Murder - Dark Stories True Crime Tours

1915: Brides in the Bath Killer Hanged at Maidstone Prison

George Joseph Smith, operating under aliases including Henry Williams and John Lloyd, was convicted of drowning three women in their baths after marrying them bigamously and insuring their lives. His victims were Bessie Mundy, found dead at Herne Bay in 1912; Alice Burnham, drowned at Blackpool in December 1913; and Margaret Lofty, found dead in her bath at Highgate in December 1914. Each death was initially recorded as accidental, but Divisional Detective Inspector Neil and pathologist Dr Bernard Spilsbury determined that accidental drowning in any of those baths was effectively impossible.

Smith was tried in 1915, convicted of all three murders, and hanged at Maidstone Prison by executioner John Ellis on 13 August 1915.

Smith protested his innocence to the end.

George Joseph Smith Brides in the Bath murderer in the dock

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Blackpool England Europe Execution Fraud London Maidstone Murder Poisoning Serial Killer Trial UK

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1964: The Last Two Men Hanged in Britain, Executed Simultaneously 50 Kilometres Apart

At 8:00 a.m. on 13 August 1964, two gallows traps opened in unison across England. Peter Anthony Allen dropped at Walton Prison in Liverpool; Gwynne Owen Evans dropped at Strangeways Prison in Manchester. Both had been convicted of the capital murder of John Alan West, a 53-year-old laundry van driver from Workington, Cumbria, stabbed and beaten to death during a robbery at his home in the early hours of 7 April 1964.

Police traced the men within 48 hours through a medallion left at the scene, inscribed with Evans’ name. Tried together at Manchester Crown Court in June 1964, the jury found both equally guilty of capital murder committed in the course of theft. The judge, executioners Harry Allen and Robert Leslie Stewart, and the clock itself were all synchronised. When the traps fell, Britain’s era of capital punishment fell with them. No one has been executed in the United Kingdom since.

Silhouetted hangmans noose rope on orange backlit background

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Cumbria England Europe Execution Liverpool Manchester Murder Robbery Trial UK

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1964: Great Train Robber Charlie Wilson Breaks Free from Winson Green Prison

In August 1963, fifteen masked men ambushed the Glasgow to London Royal Mail train near Buckinghamshire, making off with 120 bags of cash totalling a record 2.6 million pounds. Police traced the gang to Leatherslade Farm within days, and Charlie Wilson, then 32, was among those arrested. In April 1964 he was sentenced to 30 years.

Just four months into his sentence, on 12 August 1964, several men broke into the maximum-security Winson Green Prison in Birmingham and freed Wilson in a brazen outside job. He evaded capture for over three years before being recaptured in Canada on 24 January 1968, returned to England, and made to serve out his term. Wilson later moved to Spain, where he allegedly became involved in drug trafficking, and was shot dead on 23 April 1990.

Arm reaches through jail window to open door escape scene

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Canada Escape Europe Murder Organised Crime Prison Robbery UK

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1895: Minnie Dean Hanged at Invercargill for the Murder of an Infant

Minnie Dean, a baby farmer operating out of The Larches cottage in Winton, New Zealand, was executed by hanging at Invercargill Gaol on 12 August 1895. Convicted of murdering infant Dorothy Edith Carter, she became the first and only woman ever hanged in New Zealand. Police had grown suspicious after discovering she had attempted to take out life insurance policies on children in her care. In May 1895, a railway guard reported she had boarded a train with a baby and a hatbox, departing with only the box. Three children’s bodies were later found buried in her garden, though investigators believed the true number of victims may have been far greater.

Born Williamina McCulloch in Scotland in 1844, Dean had emigrated to New Zealand and married Charles Dean in 1872. She took in unwanted infants for payment, a practice known as baby farming, at a time when illegitimate births carried severe social stigma. An 1891 inquest had found her premises inadequate but stopped short of criminal charges. Her arrest in 1895 ended a career that had taken in as many as nine children at a time under a veneer of respectability.

At the scaffold, Dean maintained her innocence to the last, stating: ‘I have nothing to say, except that I am innocent.’

Minnie Dean, photographed at the time of her marriage in 1872. | New Zealand Graphic, 20 July 1895, p. 63, via NZHistory. — New Zealand Graphic, 20 July 1895, p. 63, via NZHistory.

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Baby Farming Execution Murder New Zealand Trial

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