It is March 1861. We are in the little village of Parson Drove, Cambridgeshire. The Fens, which Samuel Pepys found so unpleasant when he visited in 1663, have all been drained. He described it as “a Heathen place”, and the events described in this podcast do not give the lie to his opinion. Click the link to listen.
I realise that the weather has been violently different elsewhere in the UK this week, but here in Cambridgeshire we have had three golden days – and evenings – such as I cannot ever remember, looking back over all my many Septembers. It won’t last, of course, and the recent arrival of four new crime fiction books reminds me that there are colder and darker days ahead which will be made more bearable by some excellent reading material.
The Book of Mirrors by E O Chirovici looks to be Penguin’s big promotion for the early autumn. There’s an excellent cover with peep-through perforations, and the promo pack includes a very tasty spiral bound notepad/sketchbook. The author, Eugen Ovidu Chirovici, was born in Transylvania, which all fans of the lethal Count Dracula will know is in modern-day Romania. The story? It’s one part literary novel, in that Chirovici examines the nature of memory and recollection; a second part aims to be stylish, and the author openly admires Raymond Chandler and Mario Vargas Llosa for their flawless technique. The third part, perhaps most importantly, is that we have a cracking CriFi story about a cold-case crime and a lost manuscript which contains clues to the identity of a killer.
Buying options for The Book Of Mirrors
The Vanishing Year by Kate Moretti certainly wins title of the month award, as those of us in the UK cling on desperately to every vestige of summer, while preparing ourselves stoically for yet another northern winter of rain, diminishing days, and media hysteria over football results. Moretti’s novel focuses on Zoe Whittaker, a woman whose life has metamorphosed from desperation and danger into one of luxury, love and positive vibes. But the past is never very far away, and when Zoe’s life comes under threat from those she thought had been cast aside, just as a dream dies at the dawn of day, she must make a decision which will either bring salvation – or damnation.
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Get Lucky by Paul Eagles is one of those confessional ‘Jack The Lad’ stories about someone who has lived his life at the sharp end. It is, I suppose, True Crime, but aficionados of the genre will know that they will need several pinches of salt in order to separate the fact from the fantasy. Basically, Eagles tells his life story thus far. It is as far removed from anything you and I have experienced as is Tennyson from E J Thribb. But, I suppose, there lies the charm. We are invited to gasp and gawp at the goings on, charmed by the fact that we could never, ever have got away with things in the way that Mr Eagles describes.
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The Child Garden by Catriona McPherson tells the story of one of those ‘special’ schools set up in the 1970s, when people still believed that Hippy peace and love was a viable and cogent philosophy. Conventional schools were simply prisons for young minds, Bob Dylan reminded us of “the mongrel dogs that teach”, and, just for a nanosecond, in someone’s mind, there seemed to be a way forward. The school in question was called – clearly with the irony meter turned off – ‘Eden’. Inevitably, it folded, with its alumni and teaching staff scattered to the four winds. But a sinister suicide during the school’s heyday returns to haunt former pupils, and they learn that the dead have ingenious ways of speaking to the living.
Buying options for The Child Garden
This is a tale of brutality – and total incompetence. An elderly man is battered to death, and his killers escape with a safe containing small change. Get the full story by clicking the podcast link.
There is, perhaps, a legitimate debate to be had over what to call killings which are carried out in the name of a political cause. No-one in their right mind would label the millions of soldiers who died in the two world wars of the 20th century as murder victims. The wearing of a uniform, and the acceptance of the King’s shilling has always legitimised the act of pulling the trigger, firing the shell, or dropping the bomb.
But what about guerilla activities? What about resistance movements? When does a killing become a murder? Is one man’s freedom fighter another man’s terrorist? I am far from unique in being unable to resolve those conundrums. The men who assassinated Reinhard Heydrich on a Prague boulevard in June 1942 have been hailed as heroes. What about the Irishmen who killed eleven British soldiers in a few hours on the streets of London in July 1982? They wore no uniform and carried no flag, but in their hearts their targets were legitimate.
My view? Emotionally, I am drawn to the view that soldiers engaged in ceremonial duties in a nation’s capital are not fair game. Therefore, I am treating the events of 20th July 1982 as murder. Cold blooded murder, pure and simple.
London, 20th June, 1982. The weather was warm, but unsettled, with a promise of showers. A troop of The Household Cavalry, the ceremonial guardians of the English monarch, were calmly riding along South Carriage Drive in Hyde Park, on their way to the ceremony known as The Changing Of The Guard. Unknown to them, a blue Morris Marina car, parked alongside their route, was packed with gelignite and nails. At 10.40 a.m. the device was triggered, presumably by a nearby operative. The result was carnage.
The road was littered with flesh, of the three guardsmen who were killed instantly (that telling euphemism which denotes catastrophic injuries) – and that of horses. The three soldiers who died at the scene were Lieutenant Anthony Daly, Trooper Simon Tipper and Lance Corporal Vernon Young. Corporal Raymond Bright was rushed to hospital, but died on 23rd July. The men are pictured below, left to right.
Just a couple of hours later, as emergency services struggled to deal with the mayhem in South Carriage Drive, the terrorists struck again. It seems barely credible that in another part of the city, life was going on as normal. Remember, though, that these were the days before mobile ‘phones and social media, the days when news was only transmitted in print, by word of mouth and on radio and television. The regimental band of The Royal Green Jackets was entertaining a small crowd clustered round the bandstand in Regent’s Park. They were playing distinctly un-martial music from the musical ‘Oliver!’ when, at 12.55 pm, a massive bomb went off beneath the bandstand. The blast was so powerful that one of the bodies was thrown onto an iron fence thirty yards away, and seven bandsmen were killed outright. They were: Warrant Officer Graham Barker, Serjeant Robert “Doc” Livingstone, Corporal Johnny McKnight, Bandsman John Heritage, Bandsman George Mesure, Bandsman Keith “Cozy” Powell, and Bandsman Larry Smith.
Keith Powell’s mother, Mrs Patricia Powell was later to say:
“On the day (20th July 1982) at 1pm – I was rinsing a cup at the sink in my classroom – I suddenly felt very ill and mentioned it to a colleague – saying I’d no idea why I felt so ill. On the way home I went to the music store to purchase the score of Oliver – No idea why I wanted it suddenly nor did I have any idea this was what the band was playing. Got it – went to the bus station and saw on the placards news about the bombs in London – I knew instantly that he was dead. This was confirmed later that evening.”
Keith Powell’s comrades gave him his nickname because of the celebrated rock drummer Colin Powell, who played with bands such as Black Sabbath, the Jeff Beck Group and Whitesnake. No-one was ever convicted of the Regent’s Park atrocity, but responsibility was claimed by the IRA. In 1987, Gilbert “Danny” McNamee, an electronics engineer from Northern Ireland, was jailed for 25 years after being found guilty of building the radio-controlled bomb used in the Hyde Park attack.
He was released from prison in 1998 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, and later that year the Court of Appeal overturned his conviction on the grounds that it was unsafe. Another suspect, John Anthony Downey, was to be tried for his part of the Hyde Park bombing as recently as 2014, but his trial collapsed when it was revealed that he was one of those Republican activists who had been sent a ‘comfort letter’ by the British government, promising them immunity from prosecution. Following the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which brought something resembling peace to Northern Ireland, there was an ongoing issue over what to do about IRA suspects who were still “on-the-run”. As part of the peace deal, IRA terrorists serving prison terms were granted early release but that could not apply to those on the run. A deal was reached between the Tony Blair government and Sinn Fein to carry out an exercise whereby checks would be carried out and for those who were no longer wanted by police, they would be sent a letter informing them of that fact.
Downey (right) may or may not have been implicated in the Hyde Park murders. Only he knows for certain. At least he had the decency to cancel a party planned in his honour when he was released. He said:
“The party had been planned as a simple get-together of family, friends and neighbours who supported me after my arrest. Some elements of the media are portraying the event planned for tonight as triumphalist and insulting to bereaved families. That was never what it was about.”
There was a macabre and tragic postscript to the Hyde Park murders. One of the horses, named Sefton, survived the attack despite terrible injuries. The horse became something of a media celebrity, which is not surprising given the British public’s sentimental obsession with animals. Sefton’s days of celebrity were, at least, harmless. Not so the fate of his rider on that day, Michael Pedersen. He survived the attack physically, but suffered irreparable hidden mental damage. In 2012, after two failed marriages, he drove himself and his two children, Ben and Freya, to a remote lane near Newton Stacey in Hampshire, stabbed them to death, and then took his own life.
To write anything new or meaningful about the facts surrounding what is probably the world’s most celebrated – and baffling – unsolved murder mystery is virtually impossible. Despite this, it doesn’t stop writers of every stripe trying. Sometimes the results can be worthy. On other occasions, they can be simply embarrassing. One of the poorer efforts cost Patricia Cornwell a good part of her considerable fortune to try to convince the world that Jack The Ripper was none other than Walter Richard Sickert, the celebrated painter. Very few people outside the close circle of the creator of Kay Scarpetta resisted the temptation of a facepalm moment. So, no-one knows the identity of Jack The Ripper, and I imagine Ladbrokes (other bookmakers are available) would give you very long odds against anyone ever discovering his (other genders are available) identity.
Instead of going over old ground, in both a literal and figurative sense, I have taken a look at a trio of novels which, in different ways, have been influenced by the events of that terrible autumn in 1888. For all any of us know, these books may contain every bit as much truth as their factual counterparts.
The Curse Upon Mitre Square, A.D. 1530 – 1888 by John Francis Brewer (1888)
This was little more than a blood and thunder pamphlet. Its main – and perhaps sole – distinction is that it was actually published before the final canonical victim, Mary Jane 
Kelly, met a bloody end in her Millers Court hovel. Of Brewer, we know very little, but his style can best be illustrated with a brief extract.
“With a demon’s fury the monk then threw down the corpse and trod it out of any recognition.
He spat upon the mutilated face and, with his remaining strength, he ripped the body open and cast the entrails round about.”
As the title suggests, Brewer focuses on the murder of Catherine Eddowes in Mitre Square, and his plot, such as it is, contends that the killer is none other that a spectral avenger, a mad monk no less, who haunts Mitre Square, allegedly the site of an ancient monastery. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, given the almost unassuaged thirst for Ripper material both in Britain and across The Atlantic, Brewer’s feverish account is still available in print. Whoever Brewer was, it is unlikely that his estate benefits from sales of the modern reprints. As you will see from the graphic, one later edition of the book was teamed up with another account, slightly more thoughtful, called The Lodger by Marie Belloc-Lowndes (1913)
Belloc-Lowndes (right) was the older sister of the prolific writer and poet Hilaire Belloc, but she avoided her brother’s antimodern polemicism, and wrote biographies, plays – and novels which were very highly thought of for their subtlety and psychological insight into crime, although she preferred not to be thought of as a crime fiction writer. In The Lodger, Mr and Mrs Bunting have staked their life savings on buying a house big enough to take in paying guests, but just as their dream is on the verge of crumbling, salvation comes in the form of the mysterious Mr Sleuth, who knocks on the door and takes a room, paying up front with many a gold sovereign. As Mr and Mrs Bunting count their money – and their blessings – London is gripped with terror as a killer nicknamed ‘The Avenger’ stalks the streets searching for blood. The Buntings’ peace of mind evaporates as they suspect that their lodger is none other than The Avenger. Such is the quality of The Lodger that it has been filmed many times, most notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1927. It would be remiss of me not to quote the famous bloodcurdling imprecation at the end of the book, directed at the hapless landlady.
“Your end will be bitter as wormwood and sharp as a two-edged sword.
Your feet shall go down to death, and your steps take hold on hell.”
Colin Wilson, who died in 2013, (left) was the kind of man with whom the British establishment, certainly in the 1950s and 60s, was most deeply ill at ease. He was, as much by his own proclamation as that of others, intellectually formidable. He burst on the literary scene in 1957 with The Outsider, a journey through an existential world in the company of, among others, Camus, Nietzsche, Kafka, Sartre, Hermann Hesse and Van Gogh. His novel that concerns us is Ritual In The Dark. Published, after a long gestation, in 1960, it examines how The Ripper legend transposes itself onto the London streets of the late 1950s. It must be remembered that many of the murder sites were still more or less recognisable, at that time, to Ripper afficionados. The tale involves three young men, Gerard Sorme, Oliver Glasp and Austin Nunne. Sorme goes about his life well aware of the significance of past deeds, but also knowing that a present day killer is out and about, emulating the horrors of 1888. Wilson could be said to be one of the pioneers of psychogeography, a linking of past and present much used by modern writers such as Iain Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd. Sorme says,
“I am lying here in the middle of London, with a population of three million people asleep around me,
and a past that extends back to the time when the Romans built the city on a fever swamp.I can’t explain what I felt. It was a sense of participation in everything. I wanted to live a million times more than anybody has ever lived.”
As it slowly dawns on Sorme that the killer is one of his close associates, he is forced to examine the nature of loyalty, guilt and responsibility. He learns that the deliverer of violent death can, by night, be a mysterious cloaked figure carrying a black bag, but by day can blend into the queue at the Post Office and go home on the number 59 ‘bus with complete impunity.
Other Ripper novels to explore include:
White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings (1987) by Iain Sinclair
The Last Sherlock Holmes Story (1978) by Michael Dibdin
Pentecost Alley (1996) by Anne Perry
A Study in Terror (1966) by Ellory Queen
Mercedes Marie: The story of Mary Jane Kelly (2016) by Fusty Luggs
THE PHILOSOPHER AND AUTHOR PASCAL MERCIER said:
“We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place,
we stay there, even though we go away.
And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there.”
And sometimes, the past is uncomfortably close to the present. Even 80 years on from a tragedy, someone was moved, on a September weekend in 2014, to reach out to the wider world with a reminder of what had happened to their family. To listen to an account of the events of that dramatic weekend in 1933, when Doris Reeve (below) was murdered, click
YOU CAN GO VIA THIS LINK to the excellent feature our guest writer Nicholas Booth has written about one of the most daring attempts at fraud ever attempted in England. Had the gang succeeded, the British banking system might well have collapsed. As it was, those running The Bank of England were just made to look rather foolish.
THE THIEVES OF THREADNEEDLE STREET is a beautifully produced book, and the cover shows a contemporary version of our modern court room sketches, and we can see the gang in all their bristling moustachioed glory.
SOME BOOKS feel good in the hands and are pleasing to the eye, even before you have turned the first page. This, published by The History Press, is one such book. It is impeccably researched and well sourced, with a comprehensive index. Nicholas Booth’s guest feature on Fully Booked is entertaining as it is, but it merely scratches the surface of an amazing episode in Victorian financial and criminal history.Head over to Amazon to see your options if you want to get your own copy of this book.
BIDWELL DID THE CRIME and served the time, but when he was finally released from prison, he didn’t waste a moment in putting his remarkably tale into print to try and cash in on his infamy. His book sits alongside the lovely back dustjacket of Nicholas Booth’s modern version of the story.
THE SECOND PART of the podcast tells the sad stories of three people who came from Easter Europe in search of employment and a better life. Instead, they found only death. Click the link below to listen to the second part of It’s Murder In Wisbech
AUGUST, 1865. Queen Victoria was in the 28th year of her reign, but had become a virtual recluse after the death of Prince Albert in 1861. Palmerston was Prime Minister, and the Salvation Army had been founded in Whitechapel. In America, the Civil War was over, but Lincoln was dead, and Andrew Johnson ruled in his stead.
On the evening of Monday 7th August, a man brought three children, aged six, eight and ten, to the Star Coffee House and Hotel, Red Lion Street, Holborn, London. He had previously arranged accommodation, saying that they would all shortly be leaving for Australia. On the Tuesday evening, he put the children to bed and left the hotel, stating that he world return shortly. On the Wednesday morning, neither the man nor the children came down for breakfast. Sensing that something was wrong, the hotel manager entered the rooms occupied by the children, and found a terrible sight. All three were quite dead, and there was no sign of the man.
The testimony of Dr George Harley, physician, (below right) was this:
“On the 9th of August last I was requested by Dr. ROBERTS, of Lamb’s Conduit-street to visit Star’s Hotel, where, as he informed me, three children were supposed to have been murdered, and that in case of so serious a nature he deemed it advisable to have a second opinion. On the third floor, in the front room, No. 6 of the above-named hotel I saw two boys lying on their backs in bed quite dead. The younger of the two, ALEXANDER WHITE, aged eight was near the back, the elder, THOMAS WILLIAM WHITE, aged nine years, toward the front part of the bed. The bodies of both were cold and stiff, and although their countenances wore the placidity of slumber they nevertheless bore the pallor of death. The eyes were half open; the pupils semi-dilated. On turning down the bedclothes both bodies presented a mottled appearance, from the extreme lividity of some parts, the deadly pallor of others. The attitude of the youngest child was that of a comfortable repose. The head slightly inclined to the left side. The hands were folded upon the abdomen. The legs gently crossed. The fingers of the right hand still retained within them a penny-piece, which fell from their stiffened grasp while the body was being turned upon its side, with the view of detecting marks of violence.”
He continued:
“In the back bedroom, No. 8, of the same floor lay the dead body of a somewhat emaciated but handsomely featured boy, HENRY WILLIAM WHITE, aged ten years. The attitude and complexion of this child closely resembled that of his brothers. His expression was calm, the eyelids were closed, the pupils were natural, the face was deadly pale. A small quantity of fluid had flowed from the mouth on to the collar of his shirt, and that part of the left cheek in contact with it was mottled red and purple. The legs and toes were slightly bent the hands partially closed, the nails and finger tips intensely livid. A spot of feculent matter soiled the sheet. The rigidity of death was well marked in every l imb, and livid discolorations in all the depending parts of the body. No marks of violence were observable, but a slight odor was perceptible about the mouth. The whole chamber had a peculiar ethereal smell.”
He concluded:
“I have to add that the history of the cases, the appearance and attitudes of the bodies after death, the result of the post mortem examinations, and the chemical analysis lead me to the conclusion that Henry William White, Thomas William White, and Alexander White died from the mortal effects of a poisonous dose of prussic acid.”
The three dead children were identified as Henry White, aged ten years,Thomas White, aged eight years and Alexander White, aged six years. The parenting of these three children had been bizarre, to say the least. Their father – or at least the man who accepted them as his own – had been married to the boys’ mother, and by an awful coincidence was a schoolmaster in Featherstone Buildings, only a stone’s throw from the hotel where they died.
The boys’ mother had been living with a man called Ernest Southey, and the three lads had been passed backwards and forwards several times between Mr William Henry White and his wife. Finally, they had been ‘in the care’ of Southey and Mrs White, as it was put about that they intended to emigrate to Australia. Not only did Mr White’s description of Southey match that of the hotel staff, Southey was known to the police. Earlier in the year, Southey, who was, by occupation a billiard marker, had been involved in a strange case where Mrs White tried to inveigle money from a member of the aristocracy, and Southey had intervened on her behalf.
The Home Secretary, Sir George Grey (left), announced a £100 reward for the apprehension of Southey. It was to prove unnecessary. Having poisoned the three boys, the fugitive, who obviously subscribed to the old adage about sheep and lambs, had traveled down to the Kent seaside town of Ramsgate where, it transpired, his real wife and daughter lived. Having met them, and pleaded for their forgiveness for his long absence and neglect, he then shot them both dead with a pistol. He was caught red-handed, and gave himself up without a struggle.
At this point it became clear that Ernest Southey was none other than Stephen Forwood, his latest victims being Mary Ann Jemima Forward, and her daughter Emily. He was brought to the magistrate in Ramsgate, but then produced an astonishing document, apparently penned in the interval between his arrest and the court appearance. He proclaimed to the court;
“On Monday, the 7th instant, I took three children, whom I claim as mine by the strongest ties, to Starr’s Coffee-house, Red Lion-street, Holborn. I felt for these children all the affection a parent could feel. I had utterly worn out and exhausted every power of mind and body in my efforts to secure a home, training, and a future for those children, also the five persons I felt hopelessly dependent on me. I could struggle and bear up no longer, for the last support had been withdrawn from me. My sufferings were no longer supportable. My very last hope had perished by my bitter and painful experience of our present iniquitously-ineffective social justice, and for this I shall be 
charged with murder, for criminal murders as well in the truest, strongest sense of the charge. I deny and repudiate the charge, and charge it back on many who have by their gross and criminal neglect brought about this sad and fearful crisis. I charge back the guilt of these crimes on those high dignitaries of the State, the Church, and justice who have turned a deaf ear to my heartbroken appeals, who have refused me fellow help in all my frenzied efforts, my exhausted struggles; who have impiously denied the sacredness of human life, the mutual dependence of man, and the fundamental and sacred principles on which our social system is based. Foremost among these I charge the Hon. D. Lord Palmerston, the Attorney General, Sir George Grey, the Hon. Mr. Gladstone, the Earl of Shaftesbury, Lord Ebury, Lord Townshend, Lord Elcho, Lord Brougham, Sir E. B Lytton, Mr Disraeli, Sir J. Packington, Earl Derby, Lord Stanley, Mr Crossley, and the Bishop of Bath and Wells. I Under all the terrible run of my life I have done for the best.”
Whether the wretched man was exhibiting an early version of what we would come to know as The Blackadder Defence – wearing underpants on the head and sticking knitting needles up the nostrils, in the hope that he would be considered totally mad – we shall never know. Forward’s lawyer half-heartedly went for a plea of insanity, but his efforts were ignored.
The authorities in London wanted Forward returned to them, but the Kent police had him under lock and key, and they had no intention of letting him go. Regarding the murder of the boys, Forward’s trial produced evidence that Mrs White had grown tired of him, and he had threatened her with dire consequences should she not take him back. He was sentenced to death, and was eventually executed in January 1866. A local newspaper takes up the story.
On 11 January 1866, at the County Goal in Maidstone one of the most notorious murderers of Victorian Kent paid the final penalty for his crimes. This was Stephen Forwood (or Forwood) also known as Ernest Walter Southey. He was the last person to be publicly executed at Maidstone Goal (below)
A contemporary account tells us:
The morning of Thursday 11 January 1866, was very cold, a severe snow storm driven by a harsh wind prevailed and this kept the usual crowd that gathered for this occasion down to about 1500 persons. The execution was presided over by Mr. F Scudamore, the Under-Sheriff of the County of Kent accompanied by some of his officers.
Arriving at the Gaol just before midday they immediately went to the cell where Forward was held. The executioner was Calcraft who acted as executioner at Stafford and in the “Midland Counties”. The prisoner asked for permission to speak and “exclaimed in an audible voice”, ” I desire to say in the presence of you who are now assembled, and in the presence of Almighty God, into whose immediate presence I am now about to depart, that I die trusting only to the merits of the God-man Jesus Christ”.
The prisoner was now “pinioned” by Calcraft (above) and as he was lead to the scaffold he could be heard praying loudly. Just before he was placed on the drop he shook hands with Major Bannister, the Governor of the Gaol, and with the chaplain. To the chaplain he made his last request that when he was upon the scaffold the chaplain would only utter the following prayer” Lord, into thy hands we commend the soul of this our brother, for thou hast redeemed him. Oh Lord, thou God of Troth.”
Forward said that his reason for this request was that he wished to “concentrate the whole powers of his soul and spirit into one mighty act of volition, and render himself up to God in the words mentioned.” The request was granted and as the chaplain began to speak, the drop opened and Forward “ceased to exist”.
The Maidstone and Kentish Journal describes the scene so:
The scaffold was hung round with black cloth to such a height that when the drop fell only just the top of the convict’s head was visible to the crowd. The body, after hanging an hour, was cut down and a cast of the head taken. In the afternoon the body was buried within the precincts of the gaol.
Edwin Ruck, the Registrar for the East Maidstone District, registered the death on Saturday 13 January 1866. The informant being the Governor of the Gaol, Major C W Bannister, the cause of death was stated as “Hanging for Murder’.
We cannot know if Stephen Forwood’s piety on the scaffold stood him in any stead in the place where he was heading, but we can state that it did absolutely no good to the four children and the woman for whose deaths he was responsible. Of the London sites connected with the case little or nothing remains. Where The Star Coffee House and Hotel once stood, at 21 Red Lion Street, we now find a nondescript, but doubtlessly very expensive block of flats. The Featherstone Buildings, where William White taught his grammar lessons, was totally destroyed by German bombs during the Blitz.
Just as tabloid newspapers, even in this digital age, still hope that a juicy headline will shift a few more copies, the ballad writers and hacks who turned out broadsides may have seen a temporary upsurge in sales, as they dramatised the terrible events of August 1865.
fullybooked2017 