68 | The Mummy’s Boy Who Killed: The Dark Tale of Sidney Fox - Prash's Murder Map: True Crime Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Sydney Harry Fox was always destined to be something of
a mummies boy. His fate inextricably entwined with that of
his mother. The fourth final and favorite son of dressmaker
Rosaline Fox, Sydney was born in the tiny Norfolk village
of Great Francham in January eighteen ninety nine, but there

(00:24):
was a question mark over the identity of his father.
It could have been Rosaline's husband, William Fox, who worked
as a trained signalman, or it might have been Rosaline's lover,
a porter who worked on the same line. Either way,
Sydney developed ideas above his station for some reason, convinced

(00:47):
that he had aristocratic origins. Shortly after his birth, William
Fox left the family, a possible hint that he had
discovered the true parentage of the used arrival. As a result,
Sydney became extremely close to Rosaline, the duo developing a

(01:08):
bond that would extend beyond the typical relationship of mother
and son into a bizarre criminal partnership that could only
end in disaster. Sidney Fox's taste for fraud started early.

(01:39):
At the age of eleven, he was enlisted to go
daughter door in the village collecting charity donations, writing details
of the contributions in a book. As he strode along
the country lanes whistling stridently, an idea occurred to him.
He carefully glued two page of the book together, thus

(02:02):
hiding the donations recorded there, and pocketed the proceeds himself.
An employee at the charity office noticed the deception and
Sydney had his first experience of trouble with the police,
but it failed to deter him for long. As a teenager,

(02:24):
he was known to flutter his girlishly long eyelashes at
elderly men and women to get his own way, some
of whom thought he was simply a pleasant young man,
or others with less innocent imaginations realized he was offering
sexual favors. He worked as a page boy for a

(02:44):
wealthy family in London, where he stole the household silver
and cheated a housemaid out of her life savings, earning
the nickname Cupid for using his pert lips and blushing
cheeks to win forgiveness. At seventeen, Sydney Fox was five

(03:04):
foot seven with a medium build, brown hair, blue eyes,
and a habit of wearing a gray triwby hat at
a jaunty angle. He secured a job as a bank clerk,
but was caught indulging in forgery, and the bank manager
agreed not to call the police if Sydney enrolled for
military service to redeem himself. The young scoundrel joined the

(03:30):
Royal Flying Corps as a cadet, but was soon masquerading
as a lieutenant. After receiving minor injuries in the First
World War, Sydney drew an eight shilling disability pension, fraudulently
claiming he was suffering from seizures. He returned to live
with his mother and mourn for two of his brothers

(03:51):
who had been killed in the fighting. Sydney showed no
interest in honest work, instead telling everyone he met that
he was from a wealthy family who owned a flour mill.
He also pretended to be a member of the prestigious
Royal Automobile Club, paying for his expenses with a check

(04:11):
book stolen from an officer he had met in hospital.
He juggled a dizzying array of identities and even impersonated
the son of prominent MP Colonel Lane Fox, But when
the stolen checkbook came to light, the police traced his
letters and uncovered a web of deception and a string

(04:32):
of homosexual liaisons. Sydney was sentenced to three months hard labour,
and by the time he was thirty he had been
in and out of jail multiple times. In nineteen twenty seven,
Sidney's mother met a fifty one year old, wealthy Australian
woman named Charlotte Morse, who had recently arrived in England

(04:57):
while a husband in the Merchant Navy was stationed in
the Far East. The two women rented a room together
in Southsea, joined by Sydney, now twenty eight, He quickly
recognized an opportunity and began showering Missus Morse with romantic attention,

(05:18):
Claiming to be in love with her. He took her
to the Strand Hotel in London for sex, then convinced
his fifty one year old paramour to take out a
life insurance policy and rewrite her will in his favor.
One night shortly afterwards, Missus Morse awoke to find her
room filling with gas, and found it was coming from

(05:41):
a tap behind a heavy chest of drawers, so it
could not have been turned on by accident. The scales
fell from Missus Morseer's eyes, and she realized she had
been conned. She alerted the police of the attempted murder,
and Sidney fled with his mother, taking missus Morser's money

(06:01):
and jewelry with him. He was caught and sentenced to
fifteen months in prison, his longest stretch so far. Penniless
without her son's support and surviving on a small ten
shilling pension for the death of two of her boys
during the war, Rosaline Fox was committed to the workhouse.

(06:25):
When Sydney emerged from prison, aged thirty in March nineteen
twenty nine, his face was no longer that of an
angelic choir boy with a hidden talent for seducing aging perverts.
After repeated prison terms, he had deteriorated physically and mentally,
his unruly mop of hair receding to his temples, and

(06:48):
his eyes so often used to shoot corquettish looks to
get himself out of trouble, had developed a distinctive squint.
His boyish charisma was gone, leaving behind a more desperate
man who would stop at nothing to get what he wanted, which,
in Sydney Fox's case was money. He went to the

(07:13):
workhouse to collect his mother, who was now sixty three
and struggling to walk, and the pair embarked on a
tour of hotels on the south coast. They craftily chose
hotels which were neither too flashy nor too shabby, using
a variety of schemes to avoid paying, which included using

(07:34):
force identities, paying with dud checks, and fleeing before the
bill was due. On one occasion, to the manager's dismay,
they departed in such a hurry that they left behind
a vest and a pair of soiled underpants. Sometimes Sydney

(07:55):
would brandish a wallet stuffed with brown paper to give
the impression it was bulging with cash, and another tactic
was to ask the reception staff to keep a parcel
safe for them, discreetly implying that its value was enough
to cover the deposit. Of course, there was nothing inside

(08:17):
but more brown paper. On twenty first of April, Rosaline
Fox made a will, leaving everything to Sydney, apparently ignoring
her other surviving son, although her possessions amounted a little
more than her clothes, which she wore all at once

(08:37):
to avoid the need for a suitcase with one dress
over the other. On first of May, Sydney took out
a life insurance policy covering his mother against injury, accident
or death to the value of four thousand pounds, which
were set to expire in less than six months. On
eighteenth of October. Mother and son then travel to France

(09:02):
to visit the grave of Sydney's brother, Cecil, a member
of the Royal Army Medical Corps who had been killed
at the Battle of Arras in nineteen seventeen at the
age of twenty three. On their return to England, Rosaline
and Sydney Fox arrived at the Hotel Metropol on the

(09:23):
seafront at Margate in Kent on Wednesday, sixteenth of October.
The receptionist was struck by Sydney's thoughtful devotion to his mother,
having no idea that beneath the kindly veneer lay a
dangerous capacity for lies and subterfuge. To explain their lack
of luggage, the Foxes claimed it had been delayed on

(09:45):
the railway and would be sent on later, and Sydney
brought out his trustee paper parcel, claiming it contained assets
exceeding the value of their room. The manager, Joseph Harding,
was suspicious and arks that they settled the bill daily.
They were alligated rooms sixty eight and seventy, which had

(10:08):
no gas fire, but when Sydney raised concerns about his
mother's health, they were moved to sixty six and sixty seven,
which benefited from a fire and a connecting door between them.
On Friday, the day the life insurance policy was due
to expire, Sydney traveled to the Pickford's insurance office in

(10:30):
the nearby town of Ramsgate and paid two shillings for
a short term policy, entitling him to one thousand pounds
in the event of his mother's accidental death, lasting just
five days until midnight on twenty third of October. During
the same trip, Sydney visited a pawnbroker's shop and pawned

(10:52):
one of his mother's rings for two pounds, but he
wasn't finished. On Tuesday, twenty second of October, he left
his mother at the hotel again and took the train
to London, visiting the Cornhill Insurance Group to arrange yet
another insurance policy on her life, this time for two

(11:15):
thousand pounds. Oddly, this one was for just twenty four hours,
also ending at midnight on twenty third of October. While
in London, he phoned the Metropol hotel twice to check
on his mother, giving every impression that he was a
caring and solicitous son. He then placed an anonymous phone

(11:38):
call to a boarding house in King's Cross, pretending to
leave a message for himself, saying that his mother was
gravely ill. He then called the boarding house again moments later,
this time as himself, and asked to book a room
for the night, at which point the landlady unwittingly passed

(11:59):
on the message about his mother. Sydney Feine shocked when
he heard the news and immediately canceled the booking, telling
the landlady he would return to Margate at once. At
six thirty pm on the evening of Wednesday, twenty third
of October, Sydney was drinking in the hotel bar when

(12:22):
the barmaid asked about his mother. Mother and I have
had a sham fight, he replied, which shows that she
is well. The bar maid was puzzled, finding it difficult
to imagine the old woman grappling playfully with her son,
although apparently the bear had been known to arm wrestle

(12:44):
on occasion. Sydney added that he and his mother would
be leaving the hotel the next day, then finished his
drink and went upstairs. Later, mother and son were spotted
in the dining room enjoying the evening meal. Afterwards, Sydney

(13:04):
went out to buy a bottle of port, then returned
to the hotel bar. When he spotted the hotel manager
at about ten thirty pm, he went pale and fled upstairs,
presumably to avoid being asked for payment. By now the
hotel was quiet, with just a few commercial travelers socializing

(13:27):
in the billiard room. At eleven forty pm, the piece
was suddenly broken by the spectacle of Sydney Fox leaping
down the stairs, clad in a shirt but no trousers. First,
he called for the night porter, but when he couldn't
find him, he blurted out in an agitated voice, I

(13:49):
think there's a fire. Fellow guests Reginald Reed and Sam
Hopkins hurried upstairs to help and found smoke drifting out
from beneath the closed door of number sixty six. My
mummy is in there, shouted Sydney, although he later denied

(14:11):
using the word mummy, indignantly saying I'm not a baby
Hopkins opened the door, but was driven back by clouds
of thick black smoke. He held a handkerchief to his
mouth and dropped to his hands and knees. Seeing the
air was clearer low down, he groped his way into

(14:32):
the bedroom, where his hand met Missus Fox's leg, hanging
lifelessly over the edge of the bed. The fire appeared
to have started in a horsey upholstery of the armchair.
The other guests, Reginald Reed, went into Sydney's room and
managed to enter number sixty six through the interconnecting door,

(14:53):
then pulled the burning armchair out into the corridor. Kins
lifted Missus Fox out of the room with the help
of another passer, by covering her with his coat, as
she wore nothing but a vest throughout. Sydney Fox did
nothing to assist, only saying mind you were burning her feet.

(15:19):
By now the hotel staff had gathered at the scene,
and the doctor and police were called. Missus Rosalind Fox
was dead. The doctor issued a death certificate stating the
cause of death a shock and suffocation from the fire.
Sydney gave his spectacular performance as the bereaved son, weeping

(15:43):
into the chest of the hotel manager's wife, as she
comforted him. Now fully dressed, he told the police what
had happened, saying that he had shared the bottle of
port with his mother then left her reading a newspaper
by the gas fire. After a drink in the hotel bar,
he had gone to bed, but smelled smoke. A little later,

(16:07):
he opened the communicating door and, seeing the flames, ran
for help. Immediately, he had the temerity to ask the
detective if they had found his mother's handbag, claiming there
was twenty four pounds in it. They had indeed found
her smoldering handbag on the chair, but unsurprisingly, there was

(16:29):
no money inside. Sydney claimed that he and his mother
lived in Lyndhurst, Hampshire, and were staying at the hotel
while their mansion was being redecorated. I'm all alone now,
he told the officer, mournfully. I just lost three brothers
in the war. This was not entirely true, as his

(16:53):
oldest brother, William, was still alive and well. The next day.
A verdict of accidental death was agreed at the inquest,
and Roseline Fox was buried at Great Franchum, near Norwich
five days later, but The case would not end there.

(17:15):
When manager mister Harding spoke to other local hoteliers about
the incident and realized that the Foxes were the mother
and son's swindling team who had left behind a trail
of unpaid bills in recent weeks, he contacted the police.
The insurance company soon added their own evidence when they

(17:36):
received Sydney's claim for an accident which had occurred just
twenty minutes before the policy was due to expire. The
police arrested Sidney Fox on third of November and held
him on six charges of obtaining credit under false pretenses,
which gave them time to investigate his involvement in his

(17:58):
mother's death. Chief Inspector Walter Hambrook of Scotland Yard led
the investigation and consulted with the Margate Fire Brigade to
establish the facts of the blaze. It was obvious to
the experts that the flames had not traveled accidentally from
the gas fire to the chair, as there was a

(18:19):
six inch strip of unburnt carpet between the chair and
the gas fire, a pile of charred petrol soaked newspapers
under the armchair, and a can of petrol in the room.
Strongly suggested arson one of the newspapers was French, and
as neither Sydney nor Rosaline could speak the language, it

(18:42):
seemed that Sydney had deliberately saved it from their trip
abroad to use as kindling. Chief Inspector Hambrook ranged for
Roslin's body to be exhumed, and a related post mortem
was conducted by pathologist Sir Bernard Spills. He found no
soot in her throat nor carbon monoxide poisoning in her blood,

(19:07):
indicating that she had died before the fire started. He
found bruising to the inside of her throat, which suggested
manual strangulation, as well as a bruise on her tongue,
which had likely been caused by a tooth. As missus
Fox had known natural teeth left and wore set of

(19:28):
false teeth, her killer must have removed them after her
death to make it look as though she had taken
them out ready for bed, giving the impression she had
stepped through the fire and died from smoke inhalation. Thirty
one year old Sidney Fox stood trial at Lewis's size

(19:49):
As in March nineteen thirty, pleading not guilty to his
mother's murder. Bernard Spilsbury was adamant that Rosaline Fox had
been strangled, but admitted that in his extensive experience, he
had never seen a strangulation case with fewer signs on
the body than this. Five other doctors disagreed with Spillsbury's findings.

(20:17):
One of the bruises he reported seeing had disappeared after
he conducted the post mortem, leading to a suggestion that
it was not a bruise but discoloration from the putrefaction process.
Missus Fox's thyroid cartilage and high eid bone had also

(20:37):
been intact until Spillsbury accidentally broke the hyoid bone himself
during the examination. Expert witness for the defense, Sidney Smith,
argued that it was unusual to find the hyoid intact
in a strangulation case, particularly in an elderly victim where

(20:58):
the bone was brittle. The Attorney General posited that Sydney
had used a pillow to suffocate his mother instead, which
could explain the lack of marks on the neck. A
cardiac specialist testified for the defense that the cause of
death was heart failure, and Spillsbury agreed that the heart

(21:19):
was in an advanced state of degeneration. However, the specialist
conceded that the shock of an attempted strangulation could have
led to heart failure. Sydney, who stood in the witness
box for almost six hours, frequently took a photograph of
his mother from his breast pocket and gazed at it sadly,

(21:43):
using a handkerchief to theatrically wipe away his tears. When
asked why he closed the door and leaving his mother's room,
knowing that she was still inside, he said, my explanation
for that now is that the smoke should not spread
into the rest of the hotel. The prosecutor raised an eyebrow.

(22:05):
Rather that your mother should suffocate in that room and
smoke get about in the hotel, he said archly. A
gasp of horror was heard throughout the crowd at court
room as the onlooker saw the truth of the situation.
How could this man, posing as a loving, considerate son,

(22:26):
have seen a fire raging in his mother's room then
shut the door on the blaze. After just seventy minutes
of deliberation, the jury convinced by Bernard Spilsbury's evidence, Sidney's behavior,
and the accident insurance policies taken out shortly before her

(22:47):
death found Sydney Fox guilty of murdering his sixty three
year old mother. Almost all prisoners sentenced to death appeal
against their conviction, but for some reason Sydney chose not
to appeal and was hanged from mattricide at Maidstone Prison
on eighth of April nineteen thirty. His surviving brother, William Fox,

(23:14):
was working as a mental health nurse at the Ministry
of Pensions Hospital, treating soldiers with shell shock in other conditions,
but in the wake of the publicity from Sydney's trial,
he was dismissed from his post. The Metropol hotel bill
went unpaid, but Room sixty six was refurbished just in

(23:37):
time for the Easter holiday rush. Several occupants later reported
ghostly occurrences in the hotel, but by the mid nineteen
forties it had been demolished to make way for road improvements,
leaving few remaining signs in the coastal street that any
murderous activity had ever taken place there. For a time,

(24:01):
other local guest houses try to drum up interest by
claiming that the ghosts of Rosaline and Sydney Fox had
moved on to their establishment. Now that the Metropol was gone,
almost a hundred years later, their story has been largely forgotten,
but perhaps even now, the criminal pair haunted the Kent

(24:24):
seaside town eternally looking for their next opportunity to trick
and swindle their way inside. Thank you for listening to
this episode of Pressia's Murder Map. If you enjoyed it,
please leave a comment or review. You can also join

(24:44):
your Patreon for ad free audio episodes to support the show.
I'll see you next time.

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68 | The Mummy’s Boy Who Killed: The Dark Tale of Sidney Fox

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