FAMOUS DETECTIVE DIES

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20953, 4 November 1939, Page 14 (Supplement)

FAMOUS DETECTIVE DIES

Amazing Old Bailey Scene Recalled Wartime Work in Trapping Spies

The death at Rochester of exDivisional Detective-Inspector William Burrell recalls one of the most amazing scenes ever witnessed in the dock at the Old Bailey. It occurred in 1896, when two men, Fowler and Milson, were on trial for the brutal murder of a wealthy old man, named Smith, in his secluded residence at Muswell Hill. The only clue had been a child’s toy lantern left on a window sill. Fowler and Milson had disappeared from their haunts at Notting Dale. Both were known as desperate criminals. Burrell, then a young detective, sent his young son to play with the lantern in Southam Street, North Kensington, where Milson lived. The trap succeeded. Within a few minutes another child exclaimed, “You have got my lantern.” It was Milson’s son. Fowler and Milson were traced to Bath. A fight in a common lodginghouse, in which the chief constable of Bath was badly mauled, ended in their arrest. At the Old Bailey, a chance remark by counsel led Fowler, a man of muscular build, to believe that the puny Milson had turned “Queen’s evidence.” Suddenly Fowler turned on his fellow accomplice in the dock. They rolled over and over, and Fowler’s grip was released only after a struggle with half a dozen warders. For the remainder of the trial the pair were separated.

They were both sentenced to death but Fowler still threatened Milson. The sheriffs decided that, to prevent a scene, another condemned man should be executed between them. Three on Scaffold At the same Sessions a hardened criminal named Seaman had been sentenced to death for the murder of an old Jew and his servant in a Whitechapel slum. On the day of the execution all three stood on the scaffold. It was the first time three men had been executed together. Waiting for the chaplain’s last words, Fowler still shouted scathing epithets at Milson, and, according to the chief warder, the last remark of Seaman was, “It is the first time in my life that I have been a peacemaker.” More than a dozen other criminals were brought to the scaffold by Mr Burrell during his successful career. They included Devereaux, the Kensal Rise chemist’s assistant, who poisoned his wife and twin children and deposited them in a sealed trunk in a furniture depository for many weeks. In the service Mr Burrell was known as “Billy, who never missed his man.” After retiring on pension he did good work as a railway detective, and during the war he was specially appointed by the War Office to deal with cases of espionage.