Skip to main content

Robinson hanged for limbless body in first Brighton Trunk Murder

A photograph of Brighton Railway Station
Image: Shutterstock.com | Above: A photograph of Brighton Railway Station

Date

It was the pathologist from the Dr Crippen case, Sir Bernard Spilsbury, who established that the dismembered torso of a woman found in the trunk at a railway station had been killed two to three weeks previously.

And it was Sir Spilsbury who argued at the trial, that the victim, Minnie Bonati, was in fine health, therefore, contradicting the defence of John Robinson that she’d died of a heart attack.

So, on this date, at Pentonville Prison, John Robinson’s cause of death was hanging...