Murder of June Anne Devaney
1948 child murder in London, England
The murder of June Anne Devaney is a British child murder, which occurred on 15 May 1948, when a girl aged 3 years 11 months was abducted from her cot while an inpatient at Queen's Park Hospital in Blackburn, Lancashire. The child was removed to the grounds of the hospital, where she was raped, before suffering extensive blunt force trauma to her skull when her head was repeatedly swung into a sandstone wall. The assault caused extensive internal injuries and multiple skull fractures, causing the child to develop a fatal state of shock. Her murderer, 22-year-old Peter Griffiths, was arrested three months after the crime and was subsequently tried and convicted of June Anne's murder. He was hanged on 19 November 1948.
To solve the crime, police obtained the fingerprints of every male aged 16 and above who had been in the vicinity of Blackburn on the night of 14–15 May and compared them to those left at the crime scene by the perpetrator.
The investigation into the murder of June Anne Devaney was a milestone in the history of forensic science, being the first time a mass fingerprinting exercise had been employed to solve a murder in the United Kingdom.
Hospital admission
June Anne Devaney had been admitted to the Queen's Park Hospital in Blackburn, Lancashire, on 5 May 1948, to recover from a mild bout of pneumonia. She was placed in Ward CH3 of the premises, being under the supervision of nurse Gwendolyn Humphreys at night. By 14 May, Devaney's condition had improved, and she was due to be discharged from Queen's Park Hospital the following morning.
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