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 July 9th.
He Claimed He Didn’t Remember
No one saw Charlie Coleman kill Rose Gurney and if he did indeed kill her he protested all along that he had absolutely no knowledge of it. But the circumstantial evidence pointed at him, and he was hanged for it.
Charlie met Rose in the Swan at Rickmansworth on JULY 15th, 1911 and they had a drink together. They were last seen walking towards a stile close to Rickmansworth Park. Next morning Rose’s body was found at the stile.
Charlie, who had recently served his latest prison sentence - this one for mutilating a dog - had blood on his clothes when he was arrested. That was enough to send him to the gallows at St. Albans, where he observed: “If I did it, I did it, but I don’t remember anything about it.”
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