This episode contains distressing themes and descriptions of violence.

This podcast is intended for a mature audience.

Listener caution is advised.

They Walk Among Us is part of the A-cast Creator Network. The prisoner is probably the youngest person actively concerned in the investigation of this case.

You may build round a case of this kind a mountain of motive.

You may surround it with suspicion, but if you do

not prove the person whose death you are investigating was murdered, your mountain of motive

and all your suspicion are without value.

James Dale Castles, Sussex Assizes, March 1930.

Welcome to Season 7, Episode 14 of They Walk Among Us, a podcast dedicated to UK True Crime.

Margate on the southeast coast of England was a popular tourist destination in the 1920s.

People came in droves to experience the sandy beaches, the theme park and modern pier.

Being a hotelier was big business, even though it was midweek during that lace October.

The hotel metropole on Margate's seafront was bustling with guests. However, most of the visitors

at that time of year stayed for business, not pleasure, like travelling salesman.

The hectic Wednesday had almost drawn to a close at 1140pm on October 23, 1929.

The quiet was broken when guests were disturbed by a scantily clad man running down the stairs from the first floor, calling for the boots, a term for porters.

Dressed in just a vest, 30-year-old Sidney Harry Fox shouted for help and screamed at those people gathered in the lobby that there was

a fire upstairs. Samuel Hopkins, a travelling salesman who was staying at the hotel, later recalled

that the man who was shouting looked petrified, as if he had almost lost his head.

Hopkins followed Fox up the stairs to room 67, which was filled with smoke.

Fox rushed back out to the corridor and pointed to the next room 66 and said,

...