Before we get started, I just want to let everybody know that today’s article will follow a slightly different format than usual as we will be covering two separate crimes. As the gun reform debate rages on in the United States, we thought that it would be interesting to cover two of the worst gun related crimes in the United Kingdom, the subsequent law changes that these crimes brought about and whether or not those reforms were effective. So, without further ado, let’s get into the first story.
The Hungerford Massacre
On the 19th of August 1987, Susan Godfrey was travelling to the birthday party of one of her grandparents with her two small children when, at the recommendation of her father, she stopped at Savernake Forest for a picnic. This recommendation would be one that her father would regret for the rest of his life. Susan would never make it to that birthday party, nor would she enjoy a quiet, relaxed picnic in the forest with her children. The events that took place over the rest of that day would briefly turn the sleepy town of Hungerford, a place that the majority of people living in the United Kingdom had never heard of, into the most talked about place in the world.
Unbeknownst to Susan, just a few metres away from where she parked her car, dressed in military camouflage gear and carrying several weapons including an AK-47 assault rifle and a Beretta pistol, stood the man who would not only end her life and the lives of 15 other people, but who would also be responsible for severely injuring 15 more.
Who Was Michael Ryan?
Born on 18 May 1960, Michael Robert Ryan was the only child of Alfred and Dorothy Ryan. Known to the locals as a quiet and morose individual, Ryan had no real friends except for his mother. Although he was frequently bullied at school due to his small stature, he never fought back or protested, preferring instead to keep his emotions hidden.
After leaving school, he developed a fascination with firearms, and created an entirely fictitious persona for himself. He would tell anybody who would listen that he was a former paratrooper and now owned a gun shop. Although everybody who lived in the area knew that Ryan had spent almost his entire life unemployed, he was known to become quite irate if his lies were at all questioned, and so people just let him get on with it. After all, he wasn’t hurting anybody, he was just Michael, the crazy bullshitter from down the pub.
Every town has a Michael. The man who claims to be exceptionally wealthy but seems to spend an inordinate amount of time drinking cider in the park. The ‘former Hells Angel’ who actually rides a 49 CC moped. Or the expert knife fighter who can barely hold cutlery.
Ryan was Hungerford’s version of this guy.
During his late teens, he obtained the necessary firearms certificates required to own a shotgun, assault rifle and a number of handguns, and these became his obsession. So, a quick recap to check against the list of warning signs: No friends, check. Unhealthy relationship with his mother, check. Living in a fantasy world, check. An obsession with firearms, check. As I am sure regular readers will have already noticed, the signs are not good.
As he became more and more obsessed with the exciting life that he had created for himself within the confines of his own head, he began to engage in stranger and stranger behaviour. According to locals, it was not uncommon for Ryan to be seen creeping around in Savernake Forest dressed in military attire. Whilst several people marked this behaviour as unusual, nobody was ever seriously concerned.
After all, it was just Michael, a bit weird perhaps but essentially harmless. After the events that took place on that fateful day, police and psychologists alike came to believe that Ryan would covertly follow members of the public when they were out for walks and that he would do this in order to help fulfil sexual fantasies in which he was a hunter stalking his prey. Sadly, in a turn of events that is only too familiar, the day came when imagining and fantasising was no longer enough.
Breaking Point
It is unclear as to what finally caused Ryan to snap, although a few sources claimed that, earlier that morning, he had had an argument with his mother. Whatever the reasons, on that beautiful morning, at a well-known picnic spot in Savernake Forest, he finally lost what was left of his self-control and a monster was born.
As Susan sat on a picnic blanket near her car with her two children, Hannah, aged four, and James, aged two, Ryan approached the family, pointed a 9 mm Beretta pistol directly at Susan and instructed her to strap both of the children back into their car seats. Although obviously terrified, Susan complied and, as Ryan picked up the picnic blanket and instructed her to walk in front of him into the woods, she told her children to wait there for her. She would be back soon.
What happened next is not entirely clear. However, the police believe that, after Ryan walked Susan a short way into the forest, he attempted to sexually assault her and, when she resisted, he shot her 13 times and covered her with the picnic blanket. This done, he walked back to his metallic silver Vauxhall Astra GTE, which was parked close to Susan’s car, and, without a word to the two children still in the car seats, he drove off in the direction of Hungerford.
Quite understandably, these two children were terrified. They had heard the multiple gunshots and seeing Ryan return without their mother only caused them to become more concerned. After some time, it is difficult to be specific as we are, after all, relying on the testimony of a four-year-old child.
Hannah unbuckled the seat belts, and they went in search of their mother. In the only bit of luck that these poor children had that day, they began searching in the wrong direction and so did not come across the bullet riddled body of their mother. Instead, they ran into Myra Rose, who was out walking in the forest.
Although she did not immediately believe young Hannah when she told her that their mother had been shot, she did agree to help look for her. Susan’s body would later be discovered by a police officer who, upon noticing her abandoned car with both the doors open, stopped to investigate. He would find the body about 250 yards away from the car.
The two children would be reunited with their father later that day.
Afternoon of Carnage
After leaving the sight of his first murder, Ryan drove to Foxfield petrol station, not far from Hungerford. Once there, he proceeded to fill his car with a 5 L petrol can. Mrs Kakoub Dean, the wife of the owner, recognised Ryan as a regular customer but would later describe him as “not particularly nice or chatty”.
The only reason that she paid any attention to him at all was that he was purchasing a lot more fuel than usual. Whilst her attention was diverted as she served another regular customer, Ian George, Ryan went to the boot of his car and retrieved a semi-automatic rifle. When she finished serving George, she looked back out of the window and was horrified to see Ryan standing outside and pointing the rifle directly at her.
The quickness with which she reacted in that instant undoubtedly saved her life. As she ducked beneath the counter, Ryan’s bullet shattered the safety glass and ricocheted harmlessly off into the shop.
As George fled the scene on his motorbike in order to get help, Ryan burst into the shop and once again pointed his rifle at Dean. Terrified, she begged for her life to be spared but Ryan reacted as if he could not hear her at all. Absolutely convinced that she was about to die, Dean watched as Ryan pulled the trigger and nothing happened. Appearing to be slightly confused, he pulled the trigger several more times with the same result before turning round, leaving the shop, and driving away.
Dean immediately contacted the police who, having received a report of an armed robbery from George, were already on their way.
After leaving the petrol station, Ryan drove to Hungerford and stopped off at 4 South View, the house that he shared with his mother. Whereupon he shot and killed the family dog, changed his clothes, loaded his pockets with ammunition, and packed a bag with food and a first-aid kit before leaving the house and trying to drive away in his car. Sadly, we have no idea what he planned to do, and we will never find out.
It seems logical that, having filled up his car and an extra fuel can, he had planned to go on the run or into hiding. Unfortunately for many of the residents of Hungerford, his car would not start. After several attempts to get it going, he angrily leapt from the vehicle before wildly firing 5 shots into the boot.
It is at this point that Ryan appeared to lose what little control he had managed to maintain. Taking the fuel can from the car, he returned to his house, doused everything that he believed would burn with petrol, and set the building ablaze. Leaving his home one final time, Ryan retrieved his beloved gun collection from his car and set off down the street.
Quick Fire Murder
Now far beyond the reach of any reason, Ryan set off in search of more prey. The next two people unfortunate enough to be discovered by Ryan — Roland and Sheila Mason — had been his neighbours for many years. According to one source, the two families had been fairly close since the death of Ryan’s father, and Sheila was a particularly good friend of his mother’s. However, none of this mattered to Ryan.
When he came across the couple relaxing in the back garden, he shot Sheila once in the head and Roland six times in the chest. Both of them were killed instantly.
Marjorie Jackson, one of the incredibly lucky individuals who actually survived, was his next target. Drawn to the window by the sound of gunfire, Jackson was staring in shock at her two dead neighbours when Ryan shot at her. Although she was seriously injured, she managed to make it to the phone and call both her husband and the police.
Whilst she waited for help to arrive, Ryan ran up and down the street shooting at anything that moved. Curiously, at this point in his murderous rampage, one surviving eyewitness claims that he shouted to several groups of children that they should get inside where it was safe. This action suggests that he may have been more in control of his mind than some experts would later suggest.
He spared the two children in the morning, encouraged other children to get off the streets and, as far as I can ascertain, generally did his best to ensure that no children got hurt. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that this makes him in any way a good guy but what it does do is suggest a degree of mental capability rather than the frequently implied mindless crazy person, no longer capable of rational thought.
Another person who was incredibly lucky that day was Dorothy Smith, a 77-year-old partially deaf Hungerford resident. Upon hearing several loud bangs, she went out into the street to investigate. With an apparent lack of any idea as to just what sort of danger she was in, she shouted at Ryan in that way only certain old ladies can: “Is that you making that noise? You are frightening everybody to death.
Stop it, you stupid bugger!” She would later tell reporters that he looked at her with extremely vacant eyes before heading off down a footpath that led to Hungerford Common.
The walk along the footpath proved to be particularly fruitful for Ryan. His next victim, 14-year-old Lisa Mildenhall, was crouching by her front door as she removed her shoes. Ryan smiled at her before shooting her four times in the legs and stomach. Luckily, she was able to drag herself inside and close the door before he could finish her off but, although she would survive, she would sustain life changing injuries.
The next person, Kenneth Clements, was not so lucky. Whilst walking along the footpath with his family in the opposite direction to Ryan, he was shot once in the head and died instantly. The rest of his family were literally forced to run for their lives.
At this point, you may be wondering “where the fuck are the police?!” I mean, they had been alerted to the fact that there was an active shooter in the area quite some time ago. Well, the police had a problem.
Although they were able to monitor Ryan’s movements from a helicopter and put roadblocks in place to prevent anybody entering or leaving Hungerford, the nearest armed response unit was several hours drive away. Furthermore, the Hungerford police station was, at that time, undergoing serious restoration and because of this only had two working telephone lines. Not only were these lines quickly overwhelmed by people calling in to report shootings, members of the police also had to deal with a massive influx of calls from members of the press, many of whom would later flock to Hungerford, not only getting in the way of vital emergency services but, in some cases, even unlawfully obtaining access to crime scenes by pretending to be forensic investigators.
How I feel about these figurative pieces of excrement cannot adequately be described with the use of mere words.
Once the police were finally able to spread the word, one Constable Roger Brereton, who, upon hearing what was happening drove straight to the danger zone in order to assist in any way that he could, was killed on the spot when Ryan fired 23 rounds into his patrol car. This was still not enough to slake his thirst for blood. Now smiling to himself as if this were just another day at the rifle range, Ryan fired a further 11 rounds into the next car that he saw. The occupants, Linda and Alison Chapman, both sustained serious injuries but would ultimately survive the attack.
Having now returned to the area near his former home, Ryan shot and killed his neighbour, Abdul Khan, as he mowed his lawn, before turning his gun on Alan Lepetit, a family friend who had installed the security locker in which Ryan was obligated to store his firearms as part of the terms of his licensing certificates. Although he was shot three times, including once in the back, Lepetit would make a full recovery after the incident.
In an attempt to spread even more panic and despair, Ryan’s next target was an ambulance that had been dispatched to one of the many 999 calls made by both victims and concerned local citizens. Although, on this occasion, his bullets failed to find a human target, paramedic Hazel Haslett was injured by broken glass. This prompted the ambulance driver, Linda Bright, to reverse the vehicle and drive away from the scene.
The Fire Brigade faced a similar problem. Although the fire Ryan started in his own home now spread to several surrounding houses, fire engines were prevented from reaching the rapidly spreading blaze because of fears that the driver and operators may also find themselves in mortal danger.
At the time, the danger was still very real. Ryan’s next victims, Ivor Jackson and George White, were both shot as they drove past him in the street. Ivor had received a phone call from his wife telling him what had happened, and George had offered to give him a ride home from work so that he could be with her. Ivor would miraculously go on to survive but George, who was driving, would be killed by a combination of gunshot wounds to the chest and injuries sustained when the car struck the same abandoned police vehicle that Ryan had previously fired upon.
As the monster stood surveying his own, home-made horror movie set, his mother, Dorothy Ryan, the only person he had ever loved, pulled up in the now almost unrecognisable street where her house used to be. Catching sight of her son standing in the middle of the street and holding a gun, she called out to him “Stop it, Michael. Why are you doing this?”
Without answering her or indeed showing any signs of recognition or emotion, Ryan pointed his gun at his mother and pulled the trigger three times, hitting her twice in the stomach and once in the leg. As she lay face down on the road, he calmly approached and shot her twice more in the back at point-blank range, killing her instantly.
Although in sight of several unarmed police officers and with the PA system of the hovering helicopter instructing him to put down his weapons, Ryan simply walked away from his latest victim. At 1:30 pm, almost two hours after Ryan began his murderous rampage, the armed response unit finally arrived in Hungerford. Sadly, whilst the authorities were regrouping and getting organised, more lives would be lost.
71-year-old Betty Tolladay, who, believing the loud bangs to be children letting off firecrackers, went out into her garden to investigate and was shot once by Ryan. She would survive but the damage caused by the single bullet would cause her to lose the use of her leg. 26-year-old Francis Butler, who whilst out walking his dog in the Hungerford Memorial Gardens was shot three times, and died at the scene. Marcus Bernard, a local taxi driver who was going to visit his wife and new-born son at the hospital, was shot in the head and killed after briefly slowing his car in order to try and see what was happening.
After killing Marcus, eyewitnesses claim that Ryan seemed to have a brief moment of clarity. He looked disgustedly at the rifle in his hands before hurling it to the ground and looking around as if seeing everything clearly for the first time. Unfortunately, this brief moment of lucidity did not last very long, and he very quickly retrieved the rifle and started walking away from the centre of town.
Although, at this point, he must’ve been fully aware that armed response units would shortly be in pursuit, he still took time to engage in the hunt, shooting at and slightly injuring Ann Honeybone as she passed him in her car, before opening fire on John Storms, a local repair man who was sitting in his parked van at the side of the road. Ryan’s first shot hit John in the face, and he took cover beneath the dashboard. Ryan approached the van but, as he was reloading, a local builder, Bob Barclay, dragged John from the van and into his home.
Deprived of the kill, Ryan next turned his attention to the car of Douglas and Kathleen Wainwright, the parents of a local policeman who were driving into town to visit him. Douglas was killed instantly, and Kathleen sustained serious injuries. In a bizarre twist of fate which I am sure will haunt the aforementioned policeman until the end of his days, it had been he who had signed off on the paperwork that Ryan submitted in order to obtain a modified firearms license.
It was this license that allowed Ryan to own the high-powered assault rifles that had caused so much devastation that day.
Using one of these assault rifles, an AK-47, Ryan next shot and killed van driver Eric Vardy when he was on his way to pick up an order, and Sandra Hill who was doing nothing more sinister than taking a relaxed afternoon drive whilst listening to some music. Perhaps deciding that he needed a more defensible position, our killer forced his way into the home of Victor and Myrtle Gibbs. Victor did his best to shield the wheelchair user Myrtle, but it would do no good. Ryan killed them as casually as he had killed so many others that day.
From the relative safety of the Gibbs house, he continued to unload his arsenal of weapons upon the people of his hometown. His bullets injured both a man and woman living in nearby houses. He also shot at another passing car killing the driver, Ian Playle, who had been visiting Hungerford with his wife and children. Miraculously, the three passengers were completely unharmed.
Before leaving his temporary bolthole, Ryan would shoot one more person. This was George Noon who, in spite of being shot in both the shoulder and the eye, was also lucky enough to survive.
Final Hiding Place
At approximately 2 pm, Ryan was observed by another Hungerford resident, Bert Whatley, entering the John O’Gaunt Secondary School which was, most fortunately, closed for the summer holidays. Bert would later tell reporters that: “He had his head held down very, very low — you could just see the back of his neck — he didn’t turn round, and he was walking very slowly, and he had a handgun in his left hand, heading to the ground, and a rifle over his right shoulder.” Bert immediately alerted the authorities, and the school was quickly surrounded by armed police. A stand-off had been achieved.
Although the nine officers that surrounded the school were only armed with .38 Smith and Wessons — peashooters in comparison to what Ryan was packing — they at least knew where he was and, with a bit of luck, they would be able to keep him there and negotiate his surrender. Knowing where Ryan was also provided one extra benefit. Finally, emergency crews could tend to the wounded and put out the fires without the risk of being fired upon.
Over a period of about 90 minutes, Sergeant Paul Brightwell engaged in a long conversation with Michael Ryan. During that conversation, the sergeant would describe Ryan as being fairly lucid and easy to talk to. He kept asking about his mother and whether or not she was okay. Although Sergeant Brightwell was pleased to have established dialogue, for him, there was only really one thing to talk about, and that was Ryan’s surrender.
Every time this subject was broached, Ryan declared that he was not going to come out until he had received news of his mother. Sergeant Brightwell told him that he did not know if she had survived but he was trying to find out. As the end neared, Ryan shouted out that he wished he’d stayed in bed that morning before saying: “It’s funny, I killed all those people, but I don’t have the guts to blow my own brains out.”
By 6:52 pm, it was all over. Ryan asked for the time at about 6:48 and after that, he spoke no more. At 6:52, Brightwell heard a single shot from inside the classroom where Ryan was hiding.
Initially, the police were concerned that this may be some sort of ruse, so they flew the helicopter past the window in an attempt to confirm whether or not he was actually dead. Unfortunately, nobody on board was able to see him so a different tactic had to be devised. In the end, a member of the police tactical force climbed onto the roof of the building and, with the aid of a mirror on a long pole, was finally able to see into the room.
In the corner, close to another window, and very obviously dead, sat Ryan. Although the police were anxious to completely secure the area, there was one more problem that needed to be addressed. During his conversation with Sergeant Brightwell, Ryan had said that he was also in possession of a fragmentation grenade, and so it was with some trepidation that members of the tactical squad entered the room that contained Ryan’s body and carefully searched for explosive booby traps.
Fortunately for those individuals, like many of the things that came out of Ryan’s mouth, the existence of the hand grenade was pure fiction.
And so it was that, at just after 7 pm on the 19th of August 1987, approximately seven hours after Michael Ryan fired the first shots, the Hungerford Massacre was over. During those seven hours, Ryan fired 133 shots, killed 16 people, and injured a further 15. Although the shooting was over, the effects of what happened during those seven hours still clearly resonate throughout Hungerford to this day.
Analysis and Reforms
Looking back on it now, it is hard to understand how an individual such as Michael Ryan was ever permitted to own any sort of firearm. Unfortunately, the keywords there are “looking back.” Hindsight is so often used as a stick with which to beat people of the past for perceived stupidity that, in many instances, the bigger picture is lost.
Should that police officer who authorised Ryan’s firearm certificate modification have rejected his application? I’m sure he thinks so now, especially as that modification ultimately led to the death of his own father. However, within the confines of the law, he was given no grounds on which he could have denied Ryan his modified license.
At the time that Ryan submitted the application, he had had no previous trouble with the law, no registered mental health issues, and by joining a local gun club where many people would vouch for his competence, had built himself a completely plausible reputation as a responsible gun owner. Although many locals would later describe Ryan as a strange individual, nobody was ever concerned enough to mention this to the authorities. Therefore, not knowing Ryan personally, little if any blame can be laid directly at the feet of this one police officer.
The problem, as is so often the case, was not with the implementation of the law but with the law itself.
If anything good came out of the Hungerford massacre, it was the fact that more and more people around the UK began to question whether or not it was a good idea for members of the public to be able to own military style assault weapons. Yes, I am aware of the tired old NRA-fuelled adage that people need guns to protect themselves and to protect their families and, I am, somewhat reluctantly, not entirely opposed to this viewpoint. I do often wonder however, just how many people you would have had to have pissed off over the years in order to genuinely believe you would require a Kalashnikov and several magazines of ammunition in order to defend your home. In most cases, I would have thought that a six-shot revolver would be more than adequate for this purpose.
As a direct result of people asking this question and campaigning for change, under the Firearms Act 1988, semi-automatic and pump-action rifles and shotguns were banned, except those chambered for .22 ammunition. The Act also prohibited more dangerous forms of ammunition such as that which explodes or contains noxious substances. In addition, shotguns with barrels of 24 inches or longer required a firearms certificate, which was theoretically much more difficult to obtain than a simple shotgun license.
Interestingly, the original recommendations for the amendment of the Firearms Act were much more stringent and would have resulted in many more weapons being removed from sale to the public. These strict reforms received some opposition and, rather than attempting to engage in some sort of useful debate, the government at the time, who were keen to be seen to be doing something proactive in the wake of the Hungerford Massacre, forced through this watered-down version. It is probable that the gun ownership laws within the United Kingdom may have remained unchanged to this day, if it were not for what happened next.
Part Two: The Dunblane Massacre
Some eight years after the 1988 amendment, on the 13th of March 1996, members of the United Kingdom would once again come under fire from a crazed individual with legal access to a collection of deadly weapons.
When Ron Taylor, the headteacher at Dunblane primary school, set out for work on the morning of 13th of March 1996, he believed that it would just be an ordinary day at the office. In an interview given 20 years later, Ron recalls that: “It was a beautiful morning. It was very bright, it was frosty – the snowdrops were out in profusion. There was even some snow on the ground – there was a real hint of the summer to come.
It was beautiful.” Ron truly had no idea just how the events of that day would change not only his own life but the lives of everybody in the school, everybody in the local area and those of hundreds of thousands of people across the United Kingdom.
Upon arriving at the school, Ron set about the usual business of the day. At approximately 9:30 am, he heard a series of loud bangs. Briefly, Ron attributed these bangs to some sort of building work. Although, as far as he was aware, no such work had been scheduled for that day, he just assumed that he had either been told and forgotten about it or somebody had neglected to inform him.
Either way, it was no big deal, right? Wrong! About one minute later, a member of staff burst into Ron’s office and told him that somebody was shooting in the gym. Immediately, he sprinted from his office and headed in the direction of the gymnasium.
What he found can only be described as utter carnage. 15 five- and 6-year-old children and one teacher had been shot to death, many more were seriously injured, and the shooter lay dying from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
How did this happen? How was somebody capable of such a heinous crime allowed access to firearms? And, to quote one of the condolence cards that would be later left outside the school: “Why them?”
Who Was Thomas Hamilton?
In order to attempt to answer these questions, we must take a closer look at the individual behind this despicable crime — disgraced former scout leader and suspected paedophile Thomas Hamilton.
Born on the 10th of May 1952, Thomas Hamilton was the only son of Thomas Watt and Agnes Hamilton. Thomas Junior never got to know his father as, at the time of his birth, he had already left his wife for another woman and filed for divorce. Agnes was, at that time, working as a hotel chambermaid and money was extremely tight so, when her adoptive parents offered her the opportunity to go and live with them, she gratefully accepted.
Originally, she had planned to live with them for a while in order to save some money before once again going out on her own. When Thomas reached the age of two, something rather strange would happen. Agnes’s parents would officially adopt him, and he would be raised to believe not only that they were his biological parents but that his mother was in fact his older sister.
The truth would not be revealed to him until he reached the age of about 22. Try as I might, I have been able to find no information on why this bizarre deception was carried out. I suppose that it is possible it may have been done to avoid awkward conversations as to the whereabouts of Thomas, his biological father, but if this is the case, it seems to be rather extreme.
As I said, this is mere speculation on my part.
During his time in education, Thomas appears to have performed fairly well academically. However, he would discover his two true passions during his early teenage years. These passions took the form of both a local rifle club and the boy’s brigade. What started out as relatively harmless hobbies would quickly become an obsession.
Around 1976, Hamilton applied for and was granted a firearm certificate which permitted him to own, among other things, a large collection of handguns. As well as spending what has been described as an unhealthy amount of time at local gun clubs practising marksmanship, Hamilton also became heavily involved with the local Boy Scouts.
In 1973, he achieved the position of assistant scout leader of a troop based in the town of Stirling. It was during his time working with the scouts that the first alarm bells began to ring. During one weekend trip to the Scottish Highlands, an event which was designed to test the survival skills of the young boys, Hamilton is reported to have gone far beyond the recommended limits put in place by the Scout Association.
As a result of this, many of the boys returned from the trip in very poor health and, in some cases, suffering from hypothermia. On at least two other occasions, Hamilton took groups of boys to the highlands on the pretext of engaging in walking expeditions. Although adequate sleeping arrangements should have been made, he claimed that, on these occasions, the venues had been double booked, and he and the children were forced to sleep huddled together in the back of his van in freezing temperatures.
Although it is plausible that a double booking could happen once, in my opinion it is highly unlikely that it would happen several times. Members of the Scout Association appear to have shared my opinion and, upon looking into the matter a little more closely, they discovered that on both occasions Hamilton had not attempted to make any accommodation reservations at all.
Parents and scout leaders alike were outraged that he had placed these children in such danger, and Hamilton was asked to resign from his post. Appearing to genuinely believe that he had done nothing to warrant this, Hamilton protested vociferously. Nevertheless, the then county commissioner of the scouts, Mr Brian D Fairgrieve, decided that the scouts would be a much better and safer place without Hamilton, and contacted him directly instructing him to return his warrant book. Fairgrieve would also write to the Scottish scout headquarters in order to explain why he had made this decision.
As this letter contains several important observations, I have included it in full. It reads:
“While unable to give concrete evidence against this man I feel that too many ‘incidents’ relate to him, such that I am far from happy about his having any association with Scouts. He has displayed irresponsible acts on outdoor activities by taking young ‘favourite’ Scouts for weekends during the winter and sleeping in his van, the excuse for these outings being hill-walking expeditions. The lack of precautions for such outdoor activities displays either irresponsibility or an ulterior motive for sleeping with the boys…His personality displays evidence of a persecution complex coupled with rather grandiose delusions of his own abilities. As a doctor, and with my clinical acumen only, I am suspicious of his moral intentions towards boys”.
After his numerous appeals were rejected, Hamilton divided his time between working at the DIY shop that he had opened in 1972, continuing to practice marksmanship, and setting up and running at least 15 different boys’ clubs specialising in shooting, football, gymnastics, and outdoor pursuits. Although the scouting organisation had done everything they possibly could keep him away from young children, Hamilton had found another way. To begin with, these clubs were very popular, with some of them attracting as many as 70 members including, at one-point, professional tennis player Andy Murray who was a student at Dunblane school at the time of the massacre.
It appears that none of these clubs remained particularly popular for long. When asked about this, Hamilton would say that it was down to children’s lack of discipline and commitment. He would frequently engage in long rants about how weak and unhealthy the children of the time were, often adding that he hated fat kids and despised parents for constantly feeding them junk food.
In actuality, the reason that popularity in his clubs declined was very simple and can be summed up in only five words. His behaviour towards the children.
Parents became increasingly concerned with the way that Hamilton was interacting with the boys. As one parent put it: “The entire evening seemed to be based around Hamilton shouting at the boys. It was less of an enjoyable extracurricular activity and more a series of regimented military drills”.
Furthermore, many concerns were raised with regards to just what Hamilton got up to on his weekend trips away. According to the mother of one attendee, Hamilton would instruct the boys to rub sunblock into his naked body. Several other boys claimed that, during the evening at these summer camps, Hamilton would whip them with a metal rod before rubbing them vigorously with lotion.
Perhaps more concerning were the hundreds of photographs and videos that Hamilton took during these club meetings. Insisting that the boys wore only tight-fitting swimming trunks during most of these meetings, Hamilton would frequently take both photographs and video footage, and the majority of these focused solely on the swimming trunks area. When questioned as to exactly why he needed so many photographs of the boys, Hamilton responded that it was entirely necessary for advertising his clubs, and that any parent was welcome to have copies of the images.
Although some of these images were undoubtedly used for advertising purposes, Hamilton put many of the others to a different use. Hundreds of pictures of young, scantily clad boys adorned the walls of his home, and he kept many more in labelled photo albums.
Of course, with so much controversy surrounding him, Hamilton’s activities had been reported to the local police. However, he was always incredibly careful to make sure that, although questionable, his actions never actually broke the law. In a letter written by an unnamed police officer to a senior colleague, the officer writes:
“Mr Hamilton has undoubtedly sailed very close to the wind for many years as regards the inappropriateness of his methods of alleged tuition of very young, immature and unsuspecting boys of primary school age. However, in view of the evidence available to date, Hamilton may have committed offences of lewd, indecent, and libidinous practices and behaviour…”
Concerns would also be raised with regards to Hamilton’s unhealthy obsession with his firearms collection. Not only would he frequently allow young children to handle and fire his guns, something that he was not permitted to do within the terms of his firearms certificate, but he also seemed to get some sort of perverse excitement from talking about his guns or showing them to the children. One boy, a former member of a football club run by Hamilton said: “I can remember once when I was in the minibus, Mr Hamilton asked us to guess what kind of club he was a member of.
We couldn’t guess and eventually he told us he was in a gun club. I asked him what he shot, and he told me he liked to shoot moving things. He told us he had lot of guns but not to tell anybody.”
It has also been alleged that, during some of his summer camps, Hamilton would drop a group of boys off on a small island, provide them with guns, and encourage them to shoot at any animal that they might find.
Several people, including one police officer, attempted to have Hamilton stripped of his firearms certificate. But, even after police received reports of Hamilton pointing an unloaded pistol at a man who was visiting his home, and pulling the trigger, no action was ever taken against him due to lack of evidence. The former deputy chief constable of Central Scotland, Douglas McMurdo, would later explain to an enquiry that he had no reason to believe that Hamilton was a violent or dangerous person, going on to say: “Nor did he do anything which would have given me evidence to revoke his firearms certificate”. McMurdo would also claim that five further firearms incidents involving Hamilton were not reported to police until after the shooting.
With more and more people becoming increasingly concerned about Hamilton, he himself retreated into an expertly sculpted cocoon of denial. Claiming that everybody was out to get him and to destroy his reputation, he began a ferocious letter writing campaign during which he wrote to, among other people, patron of the scouts Association Queen Elizabeth II. In this letter, he complains of unfair treatment from the Scouts Association, and claims that due to jealousy about his popularity with the boys, a small number of scout officials had not only removed him from the Association but, through several covert channels, had attempted to block him from working with children in any capacity. The following is a small extract from that letter:
“Over the past 20 years of youth work, this has caused me untold damage including council, police, and social work investigations where they had acted as a direct result of information received in absolute confidence from officials of the Scout Association. Any subsequent investigation was instigated on a whim and without proper complaint, cause, or justification. For the purpose of the police complaints procedure, the investigative skills of the police are put into reverse.
It seems to be a tactic of the police during any investigation, to spread innuendos to as many people as possible and in such a way as to cause maximum damage, and then when their investigation comes to nothing, they do nothing about retracting their accusations. This has probably been the most damaging of all on the part of the police and council.”
Hamilton would also write a number of letters in which he described his anger at no longer being allowed to use school premises for his clubs. I am not going to include any of those letters, it is enough to say that they contained more of the same complaints that he had sent to the Queen. He was being persecuted due to jealousy, he had never done anything wrong, the police were out to get him, that sort of thing.
As his animosity towards generally everybody grew, it appears that his plan for revenge on the society that had so wronged him began to take shape. It is possible that he had been planning his attack for up to two years before it happened. One of the few remaining members of his boy’s club would later say that Hamilton was obsessed with the goings-on at the school. He would ask about routines, he would ask what classes used the gymnasium and when, and by the time that fateful day rolled around, he possessed an extremely detailed working knowledge of almost everything that happened at Dunblane primary school.
The Massacre
On the morning of the 13th of March 1996, Thomas Hamilton drove from his house to Dunblane primary school, a journey of about five miles. With him he carried four handguns, two 9mm Browning pistols, and two Smith & Wesson M19 .357 Magnum revolvers, along with 743 rounds of ammunition and a pair of pliers. Upon arriving at the school, he used his pliers to cut the telephone lines before firing off a few random shots in the playground and forcing his way past two staff members. Gaining access to the building via a side door, he calmly walked along a corridor that took him past the empty dining room before running into the gymnasium which, at that time, he knew would contain a class of five and six-year-olds along with their teacher, Mrs Gwen Mayor.
Hamilton’s first victims were the other two teachers in the room, Mrs Mary Blake, and Mrs Eileen Harrild, both of whom he shot and seriously injured. After that, he turned his guns on the children. As these terrified youngsters frantically attempted to hide beneath tables, under chairs and in storage cupboards, Hamilton casually strolled around the room in a rough circle shooting and killing many of them at point-blank range.
Once he believed that he had killed them all, he stepped out into a corridor and opened fire on another group of children, injuring the teacher who accompanied them. After this, he went back into the gymnasium, walked out of a fire escape, and opened fire on a mobile classroom. Fortunately, the teacher who had been working with the class inside the temporary structure had already figured out what was going on and instructed the pupils to hide under the tables.
This quick thinking definitely saved at least one life. Although many of the bullets that were later recovered had hit walls or bits of equipment, one bullet passed through the back of a chair which, seconds earlier, had been occupied by a student. After unleashing that final spray of bullets, Hamilton returned to the gymnasium, and it was at this point that this unbelievable coward placed the barrel of one of his own guns into his mouth and pulled the trigger.
As he lay dying amongst the bodies of those innocent, defenceless children, the door to the gymnasium would fly open once again marking the arrival of the previously mentioned headmaster Ron Taylor.
He was followed shortly after by an off-duty police officer who had been dropping his children off at the nursery that morning. The following description is taken from a report that would later be filed by this police officer:
“I entered and saw carnage. A flurry of thoughts and feelings came on me and I was aware of a strong smell of gun smoke. I also formed the opinion that all the children I saw were dead as all were motionless. I saw a group of bodies to my immediate right at the entrance doors where I stood.
That was the group where the teacher (deceased Mayor) was that died. I can recall that her body was on top of other children. I saw that they were dressed in gym kit, blue t-shirts, and dark shorts. I formed the opinion that they were all dead.
I also saw a group to my left, halfway up the left side of the hall. They consisted of about four or five further children, wearing exactly the same state of dress. I formed the opinion they were all dead.”
The main reason that I included this extract is that it confirms, without a doubt, the unbelievable selflessness and bravery of Mrs Gwen Mayor. Although faced with certain death, neither she nor any of the other teachers attempted to run or to save their own lives, instead attempting to shield their students from this brutal attacker.
Ron Taylor, who never spoke publicly about what had happened until 20 years later when the BBC released a documentary to mark the anniversary, described walking into that gymnasium as a vision of hell on Earth: He said: “There was an incredible silence, the air was thick with smoke, the smell of cordite. And I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was unimaginably horrible to see children dying in front of you.”
After instructing one teacher to remove four traumatised but still walking children from the gymnasium, he and many others did their best to administer whatever care they could whilst also trying to provide comfort to those who were taking their last breaths. Once the survivors had been taken to hospital, the police asked Ron to re-enter the gymnasium in order to identify the bodies of those children who had not survived. He told the BBC that this was particularly difficult.
As they had only been at the school for a short while, he was not familiar with all of them and had to enlist the help of another member of staff.
Ron would later be hailed as a hero for both his actions on that day, and the calm and stoic way that he dealt with the press. Sadly, this is an accolade that he does not believe he deserves. Even after all these years, he is still wracked with guilt, believing that he should’ve done more to prevent this from happening. He told the makers of the aforementioned documentary that, in a locked box in his cupboard under the stairs, he keeps a collection of newspaper articles along with his own detailed account of the events that took place on that day.
Even after all these years, he has never read this account. In his own words: “It’s pretty easy to keep that box locked. It is much more difficult to keep the box in my head locked.”
The following is a list of the people who tragically lost their lives on that day:
- Gwen Mayor, 45-year-old teacher
- Abigail McLellan — aged 5
- Victoria Clydesdale — aged 5
- Sophie North — aged 5
- Ross Irvine — aged 5
- Mhairi MacBeath — aged 5
- Melissa Currie — aged 5
- Megan Turner — aged 5
- Kevin Hassell — aged 5
- John Petrie — aged 5
- Joanna Ross — aged 5
- Hannah Scott — aged 5
- Emma Crozier — aged 5
- Emily Morten — aged 5
- David Kerr — aged 5
- Charlotte Dunn — aged 5
- Brett McKinnon — aged 6
Afterwards
Although the parents and wider families did their best to rebuild their shattered lives after this tragedy, the BBC documentary shows that some memories are as fresh now as if they had happened only yesterday. Isabel Wilson, mother of Mhairi MacBeath, remembers that the first thing she saw upon returning home that day was Mhairi’s School shoes: “I picked them up and threw them in the bin. I just couldn’t look at those little empty shoes at the bottom of the stairs and know that she was never coming back.”
Although several families would move away from Dunblane, many stayed in order to support one another. Isabel said: “We met once a week and it was terribly important because you could say anything. Their support was the key to my survival.”
Moving on was also incredibly difficult for those fortunate enough to survive. In an article published one year after the massacre, Robert Weir, father of Stewart Weir — a six-year-old boy who was shot through the leg by Hamilton — talked about how difficult it was to tell his son just how many of his friends had been lost: “He was sitting in the chair in as much a state of disbelief as we were. He is a bright wee boy.
Right from the start, he knew the severity of it all. But telling him what had happened was the hardest thing I have ever had to do — tell my son that his pals were dead. He was very quiet.
The tears came later.” When talking about attending the funerals of all those that had been lost, Robert said: “At every funeral, I would stand and look at the coffin and realise that it could have been us. I feel heart sorry for the families who lost their kids.
I don’t know how they have managed. If it had been me, I would have been in a straight-jacket long before now. I have nothing but admiration for these people.
They are extraordinary and so strong.”
As news of what had happened quickly spread, messages of condolence and support poured in from around the world. The entire United Kingdom came to a halt in order to observe a minute’s silence, and the Queen visited Dunblane primary school in order to lay a wreath and meet with survivors at a nearby hospital. She also sent the following message to the secretary of state for Scotland the day after the massacre:
“I was deeply shocked by the appalling news from Dunblane. In asking you to pass my deepest and most heartfelt sympathy to the families of all those who were killed or injured, and to the injured themselves, I am sure I share in the grief and horror of the whole country.”
Gun Laws Reformed
Although the Hungerford massacre had led to limited gun reform in the United Kingdom, the atrocities committed at Dunblane primary School sparked fresh debate. Arguments that had previously been used to water down legislation such as “this was a one off” were no longer accepted. The Snowdrop Campaign, organised by a group of Dunblane parents in an attempt to ban handgun ownership entirely, was able to obtain 750,000 supporting signatures in just 10 days.
This number rose to over 1,000,000 by the time the petition got to Parliament in June 1996. Furthermore, the Cullen Report, commissioned by the government to investigate the massacre and make recommendations on how to proceed, recommended that ownership laws should be tightened. At this point, the majority of members of the public were also in favour of a handgun ban and so the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997 was passed by the Conservative government.
This amendment placed an outright ban on all high calibre handguns but permitted .22 pistols to be owned and kept at licensed gun clubs. Shortly after this, the Conservative party was swept from power during a landslide victory by the Labour Party and, in one of the few promises that he ever upheld, the new prime minister Tony Blair introduced the Firearms (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 1997, which banned public ownership of any handguns.
So, was this ban particularly effective? Well, if you only take a casual glance at the statistics then it would appear that gun crime rose by a rate of approximately 105% over the next four years. However, if we break this down a little, the reason for this increase becomes a little clearer.
The definition of gun crime during this period was extremely broad. It included but was not limited to any crime during which a gun was present “whether or not that gun was actually fired”, any crime in which a pellet gun or air rifle was used, and any crime in which a replica firearm was used. If you remove air powered weapons and replicas from the statistics, then gun crime did decrease significantly.
Furthermore, and I am aware that this will piss off members of the NRA and its supporters and I really don’t care, not wishing to tempt fate but, since 1997 when all handguns were banned, there have been exactly no school shootings within the United Kingdom. This is only my opinion but, for that result alone, I believe that sacrificing gun ownership was entirely worth it.
I could drone on for hours and hours about the need for United States gun reform, how the second amendment was written during a time when owning a firearm meant possessing a 10LBS, one shot musket and as such was probably never meant to include rapid fire assault weapons, or how providing teachers with guns is much more likely to result in more deaths rather than fewer. However, I think the best way to end this article is with an extract from a letter written by a group of Dunblane parents for students campaigning for tighter gun laws after the Parkland, Florida, shooting. It reads:
“We wanted to reach out and offer our deepest and most heartfelt sympathy to you and your teachers and to all the families and friends of those who died at your school on 14th February. We have watched and listened with tremendous admiration as you have spoken out for what you believe should happen now, a significant change of attitude towards the availability of guns in your country. We want you to know that change can happen.
It won’t be easy but continue to remind everyone of exactly what happened at your school and of the devastation caused by just one person with one legally owned gun. Never let anyone forget. There will be attempts to deflect you, to divide you and doubtless to intimidate you, but you’ve already shown great wisdom and strength.
We wish you more of that wisdom and strength for this toughest of tasks, one that will be so important in order to spare more of your fellow Americans from having to suffer the way you have. Wherever you march, whenever you protest, however you campaign for a more sensible approach to gun ownership, we will be there with you in spirit.”
Key Takeaways
- The 1987 Hungerford Massacre, where Michael Ryan killed 16 people with legally owned firearms, led to the Firearms Act 1988 banning semi-automatic and pump-action rifles.
- The 1996 Dunblane Massacre, where Thomas Hamilton murdered 16 children and a teacher with legally owned handguns, prompted even stricter gun control legislation.
- The Firearms (Amendment) Acts of 1997 ultimately banned all public handgun ownership in the UK following public outcry and the Snowdrop Campaign.
- Reported gun crime statistics initially rose after the ban, but this was due to broad definitions including air weapons and replicas; actual gun crime decreased significantly.
- Since the 1997 handgun ban, there have been no school shootings in the United Kingdom, which the author presents as evidence of the reform’s effectiveness.
Dana Ortiz covers prosecutorial mechanics, evidentiary procedure, and how investigations unwind decades after the original case file went cold.
Frequently Asked Questions
When did the Hungerford massacre take place?
The Hungerford massacre took place on the 19th of August 1987.
Who was the perpetrator of the Hungerford massacre?
The perpetrator of the Hungerford massacre was Michael Robert Ryan, born on 18 May 1960, the only child of Alfred and Dorothy Ryan.
How many people were killed and injured in the Hungerford massacre?
During the seven hours of the Hungerford massacre, Michael Ryan fired 133 shots, killed 16 people, and injured a further 15.
What gun reforms resulted from the Hungerford massacre?
As a direct result of the Hungerford massacre, the Firearms Act 1988 banned semi-automatic and pump-action rifles and shotguns (except those chambered for .22 ammunition), prohibited more dangerous forms of ammunition such as that which explodes or contains noxious substances, and required shotguns with barrels of 24 inches or longer to have a firearms certificate.
When did the Dunblane massacre occur?
The Dunblane massacre occurred on the 13th of March 1996.
Who was the perpetrator of the Dunblane massacre?
The perpetrator of the Dunblane massacre was Thomas Hamilton, a disgraced former scout leader and suspected paedophile, born on the 10th of May 1952.
How many children and adults were killed at Dunblane?
At Dunblane, 16 children (15 five-year-olds and one six-year-old) and one teacher, Gwen Mayor, were killed.
What gun reforms resulted from the Dunblane massacre?
The Dunblane massacre led to the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997, which placed an outright ban on all high calibre handguns but permitted .22 pistols to be owned and kept at licensed gun clubs. Shortly after, the Firearms (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 1997 banned public ownership of any handguns.
What was the Snowdrop Campaign?
The Snowdrop Campaign was organised by a group of Dunblane parents in an attempt to ban handgun ownership entirely. It obtained 750,000 supporting signatures in just 10 days, rising to over 1,000,000 by the time the petition reached Parliament in June 1996.
Has there been any school shootings in the UK since the 1997 handgun ban?
According to the article, since 1997 when all handguns were banned, there have been exactly no school shootings within the United Kingdom.
Sources
- Original Casual Criminalist video: Dunblane and Hungerford: Two of the UK’s Most Horrific Crimes
- Hero image source by IAEA Imagebank / openverse, by.
