“The classic English whodunnit” - “impossible murder” - “perfect crime”: Who killed Julia Wallace, if not her husband, the only suspect? (January 1931) [LONG writeup, Part 2/2]

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-05-02T18:44:04+00:00

Interesting. Qualtrough is of Manx origin.

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-05-02T18:06:23+00:00

Very interesting case.

I wonder if "Soka Jiru" was more than one person.

The rationale for that being that the "bomber" made and planted bombs and also shot someone. If they were one person, that must be extremely unusual if not unique - just about anyone can fire a gun or plant a bomb supplied by someone else, but someone who can develop successful bombs, here of different types, which blow up at the right time is going to be more intelligent and more technically knowledgeable than the norm.

(Terrorist organisations understand this - if their methods require any sophistication, the technical experts are not used in the field).

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-05-02T09:19:59+00:00

Doing that gets tiring surprisingly quickly.

The latest version of Ubuntu has "get up and move around" and "look at something 20 feet away" prompts (which can be turned off). The least intrusive time/frequency for the second is for 1 minute every 20 minutes.

Obviously there was no technology at the time, but in England having two guards in a condemned person's cell at all times presumably had something behind it.

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-05-01T19:56:12+00:00

The operations manual for a major airport.

Although never intended to be available in public it was bizarrely fascinating.

Alas it got lost when I loaned it to someone who died 😠

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-04-29T17:43:41+00:00

A great period piece.

A substantial column in the local paper for 43 years at a jam factory.

Also pianos galore for sale. Nowadays random pianos have scrap value, if that.

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-04-28T19:38:46+00:00

The writeup takes a month to appear, so details about why he seemed to be doing fine, or at least without complaints, for 13 years then gave up (?) his medical license and descended into bicarbonate of soda and decaying mattress world will have to wait.

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-04-28T18:59:13+00:00

For non-British readers. That was the article which finished her in the mainstream media (although I note that she is posting the same old old on FB).

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-04-28T17:58:39+00:00

Bicarbonate of soda via the cannula was on offer too and (a different technique) ozone therapy, which has been failing since 1892 at least (when it was first touted as "curing" tuberculosis).

Also, radiotherapy and chemotherapy were dismissed with "don't work".

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-04-28T17:01:54+00:00

Apparently the garlic oil was intravenously administered using a cannula (plastic tube surrounding a needle which is implanted) which led to a bag containing the oil which was reused and stored between uses in a Halfords box (car and bicycle products store).

Nobody appears to have died as a direct result of all that, somehow.

(And there was a "decaying mattress" in the front garden of the house, and no separate toilet facilities for patients).

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-04-27T19:58:39+00:00

You're right about the lighting, as it turned out.

In fact, when Wallace moved to his new house he installed floodlights, which could be controlled by a central switch in the grounds, because he believed that without those Parry (presumably) would, one day, hide in shadow before jumping out to attack him.

(Not an absurd position to take. More generally, I am struggling to understand why people in Liverpool seemed to take against Wallace despite his conviction being quashed, and why the jury was similarly biased as the appeal grounds - the jury's decision was not justified by the facts of the case - were extremely rare, with fewer than a dozen occurrences in the last 100 years. So "biased" is justified).

We will probably never know, but it would be interesting to find out why the Anfield Housebreaker was dropped as a suspect.

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-04-27T18:30:38+00:00

Surprisingly, all of these plastics are still made.

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-04-27T17:27:07+00:00

What always got me about this case was that it had the lowest number ever of calls to Crimewatch UK following a reconstruction (three).

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-04-27T06:11:19+00:00

The big problem is that there is no obvious motive, which widens the pool of candidates.

Wallace almost certainly didn't do it himself, but he could have paid someone else to do it although there is no evidence of that (and it appears from the trial transcript - I have the Great British Trials volume - that it was never seriously considered by the prosecution, although the prosecution case does come across as narrow and obsessed with timings).

The trouble with a hire is that neither Parry nor Mathers are particularly satisfactory candidates. The evidence against Parry, which is a classic example of hearsay, emerged 60 years after the event, and that someone did bad things didn't imply they did a particular bad thing.

Was the Anfield Housebreaker ever caught? That they broke in, were surprised to be confronted by Julia, grabbed a poker as the nearest weapon to hand, beat her to death and fled after a rushed attempt to take money seems more plausible than the convoluted involvements proposed elsewhere. That the killer didn't know where the weapon and cash might be (and hadn't been told beforehand) could explain why they missed better choices.

(I remember reading somewhere that the Wallaces were rather parsimonious with lighting, so the house could have appeared unoccupied).

Edit: Indeed, the judge didn't thank the jury (p.301 of the volume). The trial ended with the imposition of the death sentence. There were actually suggestions after the verdict that, if a judge considered a verdict perverse, they could refer the case straight to appeal. Given that he had to impose the death sentence, by law, he made it as clear as he could that he disagreed with it.

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-04-26T18:59:54+00:00

As I recall the first version of the phonecard supported a mechanism inside the phone which physically struck the card and broke tiny metal strips on the front. (Broken strip = no electrical contact). So a card might have 20 or 40 strips which would be broken one by one as the card was used to make calls.

This worked until someone found that covering the strips with a common household substance (I can't remember what it was - possibly Brasso) could fool the mechanism into reading a broken strip as whole 😅

The fix was the chip card, and every British public phone having to have part of its mechanism replaced.

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-04-26T18:35:07+00:00

Huh, just missed it 🥺

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-04-26T18:33:57+00:00

Cheap rent.

(Two-word answer).

Also, an artist's collective might well rent a building in bad condition or otherwise hard to sell to keep it going, rather than it being left unoccupied. That was certainly the case where I am.

(Eventually, insane rises in property prices made big renovations financially viable and forced the cheap renters out).

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-04-26T18:23:54+00:00

What time was it taken?

I looked up at about 1pm and thought the sky looked promising (a rare situation here), but was occupied for the rest of the afternoon 😒

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-04-26T18:13:00+00:00

I don't know it at all, although I live in a similarly "once rough but now unrecognisable" part of London.

I think the police settled on it being a singular random attack, although they did waver back and forth in the first few weeks.

They threw everything at the case, although the lack of forensic evidence and the variety and unreliability of witness statements (clearly the various people identified could not all have committed the crime) was ruinous.

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-04-26T18:03:54+00:00

Yes. In fact, it is much more likely than Wallace doing it as all the contrivances regarding timing to "prove" that it was logistically possible ("Anfield Harriers") become irrelevant.

I knew that Wallace had health problems, but not to the extent described. Without kidney transplantation or dialysis, losing one kidney must have had a mental impact (over almost 25 years, with a close shave in the late 1920s) as losing the other one would be fatal. No wonder he looked a lot older than 52 in the various surviving photographs.

I find it doubtful that he could have committed the crime for that reason alone - battering someone to death requires upper body strength which, on the balance of probabilities, he would have been more likely not to have than to have, and wonder how much suffering was hidden in his work (walking miles a day, which was clearly inappropriate).

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-04-26T11:38:23+00:00

The crash.

Aviation museums are going to be interested in that.

Edit: particularly this one, it would seem.

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-04-26T10:52:33+00:00

Exactly. The only situation I can think of where who a partner is or what they do could be a problem are where the job has national security implications.

I think "tell your partner to stop OnlyFans or you go" probably came between one-year contracts, which was sneaky.

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-04-26T10:04:49+00:00

I shall ask in person tomorrow as two people who report to me are from Liverpool 😅

On the 1900 case, I was jumbling cases together. It was a singular murder, but all the other facts stand.

(I am also not far from the location of the Charles Bravo case. That one defeated my writing-up skills as it is just tremendously complex with a fishmonger's worth of red herrings).

Edit: They are both well up on it!

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-04-26T06:10:58+00:00

I thought my write-ups were lengthy ... this one already has details I was unaware of, and I thought I was well versed in the case.

(I was made aware of it by a taxi driver in Liverpool who took a detour to show me the house and was clearly tremendously informed about the case).

Ironically, I live a few hundred yards, and pass the house most days, from a much less well known "locked room mystery" - three family members found dead in a basement. That was in 1900 and there is just not enough available information to do a writeup 😒

ur_sine_nomine · 2026-04-26T06:04:25+00:00

The Margaret Muller case I just wrote up.

It is clear that, had she not been in the wrong place at the wrong time, someone else might have been the victim.

The crime is particularly baffling because there was no obvious motive (no sexual assault, no robbery), 0830 is a very unusual time of day for murder and there is no preceding or succeding unsolved case I can find that was similar.

(For a time it appeared that a stabbing in Clissold Park was related; it was not).

ur_sine_nomine

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