BAKEWELL AND DISTRICT PROBUS CLUB LOCKED ROOM MYSTERY – JULIA WALLACE 1931

L-R: Steve Maybury and Club Chairman, Paul Davies

To judge by the popularity of television and radio programmes devoted to the subject, crime thrillers are a source of continuing fascination to the public. Most of these are based on fiction but, in contrast, an actual murder committed in 1931 was the topic of a recent talk to the Bakewell and District Probus Club by member, Steve Maybury.

The story, as related by Steve, was about an apparently contentedly married couple, Julia and William Wallace living in the Anfield area of Liverpool during the 1930s. William was an insurance agent whose habit was to spend his evenings playing chess at a club in a city centre café, leaving his wife at home. On the evening before the murder, a telephone call from a public phone box in Anfield was made to the café. The caller did not give his name but asked for a message to be given to William when he arrived there for his scheduled chess game. The message was for William to meet a potential client the following evening at an address some distance from Anfield. Therefore, on the day of the murder, William left home for his appointment and, travelling by tram, arrived at his destination only to have difficulty in finding the address which he had been given. Having sought directions from a number of people, he realised that the address did not exist, and he therefore returned home, where he discovered the body of his brutally murdered wife.

Despite all the available evidence from witnesses to William’s movements on that fateful evening and the seemingly impossibility of his committing the crime within the known time frame, the police were convinced that he had done the deed. He was brought to trial, found guilty of the murder and condemned to death. However, on appeal, the conviction was quashed on the grounds that the original verdict could not be supported having regard to the evidence. But, if William was not the murderer, who was? This was a question at the time and remains a mystery. There appeared to be no motive for it, no weapon was ever discovered, and no person was known to be sufficiently hostile to Julia to kill her.

In summing up, the speaker (who had been a Deputy District Judge in his working life) expressed his own view that the findings of the appeal were correct. And, of course, being intrigued by the whole story, many members of his audience enthusiastically added their opinions and conclusions.

Further details of the Bakewell and District Probus Club, including reports of earlier meetings, can be found on its website at www.bakewellprobus.org