Emily Elizabeth Dimmock was born in 1884 in the village of Standon, Hertfordshire, near Bishops Stortford. She was employed as a chambermaid and in a straw hat factory in Luton before running away to London at the end of 1904. Here she adopted the name ‘Phyllis Dimmock’ when she began working as a prostitute. By 1906 she was living with Henry Biddle, a sailor from Portsmouth. 
The photograph shows her in Henry’s ‘Prince of Wales’ uniform, but their relationship didn’t last long. The following year Phyllis moved in with Bert Shaw in Camden Town, first living at 50 Great (now Royal) College Street and then 29 St Paul’s Road, (now Agar Grove). Bert worked as a cook on the Midland Railway, preparing food in the buffet car on the train from London to Sheffield. He left for work in the afternoon, returning the following day. This left Phyllis free to socialise in local pubs such as ‘The Rising Sun’ on the Euston Road and ‘The Eagle’ at the corner of Great College Street, opposite the present Camden Town Overground station. In Bert’s absence, Phyllis slipped into her old ways and took men back to the flat, to earn some extra cash.
On the morning of 12 September 1907 Bert came home to find his mother, who had come to visit him, talking to the landlady. Apparently, Phyllis wouldn’t answer the door to their flat. A dreadful sight awaited Bert when he forced open the connecting door to their bedroom. Phyllis lay naked on the bed, with her throat cut from ear to ear. There was blood everywhere.
A thorough investigation eliminated obvious suspects including Bert Shaw, Harry Biddle and Robert Roberts, a ship’s cook, who had gone back to St Paul’s Road with Phyllis on several occasions. But during their search of the room the police had found an important clue, a postcard addressed to Phyllis. The sender suggested meeting on 9 September in The Rising Sun, but rather than giving the pub’s name, he drew a picture of a rising sun. The newspapers reproduced the distinctive card and asked if anyone recognised the handwriting.
A young woman called Ruby Young came forward and said it looked like the work of Robert Wood, who she had been involved with for about three years. Wood was a 30-year old stain glass artist at the Sand and Blast Manufacturing Company in Grays Inn Road. Born in Scotland, the son of a print compositor on ‘The Scotsman’ newspaper, the Wood family moved to London where his father got work with the publisher Eyre and Spottiswode. In 1907 Robert was living with his family at 12 Frederick Street, near King’s Cross.
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| Robert Wood |
Witnesses gave evidence that Wood had in fact known Phyllis for at least 15 months. Ruby Young and a work colleague of Wood’s both told the jury that Robert had asked them to provide an alibi by lying about where he was on the evening of the murder. But several people had seen Wood and Phyllis together in The Eagle. Wood’s father, brother and a neighbour all said that he returned home just before midnight.
Throughout the trial Wood sat quietly drawing while the evidence was heard. He made sketches of the famous actors and actresses in the public gallery who came to see the case. He was defended by the charismatic barrister Edward Marshall Hall.
A change in the law in 1898 meant an accused man could give evidence in his own defence. But very few had done so in a capital case, presumably fearing they might incriminate themselves, and open them to cross-examination. After Marshall Hall visited Wood in prison, he found him unnerving and he even thought he might be mad. Eventually he was persuaded by his junior counsel Wellesley Orr, to put Wood on the stand.
This decision could have proved fatal. Wood was a very bad witness, speaking as if he was performing in amateur dramatics rather than fighting for his life. He admitted he was with Phyllis on the evening of 11 September but said he left her about 11.00 in The Eagle and went home. Asked why he hadn’t come forward after murder, Wood replied that he did not wanted his sick father to know he was seeing prostitutes.
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| Edward Marshall Hall |
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| Portrait of Marshall Hall by Robert Wood |
Marshall Hall had to convince the jury to ask themselves if this thin, gentle, talented artist, and rather silly young man could have violently killed Phyliss. Hall addressed the jury and began quietly saying that nobody had given Wood a motive to kill her. His speech rose in intensity, ‘You cannot hang a man on evidence such as that’ he shouted, banging his hand heavily on the desk. ‘I defy you to do it: I defy you. I do not merely ask for a verdict of ‘not guilty’ – I demand it’.
Then Sir Charles Matthews, the senior prosecution barrister addressed the jury. ‘It must not be assumed that, because no motive has been shown on the part of the prisoner, therefore he must be ‘not guilty’…There is no doubt the dead woman was murdered by a man who was leading a double life… by a man whom nobody would believe was a murderer…Gentlemen, the whole evidence seems to prove the prisoner has been leading a double life’. He pointed out that Wood had lied to the police and concocted an alibi with Ruby and a work colleague.
Judge William Grantham’s summing up suggested he believed Wood was guilty but then he concluded: ‘In my judgement, strong as the suspicion is in this case, I do not think that the prosecution has brought the case home near enough to the accused’. He was interrupted by loud cheers from the public gallery.
The jury returned a verdict after only 15 minutes, finding Robert Wood ‘not guilty’. A crowd of 10,000 people had assembled outside the Old Bailey and when the verdict reached them they burst into cheers for Wood and Marshall Hall.
But if Wood did not kill Phyllis Dimmock, then who did? Inspector Neil always believed Wood was the murderer. In 1907, the method of calculating the time of death was not as accurate as it is today, and this was key to the case. If Phyllis had been killed between 11.00 and 11.30, then Wood could easily have committed the murder. But if she had died between 3am and 5pm as the police doctor testified, then the killer was an unknown man whom Phyllis had taken back to the house. John Crabtree, who ran brothels where Phyllis had occasionally worked, said at the trial there were several men who had beaten her up and threatened to cut her throat.
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| What shall we do for the rent? Walter Sickert, 1909 |
Years after the case, according to his biographer Edward Marjoribanks, Marshall Hall met a small man outside a provincial court who said; ‘You don’t know me, I see, Sir Edward’. ‘No’, said Marshall taking his hand, ‘you must forgive me – I’ve got a terrible memory for faces’. He noticed the man’s very deep sunk eyes. ‘Why’ he said, ‘isn’t your name Wood? ‘No’, replied the other gravely, ‘it’s not, but I’d like you to know I’m doing very well and I owe it all to you.’
This is questioned in a well-researched book by David Barrat, who suggests that if the event actually took place, it may have been another of Marshall Hall’s clients rather than Wood.
Barrat looks at Wood’s life after the trial. He found that in 1910 Wood had an illegitimate son with Annie Louise Eames. In 1911 they lived in Church Street Chelsea; they married in 1915 and had a second son two years later. Robert worked as an advertising designer and in some records, he used the name of Radnor Wood, perhaps his professional name. They lived at 13 Embankment Gardens in Chelsea from at least 1945 until his death in 1969.
The murder of Emily Dimmock remains unsolved.
There is considerable information about the case on the Internet and it is examined in several books including:
John Barber (2008), The Camden Town Murder
David Barrat (2014), The Camden Town Murder Mystery
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