Stratton Brothers case
On Monday 27 March 1905, at 8:30 am, William Jones went to Chapman's Oil and Colour Shop at 34 Deptford High Street, where he worked.
[1] Alarmed at what he saw, he ran for help and found Louis Kidman, a local resident who worked in a nearby store, and the two men forced their way into the shop.
It was shortly determined that robbery was the motive: Jones told the police that Mr Farrow would collect the week's earnings and deposit them to a local bank every Monday, and an empty cash box was found on the floor, which was estimated to have contained about £13, equivalent to £1,800 in 2023.
It was at this point that Chief Inspector Frederick Fox and Melville MacNaghten, the Assistant Commissioner (Crime) of the Metropolitan Police and head of the Criminal Investigation Department took over the case.
Aside from the lack of forced entry as well as the empty cash box, it was clear that Mr and Mrs Farrow had been attacked separately and the discovery of two black masks fashioned from stockings that were left at the scene indicated that there were two men involved.
However, based on the separate pools of blood at the scene, it was determined that Mr Farrow had again regained consciousness, and this time the men killed him and afterwards washed their hands in a nearby basin.
As a member of the Belper Committee which had recommended the use of fingerprints as a method for identification five years before, he wondered if this might be a case to test out this new technique.
He used his handkerchief to carefully pick up the cash box, had it wrapped in paper and took it into the fledgling Fingerprinting Bureau at Scotland Yard.
It was now headed by Detective Inspector Charles Stockley Collins who was regarded as the foremost English fingerprint expert of his time.
Despite its earlier successes, especially in identifying previously convicted criminals who tried to pass themselves off pseudonymously, the technique was still considered unwieldy and both men knew that they were risking public ridicule with the intense scrutiny that a murder case would generate.
The initial hope of the police was that Mrs Farrow would give a description of her assailants, but she died in hospital on 31 March without regaining consciousness.
When the Stratton brothers were brought to trial, MacNaghten, Collins, and Richard Muir, the prosecutor for the Crown, knew that they would face an uphill battle.
Rooth, Curtis Bennett and Harold Morris, were able to give plausible alternative explanations, which would tend to cast doubt on the prosecution's witnesses, so much so that they were confident enough to have Alfred Stratton take the stand.
He testified that at about 2:30 in the morning of the 27th, he was awakened by his brother Albert who was tapping on the window and wanted to borrow money from him for a night's lodging.
Muir had anticipated this tactic by the defence, and before calling Inspector Collins, he summoned William Gittings, who worked in the jail where the Stratton brothers were confined awaiting trial.
The judge, Mr Justice Channell, remarked that after writing two such letters he would opine that Dr. Garson was an "absolutely untrustworthy" witness.
After both sides had given their summations and the jury had been given their final instructions, it took them a little more than two hours of deliberation to find the Stratton brothers guilty of murder, and on 6 May 1905 they were sentenced to death by hanging.
The left-hand lower illustration is a photographic enlargement of the finger-mark found upon a cash-box left at the scene of a noted murder. The neighbour photograph is of the prisoner's finger-print taken on paper. The general similarity is apparent.