Before Murdoch, Fleet Street was all about murder

Recent unethical practices have forced shifts in the tabloid world – but ethics had little to do with 1950s journalism, according to a book on the ‘great tabloid murderers’

TWO SETS OF lawyers gathered in the lobby of Clerkenwell Magistrates in June 1953. One had been sent by the Sunday Pictorial;the other by one of its fierce Fleet Street rivals, the Sunday Despatch. Both were bidding to pay for the psychopathic killer John Christie's legal defence.

The Sunday Pictorialbelieved it had the deal in the bag, because its crime reporter, Harry Procter, had cultivated Christie since the latter's arrest for the infamous 10 Rillington Place killings, two of which had led to the wrongful hanging three years before of Timothy Evans.

Readying to enter court, the lawyers told Christie to choose. He picked the ones paid for by the Sunday Pictorial. The Despatch's reporters fumed in the court-lobby, shouting after their rivals that they would protest the decision.

The Christie trial, and those earlier of John George Haigh and Neville Heath, prompted a vicious battle between popular-selling titles such as the News of the World, which then sold over eight million copies at two pence-halfpenny.

The struggle between Norman "Jock" Rae of the News of the Worldand Proctor, and the others that were part of Fleet Street's "Murder Gang", as they were known, feature prominently in Neil Root's Frenzy! Heath, Haigh Christie: The First Great Tabloid Murderers.

Proctor had worked hard to secure Christie‘s co-operation, sending him a shirt and tie while he was on remand in Brixton Prison – though Christie later complained “that it was half-a-size too big and he did not like the colour of the tie [he] bought him”.

On June 28th, 1953, just three days after Christie had been condemned to death, the Sunday Pictorial– which later became the Sunday Mirror– "splashed" with the killer's story: Christie Writes His Story For The Pictorial. Ranked as a second-tier newspaper on Fleet Street, the Pictorialwas then one of 10 Sunday titles, selling five million copies, three million fewer than the News of the World, which was still "the paper" when it came to murder.

The practice of newspapers paying for a suspected killer’s defence in return for exclusives; or signing them up as they awaited the hangman’s noose in return for a fee to their families was common practice in the 1950s – but only if the crime was salacious enough to drive circulation.

Proctor was fortunate to get the Christie story, because it should have been that of Norman Rae, acknowledged by all as the best of the Street’s crime reporters – a breed who lived hard and died young.

In March of 1953, Rae sat waiting in a Ford Anglia in north London. Unlike other reporters, Rae had a driver, because Rae – a dour Scot – had the best contacts within the police, the criminal underworld, even the judiciary, who were talkative, for a fee.

He was waiting for Christie, by then the most-hunted man in England.

Incredibly, Christie, living rough for a week and by now out of money, had called the News of the Worldlooking for Rae, offering to sell his story in return for a hot meal.

The reporter agreed, but only if Christie guaranteed that he would surrender to the police afterwards. Even this condition may not have been enough to save Rae from a charge of conspiring against the course of justice, but the scoop of a career was on hand.

The reporter got out of the car, as agreed, at 1.30am, but, then, a policeman walked by: “Rae cannot believe his bad luck. He hears rustling in some bushes in the near-blackness and knows that it is Christie making his escape,” writes Root.

Christie looked evil, and was, thus, perfect for a circulation war.

Neville Heath, with matinee-idol looks, was ideal, too. Captured after the brutal killings of Margery Gardner and Doreen Marshall, he was tried over three days. The jury found him guilty within an hour.

Before his trial, Heath was portrayed as "jocular and jovial, a little jaunty", writes Root, because his "good-looking bad-boy" image attracted female readers, even though he was charged with the bestial murder of two women. By now convicted, Heath's image had to change, and it did. Instead of being handsome, he became the "most murderous sadistic monster" of modern times. "The dropping line of his mouth is cruel. His upper-lip is thin. He blue eyes seem unnaturally penetrating," wrote a Pictorialreporter.

The coverage ran for weeks, boosting circulation every time. So, too, did the story and paid-for personal testimony of John George Haigh, who claimed to have drunk the blood of the six victims that he disposed of in vats of acid.

His police statements quickly leaked to the Mirrorwhich, though they did not name him, tagged him as "The Vampire Killer", mentioning "acid cremations" and other details of the case that should not at that stage have been made public.

Unlike other cases, the Mirrorwas hauled before judges, including the Lord Chief Justice, for contempt of court. The editor was jailed for three months and the Mirror's directors were warned that "the arm of this court is long enough to reach them individually".

The News of the Worldpaid for his legal costs and passed over a large sum to Haigh's Plymouth parents. In return, Haigh told his story from his Wandsworth Prison cell, complete with photographs of the workshops where he dissolved his victims.

The first photograph, titled “The Way In”, showed the stairs into it, while the second, of a large drain down which Haigh poured the glutinous detritus, was titled “The Way Out”. The readers lapped it up, demanding ever-more sensational coverage.

In the end, the 1950s newspapers’ wars forced changes in the law – banning the payment by the press of legal fees of victims and criminals, stiffening penalties for the withholding of evidence and imposing restrictions on court coverage.

The curbs may have helped to temper, somewhat, the intemperate. The fact that the 1950s also marked the high point of UK newspaper circulation is hardly coincidental. Having peaked at sales of 8.4 million in 1950, the News of the Worldwas selling 6.5 million by the decade's end.

George Orwell put it best in 1946, perhaps, as Britain endured a post-war crime wave: "The wife is already asleep in the armchair, and the children have been sent out for a nice long walk. You put your feet up on the sofa, settle your spectacles on your nose, and open the News of the World.

“Your pipe is drawing sweetly, the sofa cushions are soft underneath you, the fire is well alight, the air is warm and stagnant. In these blissful circumstances, what is it that you want to read about? Naturally, about a murder.”