Edmund Reid

More documents

Recommendations

Info

also mentioned ‘Hamlyn of No. 19’, and there was a young butcher’s assistant named Arthur Hamlyn at No. 19 Church Road, who had once accidentally nearly run Miss Wren down on his motor bicycle, but he had an alibi for the time of the murder. The coroner’s inquest on Margery Wren was opened by Dr F W Hardman on Friday, 26 September, at the police station parade room. It would go on for many weeks to come, with scores of witnesses examined, although at the advice of Chief Inspector Hambrook, none of the people denounced by Miss Wren on her death-bed were named in court. Hannah Cook the cousin gave evidence about the hermitical habits of the deceased, and her neglect of the house and shop, which were never cleaned. She was supposed to have kept some of her money and valuables in a small black bag, but although the bedroom at No. 2 Church Road was found to contain a bag with £8 10s in notes, and another full of buttons, none of these bags was black. Dr Gerard Roche Lynch and Sir Bernard Spilsbury recounted the medical evidence: Miss Wren had been seized hard by the throat in an attempt to strangle her, and then beaten down with repeated blows to the head with the iron tongs. A policewoman, who had been present in Miss Wren’s room at the hospital, gave a lengthy account of the dying woman’s confused mutterings on her death-bed. In spite of a police appeal, the woman in the red hat, who had visited Margery Wren’s shop shortly before the murder, was never identified. The coroner’s inquest went on until 24 October, returning a verdict of murder against some person or persons unknown. Since Miss Wren had more than once said ‘Hope did it! Hope was the one who did it!’ every person in Ramsgate by that name was investigated. There was a man named Hope living in Dene Road, but he was 84-years-old and his two sons had both been in Tunbridge Wells at the time of the murder. The police were interested to find another suspect living at No. 88 Church Road, namely the 20-year-old thief Charles Ernest Hope. He had once been a private soldier in the Royal Corps of Signallers, but had been discharged for larceny. After spending some time in Borstal, he was arrested in London on 27 August 1930, for stealing jewelry worth £10 from a bag in the luggage compartment of a train. The police found out that Charles Ernest Hope had spent 18 and 19 September at the Salvation Army Hostel in Euston Road, but on the following day, he had travelled from Victoria to Ramsgate by train, arriving at 4 pm and reaching the house of his parents in Church Road at 4.20. There were bloodstains on his jacket, trousers and kit bag, which he explained by claiming to have injured himself when cutting the bag open during the robbery back in August, but the police inspector who had arrested him denied that he had any fresh cuts on his hands at the time. Hope also lied about his movements the day of the murder, claiming to have left the train at Dumpton Park rather than at Ramsgate. He was clearly a petty crook, and perfectly capable of robbing Miss Wren, who was reputed locally to be hoarding money and valuables in her little shop. As time went by, and the police detectives were baffled, there was several unverified newspaper anecdotes about the two Wren sisters. According to one version, they had been servants in a wealthy London household when the daughter of the householder, a person of quality, had given birth to an illegitimate child. The two Wren sisters had taken care of the little girl, and brought her up, for a liberal allowance. This story disregards that no person had seen any little girl at No. 2 Church Road. Another newspaper story said that the two Wren sisters had once been servants to a wealthy Admiral who lived in Portman Square, and that he had rewarded them well for their work, and given them his framed photograph, which was hanging in the parlour of the murder house. No Census record supports this version, however: although the two sisters were in service in London for some considerable period of time, their masters were gentlemen without any nautical ambitions. A more adventurous version said that the two sisters were related to none less than Sir Christopher Wren, and that the portrait of another distinguished member of the family, Admiral Wren, was hanging in the parlour. Unfortunately for this version, there does not appear ever to have been a British admiral by that name. Finally, the most sensational story told that Margery Wren had once herself given birth to an illegitimate son, and that it was this individual who had returned to Ramsgate to murder her. Once more, there was no medical evidence that the Ramsgate murder victim had ever given birth to a son, and no person had seen a little boy at No. 2 Church Road; the police file on the murder makes no mention of either of these newspaper concoctions. Although no person was ever charged with the murder of Margery Wren, the police file makes it clear that there was a main suspect, namely Charles Ernest Hope, for some obscure reason called by the police ‘Ernest Charles Hope’. He lied to the police about his activities the day of the murder, and his clothes were stained with blood. As a petty crook, it would not have been out of character for him to try to rob the shop at No. 2 Church Road, to steal the money he had presumed Miss Wren had been hoarding; nor would it have been beyond him to try and strangle her, and then beat her down, when he was caught searching the house. According to his birth certificate, Charles Ernest Hope was born on 1 October 1910, at No. 88 Church Road, Ramsgate, son of the journeyman house-painter Charles Hope and his wife Louisa. Ripperologist 147 December 2015 42
An unexpected survivor: the little murder house at No. 2 Church Road, Ramsgate He was never named as a suspect in the Wren murder investigation, and his sole newsworthy exploit would appear to have been the following one, from the Hartlepool Mail, 16 August 1930: ‘EXCEEDINGLY MEAN’ Ernest Charles Hope, a private in the Royal Corps of Signals, was bound over at Scarborough for what the chairman of the magistrates described as an exceedingly mean trick. He collected for Scarborough Hospital on Rose Day, and, it was alleged, stole 3s 11d. This may well have been the caper that earned Hope the sack from the military. For the remainder of his life, he would appear to have stayed out of serious trouble, and the online newspaper archives mention nothing about his activities. Charles Ernest Hope married his wife Mary Rosamund, turned his back on his former life of petty crime, became a foreman carpenter, and moved to Langley near Slough. He died from a burst duodenal ulcer in January 1983, surviving Miss Wren by 53 years. Chief Inspector Hambrook had occasion to question the parents of Charles Ernest Hope, and they told him that Margery Wren knew both them and their son. Thus, if Hope had been the man who assaulted Miss Wren, then she would probably have recognized him, although the shop was very dark. It is natural for a person who has just been subjected to a murderous assault to make sure that the culprit is identified, but although Miss Wren more than once spoke of ‘Hope’ as the guilty man, she never mentioned his first name or called him ‘young Hope’; instead, she spoke of ‘Hope in Dene Road’ although this referred to an octogenarian acquaintance of hers. If the young thug Charles Ernest Hope had been the guilty man, there is no particular reason for Miss Wren to protect him from the police: he was clearly an objectionable person, for whom she could feel little sympathy. Perhaps the true solution to the murder of Margery Wren lies in the speculation about hidden fortunes, mysterious adoptions and illegitimate children, but these variants of the story are never discussed in the matter-of-fact police file. The murder house at No. 2 Church Road still stands, although it is no longer a shop but a private residence: this rather shabby-looking little house is a monument to a most intriguing Ramsgate murder that never will be satisfactorily solved. 5 5 On the Wren case, see the capacious police file, NA MEPO 3/1657; H L Adam, Murder Most Mysterious (London n.d.), 60-75, W Hambrook, Hambrook of the Yard (London 1937), 237-44, B Lane, The Murder Club Guide to South-East England (London 1988), 83-90, W E Johnson, Kent Tales of Mystery & Murder (Newbury 2003), 65-71; East Kent Times, 27 September – 25 October 1930, Illustrated Police News, 2 October 1930. JAN BONDESON is a senior lecturer and consultant rheumatologist at Cardiff University. He is the author of Murder Houses of London, The London Monster, The Great Pretenders, Blood on the Snow and other true crime books, as well as the bestselling Buried Alive. Ripperologist 147 December 2015 43
Page 1 and 2: No. 147 December 2015 Edmund Reid N
Page 3 and 4: The Anniversary Waltz EDITORIAL by
Page 5 and 6: So you never obtained a description
Page 7 and 8: poor mutilated woman turned his bra
Page 9 and 10: As in other interviews given by Rei
Page 11 and 12: Edmund Reid at Hampton-on-Sea makin
Page 13 and 14: This sounds similar to Yuri Gagarin
Page 15 and 16: just touched to guide-rope expected
Page 17 and 18: Sir Charles Warren Over the years,
Page 19 and 20: The register also tells us how much
Page 21 and 22: John George Littlechild was Initiat
Page 23 and 24: JTRForums: A Decade of Dedication B
Page 25 and 26: I've been focused on newspapers for
Page 27 and 28: him outside the docks, and because
Page 29 and 30: We have seen the sweater engaging h
Page 31 and 32: From the Casebooks of a Murder Hous
Page 33 and 34: As for murder house detection aspec
Page 35 and 36: Inspector Ross decided to try a few
Page 37 and 38: The murder house at No. 9 Adelphi T
Page 39 and 40: Portraits in connection with the Ra
Page 41 and 42: tirades against himself; he was wor
Page 43: Newspaper photographs of Margery Wr
Page 47 and 48: He bared his breast and exposed the
Page 49 and 50: Victorian Fiction The Last House in
Page 51 and 52: The Last House in C-- Street By Din
Page 53 and 54: ‘We did all we could to persuade
Page 55 and 56: ‘“Nonsense, Patty!” But it ha
Page 57 and 58: Mrs MacArthur stopped, wiped her ey
Page 59 and 60: Jack the Ripper- Case Solved, 1891
Page 61 and 62: portrayed as a super-cop and Druitt
Page 63 and 64: London Fog: A Memoir Christine L Co
Page 65 and 66: he made his living by writing anony
Page 67 and 68: The Ice Cream Blonde: The Whirlwind
Page 69 and 70: Scholars of the wild west seem agre
Page 71 and 72: Ripper Fiction with DAVID GREEN The
Page 73: Proper Red Stuff: Ripper Fiction Be

Edmund Reid

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?