A Shadow in the Past

Tracking the Killer of Vera Page

Vera Page in April 1931, eight months before her murder 

Vera Page was born in April 1921, in Hammersmith, West London. She was the only child of a working-class couple: Charles, a painter for the Great Western Railway, and Isobel, a housewife. Vera was a playful and happy girl, but also a little shy, and somebody who would never talk to strangers. The family moved to 22 Blenheim Crescent, Notting Hill, London W11, in January 1931, when Vera was nine years old. They lived in rooms on both the ground floor and in the basement of the three-storey town house. The other occupants of the house included middle-aged Arthur and Annie Rush on the top floor, whose son would become the prime suspect in Vera’s murder. 

The Murder 

On Saturday, 14 December 1931, Vera went to see her aunt Minnie, to show her the swimming certificate she had just been awarded, leaving home at 4:30 p.m. It was a very short walk, around fifty yards, and a journey Vera was used to making.  

Vera was expected home by her parents by 5pm, but when she hadn’t returned by 5.30pm, her father Charles went to the aunt’s house to check on her but was told by his sister that Vera had left there at 4.45pm. After finding that Vera had not returned home when he got back there and waiting for some hours with Isobel, they finally reported her missing at 10.25pm. 

A school friend of Vera’s would later say that she had seen Vera outside a local chemist’s shop, peering at the window display just after 4.45pm. Vera’s mother Isobel confirmed to police that her young daughter had her eye on some ‘fancy’ soap there.   

Just over thirty-six hours later, at 9.50 am on the morning of Monday, 16 December, Vera’s body was found by a ‘milk roundsman’ (milkman) about a mile from home just inside the doorway of the tradesman’s entrance of a large house at 89 Addison Road, Kensington. Her father Charles identified her body. 

The post mortem revealed that Vera had been digitally raped and manually strangled. Evidence found on her clothes and body would lead the police to believe that she had been killed somewhere else, her body then moved and left where it was found.  

Vera’s brutally callous murder caused outrage and fear in London and nationally, due to her being just ten years old. A photograph of her sweet face upset the public, humanising the tragedy, as the newspapers reproduced the photo and covered the case and the search for her killer widely in coming weeks, with the Daily Express offering a then sizeable £250 reward in January 1932. 

The police came under mounting pressure to get a result. 

The Detective 

The detective in charge of the case was Superintendent George Cornish, one of Scotland Yard’s ‘Big Four,’ as the newspapers then called the top sleuths. Cornish, a tall, elegant, methodical, and composed man, was tenacious in getting to the truth and solved many famous murder cases. He was near to the end of his career when he investigated Vera’s case, and in his memoirs, published just three years later, Cornish called it ‘an abominable murder.’ Although of course Rush is not named, Cornish’s memoirs leave no doubt at all that he thought Rush was the killer, and it is obvious that the inability to convict him troubled the veteran detective, which was one of his rare failures in bringing a suspected culprit to justice. 

Many hundreds of people were interviewed by the police under Supt Cornish’s direction in the trawl for Vera’s killer following her murder- door-to door enquiries and searches made over a designated radius, witness statements taken, and potential suspects quizzed.  

The autopsy and crime scene analysis were performed by Sir Bernard Spilsbury, who had been one of Britain’s leading pathologists since the mid-1920’s and would later become the most famous pathologist of the century. Spilsbury would go on to give lengthy evidence at the inquest, and his findings were key in linking the prime suspect to the murder. 

Where was Vera murdered? 

Vera’s torn-up swimming certificate was found in the street, and her red beret was discovered in the basement of a house nearby. Both coal dust and candle wax were found on Vera’s clothes, and wax on her right shoulder. Supt Cornish surmised that Vera had been taken to a coal cellar, where dust had stuck to her clothes before she was raped and murdered, and they discovered such a coal cellar nearby with the door unlocked and still ajar. It had no electricity, and it was thought likely that her killer had used candlelight in the cellar, with wax dripping on to Vera’s clothes and shoulder. 

The Prime Suspect/Killer? 

Percy Orlando Rush 

The prime suspect soon emerged in the form of 40-year-old Percy Orlando Rush, who was first interviewed on 18 December, just two days after Vera’s body was found. Rush’s parents lived on the upper floor of the same house as Vera’s family in Blenheim Crescent, and Rush and his wife Daisy (nee Wheeley) had also lived there until 1923.  

Rush, a working-class flannel washer in a laundry in nearby Earls Court, had a key to the house and often visited his parents there, although he and Daisy had lived nearby at 128 Talbot Road since 1923. Rush would claim that he only knew Vera by sight, hadn’t seen her for three weeks, and had never spoken to her, but the police didn’t believe him. 

The 1911 census shows that Rush was a laundry worker twenty years before Vera’s murder, and was still doing the job in 1931. In between, Rush had served abroad in the King’s Rifle Corps in the First World War, before returning to London and then marrying Daisy in 1921. 

Rush’s Alibi 

Rush had been working until mid-afternoon on the day that Vera went missing, and claimed that he had gone shopping and then returned home later than usual, as Daisy was away visiting her family. But Rush’s shopping trip and return home could not be proven, and his wife not being at home was certainly convenient for him if he had indeed killed Vera. Rush had the opportunity, but it was difficult to prove he was the killer, as no witness saw him with Vera that day. 

But key evidence found on Vera’s body strengthened the case against Rush: 

A Bandage Stained with Ammonia 

A bandage for a finger, heavily stained with ammonia, was discovered in the crook of Vera’s elbow when she was found. It had obviously fallen off the injured finger of her killer who had not noticed.  

It was quickly noticed that Rush had a cut on his finger, which he said had happened at work in early December. Rush was the only man found in the neighbourhood who had recently been wearing such a finger bandage. 

His colleagues at the laundry confirmed that he had worn a bandage after the accident, and one co-worker swore that Rush had been wearing a bandage on the day of the murder. 

Rush admitted that he had made his own rudimentary bandage at work when he cut his finger, with his wife applying a better one from her own bandage roll at home, but Rush insisted that he had disposed of this in the fireplace at home long before Vera’s murder. 

And Rush used ammonia in his work every day when washing flannels at the laundry. Coming into contact with the chemical with a cut finger would have been very painful, so Cornish was very suspicious when Rush said that he had not been wearing a bandage on the cut around the time of the murder, especially as the police files show, when examined by a police doctor, ‘the wound on his finger was still oozing pus.’ 

Rush’s house was searched, and no bandage was found of the same texture and fabric there.  

Cornish admitted in his memoirs, with great frustration, that one of his officers had made a glaring error- during Rush’s first interrogation at Notting Hill police station, Rush had been told that the bandage had been found on Vera’s body. This would have given Rush a chance to go home and dispose of any evidence connecting him to it at home. 

And strangely, Rush’s wife Daisy told the police that she hadn’t dressed her husband’s finger in the days just before Vera’s murder. 

Other Evidence Against Rush:

The Overcoat 

A candle was found by the police in Rush’s home, which matched the wax found on Vera’s clothes and right shoulder. Additionally, wax was found on Rush’s overcoat, the one which he usually wore.  

Even more damningly, both coal dust and semen were found on the overcoat too- Rush was never able to explain how the semen got there.. 

The Witness 

A local woman, Margaret Key, claimed that she had seen a man fitting Rush’s description pushing a wheelbarrow walking in the direction of Addison Road at around 6.40am on 16 December,  the morning that Vera’s body was found. Was that how the body was transported from the coal cellar to the dumping ground?  

Mrs Key said that there had been something large in the wheelbarrow, which was covered by a fringed red tablecloth.  

Such a tablecloth was found at Rush’s home when it was searched, but no forensics could prove that it was the same one, and with no other corroborating witnesses, Cornish couldn’t prove that Rush had been the man pushing the wheelbarrow. 

Rush’s Sexual Deviancy 

Rush had a previous conviction for exposing himself to a little girl in west London and had been warned off talking to children in the street. 

This was not known publicly at the time of the inquest into Vera’s death, but it certainly strengthened Supt Cornish’s suspicions about Rush being Vera’s killer. 

The Inquest and After  

Rush was never formally charged with Vera’s murder- there just wasn’t enough definitive evidence to mount a prosecution, although the amassed evidence pointed comprehensively to his guilt. 

Rush was extensively questioned and gave extensive evidence at the inquest at the Coroner’s Court in Manor Place, Paddington in February 1932.  

Rush vehemently denied murdering Vera, but his testimony did not impress onlookers- he was booed by women in the gallery as he left the court. The inquest returned an open verdict ‘against some person unknown.’ 

But the police files show that: 

• Just days after the inquest closed, the police were called to a meeting with the local Member of Parliament, Mr J.A.L Duncan MP at his home. Mr Duncan wanted reassurance that Rush ‘would not be lost sight of’ by the police, as many constituents had expressed their deep concerns about Rush to him. The police reassured the politician that Rush would be ‘closely watched.’  

• In December 1932, a year after Vera’s murder, a letter was sent to the police by a man who used to live in Notting Hill Gate, urging the police to arrest Rush for her murder. 

Rush’s wife Daisy died of natural causes in 1937, and Rush continued to live at 128 Talbot Road until 1947, when he moved to Hammersmith, a more westerly suburb of London. He died there in 1961, aged seventy, having never been in trouble with the police again. 

Ironically, if Vera had lived, she would have been forty years old when Rush died, the same age that he was when she was killed. 

The murder of Vera Page is still officially open, a cold case ninety years later... 

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