Percy Hoskins

Percy Kellick Hoskins (28 December 1904 – 5 February 1989) was the chief crime reporter for the British newspaper the Daily Express in the 1950s. He also provided stories for radio and television crime shows, such as Whitehall 1212.

Hoskins earned a mixture of notoriety and admiration within his profession due to the stance he took regarding suspected serial killer Dr John Bodkin Adams. Hoskins was the only reporter with a national paper to support Adams when arrested in 1956, while the rest of the press unanimously assumed Adams's guilt. Hoskins's stance was seen by his peers as career suicide, but, in the end, Adams was acquitted. Lord Beaverbrook, the paper's proprietor, phoned Hoskins after the verdict and told him, "Two people were acquitted today", meaning that Hoskins would keep his job and his reputation. This quote later became the title of a book Hoskins wrote about the case. During the trial, Hoskins befriended Adams, and when Adams died in 1983, he bequeathed Hoskins £1,000. Hoskins gave the money to charity.

Hoskins was born in Bridport, Dorset, England. He joined the Evening Standard when he was 19 and then moved on to the Daily Express, where he worked for more than five decades in the crime department, eventually becoming its chief reporter. He was famed for the friendships he cultivated with policemen, who would often act as his sources. He "kept open house for senior police officers at his flat at 55 Park Lane". Hoskins was said to know where a great many skeletons were hidden in high places: "If you were in trouble with the police, you rang Percy before your lawyer".

He avoided having his own desk at the Express so that executives could not complain at the working hours he did or did not keep. Of Hoskins's approach to work, fellow journalist Michael Bywater recalled his advice: "Whenever you are interviewing somebody, always have this question in the back of your mind 'Why is this bugger lying to me?'"

He was seen by many as "amiable [and] rotund" and boasted a long friendship with his "lookalike" Alfred Hitchcock, with whom Hoskins once posed in Soho for a 'bookends picture'. He was also friends with J Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI.

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