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description= Cricket From the Dim and Distant Past;
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ricket circles was the west indies test bowler leslie hylton hanged for the crime in 1955 but other cricketers who have murdered include edmund kesteven a professional below first class level who was hanged for murder in 1895 herbert charles tebbutt a public school and minor county cricketer who shot his family dead and then killed himself in 1932 and arie molenaar a dutch cricketer who would have played in the lancashire league but for his murder conviction and ten year jail sentence in 1949 there have also been cases of manslaughter the test cricketer vallance jupp served a prison sentence for killing someone in a car accident in 1935 and the derbyshire bowler william bestwick was involved in a fight which cost another man his life in 1907 but an inquest jury returned a verdict of justifiable homicide however the most notorious cricketing murderer was involved in a story that became well known to the wider public and retains an element of fame even today in 1952 miles giffard beat both his parents to death with a lead pipe and threw their bodies from a cliff at the end of their garden he was found guilty of murder and hanged in 1953 unlike the other cases the reasons are fairly clear and well understood but the particular circumstances of the crime and its callous brutality mean that it remains fascinating enough to be dramatised in 1970 and to feature in occasional press stories even today and giffard s fate was intertwined with a contentious issue over how mental illness should be recognised in the legal system a similar question had affected kesteven many years earlier but to class giffard as a cricketer requires something of a stretch he played cricket at rugby school without reaching the first team his games for blundell s school briefly featured in wisden and he made five appearances for cornwall in the minor counties championship in 1948 but to the press of 1952 and 1953 this meagre record was enough to class him as an ex public schoolboy and former county cricketer it was still a time in britain when a public school education hinting as it did at wealth and class supposedly marked someone out as morally superior so too cricket still viewed a noble sport that indicated superior qualities that was part of the fascination because there is no doubt that of all the cricketing murderers giffard attracted the most attention in britain in his case cricket was part of the background signal even if it was never explicitly stated how could a public school cricketer with such a privileged background fall so far as such his story was thoroughly explored in an attempt to find an explanation particularly around the time of his trial and subsequent execution in 1953 newspapers were full of tales about his early life and interviews with people who knew him he became a subject of retrospective study by psychiatrists the most thorough account appeared in a 1957 book called the mind of the murderer by the psychiatrist walter lindesay neustatter how well such analysis would stand up almost sixty years later is a question beyond the scope of a cricket website and does not especially intrude upon the story yet the truth is that giffard does not warrant much coverage as a cricketer and despite the press descriptions no one would seriously have regarded him as such before his arrest and trial his story is told in great detail elsewhere such as a recent documentary or newspaper article and an outline will suffice here miles william giffard was born in hampstead in late 1925 the son of charles giffard and his wife elizabeth goodwin his father was from london and his mother from ireland but by the early 1920s her family had moved to rockbeare in devon where she married charles giffard in 1923 the wedding attracted distinguished guests and some detailed coverage in the local press the newly married couple initially lived in london where miles and his younger brother robin were born but some time after robin s birth in 1930 the family moved near st austell in cornwall to a village by the sea called porthpean where they had a house on the clifftops giffard s parents image daily herald 12 december 1952 charles giffard was a solicitor by all accounts quite a self important man conscious of his position and throughout his life had a difficult relationship with his older son a great deal is known about miles giffard s childhood because at his 1953 trial his defence team tried in vain to prove that he was legally insane probably with a form of schizophrenia therefore the court heard numerous stories of his strange behaviour from terror at unseen dangers and a particular fear of being struck as a punishment to chewing through sheets as well as more general accounts of laziness untidiness and lack of interest in anything right up until the time he left school in 1943 some of this behaviour was attributed to an episode when as a very young child he was locked in a dark cupboard by a nanny who used to beat him but evidence of his oddness and of a lack of sympathy or understanding from his father was not lacking after attending preparatory school where he displayed aptitude for cricket but little else giffard was sent very much against his wishes to rugby school where he had a miserable time for four terms again evidence was abundant at the trial one of his housemasters testified that he was abnormal and one of the worst cases he had seen his academic progress was poor and the school suggested he would be better served elsewhere eventually in 1940 his father relented giffard was treated by several psychiatrists who made a tentative diagnosis of a rare form of schizophrenia and he transferred to blundell s school much closer to home cricket still provided an outlet and in his final term in 1942 he reached the school first eleven he was listed in the averages in the schools section of wisden that year 154 runs at an average of 14 00 after leaving school giffard had one of the few settled spells of his life when he was conscripted into the royal navy during the second world war but upon leaving his father insisted that he should follow in his footsteps and study law it went very badly giffard moved to london but showed no inclination to study attending few lectures and beginning to drink very heavily and lead a hedonistic lifestyle he was also plagued by guilt at his own actions and a fear of his father with a career in law ruled out he lived on an allowance and briefly worked as a land agent before being sacked an inherited 750 sustained him for a few months but he wasted most of it on alcohol and hired cars he was reduced to selling ice cream for a time before resorting to fleeting trips home to cornwall during which he broke into the house and stole his mother s jewellery which he sold back in london giffard as a cricketer in an undated photograph image the murder club guide to south west england and wales 1989 by brian lane such a lifestyle was clearly unsustainable and by 1948 had was forced to return to live with his parents during this period he resumed his cricket career and represented cornwall in the minor counties championship he played five matches in the 1948 season scoring 89 runs at 12 71 with a highest score of 27 it was not an imposing record but it was enough for newspapers to later denote him as a county cricketer when reporting the murders but not long after that he returned to london and to his heavy drinking lifestyle financed by bouncing cheques and begged loans while in london he began a relationship with a 19 year old called gabrielle vallance who was just over seven years his junior it was intense and giffard was deeply in love he was wracked by jealousy particularly when his lack of money and general shabbiness commented on by vallance forced him once again to return to cornwall he remained in communication with her telling her how his father had cut his allowance and restricted him to one pint and twenty cigarettes per day he considered suicide but vallance encouraged him to return to london and find a job on 3 november 1952 he wrote to her i have had a terrible row with the old man made worse by the fact that as usual he is right anyway the upshot is that he has forbidden me to return to london he says he will cut me off without the proverbial penny so there does not seem to be any alternative short of doing him in i see no future in the world at all at the end of that week on friday 7 november having told vallance over the phone that his father was lending him his car for the weekend giffard beat both his parents to death with a lead pipe when they returned home around 7 30pm his father was attacked when inspecting the engine of his car his mother was attacked in the house before giffard could leave for london his father began to regain consciousness so he struck him repeatedly he also found his mother coming around so after striking her again he placed her in a wheelbarrow and wheeled her out of the garden and along a path to the cliff edge over which he tipped her a post mortem suggested that she had been alive until this point his father was already dead and giffard also took him in the wheelbarrow although he had to roll the body for the final part of the journey porthpean beach in 2003 giffard then drove to london in his father s car even taking hitch hikers for part of the journey and after sleeping in his car and changing some of his bloodstained clothes he spent the saturday with vallance paying for their drinks with the money he received from selling more of his mother s jewellery late in the evening when both were very drunk she turned down his marriage proposal and he told her that he had murdered his parents they returned to his house by taxi where the police were waiting the bodies of giffard s parents had been found and a statement had been released by police that they were looking for giffard details of the distinctive licence plate of his father s car erl 1 had been sent around the country it had been spotted near vallance s house and so giffard was arrested he confessed almost immediately even though his letters to vallance from prison suggested he did not quite grasp the enormity of the situation after a hearing before magistrates on 4 december 1952 giffard s case was heard at cornwall assizes on 3 february 1953 it lasted four days he was only charged with the murder of his father there was no dispute from the defence that giffard had murdered his parents the question was whether he was legally insane when he did so his defence was insanity and the arguments ultimately came down to this point there were parallels to edmund kesteven s story in late 1894 the former professional cricketer had murdered his common law wife after weeks possibly years of increasingly eccentric behaviour that might have been precipitated by a blow to the head by a cricket ball there had been no clear motive other than a combustable relationship fuelled by alcohol although kesteven had shown little interest in his own fate his friends had organised his defence and argued that he was legally insane but that was incredibly hard to prove in a court at the time legal insanity was defined by the so called m naghten rules from 1843 that every man is to be presumed to be sane and that to establish a defence on the ground of insanity it must be clearly proved that at the time of the committing of the act the party accused was labouring under such a defect of reason from disease of the mind as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing or if he did know it that he did not know he was doing what was wrong for kesteven this threshold was too difficult to prove he was found guilty and hanged in 1895 giffard faced a situation practically unchanged almost sixty years later the m naghten rules were still in force but as the understanding of mental illness has grown over the intervening period this definition was viewed as increasingly weak and narrow particularly when a guilty verdict for a capital crime meant death even someone in the grip of medically recognised psychosis could still be hanged under this rule as long as it could be proved they knew what they were doing and knew that it was wrong just like kesteven s defence giffard s lawyers had to prove that either he did not know that his actions would have harmed his parents or that he did not realise that killing them was wrong even if he could have been proven to be medically insane such as a confirmed diagnosis of schizophrenia that would not have been enough the prosecution contended that giffard had simply murdered his parents to spend the day with his girlfriend the defence countered that this showed insanity and that his subsequent actions meant that his arrest was inevitable he was driving to the gallows differing medical testimony was offered defence experts said that he was schizophrenic and had been at the time of the murders so would not have known that his actions were wrong prosecution experts said that he was not mentally ill that he had shown sane premeditation particularly his letter to vallance about killing his father and had been causing hurt to his parents his whole life legally there was little room for manoeuvre because insanity was such a high bar to clear on 6 february 1953 in just 35 minutes the jury found giffard guilty of murder the judge who had no choice after such a verdict sentenced him to death he was hanged on 24 february 1953 but the m naghten rules would not hold the same weight for much longer in 1957 a new provision was introduced as part of the homicide act the defence of diminished responsibility a killer found to be suffering from a medically recognised abnormality of mental functioning could be convicted of manslaughter rather than murder and therefore spared the death penalty albeit with an almost certain life sentence someone like kesteven or giffard would likely have been able to prove that mental illness was affecting their judgement or their self control the insanity defence was no longer necessary because diminished responsibility was much easier to prove the criminal procedure insanity act of 1964 and the abolition of the death penalty in 1965 further refined the arguments even if the m naghten rules are technically still in force in the united kingdom even today but such matters move beyond the scope of an article about a supposed cricketer such a brutal murder remained in the public mind for a long time newspapers frequently revisited the story it featured regularly in various retrospectives until the 1970s and still makes occasional appearances and in 1970 it was dramatised as part of a series called conceptions of murder for london weekend television in an episode called conversation piece john castle played giffard in addition numerous books about murders and murderers included giffard there was a sensationalist tint to such retellings but a shift gradually occurred later writers offered more sympathy to giffard t...
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