The Glasgow Crime Story of Susan Newell who killed the boy delivering the newspaper

Those who have killed children like Rosemary West and Myra Hindley have passed into criminal infamy.

Less well known in the pantheon of female child killers is Susan Newell, who used her own eight-year-old daughter to help dispose of her victim’s body in a Glasgow tenement close.

Not only did Newell stand trial for the murder of a 13-year-old schoolboy, she was also the last woman to hang in Scotland.

One of a family of 13 children, she was born into a life of grinding ­poverty in Oban in 1893.

She married and had a daughter, Janet, but was widowed when her husband was killed in the First World War.

By June 1923, now 30, she had remarried, to John Newell, an ex-serviceman.

The three lived in a rented room in Newlands Street, Coatbridge, around eight miles from Glasgow.

The couple had a tempestuous ­relationship, which often flared into violence on both sides

Their behaviour had been so bad, their landlady had ordered them to quit their rooms.

However, following one argument too many, John Newell had left the family home.

On June 10, 1923, just before 7pm, 13-year-old paperboy John Johnston knocked on the Newell family door trying to sell copies of the evening paper.

Newell asked John into the house, where she was alone.

It was the last time anyone saw John alive.

A short time later Janet came home to find the boy’s body in the living room.

Newell told the girl that her stepfather had strangled the boy and not to tell anyone what had ­happened.

The next day, the mum forced her daughter to help her wrap John’s body in a carpet and place it into an old pram.

With Janet perched on top of the grisly bundle, she set off for ­Glasgow.

A lorry driver offered them a lift and dropped them in Duke Street – just yards from the prison where Newell would later be hanged.

There, John’s body accidentally spilt out, after she lost control of the pram.

As a result, the dead boy’s head – covered in burns to his scalp and ears – became clearly visible.

Although the lorry driver didn’t notice, a local Duke Street resident Helen Elliott did and alerted the police, who promptly arrested Newell, who was later charged with murder.

John’s dad Robert had the grim task of identifying his son, one of five children, at the police mortuary in St Andrew Square, Glasgow.

He told one newspaper how he lifted his son’s forearm in search of a distinguishing birthmark.

He found the blemish he feared would be there and a boil the boy had been complaining of.

The broken man turned to the mortuary staff and said: “Aye, that’s my John, right enough.”

John’s burns were thought to have been caused after he fell on a fireplace or gas ring as he fought to save his own life in the house where he had gone to deliver newspapers.

Robert had even stood outside the Newells’ home that previous night as he searched for his missing son, oblivious to the fact his son’s body lay inside.

Murdered on a Wednesday, John was buried the following Monday.

Thousands lined the streets for half a mile as his body was taken from the family home in a white coffin covered in floral tributes to be laid to rest in New Monkland Cemetery in Airdrie.

Men, women and children wept.

It was all too much for John’s young sister, May, who collapsed and had to be carried back to the family home.

Following her arrest, Newell blamed her absent husband John for the boy’s murder.

She claimed she was unable to stop him strangling the young newspaper seller.

Newell said she had then been forced to get rid of the body by her husband.

A hunt was launched for John Newell who later handed himself into a police station after reading reports about himself in the newspapers.

He claimed that he had been at a funeral at the time of the murder and had later travelled to Haddington, East Lothian, to try and find work.

Despite what seemed like a rock-solid alibi, he was also charged with murder.

The scene was now set for a trial that would make headlines across the country.

But whose version of events would the jury believe – Susan Newell’s or her husband?

The case was heard by Lord Alness at the High Court in Glasgow and began on September 18, 1923.

Demand for seats in the public gallery was such people had begun queuing in the middle of the night.

The couple sat in the dock, a ­police officer separating them and one on either side.

Newell’s legal team lodged a ­special plea of insanity at the time of the murder.

Her husband lodged a special ­defence of alibi.

Among the early witnesses was the dead boy’s father.

Robert Johnston told of the night his boy had failed to come home and spent the night searching the streets.

A police officer arrived at his workplace the next day and took him to the mortuary, where he was shown his body.

The Newells’ landlady provided a graphic account of what happened the night John died.

She also gave an insight into the relationship between the couple, who had only taken lodgings with her three weeks earlier.

Their constant rows had resulted in them being given notice to leave on the day John disappeared.

She hadn’t seen John Newell on the day of the murder but remembered John Johnston going to the couple’s door around 7pm.

She presumed the boy had left, although she had not seen him do so.

Later, Newell asked her for a box to pack things in before she went out later in the evening with her daughter, to get a jug of beer from a local pub.

They returned a few minutes later and stayed in the rooms for a while before going out again.

Newell returned home but left again at 11pm and finally settled down for the night after 2am.

At 8am, the landlady found the front door open but no sign of her female tenant.

The evidence of Janet electrified the court.

She recalled going to the pub and being left outside as her mum had the jug filled with beer, before going home.

Asked what she had seen in the room, she replied: “A little wee boy dead on the couch.”

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Taxi driver Thomas Gibson, from Airdrie, then told how he was driving a lorry that day and gave Newell a lift after helping her put the pram on the truck.

She told him she was looking for rooms and he dropped her in Duke Street, Glasgow.

As she got the pram out, the bundle slipped and he tried to help as he said: “You’re in an awful hurry.”

But she knocked his hand away and rebuked him, saying: “Get on your lorry. I’ll manage it myself.”

Helen Elliott told how she was amazed when the bundle slipped and she saw a child’s foot emerge.

Mrs Elliott found a policeman and told him what had happened.

He caught Newell leaving the close in Duke Street where she had abandoned John’s body.

At the police station, she said that during a row with her husband, he hit her, and the boy had screamed out.

He then seized hold of the boy and lifted him onto the bed and strangled him.

As the trial at the High Court proceeded, charges against John Newell were dropped after he was able to prove he was at his brother’s funeral at the time of the murder.

He left the dock without even a backward glance at his wife after being told he was free to go.

Susan Newell was now the sole accused.

Her legal team continued their claims that she was insane at the time of the murder.

However, Janet’s evidence was enough for the jury to return a guilty verdict in just 37 minutes.

Newell was sentenced to death and ordered to be hanged at Duke Street Prison on October 10, the following month.

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No-one knows what happened the night John Johnston was killed and what prompted the fatal ­attack.

Some say Newell was furious at having been left penniless.

She may have taken a paper then strangled the boy when he insisted on payment, before taking his ­paper money to buy drink.

A petition submitted to the Secretary of State for Scotland pleading that the sentence be reduced to life was rejected.

Susan Newell went to gallows still blaming her husband and died never admitting her guilt.

Not only was she the last woman to hang in Scotland she was also the last person to be hanged at the old Duke Street prison.