The Day the King Died

There was a quaint British convention under which executions were stopped and sentence commuted if scheduled to take place on the day the sovereign died. Alfred Moore was doubly unfortunate: still protesting his innocence he was on the scaffold an hour before the death of King George VI was announced. Here, the author re-assesses the evidence in this case of the double murder of two police officers and shows why the trial at Leeds Assizes was a travesty of justice—packed with mistakes, inaccuracies, dubious recollections and supposition. Set against the social backdrop of 1950s West Yorkshire, The Day the King Died stresses the need for caution where witness accounts may be driven by preconceptions or ‘fit’ too tidily and adds to the voices of those calling for justice in a case in which prosecutors almost certainly got the wrong man.

Reviews


‘A fascinating case’: Jon Robins, The Justice Gap.

‘I read the book with a growing sense of disquiet and unease and was left with a feeling that a terrible miscarriage of justice might well have occurred’: Campbell Malone.

Author


Jim Morris has taken a close interest in crime and punishment for many years, having written on subjects as diverse as unsolved murders, true crime and the Great Train Robbery. He lives and works in Ireland.