Having lost his job with the English Electric Company, Matthew Kavanagh went out on APRIL 12th, 1958, to drown his sorrows with his fellow-lodger, 60-year-old Isaiah Dixon.

Both were drunk when they returned to their Coventry lodgings, where Kavanagh helped Dixon up the stairs. Later that night he went to a local café and told the proprietor he had strangled Dixon with his own tie, and had then stolen his money.

After his conviction for murder, it was disclosed that 18 months earlier Kavanagh had been acquitted of the murder of 35-year-old Mrs. Evelyn Ulla, with whom he’d had a brief affair. He claimed he had accidentally strangled her while helping to adjust the scarf round her neck as they made love in a field.

Sentenced to death, he was hanged at Winson Green Prison, Birmingham, on August 12th, 1958.