Edwin Bush

Edwin Albert Arthur Bush (1940 – 7 July 1961) was the first criminal in Britain to be caught through the use of the Identikit facial composite system, the second to last executed in London and the last to be hanged at Pentonville Prison.

On March 3, 1961 Elsie May Batten, a 59-year-old assistant in an antique shop in Cecil Court off Charing Cross Road in London was found stabbed to death with an antique dagger and an ornamental dress sword had been stolen. Her body was discovered by the shop owner Louis Meier who helped Detectives' try new technology, Identikit that used a standardised set of facial features to help a witness build a picture of a suspect. During Meiers' interview, an image of a suspicious man who had gone into the shop two days before Elsie's killing to admire the sword was constructed. Another witness, who had seen a man and his blond girlfriend try to sell a sword the same day as the murder, also used Identikit, so both facial likenesses from the two independent witnesses were printed in local newspapers and distributed to local police officers.

Bush stood trial at the Old Bailey in May 1961 in a case that lasted just two days. He claimed his attack on Elsie was motivated solely by her making racial slurs as they haggled over the price. Bush was sentenced to death on 12 May 1961 by Mr Justice Stevenson, under section 5 of the 1957 Homicide Act, charged with “murder in the course or furtherance of theft”, and hanged at Pentonville on 6 July 1961 by Harry Allen.