NETFLIX UK DARK TOURIST ATTRACTION. LITTLEDEAN JAIL, FOREST OF DEAN , GLOUCESTERSHIRE . FASCISM IN BRITAIN DURING THE 1930’S-THROUGH TO THE 1960’S WITH SIR OSWALD MOSLEY’S BLACKSHIRTS BUF MOVEMENT & UNION MOVEMENT. FEATURED HERE ON DISPLAY IN & AMONGST THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION.

DARK TOURIST VISITOR ATTRACTION LIKE NO OTHER. 

A HOPEFULLY HISTORICALLY AND EDUCATIONAL INSIGHT INTO FASCISM HERE IN THE UK, ON DISPLAY HERE AT THE JAIL .

British Fascist and Leader of the BUF Movement ( British Union of Fascist Movement ) , Oswald Mosley in his prime during the 1930’s

Above & Below: Original oil paintings of British Union of Fascists founder & leader Oswald Mosley, by Gloucestershire artist Paul Bridgman on display at The Crime Through Time Collection, Littledean jail , UK .

PLEASE DO BE AWARE THAT THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION HERE AT LITTLEDEAN JAIL HAS NO AFFILIATION , CONNECTION OR INVOLVEMENT WITH ANY EXTREMIST , POLITICALLY MOTIVATED OR OTHERWISE MOVEMENTS WHATSOEVER …… WE SIMPLY EXHIBIT AND TOUCH UPON A GREAT MANY POLITICALLY INCORRECT AND TABOO SUBJECT MATTERS THAT NO OTHER VISITOR ATTRACTIONS DARE COVER IN THE WAY WE CHOOSE TO DO HERE. …. “IT’S ALL HISTORY FOR GOODNESS SAKE”

POLITICALLY INCORRECT IT MAY BE… SO WHAT…… IT HAPPENED HERE IN BRITAIN

BELOW: A BRIEF INSIGHT INTO A FEW OF OUR RARE PRIVATE COLLECTION OF BRITISH FASCIST MOVEMENT MEMORABILIA, HERE ON DISPLAY AT THE JAIL

BELOW IS A VERY BRIEF PICTORIAL SLIDESHOW INSIGHT INTO JUST A FEW OF THE EXHIBIT ITEMS HERE ON DISPLAY IN OUR FASCISM IN BRITAIN EXHIBITION.TOUCHING UPON A TABOO SUBJECT MATTER THAT OUR UK GOVERNMENTS HAVE LONG SINCE WISHED TO BRUSH UNDER THE CARPETS AS NOT BEING WORTH REFLECTING UPON IN OUR BRITISH HISTORY SCHOOL AND COLLEGE CURRICULUM’S 

Above and below: Rare images of Oswald Mosley’s BUF Movement parading with the original  BUF Standards/Banners…. one of which is here on display  at Littledean Jail in and amongst the Fascism in Britain Exhibition .

Below: A rare original Oswald Mosley British Union Standard/Rally Banner being one of the so say 60 number of them that were carried and used by the movement during the 1930’s, along with other BUF related memorabilia

ASIN: B07L467C1X

Above and below: Oswald Mosley seen at various British Union rallies during the 1930’s …

SURELY IT IS A PART OF HISTORY THAT WE SHOULD ALL REFLECT UPON IN EDUCATIONAL TERMS AS TO OUR PAST CONFLICTS ?

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PLEASE DO TAKE THE TIME IF INTERESTED IN OUR FASCISM IN  BRITAIN  HISTORY DURING THE 1930’S-1940’S  TO LOOK AT THE INTERACTIVE DOCUMENTARY FOOTAGE BELOW 

Above : An exceptionally rare Arnold Leese (1878-1956) “Imperial Fascist League” banner which controversially depicted the Nazi Swastika emblem within the centre of the Untider Kingdom’s Union Jack  Flag.

Oswald Mosley
Sir Oswald Mosley, Bt.
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
In office 7 June 1929 – 19 May 1930
Prime Minister	Ramsay MacDonald
Preceded by	Ronald John McNeill
Succeeded by	Clement Attlee
Member of Parliament for Harrow
In office 1918 – 1924
Preceded by	Harry Mallaby-Deeley
Succeeded by	Sir Isidore Salmon
Member of Parliament for Smethwick
In office 1926 – 1931
Preceded by	John Davison
Succeeded by	Roy Wise
Personal details
Born	Oswald Ernald Mosley 16 November 1896 Burton upon Trent, England
Died	3 December 1980 (aged 84) Orsay, France
Nationality	British
Political party	Conservative (1918–1922) Independent (1922–1924) Labour / I.L.P (1924–1931) New Party (1931–1932) British Union (1932–1940) Union Movement (1948–1973) National Party of Europe(1962–1980)
Spouse(s)	Lady Cynthia Mosley (1920–1933) Diana Mitford (1936–1980)
Children	Vivien Mosley (deceased) Nicholas Mosley Michael Mosley (Oswald) Alexander Mosley Max Mosley
Alma mater	• Winchester • Sandhurst
Military service
Allegiance	British Empire
Service/branch	British Army • 16th The Queen’s Lancers • Royal Flying Corps
Years of service	1914–1918
Rank	Lieutenant
Battles/wars	World War I • Second Battle of Ypres • Battle of Loos
Awards	Victory Medal  British War Medal  1914–15 Star

Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet, of Ancoats, (16 November 1896 – 3 December 1980) was an English politician, known principally as the founder of the British Union of Fascists. He was a Member of Parliament for Harrow from 1918 to 1924 and for Smethwick from 1926 to 1931, as well as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in the Labour Government of 1929–1931.

[edit]Family and early life[edit]Biography

Mosley was the eldest of three sons of Sir Oswald Mosley, 5th Baronet, of Ancoats (29 December 1873 – 21 September 1928), and wife Katharine Maud Edwards-Heathcote (1874–1950), the second child of Captain Justinian Edwards-Heathcote of Market Drayton, Shropshire. Mosley’s family were Anglo-Irish. His branch were prosperous landowners in Staffordshire. Through the intermarriage common among the British upper classes, the 5th Baronet was the third cousin of the Earl of Strathmore, which would eventually make Oswald Mosley, the 6th baronet, fourth cousin to Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, who was the Earl of Strathmore’s daughter, and fourth cousin once removed to Queen Elizabeth II.

Mosley was born at Rolleston Hall, near Burton-on-Trent on November 16, 1896. When his parents separated he was brought up by his mother, who initially went to live at Betton Hall near Market Drayton, and his paternal grandfather, Sir Oswald Mosley, 4th Baronet. Within the family and among intimate friends, he was always called “Tom”. He lived for many years at Apedale Hall near Newcastle-under-Lyme.

[edit]Military service

He was educated at West Downs School and Winchester College. In January 1914 he entered the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst but was expelled in June for a “riotous act of retaliation” against a fellow student.^[1] During World War I he was commissioned in the 16th The Queen’s Lancers and fought on the Western Front. He transferred to the Royal Flying Corps as an observer but while demonstrating in front of his mother and sister he crashed, which left him with a permanent limp. He returned to the trenches before the injury was fully healed and, at the Battle of Loos, he passed out at his post from the pain. He spent the remainder of the war at desk jobs in the Ministry of Munitions and in the Foreign Office.^[1]

[edit]Personal life

Oswald Mosley and Lady Cynthia Curzon on their wedding day, 11 May 1920

On 11 May 1920 he married Lady Cynthia Curzon (known as ‘Cimmie’), (1898 – 1933), second daughter ofGeorge Curzon, Lord Curzon of Kedleston, (1859 – 1925), Viceroy of India, 1899 – 1905, Foreign Secretary, 1919 – 1924, and Lord Curzon’s first wife, the American mercantile heiress, the former Mary Victoria Leiter.

Lord Curzon had to be persuaded that Mosley was a suitable husband, as he suspected Mosley was largely motivated by social advancement in Conservative Party politics and her inheritance. The 1920 wedding took place in the Chapel Royal in St James’s Palace in London. It was the social event of the year. The hundreds of guests included European royalty, including King George V and Queen Mary; and Leopold III and Astrid of Sweden, King and Queen of Belgium.^[2]

He had three children by Cynthia: Vivien Elizabeth Mosley (25 February 1921 – 26 August 2002), who married on 15 January 1949 Desmond Francis Forbes Adam (27 January 1926 – 3 January 1958), educated at Eton College,Eton, Berkshire, and at King’s College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, by whom she had two daughters and one son; Nicholas Mosley, 3rd Baron Ravensdale (born 25 June 1923), a successful novelist who wrote a biography of his father and edited his memoirs for publication; and Michael Mosley (born 25 April 1932), unmarried and without issue.

During this marriage he had an extended affair with his wife’s younger sister Lady Alexandra Metcalfe, and with their stepmother, Grace Curzon, Marchioness Curzon of Kedleston, the American-born, also, second wife and widow of Lord Curzon of Kedleston.

Cynthia died of peritonitis in 1933, after which Mosley married his mistress Diana Guinness, née Diana Mitford(1910 – 2003, one of the Mitford sisters). They married in secret in Germany on 6 October 1936, in the Berlin home of Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels. Adolf Hitler was one of the guests.

By Diana Mitford, he had two sons: Oswald Alexander Mosley (born 26 November 1938), married on 10 May 1975 to Charlotte Diana Marten (born 1952) and father of Louis Mosley (born 1983); and Max Rufus Mosley (born 13 April 1940), who was president of theFédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) for 16 years.

Part of a series on
Fascism

Mosley spent large amounts of his private fortune on the British Union of Fascists (BUF) and tried to establish it on a firm financial footing by negotiating, through Diana, with Adolf Hitler for permission to broadcast commercial radio to Britain from Germany.

Mosley also reportedly struck a deal in 1937 with Francis William Lionel Collings Beaumont, the heir to the Seigneur of Sark, to set up a privately owned radio station on Sark.^[3][4]

[edit]Elected Member of Parliament

By the end of World War I Mosley decided to go into politics as a Conservative Member of Parliament (MP), although he was only 21 years old and had not fully developed his politics. He was driven by a passionate conviction to avoid any future war and this motivated his career. Largely because of his family background, he was considered by several constituencies; a vacancy near the family estates seemed to be the best prospect.

Unexpectedly, he was selected for Harrow first. In the general election of 1918 he faced no serious opposition and was elected easily. He was the youngest member of the House of Commons to take his seat (Joseph Sweeney, an abstentionist Sinn Féin MP was younger). He soon distinguished himself as an orator and political player, one marked by extreme self-confidence. He made a point of speaking in the House of Commons without notes.^{[citation needed]}

[edit]Crossing the floor

Mosley was at this time falling out with the Conservatives over Irish policy, objecting to the use of the Black and Tans to suppress the Irish population. Eventually he ‘crossed the floor‘ and sat as an Independent MP on the opposition side of the House of Commons. Having built up a following in his constituency, he retained it against a Conservative challenge in the 1922 and 1923 general elections.

The liberal Westminster Gazette wrote that he was “the most polished literary speaker in the Commons, words flow from him in graceful epigrammatic phrases that have a sting in them for the government and the conservatives. To listen to him is an education in the English language, also in the art of delicate but deadly repartee. He has human sympathies, courage and brains.”^[5] By 1924 he was growing increasingly attracted to the Labour Party, which had just formed a government, and in March he joined. He immediately joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP) as well and allied himself with the left.

When the government fell in October, Mosley had to choose a new seat as he believed that Harrow would not re-elect him as a Labour candidate. He therefore decided to oppose Neville Chamberlain in Birmingham Ladywood. An energetic campaign led to a knife-edge result but Mosley was defeated by 77 votes. His period outside Parliament was used to develop a new economic policy for the ILP, which eventually became known as the Birmingham Proposals; they continued to form the basis of Mosley’s economics until the end of his political career.

In 1926, the Labour-held seat of Smethwick fell vacant and Mosley returned to Parliament after winning the resulting by-election on 21 December. Mosley felt the campaign was dominated by Conservative attacks on him for being too rich and claims he was covering up his wealth.^[6]

Mosley and his wife Cynthia were ardent Fabians in the 1920s and 1930s. Mosley appears in a list of names of Fabians from Fabian News and Fabian Society Annual Report 1929–31. He wasKingsway Hall lecturer in 1924 and Livingstone Hall lecturer in 1931.

[edit]Office

Mosley then made a bold bid for political advancement within the Labour Party. He was close to Ramsay MacDonald and hoped for one of the great offices of state, but when Labour won the 1929 general election he was appointed only to the post of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, de facto Minister without Portfolio, outside the Cabinet. He was given responsibility for solving the unemployment problem, but found that his radical proposals were blocked either by his superior James Henry Thomas or by the Cabinet.^{[citation needed]}

Mosley was always impatient and eventually put forward a whole scheme in the ‘Mosley Memorandum’ to find it rejected by the Cabinet; he then resigned in May 1930. At the time, the weekly liberal paper The Nation described his move: “The resignation of Sir Oswald Mosley is an event of capital importance in domestic politics… We feel that Sir Oswald has acted rightly—as he has certainly acted courageously—in declining to share any longer in the responsibility for inertia.”^[5] He attempted to persuade the Labour Party Conference in October, but was defeated again.

The memorandum called for high tariffs to protect British industries from international finance, for state nationalisation of industry and a programme of public works to solve unemployment. Thirty years later, in 1961, R. H. S. Crossman described the memorandum: “… this brilliant memorandum was a whole generation ahead of Labour thinking.”^[5]

[edit]New Party

Determined that the Labour Party was no longer suitable, Mosley quickly founded the New Party. Its early parliamentary contests, in the 1931 Ashton-under-Lyne by-election and subsequent by-elections, were successful only in splitting the vote and allowing the Conservative candidate to win. Despite this, the organisation gained support among many Labour and Conservative MPs, who agreed with his corporatist economic policy—among those who agreed were Aneurin Bevan and Harold Macmillan. It also gained the endorsement of the Daily Mail newspaper, headed at the time byAlfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe.^{[citation needed]}

The New Party increasingly inclined to fascist policies, but Mosley was denied the opportunity to get his party established when the 1931 election was suddenly called. All its candidates, including Mosley, lost their seats. As the New Party gradually became more radical and authoritarian, many previous supporters defected from it. Shortly after the election, he was described by the Manchester Guardian:

When Sir Oswald Mosley sat down after his Free Trade Hall speech in Manchester and the audience, stirred as an audience rarely is, rose and swept a storm of applause towards the platform—who could doubt that here was one of those root-and-branch men who have been thrown up from time to time in the religious, political and business story of England. First that gripping audience is arrested, then stirred and finally, as we have said, swept off its feet by a tornado of peroration yelled at the defiant high pitch of a tremendous voice.^[5]

Flag of the British Union of Fascists

[edit]Fascism

After his failure in 1931 Mosley went on a study tour of the ‘new movements’ of Italy’s Benito Mussolini and other fascists, and returned convinced that it was the way forward for him and for Britain. He determined to unite the existing fascist movements and created the British Union of Fascists (BUF) in 1932. The BUF was anti-communist and protectionist. It claimed membership as high as 50,000, and had the Daily Mail^[7] and Daily Mirror^[8] among its earliest (if, in the case of theMail, short-lived) supporters.^[9]

Among his followers were the novelist Henry Williamson, military theorist J. F. C. Fuller and the future “Lord Haw Haw“, William Joyce.

Mosley had found problems with disruption of New Party meetings, and instituted a corps of black-uniformed paramilitary stewards, nicknamed blackshirts. The party was frequently involved in violent confrontations, particularly with Communist and Jewish groups and especially in London.^[10] At a large Mosley rally at Olympia on 7 June 1934 mass brawling broke out when hecklers were removed by blackshirts, resulting in bad publicity. This and the Night of the Long Knives in Germany led to the loss of most of the BUF’s mass support. The party was unable to fight the 1935 general election.

Plaque commemorating the Battle of Cable Street

In October 1936 Mosley and the BUF attempted to march through an area with a high proportion of Jewish residents, and violence resulted between local and nationally organised protesters trying to block the march and police trying to force it through, since called the Battle of Cable Street. At length Sir Philip Gamethe Police Commissioner disallowed the march from going ahead and the BUF abandoned it.

Mosley continued to organise marches policed by the blackshirts, and the government was sufficiently concerned to pass the Public Order Act 1936, which, amongst other things, banned political uniforms and quasi-military style organisations and came into effect on 1 January 1937.

In the London County Council elections in 1937 the BUF stood in three of its East London strongholds, polling up to a quarter of the vote. Mosley then made most of the employees redundant, some of whom then defected from the party with William Joyce. As the European situation moved towards war, the BUF began nominating Parliamentary candidates and launched campaigns on the theme of Mind Britain’s Business. After the outbreak of war he led the campaign for a negotiated peace. He was at first received well but, after the invasion of Norway, public opinion of him gave way to hostility and Mosley was nearly assaulted. ^[11]

[edit]Internment

On 23 May 1940 Mosley, who had continued his peace campaign, was interned under Defence Regulation 18B, along with most active fascists in Britain, and the BUF was later proscribed. His wife Diana Mitford was also interned,^[12] shortly after the birth of their son Max; they lived together for most of the war in a house in the grounds of Holloway prison.

Mosley used the time to read extensively on classical civilisations. Mosley refused visits from most BUF members, but on 18 March 1943 Dudley and Norah Elam (who had been released by then) accompanied Unity Mitford to see her sister Diana. Mosley agreed to be present because he mistakenly believed Diana and Unity’s mother Lady Redesdale was accompanying Unity.^[13]

The Mosleys were released in November 1943, when Mosley was suffering with phlebitis, and spent the rest of the war under house arrest. On his release from prison he stayed with his sister-in-lawPamela Mitford, followed shortly by a stay at the Shaven Crown Hotel in Shipton-under-Wychwood. He then purchased Crux Easton, near Newbury, with Diana. He and his wife were the subject of much media attention.^[14] The war ended what remained of his political reputation.

[edit]Post-war politics

After the war Mosley was contacted by his former supporters and persuaded to rejoin active politics. He formed the Union Movement, calling for a single nation-state covering the continent of Europe (known as Europe a Nation), and later attempted to launch a National Party of Europe to this end. The Union Movement’s meetings were often physically disrupted, as Mosley’s meetings had been before the war, and largely by the same opponents.

This led to Mosley’s decision, in 1951, to leave Britain and live in Ireland. He later moved to Paris. Of his decision to leave, he said, “You don’t clear up a dungheap from underneath it.”^{[citation needed]}

Mosley briefly returned to Britain in order to fight the 1959 general election at Kensington North, shortly after the 1958 Notting Hill race riots. Concerns over immigration were beginning to come into the spotlight for the first time and Mosley led his campaign on this issue. When Mosley’s final share of the vote was less than he expected, he launched a legal challenge to the election on the basis that the result had been rigged. The result was upheld.

In 1961 he took part in a debate at University College London about Commonwealth immigration, seconded by a young David Irving.^[15] He contested the 1966 general election at Shoreditch and Finsbury, where he fared even worse than he had in 1959. He wrote his autobiography, My Life (1968), and made a number of television appearances before retiring. In 1977, by which time he was suffering from Parkinson’s disease, he was nominated for the post of Rector of the University of Glasgow. In the subsequent election he polled over 100 votes but finished bottom of the poll.

[edit]Death

Mosley died of natural causes on 3 December 1980 in his Orsay home, aged 84. He was cremated in Paris and his ashes were scattered on the pond at Orsay. His papers are housed at the University of Birmingham Special Collections.

[edit]In popular culture

This “In popular culture” section may contain minor or trivial references. Please reorganize this content to explain the subject’s impact on popular culture rather than simply listing appearances, and remove trivial references. (October 2011)

Mosley’s rising influence before the Second World War provoked alarm and reaction against would-be populist dictators by major cultural figures of the time:

• Aldous Huxley‘s Point Counter Point features Everard Webley, a character modelled on Mosley.

• A character in the novel The Holy Terror (1939) by H. G. Wells is a bombastic British fascist with an aristocratic background, strikingly similar to Mosley.

• “Sir Roderick Spode” in P.G. Wodehouse‘s novels parodies Mosley. Spode, a blustering bully who is described as an “amateur dictator”, heads a British fascist “Black Shorts” organization.

Mosley’s attempts to promote his views after the war resulted in continued critical reaction:

• In 2006 he was selected by the BBC History Magazine as the 20th century’s worst Briton.^[16]

• In 1997 Channel Four Television produced a mini-series about him called Mosley, starring Jonathan Cake.

• In the 1986 film version of Colin MacInnes‘s book Absolute Beginners, Steven Berkoff appears as a Mosley-esque character billed as “The Fanatic”, who delivers a (rhyming) hate speech at a fascist election rally; it is generally assumed this is meant to be Mosley during his brief resurgence in 1958.

• The indulgent tone of Mosley’s newspaper obituaries was lampooned by the satirical television programme Not The Nine O’Clock News in the song “Baronet Oswald Ernald Mosley” by Peter Brewis, which featured Mel Smith, Pamela Stephenson and Griff Rhys Jones all dressed as Nazi Skinheads, singing his eulogy and reading some of the more positive remarks of newspapers from all sides of the political spectrum, including The Times and The Guardian.^[17]

• A semi-fictionalized depiction of Mosley, the BUF, and Battle of Cable Street appears in the 2010 BBC Wales revival of Upstairs, Downstairs, which is set in 1936.

• The original version of the Elvis Costello song “Less Than Zero” is an attack on Mosley and his politics, but US listeners assumed that the “Mr Oswald” referred to was Lee Harvey Oswald and Costello obligingly wrote an alternative lyric in which it was.^[18]:74,84

• In Kazuo Ishiguro‘s The Remains of the Day and James Ivory‘s film adaptation Mosley is portrayed as the fictional “Sir Geoffrey Wren”.

• In the popular BBC science fiction sitcom Goodnight Sweetheart, 1990s time traveller Gary Sparrow attempts to educate 1940s East End barmaid Phoebe Bamford on the subject of racism, only to have Phoebe rebut him by saying: “You can be a right twit sometimes Gary. Me and dad were down Cable Street in ’36 standing up to Mosley and his Blackshirts. I know all about Fascists, thank you very much!” (Series 3, Episode 25, “The Yanks are Coming“).

• Mosley and the black shirts are referenced in the song “The Ghosts of Cable Street” by folk punk band The Men They Couldn’t Hang.

Mosley appears in alternative history stories:

• In Harry Turtledove‘s Southern Victory Series of alternative history novels, Mosley and Winston Churchill lead a fascist Britain after the Allies lose the First World War. Mosley is also referred to in Turtledove’s Colonization trilogy, where MP Mosley introduces legislation to revoke the citizenship of the country’s Jews; and in Turtledove’s novel, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, where he was given control of Britain after the Nazis won World War II.

• In the film It Happened Here, Mosley is implied to be the puppet leader of German-occupied Britain.

• In Guy Walters‘s alternative history novel The Leader, Mosley has taken power as “The Leader” of Great Britain in 1937. King Edward VIII is still on the throne, Winston Churchill is a prisoner on theIsle of Man, and Prime Minister Mosley is conspiring with Adolf Hitler about the fate of Britain’s Jewish population.

• In Philip Roth‘s alternative history novel The Plot Against America, a secret pact between President Charles Lindbergh and Hitler is said to include an agreement to impose Mosley as the ruler of a German-occupied Britain with America’s blessing after a sham attempt by Lindbergh to convince Churchill to negotiate peace with Hitler would fail.

• In Kim Newman‘s alternative history novel The Bloody Red Baron, Mosley is shot down and killed in 1918 by Erich von Stalhein (from the Biggles series by W. E. Johns), with a character later commenting that “a career has been ended before it was begun.”

• Mosley becomes Leader of Britain after the alien invasion is defeated in Superman: War of the Worlds.

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BELOW: SIGNED COLLAGE PRINT OF LINDA CALVEY, BLACK WIDOW, PERSONALLY SIGNED BY HER. THIS BEING A PRINT OF THE ORIGINAL PAINTING BY PAUL BRIDGMAN , GLOUCESTERSHIRE ARTIST WHICH IS HERE ON DISPLAY AT THE JAIL .

ABOVE: ORIGINAL PERSONALLY SIGNED OIL PAINTING ENTITLED ‘TRANQUILITY’ BY LINDA CALVEY. THIS WAS PAINTED FOR LINDA’S MOTHER  WHILST INCARCERATED IN HIGHPOINT PRISON, SUFFOLK  IN NOVEMBER 2002 AS CAN BE SEEN ABOVE.  

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ABOVE  & BELOW … LINDA CALVEY -THE BLACK WIDOW LEAVES COURT IN A HIGH SECURITY  POLICE VEHICLE DURING HER TRIAL AT THE OLD BAILEY , LONDON IN NOVEMBER 1991 . SHE SERVED 18 YEARS IN VARIOUS WOMEN’S HIGH SECURITY PRISONS FOR A MURDER THAT SHE HAS CONSISTENTLY DENIED COMMITTING

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Original painting by Gloucestershire Artist Paul Bridgman for and on display here at Littledean Jail

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BELOW:  TABLOID SENSATIONALISM…. THE SUNDAY PEOPLE IN DECEMBER 2006 AIM TO RIDICULE LINDA CALVEY WHILST SHE IS STILL IN PRISON .

BELOW : LINDA CALVEY (THE BLACK WIDOW) …BRITAIN’S NOTORIOUS FORMER FEMALE ARMED ROBBER, GANGSTER AND ALLEGED MURDERESS….WHO SERVED OVER 20 YEARS IN PRISON (18 YEARS OF THESE FOR A MURDER SHE STILL VEHEMENTLY CLAIMS TO THIS DAY SHE DID NOT COMMIT ) ….. SEEN FILMED HERE AT LITTLEDEAN JAIL HAVING A HEAD AND HANDS CAST FOR DISPLAY ( FOR THE LINDA CALVEY – BLACK WIDOW EXHIBITION ) NOW ON PERMANENT DISPLAY AS PART OF THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION .
THESE CASTS HAVING BEEN MADE BY NICK REYNOLDS , SON OF THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY MASTERMIND – BRUCE REYNOLDS

BELOW: LINDA CALVEY WITH ANDY JONES OF THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION  PRESENTING A HANDMADE CUSHION ACQUIRED FROM NOTORIOUS BRITISH SERIAL KILLER ROSE WEST WHILST IMPRISONED TOGETHER AT HMP DURHAM IN 1994 …. NOW ON DISPLAY AT LITTLEDEAN JAIL ALONG WITH VARIOUS OTHER MEMORABILIA ITEMS KINDLY DONATED FOR HISTORICAL DISPLAY AT THE JAIL .

ABOVE & BELOW : IMAGES OF BOTH SIDES OF THIS CARD AS PERSONALLY DISCRIBED BY LINDA HERSELF IN THE HANDWRITEN AND SIGNED PIECE BELOW

ABOVE AND BELOW : A CHRISTMAS CARD FROM MYRA HINDLEY TO LINDA CALVEY WHILST THEY WERE BOTH IN PRISON, ALONG WITH A HANDWRITTEN AND SIGNED LETTER FROM LINDA CONFIRMING THE ABOVE.

BELOW: A FEW IMAGES TAKEN IN FEBRUARY 2018, OF A RECENT CATCH UP WITH LINDA CALVEY AND ANDY JONES OF THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION DURING A PRIVATE VISIT TO HER HOME.  WHEREUPON SHE ALSO KINDLY ADDED SOME PERSONALLY HAND SIGNED ANNOTATIONS TO VARIOUS EXHIBIT FEATURES FOR DISPLAY IN HER EXHIBITION AREA HERE AT LITTLEDEAN JAIL .

NEWSPAPER FEATURE ON LINDA CALVEY’S MARRIAGE TO GEORGE CEASAR IN 2009 .

SHE VEHEMENTLY DENIES KILLING HER FORMER LOVER RON COOK WHO WAS SHOT AT POINT BLANK RANGE WITH A SHOTGUN AT THE HOME OF LINDA CALVEY, THE CRIME FOR WHICH SHE SERVED A TOTAL OF 18 YEARS IN PRISON .

 SHE CLAIMS SHE WAS AFFORDED THE OPPORTUNITY BY THE HOME OFFICE AUTHORITIES  TO SERVE A LESSER SENTENCE OF 7 YEARS IF SHE CONFESSED TO THIS CRIME .

SHE REFUSED THIS OFFER CLAIMING THAT…. WHY SHOULD SHE CONFESS TO A CRIME SHE NEVER COMMITTED?

 INSTEAD THE HOME OFFICE INCREASED THE TARIFF ON TWO OCCASIONS  TO A TOTAL  18 YEAR LIFE SENTENCE WHICH SHE SERVED IN FULL AS A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE .

COME VISIT THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION AND SEE FOR YOURSELVES WHAT LINDA CALVEY HAS TO SAY IN HER OWN WORDS …

Linda Calvey

Linda Calvey is a female murderer and armed robber jailed for killing her lover Ronnie Cook in 1990. She was known as the “Black Widow” because all of her lovers ended up either dead or in prison.^[1]

Previous criminal career

Calvey began her criminal career as a lookout, later becoming a getaway driver and eventually wielding guns herself during robberies.^[2]

Murder of Cook

She paid a hitman Daniel Reece £10,000 to kill Cook. However he lost his nerve at the last minute and Calvey picked up the gun herself shooting the victim at point blank range whilst he kneeled in front of her.^[3]

At the time of her release Calvey was Britain‘s longest serving female prisoner. She spent 18 and a half years in prison for the murder of Cook and had also previously served three and a half years for an earlier robbery.^[4]

In 2002 a book by Kate Kray detailing Calvey’s life and crimes was published

BELOW ARE A NUMBER OF IMAGES OF SOME OF THE PERSONAL EXHIBIT ITEMS BELONGING TO LINDA CALVEY ON DISPLAY HERE AT THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION , IMAGES OF LINDA PICTURED HERE AT LITTLEDEAN JAIL AND AT VARIOUS EVENTS ETC ETC 

Black Widow in freedom bid

ABOVE: Linda Calvey pictured here during a private visit to The Crime Through Time Collection at Littledean Jail in the Forest of Dean , Gloucestershire.

A woman known as the Black Widow who was jailed for life for shooting dead her lover at point-blank range launched a new High Court bid for freedom today.

Lawyers for Linda Calvey asked a judge for permission to challenge Home Secretary David Blunkett’s failure to refer her case to the Parole Board.

Her counsel Alan Newman QC accused Mr Blunkett of acting unlawfully and in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Calvey, 53, who was in court to hear her case argued, has served 12 years of her life sentence and is currently held at Highpoint Prison, Suffolk.

She was convicted in November 1991 of the murder of Ronald Cook.

At her Old Bailey trial the jury was told that Calvey originally hired a hit man, Daniel Reece, for £10,000 to carry out the murder in November 1990.

But he had lost his nerve at the last minute, and she forced Cook to kneel in front of her before carrying out the killing.

Both Calvey and Reece, who was also jailed for life, denied murdering Cook at Calvey’s home in Plaistow, east London, in November 1990.

The trial jury was told Calvey was nicknamed the Black Widow because of her habit of dressing in black after her husband Mickey was shot dead by police in 1978 as he was carrying out an armed robbery.

Today Mr Newman told the court that the trial judge set the minimum period she must serve for retribution and deterrence at seven years – but the then Home Secretary more than doubled the tariff to 15 years in 1993. The tariff was reviewed and reset in 1998.

In November last year, the House of Lords ruled in the case of Anderson that it was incompatible with human rights laws for the Home Secretary to set tariffs for mandatory lifers.

Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights required minimum periods in custody to be set by “an independent and impartial tribunal”.

Following that ruling Ms Calvey asked the Home Office to refer her case to the Parole Board as a matter of urgency, but her request was turned down.

Mr Newman told Mr Justice Jackson, sitting in London, that the Home Secretary’s failure to do so was unreasonable and breached Article 5 of the convention, which guaranteed a prisoner’s right to have their case reassessed if the basis for his or her detention changed.

He said it was “irrelevant” that the Lord Chief Justice had also concluded that the tariff should be 15 years.

Mr Blunkett had taken the view that Ms Calvey would have to wait until she could take advantage of new legislation passing through Parliament dealing with the position of lifers’ tariffs.

But by then she would probably have served the full 15-year tariff, and this would amount to a “cruel punishment” contrary to the 1688 Bill of Rights, said Mr Newman.

He told the judge that the case could affect many other murderers serving life sentences.

Seeking leave to apply for judicial review, he said: “The present application raises important and difficult points of law. Whatever may be the eventual outcome, even if at the end of the day the Secretary of State’s view prevails, this case clearly should be allowed to proceed to a full hearing.”

Would you marry the black widow? Ex-gangster Linda Calvey finds a new fiance

She’s a notorious gangster’s moll and every man who’s fallen for her has ended up dead or in jail. Now she’s finished a 28-year stretch for murder – and found a rich fiance. Has he got more money than sense?

Potentially lethal things, cars. Linda Calvey had a close call with an exploding spark
plug the other day. It left her a little shaken.

‘Afterwards, the guy in the garage told me that I was very lucky the engine did not go up, because I’d have been a gonner,’ she explains, breezy as you like.

Taking a chance: Linda Calvey and husband-to-be George Ceasar, who trusts her implicitly

‘I was telling my friend and she said: “Oh goodness, Linda. It could have been even worse. What if George had been driving and he’d been blown to pieces? You’d have been back inside in no time.” She was right, too. I can see the headlines now: The Black Widow Strikes Again.’

For some reason she seems to find this funny. Even more curiously, George, the man she will marry next year, is rocking with laughter too, tears collecting in his eyes.

Why the hilarity? Surely no sane person — or, at the very least, no lawabiding person — would regard it as funny to be so closely associated with Linda Calvey, behind the wheel or not.

Linda is the stuff of legends

For Linda is the stuff of legends — East End gangster legends, mostly.

In notoriety terms, she is up there with the Krays (indeed, Reggie Kray once proposed to her, which kind of says it all). So did ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser. In glamour terms, she is in a league of her own.

For most of her adult life she has gone by the name of the Black Widow, dubbed so ever since one police officer with whom she’d had dealings pondered the fact that ‘every man she has ever been involved with is either in prison or dead’.

When Myra Hindley died a few years back, Linda — her prison hairdresser, oddly enough — assumed the title of the longest-serving female prisoner in the country.

That 18-year stint was for blasting a former lover to death with a shotgun. Another lover was her co-defendant in the case, and was sent down, too.

They later married behind bars, although — as is so often the way with Linda — it didn’t last.

Her first husband Micky (the one who taught her to be a career criminal — armed robbery to be precise) met a violent end, too, although this was at the hands of the police, who confronted him mid hold-up. That is quite some history to be trailing up the aisle with poor George, who seems like ever such a nice man.

George’s past is squeaky clean

They will marry in the spring with seven — count them! — bridesmaids in tow. Isn’t that a tad excessive for a 60-year-old grandmother getting hitched for the third time? Perhaps.

But then nothing about Linda Calvey was ever understated.

Four months ago, she was released from prison and into the arms of her new love, whom she met while she was on day release.

George Ceasar is a businessman and a part-time ski instructor, and ‘the farthest thing in the world from a gangster’, according to his future wife, who seems almost surprised by this. He drives a red Rolls-Royce (‘bought rather than nicked,’ she grins). His past is squeaky clean, literally. He used to run a successful bleach factory.

‘We were the first people to put bleach in bottles,’ he tells me, proudly.

He should really be the sort of man who would run a mile from Linda Calvey and the criminal underworld she epitomises.

So why, then, is he gazing adoringly at her and bemoaning the peculiarities of the British parole system, in the way that most men of his background would tut-tut at how you can never find a Post Office when you need one.

Gangster Reggie Kray and “Mad” Frankie Fraser both proposed to Linda Calvey

‘Can’t you poison someone in daylight hours?’

George simply cannot believe that his bride-to-be is still subject to ‘barmy’ parole conditions, which mean she cannot spend the night at his — or their, as it is now — home.

‘They have this mad idea that I am in some danger because of her,’ he says, appalled.

‘The prison officers took me aside when I went to visit her, saying: “Be careful.”

‘They implied she might try to kill me, which is nonsense. Even if it were true, do the authorities really think that they are protecting me by allowing her to be here with me only during the day. Can’t you poison someone in daylight hours?

‘It’s just ludicrous, from all angles. Does she seem dangerous to you?’

Erm, well, no. But then, didn’t Harold Shipman’s patients think he was a darling? I pitch up at George’s sprawling 13-room period house in the Kent countryside, hoping to talk to Britain’s most notorious female gangster, and am taken aback by what I find.

Her demeanour — warm, sparky, surprisingly vulnerable, endlessly entertaining — sets the tone for what will be a truly surreal interview.

‘It is the first time I’ve had a Christmas tree in 18 years. Every year I had Christmas
inside, all I could think of was: “I want my own tree.” George wanted to get an artificial one. I said: “No, George — it has to be real. That’s what I’ve dreamed of.” He said: “Well, whatever you want, my dear, you will have.”’

George was smitten from the start

While I try to get the interview under way — remember that the subject matter is murder, armed robbery and organised crime — they bicker about who will make the tea and whether they are going to see Barry Manilow that evening. She wants to go, but he doesn’t.

I feel as though I have stepped into a rather uneasy cross between a Guy Ritchie film and an Ealing comedy. So, how clever is the woman who has been billed as Britain’s most notorious female gangster? On this evidence, extremely. The other inmates called her Ma in prison, and you can see why.

She is attractive. A little brassy, yes — the lead character in Lynda La Plante’s Widows was apparently based on her — but not overly so. She is tactile, engaging and endearing.

George was smitten from the very start. They met in a Medway town when she was on day release from prison two years ago.

‘I was in a restaurant and it was very busy, so she and her friend shared the table with me. We got chatting, and I thought to myself: “Well, this is a lovely lady here”,’ says George.

‘She said she was on a day out. I said: “Oh, an outing?”

‘She said: “No, a day out from prison.”

‘I said: “Blimey. What did you do? It obviously wasn’t something that bad if you’re in an
open prison.”

‘She said: “The thing I went down for was bad, but the point is I didn’t do it. I am innocent.”’

‘She said she didn’t do it, and I believe her’

George — in his mid-Seventies — has had troubles of his own. He tells me that he, too, has been married twice and that his second wife ‘robbed him blind’.

‘You don’t have to be murdered by a woman to be done over by her,’ he says at one
point. He has grown-up children who he never sees. It sounds as though he was lonely when this captivating creature came into his life. Despite the horrific charge list, he brushes over the gangster stuff — even the bits Linda has admitted to.

‘Yes, she was a naughty girl, but haven’t you done anything wrong?’ he asks disingenuously.

He also claims she is the kindest person he has ever met. They decide between themselves that she’s a much nicer person than he is on the grounds that she once gave a cold stranger her own gloves, while such a thing would never occur to George.

Linda was the longest serving female prisoner in the country

It almost seems churlish to bring up more bloody matters and he sighs when I do so.

‘We’ve talked about it all,’ says George. ‘She’s told me what she did do and what she didn’t do. Yes, she did make mistakes, but she told me that on the big one — killing Ron — she didn’t do it, and I believe her. She was stitched up.

‘She has been completely honest with me. After we’d been out on our first date, I sat her down in the living room and said: “I want the truth. I don’t care whether you did
it or not, but I want to know the truth.” She swore she didn’t, and I believe her.’

Linda has always maintained that she did not kill Ronald Cook. She points out that had she professed some guilt she would have been out of jail years ago.

‘They kept me in because I refused to say I did it. But I’ve always held my hands up to what I’ve done. Armed robbery, yes. I’ve done terrible things, things so bad I can hardly believe it myself. But I did not kill Ron, and I will go to my grave saying it.’

‘Men close to me end up dead or in prison… it’s not my fault’

However, in November 1991, a jury decided that she did, and the evidence presented in court was as chilling as Linda’s current set-up is cosy.

Ron had been her lover for several years, but when he went to prison, she turned to several of his friends — also gangsters — for comfort.

Things got complicated, in the sexual and financial sense.

The court heard that, on Ron’s release, Linda was terrified that he would discover she had been unfaithful and had spent the heist money he had stashed away. She allegedly asked another lover, Daniel Reece, to kill him.

An agreement was put in place. Linda collected Ron from prison and drove him to the home they shared. Reece was waiting, but lost his nerve at the crucial moment, leaving Linda to take the shotgun off him and finish the task herself.

Surreally enough, we find ourselves in George’s kitchen when this horrific chapter is broached.

Both are standing as Linda tells her version, effectively re-enacting aspects of that day as she describes how she cowered in a corner as a gunman — the real killer, she says — fired at pointblank range.

The pair of them talk, quite matter-of-factly, about it as Linda puts the kettle on, saying that the Black Widow tag is quite unfair.

‘OK, men close to me came a cropper, but that’s because I associated with gangsters. They end up dead or in prison. That’s life. It’s not my fault.’

‘I liked the lifestyle’

What she fails to do, however, is convey any real sense of remorse — even for the fact that a man she professed to love died in such a manner. Cold-blooded? Barking mad? Or has she just been removed from law-abiding society for so long that she finds such complete moral detachment easy?

What’s interesting is that the only man she talks about with genuine affection is her first husband, Micky — shot dead by armed officers in a botched robbery.

‘I was from a respectable family, no hint of trouble there,’ she says of their meeting.

‘Micky was trouble, but oh so charming with it. Even my mother said: “I can see why you have fallen for him.” He worshipped me, my Micky. He gave me the world. I
didn’t know — honest I didn’t — that most of it was nicked.’

Micky robbed at gunpoint. His team’s jobs were mostly planned in their kitchen, with her making tea and sandwiches, listening in. Learning. She maintains that she got involved in the hard stuff only when Micky died.

‘I kind of just slid in. I started doing some of the driving, then getting more involved. I had children to feed. I liked the lifestyle. Yes. I wasn’t evil, though. I wasn’t.’

She even insists, after a moment’s hesitation, that the guns she carried weren’t even loaded.

Linda Calvey poses for a photo at a Holloway prison party

Tougher than the rest

She clearly hates the police and blames The Establishment, whatever that is, for the death of Micky. But she isn’t nearly as bitter as you might expect about her time in prison.

Again she talks dispassionately about how she survived: it seems to have boiled down to being tougher than all the rest, but never appearing to be tough. Black humour stalks every sentence.

‘When I went to Durham, I said I wouldn’t talk to anyone who had killed a child. The wardens said: “Well, you’ll not be talking to many people here then. They are all
murderers.” ’

She struck up a bizarre relationship with Myra Hindley. She says they weren’t friends, but they were close enough that Linda dyed Hindley’s hair regularly. She clearly
doesn’t put herself in the same criminal, morally deficient class, though.

‘Myra never regretted what she had done. I was often shocked by her. I remember when I was working in the prison library she came in and asked to order a book, but she wanted me to put it in the name of another girl, who never came into the library. I asked what book. It was The Devil And His Works. She got it, too.

George looks on — fascinated rather than horrified — as she chats away about somehow finding herself in the same prison wing as one of the most notorious female killers of our time.

‘I missed seeing my grandchildren grow up’

Is there remorse on her part? Yes, undoubtedly so — although mostly for herself and her loved ones.

‘I did not kill Ron and should not have done that sentence, but I know full well that it was my lifestyle that put me in prison for that murder, and that is a terrible thing to live with.

‘All my grandchildren were born when I was inside. I haven’t seen any of them grow up, and they never had a granny.

‘One day, one of them had to write in school about what they did at the weekend. My granddaughter wrote: “We went to see Granny and I got tickled by the policeman and
then we went swimming.” She meant she’d been frisked coming to the prison to see me. That floors you, you know.’

‘Mate, she saw you coming’

She seems close to tears. George pats her arm and talks about how they could put another Christmas tree in the hallway, if she wants.

I wonder if her realizes that most people will look at him and conclude that George, with his red Rolls-Royce, his big empty house and his ability to see the best in people and conclude: ‘Mate, she saw you coming.’

Have they considered a prenuptial agreement?

‘I’ve said I would sign one,’ Linda says sharply, but George shakes his head in distaste.

‘You can’t go into a marriage thinking like that. You have to trust people. Life’s a gamble, but if you lose trust, what have you got? So, she might kill me. Well, hell, I’ll
take the chance.’

Next spring — “If I last that long,” quips George — those wedding bells will ring. Linda is already thinking about flowers and cakes.

As I leave, she skips off to fetch me some of the cake decorations she learned to make in prison.

They are truly remarkable: tiny flowers, berries and leaves, made out of icing, but impossible to tell from the real thing, even up close.

The woman has a rare, impressive — and deeply disturbing — talent for leaving you wondering what is real and what is fake.

 

DAILY MAIL NEWS REPORT 6 SEPTEMBER 2016 ….

Has the curse of the Black Widow struck again? Notorious gangster’s moll Linda Calvey is single once more after third husband, 84, dies in Spanish hospital

• George Ceasar passed away over the weekend, leaving Calvey a widow
• Policeman once mused all Calvey’s husbands end up dead or behind bars 
• But Ceasar was confident his younger wife was not going to ‘bump him off’
• Friend says Calvey is concerned people may not think she is a gold-digger 

A killer known as the Black Widow is single again following the death of her third husband – but a close friend has insisted it has nothing to do with her infamous track record for losing spouses.

Linda Calvey – who was given her nickname after after one police officer mused ‘every man she has ever been involved with is either in prison or dead’ – is mourning the passing of Goerge Ceasar, 84, in a Spanish hospital this weekend.

The couple had been married five years and, despite Ceasar’s advanced age and ill-health, Calvey is said to be bracing herself for an adverse reaction from critics

 

PICTURED HERE ABOVE IS LINDA’S FIRST HUSBAND MICKY WHO WAS SHOT DEAD BY A POLICE MARKSMAN

The friend said: ‘She dreads imagining the wrong conclusions people will now leap to, especially as cynics warned when she married him it was for his money, which wasn’t true.

 

‘The reality is that despite being a tough old boy, George simply passed away from a combination of illness and old age. Linda had nothing to do with his death.

‘It’s sad but that’s life.’

Calvey’s first husband was shot dead by police marksman, and the second, who she divorced, is serving life for murder, see below

Above: Second husband : marrying Danny Reece in Durham’s prison chapel in 1995 . He is still serving a life sentence

She served 18-and-a-half years in jail – the longest time behind bars by any woman in Britain – after shooting a former lover dead.

But Ceasar, who was 17 years her senior, seemed unworried by her reputation.

At his and Calvey’s lavish white wedding five years ago, the law abiding tycoon joked of his willingness to take a chance on ‘Linda not bumping me off’.

However, it is said he recently told friends that ‘marrying Linda was the worst mistake of my life’ – while Calvey hinted at a possible divorce.

‘Unlike George she wasn’t prepared to sit around at home in God’s waiting room day in day out. She spent a third of her life locked-up and when she was released she needed to be out and about,’ said the friend.

Ceasar, who left the UK to live in Spain for health reasons last winter, had spent a month in hospital near Benidorm, Costa Blanca, surrounded by Calvey’s family and friends.

The former ski instructor – who was given the last rites by a priest last week – left instructions for his ashes to be scattered on his favourite mountainside in Switzerland.

But Calvey was not at his side when he passed away as she is still subject to parole orders including travel restrictions, lives in Basildon, Essex.

Calvey, who rejected marriage proposals from villains Reggie Kray and ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser between husbands, was immortalised in the hit TV series, apltly named ‘Widows,’ by Lynda La Plante but she scoffed at claims she had made £1million from her crimes.

Her first husband Micky was shot dead by the Flying Squad in a bungled raid on a London supermarket in 1978.

She later wed hitman Danny Reece, who helped her kill her then boyfriend, Ronnie Cook in 1990.

Then, while Reece was still in jail for the murder, she asked him for a divorce to wed George.

They had first met by chance in a crowded pub in Canterbury, Kent, close to the prison where she was being prepared for release.

Ceaser asked her if she was enjoying a shopping trip in town, to which she replied: ‘Yes, but I’m from the jail down the road.’

Above: Linda with her boyfriend Ronnie Cook who she was alleged to have shot dead in cold blood .

As their friendship blossomed, he regularly visited her at HMP East Sutton Park and she confessed to him hat while she had ‘done many bad things in life’ she was not a murderer – despite the Old Bailey’s damning verdict.

Calvey has always maintained she was innocent, but jurors heard how she snatched the shotgun from Reece after he had bungled Cook’s killing, and finished him off herself.

On jail visit before her release in 2008, a concerned prison officer took besotted George aside and warned him: ‘Beware, she kills her men, you know..’

But the friend said this week: ‘Okay, the men close to Linda always came croppers but that’s because she associates with gangsters. Yes, they end up dead or in jail but it isn’t her fault.’

The friend said that she was braced for a backlash over George’s death from doubters who claimed she had only wed him for his bank balance.

Calvey had spent so long in jail that when she left her cell, her State pension amounted to only 11p a week.

‘Despite their differences, Linda greatly respected George, who was the kindest man she had ever known. She will miss him but she was never a gold digger.