before the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Coleridge on the 4th of November 1881. Mapleton pleaded not guilty. It took the jury just 10 minutes to reach

Bloodstained clothing was found in his room and since he had already been identified as a man who had exchanged some counterfeit coins and also pawned a revolver, the evidence against him was overwhelming,? wrote Gay. After his execution, Mapleton's waxwork was exhibited in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussauds. In 2021, the case was the subject of Episode 2 of Railway Murders. References He gave a description of two men who had travelled in the same compartment and said that after receiving a blow on the head he remembered nothing more until the train reached Preston Park. The collector saw nobody else alight from the compartment but he observed that a piece of watch chain was hanging from one of the man’s boots. He pointed this out and the passenger remarked that he had put it there for safety. The condition of this strange and somewhat battered passenger, who gave his name as Percy Mapleton LEFROY, was such that the station master arranged for the platform inspector to take him to the Police Station at the Town Hall, while the collector was sent to advise the Railway Police. There-after the situation developed in such a way that the obtuseness of the railway officials and of the Borough and Railway Police became the subject of editorial comment in The Times while other newspapers said unkind things in less polite terms. on the beach for the gun, but the following day the police recovered it. In the meantime “John Williams” had beenThe condition of this strange and somewhat battered passenger, who gave his name as Percy Mapleton Lefroy, was such that the station master arranged for the platform inspector to take him to the police station at the town hall, while the collector was sent to advise the Railway Police.

My wish was to destroy bourgeois society,” he would explain. “I did not set out to kill certain people. I was indifferent to killing one or the other. My desire was to sow terror.” A more specific provocation (cited by Salvador at his trial) was the execution one month before of another anarchist, Paulino Pallas. A country-wide search was made for LEFROY and his description was published in all the papers. The Daily Telegraph made newspaper history by publishing the portrait of a wanted man for the first time. As usual, men answering the description were seen all over the country and one man was arrested but later released. A conference was held at London Bridge Station and all the railway staff involved were questioned by detective officers. The inquest on Mr. GOLD was opened on 29th June and lasted several days. HOLMES and other officers had a bad time in the witness box and a verdict of wilful murder against LEFROY was returned. The Railway Company then offered a substantial reward for information leading to his arrest. Eulogius lamented those Christians that so willingly accepted the presence of Muslims, their leadership, and their customs: Bring some cash with you. Very Urgent”. His brother did as requested and came down from London with his best friend Edgar Power.It was soon learned that he had been robbed of his watch and chain and a considerable sum of money. rifle, before taking his watch and money. He realised at this point who it was that he had killed and made his The Trail of the Serpent" by James Gardner (2004) Pomegranate Press, a recent biography of Lefroy, gives full and fascinating details of his life and character. External links watch the FA Cup final at Crystal Palace. They were both Liverpool supporters but were in low spirits on the For Mampuru, the sibling rivalry win was as Pyrrhic as it surely was satisfying, for he was immediately branded an outlaw by the Boer Transvaal and himself obliged to flee from the countrymen whom he meant to rule. When the Boers captured him, they had him condemned a murderer and hanged him stark naked for an audience of 200-plus white men in Pretoria. As an added indignity, they botched the hanging and dropped Mampuru to the ground on their first go, when the noose snapped. (In 2013, the jail where he hanged was renamed for Mampuru.)