Camden Town Murder

The Camden Town murder was a murder which took place in Camden Town,

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

in 1907. Robert Wood, an artist, was tried for the murder of prostitute Emily Dimmock and acquitted after a defence by Edward Marshall Hall. Januszczak, Waldemar
"Walter Sickert – murderous monster or sly self-promoter?"
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The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...

'', 4 November 2007. Retrieved 13 September 2008. Edward Marjoribanks, ''Famous Trials of Marshall Hall'', Penguin, 1989. On 11 September 1907, Emily Elizabeth Dimmock (known as Phyllis), a part-time prostitute in a relationship with 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 Royal College Street is a major thoroughfare in London, England, within the St Pancras and Somers Town ward in the Borough of Camden. The street, which is one-way, is home to the London headquarters of Parcelforce and the London campus of th ...

.Wendy Baron, ''Sickert: paintings and drawings'', Yale University Press, 2006, , p. 73 Her attacker had slit her throat while she was asleep, then left in the morning. On the 12th, Shaw returned home during the evening to find his room locked. He borrowed a key from a neighbour, and upon entering found Phyllis lying naked on the bed, throat cut from ear to ear. It was a savage but skilful 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. A former girlfriend of Wood's, Ruby Young, recognised his handwriting on a postcard found in Dimmock's room, which had been published in many newspapers; she mentioned the similarity of the handwriting to a friend who worked in Fleet Street. Wood was put on trial for the murder, during which Marshall Hall displayed the kind of effective and dramatic cross-examination for which he was known. Marshall Hall 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. They did, after retiring for 15 minutes between 7:45 and 8:00 pm. The artist

Walter Sickert Walter Richard Sickert (31 May 1860 – 22 January 1942) was a German-born British painter and printmaker who was a member of the Camden Town Group of Post-Impressionist artists in early 20th-century London. He was an important influence on d ...

adopted the phrase ''

The Camden Town Murder ''The Camden Town Murder'' is a title given to a group of four paintings by Walter Sickert painted in 1908. The paintings have specific titles, such as the problem picture ''What Shall We Do for the Rent'' or ''What Shall We Do to Pay the Rent'' ...

'' for a series of etchings, paintings and drawing in 1908–09, in each of which the subjects are a clothed man and a nude woman. It was dramatised in an episode of the radio crime anthology series ''

The Black Museum ''The Black Museum'' is a radio crime-drama program produced by Harry Alan Towers, which was broadcast in the USA on the Mutual network in 1952. It was then broadcast in Europe in 1953 on Radio Luxembourg, a commercial radio station, and was not ...

'', in 1952, starring

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. A television series, '' Killer in Close-Up'', dramatised by George F. Kerr, featured the case in the episode "The Robert Wood Trial". The episode was produced by Sydney television station

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and broadcast on 4 September 1957. More than thirty years later, the court case featured in an episode of the

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