Murder Most Foul – Issue 111 – January 2019

T

HOSE WERE the easy answers

to the murder mystery. The

motive and the name of the killer

were more difficult.

The body of attractive 35-year-old

Daisy Wallis was found at 10 a.m. on

August 16th, 1949, in her third-floor

office at 157 High Holborn by her new

employee, 19-year-old Sheila Bennett,

who had started working for her the

day she was killed. Tenants had keys to

the front door of the small building but

when Sheila arrived a little before 9.30

it was locked. She waited, no one came

40 Murder Most Foul Did The Mad Axe-Man Kill Daisy?

DID THE MAD AXE-MAN KILL D

and so she went to have a coffee in the

local café. She came back a little before

10 o’clock and found the front door had

been left unlocked and open by another

tenant. She went up to Daisy’s office

and found the key in the door. She

went in and there on the floor was her

employer.

She ran to a neighbouring office and

told Anne Henderson that she thought

Daisy had had a haemorrhage but the

older and more worldly woman realised

at once Daisy was dead, her pink dress

covered in blood. Sensibly neither she

nor Sheila touched anything and they

went back to Anne’s office and called

the police.

And so began an inquiry which lasted

for more than 10 years and in which

over 600 people were interviewed and

300 sets of fingerprints were taken.

Sheila was able to tell the police just

who had been in the office on the day

before. They included a Polish man and,

when she left for the night at about 5.45,

Daisy was still talking to a woman who

had come in half an hour earlier.

Almost simultaneously with the police,

Daisy’s father and mother arrived at the

office looking for their daughter. She

had missed supper at their Willesden

home the night before but that had not

fazed them and they went to bed about

9.30 that evening. But the next morning

they found that – most unusually – she

had not come home. If she ever stayed

with friends she always called her

mother. Her father telephoned her office

without success and they had come

looking for her.

In charge of the inquiry was Detective

Superintendent Harold Hawkyard, a

long-serving officer who had arrested

Thomas Browne for the murder of PC

George Gutteridge in 1928. Now he

organised the fingerprinting of Daisy’s

office. Over the months the owners

of all but one print were found and

eliminated and the missing owner did

not have a criminal record. The next

thing was to discover who, if anyone, in

the neighbourhood had heard or seen

anything the previous evening.

Hawkyard’s next problem was:

why would anyone kill this modest,

hard-working woman? Was it a robbery

gone wrong? A jealous lover? A sex

attack? Or had Daisy somehow become

involved in the post-war black market

and paid the price? All, at one time or

another, were suggested motives.

First, however, her body was taken

to the St. Pancras mortuary where the

eminent, if sometimes brusque and

difficult, Dr. Francis Camps performed

the autopsy. He thought she had been

UNSOLVED:UNSOLVED:

A LONDON MYSTERY

Date: August 15th, 1949

Time: Approximately 6 p.m.

Location: A shabby one-room

oice in a small building in

London

Victim: Dorothy Edith Wallis,

35, known as “Daisy”

When Londoner Daisy Wallis was

horrifically stabbed to death at work, police

struggled to find a motive for her killing.

Both sex and robbery could be ruled out.

Eventually, an infamous associate of the

Kray twins made a curious confession...

Case recalled by James Morton

Daisy Wallis – she

had fought back

against her attacker

but one of the

five stab wounds

inflicted was to

prove fatal