27

‘She was everything in the world to me’

Letchworth, Hertfordshire, 1937

Minutes before 4 p.m. on 17 March 1937, a man walked into the police station at Letchworth. He looked ill and was shivering violently as he approached the counter and told PC Arnold, ‘I have shot a man. I have come to give myself up. I think I must have been mad. I meant to have shot myself but I could not do it.’ The man took a Mauser pistol from his pocket and handed it to the constable, along with a box of eighteen live cartridges.

Acting on information from the agitated man, the police hastened to an area in Letchworth, where they found a young man lying dead on the grass verge that ran alongside a farm drive. He was quickly identified as twenty-one-year-old unemployed clerk Edward Charles Walters from Lincolnshire, who was staying with a friend in the area, while receiving lessons in Esperanto. Meanwhile, thirty-three-year-old engineer Thomas Arthur Malyon was making a statement to Superintendent George Sharp confessing to the young man’s murder.

According to thirty-three-year-old Malyon, although Walters was said to be a communist, the two men shared a common interest in politics. They were introduced two or three weeks earlier by Malyon’s wife and, since then, had met two or three times. On 13 March, Malyon’s wife Florrie attended a conference in London, at which she stayed overnight. When she came home, she seemed quieter than normal and unusually distant and it was obvious to her husband that she had something on her mind. He continually asked her what was worrying her but she refused to say.

Eventually, Malyon asked his wife if she was tired of living with him and she quickly replied, ‘No.’ Malyon then asked her if she had ever been unfaithful to him and to his surprise, she hung her head and struggled to answer. ‘I can’t remember her exact words,’ Malyon told Superintendent Sharp, revealing that Florrie had eventually admitted that ‘misconduct’ had taken place between her and Walters at the conference.

‘It was as though the world had come to an end,’ Malyon continued, adding that he would never have suspected in a million years that his wife could forget their children and do anything like that. ‘I could have accepted an infatuation,’ he admitted, ‘but this was the ultimate betrayal.’

Malyon told his wife that she was disgusting and repulsive and that, as far as he was concerned, their marriage was over. He stormed out of the room, leaving Florrie sobbing and pacing around in a state of distress. However, once he got upstairs, he began thinking about how much he loved her. ‘I had been fighting to hold my head,’ he told the police. ‘I had been thinking what the wife really meant to me. She was everything in the world to me. All I lived for was the wife and kiddies.’

He decided to go for a walk to try and clear his head. Still hysterical, Florrie begged him not to do anything and he promised he wouldn’t. ‘If you do, I will do away with myself,’ she threatened and, as a precaution, Malyon went back upstairs and removed a loaded pistol from a drawer in the couple’s bedroom.

On leaving the house, he walked towards the shops before suddenly deciding on a whim to go and see Walters. He went to the house in Wilbury Crescent where he knew the young man was lodging, knocked on the door and asked for Walters, who seemed surprised to see him.

‘I suppose you know why I have come?’ Malyon asked him.

‘Yes,’ replied Walters, suggesting that the two men went outside. They went into the greenhouse, where Malyon revealed that his wife had told him everything. ‘We cannot talk here,’ Walters insisted nervously and the two men walked together down the road.

Walters seemed to be under the impression that Malyon had come to give him a good hiding. Malyon asked him what had happened at the conference on the previous Saturday night. ‘When my passions get hold of me I can’t control them,’ Walters replied, adding that he intended to get a job in London and take Florence Malyon with him.

‘Do you realise you are breaking up everything I have worked and slaved for for years?’ Malyon asked him but Walters seemed to treat his anguish with the utmost levity.

‘Are you in love with her?’ Malyon persisted but Walters just laughed in his face.

Malyon lost his temper. ‘You dirty cur!’ he shouted at Walters. ‘While I have been at work at nights, you have been at home making love to my wife.’

‘So? What of it? If I want to see Florrie I will,’ Walters sneered and, as Malyon was later to say, ‘I saw red.’

He pulled his gun out of his pocket and told Walters, ‘I am going to shoot you.’ Walters took one look at the gun and ran for his life. Malyon aimed the automatic pistol at him, saying, ‘This is for seducing my wife,’ and began firing. Although he fired a total of eleven shots at Walters, Malyon claimed to remember nothing more.

The shots were heard by some women living nearby, including Mrs Laura Cherry, who immediately locked the door of her house on Wilbury Road and ran to the window. She could see Walters lying on the verge and Malyon pacing about with his pistol in his hand, looking very agitated. Soon afterwards, a car drove up Wilbury Road and Malyon flagged it down, telling the two farm labourers inside that he had shot a man and asking them to telephone for the police.

Once Malyon had made his statement to Superintendent Sharp he refused to read it through but when the police officer read it aloud to him he agreed that it was correct and signed it. When he was charged with wilful murder, Malyon simply said that he had nothing more to add to the statement he had already made. His chief concern was for his wife’s welfare and he said several times, ‘Make certain that there is someone with my wife when she is told what I have done or she may do something to herself.’

A post-mortem examination conducted by Dr Charles Phillip Craggs of Letchworth revealed that Walters had no less than sixteen bullet wounds, of which eleven were entrance wounds and five exit. One of the wounds was in his temple and had most probably caused instantaneous death. Craggs believed that the pistol was fired when Walters was less than a foot away.

Malyon made several appearances at Hitchin Police Court before magistrates committed him for trial, which opened on 18 June and continued over two days. The proceedings were presided over by Mr Justice Hawke, with Mr St John Hutchinson KC and Mr R.E. Seaton prosecuting and Mr Norman Birkett KC and Mr Frederick Levy acting for Malyon, who pleaded not guilty to the charge of wilful murder against him.

The prosecution opened by stating that the facts of the case were ‘somewhat simple and to a large extent un-contradicted.’ Walters, who had recently completed his education at Ruskin College, Oxford, had come to Letchworth to learn Esperanto. After Malyon found out that his wife and Walters were having an affair, he went to the young man’s lodgings on 17 March, intending to ‘have it out with him’. Shots were fired, at which time Malyon was seen looking very agitated, with a pistol in his hand. Shortly afterwards, he stopped a car and told the occupants that he had shot somebody and, within half an hour, he presented himself at the police station and made a full confession.

Hutchinson told the court that he suspected that Malyon’s defence would be that, having been told that his wife had committed adultery with Walters he then went and shot him. However, it was the duty of the prosecution to point out that the defendant first found out about the affair in the morning and didn’t shoot Walters until 3.30 p.m., which was several hours later. The law was very clear that, if murder was to be reduced to manslaughter on the grounds of provocation, it was essential that the wounds were inflicted immediately on the provocation being given. If there was sufficient cooling time for passions to subside and a person killed another it was deliberate revenge and not heat of blood and therefore equated to murder. Thus the case for the prosecution was that Malyon heard about his wife’s illicit liaison in the morning and, arming himself with an automatic pistol and live cartridges, deliberately sought out Walters and shot him not once, but eleven times.

On the second day of the trial, Malyon took the stand in his own defence, repeating the statement he had given to the police in which he recalled finding out that his beloved wife of seven years had committed adultery. He described confronting Walters and his frustration that the young man wasn’t taking him seriously but was treating the situation as an adventure or a joke.

‘What effect had that statement on you?’ his defence counsel asked him, referring to Walters’s flippant remark, ‘So? What of it? If I want to see Florrie I will.’

‘I think I went mad,’ Malyon replied, hanging his head and struggling to hold back his tears.

‘What did you do?’ Birkett asked him.

‘I cannot remember altogether,’ replied Malyon. ‘I think I took the gun out of my pocket and said, “This is for seducing my wife,” and fired it at him. I did not realise what I had done but I felt justified. I think if I had known what I had really done I would not be here now. I did think of shooting myself but I remembered the kiddies.’

In response to questions from his counsel, Malyon confirmed that he shot Walters ‘on the impulse of the moment’. Until he put his hand in his pocket and felt the revolver there he had absolutely no intention of causing the young man any harm. ‘If I had known what hell I had to go through I would not have gone through with it,’ he concluded.

It was left for the counsels to give their closing speeches and the judge to summarise the case for the jury. For the prosecution, the focus of Hutchinson’s argument was jealousy, which he described as ‘one of the great motives that lead a human to horror and murder.’ There was no question of an insanity defence, said Hutchinson, reminding the jury that the defendant had been seen by a doctor at the police station on the night of the murder and Dr Norman MacFadyan had stated that, at the time, Malyon appeared responsible for his actions. Quoting the words of a Lord Chief Justice when ruling on a case in 1913, Hutchinson said, ‘It would be ludicrous to acknowledge that when a man’s wife has been debauched by another it is an excuse for murder,’ adding that, in his opinion the crux of the matter was the delay between the defendant hearing of his wife’s infidelity and the murder of the supposed other party.

Birkett’s speech for the defence was more sympathetic. No one could have listened to the case without a sense of heartbreak, he insisted, painting a picture of Malyon as a loving family man, whose whole world had come to a sudden end after a revelation from his wife. Malyon had been working fifteen-hour night shifts for some time and was stressed and exhausted and had committed his crime ‘on the impulse of the moment.’

Birkett’s theme was continued by the judge in his summary of the case for the jury, in which he described Malyon’s situation as ‘resting on top of a volcano from which there was a sudden eruption and all his hopes and love were blown to pieces.’ Yet, while Mr Justice Hawke appeared largely sympathetic towards the defendant, he could not condone anyone taking the law into his own hands and the resulting forfeit of a human life.

The jury needed just fifteen minutes to deliberate before returning to pronounce Malyon not guilty of wilful murder but guilty of manslaughter. Since it was a Saturday afternoon, Mr Justice Hawke announced his intention of postponing sentencing until Monday, saying, ‘At first sight one would have a very severe sentence but I hope reflection from now until Monday may make it consistent with my duty to pass a somewhat less sentence.’

When the court reconvened on 21 June, Hawke first asked Malyon if he had anything to say before sentence was passed upon him.

‘Yes, my Lord,’ replied Malyon but then broke down in tears and was unable to speak, indicating that he would like his counsel to speak for him. Junior defence counsel Frederick Levy told the judge, ‘He desires me to say that from the bottom of his heart he regrets this terrible tragedy, which will always be on his mind. He also desires me to bring to your Lordship’s notice the fact that he has already been in prison for three months.’

In passing sentence, Hawke stated that he had the deepest sorrow for the prisoner and had spent the previous day considering the counsel for the defence’s suggestion of leniency. Addressing Malyon, Hawke told him:

I must deal with you in a way which may be thought severe but, I hope, having regard to all the circumstances, is really lenient. I must pass a severe punishment, since it would never do to allow it to be thought in this country that people, however much provoked, may be allowed to take the law into their own hands. The jury must have accepted your story about the pistol and how you came to take it with you. You took it with no thought of murder or revenge in your mind. I think it quite possible that your story about that was a true one. But human life must be protected and although you were grievously provoked your actions were actions of considerable ferocity.

Hawke concluded, ‘While I must pass a severe sentence, there is nothing that requires me to pass a vindictive sentence, hence I have done my best to reduce the sentence to the lowest I can possibly pass.’ With that he sentenced Malyon to five years’ penal servitude.