Stratton Brothers case
Encyclopedia
Alfred Stratton and his brother Albert Ernest (born c. 1885, both died May 23, 1905) were the first men to be convicted in Great Britain
for murder
based on fingerprint
evidence. The case, otherwise known as the Mask Murders (due to the black stocking-top masks that had been left at the scene of the crime), the Deptford Murders (due to the location) or the Farrow Murders (the last name of the victims), is widely regarded as the case that truly launched forensic science.
in Deptford
where he worked. When he arrived at the shop he found it closed and shuttered, which he found very unusual. The manager of the paint shop Thomas Farrow, aged 71, lived with his wife, Ann, aged 65, in the flat above the shop and he was not in the habit of having the shop still closed at such a late hour. Unable to open the door, he tried knocking but since he did not get any response from either Mr. and Mrs. Farrow he peeked through a window and saw that there were chairs knocked over.
Alarmed at what he saw, he ran for help and found Louis Kidman, a local resident who worked in a nearby store, and the two men forced their way into the shop. It was not long before they found the body of Mr. Farrow on the ground dead, while Mrs. Farrow was found barely alive but unconscious in the couple's bed in the upstairs flat. Both bore the signs of being repeatedly beaten. A doctor and the police were called and Mrs. Farrow was taken to hospital.
Frederick Fox and Melville MacNaghten
, the Assistant Commissioner (Crime)
of the Metropolitan Police
and head of the Criminal Investigation Department
took over the case.
Aside from the lack of forced entry as well as the empty cash box, it was clear that Mr. and Mrs. Farrow were attacked separately and the discovery of two black masks fashioned from stockings that were left at the scene indicated that there were two men involved. Since they were in their night clothes, the police had speculated that Mr. Farrow was deceived into opening the door while he was still half asleep. He was immediately attacked, but was still conscious enough to go after the robbers, and was hit again. His assailants went up to the upstairs flat, attacked Mrs. Farrow, located the cash box, and fled with the money. However, based on the separate pools of blood at the scene, it was determined that Mr. Farrow had again regained consciousness, and this time the men killed him and afterwards washed their hands in a nearby basin.
five years before, he wondered if this might be a case to test out this new technique. He used his handkerchief to carefully pick up the cash box, had it wrapped in paper and took it in to the fledgling Fingerprinting Bureau at Scotland Yard
.
Established on July 1, 1901, the Fingerprint Bureau had proven its worth since the conviction of Harry Jackson
for burglary due to fingerprint evidence a year later. It was now headed by Detective Inspector Charles Stockley Collins who was regarded as the foremost English
fingerprint expert of his time. Despite its earlier successes, especially in identifying previously convicted criminals who tried to pass themselves off pseudonymously, the technique was still considered unwieldy and both men knew that they were risking public ridicule due to the intense scrutiny that a murder case would generate. Furthermore, even if they succeeded in identifying the owner of the fingerprint, they still needed to convince a potential jury sufficiently to convict.
Detective Inspector Collins examined the print thoroughly and determined that the print was made through perspiration and appeared to have been left by the thumb, probably from the right hand. He compared it with those of the Farrows and that of Detective Sergeant Atkinson and was satisfied that the print did not belong to any of those people. Although the Bureau had 80,000-90,000 sets of prints on file, there was no match on any of them as well, which meant that they would need to find a suspect to compare it with. The initial hope of the police was that Mrs. Farrow would give a description of her assailants, but she died in hospital on March 31 without regaining consciousness.
— leave the paint shop at around 7:30 in the morning of March 27. Two of these witnesses — a professional boxer named Henry John Littlefield and a local girl named Ellen Stanton — positively identified the one in the dark brown suit as Alfred Stratton.
Although he did not have a criminal record, Alfred Stratton was known to the police as being a "vagabond" and was known to have contacts in the criminal underworld. Alfred's brother Albert was also a known police character, and the description of the other man given by the witnesses matched him. The identification of Alfred was apparently confirmed when Alfred's girlfriend Annie Cromarty told the police that he had disposed of his dark brown coat and changed his shoes the day after the murder; she also recalled him asking for a pair of old stockings. Based on this lead, warrants for the arrest of the pair were issued, and they were taken to custody on April 2 and fingerprinted. Based on a tip by Annie Cromarty, police were able to recover £4 that was buried near a local waterworks.
When Detective Inspector Collins received the two sets of fingerprints taken from the Stratton brothers, he compared them to the print on the cash box, and he concluded that it exactly matched with the right thumbprint of Alfred Stratton. The brothers were charged with murder and the trial set on May 5, 1905 at the Old Bailey
.
, the prosecutor for the Crown, knew that they would face an uphill battle. Since the fingerprint was the only tangible evidence that they had, the case would stand or fall on that evidence, and the defence would try their best to undermine it. Fingerprinting pioneer Henry Faulds
was a vocal detractor, because he had the mistaken notion that one fingerprint match was unreliable; thus the defence retained him as a witness. Also set to testify for the defence was Dr. John George Garson, who advocated anthropometry
over fingerprinting as a means of identification. Both men were professional rivals of Edward Henry
, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police
, who established the Fingerprint Bureau and was responsible for the acceptance of fingerprinting in the British legal system; he was also in attendance.
The prosecution called over 40 witnesses to the stand. Muir and his team wanted to place the two defendants at the scene of the crime, and despite Muir's inherent distrust of eyewitness testimony, he was counting on their consistency to reinforce the fingerprint evidence. Although some of them like Henry Alfred Jennings, a local milkman, were not able to make a positive identification of the defendants despite being consistent in their general appearance, others like Henry Littlefield and Ellen Stanton were positive in their identification of Alfred Stratton. The Home Office
pathologist who did the post-mortem on the Farrows told the court that the injuries on the Farrows were consistent with being inflicted by weapons similar to the tools that the brothers had in their possession.
Kate Wade, Albert Stratton's girlfriend, testified that Albert was not with her during the night of the murder, and he usually stayed with her. In addition, Annie Cromarty, Alfred's girlfriend, testified that Alfred had come home on the morning of March 27 with a good amount of money without explaining where he obtained it; she also added that he threw out the clothes that he wore that day when he saw the newspaper accounts of the murder, and that Alfred asked her to tell the police, or anyone else who asked, that he was with her the night of the murder.
However, the defense counsels, H.G. Rooth, Curtis Bennett and Harold Morris, were able to give plausible alternative explanations, which would tend to cast doubt on the prosecution's witnesses, so much so that they were confident enough to have Alfred Stratton take the stand. He testified that at about 2:30 in the morning of the 27th, he was awakened by his brother Albert who was tapping on the window and wanted to borrow money from him for a night's lodging. He replied that he would check if he had some, and when Alfred came back to tell his brother that he had none, Albert was gone. He went out and found his brother some distance away, in Regent Street. It was there that they were seen by several witnesses who testified having seen them at around that time. He told his brother that he had no money and offered to let him stay for the night. Albert agreed and slept on the floor, and the brothers stayed until 9 in the morning. He explained the £4 that was recovered by the police as money which he won over a boxing contest a couple of months before. He buried the money three weeks prior to the murders and he intended to give the money to Annie Cromarty.
Muir had anticipated this tactic by the defence, and before calling Inspector Collins, he summoned William Gittings, who worked in the jail where the Stratton brothers were confined awaiting trial. Gittings related a conversation that he had with Albert Stratton, who said, "I reckon he (Alfred) will get strung up and I shall get about ten years…He has led me into this." Muir hoped to impress the jury into thinking that that statement would be counted as a confession. Then he called Inspector Collins to the stand.
After Collins took the stand, the defence called Dr. John Garson to the stand. They were hoping to discredit Collins' testimony by establishing his credentials as one of Inspector Collins' mentors, thus giving to the jury the impression that he was more of an expert than Collins in the study of fingerprinting. As expected, he testified that upon examination of the print taken from the cash box and that of Alfred Stratton, he would say with certainty that they were not in agreement.
However, the defence failed to reckon with the fact that Garson was not an expert of fingerprinting but of anthropometry, its rival field in identification. As a matter of fact, he spoke against fingerprinting in the Belper Committee. And there was one more thing of which they were unaware, which Muir intended to use to his advantage.
In cross-examination, Muir called into evidence two letters, each written by Garson. One letter was to the Director of Public Prosecutions
, the other was to the solicitor to the defence. Each letter said that Garson would be willing to testify for either side in the trial, depending on who would pay him more.
The judge, Mr. Justice Channell, remarked that after writing two such letters he would opine that Dr. Garson was an "absolutely untrustworthy" witness.
Having shattered the credibility of Dr. Garson as a witness, the defence decided not to call Dr. Faulds as a witness, fearing that Prosecutor Muir would have something to discredit him as well.
.
The sentence was carried out on May 23, 1905.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
for murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
based on fingerprint
Fingerprint
A fingerprint in its narrow sense is an impression left by the friction ridges of a human finger. In a wider use of the term, fingerprints are the traces of an impression from the friction ridges of any part of a human hand. A print from the foot can also leave an impression of friction ridges...
evidence. The case, otherwise known as the Mask Murders (due to the black stocking-top masks that had been left at the scene of the crime), the Deptford Murders (due to the location) or the Farrow Murders (the last name of the victims), is widely regarded as the case that truly launched forensic science.
The crime
On Monday, March 27, 1905, at 8:30 am, William Jones went to Chapman's Oil and Colour Shop on High StreetHigh Street
High Street, or the High Street, is a metonym for the generic name of the primary business street of towns or cities, especially in the United Kingdom. It is usually a focal point for shops and retailers in city centres, and is most often used in reference to retailing...
in Deptford
Deptford
Deptford is a district of south London, England, located on the south bank of the River Thames. It is named after a ford of the River Ravensbourne, and from the mid 16th century to the late 19th was home to Deptford Dockyard, the first of the Royal Navy Dockyards.Deptford and the docks are...
where he worked. When he arrived at the shop he found it closed and shuttered, which he found very unusual. The manager of the paint shop Thomas Farrow, aged 71, lived with his wife, Ann, aged 65, in the flat above the shop and he was not in the habit of having the shop still closed at such a late hour. Unable to open the door, he tried knocking but since he did not get any response from either Mr. and Mrs. Farrow he peeked through a window and saw that there were chairs knocked over.
Alarmed at what he saw, he ran for help and found Louis Kidman, a local resident who worked in a nearby store, and the two men forced their way into the shop. It was not long before they found the body of Mr. Farrow on the ground dead, while Mrs. Farrow was found barely alive but unconscious in the couple's bed in the upstairs flat. Both bore the signs of being repeatedly beaten. A doctor and the police were called and Mrs. Farrow was taken to hospital.
The investigation
Despite the disarray within the shop, the police found no signs of forced entry. It was shortly determined that robbery was the motive: Jones told the police that Mr. Farrow would collect the week's earnings and deposit them to a local bank every Monday, and an empty cash box was found on the floor, which was estimated to contain about £10, a considerable amount of money at that time. To ensure the doctor would not trip over it, Sergeant Albert Atkinson pushed it aside with his bare hands. It was at this point that Chief InspectorChief inspector
Chief inspector is a rank used in police forces which follow the British model. In countries outside Britain, it is sometimes referred to as chief inspector of police .-Australia:...
Frederick Fox and Melville MacNaghten
Melville MacNaghten
Sir Melville Leslie Macnaghten CB KPM was Assistant Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police from 1903 to 1913....
, the Assistant Commissioner (Crime)
Assistant Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis
Assistant Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, usually just Assistant Commissioner , is the third highest rank in London's Metropolitan Police, ranking below Deputy Commissioner and above Deputy Assistant Commissioner. There are usually four officers in the rank...
of the Metropolitan Police
Metropolitan Police Service
The Metropolitan Police Service is the territorial police force responsible for Greater London, excluding the "square mile" of the City of London which is the responsibility of the City of London Police...
and head of the Criminal Investigation Department
Criminal Investigation Department
The Crime Investigation Department is the branch of all Territorial police forces within the British Police and many other Commonwealth police forces, to which plain clothes detectives belong. It is thus distinct from the Uniformed Branch and the Special Branch.The Metropolitan Police Service CID,...
took over the case.
Aside from the lack of forced entry as well as the empty cash box, it was clear that Mr. and Mrs. Farrow were attacked separately and the discovery of two black masks fashioned from stockings that were left at the scene indicated that there were two men involved. Since they were in their night clothes, the police had speculated that Mr. Farrow was deceived into opening the door while he was still half asleep. He was immediately attacked, but was still conscious enough to go after the robbers, and was hit again. His assailants went up to the upstairs flat, attacked Mrs. Farrow, located the cash box, and fled with the money. However, based on the separate pools of blood at the scene, it was determined that Mr. Farrow had again regained consciousness, and this time the men killed him and afterwards washed their hands in a nearby basin.
A greasy smudge on the cash box
When MacNaghten was told of the empty cash box, he chose to examine it. He noticed that on the underside of the box's inner tray, there was a greasy smudge which appeared to be a fingerprint. As a member of the Belper Committee which recommended the use of fingerprints as a method for identificationForensic identification
Forensic identification is the application of forensic science, or "forensics", and technology to identify specific objects from the trace evidence they leave, often at a crime scene or the scene of an accident. Forensic means "for the courts"....
five years before, he wondered if this might be a case to test out this new technique. He used his handkerchief to carefully pick up the cash box, had it wrapped in paper and took it in to the fledgling Fingerprinting Bureau at Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard is a metonym for the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service of London, UK. It derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became...
.
Established on July 1, 1901, the Fingerprint Bureau had proven its worth since the conviction of Harry Jackson
Harry Jackson
Harry Jackson was the first man to be convicted in the United Kingdom via fingerprint evidence.On June 27, 1902, a burglary occurred in a house in Denmark Hill, London, and some billiard balls were stolen. The investigating officer noticed a number of fingerprints on a freshly painted windowsill,...
for burglary due to fingerprint evidence a year later. It was now headed by Detective Inspector Charles Stockley Collins who was regarded as the foremost English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
fingerprint expert of his time. Despite its earlier successes, especially in identifying previously convicted criminals who tried to pass themselves off pseudonymously, the technique was still considered unwieldy and both men knew that they were risking public ridicule due to the intense scrutiny that a murder case would generate. Furthermore, even if they succeeded in identifying the owner of the fingerprint, they still needed to convince a potential jury sufficiently to convict.
Detective Inspector Collins examined the print thoroughly and determined that the print was made through perspiration and appeared to have been left by the thumb, probably from the right hand. He compared it with those of the Farrows and that of Detective Sergeant Atkinson and was satisfied that the print did not belong to any of those people. Although the Bureau had 80,000-90,000 sets of prints on file, there was no match on any of them as well, which meant that they would need to find a suspect to compare it with. The initial hope of the police was that Mrs. Farrow would give a description of her assailants, but she died in hospital on March 31 without regaining consciousness.
Positive identification and arrest
In an effort to identify the robbers, the police resorted to the usual practice of interviewing potential witnesses to the crime. Fortunately there was no shortage of them, for many saw two men — one of them dressed in a dark brown suit and cap, the other in a dark blue serge suit and bowler hatBowler hat
The bowler hat, also known as a coke hat, derby , billycock or bombin, is a hard felt hat with a rounded crown originally created in 1849 for the English soldier and politician Edward Coke, the younger brother of the 2nd Earl of Leicester...
— leave the paint shop at around 7:30 in the morning of March 27. Two of these witnesses — a professional boxer named Henry John Littlefield and a local girl named Ellen Stanton — positively identified the one in the dark brown suit as Alfred Stratton.
Although he did not have a criminal record, Alfred Stratton was known to the police as being a "vagabond" and was known to have contacts in the criminal underworld. Alfred's brother Albert was also a known police character, and the description of the other man given by the witnesses matched him. The identification of Alfred was apparently confirmed when Alfred's girlfriend Annie Cromarty told the police that he had disposed of his dark brown coat and changed his shoes the day after the murder; she also recalled him asking for a pair of old stockings. Based on this lead, warrants for the arrest of the pair were issued, and they were taken to custody on April 2 and fingerprinted. Based on a tip by Annie Cromarty, police were able to recover £4 that was buried near a local waterworks.
When Detective Inspector Collins received the two sets of fingerprints taken from the Stratton brothers, he compared them to the print on the cash box, and he concluded that it exactly matched with the right thumbprint of Alfred Stratton. The brothers were charged with murder and the trial set on May 5, 1905 at the Old Bailey
Old Bailey
The Central Criminal Court in England and Wales, commonly known as the Old Bailey from the street in which it stands, is a court building in central London, one of a number of buildings housing the Crown Court...
.
Trial
When the Stratton brothers were brought to trial, MacNaghten, Collins, and Richard MuirRichard Muir
Sir Richard David Muir was a prosecutor for the British Crown, widely regarded as the greatest of his time; he played a prominent role in many of the most sensational trials of the early part of the 20th century, most notably that of Hawley Harvey Crippen.Muir was born in Scotland, the son of...
, the prosecutor for the Crown, knew that they would face an uphill battle. Since the fingerprint was the only tangible evidence that they had, the case would stand or fall on that evidence, and the defence would try their best to undermine it. Fingerprinting pioneer Henry Faulds
Henry Faulds
Dr Henry Faulds was a Scottish scientist who is noted for the development of fingerprinting.-Early life:Faulds was born in the Scottish town of Beith, North Ayrshire into a family of modest means...
was a vocal detractor, because he had the mistaken notion that one fingerprint match was unreliable; thus the defence retained him as a witness. Also set to testify for the defence was Dr. John George Garson, who advocated anthropometry
Anthropometry
Anthropometry refers to the measurement of the human individual...
over fingerprinting as a means of identification. Both men were professional rivals of Edward Henry
Edward Henry
Sir Edward Richard Henry, 1st Baronet GCVO KCB CSI KPM was the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis from 1903 to 1918....
, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police
Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis
The Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis is the head of London's Metropolitan Police Service, classing the holder as a chief police officer...
, who established the Fingerprint Bureau and was responsible for the acceptance of fingerprinting in the British legal system; he was also in attendance.
The prosecution called over 40 witnesses to the stand. Muir and his team wanted to place the two defendants at the scene of the crime, and despite Muir's inherent distrust of eyewitness testimony, he was counting on their consistency to reinforce the fingerprint evidence. Although some of them like Henry Alfred Jennings, a local milkman, were not able to make a positive identification of the defendants despite being consistent in their general appearance, others like Henry Littlefield and Ellen Stanton were positive in their identification of Alfred Stratton. The Home Office
Home Office
The Home Office is the United Kingdom government department responsible for immigration control, security, and order. As such it is responsible for the police, UK Border Agency, and the Security Service . It is also in charge of government policy on security-related issues such as drugs,...
pathologist who did the post-mortem on the Farrows told the court that the injuries on the Farrows were consistent with being inflicted by weapons similar to the tools that the brothers had in their possession.
Kate Wade, Albert Stratton's girlfriend, testified that Albert was not with her during the night of the murder, and he usually stayed with her. In addition, Annie Cromarty, Alfred's girlfriend, testified that Alfred had come home on the morning of March 27 with a good amount of money without explaining where he obtained it; she also added that he threw out the clothes that he wore that day when he saw the newspaper accounts of the murder, and that Alfred asked her to tell the police, or anyone else who asked, that he was with her the night of the murder.
However, the defense counsels, H.G. Rooth, Curtis Bennett and Harold Morris, were able to give plausible alternative explanations, which would tend to cast doubt on the prosecution's witnesses, so much so that they were confident enough to have Alfred Stratton take the stand. He testified that at about 2:30 in the morning of the 27th, he was awakened by his brother Albert who was tapping on the window and wanted to borrow money from him for a night's lodging. He replied that he would check if he had some, and when Alfred came back to tell his brother that he had none, Albert was gone. He went out and found his brother some distance away, in Regent Street. It was there that they were seen by several witnesses who testified having seen them at around that time. He told his brother that he had no money and offered to let him stay for the night. Albert agreed and slept on the floor, and the brothers stayed until 9 in the morning. He explained the £4 that was recovered by the police as money which he won over a boxing contest a couple of months before. He buried the money three weeks prior to the murders and he intended to give the money to Annie Cromarty.
Muir had anticipated this tactic by the defence, and before calling Inspector Collins, he summoned William Gittings, who worked in the jail where the Stratton brothers were confined awaiting trial. Gittings related a conversation that he had with Albert Stratton, who said, "I reckon he (Alfred) will get strung up and I shall get about ten years…He has led me into this." Muir hoped to impress the jury into thinking that that statement would be counted as a confession. Then he called Inspector Collins to the stand.
Expert testimony
It was Muir's intention to first establish Inspector Collins' credentials as an expert in the field of fingerprinting before the jury, then explain, in layman's terms, how fingerprinting worked as a means of identification. Collins was then made to discuss the fingerprint involved in the case. He showed the jury the cash box that was recovered from the scene, the fingerprint that he was able to obtain from the box, and demonstrated how it matched with the right thumb print of Alfred Stratton, for up to twelve points of agreement. At the request of a member of the jury Collins also demonstrated the difference in a print caused by various levels of pressure.After Collins took the stand, the defence called Dr. John Garson to the stand. They were hoping to discredit Collins' testimony by establishing his credentials as one of Inspector Collins' mentors, thus giving to the jury the impression that he was more of an expert than Collins in the study of fingerprinting. As expected, he testified that upon examination of the print taken from the cash box and that of Alfred Stratton, he would say with certainty that they were not in agreement.
However, the defence failed to reckon with the fact that Garson was not an expert of fingerprinting but of anthropometry, its rival field in identification. As a matter of fact, he spoke against fingerprinting in the Belper Committee. And there was one more thing of which they were unaware, which Muir intended to use to his advantage.
In cross-examination, Muir called into evidence two letters, each written by Garson. One letter was to the Director of Public Prosecutions
Director of Public Prosecutions
The Director of Public Prosecutions is the officer charged with the prosecution of criminal offences in several criminal jurisdictions around the world...
, the other was to the solicitor to the defence. Each letter said that Garson would be willing to testify for either side in the trial, depending on who would pay him more.
- MR. MUIR. — How can you reconcile the writing of these two letters in the same day?
- The witness (Dr. Garson). — I am an independent witness.
The judge, Mr. Justice Channell, remarked that after writing two such letters he would opine that Dr. Garson was an "absolutely untrustworthy" witness.
Having shattered the credibility of Dr. Garson as a witness, the defence decided not to call Dr. Faulds as a witness, fearing that Prosecutor Muir would have something to discredit him as well.
Conviction and execution
After each side had given their summations and the jury given their final instructions, it took them a little more than two hours of deliberation to find the Stratton brothers guilty of murder, and they were sentenced to death by hangingHanging
Hanging is the lethal suspension of a person by a ligature. The Oxford English Dictionary states that hanging in this sense is "specifically to put to death by suspension by the neck", though it formerly also referred to crucifixion and death by impalement in which the body would remain...
.
The sentence was carried out on May 23, 1905.
Further reading
- Beavan, Colin. Fingerprints: The Origins of Crime Detection and the Murder Case That Launched Forensic Science. New York: Hyperion, 2001. ISBN 0-7868-6607-1