Camden Town Murder
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The Camden Town Murder was a murder which took place in Camden Town, London in 1907. Robert Wood, an artist, was tried for the murder of Emily Dimmock, a prostitute, and acquitted after a brilliant defence by Edward Marshall Hall. [1][2]
On 11 September 1907, Emily Dimmock (known as Phyllis), a part-time prostitute cheating on her partner Bertram Shaw, a railwayman, was murdered in her home at Agar Grove (then 29 St Paul's Road), Camden, having gone there from The Eagle public house, Royal College Street.[3] After sex, the man had slit her throat open while she was asleep, then left in the morning.[1] On the 12th, Shaw returned home during the evening to find his room locked. He borrowed a key from a neighbour, but upon entering found Phyllis lying naked on the bed, throat cut from ear to ear. It was a savage but skillful attack on her from the nature of the wound. Nothing much had been taken from the flat, and the motive was a mystery; the case quickly became a sensation.
After initial difficulty the police investigation led by Inspector Neill centred on Robert Wood, an artist. Wood was in a relationship with Ruby Young, who recognised his handwriting on a postcard found in Dimmock's room. Wood was put on trial for the murder, during which Marshall Hall displayed the kind of effective and dramatic cross-examination that he was known for. Marshall was convinced of Wood's innocence, and also of the fallibility of the prosecution case. The judge Mr Justice Grantham departed from the pro-conviction stance he was expected to take mid-summing up, and made it clear he thought the jury should acquit. That they did, after retiring for only 15 minutes between 7.45 and 8pm.[2]
The artist Walter Sickert adopted the phrase The Camden Town Murder for a series of etchings, paintings and drawing in 1908-9, in each of which the subjects are a clothed man and a nude woman.[3] A television play based upon the case, "Killer In Close-Up: The Robert Wood Trial", written by George F. Kerr, was produced by Sydney television station ABN-2, airing on September 4, 1957.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Januszczak, Waldemar. "Walter Sickert - murderous monster or sly self-promoter?" The Times, 4 November 2007. Retrieved 13 September 2008.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Edward Marjoribanks, Famous Trials of Marshall Hall, Penguin, 1989. ISBN 0-14-011556-0
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Wendy Baron, Sickert: paintings and drawings, Yale University Press, 2006, ISBN 0-300-11129-0, p.73
