Utterly interesting

We don't tend to go in for political assainations in the UK, it's just not cricket. But this was a time when we tried it on for size... There are days when Westminster hums along like a well oiled clock. Then there was Monday 11 May 1812. Just after five in the afternoon Spencer Perceval walked from Downing Street to the House of Commons. It was a routine journey he had made many times. In the lobby a quiet Liverpool merchant named John Bellingham stood up from a chair near the fireplace, reached into a specially sewn pocket inside his coat, drew a pistol, and fired. Perceval staggered, gasped “I am murdered,” and fell. Inside a heartbeat the Commons lobby turned from chatter to chaos. Members rushed to the fallen Prime Minister. William Smith, the MP for Norwich and grandfather to Florence Nightingale, was first to reach him. In the confusion Smith initially thought the victim was his friend William Wilberforce. Only when he turned the body did he realise that the man at his feet was the Prime Minister. Perceval was carried into the Speaker’s quarters, laid on a table with his feet resting on two chairs. A surgeon arrived within minutes but the faint pulse stopped. Perceval was declared dead at about 5.20 pm. The minutes before the shot The House had begun at 4.30 pm. Inside the chamber Henry Brougham had remarked that the Prime Minister ought to be present and a messenger was sent toward Downing Street. Perceval had already set out on foot, choosing to dispense with his carriage. Meanwhile, the unremarkable figure in the lobby had taken his place. Bellingham had been seen there on several recent days, quietly asking journalists and clerks to point out ministers by sight. Weeks earlier he had visited a gunsmith on Skinner Street and bought two large calibre pistols. He then asked a tailor to add an inside pocket to his coat so one of the pistols could sit ready to hand. When the shot rang out Bellingham did not run. He sat back down on a bench. In the first seconds of pandemonium he might well have strolled out into the street, a witness later suggested. Instead, an official who had seen the act pointed him out. MPs and attendants seized him, disarmed him, and searched him. Bellingham remained calm. “I have been denied the redress of my grievances by government,” he said. “I have been ill treated. They all know who I am and what I am. I am a most unfortunate man and feel sufficient justification for what I have done.” His own MP, Isaac Gascoyne of Liverpool, happened to be present and confirmed his identity. An impromptu committal hearing was held that evening in the Serjeant at Arms rooms with MPs who were magistrates. Bellingham insisted on explaining himself despite warnings about self incrimination. “I have done my worst, and I rejoice in the deed,” he said. By eight o’clock he was charged with murder and sent to Newgate to await trial. Posthumous portrait of Spencer Perceval by G. F. Joseph , 1812 Who were the two men Spencer Perceval was born in 1762, educated at Harrow and Trinity College, called to the bar in 1786, and entered Parliament in 1796. A devout evangelical Anglican, he opposed Catholic emancipation but worked with William Wilberforce on the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. He became Solicitor General, then Attorney General, then Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1807 and finally Prime Minister in 1809. Colleagues thought him worthy rather than brilliant. One observed, with a sailor’s eye for metaphor, “He is not a ship of the line, but he carries many guns, is tight built, and is out in all weathers.” His government was formed during a difficult stretch of the Napoleonic Wars. The Walcheren expedition had gone badly. King George III lapsed into permanent incapacity in 1810 and the Prince of Wales became Regent. Perceval’s greatest strategic call was to keep Wellington’s army in the field in Portugal despite cost and cabinet doubts. In the long view this proved decisive. At home, however, the war economy and his hard line policies caused distress. The Orders in Council of 1807, a British answer to Napoleon’s Continental System, allowed the Royal Navy to detain neutral ships trading with France and its allies. American trade suffered, British exports withered, and whole industries in Yorkshire, Lancashire, Birmingham and the Potteries endured grim times. Petitions poured into Parliament. More than a hundred witnesses told committees about unemployment, poverty and hunger. Riots broke out in Manchester in April 1812. Luddite machine breaking spread and Perceval made it a capital offence, a move denounced by Lord Byron as barbarous. The atmosphere was raw. John Bellingham was not a radical firebrand. He was a clerk turned trader who had worked in Russia. In 1804 a disputed debt led to his arrest at Archangelsk. He believed he had been falsely imprisoned for reasons tied to a soured insurance claim and the hostility of local merchants. He appealed again and again to the British Embassy without success and spent years in custody, part of it after he had already been released once. His wife Mary returned to England to support their family. Bellingham finally came home in late 1809, uncompensated and angry. He petitioned the Foreign Office, the Treasury, the Privy Council, and the Prime Minister. Polite refusals followed. He told a Treasury official that if the door of justice remained closed he would take justice into his own hands. No one took the remark as a threat. He did exactly what he said. London reacts News of the assassination spread through Westminster and across the city within hours. A knot of people outside the Commons cheered as the arrested man was brought to a coach. Some tried to shake his hand. Others climbed onto the carriage and had to be beaten back with whips. William Cobbett, then in prison for seditious libel, wrote that the poor rejoiced that they had been rid of a man they saw as the leader of policies that hurt their liberties. The authorities feared a wider rising. Foot Guards and mounted troops patrolled the streets. The City militia turned out and local watches were strengthened. In Parliament the mood was stunned and sorrowful. The next day George Canning spoke of a man who had provoked no enemies beyond the political. MPs voted a grant of fifty thousand pounds and a two thousand pound annuity for Perceval’s widow Jane and their twelve children. It was a generous provision for a family that had not been wealthy. The inquest and a very swift trial On Tuesday 12 May an inquest at the Rose and Crown in Downing Street returned a verdict of wilful murder. The Attorney General pushed for the earliest possible trial. On Friday 15 May, four days after the shooting, the case opened at the Old Bailey before Sir James Mansfield. The law at the time limited the role of defence counsel in capital cases. The Attorney General William Garrow assisted the prosecution. Henry Brougham declined to appear for the defence. Peter Alley acted instead, with Henry Revell Reynolds. The prosecution laid out Bellingham’s past and his preparations. The gunsmith confirmed the sale of two pistols on 20 April. The tailor described the hidden pocket he had sewn. Numerous eyewitnesses described the shot and the calm that followed. Alley asked for a postponement to seek witnesses for an insanity defence. Mansfield refused. The trial continued. This document is part of a collection of notes on the assassination of British Prime Minister Spencer Perceval. This is the announcement made by the Lord Chancellor to the House of Lords upon receiving news of the assassination of Perceval, which he refers to as 'a most melancholy and a most atrocious circumstance having taken place in the Lobby of the other House'. When Bellingham spoke he thanked the Attorney General for discarding insanity. “I think it is far more fortunate that such a plea should have been unfounded, than it should have existed in fact.” He read his petition to the Prince Regent and argued that the British mission in St Petersburg had denied him justice years earlier. He said that if anyone had truly deserved the shot it was the former ambassador Lord Granville Leveson Gower rather than “that truly amiable and highly lamented individual, Mr Perceval.” The judge directed the jury to the test then used for criminal insanity. The single question, he said, was whether at the time of the act the prisoner had a sufficient degree of understanding to distinguish right from wrong. The jury retired. They returned in about fifteen minutes with a verdict of guilty. Following his execution John Bellingham’s skull became the subject of research for phrenologists, representing the head of a destructive personality. Shown here is a comparison of Bellingham’s skull with that of a ‘Hindoo’, from A System of Phrenology (1834) by George Combe The sentence was delivered in the solemn tones of early nineteenth century justice. Bellingham was to be hanged by the neck until dead, his body then dissected and anatomised. He was executed at Newgate at eight in the morning on Monday 18 May. A large crowd gathered. Soldiers stood ready after rumours of a rescue. Bellingham climbed the steps quickly and without tremor. After the drop his body was taken to St Bartholomew’s Hospital for dissection by Sir William Clift, who meticulously recorded his findings so that to this day we know what he and the audience observed during the procedure. The stomach contained a small quantity of fluid, "which seemed to be wine" The bladder was empty and contracted The brain was found to be "firm and sound throughout" Reports noted that his clothes were later sold off to the curious at high prices. On the day before he died he wrote to his wife, “Nine hours more will waft me to those happy shores where bliss is without alloy.” Skull of John Bellingham The wider story around 1812 The Orders in Council that had helped to create the sour public mood were repealed on 23 June 1812. The move came too late to ease relations with the United States. Within weeks came the declaration that began the War of 1812. At home the new administration of Lord Liverpool slowly moved away from some of Perceval’s hard line positions. Press freedoms widened. Campaigns for Catholic relief and parliamentary reform gathered pace. Enforcement against the illegal slave trade grew lax in these years despite Perceval’s earlier moral stance. Yet Perceval’s insistence on keeping Wellington in the Peninsula mattered. That army would push north into Spain and toward the Pyrenees as the tide of the war turned. In that sense history gave some weight to his judgement. Still, his reputation faded. Charles Dickens later sniffed that he was a third rate politician scarcely fit to carry Lord Chatham’s crutch. What endured in the public mind was not policy but the shocking manner of his death. Grief, memory, and debate Perceval was buried at St Luke’s Church in Charlton and memorialised in Westminster Abbey, Lincoln’s Inn and Northampton. In July 2014 a brass plaque was installed in St Stephen’s Hall at the Palace of Westminster near the spot where he fell, replacing a cluster of patterned floor tiles that had once served as an unofficial marker. His family received the parliamentary grant and annuity that kept them from hardship. Questions about the fairness of the trial arose quickly. Henry Brougham called the proceedings a disgrace to English justice. Later scholars have argued that the court rushed the case in the heat of public feeling, that an adjournment to gather evidence on Bellingham’s sanity should have been allowed, and that Mansfield’s summing up showed bias. A study in 2012 even floated the idea that Bellingham may have been encouraged or quietly supported by certain Liverpool mercantile interests who had suffered under Perceval’s economic policies. There is no firm evidence for a conspiracy and most historians do not accept the theory, but it continues to surface whenever the case is revisited. Memorial plaque to Spencer Perceval, in Lincoln's Inn Fields There are also the smaller human threads. In the week before he died Perceval is said to have spoken of uneasy dreams and was urged to miss the sitting. He refused to be turned aside by a mere dream. The detail may be apocryphal, but it has clung to the story for two centuries because it feels so very British. We queue, we tut, we carry on. Even our only political assassination arrived without a mob, without a plot, with a single crack of a pistol in a marbled lobby and an assassin who politely waited to be arrested. What remains Spencer Perceval holds a singular place in British political history. He is the only Prime Minister to be murdered in office. His killer was not a revolutionary but a middle class merchant who decided that a closed door of justice justified a bullet. The country gasped, then resumed its business. The war went on. The Orders were repealed. A new ministry took shape. Monuments went up. A family grieved and was supported. And each May, those who know their history can still point to the corner of St Stephen’s Hall and picture a quiet Monday when Westminster lost a Prime Minister to a single shot. Sources Hansard Parliamentary Archives. Debates and reports, 11 to 12 May 1812. https://hansard.parliament.uk/ Old Bailey Proceedings Online. Trial of John Bellingham, 15 May 1812. https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/ The National Archives UK. Home Office and inquest papers on the assassination of Spencer Perceval. https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ British Library Newspapers. Contemporary coverage, May 1812. https://www.bl.uk/ BBC History. The assassination of Spencer Perceval; Orders in Council context. https://www.bbc.co.uk/history Garnett, R. Spencer Perceval: The Prime Minister Who Was Murdered . London, 2012. Goddard, Kathleen S. “The Trial of John Bellingham.” Analysis of procedure and insanity plea, 2004. Linklater, Andro. Study of the commercial context and Liverpool reaction, 2012. Westminster and Parliamentary Estates Directorate. St Stephen’s Hall memorial plaque notes, 2014. Cobbett, William. Commentary from prison on public reaction to Perceval’s government, 1812.

Ilse Koch, notoriously known as the “Bitch of Buchenwald,” stands as one of the most infamous figures in the brutal history of Nazi Germany. Born Margarete Ilse Köhler on 22 September 1906, her life began unremarkably in Dresden, but she would go on to become a symbol of unimaginable cruelty and sadism during her time at the Buchenwald concentration camp. As the wife of Commandant Karl Otto Koch, Ilse used her position to torment prisoners in ways that shocked even the Nazi regime itself. Accused of heinous crimes, including the collection of human skin for gruesome artefacts, Koch’s role in the atrocities of the Holocaust remains one of the darkest chapters of World War II history. Her life, trials, and mysterious legacy continue to raise questions about the depths of human depravity, earning her a place in history as one of the most feared women of the Third Reich. Ilse Koch's early life was far from extraordinary. Raised by a factory foreman, her childhood was described as unremarkable, with her teachers noting her as polite and content. At the age of 15, she enrolled in accounting school—one of the few professional opportunities available to women at the time. She soon found work as a bookkeeping clerk in post-World War I Germany, a period marked by profound economic turmoil and social disillusionment. In the early 1930s, as Germany's struggles deepened, Koch, like many of her peers, joined the Nazi Party. Hitler’s ideology, promising economic recovery and the restoration of German pride, resonated with a populace beleaguered by the Treaty of Versailles and the hardships following the Great War. The Nazi Party first focused on turning the German people against democracy and the Weimar Republic, blaming its politicians for Germany’s defeat and subsequent miseries. Adolf Hitler, with his magnetic speeches and promises of abolishing the hated Treaty of Versailles, captivated Koch and others. The treaty had stripped Germany of its military might and forced it to pay enormous reparations, worsening the already dire economic situation. Many Germans, like Koch, were desperate for solutions, and the Nazi Party appeared to offer hope. The Buchenwald Years It was through her involvement in the Nazi Party that Koch met her future husband, Karl Otto Koch. They married in 1936, and the following year, Karl Koch was appointed Commandant of Buchenwald, one of the largest concentration camps in Germany, located near Weimar. The camp, which opened shortly after Dachau, was marked by an iron gate inscribed with the words *Jedem das Seine*, meaning “to each his own.” However, for the prisoners, it carried a far more sinister implication: “Everyone gets what he deserves.” Ilse and Karl Koch with their son Artwin Ilse Koch quickly embraced the chance to actively participate in her husband’s gruesome work at Buchenwald, seizing the opportunity to carve out her own place within the Nazi regime. Far from staying in the background, she became one of the most feared and sadistic figures at the camp. Her cruelty and desire for power were evident from the outset. One of her earliest acts was to commission the construction of an extravagant indoor sports arena, costing $62,500—a fortune at the time, equivalent to roughly $1 million today. The money for this lavish project was stolen from the very prisoners she and her husband oversaw, highlighting her complete disregard for human life and suffering. Koch’s love of horseback riding became another tool for her cruelty. She frequently rode not just within the arena but also through the camp itself, where her presence was met with terror. Prisoners who made the mistake of catching her eye were met with brutal consequences. She took pleasure in taunting those already enduring unimaginable conditions, sometimes whipping those who dared to look at her as she passed. Her actions, particularly towards children and the vulnerable, solidified her reputation as one of Buchenwald’s most merciless tormentors, a woman whose cruelty knew no bounds. Survivors of Buchenwald would later claim during her trial that Koch took special pleasure in sending children to the gas chambers. Another horrifying aspect of her sadistic behaviour was her supposed fascination with human skin. It was claimed that she collected lampshades, book covers, and gloves made from the skin of prisoners, particularly those with distinctive tattoos. These prisoners were said to be skinned after execution, and their remains were then incinerated. Items reportedly made from human skin were found after the camp’s liberation and used as evidence during her trial. This crime, however, has been said to be apocryphal. While various objects fashioned from human skins were discovered in Buchenwald's pathology department at liberation, their connection to Koch was tenuous, given that she had not been at the camp since the summer of 1943. The more likely culprit was SS doctor Erich Wagner, who wrote a dissertation while serving at Buchenwald on the purported link he saw between habitual criminality and the practice of tattooing one's skin. Ilse Koch is sentenced to life in prison by a US military. Arrest and Trials On 24 August 1943, both Karl and Ilse were arrested following an investigation led by SS judge Konrad Morgen . Morgen's indictment, issued 17 August 1944, formally charged Karl Koch with the "embezzlement and concealing of funds and goods in an amount of at least 200,000 RM," and the "premeditated murder" of three inmates - ostensibly to prevent them from giving evidence to the SS investigatory commission. Ilse was charged with the "habitual receiving of stolen goods, and taking for her benefit at least 25,000 RM..." While Ilse Koch was acquitted at the subsequent SS trial in December 1944, Karl was found guilty, sentenced to death, and ultimately executed at Buchenwald only days prior to its liberation. Despite their numerous crimes, Ilse Koch was initially acquitted due to a lack of conclusive evidence. While the grisly lampshades and other items were recovered, investigators could not prove they were made from human skin. Koch herself insisted they were made from goatskin. Ilse Koch on trial. The liberation of the camp brought Koch’s sadistic actions into the public eye. Survivors gave interviews detailing her atrocities, and there was a public outcry for her to face justice. In 1947, she was brought before the General Military Government Court for the Trial of War Criminals. Koch conceived another child with a fellow German war crimes internee under murky circumstances while awaiting her trial at Dachau. Koch gave birth to a son she named Uwe Köhler while incarcerated at Landsberg prison in October 1947. The child was immediately handed over to Bavarian child welfare authorities. Uwe only discovered the identity of his mother as a teenager, and began to correspond with, and visit, his mother in 1966. Clemency and Rearrest In a controversial turn of events, General Lucius D. Clay, the interim military governor of the American Zone in Germany, reduced Koch’s sentence to just four years in 1949. The reduction of Koch's sentence to four years resulted in an uproar, when it was made public, but Clay stood firm by his decision.   Years later, Clay stated: There was absolutely no evidence in the trial transcript, other than she was a rather loathsome creature, that would support the death sentence. I suppose I received more abuse for that than for anything else I did in Germany. Some reporter had called her the "Bitch of Buchenwald", had written that she had lamp shades made of human skin in her house. And that was introduced in court, where it was absolutely proven that the lampshades were made out of goat skin . In addition to that, her crimes were primarily against the German people; they were not war crimes against American or Allied prisoners [...] Later she was tried by a German court for her crimes and sentenced to life imprisonment. But they had clear jurisdiction. We did not. However, he added: “I hold no sympathy for Ilse Koch. She was a woman of depraved character and ill repute. She had done many things reprehensible and punishable, undoubtedly, under German law. We were not trying her for those things. We were trying her as a war criminal on specific charges.” The public was outraged by her release, and Koch was soon rearrested. During her second trial in 1950, she frequently collapsed and had to be removed from the courtroom. The proceedings saw over 250 witnesses testify, with four witnesses confirming they had seen Koch selecting prisoners for their tattoos or had been involved in creating human-skin lampshades. However, due to a lack of concrete evidence, the charge was once again dropped. On 15 January 1951, Koch was sentenced to life imprisonment, convicted of “charges of incitement to murder, incitement to attempted murder, and incitement to the crime of committing grievous bodily harm.” Final Years and Legacy During her imprisonment, Koch appealed her conviction multiple times, but all were dismissed. She even petitioned the International Human Rights Commission but was again rejected. Her son, Uwe, born during her imprisonment at Dachau, discovered his mother’s identity later in life and visited her frequently in prison. Koch hanged herself with a bed sheet at Aichach women's prison on 1 September 1967 at age 60. She experienced delusions and had become convinced that concentration camp survivors would abuse her in her cell. Her suicide note was written to her son Uwe: "There is no other way. Death for me is a release." In 1971, Uwe sought posthumous rehabilitation for his mother. Via the press, he used clemency documents from her former lawyer in 1957 and his impression of her based on their relationship in an attempt to change people's attitude towards Koch. She was buried in an unmarked grave at the prison’s cemetery. The mystery surrounding the infamous lampshades endures. While many historians doubt their existence, a Jewish writer named Mark Jacobson sought to verify the story after a man named Skip Hendersen purchased a lampshade said to be a Nazi relic. Initial DNA testing suggested the lampshade was made from human skin, but later tests pointed to it being cowskin. This uncertainty remains one of the many dark secrets Koch took to her grave, leaving behind a legacy of cruelty and horror that continues to haunt history. Ilse Koch will forever be remembered as the Bitch of Buchenwald, a symbol of the extremes of human depravity and the unchecked cruelty that defined the Nazi regime. Sources United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) – Buchenwald Concentration Camp Overview https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/buchenwald Brown, Daniel Patrick. The Camp Women: The Female Auxiliaries Who Assisted the SS in Running the Nazi Concentration Camp System.  Schiffer Publishing, 2002. Gedenkstätte Buchenwald (Buchenwald Memorial) – Historical Records and Exhibits on Ilse and Karl Koch https://www.buchenwald.de/en/ Neander, Joachim. “The Lampshade Controversy: The Story of Ilse Koch.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies , Vol. 22, No. 1 (2008): 131–145. Lower, Wendy. Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields.  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. Wikipedia – Ilse Koch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilse_Koch Yad Vashem Archives – War Crimes Trials Documentation (Ilse Koch, 1947–1951) https://www.yadvashem.org/ Der Spiegel  Archive – Postwar Trials of Karl and Ilse Koch (1947–1951) https://www.spiegel.de/ Kogon, Eugen. The Theory and Practice of Hell: The German Concentration Camps and the System Behind Them.  Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1950. BBC History – The Female Perpetrators of the Holocaust https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/genocide/women_perpetrators_01.shtml

In the dark world of Nazi concentration camps, where cruelty was institutionalised and compassion almost unthinkable, a chilling detail emerged after the war, some of the most sadistic guards were not men, but women. Among the names that surfaced during post-war trials, few drew as much fascination and revulsion as Jenny-Wanda Barkmann, the young Hamburg woman who became known as “The Beautiful Spectre.” When Allied forces began prosecuting the perpetrators of the Holocaust, the public was stunned by reports of women like Irma Grese, Elisabeth Volkenrath, and Gerda Steinhoff, whose acts of barbarity often matched or even surpassed their male counterparts. In total, 21 women who served as concentration camp guards were executed after the war, and Barkmann was one of them. Jenny-Wanda Barkmann Early Life and Nazi Indoctrination Jenny-Wanda Barkmann was born on May 30, 1922, in Hamburg, Germany. Very little is known about her childhood, but she grew up in a country increasingly shaped by Adolf Hitler’s rise and the pervasive reach of Nazi ideology. For many young Germans, especially those born in the 1920s, Hitler’s promises of national pride and renewal were intoxicating. The Hitler Youth and its female counterpart, the League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher Mädel), indoctrinated teenagers in notions of obedience, racial superiority, and unquestioning service to the state. As the Nazis consolidated power in the 1930s, children like Barkmann were drawn into a system that glorified discipline, hierarchy, and loyalty to the Führer above all else. By the time Barkmann reached adulthood, Germany was already at war. When she was 22 years old, she began seeking employment within the Nazi administration, specifically as a camp guard. Why she would volunteer for such a post in 1944, when Germany’s defeat seemed inevitable, remains unclear. Historians suggest it may have been a mix of opportunism, indoctrination, and a misplaced sense of patriotism. The Female Guards of the Third Reich Of the roughly 55,000 guards who served across the concentration camp system, around 3,700 were women, many of them volunteers. The Nazi regime encouraged women to take on roles in female-only subcamps, particularly in places like Ravensbrück, which served as a training and holding camp for female SS personnel. Recruitment was disturbingly casual. Job advertisements appeared in German newspapers inviting women to “show their love for the Reich” by joining the SS-Gefolge, a civilian auxiliary branch attached to the SS. Many of these recruits had little or no professional experience — they were waitresses, hairdressers, teachers, opera singers, or matrons. Some were even conscripted after their information was retrieved from SS files. SS women camp guards being paraded for work in clearing the dead. The women include Hildegard Kanbach (first from left), Irene Haschke (centre, third from right), the Head Wardress, Elisabeth Volkenrath (second from right, partially hidden) and Herta Bothe (first from right). Herta Bothe accompanied a death march of women from central Poland to Bergen-Belsen. She was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and released early from prison on December 22, 1951. Elisabeth Volkenrath was head wardress of the camp and sentenced to death. She was hanged on December 13 1945. Irene Haschke was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. Training was short and often brutal. Initially, women were trained at Lichtenburg in 1938, but from 1939 onwards, Ravensbrück, located near Berlin, became the main training centre. Courses lasted from four weeks to six months and covered ideological indoctrination, discipline, and punishment. According to former SS overseer Hertha Ehlert, who testified at the Belsen Trial, the training was “physically and emotionally demanding.” Trainees were instructed on how to identify “sabotage” and enforce punishments, often being encouraged to treat inmates as subhuman. One survivor recalled a chilling exercise in which “the Germans brought a group of fifty women to the camp to undergo training. The women were separated and brought before the inmates. Each was told to hit a prisoner. Only three asked the reason why, and only one refused, she was jailed. The rest quickly got into the swing of things, which they had been warming up for their whole lives.” Uniforms gave these women a sense of authority they’d never experienced before. Heavy leather boots, starched blouses with ties, military-style hats, and tailored coats conveyed the illusion of status and control. One former prisoner, Kitty Hart, recalled that after her liberation from the Salzwedel subcamp, she took the coat of a captured SS woman and removed the buttons. When a U.S. officer asked where she got it, he reportedly said, “All that time when we were freezing, some of us to death, we hated those vicious bitches in their windproof, waterproof coats. And now I have one for myself.” For many of these women, the uniform became the only thing separating them from the very inmates they tormented. Stutthof: The Camp of the “Beautiful Spectre” The Stutthof concentration camp, located in a marshy forest near the village of Stutthof, east of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland), was the first camp established outside Germany’s pre-war borders and the last to be liberated. Founded on 2 September 1939, the day after Germany’s invasion of Poland, Stutthof was initially intended to imprison Polish intelligentsia, politicians, and resistance members. Later, its population expanded to include Jews, Soviet POWs, and political prisoners from across Europe. The Stutthof concentration camp Conditions were appalling. Prisoners faced forced labour, starvation, disease, and mass executions. In total, over 65,000 people perished in Stutthof, including around 28,000 Jews, through shootings, gas chambers, and lethal injections. By the time Jenny Barkmann arrived in 1944, she was assigned to Stutthof’s SK-III women’s subcamp, where she quickly developed a reputation for unprovoked violence. Eyewitnesses later described her as “beautiful, young, and completely without mercy.” She regularly beat prisoners, sometimes to death, and personally selected women and children for the gas chambers. Because of her attractive appearance and her hauntingly detached demeanour, inmates began referring to her as “Die schöne Gespenst”  — The Beautiful Spectre . Her tenure at Stutthof lasted barely a year, yet her cruelty was such that her name would be remembered long after the camp’s liberation. Life Behind Barbed Wire: The Culture of the Female Guard The world of the female SS overseers was one of disturbing contradictions — a blend of privilege, brutality, and moral decay. At many camps, romantic and sexual relationships between SS men and female guards were common. Even married guards often had affairs, and drunken parties were frequent in the SS canteens. One former camp insider recalled, “The guards all had monstrous eating and drinking bouts in the SS canteens, after which they were so far gone that they could not recall in the morning who they spent the rest of the night with.” Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, reportedly told his male subordinates to regard female guards as comrades and equals. At the Helmbrechts subcamp in Germany, the commandant had an openly romantic relationship with the head overseer, Helga Hegel. In some cases, female guards even became pregnant within the camps. Others, like Irma Grese, who served at Ravensbrück, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen , were notorious for their sexual sadism. She was rumoured to have had relationships with Dr. Josef Mengele, Josef Kramer, and several prisoners, whom she later sent to their deaths. Irma Grese and Josef Kramer in the Celle courtyard, 8 August 1945 Corruption was rife. Guards stole from prisoners’ possessions, sometimes amassing small fortunes. Ilse Koch, the infamous “Witch of Buchenwald,” and her husband, Commandant Karl Koch, looted millions of Reichsmarks. When they were caught, Karl was executed for corruption, but Ilse escaped conviction. In other camps, female guards were punished for theft but rarely for violence. One woman who beat a prisoner to death received one day’s imprisonment for the murder. Yet not every female overseer was cruel. Post-war testimonies mentioned a few who showed moments of decency or compassion. Klara Kunig, who served at Ravensbrück and Dresden-Universelle, was dismissed in 1945 for being “too polite” to inmates. Another at Auschwitz was flogged by her peers for aiding prisoners. But these cases were rare, exceptions to an otherwise grim rule. The Collapse of the Reich and Barkmann’s Arrest As Soviet troops advanced toward the Baltic coast in early 1945, chaos engulfed the Stutthof region. Guards and administrators fled, destroying evidence of atrocities and forcing prisoners on brutal death marches through the freezing countryside. Barkmann fled too, disguising herself and using a false identity to hide in Gdańsk. Her freedom was short-lived. In May 1945, she was recognised and arrested at a train station by Polish authorities. Eyewitnesses said she initially denied her identity, but survivors from Stutthof soon identified her. She was detained and interrogated for her role in the murders at the camp. Jenny-Wanda Barkmann in front of a pile of shoes at the Stutthof concentration camp. The Stutthof Trials In 1946, the first trial of Stutthof concentration camp personnel took place in Gdańsk. The defendants included six female SS guards, among them Jenny Barkmann, Ewa Paradies, Elisabeth Becker, Wanda Klaff, and Gerda Steinhoff, as well as one male SS officer and six Polish “kapos” who had served as prisoner-overseers. The courtroom atmosphere was charged. Survivors described the guards’ sadism in harrowing detail, recounting how they had beaten inmates, forced them into roll calls for hours, or selected children for gassing. Despite the gravity of the proceedings, Barkmann’s behaviour was disturbingly flippant. Witnesses said she giggled during testimony, preened before mirrors, and flirted with guards. Female guards of the Stutthof concentration camp at a trial in Gdańsk between 25 April and 31 May 1946. First row (from left): Elisabeth Becker, Gerda Steinhoff, Wanda Klaff. Second row: Johann Pauls, Erna Beilhardt, Jenny-Wanda Barkmann When the guilty verdict was read, Barkmann reportedly said, “Life is indeed a pleasure, and pleasures are usually short.” She and ten others were sentenced to death by hanging. The executions were scheduled for 4 July 1946, to take place publicly at Biskupia Górka Hill near Gdańsk. The Public Execution of the “Beautiful Spectre” The executions at Biskupia Górka were intended as both punishment and warning. A crowd of approximately 200,000 people gathered to watch, including survivors of Stutthof who had volunteered to serve as executioners. Public execution of Stutthof concentration camp personnel on 4 July 1946 by short-drop hanging. In the foreground, from left to right, are female camp overseers Barkmann, Ewa Paradies, Elisabeth Becker, Wanda Klaff, and Gerda Steinhoff. The condemned were lined up on wooden gallows for short-drop hangings, which caused death by strangulation rather than a quick neck break. Photographs from the day show five women standing in the front row, Barkmann, Ewa Paradies, Elisabeth Becker, Wanda Klaff, and Gerda Steinhoff, moments before their deaths. Barkmann, calm and composed, reportedly said nothing as the noose was placed around her neck. She was 24 years old. Because of the massive turnout and the macabre atmosphere, authorities decided against any further public executions, citing “humanitarian concerns.” For many Poles who had suffered under Nazi occupation, however, the moment marked a grim sense of justice served. Jenny Barkmann The Legacy of Jenny Barkmann Jenny Barkmann’s story remains one of the most unsettling in the history of the Holocaust, not simply because of her brutality, but because of what she represented. She was young, attractive, and unremarkable in background, an ordinary person who embraced extraordinary cruelty. Her case forces historians and the public alike to confront uncomfortable questions: How could someone so ordinary become an agent of mass murder? How could such sadism coexist with vanity, flirtation, and laughter? Holocaust scholar Wendy Lower, in her book Hitler’s Furies , explores how the Nazi regime drew thousands of women into its machinery of death, as secretaries, nurses, and guards. Many, like Barkmann, were not coerced but volunteered, seeing it as an opportunity for advancement or patriotic duty. The transformation of such women into killers, Lower argues, stemmed from ideological indoctrination and a social order that gave them unchecked power over others. In this system, cruelty was not only permitted but rewarded. Barkmann’s final words, “Life is indeed a pleasure, and pleasures are usually short,” capture both her nihilism and her detachment. To the end, she appeared to view her life — and the lives she destroyed, as nothing more than fleeting moments in a pleasure-driven existence. Sources Brown, Daniel Patrick. The Camp Women: The Female Auxiliaries Who Assisted the SS in Running the Nazi Concentration Camp System . Schiffer Publishing, 2002. Stutthof Museum Archives, Gdańsk. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). Holocaust Encyclopaedia: Stutthof Concentration Camp. “Stutthof Trial, Gdańsk 1946.” Polish National Archives. Lower, Wendy. Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields . Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. Photographic archives: “Public execution of Stutthof concentration camp personnel, July 4, 1946,” Wikimedia Commons. Eyewitness accounts and post-war testimonies, cited in Brown (2002). Wikipedia: “Jenny-Wanda Barkmann” (accessed 2025). Ravensbrück Memorial Site documentation, Brandenburg, Germany. Hart, Kitty. Return to Auschwitz: The Remarkable Story of a Girl Who Survived the Holocaust.  Atheneum, 1981.

Few stories in the history of intellectual property are as disheartening as the tale of Elizabeth Magie and the board game now known as Monopoly . Beneath the brightly coloured properties and the gleaming prospect of winning big lies a darker history of theft, erasure, and the repackaging of a visionary anti-capitalist critique into a celebration of unrestrained greed. To understand this transformation is to understand the story of a brilliant woman, her groundbreaking ideas, and the systemic mechanisms that silenced her voice. Who Was Elizabeth Magie? Born in 1866 in Illinois, Elizabeth Magie, or “Lizzie,” was ahead of her time. She grew up in an intellectually stimulating environment; her father, James Magie, was a newspaper publisher and political activist who counted Abraham Lincoln among his friends. This connection to progressive politics likely influenced Magie’s worldview, particularly her embrace of the economic theories of Henry George. Henry George’s 1879 treatise Progress and Poverty  argued for a single tax on land as a solution to growing economic inequality. George believed land could not be truly owned—it was a communal resource—and that taxing it would curb monopolistic exploitation while fostering a fairer society. Magie absorbed these ideas and channelled them into her life’s work. Magie wasn’t just an intellectual. She was an inventor, writer, performer, and satirist who actively challenged the social norms of her era. In 1893, she made waves by placing an advertisement in newspapers, offering herself as a “young woman American slave” for sale to the highest bidder. This was not a genuine attempt at auctioning herself but a biting critique of the limited opportunities and wages available to women in the labour force. Her inventive spirit was similarly unconventional. She filed multiple patents, a rarity for women of her time. Among them was a patent for a typewriter mechanism and, most famously, one for The Landlord’s Game , her 1903 creation that eventually evolved into Monopoly . Patent illustration for Lizzie Magie's The Landlord's Game, filed in 1903 and granted in 1904, showcasing the original design concept that inspired the modern Monopoly game. The Creation of The Landlord’s Game Magie designed The Landlord’s Game  as an educational tool. Its purpose was to illustrate the effects of economic inequality and to promote Georgist principles. The game’s innovative mechanics featured a square board with properties to buy, rent, or tax. Importantly, the game included two distinct rule sets: 1. Prosperity Rules : Under this system, players pooled resources, paid a single tax on land, and worked together to create equitable wealth distribution. The goal was collective achievement, with all players prospering. 2. Monopoly Rules : Here, players aimed to dominate the market by acquiring properties, collecting rent, and bankrupting opponents. This version starkly showcased the inequities of a capitalist economy. The dual rules were central to Magie’s vision. She wanted to show that monopolistic practices created suffering and economic disparity, whereas a system based on fair taxation could uplift everyone. Magie self-published the game, producing a limited number of copies. Initially, it gained popularity among fellow Georgists, Quaker communities, and intellectuals along the East Coast. By 1910, The Landlord’s Game  even found an audience in Scotland, where a version called Brer Fox and Rabbit  was introduced. Yet, without mass production or aggressive marketing, its reach was limited. Patent illustrations for Charles Darrow's Monopoly, showcasing the iconic game board and chance cards, filed on August 31, 1935. The Path to Monopoly: A Game of Telephone As the game spread informally, players began tweaking its rules and design. By the 1920s, it had morphed through several iterations, often reflecting local quirks. Property names changed to reflect hometown streets, dice replaced the original auction system, and the game became more focused on competition than education. The game made its way into fraternity houses, Quaker schools, and middle-class living rooms. One significant version was created by Charles and Olive Todd, a couple living in Atlantic City, who codified many of the features familiar to Monopoly players today—such as the misspelled “Marvin Gardens” (originally Marven Gardens). The Todds hosted dinner parties where the game was played, and in early 1933, one of their guests was a down-on-his-luck heater salesman named Charles Darrow. Darrow was immediately captivated. The Todds generously typed up the rules for him, unaware that they were handing over a goldmine. Darrow copied the game, hired a graphic artist to refine the design, and pitched it to Parker Brothers. The company initially rejected his prototype but reconsidered when Darrow’s self-produced version became a hit in local department stores. By the end of 1935, Monopoly was on its way to becoming a global sensation. The Erasure of Elizabeth Magie Darrow presented himself as the sole inventor of Monopoly, spinning a story about creating the game in his basement during the Great Depression. It was a narrative perfectly suited to the American Dream: a clever individual pulling himself out of poverty through ingenuity. Parker Brothers embraced this myth wholeheartedly, even going so far as to buy up homemade versions of the game to suppress evidence of its true origins. But the truth was not entirely hidden. In 1935, Parker Brothers approached Magie to buy the patent for The Landlord’s Game . For $500—a paltry sum even then—Magie signed over her rights, believing Parker Brothers’ promise to market her game alongside Monopoly. The company did release The Landlord’s Game , as well as two other games Magie had designed, but with little fanfare or marketing support. Magie’s contributions were quickly overshadowed by Monopoly’s meteoric rise. Magie, disillusioned and hurt, spoke to reporters about the injustice. In one interview, she lamented that her game had been co-opted to glorify the very systems she sought to critique. “There is nothing new under the sun,” she remarked bitterly. “There is not an idea in the world that is not old.” The Truth Comes to Light Magie’s story might have been lost to history if not for Ralph Anspach, an economist who created Anti-Monopoly  in 1973. Parker Brothers, now a subsidiary of General Mills, sued Anspach for trademark infringement. Determined to fight back, Anspach dug into Monopoly’s history and uncovered Magie’s pivotal role. His legal battle revealed how Parker Brothers had built their empire on a false foundation. Anspach’s research connected the dots: from Darrow’s dinner party with the Todds, to earlier versions of The Landlord’s Game , to Magie’s original 1903 patent. His findings forced a public reckoning with Monopoly’s origins, though by then, the damage had been done. Monopoly had become a cultural phenomenon, its capitalist ethos firmly entrenched in popular imagination. Monopoly’s Legacy and Magie’s Vision Monopoly is now one of the best-selling board games of all time, a symbol of cutthroat competition and accumulation of wealth. Yet its true roots lie in Magie’s radical critique of those very values. Her Landlord’s Game  was a warning about the dangers of monopolistic practices, an effort to educate and inspire collective action against inequality. Elizabeth Magie’s legacy is a testament to the resilience of creative vision in the face of systemic injustice. Her story reminds us of the need to honour those whose contributions are too often erased, particularly women whose work is overshadowed by the men who profit from it. While Magie never lived to see her work fully recognised, the rediscovery of her role in Monopoly’s history has sparked renewed appreciation for her brilliance. As we pass “Go” and collect $200, we would do well to remember the lessons she tried to teach—and the price of forgetting them. Sources Mary Pilon, The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World’s Favorite Board Game  (Bloomsbury, 2015). Smithsonian Magazine , “The Secret History of Monopoly: The Capitalist Board Game’s Anti-Capitalist Origins,” 2015. The Guardian , “The woman who invented Monopoly – and how it was stolen from her,” 2015. BBC News , “Monopoly’s forgotten feminist creator,” 2019. Washington Post , “Before Monopoly, a forgotten woman invented The Landlord’s Game,” 2015. Elizabeth Magie, The Landlord’s Game  patent no. 748,626 (issued January 5, 1904). The Atlantic , “The Secret Anti-Monopoly Origins of America’s Most Popular Board Game,” 2015. US Patent and Trademark Office archives, The Landlord’s Game  (renewed patent, 1924). TIME Magazine , “The Real Story Behind Monopoly’s History,” 2017. Parker Brothers Company Records , Hasbro Archives (internal correspondence, 1934–1936).

Margaret Gibb Gets a Kiss From Her Betrothed, While Her Conjoined Sister Mary Looks on. Ca. 1940s “We were born together, and we shall go together.” — Margaret and Mary Gibb, 1940s interview with a local reporter in Holyoke. If you’d been walking through a travelling fair in the 1930s, you might have stopped to see two young women seated at a piano, smiling as they played together in perfect rhythm. They were Margaret and Mary Gibb, conjoined twins from Holyoke, Massachusetts, and their performances drew crowds across the United States and Europe. They weren’t chasing headlines or pity. They were working performers, musicians, and small-town shopkeepers who happened to be joinrs. Their story, unusual as it was, followed a rhythm all its own. Growing up in Holyoke Margaret and Mary were born on 20 May 1912 in Holyoke, Massachusetts, to Scottish immigrants James and Margaret Gibb. They also had a younger sister named Dorothy. Holyoke was a booming paper-mill town back then, a place of clattering machines, factory whistles, and close-knit immigrant communities. When the twins arrived, doctors and local reporters were immediately intrigued. The sisters were joined at the upper chest and shoulder, facing slightly toward each other. Each had their own vital organs and full control of her limbs. Because they were thoracopagus twins, sharing only a small area of tissue, some surgeons believed they might one day be safely separated. But their parents refused. Their mother reportedly told a visiting journalist, “If God made them one, then one they shall stay.” The Gibbs decided to raise the girls quietly. They hired private tutors instead of sending them to school and kept them away from exhibition shows. The twins grew up learning music and dance at home, eventually teaching themselves to play the piano as a pair, one working the higher keys while the other played the lower. By their early teens, curiosity about the outside world was setting in. They’d spent most of their childhood indoors, and when they turned fourteen, they decided to head to New York City to see what opportunities the stage might offer. Life on the stage In 1920s New York, vaudeville was everywhere — a mix of music, magic, dance, and comedy that filled theatres night after night. Margaret and Mary joined in, performing as “America’s Siamese Twins.” The phrase came from the fame of Chang and Eng Bunker, 19th-century twins from Siam (now Thailand) whose name had become shorthand for conjoined twins in general. The Gibbs weren’t a sideshow act in the traditional sense. Their performances revolved around music, rhythm, and light humour. They played piano duets, sang, and chatted with audiences. Reviewers described them as polite, engaging, and naturally funny. Crowds came out of curiosity but often left impressed by the coordination of their act. During the 1930s, they toured widely, across the United States, Paris, Germany, and Switzerland — performing with the Barnum and Cole Brothers Circuses. They travelled by train, performing in theatres and tents across small towns and major cities alike. In 1929, while performing in New Orleans, Margaret met Carlos Daniel Josefe, a man from Mexico City, and the two became engaged. The story caused a media stir. Papers speculated about whether the twins might finally undergo surgery to allow Margaret to marry. A surgeon, Dr. Francis P. Weston, was reportedly preparing for a possible operation, but it never happened. Accounts differ, some say the risks were too great, others that the twins themselves decided against it. Either way, they stayed as they were. The engagement ended quietly, and they continued touring for another decade. Leaving the spotlight By the early 1940s, the vaudeville circuit had started to fade. Audiences were turning to radio and cinema, and travelling shows were closing down. The Gibbs decided to retire from performing and return home to Holyoke. In 1942, they opened a small business, the Mary-Margaret Gift Shoppe, on High Street. It sold cards, vases, novelties, and handmade baby clothes. Locals remembered them sitting side by side behind the counter, knitting or chatting with customers. The shop ran successfully for several years before closing in 1949. After that, they lived quietly. They attended church regularly, watched television, and spent time knitting and reading. They had lived their early years in front of audiences; now they preferred to keep to themselves. When asked once whether they missed performing, one of them replied simply, “We’ve had our applause. Now we like the quiet kind.” The final years In 1966, doctors discovered that Margaret had bladder cancer, which soon spread to her lungs. The sisters were advised once again to consider separation, but they declined. The operation was risky even by 1960s standards, and neither wished to live without the other. On 29 August 1967, Margaret died at the age of 55. Mary followed just two minutes later. The local Holyoke Transcript-Telegram  reported, “They came together and went together.” They were buried in Saint Jerome Cemetery, under a single headstone that reads: “Margaret and Mary Gibb — Together in Life and Death.” After the curtain fell The story of Margaret and Mary Gibb never attracted the same fame as Daisy and Violet Hilton or other twins of their era. They appeared in newspapers and medical journals, but their names gradually slipped from public memory. Unlike many performers from the sideshow era, the Gibbs had a choice in how they lived and worked. They performed for wages, managed their own bookings, and later built an ordinary life in their hometown. For all the medical curiosity and press fascination, their lives were defined mostly by routine — rehearsals, train rides, and evenings spent knitting in their small flat above the shop. Today, their story occasionally resurfaces in local histories of Holyoke or in articles about early circus performers. Their photographs, often showing them smiling in matching dresses, appear in archives and medical journals, reminders of a period when science, entertainment, and human curiosity often overlapped. It’s a small story in the larger history of performance and medicine, but one that hints at how people found work, companionship, and a sense of normal life under circumstances few could imagine. Sources Holyoke Transcript-Telegram  archives, Holyoke Public Library (1930s–1967). Springfield Republican  newspaper archives, Massachusetts. Potter, Paul. The Gibb Twins of Holyoke: America’s Siamese Twins.  Holyoke History Room, 1989. Cole Brothers Circus Touring Records, Circus World Museum, Wisconsin. “Conjoined Twins in History.” Smithsonian Magazine , July 2019. Blumberg, Jess. “When Conjoined Twins Captivated the Public.” National Geographic History , February 2020. “The Hilton Sisters: Joined for Life.” The Guardian , October 2007. Massachusetts Vital Records (Birth and Death Certificates for Margaret and Mary Gibb, 1912–1967). Medical Archives Journal , “Famous Conjoined Twins of the 20th Century,” Vol. 12, 1995. Barnum and Cole Brothers Circus promotional brochures, 1930s editions.

It’s strange how history sometimes hinges on the smallest of things, a casual joke, a friendly wager, a “sure, sure, sure I will.” That’s all it took for John Lennon to step back onto the stage for what would be the last live concert performance of his life. And fittingly, it wasn’t just any stage, it was Madison Square Garden in New York City, and the man sharing it with him was none other than Elton John. On the night of 28 November 1974, Lennon appeared on stage before a roaring, glittering crowd, joining Elton for three unforgettable songs: Whatever Gets You Thru the Night , Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds , and I Saw Her Standing There . It was his first major live performance in years, and as it turned out, it would also be his last. The entire thing happened because of a bet over a single song. Backstage in NYC The Bet That Changed Everything In the summer of 1974, John Lennon was recording his track Whatever Gets You Thru the Night  when Elton John dropped by the studio to lend some harmony and piano magic. Elton, ever the showman, loved the energy of the song and told Lennon he thought it could hit Number One in the charts. Lennon laughed it off. “Elton was in town and I was doing it and needed the harmony,” Lennon later told the BBC, in an interview recorded just a few days before his death. “He did the harmony on that and a couple more, and played beautiful piano on it. And jokingly, he was telling me he was going to do this Madison Square Garden concert — he said, ‘Will you do it with me if the record’s Number One?’ ” Lennon, never one to shy away from a bit of cheek, replied, “ Sure, sure, sure I will. ” He later admitted, “ And I did not expect it to get to Number One at all. I didn’t think it had a chance in hell. ” But fate, or perhaps karma with a wicked sense of humour, had other plans. When Whatever Gets You Thru the Night  shot to the top of the charts, Lennon had to make good on his word. “ ‘OK, it’s time to pay your dues!’ ” Lennon recalled, laughing. “ It was the first Number One I had, actually. ‘Imagine’ wasn’t Number One, ‘Instant Karma’ wasn’t Number One, which I all think are better records than ‘Whatever Gets You Thru The Night.’ ” That single moment of success, propelled by a playful wager, led to one of rock history’s most legendary nights. Cocaine, a helluva drug... Lennon’s Return to the Stage For Lennon, who hadn’t performed a full concert since The Beatles stopped touring in 1966, the stage had become almost alien territory. He’d grown comfortable working within the studio walls, sculpting songs and experimenting with sound, rather than performing for screaming fans. So when he stepped out at Madison Square Garden, the stakes were high. There must have been nerves, maybe even a flash of doubt, but if so, you’d never know it. The surviving footage shows Lennon brimming with confidence, humour, and a raw connection to the crowd that felt both nostalgic and electric. The two friends launched into Whatever Gets You Thru the Night  before diving into Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds , which Elton had recorded as his own single earlier that year, with Lennon cheekily providing backing vocals under the pseudonym “Dr. Winston O’Boogie.” They closed with I Saw Her Standing There , a Beatles classic that Elton was performing on tour at the time. For fans who’d grown up with Lennon’s voice, that performance was like seeing an old friend again, one they didn’t know they’d be saying goodbye to so soon. A Friendship Born from Music and Mayhem Despite what it looked like on stage, Elton John and John Lennon hadn’t known each other for very long. In fact, they’d only met the previous year, in 1973. But when they did, they hit it off instantly. “We got on like a house on fire and we hung out for a couple of years,” Elton later remembered. “I found him very kind, very funny. I don’t know why we clicked, but we did and he clicked with my band and he clicked with the people around me. And we had so much fun.” Still, Elton confessed that meeting a Beatle came with its own set of nerves. “I was quite intimidated by him, because I knew he was razor sharp and could be very abrasive. But that side never came out with me, only the kind side and the funny side.” Their friendship became one of mutual admiration and genuine affection. Lennon, for all his wit and reputation for being cuttingly direct, seemed to let his guard down with Elton. In later years, Elton recalled the first time he met Lennon in person: “When I met your dad I was a little bit, obviously, I was in awe, I was in awe of any of The Beatles and they all treated me so brilliantly,” he told Lennon’s son, Sean, during an interview. “But your dad had that edge that none of the other Beatles had, kind of because he wasn’t afraid to say what he saw. And I met him on a video shoot for Mind Games  with my friend Tony King playing the queen.” Elton remembered the moment vividly: “I was wearing a bright green Saint Laurent satin suit and I thought, ‘In for a penny, in for a pound.’  And your dad was as kind and as generous and sweet and we just hit it off immediately. He was so funny. That’s what I loved about him. And we talked about music, we talked about records we loved.” That chemistry, that mixture of playfulness and sincerity, was what made their on-stage chemistry so undeniable. “Cocaine, a helluva drug…” Of course, not all of Lennon and Elton’s shared memories were about music. Like many rock stars of the 1970s, they occasionally indulged in some wild escapades — and one of them involved a mountain of cocaine and a very persistent Andy Warhol. Elton recalled one particularly bizarre night at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel: “I can remember being stoned out of our mind on coke at the Sherry-Netherland hotel,” said Elton. “And at two in the morning, there would be a knock on the door… It took me five minutes to get to the door because I was so paranoid, but it was Andy fucking Warhol. Onstage in NYC Caught completely off guard, Elton panicked and turned to Lennon for guidance. “I said, ‘It’s Andy Warhol.’ John began to shake his head frantically and made the gesture of cutting his neck. And [Lennon] said, ‘Don’t fucking let him in! He’ll have a fucking camera and everything!’” Warhol, of course, was rarely without his Polaroid camera — he was known for snapping photos of everyone and everything. And there they were: Elton John and John Lennon, holed up in a hotel room surrounded by cocaine, desperately hoping the world’s most famous pop artist would just go away. “So, between whispers,” Elton continued, “we both looked at the mountain of cocaine. We slowly backed up to get back to what we had in hand, trying to ignore that the most famous pop artist on the planet was pounding the door without stopping.” It’s a scene straight out of a rock ‘n’ roll comedy, absurd, hilarious, and just a little sad when viewed through the haze of hindsight. But it also captures the era perfectly: two musical giants at the height of fame, trapped between brilliance and chaos. Lennon with Elton, in a wig for some reason. Lennon’s Final Bow That night at Madison Square Garden was more than just a one-off gig. For Lennon, it was a symbolic moment, a rare public reappearance that came during a turbulent period in his personal life. He and Yoko Ono had separated at the time, and it was rumoured that she attended the concert from the audience. Some fans even believe that the show helped spark their reconciliation not long after. Whatever the truth, that concert became an emotional high point for everyone who witnessed it. Lennon’s voice rang out across the Garden, playful yet powerful, his old charisma intact. The chemistry between him and Elton was easy, joyful, and genuine, a reminder of how music can reconnect even the most distant of souls. It would be the last time Lennon ever performed on a major stage. Six years later, he was gone, taken from the world far too soon. But the footage of that night still radiates warmth, humour, and that unmistakable Lennon charm. For Elton John, the memories endure. Over the years, he’s spoken fondly of Lennon as both a friend and a musical hero, someone who changed the landscape of popular music and left an indelible mark on everyone he met. “He was so funny,” Elton once said. “That’s what I loved about him.” Legacy of a Wager When you strip it all back, this story isn’t just about a concert, or even a friendship. It’s about how music, fate, and a simple bet collided to create one of the most iconic moments in rock history. Lennon didn’t expect Whatever Gets You Thru the Night  to be a hit. He didn’t expect to find a kindred spirit in Elton John. And he certainly didn’t expect that a bit of friendly banter would end up coaxing him onto the stage for the final time. Yet there he was, playful, brilliant, alive, giving the world one last glimpse of his magic. Sometimes history doesn’t come wrapped in grand gestures or careful planning. Sometimes it’s just a dare between friends, a Number One song, and a night that no one would ever forget. Sources: BBC Radio Archives, John Lennon interview, 1980. Elton John: Me  (Pan Macmillan, 2019). Rolling Stone Magazine, “John Lennon and Elton John: The Night They Made History,” 2020. NME Archives, 1974 coverage of Madison Square Garden concert. The Guardian, “Elton John on Lennon: ‘We got on like a house on fire,’” 2020.

Though the viral 'frostbit guy' is now a 26-year-old bloke, he was just a young whipper-snapper school boy when his interview for the local news went viral in 2015. Since that interview Ruairí McSorley has led quite a life. In recent years Ruairí has found himself adrift at sea surrounded by Dolphins and been busy dating 75yr-old American ladies. In 2021 Ruairi had been staying at a caravan park near Inch beach in County Kerry when he decided to swim out to nearby Fenit Island . He was first reported missing at around 8am on Sunday after his clothes and shoes were found on a beach near Inch, Co Kerry by a walker. Ruairí was found by the RNLI a whole 12 hours later at 8.15pm surrounded by a pod of dolphins. It was reported that when he was rescued, Ruairí was dangerously hypothermic but he insisted that "the only thing that is stressing me out is everybody else is panicking about it". "I just jumped in, and that was it. "I saw Fenit lighthouse out in the water, and I said, right I’m going towards it. I wouldn’t have got in to start with if I didn’t know I was going to be grand," he explained. He told the Irish Independent there was one moment during the ordeal that be was worried about his safety. He said: "I saw these black tails in the water, and I wasn’t sure were they dolphins or sharks. "I just thought to myself, maybe it wouldn’t have been the worst idea to have googled this before I jumped in, but they were just dolphins. "They were just swimming around me. If anything, they may have helped me. It was definitely an experience." Ruairí had also set his sights set on moving to the US to become an 'Irish auctioneer in Texas' Fighting off frostbite, dodging dolphins and auctioneer dreams aside, Ruairi managed to find time for his love life too. During an appearance on Shane Todd's Tea With Me podcast, Ruairí revealed that he had nearly made it down the aisle 'a couple of times' - but something sinister stopped him getting hitched to one of his older lady friends. Comedian and host Shane decided to dig into the details of his latest romance and wanted the frostbit boy to paint a picture of his ex partner - so asked how old she was. Ruairí replied: "I'm not a homosexual, I'm not a transexual. I was a seniorsexual for a while." He went on to explain that his former flame was 75 years old and said they had got together at some point last year. Shane was keen to find out what stopped them saying their 'I do's' at the altar - and it's safe to say no one was ready for Ruairí response. He said: "Oh, she died then in the finish up. I'd everybody at home told about the wedding and everything." In more recent developments, Ruairí has now announced plans to run to become the Irish Taoiseach. He insists his plans to run for office and install Conor McGregor as his president are not a publicity stunt, and has laid out his plans for ‘a new Ireland’, inspired by the far right riots which enveloped Dublin last year. Amongst his plans on how to tackle issues around immigration across the island of Ireland involve the issuing of temporary visas for two years to those who speak fluent English, have no criminal record and have a job lined up before arrival. He says during the two years on the temporary visa, people would not be entitled to public welfare payments, have to learn to speak Irish, carry out ‘voluntary work’ on behalf of the president, or carry out a period of military service. “What I had suggested was that Conor McGregor could potentially be a very good president given the revisions that I had detailed for the job of the president of Ireland,” Ruairi told Belfast Live. “Given the reach that Conor has and his love for Ireland and that, I felt that he would be a great man to rally the troops and be able to inspire that generous donation of both service and time to social causes. “He has inspired so many people to take up martial arts and chase their dreams, so my suggestion is that he could use those qualities in a reformed presidency role. “I had initially thought he would be best placed to lead the Irish Defence Forces, but the idea of Taoiseach Ruairi and Uachtarain McGregor, I think, makes more sense. “His ideas for Ireland seem to be very similar to mine, and I would love to sit down with him and discuss our visions of the future. I think we would work brilliantly together. Now McSorley has reimagined the Irish constitution in his new book The Reign of King Ruairi. As Ruairi approaches his 30s you can follow his journey into politics on his YouTube channel here and his Instagram here . Whether people will agree with his politics or not, one thing is for certain, whatever he does next it won't be dull.

On May 5, 1997, seven-year-old Jamie Lavis went missing from his home in Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester, setting off a chain of events that would shock the community and reveal the disturbing duplicity of Darren Vickers. The Disappearance of Jamie Lavis Jamie Lavis, a lively and trusting boy, disappeared on a Bank Holiday, leaving his family and community in a state of anguish and confusion. His body was not discovered for five months, and the search for him became one of the most high-profile missing person cases in the area. The community rallied, and among those who appeared to lead the efforts was Darren Vickers, a local bus driver. Darren Vickers’ Relationship with the Victim Darren Vickers had no prior significant relationship with Jamie Lavis before the day of his disappearance. On May 5, 1997, Vickers, who was driving a bus on the route towards Stalybridge, encountered Jamie. He allowed the young boy to engage with the bus operations, changing gears and handing out tickets, behaviors that seemed benign to the passengers at the time. Witnesses later recalled Vickers ruffling Jamie’s hair and seeing the boy with his face pressed against the window of the driver’s cabin. The Abduction and Murder At the end of his shift, Vickers took Jamie to the woods at Reddish Vale golf course. It is believed that this is where Jamie was murdered. The exact details of his death remain unclear due to the severe decomposition of his remains, which were discovered months later. Only his torso and jawbone were found; his head and limbs were never recovered. The condition of his body prevented authorities from determining the precise cause of death. However, the removal of Jamie’s clothes and Vickers’ known association with a convicted paedophile led investigators to suspect that Jamie may have been sexually assaulted before his death. Manipulative Involvement with Jamie’s Family Following Jamie’s disappearance, Vickers ingratiated himself into the lives of Jamie’s parents, John Lavis and Karen Spooner. His involvement was extensive; he became a prominent figure in the search efforts, often appearing in TV news bulletins comforting the family and making public appeals for information. Vickers’ actions were not merely about deflecting suspicion but also appeared to stem from a morbid fascination with the investigation process. Darren Vickers with Jamie's parents Karen and John Lavis In a bizarre twist, Vickers claimed in court that he had an affair with Jamie’s mother, Karen Spooner, during the months following Jamie’s disappearance. Ms. Spooner vehemently denied these allegations, asserting that no sexual relationship occurred between them. Deception and Obsession Vickers’ attempts to embed himself into the investigation raised suspicions among the police. He used a scanner to monitor police radio communications and would often arrive at potential sighting locations before the investigating officers. His constant presence and intense involvement in the family and search efforts were described as “bordering on the obsessive.” While in jail on remand, Vickers confided in a cellmate, offering a “sanitized” version of events. He claimed that Jamie had accidentally hit his head on the bus and that he had dumped the body in a panic. Prosecutor Brian Leveson QC dismissed this account, suggesting it was an attempt to minimize his culpability. Investigation and Arrest From the onset, Vickers was a primary suspect due to his unusual behavior and intrusive involvement with the Lavis family. Detective Chief Superintendent Roy Rainford, leading the investigation, noted that all evidence increasingly pointed to Vickers as the perpetrator. Despite Vickers’ attempts to divert blame, including accusing Jamie’s father, the police remained focused on him. By October 1997, Vickers’ excessive and suspicious behavior had led to his arrest for Jamie’s abduction. The evidence, including witness testimonies and his own contradictory statements, culminated in his trial at Manchester Crown Court. The Trial and Conviction During the trial, the court heard about Vickers’ manipulation and deceit. His obsessive participation in the search efforts and close interaction with the Lavis family were critical points of the prosecution’s case. Ultimately, Darren Vickers was found guilty of the abduction and murder of Jamie Lavis. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 25 years, meaning he would be eligible for parole in 2022. Parole Hearings and Continued Incarceration Since his incarceration, Darren Vickers has had several parole hearings, the first of which occurred in 2022 when he became eligible for parole after serving 25 years. Each parole hearing has been closely monitored by Jamie’s family and the public, reflecting the ongoing impact of his crime. To date, Vickers has been denied parole in each hearing, with authorities deeming him still a danger to the public and not sufficiently rehabilitated to warrant release. Sources The Guardian – “Bus driver gets life for boy’s murder” – https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/apr/24/davidward.libbybrooks The Guardian – “Bus driver ‘lured boy to his death’” – https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/mar/03/davidward The Independent – “Life for bus driver who killed boy, 8” – https://www.independent.co.uk/news/life-for-bus-driver-who-killed-boy-8-1089190.html The Irish Times – “Bus driver gets life for murder” – https://www.irishtimes.com/news/bus-driver-gets-life-for-murder-1.177346 HoldTheFrontPage – “Crime reporter demands Darren Vickers remains behind bars” – https://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/2022/news/crime-reporter-demands-killer-paedophile-remains-behind-bars/ Casefile True Crime – Episode 259: “Jamie Lavis” – https://casefilepodcast.com/case-259-jamie-lavis/ Faking It: Tears of a Crime (TV documentary, 2018) – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9272358/

In the 1950s, Bert Hardy packed up his trusty camera and made his way to St Mary Cray, a small settlement on the outskirts of London. At first glance, it might have seemed like just another quiet corner of Kent, but to Hardy, it was a place brimming with stories. Known for his work with Picture Post , Hardy was no stranger to documenting the lives of working-class communities. Yet, in St Mary Cray, he found something unique: a vibrant gathering of Romani families and Irish Travellers living side by side, creating a patchwork community rich with tradition, resilience, and culture. Why St Mary Cray? Back in the mid-20th century, St Mary Cray was a popular stopping point for Traveller groups. Its location was ideal—close enough to London for trading and work, yet surrounded by the Kent countryside, where seasonal agricultural jobs were plentiful. It was a place where families could set up camp for weeks or months, balancing the demands of work with the traditions of their nomadic lifestyle. The settlement was a lively scene. Brightly painted Romani vardos (wagons) and Irish Traveller caravans dotted the landscape. Horses grazed nearby, their manes blowing in the breeze, while children dashed about, playing games or helping their parents with chores. Fires crackled as meals were cooked in the open air, and neighbours swapped stories while mending carts or preparing for the next journey. Bert Hardy’s Approach Bert Hardy had a knack for seeing people, not just their circumstances but their humanity. His photographs always told a story, capturing fleeting moments of real life. When he arrived in St Mary Cray, he didn’t just snap pictures and leave; he immersed himself in the community. He chatted with families, watched their daily routines, and earned their trust, which shows in the warmth of his photographs. One image might show a group of children laughing as they climb onto a wagon; another might catch a mother hanging out laundry, her skirts flapping in the wind. Hardy’s lens wasn’t there to judge or romanticise, it simply recorded life as it was. The joy, the hard work, and the strong sense of belonging that defined this community shine through in every shot. A Way of Life on the Edge Even as Hardy was photographing St Mary Cray, change was creeping in. The post-war years brought pressures that were hard for Traveller communities to ignore. Urban expansion was swallowing up the countryside, and laws around land use were tightening, leaving fewer places for people to set up camp. St Mary Cray, once a haven for Travellers, was slowly being reshaped by suburban housing and industrial developments. Despite this, Hardy’s photographs show a community holding onto its traditions. Men traded horses in the fields, women prepared meals over open flames, and children learned skills passed down through generations. It was a way of life that was deeply rooted in heritage but also adaptable—a balance between preserving the old and navigating the new. What Makes Hardy’s Work Special What sets Hardy’s photographs apart is their humanity. Traveller communities often faced stigma and misrepresentation, but Hardy saw them for who they were—families working hard, raising children, and finding joy in the small moments of life. His images challenge stereotypes, showing not just the struggles but the pride, resourcefulness, and community spirit that defined life in St Mary Cray. One particularly striking image shows a Romani elder sitting outside her wagon, her weathered face a map of experience. Another captures a group of men fixing a wheel, their hands caked in grease but their faces lit with laughter. These are the kinds of moments that might have been forgotten if not for Hardy’s camera. Remembering St Mary Cray Today, St Mary Cray is a very different place. The wagons and caravans have long since disappeared, replaced by houses, roads, and shops. But thanks to Bert Hardy’s photographs, the memory of what it once was lives on. His images remind us of the richness and diversity of Britain’s cultural heritage, even in the most unassuming corners of the country. Hardy didn’t just capture what St Mary Cray looked like—he captured how it felt. The warmth of a campfire, the rhythm of daily chores, the bond between neighbours. It’s a world that might be gone, but through his work, we can still glimpse its heart. For Hardy, photography wasn’t just about pictures; it was about people. And in St Mary Cray, he found a community with stories worth telling, stories of resilience, connection, and the enduring spirit of a way of life that refuses to be forgotten. Sources Hardy, Bert. My Life: Bert Hardy—Photographs and Memories.  London: The Bluecoat Press, 2004. Picture Post Archive – Hulton Collection, Getty Images: https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/editorial-images/photographer/bert-hardy The National Portrait Gallery – Bert Hardy Collection: https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp13919/bert-hardy The Guardian – “Bert Hardy: The Working-Class Photographer Who Captured Postwar Britain”: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign Imperial War Museums – Bert Hardy Photography Archive: https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections Museum of London – Postwar London Photography Collection: https://collections.museumoflondon.org.uk/ BBC Archive – “Bert Hardy: Life Through a Lens”: https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/bert-hardy British Journal of Photography – Retrospective on Bert Hardy’s Work (Issue 2004): https://www.bjp-online.com/ Getty Images Hulton Archive – “St Mary Cray Series by Bert Hardy, 1949.” Hardy, Bert. Bert Hardy’s Britain.  London: Pavilion Books, 1992. V&A Museum – Photography Collection: https://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/photographs Amateur Photographer  magazine – “Bert Hardy: The Man Who Captured Britain.” (Feature, 2019).

In the heart of Victorian London, amidst the bustling streets and hidden alleys, two men embarked on a groundbreaking project that would unveil the harsh realities of urban poverty and life in the 19th century metropolis. Photographer John Thomson and journalist Adolphe Smith joined forces to create "Street Life in London," a pioneering work that documented the daily struggles and resilience of the city's marginalised communities. John Thomson, a Scottish photographer born in 1837, was renowned for his innovative approach to documentary photography. Trained as a painter, Thomson turned to photography as a means of capturing the vibrant diversity of cultures and societies he encountered during his travels. His technical skill and keen eye for detail set him apart as one of the leading photographers of his time. Exploring and photographing China for ten years (1862-72), he published his photographs and texts of his journeys in The Antiquities of Cambodia  (1867), Illustration of China and its People  (1873-74), and The Straits of Malacca, Indo China and China  (1877). Adolphe Smith, on the other hand, was a journalist and social reformer with a deep commitment to exposing the social injustices of Victorian England. His writings often focused on the plight of the working class and the need for systemic change to address poverty and inequality. Together, Thomson and Smith embarked on a collaborative project that would bring their respective talents together to shed light on the hidden corners of London society. The result was "Street Life in London," a series of photographs accompanied by descriptive essays that provided insight into the lives of London's poorest inhabitants. Their project took them to the streets of London's East End, where they encountered a diverse array of characters - from street vendors and chimney sweeps to beggars and prostitutes. Through their lens and pen, Thomson and Smith captured the dignity and humanity of these individuals, challenging prevailing stereotypes and prejudices. British Army recruiting sergeants outside a public house at Westminster. 1877 In the preface to "Street Life in London," Smith writes: "The pictures we have obtained...tell their own tale of hardship and suffering, and will, we hope, lead to a better appreciation of the struggle for existence in the crowded alleys of our great city." These words encapsulate the duo's mission to bring attention to the social inequalities that plagued Victorian society. Thomson's photographs, characterised by their realism and attention to detail, offer a poignant glimpse into the everyday lives of London's working class. From the cramped tenements to the bustling markets, each image tells a story of resilience and survival in the face of adversity. Flower women selling bouquets at Covent Garden market. 1877. One of the most striking aspects of "Street Life in London" is its focus on individual narratives. Thomson and Smith took the time to engage with their subjects, allowing them to share their personal stories and experiences. This humanistic approach transformed their project from a mere documentary into a powerful advocacy tool for social reform. Despite the initial skepticism from some quarters of society, "Street Life in London" received critical acclaim upon its publication in 1877. The project helped to raise awareness about the plight of the urban poor and contributed to ongoing efforts to address poverty and inequality in Victorian England. By the mid-twentieth century, the popular perception of the poor had changed. Previously viewed as morally defective, the poor were now regarded as the object of study and charity. Henry Mayhew’s monumental London Labour and the London Poor , published in 1851, had been illustrated by woodcuts based on photographs by Richard Beard. While Street Life in London is hardly as comprehensive a work as Mayhew’s, it has the virtue that its photographic reproductions not only show the subjects as they actually appeared but, by capturing the contemporary streetscape of London, also reveals them in their milieu. Smith’s short essays were based on interviews with a range of men and women who eked out a precarious and marginal existence working on the streets, including flower-sellers, chimney-sweeps, shoe-blacks, chair-caners, musicians, dustmen, locksmiths, beggars, and petty criminals. Costermonger Joseph Carney sells fresh herring from his barrow in the street market in Seven Dials. 1877. According to The Photobook: A History by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger “Structurally, Street Life is a combination of street portraiture… and interviews with the subjects. Thus it was the direct predecessor of the journalistic picture stories that would appear in illustrated magazines from that period onward. … is a pioneering work of social documentation in photographs and words … one of the most significant and far-reaching photobooks in the medium’s history”. A vendor sells cough lozenges. Smith and Thomson's empathy for their subjects is palpable, as they frequently face the specter of deprivation and hunger. Although the attire and settings in the photographs may appear quaint now, Thomson's subjects remain ensnared in an enduring cycle of poverty. Bill stickers paste placards advertising Madame Tussaud’s waxworks museum. 1877. An omnibus driver, known as “Cast-Iron Billy.” 1877 A signwriter at work in his studio. 1877. A street vendor sells halfpenny ices. 1876. “Mush-Fakers” and ginger beer makers with their cart. 1877. A man wears a sandwich-board advertisement. 1877. “Caney” the clown weaves cane strips into the seat of a wooden chair. 1877. A shoeshine boy at work. 1877. People in front of a rag shop in Lambeth, London, where the Thames annual tidal overflow causes hardship to the locals. 1877. A fancy ware dealer sells ornaments from his barrow. 1877. An Italian harpist entertains local children on the street. 1877. Flower women selling bouquets at Covent Garden market. 1877. Thomson, John & Smith, Adolphe. Street Life in London.  Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1877. National Library of Scotland – John Thomson Collection: https://digital.nls.uk/john-thomson/ British Library – “Street Life in London by John Thomson”: https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/street-life-in-london-by-john-thomson Museum of London – Photography Collection: https://collections.museumoflondon.org.uk/ Royal Photographic Society Archives: https://rps.org/ Hannavy, John (ed.). Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography.  Routledge, 2007. Newhall, Beaumont. The History of Photography: From 1839 to the Present.  Museum of Modern Art, 1982. Tate Museum – “John Thomson: Capturing London’s Poor”: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/photography-victorian-era The Victorian Web – “John Thomson and the Social Documentary Tradition”: https://victorianweb.org/art/photography/thomson/ Getty Museum – “Street Life in London (1877)” overview: https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/ The Guardian – “Street Life in London: The Victorian Photographs of John Thomson”: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign The Metropolitan Museum of Art – John Thomson Works: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search#!/search?q=John%20Thomson

On 30 July 1938, in a quiet ceremony in Dearborn, Michigan, one of America’s most famous industrialists was handed an award designed by Adolf Hitler himself. It was Henry Ford’s seventy-fifth birthday, and two German diplomats, Karl Kapp and Fritz Heller, arrived bearing a velvet-lined box containing a crimson-and-gold Maltese cross. It was the Grand Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle, the highest honour Nazi Germany could bestow upon a foreigner. Ford, the man who had revolutionised American industry with the Model T and the moving assembly line, was the first American ever to receive it. “ My acceptance of a medal from the German people does not, as some people seem to think, involve any sympathy on my part with Nazism, ” Ford told the New York Times  later that summer. But by then, the damage was done. The story of Henry Ford’s Nazi medal, and the beliefs that led to it, remains one of the most unsettling episodes in the history of American business. It’s a reminder that progress and prejudice often coexisted uncomfortably in the industrial age. Henry Ford with his legendary Model T. A Medal from Hitler By the late 1930s, Ford was already a global icon. His innovations in mass production had made cars affordable to ordinary people, and his name was synonymous with the modern age. But across the Atlantic, in the offices of Berlin’s Reich Chancellery, Adolf Hitler saw something more in Ford: a kindred spirit. Hitler admired Ford’s anti-union stance, his disdain for financiers, and above all, his antisemitic world view. He kept a life-size portrait of the American automaker behind his desk, and in Mein Kampf  he wrote admiringly, “ Only a single great man, Ford, to [the Jews’] fury, still maintains full independence… ” Ford was the only American mentioned positively in Hitler’s autobiography. By 1938, the Nazi regime had created an order of merit, the Order of the German Eagle, for foreigners who, in their view, “rendered service to the Reich.” The design of the medal was no accident: red enamel, white rays, and a black swastika at its centre. It was as much a symbol of propaganda as it was of gratitude. The presentation took place not in Berlin, but at Ford’s headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan. It was a convenient arrangement, Ford didn’t have to travel, and Nazi diplomats could present the honour in person. Ford smiled for photographs, looking more like a genial old engineer than a man being thanked by one of history’s most murderous regimes. Why Hitler Admired Ford Henry Ford’s influence on Nazi Germany ran deeper than most Americans realised at the time. Long before the medal, Ford had already inspired Hitler’s ideas about mass production, the power of the automobile, and the creation of a “people’s car”, what would become the Volkswagen. In a 1931 interview with The Detroit News , Hitler called Ford his “ inspiration ” and said he had tried to put Ford’s theories “ into practice in Germany .” He even modelled the Volkswagen factory on Ford’s River Rouge plant, hiring American engineers trained by Ford to implement assembly-line techniques. But admiration for Ford went far beyond car manufacturing. In the early 1920s, Ford had published The Dearborn Independent, a weekly newspaper that ran for eight years and became a platform for his antisemitic theories. Under Ford’s ownership, it published 91 articles accusing Jews of orchestrating global conspiracies, controlling banks, corrupting culture, and manipulating the media. Those articles were later compiled into four volumes titled The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem , a book that would travel far beyond Michigan. Henry Ford’s “The International Jew ‘The International Jew’: Ford’s Influence on Antisemitism The International Jew  became a bestseller among far-right groups in the United States and was translated into multiple languages. In Germany, it was published by Theodor Fritsch, one of the founders of early antisemitic parties and later a Reichstag member. Heinrich Himmler, who would go on to oversee the SS and orchestrate the Holocaust, called Ford “ one of our most valuable, important, and witty fighters .” The influence of Ford’s writing was immense. Hitler distributed Ford’s book among Nazi circles, and Baldur von Schirach, the future leader of the Hitler Youth, would later testify at Nuremberg that The International Jew  was the book that first made him antisemitic. “ The decisive anti-Semitic book I was reading… was that book by Henry Ford, ” Schirach said under oath. Ford had also funded the printing and distribution of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious fabricated text that claimed to reveal a Jewish plot for world domination. His own dealerships were required to stock and distribute his paper, meaning that by the mid-1920s, millions of Americans had read Ford’s conspiracy theories alongside adverts for the Model T. By 1927, public outrage had grown. Jewish organisations such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) denounced the paper’s content, and a libel suit brought by lawyer Aaron Sapiro finally forced Ford’s hand. The Dearborn Independent  was shut down that December, and Ford issued what was presented as an apology. In an open letter to the ADL, Ford claimed to be “shocked” by the contents of his own newspaper, insisting he hadn’t realised what was being published under his name. The apology was widely welcomed, but insiders suspected it was a forgery. His longtime aide Harry Bennett reportedly signed Ford’s name himself. Even if genuine, Ford’s remorse didn’t last. In 1940, he was quoted as saying, “ I hope to republish The International Jew again some time. ” Ford’s Contradictions: Anti-War but Deeply Prejudiced Ford’s worldview was a tangle of contradictions. He considered himself anti-war, but blamed Jewish people for World War I. He claimed to despise hatred, yet spent years publishing material that promoted it. He championed the “common man” but funded social engineering campaigns based on racism and traditionalism. A particularly odd footnote to his legacy is that Ford financed square dancing in American schools, not out of love for folk traditions, but because he detested jazz music, which he associated with Jewish and Black culture. He hoped to “purify” American entertainment by returning to what he considered wholesome white rural customs. Ford’s antisemitism wasn’t an isolated quirk; it was a consistent part of his worldview. He once declared, “ If fans wish to know the trouble with American baseball, they have it in three words — too much Jew. ” For a man whose company prided itself on efficiency and rationalism, his beliefs were mired in conspiracy and superstition. The Ford publication The International Jew, the World's Foremost Problem . Articles from The Dearborn Independent , 1920 The Dearborn Connection and the Nazi Network Ford’s connection to German nationalists wasn’t limited to ideology. In February 1924, Kurt Ludecke, a personal envoy of Hitler, visited Ford in Dearborn. Ludecke had been introduced by Siegfried and Winifred Wagner, both Nazi sympathisers and the son and daughter-in-law of composer Richard Wagner, whom Hitler idolised. Ludecke asked Ford for financial support for the Nazi cause. Ford reportedly refused, but he did give money to Boris Brasol, a Russian émigré and member of the Aufbau Vereinigung, a network linking White Russian monarchists and early Nazi activists. That money would ultimately help fund the fledgling Nazi Party. By the time Ford received his medal in 1938, the relationship between American industry and Nazi Germany had become uncomfortably close. Executives from General Motors and Standard Oil were also receiving awards and attending receptions in Berlin. Ford’s own German subsidiary, Ford Werke, played a role in German armament production during the war years, though Ford himself claimed ignorance of this. A Symbol Too Late to Revoke When Ford was presented with the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, Europe was already bracing for war. Germany had annexed Austria earlier that year and was preparing to invade Czechoslovakia. The Nuremberg Laws were in full effect, stripping Jewish citizens of rights. Kristallnacht, the violent pogrom that signalled the beginning of the Holocaust, would occur only a few months later. Yet Ford accepted the honour. He didn’t travel to Germany to receive it; the medal came to him. But he also didn’t send it back. In photographs, the medal glimmers across his suit jacket, a symbol of both his fame and his folly. It’s worth remembering that Ford was not alone among industrialists who flirted with fascism. Charles Lindbergh, the aviator hero, also received a similar German medal and gave speeches warning Americans against entering a war to defend “foreign interests.” But Ford’s influence ran deeper because of his immense wealth and his ability to shape public opinion. Henry Ford in Germany; September 1930 Aftermath: Regret and Decline When the Second World War broke out, Ford found himself scrambling to distance his company from the Nazis. In 1942, he wrote again to the Anti-Defamation League, disavowing any connection to “ agitation which would promote antagonism toward my Jewish fellow citizens. ” He ended the letter with a hopeful line: “ My sincere hope is that when the war is finished, hatred of the Jews and hatred against any other racial or religious groups shall cease for all time. ” But by then, it was too late. His writings had already been used as propaganda by the Third Reich, influencing generations of antisemitic thought. In Germany, The International Jew  remained banned after the war, yet copies still circulate among extremist groups to this day. When newsreel footage of the concentration camps was shown to Ford after the war, witnesses say he collapsed, suffering a final stroke. “ He was confronted with the atrocities which finally and unanswerably laid bare the bestiality of the prejudice to which he contributed, ” wrote biographer Robert Lacey. “ He collapsed with a stroke, his last and most serious. ” Henry Ford died in 1947 at the age of 83. Legacy: The Industrial Genius and His Shadow Today, Henry Ford’s name remains synonymous with innovation. He built one of the world’s largest car companies, transformed industrial labour, and helped create the modern middle class. Yet his darker legacy lingers, a reminder of how easily progress can coexist with prejudice. Historians still debate how to interpret the Ford–Nazi connection. Some see it as an example of what’s been called “reactionary modernism”, the paradoxical fusion of technological progress and regressive ideology. Others see it as part of a broader trend in which early twentieth-century capitalism often aligned with authoritarian regimes for profit or stability. Whatever the explanation, Ford’s medal stands as a symbol of moral blindness. It’s a strange image: the man who built the people’s car  being honoured by the regime that would later murder millions of people he had helped to demonise. In that sense, the Grand Cross of the German Eagle isn’t just a piece of Nazi memorabilia. It’s a mirror reflecting one of the most uncomfortable truths of modern history, that progress, patriotism, and prejudice can all share the same workshop floor. Sources The New York Times , July 1938 – “Ford Accepts Nazi Medal on 75th Birthday” Watts, Steven. The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century  (Knopf, 2005) Lacey, Robert. Ford: The Men and the Machines  (Heinemann, 1986) Baldwin, Neil. Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate  (PublicAffairs, 2001) Wallace, Max. The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and the Rise of the Third Reich  (St. Martin’s Press, 2003) Testimony of Baldur von Schirach, Nuremberg Trials, 1946 Anti-Defamation League archives – Henry Ford and The International Jew United States Holocaust Memorial Museum – Ford and Nazi Germany Industrial Relations

In 1957, as police uncovered horrors inside a quiet farmhouse in Plainfield, Wisconsin, a woman named Adeline Watkins suddenly appeared in the headlines. She claimed she’d once been courted by the killer whose crimes would inspire  Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,   and  The Silence of the Lambs. But who was she really—and what happened to her after the world turned its gaze her way? A Morning of Headlines and Horror On the morning of 16 November 1957, Plainfield’s small police force discovered the body of Bernice Worden, a local hardware store owner who had gone missing the previous day. Inside a ramshackle farmhouse belonging to Edward Theodore Gein, they found not only her remains but a grim collection of objects fashioned from human body parts, lampshades made of skin, skull bowls, corsets cut from corpses, and masks crafted from faces exhumed from local graves. Bernice Worden The world was horrified. The newspapers called him “The Butcher of Plainfield,” “The Ghoul of Wisconsin,” and “America’s real-life Frankenstein.” Within days, Ed Gein had become the embodiment of small-town evil — a soft-spoken, reclusive farmer whose crimes would reshape modern horror. But just as the story was being pieced together, a new name appeared in the papers: Adeline Watkins. The Woman Who Said She Almost Married Ed Gein Barely a week after Gein’s arrest, The Minneapolis Tribune published a sensational interview with a 50-year-old Plainfield woman named Adeline Watkins. She told reporters she had known Gein for almost twenty years, describing him as a “kind,” “gentle,” and “thoughtful” man. According to the article, she and Gein had gone to the movies together, exchanged small gifts, and even discussed marriage. She recalled one February evening in 1955 when Gein, shy and stammering, allegedly hinted at a proposal. “He didn’t come right out and say it,” she explained, “but I knew what he meant.” Watkins painted a picture of an awkward but caring man, someone who walked her home at night and never made untoward advances. Her mother, she said, liked him too. “He was sweet and polite,” Watkins told the reporter. “He’d never hurt a fly.” For a shocked public trying to understand how this mild-mannered handyman could become a murderer and body snatcher, the interview was electric. The headline read: “Plainfield Woman Nearly Wedded Ed Gein.” Small Town, Big Sensation In the 1950s, rural Wisconsin was as far from Hollywood scandal as one could imagine. The idea that a local spinster had been courted by a man who collected corpses was irresistible to journalists. Reporters descended on Plainfield like vultures. Every neighbour, store clerk, and schoolteacher who’d ever spoken to Gein suddenly found themselves hounded for comment. People who’d barely known him described him as “odd but harmless.” Others recalled eerie visits to his cluttered farmhouse, where he muttered to himself and kept the doors locked. But Adeline Watkins’ story stood apart. She wasn’t simply a witness, she was claiming intimacy. Newspapers across the Midwest reprinted her statements, sometimes embellishing them. The Wisconsin State Journal  and Chicago Daily News  ran similar versions, quoting her as saying Gein was “lonely but good-hearted.” Some papers hinted that the relationship explained his hatred of women: that her rejection might have triggered something in him. It was the perfect human-interest angle in a case already drenched in the macabre. Yet, within a week, the entire story began to unravel. Adeline Watkins “Blown Out of Proportion” By late November, Adeline Watkins had apparently grown uncomfortable with the attention. She approached another newspaper, The Stevens Point Journal , to set the record straight. She said the earlier reports had been “blown out of proportion.” The so-called twenty-year romance was an exaggeration. Yes, she had known Gein, they’d attended the same church, spoken at the general store, and seen a few films together, but she denied that there had ever been serious talk of marriage. “It was exaggerated,” she told the paper, “and containing untrue statements.” In this revised version, Watkins portrayed herself as a friendly acquaintance rather than a sweetheart. The stories about candlelit evenings, proposals, and her mother’s approval were inventions of the press, she said. She denied ever entering his home or calling him “sweet.” This retraction was barely noticed outside Wisconsin. National papers, having already moved on to the lurid details of Gein’s crimes, left Watkins’ clarification buried in the back pages. But in Plainfield, locals whispered that she’d been overwhelmed by the frenzy — or that she’d made the story up entirely. What We Know About Adeline Watkins Very little documentation exists about Watkins beyond those few newspaper clippings from November 1957. She was reportedly around 50 years old, unmarried, and living in or near Plainfield. She does not appear in court records, police files, or the official investigation into Gein’s crimes. She wasn’t one of his victims, and she was never accused of being involved. After her retraction, her name disappears entirely from public record. Some researchers believe Watkins might have been genuinely confused by reporters eager to spin a story. Others think she exaggerated her connection in a moment of excitement, or loneliness. The frenzy surrounding Gein’s arrest was unlike anything small-town Wisconsin had ever seen. People posed for photographs outside his farmhouse. Souvenir hunters chipped pieces off the property’s fences. In such a climate, even the mildest acquaintance could suddenly be recast as a “romantic partner.” Why Her Story Matters For historians, Adeline Watkins’ tale is more than a curious footnote. It reflects the way women’s voices, especially those of ordinary small-town women, were used to humanise, scandalise, or sensationalise male violence. Her claim came at a time when society struggled to comprehend how an apparently quiet man could commit such unspeakable acts. To imagine Gein as capable of affection, or to believe he had once been “in love,” offered a kind of psychological comfort. It suggested that monsters were not born, but broken. Watkins’ story also highlights the darker side of 1950s tabloid journalism. The rush to print, combined with the public’s appetite for grisly detail, meant that accuracy was often sacrificed for shock value. Once printed, her words, whether misquoted or embellished, became part of Gein’s mythology. Ed Gein’s Women In Gein’s twisted imagination, women occupied a strange dual role: both idolised and desecrated. His obsession with his mother, Augusta, dominated his life. Deeply religious and fiercely controlling, she taught him that women were sinful temptresses. When she died in 1945, Gein’s isolation deepened into madness. Augusta Wilhelmine Gein He began frequenting cemeteries, exhuming corpses that resembled his mother, and fashioning grotesque “souvenirs.” He read pulp horror magazines and anatomy books, and he fantasised about becoming a woman himself, wearing the skin of others as a suit. It is within this psychological landscape that Adeline Watkins’ supposed relationship becomes fascinating. If she truly did spend time with Gein in the years after his mother’s death, she might have represented something profoundly rare in his world: a living woman who treated him kindly. That doesn’t mean she was ever in danger, but it does show how desperately Gein may have longed for companionship, even as he descended into the darkness that would define him. Media Myth vs. Human Reality By the time Ed Gein stood trial in 1958, the press had largely dropped Adeline Watkins’ name. The prosecution focused entirely on the murder of Bernice Worden and the earlier killing of Mary Hogan. Gein was found legally insane and sent to the Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Waupun, Wisconsin. In the decades that followed, Gein’s crimes inspired some of the most famous villains in cinema — Norman Bates in Psycho , Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , and Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs. But Adeline Watkins never reappeared in any of those narratives. Her brief burst of fame was eclipsed by the far more durable myths that grew from Gein’s crimes. Ed Gein is led away by Sheriff Arthur Schley at Plainfield, after the discovery of his depraved obsession inside the farmhouse. When Netflix released Monster: The Ed Gein Story  in 2025, Watkins was resurrected once again — portrayed as a complex woman torn between fascination and revulsion. In the series, she is shown as Gein’s emotional anchor, a figure who almost saved him from himself. It’s a compelling piece of fiction, but, as historians remind us, there’s no evidence such a romance ever existed. What Happened to Adeline Watkins? After her retraction in 1957, Adeline Watkins seems to have slipped back into obscurity. No public record marks her death or later life. She may have left Wisconsin, married quietly, or simply lived out her years away from reporters. In the pre-digital era, it was entirely possible for a small-town resident to vanish from public view without leaving much of a trace. Census data from the early 1960s lists several women named Adeline Watkins in the Midwest, but none can be definitively linked to the woman in those infamous articles. There is no record of her being harmed by Gein or anyone else. Nor is there any evidence she profited from her fleeting moment of fame. For all we know, she spent the rest of her life wishing she had never spoken to the press. Fact, Fiction, and the Forgotten Woman So why does her story still matter nearly seventy years later? Because Adeline Watkins represents something hauntingly familiar: the ordinary person swept up in an extraordinary storm. In the moral panic that followed Gein’s arrest, every neighbour became a suspect, every acquaintance a potential source. Watkins’ name appeared, was amplified, and then erased, yet traces of her linger, passed from one sensational headline to another. Her story asks uncomfortable questions about how we construct monsters, and about how women’s voices can be twisted to fit someone else’s narrative. Did she know Gein well? Possibly. Did she love him? Almost certainly not. But for a few feverish days in November 1957, she was cast as the killer’s would-be bride, a role she never asked for, and one that history never quite let her escape. Sources The Minneapolis Tribune , 21 November 1957 – interview with Adeline Watkins. The Stevens Point Journal , 26 November 1957 – Watkins’ retraction. Wisconsin State Journal , November 1957 – “Plainfield Woman Nearly Married Slayer Ed Gein.” Biography.com : “Adeline Watkins Claimed She Had a 20-Year Romance with Ed Gein. It Was All Untrue.” https://www.biography.com/movies-tv/a68061591/ed-gein-girlfriend-adeline-watkins-monster-netflix People Magazine : “Who Was Adeline Watkins, Ed Gein’s Girlfriend?” https://people.com/who-was-adeline-watkins-ed-gein-girlfriend-11821408 Plainfield, Wisconsin Farmer Ed Gein: Serial Killer and Grave Robber  (book, Apple Books edition). Netflix Tudum : “Monster: The Ed Gein Story Cast Guide.” https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/monster-the-ed-gein-story-cast-guide