Archibald Hall
Encyclopedia
British people
The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...
serial killer
Serial killer
A serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...
and thief. Born in Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
, Scotland, he became known as the Killer Butler or the Monster Butler after committing crimes while working in service to members of the British aristocracy
Aristocracy
Aristocracy , is a form of government in which a few elite citizens rule. The term derives from the Greek aristokratia, meaning "rule of the best". In origin in Ancient Greece, it was conceived of as rule by the best qualified citizens, and contrasted with monarchy...
. Until his death, he was the oldest person serving a whole life tariff
Whole life tariff
This is a list of prisoners who have received a whole life tariff through some mechanism in jurisdictions of the United Kingdom.Eight of these prisoners have since died in prison, while three of them have had their sentences reduced on appeal, meaning that there are currently at least 48 prisoners...
in prison.
Crime from the start
Hall began stealing at the age of 15, and soon progressed to burglaryBurglary
Burglary is a crime, the essence of which is illicit entry into a building for the purposes of committing an offense. Usually that offense will be theft, but most jurisdictions specify others which fall within the ambit of burglary...
. After realising he was bisexual
Bisexuality
Bisexuality is sexual behavior or an orientation involving physical or romantic attraction to both males and females, especially with regard to men and women. It is one of the three main classifications of sexual orientation, along with a heterosexual and a homosexual orientation, all a part of the...
, he infiltrated the gay scene in London where he moved on the strength of his criminal profits. He served his first jail sentence after trying in London to sell jewellery
Jewellery
Jewellery or jewelry is a form of personal adornment, such as brooches, rings, necklaces, earrings, and bracelets.With some exceptions, such as medical alert bracelets or military dog tags, jewellery normally differs from other items of personal adornment in that it has no other purpose than to...
he had stolen in Scotland. During his stretch, he learnt more about etiquette
Etiquette
Etiquette is a code of behavior that delineates expectations for social behavior according to contemporary conventional norms within a society, social class, or group...
and the aristocracy
Aristocracy
Aristocracy , is a form of government in which a few elite citizens rule. The term derives from the Greek aristokratia, meaning "rule of the best". In origin in Ancient Greece, it was conceived of as rule by the best qualified citizens, and contrasted with monarchy...
while also dulling his Scottish accent
Accent (linguistics)
In linguistics, an accent is a manner of pronunciation peculiar to a particular individual, location, or nation.An accent may identify the locality in which its speakers reside , the socio-economic status of its speakers, their ethnicity, their caste or social class, their first language In...
with elocution
Elocution
Elocution is the study of formal speaking in pronunciation, grammar, style, and tone.-History:In Western classical rhetoric, elocution was one of the five core disciplines of pronunciation, which was the art of delivering speeches. Orators were trained not only on proper diction, but on the proper...
lessons and studying antiques.
Upon his release he began using the name Roy Fontaine - as a homage to actress Joan Fontaine
Joan Fontaine
Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland , known professionally as Joan Fontaine, is a British American actress. She and her elder sister Olivia de Havilland are two of the last surviving leading ladies from Hollywood of the 1930s....
, of whom he was a fan - and working as a butler, occasionally returning to prison for sentences incurred after more pilfering of jewels. He married and divorced during this time.
From thief to killer
In 1975, Hall was released from prison and went back to Scotland. He began working as butler to Margaret Hudson, a dowagerDowager
A dowager is a widow who holds a title or property, or dower, derived from her deceased husband. As an adjective, "Dowager" usually appears in association with monarchical and aristocratic titles....
who lived at Kirtleton House, Dumfriesshire
Dumfriesshire
Dumfriesshire or the County of Dumfries is a registration county of Scotland. The lieutenancy area of Dumfries has similar boundaries.Until 1975 it was a county. Its county town was Dumfries...
. Hall initially had ideas to steal her valuables but he never carried them out when he realised that he liked both his job and employer too much.
When David Wright, an acquaintance from his last prison term and a former lover, was also given a job on the estate as a gamekeeper
Gamekeeper
A gamekeeper is a person who manages an area of countryside to make sure there is enough game for shooting, or fish for angling, and who actively manages areas of woodland, moorland, waterway or farmland for the benefit of game birds, deer, fish and wildlife in general.Typically, a gamekeeper is...
in 1977, the two had an altercation after Wright stole some of Lady Hudson's jewellery and threatened to tell her about Hall's own criminal past if he reported him.
Hall took Wright on a rabbit hunt in a trick attempt at coming to an amicable solution. Once out in the fields, he shot Wright dead and buried him next to the stream in the Kirtleton House grounds.
Hall quit his job immediately - much to Lady Hudson's apparent disappointment - and moved back to London where he combined more thieving and racketeering with working as a butler to the 82-year-old Walter Scott-Elliot
Walter Scott-Elliot
Captain Walter Travers Scott-Elliot was a British company director and politician who served one term as a Member of Parliament...
, and his 60-year-old wife Dorothy. Scott-Elliot, who had been Labour
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
for Accrington
Accrington (UK Parliament constituency)
Accrington was a parliamentary constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1885 to 1983. It elected one Member of Parliament by the first-past-the-post system of election.-History:...
from 1945 to 1950, was rich and from an aristocratic Scottish background. Hall's plan was to rob them of their money and retire, but in the end he killed them both after Mrs Scott-Elliot walked in on Hall and an accomplice, Michael Kitto, as they were discussing their plans. Kitto immediately put a pillow over her mouth and suffocated her.
They then drugged her husband and drove them both up to Scotland, helped by a local prostitute and acquaintance, Mary Coggle. Dorothy was buried in Braco
Braco
Braco is a village in Perth and Kinross, Scotland, with a population of 515 It is located 5 miles north of Dunblane towards Perth off the A9 road.The village can also be accessed via the B8033 route which passes Ashfield and Kinbuck.- History :...
, Perthshire
Perthshire
Perthshire, officially the County of Perth , is a registration county in central Scotland. It extends from Strathmore in the east, to the Pass of Drumochter in the north, Rannoch Moor and Ben Lui in the west, and Aberfoyle in the south...
, then they strangled (with a scarf) and beat her sedated husband with a shovel and buried him in woods near Tomich, Invernesshire
Inverness-shire
The County of Inverness or Inverness-shire was a general purpose county of Scotland, with the burgh of Inverness as the county town, until 1975, when, under the Local Government Act 1973, the county area was divided between the two-tier Highland region and the unitary Western Isles. The Highland...
.
Their next victim was Coggle, who had taken to wearing Dorothy's expensive clothes and jewellery and was drawing too much attention to herself. After she refused to dispose of the fur coat, which was potentially incriminating evidence, Hall and Kitto killed her with a crow bar and left her body in a barn in Middlebie
Middlebie
Middlebie is a hamlet and parish in Dumfries & Galloway, south-west Scotland. It is approximately east of Ecclefechan, and north-east of Annan, on the banks of the Middlebie Burn....
, Dumfriesshire, where she was discovered on 25 December 1977 by a shepherd.
The final victim of the pair was Hall's half-brother Donald, a paedophile just out of prison whom Hall hated. Hall and Kitto found him at Hall's holiday home in Cumbria
Cumbria
Cumbria , is a non-metropolitan county in North West England. The county and Cumbria County Council, its local authority, came into existence in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972. Cumbria's largest settlement and county town is Carlisle. It consists of six districts, and in...
, they told Donald that their next robbery was going to be a tie up job and tricked him into letting them practice on him. Once tied up, Hall tipped a bottle of chloroform
Chloroform
Chloroform is an organic compound with formula CHCl3. It is one of the four chloromethanes. The colorless, sweet-smelling, dense liquid is a trihalomethane, and is considered somewhat hazardous...
down his throat before drowning him in the bath. The abortive effort to dispose of his body led to Hall and Kitto's downfall.
Arrest
Hall and Kitto put the body in the boot of the car and again drove to Scotland to carry out another burial. However, the wintry weather made driving hazardous, and so on reaching North BerwickNorth Berwick
The Royal Burgh of North Berwick is a seaside town in East Lothian, Scotland. It is situated on the south shore of the Firth of Forth, approximately 25 miles east of Edinburgh. North Berwick became a fashionable holiday resort in the 19th century because of its two sandy bays, the East Bay and the...
in East Lothian
East Lothian
East Lothian is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland, and a lieutenancy Area. It borders the City of Edinburgh, Scottish Borders and Midlothian. Its administrative centre is Haddington, although its largest town is Musselburgh....
, they decided to check into a hotel overnight in order to lessen their chances of being in an accident.
However, the shifty movements of Hall and Kitto made the hotelier suspicious and, worried about whether he would be paid for their stay, he called the police as a precaution. When they arrived, they searched Hall's car and found the corpse.
Kitto was arrested but Hall escaped through a lavatory window. He was captured at a police roadblock in nearby Haddington
Haddington, East Lothian
The Royal Burgh of Haddington is a town in East Lothian, Scotland. It is the main administrative, cultural and geographical centre for East Lothian, which was known officially as Haddingtonshire before 1921. It lies about east of Edinburgh. The name Haddington is Anglo-Saxon, dating from the 6th...
.
The police then made a connection between Hall's car and the registration number of a vehicle noted by a suspicious antiques dealer in Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...
, to whom two men had offered silver and china at a price well below its true value. The police traced the car to the Scott-Elliots' address in London and found the apartment robbed of many valuables and spattered with blood. This also linked with the murder of Coggle, whose body had already been found and who had been previously registered as a housekeeper for the Scott-Elliots. The police had evidence that three men (including a drugged Scott-Elliot) and a woman had stayed at a Scottish hotel for one night, but the following night only two men - Hall and Kitto - returned.
Hall tried and failed to commit suicide while in custody, before revealing the whereabouts of the three buried victims. In deep snow and bitter temperatures, and with the media watching, police teams dug up the bodies of David Wright and Walter and Dorothy Scott-Elliot. They charged Hall and Kitto with five murders.
Imprisonment and death
Hall was convicted at courts in London and EdinburghEdinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
of four murders - the murder of Dorothy Scott-Elliot was ordered to lie on file - and sentenced to life imprisonment. In Scotland, it was recommended that he served a minimum of 15 years and in England the judge handed down a recommendation that he never be released.
Kitto was given life imprisonment for three murders, with no recommended minimum in Scotland and a 15-year minimum in England. Police said in evidence that Kitto was, in a perverted way, fortunate to be able to go on trial, as Hall was planning to kill him too.
Successive Home Secretaries
Home Secretary
The Secretary of State for the Home Department, commonly known as the Home Secretary, is the minister in charge of the Home Office of the United Kingdom, and one of the country's four Great Offices of State...
put Hall on the list of dangerous prisoners who should serve a whole life tariff, which unlike some criminals on the list, did not alter Hall's prison status at all, as it reciprocated the tariff set by one of his judges. When politically-set tariffs were declared illegal by the law lords and the European Court of Human Rights
European Court of Human Rights
The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg is a supra-national court established by the European Convention on Human Rights and hears complaints that a contracting state has violated the human rights enshrined in the Convention and its protocols. Complaints can be brought by individuals or...
, Hall's status as a prisoner unlikely to be released never changed, despite being the oldest prisoner on the publicised list. In 1995, the Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
newspaper published a letter from Hall in which he requested the right to die. He made numerous suicide attempts which were all unsuccessful.
Hall published his autobiography, A Perfect Gentleman, in 1999. He died of a stroke in Kingston Prison
Kingston (HM Prison)
HM Prison Kingston is a Category B/C men's prison, located in the Kingston area of Portsmouth in Hampshire, England. The prison is operated by Her Majesty's Prison Service.-History:...
, Portsmouth, in 2002 at the age of 78. By this date, he was one of the oldest of more than 70,000 prisoners in British prisons, and the oldest to be serving a whole life tariff
Whole life tariff
This is a list of prisoners who have received a whole life tariff through some mechanism in jurisdictions of the United Kingdom.Eight of these prisoners have since died in prison, while three of them have had their sentences reduced on appeal, meaning that there are currently at least 48 prisoners...
.
Film
In 2005, British actor Malcolm McDowellMalcolm McDowell
Malcolm McDowell is an English actor with a career spanning over forty years.McDowell is principally known for his roles in the controversial films If...., O Lucky Man!, A Clockwork Orange and Caligula...
and Hollywood screenwriter Peter Bellwood
Peter Bellwood
Peter Bellwood is a Professor of Archaeology at the School of Archaeology and Anthropology of the Australian National University in Canberra...
announced that they were seeking a director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
and funding for a film based on Hall's life. In 2011 Malcolm McDowell
Malcolm McDowell
Malcolm McDowell is an English actor with a career spanning over forty years.McDowell is principally known for his roles in the controversial films If...., O Lucky Man!, A Clockwork Orange and Caligula...
stated the film was currently being made and would be named Monster Butler.
External links
- The Scotsman
- Edinburgh Evening News obituary
- The Guardian
- True Crime Book Reviews on The Monster Butler by A.M. Nichol