Chapter 36

Kenneth Gilbert and Ian Arthur Grant

1954

There were two senior porters at the Aban Court Hotel, situated at 25 Harrington Gardens, in Kensington, and these two men took turns to do the night-shift. The first of these, John David Downey, was on the day-shift during the week beginning Monday, 8 March 1954 and he finished work, each evening, at 8.30pm. It was then that the other porter, fifty-five-year-old George Smart took over.

Mary Magennis, a chambermaid, had worked at the Aban Court for the past two years. On 9 March, she had the afternoon off, but arrived back at the hotel at 10.45pm. As she went up to her quarters, she greeted George, who was sitting at the reception desk, reading a newspaper.

A few minutes after this, at 10.50pm, the manageress of the hotel, Ethel Maud Robertson Bryston, also saw George at the reception desk. She too bade him a warm goodnight before going up to her rooms.

On that particular Monday, the other porter, Downey, who also lived in at the hotel, decided that he would go out for a few drinks, after he had finished his shift. He returned to the hotel at 12.58am on Tuesday, 9 March, by which time, as was usual, all the doors were locked. Downey rang the front door bell and was admitted by George Smart. The two men exchanged goodnights and Downey then went up to his bed.

Mary Magennis’s alarm clock went off at 7.00am on the morning of 9 March. She got dressed quickly and was downstairs at some time between 7.15am and 7.30am. She went straight into an area known as the servery and noticed, to her surprise, that the lights were still off. She quickly snapped them on and the sight that greeted her put all thoughts of work from her mind. There, on the floor, lay the bloody body of George Smart.

The manageress, Ethel Bryston, was called for and, after seeing the awful scene for herself, rang for the police. Later, acting on police instructions, Ethel made a careful inventory of items that were missing and, during the period that she was making her notes, she found a man’s cap in the porch behind the front door. That cap did not belong to any of the hotel staff.

Two police officers arrived at the hotel together. Constable Harold Roumph and Constable Mace took charge of the scene, until more senior officers could arrive. They noted that all the hotel doors were still locked.

The police investigation soon showed that George Smart had opened the front door to a female guest at approximately midnight on 8 March. Of course, he had been seen alive almost one hour later, by John Downey, so it was obvious that the attack upon him had taken place after that time. It also became clear that the killer, whoever he was, had gained access by forcing a door into the coal cellar. The presumption was that Smart had disturbed the would-be thief and been battered to silence him. He had then been tied up and gagged and later, a post-mortem would show that the actual cause of death was asphyxia.

Though theft had been the motive, the thief had not been a very successful one. A large quantity of cigarettes had been taken, but there was only £2 1s 9d in cash, which had been inside a drawer, and this had been forced open by means of a screwdriver. All the areas around the murder scene were dusted for prints but nothing was found, apart from prints that were to be expected to be there, such as the other members of staff. It looked like this might be a difficult case for the police to solve.

In fact, it turned out to be nothing of the sort. Later that same day, a man named Donald Stuart Chapman walked into Waltham Green police station, with a left-luggage ticket. Chapman explained that he was working at Olympia, in connection with the forthcoming Ideal Home Exhibition. The ticket had been given to him by two men, who also worked there. They had confessed that they had robbed a hotel, killed a man and put the cigarettes they had taken into the left luggage office at Victoria station. They had asked Chapman to pick the cigarettes up and keep them at his house until the weekend. Chapman had agreed, but had then gone straight to the police instead. Finally, he gave the names of his two co-workers: Kenneth Gilbert and Ian Arthur Grant.

A record check showed that both Gilbert and Grant were already known to the police. Grant, who had been born on 9 May 1932, had four previous convictions for larceny, shopbreaking, stealing and assault. Gilbert, born on 30 December 1929, had just one conviction, for stealing a car.

After officers had collected the stolen property from Victoria, and checked out Chapman’s story, they decided to make the necessary arrests. At 1.00pm on 10 March, Detective Superintendent William Judge, Detective Inspector Victor Massey, and a number of uniformed officers, travelled to Olympia. The first person they found was Gilbert who, when told that he would be arrested on a charge of murdering George Smart replied, ‘I don’t know anything about it.’ Very soon afterwards, the officers approached Grant who, to the same charge retorted, ‘I don’t know what this is all about.’ Both men were then taken to Chelsea police station where, later that day, both made statements incriminating the other.

The trial of Gilbert and Grant took place on 10 May 1954, before Mr Justice Glyn-Jones. Mr Christmas Humphreys and Mr Mervyn Griffiths-Jones detailed the case for the prosecution. Gilbert’s defence lay in the hands of Mr John Hazan, whilst Grant was defended by Mr Peter Crowder. The proceedings would last until 12 May and, in addition to murder, both men were charged with larceny.

Dick Harness was a kitchen hand at the hotel. Part of his job was to clean up the servery area and he had done this on 8 March, during which time he left a kitchen cloth on a shelf in the room. After the murder, and once George Smart’s body had been moved, Harness cleaned the servery again. By now the cloth was missing. Later medical reports would show that this cloth was the one forced into Smart’s mouth, to silence him.

John Woodward was the head porter at the Aban Court and had been there for six and a half years. He had checked the petty cash box and saw that there were some odd coppers scattered on the floor, close to the now empty box. In all, once this money had been taken into account, there was the sum of £2 1s 9d missing.

Margaret Helen Edwards was the hotel’s head receptionist and part of her duty was to maintain stocks of cigarettes. On the morning of 8 March, she had checked the stock. There were two unopened packs of 200; one of Weights and one of Piccadilly. There were also packets of Players, Capstan and Churchman and, in all, some 700 cigarettes were missing by 9 March.

Dr Jacob Arthur Gorsey had been called to the hotel at 8.10am on 9 March. He confirmed that George Smart was dead and, from temperature comparisons, calculated that the time of death had been at around 2.00am.

William Edward Winkley was a cab driver and he was on duty during the early hours of 9 March. At some time after 2.00am, Winkley was on the cab rank outside the Buckingham Hotel in Cornwall Road, when two men walked up to his cab from the direction of the Aban Court.

One of the men asked him to drive them to Kings Road. Winkley did as he was asked, dropping them just over the Stanley Bridge. One of the men got out immediately and walked off in the direction of Harwoods Road. The other paid the fare with two half crowns before running after his companion. Having heard of the murder, Winkley had approached the police and had since made a positive identification of Gilbert and Grant.

Harry Walter Humphrey, was a leading porter at Victoria station and, on 9 March, was working in the left luggage office from 6.00am until 2.00pm. Very soon after he had come on duty, a man had left a small wooden case with him. He had given the name Grant, and this name had been written on his ticket. Humphrey also made a positive identification of Grant as the man he had seen. He was present when police officers opened the box and saw that it contained a lot of cigarettes, including two unopened packs of 200.

One of the most important witnesses was Donald Chapman, the fellow worker Gilbert and Grant had confided in. The first man to approach him was Grant who early on 9 March admitted that he and Gilbert had ‘done a job’ in a hotel and got themselves a few cigarettes. Later that morning, Gilbert had approached him, with the Star newspaper. He showed Chapman the article on the murder and said, ‘Don, what do you think I’ve done? I’ve done somebody in. I didn’t mean to do it. What shall I do?’

For the rest of the morning, both Gilbert and Grant spoke to him a number of times about the robbery. Then, at around noon, one of them mentioned that the cigarettes were at Victoria station. Grant handed over the ticket and asked him to go to Victoria and collect the cigarettes. Chapman had, of course, taken that ticket to the police.

After telling the court about the arrests, Detective Superintendent Judge spoke of events at Chelsea police station. He had interviewed Grant, who at one stage said, ‘I told Gilbert not to keep hitting him. When he showed me the paper and I saw the old man had died, I realised what we’d done.’

At the same time, Inspector Massey was interviewing Gilbert. Massey told the court that right at the beginning of the interview, Gilbert had said, ‘I suppose he’s down there talking his bloody head off. I never should have taken him with me. You can get your pen out and start writing. I’ll make a statement and it will be the truth.’

In those statements, both men admitted playing a part in George Smart’s death but each blamed the other for the actual murder. Gilbert, who had once worked at the Aban Court Hotel for three months in 1953, admitted that he had struck Smart, but had only hit him twice before gagging him. Grant, for his part, claimed that he had seen Smart with his hand raised, as if he were about to strike out, and so hit him once, in the stomach. It was Gilbert who then hit Smart very hard, and continued to beat him, even after he was tied up.

The jury had little trouble in finding both men guilty of murder. There was now no need to proceed with the larceny charges and they were dropped. Both men were then sentenced to death.

An appeal was entered and during the proceedings the defence claimed that, since neither man had gone to the hotel with the intention of killing Smart, the correct verdict should be guilty of manslaughter. The three appeal court judges ruled that since the men had gone to the Aban Court with the intention of stealing, and were quite prepared to use violence, the charge was one of murder. The appeal was dismissed.

On Thursday, 17 June 1954, Kenneth Gilbert and Ian Arthur Grant were hanged at Pentonville by Albert Pierrepoint, who had three assistants: Royston Rickard, J Grant and Harry Smith. Though other pairs of killers would be hanged in the future, this was the last time that two men were hanged side by side at the same time. From this time onwards, double executions were always carried out at two different prisons.