January 31, 2025 • 42 mins
Winston Trew has just been arrested for mugging. It's 1972 and the crime has recently made its way to Britain from the United States. Dangerous thugs, replicating their American counterparts, have made the city of London their hunting ground - so Winston's eventual conviction is a win for the police, and for the press.
The problem is, 22-year-old Winston is completely innocent.
Do you have a question for Tim Harford and Rachel Botsman about trust? Please send it in to tales@pushkin.fm.
For a full list of sources, see the show notes at timharford.com.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Derrick Ridgwell moves through the London underground with the easy
swagger of a man who knows his star is on
the rise. Confident and charismatic, the twenty seven year old
is a detective in the British Transport Police and he's
well liked by his colleagues. He's even enjoyed some minor celebrity.
A few years ago, he gave a television interview about
(00:42):
his decision to leave the Rhodesian Police Force in nineteen
sixty five. Ridgwell had served for several years, but in
his words, the force was a military organization designed to
suppress the Africans, and he quit on account of what
he called its sickening racism. The young officer now leads
(01:06):
a special squad of plain clothes police who patrol the Tube,
London subway system. It's accepted that mugging is on the
rise in London, and the most dangerous thugs favour the
shadowy network of tunnels beneath the city. Derrek Ridgwell wants
Londoners to feel safe again. He plans to clear up
(01:28):
the Tube arrest by arrest Tonight, March the sixteenth, nineteen
seventy two. Is on the Northern Line, a branch of
the underground that snakes its way from the north to
the south of the city. He set his sights on
Oval Station, a stop in a quiet district just south
(01:50):
of the River Thames and a known haunt of the
most vicious thieves and muggers across town. Twenty two year
old Winston True is hurrying towards the tube. It's gone
ten pm and he's keen to return to his wife,
(02:11):
Marie and their two small children. They live in the
south of the sprawling city, and the journey home will
be a long one. Winston is happily chatting with three friends.
They've just been to a meeting of their organization, The
for Simbers, who are at the heart of the British
Black Power movement. In recent decades, Britain has seen waves
(02:34):
of immigration from the Caribbean islands that were formerly part
of its empire. Some members are the children of those immigrants. Others,
like Winston, moved to Britain as children. Winston's father was
in the police force in Jamaica, where black officers couldn't
rise above the rank of sergeant. Determined that his children
(02:55):
would not face the same discrimination. He moved the family
to Britain. He believed deeply in that core British value meritocracy.
Winston and two of his brothers, Clement and che Ammelin,
were even named after prime ministers. But his bright hopes
were dashed. In Britain, the family encountered bitter racism, and
(03:20):
after Winston's father died in an accident at work, they
fell on hard times in nineteen seventy two. For Winston,
the Fa Simbers are a bright spot on an otherwise
bleak horizon. They offer a philosophy of self help and
self development that appeals to him. They want black men
(03:43):
and women to gain more skills and greater confidence, and
they organize community initiatives and education programs. Tonight, Winston is
carrying a bundle of books he's collected for his children's
Saturday school. As they excitedly discussed their plans, he has
one eye on the time. He's promised Marie he won't
(04:03):
be late if he can just get home by midnight.
The fastest room, he thinks to himself, will be the
Northern Line, and then a bus for the final leg
of the journey.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Where can he pick up a bus? Oh?
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Yes, Oval station just south of the River Thames. As
Winston descends into the subterranean gloom, he hears a train
pull into the platform. Come on, he urges his friends.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
They bore just in time.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
The doors close shut behind them. I'm Tim Harford and
you're listening to cautionary tales. Winston and his friends Sterling Christy,
(05:13):
George Griffiths, and Constantine Bouchet, also known as Omar, left
the train as planned. At Oval station, where Winston was
going to catch a bus, a man was standing at
the end of the tube platform, just by the exit,
A white man looking in their direction. Was he waiting
(05:34):
for them? Winston felt uneasy, but the man did nothing
as they passed him, and the group hurried up the escalator,
keen to each the open air on the escalator too, However,
something unsettling.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Two white men were blocking the way. They were just
standing there. We asked to pass, but they ignored us.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
The group shrugged it off and rode the escalator to
the top. Here, Winston turned towards the exit, and then
quite suddenly.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
The two men in front turned around and one grabbed me,
holding my arm and dragging and pushing me against the wall.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
The other man grabbed sterling Christie. Then two more men appeared.
They started shoving George and Omar and shouting at them
what was going on. Muggers were known to lurk on
the tube, so weather being robbed.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
I could hear him saying, get over there, move, get
the fuck over there. They shout at us, and we
shouted at them.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
One of the men, the leader, looked young. He had
a kind of cocky swagger, and he reminded Winston of
the white boys he had been at school with, the
ones who always stood too close, invading his space in
an implicit threat of violence.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
They weren't being robbed.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
We're the police, declared Detective Sergeant Ridgewell, the police. They
weren't dressed like the police. Winston asked to see some
id he knew his rights.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Neh, you bloody right about ID. Some of you blogs
of nick and handbags. We're going to search you a lot.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Winston was baffled stealing women's purses. Didn't have any purses
on them, just the coloring books he had collected for
the children. The men faced each other in a tense standoff.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
How do we know you're the police?
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Just saw us? Some id it all? Seemed ridiculous. Winston
would later recall, surely these men were drunkards. They just
left the pub and they were having a laugh at
the group's expense. Stop fucking pushing me. Winston heard Omar shout.
The standoff was broken. Omar had punched the man who'd
(08:00):
been pushing him. The group had been learning karate, and
their instinct was to defend themselves. Another man rushed at Winston,
who pushed him back. He fell to the ground, where
he grabbed at Winston's feet, pulling him down to the floor.
A second attacker seized Winston in a headlock.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
The man holding he was angry, and he began applying
pressure to my neck. I could hardly breathe. He was
trying to strangle me. Then he whispered in my ear,
this how fucking clever you are.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Now, And then it was all over. Clothes torn, covered
in cuts and bruises. Winston and his friends were loaded
into a police van and taken to the station. Here,
his request for a phone call was denied. It's my right,
(08:53):
Ridgewell drew close.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
You blacks have got no bloody rights.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
He snarled into his face.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Not in ear anyway.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Another voice chimed in. Winston couldn't understand how he'd ended
up here alone in a prison cell. A mix of
dread and heart thumping shock coursed through his body. The
(09:26):
following morning, Winston, Omar George and Sterling were charged with
seventeen counts of robbing persons undetermined. They would face trial
later that year, but for now they were released on bail.
As Winston awaited trial, he noticed that media coverage of
(09:50):
muggings was growing fevered and frantic. The Daily Mirror newspaper
led the charge, announcing the night of the mugger. In
the darkness outside a London railway station on Tuesday night,
a stiletto flashed and an old old man fell dead,
stabbed in the heart. Mugging, explained the article, is a
(10:14):
crime fairly new to Britain. It has its origins in America.
The word itself is derived from attacking a mug an
easy victim. The murdered man, a widower named Graham Hills,
had been exactly what the cunning three man gang had
been waiting for, easy prey, for a quick steal. The
(10:37):
police already knew that the crime of mugging was on
the rise in gritty urban districts. Now it was time
for the general public to become acquainted with the term
and alert to the danger. According to the American Police,
mugging usually involved crushing the victim's head or throat in
(10:59):
an armlock, and robbery by any degree of force, with
or without weapons. It was said that in the United
States this crime had more than trebled in ten years.
One hundred and fifty such muggings had been reported on
the London underground in the last three years. The implication
(11:19):
was clear. Mugging had made its way across the Atlantic,
and now it was reproducing itself on British soil, spreading unchecked.
It was terrifying and it was totally unprecedented, or was
it cautionary? Tales will return? London, July the eighteenth, eighteen
(12:02):
sixty two. It's gone midnight. Member of Parliament James Pilkington
is walking along Pall Mall, a grand thoroughfare in Westminster,
the seat of power in Britain. He's just passing the
famous monument to the crimean War, a statue of three
guardsmen whose somberly survey the gas lit street. Should he
(12:27):
head to his private club, No, he thinks it's late
time to go home. He turns towards Waterloo Place.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
I remember crossing Pall Mall and then all consciousness left me.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
An attacker, or perhaps a group of attackers, have hit
James Pilkington on the back of his head. When he
comes to, his clothes are soaked with blood, and his
watch and chain are missing. Once the public learns what
has befallen James Pilkington, a member of Parliament, no less,
(13:05):
there is uproar. Pilkington, it is said, wasn't just attacked
and robbed. He was a victim of the sinister new
crime of gorotting. According to the newspapers, gangs are now
professionalizing the art of street robbery. One attacker crushes the
(13:26):
throat of the target, leaving him writhing in agony, with
tongue protruding and eyes starting from their sockets. Unable to
give the alarm. The attacker's colleagues meanwhile rob the poor victim.
There's something distinctly foreign about carotting. The word comes from
(13:51):
a Spanish weapon, a gruesome handheld ligature used to torture
and strangle unfortunate victims. One editorial declares that London's Bayswater
Road is now as unsafe as Naples, Spain, Italy. Whatever.
(14:12):
This crime wave is uncongenial to the soil and manners
of Englishmen. It reeks of Mediterranean villainy. And if an
MP can be attacked in genteel Westminster, then even the
more respectable pockets of the city are now the dominion
(14:33):
of thugs. No one is immune to garrotting. No one
is safe to walk alone at night. As summer turns
to autumn, the papers fixate on the threat. Reports proliferate
about garrotters hauled up before the magistrates to face justice.
Garrotting is the talk of the town, declares the Illustrated
(14:56):
London News. Penal jurisprudence a favorite after dinner topic. Everyone
has an opinion about where this crime wave has come from,
and everyone has the pet solution. For one reader of
The Times, the police are at fault for they've grown lax. Laxity,
(15:18):
he explains, is the nurse of crime. For others, the
trouble started when Britain stopped shipping its criminals to Australia.
What's more, those criminals are now being granted their freedom
early with a kind of parole document. Called a ticket
of leave. As a result, there's a surplus of delinquents
(15:42):
on the streets, and they are undoubtedly waiting to pounce.
The good newspaper reading people of London begin taking matters
into their own hands. After all, if the authorities stop
transporting convicts to Australia, they cannot depend on the authorities
to protect them. The discerning gentlemen might purchase homemade weapons
(16:07):
or hire a uniform escort to ward off potential attackers.
A range of defensive gadgets goes on sale one walter
Thornhill a cutler. Patents are designed for an anti garrotting device,
a spiked steel collar to be worn about the all
too vulnerable neck. The panic about garrotting soon spreads to Yorkshire,
(16:33):
Lancashire Nottinghamshire. Britain is on a knife edge. In the
nineteen seventies, the psychologists Sarah Liechtenstein and Paul Slovich began
studying how well people estimate the likelihood of certain lethal events.
(16:59):
In a series of experiments, they asked six hundred and
sixty adult participants to judge how frequently they thought death
occurred from fairy different causes. They found that we tend
to exaggerate the likelihood of very dramatic and sensational happenings.
Death by tornado, for example, was generally overestimated, while death
(17:23):
from diseases such as diabetes and asthma were vastly underestimated.
Also particularly bad at judging the likelihood of violent crimes,
as Tom Gash has noted in his book Criminal, The
Truth About Why People Do Bad Things. That includes crimes
(17:44):
such as murder, but it seems likely that it also
extends to being attacked at random in the street and
garrotted or ambushed on the London underground and mugged. Media
coverage influences this too. In another experiment, Paul Slovich and
(18:07):
Barbara Comb's found that the more coverage a dramatic event
receives in the local press, the more likely people were
to overestimate its chance of happening. Again, we simply don't
have a very good understanding of the risk of shocking
and sensational dangers in everyday life. Distorted media coverage can
(18:29):
make that worse. When it comes to the stories we
tell about crime. Big scary numbers like the idea that
muggings have more than trebled can play into this, they
grab our attention. We're all too ready to anticipate such
danger anyway. By November eighteen sixty two, panic about garrotting
(18:57):
had reached fever pitch. There was also increasing confusion about
who was and who wasn't a garrotta. The satirical magazine
punchuly printed cartoons of men spooked by their own shadows
or attacking trees in the dense London fog. Newspapers reported
(19:18):
on instances of confusion. Two The Times described a timid
gentleman who lived in the London suburbs and constantly on
the lookout for danger, had taken to carrying a cudgel
with a heavy lead filling. One night, as he neared
his home, another fellow pushed rudely against him. Naturally, the
(19:41):
timid man swung at the rude fellow with his cudgel, and,
with great presence of mind, struck him a severe blow.
The rude fellow fled, but he left his hat behind him,
and the timid man was shocked to read in its
lining the name of a dear friend, Edward. He hastened
(20:03):
at once to his house to explain himself. Edward's distraught
wife opened the door I'm.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
Glad to see you, poor Edward.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
He's been garrotted.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Another paper, the shaw Ditch Advertiser, systematically investigated a number
of reported garrottings. They all turned out to be utterly
fictitious or mere drunken squabbles. And what of James Pilkington's
pal Mall attackers. Two men, both ex convicts and former
(20:42):
Ticket of leaveholders, were arrested. The police magistrate had no
firm evidence that they were the guilty parties, so he
sentenced them to three months in prison for being suspicious
characters better safe than sorry. In October ninethe teen seventy two,
(21:11):
Winston True Stirling, Christie Omar Bouchet and George Griffiths went
on trial at the Old Bailey, the central Criminal Court
of England and Wales. There was grassroots support for the
accused men that for Simbas and various other organizations had
started an Oval four defense campaign. A picture of the
(21:34):
men outside the magistrate's court, their faces grossly swollen from
their beating by police, had been printed on posters and
circulated in community papers. At the same time, the mainstream
press continued to warn people about muggings. According to the Times,
(21:54):
the police were going to petition the Home Office to
increase their powers, so alarmed were they by the mugging
trend among young people. One figure, which featured in newspapers
up and down the country, suggested that muggings were up
one hundred and twenty nine percent in four years. But
(22:15):
what was that figure based on? As author Tom Gash
has noted, violent crime was on the rise in the
second half of the twentieth century, so it seems there
was some basis for concern about mugging. But mugging wasn't
formally a crime, So we're all robberies up by one
(22:36):
hundred and twenty nine percent in four years, or perhaps
assault with intent to rob or was something else being
measured altogether. As murky statistics and sensational headlines proliferated, the
panic about mugging appears to have outstripped the concrete facts,
(22:57):
and that panic had very real consequences. Decent citizens are
afraid to use the underground late at night, said the
Daily Mirror, forebodingly the solution harsh deterrant sentences. At the
(23:19):
same time, community leaders expressed concern that black youth were
being explicitly targeted in police clean up operations. Was even
said that if you listened closely while walking past the
pubs in South London, you might hear a sinister Calypso
song drifting through the air. If the muggers don't get you,
(23:42):
Ridgewell will. At trial, Winston explained how, on the night
of his arrest, Derrek Ridgewell's squad hadn't properly identified themselves
as police officers. A woman named Diana O'Connor had seen
the fight at Oval station. She told the court that
on that terrible night in March, should thought she was
(24:05):
witnessing a group of white men attacking some black kids,
not police officers subduing criminals, and she had even tried
to help.
Speaker 5 (24:14):
The boy's eyes seemed to be coming out of his
head and his mouth was open, as if he was
choking to death. It frightened me when I saw his face.
That's when I intervened to stop it.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Winston also described how he had been forced to sign
a false confession in custody, had been punched by one
officer and had his head slammed into a cell wall
by another.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
I was on edge, expecting to be hit at any
moment by anyone from any direction.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
He said later had been interrogated and threatened repeatedly throughout
the night, eventually worn down. He had signed the confession
even though there were no victims named in any of
the seventeen charges of robbing, persons undetermined, and no witnesses
(25:07):
for the prosecution aside from the arresting officers themselves. The
Oval four were found guilty. Winston was sentenced to two
years in prison.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
I was in a state of shock. I couldn't believe
what was happening to me. I was actually going to
prison for something I didn't do.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
He felt hopeless, all was lost. Detective Sergeant Ridgewell, meanwhile,
had already struck again. Portionary Tales will be back. It's
(25:55):
late nineteen seventy two. Alphonse Chicouri and Lawrence Swayler are
deep underground in Tottenham Court Road station on London's Northern Line.
They're lost. The trainee Jesuit priests are visiting Britain from
Rhodesia today Zimbabwe. They want to get back to Oxford,
(26:17):
where they're studying social work, but they can't find the
right platform. Alphonse is standing with his hands in his
pockets when quite suddenly two men appear in front of
him and grab him by the arms. They drag him
wordlessly upstairs. Alphonse is terrified. Then more men appear. They're aggressive.
(26:39):
They're going to rob me, he thinks. Alphonse fights the
men off as best he can. It's only after they've
managed to restrain him that they reveal their police officers.
Alphonse and Lawrence are taken to police headquarters, where they're
both charged with trying to steal from two women, as
well as with assaulting officers. They deny the accusations fervently,
(27:05):
but a trial date is set. Winston True was still
in prison at this point, and for a while it
seemed that Alphonse and Lawrence were bound for the same fate,
only this time. The presiding judge took a different view.
When Ridgewell gave evidence, the defense asked him if he
(27:26):
was particularly on the lookout for colored young men.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
On the Northern Line.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
I would agree with.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
That, admitted Ridgewell. The judge was horrified, citing inconsistencies in
police evidence.
Speaker 4 (27:41):
He said, I find it terrifying that here in London
people using public transport should be pounced upon without a
word by anyone that they are police officers.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
The case was thrown out, and the judge told the
two young men that they left the court with no
stain on their characters.
Speaker 4 (28:02):
This case was brought without justification.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
As for Derrek Ridgwell, the British Transport Police quietly transferred
him to another post. For Winston, true prison was a
place of limbo, where the passage of time seemed not
to exist. His prison reality was one of permanent uncertainty.
(28:28):
While in prison, Winston appealed. His conviction was upheld, but
his sentence was reduced to eight months. Back in civilian life,
that dread and sense of limbo remained.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
He was in turmoil.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
I was a very angry man. I had night miss
I had a stomach ulcer. I hated the world and
felt helpless.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Winston told a local paper that he would not give
up the fight for justice.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
The wounds are too painful to leave it at that, But.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
He was also depressed. His marriage was over, he was
a single pair, and his sense of self had been
destroyed by the lies that had been told about him.
For now, he also faced the task of rebuilding. Eventually,
Winston got a job as a mailroom clerk and messenger
(29:26):
at an office and in nineteen eighty two. He went
on to obtain his bachelor's degree in social science. A
master's in policy studies followed in the early nineteen nineties,
and he became a lecturer. He also remarried. The stigma
of a criminal conviction followed Winston, but he was gradually
(29:47):
able to put the pieces of his life back together.
In two thousand and three, Winston was conducting research on
teenage fathers.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
I was part way through a literature review when I
collapsed from a brain hemorrhage.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
He was left partially paralyzed, walking with a limp, and
he lost some of his memory, but the stroke also
shook other memories loose.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
My wife told me that during my time in hospital,
I kept referring to it as a prison and kept
telling her I didn't want to stay there. I wanted
to go home.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
The pain of his wrongful conviction had embedded itself within him.
When he returned home from hospital, he decided he'd write
a book about his case and hopefully expel the bitterness
and anger.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
He felt.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
It was an act of defiance.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
He began to make freedom of information requests about Derrick
Ridgewell's career. What he found out amazed him. In Victorian England,
the garrotting panic vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared.
(31:18):
The press moved on. There were other matters to worry
about now, like the revolution in Greece, depression in Britain's
textiles industry, and the war in America. But the panic
had lasting consequences.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
It left in.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Its wake a raft of hasty and punitive legislation designed
to crush garrotters. Minimum terms were made longer. Prisons in
Britain had previously been undergoing reform, but now there was
a crackdown on conditions. Prisoners were locked in separate cells
(31:54):
and prevented from speaking.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
With each other.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Hard labour on the treadwheel was also permitted. Inmates would
spend hours climbing stairs attached to a giant wheel, a useless,
exhausting task designed to break the spirit. And whipping was
also brought back. For people convicted of robbery with violence,
(32:18):
prison guards could issue a convict with up to fifty
flesh splitting lashes at a time. In Parliament, the Home
Secretary recognized.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
That this was Pellic legislation. After that Pellic had subsided.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
All the same, it remained in place for decades. Roughly
one hundred years later, the press would once again, in
Winston Tru's words, whip up a mirage. This time it
was about young black men involved in crime. As the
(32:59):
fear escalated, figures of authority like Derrek Ridgwell gained more power,
Innocent people were punished, and.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
Lives forever altered.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Perhaps if we'd learned more from the Garrotting panic, winston
true story would have been different. In twenty ten, Winston
published his book Black for a Cause. Determined to right
(33:32):
the wrongs he had suffered, he had set about collecting
all the information he could on Detective Sergeant Ridgewell, and
he'd learned that the Oval four case wasn't the first
time that the police officer had lied. Ridgewell hadn't served
in Rhodesia for several years. He had been in the
(33:52):
military police force there for just three weeks when the
country declared unilateral independence from Britain, and in the chaos
he had deserted. When he first returned home, there'd been
a warrant out for his arrest. Eventually, though, it was dropped,
and he had been able to take up a post
with the British Transport Police there was more. He'd fitted
(34:16):
up another group of young black men for mugging on
the Northern Line just weeks before framing the Oval four.
They had become known as the Stockwell Six. Ridgwell claimed
that the men had attempted to rob him and that
had fought back. The Stockwell Six testified that the robbery
was a fabrication and that the officers had been violent,
(34:38):
beating them, kicking them and stamping on their bare toes.
One of the group believed that Ridgwell had planted a
knife on him. Was he well practiced then fabricating evidence.
After his failed attempt to frame Alphonse Chicouri and Lawrence
Sweler for mugging, Ridgewell was asked to head up another
(35:00):
special squad. Vast quantities of goods had been going missing
from a London railway depot. The British transp Thought police
must have hoped that the disappearances would decrease under Ridgewell's
watchful eye, but strangely, they multiplied. He continued in the
role until nineteen seventy eight, when he was arrested and
(35:25):
charged with conspiracy to steal from British rail It turned
out that over eleven or so months, Ridgewell and his
colleagues had stolen sixty vanloads of goods. Those goods were
worth more than one million pounds in nineteen eighty relative
to the wages of the time, they'd be worth more
(35:47):
than seven million pounds today about ten million dollars. It
fenced them via a notorious London crime family and squirreled
the proceeds away in properties, businesses, and a Swiss bank account.
In nineteen eighty two, Ridgewell, still in prison, died of
(36:09):
a heart attack, but rumors persist that he was murdered
because he knew too much about corruption in the police force.
Another Ridgewell victim, a man Ridgewell had framed for stealing
from British Rael, read Winston's book. It helped him piece
together the truth about the police officer who'd sent him
(36:30):
to prison, and in twenty eighteen he managed to get
his conviction heard and overturned by the Court of Appeal.
One year later, armed with this precedent, Winston True finally
won the same victory.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
His conviction was quashed.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Along with those of Sterling Christie and George Griffith. Eventually,
Omar Bouchet's conviction was overturned too. The Lord Chief Justice
was remorseful.
Speaker 4 (37:02):
Our regret is that it has taken so long for
this injustice to be remedied.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Winston no longer felt he was suspended in limbo. He
was in charge of his own destiny outside.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
The Court of Appeal.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
He urged others whose lives had been blighted by Ridgwell
to come forward.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
If you are innocent, don't give up.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Derrek Ridgwell had lied from the earliest days of his career.
There had long been reason to mistrust him. A climate
of fear about mugging, heightened by media reports, gave him power,
and the people around him reinforced that power. By the
end of twenty twenty four, the Court of Appeal had
(37:56):
quashed eleven convictions based on evidence from Derrek Ridgewell, but
there may be.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
More out there.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
As for Winston, life is good. Still lives in South London,
where he's celebrated by his local community for his activism.
He's often recognized as he walks down the street. He's
also working with a production company to develop a documentary
and a drama series about his story. But while that
story has a happy ending, the scars remain.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
Ridgewell was convicted and imprisoned for stealing mail bags. But
in my case, he wilfully and maliciously stole nearly fifty
years of my life and I'll never get them back.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Key sources for this episode include Winston True himself, who
spoke to Cautionary Tales in twenty twenty four, and Rot
at the Core The Serious Crimes of a Detective Sergeant
by True and Graham Satchwell. This episode was inspired by
policing the crisis, Mugging the State, and law and Order by.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
Stuart Hall and others.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
For a full list of sources, see the show notes
at Timharford dot com. The Cautionary Tales as written by
me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright, Alice Fines, and Ryan Dilly.
It's produced by Alice Fines and Marilyn Rust. The sound
design and original music are the work of Pascal Wise.
(39:42):
Additional sound design is by Carlos San Juan at Brain Audio.
Bend Dafhaffrey edited the scripts. The show features the voice
talents of Melanie Guttridge, Stella Harford, Oliver Hembrough, Sarah Jupp,
messaam and Roe, Jamal Westman, and Rufus Wright. The show
also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg,
(40:04):
Greta Cohne, Sarah Nix, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sulli,
Kira Posey, and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production
of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at Wardoor Studios in London
by Tom Berry. If you like the show, please remember
to share, rate and review. It really makes a difference
(40:25):
to us and if you want to hear the show,
add free sign up to Pushkin Plus on the show
page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm slash plus.
Trust is at the center of so many cautionary tales.
I've told you about the people who trusted a man
(40:46):
in uniform and allowed him to steal from the city coffers,
and the woman who drove into the desert because she
trusted the sat now ahead of her instincts. Then there
was the celebrity author who trusted photographs of fairies as
proof of their existence. We've had people who trusted in
technology when they shouldn't and those who didn't trust it
(41:07):
when they should And that's before we get to the doctors,
business leaders and scammers who abuse the trust put in them.
I'm fascinated by questions of trust, and given that you're
a loyal listener to Cautionary Tales, I'm guessing you're quite
interested in them too, And that's why I've invited Rachel
(41:28):
Botsman to join me for a special edition of Cautionary Questions.
Rachel is the author of the new audiobook How to
Trust and Be Trusted? So do better to answer your
trust questions. Maybe you'd like to know why we naturally
trust some people but recoil from others. Maybe you're curious
(41:50):
about why so many people are taken in by particular
historical figures. There might be an episode of Cautionary Tales
that makes you tear your hair out at the gullibility
of those involved. Are we right to be suspicious whenever
a politician says trust me? Can being too distrustful be
(42:12):
as dangerous as being too trusting? Whatever your query, you
can trust Rachel to have the answers, So send them
two tales at Pushkin dot FM. That's t a L. E.
S At Pushkin dot f M.
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Derrick Ridgwell moves through the London underground with the easy
swagger of a man who knows his star is on
the rise. Confident and charismatic, the twenty seven year old
is a detective in the British Transport Police and he's
well liked by his colleagues. He's even enjoyed some minor celebrity.
A few years ago, he gave a television interview about
(00:42):
his decision to leave the Rhodesian Police Force in nineteen
sixty five. Ridgwell had served for several years, but in
his words, the force was a military organization designed to
suppress the Africans, and he quit on account of what
he called its sickening racism. The young officer now leads
(01:06):
a special squad of plain clothes police who patrol the Tube,
London subway system. It's accepted that mugging is on the
rise in London, and the most dangerous thugs favour the
shadowy network of tunnels beneath the city. Derrek Ridgwell wants
Londoners to feel safe again. He plans to clear up
(01:28):
the Tube arrest by arrest Tonight, March the sixteenth, nineteen
seventy two. Is on the Northern Line, a branch of
the underground that snakes its way from the north to
the south of the city. He set his sights on
Oval Station, a stop in a quiet district just south
(01:50):
of the River Thames and a known haunt of the
most vicious thieves and muggers across town. Twenty two year
old Winston True is hurrying towards the tube. It's gone
ten pm and he's keen to return to his wife,
(02:11):
Marie and their two small children. They live in the
south of the sprawling city, and the journey home will
be a long one. Winston is happily chatting with three friends.
They've just been to a meeting of their organization, The
for Simbers, who are at the heart of the British
Black Power movement. In recent decades, Britain has seen waves
(02:34):
of immigration from the Caribbean islands that were formerly part
of its empire. Some members are the children of those immigrants. Others,
like Winston, moved to Britain as children. Winston's father was
in the police force in Jamaica, where black officers couldn't
rise above the rank of sergeant. Determined that his children
(02:55):
would not face the same discrimination. He moved the family
to Britain. He believed deeply in that core British value meritocracy.
Winston and two of his brothers, Clement and che Ammelin,
were even named after prime ministers. But his bright hopes
were dashed. In Britain, the family encountered bitter racism, and
(03:20):
after Winston's father died in an accident at work, they
fell on hard times in nineteen seventy two. For Winston,
the Fa Simbers are a bright spot on an otherwise
bleak horizon. They offer a philosophy of self help and
self development that appeals to him. They want black men
(03:43):
and women to gain more skills and greater confidence, and
they organize community initiatives and education programs. Tonight, Winston is
carrying a bundle of books he's collected for his children's
Saturday school. As they excitedly discussed their plans, he has
one eye on the time. He's promised Marie he won't
(04:03):
be late if he can just get home by midnight.
The fastest room, he thinks to himself, will be the
Northern Line, and then a bus for the final leg
of the journey.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Where can he pick up a bus? Oh?
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Yes, Oval station just south of the River Thames. As
Winston descends into the subterranean gloom, he hears a train
pull into the platform. Come on, he urges his friends.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
They bore just in time.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
The doors close shut behind them. I'm Tim Harford and
you're listening to cautionary tales. Winston and his friends Sterling Christy,
(05:13):
George Griffiths, and Constantine Bouchet, also known as Omar, left
the train as planned. At Oval station, where Winston was
going to catch a bus, a man was standing at
the end of the tube platform, just by the exit,
A white man looking in their direction. Was he waiting
(05:34):
for them? Winston felt uneasy, but the man did nothing
as they passed him, and the group hurried up the escalator,
keen to each the open air on the escalator too, However,
something unsettling.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Two white men were blocking the way. They were just
standing there. We asked to pass, but they ignored us.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
The group shrugged it off and rode the escalator to
the top. Here, Winston turned towards the exit, and then
quite suddenly.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
The two men in front turned around and one grabbed me,
holding my arm and dragging and pushing me against the wall.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
The other man grabbed sterling Christie. Then two more men appeared.
They started shoving George and Omar and shouting at them
what was going on. Muggers were known to lurk on
the tube, so weather being robbed.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
I could hear him saying, get over there, move, get
the fuck over there. They shout at us, and we
shouted at them.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
One of the men, the leader, looked young. He had
a kind of cocky swagger, and he reminded Winston of
the white boys he had been at school with, the
ones who always stood too close, invading his space in
an implicit threat of violence.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
They weren't being robbed.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
We're the police, declared Detective Sergeant Ridgewell, the police. They
weren't dressed like the police. Winston asked to see some
id he knew his rights.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Neh, you bloody right about ID. Some of you blogs
of nick and handbags. We're going to search you a lot.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Winston was baffled stealing women's purses. Didn't have any purses
on them, just the coloring books he had collected for
the children. The men faced each other in a tense standoff.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
How do we know you're the police?
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Just saw us? Some id it all? Seemed ridiculous. Winston
would later recall, surely these men were drunkards. They just
left the pub and they were having a laugh at
the group's expense. Stop fucking pushing me. Winston heard Omar shout.
The standoff was broken. Omar had punched the man who'd
(08:00):
been pushing him. The group had been learning karate, and
their instinct was to defend themselves. Another man rushed at Winston,
who pushed him back. He fell to the ground, where
he grabbed at Winston's feet, pulling him down to the floor.
A second attacker seized Winston in a headlock.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
The man holding he was angry, and he began applying
pressure to my neck. I could hardly breathe. He was
trying to strangle me. Then he whispered in my ear,
this how fucking clever you are.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Now, And then it was all over. Clothes torn, covered
in cuts and bruises. Winston and his friends were loaded
into a police van and taken to the station. Here,
his request for a phone call was denied. It's my right,
(08:53):
Ridgewell drew close.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
You blacks have got no bloody rights.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
He snarled into his face.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Not in ear anyway.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Another voice chimed in. Winston couldn't understand how he'd ended
up here alone in a prison cell. A mix of
dread and heart thumping shock coursed through his body. The
(09:26):
following morning, Winston, Omar George and Sterling were charged with
seventeen counts of robbing persons undetermined. They would face trial
later that year, but for now they were released on bail.
As Winston awaited trial, he noticed that media coverage of
(09:50):
muggings was growing fevered and frantic. The Daily Mirror newspaper
led the charge, announcing the night of the mugger. In
the darkness outside a London railway station on Tuesday night,
a stiletto flashed and an old old man fell dead,
stabbed in the heart. Mugging, explained the article, is a
(10:14):
crime fairly new to Britain. It has its origins in America.
The word itself is derived from attacking a mug an
easy victim. The murdered man, a widower named Graham Hills,
had been exactly what the cunning three man gang had
been waiting for, easy prey, for a quick steal. The
(10:37):
police already knew that the crime of mugging was on
the rise in gritty urban districts. Now it was time
for the general public to become acquainted with the term
and alert to the danger. According to the American Police,
mugging usually involved crushing the victim's head or throat in
(10:59):
an armlock, and robbery by any degree of force, with
or without weapons. It was said that in the United
States this crime had more than trebled in ten years.
One hundred and fifty such muggings had been reported on
the London underground in the last three years. The implication
(11:19):
was clear. Mugging had made its way across the Atlantic,
and now it was reproducing itself on British soil, spreading unchecked.
It was terrifying and it was totally unprecedented, or was
it cautionary? Tales will return? London, July the eighteenth, eighteen
(12:02):
sixty two. It's gone midnight. Member of Parliament James Pilkington
is walking along Pall Mall, a grand thoroughfare in Westminster,
the seat of power in Britain. He's just passing the
famous monument to the crimean War, a statue of three
guardsmen whose somberly survey the gas lit street. Should he
(12:27):
head to his private club, No, he thinks it's late
time to go home. He turns towards Waterloo Place.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
I remember crossing Pall Mall and then all consciousness left me.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
An attacker, or perhaps a group of attackers, have hit
James Pilkington on the back of his head. When he
comes to, his clothes are soaked with blood, and his
watch and chain are missing. Once the public learns what
has befallen James Pilkington, a member of Parliament, no less,
(13:05):
there is uproar. Pilkington, it is said, wasn't just attacked
and robbed. He was a victim of the sinister new
crime of gorotting. According to the newspapers, gangs are now
professionalizing the art of street robbery. One attacker crushes the
(13:26):
throat of the target, leaving him writhing in agony, with
tongue protruding and eyes starting from their sockets. Unable to
give the alarm. The attacker's colleagues meanwhile rob the poor victim.
There's something distinctly foreign about carotting. The word comes from
(13:51):
a Spanish weapon, a gruesome handheld ligature used to torture
and strangle unfortunate victims. One editorial declares that London's Bayswater
Road is now as unsafe as Naples, Spain, Italy. Whatever.
(14:12):
This crime wave is uncongenial to the soil and manners
of Englishmen. It reeks of Mediterranean villainy. And if an
MP can be attacked in genteel Westminster, then even the
more respectable pockets of the city are now the dominion
(14:33):
of thugs. No one is immune to garrotting. No one
is safe to walk alone at night. As summer turns
to autumn, the papers fixate on the threat. Reports proliferate
about garrotters hauled up before the magistrates to face justice.
Garrotting is the talk of the town, declares the Illustrated
(14:56):
London News. Penal jurisprudence a favorite after dinner topic. Everyone
has an opinion about where this crime wave has come from,
and everyone has the pet solution. For one reader of
The Times, the police are at fault for they've grown lax. Laxity,
(15:18):
he explains, is the nurse of crime. For others, the
trouble started when Britain stopped shipping its criminals to Australia.
What's more, those criminals are now being granted their freedom
early with a kind of parole document. Called a ticket
of leave. As a result, there's a surplus of delinquents
(15:42):
on the streets, and they are undoubtedly waiting to pounce.
The good newspaper reading people of London begin taking matters
into their own hands. After all, if the authorities stop
transporting convicts to Australia, they cannot depend on the authorities
to protect them. The discerning gentlemen might purchase homemade weapons
(16:07):
or hire a uniform escort to ward off potential attackers.
A range of defensive gadgets goes on sale one walter
Thornhill a cutler. Patents are designed for an anti garrotting device,
a spiked steel collar to be worn about the all
too vulnerable neck. The panic about garrotting soon spreads to Yorkshire,
(16:33):
Lancashire Nottinghamshire. Britain is on a knife edge. In the
nineteen seventies, the psychologists Sarah Liechtenstein and Paul Slovich began
studying how well people estimate the likelihood of certain lethal events.
(16:59):
In a series of experiments, they asked six hundred and
sixty adult participants to judge how frequently they thought death
occurred from fairy different causes. They found that we tend
to exaggerate the likelihood of very dramatic and sensational happenings.
Death by tornado, for example, was generally overestimated, while death
(17:23):
from diseases such as diabetes and asthma were vastly underestimated.
Also particularly bad at judging the likelihood of violent crimes,
as Tom Gash has noted in his book Criminal, The
Truth About Why People Do Bad Things. That includes crimes
(17:44):
such as murder, but it seems likely that it also
extends to being attacked at random in the street and
garrotted or ambushed on the London underground and mugged. Media
coverage influences this too. In another experiment, Paul Slovich and
(18:07):
Barbara Comb's found that the more coverage a dramatic event
receives in the local press, the more likely people were
to overestimate its chance of happening. Again, we simply don't
have a very good understanding of the risk of shocking
and sensational dangers in everyday life. Distorted media coverage can
(18:29):
make that worse. When it comes to the stories we
tell about crime. Big scary numbers like the idea that
muggings have more than trebled can play into this, they
grab our attention. We're all too ready to anticipate such
danger anyway. By November eighteen sixty two, panic about garrotting
(18:57):
had reached fever pitch. There was also increasing confusion about
who was and who wasn't a garrotta. The satirical magazine
punchuly printed cartoons of men spooked by their own shadows
or attacking trees in the dense London fog. Newspapers reported
(19:18):
on instances of confusion. Two The Times described a timid
gentleman who lived in the London suburbs and constantly on
the lookout for danger, had taken to carrying a cudgel
with a heavy lead filling. One night, as he neared
his home, another fellow pushed rudely against him. Naturally, the
(19:41):
timid man swung at the rude fellow with his cudgel, and,
with great presence of mind, struck him a severe blow.
The rude fellow fled, but he left his hat behind him,
and the timid man was shocked to read in its
lining the name of a dear friend, Edward. He hastened
(20:03):
at once to his house to explain himself. Edward's distraught
wife opened the door I'm.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
Glad to see you, poor Edward.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
He's been garrotted.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Another paper, the shaw Ditch Advertiser, systematically investigated a number
of reported garrottings. They all turned out to be utterly
fictitious or mere drunken squabbles. And what of James Pilkington's
pal Mall attackers. Two men, both ex convicts and former
(20:42):
Ticket of leaveholders, were arrested. The police magistrate had no
firm evidence that they were the guilty parties, so he
sentenced them to three months in prison for being suspicious
characters better safe than sorry. In October ninethe teen seventy two,
(21:11):
Winston True Stirling, Christie Omar Bouchet and George Griffiths went
on trial at the Old Bailey, the central Criminal Court
of England and Wales. There was grassroots support for the
accused men that for Simbas and various other organizations had
started an Oval four defense campaign. A picture of the
(21:34):
men outside the magistrate's court, their faces grossly swollen from
their beating by police, had been printed on posters and
circulated in community papers. At the same time, the mainstream
press continued to warn people about muggings. According to the Times,
(21:54):
the police were going to petition the Home Office to
increase their powers, so alarmed were they by the mugging
trend among young people. One figure, which featured in newspapers
up and down the country, suggested that muggings were up
one hundred and twenty nine percent in four years. But
(22:15):
what was that figure based on? As author Tom Gash
has noted, violent crime was on the rise in the
second half of the twentieth century, so it seems there
was some basis for concern about mugging. But mugging wasn't
formally a crime, So we're all robberies up by one
(22:36):
hundred and twenty nine percent in four years, or perhaps
assault with intent to rob or was something else being
measured altogether. As murky statistics and sensational headlines proliferated, the
panic about mugging appears to have outstripped the concrete facts,
(22:57):
and that panic had very real consequences. Decent citizens are
afraid to use the underground late at night, said the
Daily Mirror, forebodingly the solution harsh deterrant sentences. At the
(23:19):
same time, community leaders expressed concern that black youth were
being explicitly targeted in police clean up operations. Was even
said that if you listened closely while walking past the
pubs in South London, you might hear a sinister Calypso
song drifting through the air. If the muggers don't get you,
(23:42):
Ridgewell will. At trial, Winston explained how, on the night
of his arrest, Derrek Ridgewell's squad hadn't properly identified themselves
as police officers. A woman named Diana O'Connor had seen
the fight at Oval station. She told the court that
on that terrible night in March, should thought she was
(24:05):
witnessing a group of white men attacking some black kids,
not police officers subduing criminals, and she had even tried
to help.
Speaker 5 (24:14):
The boy's eyes seemed to be coming out of his
head and his mouth was open, as if he was
choking to death. It frightened me when I saw his face.
That's when I intervened to stop it.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Winston also described how he had been forced to sign
a false confession in custody, had been punched by one
officer and had his head slammed into a cell wall
by another.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
I was on edge, expecting to be hit at any
moment by anyone from any direction.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
He said later had been interrogated and threatened repeatedly throughout
the night, eventually worn down. He had signed the confession
even though there were no victims named in any of
the seventeen charges of robbing, persons undetermined, and no witnesses
(25:07):
for the prosecution aside from the arresting officers themselves. The
Oval four were found guilty. Winston was sentenced to two
years in prison.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
I was in a state of shock. I couldn't believe
what was happening to me. I was actually going to
prison for something I didn't do.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
He felt hopeless, all was lost. Detective Sergeant Ridgewell, meanwhile,
had already struck again. Portionary Tales will be back. It's
(25:55):
late nineteen seventy two. Alphonse Chicouri and Lawrence Swayler are
deep underground in Tottenham Court Road station on London's Northern Line.
They're lost. The trainee Jesuit priests are visiting Britain from
Rhodesia today Zimbabwe. They want to get back to Oxford,
(26:17):
where they're studying social work, but they can't find the
right platform. Alphonse is standing with his hands in his
pockets when quite suddenly two men appear in front of
him and grab him by the arms. They drag him
wordlessly upstairs. Alphonse is terrified. Then more men appear. They're aggressive.
(26:39):
They're going to rob me, he thinks. Alphonse fights the
men off as best he can. It's only after they've
managed to restrain him that they reveal their police officers.
Alphonse and Lawrence are taken to police headquarters, where they're
both charged with trying to steal from two women, as
well as with assaulting officers. They deny the accusations fervently,
(27:05):
but a trial date is set. Winston True was still
in prison at this point, and for a while it
seemed that Alphonse and Lawrence were bound for the same fate,
only this time. The presiding judge took a different view.
When Ridgewell gave evidence, the defense asked him if he
(27:26):
was particularly on the lookout for colored young men.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
On the Northern Line.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
I would agree with.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
That, admitted Ridgewell. The judge was horrified, citing inconsistencies in
police evidence.
Speaker 4 (27:41):
He said, I find it terrifying that here in London
people using public transport should be pounced upon without a
word by anyone that they are police officers.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
The case was thrown out, and the judge told the
two young men that they left the court with no
stain on their characters.
Speaker 4 (28:02):
This case was brought without justification.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
As for Derrek Ridgwell, the British Transport Police quietly transferred
him to another post. For Winston, true prison was a
place of limbo, where the passage of time seemed not
to exist. His prison reality was one of permanent uncertainty.
(28:28):
While in prison, Winston appealed. His conviction was upheld, but
his sentence was reduced to eight months. Back in civilian life,
that dread and sense of limbo remained.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
He was in turmoil.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
I was a very angry man. I had night miss
I had a stomach ulcer. I hated the world and
felt helpless.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Winston told a local paper that he would not give
up the fight for justice.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
The wounds are too painful to leave it at that, But.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
He was also depressed. His marriage was over, he was
a single pair, and his sense of self had been
destroyed by the lies that had been told about him.
For now, he also faced the task of rebuilding. Eventually,
Winston got a job as a mailroom clerk and messenger
(29:26):
at an office and in nineteen eighty two. He went
on to obtain his bachelor's degree in social science. A
master's in policy studies followed in the early nineteen nineties,
and he became a lecturer. He also remarried. The stigma
of a criminal conviction followed Winston, but he was gradually
(29:47):
able to put the pieces of his life back together.
In two thousand and three, Winston was conducting research on
teenage fathers.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
I was part way through a literature review when I
collapsed from a brain hemorrhage.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
He was left partially paralyzed, walking with a limp, and
he lost some of his memory, but the stroke also
shook other memories loose.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
My wife told me that during my time in hospital,
I kept referring to it as a prison and kept
telling her I didn't want to stay there. I wanted
to go home.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
The pain of his wrongful conviction had embedded itself within him.
When he returned home from hospital, he decided he'd write
a book about his case and hopefully expel the bitterness
and anger.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
He felt.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
It was an act of defiance.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
He began to make freedom of information requests about Derrick
Ridgewell's career. What he found out amazed him. In Victorian England,
the garrotting panic vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared.
(31:18):
The press moved on. There were other matters to worry
about now, like the revolution in Greece, depression in Britain's
textiles industry, and the war in America. But the panic
had lasting consequences.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
It left in.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Its wake a raft of hasty and punitive legislation designed
to crush garrotters. Minimum terms were made longer. Prisons in
Britain had previously been undergoing reform, but now there was
a crackdown on conditions. Prisoners were locked in separate cells
(31:54):
and prevented from speaking.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
With each other.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Hard labour on the treadwheel was also permitted. Inmates would
spend hours climbing stairs attached to a giant wheel, a useless,
exhausting task designed to break the spirit. And whipping was
also brought back. For people convicted of robbery with violence,
(32:18):
prison guards could issue a convict with up to fifty
flesh splitting lashes at a time. In Parliament, the Home
Secretary recognized.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
That this was Pellic legislation. After that Pellic had subsided.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
All the same, it remained in place for decades. Roughly
one hundred years later, the press would once again, in
Winston Tru's words, whip up a mirage. This time it
was about young black men involved in crime. As the
(32:59):
fear escalated, figures of authority like Derrek Ridgwell gained more power,
Innocent people were punished, and.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
Lives forever altered.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Perhaps if we'd learned more from the Garrotting panic, winston
true story would have been different. In twenty ten, Winston
published his book Black for a Cause. Determined to right
(33:32):
the wrongs he had suffered, he had set about collecting
all the information he could on Detective Sergeant Ridgewell, and
he'd learned that the Oval four case wasn't the first
time that the police officer had lied. Ridgewell hadn't served
in Rhodesia for several years. He had been in the
(33:52):
military police force there for just three weeks when the
country declared unilateral independence from Britain, and in the chaos
he had deserted. When he first returned home, there'd been
a warrant out for his arrest. Eventually, though, it was dropped,
and he had been able to take up a post
with the British Transport Police there was more. He'd fitted
(34:16):
up another group of young black men for mugging on
the Northern Line just weeks before framing the Oval four.
They had become known as the Stockwell Six. Ridgwell claimed
that the men had attempted to rob him and that
had fought back. The Stockwell Six testified that the robbery
was a fabrication and that the officers had been violent,
(34:38):
beating them, kicking them and stamping on their bare toes.
One of the group believed that Ridgwell had planted a
knife on him. Was he well practiced then fabricating evidence.
After his failed attempt to frame Alphonse Chicouri and Lawrence
Sweler for mugging, Ridgewell was asked to head up another
(35:00):
special squad. Vast quantities of goods had been going missing
from a London railway depot. The British transp Thought police
must have hoped that the disappearances would decrease under Ridgewell's
watchful eye, but strangely, they multiplied. He continued in the
role until nineteen seventy eight, when he was arrested and
(35:25):
charged with conspiracy to steal from British rail It turned
out that over eleven or so months, Ridgewell and his
colleagues had stolen sixty vanloads of goods. Those goods were
worth more than one million pounds in nineteen eighty relative
to the wages of the time, they'd be worth more
(35:47):
than seven million pounds today about ten million dollars. It
fenced them via a notorious London crime family and squirreled
the proceeds away in properties, businesses, and a Swiss bank account.
In nineteen eighty two, Ridgewell, still in prison, died of
(36:09):
a heart attack, but rumors persist that he was murdered
because he knew too much about corruption in the police force.
Another Ridgewell victim, a man Ridgewell had framed for stealing
from British Rael, read Winston's book. It helped him piece
together the truth about the police officer who'd sent him
(36:30):
to prison, and in twenty eighteen he managed to get
his conviction heard and overturned by the Court of Appeal.
One year later, armed with this precedent, Winston True finally
won the same victory.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
His conviction was quashed.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Along with those of Sterling Christie and George Griffith. Eventually,
Omar Bouchet's conviction was overturned too. The Lord Chief Justice
was remorseful.
Speaker 4 (37:02):
Our regret is that it has taken so long for
this injustice to be remedied.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Winston no longer felt he was suspended in limbo. He
was in charge of his own destiny outside.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
The Court of Appeal.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
He urged others whose lives had been blighted by Ridgwell
to come forward.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
If you are innocent, don't give up.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Derrek Ridgwell had lied from the earliest days of his career.
There had long been reason to mistrust him. A climate
of fear about mugging, heightened by media reports, gave him power,
and the people around him reinforced that power. By the
end of twenty twenty four, the Court of Appeal had
(37:56):
quashed eleven convictions based on evidence from Derrek Ridgewell, but
there may be.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
More out there.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
As for Winston, life is good. Still lives in South London,
where he's celebrated by his local community for his activism.
He's often recognized as he walks down the street. He's
also working with a production company to develop a documentary
and a drama series about his story. But while that
story has a happy ending, the scars remain.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
Ridgewell was convicted and imprisoned for stealing mail bags. But
in my case, he wilfully and maliciously stole nearly fifty
years of my life and I'll never get them back.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Key sources for this episode include Winston True himself, who
spoke to Cautionary Tales in twenty twenty four, and Rot
at the Core The Serious Crimes of a Detective Sergeant
by True and Graham Satchwell. This episode was inspired by
policing the crisis, Mugging the State, and law and Order by.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
Stuart Hall and others.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
For a full list of sources, see the show notes
at Timharford dot com. The Cautionary Tales as written by
me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright, Alice Fines, and Ryan Dilly.
It's produced by Alice Fines and Marilyn Rust. The sound
design and original music are the work of Pascal Wise.
(39:42):
Additional sound design is by Carlos San Juan at Brain Audio.
Bend Dafhaffrey edited the scripts. The show features the voice
talents of Melanie Guttridge, Stella Harford, Oliver Hembrough, Sarah Jupp,
messaam and Roe, Jamal Westman, and Rufus Wright. The show
also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg,
(40:04):
Greta Cohne, Sarah Nix, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sulli,
Kira Posey, and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production
of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at Wardoor Studios in London
by Tom Berry. If you like the show, please remember
to share, rate and review. It really makes a difference
(40:25):
to us and if you want to hear the show,
add free sign up to Pushkin Plus on the show
page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm slash plus.
Trust is at the center of so many cautionary tales.
I've told you about the people who trusted a man
(40:46):
in uniform and allowed him to steal from the city coffers,
and the woman who drove into the desert because she
trusted the sat now ahead of her instincts. Then there
was the celebrity author who trusted photographs of fairies as
proof of their existence. We've had people who trusted in
technology when they shouldn't and those who didn't trust it
(41:07):
when they should And that's before we get to the doctors,
business leaders and scammers who abuse the trust put in them.
I'm fascinated by questions of trust, and given that you're
a loyal listener to Cautionary Tales, I'm guessing you're quite
interested in them too, And that's why I've invited Rachel
(41:28):
Botsman to join me for a special edition of Cautionary Questions.
Rachel is the author of the new audiobook How to
Trust and Be Trusted? So do better to answer your
trust questions. Maybe you'd like to know why we naturally
trust some people but recoil from others. Maybe you're curious
(41:50):
about why so many people are taken in by particular
historical figures. There might be an episode of Cautionary Tales
that makes you tear your hair out at the gullibility
of those involved. Are we right to be suspicious whenever
a politician says trust me? Can being too distrustful be
(42:12):
as dangerous as being too trusting? Whatever your query, you
can trust Rachel to have the answers, So send them
two tales at Pushkin dot FM. That's t a L. E.
S At Pushkin dot f M.
Host
Tim Harford
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