In 1952, the East End of London’s ‘fit -for-heroes,’ Britain, seethed with strong opinions and embedded ignorance. Young Ronnie and Reggie Kray fermented in the junior years of school.
“Niven Craig”, intoned the Judge, “you are found guilty of aggravated burglary. I sentence you to 12 years imprisonment”.
Niven’s Younger brother, Christopher, seated in the Public Gallery, was furious. He growled a curse and punched his seat. As Niven turned to descend the stairs to the cells, he winked at Christopher.
Christopher, like his older sibling, was destined to be a criminal. Raised in the slums of Whitechapel, he was graduating in a career of petty crime. He’d stolen almost all his possessions, including the clothes he was wearing in Court, a long draped jacket with black velvet collar, thick-crepe rubber soled shoes, black shirt and pencil-thin tie. He looked like a thug, wanted to be a thug and, to the best of his skinny, malnourished frame’s ability, he was a thug.
Derek Bentley, also a local Whitechapel boy, was a poor creature. ‘Mentally sub-normal,’ as he was described in his school report. His family had been bombed out of their house three times during the Blitz. Once, Derek had been buried and nearly suffocated. As he grew, he had become the go-to victim for the fists and scuffed shoes of every bitter, brutal child incarcerated with him in his school.
Derek, a withdrawn child who kept himself almost entirely alone, lived with his father in their bomb-damaged homes. He hid during the day, coming out only at night, when he was known to scavenge his dinner from the greasy largess of the bins behind the chip shop.
Christopher Niven, posing as a gangster in both his dress and demeanour, met and with the ease of a superior intelligence, impressed Derek. Christopher enjoyed Derek’s naive admiration. Derek was for him, a useful idiot.
Constable Sidney Miles was a local bobby. He had repeatedly – whilst on his rounds of the drear streets – advised Derek to stay clear of Christopher who, as P.C. Miles had assured Derek’s Father, was destined soon to join his older brother in prison as they had him under their watch.
On the 2nd November 1952, Christopher invited his dull-witted friend to join him on a ‘job,’ a warehouse near the East End Docks. He handed Derek a sheath knife and a spiked knuckleduster.
‘Put them in yer pocket, Der,’ he had instructed.
Before they set out into the evening dark, Christopher beckoned Derek and showed him, half pulled from his trouser pocket, a Colt .455, heavy pistol.
‘I’ve sawn off ‘alf the barrel,’ he had explained to his easily impressed conspirator.
‘Let’s go’.
To gain access to the warehouse, they were to climb a cast iron downpipe onto a low-roofed office building attached to the side of the warehouse. It was a structure that housed the supervisor’s desk and the gate to a lift that ran up the exterior of the taller warehouse.
Not adequately agile in steel-studded boots, Derek repeatedly slipped back down the drainpipe, failing to gain the Office roof. His clumsy efforts were seen by a passer-by who advised Constable Miles that some kids were on the warehouse roof. The constable walked to a police box and telephoned his station where he spoke with DS Fairfax. Fairfax, an athletic, young sergeant rode his bike down to meet Constable Miles and together, the pair walked across the car park to the warehouse.
Approaching the low Office building, Constable Miles recognised and called to Derek, telling him to ‘stand still’, which the boy did. DS Fairfax then shouted to Christopher to come down. Christopher – fantasising as a gangster he had seen portrayed in the Saturday morning cinema that he loved – drew his pistol and fired down at DS Fairfax, hitting him in the shoulder. Constable Miles turned to Derek and told him to stand where he was. He then grabbed the drainpipe and, with surprising agility for a man of his years, climbed and put his head over the edge of the roof where he could see Christopher crouching by the lift shaft housing.
“Give me the gun son,” he commanded, using a tone that had served him well throughout his thirty-year career on the streets of Whitechapel.
‘Give it to him, Chris,’ called the defeated Derek to his friend. Christopher fired his pistol.
The likelihood of accuracy from an inexperienced child using a sawn-off, heavy pistol is vanishingly small and yet the shot hit constable Miles in the head, killing him instantly.
Lord Chief Justice Goddard in the subsequent trial, directed the Jury that if they determined either of the boys had unlawfully killed Constable Miles – and there was irrefutable evidence that Christopher had – then both boys should be found guilty of murder – ‘murder by common purpose’ – in an action of ‘Joint Enterprise’.
This direction to the Jury, aligned with the evidence of DS Fairfax who testified that Derek – whilst on the ground below – having been arrested by Constable Miles – upon hearing Constable Miles command that Christopher ‘give him the gun’, had called out…
“Give it to him, Chris’.
This ambiguous phrase – (whose meaning pivots on the emphasis or not of a comma), could Legally have been interpreted as either encouragement to hand over the weapon or alternately, to fire. The Jury’s understanding was to ignore the comma. This was sufficient to cost Derek Bentley his life.
Bentley, 20, with a mental age of 10 and a reading age of 4 – was unlikely to even recognise a comma – was clearly not capable of defending himself. He was found guilty, and hanged on the 28th January 1953.
Judge Goddard, on issuing the death sentence, explained to Derek that he, in calling out to Christopher – to give it to him’ – had ‘mentally aided’ Christopher in Constable Miles’ murder.
Ironically, it may be the only occasion in Derek Bentley’s unfortunate, brief and brutal life that he might ever have been considered to have ‘mentally aided’ anyone.
Christopher Craig – also found guilty of murder – was however, aged 16, and so judged to be a child and exempt the death sentence. He was given 10 years imprisonment and came out of prison in 1963, qualified as a plumber.
The Warehouse the two boys – desperate criminals – had attempted to break into belonged to Barlow and Parker, (a Confectionary Company). It contained only sweets.
Beaky's Blather 
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