Detective Sergeant Robert Knox testified that on January 28th (only hours after the murder) at 9.45 am he went to Pearl Gamble’s home with Head Constable O’Hara and other police. It was the single most dreadful moment in Mrs Gamble’s life. Perhaps it’s just that I got into trouble, no matter what job or assignment I was given! Some years later still I was interned along with my brothers Jack and Eugene (RIP). Woman Constable Elizabeth Ann McCance testified that she was on duty in plain clothes in In an attempt to revitalise the toy industry after the end of World War I, the American Tootsie Toys company introduced a new range of innovative pocket-sized diecast toys in 1918. Tootsie’s success in the In an attempt to establish his alibi Robert McGladdery as suspect agreed to walk his alleged route home in the company of a policeman Head Constable Farrelly. I was a sentenced prisoner – for the ‘crime’ of carrying the national flag – but there were also internees over in D Wing. I knew and was known to many of them and had illicit communications with them. As a result I was able to obtain supplies that other Juveniles could not. The last cottage in the Brown’s Yard row, number four was the home of the Hamill family. After the houses in Brown’s Yard were condemned and demolished, the Hamills would move to the newly renovated housing at Helen’s Terrace in The Meadow was there long before the great housing estate was first constructed in the late 1940s. Indeed then they were the only homes in a kilometre radius – except for the isolated cottage of ‘Sticks’ Morgan’s people a little further along the Pighall Loanan. Then one quiet day when I was about ten, I made my way into a public bar in Kilkeel because I thought no one was there. Police evidence concerning the tailing (and frequent interviewing) of McGladdery over the days and weeks following Pearl Gamble’s death continued to be given. I was speaking to my friend Tommy Donaghy last evening about the Pearl Gamble murder and he too – like everyone of that era – has a strong memory of those few weeks after when McGladdery strutted the streets of the town basking in his new infamy. Down there close to Helen’s Terrace and near the bridge facing McClelland’s enclosure we each in turn pressed down with one hand on the strand of barbed wire atop the low stone wall that separated us from Corr’s Field and threw a leg over to the other side. Mrs Gamble gets dreadful news
Remembering Tom Williams
Strange hiding place
McGladdery buys murder weapon
Boys Toys of the 50s
McGladdery walks the route …
Screw in my pocket
Brown’s Yard : End
Meadow: Helen’s Terrace
In the bar in Kilkeel
McGladdery: Police witnesses
McGladdery as chief suspect
Corr’s Field 1957: the ‘boat’
