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Frank Everett

Age: 56

Sex: male

Date: 18 Oct 1945

Place: Lambeth Bridge, London

Frank Everett was found shot dead in a brick shelter on Lambeth Bridge on Thursday 18 October 1945.

He was a taxi driver working for the London General Taxicab Co. on Brixton Road. He had lived with his wife in May Hill, Gloucestershire but whilst working in London he lived in lodgings in Streatham.

It was suggested that he had been doing some private detective work as he was a retired police sergeant and that he had been murdered by someone that had wanted to close forever the mouth of 'a man who knew too much'.

It was also suggested his assailant might have bene somebody desperate for money and prepared to go to any length to get it, although robbery was later ruled on as a motive as some money was found on Frank Everett and £1 notes were found in his taxi which had been taken away and abandoned eight miles away in Notting Hill Gate on a prefabricated house site.

It was also suggested that he might have been shot when he had resisted an attempt by the gunman to commandeer his taxi for another crime.

He was found on the Thursday morning, 18 October 1945, at 9am by a passer-by on Lambeth Bridge. The police said that they thought that he had been shot shortly before dawn as he drove over the bridge.

He was found inside a wartime NFS brick-built pump house on the pavement at Lambeth Bridge. After being shot he had been crammed into the pump house, which was only five feet long and three feet wide through a hole that was only twelve inches wide.

The police said that the bullet that killed Frank Everett was thought to have come from a large calibre automatic, probably of German make.

He died from a bullet wound to the back of his head.

It was said that all his identification tabs, papers and money had been removed and that it was not until his taxi was found that he was identified. His registration disc had been attached to his coat, but it had been torn off in what was thought to have been an attempt to conceal his identity.

The last cab driver to see Frank Everett alive said that he saw him pick up a fare at about 2am outside the Military Club in Mayfair. The cab driver said, 'He said he would see me back at the depot at three o'clock. I waited an hour for him. He would have had about £10 on him'.

Frank Everett was known to other taximen as 'the Duke' because he was always going off to Gloucestershire.

On 22 October 1945 the police found a bloodstained German revolver and some clothes in a pig swill bin in Kenton Street, London which they said might offer some clues as to the identity of Frank Everett's murderer. The revolver was found by a refuse collector. Beside the revolver in the bin, the refuse collector found a parcel of clothes wrapped up in newspaper that contained a bloodstained blue shirt, two pairs of socks, two keys and a padlock.

On Tuesday 23 October 1945 the police interviewed a woman that called at Southwark police station who made a statement to the fact that Frank Everett's last fare was a man that he picked up in Walworth Road.

The police said that they did not think that Frank Everett had been involved with racketeers.

Frank Everett had been a London policeman but had retired with his wife to Gloucestershire, taking lodgings with her in Longhope during the flying bomb blitz before buying a bungalow called Broomfield on the Gloucester to Ross road at May Hill. At the time of his murder he had been working in London driving a taxicab and would go home to see his wife about once a fortnight.

Frank Everett had had a son, but he was killed in the war.

It was noted that the place that Frank Everett was found was only a few hundred yards away from Westminster Bridge on which Tadeusz Rybczynski was found shot dead by an air raid observation hut a few weeks later on 11 November 1945.


*map pointers are rough estimates based on known location details as per Place field above.

see www.nationalarchives.gov.uk

see National Archives - MEPO 3/2313

see Coventry Evening Telegraph - Saturday 20 October 1945

see Aberdeen Press and Journal - Wednesday 24 October 1945

see Western Daily Press - Saturday 20 October 1945

see Dundee Courier - Monday 12 November 1945

see Liverpool Echo - Saturday 20 October 1945

see Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette - Friday 19 October 1945

see Gloucester Citizen - Friday 19 October 1945

see Dundee Courier - Friday 19 October 1945

see Dundee Evening Telegraph - Tuesday 23 October 1945

see Nottingham Evening Post - Friday 19 October 1945