15 minutes between 7:45 and 8:00 pm. [2] [3]
The artist Walter Sickert adopted the phrase The Camden Town Murder for a series of etchings, paintings and drawings in 1908–09, in each of which the subjects are a clothed man and a nude woman. [4] It was dramatised in 'The Post Card' an episode of the radio crime anthology series The Black Museum , in 1952, starring Orson Welles, and also in the episode of Secrets of Scotland Yard - 'Scales of Justice' - starring Clive Brook. [6] [7] A television series, Killer in Close-Up , dramatised by George F. Kerr, featured the case in the episode "The Robert Wood Trial". The episode was produced by Sydney television station ABN-2 and broadcast on 4 September 1957. More than thirty years later, the court case featured in an episode of the BBC series Shadow of the Noose in 1989, with Jonathan Hyde as Marshall Hall, and Peter Capaldi as Wood.
Walter Richard Sickert was a German-born British painter and printmaker who was a member of the Camden Town Group of Post-Impressionist artists in early 20th-century London. He was an important influence on distinctively British styles of avant-garde art in the mid and late 20th century.
Diamond Bessie was the popular name given to Bessie Moore, née Annie Stone, a prostitute whose murder in the woods outside Jefferson, Texas, propelled her to the level of local legend. She was killed by a single gunshot wound to the head, allegedly by her husband, Abraham Rothschild.
Johnnie Lee Cochran Jr. was an American attorney from California who was involved in numerous civil rights and police brutality cases throughout his 38-year career spanning from 1964 to 2002. Noted for his skill in the courtroom, he is best known for leading the so-called "Dream Team" during the murder trial of O.J. Simpson.
Sir Bernard Henry Spilsbury was an English pathologist. His cases include Hawley Crippen, the Seddon case, the Major Armstrong poisoning, the "Brides in the Bath" murders by George Joseph Smith, the Crumbles murders, the Podmore case, the Sidney Harry Fox matricide, the Vera Page case, and the murder trials of Louis Voisin, Jean-Pierre Vaquier, Norman Thorne, Donald Merrett, Alfred Rouse, Elvira Barney, Toni Mancini, and Gordon Cummins. Spilsbury's courtroom appearances became legendary for his demeanour of effortless dominance.
Hawley Harvey Crippen, colloquially known as Dr. Crippen, was an American homeopath, ear and eye specialist and medicine dispenser who was hanged in Pentonville Prison, London, for the murder of his wife, Cora Henrietta Crippen. He was the first criminal to be captured with the aid of wireless telegraphy.
George Joseph Smith was an English serial killer and bigamist who was convicted and subsequently hanged for the murders of three women in 1915. The case became known as the Brides in the Bath Murders. As well as being widely reported in the media, it was significant in the history of forensic pathology and detection. It was also one of the first cases in which striking similarities between connected crimes were used to prove guilt, a technique used in subsequent prosecutions.
A series of murders that took place in the East End of London from August to November 1888 have been attributed to an unidentified assailant nicknamed Jack the Ripper. Since then, the identity of the killer has been widely debated, with over 100 suspects named. Though many theories have been advanced, experts find none widely persuasive, and some are hardly taken seriously at all.
Mornington Crescent is a terraced street in Camden Town, Camden, London, England. It was built in the 1820s, on a greenfield site just to the north of central London. Many of the houses were subdivided into flats during the Victorian era, and what was the street's communal garden is now the Carreras Building. Mornington Crescent tube station which opened in 1907, takes its name from the street.
The Hall–Mills murder case involved Edward Wheeler Hall, an Episcopal priest, and Eleanor Mills, a member of his choir with whom he was having an affair, both of whom were murdered on September 14, 1922, in Somerset, New Jersey, United States. Hall's wife and her brothers were accused of committing the murders, but were acquitted in a 1926 trial. In the history of journalism, the case is largely remembered for the vast extent of newspaper coverage it received nationwide; it has been regarded as an example of a media circus. It would take the Lindbergh kidnapping trial in the 1930s to eclipse the high profile of the Hall-Mills case.
Sir Edward Marshall Hall, was an English barrister who had a formidable reputation as an orator. He successfully defended many people accused of notorious murders and became known as "The Great Defender".
Jeanne Weber was a French serial killer. She strangled at least 10 children, including her own. She was both convicted of murder and declared insane in 1908; she hanged herself ten years later.
Neville George Clevely Heath was an English murderer who killed two young women in the summer of 1946. He was executed in Pentonville Prison, London, in October 1946.
Robert Polhill Bevan was a British painter, draughtsman and lithographer who was married to the Polish-born artist Stanisława de Karłowska. He was a founding member of the Camden Town Group, the London Group, and the Cumberland Market Group.
The Peasenhall murder is the unsolved murder of Rose Harsent in Peasenhall, Suffolk, England, on the night of 31 May 1902. The house where the murder occurred can be found in the centre of the village, on the opposite corner to Emmett's Store. It is a classic 'unsolved' country house murder, committed near midnight, during a thunderstorm, and with ingredients of mystery.
On 17 June 1919, Mabel Greenwood (née Bowater) died in the company of her husband Harold Greenwood an English solicitor. Greenwood was accused and acquitted of murdering his wife by arsenic poisoning. He was tried at Carmarthen Assizes in 1920 and defended by Edward Marshall Hall; his case is a rare example of a legal professional being charged with murder.
The Camden Town Murder is a title given to a group of four paintings by Walter Sickert painted in 1908. The paintings have specific titles, such as the problem picture What Shall We Do for the Rent or What Shall We Do to Pay the Rent.
Killer in Close-Up was a blanket title covering four live television drama plays produced by the Australian Broadcasting Commission in 1957 and 1958. It could be seen as the first anthology series produced for Australian television.
The Charing Cross Trunk Murder took place in a third floor office at 86 Rochester Row in the City of Westminster in London on 4 May 1927.
Jack the Ripper's Bedroom is an oil on canvas painting by German-born British artist Walter Sickert, painted from c. 1906 to 1907. It depicts the darkly lit bedroom of Jack the Ripper, the culprit of at least five of London's Whitechapel murders in 1888.
Robert "Bobby" Mailman and Walter Gillespie were two Canadian men from Saint John, New Brunswick who were wrongfully convicted and sentenced for the 1983 murder of George Gilman Leeman. On January 4, 2024, they were acquitted of second-degree murder after having their case overturned.
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