England and Wales Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) Decisions

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM
Derbyshire Winter Assizes, 1927
His Honour Judge Branson

		Royal Courts of Justice Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
		17 October 2002

Lord Justice Judge:

1. On 26 February 1927 at the Derbyshire Winter Assizes before Branson J and a jury, William Knighton (“the appellant”) was convicted of the murder of his mother, Ada Knighton. He was sentenced to death.
2. An application for leave to appeal against conviction was dismissed by the Court of Criminal Appeal (Avory, Shearman and Sankey JJ) on 21 March. The case was referred back to the Court by the Secretary of State for the Home Department. The referral was treated as if permission had been granted to the appellant to call fresh evidence. The Court (Hewart LCJ, Avory and Sankey JJ) dismissed the consequent appeal on 12 April.
3. Sentence was carried out in Bagthorpe Prison, Nottingham, on 27 April 1927.
4. In July 2001 the conviction was referred to this court by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) under s9 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1995. The person with a sufficient interest in the appeal, and approved for the purposes of s44A, is the appellant’s niece. When her uncle was executed, she was a child. She is now over 80 years old. She has no direct knowledge of the facts of the case, but she is anxious that his memory should, at last, be vindicated.
5. No one who knows anything about the circumstances in which Ada Knighton lived and died, or the facts of the investigation by the police and subsequently by the Director of Public Prosecutions, or the trial, or either hearing before the Court of Appeal, is still alive. Seventy-five years after his execution we are not examining the question whether the appellant was guilty, but whether his conviction is safe. Whether this examination will do, or could do anyone the slightest good, cannot influence our decision. The case has been referred to the Court by the CCRC in the exercise of its powers under s9 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1995, and provided there is an individual with a sufficient interest, as there is, we are not entitled to return the reference to the CCRC unanswered. We are required to consider and decide the appeal.

The critical facts

6. Ada Knighton was murdered at 1 Bethel Street, Ilkeston, in her bed, in the early hours of 8 February 1927, some time before 4.15am. She was 55 years old. Her throat was cut with considerable force. A deep four-inch wound in the mid-line of her neck, just above the Adam’s apple, had cut through the structures and through the interior wall of the oesophagus. The weapon which inflicted the fatal injury was a razor, and it was probably used as she lay on her left side.
7. Four other people were living in the house that night: Mrs Knighton’s husband, George, her son, William, the appellant, her daughter, Doris, and her grandson, Reginald, who was five years old. George Knighton slept in the living room on the ground floor. The appellant and Reginald occupied the front bedroom on the first floor, with Reginald sleeping nearer to the door, and William further away. A further flight of stairs led to the attic in which the deceased and Doris shared a bed.
8. George Knighton was born in about 1868. At the time of his wife’s death he was 59 years old. He joined the Army in 1884, serving for eight years. He rejoined for what he described as “the South African War”, and again rejoined for the First World War, being invalided in 1918 and discharged in February 1919. By 1927 he was unable to work. The precise state of his health will be examined later in the judgment.
9. Mr and Mrs Knighton had nine children. One was Lois Wake, who by 1927 was married, but lived close by. Another was William, the appellant, who was 22 years old. At some time earlier he had worked as a slaughterman, but in February 1927 he was working as a miner. Doris Ivy, who was 16 years old, worked as a factory hand.
10. The marriage was not without its difficulties. The deceased habitually drank to excess, and her husband was unkind to her. Lois Wake spoke of his cruelty and ill treatment. When the deceased was in drink there were occasions when her husband would lock her out of the house. When in drink she was heard to call out to Doris, “Poor mother, locked out in the cold, and my own daughter lying in bed with her father.” Another neighbour said that she complained that her husband was crafty and hit her with his walking stick “when she was walking past his bed downstairs”. On the other hand, the same neighbour commented that there had been no quarrels during the six months before her death. Doris herself said that her mother was very frightened, as she was, of her father. About a year earlier there was an occasion when her mother had used a catch on her bedroom door. All that said, in early February 1927 there was powerful medical and other evidence to suggest that George Knighton was ill to the extent of being bed-ridden.
11. No one has ever suggested, and there is absolutely no shred of evidence to hint at the possibility that Ada Knighton’s murderer was an intruder. Plainly Reginald could not have killed her. She might have committed suicide, a possibility raised at the appellant’s trial, but in effect rejected by the jury, and discounted at every stage thereafter, as we conclude, and counsel for the appellant accepted before us, on the evidence, rightly so. So Ada Knighton was killed either by her husband, or her son, or her daughter. There are no other possibilities. No one has ever sought to blame the daughter, and there is no shred of evidence to suggest that she may have been responsible. If not, she was present beside her mother in bed when her mother was killed by her husband or her son. Hardly surprisingly, given that Doris gave no evidence whatsoever about the moment when the killing took place, the judge suggested to the jury that the story might seem “extraordinary…from any point of view”.

William Knighton’s confession

12. At about 7.25am on 8 February 1927, before the police had any knowledge of the murder, the appellant left 1 Bethel Street and walked to Ilkeston police station. He seemed very calm and sober. He asked to speak to an inspector. He said it was a case of murder. He was put into the lock-up. When Inspector Wheeldon saw him at 7.30am the appellant said to him, “I want to see you, Inspector. I have done the old woman in. I have cut her throat with a razor. The razor is lying by the side of the bed.” With that, he was cautioned. He responded, “You will find it right. I have been on the booze.”
13. In his sworn evidence at trial, the appellant challenged the report of his post-caution response. However, he accepted that he had said the words attributed to him by Inspector Wheeldon before the caution. In short, without any pressure or suggestions from any police officer, and before any officer knew of his mother’s death, he confessed that he was responsible and that he had killed her with a razor which had been left on the floor of the bedroom, where it was found by the police a little later that morning.
14. If he were innocent, it was, and remains, extraordinary that he should confess to a murder of which the police were ignorant, and accurately describe how it had been committed. This was not a confession to a murder after it had become public knowledge, nor was it a wholly generalised confession, omitting reference to crucial detail, of which someone who knew nothing of the murder would be ignorant. This spontaneous confession by one of the very few people who could in fact have committed the murder therefore provided, and still continues to provide, formidable evidence against the appellant.
15. According to the CCRC’s Statement of Reasons, it was not until 24-36 hours before the trial that the appellant “was persuaded” to plead “not guilty”. In short, the appellant appears to have stood by his confession after he had had time to reflect on it, and the reasons why he had made it. This information is consistent with the report of the prison doctor that the appellant had also confessed his guilt to him. We cannot evaluate the circumstances in which the appellant decided to contest his guilt, and he was later to deny having made a further confession to the doctor. Having noted these matters, in this particular case we have decided that it would be unfair to the appellant to draw any adverse inferences from them. So we have ignored them. The impact of his confession to the police is accordingly neither strengthened nor diminished.
16. The essential argument advanced by the defence at trial was that the appellant may have killed his mother when suffering from what we would describe as epileptic automatism. The judge left to the jury a possible special verdict of “guilty, but insane so as not to be responsible in law for the consequences of his act”. It was not admitted by the appellant, nor accepted on his behalf, that he had been responsible for the death. His case was that he could say nothing of the circumstances because he had, or claimed to have no recollection of events immediately before, during the time, or immediately after his mother’s death: hence the exploration at trial of the possibility that his mother had committed suicide, and indeed of what his counsel described as “every theory”. Having put his evidence at trial into its context, it is probably better to quote rather than summarise the relevant passages of his own testimony which explained how he had come to make the confession.
17. In his evidence in chief, after describing his movements, he said, “I naturally thought that I must have cut her throat with a razor.” In cross-examination the point was developed in rather more detail:

“Q And when you saw your mother with the blood lying round her you did not see the wound in her neck?

A No.

Q Therefore there was no reason why you should think that she had not burst a blood vessel?

A Then I remembered the razor in my pocket. I pulled it out and saw the bloodstains on it and saw all the blood round it and I naturally jumped to the conclusion that I had cut her throat.

Q You say ‘naturally’, but forgive me if I say that that was not a natural conclusion to which to come --

A It was because I had blood on my hand just here (indicating junction of first finger and thumb on the right hand).

Q When you came to the conclusion that you had cut your mother’s throat, did you even then go over to look and see whether her throat was cut?

A No.

Q So that, for all you knew when you left the house that morning you were wrong and her throat had not been cut at all. Is that not so?

A No. Well, I thought when I found out I had got the razor in my pocket and could see I had got blood on my hands, I naturally thought that I had cut her throat.”

Later in cross-examination he was asked:

“Q And you felt bound to tell the inspector what you knew about the case?

A Yes.

Q Why did you not tell the inspector: ‘I have cut my mother’s throat. You will find the razor near the bed. I have no recollection about anything’? Why did you not tell the inspector that?

A I did not think that it had anything to do with the inspector.”

After questioning about the caution, and establishing that the appellant realised that anything he said would be used in evidence against him, the cross-examination continued:

“Q Why, then, did you not say: ‘I have no knowledge of doing this at all; I must have done it when I was asleep or unconscious or something of that sort’?

A I do not know.”

Later he responded to another question:

“I was not taking any interest in it. I thought the case was dead against me and I thought the best thing I could do was to say anything.”

18. In summing up the judge said:

“The prisoner says that he was driven to the conclusion that he had cut his mother’s throat. I should think there can hardly be any doubt in anybody’s mind that he was right in drawing that conclusion, but of course it is a matter for you. If you are satisfied that he cut his mother’s throat, then the only thing that remains is to see whether he did it wilfully, knowing he was doing it, in which case he is guilty of murder, or whether he did it, as is suggested, while he was in an epileptic state so that he did not know what he was doing.”

19. When dismissing the appeal against conviction, the Lord Chief Justice observed that the appellant’s conviction did not rest upon the evidence of his sister. He went on, “…not least, there was his own confession…and the evidence which he himself gave in the witness box at the trial before the jury.”

The Reference by the CCRC

20. So what then is new? What is known to us, which was not known to the Court of Criminal Appeal in 1927, and serves to undermine the judgment made by the jury, and the Court of Criminal Appeal, that the voluntary confession was true, and that it was right for the appellant to be convicted? On close analysis, although the available points are argued in considerable detail in the Reference, in reality, there is very little.
21. We have admitted evidence relating to five small blood stains found on stairs between the attic and the first floor, believed by the CCRC to have been “suppressed” by the officer in charge of the investigation, Inspector Wheeldon. According to the CCRC, this “could have fundamentally altered the course of the trial”, and “cast a shadow over the integrity of the investigation”. We shall be examining this contention in detail later in the judgment. We have also admitted in evidence a statement by Reginald Knighton, made when he was five years old. His age alone does not disqualify this statement from consideration, but we have no idea whether, in 1927, Reginald was, or was not, a child to whose evidence attention could reasonably be paid. We know that, at the time, it was thought not. In reality, his statement adds nothing to the other material. We have examined all the material available to the Court of Criminal Appeal or the appellant’s legal advisers by the date of the hearing of the final appeal.
22. Although they were available to us, we did not examine three Home Office files, one embargoed from publication until 2003, and two until 2028. We understood from counsel that material in these files had been disclosed to the appellant’s solicitors by the CCRC, which had access to them. To the extent that any material of potential relevance has been referred to by the CCRC in its Statement of Reasons (whether from these files or elsewhere), we have taken account of it, and assumed, without deciding, that it would be admissible in evidence.

Doris Knighton’s evidence

23. Medical examination revealed that Doris had had regular sexual intercourse. The jury did not hear any evidence on this topic, nor did it know that she had given sworn testimony at the committal that her brother had had sexual intercourse with her during the night of 5 February in the bed in which she slept with her mother. The crime was presented to the jury as motiveless: indeed there was evidence that the appellant loved his mother. The crime would have been more readily understood, and would have seemed much less “extraordinary”, if Doris had been asked to give the evidence she had given at committal on this topic. It would not then have been fanciful for the jury to infer that her mother had discovered that sexual intercourse between her and her brother had taken place and, understandably, had been very angry: and that might indeed have provided evidence of motive.
24. Some criticism emerges from the papers of the Crown’s decision not to adduce this evidence. It was plainly relevant. It hardly needs emphasising that we do not and cannot know why counsel for the Crown took the decision not to ask Doris any questions on this topic. He may however have taken the view that although evidence of this kind would have been probative, it would have had an overwhelmingly prejudicial and unfair effect on the appellant’s defence. Perhaps, too, he had in mind that this girl was still only 16 years old, and it was less than a month since her mother had been murdered, as she lay in the bed they shared. In the end therefore the evidence was limited to the fact, otherwise not explained, of the appellant’s presence in the bedroom. The appellant himself was obviously not prejudiced by the fact that evidence of a sexual relationship between him and his younger sister was not put before the jury.
25. We have analysed the developing account of the evidence from Doris. In her statement on 8 February, Doris referred to her brother entering the bedroom during the previous night, sober, wearing his trousers and a shirt. She did not speak of seeing her father in the bedroom. She said that he slept downstairs, “owing to his being an invalid”. On 9 February, Inspector Wheeldon took a further statement from Doris. Referring to the night of 5/6 February, she said that she “heard William come halfway up the attic stairs”. He asked his mother for some matches, but she said that she was not going to get out of bed. “Just after this he came into the bedroom on his hands and knees. He came round my side of the bed and felt my arms and then my face several times. After a little while he tried to get into bed with me and mother asked him what he was doing. He said, ‘Nothing’. He got up and went and stood on the attic stairs…At last he went away and I went to sleep.”
26. On the following day, just before a remand appearance before the Justices, Doris went up to Inspector Wheeldon and said, “I ought to have told you more yesterday – my brother Billy had connection with me on Saturday night.”
27. In the evening of 10 February a further statement was taken from Doris, which in effect confirmed what she had said to Inspector Wheeldon on 9/10 February. She spoke of her brother getting into bed with her, and turning towards her mother. He pulled her on to her back and “had connection” with her. While this was happening, she screamed. Her mother was woken. Her brother jumped off her. She told her mother that there was a man in the room, but she did not say it was her brother. Her mother told her not to be silly. A few minutes later she saw him round the mother’s side of the bed. Her mother did not see him in bed with her and she did not tell her that her brother had been in the bed. Indeed, she did not “tell anyone until I informed the police”. The statement ends with the sentence:

“It was the first time he had interfered with me and I did not have any talk to him about it afterwards.”

28. At committal, when Doris gave evidence, apart from referring to the fact that her father was “an invalid and unable to get upstairs” and giving an account of the night of the killing, she referred, again, to the incident on the night of 5/6 February, saying:

“[The appellant] came round to my side of the bed and put his hand on my face and arm. He then got into bed. He had only his shirt on. He got on top of me and had connection with me. I screamed, he got off then. It woke my mother, and she asked me what was the matter. I told her there was a man in the room. I did not tell her who it was. My mother said, ‘Don’t be silly, there’s nobody here.’ When I said he got off, I meant he got out of bed. I don’t know whether he went out of the room or stayed in. About five or ten minutes later, I heard my mother say, ‘Is that you, Bill?’ He was then on my mother’s side of the bed near the foot."

29. (a) At trial, Doris began her evidence by confirming, in answer to a leading question, that her father was a delicate man who was unable to climb upstairs. Basing ourselves on the transcript as a whole, we doubt if such a question would have been asked, or if asked, left unchallenged, if there was issue on the subject. She began by speaking of events involving her brother on the night of 5/6 February. Her brother came into the bedroom. As indicated she was not asked about any sexual activity. Her mother did not wake at first. When she did wake up she asked the appellant, ‘Is that you, Bill?’. He confirmed that it was, and his mother asked him what he was doing there. He said, “Nothing” and went downstairs.

(b) On the night of 7/8 February Doris herself went to bed early. She did not hear her mother come to bed. She was woken at about 1am by sounds of moaning coming from her mother. It was an “awful” noise, like a “gurgle”. When asked what the matter was, her mother made no reply. She just went quiet. Doris thought that her mother had just suffered one of her coughing bouts. She then went back to sleep.

(c) About three-quarters of an hour later Doris “observed” her brother in the room, standing at the foot of the bed on her mother’s side. Her brother asked, “What is the matter with her, Ivy?” and she replied that she did not know, and that her mother had been like it a long while. She asked her brother to strike a match and asked him the time. He struck a match, and said it was quarter to two. He was wearing his shirt and his trousers. He then went downstairs. He made no effort to speak to their mother. She was woken by her father shouting to her mother to get up. She shook her mother. There was no reply. She went round to her mother’s side of the bed and lit a candle. She saw all the blood on the floor and on her face. She thought that the cause of the bleeding was a broken blood vessel. She dressed herself, and while doing so heard her brother going downstairs. She went downstairs herself and spoke to her father. She asked her brother to go and look at her mother, explaining to him that she had shaken her but had been unable to wake her, and that there was a pool of blood on the floor. Her brother went upstairs and came down again. Her brother told her father, “It seems as if there is something the matter with her.” Her father suggested that he take her up some brandy, which he did. When her brother came downstairs with it in his hand, and father asked whether she had taken the brandy, her brother replied, “No, it seems hopeless.” Her father told her to go and fetch her sister. Then her brother said that he would go when he had a cup of tea. He then left the house.

(d) When she was cross-examined Doris said that when her brother had struck the match, she had not seen the time for herself. He had given her the time of quarter to two. When he struck the match she had been able to see him. She was asked if she had seen his hands, and she said, “No, I never noticed his hands.” She said that she had seen no blood on him at all. Although much was made of this, we are bound to say that the stuttering light of a single match in the middle of the night would be unlikely to provide the best opportunity to notice anything very much. She confirmed that she had not seen her brother around their mother’s side of the bed.

30. In short, at trial, there was nothing in the evidence given by Doris, or in any previous statement she had made, which gave the slightest hint whatever that George Knighton had ever been upstairs in the bedroom she shared with her mother on the night of 7/8 February, or indeed that he was sufficiently fit physically to have done so. The only person who had visited their bedroom was the appellant.
31. Just over a month later, exactly one week after the Court of Criminal Appeal had dismissed the appellant’s application to call further expert evidence in relation to his own medical condition, one of the appellant’s brothers-in-law, Mr Savage, discussed the case with the solicitor then acting for the appellant, Mr Flint. According to Mr Flint, he expressed the opinion that Doris knew “a great deal more about the murder than she had stated in her evidence, and that she might even yet be induced to disclose it”.
32. On 29 March Mr Savage and his wife, who was another daughter of the marriage, Lois Wake, and Doris Knighton were interviewed by Mr Flint. We do not share the CCRC’s view that Doris “approached” Mr Flint. And although it may not matter to this particular case, we doubt whether the pressure to which she was exposed before she gave any account of events adverse to her father would be acceptable nowadays if, say, a 16-year-old girl were being interviewed either by the police, or indeed a solicitor. According to Mr Flint’s statement he told “Ivy” that he was “convinced that the murder could not have occurred in the manner generally supposed…”. The irresistible conclusion was that either the murder had been done from within the bed, or that some person other than her brother had done the murder from outside. He begged her to tell him the truth in time to save her brother’s life, if it was any other person who had committed the crime. She answered several times “in a sullen manner” that she knew nothing further about the matter. Mr Flint then asked Doris to confirm whether the story about her brother’s visit to her room on 5 February was true. She replied that it was. He then asked if this was the only occasion when her brother had been “intimate” with her, and she said that it was. He “pressed her as to the truth of this, and she was emphatic”.
33. Mr Flint had been informed by the solicitor for the prosecution that the medical examination of Doris had revealed “repeated sexual intercourse”. So, in the presence of two of her sisters, and a brother-in-law, he put this information to her, and “pressed her to tell me who was the person who had been intimate with her repeatedly.” Adopting his language, she was plainly under pressure to give an answer. She hung her head and burst into tears, and then said, “My father, ever since I was a little girl at school.” Mrs Wake and Mrs Savage both made startled exclamations of surprise. Later, “Ivy (as Mr Flint described Doris Knighton in his statement) told me that this relationship began when she was only twelve years old.”
34. According to Mr Flint’s statement, he then questioned her again about the incident on the Saturday night. He asked if she was still prepared to say that it was her brother who was with her. She answered, “I think so.” He said to her, “What makes you think so?” She replied that her mother had said, “Is that you, Bill?” and that he had said, “Yes.” According to this statement she “volunteered without any question or prompting the statement, ‘He was making that curious gasping for breath which my father makes when he has his heart attacks.’” He then asked her, “Do you really think it was your brother, or was it your father?” Doris replied, “I think it must have been my father.” Mr Flint continued to question her without obtaining any further information for some little time.
35. He then proceeded to ask further questions about clothing, and the washing of clothes. He then returned to “press Ivy that she could not have slept through the murder without hearing or knowing something, and she reiterated a statement which she made earlier in our interview and to which I attached little importance, namely, that she thought she must have been drugged.” Only then were her two sisters and Mr Savage asked to leave the room.
36. Mr Flint asked if she would tell the true story of what happened. Doris was fearful about her father getting to know, and she added, “Will it get Bill off if I tell you any more?” Mr Flint replied that it would, if it were the true story, and one which could be tested. He warned her not to tell him and his partner anything merely “for the sake of shielding Bill. The essential thing we want to know is – was your father in your room that night?” She replied, “I can’t say he was in the room but I heard him going downstairs.” She then described the sound of her father’s footsteps on the stairs, and on the kitchen floor, and she “herself volunteered the suggestion that she knew the tap which her father’s slippers made as he crossed the kitchen floor.”
37. Her sisters and her brother-in-law were brought back into the office. Statements were taken from Doris and her sister Lois. Before Doris signed her statement Mr Flint warned her that she must not sign it unless “every word of it was true”, and she declared that it was.
38. This statement began by asserting that the appellant had “never had connection with me, my father has had repeated connection with me since I was twelve years of age.” She said that she had been woken on 5 February by someone in bed. She said she thought it was her father, who was bigger and heavier than her brother. He was making curious gasping for breath which “he has with his heart attacks”. When her mother was wakened and asked whether it was Bill, he said, “Yes”, got up and left. On the night of the murder, she heard someone going downstairs and she had no doubt that it was her father. She said that she had not spoken previously about her father’s conduct before through fear, and before the trial he had told her “not to say anything about his having had connection with me”. We must interpose that according to the report from a Superintendent after visiting the Director of Public Prosecutions on 4 April he recorded:

“There is very little difference in weight, if any, in the father and son. It is possible when in the attic to hear anyone with slippers going down both flights of stairs and collide with a chair, but impossible to hear them walk across the kitchen floor. I have tested this together with Inspector Wheeldon and Sergeant Deaton.”

39. Doris made a further statement on 5 April 1927. In this statement she said that on 5 February her brother came into their room, looking for matches, and that she woke up later in the night, and a person who she “thought” was her father had connection with her in the bed. She said that about five or ten minutes after the person had left the room, she heard someone knocking about in it, and her mother said, “Is that you, Bill?”, to which the person replied, “Yes.” It was Bill’s voice and she said that she was positive both that it was Bill who had spoken to her mother, and that her father had been in bed with her that night.
40. She said that although he had had connection with her many times since the age of twelve, this was the first occasion he had done so when her mother was at home. Before that the most recent occasion had been in August 1926.
41. She again described the night when her mother died. She said that her brother had come into the room. It was then about quarter to two. She did not know it was him until he spoke. He had struck a match. He then went downstairs. When she next woke up it was just getting light, and she heard someone going downstairs. She couldn’t tell the time, but when she heard the noise on the stairs it was between the first floor and the ground floor. She thought it was her brother getting up. She then thought that the person making the noise was wearing slippers, and that it must be her father. On this basis, of course, she was attributing movement to her father at about 6am, not long after, but nevertheless after her mother had been killed.
42. She gave evidence before the Court of Criminal Appeal. From the Law Report, Knighton (1927) 20CAR45, when cross-examined by counsel for the Crown, “she admitted that she was ‘not sure’ of the identity of the person she accused.”
43. The judgment of the Lord Chief Justice is unequivocal:

“We are unanimous that this witness has deliberately given false evidence in her amended statements here – differing from her evidence before the coroner, the Justices and at the trial – otherwise we should give the person she has accused an opportunity of denying her charges on oath. The confession made by the appellant on the morning of the murder, when he was calm, sober and explicit, stands uncontradicted.”

44. The judgment was also reported in The Times newspaper for 13 April 1927, where it is recorded in greater detail. It reads:

“The Lord Chief Justice, in giving the judgment of the Court, repeated that every member of the Court was satisfied that the revised and amended story told by the girl, Doris Ivy Knighton, was untrue to her knowledge. They were so completely satisfied that that was so that they did not think it necessary to offer to her father the opportunity to which he would otherwise clearly be entitled, of denying her new story on oath. The defence of insanity had entirely failed…The effect was to establish more clearly than ever the importance of the confession which Knighton had made on the morning of the murder to an inspector at Ilkeston police station, whither he had gone and asked to see the police. He was then calm, un-concerned and sober.

It had been said, when the untruthfulness of Doris Knighton’s later story had been made manifest, that it was unsatisfactory that Knighton’s conviction should rest on the evidence which she had given in the first instance. Knighton’s conviction did not rest on her evidence. There was ample evidence to convict him apart from it. Not least, there was his own confession and his evidence at the trial.

The evidence which had just been tendered might be thought to have accomplished one thing at any rate. If it had been before the jury it might well have supplied the material from which the jury would have inferred Knighton’s motive in committing the crime, the question of motive being, on the evidence as it stood, one of some little difficulty.”

45. The way in which the judgment of the court was expressed makes clear that it was the “revised and amended story”, that is the account implicating her father rather than her brother, which the court believed to be false. In the absence of further evidence on this topic, we should follow the conclusion reached by the Court 75 years ago, which had the advantage which we do not, of having seen and heard Doris give her evidence. We add that it would be unfair to the father, who had no chance to meet these allegations because they were peremptorily dismissed in 1927, to assume anything against him today. It is however apparent that whenever the opportunity arose for her to do so, the crucial feature of her evidence, consistently asserted, was that her brother did indeed enter the bedroom she shared with her mother on the fatal night. We acknowledge that there is no mention of it in her statement to Mr Flint on 29 March. However, the critical part of that statement begins at the time when it was “just beginning to get light”, and omits reference to events earlier in the night. Apart from that omission, Doris consistently said that her brother had gone into their bedroom, and she even did so at a time when she was seeking to attribute blame to her father, and had no reason whatever to continue to identify her brother as someone who had entered the bedroom if he had not indeed done so. We should add that it seems clear that before the fatal night, someone, or possibly more than one person, had had sexual intercourse with Doris. But even if her father had done so before it does not follow that he did so during the night when her mother died. We must briefly consider the evidence of her father’s state of health, which she herself initially described as “delicate”. Before doing so we must add that we cannot avoid a profound sense of sympathy for this young 16-year-old in her awful predicament, who had just lost her mother in horrifying circumstances, almost certainly witnessing an appalling crime, and crushed between conflicting loyalties.

George Knighton’s health

46. We shall not repeat the impression of her father’s health, and in particular his ability to climb stairs, in early February, conveyed by Doris Knighton’s statement dated 8 February, and her evidence at trial. This issue was not explored any further. Everyone seems to have proceeded on the basis that George Knighton was not fit enough to mount the stairs. And so it remained, until Doris made allegations of sexual misconduct against him. Even when Doris made her allegations against her father, as they eventually developed, she herself explained that until the night of her mother’s death, he had not had sexual intercourse with her since the previous August.
47. In her statement dated 5 April she explained that her father had slept downstairs since he returned from hospital the previous year. She also said that his health seemed to improve after her mother’s death, and she spoke about him “up in the attic” moving things. In a post-trial statement, the appellant himself said that his father was up and about until towards the end of January, “when he had an attack and took to his bed”. Lois Wake, in a statement made on 5 April, said that her father had been in Ilkeston Hospital in the summer, and “in bed” in the downstairs front room since about a fortnight after Christmas. She said that he “suffers with heart trouble and rheumatism caused by the war. The attacks he has are intermittent. Sometimes he is well for six months. He has been attended by Drs Sudbury and Stokes, and on Saturday 5 February Dr Sudbury gave him a cough mixture to make him sleep. I know this because he told me on the Sunday what a good night he had had.” She described his pension arrangements. The pension was not permanent. He attended medical boards from time to time. He used to draw the pension from the Post Office. When he was ill it was drawn out for him by her brother. She said after 8 February he had “improved”, and she had seen him going about without his stick, and he had been upstairs, whitewashing and painting.
48. Two neighbours, living in Chapel Street, Elizabeth Hufton and Emma Hufton, spoke of knowing that “Mr Knighton was very ill”. Indeed Emma Hufton said that a few days before her own death, Mrs Knighton had told her that her husband was very ill, he had had a very poor night, “and expected him dying”. That was entirely consistent with the statement of Eliza Thorley, a widow, and next-door neighbour at 2 Bethel Street. We know from the evidence of Doris, and in particular from what she was able to hear from next door, in Mrs Thorley’s home, that sounds carried very easily between the two houses. She said that Mr Knighton had been bed-ridden “for weeks” before 8 February. She had often called in to see him. He was in bed when, on the morning of his wife’s death, Mrs Thorley called in at the house. She also described how on 5 February, Mrs Knighton had called her into the house to see him. She said, “He was then very ill and members of the family had been taking turn in sitting up with him as they thought he would die. Mrs Knighton told me that her husband had never been upstairs since last Whitsuntide and if I had been told on Tuesday morning 8 February that he was dead, I should not have been surprised.”
49. Dr Stokes made a statement asserting that he had never attended George Knighton in bed upstairs, and that as far as he could ascertain, he was confined to bed from 18 January 1927 “for his last heart attack”.
50. Dr Sudbury knew more about George Knighton’s condition. He explained that George Knighton had suffered from rheumatism for some years, and that during the last year he had had “several attacks of acute cardiac failure. He had gross valvular disease of the heart, the aortic and mitral valves being affected.” He saw Mr Knighton on 6 February, and again at his house on the morning of 8 February. He said that at the time of the murder he did not think “it was possible for him to go into the attic where his wife slept, nor to have sexual intercourse. When lying or sitting still he does not gasp when he breathes, but it is probable that he would do so after any slight exertion.”
51. Consistently with the evidence of an improvement in George Knighton’s health, he added that in late March and early April, George Knighton had attended surgery two or three times. The surgery was not more than half a mile from 1 Bethel Street, and in the course of the hearing we ascertained that there was a route between the two addresses which did not involve climbing any significant slopes. This improvement is consistent with further evidence that in the month before 7 April, it emerged that George Knighton had fetched his own pension from the Post Office 200 yards away from his home. According to the report, “previous to this, when very ill, one of his family had fetched it”. Significantly, however, and not entirely surprisingly given his evidence about George Knighton’s condition, Dr Sudbury did not suggest, directly or indirectly, that this particular improvement served to alter his assessment of George Knighton’s condition in early February.
52. George Knighton himself made a statement. He described as “rot” the suggestion that he had had sexual intercourse with his daughter. He described the general state of his health. He was subject to heart attacks. He suffered from rheumatism. He had a pension, which continued, of varying amounts. In July 1926, he had been given a 100% pension for twelve months.
53. He had attended Ilkeston Hospital early in 1926. He left hospital in May. Although the statement is not entirely clear, it looks as though he was saying that he took to his bed before Christmas and did not “get out of it again until about a fortnight after my wife’s death”.
54. He said that he had not slept with his wife for two years. He was “no good to any woman from a sexual point of view”.
55. He also dealt with the suggestion that there had been a remarkable improvement in his health after his wife’s death. He agreed that he had assisted with the painting and whitewashing of the house after the funeral. He said that he had not done very much. He got on a chair to do something but was forced to stop, and he commented to Doris that “it would kill me”.
56. We have examined this issue in detail to see whether it throws any light on the question whether George Knighton had sexual intercourse with his daughter during the night, or the weekend, when his wife died. None of the witnesses is available for cross-examination. We therefore cannot know whether, for example, Mrs Thorley would, if cross-examined, adhere to her evidence of her understanding of the state of George Knighton’s health on 5 February. There seems no reason, however, to doubt that the doctor called in to see him on 6 February, and his evidence about the inhibiting effect of George Knighton’s health on his ability to have sexual intercourse in early February 1927 is uncontradicted. Taking this evidence in isolation, it seems highly improbable that George Knighton had sexual intercourse with his daughter on either 5 or 7/8 February, and it lends weight to the Court of Criminal Appeal’s rejection of her evidence on this point. Approaching the problem on the same basis, that is, the evidence of his health alone, no clear indication, one way or another is given, whether he did nor may have had sexual intercourse with Doris in 1926, or earlier. The Court rejected her evidence that he had. We do not think that the medical evidence helps one way or another, although plainly he was less ill in early 1926 than he was at the beginning of February 1927.
57. 1 Bethel Street, Ilkeston was a tragic home. But whatever else may have been going on behind the closed doors, having analysed all the material, we can find nothing in Doris’ evidence, or in the way in which it developed, which serves to undermine the weight which should otherwise be attached to the defendant’s confession.

The murder weapon

58. Ada Knighton was killed by the razor which belonged to her husband. It was kept in a razor case in a drawer in the living room where he slept. It was also used from time to time by the appellant. He had permission to use it whenever he wanted, but when he did, his father expected it to be replaced. George Knighton himself suggested that unless he was asleep (and the background to that comment is that at the relevant time he was bed-ridden in the living room) the razor could not have been taken out of the drawer without his knowledge. It was not used on Mrs Knighton until the early hours of the morning. At about that time the appellant had, according to his account, had a cup of tea in the lounge in which his father was sleeping. He did not suggest that his father was awake.
59. Next morning, neither the razor nor its case were in their proper places. The razor itself was found by the police under the bed in which the victim had been murdered, 26” from the bottom of the bed and 12” beneath it. It was partly open, about 2”. There were blood stains on the blade and the handle. The case was nearby, about 1” away (according to evidence at the committal) or 2” (according to evidence at the trial). It was closed and, not unimportantly, it was clean. Both the razor and the case were dropped by the side of the bed by the appellant, and he said that the position in which they were found must have been the result of someone kicking them from the position in which he had left them.
60. In summary, shortly after the razor had been used to murder his mother, on his own evidence the appellant was undoubtedly in possession of it, and the case, and he, not his father, left them both at the scene of the murder. Unexplained, these uncontested facts also provide further powerful evidence that he was responsible for the killing.
61. To understand the appellant’s explanation for his possession of the fatal weapon, we must return to his evidence at trial. We shall narrate it without comment, but record at the outset that it should not be assumed that the jury accepted it, or all the relevant details in it. The appellant described how, having returned home from drinking at a public house with a friend, he had a cup of tea at home. After sitting down at the corner of the table in the living room, his next memory was hearing his father calling out to his mother between 5.30am and 6.00am. At that time he was still asleep in bed, still, according to his evidence, in his trousers, waistcoat and shirt. He looked to find himself a cigarette. He put his hand into his trouser pocket to find a match. He then discovered the razor, in its case. In other words, he found the case with the razor inside it in his pocket. Having found it, he went downstairs to the lavatory, and then washed his hands, on which he found some blood, in the kitchen. That blood cannot have come from the case. No blood was found on it. The bloodstained razor was inside the case. After washing, the appellant did not immediately restore the razor and case to their proper places, but rather continued to carry them.
62. His sister told him to go upstairs because there was something the matter with mother. He did so, and found his mother lying on the bed, with a lot of blood all over her, and some blood on the floor. He did not drop the razor on the floor at that stage. He went downstairs again, and in answer to a question from his father, said, “She looks in a bad way.” His father asked him to take his mother some medicinal brandy. He returned upstairs, but found that she could not take it. He then concluded that she was dead.
63. After that, he remembered “about the razor in my pocket and pulled it out of my pocket to have a look at it. I saw the blood stains on it and I dropped it”. He went downstairs, and told his father that things looked hopeless, so his father asked Doris to go and fetch her married sister, Lois. The appellant said that he would do it. Having told this sister about their mother’s death, he went to the police station to surrender himself.
64. We have already described part of the cross-examination, about the circumstances in which the appellant decided to confess to the police, including the way in which the appellant “naturally” thought that he had cut his mother’s throat. He was asked:

“Q Why did you take it out of the case before dropping it at the side of the bed?

A I had a look at it.

Q Why, if it were then your intention to surrender yourself to the police, did you not put the razor back in your pocket and take it with you and say, ‘There is the razor that I did it with…’?

A Naturally, I dropped it as soon as I pulled it out to have a look at it and saw the blood on it…

Q Why did you not tell any of the family what you had done?

A I did not like to upset them.

Q It would be a greater shock after when they found it out for themselves.

A Yes, it would be, but I thought it would be better if I went straight away.

Q And you never told your other sister, Mrs Wake, either?

A No…

Q And you told your sister, not that you were going to the police, but that you were going to see whether your friend…had gone to work?

A Yes…

Q Why did you not tell the inspector: ‘I have cut my mother’s throat. You will find the razor near the bed. I have no recollection about anything’? Why did you not tell the inspector that?

A I did not think that it had anything to do with the inspector.”

65. Quite apart from his inability to explain why he had removed the razor from its case, the appellant was also unable to explain how or why the case and razor came to be in his pocket. Nowadays the jury might be asked to infer that the razor, in its case, had been “planted” on him, and in effect we were asked to consider this possibility. We have done so, in relation to George Knighton, the father. This proposition involves George Knighton, despite his ill health, mounting the steps from the ground floor to the attic, carrying the razor with him, and cutting his wife’s throat. Thereafter he emerged from the room, worked his way down one flight of stairs, and entered the bedroom the appellant shared with young Reginald. Having done so, he found his way to the far side of the bed where the appellant was asleep. He placed the case with the razor into his son’s trouser pocket, and although smearing one of his hands with blood, failed to wake him. At some stage in this process he paused and waited long enough for the blood on the razor to dry sufficiently for the case in which it was placed to be uncontaminated by blood. George Knighton had the great good fortune that the appellant happened at just that particular moment to be in a state of automatism, and therefore unable to react in any way, or indeed, if he woke at all, to recollect the incident afterwards. He then had the even greater good fortune, that when the appellant did come out of his state of automatism, he assumed that he had murdered his mother. So he asked no questions, and said and did nothing about the finding of the case and razor in his pocket. Instead he eventually dropped them by his dead mother’s bed. And he then went to the police station and confessed that he, and he alone, was responsible for her death, and explained how he had killed her. The suggestion in argument that the razor and its case had been “planted” by George Knighton would not have been realistic in 1927, and on the evidence before us it remains unrealistic.

The “new” evidence

66. Sir Henry Maddocks QC, the appellant’s counsel at trial, asserted an intention to “look at every theory” of how Mrs Knighton’s death occurred. It was essential to the explanation for the confession, and the assumption on which he based it, that, as he asserted at trial, the appellant had indeed found the case and razor in his pocket when he woke up. Either way, whether “planted” there by someone else, or placed there by him in his “automatic” state of mind, there was one piece of evidence which might be of assistance to these contentions. The police had found five drops of blood on the stairs between the attic and the first floor.
67. On 8 February, Inspector Wheeldon made a statement setting out, among other things, that he had taken possession of the bloodstained razor he had found in the deceased’s bedroom, together with clothing and a raincoat which provided the bed covering. They were “very blood stained”. In a further statement, which is undated, but which is headed “Copy”, he referred to finding an open bloodstained razor and case in the bedroom and taking possession of the clothing “which was very bloodstained”, and also a raincoat “I found downstairs in another bedroom”. The statement went on to describe that he had found on enquiry that the whole of the deceased’s bed covering had consisted of coats, and the raincoat which was found had been taken off the deceased’s bed by her married daughter, Lois Wake. The raincoat “had a quantity of blood on it and this would probably (our emphasis) account for a few drops of blood being dropped on the stairs as it was being carried down”. The blood stains were quite small, the size of the old threepenny piece, almost like drops of blood falling. The raincoat itself was produced at committal and identified by Lois Wake: so was the clothing. The statement, or copy statement made by Inspector Wheeldon about these findings was not however produced, either at committal or trial.
68. We cannot know what transpired between counsel before the start of the trial. It is however obvious from Sir Henry’s carefully formulated questions of Inspector Wheeldon in cross-examination that the defence must have been aware of the finding of five drops of blood on the stairs, as well as the bloodstained raincoat removed from her mother’s bedroom by Lois Wake. Sir Henry asked Inspector Wheeldon whether he found any blood on the appellant’s bedclothes. He said:

“I found a raincoat on his bed which was bloodstained but I understand that had been brought there afterwards.

Q There was nothing to connect him with the murder of this woman?

A No.

Q Were the five spots which you found on the stairs such as might fall from a dripping razor?

A Yes, possibly. (Our emphasis.)

…

Q When you found the razor it was upstairs between two shoes?

A Yes.

Q If the razor had been the instrument from which these spots had been dropped by anybody going down, it would follow that the razor must have been brought back again?”

Inspector Wheeldon did not “volunteer” his personal view that the blood on the stairs had probably fallen from the raincoat. The CCRC considers that he “misled the court” and that the manner in which he did so “casts a shadow over the integrity of the investigation”. We disagree. We further disagree with the CCRC’s view that it is “inconceivable” that the issue of the blood stains would have been dealt with in the way that it was if Inspector Wheeldon’s view of the “probable” cause of the blood spots on the stairs had been known. Indeed the CCRC suggests that if the defence had been in possession of all the facts, the confession itself might have been excluded. Again, we disagree: any such application would have been bound to fail, and indeed we do not think that it could responsibly have been advanced. We must explain why we differ from the CCRC.

69. We know that as a matter of probability the inspector himself attributed the blood stains to blood falling from the raincoat. No one ever asked him his opinion. He answered precisely the question asked of him by counsel for the defence, that “possibly” they might have fallen from the razor. We doubt whether that answer was false, at any rate in the sense that Inspector Wheeldon did not believe that the drops may “possibly” have done so. What is more, in this particular context, we suspect that if he had sought to advance his own views without being asked, he would probably have been rebuked. If Sir Henry wanted his views, he would have asked for them. Sir Henry knew, from the answer to his question, if not from an inspection of the raincoat produced at committal, that the Inspector had found the bloodstained coat on the appellant’s bed. If he had been seeking to attribute the drops of blood to the raincoat – in other words, distancing his client from them – he could readily have asked another question, linking them to it. In short, if he had wanted to pursue the source of the blood beyond the razor, he would have done so. He would have commented, “That is one possibility” and then asked something to the effect, “What are the others?”, or, “Is it possible the raincoat may have something to do with them?” We doubt whether there was any malicious withholding of information by Inspector Wheeldon. It seems to us probable that Sir Henry had made a deliberate decision, with a specific forensic purpose. His difficulties, in a capital case, need no elaboration. His client accepted that he had volunteered his guilt to the police. What is more, he was not asserting that he was not responsible for his mother’s death. He was claiming that he could not remember having killed her, nor any relevant events, and that he had confessed, not as a result of actual memory of any events, but as a matter of deduction after he came out of his automatic state. Moreover, on his own account, he was certainly in possession of the murder weapon very shortly after it was used, and he was the person responsible for leaving it on the floor in the room where the killing occurred. It was therefore important to the defence to establish the possibility that the drops of blood may have come from the razor, so as to provide some support for the appellant’s case that he had indeed found the razor in his pocket, and so had drawn the inference which led him “naturally” to confess. The CCRC is concerned that everyone involved in the case began with, and probably went no further, or very little further, than the confession. In the particular circumstances, we find that entirely understandable. Without something to explain it, the confession did indeed provide formidable evidence, amply sufficient to convict the appellant.
70. We acknowledge that the effect of this line of questioning undermined “suicide” as a possible defence. However, before he cross-examined Inspector Wheeldon, Sir Henry had cross-examined the doctor whose evidence effectively disposed of any possibility of a verdict of not guilty on the basis that the deceased may have killed herself. In effect, although the blood stains provided some confirmation, if any were needed, that this death was not suicide, it nevertheless remained essential to the appellant’s case to establish that the razor had somehow come downstairs after the killing. If it had remained in his mother’s bedroom throughout, the explanation for the confession would inevitably fail. Conviction would become more, not less likely. That explains why Sir Henry Maddocks pursued the issue in the extremely circumspect and deliberate way he did.
71. We must now analyse the impact of the evidence of blood on the stairs on the assumption that Sir Henry was ignorant of Inspector Wheeldon’s personal view of the probable source, and consider, if he had known it, whether, and if so how, the conduct of the defence might have been affected. Obviously, if the spots came from the raincoat, they removed any link between the staircase leading to the appellant’s bedroom (and downstairs) and his mother’s death. Equally, however, as they were confined to the stairs leading from the attic to the first floor, on this assumption they added nothing to implicate anyone else in the murder either. They were entirely neutral. They provided no support for the suggestion that George Knighton may have “planted” the razor in his son’s pocket, and as we have described, did not assist the appellant’s case that he must have carried the weapon while in an automatic state. What impact might this information have had on the confession? None, unless the appellant suggested that when making his confession his mind had been influenced by seeing the blood spots. He did not do so. He himself knew nothing of this blood at the time of his confession. Indeed, if it had come from a raincoat carried by his sister, Lois Wake, it was deposited on the stairs after he had left home and set off for the police station and made his confession. In summary, if this information was withheld, deliberately or otherwise, we do not agree with the CCRC that, if it had been available, it would have made the slightest difference to the conduct of the defence, or to the outcome of the trial, or to the admissibility of the confession. If the drops had fallen from the raincoat, they could not serve to undermine the accuracy, or admissibility of the confession made before they had done so. Once again, we have to emphasise that the conduct of the defence at trial depends on the nature of the instructions given by the defendant to his lawyers. His explanation for his confession was that he had “naturally” made assumptions from the finding of the razor in his pocket because he had no recollection of the circumstances. If his defence had been that he never made the confession, or that he had not returned the murder weapon to his mother's room after finding it in his pocket some time after she had been killed, or that he had seen the drops of blood on the stairs before going to the police station and these had influenced his confession, then, the source of the blood stains on the stairs, might have been investigated differently. But these questions are speculative. None of them represented his case, nor his explanation for the confession.
72. We must add a brief word about clothing. The jury was expressly told by Inspector Wheeldon, and reminded by the judge, that nothing was found on the appellant’s clothes to link him with the killing, or to indicate that he had been involved in it. The clothes issue, and the contradictory material about it, and events post-trial, could have been raised, and were apparently intended to be raised at the hearing of the appeal in 1927. We have considered it all. Perhaps because of the lapse of time, we have found ourselves in the realm of speculation and theory, but in any event, we have been unable to reach any conclusion on these matters which serves to undermine the safety of the conviction.

Conclusion

73. We have studied all the material drawn to our attention by the CCRC. Having done so, we are troubled that this conviction was referred at all. William Knighton has been dead for 75 years. His father did not long survive him. Suspicion has been directed from William Knighton against, not an outsider, but his own father. In exercising its discretion to refer the case, the CCRC took account of the wishes of the appellant’s niece, and another named descendant of George Knighton, who are said to have a strong sense of grievance about the conviction. We were told at the hearing that his niece appreciated that the appeal would create suspicion against her grandfather, and raise publicly a number of matters to his discredit. We understand that many of the descendants of Ada and George Knighton are ignorant of this bleak period in their family history. It has now been opened to the public gaze. For them, this appeal will have been profoundly disturbing. More important, in the decision-making process, the CCRC took account of the fact that the conviction resulted in the use of the death penalty or, that, as it was described in an over-emotive comment earlier in the Statement of Reasons, by its verdict the jury had sent the appellant “to the gallows”. We do not agree that, of itself, a mandatory sentence of death, a sentence finally abolished nearly 40 years ago, should influence the CCRC’s decision whether to refer a conviction. The appellant’s execution has had no bearing on its safety, or otherwise. There are here no issues of exceptional notoriety, and therefore public interest, as in Bentley (2001)1CAR307 or Hanratty (2002) 2CAR419. Although we recognise that the observations made by the Lord Chief Justice in Hanratty, on problems posed by very old cases, were not available to the CCRC when the decision to refer the present case was made, we respectfully agree with him, with yet greater emphasis in the present case, where there are no living relatives of the deceased who knew him well, and for whom the quashing of his conviction would provide real practical benefit, as well as solace. (See, for example, Mattan, unreported, 24 February 1998.) Ultimately, unlike the CCRC, we have been unable to find any significant new information which, on close analysis, leads us to doubt the safety of this conviction. Accordingly the appeal will be dismissed.