Upon leaving school at age 14, Rouse worked briefly as an office boy for an estate agent, then found more secure employment at a textile manufacturing firm.

[10] As a result of his injuries, Rouse remained hospitalised for almost a year; undergoing several operations upon both his left temporal region—some of which were performed to remove embedded shrapnel—and his leg.

Rouse's leg injuries left him unable to bend his knee and caused him to develop œdema, severely affecting his ability to walk.

In July 1916, Rouse's doctor noted that his memory was defective and that he was unable to wear a hat of any kind because the scar around his temporal lobe was irritable.

In August 1920, a final examination revealed his head injury had completely healed and the limitations of his knee movement had decreased dramatically.

[13] In June 1929, Rouse found employment as a commercial traveller for a Leicester-based firm which primarily sold braces and garters, typically at locations around the South Coast and the Midlands.

[15] Through this employment, Rouse managed to earn sufficient money for him and his wife to obtain a mortgage on a house on Buxted Road in the London borough of Friern Barnet.

Because of both Rouse's high sex drive and his general promiscuity, plus the fact his job required him to travel extensively across the entire country, throughout 1929 and 1930 he is known to have conducted a number of affairs with women—both married and single—whom he typically encountered through his employment.

As with the Edinburgh 14-year-old and Tucker, many of these women came from poor backgrounds and would be deceived by Rouse's charismatic personality,[16] his fabrications of being a wealthy London entrepreneur, and his promises of marriage.

In addition, Rouse faced several other impending child support order cases from women across the country and one woman in Paris.

Furthermore, Rouse would claim the decision for him to ultimately decide to fake his own death had been Tucker's announcement to him in the summer of 1930 that she was expecting her second child by him (an illegitimate daughter would be born on 29 October).

[19] According to Rouse, he had simply "wanted to start afresh", yet to ensure the financial stability of his legal wife and his six-year-old son, he had drawn a life insurance policy for £1,000 in his name months before he executed his plan, to be paid in the event of the accidental death of the owner-driver of his vehicle.

[25] At approximately 1:50 in the morning of 6 November 1930, two young men returning from a Guy Fawkes Night dance in the town of Northampton to their homes in the nearby village of Hardingstone saw a fire in the distance.

Due to the actual condition of the remains, she was not allowed to see the body, but instead asked to confirm whether she could identify scraps of clothing and a wallet containing 30 shillings which had been found upon the victim.

Early the following morning, Rouse's mistress showed him a newspaper displaying an image of his burned-out car which speculated as to whether the deceased occupant had been the owner of the vehicle and questioning whether he had been murdered.

At Northampton police station, Rouse contradicted his earlier statement by claiming that he had encountered the victim hitchhiking along the Great North Road towards the Midlands and had offered the man a lift.

At this location, he had stopped the vehicle to answer a call of nature and had asked his travelling companion, whom he had given a cigar,[39] to fill the car's petrol tank from a can in the boot.

This claim was refuted by both Sir Bernard Spilsbury and Dr. Eric Shaw, who had together performed an autopsy upon the unidentified victim and who were each called to testify on behalf of the prosecution.

[43] Another witness to refute the accidental death theory was a vehicular expert who had studied the remains of the Morris Minor, and who testified that a joint on the feeding pipe between the petrol tank and the carburettor of the vehicle had been forcibly loosened to allow petrol to flow into and beneath the motor, thus discrediting earlier defence claims that excessive heat in a burning car would invariably result in the loosening of this particular joint.

To emphasise this, William Birkett called three of his mistresses to testify, explaining to the jury the testimony of these women would illustrate that "Rouse's domestic life was not what it should have been".

[46] He would often perform poorly in the witness box; repeatedly being forced to either admit to the contradictions in the earlier statements he had provided to police and his current claims, or that he had lied about his actions or movements.

In a final address to the jury Mr. Justice Talbot stated thus: "Of course, there can be no doubt about it that these facts create grave suspicion against this man who was the owner of the car, and who drove it to the place where it was burned.

The jury debated for just 25 minutes before reaching their verdict: Rouse was unanimously found guilty of murder and sentenced to death on 31 January.

Having calmly heard the verdict, just prior to the sentence of death being imposed, Rouse firmly declared to Mr. Justice Talbot, "I am innocent, sir.

"[41] Rouse did lodge an appeal against his conviction, primarily contending immoral character evidence had been submitted at his trial, and that this had influenced the jury.

In this written confession, Rouse stated that as he had driven his intended victim to the Midlands, he had encouraged him to drink from the bottle of whisky he had purchased in order to inebriate him before turning onto Hardingstone Lane.

[49] Initially, Rouse had intended to walk to Northampton and travel to Scotland via train to begin life afresh; however, when he had seen the two young men returning from a Guy Fawkes Night dance at the end of Hardingstone Lane, he realised people would know he was not the victim in the car; therefore, after briefly returning to his London home with a hastily concocted story of his car having been stolen, he had opted to travel to Glamorganshire to meet with one of his mistresses.

When he read extensive accounts of the murder in the Welsh press in which he was named as the prime suspect, he had travelled to Hammersmith Broadway, where he was arrested.

[50] The body of Rouse's victim was interred in a grave marked with a simple cross bearing the inscription "In Memory of an Unknown Man.

[53] In May 2012, the family of a 23-year-old man named William Briggs—missing since 1930—contacted Northamptonshire Police in the hope advances in DNA profiling may provide a positive identification; the family were redirected to a team of forensic scientists from the University of Leicester and Northumbria University who obtained archived tissue samples of the murdered man for comparison;[54] the mitochondrial DNA samples did not prove to be a match.