Hyman Perdovitch

Hyman Perdovitch was convicted of the murder of 49-year-old Solomon Franks and sentenced to death.

He stabbed him to death at Wilkes Brothers Factory in Booth Street, Salford on 15 August 1919.

Hyman Perdovitch had been a native of Vilna and came to England in 1988. He had been single and had worked for several firms in Manchester and bore a good character as a workman.

For several years before he joined the army he had worked for Messrs Wilks Bros in Salford as a waterproof garment machinist.

He offered to enlist in 1915 but was refused as an alien, but in July 1916 he was accepted and went to France in November 1916. However, he received a shrapnel wound in the thigh in August 1917 and after eleven days in hospital he was returned to England, where, after a period in the Royal Defence Corp, he was finally discharged in August 1918 with a pension of 13/2d a week.

He received a parchment certificate marked, 'For valour in the field on the 7th June, 1917'.

He was then taken on again at Messrs Wilks, but appeared to have very soon after got on bad terms with the foreman of the room in which he worked, Solomon Franks.

Solomon Franks had been married with five children.

The work had been piece work and Hyman Perdovitch seemed to have complained that Solomon Franks gave him the heavy and more difficult work, which it was noted, reduced the amount he could earn.

It was noted that it was impossible to say whether Hyman Perdovitch had any substantial grievance, it being heard that one or two witnesses said that they all had heavy work, and that probably in a room where 20 or 30 people were employed on piece work, that there was constant grumbling of that kind.

At the time Hyman Perdovitch had still been suffering to some extent from his wound and had been attending the hospital daily, and it was thought that he might have thought that he was not receiving sympathetic treatment from Solomon Franks.

In a written statement made by Hyman Perdovitch after the murder, he said that Solomon Franks taunted him, and said, 'You should not have been a fool to run to the Army. What have you got to fight for. You should be getting a pension and doing nothing till you get alright'.

Hyman Perdovitch also said that he had complained to both the partners of the firm but that they didn't seem to have interfered as effectively as Hyman Perdovitch hoped.

Following that Hyman Perdovitch decided to leave Wilks' employ on the Friday, 15 August 1919, and that morning, when Solomon Franks came into the room where Hyman Perdovitch had been at work and went to open a door near to Hyman Perdovitch's table, Hyman Perdovitch stabbed him twice with a pen-knife in the back of the neck. One of the wounds pierced his spinal column and he died on removal to hospital.

At his trial Hyman Perdovitch's defence was that although he had meant to strike Solomon Franks, that he didn't know that he had had a knife in his hand at the time and didn't mean to kill him.

The police report noted that it was quite certain that Hyman Perdovitch had a real or imaginary grievance against Solomon Franks.

On 12 August 1919 Solomon Franks was heard to ask Hyman Perdovitch, 'When can I have that work you are doing out today?', to which Hyman Perdovitch replied, 'When it suits me'.

It was found that a day or two before the murder Hyman Perdovitch bought the knife with which he stabbed Solomon Franks, saying that he wanted it for an operation at his work.

The night before the murder he told a friend, at whose house he lodged, that he was going away for his holidays, and when asked where, he replied, 'Strangeways'.

After the murder, a fellow workman in the shop asked him, 'What have you done?', and Hyman Perdovitch replied, 'You can see I am an injured man, you know how he has treated me', and then, out in the street, when a tobacconist asked him, 'What is the matter?', Hyman Perdovitch replied, 'Nothing worth talking about, the man was never any bloody good to anybody so I have done him in', however, Hyman Perdovitch denied having said that although the police report submitted that there was little doubt that he did.

To another workman he said, 'It's all right. I have finished him. He deserved it, the bastard'.

When Hyman Perdovitch gave himself up to the police, he said, 'I have injured a man over at Wilks', and then, 'That's the thing I did it with', handing over the penknife. When he was cautioned he said, 'That is quite true. I did not intend to kill him although I have done'.

In his written statement, Hyman Perdovitch said, 'I decided to have my revenge on him, not by killing him, but by hurting him, but as things happened I hit him in a vital spot, so I suppose the law will have its running’s'.

However, at the trial the judge said that he thought that it was clear that Hyman Perdovitch had deliberately killed Solomon Franks, and that the nature of the attack together with his subsequent statements to the police precluded the suggestion of accidental homicide.

He was convicted of murder, but with a strong recommendation to mercy, which the judge did not dissent from, but noted that he thought that it was on slender grounds.

The police report to the Home Secretary stated that they thought that Hyman Perdovitch's grievance was of too trivial a nature to afford any excuse for the taking of Solomon Franks's life, adding that it merely afforded a motive for the crime.

Hyman Perdovitch appealed but the appeal was dismissed and he was executed at Manchester on 6 January 1920.