Brief history of the land

Rillington Place and Ruston Mews (originally, and until at least the early twentieth century, called Crayford Mews) were developed in the late 1860s when speculative building in the area of North Kensington was ongoing on the farm land of “the Manor or Lordship of Notting Barns.”  The freeholder of the land was Colonel Matthew Chitty Downes St Quintin (b: 1800 d: 1876) whose family seat was Scampston Hall near Malton in North Yorkshire. The village of Rillington is less than a mile away and is presumed to be the origin of the name. Matthew St Quintin suffered greatly from mental illness and his wife arranged for the management of his estates to be transferred to relatives in the late 1850s. Development proceeded solely on the basis of  the grant of long leases to speculative developers in return for an annual ground rent. 10 Rillington Place is believed to have been built in 1869.

The houses were originally intended for single-household occupation by comparatively well-to-do families and there is some evidence that this may have been the case early on (see extract from 1890 register below). However, surviving notes from a survey entitled: Inquiry into the Life and Labour of the People in London carried out by Charles Booth between 1886 - 1903 describes the occupants of Rillington Place as “respectable working class...some poor.” Further, the turbulent financial circumstances and changing social conditions of the time led to an increasing incidence of multiple occupation by poorer people using rooms, or collections thereof, in a way that was never intended when the houses were designed. As a consequence, it would be commonplace to find a large number of occupants having to share the one outside lavatory and to which access could only be gained by going past the ground floor rooms. Indeed, this pattern of occupation continued until the houses’ eventual demolition by way of slum clearance at the end of 1970. The electoral register from 1952, during which time Mr & Mrs Christie were both still in occupation (and bearing in mind only adults aged twenty-one years and above would be listed anyway), gives some indication of the overcrowding and lack of privacy that tenants were obliged to endure.

Above - an extract from a register of householders compiled in the year 1890, something of the order of  twenty years after Rillington Place was constructed.

The renaming of Rillington Place

The extract below from the minutes of the meeting of councillors for the Royal Borough of Kensington on 19 May 1953 records the receipt of a petition by eighty-three residents of Rillington Place to have the street name changed. Organised by Mrs Sarah McFadden at no. 3 and presented initially to the local MP Mr George Rogers, this was, of course, motivated by the notoriety associated with the address and the numbers of visitors coming to what was already a narrow and congested cul-de-sac. Given that Rillington Place contained just twenty small, terraced houses, the number of people signing the petition was substantial and gives something of an insight into the degree of overcrowding that was occurring even then.

The decision was apparently taken to defer consideration of the request on the grounds that a name change was unlikely to have much effect, particularly upon the question of unwanted visitors, (and which view was subsequently borne out when a name change did have little impact upon the problem). Needless to say, all published maps of the area, together with such things as postal and trade directories, and other literature, would have continued to show the location of Rillington Place and it is arguable that renaming served only to increase the mystique and intrigue surrounding the address. In fact, in order to promote consistency and continuity, it was the London County Council rather than the individual boroughs which had competence for the naming and signage of streets throughout London. The extract from the council minutes in June 1954 records this.

Apparently, demolition of the house was also contemplated by the Borough in 1953 but it was felt that such a measure would, at best, offer only psychological benefit to local residents rather than anything more substantive. In more recent times a different view might have been taken as has been the case with other such notorious addresses where demolition has, in fact, been carried out.

Timothy Evans’s reburial

Following the enactment of the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Bill which brought the Act into law on 8 November 1965, Evans’s mother, Mrs Thomasina Probert, was quickly granted licence to have her son’s mortal remains disinterred from their original place of burial within the precincts of Pentonville Prison and reinterred in consecrated ground. It will be noted that this was well before the grant of Evans’s royal pardon which ensued from the findings of the Brabin Inquiry in October 1966. The grant of such licence, in respect of any executed person, had already been contemplated by Parliament in February 1965 and, thus, the reinterment of Evans’s remains in November 1965 preceded his royal pardon by almost a year and was not therefore a consequence of it.

As a committed Roman Catholic Mrs Probert originally intended to reinter her son's remains at the Greenford Park Cemetery in the London Borough of Ealing. Arrangements had been made and a plot duly acquired and prepared. However, news of this was leaked and, fearing a “media circus” the solicitors acting for Mrs Probert had to make a last-minute alteration to the plans whereby the burial actually took place in St Patrick’s Catholic Cemetery, Leytonstone - the other side of London. A decoy vehicle duly left Pentonville Prison at the appointed time and made its way to Greenford with the press following; shortly afterwards the true cortege left for Leytonstone unobserved. Even Mrs Probert herself only became aware of the changed arrangements when she realised that their direction of travel was away from Greenford. A fuller account may be read in Hansard by following the link below. Mr William Molloy was the Member of Parliament for Ealing, North at that time (1965).

http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1965/nov/25/timothy-evans-reinterment

The Evans case and the abolition of hanging in the United Kingdom

It is sometimes said that the conviction, execution and subsequent pardon of Timothy Evans led to the abolition of capital punishment for murder in the United Kingdom, but this is not borne out by the facts.

Whilst there had been much public disquiet over a possible miscarriage of justice in the Evans case following Christie’s conviction in 1953, this was not material to the continuing deliberations over the potential suspension of the death penalty for murder in the United Kingdom. Indeed, this had been contemplated in modern times as early as 1930 and was put before Parliament in 1938 although the process failed to make progress due to the outbreak of war. The Homicide Act 1957 created the offence of capital murder whilst abolishing the death penalty in respect of simple murder, i.e. murder not falling into any of the specified categories, and substituting a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment. In fact, suspension of the death penalty for murder generally in the United Kingdom, initially for a trial period of five years but subsequently made permanent in Great Britain in December 1969, took place on 8 November 1965 as a result of a private member’s Bill by Sydney Silverman MP which led to the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965 as referred to above. By this time the Brabin Inquiry* had only just convened (in August 1965) and would not report until October 1966 by which time Evans’s pardon had already been granted.

In summary it would appear fallacious to suggest that the possibility of a miscarriage of justice in general, or the Evans case in particular, led to abolition. The underlying principles were ethical and humanitarian, together with the lack of any clear evidence that capital punishment acted as a deterrent, public opinion to the contrary notwithstanding. Certain categories of capital offence lingered until final abolition in November 1998 under the Human Rights Act 1998 although the last hanging had taken place in 1964. No re-enactment is now possible whilst the United Kingdom remains a member of the Council of Europe (ironically founded in 1949). There was, however, still one functioning gallows in a London prison (HMP Wandsworth) until 1994.

Paradoxically, it was the then Home Secretary, Mr James Chuter Ede, who set up the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment (1949-1953), which ultimately concluded that, in the absence of great public support, there was no clear case for abolition. It was also he who had the onerous duty of writing the words “The law must take its course” on the file for Timothy Evans, thus removing the last barrier to the sentence of death by hanging being carried into execution - as it duly was on 9 March 1950.

* The Case of Timothy John Evans - Report of an Inquiry by The Hon. Mr. Justice Brabin, Cmnd. 3101 (1966).                    

The Inquiry found as follows:

I have come to the conclusion that it is more probable than not that Evans killed Beryl Evans. I have come to the conclusion that it is more probable than not that Evans did not kill Geraldine.

Daniel Brabin.