Originally posted on robinjarossi.com on 11 7 17
London is special. Beautiful, ugly, intimate, sprawling.
The capital fed my interest in writing about the 60s’ Nude Murders, to explore how the place has evolved. I was a child at the time and my memories are vivid of a Highbury still shattered by the war, paraffin heaters and markets thronging with shoppers.
To say nothing of the pop songs on transistors all around, the TV – Corrie hairnets in black and white – even the way old relatives used to talk. Oh, do give over!
From squalor to £4m houses
The contrast between then and now is jarring. Living conditions, for example. One of the victims of the Nude Killer, Helene Barthelemy, lived in a bedsit in Willesden.
The house was crammed. Helene was in one room on the ground floor. A Jamaican nurse, who became her friend, lived in the back room. On the first floor were two young couples with a single child each, both families living in one room. One room! Toilet and kitchen facilities were shared.
Mary Fleming, another victim, lived in similar conditions in Lancaster Road, Notting Hill. What was once a squalid, overcrowded house in a slum area is today worth £4 million.
London crime scenes
Researching The Hunt for the 60s’ Ripper led me to visit all the crime sites in the company of two recently retired detectives, Brian Hook and Andy Rose. They were generous in their efforts to explain to me the contrast in policing methods from the Sixties with those of today.
One of the areas we toured was Chiswick, by the Thames. It was on the foreshore that two victims were found in 1964, Hannah Tailford and Irene Lockwood.
At the time the area was a bustling commercial neighbourhood of factories and warehouses, dealing with goods coming up the river and transported through wharves. Today it is a collection of dull private flats and gated estates. No doubt expensive, but gentrified and ‘improved’ to within an inch of its life.
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