Hogg Phoebe - Woman at the Devils Door: The Untold True Story of the Hampstead Murderess

THE UNTOLD STORY OF

THE HAMPSTEAD MURDERESS

SARAH BETH HOPTON

This book is a publication of

Red Lightning Books

1320 East 10th Street

Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA

redlightningbooks.com

Woman at the Devils Door: The Extraordinary True Story of Mary Pearcey and the Hampstead Murders, by Sarah Beth Hopton

2017 Sarah Beth Hopton

First North American Edition, published by Red Lightning Books, 2018

This edition is only for sale in North America, and was licensed from the original publisher, Mango Books, UK. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

Manufactured in the United States of America

ISBN 978-0-253-03462-5 (paperback)

ISBN 978-0-253-03463-2 (ebook)

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For my family, but especially Mimi,

who never tired of hearing my stories.

I sure miss telling them to you.

Courtesy the Mayors Office for Policing and Crime

This book took a decade to write. It went through countless revisions as it tried to figure out what it wanted to be. It was first conceived and written as fiction, then creative nonfiction, sold to a literary agency, then withdrawn, repurposed itself as something between creative nonfiction and biographical history and finally sold again. There were many people over the last decade who financially supported, edited, and counseled me off ledges, and to list you all here would require a separate book. But know that I know who you are and that your support was essential.

Having said that, there is one person who I would like to acknow-ledge by name. He stuck with me, this case, and the manuscript far longer than I had reason to expect, and contributed far more to its success than many know.

Thank you Mark Ripper for helping me tell the truth, well. I hope youre proud of our book.

SARAH BETH HOPTON

January 2017

I see when men love women

They give them but a little of their lives,

But women when they love give everything.

~Oscar Wilde

IT was Friday, October 24, 1890, just after seven oclock, when 19-year-old clerk Somerled Macdonald was walking home toward 5 Belsize Park in London. He rarely took this route home - in fact, he hadnt taken this route for at least three months

When he reached the back of the late Mr McLeods house at 28 Adamson Road, He circled back and then hastened to Swiss Cottage Railway Station to find a constable to help her.

He spotted Constable Arthur Gardiner walking along Upper Avenue Road.

Somerled Macdonald went to fetch a doctor he knew in Belsize Park. At the same time, medical student Arthur Claude Fox, who lived nearby, happened upon the scene and offered to assist. Shortly thereafter, Macdonald returned with Dr Arthur Wells, an ophthalmic and aural surgeon, and Wells went right to work. He found a bare patch of skin on the womans legs and arms and tested her temperature with his hand; her legs were still warm, and her arms not quite cold. Dr Wells believed the woman was only recently dead, perhaps not more than an hour so, but it was impossible to be more specific than that, as her clothing may have kept her body warmer longer.

Constables John Stalker and Frederick Algar had heard Gardiners distress whistle and answered, so that now there was a small crowd forming around the tree where the dead woman lay. Gardiner sent word to Inspector Wright, who was on duty at Hampstead police station, and requested he come at once with an ambulance.

By 8.30pm - an hour and a half after the body was found - S Divisions Inspector Thomas Wright, a veteran detective whod joined the Metropolitan Police more than a decade previously, had arrived with officers in tow wheeling an ambulance.

Wright studied the body closely. The womans head lay toward the road, her feet toward a hoarding which fenced a building site. As Wright later described the woman, her right leg was perfectly straight, and her left leg was drawn under her body, bent up and at an angle. Her right arm was extended, and her hand clenched; her left arm drawn up above her shoulder.

While Wright continued to analyse the bodys unnatural position, his colleagues searched the area. Rather remarkably, Sergeant William Brown spotted blood no more than the size of a five-shilling piece on a pile of bricks. This was remarkable because there was a conspicuous absence of blood altogether, and the light was very bad, making it difficult to see. Near these bricks Brown also found a small brass nut - from what he couldnt say - but it too was speckled with blood and so he pocketed the nut to study later.

By now, the press had arrived at Crossfield Road. They prowled for scoops and glimpses of the mutilated corpse to pencil in their sketchbooks, but were probably kept from seeing the body, as a sketch of the place where the body was found appeared in Lloyds Weekly Newspaper two days later, but showed only the trees and the hoarding near which the victim was found, but not the victim.

Rumour swirled. A cabman told the Swiss Cottage stationmaster, Mr Smith, that he was hailed around 7.00pm by a well-dressed man who told him to drive to Chalk Farm station as quickly as possible, and that he would give him double fare. The man paid as promised, his fare already in hand as they pulled to the station entrance.

With great care, The womans windpipe and spinal column had been divided, nearly separating her head from her body. She suffered a compound comminuted fracture to the skull, which meant that shed been hit so hard with some object that shards of skull had splintered into her brain. Her hands, knuckles and body were scratched and gashed, cut with some sharp object, in some places quite deep. Doctors found a small bloodstain over her right hip and a bruise above her right ankle.

The kinds of wounds found on the victims body suggested police should look for a heavy, pointed Other suggested weapons included a hatchet, hammer and a razor, but the only potential weapon actually found at the scene that Friday night was a brick taken from the garden of a nearby house. It was heavy enough to have crushed the victims skull, and appeared to have blood and hair on it, but like the story of the man who hailed the cab, the brick eventually proved to be irrelevant.