Winston Trew has just been arrested for mugging. It’s 1972, and the crime has recently made its way to Britain from the United States. Dangerous thugs, replicating their American counterparts, have made the city of London their hunting ground – so Winston’s eventual conviction is a win for the police and the press.
The problem is, 22-year-old Winston is completely innocent.
Further reading
The key source on Winston Trew’s wrongful conviction is Rot at the Core: The Serious Crimes of a Detective Sergeant (2021), by Winston Trew and Graham Satchwell. Winston also self-published an earlier book called Black For A Cause (2010), where he tells his story.
Reporting by the Guardian was useful for this episode – in particular Simon Hattenstone’s long read “‘I just went bent’: how Britain’s most corrupt cop ruined countless lives‘” (2024).
Numerous Victorian newspaper articles formed the basis of our coverage of the garotting panic.
Two articles by contemporary historians were also very useful: Jennifer Davis’ “The London garotting panic of 1862: a moral panic and the creation of a criminal class in mid-Victorian England” (1980) and R. Sindall’s “The London Garrotting Panics of 1856 and 1862” (1987).
We drew on Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order (1978) by Stuart Hall, John Clarke and Brian Roberts, which briefly touches on the similarities and differences between the mugging panic of the 1970s, and the garotting panics of Victorian Britain. We also drew on Tom Gash’s book Criminal: The Truth About Why People Do Bad Things (2016).
For more on Paul Slovic and collaborators, see Lichtenstein, Slovic et al, “Judged Frequency of Lethal Events” (1978); and Barbara Combs and Paul Slovic “Causes of Death: Biased Newspaper Coverage and Biased Judgements” (1979).
Other Sources
Winston Trew biography
“Night of the Mugger”, by Tom Tullet, Daily Mirror, 17th August 1972
“Murderous Attack on Mr Pilkington MP”, The Times, 18th July 1862.
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Garotting-Panic
“Garrotting”, Stockton Herald, South Durham and Cleveland Advertiser, 5th December 1862
“Garrotting and Burglaries”, Evening Mail, 28th November 1862
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/13/winston-trew-to-clear-his-name
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/19th-century-you-wouldnt-want-be-put-treadmill-180964716