Was my great-grandfather hanged on Churchill's orders for a murder he didn't commit?

When a court artist's impression of an Edwardian gentleman flashed up on the screen, she recognised him as her grandfather

The chaplain, clad head to foot in black, strode across the courtyard of Newcastle Gaol intoning the words of the burial service as the condemned man followed, with the executioner close behind him.

The prisoner did not flinch as he mounted the scaffold, staring blankly ahead as he was asked for his last words.

A thousand-strong crowd had been milling outside the prison since daybreak, and cries of 'Hang him!' and 'Murderer!' could be heard as the appointed hour drew near.

As bells in the prison and nearby cathedral began to strike eight o'clock, a hood was placed over his head, and then a noose around his neck. Just after the final gong sounded, the executioner pulled a lever and the prisoner fell through a trap door, a drop of seven feet. He died instantly.

Some felt that hanging was too good for such a blackguard; especially after the poor wages clerk he was accused of shooting five times had bled to death on the floor of a train, having been slain for the cash he'd been carrying to pay local miners. But now the deed was done, a murmur of approval rippled through the crowd and one or two muted cheers were heard. It was over.

But for my grandfather, Harry, just 13, and his sister Kitty, 17 — the shamed offspring of a thief and murderer — the nightmare had just begun.

More than 70 years after that grey August morning in 1910, my mother was watching a BBC programme about possible historic miscarriages of justice. Suddenly, when a court artist's impression of an Edwardian gentleman flashed up on the screen, she recognised him as her grandfather, John Alexander Dickman, better known as Jack.

As a child, she had spent time in Newcastle at her Aunt Kitty's house and was fascinated by old photos of a well-to-do man on the mantelpiece. My mother was only ever told that Jack had died 'suddenly and young' before the subject was hurriedly changed.

Back then, I was a typical 1980s teenager, with posters of popstars on my bedroom wall, but after that TV show I became fascinated by my great-grandfather, his fate and possible scandal that had been hushed up for generations.

It sparked a desire to find out the truth, which in turn led me to become a writer. Indeed, I worked as a cub reporter on one of the local papers, The Northern Echo, which had interviewed my great-grandmother in Newcastle the night before her husband was hanged.

Jack's execution, ordered by then Home Secretary Winston Churchill (pictured), marked the beginning of a blight on my family

And when I read what were reported to be Jack's final words to his wife — that one day 'someone will clear my name' — it sent a shiver down my spine. I became even more determined to establish the truth.

In doing so, I discovered that my great grandfather's execution had been a catalyst for a web of deceit entangling three generations and two families who were never supposed to find out about each other's existence. That secrecy had led only to sadness and betrayal.

Jack's execution, ordered by then Home Secretary Winston Churchill, marked the beginning of a blight on my family, which was inextricably bound up with World War I, the Depression of the 1920s and the 'hungry' 1930s, which saw millions of working-class families struggling to survive.

Only now, more than a century later and after years of painstaking research, can the full truth about my family be told.

The story began at Newcastle Central Station on March 18, 1910. Jack Dickman had been a colliery clerk but, after coming into an inheritance from his late mother's family in France, set himself up as a speculator to wealthy coal merchants in the city, helping identify where new pit shafts could be sunk.

He also ran an illegal bookies, placing bets for rich clients, as he travelled to races up and down the country.

The world depicted in TV's Peaky Blinders was real to Jack. If he had a big win, he'd roll home drunk. If he lost, his wife Annie, a teacher, fretted about how she'd pay the bills.

That fateful Friday, Jack was travelling to a colliery on business. Several colliery clerks were also on board because it was payday.

As the train pulled into its final destination at Alnmouth, a porter saw blood on the floor of one of the carriages. It didn't take him long to find a body under a seat.

More than £370 was missing from the victim's briefcase — equivalent to more than £40,000 today.

Newspaper headlines screamed 'Murder' and a manhunt was launched.

Two wages' clerks who'd been on the train gave police a description of a man they had seen entering a carriage at Newcastle with the victim, John Innes Nisbet. It matched Jack.

Then an artist who had known my great-grandfather since he was a boy came forward to say he had seen him walking alongside the victim and boarding the train with him.

Jack Dickman had been a colliery clerk but set himself up as a speculator to wealthy coal merchants in the city. He also ran an illegal bookies. Pictured: William 'Roy' Dickman standing next to Ethel on the second to right and Zena on the left. Ethel is on the far right at the back and next to her is Harry's first son, William, who he abandoned when Ethel's affair was discovered

Jack was arrested. He went willingly with police, telling his wife: 'Don't worry, it's all a misunderstanding. I'll be home in time for tea.' He never came home again.

At his trial, it emerged that he had bought a handgun. Although it had been returned to the gunsmith and it wasn't illegal to own a firearm, it raised troubling questions about the murky world in which my great-grandfather was operating.

It was certainly at odds with his middle-class background, as the son of a master butcher, and coming from a long line of gentlemen farmers from Alnwick, Northumberland.

His son and daughter — my grandfather Harry and his sister Kitty —were privately educated and grew up in the middle-class Newcastle suburb of Jesmond. Following Jack's arrest, however, they became social pariahs overnight, shunned in shops and spat at in the street. Eggs were thrown at the windows of the family home and threatening letters rammed through the letterbox.

Harry was pinned to the floor by lads who painted his face black, like the hood that was to be placed on his father's head for execution, while Kitty was jeered and jostled on prison visits to her father.

Disquiet about the evidence used to convict Jack emerged almost immediately. There was nothing to link him to the crime other than the statements of the two wages clerks and the artist.

Jack's story was that he had not travelled in a carriage with the murder victim, whom he knew by sight, but had travelled alone, engrossed in the sporting pages of a newspaper.

That fateful Friday, Jack was travelling to a colliery on business. Several colliery clerks were also on board because it was payday. Pictured: Beezy Marsh

No trace of the stolen money was ever found or linked to Jack or his family, who had four bank accounts with more than £4 in total in them — the equivalent of around £460 today. The family was not hard up.

Most troubling was evidence which emerged after the trial.

Prior to an identity parade, and while Jack was still being interviewed by police, he had been pointed out to the two witnesses (the wages clerks) through an open door. He was wearing a distinctive light-coloured coat and wore the same coat in the identity parade. It suggested that police wanted to ensure the clerks singled him out as the guilty man.

After an investigation, the Chief Constable of Newcastle wrote to the Home Office but this new evidence in Jack's defence was dismissed on appeal. The only hope of reprieve rested with Home Secretary Winston Churchill. He could commute Jack's sentence to life.

Churchill studied the case but ruled Jack should hang.

Even today, the case remains controversial and is studied by law students because it led to the introduction of police procedures preventing officers from pointing out suspects to witnesses before or during identity parades. Such a change was a huge step forward in the legal process.

For Jack's grieving family, there was no comfort. They believed he had died an innocent man but could not prove it.

The only way forward was to get on with life and that is what Jack's daughter Kitty did. She became a fierce advocate for women's rights, a Suffragette, and a journalist on a local shipping publication at a time when there were few women in the workplace.

At 18, Harry joined up to fight in France and Belgium as a driver in the 55th Lancashire Division of the Royal Field Artillery, riding the horses which dragged the 18-pounders to the front. Even as a teenager he saw it as a way of restoring the family's honour.

He survived Ypres, Passchendaele and the Menin Road Ridge before being shot and left for dead at Cambrai in the winter of 1917. By a miracle, he survived, waking up in the morgue, surrounded by the mangled remains of his comrades — a sight that haunted him in nightmares for the rest of his life.

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Returning to Newcastle, Harry married a local girl, Ethel, got a job as an engineer and they were soon the delighted parents of a son.

For a time, life was good, but Harry was a vocal member of a trade union and after the General Strike in 1926, he found himself out of a job. There was a stark choice: stay in the North and starve, or go to London and look for work.

The young family settled in Clapham, South London, but cracks began to appear in the marriage. Money was tight, and the pressure to put food on the table a challenge.

When Harry was offered a better job back in Newcastle, he followed the money.

Ethel stayed in London and began an affair with a milkman. Harry was delighted when she gave birth to a little girl, knowing nothing of her betrayal. However, after Harry paid her a surprise visit from Newcastle one summer's afternoon, he found Ethel in bed with her lover and the truth about the child he believed was his daughter sank in.

Harry duly abandoned Ethel, the baby and his nine-year-old son.

Haunted by his father's death and his experiences in the trenches, he suffered a mental breakdown and lived rough in King's Cross for a year. It was his sister Kitty who rescued him, finding him a factory job and lodgings in West London with a family who worked in the laundries of Acton's 'Soapsud Island'.

Harry fell in love with his landlady's eldest daughter, Annie, my gran, who herself had endured a hard life, scrubbing at the washtubs from the age of 12. As World War II erupted and the threat of German invasion gripped the nation, Harry slipped a ring on Annie's finger. In 1940, shortly after Dunkirk, my mother, Anita was born.

The only blight on their life was Harry's failure to divorce Ethel and he continued to keep the existence of the family he'd abandoned secret from Annie, my gran.

He also kept his 'new' family secret from his sister, Kitty, in Newcastle, until the day, towards the end of the war, that she turned up on his doorstep.

She handed her bags to Annie and said: 'You must be Harry's landlady!'

The three children — two more had followed Anita — who tumbled excitedly down the stairs to greet their Aunt Kitty were redirected into the scullery and a row between Kitty and Harry ensued in the parlour, while Annie was sent to make tea.

A sweet, trusting woman, she was in awe of Harry because he was educated; he was also a good husband and father and so she never questioned him.

Together, they raised a happy family together and retired to Hertfordshire in the 1960s.

But when Harry died in 1970, and my gran tried to get a grant to help with his funeral, she was told: 'It's going to his wife, Ethel.'

His secret was out.

My mother tracked down Harry's first son but, despite the passage of time, he was too hurt by his father's sudden, cruel abandonment to want to know and he shut the door in her face.

Meanwhile, back in Newcastle, Kitty had been safeguarding the biggest secret, the 'murderer' in the family. She took that with her to the grave, destroying photos and letters which might have left clues.

The fact that I never got to meet my half-uncle has always weighed heavily on me.

Then, two years ago, I was contacted by researchers for a BBC1 programme, Murder, Mystery And My Family, and together with my uncle John, Harry and Annie's son, I got to meet my half-uncle's son, Rowan, for the first time.

His father had passed away. But through Rowan, I also met his cousin Michele, the daughter of the little girl my grandfather had believed was his own all those years before.

Piece by small piece, the story began to fall in to place. I haven't given up hope of clearing my great-grandfather's name. I realise I may never establish the truth about Jack and the terrible crime he was found guilty of.

In the meantime, I believe that getting to know the members of that 'secret family' is a kind of justice for us — because family will always find a way to survive.

• Her Father's Daughter: Two Families. One Man's Secret, by Beezy Marsh, is published by Pan at £7.99. To order a copy for £6.40 (offer valid to 4/9/19; p&p free on orders over £15), call 0844 571 0640. 

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