‘It half stunned me. It was all the world like an explosion. Everything seemed to go black for a second.’1
The years following Christie’s marriage saw him descend from humdrum respectability into the murky world of crime, in both Halifax and London, though to begin with his misdemeanours were of a relatively minor nature. Previous writers have paid little attention to these years, but they are important in chronicling Christie’s criminal career. In contrast to the events of the first chapter, we are on firmer ground here, for Christie’s activities are documented by authorities rather more reliable than himself.
Christie was of a restless disposition. On 10 January 1921, he was enrolled as a temporary postman at Halifax, and was paid £2 18s 2d per week. He later recalled that the amount of walking involved was ‘too much for me as my left knee was not quite alright after the war injury’, but his medical records make no reference to any leg wound. On 1 February he went before the medical board again, and was deemed to be suffering only 6–14 per cent effects of gas. He was recorded as ‘states he is much better . . . voice is husky in wet weather’. He was given a final weekly pension of 7s 6d for the next seventy weeks. However, Christie’s life took a turn for the worse on Tuesday 5 April 1921, when he appeared at Halifax Magistrates’ Court (Dr Shipman also had his first court appearance here in 1976) before Mr Greenwood Gibson on two counts of stealing postal orders. Detective Inspector Sykes provided evidence to the effect that on 20 February, two postal orders to the value of 3s 4d and 1s 11d, and on 26 March, those to the value of 1s 3d and 7s, had been stolen by the aforesaid Christie. He added that there might be other charges and that he would need another week to complete his case. Bail was granted for £20 and two people (perhaps Christie’s parents) came forward to stand as sureties for £10 each. It is interesting to note that the accused was not mentioned by name in The Halifax Courier, which reported the court case over two issues, and he was referred to as the ‘son of very respectable people and there was no fear of him not attending to meet the charges’.2
A week later, the case resumed, this time before Mr J. Brearley. Frederick John Fallowfield Curtis, on behalf of the Postmaster General, made the case for the prosecution. Joseph Henry Mackrell, a solicitor, pleaded guilty for the prisoner. He was accused on three separate counts; the theft of a postal order to the value of 1s 6d, and stamps worth 5s; the second being postal orders worth 11s and stamps worth 4s, and finally for a postal order of 13s 2d. Questions had arisen because letters were going missing from Halifax Post Office and a Mr Drennan had been called upon to make enquiries. On 4 April he had found a letter in a public lavatory at Crossley Street in central Halifax. This was a letter which Christie should have delivered. Drennan then followed Christie home and had a detective search him, which Christie consented to readily. Four postal orders were found on his person. Several other postal orders, together with cheques and dividends, were found at the house. They totalled several hundred pounds, including a £100 Bank of England warrant, cheques to the value of £600 and money orders worth £14 10s. Very few had been cashed and only £1-worth had been lost.3
The defence rested on the prisoner’s previously exemplary character. The court was told that he had been a Sunday School teacher prior to his marriage, and had served in the war with a creditable record, where he had been severely gassed. Since then it was stated that he had been in poor health and had suffered from memory loss and dizziness. No reason for the thefts was given, and it was argued that this was a point in his favour, as he had not spent his ill-gotten gains on gambling and drinking. The verdict was that Christie was guilty and he was sentenced to three terms of imprisonment, each of three months, to run concurrently, and without hard labour. The relatively mild sentence was undoubtedly due to his previous good character and his creditable military service. He spent the next three months (12 April–27 June 1921) in Manchester Prison. Later serial killers such as Ian Brady and Dr Shipman were also imprisoned there. Christie himself never offered any form of excuse for his actions. Possibly he wanted to abuse the little power he had been given. Or he may have craved excitement: he was a clever man, but his job and family life were probably mundane and petty theft may have appealed to his nature. The Christies certainly did not lack money as a household; apart from his wages, he was in receipt of a weekly government gratuity of 7s 6d because of his war injuries and Ethel earned 35s per week. Many ex-servicemen with good war records fell into petty crime because they lacked self-discipline, and perhaps Christie was among them.4
Christie’s prison record sheet notes that on departure he returned to his parents’ house at Chester Road. However, he did not reside for long with them. We do not know where he lived (he was not resident in the Halifax workhouse nor with his parents), nor how he was occupied, from 1921 to 1923. Christie related in 1953 that he and his wife lived together. He may have been living from hand to mouth, his criminal record inhibiting his employment opportunities.5
His next brush with the law occurred less than two years later. It has often been stated that this second crime was one of obtaining money under false pretences and using violence. However, although the former is true, the latter has no substance in fact. What happened was that Christie stayed in a guest house in Halifax from 7 to 13 January. The guest house was run by Doris Moore, possibly at 26 St John’s Place. Apparently he had booked a room for himself and his wife for a week, and stayed for two or three nights by himself. On one evening he had a supper of eggs, bread and butter and tea, having the same the next day, but with bacon for breakfast. The food cost 2s. Christie had claimed he was on business in Halifax as an electrical engineer, but when pressed for payment had to admit he had none. He then promised to go to the bank to draw on equally non-existent funds.6
On 15 January he appeared before the magistrates’ court again. As before, Brearley presided. Christie claimed there was no charge against him because he had booked the room for a week and that time had not expired. He had not intended to defraud. In any case, his mother had paid the landlady his bill, so no one had suffered. Christie was again leniently dealt with ‘on a promise to pull himself together and make a man of himself’, and was urged to show willpower and determination in going straight. He escaped gaol. He was put on probation for twelve months and thanked the magistrates. Once again, his name was not mentioned in the press, nor was the landlady’s.7
Christie left Halifax forever in 1923. It is not certain why or exactly when he did so. He later said that it was because Ethel had had an affair, but he did not blame her because she had been drinking at the time. Apparently: ‘There was some trouble which I did not want to mention. My wife was having an affair with her employer [one Mr Garside] and I left her. I know it was correct because I tackled the man and he admitted it’. Ethel was then working, presumably as a typist, at Garside Engineering Company, Ironbridge Road, Bradford. As with all Christie’s statements which are unsupported by other evidence, this is suspect. However, it is not impossible; Ethel was an attractive young woman, who may well have been annoyed by her husband’s criminality and so fell for another man, though her relatives later disputed it. The affair caused Christie, or so he said, to lose his voice for six months, because ‘of the emotional disturbance consequent upon marital disharmony’ and separation from his wife. Even if the story of his wife’s affair is true, it may have been only a cover for his real reason for leaving the town.8
In a newspaper report of 1924 it was claimed that ‘His parents were very respectable and had done all they could to put him straight . . . After his parents had done everything they could for him, he broke into their house and stole jewellery’. Charges were not pressed. Christie briefly worked as a painter in Manchester, but soon moved to London, perhaps attracted by the anonymity of the capital and the better prospects it offered him. It was initially an aimless existence, as he later said, ‘First I started travelling around, just walking from one place to another. I lived on savings [proceeds of theft?] and I didn’t know where to settle’. He lived in rented rooms.9
Christie led a peripatetic life in London from 1923–33. He did not put down roots anywhere and made no lasting friends. At one point he was injured by a taxi in a traffic accident in central London. One account suggests he was cycling through the busy streets and was knocked down; the other that he was knocked over when crossing the road and became unconscious. In both cases he was treated at Charing Cross Hospital. He later had operations, for an injury to his left knee (Westminster Hospital) and also his right shoulder/collar bone (St Thomas’ Hospital), leaving a permanent scar on his right shoulder. However, we only have Christie’s word that these events happened, and since hospital patient records are either non-existent or closed for 100 years it is not yet possible to verify them. Yet the scar and partially missing clavicle were real enough.10
On 13 December 1923 Christie joined the RAF, service number 356,827, as an aircraftman second class. Oddly enough he gave his birthday as 8 April 1896. He was assigned to T Squadron, based at Uxbridge, where the RAF Central Depot was located. Signal units were based there in this period and given that Christie had been a signaller in the army in the previous decade it is no surprise that he was employed in the Electrical and Wireless School from 27 February 1924. He later claimed he enlisted because he wanted to be posted abroad so he could escape his criminal habits. Although his character was described as being very good, he claimed he was discharged due to bad health caused by his being gassed in 1918, though this may well be merely an excuse. Certainly he spent some of his brief service career in military hospitals, at Netley and then at RAF Hatton on 27 May 1924. Possibly his restless nature led him to being bored by the routine of military life in peacetime and he was discharged on 15 August 1924. Strangely, for some of the same time (20 December 1923 to 20 February 1924), he was also employed at the Empire Cinema on Vine Street, Uxbridge, as an operator.11
Christie was soon up to his old tricks. He was then living in Southall, on the fringes of west London. On Sunday 24 August, he had gone to the cinema where he was once employed and worked on the dynamo; Mr Needham, the assistant there, needing help to repair it, though this had not been authorised by John Polley, the manager. When Elizabeth Miller locked up for the night, Christie must have concealed himself inside, for the next morning she found the front door unbolted. Polley arrived at his office the following afternoon and discovered a chair obstructing his office door and a pipe and RAF glove on his desk. The cash, mainly coppers, which should have been in the till waiting to be banked, was missing, as were cigarettes, chocolate, glass cutters and money (worth £5 18s 2d in total). Some business cards left by salesmen were also missing.12
Furthermore, on 11 September, James Collins’s twelve-year-old son left his bicycle (worth £3 10s) outside Hillingdon and Cowley Boys’ School, Hillingdon Road, Uxbridge, in view of the road (and just opposite the RAF base), at 1.30pm. By 3.00pm it had vanished. Christie was the thief. Presumably he was motivated by simple financial gain, due to being unemployed.13
PC Thrusell found Christie lying on the grass at Southall Park, a few miles to the east of Uxbridge, on Monday 15 September, and asked him for his name and address. Christie replied, ‘Wilson’. Thrusell went on to explain that a man of his description had been seen loitering in the vicinity of the school on the afternoon of the theft. Christie denied he was there then, but admitted that he had sold a bicycle for a friend of his in Uxbridge, but he did not know where this alleged friend lived. He was arrested and on his person were found glass cutters and business cards (identified by Polley as his). When he was charged with the theft, on 16 September, before Howard Button at Uxbridge Magistrates’ Court, he persisted in his denial. He was remanded in custody until the following week.14
The chief witness was Ernest Henry Elliott, of Southall, who ran a furniture business in nearby Hayes. He had been approached by Christie, who told him he was trying to sell a bicycle for a friend. Elliott agreed to sell it in his shop, and displayed it in the window, to sell for 35s. Next day Christie returned to ask if a sale had been made. It had not, but he said he needed money for a tram fare to Uxbridge, where he claimed he worked. Elliot gave him the money, but Christie returned later that day to say that he had lost his job due to being late and Elliott gave him 3s 6d and told him not to worry. The bicycle was sold on Saturday 13 September. Christie turned up to collect the money, saying that his friend could not attend. Elliott became suspicious and told the police, with the result that an arrest was made as related. At the trial the bicycle was identified by the boy’s father.15
Christie pleaded not guilty and persisted in his story about helping out a friend in need, blaming the ‘friend’ for not having appeared at Elliott’s, so ‘I have to stand here and bear the brunt of the charge’. The friend was called Jack Smith, address unknown. Christie gave a description of the man but he could not be traced. He had apparently known this man since 15 August on leaving the RAF. Christie also said that he had left the cinema with Needham. His story was disbelieved and he was then (22 September) found guilty of both charges and asked to be dealt with leniently, claiming he would mend his ways.16
Christie was given two sentences of six and three months, with hard labour, the sentences to run consecutively. This was harsh; later sentences handed down to him in 1929 and 1933 were less so. Christie was sent to Wandsworth prison, where he was noted as being five feet eight, with blue eyes and brown hair, and his occupation was that of a ‘motor driver’. It was noted that he had a good education, was from Halifax and was an Anglican, though the latter was purely nominal.17
Leaving gaol on remission on 11 May 1925 (the sentence expired on 21 June), Christie found a job as an electrician, employed by Messrs Hellyar and Sons Ltd, of 169 Church Road, Barnes. Doubtless his interest in matters electrical and his previous technical work in cinemas and in the RAF stood him in good stead. He worked for them for eight weeks. His next registered employment was as a lorry driver for a transport firm in Fulham, and he worked there from about January 1927 to May 1929. The reason for his eventual dismissal was his first violent crime.18
Meanwhile, life was fast changing for the Christie family in Halifax; though whether Christie was aware of it–or cared–is another question. There is certainly no evidence that he ever returned to Halifax. On 12 February 1928, Ernest Christie died, ‘after a long and painful illness’ at his home at 67 Chester Road. Christie may not have been unaware of this, for he later recalled his father dying after being paralysed in the legs. It is interesting to note that his will, which left £663 13s 6d (net), was entirely made out to his wife (who was also his executrix); the six remaining children were not mentioned at all. His widow died in Stockport in 1944 (Christie recalled, ‘I loved her very much’) with the Delves family. One family member remembered her looking at a picture of Christie in his policeman’s uniform on her dressing table and saying, ‘Oh, that’s my little Reggie’ (Christie was usually referred to as Reg or Reggie by family and friends). She deputised Percy to try and find Christie, but he was unsuccessful.19
Elsewhere in Yorkshire, life was moving on for Christie’s wife, too. In 1924 she was employed by the English Electric Company, Phoenix Works, off Thornton Road in central Bradford. She never spoke about her husband whilst she was there. Emily Willis, a fellow employee, recalled ‘She spoke of her sister and her sister’s child. She was always talking about the child to whom she appeared deeply attached’. She was made redundant in about 1928. Then she moved to Sheffield to live with her brother, Henry Simpson Waddington (he had adopted the latter name in 1938–some writers have mistaken it for Ethel’s maiden name), a clerk employed by the council, resident at 63 Hinde House Lane. Her mother (who died in 1931), sister and her husband (Lily and Arthur Bartle) were at number 61. They thought Ethel was ‘quiet and reserved’ and ‘seemed quite happy’. She stayed with them until about 1933, but also lived at a house in Earl Marshall Road. She is said to have reported her husband missing and applied, presumably unsuccessfully, for maintenance.20
However, Ethel, though employed as a shorthand typist at one of the steel works in Saville Street, Sheffield, and earning a good wage of £3 10s per week, had her own fish to fry. Vaughan Brindley, who was about four years her junior, met her in 1928. He later stated, ‘I started keeping company with a girl called Ethel Christie whom I met at a dance at the Abbeydale Ballroom, Sheffield’. Brindley was single and ‘began to court her’. The two went to the cinema, to the theatre, to dances and had trips to the countryside together. It was not until three months had passed that he noticed a wedding ring, and when he commented (he had believed her to be single), ‘she broke down and cried’. She said that she had been married, but that her husband had been injured by poison gas in the War and had later died of his wounds.’ She added that she had fallen in love with Brindley.21
Their romance blossomed nonetheless. They made love regularly. Although they never lived together, they did holiday together; in places such as Blackpool and Bournemouth. They had weekends away in Derbyshire, Brindley recalling, ‘We lived as man and wife, registering as Mr and Mrs Christie’. By 1932, Brindley’s job prospects had improved and he now felt in a position to marry. However, he did want to have children, and although he had never used contraceptives on the numerous occasions that they had had sex, Ethel had never become pregnant. He feared that she might not be capable of bearing a child. Ethel told him that she had once had a miscarriage when she was married. Ethel wanted marriage and she approached Brindley’s father, asking him to use his influence on his son. This enraged Brindley and they quarrelled. The two split by the end of 1932.22
Despite this, in 1953 Brindley, now married and a father of two, had fond memories of Ethel, though he did not want these made public. He said Ethel was ‘a refined, well bred and educated young woman. She was extremely attractive’. She was also respectable and did not frequent pubs, nor did she smoke. He added that she had a ‘timid, sensitive nature’ but was an ‘extremely competent shorthand typist’. This adds a new dimension to our knowledge of Ethel; confirming what Christie said of her as regards her looks, but also indicating her efficiency as a worker and her need for male attention. He added that she kept a diary at this time, but unfortunately it is not known to have survived.23
It was probably in 1928 that Christie was in his second, and only other co-habiting relationship with a woman. In the following year he committed his first known violent crime. Mrs Maud Cole, who did not live with her husband, was travelling to Margate in a charabanc, presumably in the summer of 1928. She met Christie on this trip and they began to live together, at a flat at 6 Almeric Road, Battersea, together with her unnamed schoolboy son. Apparently Christie and Mrs Cole were very fond of each other. It is often stated that Mrs Cole was a prostitute, but there is no evidence for this, and, as we shall note, she referred to going out in the daytime to work. It is hard to imagine that Christie, as a possessive man, would have tolerated such a profession. It might also be added that a clause of the Vagrancy Act of 1898 had made living off immoral earnings a crime and Christie was not charged with this, despite the court’s evident animosity towards him.24
The couple had their problems, chiefly stemming from Christie’s parsimony. Apparently he only ever contributed about a shilling towards housekeeping costs. At first this did not matter too much. Mrs Cole went out to work, and Christie was out of the flat for most of the time that he lived there, so he did not cost her much, she later said. He had been in work for the first fortnight he had lived with her, but apparently not thereafter (this is Mrs Cole’s version; as noted above he was in work). Mrs Cole was, however, not possessed of infinite patience, and told him he should look for work. She said that he refused to do so. In late April, it was decided that he should leave. Christie did not take this well, and assured her that if he could not have her, then no one would.25
Matters came to a head on 1 May. In the morning of that day, Christie took master Cole’s cricket bat out of the corner and said, ‘This is a strong bat’. He said no more about it. At lunchtime, Mrs Cole brought Christie some fried chips–apparently he did not like fish–which he sat down and ate. He then left the table, whilst Mrs Cole remained seated. She then felt a blow to her head and she fell over. She later said, ‘It half stunned me. It was all the world like an explosion. Everything seemed to go black for a second’. Rising, she felt Christie’s fingers in her mouth, injuring her lip. She screamed and the noise of the scuffle was heard by Richard Boswell, who lived in the flat above Mrs Cole’s.26
Boswell saw Mrs Cole at her door. Blood was streaming from her head. Two hands were pushing her out of the room. The door was then locked from the inside. Mrs Cole told Boswell, ‘Don’t let him get at me. He’s trying to murder me’. Boswell took her to his flat and then called the police. PC Davidson, 563L, arrived at ten to one and found that the door to the flat was locked. He forced the door open, but found there was no one there. Marks on the window sill showed that someone had recently vacated the flat by that means. Christie was later arrested by DS Swain at Victoria Street. Meanwhile, Mrs Cole was taken to Bolingbroke Hospital, where she was seen to by Dr John Ives, who saw that she had a scalp wound, five inches long. It needed five stitches and he sent her to St James’ Infirmary. However, she was told that there would be no permanent injury. It was when she was in the recovery ward there that she was visited by Christie. He told her that it was an accident, but she disagreed and he then walked out. He later wrote her a letter, declaring that he would receive three years in prison and a flogging for what he had done.27
Christie was brought before Mr Campion at the South Western Magistrates’ Court on Monday 13 May, charged with causing grievous bodily harm. Dr Ives and Mrs Cole gave their evidence, the essence of which has already been recounted. The clerk of the court read a written statement from Christie. He claimed that he was only swinging the cricket bat to test it and thought he had merely hit the back of the chair, not Mrs Cole. He went on to say that he did not realise that she was injured until she fell over and he picked her up. He then said he lost control of himself and panicked, fleeing through the window. The blow ‘was an absolute accident’.28
Campion did not believe Christie’s story, believing him to be a liar and a coward. He pointed out that Mrs Cole had been good to him and that ‘he was fond of her as much as he could be fond of anyone’. He said that the assault was ‘a murderous attack’ and that with a little more force, it could have broken through her skull and killed her. Reading the letter quoted two paragraphs above, Campion regretted he could not sentence Christie to corporal punishment (not abolished until 1948, so it is unclear why it could not have been administered), ‘though it was a thing that would impress itself strongly on a man of his cowardly temperament’. Instead, he imposed the maximum sentence he could, which was to give him six months in prison, with hard labour. Needless to say, it brought his driving job to an end. He was again sent to Wandsworth Prison, and the same facts were noted about him in the prison ledger, except that under ‘Education’, was written ‘RWM’, meaning he could read and write and was able to do mathematics.29
Christie returned to driving once he was released on remission on 14 October (the sentence expired on 12 November). From 8 July to 27 September 1930, Christie was working as a coach driver for the United Services Transport Company, based at Clapham Road. He was dismissed due to his slackness. A few weeks later, he found another job as a driver, this time with Messrs Waring and Gillow Ltd, Oxford Street. Although he was with them until 23 May 1932, he was not fired but had to leave because of a rearrangement of staff.30
It has been suggested that Christie may have commenced his murderous career in London in the 1930s. The only murder which he may possibly have committed is the strangulation of Dora Lloyd, a middle-aged prostitute, on 21 February 1932, in her flat in Maida Vale. The man last seen with her was about thirty-five, five feet nine, medium build, clean shaven, wore horn-rimmed spectacles and ‘spoke in a very nice and gentlemanly manner’. He may have lived in Wimbledon or Kensington, and wore an overcoat and a trilby. The motive was unclear as the victim had been neither robbed nor raped. Whilst some of these characteristics fit Christie (type of victim, method of murder, appearance and voice), they would probably fit many other men in London too. It is also the case that Christie did not wear glasses in 1932; he is first noted attending an optician in 1937, and it was not until 1948 that he became bespectacled. He was certainly not mentioned as a suspect in the police file covering the case. So, Christie was almost certainly innocent of this murder.31
Christie returned to west London in 1932. From 20 July to 17 September that year he was employed as a lorry driver once more, this time being employed by Clifford’s (Fulham) Ltd, a haulage company on the Great West Road in Brentford. Then he switched to the employ of Sir Robert MacAlpine and Sons (London) Ltd, contractors, based in Cranford (or so he said: one record states he was not in registered employment for the following year).32
On Sunday 22 October 1933, Albert Henry Thomas, a cashier in MacAlpine’s employ, noticed that a Morris Oxford car, worth £70, was missing from a garage there. The car, and Christie, were seen on the following day by Charles Albert Morton, of Calvert Brickworks, in Calvert, Buckinghamshire (near Twyford). It was 6.45pm and Christie asked him for permission to pull inside the works, so he could sleep in the car, because he claimed he had been driving since six that morning. He told Morton, ‘You know me, I used to cart bricks from here with Clifford’s lorries. I have left now and am working for MacAlpines’.33
Morton remembered him and Christie reminded him, ‘My name is Christie’. He said that he had become very tired because of all the driving he had done and was feeling faint and giddy. He was given permission to park inside the works gates. Christie added, ‘Thank you. If I had stayed along the road or in a field the police or someone will disturb me’. Christie drove through the now open gates and parked the car. Within half an hour, he was asleep.34
However, Christie’s story did not ring true. Morton contacted the police. At 8.15pm, PC Taverner of the Buckinghamshire Police arrived and went to the brickfield, where he roused the sleeping Christie and asked what he was doing. ‘Just having a sleep. Mr Morton said that I could come in here’. The constable asked him for his licence and insurance papers, but Christie could not provide them, saying that his driving licence had expired and that he lacked any motor insurance. He was then told that the car had been stolen. Christie feigned innocence, as ever, replying, ‘I was picked up by another man, who has gone to look for lodgings, and he left me here to drive the car into the yard’.35
The car was taken to Harlington Police station where it was identified by Thomas on the following day. Christie was formally charged and found himself, on 1 November, once again at Uxbridge Magistrates’ Court, where he was described as being ‘a motor driver of no fixed abode’. Rowland Richard Robbins, CBE, was chairman of the court, where the charges were stealing and receiving the car, driving without a licence and lacking third-party insurance. There was also the charge of breaking and entering into the garage in the pursuance of theft, but this was dropped. For once, Christie pleaded guilty to all charges and apologized for his misdemeanours. DS Templeman told the court that the accused had four previous convictions. Christie was found guilty and sent to prison for three months, with hard labour, for the theft of the car. For the other offences, he was given the choice of either a 10s fine or seven days in prison. Choosing the latter, he was told that this sentence would run concurrently. This also meant that he would be disqualified from driving for a year. For the third and final time, he was sent to Wandsworth prison.36
It will be noted that there is no reference to Christie stealing the car from a priest, as has been stated by previous authors. This is because the contemporary report does not refer to it. Furthermore, such was the poverty of Catholic clergymen that very few, if any, would have owned a car at this period. One version of the story, reported in the press in 1953, is that a priest employed Christie as chauffeur and his wife as housekeeper after the former came out of prison, and that Christie repaid his kindness by theft. As stated above, Christie was employed elsewhere and his wife was still in Sheffield.37
This was the last petty offence committed by Christie and indeed he is not known to have carried out any other criminal act for another decade. One reason for this was his reconciliation with his estranged wife, who visited him in prison. According to Christie:
At her visit to Wandsworth it was agreed, that the past on both sides should be put behind us . . . At the visit she said it was a question of divorce or coming together again. I asked her which she preferred and she said coming together again . . . After a couple of weeks we felt as if we had never been parted.
This occurred on Ethel’s initiative, possibly because her romance with Brindley had collapsed. Her sister recalled, ‘John Reginald Christie was eventually traced to London and my sister joined him there and they resumed normal married life’. He did not mention his assault on Mrs Cole. He was released from prison on remission on 17 January 1934 (sentence expired on 31 January). Christie clearly always behaved well when under the thumb and so was always released early. He and Ethel had moved to Notting Hill by the end of 1934 and the two were certainly living together in 1936, for they are then recorded at 23 Oxford Gardens, after having resided briefly at 173 Clarendon Road, and probably at other addresses, prior to this. In these instances they lived in just the one room. Christie also (in December 1934) signed up with Dr Matthew Odess of 30 Colville Square, who was to remain his physician for the rest of his life. He recalled treating Christie for insomnia in 1936, and Christie claimed he helped him with his shoulder. His first appointment was on 15 December 1934 for eczema of the foot; in 1936 there were four visits: headache, colds, temperatures and insomnia. There were three appointments in 1937; four in 1938 and a staggering ten in 1939. He also saw an optician in 1937.38
According to Christie he and Ethel lived happily enough:
If when I saw her coming home at night and she was out I always was very careful to have the tea ready for her. Was very careful about that. She had sore feet and so as soon as she came in she could sit down and rest her feet and have her tea. I used to sit at the window watching for her so as to have the tea ready as soon as she came in. If we had been out to Regent’s Park when she came in I would get water for her feet so that she could bathe them. One Xmas she had a bilious attack and I got the Xmas dinner ready.39
It was in 1937 (not December 1938 as previously thought) that the Christies moved from living in Oxford Gardens to that address forever associated with Christie–10 Rillington Place.
Before going any further with the Christie story, we should briefly consider the history of the house which will unwittingly form the setting for the tragedies which follow.
Rillington Place was a small road in Notting Hill–formed of ten houses on each side of the road, just off St Mark’s Road, with the southern side, from St Mark’s Road, numbered from one to ten and the northern side from eleven to twenty. The houses were built in early 1869 by a number of builders, and initially had an annual rental value of £28. The houses in the street were of a dull conformity. The front doors all opened onto the pavement. They had a frontage of seventeen feet and were twenty-six feet long, with a back yard/garden of a further twenty-eight feet. They have been described as ‘doll’s houses’ due to their small size. Each had a washroom and a toilet at the rear. Number 10 and some of the other houses were still uninhabited a year after their erection, and it was not until 1871 that the houses were all populated. The Charles Booth ‘poverty map’ of the 1890s has the street coloured purple, indicating that there were working people inhabiting the street, neither rich nor poor. At the end of the road, near number 10, was Bartle’s iron foundry, with its large chimney.40
Contemporary middle-class descriptions of the district are unflattering. One said it was ‘an area of West London that in many ways parallels Whitechapel to the east, except that it was once an eminently respectable neighbourhood which has since declined’. Another reported that the house was ‘a squalid house in a seedy neighbourhood’. Of the house it was said:
10 Rillington Place was a tiny shabby house, where the paint needed renewing, where there was no bathroom and only one WC on the garden level for all the inhabitants . . . Being a cul-de-sac, Rillington Place, was the natural playground . . . of the children of the neighbourhood . . . On summer days when the evenings are mild the housewives sit out on broken chairs or on the kerb edge and call to acquaintances passing in slippers and curlers. The yellow brick of the mean terraced houses, which face each other across the littered street, is stained and the doors and windows are ill fitting, for the foundations are gradually sinking. At the end of the cul-de-sac is a wall and behind it shows an ugly factory chimney. Beyond the wall the ground falls away to a level well below that of Rillington Place.
No. 10 is the last house on the left hand side . . . There are no cellars, the staircase is narrow, and it is impossible for anybody to do much about the house without the other inhabitants hearing. On the ground floor there is an ugly Victorian bay window to the front room of the house, surrounded by crumbling sandstone. This was the room the Christies used as their sitting-room; their bedroom was behind it with a window looking out on the backyard and the garden; and a tiny kitchen, a mere box of a room, was beyond it on the other side of the narrow passageway which led out to the garden and the communal water closet . . . It is of importance that in front of the bay window on the ground floor there was a manhole cover of heavy iron set into the paving over the drains. Set into the front wall beneath the window, below the level of the sitting-room, was a ventilator grating.41
Of course, in much of this it was no worse than much of the housing stock in the neighbourhood. When, in 1953, there were proposals for slum clearance in north Kensington, the street was not on the list. A positive spin was given in an auctioneer’s sale catalogue of 1932 which advertised numbers 12 and 13 for sale. It referred to them thus, ‘Just off St Mark’s Road and close to Ladbroke Grove (Metropolitan) station and frequent bus routes’ and ‘The Attractive Non-Basement Bay windowed property’. It was suggested that for one tenant, weekly rent could be 24s 8d.42
The house was certainly in a poverty-stricken district; one of the worst in London. On average, 1.3 people shared each room in 1931 and 14.8 per cent lived below the poverty line, which was the highest proportion anywhere in west London and far above the average for the city. The death rate was high, at 13.8 per 1,000, and infant mortality was 77 per 1,000; both among the highest for London. There were few open spaces for recreation. As a report stated, ‘North and west of Notting Hill High Street is a mixed middle and working class district, which in the Notting Dale region includes some of the most notorious slums in London. Since the War some new blocks and cottages have replaced slums in this region, but north of it is still bad’.43
There had already been a hideous crime committed in this district, which had received national attention. This was the murder by strangulation and the sexual assault of ten-year-old Vera Page of 22 Blenheim Crescent in December 1931. No one was ever convicted of this terrible crime. The chief suspect, Percy Orlando Rush (1891–1961), lived in the district at 128 Talbot Road until 1947.44
No. 10 Rillington Place was divided into three floors and each housed one household. In 1937, the landlord was Arthur George Partridge, who owned several properties on the street, each with an annual rental value of £28. Charles Herbert Kitchener (1877–1964), once a van guard at Paddington for the GWR, resided on the first floor, as he had done since about 1920. From 1920–1924, he had lived with Sarah Kitchener. On the ground floor lived an elderly woman, one Alice Aldridge, and on the second floor were Edward and Winifred Smith. He moved to the ground floor on her death in late 1936. Sometime afterwards, but before autumn 1937, the Christies began to rent the two rooms on the second floor, and in December 1938 they took the rooms on the ground floor when vacated by Smith (who had lived in the house since 1929). The second-floor rooms were then taken by Kathleen and Stanley Clowes. Christie later recollected, ‘We occupy the ground floor which consists of a bedroom, living room and a kitchen’. Ethel put a picture of her mother on the living room wall. They paid 12s per week rent.45
Christie and Ethel settled down, again, as in 1920. In September 1936 Christie had taken the job of foreman at the Commodore Cinema at King Street, Hammersmith (the fourth cinema he was employed at, and since demolished). He worked there for almost three years and this spell of employment was only interrupted by the outbreak of war, though during 1937 several hundred pounds were stolen from the safe in his office (two men were arrested for this crime). It was in 1939 that Christie and Ethel acquired a fawn-coloured Irish terrier (later to be joined by a cat), doubtless much to Christie’s content and probably because he wanted the additional companionship they unconditionally offered. 46
It had been a tumultuous two decades. Christie had committed at least two offences in Halifax, and probably the even more heinous one of stealing from his parents, then decamped to London. He had been injured in a road accident, and then lived a peripatetic existence, mainly making a living from various driving jobs, all of which were relatively short-lived. They were also punctuated by three prison sentences for theft and violent assault. The latter incident demonstrates Christie’s foul temper–like that of his father. However, with the arrival of Ethel in about 1934, after a separation of a decade, and, from 1936, permanent employment and a secure address at 10 Rillington Place, his life seemed to have made a return to a humdrum, tolerable kind of existence. Outwardly he was as respectable as ever and neighbours later recalled him ‘as quite an upstanding bloke’.