Age: 22
Sex: male
Crime: murder
Date Of Execution: 19 Nov 1948
Crime Location: Grounds of Queens Park Hospital, Blackburn
Execution Place: Liverpool
Method: hanging
Executioner: Albert Pierrepoint
Source: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
Peter Griffiths spent the day drinking and wound up outside the Queens Park Hospital in Blackburn where he climbed over a fence, entered the childrens ward and took 3 year old June Anne Devaney. (she was 3 years 11 months old)
She was found outside in the grounds the next day dead. She had been swung by the ankles smashing her head against a wall, she had a bite mark on her buttocks and had been raped.
A glass bottle was found under her cot with finger prints they could not identify. The police decided to fingerprint every male in blackburn from the records on the electoral register and collected 46,000 finger prints but none matched. However, when they matched the ration records against the electoral register they identified 200 extra men, mainly returning soldiers who were not yet registered to vote. The set of prints numbered 46253 were a match.
They arrested Peter Griffiths who confessed to the crime.
