If you have listened to my recent podcast, with my guest the wonderful James Jefferies, where we discussed some of the superstitions and traditions shown by bomber crews during the Second World War, you would also have heard us mention a few names. Guy Gibson – he of Dambuster’s fame – and also Leonard Cheshire, a name which anyone with a passing interest in bomber history is aware of, but in my experience many people are not and that is a great disservice to the man that he was. James knows I am a massive Gibson groupie (there really is no other word for it!) and said that Cheshire seems to be overshadowed by the former in the history books and people’s memory, I actually agreed, he is and unfairly so. My belief is that because Guy died as a very young man and under slightly unknown circumstances, was it pilot error? Was it due to friendly “fire” or was he taken out by a Luftwaffe pilot during a mission? Personally, my view is that it was a combination of perceived invincibility, arrogance and exhaustion that led to ultimately a fatal pilot mistake. Many of the posthumous comments made about Gibson did state that he was incredibly pompous and had absolute self-belief in his own abilities, as this blog is not about Guy, I am not going to share my thoughts on that but Cheshire was the polar opposite in personality, and perhaps that is why he survived three tours on bombers during the war. Read any of the books he has written, and do not forget to get hold of a copy of Tail Gunner by Richard C Rivaz, the title tells you what his role was, but perhaps it is better to read what one of the flight crew felt about their pilot than how he came across in print. Cheshire had an incredibly hard working and studious approach to being a pilot, he took the responsibility with uber seriousness and whilst he was training under Hugh “lofty” Long, he would be expected to repeat tests and scenarios until he was absolutely perfect. This gave him a sense of caution which is perhaps why, after he was made a Group Captain at RAF Linton on Ouse, for 76 Squadron, he still flew on missions, albeit a few times a month (apparently the Commanding Officer was only meant to fly once a month, unless it was absolutely necessary, Cheshire always found a reason to meet that criteria). He had an amazing knack for making novice crews feel at ease, and was always looking at ways to improve the men’s morale and lot. Flying Handley Page Halifax’s out of Yorkshire, they were not able to reach such high altitudes as the Lancasters, so were more susceptible to flak than their higher flying sister. Cheshire looked at reducing the weight of the aircraft under his command and subsequent losses were reduced = improved morale. I am fast forwarding through four years of constant work here, but I would need thousands upon thousands of words to correctly put into print the amazing achievements of this man. It is believed it was his experience of seeing the second nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki on 9 th August 1945 that changed his outlook somewhat. “ We are faced either with the end of this country, or the end of war. Ending war and making a better future is not a responsibility that we can say belongs exclusively to the government …each one of us must play our part.” This is the same person who was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross, two bars to his Distinguished Service Order and a Victoria Cross, so why have so many people not heard of him? If I were to say “Cheshire Homes”, you may know of one? I certainly grew up near to the place in East Carleton Norfolk, and as a Brownie and Girl Guide (yes, I was young once!) we would regularly help at the summer fete with our stall selling groceries but we never saw the people who lived there and I wondered why. When I became older, I learned that Cheshire Homes were actually founded by…Leonard – actually, he was also married to another amazing charity founder, Sue Ryder, that is one humanitarian powerhouse of a couple! It is the story of how it happened however that is well worth reading about. After the war had ended, Cheshire was still looking for meaning in his life and started a communal living project entitled “Vade in Pacem” to help former service personnel transition back to civilian life, unfortunately that did not work out but he heard that a former member of the experiment, one Arthur Dykes, needed somewhere to live and had asked Cheshire if he could park his caravan on the site of Le Court, Hampshire. This gave Leonard his purpose back, and he proceeded to learn nursing skills to help both former army veteran Arthur – who unbeknown to the patient, had a terminal cancer diagnosis – and by 1949, twenty four other residents.  Whilst initially he may have veered more towards ex service personnel, now the many homes set up in his name are a place of safety for people with severe disabilities, whether physical or learning, and all due to one person having seen the worst of humanity, wanting to give something back. It is slightly tragic however, that Cheshire passed away after being diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease at the age of 74, the youngest ever Group Captain in the R.A.F certainly left an amazing legacy.

Everywhere you go, you can find traces of the Victorian era if you look close enough, especially the changes that they were looking to make to healthcare and the treatment of poverty. Due to the Lunacy Act of 1845, and also the County Asylums Act of the same year, counties had an obligation to provide care via a hospital setting for those with mental health problems – be they born with them or having developed them. One of the huge asylums that was built was known as the East Kent (or sometimes second Kent) County Asylum in Chartham, just south west of the more well known Canterbury. Now those of you who are chomping at the bit to go and investigate, hold those horses as the site is now a housing estate with few parts of the original 19th century building remaining, but talking about Chartham is not the purpose of this piece, it is to tell you about one of its residents that met with a horrible end. Arthur Izzard was born in Tonbridge in 1904, but by the age of 7 years old, he was in what was known as a “Farm Training Colony”, in Lingfield Surrey, and although the history books would describe these places as a type of industrial school for wayward children, in Arthur’s case it was to do with the fact he had epilepsy – as did every other boy on the census record of 1911, all of whom were under 16 years old. Even though we do know that epilepsy is not a mental illness, it was many years before there was trustworthy treatment to help those having seizures, but my heart does truly break at the thought of so many children, taken away from their families and who were thrown together due to a neurological condition. What is the link between Arthur and the hospital at Chartham? Some time between 1921 (when he was last mentioned on a census record) and 1938, he had been taken into East Kent and was there as a patient. According to reports he was one of the more “better off” of the residents, and would frequently lend money to others within the hospital but had a tendency to threaten reporting them to the Medical Superintendent if they did not pay him back in a timely manner. Obviously this did not make him a popular person, and according to the reports that the police were to subsequently obtain, he had made enemies within the hospital. On the 22nd October 1938, Arthur had gone into Canterbury on his weekly shopping mission for the other patients as he was one of fifty nine who were allowed “out” of the hospital grounds. At some point along the way he was attacked, and suffered multiple blunt trauma wounds to his head, which proved fatal. He tried to stagger back to the asylum, but was found about twenty yards away from where he was assaulted, the money he was carrying for the others to pay for their purchases was stolen, as was his cap in which the thrifty Izzard had sewn his own cash. It was quite obvious to the police who were investigating that it was someone who knew Arthur, who was aware of his weekly route and who also would have known that he had funds concealed inside his hat. They took copious statements, over two hundred according to reports, but this was not to be enough. The police had even put together a short list of suspects, with one having been seen near the vicinity of the murder, but the crime was never, ever solved, partly due to the realisation that a court would not take the evidence they had collated because it came from patients of an asylum. With the capacity laws we have now, this kind of disregard for the ability of individuals with mental health problems being taken seriously would not happen, unfortunately those changes came too late for Arthur and his killer was never brought to justice.

I would wager that most people have heard of Burke& Hare, the infamous Scottish resurrection men who when not enough fresh corpses were available from graveyards, turned to creating them instead…but have you any knowledge of Bishop & Williams? If you have, then bravo if not, read on. In July 1830, John Bishop rented number 3 Nova Scotia Gardens, a house in a run-down area in Bethnal Green, a frequent visitor to his home was Thomas Williams, and these two were to become very well known in the London area. Back in the 1830’s, the medical training establishments were making giant leaps forward in terms of research and understanding of the human body, but they required cadavers in order to learn even more. The powers that be had probably thought it an absolute stroke of genius when they ordered those who had been hanged for whatever crime they had been found guilty of – normally things like rape, murder, arson and burglary - were to be used for this purpose. By the early part of the 19 th century, the amount of people being sentenced to death had reduced so much that there were not enough bodies to supply the colleges and the resurrectionists were formed. These individuals would stalk graveyards, looking for freshly dug plots to remove the deceased and then sell them to places like St Barts, Kings College and St Thomas’ for a tidy little profit and no questions asked. When the move into murder came is not quite clear, but on the 5 th November 1831, John Bishop and another man, James May, tried to sell the corpse of a 14 year old Italian boy to Guys hospital, but were turned down so took him to Kings college instead. When examining the body, one of the men in charge of the dissection displays, Richard Partridge, felt that the body did not show signs of having been laid in a coffin, and certainly not buried. Knowing that the men were eager for their money, Partridge made a big show of needing to change a large note and asked them to wait, in the meantime someone had been sent to fetch the police who arrested Bishop and May immediately. Another man, Thomas Williams, was found to have been at Kings college in the first instance and he too was arrested. The police went to search number 3 Nova Scotia Gardens and found various items of clothing belonging to different people and the assumption was that this had not been an isolated murder, and that there were more victims. Whilst trying to protest their innocence had failed, Bishop admitted to having taken the boy – now identified as Carlo Ferrari, a young Italian lad who had moved to Great Britain about two years prior – drugged him with rum and laudanum and then dropped him into the well. Many witnesses came forward to confirm they had seen poor Carlo hanging around Nova Scotia gardens, he was notorious for having two white mice in a small cage around his neck which he would strive to amuse people with. It was not just his body they sold; they also ripped his teeth out to offer to a local dentist – Mr Mills of Newington Causeway - who commented to the courts that “They appeared to have been violently extracted ; part of the gums adhered to them” Realising now that they had nothing to lose, the death penalty had been passed, they admitted to killing Frances Pigburn, a woman who slept rough in Shoreditch, even incorporating Bishop’s daughter Rhoda into the disposal of the body (she was actually married to Williams, a real family affair). A third person, a young lad by the name of Cunningham, was also to fall victim to their desire for money, he was found without anywhere to go, promised shelter and food, and then drugged and murdered in the same manner as poor Carlo. Who knows how many more poor unfortunates they targeted, as when asked how many bodies their gang had sold they estimated well in excess of five hundred over the last twelve years. Chief Justice Tindal - who is actually a local hero of my hometown Chelmsford – sat on the bench, and the court opened the windows for the throngs of people gathered to hear sentence passed. Somehow May was able to convince the judges that he knew nothing of the murder, instead he was transported and died in Van Diemen’s land in 1834.  On the 5 th December 1831, John Bishop and Thomas Williams were hanged at Newgate Prison and with a bitter stroke of irony, their bodies were taken to Kings College and the Theatre of Anatomy respectively for dissection.

I rarely read investigators accounts of their time in regards to a specific location, if I am completely frank, most of my time is taken up deep in the pages of history books whether I am researching for something or just wanting to learn more, but when I found out that the author had written a warts n all account of his time in the notorious House of Wills, I was intrigued. Daryl Marston is probably best known as the quietly observant bearded fellow in the Ghost Hunters series, he seems the kind of individual that could not be scared by anything, but reading his book, “The Horrors of the House of Wills” shows you that this is not true, and that everyone has their breaking point. Without ruining the surprises within Daryl’s first ever piece of literature by giving you too many spoilers you have to read it, but here is a bit of background to the location in question. The history of the building in Cleveland, Ohio is quite difficult to come by, it was originally built as a German dance and music hall around 1898, the architect being Frederic William Striebinger. He was a very seasoned and well respected designer of buildings in the area and had many city creations to his name. The interesting fact – especially when you are reading Daryl’s accounts of what happened – is that Striebinger was both a Mason and a Knights Templar, two organisations shrouded in paranormal mystery, the question has to be asked…did he create his structures to channel occult energy? Not only that, it also functioned as a hospital of sorts (for Jewish Hungarians) and a rumoured speakeasy…all that was before it became the main office of funeral director, John Walter Wills took ownership of the building in 1941, the same year that it’s reported the designer died. Daryl tells the story of the book in that he decided to write it to keep himself busy during the covid lockdown and initially sent a manuscript to the publishers whose response was - and I am paraphrasing here - “write more words please, much more”, so he did, and The Horrors of the House of Wills was born. The biggest things that I think will strike you about this book are both the raw honesty and total vulnerability shown by the author. He does not try to brush off some of the scarier things that happened to him – in his mind, due to the House of Wills – and has no issue in telling you how terrified he was, he calls East 55 th Street a “living entity” saying “…much like a predator in the wild such as a shark or a wolf. It is doing what comes natural to it by feeding on the weak”. He also talks about when things started happening in his own home following his first visit, and how angry he was that whatever had followed him, could be affecting his loved ones. These experiences lasted about six weeks, which as an investigator myself, does make me wonder if it basically ran out of juice and had to go back to the power source, the building itself. For me personally, the book raises more questions in my mind about the House of Wills than it answers – not a bad thing! – for example, why is the activity deemed more evil since the current owner Eric took over? Also, what came first? The evil in the building or the bad feeling from locals directed towards it? lastly, Daryl mentions mould in the property, it would be interesting to know how long that has been there and what type it is, certain types of mould have been proven to be hallucinogenic, could this be exacerbating people’s negative experiences or could hungry spirits be feeding off the potential irrational behaviour? Whatever the case, this is a totally sincere account of one mans experiences with a notorious location, and how it nearly stopped him investigating anywhere ever again, read and take heed.

Some thoughts...

Recently, I was lucky enough to visit the beautiful island of Crete on my summer vacation with my family. Whilst there were quite a few “history” type trips I planned to take us all on (kicking and screaming in some cases), there was one which was not up for debate nor negotiation, and that was to pay my respects to the war dead commemorated at the Commonwealth War Graves site in Suda Bay (sometimes spelled Souda). It is always a sobering moment walking around so many immaculate white gravestones, some with the names of the fallen and others with just the date of the war that the unknown person it commemorates took part in – those are perhaps the sites that affect me the most. Whilst we were there, my eldest son (nearly 14 years old and a typically Kevin and Perry type teenager) actually took an interest, and was asking me questions. They would consist of things like “why does that grave not have a name on it?” “Why are there different symbols on each?” and “Why are some graves bunched together and not spaced out?” That got me thinking, I guessed it was to do with a group of people who had either died at the same time, or had gone missing in action and were presumed dead, being kept together in the afterlife. Most of these were quite easy to explain, but some had six or seven together and the logical explanation was that these had been bomber crews, and I wanted to find their story. This is not the only one there at Suda, there are sadly, many but I was drawn to the young men listed on these stones and wanted to find out who they were, and what had happened to them. When we landed at Chania airport (pronounced “Hania”), as we were walking to our arrivals building, we were greeted with the sight of seven F-16 aircraft noisily taking off along the runway, it served to remind us that the area we were in was still used for military purposes and that the history of the surrounding land was continuing to be written. As we were driving west to our accommodation we saw many Greek naval buildings and also barracks for the Hellenic air force. The location in Suda and at Chania is no accident, the bay itself is very sheltered and was the perfect place for the British and Allied forces in world war two to base their ships to enable to attack the Mediterranean land being held by the Axis forces, and bombers could reach the oil fields at Ploiesti in Romania with ease. On the 28 th October 1940, the Italians attacked but were repelled by the Allies, however by the following April, the Germans had taken Greece and had their eye on Crete. A bitter thirteen day battle from the 20 th May 1941 to the 1 st June 1941 commenced when German paratroopers landed near Maleme airfield and the Battle of Crete began. The next few years consisted of the Allied forces trying to recover the island, and this is where our brave air crew came in. Anyone who has studied second world war history knows that if a heavy bomber aircraft - with upwards of six souls on board – went down, nearly all of the men would perish. So, what happened to Flight Lieutenant Cox and his crew? On the evening of the 27 th October 1942, ten B-24 Liberator aircraft were being readied at the RAF base in Agir, Palestine to fly to Maleme and look to destroy the aircraft that the Germans had there. Of the ten made ready, only eight took off (due to mechanical failure of the other two), one of these was piloted by veteran flyer and Distinguished Flying Cross holder, Flight Lieutenant Eric C. Cox of Hawke’s Bay New Zealand. Cox had completed around thirty seven operational sorties and had nearly a thousand flying hours logged – not bad for a 28 year old former accountant. His aircraft, AL548, code BS-R of the 160 squadron left the airfield at 19:18 hours, and proceeded to its target on the island of Crete. The Operational Records for the mission simply state that other crews saw red light on the ground, south of the target which may have been a burning aircraft, it is later in the report that it mentions that Cox and his crew are missing from operations. The other seven Liberators returned safely to base from around 4:00 the following morning. Subsequent eye witness reports confirmed that AL548 had been shot down and fallen slightly south of the target, so this would have been the fire that the crews had mentioned when giving their operational debrief.  A group of men, the oldest being Pilot Officer Reilly at 29, the youngest Wireless operator and gunner flight Sergeant Gibbons at 21, from Australia, Britain and New Zealand, commemorated together forever.

We do seem to have a preoccupation with giving heinous serial killers “catchy” nicknames, and every police procedural show has the obligatory boss detective groaning at whatever the newspapers have cooked up moniker wise. Just a quick google brings up names like Bondage Killer, Chessboard Killer, Toyboy killer, Japanese Bluebeard (yes, really) and many others, but the one that I thought I would mention is a murderer known as The Jigsaw killer. Now, without meaning to sound disrespectful to the two women whose lives he took, I thought maybe he had used an actual jigsaw in the process, or did he leave a jigsaw “piece” by each body? Yes, I have perhaps watched too many cop shows…but no, the reason for that particular epithet was to do with the puzzle that the investigators were met with when the bodies were found. This is pretty nasty, so you have been warned. Dr Buck Ruxton was born in India, 1899 as Bukhtar Hakim, and in 1925 under an arranged marriage, was wed to a Parsi woman, although this did not appear to last long as a year later he had moved to Britain to continue his medical studies having qualified as a Doctor in India a few years previously. When in 1927, he moved to Edinburgh to work towards becoming a surgeon, he met a lady by the name of Isobel (or Isabella depending upon which account you read), she was officially married to a Dutchman but had left him after just a few weeks of matrimony and was living under her maiden name of Kerr when she met the Indian doctor. There is nothing documented to state that either had divorced their respectives spouses, but very soon he had changed his name to Buck Ruxton, and she was calling herself Mrs Ruxton, a child was soon to follow. Moving to Lancaster, Ruxton established himself as a friendly and respected General Practitioner and after their third child was born, they employed a nurse maid called Mary Jane Rogerson to help with the family. All was not sweetness and light behind closed doors however as Ruxton was incredibly jealous and had started to believe that his “wife” Isobel was having affairs with multiple men. This building up of resentment would cause multiple fights, often resulting in Ruxton beating the mother of his children, her leaving, and then returning when he would beg her to come home. In fact the records state that Isobel tried to take her own life in 1932, but with what subsequently happened, one cannot help but wonder if that was truly the case. In early September 1935, she went to Blackpool to see the lights and to visit family who lived there, upon her return to Lancaster it seems that Ruxton had built himself up into a swirling pool of angry paranoia and killed her. The next person to suffer was 20 year old Mary Jane, the housekeeper, the belief is she saw him murder her mistress and so she had to die too. On the 29 th September 1935, a young woman walking over a bridge in Moffat, Dumfriesshire found a parcel that had a decomposing human arm protruding from it…as the police started to poke around various other body parts were found. Forensics was still in it’s infancy at this point, but the scientist Professor John Glaister established that they were the parts of two different women. The identification process was hard however as the killer had removed all the parts which would be used to make composite drawings or obtain dental records -they had cut away the eyes, ears, skin, lips and removed teeth. To illustrate how fast this particular way of obtaining information on a murder victim was progressing, they even employed the services of an entomologist to work out the rough time of death – a technique which is pretty common place now. Mary Jane was the first to be positively identified, even though the police also knew that 35year old Isobel was missing – it was the obvious conclusion that the other remains belonged to her but they had to be sure before they arrested the well respected doctor, Buck Ruxton. To cut a long story short, the evidence mounted up and he was taken into custody and on March 13 th 1936 was sentenced to death. Reading newspapers from the time, the Aberdeen Press and Journal makes an interesting supernatural link in pointing out how the number “13” factored heavily. He was arrested on October 13 th , he was committed for trial on December 13 th and received his notification of punishment on March 13 th . Despite the guilt being pretty unequivocal (read the court transcripts if you wish to learn more), residents of Lancaster still tried to appeal for clemency, and Ruxton himself kept proclaiming his innocence, right up until he was hanged by Albert Pierrepoint on the 12 th May 1936. You may think that this was an innocent man, executed unfairly, that the jury was swayed by technical science rarely heard of, but after his death a letter he had lodged with that was only to be opened after his death, and if he was acquitted, to be returned to him which said – “I killed Mrs Ruxton in a fit of temper because I thought she had been with a man. I was mad at the time. Mary Jane Rogerson was present at the time. I had to kill her."

Any type of institution where you have hundreds of people has the probability of danger, and with the emphasis on health and safety being no where near what it is now, then horrific accidents and fatalities were always a distinct possibility - especially when you factor in open fires, smoking, lack of supervision and people who should perhaps have been in a more strictly monitored setting. The workhouse in Stafford was built between 1837 and 1838, and located on the West side of Marston Road. In the 1881 census it had just over two hundred and eighty residents (or inmates as they were known), so it was not a huge facility by the standards of the time, but not a tiny one either. It was whilst going through newspaper accounts looking for some interesting workhouse related stories that I stumbled across a really sad event. Unsurprisingly, fires breaking out in workhouses was not an unusual event, in fact, there were even worse tragedies than this one that happened during the Victorian era, one in Forest Gate in 1890 resulted in the deaths of over twenty six boys who were attending the district school (a sub division of the workhouse) there. What I found especially interesting about this one however was the fact that it caused some changes to nearby Poor Unions and illustrates how they were permanently “trying” to evolve. On the 16 th May 1901, Nurse Elizabeth Langabeer – who was a 49yr old widow – was looking after the old infirmary of Stafford workhouse, most of the eleven people who were residing in that part were elderly or lacking mental capacity in some way (the term used in the report was imbeciles). At around 2am, she smelled smoke and went to investigate, finding the room that belonged to the workhouse cook, Ann Middleton, aflame, she endeavoured to battle the inferno herself using a stirrup pump before shutting the internal doors to try and prevent any further spread. Sadly, seven people died in the fire – Peter Ellis, John Higstoo, Henry Stanley, Samuel Smith, George Cartwright, Edward Powell and Ann. When the inquest was held a few days later, the fire was determined to have started in the room directly below Mrs Middleton’s quarters, and it transpired that an inmate - who had signed himself out, and then broken back in to sleep there – called Bullbrook - was in the exact location when it ignited. According to him, he had been asleep in the shoe making shop, and awoke to see the flames, witnesses did state he tried to help but was very drunk and disappeared again later that morning. Nurse Langabeer was commended for her actions and bravery, and the Union admitted that a telephone and night watchman would have possibly helped (due to the time it took to get the fire brigade there. Amazingly, some of the Guardians felt that a telephone would be too intrusive and voted against it! they did however agree to changes during the rebuild, which included fire proof staircases and more internal “fire” doors. Even if they did not learn from events that quickly, neighbouring workhouses did, with both Dudley and Walsall voting unanimously to have phone lines installed as soon as possible.  It was never confirmed how the fire started, but if I was a gambling person, I would be laying odds on that it was something to do with a former inmate who had passed out unconscious after a drinking binge and would have been smoking.

A wolf in sheep's clothing?