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