Railway Murders

In 1864 the body of a wealthy banker was discovered on the tracks between Bow and Hackney Wick stations in London The death of Thomas Briggs was the first murder on a British railway The pressure was on for police to solve the crime but nobody could have predicted the judicial drama that was to come

Percy Lefroy Mapleton was a talented young writer But he was also a liar a thief and a fantasist By 1881 he had become fixated on a beautiful stage actress Convinced the two of them belonged together he concocted an elaborate fraud to win her heart But Mapleton could not outrun his lies forever and when exposure seemed certain he was driven to a darker and more violent crime

On a September night in 1895 two railway policemen surprised a gang of thieves at work in a Wigan goods yard A vicious fight broke out and Detective Sergeant Robert Kidd was stabbed to death It was the first time a railway police officer had been murdered in the line of duty but bringing the killers to justice would not be easy

In 1910 the city of Newcastle was transfixed by a murder trial A clerk had been killed on a train and his wages bag stolen with hundreds of pounds inside Accused of the murder was a local man named John Alexander Dickman But the evidence against him was all circumstantial and thanks to a recent change in the law Dickman himself would have the chance to go into the witness box

Jimmy Alcott was a troubled young man He had joined the army after leaving school but his time in Germany ended in disgrace when he was courtmartialed for the violent murder of a civilian Spared execution by the mercy of the King he returned to England and built a new life for himself However he had not left his violent ways behind In 1952 he plotted a theft that would end in murder

It is one of Londons great unsolved mysteries Late one evening in May 1957 an elderly Polish countess was traveling home from a party when she was attacked at Gloucester Road Tube station Stabbed repeatedly on the platform she died in the hospital later that night Her killer was never identified and to this day there are only theories about why Countess Teresa ubieska was targeted