Listen to our new podcast on Gilbert McIlwrick - the 'Quiet Man' of policing

 

He was nicknamed the "Quiet Man”, but nothing could be further from the truth when describing Gilbert McIlwrick's time in the police force ranks.

In a fascinating career lasting almost 40 years he arrested a major IRA terrorist, returned the stolen Stone of Destiny to Westminster Abbey, and initiated Scotland's first ever mass fingerprinting exercise in a bid to find the killer of a four-year-old girl.

As head of the City of Glasgow CID, McIlwrick was also responsible for solving five murders and the city's biggest ever bank robbery after they had all taken place in the same week.

Born in 1897 in Cumnock, Ayrshire it was inevitable that McIlwrick would become a policeman given that his father had been an inspector based in nearby Ardrossan.

Like many officers of his generation, he had fought in the First World War where he was a member of a military transport unit.

After being demobbed he followed in his father's footsteps and joined the police in 1919.

Gilbert quickly showed an aptitude for crime fighting and within two years had been made a detective.

Though a shy man he liked to keep a scrapbook of newspaper cuttings of cases where an arrest had been made, particularly where his own name had been mentioned.

However, as his career progressed the various scrap books would soon be filled to overflowing.

In April 1921, aged only 24, he was responsible for the arrest of a senior member off the IRA Frank Carty.

Carty had escaped from prison in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, in February that year and fled across to Glasgow to stay in a safe house provided by republican sympathisers in the city.

McIlwrick was part of a team that arrested him in the property in Springburn.

The following month, while being taken to Duke Street Prison by prison van, there was a failed attempt him by gunmen to free Carty, during which a Police Inspector Robert Johnstone was shot dead.

In the 1930's the then Chief Constable Sir Percy Sillitoe put McIlwrick in charge of a newly formed commercial section. What we now know as the fraud squad.

Over the next four years he headed up several major investigations into embezzlement and corruption that saw three councillors and eight lawyers put behind bars.

It was during this period that McIlwrick showed his aptitude for innovation and new techniques.

In one instance he used secret tape recordings and listening devices in a hotel to trap one errant councillor.

However, his career was almost cut short in 1937 while in Edinburgh to give evidence at the High Court.

He had been delayed and consequently missed his 5.30pm train back to Glasgow.

That same train crashed into the back of another train near Falkirk in a snow blizzard with the loss of 35 lives.

McIlwrick's reputation was such that he was often asked to help solve other force's crimes.

In 1941 he was invited by the then Moray and Nairn Constabulary in the north of Scotland to help track down the killer of a 17-year-old shop assistant whose body was found in a wood. She had been hit with a stone and her skull crushed. Within four days a young local soldier had been arrested.

By 1946 McIlwrick has been promoted to Detective Superintendent and was responsible for solving the murder that year of a retired colleague. A case which best illustrated his policing skills.

James Straiton, 62, had been shot dead while trying to foil a burglar who had tried to rob a neighbour’s house in Carntyne’s Edinburgh Road.

Around 8.30pm on March 26, James and Annie Deaken had asked for his assistance suspecting someone had broken into their house and was still there.

Without a thought for his own safety the former detective fetched his old police baton and went immediately to help.

Mr Deaken offered to go into the house while James Straiton covered the front.

Once inside the neighbour saw two men at the top of the stairs.

One was armed with two guns which he carried in both hands.

When the intruders tried to flee the house, Mr Deaken blocked their escape.

The older of the two-armed intruders opened fire but narrowly missed him.

There was a violent struggle and James Straiton hit the gunman on the head with his old police baton.

The blow knocked the intruder to his knees and in retaliation he shot James Straiton in the stomach.

Both burglars then ran off, leaving the retired police officer dying in the gardens.

There had been two previous burglaries in the Dennistoun area involving a firearm where the intruder got in through a drainpipe. In one in Whitehill Drive a bullet was fired to force open a door.

In the second in nearby Golfhill Drive, a gun was used to threaten the owner after he disturbed them.

Superintendent McIlwrick decided to search for all criminals between the ages of twenty and twenty-five who had previously broken into homes using a drain pipe.

Their fingerprints could then be compared to a fingerprint which had been left at the scene of the Golfhill Drive break-in.

If they could get a match, they would then have a credible suspect for the murder.

They quickly found one belonging to John Caldwell, a twenty-year-old soldier, who lived in Bridgeton, Glasgow.

Caldwell stood trial at the High Court in Glasgow in June 1946 where he was found guilty and sentenced to hang.

Five years later McIlwrick was made head of CID at the City of Glasgow Police at the rank of Detective Chief Superintendent.

At that time little was known of the publicity shy police chief who had been given the "Quiet Man" nickname by reporters.

One of his first tasks was the return of the Stone of Destiny.

It had been stolen from Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1950 by four Glasgow University students causing an international sensation.

Though the theft had taken place in London the police investigation centred on Glasgow and led in turn to one of the city's biggest ever security operations.

The Stone of Destiny, said to be an ancient coronation stone for Scots kings, had been taken by Edward I in 1296 and removed to Westminster Abbey as a spoil of war.

An investigation was initially launched by the Metropolitan Police and the border between Scotland and England was also temporarily sealed off for the first time in 400 years.

The Met correctly assumed the stolen stone, which had broken in two, was heading to Scotland and contacted the then Chief Constable of Glasgow Malcolm McCulloch.

His officers quickly discovered it had been taken for repair to a masonry company in Sauchiehall Street owned by a nationalist sympathiser. However, when they raided his yard it was gone.

McIlwrick's men quickly identified nationalists Ian Hamilton, Gavin Vernon, Kay Matheson and Alan Stuart as the stone stealers.

One of his officers had gone to the Mitchell Library and discover that Hamilton had borrowed a large number of books on the subject in the previous weeks.

All four were Scottish Covenant Association members, campaigning for a Scottish Parliament.

Four months later in April 1951 the Stone of Destiny was found abandoned at Arbroath Abbey - where the Declaration of Scottish Independence had been drawn up in 1320.

That same evening, it was brought to Glasgow under police escort and kept in McIlwrick's office in Turnbull Street.

He was now responsible for getting it out of Glasgow police headquarters and back to London without fuss - a difficult feat with the nation's press gathered outside.

The original plan was to transport the Stone of Destiny at dawn in a limousine with a police Jaguar escort car, via Whitburn, West Lothian. There it would pick up the two Scotland Yard detectives, then head south to London.

However, McIlwrick had also heard that another nationalist group were planning to prevent the ancient relic being removed from Scotland.

The detective then decided to transport the stone in the police jag and use the limo as a decoy to deter both the nationalists and the media.

Around 5.15am on Friday, April 13, the gates were opened and the police Jaguar car carrying the Stone of Destiny sped out of the yard heading south.

At 5.20am the limo, with police cars at the front and rear, emerged at speed and headed eastwards.

The Press cars fell in behind the three official cars not realising the stone had been switched and was already heading over the border.

It was an impressive piece of quick thinking that ensured that the stolen artefact was delivered back south with the minimum of fuss.

On arrival at Westminster Abbey, the Stone of Destiny was put into a high secure vault for safe keeping.

Following the death of King George VI in February 1952 it was used in the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth the following year.

None of the four thieves were ever charged as it was felt that the British establishment had been caused enough embarrassment.

McIlwrick had taken over as head of CID in 1951 at a time when crime was on the increase in post war Scotland.

During his six years in the hot seat, he investigated 71 cases of murder, attempted murder, and culpable homicide.

Though he had senior officers running the inquiries on day-to-day basis, the buck stopped with him.

McIlwrick was also in overall charge of the search for the killer of four-year-old Betty Alexander, whose body was found in a locked hospital backyard near her home in Garnethill in October 1952.

Her death prompted one of the biggest police investigations Glasgow has ever seen.

McIlwrick reckoned Betty had been killed elsewhere and then taken into the hospital yard over the wall or a gate

Around 2000 uniformed officers and 120 detectives were drafted into the murder investigation from across the city.

At the time McIlwrick, said: “No particular man is being sought.

“In fact, we cannot even be certain at the moment that it was a man. No possibility is being overlooked."

Forensic officers had found a fingerprint on a wooden door near where her body had been dumped.

Police records were checked but there was no match.

Other more drastic steps had to be taken, as we revealed in more detail in an earlier episode of this podcast.

The print was the only real clue they had apart from unconfirmed sightings.

The City of Glasgow Police then announced that every man over 17 in the Garnethill area was going to be fingerprinted.

Detective Chief Superintendent McIlwrick said at the time: “We are investigating the possibility of trying to connect up part of a fingerprint which had been found in the vicinity of where the body was found.

“With that end in view we are asking for the co-operation of all males in the vicinity in letting their fingerprints be taken.”

This was the first time in Scotland that such a move had been taken.

A written assurance that all records would be destroyed was made by Glasgow’s Chief Constable Malcolm McCulloch in a bid to encourage as many men as possible to come forward.

As the prints flooded in special teams of officers began the laborious task of comparing them with the print found on the gate.

Unfortunately, none matched, and the trail ran cold.

More than 1000 men eventually agreed to give samples, but the murder remains unsolved to this day.

A number of possible suspects including local men were questioned at the time, but they all had alibis or were ruled out for other reasons.

It was one of the few failures in what had been a glittering career to date.

The previous month he had taken charge of an investigation into the murder of Constable John Mcleod in Hyndland by 18-year-old bank clerk Edwin Finlay.

Finlay was a Sunday school teacher, privately educated, and was due to begin his national service.

He was also a crack shot from his time in the air cadets.

Finlay was suspected of stealing £1200, equating to around £35,000 nowadays, from his bank. However, when two local beat cops went to arrest him in Hyndland Road he shot one of them dead and injured the other.

Following a chase and shoot out in a nearby street Finlay turned the gun on himself.

Had he been taken alive he would almost certainly have faced the hangman's noose for the murder of a policeman.

In 1954, McIlwrick led a murder investigation that was the most sensational of its time.

The actor George MacNeill had been found dead in his flat in August that year in Govan with a head injury having been attacked with an axe.

He had been a cast member in the radio show "The McFlannels" a popular and long running soap of the time.

The main suspect was 24-year-old criminal John Gordon whose fingerprints had been found in the dead man's flat.

He was arrested in Spain, having fled there to avoid arrest, and brought back to Scotland by detectives to stand trial at the High Court in Glasgow in February, 1955.

Given the celebrity of the victim the case received enormous coverage in the newspapers at the time.

Though by this time McIlwrick had long stopped keeping reports of his cases in scrapbooks

Gordon was found guilty after less than an hour by the jury following a two-week trial and sentenced to death.

However, he won a reprieve and was given a life sentence and released after 19 years.

It was during the summer of 1955 that McIlwrick was given the biggest challenge of his career.

Five people had been murdered in a seven-day period in the first week of the Glasgow Fair Holiday fortnight.

The violence began on Friday, July 15, when a man was killed during a street fight in the Gorbals. 

The next night, Mary MacLeod was battered to death by her husband at their home in Bath Street.

The third murder took place on Sunday, July 18, when 45-year-old Sunday school teacher Bob Cummings was stabbed to his death near his home in the Gorbals.

The following weekend, 47-year-old steel worker Joseph Cholsworth died in Shettleston Road after being punched in the head.

Twenty-four hours later a baker was murdered in his flat in Pollok.

At the time McIlwrick referred to the crime spree as 'heatwave madness'."

The spate of murders also coincided with the biggest bank cash robbery ever seen in Glasgow.

On Wednesday, July 20, four men stole a bank van in Ibrox and escaped with £45,000 worth more than £1.25 million today.

At first the police investigation hit a brick wall with little information from the public or underworld sources causing speculation that the gang may have been from south of the border.

It even prompted the normally reticent McIlwrick to admit: “So far we are stumped. The descriptions we have are very hazy."

"We haven't even the fragment of a registration plate to give us a lead."

It was at this point McIlwrick showed how aptitude for innovation by deciding to make an appeal on the relatively new medium of television, the first time such a thing had been done by police in Scotland.

The robbers had made their one and only mistake when they had left behind a set of brown overalls with initials in the bank van.

McIlwrick appealed for the owner to come forward and an AA patrolman in London said they were his.

That find led them to one of the gang members John Blundell who was arrested in his home in Fulham and others quickly followed suit including an Australian man.

In January 1956, six went on trial at the High Court in Glasgow with three including Blundell receiving lengthy jail terms.

McIlwrick received high praise for his work with a Glasgow Times report of the time saying: “Five murders and a £40,000 bank raid in the space of seven days would surely bow any ordinary man

"Mr McIllwrick simply looks slightly tired - and that is hardly astonishing when you consider he hasn't had an undisturbed night's sleep for week."

The reporter also observed that the police chief had a camp bed in his office which he hadn't used since the Stone of Destiny case.

McIlwrick's detective skills even won praise from one of the bank robber's lawyers Lionel Daiches QC who later commented: “I cannot recall a case where were so much remarkable and meritorious police work has been effected."

McIlwrick retired in the late 1950's after almost 40 years police service and died in 1985 at the age of 88.

When asked once about his remarkable career he responded: “The unsolved cases - these are the ones that you remember most."