The Raincoat man – why did he keep attacking women in Chesham and Amersham?
Back in 1957, the number of incidents of assault reported to the police in England and Wales for the entire year was extremely low by today’s standards and this made the following attacks, which appeared to be by the same man, all the more unusual and sensational.
May 1957
In May 1957, a lady travelling home alone on the train from London to Aylesbury was extremely frightened when a man entered her compartment and struck up a conversation with her, during the course of which he made several suggestive remarks.
When she left the train at Amersham station, the lady immediately telephoned the police and told them she thought she had just been accosted by the Raincoat Man.
The man in question was charged with behaving in an offensive manner but it turned out that he wasn’t the Raincoat Man, and since there were considerable discrepancies in their stories, the magistrates dismissed the case.
But who was this mysterious Raincoat Man and why was the woman on the train so frightened at the thought of meeting him?
January 1957
It all began in January of that year. At the beginning of that month, a brief article appeared in the local press stating that a 40 year old woman had been attacked by a man in Rectory Woods, Amersham and had received treatment at Amersham Hospital. She had apparently been hit over the head with a piece of wood.
Later on in the month, an off-duty nurse from Amersham Hospital was walking through Chesham Bois after dark to visit a friend when she heard footsteps behind her which sounded as though the walker was wearing wellington boots. Before she could do anything, she felt a violent blow on the back of her head. She turned and saw a man wearing a raincoat who then hit her twice more on the head with a milk bottle. He threw the bottle to the ground where it smashed and ran off through the gardens of a nearby house.
Although she was quite severely injured, the nurse managed to make her way to a house in the vicinity where she could see lights and the residents called the police. A police dog was rushed to the scene but the nurse’s assailant had disappeared. The attack was apparently motiveless and the nurse ended up spending a couple of nights in Amersham Hospital suffering from concussion.
February 1957
There were three incidents involving the Raincoat Man in February 1957. The first involved a 13 year old boy who told police that he had been stopped by a man wearing a raincoat in Pond Park in Chesham.
The man had followed him for some distance and was banging something in the palm of his hand. He tried to persuade the boy to come with him but the boy (who lived nearby) ran home.
Later on in February the Raincoat Man struck again in Chesham. This time his victim was a 42 year old housewife who was attacked with a milk bottle by a man wearing a raincoat as she walked home from the Broadway to Pednor Road after dark. He had followed her along Church Street before attacking her as she turned into Pednor Road.
She was able to give a detailed description of her assailant and described him as being “around 25 to 40, height approximately 5’10”, long thin pale face, clean shaven with fairish long unkempt hair and wearing a light coloured raincoat”. The victim was treated at hospital for a cut on her head but was otherwise uninjured.
Two girls in their early twenties were scared by a man with a similar description towards the end of February. They had been to the Regent cinema in Amersham and were walking home along Hervines Road, again after dark, when they heard footsteps behind them.
Looking back, they spotted what appeared to be a youngish man wearing a raincoat who was obviously following them so they ran to the nearest of their two homes and raised the alarm. The father of one of the young ladies searched up and down the road but there was no-one about and once again there was no sign of this man when the police arrived.
March 1957
The incident in March 1957 was slightly different. A woman walking in Rectory Woods, Amersham saw a man in the woods with her, and just in case he was the Raincoat Man she gave him a “jolly good bang on the head”!
The local police could not find any motive for these random attacks in which the assailant hit the women over the head and then ran off. Neither could they discover whether it was a local man or whether he was travelling into the area to make the attacks. They seem to have stopped at the end of February 1957 and the culprit was never found.
However in September 1957 Scotland Yard were looking for a man who closely matched the description given by all these women, who was believed to be guilty of the murder of his mother in South London. She had been hit over the head with a flat iron. The son was described as being “a tall stooping man with long unkempt hair and wearing a dirty raincoat”. Could there have been a connection with the attacks in Chesham and Amersham earlier in the year?
The son was eventually arrested after an intensive manhunt and although not convicted of his mother’s murder, he was convicted of her manslaughter and sentenced to serve seven years in prison.
Could he have been the Raincoat Man? Did he – in some macabre manner – experiment on these defenceless women in Amersham and Chesham before carrying out the real crime?
