MURDER IN MINIATURE
One of the NRM’s most curious exhibits
Nestled on a balcony overlooking the Great Hall of the NRM is a scale model of a London & South Western Railway carriage. Constructed in 1901, its fine craftsmanship would suggest it was made as a labour of love; an object to be admired and enjoyed. Visitors could be forgiven for passing by without a second glance, but this model has a grisly past, as evidence in the trial of a violent murder. The weight of evidence led to the conviction and execution of the perpetrator…
On Thursday January 17 1901, Mrs Rhoda King boarded the 11.15am Southampton West to Waterloo service. She was travelling to London to visit a sick relative and her journey began uneventfully in an empty Third class compartment. At Eastleigh, a young man entered the compartment and then at the next stop, Winchester, an elderly farmer named William Pearson joined them. Rhoda King spent the journey gazing out of the carriage window while Pearson fell asleep. Near Surbiton, the younger man went to the lavatory which formed part of the compartment. The horror of what happened next can scarcely be imagined. Shortly after exiting the lavatory, the young man pulled out a pistol and shot the older man in the head. Rhoda King herself was grazed by a second bullet and felt blood running down her face as she dodged death by an inch. In shock, she recoiled as the young man rifled through Pearson’s pockets. Rhoda King was now trapped in a compartment with the bloodied corpse of a man who had been peacefully dozing just moments before, while the agitated murderer, gun in hand, desperately ransacked the dead man’s clothing.
She had no means of escape, had blood dripping from a wound in her cheek and was, naturally, in fear of her own life.
The murderer’s name was George Henry Hill, aged 23 and a former marine, although he went by the alias of Parker.
Parker had, like Rhoda King, joined the LSWR train at Southampton West, travelling in a different compartment. He had boarded the service with Elizabeth Rowland, the wife of a soldier then in India, with whom he was having an affair. On his person Parker had a revolver and ten rounds which he later claimed he had purchased to kill Elizabeth and then himself. When Rowland changed trains at Eastleigh to join a Portsmouth service, Parker re-joined the London train in Rhoda King’s compartment.
Rhoda King’s nightmare journey continued for some time. Parker’s desperation for money led to her giving him a shilling from her purse. She showed remarkable composure, persuading him to place a handkerchief over Pearson’s gunshot wound, and tried to convince him to throw the gun out of the window. In this she almost succeeded, only for Parker to pull back when he spotted a permanent way gang working at the trackside.
King continued to plead with Parker to throw the gun away and eventually, near Nine Elms, he did so. Shortly before arrival into Vauxhall at 1.29pm Parker opened the carriage door, climbed onto the running board and, as soon as the carriage was alongside the platform, he made his escape. Rhoda King, in a near state of collapse, roused enough energy to shout out: “Stop that man, he has killed someone in that carriage!”
The pursuit was on and Parker was eventually apprehended. His words to the arresting officer were: “I wish I had killed that woman, and then I should have got away...”
Parker’s trial for the murder of William Pearson began on March 1 1901.
It is now that our model plays its part. Surviving court records show that William Henry Beckley, a draughtsman employed by the LSWR at its Eastleigh carriage and wagon works, was asked to prepare plans of the carriage, No. 269, in which Pearson had been killed.
The model, complete with detachable roof, was made from those plans and shown to the jury.
While we cannot be certain, it is likely that the model was made by apprentices at Eastleigh as they would have been used to preparing scale models as part of their training. The model is a large one and shows
the compartment in which King, Parker and Pearson travelled as well as the lavatory from which Parker emerged to commit his crime. Every detail is captured, including the seating moquette, the luggage racks and the ‘Smoking’ signs on the windows.
In the Victorian and Edwardian periods, it was not unusual for the police or court to commission models for trial purposes. We know that a similar model was produced for the inquest into the unsolved murder of Elizabeth Camp, a pub housekeeper, whose body was discovered on another Waterloo-bound train in 1897. Nevertheless, given this was such an open-and-shut case it is extraordinary how much effort was put into making the small scale replica. George Henry Parker was found guilty of Pearson’s murder and sentenced to be hanged. The ‘Murder Carriage’ model, therefore, survives as evidence of one of the most startling of all railway crimes. The carriage helps us understand how the murder occurred and also how terrifying it must have been to be trapped, as Rhoda King was, in a compartment of a speeding train with an armed murderer and a corpse for company. The ‘Murder Carriage’ can be seen as part of the Highlights Gallery on the museum’s Search Engine balcony.
●● Because of the temporary closure of the NRM during the Covid-19 lockdown it has not been possible to consult all the sources one would have liked to for this article. The author would therefore like to express his sincere thanks for the assistance he has received from various colleagues, as well as Nick Pomfret, Mike King and other members of the South West Circle.
Given this was such an open-and-shut case it is extraordinary how much effort was put into making the model