P3To The Gallows.P1 P1John Reginald Christie was due to be hanged. an inquiry was quickly set up to see if Timothy Evans had been the Victin of a miscarriage of Justice.P1 P1Christie's execution was only three weeks away. With his trial over, there were clamours for a more wide-ranging in- quiry. Could two stranglers have operated independently, unknown to each other, in such a tiny house. Christie was sentenced on 25 June 1953. Next day, the Labour opposition in Parliament pressed a reluctant government to review the entire Rillington Place affair. On 6 July, the Home Secretary, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, appointed the Recorder of Portsmouth, John Henderson, to study `whether there is any ground for thinking there may have been a miscarriage of Justice'.P1 P1Scott Henderson had to move quickly. His report had to be compiled before Christie went to the Gallows. The task was immense. Before his appointment, he had been asked to study all the relevant documents in the Evans case. To these were now added the Christie documents. Scott Henderson had also to hold discussions with counsel for both Evans and Christie, and with numerous other officals in the case. Scott Henderson also held a 75-minute meeting with Christie himself. Christie's permission for this had been obtained by a senior police officer assisting the inquiry. The officer had warned Christie that he would be questioned about Geral- dine Evans,but gratuitously added that there was no evidence that he had killed her.P1 P1The report, presented on 3 July, bewildered people on both sides of the debate. It concluded that the case against Evans for murdering his daughter had been overwhelming.More- over, the report said. Evans hadalso murdered his wife. In other words, Christie had told the truth at Evan's trial, but lied at his own, and that there were two stranglers at 10 Rillington Place. Chtistie in his death cell, enjoyed a status that had during his life never before been conferred on him. But two days before his execution an old acquaintance found him a broken man. `I don't care what happens to me now. I have nothing to live for.' Said Chris- ie. His solicitor announced there would be no formal appeal against the conviction or the sentence.P1 P1Christie wrote to another friend that he was in reasonable sorts and enjoying the food. `I could really compliment our cook,' he wrote. `It is really well cooked and plentiful. I am even putting on weight.' He was possibly suffering from the condemed cell syndrome of `Weight grief'. Many prisoners relieved of the ordeal of the trial actually put on weight while awaaiting execution. Christie sold his story to the Sunday Pictorial. But his lurid descriptions of the grimes did nothing to lift the veil of their mystery. Few people, apart from abolitionists, mourned that Christie would soon be executed, but the events of 1949, and the murders of Beryl and Geraldine Evans, needed further explanation.P1 P1Dr Hobson, the psychiatrist who testified for the defence at Christie's trial, was refused permission to see Christie again. Hobson was outraged by this, believing that Christie's decaying memory could still be revived, and the exact fate of Geraldine Evans discovered if handled delic- ately. The Evans family and their supporters were not satisfied. There had been medical evidence of an attempt to penetrate Beryl Evans sexually after her death. This had not been produced at Evans' trial, but if true then it becomes inconceivable that Evans killed his wife. The Lawyers considered it too awful to present evidenc of necrophilia to the a jury. In 1949. science was not yet able to carry out conclusive tests on semen.P1 P1There was also evidence from the workmen who renovated Christie's flat. Evans ' supporters claimed this could have shown that Evans ' dates for the killings were wrong, and that the bodies could not have been in the washroom when he said they were. But the workmen were never called to give evidence. Supicion also fll on Christie's claim, made at Evans' trial, that his bad back prevented him from lifting weights. He had not complained about this until after Beryl Evans death. Was it not possoble that the pain was caused by lifting her body? There was a crowd of about 200 people outside Pentonville Prison at 9 a.m. on the morning of 15 July 1953. People had come from Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and even from as far as Australia and the United States.P1 P1One lorry driver announced he had managed to get himself an overnight run and reached the prison `just in time'. Despite this,the authorities had expected a larger and more trouble- some crowd. There were none of the incidents seen at Wands- worth Prison ealier in the year when a teenager of limited mental powers, Derek Bentley, was hanged for killing a police officer. A dozen constables stood with arms linked, as reinforcements stood by, outside the gates. Inside, the Public Executioner, Albert Pierrepoint, stood ready with Christie. At 9.10, a warder appeared at the gates with a black-edged notice which he pinned up on the board. It was announced that John Reginald Halliday Christie had been ex- ecuted.P1 P3Injustice.P3 P1The most sensational recent miscarriage of justice concerned the `Guildford Four'. They were sentenced to life imprison- ment in October 1975 for two public house bombings in Oct 1974 in which five people were killed. The four were convic- ted on confessions they were said to have mede freely to de- tectives investigating attacks on the Horse and Groom and Seven Stars pubs in Guildford. After a long campaign for their release, led by the Labour MP Chris Mullin, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Lane, quashed their convictions in October 1989. Łord Lane said that new evidence showed the police `must have lied' at the trial of the four. Three Surrey police officer were suspended from duty pending a criminal investigation.P1 P3Madame Tussaud's.P3 P1Crowds flocked to Madame Tussaud's in the summer of 1953 to see the waxwork of Christie. The exhibit showed Christie papering the alcove in which Hectorina MacLennan was found. Christie's personal particulars sent to the waxwork,read:P1 P3Colour of hair: A shade darker than Mr Bernard Tussaud's. Height: 5ft 7 1/2ins. Size in hats: 6. Waist: 33 ins. Chest: 36 ins. Colour of eyebrows: Gingery. Size in shoes: 7 1/2. Colour of eyes: Pale blue-grey. Name and address of tailors: Reg Fair, Portobello Road, W11. Suit: Blue-grey rough material with large herring-bone pattern. Shirt: Bonart. Very pale lilac grey with faint red-stripes. Shoes: Very round toe-cap; old and in bad condition. Tie: Very cheap imitation club stripe.P1 P1BP3y P1sP3TP1UP3NP1TP3MP1AP3NP1/P3nP1FP3AP1.