Around 7 p.m. on Saturday 10th February 1968 the peace of Hazlebury Road was shattered by several loud bangs. At least six shots were fired in a flat at number 51. Terence 'Ba Ba' Elgar died at the scene from a bullet wound to the chest and Anthony Lawrence survived two gunshots to the head. The shootings were the result of a gangland feud and subsequent reports in the Fulham Chronicle and West London Observer described a street gripped by shock and fear, and of calls for the restoration of the death penalty for gun crime (especially after the cold blooded shootings of three policeman in Shepherds Bush a few years earlier).

Elgar, aged 22, had lived in Fulham Court with his mother, sister and brother-in-law and worked with Lawrence at the latter's scrap metal yard in Waterford Road. He had also worked as a trader in North End Road market. Lawrence lived with his wife at Barclay Close near Fulham Broadway.

Ian Horton who lived at the house in Hazlebury Road  and George Marshall were charged with murder and attempted murder. Horton was discharged at his trial and George Marshall who was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment, was later freed on appeal. Both men had claimed that Lawrence had pointed a shotgun at them first because they had failed to carry out a contract killing of a rival scrap dealer. Lawrence had maintained that both he and Elgar had been lured to Hazlebury Road so they could be killed.

The Fulham Chronicle interviewed a neighbour soon after the shootings. He said: "There was a man on the doorstep with blood pouring down his face. He asked to be allowed in to the house but we thought he was a drunkard. The man was in a daze but because we thought he was drunk we got him back into the street and shut the door."

He added: "The next thing, police cars and ambulances inavaded the street."

Lorraine Dunleavy was a child at the time of the shootings and also only lived a couple of doors away. "When the shooting happened in Hazlebury Road, myself and my sisters were in the Sunday newspapers, as it was only two doors away." she writes.

"We had been attending a neighbour's wedding reception in a hall in New Kings Road. When we returned home the rear of the murder house, opposite ours in Broughton Road was floodlit and we could see the silhouettes of  forensic experts in jumper suits brushing for finger prints."

The shootings were seen as part of an ongoing feud between rival gangs as the press cuttings below reveal. The journalist and broadcaster Janet Street-Porter, formerly Janet Ball and an ex- pupil of Peterborough School * wrote about the local crime scene in her autobiography 'Baggage' **  

"In the late 1950s Fulham was home to plenty of low-level criminals, and not a week passed without the front page of the Fulham Chronicle recording a bank hold up or a robbery with violence." There was a 'war' between several of the families who ran scrap metal yards in Fulham and one of the children in my class had the front of their father's premises strafed with gunfire as a warning." 

*Read about Jane's Peterborough School days in the Schools and Churches Section.

** 'Baggage'  Headline Book Publishing 2004