𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐬 𝐈𝐧 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐊𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫.

George Joseph Smith was a notorious English serial killer and bigamist who terrorized the early 20th century with his heinous crimes. His case, known as the Brides in the Bath Murders, shocked the nation and captivated the media. Smith's manipulation and deceitful ways led to the deaths of three innocent women, making him a face of evil that is remembered in history.

Smith was born on January 11, 1872, in London, England, to a working-class family. Growing up, there were no indications of the dark path he would eventually take. He married his first wife in 1898, but it wasn't long before his true nature emerged. Smith was a charming man who used his charisma to deceive women into marrying him for financial gain. He would marry multiple women simultaneously, promising them a life of luxury before ultimately drugging and drowning them in their baths to claim their life insurance policies.

Smith's modus operandi was chillingly calculated. He would gain the trust of his victims, convince them to marry him, and then set about draining their finances before murdering them. The Brides in the Bath Murders refers to the deaths of Bessie Mundy, Alice Burnham, and Margaret Lofty, all of whom fell prey to Smith's manipulative ways. His crimes were brought to light in 1915 when he was arrested, tried, and convicted of their murders.

The case of George Joseph Smith was a landmark in forensic pathology and detection. The similarities between the murders of the three women were crucial in proving Smith's guilt. It was one of the first instances where connected crimes were used to establish a pattern of deliberation, ultimately leading to his conviction. The case also highlighted the importance of thorough investigations and the need for more stringent measures to prevent similar atrocities from happening in the future.

The impact of George Joseph Smith's crimes reverberated throughout society, sparking discussions on the dangers of manipulation and the need for stricter regulations on marriage and insurance policies. The media coverage of the case brought attention to the issue of domestic violence and the vulnerability of women in society. Smith became a symbol of evil, a cautionary tale of the dangers of falling prey to charming but deceitful individuals.

Despite the negative implications of Smith's actions, his case has also had positive repercussions in the field of criminal justice. The techniques used in his prosecution have paved the way for more effective methods of investigating and prosecuting serial offenders. The case serves as a reminder of the importance of thorough investigations and the value of forensic evidence in solving crimes.

Executed by hanging in Maidstone prison on 13th of August 1925, George Joseph Smith will forever be remembered as a face of evil for his heinous crimes. His manipulation and deceit led to the deaths of three innocent women, leaving a trail of devastation in his wake. The Brides in the Bath Murders case was a turning point in the history of forensic pathology and detection, highlighting the need for more stringent measures to prevent similar crimes from occurring. Smith's legacy serves as a cautionary tale of the dangers of falling prey to charming but manipulative individuals and the importance of thorough investigations in bringing criminals to justice.

Image colourised by Electric Colour.

WHERE THE DICKENS DID HE GET HIS INSPIRATION FROM?

Fagin :

Dickens if thought to have drawn inspiration for the character of Fagin, from Isaac Solomon. Known as Ikey, he was a notorious Jewish criminal who operated in London during the 19th century. He was a master thief, fence, and receiver of stolen goods, and his criminal activities made him a feared and respected figure in the underworld of the time.

Born in London in 1785, Solomon grew up in poverty and turned to a life of crime at a young age. He quickly made a name for himself as a skilled thief and began to build a criminal empire that spanned across the city. He was known for his cunning and ability to outsmart the police and was able to avoid capture for many years.

Solomon was also known for his connections to other criminals and his ability to fence stolen goods. He operated a successful pawn shop on Saffron Hill in London, where he would buy and sell stolen property at a considerable profit. This allowed him to amass a considerable fortune and cement his reputation as one of the most powerful criminals in the city.

Despite his criminal activities, Solomon was also known for his generosity towards those in need. He often provided financial assistance to struggling members of the Jewish community and was seen as a Robin Hood-like figure by many.

However, Solomon's criminal empire eventually came crashing down in 1830 when he was arrested and convicted of receiving stolen goods. He was sentenced to transportation to Australia, where he spent the rest of his life.

Ikey Solomon's life story is a fascinating tale of crime, cunning, and charisma. He was a larger-than-life figure who managed to rise from poverty to become one of the most powerful criminals in London. While his criminal activities were certainly illegal and unethical, his ability to outsmart the authorities and evade capture for so long is a testament to his intelligence and cunning.

Though his criminal activities ultimately led to his downfall, his reputation as a master thief and receiver of stolen goods has ensured that he will be remembered as one of the most notorious figures of his time.

Bill Sykes : 

A well-known antagonist in Charles Dickens' classic novel, Oliver Twist. He is portrayed as a violent, abusive criminal who is involved in various nefarious activities, including robbery and murder. Many readers have wondered if Bill Sykes was based on a real-life character, as his actions and behaviour seem so vivid and detailed.

While there is no definitive proof that Sykes was based on a specific individual, it is widely believed that Dickens drew inspiration from the criminals and villains he encountered in the seedy underbelly of Victorian London. During his time as a journalist, Dickens frequently visited prisons and met with convicts, giving him insight into the world of crime and poverty.

One possible inspiration for Bill Sykes could have been the notorious criminal Bill Sikes, who was active in London during the early 19th century. Sikes was involved in a number of criminal activities, including theft and violence, and his name became synonymous with fear and cruelty. It is likely that Dickens heard of Sikes's exploits and incorporated them into his novel, creating a character who embodies the darkest aspects of human nature.

Another possible influence on Bill Sykes was the real-life case of Burke and Hare, two infamous serial killers who murdered their victims in order to sell their bodies to medical schools for dissection. The callousness and brutality displayed by these men may have served as a basis for Dickens's portrayal of Sykes as a heartless and remorseless criminal.

Additionally, Dickens may have drawn inspiration from his own experiences and observations of the poverty and desperation that plagued London during his time. The stark divide between the wealthy and the impoverished, as well as the harsh conditions faced by the lower classes, likely informed Dickens's depiction of characters like Bill Sykes who were driven to crime out of desperation and a lack of opportunities.

The Artful Dodger :

The Artful Dodger (Jack Dawkins) however, is an entirely fictional from Dickens 'Oliver Twist', as are Oliver, Nancy and the rest of the novels characters. 

While there is no concrete evidence to suggest that Fagin or Bill Sykes were directly based on real-life characters, it is clear that Dickens drew inspiration from the criminal underworld and societal injustices of his time to create characters who are both horrifying and compelling. 

By weaving together elements of fact and fiction, Dickens crafted timeless villains whose legacy continues to captivate readers to this day.

In conclusion :

If like me, you enjoyed the films and musical productions of this classic, but have never read the book itself, you'd be amazed at the amount of the plot that’s been left out. Pivital characters completely erased from the films, plays, musicals. 

But don’t worry, I’m not going to post any spoilers…I would however, strongly advise reading the novel. 

In my opinion, the best part of the story has been completely overlook, possibly because of the time it would take to film/show the whole story in its entirety.

𝟐𝟏𝐬𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐅𝐞𝐛𝐫𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐲, 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐫𝐞𝐠𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐫.

Named after Pope Gregory XIII, who introduced it in 1582, the Gregorian calendar replaced the Julian calendar, which had been the most used calendar in Europe until this point.

In 45 BC, Julius Caesar ordered a calendar consisting of twelve months based on a solar year.

𝐒𝐨, 𝐰𝐡𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞?

In 1582, it was discovered that the Julian Calendar was out by 10 days in regard to the tropical year and because the date of Easter was tied to the Spring Equinox, the Roman Catholic Church considered the seasonal drift in the date of Easter undesirable.

So in October of 1582, 10 days were removed from that month and the day after the 4th became the 15th. This was designed to bring the vernal equinox in line with the tropical year. 

The introduction of the calendar wasn't welcomed by everyone, for instance in England mobs protested, fearing they would lose wages for the missing days, plus they would lose 10 days of their life.

Their cry was “Give us back our 11 days!”—referring to the 10 days dropped plus the day of the calendar change itself.

The Julian calendar is still used as a religious calendar in parts of the Eastern Orthodox Church, as well as by the Amazigh people in Morocco, Libya, Algeria, and Tunisia (also known as the Berbers).

Today there is a disparity of 13 days from the original Julian calendar which will increase to 14 days by 2100. 

As they say….what a difference a day makes .

THE EASTCASTLE STREET MAIL VAN ROBBERY

The van was on a diversion from its usual route due to roadworks taking place in Oxford Street. As it passed along Eastcastle Street a car pulled out in front of the mail van and another vehicle pulled up behind it blocking its movement. The driver, guard and sorter were all forcibly removed from the van which was driven away and abandoned in nearby Augustus Street.

A total of £236, 748 10s (worth £7.3 million today) was stolen. As with the Great Train Robbery, there was initially suspected that a member of Post Office staff may have been involved.

Staff on board the mail van at the time of the robbery came under particular scrutiny. There were a few factors which increased these suspicions. The van was fitted with an ambush alarm, but this was not used during the raid. When the van was recovered it was discovered that the alarm was deactivated.

Another incriminating factor was that proper processes for handling the keys had not been followed. The driver should have handed them to the guard for safekeeping but had instead left them on the seat of the van. These oversights, together with the fact that the driver did not sustain serious injuries in the attack, all raised questions.

In July 1952 Robert Kingshott (who had previously been dismissed from the Post Office for theft) and Edward Noble went on trial for receiving money stolen in the raid. After the extensive debate, the jury found them both not guilty.

The mastermind  believed to be behind the raid was London gangster Billy Hill and the robbers included George "Taters" Chatham and Terry "Lucky Tel" Hogan. Although no one was ever arrested for the crime,  it still remains unsolved.

🟩 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐚𝐥𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐛𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐭 𝐬𝐢𝐞𝐠𝐞 𝟔𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝟏𝟐𝐭𝐡 𝐃𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝟏𝟗𝟕𝟓:

This was an incident involving members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army and London's Metropolitan Police which lasted lasting 12 days, from 6 to 12 December 1975. 

The siege ended with the surrender of the four IRA members and the release of their two hostages. The events were televised and watched by millions.

In 1974 and 1975, London was subjected to an intense 14-month campaign of gun and bomb attacks by the Provisional IRA. In one incident the Guinness Book of Records co-founder and conservative political activist Ross McWhirter was assassinated. He had offered a £50,000 reward to anyone willing to inform the security forces of IRA activity.

The four members of what became known as the "Balcombe Street gang", Joe O'Connell, Edward Butler, Harry Duggan and Hugh Doherty, were part of a six-man IRA Active Service Unit (ASU) that also included Brendan Dowd and Liam Quinn. Quinn had recently shot dead police constable Stephen Tibble in London after fleeing from police officers. The flat he was seen fleeing from was discovered to be a bomb factory used by the unit.

The Balcombe Street siege started after a chase through London, as the Metropolitan Police pursued Doherty, O'Connell, Butler and Duggan through the streets after they had fired gunshots through the window of Scott's restaurant in Mount Street, Mayfair. 

They had thrown a bomb through the restaurant window a few weeks before on 12 November 1975, killing John Batey and injuring 15 others. 

The Met's Bomb Squad had detected a pattern of behaviour in the ASU, determining that they had a habit of attacking again some of the sites they had previously attacked. In a scheme devised by a young detective sergeant, the Met flooded the streets of London with plainclothes officers on the lookout for the ASU, in what was known as Operation Combo. The four IRA men were spotted as they slowed to a halt outside Scott's and fired from their stolen car.

Inspector John Purnell and Sergeant Phil McVeigh, on duty as part of the dragnet operation, picked up the radio call from the team in Mount Street as the stolen Ford Cortina approached their position. 

With no means of transport readily available, the two unarmed officers flagged down a taxi cab and tailed the men for several miles through London, until the IRA men abandoned their vehicle. 

Purnell and McVeigh, unarmed, continued the pursuit on foot despite handgun fire from the gang. Other officers joined the chase, with the four IRA men running into a block of council flats in Balcombe Street, adjacent to Marylebone station, triggering the six-day standoff. Purnell was subsequently awarded the George Medal for his bravery. Several other police officers were also decorated.

The Balcombe Street Gang had carried out the majority of their attacks in London, Surrey, Hampshire and Wiltshire. 

Between October 1974 and December 1975 they carried out approximately 40 bomb and gun attacks in and around London, sometimes attacking the same targets twice. 

On 27 January 1975 they placed seven time bombs in London.

The siege

The four men went to 22b Balcombe Street in Marylebone, taking its two residents, middle-aged married couple John and Sheila Matthews, hostage in their front room. The men declared that they were members of the IRA and demanded a plane to fly both them and their hostages to Ireland. Scotland Yard refused, creating a six-day standoff between the men and the police. Peter Imbert, later Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, was the chief police negotiator. Max Vernon, who was later chief negotiator of the Iranian Embassy siege was another of the police negotiators.

The men surrendered after several days of intense negotiations between Metropolitan Police Bomb Squad officers, Detective Superintendent Peter Imbert and Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Nevill, and the unit's leader Joe O’Connell, who went by the name of "Tom". The other members of the gang were named "Mick" and "Paddy", thereby avoiding revealing to the negotiators precisely how many of them were in the living room of the flat. 

The resolution of the siege was a result of the combined psychological pressure exerted on the gang by Imbert and the deprivation tactics used on the four men. The officers also used carefully crafted misinformation, through the BBC Radio news—the police knew the gang had a radio—to further destabilise the gang into surrender. 

A news broadcast stated that the Special Air Service (SAS) were going to be sent in to storm the building and release the hostages. This seemed to deter the gang and they eventually gave themselves up to the police.

𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞 𝐌𝐜𝐂𝐚𝐥𝐥, “𝐋𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐎𝐧𝐜𝐞, 𝐁𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐝 𝐓𝐰𝐢𝐜𝐞”.

Tucked away behind residential streets in the heart of Lurgan lies the centuries old Shankill Graveyard.

If you dare to creep through the wrought iron gates and move amongst the sinking tombstones, you're sure to find a few spine-chilling tales.

Local historian, Jim Conway, is the authority on the horrifying stories that haunt the 17th century site.

Margorie McCall is the first grave he leads me to, the woman who live once and was buried twice.

In 1695, Margorie caught a fever and, believed to be dead, her family held a wake and promptly buried her.

Soon after she was laid to rest, grave robbers, who regularly ransacked newly buried coffins, dug her up and attempted to steal a valuable ring she was still wearing.

Unable to remove the ring from her finger, the robbers decided to cut the finger off.

But as they began their gruesome task, the lady awoke and, as Jim puts it, "she scared the devil out of the grave robbers, who soon skedaddled".

Margorie got out of her grave, dusted herself off and went home, but when she got there her husband nearly died of shock.

Jim says the story goes that on hearing his wife's knock at the door, Mr McCall said to his children: "If I hadn't buried your mother, I would swear that was her knock."

When he opened the door he fainted and, according to Jim, his hair went white overnight.

Margorie lived on and even had another child after her ordeal, before being buried once more in what proved to be her final resting place.

James II, obeyed his brother's (Charles II) deathbed wish, "Let not poor Nelly starve" .

London, Hereford and Oxford have all laid claim to Pepys’ ‘pretty witty Nell’ – he also called her ‘a bold merry slut’ -- but she was probably a native Londoner, born close to the scene of her future triumphs, in a squalid back alley called Coal Yard, off the northern end of Drury Lane. The date of her birth comes from her horoscope, which was drawn up years afterwards. A modern reading of it would endow her with sex appeal, charm, self-confidence, gregariousness and a ready wit – all of which the grown Nell amply demonstrated, along with a delectable figure, excellent legs and fashionably tiny feet.

Very little is known about Nell’s life. She grew up carrying drinks to customers in a brothel, which may have been owned by her brandy-soaked mother, who toppled drunkenly into the river one day in 1679 and drowned. Nell’s father was apparently a broken-down Welsh army officer, who died in prison for debt. There was an elder sister, Rose, who married a highwayman and spent time in prison for theft. At thirteen, Nell got a job as an orange girl at the newly opened King’s Theatre in Drury Lane (forerunner of the Theatre Royal), where she developed her gift for quickfire repartee.

For a spirited slum girl with looks, intelligence and ambition, it was a promising start. Nell quickly graduated from the pit to the stage, making her first appearance when she was fourteen and it was still a novelty for female parts to be played by women. She was soon a popular favourite in light comedy, starring opposite the actor Charles Hart, who was her lover, and scoring a triumph in Dryden’s Secret Love in 1667. She soared swiftly to the top of the social ladder. After an affair with the rakish Lord Buckhurst, she fell into the arms of Charles II himself. With characteristic wit she called him her Charles III, as both Hart and Buckhurst were named Charles too.

She was still only seventeen, to the king’s thirty-seven, and she continued her successful stage career until after the birth of her first son, yet another Charles, and the future Duke of St Albans, in 1670. 

The king gave her a grand house at 79, Pall Mall, where John Evelyn saw her one day leaning over her garden wall chaffing her royal lover, who was standing below in St James’s Park. Nell had a magnificent silver bed in the house, adorned with the king’s head and figures of cupids and slaves, as well as crowns and eagles. Other treasures included a warming pan inscribed ‘Fear God and serve the King’.

Nell’s sauciness, cheerfulness, lustiness, straightforward good nature and lack of affectation evidently came as a relief to Charles, as did her lack of any serious interest in politics. Unlike many of his other mistresses, Nell seems to have been completely faithful to him and when he lay dying, in 1685, the King told his brother and heir, the future James II, not to let poor Nelly starve. Starve she did not, but she outlived her third Charles by only two years and died in her Pall Mall residence in 1687, only thirty-seven years old. She was buried in St Martin’s-in-the- Fields in the same grave as her mother and at her funeral she drew a large audience for the last time. The sermon was preached by a future Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Tenison, who praised her kindness to the poor and found much good to say of her.