Percy Lefroy Mapleton - Trial and Execution

Trial and Execution

Mapleton was tried at Maidstone Assizes before Lord Chief Justice Coleridge, with Montagu Williams acting for his defence. The jury found him guilty after retiring for only ten minutes. A number of railway witnesses gave evidence against him—including Holmes, the booking clerk who had sold him his ticket, the train's guard, the ticket collector at Preston Park Station, and a woman in Horley who saw two men struggling violently in the train as it passed her cottage.

It was revealed during his trial that at the time of the murder he had been desperately short of money and had gone to London Bridge with the intention of robbing a passenger. He had hoped to find a female victim, but finding none suitable, had settled on the elderly Mr. Gold. Incredibly vain, Mapleton had asked for permission to wear full evening dress in Court because he thought it would impress the jury. He was allowed to take his silk hat and took more interest in this than he did in the legal proceedings against him.

According to psychiatrist L. Forbes Winslow, who was present during the trial on behalf of Mapleton's family, Lord Coleridge, in pronouncing sentence, remarked, "You have been convicted on the clearest evidence of a most ferocious murder, a murder perpetrated on a harmless old man, who had done you no wrong; he was perhaps unknown to you. You have been rightly convicted, and it is right and just that you should die." Mapleton replied, " The day will come when you will know that you have murdered me."

While awaiting execution, Mapleton confessed to the murder of Lt. Percy Roper R.E., who was shot in his room in the Army's Brompton Barracks near Chatham Dockyard in February 1881, but he later withdrew the confession. Mapleton was hanged at Lewes on 29 November 1881 by executioner William Marwood.

The Coroner at Mapleton's inquest was Wynne Edwin Baxter, who had previously presided at Isaac Gold's inquest. Mapleton was the godson of Sir John Lefroy, the former Governor of Bermuda and the then Acting Governor of Tasmania.