Prostitutes have long been considered fair game for twisted men to indulge their taste for murder, wherever in the world. The States have had Gary Ridgway, Arthur Shawcross, Robert Hansen to name but a few. Here in Britain, we have had Sutcliffe, Jack the Ripper, Steve Wright, Jack the Stripper, to name just a few. But whilst the captured killers names live on in infamy, the victims are quickly forgotten. Here are a couple of "Low-level prostitute murder cases" from the past.
The first is the death of Maud Mills way back in 1912, in the Black Country area of Walsall. It was on Sunday 5th May 1912, when she was found severely injured. She had been shot four times. Two of the shots were to her head. Incredibly, she lived on for six days, but Police could not understand Maud claiming that she had not been shot but in fact had fallen on some railings. The hospital had taken four bullets from her wounds. Shortly before she died, Maud had confessed to her sister-in-law that she had done some work as a prostitute. Police had learned from witnesses that Maud was seen talking to three men outside Lloyds Bank in Walsall town centre, and very shortly afterwards they heard the shots. Why did Maud deny being shot? Who were the three men she was seen with? Was she sticking to the supposed "Underworld code of silence?" Whatever the answers, Maud Mills died in denial to the Police.
Constance May (Hind) Smith met an extremely brutal death in London on 9th May 1936. She was seen walking towards her rooms in Old Compton Street in the company of a young man. Later, her body was found. She had been repeatedly punched, strangled with a length of electrical wire and then so savagely beaten around the head with a flat iron, that her head was almost destroyed. The young man was never traced.
Constance was the illegitimate child of Kathleen Hind, born in 1912 in East Ham in London. Constance amassed eight convictions for prostitution, beginning on 28th March 1930. Her "beat" had been Old Compton Street & Charing Cross Road. She did marry, in 1933, to Robert Smith but the marriage did not last for very long. At the time of her death, Police revealed that she had lived with four different men, including, wait for it, A BLACK MAN! This dastardly villain had lived off her earnings! Of course, black men were regarded as the lowest of the low, at that time, being pimps and pushers.
But Constance did not have the deterioration that many prostitutes had. The Pathologist said that her body was well nourished, had no signs of alcoholism or venereal disease. Newspapers speculated that her murder was connected to two other prostitute killings. Those of Josephine Martin in November 1935 and Jeanette Cotton in April 1936.
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