Evening News, London, 23 July 1948

Porter gets eight years

This Brutal Robbery a Case for Flogging

Attacked Spinsters, then Stole Jewels

JOHN HENRY WALKER, aged 42, a carpenter, of Goldbourne-gardens, North Kensington, was to-day sent to eight years’ penal servitude for robbing with violence Miss Helen Fraser, aged 80, and her sister, Miss Florence Fraser, aged 77, at Albert Court, Prince Consort-road, Kensington, of four strings of pearls and other articles, worth 2,000.

Both the women, who had been helped into court at the Old Bailey leaning on their sticks, heard Judge McClure say:

“In a fairly long experience in these courts I have never heard of a more brutal case than this. Anyone who listened to the evidence may well wonder why the punishment which this offence carries, so far as corporal punishment is concerned, is about to be abolished. If ever there was a case for that kind of punishment this is that case.”

Came to See Clocks

Miss Helen Fraser said that on the afternoon of June 2 Walker, who had been a porter in the flats, knocked at her door and wanted to attend to the clocks.

“Suddenly he struck me down and tied a handkerchief round my throat,” she said. “He rushed into one of the rooms and as I followed I pulled the handkerchief away. He tied it round my throat again. I screamed, and, turning to me, he said: ‘If you make any noise I will kill you.’

“He pushed me into a chair and said ‘Do you want to die?’

Hit in the Face

“He hit me and I lost consciousness. When I recovered I was covered with blood and had to have stitches in the wounds.”

Miss Florence Fraser said that Walker went into her room after injuring her sister and hit her in the face more than once.

He knocked her down and took her handbag.