by Harry Ludlum
It is said that there was opposition to the marriage from other members of the Bull family, and there are pointers to it being an unhappy one. In marrying Ivy, Harry Bull became stepfather to her daughter by the previous marriage, and in his report on the Borley controversy, Robert J. Hastings tells us that Bull did not get on very well with his stepdaughter, and is alleged on occasions to have struck her.
There are even suggestions that the French Revolution medal that appeared in the Rectory during 1929, causing one of the many subsequent rows about Price's work there, was the property of Miss Brackenbury, who might have hidden it from her stepfather at times of strained relations between them. The girl was apparently a Catholic, which might perhaps have influenced Harry Bull's attitude to their relationship.
Harry and Ivy were not married at Borley, but at the Parish Church of St Albans, Holborn, London. The writer T. H. Hall made the comment on page 11 of his book New Lights on Old Ghosts, that it is a little strange that Harry Bull was not married in the village where he was Rector and to all intents and purposes a squire.
Hall's comment is really rather weak when one realises that in the first place others from Harry's family were opposed to the marriage, and that in the second place it would have been a curious precedent to say the least for a Rector to conduct his own wedding. A present was, however, given by members of the choir at Borley in the form of a framed photograph of him with the choir, and it survived for years, hanging in the vestry of Borley Church.
Prior to his marriage, Harry had been living in the Rectory, but after the wedding the couple took up residence in Borley Place, the home of his mother, Mrs Caroline Sarah Bull, at the time of her death in 1914. It was while Harry was still living at the Rectory that his father died at the relatively young age of 59, on May 2, 1892. Upon his death, Harry became Rector, having been curate to his father for three years.
After the end of World War I, Harry and his wife remained at Borley Place until 1920, when upon his sisters moving to Chilton Lodge, Cornard, he and Ivy moved back to the Rectory. Here he lived for seven more years, but by the early summer of 1927 he had become seriously ill and on June 9 of that year, confined to bed in the Blue Room, he died, the cause of death being cancer. He was laid to rest in Borley churchyard, close to his father's grave.
The background to Harry Bull, among other things, formed the basis on which Hall in New Lights on Old Ghosts castigated the late Harry Price concerning the records of the séances conducted by Sidney and Roger Glanville and their colleagues, in which it is said that details were obtained relating to the death of a girl called Kate Boreham, and in respect of Harry Bull, details suggesting that he had died as a result of poisoning.
In connection with apparent revelations about Harry Bull, Hall criticised Price over the editing of the séance records in his books. It would surely have been wrong of Price (having warned his readers of the inadequacies of the planchette results without other evidence, but particularly having clearly stated that there were the feelings of those still living to consider) if he had gone ahead and quoted the results in full. There might be suggestions in the Locked Book that Harry Bull died an unnatural death but Harry Price did not claim this in his book.
Harry Bull had died as a result of illness and it is believed that he suffered from an ailment that caused excessive drowsiness. It has been told that he often failed to turn up for his meals, only to be found by one or other of his sisters sitting fast asleep in one of the summerhouses.
There are those who suggest that it was this penchant for dozing off in the garden that explains some of the curious things Harry claimed to have seen in and around the Rectory. That is certainly not an unreasonable point to make, but it should be borne in mind that some of the curious phenomena that Harry reported were also seen by others, and not always by people who knew him.
Not for nothing was Harry Bull the best remembered of Borley's Rectors, though of course the Foyster tenancy attracted much attention in later years. That he held an interest in the afterlife we now know well enough and it is some aspects of this side of Harry Bull that have, rather unfairly, earned him the reputation of being a morbid dreamer.
There was more to Harry Bull than any supposed morbidness or just his interest in the spiritual world, but before continuing with detail it is worthwhile mentioning one episode connected with his spiritual interests.
On June 15, 1929, Mr J. Harley wrote to Harry Price and his letter reveals that during a visit by Harley to Borley Rectory in 1922 he and Harry Bull had discussed the subject of spirits. Harry Bull held the view that a spirit attempting to attract the attention of those living could only do so by causing some mechanical disturbance, such as breaking glass or some other element. He also stated that following his own death, he would, if discontented, adopt this method of communicating with the later inhabitants of the house.
It is odd indeed, irrespective of one's individual views, that the Rectory was the scene of much physical disturbance in the years following Harry Bull's death, disturbances that included stones being thrown, china and glassware smashed, some furniture hurled about, and more besides. It is a curious coincidence also, that Marianne Foyster, wife of a later Rector, who was himself a relative of the Bull family, should report on more than one occasion having seen the ghost of Harry Bull inside the building.
One must, of course, follow one's own beliefs about the subject of ghosts and the meanings that may be put forward for their appearance, but one cannot help but wonder, in view of Harry's remarks to Mr Harley in 1922, whether the outwardly cheerful and rather ebullient countenance of the Rev. Henry Foyster Bull did in fact conceal some inner sense of disillusionment? Certainly nothing of such showed itself to his contemporaries, but it is possible that not even his closest friends in the community or members of his family might have known of his innermost thoughts.
Indeed, he was known in the district for his rather bouncing, jovial and often humorous approach to things, even to his clerical duties. He was in the habit of running across to the church to take the services and apparently he would return from such duties to the Rectory, very out of breath, and exclaim, according to a report in The Ghosts of Borley, 'Oh! Very puff! Never missed a word and beat my own record.'
A sort of cameo of life at Borley Rectory during Harry Bull's time can be gained from the memories of a frail but grand old maiden lady, aged 93 when the author interviewed her.
Though she chose to deny it, she was a maid to the Bull household about the time of the First World War. It could, with some justification, be said that relying on the frail memories of a 93-year-old lady for historical details is rather questionable, but in this instance there is photographic evidence to support at least some of her recollections.
The following are verbatim notes made at the time of my conversation with the lady.
'Details about the lifestyle and interests of the Reverends H. D. E. and H. F. Bull are hard to come by after so many years, virtually all those who might have remembered those days during the heyday of the Rectory's existence having long since passed away ... the identity of the lady will not be revealed, in deference to her wishes and those of her relatives. As a young girl at Borley School, she recalls the Sunday School lessons for which the children walked to the Rectory (presumably after church ... I.B.). The Rev. Harry Bull instructed the boys, whilst the girls were in the charge of Mrs Bull. When she died, her duties were carried on by the eldest Miss Bull, Freda.'
At this point, a couple of items call for explanation. The eldest Miss Bull was in fact Caroline Sarah Elizabeth, sometimes mistakenly referred to as 'Elsie', and known in the family as 'Dodie'. Another point concerns the Sunday School lessons. In some parishes they would be held in the church. At Borley, however, the Rectory offered a schoolroom, the room in which a light was twice seen from outside by Mabel Smith, when it fact it was locked and in darkness. In practical terms, especially in the winter months, this room in the Rectory would have been much warmer than the
church.
There may arise also, some confusion as to whether the Mrs Bull referred to by the old lady was Harry's mother, or his wife. The old maid was born in 1890, so that at least until 1910 it would have been Harry's mother who took the girls for Sunday School. Between 1910 and 1914 it could have been either, but in 1914 Mrs H. D. E. Bull died. Harry did not marry Ivy Brackenbury until 1911, and in spite of Price's note that Harry's mother died in the Rectory, in fact she died in Borley Place. Both Henry and Harry Bull nevertheless did die in the Rectory. To continue with the old lady's memories:
'The Bull sisters also took their turn in instructing the village girls at needlework lessons.
'From the old lady's memories, Harry Bull was tall and thin in stature, and dark haired, Mrs Bull by comparison being rather on the plump side. By all accounts, the Rector and his sisters took part in almost all that went on in Borley, being popular with the local people.'
Just to remind readers - after 1920, the Bull sisters were no longer at Borley, having moved out of the Rectory to Chilton Lodge, at Cornard, near Sudbury. But to continue:
'In common with many houses of that size in those days, Borley Rectory had a staff of maids ranging from cook through parlour maid to house maid. There was also a gardener but he apparently did not reside in the Rectory, but in the village.
'One feature of the Rectory was the annual Easter treat for the school children, whereupon, having attended service in the church, they were marched over to the Rectory in a column of twos, and in through the rear door, to be given hot cross buns and an orange apiece. In fine weather, these events took place on the Rectory lawn.
'Another popular pastime there during the summer months was the holding of tennis parties on the lawn. This can be seen in an old photograph of Borley Rectory, the earliest known to have been taken, wherein can be seen Mrs H. D. E. Bull and seven of the girls, and a tennis net placed across the lawn close to the house and just visible against the dark background of the trees.
'The old lady's memories also encompassed the existence of the little "Bower" or summerhouse which stood on the Rectory lawn, close to the road, built for the two men, Henry and Harry. The garden at that time ran down almost the whole length of the hill to the edge of Borley "wood", this being long before much of the ground was sold off for building.'
One can glean something from these notes of the lifestyle of the Bull family in those days before the First World War. The reader will no doubt also recall the memories of the family, related by Mr P. Shaw Jeffrey, who stayed at the Rectory as a guest of Harry Bull during his university days.
T. H. Hall's view of Harry's life was that there was nothing to suggest that his marriage to Ivy Brackenbury was unhappy but it seems that this may not have been the case. I have earlier pointed out R. J. Hastings' comments about relations between Harry Bull and his stepdaughter, and certainly it is not unusual for relations between step-parents and stepchildren to be strained.
But there are other points about that marriage which I feel Hall has misunderstood. In New Lights on Old Ghosts, he deals with Harry's marriage to Ivy, and some of his views are worthy of note.
Firstly, consider the occasion of the couple's moving from Borley Place into Borley Rectory, and, as Hall put it in his book 'removing his sisters'. The move back into the Rectory was apparently at the wish of Harry's wife, Ivy. But did Mrs Harry Bull not actually demand the move? Could she perhaps have been a rather domineering wife? There seems to have been precious little recorded about Ivy's personality, and we will probably never know.
It doesn't take much to realise that if the move into the Rectory was against a background of insistence on Mrs Bull's part then the relationship between the Bull sisters and their brother would surely have become a bit strained to say the least and it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that any such 'atmosphere' within the family would have affected Harry's relationship with his wife.
Another point concerns the suggestions about his relationship with his stepdaughter, mentioned by the late R. J. Hastings. If Harry Bull did not take to his stepdaughter, any resultant friction would surely have caused some problems in the relationship with his wife.
Thirdly, as Hall himself related, when Harry Bull made his will (which he never changed) he effectively left everything relating to his estate to his wife, but does not appear to have provided for his sisters at all. Whilst he was quite entitled to do with his estate exactly what he wished, this decision was rather unfortunate for his sisters. One of the problems about the whole Bull era at Borley Rectory lies in the fact that aside from what one can discover from available public records it is difficult to find any provable evidence about family matters.
In the final analysis, where Harry Bull is concerned, my own personal view of him is this. Taking the story of Harry Bull overall, he concealed some sadness or dissatisfaction with his life. A feeling does not amount to proof of course, but the writer feels very strongly that those who accuse the late Harry Price of manipulating the séance results, where they concerned past events at the Rectory, have themselves misrepresented Price's work.
He did not name either Harry Bull or his father Henry in the séance results, and insofar as Price warned his readers more than once, not to take séance material too seriously, he also realised that he could not reveal all the results with some of his subjects still living.
It is quite wrong, therefore, to accuse him of chicanery over his presentation of this aspect of the story of Borley Rectory. Price did no more than the present writer has tried to do; that is to suggest what might be at the root of Borley Rectory's troubles.
T. H. Hall, and others, would have us believe that there was no truth in ideas of Harry and Ivy's marriage being less than contented, and consequently no truth in suggestions that Harry was poisoned by his wife. He may be right, but Price omitted a lot of what Glanville included in the 'Locked Book', and therefore, unless its contents were published in full, to castigate Price over details that he left out is in itself misleading.
In his view of Harry Bull's married life, Hall might be correct in his remarks, but in putting forward these foregoing remarks I am suggesting that there could have been an alternative course of events vis-à-vis Harry Bull and Ivy Brackenbury.
CHAPTER 11
The Reverend Guy and Mabel Smith
It was during the short tenancy of the Revered Guy Eric Smith and his wife Mabel in 1929 that the story of Borley Rectory began to unfold in earnest, when it became public knowledge by courtesy of the Daily Mirror and Mr V. C. Wall.
As far as I can ascertain, Guy Eric Smith was born in February 1885, in Calcutta, and was christened on March 23, the son of Eldred Melville Smith and Ellen Mary Smith.
He studied at Calcutta University and later worked in the Civil Service. On November 1, 1924, at St John's, Calcutta, Guy married Sarah Helen Mabel Hart, daughter of Montague Hart. Mabel was a year older than Guy and it is interesting to note her full Christian name, for throughout the Borley Rectory period she was always known as Mabel Smith.
Mabel Smith became ill, and in due course the couple left for England where Guy decided to enter the Church, and proceeded to study for Holy Orders at the Chichester Theological College. He was ordained in 1926, and from then until 1928, he held a curacy at Great Clacton with Little Holland. He was then appointed to the Rectorship of Borley, spending in its isolated Rectory a winter and a spring that neither of them would be likely to forget. In spite of spending some £200 trying to tidy up the Rectory and its archaic facilities, they left after only nine months, moving initially into lodgings in Long Melford from where Guy Smith continued his duties as Rector of Borley.
Guy was of Eurasian extraction, of ample proportions, bespectacled, smooth haired, and a cultured good-natured man by all accounts. Mabel seems to have been a lady of rather frail health, which wasn't helped much by the cold and rather dilapidated state of their new home, nor by some of the things that were to happen there.
Many years later
, Mabel stated that they had no fear of ghosts at Borley, having recourse to a higher authority for their beliefs and their faith. However, there are frequent references that suggest that she was frightened by happenings there on more than one occasion, and indeed, Guy Smith once admitted having withheld news from his wife of strange events that had befallen him when alone in the house, for fear of frightening her.
It was a curious period, and Iris Owen and Pauline Mitchell in their report suggested that when Harry Price came to Borley, following Guy Smith's appeal to the Press, he walked into a full-blown poltergeist situation. Up to a point that was true, because Borley Rectory certainly went through a period of somewhat violent physical disturbance, including the smashing of a number of household objects such as a vase, a candlestick and, during the Foysters' time, more items, though the Smiths seemed to have escaped the actual physical assaults that were alleged to have been suffered by Marianne and Francois d'Arles.
It is also certainly true that whilst the Smiths were the victims of various curious happenings they were also, after the Daily Mirror article of June 1929, pestered by the sightseeing brigade with which the people of Borley have had to contend ever since.
The Smiths stayed such a short time at Borley that there is little to tell about them while they were there. There is, however, rather more to relate, especially about Mabel Smith, from the years after they left Borley.
Mrs Smith claimed, in a letter written many years after their time at Borley, that she and Guy had lived there for over three years but in fact it was a mere nine months, from October 1928 to July 1929. For the rest of that period, they lived in lodgings in Long Melford, from where Guy Smith carried out his parish duties. Many reports suggest that they were driven out by ghosts but, taking a cross-section of evidence, it seems that there was no single factor responsible for their abandoning the Rectory, but more a mixture of problems itemised as follows:
