Handsome Brute: The True Story of a Ladykiller
Page 38
Please don’t mourn my going – I should hate it – and don’t wear any black. I really mean that. Just wear your gayest colours and refer to me quite normally – that is the easiest way to forget.
So now I’ll leave you. Cheerio, my dear, and very many thanks for everything.
All my love is with you both always. Forever yours,
Nen1
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the staff at the libraries and archives around the United Kingdom and in South Africa who have assisted me in my research. I am particularly indebted to the staff at The National Archives in Kew who have responded with patience and diligence to my many requests to have the various files relating to the case made available to study for the first time.
I am grateful to the London Metropolitan Archives, the London Library, the British Library, the British Newspaper Library at Colindale, the staff at the Archives of the Imperial War Museum, the RAF Museum at Hendon, the Museum of Wimbledon, Melvyn Foster at the Association of Wrens, Charlotte Burford and Julia Collins at Madame Tussaud’s, Professor John Moxham at King’s College Hospital, Martin Hayes at Worthing Library, Jonathan Oates at Ealing Library, the Lincolnshire County Archives, the Nottinghamshire County Archives, the Sheffield Local History Library, the Sheffield Telegraph, the Harrow Observer and the Bournemouth Echo. Peter Kazmierczak at Bournemouth Library provided guidance and provided photographs from the local history archive. Hazel Ogilvie was particularly helpful at the Local History Library in Harrow, researching the movements of the Marshall family during the war. Matthew Piggott at Surrey History Centre helped to investigate the archives of Rutlish School. I’m grateful to Graham W. Mills, a governor at Rutlish and the current headmaster, Mr A. Williamson, for allowing me access to the school archive. Peter Elliot at the RAF Museum in Hendon very kindly read and advised about the RAF sections.
In South Africa, I am indebted to Anne Clarkson, who accessed a large volume of new material relating to Heath’s marriage and his tenure with the South African Air Force in the archives held in Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town.
For access to the remaining evidence from the case at the Crime Museum – including Heath’s suitcase, his ‘escape scarf ’ and whip – I am indebted to Paul Bickley and Camilla O’Hare at New Scotland Yard. Crime historian and researcher, Keith Skinner, has been extremely helpful and encouraging as well as being a mine of information and contacts. He has generously shared his own documents and research about the case from his archive.
Donald Thomas, who wrote the last major study of Heath twenty-five years ago, shared his insights into the case and his memories of the period. Dr Paul Addison, Juliet Gardiner, Roger Hollinghurst, Alwyn Liddell, Matthew Lloyd, Don Minterne, Tim McInerny, David Pirie, Martin Ridgwell, Geoff Sherratt and René Weis all offered help and advice at various stages in the inception and writing of this book, for which I’m very grateful.
Despite the horrific nature of Heath’s story, several people have welcomed me with great enthusiasm to the many buildings where significant events took place. Early on in my research, Jay and Lucy Dowle invited me to visit them at the Heaths’ former home at Merton Hall Road, as did Julie Williams, who allowed me to visit the Marshall family home in Pinner. Liliya Guzheva, Jamison Firestone and Robert Field generously allowed me to visit the scene of the crime at the former Pembridge Court Hotel. In Bournemouth, Nick the caretaker at Tollard Court, allowed me to spend time in the former Tollard Royal Hotel where many of the interiors in the public spaces of the building have remained unchanged. I was also welcomed to the Norfolk Royale Hotel (the former Norfolk Hotel) by the current manager, Simon Scarborough. I’d like to thank Matt Evans who accompanied me on a trip to Bournemouth to visit the scene of the crime at Branksome Dene Chine. David McRae, the manager of the Strand Palace Hotel, showed me Room 506, which still remains, as well as providing photographs from the hotel archive.
Michael Suter kindly shared memories of his father with me. Julia Young, the niece of Doreen Marshall, has been hugely generous with her recollections of Doreen’s parents and her sister, Joan. I am indebted to the remaining members of Neville Heath’s family who, despite their reluctance to explore a difficult area of their family history, agreed to meet me to discuss it.
Jackie Malton has offered support, insight and practical help from the start of this venture for which I am very grateful. I’m also indebted to Sarah Waters for her help and advice. My agent, Judith Murray, has championed this book since she read my first tentative pages and I am grateful for her encouragement and support throughout. Mike Jones at Simon & Schuster enthusiastically embraced the idea and I have been greatly supported by Jo Whitford and Lindsay Davies who have worked with me on the text.
Rob Haywood has been patient, supportive and encouraging throughout the gestation and realization of this book for which I’m hugely grateful.
My greatest debt, though, is to Melody Gardner, who has not spoken publicly about her family history for nearly seventy years. Despite the painful material, Melody has embraced the revelations I have put before her with extraordinary fortitude and open-mindedness. She has offered unique insights into three generations of Sheffield women: her redoubtable grandmother, Betty Wheat, her mother Margery Gardner and, indeed, her own life. She has encouraged the writing of this book, whilst always retaining distance from it. For me, enabling Melody to read her mother’s story from original documents, rather than filtered through biased and erroneous newspaper reports, has been a great privilege. I hope she feels that her mother’s tragic story has been told honestly, fairly and – at last – with understanding and compassion.
FURTHER READING
Original documents relating to the investigation and trial held at the National Archives (TNA):
HO 144/22871
HO 144/22872
DPP 1/1522
DPP 1/1524
CRIM 1/1806
MEPO 3/2664
MEPO 3/2728
P COM 9/700
In South Africa, the files relating to Heath are held at the Cape Archives and Record Service and the National Archives Repository in Pretoria, as well as at the Offices of the Master of the High Court in Cape Town and Pretoria.
Books about Heath or which discuss the case:
Brock, Sydney, The Life and Death of Neville Heath, Modern Fiction Ltd, 1947
Byrne, Gerald, Borstal Boy: The Uncensored Story of Neville Heath, Gerald Byrne, Headline, 1946
Critchley, Macdonald (ed.), The Trial of Neville George Clevely Heath, Notable British Trials series, William Hodge, 1951
Hill, Paull, Portrait of a Sadist, Neville Spearman, 1960
Selwyn, Francis, Rotten to the Core: The Life and Death of Neville Heath, Routledge, 1988
Adamson, Iain, The Great Detective: A Life of Deputy Commander Reginald Spooner of Scotland Yard, Frederick Muller Ltd, 1966
Bennett, Benjamin, Why Did They Do It?, Howard B. Timmins, Cape Town, 1954
Bixley, William, The Guilty and the Innocent, Souvenir Press, 1957
Casswell, J. D., A Lance for Liberty, Harrap, 1961
Fabian, Robert, London After Dark, The Naldrett Press, 1954
Hoskins, Percy, The Sound of Murder, John Long, 1973
Morland, Nigel, Hangman’s Clutch, Werner Laurie, 1954
Phillips, Conrad, Murderer’s Moon, Being Studies of Heath, Haigh, Christie and Chesney, Associated Booksellers, 1956
Pierrepoint, Albert, Executioner: Pierrepoint, Harrap, 1974
Playfair, Giles, and Sington, Derrick, Crime, Punishment and Cure, Secker & Warburg, 1965
Playfair, Giles, and Sington, Derrick, The Offenders: Society and the Atrocious Crime, The Windmill Press, 1957
Root, Neil, Frenzy! Heath, Haigh and Christie: The First Great Tabloid Murderers, Preface Publishing, 2011
Simpson, Keith, Forty Years of Murder: An Autobiography, Harrap, 1978
Thomas, Donald, Hanged in Error?, Robert Hale, 1994
Webb, Duncan, Crime Is
My Business, Frederick Muller, 1953
Britain at war (and after):
Allport, Alan, Demobbed: Coming Home After the Second World War, Yale, 2010
Beaton, Cecil, and Pope-Hennessy, James, History Under Fire: 52 Photographs of Air Raid Damage to London Buildings, 1940–41, B. T. Batsford, 1941
Beevor, Antony, The Second World War, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2012
Bigland, Eileen, The Story of the WRNS, Nicholson & Watson, 1946
Calder, Angus, The People’s War: Britain 1939–45, Jonathan Cape, 1969
Costello, John, Love, Sex and War, Collins, 1985
Drummond, John D., Blue for a Girl: The Story of the WRNS, W. H. Allen, 1960
Edington, M. A., Bournemouth and the Second World War, Bournemouth Local Studies Publications, 1999
Faviell, Frances, A Chelsea Concerto, Cassell, 1959
Fussell, Paul, Wartime: Understanding and Behaviour in the Second World War, Oxford, 1989
Gardiner, Juliet, The Blitz: The British Under Attack, Harper Press, 2010
Gardiner, Juliet, Wartime 1939–1945, Headline, 2004
Garfield, Simon, Our Hidden Lives, Ebury Press, 2004
Hodgson, Vere, Few Eggs and No Oranges, Dennis Dobson, 1976
Kent, William (ed.), An Encyclopaedia of London, J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1951
Kent, William, The Lost Treasures of London, Phoenix House Limited, 1947
Kershaw, Robert, Never Surrender: Lost Voices of a Generation at War, Hodder & Stoughton, 2009
Kynaston, David, Austerity Britain 1945–51, Bloomsbury, 2007
Lloyd George, David, War Memoirs, Ivor Nicolson & Watson, 1934
Lofthouse, Alistair, Then and Now: The Sheffield Blitz, Operation Crucible, ALD Design and Print, 2001
London Evening News, Hitler Passed This Way: 170 Pictures from the London Evening News, 1945
Longmate, Norman, How We Lived Then: A History of Everyday Life During the Second World War, Arrow Books, 1973
Malin, A. M., The Villager at War: A Diary of Home Front Pinner 1939–1945, The Pinner Association, 1995
Marley, David (ed.), The Daily Telegraph Story of the War, Hodder & Stoughton, 1944
Mathews, L. W., Chelsea Old Church 1941–1950, Buckenham & Son, 1957
Nicholson, Virginia, Millions Like Us: Women’s Lives in War and Peace, 1939–1949, Viking, 2011
Plastow, Norman, Safe as Houses: Wimbledon at War 1939–1945, The Wimbledon Society, 2010
Price, Alfred, Blitz on Britain: The Bomber Attacks on the United Kingdom 1939–1945, Ian Allan Ltd, 1976
Priestley, J.B., Britain Under Fire, Country Life, 1941
Richards, E. M., The Bombed Buildings of Britain, The Architectural Press, 1947
Scott, Peggy, British Women in War, Hutchinson & Co, 1940
Turner, Barry, and Rennell, Tony, When Daddy Came Home: How Family Life Changed Forever in 1945, Pimlico, 1996
Waller, Maureen, London 1945: Life in the Debris of War, John Murray, 2004
Wyndham, Joan, Love Is Blue: A Wartime Diary, Heinemann, 1986
Ziegler, Philip, London at War 1939–1945, Pimlico, 2002
Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Ina, Austerity in Britain: Rationing, Controls and Consumption 1939–1955, Oxford, 2002
The Royal Air Force:
Beaton, Cecil, Winged Squadrons, Hutchinson, 1942
Bishop, Patrick, Bomber Boys: Fighting Back 1940–1945, Harper Perennial, 2008
Bishop, Patrick, Fighter Boys: Saving Britain 1940, Harper Perennial, 2004
Clark, Denis, Tail End Charlie, Lutterworth Press, 1946
Dahl, Roald, Over to You: Ten Stories of Flyers and Flying, Hamish Hamilton, 1945
David, Dennis ‘Hurricane’, My Autobiography, Grub Street, 2000
Falconer, Jonathan, RAF Bomber Crewman, Shire Publications, 2011
Francis, Martin, The Flyer: British Culture and the Royal Air Force, 1939–1945, Oxford University Press, 2008
Hastings, Max, Bomber Command, Michael Joseph, 1979
Kent, Gp. Capt. J. A., One of the Few, William Kimber & Co, 1971
Minterne, Don, The History of 73 Squadron, Part 2: July 1937 to August 1939, Tutor, 2000
Nichol, John, and Rennell, Tony, Tail End Charlies: The Last Battles of the Bomber War 1944–45, Viking, 2004
Simpson, William, I Burned My Fingers, Putnam, 1955
Wells, Mark K., Courage and Air Warfare: The Allied Aircrew Experience in the Second World War, Frank Cass, 2000
Wilson, Kevin, Men of Air: The Doomed Youth of Bomber Command, Phoenix, 2008
General:
Aulier, Dan, Hitchcock’s Secret Notebooks, Bloomsbury, 1999
Behan, Brendan, Borstal Boy, Hutchinson & Co, 1958
Benton, Charlotte, Benton, Tim, and Wood, Ghislaine (eds), Art Deco 1910–1939, V&A Publications, 2003
Bournemouth, Ward Lock Red Guide, Nineteenth Edition, c.1950
Brock, Colin, Rutlish School: The First Hundred Years, Rutlish School, 1995
Brooke, Rupert, Collected Poems, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1918
Browne, Douglas G., and Tullet, E. V., Bernard Spilsbury: His Life and Cases, Harrap, 1951
Bryant, Margot, As We Were: South Africa 1939–41, Keartland Publishers, Johannesburg, 1974
Carswell, Donald, The Trial of Ronald True, Notable British Trials series, William Hodge, 1924
Cave, Herbert, Practical Exercises in Spoken English, Harrap, 1930
Chapman, Pauline, Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors, Constable, 1984
Cooper, Artemis, Cairo in the War 1939–45, Hamish Hamilton, 1992
Coward, Noël, Middle East Diary, William Heinemann Ltd, 1944
Coward, Noël, ed by Payn, Graham and Morley, Sheridan, The Noël Coward Diaries, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1982
Crisp, Quentin, The Naked Civil Servant, Jonathan Cape, 1968
Eddleston, John J., The Encyclopaedia of Executions, John Blake, 2002
Farndale, Nigel, Haw-Haw: The Tragedy of William and Margaret Joyce, Macmillan 2005
Gibson, Ian, The English Vice: Beating, Sex and Shame in Victorian England and After, Duckworth, 1978
Gibson, Perla Siedle, Durban’s Lady in White: An Autobiography, Aedificamus Press, 1991
Gunby, Norman, A Potted History of Ilford, published privately by the author, 1997
Hardy, Thomas, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Osgood, McIlvaine & Co, 1895
Hollis, Christopher, The Homicide Act, Victor Gollancz, 1964
Honeycombe, Gordon, Murders of the Black Museum, John Blake, 2009
Inwood, Stephen, A History of London, Macmillan, 1998
Jones, Nigel, Rupert Brooke: Life, Death and Myth, Richard Cohen Books, 1999
Kerridge, Ronald, and Standing, Michael, Worthing, Black Horse Books, 2001
Lister, Moira, The Very Merry Moira, Hodder & Stoughton, 1969
Macaulay, Rose, The World My Wilderness, Collins, 1950
Morton, H. V., In Search of South Africa, Methuen & Co, 1948
Orwell, George, The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Secker & Warburg, 1961
Orwell, George, Inside the Whale and Other Essays, Victor Gollancz, 1940
Procter, Harry, The Street of Disillusion, Revel Barker Publishing, 2010 (first published by Allan Wingate in 1958)
Read, Simon, In the Dark: The True Story of the Blackout Ripper, Berkley Books, New York, 2006
Reader’s Digest, Illustrated History of South Africa: The Real Story, Reader’s Digest Publishing, 1988
Scott, Sir Harold, Scotland Yard, Andre Deutsche, 1954
Spoto, Donald, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock, Plexus, 1983
Walker, Eric A., A History of Southern Africa, Longmans Green, 1957
Weis, René, Criminal Justice: The True Story of Edith Thompson, Hamish Hamilton, 1988
Weisbord, M., and Simmonds, M., The Valour and the Horror: The Untold Story of Canadians in the Second World War, HarperCollins, 1991
Wells, A. W., South Afr
ica: A Planned Tour of the Country Today, J. M. Dent & Sons, 1947
Wheat, Gilbert, The Wheats of Sheffield, B. A. Hathaway Press, 1996
Worthing, Ward Lock Red Guide, Eighth Edition (Revised), 1939–40
Young, Filson (ed.), The Trial of Frederick Bywaters and Edith Thompson, Notable British Trials, second edition 1951
Studies in Psychopathy:
Baron-Cohen, Simon, Zero Degrees of Empathy: A New Theory of Human Cruelty, Allen Lane, 2011
Cleckley, Hervey M., The Mask of Sanity, Plume Books, 1982
Hare, Robert D., Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Amongst Us, The Guildford Press, 1993
Hibbert, Christopher, The Roots of Evil: A Social History of Crime and Punishment, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1963
Ronson, Jon, The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry, Picador, 2011
Storr, Anthony, Human Aggression, Pelican Books, 1970
Fiction inspired by Heath:
Hamilton, Patrick, Mr Stimpson and Mr Gorse, Constable, 1953
Hamilton, Patrick, Unknown Assailant, Constable, 1955
Hamilton, Patrick, The West Pier, Constable, 1951
La Berne, Arthur, Goodbye Piccadilly, Farwell Leicester Square, W. H. Allen, 1966
Mallanson, Todd, Ladykiller, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980
Taylor, Elizabeth, A Wreath of Roses, Peter Davies, 1949
ENDNOTES
Foreword
1. Daily Mail, 28 September 1946.
2. News of the World, 29 September 1946.
3. From Detective Inspector George Henry Gates’ statement quoted in Critchley (ed.), op. cit., p. 106.
4. People, 15 September 1946. The paper also added that the interest of the international press ‘pales into insignificance before the morbid curiosity of women’.
5. Daily Express, 27 September 1945.
6. News Chronicle, 10 July 1945, p. 2.