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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 July 20th. Caught By The ActJohn Wilson Vickers started petty thieving when he was 11. When he was 22 he chose to target Miss Jane Duckett’s corner grocery store in Tait Street, Carlisle. It cost him his life. Believing that Miss Duckett was deaf, Vickers decided that her shop - a short walk from his home in Aglionby Street - was easy pickings and he broke in during the night of Monday, April 15th, 1957. But Miss Duckett wasn’t that deaf. Awakened, she went to investigate, and when she confronted Vickers he punched her and kicked her to death. It was then that the politicians became interested. There had been no executions since August, 1955. The Homicide Act, which became law on March 21st, 1957 - three weeks before the killing - retained the death penalty for certain categories of murder, including murder committed in the furtherance of theft. But the new Act seemed to indicate that without malice aforethought it could not be murder. So did Vickers intend to kill Miss Duckett? His defence was that he did not have that intention. “Surely,” argued prosecutor Jack di V. Nahum QC, addressing the jury, “if a man of 22 kicks and punches an old lady of 73 he intends to cause her grievous bodily harm. If you are satisfied that Vickers did this, then he murdered her during the commission of a theft.” The jury agreed, and Vickers was sentenced to death. Home Secretary R. A. Butler refused a reprieve, and when Vickers was hanged at Durham Prison on JULY 23rd, 1957, a crowd of 6,000 people stood outside the gates in silent protest. Capital punishment was finally ended altogether in November, 1965. Why Killer Smiled At Death SentenceThey called Ronald Cooper the luckiest killer in Britain when he was sentenced to death, because just a few weeks earlier a new British Government had let it be known that it would probably discontinue capital punishment. Not so lucky was Joseph Hayes, who was counting out the wages for his factory employees at his home in Longbridge Road, Barking, on JULY 23rd, 1964, when Cooper, armed with a revolver, knocked at the door. Demanding the cash which he knew was there, Cooper opened fire and Hayes fell mortally wounded. A second shot wounded Mrs. Elsie Hayes, who screamed for help as the killer ran off. Cooper conveniently left his fingerprints in the Hayeses’ hall, and he was known to police. By the time he was traced he had flown to Nassau in the Bahamas. It took six weeks for extradition proceedings to go through - by which time the new government was in office and the death penalty was almost certain to be abandoned. Had Cooper been extradited quickly he might not have been so lucky. When he was finally arraigned at the Old Bailey on December 9th everyone knew why he was smiling as the judge went through the formality of sentencing him to death. Ronald Cooper failed by a whisker to become the last man to be executed in Britain. His death sentence was predictably commuted to life imprisonment and he was released in January, 1980, aged 41. One-Sided Suicide PactAs often happened at the beginning of the 20th century, Richard Deering Dean, a labourer, left his wife and children in Birmingham and set off across the land to find a job. He didn’t find one, but he certainly had some strange adventures. At Long Eaton he met a girl, Emily Lockwood, and told her he was a single man who had fallen head over heels in love with her. But that didn’t stop him roaming. He left Long Eaton and went on the road with a travelling show. Several months later, at Whitsun, 1907, he was back in Long Eaton again. Emily and Dean, who now called himself Richard Deering, next went together to Sileby, then to Melton Mowbray. On JULY 24th they came to Edenham, Lincolnshire, where they decided to make a suicide pact. They sat down on the river bank together, swallowed oxide acid and walked into the river. The pact, however, came unstuck. They crawled back to the river bank, where they were spotted. Emily, who had swallowed much more acid than Dean, died a few hours later. Dean was arrested and charged with murder. At Lincoln Assizes the jury were told that Dean’s attempt at suicide was “bona fide but half-hearted,” and he was corresponding “on the most affectionate terms” with two other girls. He was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death, but later reprieved and sent to prison for life. |
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