Stumbling Stones

My foot scuffed something. I was walking down the Kloveniersburgwal in Amsterdam in 2018 when something slightly tripped me over. I looked down and saw something shiny embedded into the pavement. There were small plaques, which stood slightly proud from the brickwork. They resembled brass beer coasters, so I knelt down for a closer look. […]

Parliament’s Postie

Imagine being at the heart of communication in one of the most important buildings in the world! It’s 1903 and in his private office in Buckingham Palace, King Edward VII sits in his chair, pouring over a list of names. Making notes beside each one, the roll of names before him has been given Royal […]

Murder on the Piccadilly Line

Gloucester Road Tube Station. The eastbound platform of the Piccadilly Line. You don’t know it, but you’re actually stepping into a crime scene. Being London, that’s hardly surprising. But the crime that happened here was inexplicable in the sense that there was no known motive, no witnesses and no clue. The story starts here, but […]

A Gangster’s Paradise

by Sheldon The people whose houses backed on to Chingford Mount Cemetery would be forgiven for thinking that the Resurrectionists had returned, early in the morning of the 15th of June 1934. Flickering torches slowly meandered their way through the darkness, the light catching the odd headstone here and there. Their flickering light barely illuminating some […]

The Life and Death of William Terriss

Frederick Lane had not slept well. As the understudy to one of the leading lights of the Victorian acting world, his mind was already fraught with nerves, but the dream he’d endured the night before had shaken him badly. In this dream he had seen: ‘…Mr Terriss, lying in the landing, surrounded by a crowd, […]

Murder & Forbidden Love in Lewisham

The people in what is now the present day London Borough of Lewisham must have breathed a sigh of relief in 1858. Much like the two for one deals that proliferate modern supermarkets today, the local people were treated to not one, but two cemeteries opening – within months of each other. Originally called Deptford […]

Death in Bayswater

A department store was perhaps the most fitting place for this man to die. But not in the way he actually did. I was supposed to be researching a tour along a canal the following day, yet there I was, making a bee-line for Kensal Green Cemetery, walking a mile off course to find the […]