Click on the image above to hear the first episode of the radio documentary accompanying the release of Who Killed Oswald Grey?
Oswald Grey came to England aged 18 in 1960. Two years later he became the last man to be hanged in in Birmingham and the last Black man to be executed in Britain. The justice system was hasty and careless. Those who judged him were burdened by prejudice – and not just about race. Scandal born of carelessness is the hallmark of this piece of Black history: a story forgotten until now.
To book your free place at the launch on October 24 at ML2 Digbeth, click here.
Listen to legendary broadcaster Chicken George, The Reverend Joe Aldred, poet and broadcaster Sue Brown, writer and academic Dr Martin Glynn and ask questions to the author, Jon Berry – and all with wonderful food and drink!
Who Killed Oswald Grey? was released on 28 September 2025 to coincide with the upcoming Black History Month.
A six part radio documentary hosted by Genesis Radio Birmingham will accompany the release.
A launch will take place at ML2 in Digbeth, Birmingham on 24 October. To book your free place, click here.
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In November 1962, 20-year-old Oswald Augustus Grey, an immigrant from Jamaica who had been in the UK for less than two years, became the last man to be hanged in Birmingham’s Winson Green prison.
He was the last Black man hanged in the UK.
There were only five further executions in the UK before capital punishment ended in 1965.
Grey was found guilty of shooting newsagent Thomas Bates in his shop in Lee Bank Road in June that year. In a bungled robbery, a single shot from a stolen pistol killed the shopkeeper who died instantly.
His trial lasted fewer than five working days and his subsequent appeal less than an hour. There were 24 weeks between the crime and the execution.
Labelled a backward child, he had spent months in a reform school in Kingston before his father brought him to the ‘mother country’ to ‘straighten him out.’
That plan failed. Within months he was back in bad company and embarked on the life of petty crime that led him to the gallows.
The law failed Oswald Grey. He was treated as disposable and was the victim of careless advocacy and the unchallenged racism of his times. His story has been largely forgotten: this book puts that right.
