Mystery of room 667 (From Daily Echo)

Mystery of room 667 at South Western Hotel in Southampton

3:56pm Thursday 12th January 2012 in Hampshire Heritage By John Hoskins, Court Reporter

THEY checked in as Mr & Mrs R Dawson of Kings Heath, Birmingham – but only one of them left alive, and she was bleeding with a bullet wound under her heart.

What was to emanate was an enthralling mystery and ultimately a story of heartache that culminated with a double shooting in Southampton’s celebrated hotel.

Death came to room 667 of South Western Hotel during the night and the incredible drama fell in to the lap of an Echo reporter who by chance was staying there.

Shortly before 3am, he was awoken by a commotion after a night porter had answered a service bell. The porter had heard an agonised but faint cry and used his pass key to open the door and turn on the light.

A horrific sight confronted him.

The pyjama wearing ‘husband’ was crouched on the bed, clasping a blood-spattered American revolver. The weapon had been fully loaded but the last two bullets had been fired – one entering his skull above the right ear and exiting through his left temple.

Next to him lay the semi-naked ‘Mrs Dawson,’ with blood oozing from a wound under her left breast that smeared her loose fitting nightdress.

“I am dying,” she bemoaned. As the hotel manager and staff gently carried her downstairs to be taken to the Royal South Hants Hospital, she made one extraordinary plea. “Do not move my head so I can see him”.

Police recovered one bullet hidden by the fringe of a pillow and another under a washbasin.

A heavy overcoat lying on the floor indicated the shooting had been planned – it had been deliberately placed on the handle to muffle the sound of gunfire.

However, all was not what it seemed.

Despite one letter found in her handbag and another in the man’s trousers, the plain signature of ‘wife’ and ‘husband’ did not ring true – as the hotel register corroborated.

Both names and addresses were ficticious.

The couple had gone to considerable length to shield their background, destroying personal papers and removing clothing tags and laundry marks. They had even battered a monogram on a hairbrush and scratched the retailers name off a box of revolver cartridges.

Two days later, November 17, 1931, an inquest was opened and adjourned with police still baffled as to their identity, despite a nationwide appeal.

As hundreds of letters poured into the Bargate police station offering possible names, the woman frustratingly refused to divulge any information to two women officers keeping a hospital bedside vigil, though she freely chatted to them on other matters.

Detective Inspector Percy Chatfield said: “This affair is one of the most mysterious of its kind I have ever had to deal with.

“But I am hopeful of finding out who the couple are.

We have very slender clues since almost everything that might have led to their identification was destroyed.”

But it was publicity about the man’s metal rim glasses that disclosed his identity – and the mystery unravelled.

A long standing friend, J M C Coppen, travelled from his London home to Southampton, confirming the dead man to be Roland Herbert Draper, 55 and a former purser on the Orient liners, who had been living in Paris where he realised his sight was gradually fading.

The former Royal Naval Reserve, who served in the First World War, had become increasingly depressed at the prospect of going blind amid financial worries. He had attended a London eye specialist and also arranged to have dinner with his former military colleague.

But he never kept the second appointment – instead he went to Southampton.

One revelation led to another and eventually police discovered ‘Mrs Drapper’ was Gladys Tressider, the former wife of Major George Tressider, and her married lover had been cited as co-responded in an undefended divorce brought against her in 1920.

She had been his constant companion during his months of pain and mental anguish, living together on a smallholding in Wales.

She was to survive the shooting – but at a harrowing cost, permanently paralysed from the waist down.

At the hearing it became abundantly clear they had minutely planned a suicide pact.

Police surgeon, DR E R Seager Thomas, was confident Draper had shot her and convinced she had been fatally injured with the bullet passing through her heart, he then turned the revolver on himself.

Inspector Chatfield read the contents of the letter found in his trouser pocket.

‘Dear Heart,’ it read, ‘It seems strange to write to you a letter that you may never see, but if you do, I know you will understand when I tell you that I would like it to be known by anyone into whose hands it may drop afterwards that we have planned, dear, to die together.

‘I remember our discussions some time ago about leaving any letters which might cause pain to others on becoming public property, and your saying, dear, that you would rather that nothing was left. Well, I would like to this be found after our death.

‘Well, darling, we have had many wonderful years together, no regrets, and may we both find rest and peace together.

‘God bless you, dear. Your loving wife.’ The inspector then told the court of a conversation with Mrs Tressider. ‘We decided to pass on unknown. I destroyed all marks by which we might be traced.

He asked if I was going. I said “yes”. He then shot himself.’ In his summing up, Coroner Arthur H Emanuel, said the jury should not concern themselves over who shot Mrs Tressider but Who shot the man?

The jurors retired for 10 minutes before declaring Draper had committed suicide while temporarily insane.