The Christie Case

[Smoking Joe]

You are free to "plump" for what ever you wish.Thats your story -You stick to it.
George Davis was released from prison but was NOT declared innocent.His conviction was deemed unsafe but Davis could not be positively exonerated. Not the same as being innocent.The follow up bank robbery was no doubt another case of mistaken identity I suppose...oh yes and the Mailbag issue some time later.......
I will stick to my view thank you, and pay little heed to your unconvincing argument . If its all the same to you...Which Im sure it isnt.

[Observer]

Yes I'm British. It is a fact that Davis was indeed innocent of the charges which convicted him. Whether he was a convicted bank robber or not had no bearing on the case which lead to his unfair incarceration. As I said the Home Office, the judiciary are loath to overturn decisions which have lead to the unfair incarceration of individuals. You can be very very sure that the most thorough investigation was carried out with regard to Evans innocence. The authorities that be do not pardon on a whim, nor do they bow to public opinion. Asked to choose between your own unconvincing argument, and the Home Office findings regarding Evans innocence, I'd plump for the Home Office every time

Regards

Observer

[Smoking Joe]

Hi O bserver
Public opinion mostly. The same public opinion that freed George Davis.Dont know if you are from Britain,but if you are you will know of him. The George Davis is innocent campaign managed to get a convicted Bank Robber out of Prison. Upon his release he didnt waste much time and promptly got himself arrested in the act of committing another bank robbery. And in my opinion the same public opinion that freed the WM3. Public campaigns of this kind deal mostly in feelings............not facts. As an example apparently 70% or so of people asked still unbelievabley think that JFK was killed by either the CIA,Fbi ,mafia ,Oilmen or a combination of....and that Oswald was framed.Thats how much you can trust Public opinion.A good proportion of the Public shouldnt be allowed an opinion..........on anything. Well maybe an opinion on who has the "rear of the year" or stuff like that ,but nothing important. Im in bolshy mode .
REGARDS

[Observer]

Hey Smoking Joe

Why was Timothy Evans granted a free pardon? Why was his body exhumed and re-buried in consecrated ground. Why did the Home Office award Timothy Evans's half-sister, Mary Westlake, and his sister, Eileen Ashby, ex-gratia payments as compensation for the miscarriage of justice in Evans's trial?

Bear in mind that Government, and the judiciary are loath to hand out free pardons.

[Smoking Joe]

Does she have a birth certificate? Also, I know much was made of the fact that Timothy Evans was illiterate, although he could sign his name. Did he know how to spell his daughter's name? If the "Jeraldine" request was made, someone must have made it. Was Beryl able to read and write?

, which still seems strange.

Timothy Evans presumabley could read road signs also.He would have had to in his job as delivery driver. He would I assume also have had to be literate enough to read the addresses to which the items had to be delivered to. Literate enough also to read which items were on which Invoice. Just how Illiterate in fact was he?
On the issue of baby teeth, I kid ye not,I had two bottom centre milk teeth till the age of 37,when they both fell out,unaided,on the same day. Im not suggesting that has any bearing on the Christie case but...........it's true.

[caz]

Good luck with the talk tomorrow, John. Wish I could be there. I'm currently reading and enjoying Edward Marston's Crime Archive edition on the Christie case.

Love,

Caz
X

[Honest John]

Hah. I have pictures of the teeth.

If anyone is interested, I am giving a talk on the Christie murders at Ealing Central Library on Thursday 30 May. It begins at 6.15pm, but I would recommend anyone interested to arrive at the library at 6pm to buy a ticket for £4.

[RivkahChaya]

Hah. I have pictures of the teeth.

[caz]

Hi Rivkah,

I have a lot of very early memories, not just the fairy one, and they all relate to feelings I had at the time that nobody else would have known about. For instance, my dad took me by train to stay at Norland Nursery when my mum was having my younger brother, and I remember stuff that happened at the nursery that nobody could have told me about when I was older.

Maybe you constructed the memory, or your mom did, of you having all your baby teeth at six months.

Only kidding.

Love,

Caz
X

[RivkahChaya]

Caz, it's possible you've constructed a memory after being told the story. See Elizabeth Loftes' research on how surprisingly easy it is to create a false memory.

It's also possible that you just had precocious neurological development. All my teeth came in really early. I had all eight permanent teeth in front before I started kindergarten, and all my baby teeth before I was six months. Stuff happens.

I'm just talking averages. It's normal for a 2 1/2 year-old not to have terrific memories of the past, so that a kid that age with a head injury is not necessarily exhibiting damage because she can't remember what she had for dinner the day before, or what she did on her last birthday.

[caz]

13-month-olds usually can't speak, except maybe "cookie," "milk" and "mama."

However, they can suddenly show fear of someone they previously did not fear. It was also believed at the time that they would "remember" things they saw, and articulate them later. This isn't true. Children under 30 months have a type of "amnesia," for lack of a better term, that results from certain brain structures just not being fully developed.

They neglected to tell me. One of my earliest memories is from the summer of 1955 (aged 18 months) when my mum dressed me as a fairy for a fancy dress competition at a holiday camp. I remember as if it were yesterday how I felt when it was my turn to walk round the ballroom and everyone laughed. That puzzled me because I couldn't see what was funny and nobody else got that reaction, but it must have been because I was the youngest and looked cute. I couldn't be remembering it all from what mum told me in later years because I know exactly how I was feeling inside at the time, and can remember the ballroom and the wooden floorboards at the back where we all had to stand before parading, where mum was worried about what she called "splinters" because I had bare feet.

Mum's nickname for me was Fairy Fay.

Having said that, I agree that baby Geraldine would have been too young to give anything away, although Christie may have erred on the safe side if he had little experience with children of any age.

Love,

Caz
X

[Honest John]

Does she have a birth certificate? Also, I know much was made of the fact that Timothy Evans was illiterate, although he could sign his name. Did he know how to spell his daughter's name? If the "Jeraldine" request was made, someone must have made it. Was Beryl able to read and write?

The birth should have been registered in the fourth quarter of 1948, so you can check on ancestry.com, and order a certificate if required.

The Evans family had an order of newspapers form a local newsagent so I think we can be pretty certain that at least one or both had a level of literacy. Evans made contradictory statements about being able to read and then not being able to. Likewise he had a watch so that also suggests some degree of literacy.

I don't suppose it really matters, I'm just curious.

Also, when people were first considering a pardon for Evans, did anyone really advocate the position that he killed his daughter, but Christie killed his wife? That seems a pretty odd position to take. I'd think that if you believe Christie killed one, you believe he killed the other, unless you think the child died accidentally because she was unsupervised after her mother was dead, which still seems strange.

I don't know of anyone who has suggested that Christie killed Beryl and Evans killed Geraldine; author Furneaux and Judge Brabin consider Evans did the first murder and Christie did the second; others that both were killed by the same man.

[RivkahChaya]

Does she have a birth certificate? Also, I know much was made of the fact that Timothy Evans was illiterate, although he could sign his name. Did he know how to spell his daughter's name? If the "Jeraldine" request was made, someone must have made it. Was Beryl able to read and write?

I don't suppose it really matters, I'm just curious.

Also, when people were first considering a pardon for Evans, did anyone really advocate the position that he killed his daughter, but Christie killed his wife? That seems a pretty odd position to take. I'd think that if you believe Christie killed one, you believe he killed the other, unless you think the child died accidentally because she was unsupervised after her mother was dead, which still seems strange.

[Sherlock]

Oddly enough, although Geraldine's name is spelled with a "G" on her and Beryl's headstone in Gunnersbury Cemetery, on the metal plate on their coffin her name was spelled "Jeraldine". It is recorded on page 138 of Camps's Medical and Scientific Investigations in the Christie Case that the undertaker had been specifically told that the child's name must be spelled with a "J" when the coffin was ordered.

On page 136 of that book there is a photograph of the coffin immediately after exhumation in 1953 in which the named Jeraldine can just be made out on the plate.

[RivkahChaya]

13-month-olds usually can't speak, except maybe "cookie," "milk" and "mama."

However, they can suddenly show fear of someone they previously did not fear. It was also believed at the time that they would "remember" things they saw, and articulate them later. This isn't true. Children under 30 months have a type of "amnesia," for lack of a better term, that results from certain brain structures just not being fully developed. But psychological theory at the time held that people with mental illnesses, or children with behavioral difficulties, that we'd nor call ADHD, or autism, attributed these things to trauma that occurred when a child couldn't consciously remember it*. A lot of the treatment for these children consisted of trying to bully them into remembering non-existent trauma.

I have no idea whether Christie would have known about those theories.


*Yes, I know about the "refrigerator mother" theory. That was a type of trauma. Supposedly. I read The Empty Fortress. Oh my gawd.