It was not a high-profile murder. A poor man was killed in a poor part of London during the War, so it did not receive much press coverage. This detailed blog story takes us into the seedy underworld of London gangs and tells how a petty criminal fought to prove his innocence and became a television playwright.
The Crime
It was wartime in Kilburn and like the rest of London, people were suffering from the continued bombing in the Blitz. In 1941 on 12 April, 56-year-old George Ambridge was murdered at his home, 2 Hampton Road, Kilburn. This was a short street linking Kilburn Park and Cambridge Roads, which has been swept away by the large-scale redevelopment of South Kilburn. George worked as a rag and bone man and delivered coal. But he was also a ‘fence’ for stolen goods. At the time of the murder he was a widower, living alone with his dog in the small flat over a disused stable in Hampton Road. 
No.2 Hampton Road
The police made little progress, until nine months later in January 1942, two Kilburn men were arrested and charged with the murder. They were Jimmy O’Connor, 22, a haulage contractor of 39 Donaldson Road, and his friend Bill Redhead, 25, a lorry driver from nearby 10 Percy Road.
The Victim
George Ambridge was born on 17 November 1884, the son of Thomas and Martha Ambridge. His father was a coal dealer of 102 East Street, Marylebone.
George was married on Christmas day 1905 at St Mary’s, Paddington, to Emily Amelia Allen. At the time they were both living at 49 Kingsgate Road Kilburn, and he gave his occupation as a horse keeper. We get further information from his Army record. He was living at 199 Cambridge Road in South Kilburn when he joined up in WWI as a private in the Royal Army Veterinary Corps. George served in France but was injured when a horse kicked him in the head. Ambridge was a small man, only 5 feet 2 and a half inches, and 136 lbs, with a slight stammer. After the War he received an Army pension.
The Inquest
At the inquest Martha Dennison, Ambridge’s sister, of nearby Cambridge Road, said he had no bank account and carried his money around with him. She last saw him alive about 3 o’clock on Easter Saturday. When he did not come round to her for Sunday dinner she went to his flat and knocked on the door. There was no reply although she heard the dog barking. She also noticed that the front window above the stable was wide open, which was unusual. Martha tried again on Tuesday morning but got no reply. Becoming worried, she called a neighbour, Harry Whiley a shopkeeper of 6 Hampton Road, who used a ladder to look into the living room where he saw Ambridge lying on the bed with a pool of blood on the floor.
The Trial
The trial lasted four days, 23-26 March 1942. At the Old Bailey Mr McClure for the prosecution, said that on Saturday afternoon George Ambridge had changed £5 of silver coins into notes and from about 6.15 to about 10.00 he was in The Chippenham public house. Afterwards he bought a fish and chip supper and went home. McClure admitted that while the two accused men were in the vicinity of The Chippenham at the time Ambridge was there, much of the evidence was circumstantial. He also said that the case against Billy Redhead was less strong than that against Jimmy O’Connor.
The Chippenham, 2011 (Dick Weindling)
Detective Inspector Charles Ferrier of New Scotland Yard was called to the murder scene on Tuesday morning. He found George Ambridge had been killed by blows to his head with a blunt instrument. There were bloodstains on the wall as well as on the bed and floor. The back door of the stable had been forced open and the dog had been shut in another room. No money was found in the house. In the backyard there was an impression of a rod-like instrument in the soft earth, and Ferrier had a plaster cast made.
The Inspector had questioned Bill Redhead at Scotland Yard in July 1941 and took a statement from him. Redhead said he had known Jimmy O’Connor (nicknamed Ginger from his red hair) for some years. On Easter Saturday he and his wife were with Ginger and his wife in The Elephant and Castle pub in Elgin Avenue.
Redhead said he did not know George Ambridge and only heard about his death on the Tuesday afternoon. DI. Ferrier also interviewed Ginger who agreed that he and his wife were with the Redheads at the pub in Elgin Avenue on Easter Saturday. Afterwards, he and his wife went to a party in Denmark Road. He also said he did not know George Ambridge.
Chief Inspector Arthur Thorp
DCI Thorp was an ambitious policeman who was in charge of the murder enquiry. In September 1941, Ginger O’Connor was in Cardiff prison for a breaking and entering in Swindon when he sent a letter to Scotland Yard saying he had some information about the Ambridge murder. But when he was interviewed in Cardiff on 3 October by Chief Inspector Arthur Thorp, O’Connor retracted his comments saying, ‘Since writing the letter I have changed my mind. I have decided not to come the copper on anybody. What do I get out of it?’
Thorp told him to think it over. When they met again the next day O’Connor said:
‘Now that I have slept on it I think it would be well for me to open up. I have known for a long time that I have been suspected of a murder and this has caused me a lot of worry. I know that several of my so-called friends have made statements to the police trying to put me in it, so I’ll do a little talking. On Easter Monday, I was told that the old man had been done up and robbed. The man who told me is a layabout in Kilburn. I won’t tell you his name until I get transferred to a London prison’.
Hoping to get more information, Thorp moved Ginger to a London prison. When Thorp interviewed Redhead and O’Connor again in October and November and they accused each other of the murder. Thorp believed he had sufficient evidence to charge them and on 12 January 1942 when O’Connor came out of Wandsworth prison, Thorp was waiting outside to arrest him for the murder. When O’Connor was charged he said; ‘If you want to know who did it I will tell you. It was Redhead. That’s definite. If you can find the tyre lever you will find proof’. Bill Redhead was arrested three days later. 
Arthur Thorp
Thorp rose through the ranks to become a Superintendent and the head of the Fraud Squad. In his 1954 autobiography, ‘Calling Scotland Yard’, Thorp says he was in command of 15 murder investigations, but he does not mention the Kilburn case. This was at a time before the use of detailed forensics, and interviews with suspects were not tape recorded. ‘Verballing’ or making up statements was commonplace. As we shall see, to close the case, it seems Thorp fitted O’Connor up.
Georgie Sewell
Another witness, Georgie Sewell, described as a florist of Seven Sisters Road, said that last Easter Ginger O’Connor had visited him to ask about finding a garage for his lorries and in the presence of Mrs Sewell remarked;
‘Isn’t it nice what my pals are talking about. My pal and I were doing a gaff and while we were doing it in come the old fellow. My pal took up a stick to do him and I said ‘Nark it, none of that’. He answered, ‘F--- him. I shall do it and belted him, and then belted him again’. Then Sewell identified the gold watch and chain, which he said O’Connor had given to him at the time of the murder.
Georgie Sewell was a very tough man and in the 1920s and 30s he was known as the ‘Cobblestone Fighter’. He had previously fought as a boxer and had a fearsome reputation who only used his fists instead of a chiv, or razor. Georgie Sewell’s son was the well-known TV actor, George Sewell.
Darby Sabini
Darby Sabini was the leader of the ‘Italian Mob’ from Little Italy in Clerkenwell, and during the 1920s and 30s he was the most powerful gangster in London. He controlled about 300 men and made his money from the protection rackets of the bookies at the horse racing meetings around the country. Georgie Sewell respected Darby Sabini and became his Lieutenant and enforcer.
After rival gangs fought what became known as ‘The Battle of Lewes’ on the racetrack in 1936, Graham Greene wrote the novel ‘Brighton Rock’ the following year. This was made into a film directed by the Boulting Brothers in 1947. It starred Dickie Attenborough as the young thug Pinkie Brown who is slashed with a razor by a rival gang. In the film, the character of Colleoni the leader of the gangs, was based on Darby Sabini.
Brighton Rock (1947)
The Old Bailey trial was perfunctory in the extreme. O’Connor’s counsel only took on the case five minutes before it began. He advised O’Connor and Redhead not to take the stand and offered no witnesses for their defence. The forensic evidence given by Sir Bernard Spilsbury was also questionable by modern standards. He used the remains of the fish and chips in Ambridge’s stomach to argue his death occurred at around midnight. Much of the evidence came from convicted criminals who either had a grudge against O’Connor or had been heavily leaned on by the police. The crucial piece of evidence was the gold watch and chain which Sewell claimed Ginger had given him.
When the jury returned with their verdict, they acquitted Bill Redhead but Ginger O’Connor was found guilty. The judge then put on his black cap and sentenced him to death. O’Connor did not want to hear the judge sentencing him to death and as he turned to descend the stairs from the dock and lit a cigarette But the screws pulled him round to face the judge so everyone saw the cigarette and he was dubbed the ‘Cigarette Killer’ by the press.
The Court of Appeal dismissed his application, and he was due to be executed on 20 May which was his 23th birthday. Held in the condemned cell at Pentonville he watched the warders digging his grave.
A petition to the Home Secretary was organised by George Harrison, of 82 Kenliworth Court, Curzon Crescent, (this is near Church Road Willesden). Harrison was an ex-screwsman, or burglar and safe cracker. He was a friend of O’Connor’s father and had known Jimmy since he was a child. In May, Mr S. Hammersley, the MP for East Willesden, presented the Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison, with the petition signed by 2,500 people asking for a reprieve. On 16 May Harrison received a letter from the Home Office stating;
‘The Secretary of State after having reviewed all the circumstances of the case, has recommended His Majesty to respite the capital sentence with a view to commuting it to penal service for life’.
O’Connor was told about the reprieve on 18 May, just two days before he was due to executed. He served the next 10 years in various prisons. While he was in Dartmoor O’Connor took a correspondence course in creative writing from Ruskin College, Oxford. When he was released in 1952 on a life licence, he began a lifelong campaign to clear his name and get a full pardon.
Jimmy O’Connor
In 1976 O’Connor wrote his autobiography called ‘The Eleventh Commandment’, from the idea in the underworld you should never break the Eleventh Commandment, that is, never plead guilty. This gives us his side of the story..jpg)
Jimmy O’Connor (1976)
He was born on 20 May 1918. His mother was Annie Maria Ball who married James O’Connor, an Irish seaman, at Homer Row church, in Marylebone. His mother’s family came from Cork and were dustmen for Paddington Council. They lived in North Wharf Road, a slum facing the dust yard where they both worked.
His father’s parents the O’Connor’s, who were a little more affluent, also worked for the Council. His father was the black sheep of the family, always drunk and fighting – everyone was frightened of him. He was a thief and a petty criminal. Jimmy O’Connor had two sisters, and a brother who died of TB. The family lived in two rooms in a large house in Paddington, 21 Bristol Gardens.
Ginger began thieving at an early age. He had various short-term jobs and after being taken on as a page boy at the Swallow Club, near Regent’s Street, was sent to Claridges Hotel where he stole jewels from a woman guest who had left them on a table.
Ginger joined a little gang from Notting Hill Gate where he met Bill Redhead. He and Bill got their first arrests in 1933 for driving a stolen car. Ginger worked as a barrow boy selling fruit and flowers, but he was booked by the police for obstruction on many occasions, and unable to pay the £20 fine he spent time in Wormwood Scrubs. Here he met two older thieves who later used him as a cat burglar to climb through windows.
When war broke out in September 1939 Jimmy joined the NAAFI. He served in France as a corporal, where he made £20,000 through numerous deals in stolen cigarettes and petrol. As part of the evacuation, on 17 June 1940 he embarked on the ‘Lancastria’ from St Nazaire with 6,000 troops, when it was sunk by German bombers with the heavy loss of over 4,000 men. O’Connor survived on a life raft. He lost the £20,000 but still had some money and jewels in a body belt. He was discharged and went back to Kilburn where his wife and son were living with her parents. They were very surprised to see him because they had been told he was missing in action.
Returning to his life of crime Ginger worked with Jock ‘The Fitter’, a safe cracker, on jobs in London and the West Country. One job was in Bath where they robbed Littuar’s jeweller’s shop on 11 March 1941. Among the stolen items was a cheap gold watch and chain. The next day the men returned to London by train and went to see Izzy Farrer, a jeweller and fence at his club in Oxford Street which was managed by Georgie Sewell. Ginger gave Sewell the watch and chain which they had stolen from Bath. Then they disposed of the rest of the jewellery elsewhere and split up.
Jimmy decided to give up thieving and become a haulage contractor. He had enough money to buy a couple of lorries. But unfortunately for him, Jock had left Swindon without paying rent on a garage, where the owner found two stolen cars which Jock was supposed to get rid of. At the beginning of April, the police were looking for Jimmy for the theft of the cars and theft from a wholesale warehouse in Swindon.
On Tuesday 15 April Ginger was in Kilburn and went to Bill’s house in Percy Road, which was about a hundred yards from Hampton Road. When they passed Number 2 they saw the street was full of police who had found the body of George Ambridge in the house. On 18 April Jimmy read in the Kilburn Times the coroner’s report, ‘verdict murder, by persons unknown’.
In May 1941 Jimmy, with his wife and son had moved to Stockwell Road where he started up a business with three tipping lorries. O’Connor was arrested by chance in June after the police searched houses in Stockwell Road for a man who had escaped from Dartmoor. O’Connor was charged with a robbery in Swindon and remanded in Gloucester prison. He asked a London policeman he had ‘straightened’ (bribed), if he could get him charged in London with a shorter sentence. The policeman came to see him and said,
‘I can’t help you Ginger. The guv’nor’s outside. He wants to talk to you about the Kilburn murder. We got a statement from a man that involves you. People say that you may have hit the man too hard. A man says you flashed some jewellery to him’.
The guv’nor was DI Charlie Ferrier, who later told O’Connor’s wife that he did not think he had anything to do with the murder.
After he was found guilty at the Old Bailey O’Connor wrote to the Home Secretary and told him that Georgie Sewell’s was lying. He had not given the watch and chain to Sewell on the morning after the murder, but some time earlier and it had been stolen in Bath from the jeweller Mr Littuar and not from George Ambridge. Jock was still doing 18 months and O’Connor wondered why he did not come forward and tell the truth, but he did not want to get him nicked. Thorp questioned Jock who would neither confirm or deny that they had committed a robbery in Bath. Jock later crashed during a police chase and died from his injuries.
After he was released in March 1952 O’Connor went to see Thorp at Scotland Yard and accused him of framing him and demanded to see the watch and chain. Thorp told him it had been given back to the jeweller in Bath and sent for the property book to show O’Connor the signature of Mr Littuar as having received the watch and chain from Scotland Yard. He told O’Connor to forget about it.
Jack Fishman, of the Sunday Empire News, although sceptical about O’Connor’s claims of wrongful conviction, put him in touch with Mrs Van der Elst, a wealthy campaigner against the death sentence. A private detective retained by Mrs Van der Elst interviewed Georgie Sewell, who admitted O’Connor had given him the watch and chain before the murder. Solicitors in Bath acting for Mrs Van der Elst told O’Connor that the jeweller was prepared to inspect the watch and chain. O’Connor was amazed because Thorp had shown him the jeweller’s signature saying he had received them. O’Connor phoned Thorp and accused him of forging Littuar’s signature.
Nemone Lethbridge
Paddy Kennedy, the publican at the famous Star Tavern in Belgrave Square where gangsters and royalty like Princess Margaret met, also helped O’Connor, and through him he was introduced to the Mayfair set including the beautiful young barrister, Nemone Leithbridge. They fell in love and married in Dublin in 1959. It had to be kept secret because Nemone was still working as a barrister, and they did not want it to affect her career. 
Neome Lethbridge
She was 14 years his junior, the daughter of General John Lethbridge, who had commanded the wartime operations in Burma. As a barrister Nemone had defended many of the East End villains such as the Kray Twins, Freddie Foreman and ‘Mad Axeman’ Frank Mitchell. When news of their marriage slipped out in newspaper report in 1962 the stigma of O’Connor being out ‘at Her Majesty’s Pleasure’, caused Lethbridge to be expelled from her chambers and she was only able to return to the bar 20 years later. During this time she wrote several plays for TV.
O’Connor met the writer Ian Fleming who thought he had a lot of good ideas and advised him to write about them. Jimmy shows his first play to Bob ‘Fabian of the Yard’ who gave it to the BBC drama department who liked it. But as it required permission to film inside a jail, they had to remove O’Connor’s name from the script. They paid him 15 guineas and ‘Beyond the Gate’ was very successful. However, it took another ten years for O’Connor to become a successful playwright writing scripts for the gritty BBC TV Wednesday Play. He wrote 13 plays in all, including, ‘Tap on the Shoulder’ (1964), and ‘Three Clear Sundays’ (1965) - this is a reference to the time needed between being convicted and executed. The play had a huge viewing audience and helped to repeal hanging. Jimmy also won critical acclaim for ‘The Coming Out Party’ (1965) which was directed by Ken Loach and starred Georgie Sewell’s actor son, George Sewell. O’Connor’s last TV play was ‘Her Majesty’s Pleasure’ (1973).
A villain, who thought Jimmy had made fun of him in a play, offered money to Ronnie Kray to shoot O’Connor. But because of the Ronnie’s gratitude for Nemone’s help, he phoned O’Connor to tell him he had refused the job..jpg)
Neome and Jimmy O’Connor, 1969 (Evening Standard, Getty Images)
With the earnings from his plays and those written by Nemone, the couple bought a house in Mykonos Greece where they spent time with celebrities including Aristotle and Jackie Onassis. After several miscarriages O’Connor and Lethbridge had a son, Ragnar in 1970. But O’Connor was bitter about the denial of his pardon and drank most of his money away. Nemone left him and returned to London where she took out a restraining order against him. They reconciled long enough to have a second son Milo in 1973, but then divorced. Jimmy continued to drink heavily, resulting in the loss of his Greek home and he returned to London. In 1976 he wrote his best-selling autobiography, the ‘Eleventh Commandment’.
Shortly after 1994 O’Connor suffered a series of strokes and Nemone placed him in St Anne’s, a Catholic charity nursing home run by the Little Sisters of the Poor, near to her Stoke Newington home. Each weekend she took him to a pub. On 29 September 2001 O’Connor died after further strokes at the age of 83.
Whodunit?
If Jimmy O’Connor did not kill George Ambridge, then who did?
In April 1952 O’Connor visited the house in Hampton Road where Ambridge was murdered. While he was standing outside, a woman he knew came up and said she thought a girl named Florence Sayers had known something about the murder. She said that when Flo Sayers was broke she used to sleep with Ambridge. Her husband had been in prison for living off immoral earnings and she lived with various criminals. Flo Sayers was a friend of O’Connor’s wife and on the night of the murder Jimmy remembered that he had said goodnight to her as she was walking home with a man she lived with in Kilburn. While O’Connor was in Dartmoor Flo had died and he read in the Kilburn Times that she had been buried in a pauper’s grave.
In 1952 Duncan Webb, the famous crime reporter on ‘The People’ took up his case. Webb and O’Connor went to see Mr Littuar, the Bath jeweller who said that he had never been to Scotland Yard or signed the property book, and he did not know Superintendent Thorp. So, the signature was a forgery.
After reading a newspaper article about O’Connor, George Ambridge’s brother wrote to the editor saying that his brother had never owned a gold watch and chain. He only had a silver watch which was found on his body when he was murdered.
Jack Fishman published a story in the ‘Empire News’ at the beginning of May. As a result of the story Thorp had left a message asking O’Connor to phone him back. Because he did not trust Thorp, O’Connor asked Jack to listen in on the extension. Later Fishman made a sworn statement saying:
O’Connor said, ‘You know I’m innocent and I’m going to keep on till I prove I didn’t do it’. Thorp’s reply was, ‘I’m warning you, Ginger. Drop it, or I’ll put it on you again like I did last time, and next time it will be for the rest of your life’. Thorp then hung up.
O’Connor was frightened. He told the solicitors acting for Mrs Van der Elst that he was being threatened by Thorp and he was dropping the case. He then worked as a crime reporter for Jack Fishman on the Empire News.
In April 1952 O’Connor went to live with a girl in Paddington. He was surprised to find Freddie Andrews, a local villain living opposite him. The first time O’Connor saw him he said Hello, but Andrews ignored him. Jimmy thought he did not recognise him after 10 years in jail. Some time later he saw Andrews’s furniture being moved from the house in Paddington. The girl that O’Connor was living with said that Andrews had lived there for nine years, and before that he was with Flo Sayers, near Ambridge’s house in Kilburn at the time of the murder. O’Connor realised that Andrews was the man with Flo Sayers who he and his wife had passed on the night of George Ambridge’s murder.
In October 1965 O’Connor went to party in Notting Hill Gate where he met a man called Ernest Thomas who said he knew he was innocent. He had been a close friend of Freddie Andrews who gave him a few quid the morning after George Ambridge’s death and confessed to the murder. In November 1965 Thomas made a statement to David Napley, O’Connor’s solicitor, saying that Andrews had confessed to him saying he had to tell somebody because it was on his conscience. Thomas said once O’Connor had got his reprieve he decided to forget it.
Georgie Sewell gave a handwritten statement to David Napley in which he said that O’Connor had given him the watch and chain before the murder. He said that DCI Thorp had threatened to charge Sewell with the murder unless he said the watch and chain had been given to him by O’Connor on the day after the murder.
On 1 January 1969 David Napley submitted a petition to the Home Secretary who ordered an enquiry. That January Nicholas Tomalin wrote an article about the case in the ‘Sunday Times’. He had interviewed Ernest Thomas who repeated on tape what he had already told O’Connor. Tomalin also interviewed Freddie Andrews who completely denied the charge. Later Andrews and his brother went to see Thomas and persuaded him to withdraw his statement, but as O’Connor pointed out, it still exists in the petition to the Home Office and on Tomalin’s tape recording.
Finally in November 1970 the Home Office said that after a full investigation, certain features of the prosecution and the trial might be considered unsatisfactory. However, they could not reopen the case unless there was significant evidence which established beyond reasonable doubt the innocence of the convicted person.
Over 20 years later, in 1994 O’Connor was given access to 12 out of 80 of the files from his 1942 trial. At the time Frank Newsom, The Permanent Secretary of the Home Office, had written;
‘The police have in fact received information which gives them grounds for believing that it was (name blanked out) who actually struck the blow which killed the deceased, but that information cannot be used’. This was the reason why the Home Secretary had issued O’Connor’s reprieve from hanging to life imprisonment.
Freddie Andrews
Freddie Andrews was six years older than O’Connor and had a fearsome reputation on the streets. He was the youngest of three brothers, born and brought up in the Camden Town and Kentish Town area. In 1939 when Andrews was arrested on charges of assaulting two women, he said he was a lorry driver of Regina Street, Camden Town. In court he was described by the police as the leader of a gang of violent men who had caused a reign of terror in Camden Town. He was sentenced to six months imprisonment with hard labour. In court a detective produced an anonymous letter which threatened to beat him up, saying he would be sorry for having interfered with the Camden Town boys.
During the War, soon after the Ambridge murder, Andrews was sentenced to five years imprisonment for slicing up a soldier who had unwisely asked him why he was not in uniform.
Billy Hill
The famous gang leader Billy Hill and some of his men called on Freddie Andrews in Kentish Town just after midnight on 27 December 1953. Hill believed that Andrews had sided with Jack Spot, his biggest rival. When Andrews opened the door Hill lunged forward and slashed his face with a razor. In February 1954 Hill appeared at the Old Bailey. Andrews who had known Hill for twenty years, gave evidence and said, ‘I thought I saw the prisoner Hill, but I realise now that it was not so’. Quite simply, he had been bought off by Hill who promised to look after him in the future. He immediately joined Billy Hill’s gang in Tangier when Hill was hired to bring the deposed Sultan Mohammed V back from exile in Madagascar for a payment of £100,000. This turned into a complete fiasco when Andrews got so drunk he started a fight and set the boat on fire.
During the 1950s and 1960s Billy Hill became the most powerful gang leader in London and mentored the Kray twins, Ronnie and Reggie, eventually handing over his criminal empire when he retired..jpg)
Bill Hill, centre, with Kray Twins
The final link in the chain
After reading of his efforts to clear his name, a man called John Andrews contacted O’Connor. His father was Freddie Andrews. John said that every now and then when reading in the newspapers or seeing one of O’Connor’s plays on TV, Freddie would shake his head and say to his son, ‘I should have been hung, you know’. John eventually worked out his father was talking about the Ambridge murder. His mother filled in the gaps. Freddie and two mates had gone to Ambridge’s house to bully money out of him. Unexpectedly, he put up a tremendous struggle and Freddie battered him to death.
Andrews’s name fits exactly with the number of characters blanked out in the Home Office document written by Frank Newsom. A memo in the files shows that Thorp knew Andrews had been the killer, but he could not prove it and he was under pressure to get a conviction. O’Connor had a poor alibi and had made false statements. John Andrews told Nemone that his father would ‘make his peace’ and confess if he was granted immunity from prosecution. She was making enquirers about this when Freddie Andrews died on 25 June 1995, ending O’Connor’s best chance for a successful appeal. But it was not clear if Andrews would have confessed. Remember the Eleventh Commandant is, ‘Thou shalt not plead guilty’.
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