Why a century-old Glasgow murder asks hard questions about evidence and bias

What does an unsolved crime from the 1920s reveal about Scottish society at the time? Gordon Cairns investigates.

Less than a 15-minute walk from Glasgow’s Barrowland Ballroom – synonymous with the murder of three women in the 1960s – is Sword Street, where another unsolved murder took place 40 years earlier. In October 1921 the callous murder of a 34-year-old mother-of-two in her own home was front-page news across Scotland, but unlike the ‘Bible John’ killings, the death of Sarah Brookstein has long slipped from the public consciousness, although the subsequent trial challenges what we think we know about justice and the Scottish mindset in the 1920s.

The police quickly identified two suspects and built a seemingly strong case, yet four months later, former first world war officer Robert Hendry and his co-accused Jessie McMillan walked free from court. The victim was a Jewish sex worker, but their acquittal was not for the reasons one might assume.

Dr Louise Heren has carried out extensive research into criminality in this period in her book, Sex and Violence in 1920s Scotland: Incest, Rape, Lewd and Libidinous Practices. She believes that we can be guilty of making 21st-century assumptions on what our predecessors were thinking: “I was looking at cases where I started out feeling astounded at how modern they felt, but then, as I saw more and more of them, I thought, this society is not what we have been led to believe.”

The victim

At the time of her death, Brookstein was separated from her husband, who was living in London, and her children who would visit on Sundays. Neighbours noted how fashionably she dressed despite her lack of regular employment. She was last seen alive travelling on the green tram car with a young man to her room-and-kitchen in Dennistoun; her half-naked body was discovered three days later. She had been struck repeatedly on the back of the head, and her assailant had then forced the legs of her unconscious body apart and pushed a broken and rusty set of pliers inside her, before washing his hands and leaving.

In the postmortem, the pre-eminent Professor of Forensic Medicine John Glaister noted no damage had been done internally and this is probably why no sexual element was included on the indictment, although the sexual assault would play a large part in determining the character of the killer.

Dr Heren, who has also recently published Scottish History in 15 Violent Crimes, notes: “Partially dressed is an absolute flag for a sexual assault but Glaister wouldn’t have correlated pliers within the person with rape because [at that time] you couldn’t rape with anything other than a male member.”

The accused

Hendry was spotted loitering at the back of the entrance to Brookstein’s flat by Charles McDonald. He was mopping blood from his head with a handkerchief and seemed “anxious to get away” but asked for a light for his cigarette before departing.

McDonald picked out Hendry in two separate police line-ups soon after, although Hendry claimed one comprised of two policemen and three small boys. With Hendry identified by three independent witnesses, it was only for the police to find a motive.

Although he worked as a pantomime man, Hendry’s main source of income was as a prostitute’s bully or pimp. It was presumed he pimped for McMillan, who had been heard on a few occasions threatening Brookstein and had approached several men to assault her. When a bloodstained shirt collar was discovered hidden behind the bath in Hendry’s flat, it would seem the procurator fiscal had a credible case. The trial commenced on 2 February 1922.

Public interest

The public’s appetite for true crime a century ago is as keen as it is today and crowds queued for courtroom seats for this and another murder trial earlier the same week. The case dominated the newspapers with detailed accounts of court proceedings. An added element was the sexual context, allowing the press to moralise about the ‘woman of the street’.

At the time, rape trials excluded the press and although the exact nature of the sexual assault wasn’t mentioned they recorded the exchanges between defence lawyer Craigie Aitchison and Glaister, with the former arguing such a brutal act could not have been committed by a Scotsman such as Hendry:

“It was the act of some man or woman with no sense of decency?”

“Do you not find that crimes of ferocity of this kind are usually committed by foreigners?”

“Is it not possible that an insult of this kind was done by a co-religionist.”

All attempts to deflect from the accused were rejected by Glaister.

Hendry and McMillan’s defence was one of alibi, with Hendry’s garage owner claiming he saw him that day. Despite the seemingly compelling evidence, the jury decided after only 38 minutes the case against Hendry was not proven and McMillan was not guilty, no evidence put her at the crime scene.

The jury

To the modern mind, Brookstein’s Jewishness, which was frequently mentioned in the newspaper reports, would be the reason an antisemitic jury couldn’t find the accused guilty, yet Dr Heren tells me research suggests the Jewish community were welcome in Glasgow at that time. The press used her religion as a way of identifying her rather than as a pejorative, concluding: “There is not much to the idea that her Jewish heritage made her not worthy in the eyes of the jury.”

In fact, in a macabre coincidence, at the start of that week the same 12 jurors sat to decide on another murder where a married couple murdered a 14-year-old Jewish girl: both were sentenced to hang.

However, the mixed-sex jury would have definitely judged Brookstein’s circumstances. Dr Heren explains that as she was still married, there could be a feeling she was cuckolding her husband as well as abandoning her family: “The fact that she is out and about with fancy men is not going to look good, but we are still dealing with a murder.”

She adds there could be a number of reasons why Hendry’s case was found not proven – one being a ‘verdict of avoidance’ from a jury who had already sent two people to their death that week. A verdict of culpable homicide, which would have saved him from the gallows, could not be given as Hendry had an alibi – he couldn’t have unintentionally killed her if he wasn’t there: “It could be the jury was squeamish about being responsible for a man’s death so they couldn’t go for a verdict of guilty of murder.”

Character and evidence

The jury would also consider Hendry’s character; his military service would be balanced against his use of sexual exploitation: “The attitude in Glasgow in this period was they were not supportive of men who lived off women.”

Dr Heren adds: “It could genuinely be that the prosecution case was not sufficiently proven for them to convict.

“The overall trend to me looked like people were looking at the evidence and not allowing any biases about character or sexual history to infect their decision-making.”

In 1926, Hendry’s face turned up in a police mugshots book. Smartly dressed, he smiles confidently into the lens. The pen portrait tells another story. Escaping the gallows doesn’t seem to have caused him to change path – he was still listed as a ‘prostitutes bully’ of ‘no fixed abode’. ‘Sword Street’ is written faintly in the margin: he was fated never to escape the unresolved crime that scandalised 1920s Glasgow.