Everyone knew Thomas Gallacher, 22, as a quiet, self-effacing young man. But underneath it he simmered, hating the harsh treatment his father John meted out to his mother in the one room they all shared with a brother in a Middlesbrough slum.
On APRIL 28th, 1933, after Mrs. Gallacher returned home from a stay in hospital, her husband told her there was no room for her in the house. Chastened, she departed to spend the night at the home of a married daughter.
When she had gone, Thomas argued bitterly with his father. And when John Gallacher went to bed Thomas continued to brood on the injustice of it. Finally he took a hammer, stole up to his fathers bed and killed him with it while he slept.
At York Assizes on July 10th, 1933, Thomas Gallacher was sentenced to death, but 13 days later the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. He was transferred to Broadmoor in February, 1936.