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Practically every day of the year is a landmark of some sort in the annals of crime. Here’s where you can find out what happened this week in years gone by... Stories from the week beginning March 8th. Hangman’s Leap To SafetyThomas McGuinness was 25, unemployed and a drifter. Falling in love with a domestic worker in Aberdeen, he proposed marriage, unaware that she had a young son. When he learned of the child he withdrew his proposal but persuaded the girl to leave her job and travel the country with him. She soon found that life on the road didn’t appeal to her, left him and went to Edinburgh. But McGuinness soon traced her and again persuaded her to join him, this time in Glasgow. There he soon began to ill-treat her five-year-old son Alexander Imlach, stubbing out cigarettes on his arms and pushing him downstairs. Taken ill and confined to bed, the child’s mother was unable to intervene when on MARCH 8th, 1917, McGuinness threw the boy downstairs, where he finished him off by punching and kicking his head. He told Alexander’s mother that her son had had a fit, and repeated this story to a woman neighbour. But the neighbour was suspicious and called the police. Meanwhile McGuinness had fled, but he was arrested on his return to the house the next day. Convicted of the child’s murder, he was sentenced to death. His execution was set for May 17th, 1917, and although he was a picture of abject terror he refused a drink of brandy shortly before he went to the scaffold. “I’ve been a teetotaller all my days,” he said firmly, “and I’ll manage without it now.” Less than five feet tall, he was one of the shortest condemned prisoners the hangman John Ellis ever encountered. And he was also inadvertently one of the most difficult. As Ellis placed the noose around McGuinness’s neck he saw that he was about to faint. With a warning shout to his assistant Robert Baxter to jump clear, Ellis dashed to pull the lever, and the trap-doors crashed open as Baxter leapt to safety. Side By Side On The GallowsThe morning of MARCH 9th, 1954, began badly for staff at the Alban Court Hotel, in South Kensington, London. But it was even worse for the hotel’s 55-year-old night-porter George Smart. As his colleagues began the day by preparing breakfast they found his gagged and bound corpse in the servery. Two pounds was missing from the bar, together with a small quantity of cigarettes, and the night porter had obviously fought hard for his life. Although he had head injuries he had managed to free his hands, but he had then suffocated. Within 24 hours the police had the two killers in custody, after one of their workmates came forward to inform on them. Both Kenneth Gilbert, 21, and Ian Grant, 24, were hotel porters, Gilbert having worked previously at the Alban Court. On the day that Smart’s body was found Grant had told the workmate – named Chapman – that he and Gilbert had “done a job” the previous night, stealing some cigarettes. Later the same day, when newspapers reported the discovery of Smart’s body, Gilbert had shown the reports to Chapman, saying that he and Grant had “done a man in.” Gilbert had then told Chapman that the stolen cigarettes were in a railway station left-luggage office, giving him the ticket and asking him to collect them. But Chapman took the ticket to the police. Gilbert and Grant told the detectives who arrested them that they had not intended to kill Smart, and had been shocked when they read of his death. Gilbert admitted giving Smart “a light blow to the stomach,” and Grant admitted punching him twice on the jaw, gagging him with a crępe bandage, and then stuffing a serviette in his mouth when the gag slipped. At the pair’s trial the prosecutor said that even if they had not intended to kill their victim or cause him serious harm, if either of them had contemplated violence to further the robbery, then both were guilty of murder. The defence sought a verdict of manslaughter, but in his summing-up Mr. Justice Glyn-Jones said that in his view the case was one of murder. The jury agreed, retiring for only 20 minutes before they returned to convict both defendants. Their appeals dismissed, Gilbert and Grant were hanged side by side at Pentonville Prison on June 17th, 1954, in the last double execution to take place on the same gallows. This practice ceased under the Homicide Act of 1957. This decreed that in cases in which more than one prisoner was to be executed for the same offence the condemned men would be hanged simultaneously at separate prisons. |
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