Hammersmith Nude Murders (Stripper)

[Jeff Leahy]

I was offering a day of my time next week if required Neil. I would need to know exactly what you are looking for, however I know where it is, funny enough I was near there today.

Pirate

[Neil Milkins]

Hannah Tailford

Thank you very much Pirate for your kind offer. I am looking for newspapers that reported on Hannah's death and inquest. She was found dead at Hammersmith on the foreshore of the Thames on February 2nd 1964. I am not sure if national papers would have covered the discovery of the body. Regards Neil.

[Jeff Leahy]

All the information you require on Hannah is in the coroners report at the City of London archive....the copy I had made is with Steven Sloman. However, if you wish a copy, I could head that way...

Is it Hannah you require information on?

Send me an email to: jeff.leahy@btinternet.com

With all you require and I will do my best. Happy new year

Pirate

[Sara]

Wow, I'm really looking forward to following this thread, it's fascinaitng to be in a 'real time' investigation!

I have to say the theory which Neil puts forward looks a great deal more promising than the somewhat fevered theories concerning the West Indian groupings in 1960s Notting Hill and their connections to the 'haute monde'.

I knew Notting Hill from the mid 60s - some friends went to live there after we left school (Talbot Road) and I visited often from Bristol where I was at Uni; we were very involved in the dope-smoking // blues/jazz/folk/reggae scene in both cities (that was down in St Paul's in Bristol). I lived in NHill myself (Colville Terrace) in the late 60s. That article posted of an interview with Lee Harris relies a great deal on his own self-aggrandisement I'm afraid. I owuld be very wary of relying on anything in it regarding the 60s scene. It wasn't really like that at all - and nor was Soho. And I do know (did rather!) a few of the people he mentions, and a few of the places

Agreed, Notting Hill / Ladbroke Grove in those days was very funky, very edgy, and you could find all sorts of dives and clubs and pubs where there was drug taking and dirty dancing and pick-ups between the sexes - esp in the north of the area (and parts of the area were very rich as they are now).

But it's important to remember that there was a great deal of cross-over between the gangsterish fringes and the bohemian world of upper-crust London, both in Notting Hill and especially in Soho (and to a lesser extent in eg Chelsea and the area down to Earls Court) - I mean upper crust in terms of people with money, power and influence, inc in the media, arts etc.

But that didn't mean that everyone who went to such clubs & pubs etc was a gangster, nor that white girls picked up by a man for the night were all on the game! God knows when I started living in London in 1968 and that world was still seamlessly continuing, I lived just that kind of life myself. I went out with all kinds of men, mostly met in clubs - quite a few rich and quite few famous, and some black and some very poor. (My flat-mate was only attracted to back men, some very dodgy). I loved going out, I loved the craic and the seedy glamour and the unpredicatability of it all - I loved men and I loved drink, especially champagne. I was NOT a tart and never took a penny for sex in my life. Neither did my flat mate (though she did get bashed about a bit, which I never was)

So I'd be careful what you believe, if you've never experienced all that side of London. People talk so much rubbish about Christine Keeler, and it's ruined her life. That guy Lee droning on about her being the centre of some crime universe - per-leeze! She was 19 years old ffs. What a lot of old cobblers, just saying what the interviewer wanted to hear. I've never before heard of any involvement between her and Rachmann, by the way.

I only met her two or three times (early 70s - she was shy, un-made-up, with a haunted air, and had very bitten fingernails I remember); but several friends of mine - only one still alive - knew her very well. One, a very 'normal' and very distinguished professor of science at Imperial College, had a long affair with her - and she was the only person he would see on his deathbed (early 90s). Mandy was a different kettle of fish altogether, and later made a shrewd marriage. I would not call Christine a prostitute, Mandy I would not be so sure of! I may be being naive of course, but that's on the knowledge I have. I've known a lot of very respectable people who had sketches of themselves done by Stephen Ward; they certainly weren't part of any crime network. The whole thing gets blown out of all proportion.

Most people don't realise how loose the connections between all those London scenes are and were - it hasn't really changed much btw. The same large group of 'night life' addicts are bound to be found in all these places, because they love that whole bar and club scene, and the music you find there - and a lot of actors come into that category, of both sexes. Of course there are girls around, some on the game and some no doubt the 'property' of pimps. But a lot of the girls are just having a good time, and others have their own agenda (or demons to pursue). You can't just lump them all into one close-knit grouping for the purposes of concocting a 'conspiracy theory'. The exotic edginess of the West Indian scene in West London was very attractive to many people with perfectly straight 'day jobs'. It was as innocent or otherwise as you chose it to be.

We all knew where to go for the next buzz - there were hang-outs which suited a certain time of afternoon or evening - or after midnight (still are of course, tho I'm out of the loop now....). Some were quite grand and some were positively low-life - that was part of their attraction. I could take you tomorrow to an upstairs club just north of Oxford St run by a lesbian, which opens around midnight, and is about 10 ft by 8ft. In the small hours you'll bump in the odd scion of an aristocratic family, an artist or actor or two, a brace of journalists, a semi drunk girl in outlandish garb looking for more drink or a few pills rather than a man, and a few indeterminates of various shades, and either sex, who remain ambigious in every way... it's all quite camp and not really dangerous at all. I've felt in more danger in the bars of some of London's grandest hotels!

The old Colony Room in the early 60s (I'm a member of 36 years standing btw) was frequented by Princess Margaret, the Kray brothers, most of the famous and lesser known painters of the age, many writers and politicians (including Tom Driberg and Dan Farson). It was only slightly less glamourous when I joined in c1970 or 71. Gerry's Club, a theatre club also in Dean St, was owned in the 60s/70s by an actor who was also a big dope pusher and a big softie. When he died, one of the Great Train Robbers tried to buy the place. None of that stopped a predominently middle class gang of dedicated boozers doing their thing... we just ignored it all!

When you get really into those kinds of scenes, you realise that the media descriptions of these places and networks never really explain what they are about.

I can't buy the West Indian conspiracy at all, I'm afraid; or not as a means to shut up the girls from 'on high' or as some kind of black power statement. I wouldn't entirely discount the possibility that they were killed by their pimp/s on the orders of a 'gang boss' though, for eg not remitting all their money from tricks. But the fact they were last seen in Notting Hill / Kensington doesn't per se make them part of a West Indian plot - that's where anyone in West London would probably go at the time to find a tart!

[Sara]

Much more monday than that, more likely Thursday.
Stephen Ward supplied the girls for the 'Thursday Club' and what do you know? The Krays were involved, as were some of my folks:

'I think I am probably one of the last surviving members of the old Thursday Club, the gang of cronies that the Duke of Edinburgh used to gather round him in the 1950s to have a bit of fun away from his serious life at Buckingham Palace. The club was strictly all-male, but that does not mean there were not women at these gatherings. ....(snip).......
"Oh, knock it off, Louis!" Philip would say. "OK, so you slaughtered a couple of million Indians during Partition. OK, so you made a mistake. But don't let it get you down! Don't spoil the party! And no pictures please, Cecil!"

This to Cecil Beaton, who had already got his little Brownie out.

"If you don't want photos, why do you ask me here?" said Cecil, looking aggrieved.

"We shall have photos when we are ready for the group photo," said Philip. "It is very important that these occasions should look innocent when the time comes."
&tc &tc

I've snipped a lot of this ludicrous post. As the subsequent reply to Natalie's question 'who wrote this article?' makes clear, it was written by MILES KINGTON then as now The Daily Telegraph's resident SATIRIST who has never written a straight article in his life! It was written with precisely the intention of sending up the entire farrago of conspiracist nonsense with which this thread has become a little befuddled!

The idea that the people mentioned in the very amusing quoted piece would all belong to the same club is so laughable as to bring into question the credentials of any researcher who takes it seriously! Eg: the Queen Mum was was very fond of Beaton - she loved old Queens - but to imagine he and Philip had any common soical life is just, well, absurd.

The mention of the Krays is just Kington's poking fun at the way that their names were always attached to any nefarious goings-on on London at the time. They had their own patch of the East End of course, and would never have got involved in anything to do with Notting Hill; crime empires are completely territorial. As for Philip socialisng with criminals, you're 'avin a larf surely??! Margaret maybr (in fact she did) - Philip, nah!

As anyone in the know could tell you, Philip did allegedly have a few places he let his hair down, the most important probably being The Saddle Room Club - there were heavy rumours at the time that he was involved with its owner, Helen Corday (iir the came correctly). This was not in Notting Hill and wasn't (quite) in Soho either - and it was very smart. I went there several times, aged 18, with my recently married cousin's gang (the one married to the QC). It was popular with black people on the music scene - Shirely Bassey was there the first time I went, in a social capacity - but it was, as all those smart Clubs were on the surface at least, very 'respectable'. I'm sure businessmen took and found the better class of tarts there as well, but such matters were never overt.

[sdreid]

I don't agree with AP's theory either but I believe he's in the penalty box right now and cannot respond.

[Sara]

Ah, OK, fair nuff...

- in fact I logged on to say I was sorry for sounding so derisive and dismissive, since there's a lot that is very interesting in his posts about the background to some of the people involved. Only I think he takes it to far and has let his imagination run away with him in this instance and has not done his research in a dispassionate manner.

I normally enjoy AP'sposts a lot, esp on the Ripper threads, and I can see he's usually a pretty hot researcher. But I do think he's being 'too clever by half' in this particular instance! I'm not sure how old he is either, but my hunch is a lot younger than me! - as I don't think AP's grasp of the period is quite accurate. I'm only 4 years younger than Keeler

[Jeff Leahy]

Just a very quick post to say I am following the thread just very busy on another project at the moment.

Neil and i both had Flue over xmas but matters are in hand.

Pirate

[Sara]

Hope you both feel better soon! We are agog to follow progress....

I'm just logging in to say, it was a very long time since I'd looked into the Keeler affair and period and I've just done a bit of refreshement reading, so to speak... I'd forgotten quite a bit inc the affair with Rachmann and that htere were some Kray connections (though I forget what exactly).

I found this interview following the publiction of her last memoir very interesting - I'll have to get the book now!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/feb/18/biography.features

[Jeff Leahy]

Thanks Sara

I certainly feel better today and ready to go tomorrow..though on other subjects...

But yes the Kray's were involved. How directly is another matter. But many of the clubs the girls visited were controled by the Kray's.

And the drug of chioce, certainly Hannah's favourite tipple, was 'Purple Hearts'.

And i think the Kray's new what was happening in their clubs with distribution.

Certainly I was surprised that Hannah Tailfords coroners report had a map of the Eastend and marked Brick lane. Surely a long way off her territory? Yet she went there regularly...

I dont think she went for clients, she had a patch on Victoria embankment. But if you were looking to score purple hearts..you might travel across town...?

and who controlled supply?

PIRATE

[ValerieMewes]

I have noticed that the name "Vicki Martin" crops up repeatedly [in relation to many topics]... yet there is very little information about her to be found anywhere.

Could anyone provide any details about her or suggest a resource which might shed some light on this somewhat vague character?

[Jeff Leahy]

Vicki Martin

Apart from the fact thyat she was Ruth Ellis's best friend and one of Stevem Wards girls. Not a lot.

Your best chance was AP Wolf who seems to have had a fall out with casebook (I don’t know the politics) at the moment. I think he's on Howards site??? He might help, say 'the Pirate' sent you.

http://copperknob.wordpress.com/

http://copperknob.wordpress.com/2007/04/12/part-two/

Hope this helps

Pirate

[Neil Milkins]

David Seabrook

If anyone is interested David Seabrook who wrote Jack of Jumps died in January 2009 of a blood clot. Does anyone have any further info, age etc.
Regards Neil.

[Jeff Leahy]

If anyone is interested David Seabrook who wrote Jack of Jumps died in January 2009 of a blood clot. Does anyone have any further info, age etc.
Regards Neil.

No . I'm afraid I havn't Neil. I'm not a great fan of his book, but i did meet the chap. It is a tragic loss. He was a young man, and i can only commisorate with his friends and family.

A sad loss

Pirate

[DarkPassenger]

I haven't read this thread (a fatal comment, I know) but has anyone any idea who the suspect was who killed themselves? The security guard on the Heron estate?