Peter Robert Smith

Peter Robert Smith died following a brawl after leaving the Prince of Wales Hotel in Southport where he was a hotel porter. He had been assaulted on 31 December 1950 and then taken to hospital where he died from his injuries on 4 January 1951.

A 50-year-old mother and her 27-year-old son were tried for his murder but acquitted. It was heard that Peter Smith had previously had an operation to his skull about 18 years earlier in which part of his skull had been removed and that after the assault on him that whilst he had been carried back to the hotel that he had been dropped and that that might have caused the injuries from which he had died.