Thursday 26 June 2014

Eric Brown - Convicted of Patricide

This is an obscure murder case I came across dating back to 1943, when a young bank clerk murdered his father, and did it in a most unusual way for a domestic quarrel.  Eric Brown was just 19, but was fed up of the attitude of his father, which was undoubtedly exasperated by his injuries following a motorcycle accident.  Mr Brown was slowly getting paralysis of the spine and so was confined to a wheelchair, and was taken out for one of his favoured walks by an attending nurse, Miss Mitchell.  They left the Brown home in the small village of Rayleigh, which is close to Southend, on July 23rd 1943.

    Suddenly, an explosion sent Nurse Mitchell flying, but miraculously, she was unharmed.  Archibald Brown was not so fortunate.  He was killed outright.  The explosion was caused by an antitank bomb that had been attached to the wheelchair.  Eric Brown admitted to Police what he had done, and so stood trial at Chelmsford Assizes in November 1943.  The reason he gave was that he had had enough of his father.  Brown was found guilty of murder but deemed insane, so was duly sent to a secure hospital for an undetermined length of time.

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