Trinidadian Desmond Allum came to London to study law in 1958. He worked in hotel kitchens and the Post Office and studied law at night. He qualified and was called to the Bar in the summer of 1962 and then got a job with the Inland Revenue. In 1964 and 1965 he lived at 116 Greencroft Gardens in West Hampstead.
His friend George Hislop was born in Tobago. He played cricket for Trinidad and represented the West Indies at the Empire Games held in Cardiff in 1958. The following year he came to London to train as a teacher. In September 1962 he started work as a PE teacher at the Hillcroft Secondary School in Tooting Bec.
The Incident
On the evening of 31 January 1963 Allum and Hislop had visited friends at 351b Finchley Road (now redeveloped as part of the JW3 Centre). They left and were walking down Finchley Road towards the underground station on their way to Balham. At 9.25pm they were stopped and questioned by two plain clothes detectives who asked them to turn out their pockets in the phone boxes outside the station. One detective said to the other one, ‘Do you reckon these two’? His colleague nodded. Allum and Hislop were arrested and taken to Hampstead Police Station where they were charged with attempting to steal a car outside Frognal Court, Finchley Road. They were held until 2.20 am when their solicitor arrived. Later, Allum and Hislop appeared at the London Sessions on 28 March and denied any attempt to steal cars. The jury acquitted them after retiring for just eight minutes.
The Prime Minister of Trinidad, Eric Williams, had instructed Learie Constantine who was the High Commissioner to Britain to assist the two men. Our previous blog story about Sir Learie Constantine is here:
http://kilburnwesthampstead.blogspot.com/2022/10/learie-constantines-experience-of.html
Allum and Hislop were advised they had a good case against the police for malicious prosecution and their case was heard three years later in February 1966. Two weeks before the trial the Metropolitan Police offered an out of court settlement of £250. As a barrister, Allum had looked at previous cases and the highest award had been £750, so he asked for £500, but the Met refused. Both Hislop and Allum were served notices that if found guilty they would be deported.
The case went to trial at the High Court on 17 February before Mr Justice Marshall and a jury. In court they were described as Desmond Eric Quintin Allum (31) a barrister of Sumatra Road West Hampstead, and George Darlton Hislop (30) a schoolteacher of Sumatra Road.
Detectives Weller (left) and Jackson (right)
DC Michael Weller (28) and DC William Jackson (32) of S-Division attached to Hampstead Police, were part of a Scotland Yard team investigating stolen vehicles.
Weller said it was a cold and slushy night when he and DC Jackson began their patrol at 7pm. At 9.15 they were standing in a doorway outside the opticians at No.4 Frognal Parade (next door to today’s Warwick House) when they saw Allum and Hislop crossing Finchley Road. Weller said Hislop tried the door handles of several parked cars which were locked. Then Weller saw Allum open the door and get into a Standard Vanguard car outside the shop in the entrance to Frognal Court, a cul de sac running behind the shops on Finchley Road, and next to the present Holiday Inn Express. When they approached the car the detectives claimed Allum was in the driving seat with a bunch of ignition keys. After searching them outside Finchley Road Tube station they were arrested and taken to Hampstead. Allum and Hislop thought it was a mistake which would be cleared up at the police station.
In the police station Allum and Hislop were asked by the desk sergeant David Rees to put their belongings on a table. DC Weller came back into the room and put a bunch of car keys on the table with Allum’s possessions. He told the sergeant that these were the keys Allum was using to try to start the car. Allum said he had never seen the keys before and knew nothing about them.
On 4 February Allum and Hislop with their solicitor Mr Rose, and two members of the Trinidadian High Commission, returned to Hampstead Police station as requested. They were asked to sign for their possessions including the car keys, which they declined to take.
At the trial in 1966, the prosecution was told the keys were now not available. In his evidence the property sergeant at Chalk Farm police station said the bunch of nine ignition keys had been sent to him from Hampstead on 22 June 1963. They were kept for the regulation 12 months, and then taken by ship in August 1964 and disposed of in the North Sea. He said this was normal procedure.
Over the weekend Mr Justice Marshall read the officers’ notebooks and the desk sergeant’s occurrence book. When the case resumed, he questioned Sergeant Rees who replied that the ignition keys were placed on the table after Allum and Hislop put their possessions down. The judge also asked Rees about some inconsistences in the occurrence book, including timings and errors about the number plate of the Vanguard car.
After hearing all the evidence, the jury raised some questions. The judge put these to DC Weller who said he did not carry a bunch of ignition keys to remove illegally parked cars. He also admitted that he had not fingerprinted the cars that Allum and Hislop were accused of trying to steal. In his summing up Justice Marshall said it was odd that neither men could drive yet had planned to steal cars. He instructed the jury to consider if the keys had been planted.
The jury retired at 12.45 and returned at 3.00 in the afternoon. They found in favour of Allum and Hislop and awarded very high damages which totalled over £8,000. It was clear that neither the judge nor jury believed the detectives’ completely fabricated story. Weller was obviously the leader of the pair and had made 100 previous arrests compared with 25 by Jackson. But this time Weller picked the wrong West Indians to frame: Desmond was a barrister, and was able to prevent George, who held a black belt in judo, from reacting badly when they were arrested.
Allum and Hislop each received over £4,000 for false imprisonment and malicious prosecution, (this is worth about £80K today).
Ten days later Desmond Allum married Irish-born Catherine Powell and he returned to Trinidad, where Cathy joined him at the end of 1966. They had three children and had remained married when Desmond gave an interview 43 years later. He became an important barrister in Trinidad and died there aged 75 in 2010. Here is his YouTube interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj3Fox0Zd0E
George Hislop married Eugenia Hunte in Hampstead in 1967. Their son Neil Shaka Hislop gained an American degree in mechanical engineering. He became a well-known goalkeeper between 1995 and 2006 for Newcastle, West Ham, and Portsmouth. Born in Hackney, he played for the England Under 21’s, and then decided to play internationally for Trinidad and Tobago.
The story shows how some of the police in the 1960s (and later) ‘fitted up’ people, believing they could get away with it.
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