However, it wasn’t until Scottish engineer and inventor James Goodfellow put the idea into practice that the ATM and PIN made the concept a reality in the early 1960s.

So how did he do it?

He studied radio and electrical engineering

James Goodfellow was born in 1937 in Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland, where he went on to attend St Mirin’s Academy. He later completed an apprenticeship at Renfrew Electrical & Radio Engineers in 1958. After he completed his national service, in 1961 he found work as a development engineer at Kelvin Hughes (now known as Smiths Industries Ltd) in 1961.

He was tasked with creating an automatic cash dispenser

In the early 1960s, banks sought a practical way of closing banks on Saturday mornings while also maintaining a high level of service for customers.

The concept of an automatic cash dispenser was seen as a solution, and was even theorised as an invention in the 1930s. However, it had never been successfully invented.

In 1965, then Development Engineer with Smiths Industries Ltd, James Goodfellow was tasked with successfully developing an ATM (the ‘cash machine’). He teamed up with Chubb Lock & Safe Co. to provide the secure physical safe and mechanical dispenser mechanism that his invention required.

He improved upon previous, failed designs

The machine needed to be both convenient and functional but highly secure, and all previous designs for ATMs until then had yielded few results. Experiments had been done with sophisticated biometrics such as voice recognition, fingerprints and retinal patterns. However, the cost and technical demands of these technologies proved too extreme.

Goodfellow’s main innovation was to combine a machine-readable card with a machine that used a numbered keypad. When used in combination with a personal identification number (or PIN) known solely to the cardholder, the two forms of encryption would be matched to an internal system that verified or rejected the user’s identity.

From there, customers had a unique, secure and simple way to withdraw money.

His invention was misattributed to someone else

Goodfellow received a £10 bonus from his employer for the invention, and it received a patent in May 1966.

However, a year later, John Shepherd-Barron at De La Rue designed an ATM that was able to accept cheques impregnated with a radioactive compound, which was made widely available to the public in London.

Afterwards, Shepherd-Barron was widely credited with having invented the modern ATM, despite Goodfellow’s design being patented earlier and operating in exactly the same way that ATMs in use today are.

A Chase Bank ATM in 2008

Image Credit: Wil540 art, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

This misattribution was popularised until at least 2005, when Shepherd-Barron received an OBE for the invention. In response, Goodfellow publicised his patent, stating: ‘[Shepherd-Barron] invented a radioactive device to withdraw money. I invented an automated system with an encrypted card and a pin number, and that’s the one that is used around the world today.’

The ATM is also erroneously listed in National Geographic’s 2015 publication ‘100 events that changed the world’ as being Shepherd-Barron’s invention.

He received an OBE

In 2006, Goodfellow was appointed an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for his invention of the personal identification number. The same year, he was inducted into the Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame.

He has received other awards, such as the John Logie Baird award for ‘outstanding innovation’, and was the first inductee into Paymts.com Hall of Fame at Harvard University. He also received an honorary doctorate from the University of West of Scotland.

Nonetheless, knowing she would stand out among her peers, Allen graduated into the Metropolitan Police force in 1968, making history as the first black female police officer.

Here’s the story of Sislin Fay Allen.

Becoming Britain’s first black female police officer

One day in 1968, during her lunch break, Sislin Fay Allen was flicking through a newspaper when she saw an advert recruiting both men and women to the Metropolitan Police. She had always been interested in the police, so cut out and saved the advert to read and reply to when she finished her shift.

The Metropolitan Police had a complex relationship with Britain’s black and other minority communities. In 1958, London’s Notting Hill had become a battle ground when a mob of young white ‘Teddy boys’ had attacked the area’s West Indian community.

While the police arrested some 140 people during the riots, this figure included both white rioters and black men who had been found carrying weapons. There was a wide feeling among London’s West Indian black community that the Met could have done more to respond to reports of racial attacks.

Police officers with dogs at a street in London’s Notting Hill area, during renewed race rioting in 1958.

At the time Allen was working as a nurse at Croydon’s Queens Hospital. There were also no black female officers. Undeterred, she sat down to write her application, including that she was black, and within a few weeks had been offered an interview.

Her husband and family were shocked when she was accepted.

History maker

Rita Marshall, a reporter writing for The Times, asked for an interview with the young black police officer, describing how she wished to ask Allen “on the real problems which will face her … without being the slightest bit sensational”.

Marshall recognised the significance of Allen becoming a police officer at a time when racial tensions were inflamed by far-right groups such as Oswald Mosley‘s Union Movement and the White Defence League, who demanded discontented white Brits to stop racial mixing from happening. Indeed, Britain’s first black police officer since the 19th century, Norwell Roberts, had only joined the Metropolitan Police the previous year.

D. Gregory, the Metropolitan Police’s Public Relations Officer, suggested Marshall hold off until Allen had had time to experience life as a police officer; at the time of writing she was still in training at Peel House.

In new uniform, Sislin Fay Allen checks over the “injured” in a mock road accident as she trained at the Metropolitan Police Training Centre in Regency Street.

Image Credit: Barratt's / Alamy

However, Marshall was not the only journalist who saw Allen as an important news story. Shortly after starting her new position, Allen dealt with numerous reporters wanting to do a story on her, describing how she almost broke her leg running from the press. She also received racist hate mail, although her seniors never showed her the messages. At the centre of the media attention, Allen understood more than anyone what her decision meant. “I realised then that I was a history maker. But I didn’t set out to make history; I just wanted a change of direction”.

Her first beat in Croydon went without incident. Allen later described being asked how she could have chosen to leave nursing to join an institution that had come into conflict with the black community. Nonetheless, she remained part of the British police until 1972, only leaving because she and her husband returned to Jamaica to be closer to family.

Legacy

PC Sislin Fay Allen died aged 83 in July 2021. She had lived in both south London and Jamaica, where her work as a police officer received recognition from then Jamaican Prime Minister, ​​Michael Manley, and in 2020 a lifetime achievement award by the National Black Police Association.

Allen’s part in the history of British policing cannot be underestimated. The courage that individuals such as Allen display, knowing they could be faced by discrimination and violence, opens the door for others to see themselves in roles previously withheld from them.

Though they are sold openly in some countries, usually in small brown bottles, the usage of poppers is legally ambiguous, meaning that they are often sold as leather polish, room deodorisers or nail polish remover. In the European Union, they are banned altogether.

However, poppers weren’t always used recreationally. Instead, they were first synthesised in the 19th century by French chemist Antoine Jérôme Balard before later being used as a treatment for angina and period pains. Later, poppers were caught up in the moral panic associated with the HIV/AIDS epidemic, being falsely accused as the possible source.

Here’s the fascinating history of poppers.

They were first synthesised in the 1840s

Antoine-Jérôme Balard (left); Sir Thomas Lauder Brunton (right)

Image Credit: Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (left); G. Jerrard, CC BY 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons (right)

In 1844, French chemist Antoine Jérôme Balard, who also discovered bromine, first synthesised amyl nitrite. To do so, he passed nitrogen through amyl alcohol (also known as pentanol) to produce a liquid which emitted a vapour that made him ‘blush’.

However, it was really the Scottish physician Thomas Lauder Brunton who, in 1867, recognised that amyl nitrite vapour could be used to treat angina instead of traditional therapies – which included bleeding the patient to reduce the sufferers’ blood pressure. After conducting and witnessing a number of experiments, Brunton introduced the substance to his patients and found that it relieved chest pain, since it causes blood vessels to dilate.

Other uses included combatting period pain and cyanide poisoning; however, it has been largely discontinued for the latter purpose since there is a lack of evidence that it works, and it comes with an associated risk of abuse.

It was quickly realised that the substance was being abused

Though alkyl nitrites were used for legitimate medical conditions, it was quickly realised that they also caused intoxicating and euphoric effects.

In a letter to Charles Darwin in 1871, Scottish psychiatrist James Crichton-Browne, who prescribed amyl nitrites for angina and period pain, wrote that his “patients grew stupid and confused and bewildered. They have ceased to give prompt intelligent and coherent answers to questions.”

They were originally activated by being ‘popped’

Amyl nitrites were originally packaged in a delicate glass mesh called ‘pearls’ which were wrapped in silk sleeves. To administer them, the pearls were crushed between the fingers, which created a popping sound, which then released the vapours to be inhaled. This is likely where the term ‘poppers’ came from.

The term ‘poppers’ was later extended to include the drug in any form as well as other drugs with similar effects, such as butyl nitrite.

They were first adopted for recreational use by the gay community

Black and white photograph of the interior of the mixed gay and straight bar the Garden & Gun club, c. 1978-1985.

Image Credit: College of Charleston Special Collections, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

By the start of the 1960s, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States ruled that amyl nitrite wasn’t dangerous enough to require a prescription, meaning it became more freely available. Only a few years later, reports that young, healthy men were misusing the drug emerged, meaning that the requirement for a prescription was reintroduced.

However, by then, poppers were firmly embedded in queer culture for their ability to enhance sexual pleasure and facilitate anal sex. To get around the re-introduced FDA requirement for a prescription, entrepreneurs started modifying amyl nitrite to fit in small bottles, often disguised as room deodorisers or nail polish remover.

In the late 1970s, Time magazine and The Wall Street Journal reported that along with being popular in the homosexual community, popper usage had “spread to avant-garde heterosexuals”.

They were erroneously blamed for the AIDS epidemic

During the early years of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s, widespread usage of poppers by many people who also suffered from HIV/AIDS led to theories that poppers were causing, or at least contributing to the development of Kaposi’s sarcoma, a rare form of cancer that occurs in people suffering with AIDS. In response, the police conducted a number of raids and seizures of poppers in primarily LGBTQ+ affiliated venues.

However, this theory was later disproved, and by the 1990s, poppers were popular again amongst the queer community, and more widely embraced by members of the raving community. Today, poppers remain popular in Britain, though debates as to whether they should be banned are ongoing and controversial.

A staunch Christian, Whitehouse was regarded by some as a bigoted figure whose beliefs put her at direct odds with the sexual revolution, feminism, LGBT+ and children’s rights. However, she has also been regarded more positively as someone who was an early campaigner against child porn and paedophilia at a time when the subjects were highly taboo.

Here are 10 facts about the controversial Mary Whitehouse.

1. Her childhood was uneventful

Whitehouse was born in Warwickshire, England, in 1910. In her autobiography, she states that she was the second of four children born to the “less-than-successful businessman” father and a “necessarily resourceful mother”. She went to Chester City Grammar School, and after a period of teacher training became an art teacher in Staffordshire. She became involved with Christian movements at this time.

2. She was married for 60 years

Mary Whitehouse at a conference. 10 October 1989

In 1925, Whitehouse joined the Wolverhampton branch of the Oxford Group, later known as the Moral Re-Armament Group (MRA), a moral and spiritual movement group. While there she met Ernest Raymond Whitehouse, who she married in 1940, and remained married to until his death in 2000. The couple had five sons, two of whom died in infancy.

3. She taught sex education

Whitehouse was senior mistress at Madeley Modern School in Shropshire from 1960, where she also taught sex education. During the 1963 Profumo affair, she found some of her pupils mimicking sexual intercourse that they claimed had been televised in a programme about Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies. She was scandalised by the ‘filth’ on television that had prompted them, and gave up teaching in 1964 to campaign full time against what she perceived as declining moral standards.

4. She launched a ‘Clean Up TV Campaign’

With vicar’s wife Norah Buckland, in 1964 Whitehouse launched the Clean Up TV (CUTV) Campaign. Its manifesto appealed to the ‘women of Britain’. The campaign’s first public meeting in 1964 was held in Birmingham’s Town Hall and attracted thousands of people from across Britain, the majority of whom supported the movement.

5. She founded the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association

In 1965, Whitehouse founded the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association (NVALA) to succeed the Clean Up TV Campaign. Based in Whitehouse’s then home in Shropshire, the association attacked cultural items such as the situation comedy Till Death Us Do Part, which Whitehouse objected to because of its swearing. She is quoted saying “Bad language coarsens the whole quality of our life. It normalises harsh, often indecent language, which despoils our communication.”

6. She organised letter writing campaigns

Chuck Berry. Mary Whitehouse was not a fan of his song ‘My Ding-a-Ling’

Image Credit: Universal Attractions (management), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (left) / Pickwick Records, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (right)

Over some 37 years, Whitehouse co-ordinated letter writing campaigns and petitions in protest against the ‘permissive society’ that allowed for sex and violence on British television screens. Her campaigns were sometimes famous: she objected to double entendres in songs such as Chuck Berry’s ‘My Ding-A-Ling’ and a suggestively placed microphone during a Mick Jagger appearance on Top of the Pops.

7. She sued for libel

Whitehouse suing for libel attracted a lot of attention. In 1967, she and the NVALA won a case against the BBC with a full apology and significant damages after writer Johnny Speight implied that the organisation’s members were fascists. In 1977, she had Gay News fined £31,000 and the editor personally fined £3,500 for publishing a poem in which a Roman soldier harboured masochistic and homoerotic feelings towards Jesus on the cross.

8. A comedy show was named after her

A radio and television show called The Mary Whitehouse Experience was broadcast in the late 1980s and early 1990s. A mix of observational comedy sketches and monologues, it used Whitehouse’s name in jest; however, the BBC feared that Whitehouse would initiate litigation for using her name in the show’s title.

9. She was openly despised by the Director General of the BBC

The most famous critic of Whitehouse was Sir Hugh Greene, Director General of the BBC from 1960 to 1969, who was known for his liberal attitudes. He so hated Whitehouse and her complaints to the BBC that he purchased a lewd portrait of Whitehouse, and is reported to have thrown darts at it to vent his frustration.

Whitehouse once said “If you were to ask me to name the one man who more than anybody else had been responsible for the moral collapse in this country, I would name Greene.”

10. She discussed banning sex toys with Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher bids farewell after a visit to the United States

By the 1980s, Whitehouse found an ally in then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and is reported to have helped pass the bill of the Protection of Children Act of 1978. Papers released in 2014 indicate that Whitehouse met Thatcher on at least two occasions to discuss banning sex toys in around 1986.

Dubbed the ‘divorce of the century’, the subsequent swirl of rumours, gossip, scandal and sex captivated the nation. Margaret was publicly humiliated as society first fed on, and then utterly condemned, her sexual relationships.

But why was this divorce case particularly scandalous? And what were the infamous Polaroid photos that proved so contentious?

Heiress and socialite

Born Margaret Whigham, the future Duchess of Argyll was the only daughter of a Scottish materials millionaire. Spending her childhood in New York City, she returned to London around the age of 14 and subsequently began a series of romantic relationships with some of the biggest names of her day.

In an age where aristocratic women were primarily simply required to be beautiful and wealthy, Margaret found herself with no shortage of suitors and was named debutante of the year in 1930. She was briefly engaged to the Earl of Warwick, before marrying Charles Sweeny, a fellow wealthy American. Their marriage, at the Brompton Oratory, stopped traffic in Knightsbridge for 3 hours and was declared the wedding of the decade by many in attendance.

Margaret Sweeny, nee Whigham, photographed in 1935.

Image Credit: Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo

After a series of miscarriages, Margaret had two children with Charles. In 1943, she fell nearly 40ft down a lift shaft, surviving but with a significant trauma to her head: many say the fall altered her personality, and that she was a different woman afterwards. Four years later, the Sweenys divorced.

Duchess of Argyll

After a string of high profile romances, Margaret married Ian Douglas Campbell, 11th Duke of Argyll, in 1951. Meeting by chance on a train, Argyll told Margaret of some of his experiences as a prisoner of war during World War Two, omitting the fact that the trauma had left him reliant on alcohol and prescription drugs.

Whilst there may well have been an attraction between them, Margaret’s money was a key factor in the decision to marry: the Duke’s ancestral home, Inveraray Castle, was crumbling and badly needed an injection of cash. Argyll forged a deed of sale before their marriage to gain him access to some of Margaret’s money.

Inveraray Castle, the ancestral seat of the Dukes of Argyll, photographed in 2010.

The pair’s marriage disintegrated as quickly as it came about: both husband and wife were serially unfaithful, and Margaret forged papers suggesting her husband’s children from his previous marriages were illegitimate.

Argyll decided he wanted to divorce Margaret, accusing her of infidelity and providing photographic evidence, in the form of Polaroids, of her engaged in sexual acts with a series of anonymous, headless men, which he had stolen from a locked bureau in their house in Mayfair, London.

The ‘Dirty Duchess’

The ensuing divorce case was splashed across newspaper front pages. The sheer scandal of photographic evidence of Margaret’s blatant infidelity – she was identifiable by her signature three-strand pearl necklace – was shocking to a world which, in 1963, was on the cusp of a sexual revolution.

The headless man, or men, in the photographs were never identified. Argyll accused his wife of infidelity with 88 men, compiling a detailed list which included government ministers and members of the royal family. The headless man was never formally identified, although a shortlist included the actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr and Churchill’s son-in-law and government minister, Duncan Sandys.

Many of the 88 men listed were in fact homosexual, but given that homosexuality was illegal in Britain at the time, Margaret stayed quiet in order not to betray them on a public stage.

With irrefutable evidence, Argyll was granted his divorce. The presiding judge, in his 50,000-word judgement, described Margaret as a “completely promiscuous woman'” who was “wholly immoral” because she engaged in “disgusting sexual activities”.

Many have retrospectively described her as the first woman to be publicly ‘slut-shamed’, and whilst the term is somewhat anachronistic, it was certainly one of the first times a woman’s sexuality was quite so publicly, roundly and explicitly condemned. Margaret’s privacy had been violated and sexual desires condemned because she was a woman. Women who had watched proceedings from the gallery wrote in support of Margaret.

Lord Denning’s report

As part of proceedings, Lord Denning, who had compiled a government report on one of the decade’s other scandals, the Profumo Affair, was tasked with investigating Margaret’s sexual partners in more depth: primarily this was because ministers were concerned Margaret might be a security risk if she had been involved with senior government figures.

After interviewing the 5 main suspects – several of whom underwent a medical examination to determine whether they matched up to the photographs – and Margaret herself, Denning ruled out Duncan Sandys from being the headless man in question. He also compared the handwriting on the photos with handwriting samples from the men, and did apparently determine who the man in question was, although his identity remains a secret.

Lord Denning’s report has been sealed until 2063: it was reviewed after 30 years by the then Prime Minister, John Major, who decided to keep the testimonies firmly sealed for a further 70 years. Only time will tell exactly what was inside them that was deemed so sensitive.

Little did the family know that this was the beginning of a chain of seemingly supernatural events that would torment them for 12 years, with the famed ghost (named ‘Donald’ by the family) moving furniture, writing notes and even setting objects on fire during his reign of terror.

At the centre of the case was 15-year-old Shirley, whose teenage years were consumed by the poltergeist, and who was suspected by many of having a hand in the mysterious goings-on.

At its height, the terrifying case of the Battersea poltergeist attracted international attention, and today it continues to puzzle sleuths around the world.

An ordinary family

We normally associate ghost stories with castles, churches and manor houses. However, No. 63 Wycliffe Road in Battersea, London, was a seemingly ordinary semi-detached home.

And its occupants, the Hitchings family, were a seemingly ordinary working-class group: there was father Wally, a tall and gaunt London Underground driver; his wife Kitty, a former office clerk who was a wheelchair user due to chronic arthritis; grandmother Ethel, a fiery character known locally as ‘Old Mother Hitchings’; her adopted son John, a surveyor in his twenties; and finally Shirley, Wally and Kitty’s 15-year-old daughter who was about to start art school and worked as a seamstress in Selfridges.

Mysterious noises

In late January 1956, Shirley discovered an ornate silver key on her pillowcase that didn’t fit any lock in the house.

The very same night, noises began which were reminiscent of the Blitz, with deafening bangs reverberating through the house and shaking the walls, floor and furniture. The sounds were so loud that the neighbours complained, and Shirley later reflected that the “sounds were coming from the roots of the house”.

The noises escalated and continued for weeks, with a new scratching sound within the furniture tormenting the sleep-deprived and terrified family day and night. Neither the police nor surveyors could get to the bottom of where the noises came from, and various photographers and reporters were left unsettled upon visiting the house.

The theory that the noises were being caused by a supernatural presence – a poltergeist – therefore emerged, with the family naming the mysterious entity ‘Donald’.

A photograph of a supposed seance, taken by William Hope in 1920. The table is said to be levitating, but in reality, a ghostly arm has been superimposed over the image using a double exposure.

Image Credit: National Media Museum / Public Domain

Moving objects

As time went on, activity within the house became more extreme. Multiple witnesses claimed to have seen bedsheets flying off beds, slippers walking around of their own accord, clocks floating through the air, pots and pans being thrown across rooms and chairs moving around the house.

It was clear that Donald was fixated on Shirley, with the noises following her to work, and the paranormal happenings occurring around and even to her.

Most significantly, Shirley herself was witnessed involuntarily moving in her bed and around the room by various family members and neighbours. By now, her association with the poltergeist had caused her to lose her job and friends, and many believed her to be possessed by the devil.

Fame and investigation

From around March 1956 onwards, the Hitchings family began to draw press attention. Photographers lingered outside the house, while newspapers reported that the poltergeist was romantically obsessed with Shirley. Many believed that the poltergeist was a figment of her imagination and that she was purposefully stirring up the story for attention.

Eventually, the Daily Mail got in touch. Shirley was invited to the head office, where she was strip-searched to ensure that she wasn’t hiding anything. The paper published a sensational account of the story which attracted widespread attention.

An attempt was made by the BBC to contact Donald on prime-time TV, and the haunting was even spoken about in the House of Commons.

Paranormal interest increases

In early 1956, paranormal investigator Harold ‘Chib’ Chibbett was drawn to the case. A tax inspector by day and paranormal enthusiast by night, he was well-known and connected, counting author Arthur Conan Doyle, psychic researcher Harry Price and science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke as friends.

The case became one of the biggest of his life, and his extensive records demonstrate that he authentically believed in the Battersea poltergeist. He spent days and nights recording events at the house, and eventually became a close family friend of the Hitchings. He even wrote a detailed book about the case which was never published.

Donald reveals his identity

As time went on, Donald’s behaviour became increasingly violent. Rooms were supposedly found trashed, spontaneous fires would apparently break out – one which was so severe that it hospitalised Wally – and writing, symbols of crosses and fleur-de-lis, began appearing on the walls.

Exorcisms were attempted and the police would check up on the house. Mysteriously, Donald even circulated Christmas cards.

It’s said that the family learned to communicate with the poltergeist, initially by using alphabet cards and through tapping a certain number of times to mean ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and then, in March 1956, through written correspondence addressed to Shirley, which said ‘Shirley, I come’.

From March 1956, Donald left notes around the house ordering the family to do things such as dress Shirley in courtly clothes, and contact the famous actor Jeremy Spenser. This led to a breakthrough.

In a handwritten letter dating to May 1956, ‘Donald’ identified himself as Louis-Charles, the short-lived Louis XVII of France, who was rumoured to have escaped captivity during the French Revolution, rather than dying a prisoner aged 10 as was later proved.

‘Donald’, or Louis XVII, used a number of elaborate French phrases in his letter and claimed that he had drowned en route to exile in England. His story, however fascinating, was often changing and contradictory.

Theories

Actor Jeremy Spenser, with whom Donald was supposedly infatuated. Over the course of 1956, Donald demanded that Shirley meet Spenser, or threatened that he would cause Spenser harm. Extraordinarily, Spenser suffered a non-fatal car accident shortly after.

Image Credit: Flikr

Shirley married and left her parents’ house in 1965, by which time Donald’s presence was waning. In 1967, she left London altogether, and by 1968 it appeared that Donald had finally gone for good.

There are many who propose scientific explanations for the strange goings-on. Some point to the noises coming from the house being located on uneasy marshland, while others have suggested that acid in the soil could have led to madness. The family cat – named Jeremy, after Jeremy Spenser – even ended up being analysed by fans desperate to prove Donald’s existence.

Others point to Shirley being a starry-eyed but ultimately bored teenager who lived a rather sheltered life, and may have manufactured Donald and drawn others in as a means of attracting attention to herself and making demands that would work to her advantage.

Over the 12 year course of the haunting, some 3,000-4,000 written messages were delivered to the family from Donald, with a staggering 60 messages being left per day at the height of the case. Handwriting experts have analysed the letters and concluded that they were almost certainly written by Shirley.

Through these letters and the attention they drew, Shirley was able to move out of her shared room with her parents, was given money for clothes and more fashionable hairstyles and was the subject of much press hysteria.

The case remains unsolved

The original haunted house was demolished in the late 1960s and never replaced. What is clear, however, is the profound impact that the events had upon Shirley, who stated that the haunting robbed her of her childhood.

Whether a real malevolent spirit, figment of an overactive imagination or a mass projection of fear, the case of the Battersea poltergeist will continue to fascinate paranormal enthusiasts and sceptics for many years to come.

In October 1966, a huge pile of mining waste in southeast Wales was turned to slurry by heavy rainfall. It raced down the hill, devastating the nearby town of Aberfan. A tribunal found the National Coal Board (NCB) to be responsible for the tragedy, and yet no one was prosecuted and the NCB faced no consequences.

The Aberfan disaster was dubbed by one journalist as “the mistake that cost a village its children” and has since been brought to the forefront of public consciousness again by the hit Netflix series The Crown.

The tragedy proved to be something of a watershed moment in public perceptions of health and safety and in the accountability and competency of major organisations.

The village of Aberfan

Aberfan is a small village in southeast Wales, 20 miles north of Cardiff. The economy of the area was primarily centred around mining for much of the 20th century, and almost everyone living there had some connection to the industry. Merthyr Vale, just up the road, was one of the biggest coal mines in the region.

Over time, 7 colliery spoil tips (piles of waste material generated during mining) were established on the hillside above Aberfan. Despite complaints and concerns about the growing size of the tips, the NCB did nothing. Many miners were wary of kicking up too much of a fuss, fearing for their jobs and livelihoods.

Early on the morning of 21 October 1966, after weeks of heavy rainfall, Tip 7 began to slide down the hillside towards the village, engulfing everything in its path. Around 09:15, the avalanche arrived at the village of Aberfan, bringing with it around 38,000 cubic metres ^{of spoil and slurry, which stood up to 9 metres high in some places.}

The Aberfan spoil heaps in the aftermath of the disaster.

Image Credit: Public Domain

Pantglas Junior School

Aberfan’s primary school, Pantglas Junior, received the full force of the avalanche. Teachers had just begun to take attendance for the final school morning before half term when the school was buried. 109 children were killed by the avalanche, many almost immediately, but several could not be rescued from the thick rubble, which began to solidify when it stopped moving.

Several teachers lost their lives in attempts to shield children from the oncoming debris. Rescue efforts began almost immediately: the last survivor to be pulled from the rubble emerged at just after 11 am. The window with which to conduct rescue operations was narrow, and many suffocated or died from their injuries before they could be rescued.

Many of those children who did survive the disaster suffered from PTSD later in life, with several finding living in the area extremely difficult. The community was often divided between those who lost children in the disaster and those who didn’t.

Reaction

There was an outpouring of public sympathy following the disaster: thousands journeyed to Aberfan with the aim of helping the rescuers (although if anything, their efforts hindered the professionals from doing their job). Harold Wilson, the then Prime Minister, visited in the evening, and the Duke of Edinburgh visited the site the next day to offer condolences.

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh both visited Aberfan on 29 October, over a week after the disaster. The Queen appeared visibly moved at the site of such a tragedy, though she was criticised for her delay in visiting.

Both the Commons and the Lords approved the creation of a tribunal to instigate an inquiry into the disaster within days. Over 5 months, the tribunal heard evidence from over 130 witnesses.

The memorial garden in Aberfan, where the 116 children who lost their lives in the disaster are buried.

Image Credit: Andrew Chisholm / Shutterstock

The National Coal Board

The tribunal came to the conclusion which many knew all along: the fault for the disaster lay entirely with the National Coal Board, and it was entirely preventable. The local community had sent several complaints to the NCB about the danger posed by the tips above the village, particularly because slides were not uncommon in heavy rainfall.

Tip Number 7, which generated the most concern, had been established in 1958 and grown rapidly. In 1963, a minor slip had drawn more concerted efforts to get the NCB to ensure its safety: the hillside on which it was located was known to be made of porous sandstone.

The NCB brushed off the complaints and made it clear that if too much of a fuss was made, the mine would be closed down. Given the reliance on mining within the local economy, the closure of the mine was virtually unthinkable, and the issue was largely avoided.

Much to the frustration of the people of Aberfan, the NCB faced no consequences for their negligence, nor did its staff. No one was held accountable and no one was prosecuted, despite evidence given to the inquiry and the conclusions of the tribunal.

Consequences

Donations poured in from around the world to help the people of Aberfan. The avalanche had done a huge amount of damage to the town, damaging the water mains, destroying the school and engulfing houses in certain areas of the town.

A disaster relief fund was set up which received over £1.75 million in donations from over 90,000. Controversially, the government demanded a forced donation of £150,000 from the fund towards the clearing process. This was later paid back in full, with an extra contribution by way of an apology.

Lord Robens, who had been chairman of the NCB, was later appointed as chair of a major health and safety review which in turn led to the defining 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act.

Many of the residents of Aberfan who survived suffered health issues, both physical and mental. The town was used as a study by doctors looking at post-traumatic stress disorder, which many residents later suffered from. With the other tips still looming above the village, a potent reminder of the tragedy, many found it easier to move away than spend their lives in their shadows.

The Krays were undoubtedly ruthless criminals, responsible for violence, coercion and a 2-decade-long reign of terror in the city’s underworld. But they were also complex, damaged and at times even charming men.

Managing a number of West End clubs, the Krays rubbed shoulders with celebrities like Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra. As such, they developed a unique allure not afforded many other criminals of their viciousness.

Simultaneously gangsters and socialites, the Krays are remembered as bastions of a forgotten 1960s style, of a dangerous London that has since disappeared and of a distinctly British criminality.

Here are 10 facts about infamous London gangsters the Kray twins.

1. Reggie was the oldest twin

The Kray twins were born in Hoxton, London, in 1933. Their parents were Charles Kray and Violet Lee, who were London Eastenders of Irish and Romani heritage respectively. Reggie was born 10 minutes before Ronnie, narrowly making him the older twin.

While still very young, both of the twins developed diphtheria with Ronnie suffering terribly. Sceptical of the doctors’ abilities, Violet discharged Ronnie from hospital, and he eventually recovered at home.

Though Ronnie and Reggie are undoubtedly the most notorious of the Kray clan’s members, they also had a criminal older brother, Charlie. He was known as ‘the quiet Kray’, but Charlie still had a hand in the family’s reign of terror in 1950s and 1960s East London.

2. Reggie Kray almost became a professional boxer

Both boys were strong boxers during their teenage years. The sport was popular in the East End amongst working-class men, and the Krays were encouraged to take it up by their grandfather, Jimmy ‘Cannonball’ Lee.

Reggie discovered that he had a natural talent for boxing, even receiving an opportunity to go professional. Ultimately, he was rejected by sporting officials due to his blossoming criminal enterprises.

3. Reggie had a deadly signature punch

Reggie made use of his boxing abilities in the criminal world, and he apparently developed a tried and tested method for breaking someone’s jaw with a single punch.

He would offer his target a cigarette, and as it neared their mouth, Reggie would strike. Their open, relaxed jaw would take the brunt of the impact, supposedly breaking every time.

Reggie Kray (one from the left) photographed with associates in 1968.

Image Credit: The National Archives UK / Public Domain

4. The Kray twins were held in the Tower of London

In 1952, not yet at the height of their power, the Kray twins had been enrolled for National Service with the Royal Fusiliers. They refused, apparently punching a corporal in the process, and were arrested for their actions.

The Krays were held in the Tower of London, making them some of the iconic structure’s last ever prisoners. The brothers were eventually transferred to Shepton Mallet military prison.

This 1952 arrest was one of the twins’ first. As their criminal enterprise grew throughout the 1950s and ‘60s, they would suffer many more run-ins with the law.

5. Ronnie shot George Cornell dead in the Blind Beggar pub

The Kray twins swiftly transformed from teenage boxers into notorious criminals. Their gang, The Firm, operated across East London in the 1950s and ‘60s, running protection rackets, committing robberies and managing seedy clubs. With this criminal enterprise came violence.

One particularly infamous bout of violence occurred at East London’s Blind Beggar pub in 1966. There, one of the Kray’s adversaries, George Cornell, was sat having a drink when an altercation ensued.

Ronnie shot Cornell in the head.

The Blind Beggar pub is still around today, and visitors can stand in the exact spot the murder took place.

The Blind Beggar pub on Whitechapel Road in London, where Ronnie Kray murdered George Cornell.

Image Credit: chrisdorney / Shutterstock

6. Judy Garland sang a song for the Kray twins’ mother, Violet

As the owners of various London clubs and establishments, the Krays met and mingled with some of the era’s biggest names.

Actors Joan Collins and George Raft are known to have frequented the Kray twins’ clubs.

Even Judy Garland ran into the twins on one occasion. The Krays invited her back to their family home, and Garland sang Somewhere over the Rainbow for their mother, Violet.

7. Reggie had a fling with actress Barbara Windsor

The Krays twins’ celebrity escapades also involved Barbara Windsor, the famed British actress behind EastEnders character Peggy Mitchell.

Reggie supposedly spent a night with Windsor, though it didn’t turn into a relationship. Windsor went on to marry the gangster Ronnie Knight, who was a friend of the Krays.

8. Ronnie Kray was openly bisexual

In 1964, rumours began to swirl around Ronnie’s sexuality. The Sunday Mirror published a story claiming that Ronnie and Conservative MP Robert Boothby were under investigation by the Met for being in a homosexual relationship, which was deemed a crime until 1967.

Later in life, Ronnie opened up about his sexuality, confessing in the late 1980s and in his 1993 autobiography My Story that he was bisexual.

Laurie O’Leary, a childhood friend of the Krays, said members of The Firm were tolerant to Ronnie’s sexuality, telling the Guardian, “Even if they objected, Ron just smiled at them and told them they didn’t know what they were missing”.

9. The Kray twins were sentenced for murder in 1969

The Kray twins’ reign of terror caught up with them in March 1969, when they were sentenced for the murders of rival gangsters George Cornell and Jack McVitie.

Jack McVitie was killed in 1967. Reggie had found McVitie at a party and attempted to shoot him, but his gun jammed. Instead, Reggie repeatedly stabbed McVitie in the chest, stomach and face. Fellow members of The Firm disposed of the body.

Ronnie and Reggie were both sentenced at London’s Old Bailey court, receiving sentences of life imprisonment with 30 years of non-parole. They were, at the time, the longest sentences ever passed at the Old Bailey.

A street art mural of the Kray Twins.

Image Credit: Matt Brown / CC BY 2.0

10. When Reggie died, celebrities sent their condolences

The Krays continued to run a protection racket from prison. Their bodyguard business, Krayleigh Enterprises, supplied Frank Sinatra with 18 bodyguards in 1985.

Ronnie Kray died in Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital in 1995, from a heart attack.

Reggie passed away from cancer in 2000. He had been released from prison on compassionate grounds. Various celebrities sent wreaths and condolences upon hearing of his death, including Roger Daltry, Barbara Windsor and The Smiths singer Morrissey.

The Krays are buried in Chingford Mount Cemetery, East London.

Much less is spoken about Françoise, Catherine and Christian’s niece who was a neo-Nazi and a socialite in post-war France. The family successfully distanced themselves from Françoise as her views gained more publicity, but their attempts to deny Françoise airtime in the press failed and she courted notoriety for a number of years.

Christian Dior photographed in 1954.

Image Credit: Public Domain

So who exactly was the mysterious black sheep of the family, Françoise, and how did she stir up so much controversy?

Early life

Born in 1932, Françoise’s early childhood was largely defined by the Nazi occupation of France. Unlike many of her contemporaries who loathed the occupation, Françoise later described it as one of the ‘sweetest times’ of her life.

Her father Raymond, brother of Christian and Catherine, was a communist who embraced conspiracy theories and as a teenager, Françoise began to become invested in the theory that the French Revolution was in fact part of a global conspiracy by international elites who wanted to ruin France.

As a young woman, Françoise had a relatively close relationship with her uncle Christian: he reportedly made several dresses for her and acted as a quasi-father figure for periods of her life.

Aged 23, Françoise married Count Robert-Henri de Caumont-la-Force, a descendant of the royal family of Monaco, with whom she had a daughter, Christiane. The pair divorced not long after, in 1960.

National Socialism

In 1962, Françoise travelled to London with the aim of meeting the leaders of the National Socialist Movement there, particularly Colin Jordan, the head of the organisation. The group had been founded as a splinter group from the British National Party (BNP), who Jordan had criticised for its lack of openness surrounding its Nazi beliefs.

Over the subsequent years, she became a frequent visitor, developing a close friendship with Jordan. It was also around this time that she was introduced to Savitri Devi, an Axis spy in India and fascist sympathizer.

Using her connections and personal wealth, she helped establish the French chapter of the World Union of National Socialists (WUNS), heading up the national section herself. She achieved limited success: few high-ranking Nazis or members of her social circles wanted to join.

When the police discovered the existence of the Western European branch of the WUNS in 1964, its 42 members were quickly dissolved.

Colin Jordan

Françoise had known Colin Jordan for barely a year when she married him in 1963. The pair wed in a civil ceremony in Coventry which was heckled by protestors. They had a second ‘wedding’ at the headquarters of the National Socialist Movement in London where they cut their ring fingers and mingled their blood over a copy of Mein Kampf. 

Unsurprisingly, photographs of the Nazi-orientated ceremony (with guests giving Nazi salutes) gained a huge amount of publicity and were widely printed in the press, despite the fact Françoise seemed to struggle to actually articulate her beliefs or what the NSM stood for.

Francoise Dior and Colin Jordan arriving for their wedding in Coventry Registry Office, greeted by Nazi salutes.

Image Credit: PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo

It was at this point that Françoise’s family publicly distanced themselves from her: her mother said she would no longer let Françoise set foot in their home and her aunt, Catherine, spoke out against the coverage Françoise received, saying it detracted from the fame and skill of her brother Christian and ‘the honour and patriotism’ of other members of their family.

The pair’s turbulent marriage continued to make headlines. They split a few months later as Françoise publicly dismissed him as a ‘middle-class nobody’, implying she’d been blinded as to his true leadership skills and ability to hold the National Socialist Movement together. The pair reconciled, publicly, when Françoise claimed she was sure of her husband’s strength and skills as a leader.

Fall from power

Dior’s marriage to Jordan cemented her, briefly, at the top of the National Socialist Movement. She was heavily involved in arson campaigns and continued to maintain a relatively high profile in fascist and neo-Nazi movements across Europe. She was convicted in absentia in Paris for distributing neo-Nazi leaflets and imprisoned in Britain for inciting anti-Semitic violence.

During this time she began a new relationship with an NSM member, Terence Cooper. The pair eloped together and Colin Jordan divorced his wife on grounds of adultery after the affair came to light. They lived together in Normandy until 1980, and Cooper subsequently wrote a lurid tell-all about his time with Françoise in which he accused her of incest and implicating her in the untimely death of her daughter Christiane.

Françoise continued to use what remained of her fortune and social network to continue to participate and support anti-Semitic and Nazi movements, including the Front Uni Antisioniste, Rally for the Republic and remained a close friend of Savitri Devi. She also reportedly paid some of the legal expenses of fascists including Martin Webster.

An inglorious end

After a series of bad investments, Françoise’s fortune was largely lost and she was forced to sell her Normandy home. She married for the third time, this time to another aristocrat and ethnonationalist, Count Hubert de Mirleau.

Françoise died in 1993, aged 60, her name largely lost to history and her death barely reported in the newspapers. Today, she is but a mostly-forgotten footnote in the otherwise illustrious history of the Dior family.

While the report condemned homosexuality as immoral and destructive, it ultimately recommended an end to the criminalisation of homosexuality and reform on prostitution laws in Britain.

The report’s recommendations on decriminalising homosexuality came into law in 1967, after facing fierce backlash from certain politicians, religious leaders and the press. The report’s publication marks a pivotal moment in the fight for gay rights in the UK.

Here’s the story of the Wolfenden report.

The 1954 committee

In 1954, a British departmental committee consisting of 11 men and 4 women was set up to consider “the law and practice relating to homosexual offences and the treatment of persons convicted of such offences.” It was also tasked with examining “the law and practice relating to offences against the criminal law in connection with prostitution and solicitation for immoral purposes.”

After World War Two there was a rise in prosecutions for crimes related to homosexuality in Britain. In 1952, there were 670 prosecutions for ‘sodomy’ and 1,686 for ‘gross indecency’. With this rise in prosecutions came an increase in publicity and interest in the topic.

The decision to form the committee, which was tasked with producing a report, came after a number of high profile arrests and prosecutions.

High-profile prosecutions

Famous mathematician Alan Turing depicted on an English £50 note, 2021.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

Two of the ‘Cambridge Five’ – a group who passed information to the Soviet Union during the war – were found to be gay. Alan Turing, the man who cracked the Enigma code, was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ in 1952.

Actor Sir John Gielgud was arrested in 1953 and Lord Montagu of Beaulieu was prosecuted in 1954. The establishment was under pressure to re-address the law.

Sir John Wolfenden was appointed as chair of the committee. During the time the committee sat, Wolfenden discovered his own son was homosexual.

The committee first met on 15 September 1954 and over three years sat 62 times. Much of this time was taken up with interviewing witnesses. Interviewees included judges, religious leaders, policemen, social workers and probation officers.

The committee also spoke to homosexual men, particularly Carl Winter, Patrick Trevor-Roper and Peter Wildeblood.

An instant bestseller

The front cover of the Wolfenden Report.

Image Credit: via Wikimedia Commons / Fair Use

Unusually for a government report, the publication was an instant bestseller. It sold 5,000 copies in hours and was subsequently reprinted a number of times.

The report recommended decriminalising homosexuality. Although it condemned homosexuality as immoral and destructive, it concluded that the law’s place was not to rule on private morality or immorality.

It also said that outlawing homosexuality was a civil liberties issue. The committee wrote: “It is not, in our view, the function of the law to intervene in the private life of citizens, or to seek to enforce any particular pattern of behaviour.”

The report also refused to classify homosexuality as a mental illness, but did recommend further research into causes and possible cures.

In addition to its recommendations on homosexuality, the report recommended increasing penalties for soliciting street prostitutes and making male prostitution illegal.

Becoming law

The recommendations made by the report on prostitution came into law in 1959. It took a lot longer for the committee’s recommendations on homosexuality to follow suit. The idea of decriminalisation was widely condemned, especially by religious leaders, politicians and in popular newspapers.

Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, the home secretary who had commissioned the report, was not pleased with its outcome. Maxwell-Fyfe had expected the recommendations to tighten control on homosexual behaviour and he took no immediate action to change the law.

The House of Lords held a debate on the subject on 4 December 1957. 17 peers took part in the debate and over half spoke in favour of decriminalisation.

In 1960 the Homosexual Law Reform Society began its campaign. Its first public meeting, held in Caxton Hall in London, attracted over 1,000 people. The society was most active while campaigning for the reform that finally came into being in 1967.

The Sexual Offences Act

The Sexual Offences Act passed in Parliament in 1967, 10 years after the publication of the report. Based on the Sexual Offences Bill, the Act relied heavily on the Wolfenden report and decriminalised homosexual acts between two men who were both over the age of 21.

The Act applied only to England and Wales. Scotland decriminalised homosexuality in 1980 and Northern Ireland in 1982.

The Wolfenden report began an important process that ultimately led to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Britain.