CHAPTER 18

Murder in Southall, 1938

Some people deserve all they get

The reader will have noticed that a number of the characters featured in this book, whether as victims, suspects or witnesses, were immigrants from overseas – from France, Russia, Lithuania, Italy, Africa and India. Capital cities attract migrants, and whilst the level in London was by no means comparable to that in the later twentieth century and beyond, their numbers in the London of the 1920s and 1930s were not insignificant either. However, as they had for centuries, people came there from all over the British Isles, too, and usually they were seeking work.

One such man was Frederick Henry Priddle, who was born in Thomastown, Glamorgan, in 1913. His father was a coal miner. The depression of the 1930s had badly affected employment in many parts of Britain, and these included the coal-mining districts of Wales. Many young men and women left Wales in the 1930s and looked for employment in London, as new industries were being set up in and around the capital.

Priddle first arrived in London as part of the government’s transfer scheme and undertook training in acetylene welding at Park Royal, West London. From 1933 to 1936 he worked at Woolf’s Rubber factory in Cricklewood, and then in Hayes. Towards the end of 1936 he fell ill and returned to his home town, where, after recovering, he worked in a colliery for a few months. Bad health struck again, and he decided to return to London. From April 1937, he was employed by L Clarke & Co., engineers and welders of Acme Works, Pluckington Place, Southall. His employers described him as ‘a conscientious and capable workman’.

Priddle was an inoffensive figure, described as being a ‘very quiet and reserved young man, who did not mix with a lot of people, but kept to the company of a few childhood friends’. It seems that there were several hundred Welsh in Southall in the later 1930s. He was a teetotaller and rarely went out. When he lived in Wales, he was interested in first aid and was a member of the St John’s Ambulance Brigade. In 1934 he had become engaged to a Welsh girl, Miss Eunice Wiggins, who had been born in Pontypridd, Glamorgan, in 1911. They had been friends since 1931. She had lived in Southall since February 1937, being her widowed brother’s housekeeper. Priddle often spent his evenings with her, going to one of the four cinemas in the town, or stayed in with her and her brother. Although the young couple had made no fixed plans, now Priddle had a steady job they were hoping to marry before long.

On 31 December 1937, they went to the house of a fellow Welshman in Portland Road, Southall. A New Year’s party was being held and there were party games. Everyone seemed to have a good time. Although Priddle was a teetotaller, he was reported as drinking three glasses of wine. Miss Wiggins had her fortune told by another guest. She later recalled, ‘I was going to hear of a broken engagement’ and that ‘I should hear of an illness and be sent for quickly to someone’s bedside’. None of these predictions are difficult to make, as vague as they are. Unfortunately, they came true rather more quickly than anyone would have expected. At the time, Miss Wiggins only thought ‘I had the impression that it was meant to refer to an elderly person living a long way away.’