Dark Stories: On This Day In True Crime History - Dark Stories True Crime Tours

1917: Tilly Devine Marries an Australian Soldier in London, Sealing a Turbulent Union

Matilda Twiss, born in Camberwell, London in 1900, married James Edward Devine, an Australian soldier serving in World War I, on 12 August 1917. Jim Devine, known as ‘Big Jim’, was a Victorian-born digger with a reputation for being sour and quick-tempered; Tilly was vivacious and already working as a prostitute. The pair were opposites in almost every way.

Tilly followed Jim to Sydney after the war, arriving in February 1920 and quickly building a criminal empire centred on Darlinghurst and Kings Cross. As the self-styled Queen of Woolloomooloo, she became one of the most notorious figures in the razor gang wars of the late 1920s and early 1930s. The marriage lasted 25 years before ending in divorce in 1943.

Portrait of Tilly Devine in 1925

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Australia Darlinghurst Gang Kings Cross London Murder NSW Organised Crime Prostitution Scandal Sydney UK VIC Woolloomooloo

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1927: John Robinson Hanged for the Charing Cross Trunk Murder

In May 1927, a large black trunk deposited at Charing Cross railway station in London began to emit a foul smell. When police opened it on 10 May, they found the dismembered body of a woman, her limbs individually wrapped in brown paper. A laundry tag traced the victim to Minnie Alice Bonati, a domestic servant who supplemented her income through prostitution. She had gone to the Rochester Row office of estate agent John Robinson, 35, and died there following an argument over money.

Robinson claimed Bonati had attacked him, that he pushed her away and she fell and struck her head. Forensic pathologist Bernard Spilsbury contradicted this at trial, testifying she had been knocked unconscious and deliberately asphyxiated. Tried at the Old Bailey, Robinson was convicted on Spilsbury’s evidence and hanged on 12 August 1927.

Trunk in which Mrs Bonati body was found at Charing Cross station

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Execution London Murder 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.