LESBIAN LOVE LED TO FATAL STABBING: Criminal Past Series: Part Five

SOLDIER Montague Cyril Williams had met the woman he wanted to spend his life with. West Lothian girl Margaret Laughlin was a fine figure of a young woman, strong, athletic, fun-loving.

She was a Private in the WRAC and he was a Squadron Sgt. Major in the Royal Corps of Signals. And he was madly, passionately in love with her from the very moment they met.

Sadly for Montague, however, his young wife did not quite feel the same for him.

She, after all, preferred the company of her own sex.

Margaret, just 21, had wrestled with her feelings - this, after all, was post-war Europe and lesbian relationships were hardly de rigueur. In a moment of confusion and drunken impulse, she had agreed to become the 35-year-old's wife.

As the wedding date loomed, she set down one major condition: that they would not have sexual intercourse until such time as she felt those same flames of passion for him, as he so clearly felt for her.

It was a delicately balanced arrangement that was doomed to fail on many levels. And when it did, it destroyed both their lives.

Margaret and Montague, whom she called "Slim", were based together in married quarters at Klagenfurt, Austria, in June, 1949.

Eighty days they had been married, and still Margaret's resolve - much to her groom's frustration - had not wavered.

A gala dance had been organised at nearby Annanheim for locals and the soldiers from the nearby billet. There was dancing and drinks and Margaret was having fun. Too much fun, it seemed, for her frustrated husband.

He'd had even his slightest advance repulsed by his wife. While he yearned for her undivided attention, she was said to have shown the complete opposite feelings towards him. And now she was having fun, slightly drunk and enjoying the company of at least one Austrian man who - unaware of her marital status or her lesbian leanings - had even tried to fix a date with her.

Monatague, frustrated lover and jealous husband that he was, had had enough: tonight he planned to, if not ensure his bizarre wedding arrangement became a proper marriage, at least show his wife who was boss.

Margaret was leaving the gala, tipsy, when two men roughly bundled her into a coal truck before driving her back to the billet - all at her husband's request.

Inside the truck, Margaret struggled only to be shoved on to the floor, face down, arms pinned behind her back, while "Slim" instructed the two men to press them harder or ease off as the pain became too much.

By the time they had arrived at their married billet, Margaret was enraged.

They rowed, his insults aimed at her and at her family at home in Bathgate stung. As Margaret made up a bed for herself on the sofa, she finally told her husband their marriage was over.

"You've jolly well asked for this," he declared angrily as he struck her across the face.

A camper's knife lay on a table nearby, suddenly it was in Margaret's hands.

"I raised it and said, you big pig, I'll knife you if you come anywhere near me again," she recalled.

The next slap across Margaret's face was all it took. Suddenly "Slim" was bleeding from the wound left as the knife slipped between two ribs and pierced his heart.

He staggered to a chair, ashen faced, where his horrified wife tried desperately to stem the flow and begged for his forgiveness.

Her Old Bailey trial was sensational - particularly when a Scotland Yard detective told the hushed court how Margaret had admitted to him: "I have always been attracted to women more so than men. But I did not know there was anything wrong in it until a girl I fell in love with told me all about it.

"I have tried hard to fight against it. That was another reason why I got married."

Margaret was found guilty of her husband's murder. The jury made a particular point of asking Justice Streatfeild to show mercy, but this was murder and that usually carried the ultimate sentence.

Margaret stood in the dock, according to reports at the time, her "youthful looking tousled mop of straw coloured hair contrasting strangely with her worn, lined face," and women jurors wept as the death sentence was pronounced.

Her fate ringing in her ears, Margaret tottered and, near collapse, was almost carried to the cells.

She was in her cell at Holloway Prison in London two weeks later when news came through that the law had been merciful. She was told she would be imprisoned for life.

There would be no justice, however, for the life of tragic 15-year-old Edinburgh schoolgirl Margaret Beagley.

She was just 100 yards from her West End home in February 1950, when she was attacked, battered on the head with a 75lb stone and left for dead.

Auburn haired Margaret, of Stanhope Place, had been seen earlier with an older man. Did the teenager - said to look older than her 15 years - have some connection with him?

Police launched a major investigation, interviewing 3000 people and finally arresting Alexander Short.

Short had been held in connection with a small money fraud in Glasgow. He had a mental age of only eight, yet officers began to quiz him not on the fraud, but on Margaret's murder.

By the time the case came to court a few months later, it was clear that police procedure in the case had been inappropriate. Short had been a victim of a police attempt at entrapment.

He was cleared of the charge of murder - and fraud. As for Margaret's killer - the case was never solved.

ICE-CREAM WAR IN PORTOBELLO

The war in Europe had ended just weeks earlier, but were emotions still running high in summer 1945 when an Italian ice cream shopkeeper became the tragic victim of a terrible assault?

The Italian community across the UK had already found themselves victims of Churchill's sweeping dictate to "round them up", prompted by Mussolini's 1940 decision to enter the war.

Italian-run businesses and shops had come under attack from fearful citizens, emotions ran high as Italian men of all ages were dragged from their homes, some sent abroad, others to prison.

It was June, and Guiseppe and Maria Demarco's ice cream parlour on Portobello's High Street, pictured above, had enjoyed a roaring day's trade, indeed, the shopkeeper's till contained just over GBP100.

The only blight on the day were the two young men who'd entered their shop and shouted vile threats.

Robert Robertson and Timothy Donoghue had been told to leave by the 82-year-old owner. But soon they were back, and this time they wanted the contents of the till.

A violent struggle ensued - ageing Mr Demarco and his distraught wife against two strapping men recently discharged from the Army. Suddenly, Robertson grabbed a lemonade bottle and brought it crashing on to the elderly man's head. As Mr Demarco reeled back, injured, Donoghue grabbed the till's contents. When Mrs Demarco tried desperately to intervene, she, too, was hit by a bottle.

The shock of it all was too much for the Italian gent's frail heart. Having come to Edinburgh in 1914 seeking a better life, he now lay on his shop floor, dead.

Robertson appeared in court claiming he had acted in self-defence. He and Donoghue denied theft.

A jury wasn't completely convinced. They convicted Robertson of culpable homicide and he was sentenced to seven years. In spite of witnesses' evidence, Donoghue, walked free, the charges against him not proven.

1940 A sub-postmistress was rendered unconscious with an ether-soaked handkerchief before thieves raided the takings. Miss Niven, 33, was unconscious for up to ten minutes while two men stole GBP130 from the shop near Bristo Place.

1941 Violet Potter made Edinburgh legal history when she became the first woman in the city to appear in court charged with defrauding the Ministry of Food. She had claimed she'd lost two ration books to obtain two new ones which she then used to claim extra food rations. She was jailed for a month.

1946 Concern was growing over a spate of senseless vandalism throughout the city. Five schools were attacked and classrooms wrecked during the summer of 1946, while newly- built homes in West Pilton were damaged, with around 1000 windows smashed, delaying families waiting to move in.

1947 Margaret Farmer, of Keir Street, believed she had a gift - she could tell fortunes. And when two undercover detectives arrived at her home, she happily read their fortunes using a pearl necklace and a ring which she pressed to her forehead. However, she failed to see into her own future - she was arrested for fraud. She was fined GBP10, but refused to accept the finding, appealed the case and eventually had it overturned.

1949 The killing of a Boer War veteran in his home in Temple, Midlothian (pictured), landed his murderer with the death sentence. But Andrew Donaldson escaped the gallows with a life sentence reprieve - only to abscond from jail. He was later recaptured
Edinburgh Evening News, April 16, 2011.