Chapter 18
1. Askwith, quoted in Paul Newman, Under the Shadow of Meon Hill, p. 104.
2. All quotes, unless otherwise stated, are from Robert Fabian, London After Dark.
3. William Booth, In Darkest England or the Way Out (1891).
4. Quoted in Slater p. 63.
Chapter 19
1. Quoted in Dick Kirby, Mayfair Mafia.
The wych elm in Hagley wood where Bella’s body was found. Most accounts of the murder show the wrong tree.
The site of the wych elm today. The tree itself was destroyed in removing the skeleton in 1943. This image was taken seventy-nine years to the day from the day the body was found – note the buds and growing foliage, giving the lie to the writers who speak of gloom and death!
The Nimmings, a field next to Hagley Wood where gypsies often camped during the 1940s.
Bella’s skull with the missing front tooth replaced. Confusingly, the pathologist, James Webster, talks about overlapping bottom teeth, whereas the abnormality clearly lies in the upper jaw.
Bella’s skull photographed in situ in Hagley Wood. Note the hair still clinging to the bone.
Bella’s shoes were more expensive than the rest of her clothing. For years, police and journalists followed stories of these shoes, to no effect.
A sample of knitting in the style of Bella’s jumper. Donald McCormick suggests that the stripes are vertical, but that would take twice as much wool, unlikely within wartime conditions. This sample was created for this book to prove the point.
Bella as she may have looked at the time of her death. According to Professor Webster, her cardigan had no sleeves and her skirt was too big for her. The hair is always a guess, but in this drawing, the artist has taken into account her uneven teeth.
Bella’s cheap ‘wedding ring’, redrafted from an unclear photograph in the police gazette, April 1943. Such rings cost half a crown.
One of the many examples of wall writing relating to Bella’s death. This one was written on paper by a possible suspect under direction from DI Williams. The suspect could not spell various words.
The ‘McCormick Mannequin’. In 1968 Donald McCormick claimed that this was from a police sketch of the 1940s. The hairstyle and clothing are wrong for that decade and have added to confusion ever since.
Professor James Webster of the Midland Forensic Crime Lab attached to Birmingham University. One of the foremost pathologists of his day, he was considerably more modest than the rest of them.
We do not know how Dr Margaret Murray was dragged into a possible witchcraft angle regarding Bella’s death. She was an academic with a background in Egyptology and anthropology and gave various interviews to local and national newspapers. Several of them misquoted her, as, I suspect, did Donald McCormick.
One of Bella’s hands was removed from her body almost certainly by animals in Hagley Wood. In the hysteria-charged atmosphere of the 1950s and 60s, this became associated with the ‘Hand of Glory’, a talisman used in Black Magic ceremonies.
No one could trace the origin of Bella’s shoes or the dental work she had had done. Was that because she was a spy, parachuted in to the Midlands in 1941? To some, this is Bella. Her actual name is Klara Dronkers who was a foot taller than Bella with perfect teeth!
In the tense atmosphere of wartime Britain, strangers and foreigners were regarded with suspicion; none more so than the gypsies who had lived in various parts of the Midlands since the fifteenth century.
