William McKenna

William McKenna died in a police cell following a street brawl.

He died from a fractured skull.

A 26-year-old man was tried for his manslaughter but acquitted. They were said to have both been involved in a brawl and placed in the prison cell at Cardiff Central Police Station after which the following morning William McKenna was found dead. He had been due to appear before a magistrate on the morning of 24 September 1956 on a charge of being drunk and disorderly.

The police said that they had no reason to think that William McKenna had been anything other than drunk when he was placed in the cell. William McKenna had been arrested after he was found lying in the road.

It was heard at the trial that William McKenna had spent the evening drinking beer and had later gone to a cafe and that the 26-year-old man had then gone into the cafe and had started a quarrel with William McKenna. The prosecution said, 'They went outside to start a drunken brawl, for it appears that the accused himself was the worse for drink'.

A witness said that they saw the 26-year-old man squaring up to William McKenna and heard William McKenna say, 'I don't want to fight. I want to go home', and that he had then started to walk home but that the 26-year-old man had followed him and had picked the quarrel again. It was said then that in the course of the fight that William McKenna had fallen backwards and hit his head on the pavement with an audible thud.

It was said that after the 26-year-old man heard that William McKenna had died he had gone to the police and told them that he had drunk between ten and twelve pints and when he described the second fight he said, 'We got to grips and were hitting each other. We both fell to the ground with him underneath me. As he fell I heard his head hit the pavement'.

William McKenna and the other man were both Irish and had both lived in Turbeville Place in Cardiff.

It was said that William McKenna had had many friends in the Tudor Road area and members of the city's Irish Club in Herbert Street off Bute Road, and it was reported that a collection had been made to cover the cost of transporting his body back to Ireland for burial. It was reported that friends had said that 'bill' McKenna would not have a pauper's grave.