George Hamblin and George Frank Harvey, 28, were inmates of the Westminster Poor Law Institution at Fulham, Harvey acting as a servant to the labour superintendent and having the use of a storeroom. Hamblin carried on a surreptitious bookmaking business, often using Harveys room, and on OCTOBER 25th, 1934, he received nearly £5 in bets.
At 4.30 p.m. he and Harvey were seen together in the storeroom by a man named Richardson who regularly took Hamblin a newspaper. But when Richardson went to the storeroom again an hour later, he found the door locked. The next morning Hamblin was reported missing, and his body was later found in the storeroom, his pockets turned out and all his money taken.
On the morning of October 25th Harvey had obtained a pass to be out in the evening, and he left the institution around 5 p.m. He spent that night and the next with a woman, and on October 28th he gave himself up to the police as the suspect they were seeking.
At the Old Bailey he denied Hamblins murder, but the circumstantial evidence convinced the jury of his guilt and on January 24th Mr. Justice Atkinson sentenced him to death.
Harveys father, however, claimed that there was insanity in his wifes family, and that he was mentally abnormal. As there was a history of suicides in her family, Harvey was examined by two doctors.
They found no evidence of mental deficiency, there was no reprieve, and Robert Baxter and Henry Pollard hanged Harvey on March 13th, 1935.