In the 1830s, the problem of burying the dead had reached crisis point in London. The rapidly increasing population meant that existing graveyards and crypts were – literally, in some cases – full to bursting. One such example was the nightmarish Enon Chapel in Clement’s Lane. An unscrupulous clergyman had come up with a scheme for bargain burials. These may have been at a knock-down price, but they were not burials. The body of your loved one would simply be tipped into the crypt below the chapel, to join countless others. The enterprising minister was also of accused of recycling the wood from the coffins to sell to the poor for kindling. The crypt was only separated from the chapel above by a flimsy wooden floor, through which all kinds of noxious gases and vile insects would pass, to plague the worshipers as they sat down in the pews to praise the Lord. Even more bizarre was the conversion of the chapel to a dance hall, where customers could literally dance on the dead.
Eventually, the authorities decided that enough was enough, and began the business of commissioning seven huge new cemeteries outside if the inner city boundaries. Highgate and Kensal Green are the best known of these, principally due to the numbers of famous people buried within, but it was to one of the lesser known of ‘The Magnificent Seven’ that I traveled, on a pilgrimage to visit the graves of two people who certainly made the headlines in their day, but are largely forgotten now.
You can read the story of The Tottenham Outrage elsewhere on the site but, briefly, on Saturday 9th January 1909, two Latvian anarchists ambushed the wages delivery for the Schnurmann Rubber Factory on Chestnut Road in Tottenham and made off with the loot, firing at their pursuers with sophisticated automatic pistols. Both criminals died as a result of their efforts, but a policeman and a young boy were killed in the chaotic chase.
The cold blooded murder of PC William Tyler caused a national outcry, and his funeral was a public event on a grand scale. The deaths of police officers in the course of their duties have always been thought shocking in Britain and, happily, they remain rare events. PC Tyler was laid to rest in Abney Park Cemetery in Stoke Newington. Fortunately for the visiting explorer, his simple but imposing memorial is near the path, and is easily found. The number carved on the pediment is, of course, his police number.
Just a few feet away from Tyler’s grave is a rather humbler cross which marks the grave of an even more tragic casualty of the madness of 9th January 1909. Like countless others before and since, young Ralph Joscelyne had a Saturday job. His was to help a local baker deliver bread to the families in that part of Tottenham. As the Latvian gunmen tried to shoot their way to safety, a stray shot hit Ralph as he tried to hide behind his employer’s cart in Mitchley Road. The ten year-old was cradled in the arms of a bystander, but was pronounced dead by the time he reached hospital.
On 29th January 1909, the funeral cortège for Joscelyne and Tyler passed along a 2.5 mile route lined by 3,000 police officers and an estimated crowd of 500,000. The lengthy procession included white-plumed horses drawing Joscelyne’s coffin and black-plumed horses drawing Tyler’s coffin, draped in a Union Flag, which were escorted by hundreds of policemen, a police band, men from the local fire brigade, men from the Scots Guards and Royal Garrison Artillery, and tramway employees. A volley of guns was fired at the conclusion of the funeral.
Ralph Joscelyne’s mother, Louise, was to raise another seven children, but she kept the pair of boots Ralph was wearing on the day he was killed. When she died in 1952, the boots were buried with her. In more recent times, both Joscelyne and Tyler have been commemorated. WIlliam Tyler has a plaque on the wall of Tottenham police station, while Ralph Joscelyne is remembered in a memorial outside a church in Mitchley Road. There is an abiding irony that the corner of Tottenham where the robbery occurred and the resultant chase began is exactly where the catastrophic riots of 2011 started. An initially peaceful protest by relatives of Mark Duggan, a gangster shot by police, did not get the required response from officers within the police station. It then, as they say, “all kicked off.”
Ralph’s memorial in Abney Park was paid for by fellow scholars at his school, Earlsmead, which still stands in Broad Lane, Tottenham (below) and distant relatives of the unfortunate lad have, as mentioned earlier, ensured that his death will not be forgotten against the backdrop of more recent troubled times in London.
According to some Tottenham residents, however, the boy has not completely left us. This, from the pages of a local newspaper:
So, in a spookily lit upper room we met the writer, who is not only an award winning economist and has penned best-sellers in his native Romania, but also the author of a stunningly good new novel – the first he has written in English. The book is set partly in the present and partly in 1987, and it tells the story of the murder of a controversial professor of psychology at New Jersey’s Princeton University. His death is observed by different narrators, and Chirovici (left) has constructed an ingenious literary version of the old fairground attraction of distorting mirrors, so that we reach the final pages still not really sure who is giving us the correct image of events on the fateful night.
Yet, Mel Glass, a young Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan, not even assigned to the Homicide Bureau, was troubled by the investigation. With the blessing from legendary District Attorney, Frank Hogan, Glass tirelessly immersed himself in the case. So began an epic quest for justice, culminating in a courtroom showdown in which the Brooklyn arresting and interrogating cops refused to admit their flagrant missteps, providing a complete defense to the actual career criminal, vicious predator, murderer, Richard Robles.(pictured right)
Important to note that District Attorney Hogan (left) was truly a legend long before Wylie-Hoffert occurred. Once convinced that Mel Glass’ gut-instincts and subsequent investigation was legitimate and that George Whitmore, Jr., was wrongfully indicted for the most gruesome and sensationalized double-rape murders in the media’s radar, Mr. Hogan was prepared to admit his mistake, possibly fracture his career’s reputation, and exonerate an impoverished young man with a very low I.Q. And why? Simply and manifestly because it was right, justice demanded it.
Angeles and defended Amy Grossberg in her sensationalized baby death case. He was Assistant District Attorney in New York County in the office of legendary District Attorney Frank Hogan, where he ran the Homicide Bureau, served as Chief of the Criminal Courts, and was in charge of the DA’s legal staff training program. He served as Deputy Chief counsel for the Congressional Committee investigation into the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He also served two terms as mayor of Beverly Hills and taught Advanced Criminal Procedure for four years at Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley, and has conducted continuing legal education (CLE) seminars for practicing lawyers in California, New York, and Pennsylvania. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Tanenbaum attended the University of California at Berkeley on a basketball scholarship, where he earned a B.A. He received his law degree (J.D.) from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. For more information, please visit 
We are in the weeks leading up to Christmas 1944, deep in what would prove to be the last winter of a war which, thanks to the Luftwaffe, had brought death and destruction to the doorsteps of ordinary people in towns and cities up and down the country. German aircraft no longer drone over the streets of London; instead, the Dorniers and Heinkels have been replaced by an even more demoralising menace – the seemingly random strikes by V1 and V2 rockets. Despite the fact that the rockets need no visible target to aim at, the ubiquitous blackout is still in force. An Air Raid Precaution Warden, whose job has become as redundant as that of those manning anti-aircraft batteries, makes a chilling discovery. He stumbles – literally – on the body of a young woman. Her neck has been broken by someone clearly well-versed in killing, and the only clue is a number of spent matches lying by the body.
There is more than a touch of The Golden Age about this novel, but it is much more than a pastiche. Although the killing of Rosa Nowak is eventually solved, with a regulation dramatic climax in a snow-bound country house, Rennie Airth allows us to breathe, smell and taste the air of an England almost – but not quite – beaten down by the privations of war. Many of the characters have menfolk away at the war, including Madden himself and his wife Helen. Their son is in the Royal Navy, on the rough winter seas escorting convoys. The contrast between life in the city and in the country is etched deep. In the city, restaurant meals are frequently inedible, the black market thrives unchecked due to depleted police manpower, and even the newsprint bearing cheering propaganda from the government is subject to rationing. Travelling anywhere, unless you are fiddling your petrol coupons, is arduous and unpleasant.
fullybooked2017 