19/03/2024
82 years ago...
(for the first part of this story see here: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=881145504021104&id=100063769885838 )
Cyril Johnson’s trial for murder began at the Old Bailey on Thursday 19th March [1942], and continued into the following day. Much was made of Johnson’s statement to the police, detailing the last moments of Maggie Smail’s life which were known only to him. By his account, at 7.15am on the morning of 6th February he had gone into her bedroom to ask the time. He then asked if she would like him to get into bed with her. She refused:
‘I then lost my temper. I knocked her down on the bed. She started to struggle, and I put my hands round her neck with the intention of frightening her. I must have squeezed her too hard and held on too long, because she lost consciousness.
I think I lost my head altogether then, and I tied a scarf round her neck that was hanging on the bedrail.
I then went into the sitting room and took up a poker that was lying there and went back and hit her on the head with it.’
A full and clear confession, one might think. An open-and-shut case. But there were a number of problems with Johnson’s statement which the prosecution were determined to expose.
They derived from the forensic examination that had been carried out on the afternoon of the crime by Dr Norman Ashton at the mortuary of Ashford Hospital. There was no evidence of strangulation by the hands; the kind that would leave extensive bruising on the neck. Instead, Maggie had likely been rendered unconscious by blows from the poker, as the head wounds had been inflicted while she was still alive. The actual cause of death was asphyxiation from the scarf, which had been tied so tightly that the hyoid bone under the jaw had been dislocated. Swabs were taken and hairs collected, and these were sent to the police laboratory at Hendon; the results strongly suggested that Maggie had been r***d while unconscious or even dead.
Johnson’s statement gave no mention of this last revelation and he did not testify in court on his own behalf. The only defence open to his counsel, Hector Hughes KC, was that of insanity. To this end Johnson’s father testified that his mother had suffered a great shock late into her pregnancy when a chimney had fallen into the lower room she was in, causing her to have a nervous collapse. Cyril was subsequently born back-to-front, and had hysterical crying fits in his first three years. Mr Johnson gave the opinion that his son was a fantasist, once falsely confessing to the police that he had broken into a shop to steal ci******es, and a recent letter was produced in which he claimed he had nearly drowned on an exercise in the Channel, which his father did not believe.
Yet the Medical Officer at HMP Brixton, where Johnson had been sent for continual observation in the two weeks prior to the trial, confirmed that he was:
‘… rational in conduct and conversation… and at no time has he exhibited signs of insanity… Examination shows him to be far from backward and in fact above the average in intelligence.’
He was at least literate enough to read Daisy Smail’s book ‘A Question of Proof’, which was seen as probative since its plot concerned the murder of a boarding-school pupil by both manual and then ligature strangulation – could this have inspired Johnson’s false claim that he had first reacted with his hands in a fit of anger, and later finished the job with the scarf? The police also demonstrated that his first act after the crime was to use Daisy’s writing-pad in the sitting room to produce letters to two former girlfriends. One was to Vera Ward:
‘I did it because I hate women, it seems q***r doesn’t it after being so friendly with you. But, all I can say is, thank you for being so good to me, for you are the only one I don’t hate.’
The other was to Muriel Golding, the fiancée who had broken off their engagement:
‘All I want to say is this. I’m in love with you, and for the last 4 months since you jilted me I’ve lived in hell, you made me hate females.
The girl I’ve killed was teasing me, just like you did. That’s why I did it, and because I hate women.’
Johnson then made himself a cup of tea before leaving the flat, affixing stamps and posting the letters. These were not, it was argued, the actions of a man who was either permanently or temporarily insane. Neither Miss Ward nor Miss Golding had seen any signs of true insanity in their relationships with him; the most that could be said was that he was emotionally immature, rather immodest, and sometimes spiteful. The judge, Reginald Croom-Johnson, gave precise direction on the insanity question the following day, Friday 20th March, during his summing-up to the jury who, after an hour and a half’s deliberation, returned a verdict of guilty with a recommendation to mercy on account of Johnson’s youth. Even if Justice Croom-Johnson felt minded to endorse the jury’s suggestion, which he didn’t, his duty as prescribed by law for a murder conviction was to pass a death sentence, which he did.
An appeal was immediately sent to the Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison, who postponed the ex*****on indefinitely in order to consider the matter – it had been fixed for Wednesday 8th April. Johnson wrote:
‘I deeply regret this awful tragedy, and beg of you, Sir, to recommend to His Majesty the King a reprieve.
I can sincerely promise that the whole of my life will be an honest effort to make amends for this crime.’
Canon Frederick Addison and Rev. Robert Worsley, present and past vicars of Horwich in Lancashire, at whose Mission Church the Johnson family were active workers, wrote in support. Worsley wrote that Johnson’s parents ‘have battled constantly with poor health and straitened means’, and Addison revealed that the mother was very ill, and ‘is not expected to live more than a few months’. Then on Tuesday 31st March, Johnson abandoned his appeal against the verdict and appears to have accepted his guilt. The ex*****on was rescheduled for a fortnight hence.
Letters continued to come in to the Home Secretary, including from the padre of Johnson’s unit, the members of Horwich Council and the MP for Westhoughton Rhys Davies. One of the more creative ones came from an old curate of Horwich who had known the family, and who disclosed that Johnson’s development before birth had been impeded by his mother ‘falling down the steps of the Town Hall’, and that the cancer from which she was now dying was caused by
‘… a man who is unknown, but in the scramble of pushing his way on to a tram car, gave her a blow with his elbow. I mention this because there are those with full mentality [who] give way to fits of rage and in an unfortunate moment do things which cause the death – slowly – of another.’
There was also a handful of correspondence from concerned citizens who (from press reports of the case) found fault in the direction of the judge, thought the nature of the crime did not merit the severity of the sentence, or who habitually wrote in to protest against any instance of capital punishment. One old soldier of the last war, and now conscientious objector, Henry Briggs of Chingford, offered the ultimate sacrifice:
‘Surely the law, not infallible in itself, does not demand that, when manpower is so vital and youth the great standby of the nation, that [sic] the lad’s life should be taken?
I am 45 years, single, an apparent failure. I am willing if it is possible to give my life instead of this lad’s. I would willingly pay the full penalty of the law to save the lad – can it be possible? I mean it.’
All correspondents received a near-identical reply that the Home Secretary had considered the case but ‘failed to discover any sufficient ground to justify him in advising His Majesty to interfere with the due course of law’. Cyril Johnson was hanged at Wandsworth Prison by Thomas Pierrepoint, uncle of the more famous Albert, at 9am on Wednesday 15th April, and was buried in the prison grounds.
From 'Ashford at War':
www.canterley.co.uk/ashford-at-war
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