GLOUCESTERSHIRE & UK POLICE MEMORABILIA PAST AND PRESENT, HERE ON DISPLAY AT THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION, LITTLEDEAN JAIL

ABOVE … A BRIEF INSIGHT INTO THE FIRST SERVING GLOUCESTERSHIRE  POLICEMAN TO BE KILLED IN THE LINE OF DUTY  IN 1861. SERGEANT SAMUEL BEARD WAS , AT THE TIME STATIONED HERE AT LITTLEDEAN JAIL FOR SOME 16 YEARS .  THE GLOUCESTERSHIRE POLICE FORCE WAS FORMED IN 1839, MAKING IT THE SECOND OLDEST COUNTY POLICE FORCE IN THE UK .

INCIDENTALLY , THE FIRST RECORDED DEATH OF A SERVING PARISH CONSTABLE (FORERUNNERS TO THE POLICE FORCE ) IN THE FOREST OF DEAN WAS  HENRY THOMPSON IN THE PARISH OF RUARDEAN , 14 MAY 1817 , AGED 31 .

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ON THE HISTORY OF THE GLOUCESTERSHIRE POLICE FORCE PLEASE CLICK ON  THE TWO LINKS HERE OR  HERE

BELOW …. A BRIEF LOOK AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION , LITTLEDEAN JAIL, FEATURING VARIOUS POLICE MANNEQUINS AND OTHER POLICE MEMORABILIA  DISPLAYS .

HERE’S  JUST  A BRIEF PICTORIAL INSIGHT INTO SOME OF THE BRITISH POLICE MEMORABILIA AND EPHEMERA ON DISPLAY AT LITTLEDEAN JAIL WHICH COVERS THE HISTORY OF THE POLICE THROUGH THE AGES .

THIS COLLECTION IS BELIEVED TO BE ONE OF THE LARGEST PRIVATE COLLECTIONS OF POLICE MEMORABILIA IN THE UK . WE HAVE HUNDREDS OF VINTAGE HAND PAINTED  TRUNCHEONS , RESTRAINTS , HELMETS, BADGES, UNIFORMS AND MUCH MORE .

SEE BELOW  FOR PICTORIAL SLIDESHOW OF A FEW EXHIBITS ON DISPLAY

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

SEE BELOW VIDEO FOR EDUCATIONAL INSIGHT INTO THE HISTORY OF THE BRITISH POLICE

A SUPERB PIECE OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE POLICE CRIME SCENE MEMORABILIA  ON DISPLAY AT LITTLEDEAN JAIL

JUST ONE OF A GREAT MANY BRITISH POLICE MEMORABILIA ITEMS THROUGH THE AGES ON DISPLAY IN ONE OF THE UK’S LARGEST PRIVATE COLLECTIONS OF LAW AND ORDER MATERIAL . 

BELOW IS  AN  IMAGE OF WHAT  IS BELIEVED TO BE ONE OF THE VERY FEW SURVIVING VINTAGE  GLOUCESTERSHIRE CONSTABULARY’S FINGERPRINT KITS (CIRCA 1940’S) . COMPLETE WITH IT’S ORIGINAL BOX, INKS, ROLLER, POWDERS AND BRUSHES ETC .ALSO VARIOUS APPROPRIATE  DOCUMENTATION FOR FINGERPRINT EVIDENCE PURPOSES . FOR MORE INFORMATION AND PICTURES RELATING TO THIS ITEM CLICK HERE

Picture By: Jules Annan Picture Shows:GLOUCESTERSHIRE POLICE FINGERPRINT KIT CIRCA 1940’S Date 25TH September 2011 Ref: *World Rights Only* *Unbylined uses will incur an additional discretionary fee!*

A short history of British Police focusing on truncheon and armour – Arms in Action

ORIGINAL PAINTING BY GLOUCESTERSHIRE ARTIST PAUL BRIDGMAN DEPICTING WPC YVONNE FLETCHER, WHO WAS FATALLY SHOT OUTSIDE THE LIBYAN EMBASSY , ST JAMES SQUARE, LONDON IN 1984 . THIS PAINTING IS ON DISPLAY AT LITTLEDEAN JAIL.

PC DAVID RATHBAND WHO WAS SHOT AND BLINDED BY RAOUL MOAT PERSONAL SIGNED PHOTOGRAPH ON DISPLAY AT LITTLEDEAN JAIL

 

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE BRITISH POLICE

The word “Police” means, generally, the arrangements made in all civilised countries to ensure that the inhabitants keep the peace and obey the law. The word also denotes the force of peace officers (or police) employed for this purpose.

In 1829 Sir Richard Mayne wrote:
“The primary object of an efficient police is the prevention of crime: the next that of detection and punishment of offenders if crime is committed. To these ends all the efforts of police must be directed. The protection of life and property, the preservation of public tranquillity, and the absence of crime, will alone prove whether those efforts have been successful and whether the objects for which the police were appointed have been attained.”

In attaining these objects, much depends on the approval and co-operation of the public, and these have always been determined by the degree of esteem and respect in which the police are held. One of the key principles of modern policing in Britain is that the police seek to work with the community and as part of the community.

Origins of policing

The origin of the British police lies in early tribal history and is based on customs for securing order through the medium of appointed representatives. In effect, the people were the police. The Saxons brought this system to England and improved and developed the organisation. This entailed the division of the people into groups of ten, called “tythings”, with a tything-man as representative of each; and into larger groups, each of ten tythings, under a “hundred-man” who was responsible to the Shire-reeve, or Sheriff, of the County.

The tything-man system, after contact with Norman feudalism, changed considerably but was not wholly destroyed. In time the tything-man became the parish constable and the Shire-reeve the Justice of the Peace, to whom the parish constable was responsible. This system, which became widely established in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, comprised, generally, one unarmed able-bodied citizen in each parish, who was appointed or elected annually to serve for a year unpaid, as parish constable. He worked in co-operation with the local Justices in securing observance of laws and maintaining order. In addition, in the towns, responsibility for the maintenance of order was conferred on the guilds and, later, on other specified groups of citizens, and these supplied bodies of paid men, known as “The Watch”, for guarding the gates and patrolling the streets at night.

In the eighteenth century came the beginnings of immense social and economic changes and the consequent movement of the population to the towns. The parish constable and “Watch” systems failed completely and the impotence of the law-enforcement machinery was a serious menace. Conditions became intolerable and led to the formation of the “New Police”.

The Metropolitan Police

In 1829, when Sir Robert Peel was Home Secretary, the first Metropolitan Police Act was passed and the Metropolitan Police Force was established. This new force superseded the local Watch in the London area but the City of London was not covered. Even within the Metropolitan Police District there still remained certain police establishments, organised during the eighteenth century, outside the control of the Metropolitan Police Office, viz:-

• The Bow Street Patrols, mounted and foot, the latter commonly called the “Bow Street runners”.
• Police Office constables attached to the offices of, and under the control of, the Magistrates.
• The Marine or River Police.

By 1839 all these establishments had been absorbed by the Metropolitan Police Force. The City of London Police, which was set up in 1839, remains an independent force to this day.

HISTORY OF THE METROPOLITAN POLICE

Time Line 1829 – 1849

Until 1829, law enforcement had been lacking in organisation. As London expanded during the 18th and 19th centuries the whole question of maintaining law and order had become a matter of public concern. In 1812, 1818 and 1822, Parliamentary committees were appointed to investigate the subject of crime and policing. But it was not until 1828 when Sir Robert Peel set up his committee that the findings paved the way for his police Bill, which led to the setting up of an organised police service in London.

1829	The formation of the Metropolitan Police Force on 29 September 1829 by Sir Robert Peel.

Sir Charles Rowan and Richard Mayne are appointed as Justices of the Peace in charge of the Force.1830PC Joseph Grantham becomes first officer to be killed on duty, at Somers Town, Euston. The Metropolitan Police ranks were increased considerably to 3,300 men.1831Further riots. A crowd attacks Apsley House, home of the Duke of Wellington, and break all the windows. The police eventually restore order.1832Richard Mayne, the Commissioner, tries to clarify the roles of the Magistrates and the Commissioners as the Bow Street Runners continue their existance.1833Coldbath Fields Riot (Grays Inn Road). A major crowd disturbance was dealt with by the Metropolitan Police with controversial use of force.

PC Robert Culley was killed at this event, and the jury returned a verdict of Justifiable Homicide.

1834The Select Committee designated with the task of inquiring into the state of the Police of the Metropolis reported ‘that the Metropolitan Police Force, as respects its influence in repressing crime and the security it has given to persons and property, is one of the most valuable modern institutions’

1835In October a fire breaks out at the Millbank Penitentiary and 400 Metropolitan Police officers and a detachment of the Guards are called to restore order. This prompted the press to call for the police to be put in command at all large fires.

1836The Metropolitan Police absorb the Bow Street Horse Patrol into its control.

1837Select Committee appointed to look into the affairs of the police offices. They also propose that the City of London be placed under the control of the Metropolitan Police.

1838Select Committee finally reports and recommends incorporating of Marine Police and Bow Street Runners into the Metropolitan Police and the disbandment of the Bow Street Office and other Offices. These were all agreed and put into effect.

1839The two Justices of the Peace, Rowan and Mayne are termed Commissioners by the Metropolitan Police Act 1839. Enlargement of the Metropolitan Police District by the same Act

.1840Gould Interrogation case in which Police Sergeant Otway attempts induced self-incrimination in the accused, which is immediately discountenanced by the Courts and Commissioner Richard Mayne.

1841Formation of Dockyard divisions of the Metropolitan police

.1842Formation of the Detective Department

.1843The Woolwich Arsenal became part of the area to be patrolled by the Metropolitan Police

.1844Richard Mayne, Commissioner, called to give evidence to the Select Committee on Dogs. He stated that in the Metropolis there were a rising number of lost or stolen dogs. In the preceding year over 600 dogs were lost and 60 stolen. He declared the law to be in a very unsatisfactory state as people paid money for restoration of dogs. ‘People pay monies to parties whom they have reason to believe have either stolen or enticed them away in order to get the reward…’ Mayne believed it to be organised crime.

1845The Commissioners, in returns to the Home Office, states that the aim of the Force was to have one Policeman to 450 head of population.

1846Plain clothes officers were frequently used at this time, but a June order made clear that two officers per division would be employed on detective duties, but that police in plain clothes must make themselves known if interfered with in their duty.

1847Statistics for the year were; 14,091 robberies; 62,181 people taken in charge, 24,689 of these were summarily dealt with; 5,920 stood trial and 4,551 were convicted and sentenced; 31,572 people were discharged by the magistrates.

The Metropolitan Police were still, despite their good record on crime prevention, facing discipline problems amongst their officers on the 18 divisions, with 238 men being dismissed in the year.

1848Large scale enrolement of Special constables to assist the Metropolitan Police in controlling the Chartist Demonstrations

.1849Authorised strength 5,493. In reality 5,288 were available for duty. The population at this time in London was 2,473,758.

Time Line 1850 – 1869

1850	Retirement of Sir Charles Rowan as joint Commissioner. Captain William Hay is appointed in his place.
1851	The Great Exhibition with its special crowd problems forces the police to temporarily form a new police division. The total manpower of the force at this time was 5,551, covering 688 square miles.
1852	Sir Charles Rowan, first joint Commissioner, dies. In his obituary note of 24 May The Times wrote: “No individual of any rank or station could be more highly esteemed or loved when living, or more regretted in death.”
1853	Lord Dudley Stuart, MP for Marylebone and a persistent critic of the police, suggests in Parliament that the police are not worth the money they cost. He recommends that they be reduced in numbers, and a higher class of officers be recruited to control the constables.
1854	Out of 5,700 in the Metropolitan Force, 2.5% were Scottish, 6.5% Irish. The Commissioner was not happy about employing these officers in areas of high Scottish or Irish ethnic concentrations.
1855	Death of Captain William Hay. Sir Richard Mayne becomes sole Commissioner.
1856	Detective Force increased to 10 men, with an extra Inspector and Sergeant.
1857	The Commissioner Richard Mayne is paid a salary of £1,883, and his two Assistant Commissioners are paid salaries of £800 each.
1858	First acquisition of Police van for conveying prisoners. These were horse drawn, and known as‘Black Marias’.
1859	Police orders of 6 January state “It is a great gratification to the Commissioner that the number of police guilty of the offence of drunkenness during the late Christmas holidays has been much lower than last year… In A, F and R Division only one man was reported in each, and in H Division not one man was reported in the present or last year..”
1860	Police begin the occasional use of hand ambulances for injured, sick or drunk people. Accommodation or ‘ambulance sheds’ are later provided for these in police station yards.
1861	Police orders on the 25 January made allowance for one third of Metropolitan Police officers in Dockyards “to be relieved each Sunday, to give them an opportunity of attending Divine Service…”

The Metropolitan Police act as firemen at the British Museum. The Superintendent in charge said of them “From their manner of doing the work, I should be inclined to place considerable confidence in these men in an emergency.”

1862Further expansion in the Metropolitan Police with the formations of the X and W Divisions in the west, and Y Division in the north

1863Drunkenness is still a problem in the force, and in this year 215 officers were dismissed for this reason

.1864Execution of 5 pirates of the ship ‘Flowery Land’ at Newgate. The Metropolitan Police supply nearly 800 officers to keep the peace.

1865Further extensions of the Metropolitan Police District in terms of the area patrolled in north east London.

1866 3,200 police under the command of Commissioner Richard Mayne were used to control a serious riot in Hyde Park. 28 police were permanently disabled, and Mayne was hit by a stone which cut his head open. He was forced to call in the Military to restore order

.1867The Metropolitan Police are severely criticised after Commissioner Richard Mayne ignores a warning about the Clerkenwell bombing by the Fenians. Mayne offers his resignation, but it is refused.1868Death of Commissioner Sir Richard Mayne. Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Labalmondiere acts as Commissioner.

1869Lieutenant Colonel Edmund Henderson appointed Commissioner.

Time Line 1870 – 1889

1870	The standard height for Metropolitan Police officers is raised to 5ft 8ins, except for Thames Division, where it is 5ft 7ins.
1871	As a result of frequent larcenies of linen, the Commissioner Edmund Henderson said, on the 21 April, “Constables are to call at the houses of all persons on their beats having wet linen in their gardens, and caution them of the risk they run in having them stolen…”
1872	Police strike for the first time. Various men are disciplined or dismissed, although these latter are later allowed back in to the Force.
1873	The Metropolitan Police acquire 9 new stations : North Woolwich, Rodney Road (Lock’s Fields), Chislehurst, Finchley, Isleworth, Putney, South Norwood, Harrow and Enfield Town.
1874	A survey of recruiting over a 2 year period showed that of those who had joined the force; 31% came from land jobs, 12% from military services, and 5% from other police jobs. The remainder came mostly from manual jobs. The majority of recruits and serving officers came from outside of London.
1875	New police offices at Great Scotland Yard are taken possession of on 4 October 1875 by the Detective and Public Carriage Departments.
1876	8 January the following order was released : “Relief from duty during severe weather – dufing the present severe weather as much indulgence as possible is to be given to the men on night duty, due regard being had to public safety..”
1877	Trial of the Detectives or Turf Fraud Scandal exposes corruption within the Force.
1878	Charles Vincent was appointed Director of Criminal Investigations, the reformed Detective Branch which became known as C.I.D.
1879	Initial rules for dealing with Murder cases, released on 7 June, stated “the body must not be moved, nor anything about it or in the room or place interfered with, and the public must be excluded..”
1880	Formation of the Convict Supervision Office for the assistance and control of convicts discharged upon license.
1881	Possibly London’s most famous police station, Bow Street, was rebuilt in this year.
1882	The growth of London and the area needing policing is illustrated in Tottenham, (Y Division) when 8 miles of new streets are formed in a year with nearly 4,000 houses on them.

The Metropolitan Police at Devonport Dockyard illustrate the diversity of the role of the force as the Police Fire Brigade has its busiest year since formation with 6 major fires

.1883Special Irish Branch formed

.1884A bomb explodes at Scotland Yard planted by the Fenians. The Special Irish Branch are hit.

1885The strength of the force at this time was 13,319, but statistics show that only 1,383 officers were available for beat duty in the day. The population of London at this time was 5,255,069.Public outrage at the explosions at the Tower of London and Houses of Parliament. Two men are sentenced to penal servitude for life as a result.

1886Trafalgar Square riot forces resignation of the Commissioner Sir Edmund Henderson.

1887Major riot in Trafalgar Square, known as ‘Bloody Sunday’, the first test for the new Commissioner Sir Charles Warren, appointed the previous year.

1888Sir Charles Warren resigns after a dispute with the Home Office, and James Monro is appointed Commissioner in his place.

Jack the Ripper murders in the Whitechapel area.1889The last of the so called “Whitechapel” murders is discovered with the death in Castle Alley on 17 July of Alice McKenzie.

Time Line 1890 – 1909

1890	Opening of the new headquarters at the Norman Shaw Building on the Embankment known as New Scotland Yard.

Police strike at Bow Street Police Station.

Sir Edward Bradford is appointed Commissioner after the resignation of James Monro.

1891The Public Carriage and Lost Property Offices move from Great Scotland Yard to the new offices at New Scotland Yard on the 21 March.

1892Dismissals and rank and pay reductions were common at this point, and the case of Pc379A Best whose resignation on 21 July illustrates how the Metropolitan Police attempted to keep its men in order. He was “in possession of a tea-can, the property of another constable, obliterating the owners number, substituting his own name and number, telling a deliberate falsehood in connection therewith; and considered unfit for the police force

”1893PC George Cooke, a serving officer, is convicted for murder and hanged.

1894The Alphonse Bertillon system of identification comes into operation.1895To join the Metropolitan Police the following qualifications were necessary:

• to be over 21 and under 27 years of age
• to stand clear 5ft 9ins without shoes or stockings
• to be able to read well, write legibly and have a fair knowledge of spelling
• to be generally intelligent
• to be free from any bodily complaint

The bodily complaints for which candidates were rejected included; flat foot, stiffness of joints, narrow chest and deformities of the face.

1896Public Carriage Office and Lost Property Offices amalgamate under the designation ‘Public Carriage Branch’.

1897Metropolitan Police Officers granted a boot allowance instead of being supplied with boots. Police boots at this time were loathed, only Sir Edward Bradford, the Commissioner, believing them suitable.

1898After a series of assaults and the murder of PC Baldwin in the vicinity of the Kingsland Road, there are calls for the Metropolitan Police to be armed with revolvers.

1899High rate of suicides amongst officers. This is blamed by certain commentators on harsh discipline and insensitive handling of the men.

As the century draws to a close it is worth noting that the Metropolitan Police on formation in 1829 had a force of about 3,000 men, and by 1899 16,000. The population of London had grown from 1,500,000 to 7 million.

1900Construction of a new floating police station at Waterloo Pier.Lord Belper Committee inquire into the best system of identification of possible criminals

.1901The Fingerprint Bureau commences operation after the findings of the Belper Report. Anthropometric measurements under the Bertillon system are still used, but begin to decline in importance.

1902The coronation of King Edward VII makes major demands on the police, resulting in 512 police pensioners being recalled for duty. Extra pay, leave and a medal were granted to all serving officers.

1903Sir Edward Bradford retires as Commissioner to be replaced by Edward Henry.

19046 new stations buildt at East Ham, Hackney, John Street, Muswell Hill, North Woolwich and Tower Bridge. 1 is near completion and 2 other started. Major works take place on 23 other stations.

1905An article in Police Review mentions that Pc William Hallett of Y Division, who had retired after 26 years as a mounted officer, had ridden 144,000 miles or more than 5 times around the world in the course of his duty.

1906The Metropolitan Police at this stage in their history are on duty for 13 days a fortnight and have an additional leave of 10 days.

1907Clash between the Metropolitan Police and 800 Suffragettes outside the House of Commons on 13 February. Mounted and Foot officers are used to disperse them, and allegations of brutality are made.

1908Police Review reports “the authorities at Scotland Yard have been seriously discussing the use of dogs as the constable companion and help, and Sir Edward Henry (Commissioner), who regards the innovation sympathetically, considers the only crucial objection to be the sentimental prejudices of the public.”

1909The Tottenham Outrage occurs, in the course of which PC William Tyler and a 10 year old boy are shot dead by anarchists.

Time Line 1910 – 1929

1910	Radio Telegraphy used for the first time, resulting in the capture of Doctor Crippen.

The miners strike in South Wales results in many Metropolitan Police officers assisting to maintain law and order.

1911The Siege of Sidney Street results in armed Metropolitan Police officers taking to the streets with the military to deal with armed anarchist criminals.

1912Assassination attempt on the life of the Commissioner, Sir Edward Henry.

Establishment of the Metropolitan Police Special Constabulary on a permanent basis.

1913The Commissioner calls for legislation to be introduced to restrict the trade in pistols following the assassination attempt on his own life.

1914With the outbreak of war, 24,000 Special Constables are sworn in, and by the end of the year there are 31,000. Annual leave is suspended for the first year of the war.

Women Police founded in this year.

1915London Ambulance Service commences operation, taking over some of the duties originally performed by the Metropolitan Police. However, police in this year convey over 11,000 people to hospital.

1916The Commissioner Sir Edward Henry signs a Police Order in November stating that any member of the Metropolitan Police renders himself liable to dismissal by joining a union.

1917At this point in WW1, some 2,300 members of the Metropolitan Police were serving in the armed services.

1918Major strike of Metropolitan Police in search of better pay and conditions, and union recognition. Sir Edward Henry resigns as Commissioner, and is replaced by Sir Nevil Macready.

1919Macready crushes a further police strike.

Women Police Patrols appointed.

Formation of Flying Squad.

1920Sir Nevil Macready retires as Commissioner, and is replaced by Brigadier-General Sir William Horwood.

1921The Police Pensions Act comes into force, fixing an age limit for each rank at which retirement shall be compulsory.

Z Division formed on the South side of the River Thames.

1922Commissioner Horwood admits that many of the men taken into the force in 1919 to replace strikers and those in the armed forces have given trouble due to neglecting their beats and drunkenness.

The Commissioner also comments on the growth in consumption of methylated spirits, with 80 convictions this year.

Women Constables reduced to an establishment of 20.

1923First Cup Final at Wembley leads to major crowd problems, controlled by the Mounted Branch. Billy, the White Horse of Wembley, and his rider Pc George Scorey become a legend.

1924The Commissioner explains in his Annual Report how the social status of a Metropolitan policeman has been raised due to his conditions of employment.

1925The Metropolitan Police begin to withdraw from policing dockyards (including Rosyth, Pembroke, Deptford Dockyards) and War Department Stations.

Sir James Olive retires from his position as an Assistant Commissioner after 53 years service.

1926Attempt to assasinate Commissioner Horwood with poisoned chocolates

1927Public Carriage Office transfered to Lambeth

1928Retirement of Brigadier-General Sir William Horwood. Viscount Byng of Vimy appointed new Commissioner.

1929Centenery of Metropolitan Police celebrated with a parade in Hyde Park and inspection by HRH the Prince of Wales.

The Police Box system commences on an experimental basis in Richmond and Wood Green.

Time Line 1930 – 1949

1930	Large number of men posted to Motor Patrol work: 4 subdivisional Inspectors, 31 Sergeants, and 324 Constables.
1931	Commissioner Byng retires. Lord Trenchard appointed.
1932	Lord Trenchard abolishes the timed Beat System and sets out his thoughts about the Metropolitan Police Personnel recruitment and promotion system.
1933	Trenchard begins his programme for the improvement of Section Houses.
1934	The Metropolitan Police College opens at Hendon.

Metropolitan Police withdraw from Devonport Dockyard, bringing to a close its presence in HM Dockyards.

1935Metropolitan Police Forensic Laboratory opened.

Lord Trenchard retires as Commissioner, and Sir Philip Game is appointed in his place.

1936The Battle of Cable Street involves the Metropolitan Police in street battles with opposing political factions.

1937The 999 system is introduced.

1938Civil Defence starts with the formation of two Reserves in the event of war. The first are retired officers, the second Special Constables.

1939I.R.A. activity results in 59 explosions in the Metropolitan Police District. 55 people are convicted for these offences.

194098 Metropolitan Police officers killed during air raids.

Click here to read about the MPS officer murdered in Hyde Park during the war

1941Air raid bombings continue, and Holloway police station is destroyed. Somers Town, Sydenham and Brixton stations are too badly damaged to be used.

1942Police officers allowed to volunteer for the Armed Forces.

1943In an attempt to curb housebreaking, the Commissioner Sir Philip Game asks people not to keep furs, saying “they are no doubt warmer, and look nicer than a tweed coat, but a live dog is better than a dead lion.

”1944Looting reaches an all time record.

1945Sir Philip Game retires and is replaced as Commissioner by Harold Scott

.1946The Metropolitan and City Police Company Fraud Department is formed.

1947Metropolitan Police face a deficiency of 4,730 men as a result of the war.

1948Indictable crime rate falls to 126,000 crimes, but this is still 40% higher than before the war.

1949Lord Oakseys committee reports on police pay, recommending small increases and London weighting.

Time Line 1950 – 1969

1950	The Metropolitan Police Roll of Honour is unveiled at Westminster Abbey by the Queen, displaying the names of officers killed in the 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 wars.
1951	Commissioner Harold Scott introduces training of cadets aged 16 – 18 to become police officers.
1952	The Dixon Report advocates many changes in the Metropolitan Police, including greater civilianisation.
1953	Sir Harold Scott retires, and is replaced as Commissioner by Sir John Nott-Bower.
1954	Serious understaffing problems, with the force consisting of only 16,000 and needing an estimated 4,000 men, mainly Police Constables.
1955	Formation of the Central Traffic Squad, consisting of 100 men.
1956	Flying Squad makes over 1,000 arrests, a record since its formation.
1957	New Information Room opens at New Scotland Yard.
1958	Sir John Nott-Bower retires as Commissioner. He is replaced by Joseph Simpson.
1959	Indictable offences reach over 160,000, the highest recorded to date.
1960	Traffic Wardens introduced.

Criminal Intelligence Section and Stolen Motor Vehicle Investigation branches established.

1961The Receivers Office moved from Scotland House to new premises at Tintagel House.

The Minicab arrives on the London scene, and the Metropolitan Police obtain 24 convictions for illegal plying for hire.

1962The rate of indictable crimes for this year reaches an all time high – 214,120.

The series ‘Police 5′, designed to prevent crime, begins on BBC.

1963The Commissioner, Joseph Simpson, stresses the need for the Beat system to reduce motorised patrols and deter incidents of crime.

The first computer to be used by the Met (an ICT 1301) was set up in the office of the Receiver for use on pay and crime statistics.

1964The worst year so far this century for crime, with over a quarter of a million indictable crimes.

Regional Crime Squads formed.

Police face major criticism and complaints as a result of the Challenor Case, in which a policeman was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic and made infamous for planting evidence

.1965Special Patrol Group formed consisting of 100 officers. It arrested 396 people in its first 9 months of operation.

1966The Commissioner’s Office and the Receiver’s Office are combined.
3 Metropolitan Police officers murdered at Shepherds Bush.

1967The headquarters is moved from the Norman Shaw Building to a new building in Broadway, just off Victoria Street. The name of New Scotland Yard is retained.

Norwell Roberts joins the Met as the first black police officer. He retired after 30 years service with the rank of Detective Sergeant and received the QPM in 1996.1968Sir Joseph Simpson dies in service, and is replaced as Commissioner b

y John Waldron.

1969MPS officers sent to offer assistance in the Anguilla crisis.

Serious Crime Squad becomes permanent.

Time Line 1970 – 1989

1970	Clear up rate on indictable crimes reaches 28%, the best since 1957.
1971	The Commissioner (John Waldron) in his annual report said “With deep and lasting traditions the Metropolitan Police is an impressive institution by every standard and in any company in the world.”
1972	Sir John Waldron is succeeded as Commissioner by Robert Mark.
1973	Robert Mark works to restore the integrity of the Metropolitan Police, and 90 officers leave as a result.

Mark establishes better relations with the media by setting out a policy of openness.

Women police are integrated directly into the force.

1974The Peel Centre at Hendon is modernised and reopended as the Training School

.1975Robert Mark makes an appeal on television for ethnic recruits.

Balcombe Street and Spaghetti House sieges were both brought to successful conclusions by the Met.

1976Major riot at Notting Hill Carnival, in which more than 400 officers and civilian staff were injured.

1977David McNee becomes Commissioner after the retirement of Sir Robert Mark.

1978An inquiry into police pay by Lord Edmund-Davies results in higher allowances and better pay to officers.

1979The Metropolitan Police celebrates its 150th Anniversary.

A new Force Inspectorate is formed, to provide a close and continuing assessment of the efficiency of all units of the force.

1980Iranian Embassy siege brought to a successful conclusion after co-operation between the Met and the Special Air Service Regiment.

Formation of Metropolitan Air Support Unit with its own Bell 222 helicopter.

1981Brixton Riots involve the Metropolitan Police in the largest civil disturbance this century.

1982Sir David McNee retires as Commissioner to be replaced by Sir Kenneth Newman.

1983With the aid of the MPS Policy Committee Sir Kenneth Newman devises a new statement of the Principles of Policing, and in doing so changes the emphasis from the primary objectives of policing established by Richard Mayne and Sir Charles Rowan in 1829.

1984PC Jon Gordon lost both legs and part of a hand in the IRA bomb attack on Harrods in 1983. On 10 December 1984 he resumed duty by walking unaided up the steps to his new office.

Whilst policing a demonstration in St James’s Square, WPC Yvonne Fletcher was shot in the back and mortally wounded by shots fired from the Libyan People’s Bureau. WPC Fletcher’s murder led to the creation of the Police Memorial Trust, an organisation dedicated to placing memorials at the locations of fallen officers

1985Tottenham Riots (also known as ‘Broadwater Farm’ riot) result in the murder of PC Keith Blakelock.

1986Identification Parade screens introduced at Clapham police station.

The Police and Criminal Evidence Act comes into force in January.

Mounted Branch celebrates its 150th anniversary.

1987Sir Kenneth Newman retires, and is replaced as Commissioner by Peter Imbert.

1988The Commissioner stresses the need for close community liaison between the Police and Consultative Groups to foster the police / public partnership.

1989‘Plus Programme’ launched to improve the corporate image and quality of the service of the Metropolitan Police. It significantly altered attitudes within the MPS, and included the Statement of Common Purpose and Values.

Time Line 1990 – 1999

1990	Riot in Trafalgar Square mirrors the 1887 riot in the same location.
1991	Sector Policing introduced, involving a team of officers with a continuing responsibility for the same small community area or sector.
1992	First 5 year Corporate Strategy published in February.
1993	Sir Peter Imbert retires, and is replaced as Commissioner by Sir Paul Condon.

Operation Bumblebee introduced on the 1 June and has a considerable impact on burglary in the capital.

The Charter is launched in September, defining the role of the Police and public expectation

1994Metropolitan Police Service key objectives established for the first time by the Government, plus key performance indicators.

1995Metropolitan Police Committee formed on 1 April.

Crime Report Information System (CRIS) introduced. It revolutionises the means of recording crimes.

1996‘The London Beat’ published.

The MPS launches its Website at www.met.police.uk. Click here to find out more about this website.

1997Installation of N.A.F.I.S. the National Automated Fingerprint Identification System.

1998The Metropolitan Police launch the Policing Diversity Strategy in response to the majority of issues raised into the Inquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence. The aim is to provide better protection to ethnic communities from racial and violent crime and demonstrate fairness in every aspect of policing.

1999The handling of the Greek Embassy siege demonstrates the professionalism of the Metropolitan Police Service.

Time Line 2000-2009

2000	Sir Paul Condon retires and is replaced as Commissioner by Sir John Stevens. Sir John issues his Policing Pledge for Londoners.
2004	Wednesday 29 September was an historic day as the Met celebrated 175 years of policing London.
2005	Sir Ian Blair becomes Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police
2008	Sir Ian Blair resigns from the post of Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police
2009	Sir Paul Stephenson becomes Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police

HERE’S A FEW ITEMS HERE ON DISPLAY AT THE JAIL ….

Advertisements

DARK TOURISM UK …HERE AT THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION AT LITTLEDEAN JAIL …. THE MOORS MURDERERS… EVIL CHILD KILLING SATANIC & SADISTIC MONSTERS…..IAN BRADY & MYRA HINDLEY.

DARK TOURISM HERE IN THE UK ………..

TRUE CRIME, MURDERABILIA , MAIMERABILIA , WITCHCRAFT,SATANISM, THE OCCULT,THE ILLUMINATI, SECRET SOCIETIES  …. AND MUCH MORE HERE AT THE UK’S CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION , LITTLEDEAN JAIL . 

TOUCHING UPON A GREAT MANY SAD, DISTURBING AND MACABRE SUBJECT MATTERS THAT NO OTHER VISITOR ATTRACTION DARE COVER . CERTAINLY NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN OR THOSE EASILY OFFENDED OR OF A SENSITIVE NATURE .  

HERE BELOW IS  SOME INTRIGUING  INTERACTIVE BACKGROUND INFORMATION  AND VARIOUS VIDEO FOOTAGE RELATING TO THESE  HIDEOUS MURDERS  COMMITTED BY THESE SATANIC DRIVEN KILLERS. BOTH OF WHOM  HAD A FASCINATION IN WITCHCRAFT AND THE OCCULT .

WE ALSO FEATURE VARIOUS PERSONAL BELONGINGS AND HANDWRITTEN MEMORABILIA ITEMS FROM BOTH BRADY AND HINDLEY .

ABOVE AND BELOW: ORIGINAL OIL PAINTINGS BY GLOUCESTERSHIRE ARTIST PAUL BRIDGMAN OF EVIL CHILD KILLERS BRADY AND HINDLEY, HERE ON DISPLAY AT THE JAIL

 

ABOVE IS AN EDITORIAL PIECE DONE BY THE SUNDAY PEOPLE ON VARIOUS EXHIBIT ITEMS KINDLY DONATED TO THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION BY LINDA CALVEY – THE BLACK WIDOW , WHO HAD SERVED TIME WITH MYRA HINDLEY …. WHOM SHE HAD HATED BUT HAD  TO TOLERATE  WITHIN THE PENAL SYSTEM . THESE ITEMS WERE FOR SOME UNKNOWN REASON LEFT TO LINDA PRIOR TO THE DEATH OF HINDLEY. AND FOR OBVIOUS REASONS NOT WANTED BY HER. … HENCE NOW THEY ARE IN OUR POSSESSION  FOR DISPLAY HERE AT THE JAIL

BELOW IS A HANDWRITTEN  AND SIGNED CHRISTMAS CARD FROM MYRA HINDLEY GIVEN TO HER FELLOW INMATE AND HER THEN PERSONAL HAIRDRESSER …. LINDA CALVEY – “THE BLACK WIDOW”

BELOW : A SIMPLE HAND SIGNED GREETINGS CARD FROM MYRA HINDLEY TO ONE OF THE PRISON GUARDS

BIZARRE GIFT FROM MYRA HINDLEY TO LINDA CALVEY “BLACK WIDOW” , WHILST INCARERATED IN THE SAME PRISON AT HMP HIGHPOINT .

BELOW: FROM THE HANDS OF EVIL SERIAL KILLER IAN BRADY . HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES OF HIS VARIOUS HANDWRITTEN AND SIGNED LETTERS ON DISPLAY AT THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLCTION LITTLEDEAN JAIL

PROBABLY THE LAST CLOTHING WORN BY MYRA HINDLEY DURING HER LAST DAYS IN HIGHPOINT PRISON BEFORE SHE DIED IN 2002 AT A NEARBY HOSPITAL AGED 60. THESE CLOTHES AND OTHER PERSONAL ITEMS WHICH HAD BEEN GIVEN TO LINDA CALVEY “THE BLACK WIDOW ” TO LOOK AFTER ON HER BEHALF.

ON LINDA’S RELEASE FROM PRISON IN 2008, SHE LATER DONATED THESE ITEMS TO THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION , LITTLEDEAN JAIL , UK .

BELOW ARE VARIOUS IMAGES RELATING TO SOME OF THE EXHIBIT MATERIAL WE HAVE ON DISPLAY HERE AT THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION , LITTLEDEAN JAIL

Few have attracted such notoriety or public loathing as the Moors murderers, so-named after they kidnapped and murdered five children over 18 months, between July 1963 and October 1965.

The pair were jailed for life in 1966 for murdering five children – Pauline Reade, 16, John Kilbride, 12, Keith Bennett, 12, Lesley Ann Downey, 10, and Edward Evans, 17, all from the Manchester area.

Brady and Hindley, who were both in their 20s, lured the youngsters to their deaths, sexually torturing their victims before burying them on Saddleworth Moor in the Pennines above Manchester.

Pauline disappeared on her way to a disco on July 12 1963 and John was snatched in November the same year.

Moors murders

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ian Brady and Myra Hindley
Brady (left) and Hindley, October 1965
Background information
Birth name	Ian Duncan Stewart Myra Hindley
Also known as	The Moors murderers
Born	Brady: 2 January 1938 (age 74) Hindley: 23 July 1942
Died	Hindley: 15 November 2002 (aged 60)
Cause of death	Bronchial pneumonia caused byheart disease
Conviction	Murder
Sentence	Life imprisonment
Killings
Number of victims	5
Country	England
Date apprehended	Brady: 7 October 1965 Hindley: 11 October 1965

The Moors murders were carried out by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley between July 1963 and October 1965, in and around what is now Greater Manchester, England. The victims were five children aged between 10 and 17—Pauline Reade, John Kilbride, Keith Bennett, Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans—at least four of whom were sexually assaulted. The murders are so named because two of the victims were discovered in graves dug onSaddleworth Moor, with a third grave also being discovered there in 1987, over 20 years after Brady and Hindley’s trial in 1966. The body of a fourth victim, Keith Bennett, is also suspected to be buried there, but despite repeated searches it remains undiscovered.

The police were initially aware of only three killings, those of Edward Evans, Lesley Ann Downey and John Kilbride. The investigation was reopened in 1985, after Brady was reported in the press as having confessed to the murders of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett. Brady and Hindley were taken separately to Saddleworth Moor to assist the police in their search for the graves, both by then having confessed to the additional murders.

Characterised by the press as “the most evil woman in Britain”,^[1] Hindley made several appeals against her life sentence, claiming she was a reformed woman and no longer a danger to society, but she was never released. She died in 2002, aged 60. Brady was declared criminally insane in 1985, since when he has been confined in the high-security Ashworth Hospital. He has made it clear that he never wants to be released, and has repeatedly asked that he be allowed to die.

The murders, reported in almost every English-language newspaper in the world,^[2] were the result of what Malcolm MacCulloch, professor of forensic psychiatry at Cardiff University, called a “concatenation of circumstances”, which brought together a “young woman with a tough personality, taught to hand out and receive violence from an early age” and a “sexually sadistic psychopath”.^[3]

Victims

Saddleworth Moor, viewed from Hollin Brown Knoll. The bodies of three of the victims were found in this area.

The full extent of Brady and Hindley’s killing spree did not come to light until their confessions in 1985, as both had until then maintained their innocence.^[4] Their first victim was 16-year-old Pauline Reade, a neighbour of Hindley’s who disappeared on her way to a dance at the British Railways Club in Gorton on 12 July 1963.^[5] That evening, Brady told Hindley that he wanted to “commit his perfect murder”. He told her to drive her van around the local area while he followed behind on his motorcycle; when he spotted a likely victim he would flash his headlight, and Hindley was to stop and offer that person a lift.^[4]

Driving down Gorton Lane, Brady saw a young girl walking towards them, and signalled Hindley to stop, which she did not do until she had passed the girl. Brady drew up alongside on his motorbike, demanding to know why she had not offered the girl a lift, to which Hindley replied that she recognised her as Marie Ruck, a near neighbour of her mother. Shortly after 8:00 pm, continuing down Froxmer Street,^[6] Brady spotted a girl wearing a pale blue coat and white high-heeled shoes walking away from them, and once again signalled for the van to stop.^[4] Hindley recognised the girl as Pauline Reade, a friend of her younger sister, Maureen.^[7] Reade got into the van with Hindley, who then asked if she would mind helping to search for an expensive glove she had lost on Saddleworth Moor. Reade said she was in no great hurry, and agreed. At 16, Pauline Reade was older than Marie Ruck, and Hindley realised that there would be less of a hue and cry over the disappearance of a teenager than there would over a child of seven or eight. When the van reached the moor, Hindley stopped and Brady arrived shortly afterwards on his motorcycle. She introduced him to Reade as her boyfriend, and said that he had also come to help find the missing glove. Brady took Reade onto the moor while Hindley waited in the van. After about 30 minutes Brady returned alone, and took Hindley to the spot where Reade lay dying, her throat cut. He told her to stay with Reade while he fetched a spade he had hidden nearby on a previous visit to the moor, to bury the body. Hindley noticed that “Pauline’s coat was undone and her clothes were in disarray … She had guessed from the time he had taken that Brady had sexually assaulted her.”^[4] Returning home from the moor in the van—they had loaded the motorcycle into the back—Brady and Hindley passed Reade’s mother, Joan, accompanied by her son, Paul, searching the streets for Pauline.^[8]

Accompanied by Brady, Hindley approached 12-year-old John Kilbride in the early evening of 23 November 1963 at a market in Ashton-under-Lyne, and offered him a lift home on the pretext that his parents would be worried about him being out so late. With the added inducement of a proffered bottle of sherry, Kilbride readily agreed to get into the Ford Anglia car that Hindley had hired. Brady told Kilbride that the sherry was at their home, and they would have to make a detour to collect it. On the way he suggested that they take another detour, to search for a glove he said that Hindley had lost on the moor.^[9] When they reached the moor Brady took the child with him while Hindley waited in the car. Brady sexually assaulted Kilbride and attempted to slit his throat with a six-inch serrated blade before fatally strangling him with a piece of string, possibly a shoelace.^[10]

Twelve-year-old Keith Bennett vanished on his way to his grandmother’s house in Longsight during the early evening of 16 June 1964,^[11] four days after his birthday. Hindley lured him into her Mini pick-up—which Brady was sitting in the back of—by asking for the boy’s help in loading some boxes, after which she said she would drive him home. She drove to a lay-by on Saddleworth Moor as she and Brady had previously arranged, and Brady went off with Bennett, supposedly looking for a lost glove. Hindley kept watch, and after about 30 minutes or so Brady reappeared, alone and carrying a spade that he had hidden there earlier. When Hindley asked how he had killed Bennett, Brady said that he had sexually assaulted the boy and strangled him with a piece of string.^[12]

Brady and Hindley visited a fairground on 26 December 1964 in search of another victim, and noticed 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey standing beside one of the rides. When it became apparent that she was on her own, they approached her and deliberately dropped some of the shopping they were carrying close to her, before asking for the girl’s help to carry some of the packages to their car, and then to their home. Once inside the house Downey was undressed, gagged, and forced to pose for photographs before being raped and killed, perhaps strangled with a piece of string. Hindley maintained that she went to draw a bath for the child and found the girl dead (presumably killed by Brady) when she returned. In Dr. Chris Cowley’s book Face to Face with Evil: Conversations with Ian Brady, Brady states that it was Hindley who killed Lesley Ann Downey. The following morning Brady and Hindley drove with Downey’s body to Saddleworth Moor,^[13] where she was buried, naked with her clothes at her feet, in a shallow grave.^[14]

On 6 October 1965 Brady met 17-year-old apprentice engineer Edward Evans at Manchester Central railway station and invited him to his home at 16 Wardle Brook Avenue in Hattersley, where Brady beat him to death with an axe.^[15]

Initial report

The empty plot where 16 Wardle Brook Avenue in Hattersley, once stood. The house was demolished in the 1980s by the local council.

The attack on Edward Evans was witnessed by Hindley’s 17-year-old brother-in-law, David Smith, the husband of her younger sister Maureen. The Hindley family had not approved of Maureen’s marriage to Smith, who had several criminal convictions, including actual bodily harm and housebreaking, the first of which, wounding with intent, occurred when he was aged eleven.^[16] Throughout the previous year Brady had been cultivating a friendship with Smith, who had become “in awe” of the older man, something that increasingly worried Hindley, as she felt it compromised their safety.^[17]

On the evening of 6 October 1965 Hindley drove Brady to Manchester Central Station, where she waited outside in the car while he selected their victim; after a few minutes Brady reappeared in the company of Edward Evans, to whom he introduced Hindley as his sister. After they had driven back home and relaxed over a bottle of wine, Brady sent Hindley to fetch her brother-in-law. When they got back to the house Hindley told Smith to wait outside for her signal, a flashing light. When the signal came Smith knocked on the door and was met by Brady, who asked if he had come for “the miniature wine bottles”.^[15] Brady led Smith into the kitchen and left him there, saying that he was going to collect the wine. A few minutes later Smith heard a scream, followed by Hindley shouting loudly for him to come and help.^[18] Smith entered the living room to find Brady repeatedly striking Evans with the flat of an axe, and watched as he then throttled Evans with a length of electrical cord.^[19] Evans’ body was too heavy for Smith to carry to the car on his own—Brady had sprained his ankle in the struggle—so they wrapped it in plastic sheeting and put it in the spare bedroom.^[20]

Smith agreed to meet Brady the following evening to dispose of Evans’ body,^[20] but after returning home he woke his wife and told her what he had seen. Maureen told him that he must call the police. Three hours later the couple cautiously made their way to a public phone box in the street below their flat, Smith taking the precaution of arming himself with a screwdriver and a kitchen knife to defend them in the event that Brady suddenly appeared and confronted them. At 6:07 am Smith made an emergency services call to the police station in nearbyHyde and told his story to the officer on duty.^[21] In his statement to the police Smith claimed that:

[Brady] opened the door and he said in a very loud voice for him … “Do you want those miniatures?” I nodded my head to say yes and he led me into the kitchen … and he gave me three miniature bottles of spirits and said: “Do you want the rest?” When I first walked into the house, the door to the living room … was closed. … Ian went into the living room and I waited in the kitchen. I waited about a minute or two then suddenly I heard a hell of a scream; it sounded like a woman, really high-pitched. Then the screams carried on, one after another really loud. Then I heard Myra shout, “Dave, help him,” very loud. When I ran in I just stood inside the living room and I saw a young lad. He was lying with his head and shoulders on the couch and his legs were on the floor. He was facing upwards. Ian was standing over him, facing him, with his legs on either side of the young lad’s legs. The lad was still screaming. … Ian had a hatchet in his hand … he was holding it above his head and he hit the lad on the left side of his head with the hatchet. I heard the blow, it was a terrible hard blow, it sounded horrible.”^[22]

Arrest

Early on the morning of 7 October, shortly after Smith’s call, Superintendent Bob Talbot of the Cheshire Police arrived at the back door of 16 Wardle Brook Avenue, wearing a borrowed baker’s overall to cover his uniform. Talbot identified himself to Hindley as a police officer when she opened the door, and told her that he wanted to speak to her boyfriend. Hindley led him into the living room, where Brady was sitting up in a divan writing a note to his employer explaining that he would not be able to get into work because of his ankle injury. Talbot explained that he was investigating “an act of violence involving guns” that was reported to have taken place the previous evening.^[23] Hindley denied that there had been any violence, and allowed police to look around the house. When they came to the upstairs room in which Evans’ body was stored the police found the door locked, and asked Brady for the key. Hindley claimed that the key was at work, but after the police offered to drive her to her employer’s premises to retrieve it, Brady told her to hand the key over. When they returned to the living room the police told Brady that they had discovered a trussed up body, and that he was being arrested on suspicion of murder.^[24] As Brady was getting dressed, he said “Eddie and I had a row and the situation got out of hand.”^[25]

Hindley was not arrested with Brady, but she demanded to go with him to the police station, accompanied by her dog Puppet, to which the police agreed.^[26] Hindley was questioned about the events surrounding Evans’ death, but she refused to make any statement beyond claiming that it had been an accident. As the police had no evidence that Hindley was involved in Evans’ murder she was allowed to go home, on condition that she return the next day for further questioning. Hindley was at liberty for four days following Brady’s arrest, during which time she went to her employer’s premises and asked to be dismissed, so that she would be eligible for unemployment benefits. While in the office where Brady worked she found some papers belonging to him in an envelope that she claimed she did not open, which she burned in an ashtray. She believed that they were plans for bank robberies, nothing to do with the murders. On 11 October Hindley was charged as an accessory to the murder of Edward Evans and was remanded at Risley.^[27]

Initial investigation

Brady admitted under police questioning that he and Evans had fought, but insisted that he and Smith had murdered Evans between them; Hindley, he said, had “only done what she had been told”.^[28]Smith told police that Brady had asked him to return anything incriminating, such as “dodgy books”, which Brady then packed into suitcases. Smith had no idea what else the suitcases contained or where they might be, but he mentioned in passing that Brady “had a thing about railway stations”. The police consequently requested a search of all Manchester’s left-luggage offices for any suitcases belonging to Brady, and on 15 October British Transport Police found what they were looking for at Manchester Central railway station^[29]—the left-luggage ticket was found several days later in the back of Hindley’s prayer book.^[30] Inside one of the suitcases were nine pornographic photographs taken of a young girl, naked and with a scarf tied across her mouth, and a 13-minute tape recording of her screaming and pleading for help.^[31] Ann Downey, Lesley Ann Downey’s mother, later listened to the tape after police had discovered the body of her missing 10-year-old daughter, and confirmed that it was a recording of her daughter’s voice.^[32]

Police searching the house at Wardle Brook Avenue also found an old exercise book in which the name “John Kilbride” had been scribbled, which made them suspicious that Brady and Hindley might have been involved in the unsolved disappearances of other youngsters.^[33] A large collection of photographs was discovered in the house, many of which seemed to have been taken on Saddleworth Moor. One hundred and fifty officers were drafted to search the moor, looking for locations that matched the photographs. Initially the search was concentrated along the A628 road near Woodhead, but a close neighbour, 11-year-old Pat Hodges, had on several occasions been taken to the moor by Brady and Hindley and she was able to point out their favourite sites along the A635 road.^[34] On 16 October police found an arm bone sticking out of the peat; officers presumed that they’d found the body of John Kilbride, but soon discovered that the body was that of Lesley Ann Downey. Her mother (later Ann West after her marriage to Alan West) had been on the moor watching as the police conducted their search, but was not present when the body was found.^[35] She was shown clothing recovered from the grave, and identified it as belonging to her missing daughter.^[36]

A photograph taken by Ian Brady of Myra Hindley with her dog, Puppet, crouching over John Kilbride’s grave on Saddleworth Moor in November 1963.

Detectives were able to locate another site on the opposite side of the A635 from where Downey’s body was discovered, and five days later they found the “badly decomposed” body of John Kilbride, whom they identified by his clothing.^[37] That same day, already being held for the murder of Evans, Brady and Hindley appeared at Hyde Magistrate’s Court charged with Lesley Ann Downey’s murder. Each was brought before the court separately and remanded into custody for a week.^[38] They made a two-minute appearance on 28 October, and were again remanded into custody.^[39]

The search for bodies continued, but with winter setting in it was called off in November.^[37] Presented with the evidence of the tape recording Brady admitted to taking the photographs of Lesley Ann Downey, but insisted that she had been brought to Wardle Brook Avenue by two men who had subsequently taken her away again, alive. Brady was further charged with the murder of John Kilbride, and Hindley with the murder of Edward Evans, on 2 December.^[40] At the committal hearing on 6 December Brady was charged with the murders of Edward Evans, John Kilbride, and Lesley Ann Downey, and Hindley with the murders of Edward Evans and Lesley Ann Downey, as well as with harbouring Brady in the knowledge that he had killed John Kilbride. The prosecution’s opening statement was held in camera,^[41] and the defence asked for a similar stipulation, but was refused.^[42] The proceedings continued in front of three magistrates in Hyde over an 11-day period during December, at the end of which the pair were committed for trial at Chester Assizes.^[43]

Many of the photographs taken by Brady and Hindley on the moor featured Hindley’s dog Puppet, sometimes as a puppy. Detectives arranged for the animal to be examined by a veterinary surgeon to determine its age, from which they could date when the pictures were taken. The examination involved an analysis of the dog’s teeth, which required a general anaesthetic from which Puppet did not recover, as he suffered from an undiagnosed kidney complaint. On hearing the news of her dog’s death Hindley became furious, and accused the police of murdering Puppet, one of the few occasions detectives witnessed any emotional response from her.^[37] In a letter to her mother shortly afterwards Hindley wrote:

I feel as though my heart’s been torn to pieces. I don’t think anything could hurt me more than this has. The only consolation is that some moron might have got hold of Puppet and hurt him.^[44]

Trial

The trial was held over 14 days beginning on 19 April 1966, in front of Mr Justice Fenton Atkinson.^[43] Such was the public interest that the courtroom was fitted with security screens to protect Brady and Hindley.^[45] The pair were each charged with three murders, those of Evans, Downey, and Kilbride, as it was considered that there was by then sufficient evidence to implicate Hindley in Kilbride’s death. The prosecution was led by the Attorney General, Frederick Elwyn Jones.^[43] Brady was defended by the Liberal Member of Parliament Emlyn Hooson,^[46] and Hindley was defended by Godfrey Heilpern, recorder of Salford from 1964—both experienced QCs.^[47][48] David Smith was the chief prosecution witness, but during the trial it was revealed that he had entered into an agreement with a newspaper that he initially refused to name—even under intense questioning—guaranteeing him £1,000 (equivalent to about £10,000 as of 2012) for the syndication rights to his story if Brady and Hindley were convicted, something the trial judge described as a “gross interference with the course of justice”.^[49][50] Smith finally admitted in court that the newspaper was the News of the World,^[51]which had already paid for a holiday in France for him and his wife and was paying him a regular income of £20 per week, as well as accommodating him in a five-star hotel for the duration of the trial.^[52]

Brady and Hindley pleaded not guilty to the charges against them; both were called to give evidence, Brady for over eight hours and Hindley for six.^[53] Although Brady admitted to hitting Evans with an axe, he did not admit to killing him, arguing that the pathologist in his report had stated that Evans’ death was “accelerated by strangulation”. Under cross-examination by the prosecuting counsel, all Brady would admit was that “I hit Evans with the axe. If he died from axe blows, I killed him.”^[54] Hindley denied any knowledge that the photographs of Saddleworth Moor found by police had been taken near the graves of their victims.^[55]

The tape recording of Lesley Anne Downey, on which the voices of Brady and Hindley were clearly audible, was played in open court. Hindley admitted that her attitude towards the child was “brusque and cruel”, but claimed that was only because she was afraid that someone might hear Downey screaming. Hindley claimed that when Downey was being undressed she herself was “downstairs”; when the pornographic photographs were taken she was “looking out the window”; and that when the child was being strangled she “was running a bath”.^[55]

On 6 May, after having deliberated for a little over two hours,^[56] the jury found Brady guilty of all three murders and Hindley guilty of the murders of Downey and Evans. The Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act had come into force during the time that Brady and Hindley were held in prison, abolishing the death penalty for murder, and therefore the judge passed the only sentence that the law allowed: life imprisonment. Brady was sentenced to three concurrent life sentences and Hindley was given two, plus a concurrent seven-year term for harbouring Brady in the knowledge that he had murdered John Kilbride.^[43] Brady was taken to Durham Prison and Hindley was sent to Holloway Prison.^[55]

In his closing remarks Mr Justice Atkinson described the murders as a “truly horrible case” and condemned the accused as “two sadistic killers of the utmost depravity”.^[57] He recommended that both Brady and Hindley spend “a very long time” in prison before being considered for parole but did not stipulate a tariff. He stated that Brady was “wicked beyond belief” and that he saw no reasonable possibility of reform. He did not consider that the same was necessarily true of Hindley, “once she is removed from [Brady’s] influence”.^[58] Throughout the trial Brady and Hindley “stuck rigidly to their strategy of lying”,^[59] and Hindley was later described as “a quiet, controlled, impassive witness who lied remorselessly”.^[43]

Later investigation

Keith Bennett

In 1985 Brady allegedly confessed to Fred Harrison, a journalist working for The Sunday People, that he had also been responsible for the murders of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett,^[60] something that the police already suspected, as both children lived in the same area as Brady and Hindley and had disappeared at about the same time as their other victims. The subsequent newspaper reports prompted the Greater Manchester Police (GMP) to reopen the case, in an investigation headed by Detective Chief Superintendent Peter Topping, who had been appointed Head of GMP’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) the previous year.^[61]

On 3 July 1985 Topping visited Brady, then being held at Gartree Prison, but found him “scornful of any suggestion that he had confessed to more murders”.^[62] Police nevertheless decided to resume their search of Saddleworth Moor, once more using the photographs taken by Brady and Hindley to help them identify possible burial sites. Meanwhile, in November 1986 Winnie Johnson, Keith Bennett’s mother, wrote a letter to Hindley begging to know what had happened to her son, a letter that Hindley seemed to be “genuinely moved” by.^[63] It ended:

I am a simple woman, I work in the kitchens of Christie’s Hospital. It has taken me five weeks labour to write this letter because it is so important to me that it is understood by you for what it is, a plea for help. Please, Miss Hindley, help me.^[64]

Police visited Hindley, then being held in Cookham Wood, a few days after she had received the letter, and although she refused to admit any involvement in the killings, she agreed to help by looking at photographs and maps to try to identify spots that she had visited with Brady.^[65] She showed particular interest in photographs of the area around Hollin Brown Knoll and Shiny Brook, but said that it was impossible to be sure of the locations without visiting the moor.^[66] The security considerations for such a visit were significant; there were threats made against her should she visit the moors, but Home Secretary Douglas Hurd agreed with Topping that it would be worth the risk.^[67] Writing in 1989, Topping said that he felt “quite cynical” about Hindley’s motivation in helping the police. Although the letter from Winnie Johnson may have played a part, he believed that Hindley’s real concern was that, knowing of Brady’s “precarious” mental state, she was afraid that he might decide to co-operate with the police, and wanted to make certain that she, and not Brady, was the one to gain whatever benefit there may have been in terms of public approval.^[68]

Hindley made the first of two visits to assist the police search of Saddleworth Moor on 16 December 1986.^[69] Four police cars left Cookham Wood at 4.30 am. At about the same time, police closed all roads onto the moor, which was patrolled by 200 officers, 40 of them armed. Hindley and her solicitor arrived by helicopter from an airfield near Maidstone, touching down at 8:30 am. Wearing a donkey jacket and balaclava, she was driven, and walked around the area. It was difficult for Hindley to make a connection between her memories of the area and what she saw on the day, and she was apparently nervous of the helicopters flying overhead. At 3:00 pm she was returned to the helicopter, and taken back to Cookham Wood.^[67] Topping was criticised by the press, who described the visit as a “fiasco”, a “publicity stunt”, and a “mindless waste of money”.^[70] He was forced to defend the visit, pointing out its benefits:

We had taken the view that we needed a thorough systematic search of the moor […] It would never have been possible to carry out such a search in private.^[70]

Topping continued to visit Hindley in prison, along with her solicitor Michael Fisher and her spiritual counsellor, the Reverend Peter Timms, who had been a prison governor before resigning to become a minister in the Methodist Church.^[70] She made a formal confession to police on 10 February 1987, admitting her involvement in all five murders,^[71] but news of her confession was not made public for more than a month.^[72] The tape recording of her statement was over 17 hours long; Topping described it as a “very well worked out performance in which, I believe, she told me just as much as she wanted me to know, and no more”.^[73] He also commented that he “was struck by the fact that she was never there when the killings took place. She was in the car, over the brow of the hill, in the bathroom and even, in the case of the Evans murder, in the kitchen.”^[74] Topping concluded that he felt he “had witnessed a great performance rather than a genuine confession”.^[75]

During the 1987 search for Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett, Hindley recalled that she had seen the rocks of Hollin Brown Knoll silhouetted against the night sky.

Police visited Brady in prison again and told him of Hindley’s confession, which at first he refused to believe. Once presented with some of the details that Hindley had provided of Pauline Reade’s abduction, Brady decided that he too was prepared to confess, but on one condition: that immediately afterwards he be given the means to commit suicide, a request that was impossible for the authorities to comply with.^[76]

At about the same time, Winnie Johnson sent Hindley another letter, again pleading with her to assist the police in finding the body of her son Keith. In the letter, Johnson was sympathetic to Hindley over the criticism surrounding her first visit. Hindley, who had not replied to the first letter, responded by thanking Johnson for both letters, explaining that her decision not to reply to the first resulted from the negative publicity that surrounded it. She claimed that, had Johnson written to her 14 years earlier, she would have confessed and helped the police. She also paid tribute to Topping, and thanked Johnson for her sincerity.^[77] Hindley made her second visit to the moor in March 1987. This time, the level of security surrounding her visit was considerably higher. She stayed overnight in Manchester, at the flat of the police chief in charge of GMP training at Sedgley Park, and visited the moor twice.^[77] She confirmed to police that the two areas in which they were concentrating their search—Hollin Brown Knoll and Hoe Grain—were correct, although she was unable to locate either of the graves.^[78] She did later remember, though, that as Pauline Reade was being buried she had been sitting next to her on a patch of grass and could see the rocks of Hollin Brown Knoll silhouetted against the night sky.^[79]

In April 1987 news of Hindley’s confession became public. Amidst strong media interest Lord Longford pleaded for her release, writing that her continuing detention to satisfy “mob emotion” was not right. Fisher persuaded Hindley to release a public statement, in which she explained her reasons for denying her complicity in the murders, her religious experiences in prison, the letter from Johnson, and that she saw no possibility of release. She also exonerated David Smith from any part in the murders, except that of Edward Evans.^[80]

A map of Saddleworth Moor, showing the areas in which the bodies of three of the children were found, and the general area in which police searched for the body of Keith Bennett

Over the next few months interest in the search waned, but Hindley’s clue had directed the police to focus their efforts on a specific area. On the afternoon of 1 July 1987, after more than 100 days of searching, they found a body lying in a shallow grave 3 feet (0.9 m) below the surface, only 100 yards (90 m) from the place where Lesley Ann Downey had been found.^[79][81]Brady had been co-operating with the police for some time, and when news reached him that Reade’s body had been discovered he made a formal confession to Topping.^[82] He also issued a statement to the press, through his solicitor, saying that he too was prepared to help the police in their search. Brady was taken to the moor on 3 July, but he seemed to lose his bearings, blaming changes that had taken place in the intervening years, and the search was called off at 3:00 pm, by which time a large crowd of press and television reporters had gathered on the moor.^[83]

Topping refused to allow Brady a second visit to the moors,^[82] and a few days after his visit Brady wrote a letter to BBC television reporter Peter Gould, giving some sketchy details of five additional murders that he claimed to have carried out.^[84]Brady refused to identify his alleged victims, and the police failed to discover any unsolved crimes matching the few details that he supplied.^[85] Hindley told Topping that she knew nothing of these killings.^[82]

Hoe Grain leading to Shiny Brook, the area in which police believe Bennett’s undiscovered body is buried^[86]

On 24 August 1987 police called off their search of Saddleworth Moor, despite not having found Keith Bennett’s body.^[87] Brady was taken to the moor for a second time on 1 December, but he was once again unable to locate the burial site. Keith Bennett’s body remains undiscovered as of 2012, although his family continues to search the moor, over 40 years after his disappearance.^[88]

Although Brady and Hindley had confessed to the murders of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett, the Department of Public Prosecutions (DPP) decided that nothing would be gained by a further trial; as both were already serving life sentences no further punishment could be inflicted, and a second trial might even have helped Hindley’s case for parole by giving her a platform from which to make a public confession.^[89]

In 2003 the police launched Operation Maida, and again searched the moor for the body of Keith Bennett. They read statements from Brady and Hindley, and also studied photographs taken by the pair. Their search was aided by the use of sophisticated modern equipment, including a US satellite used to look for evidence of soil movement.^[90] The BBC reported on 1 July 2009 that Greater Manchester Police had officially given up the search for Keith Bennett, saying that “only a major scientific breakthrough or fresh evidence would see the hunt for his body restart”.^[91] Detectives were also reported as saying that they would never again give Brady the attention or the thrill of leading another fruitless search on the moor where they believe Keith Bennett’s remains are buried.^[92] Donations from members of the public funded a search of the moor for Bennett’s body by volunteers from a Welsh search and rescue team that began in March 2010.^[93]

Perpetrators’ backgrounds

Ian Brady

Ian Brady was born in Glasgow as Ian Duncan Stewart on 2 January 1938 to Maggie Stewart, an unmarried 28-year-old tea room waitress. The identity of Brady’s father has never been reliably ascertained, although his mother claimed he was a reporter working for a Glasgow newspaper, who died three months before Brady was born. Stewart had little support, and after a few months was forced to give her son into the care of Mary and John Sloan, a local couple with four children of their own. Brady took their name, and became known as Ian Sloan. His mother continued to visit him throughout his childhood.^[94] As a young child he took pleasure in torturing animals; he broke the hind legs of one dog, set fire to another, and decapitated a cat.^[95] Aged nine, Brady visited Loch Lomond with his family, where he reportedly discovered an affinity for the outdoors, and a few months later the family moved to a new council house on an overspill estate at Pollok. He was accepted forShawlands Academy, a school for above average pupils.^[96] As he grew older Brady’s “brutality escalated”, and soon he was hurting children smaller than himself.^[95] At Shawlands his behaviour worsened; as a teenager he twice appeared before a juvenile court for housebreaking. He left the academy aged 15, and took a job as a tea boy at a Harland and Wolff shipyard in Govan. Nine months later he began working as a butcher’s messenger boy. He had a girlfriend, Evelyn Grant, but their relationship ended when he threatened her with a flick knife after she visited a dance with another boy. He again appeared before the court, this time with nine charges against him,^[97] and shortly before his 17th birthday a court put him on probation on the condition that he went to live with his mother,^[98]who had by then moved to Manchester and married an Irish fruit merchant named Patrick Brady, who got him a job as a fruit porter at Smithfield Market.^[99]

Within a year of moving to Manchester, Brady was caught with a sack full of lead seals he had stolen and was trying to smuggle out of the market. Because he was still under 18, he was sentenced to two years in borstal for “training”.^[100] He was initially sent to Hatfield but after being discovered drunk on alcohol he had brewed he was moved to the much tougher unit at Hull.^[98] Released on 14 November 1957 Brady returned to Manchester, where he took a labouring job, which he hated, and was dismissed from another job in a brewery. Deciding to “better himself”, Brady obtained a set of instruction manuals on book-keeping from a local public library, with which he “astonished” his parents by studying alone in his room for hours.^[101] In January 1959, Brady applied for and was offered a clerical job at Millwards Merchandising, a wholesale chemical distribution company based in Gorton. He was regarded by his work colleagues as a quiet, punctual, but short-tempered young man. He read books such as Teach Yourself German, and Mein Kampf, as well as works on Nazi atrocities. He rode a Tiger Cub motorcycle, which he used to visit the Pennines.^[102]

Myra Hindley

Myra Hindley was born on 23 July 1942^[103] and raised in Gorton, then a working class area of Manchester. Her parents, Nellie and Bob Hindley (the latter an alcoholic), beat her regularly as a young child. The small house the family lived in was in such poor condition that Hindley and her parents had to sleep in the only available bedroom, she in a single bed next to her parents’ double. The family’s living conditions deteriorated further when Hindley’s sister, Maureen, was born in 1946. Shortly after the birth, Hindley, then aged five, was sent by her parents to live with her grandmother, who lived nearby.^[104]

Hindley’s father had fought in North Africa, Cyprus, and Italy during the Second World War, and had served with the Parachute Regiment.^[105] He had been known in the army as a “hard man” and he expected his daughter to be equally tough; he taught her how to fight, and insisted that she “stick up for herself”. When Hindley was aged 8, a local boy approached her in the street and scratched both of her cheeks with his fingernails, drawing blood. She burst into tears and ran into her parents’ house, to be met by her father, who demanded that she “Go and punch him [the boy], because if you don’t I’ll leather you!” Hindley found the boy and succeeded in knocking him down with a sequence of punches, as her father had taught her. As she wrote later, “at eight years old I’d scored my first victory”.^[106]

Malcolm MacCulloch, professor of forensic psychiatry at Cardiff University, has suggested that the fight, and the part that Hindley’s father played in it, may be “key pieces of evidence” in trying to understand Hindley’s role in the Moors murders:

The relationship with her father brutalised her […] She was not only used to violence in the home but rewarded for it outside. When this happens at a young age it can distort a person’s reaction to such situations for life.^[107]

One of her closest friends was 13-year-old Michael Higgins, who lived in a nearby street. In June 1957 he invited her to go swimming with friends at a local disused reservoir. A good swimmer, Hindley chose not to go and instead went out with a friend, Pat Jepson. Higgins drowned in the reservoir, and upon learning of his fate Hindley was deeply upset, and blamed herself for his death. She collected for a funeral wreath, and his funeral at St Francis’s Monastery in Gorton Lane—the church where Hindley had been baptised a Catholic on 16 August 1942—had a lasting effect on her.^[108] Hindley’s mother had only agreed to her father’s insistence that she be baptised a Catholic on the condition that she was not sent to a Catholic school, as her mother believed that “all the monks taught was thecatechism“.^[109] Hindley was increasingly drawn to the Catholic Church after she started at Ryder Brow Secondary Modern, and began taking instruction for formal reception into the Church soon after Higgins’s funeral. She took the confirmation name of Veronica, and received her first communion in November 1958. She also became a godparent to Michael’s nephew, Anthony John.^[110][111] It was also at about this time that Hindley first began bleaching her hair.^[112]

Hindley’s first job was as a junior clerk at a local electrical engineering firm. She ran errands, made tea, and typed. She was well liked at the firm, enough so that when she lost her first week’s wage packet, the other girls had a collection to replace it.^[113] She had a short relationship with Ronnie Sinclair from Christmas 1958, and became engaged aged 17. The engagement was called off several months later; Hindley apparently thought Sinclair immature, and unable to provide her with the life she envisaged for herself.^[114]

Shortly after her 17th birthday she changed her hair colour, with a pink rinse. She took judo lessons once a week at a local school, but found partners reluctant to train with her, as she was often slow to release her grip. She took a job at Bratby and Hinchliffe, an engineering company in Gorton, but was dismissed for absenteeism after six months.^[115]

As a couple

In 1961, the 18-year-old Myra Hindley joined Millwards as a typist. She soon became infatuated with Brady, despite learning that he had a criminal record.^[116] She began a diary and, although she had dates with other men, some of the entries detail her fascination with Brady, whom she eventually spoke to for the first time on 27 July 1961.^[117] Over the next few months she continued to make entries, and grew increasingly disillusioned with him, until 22 December when Brady asked her on a date to the cinema,^[118] where they watched the biblical epic King of Kings.^{[119][nb 1]} Their dates together followed a regular pattern; a trip to the cinema, usually to watch an X-rated film, and then back to Hindley’s house to drink German wine.^[120] Brady then gave her reading material, and the pair spent their work lunch breaks reading aloud to one another from accounts of Nazi atrocities. Hindley began to emulate an ideal of Aryan perfection, bleaching her hair blonde and applying thick crimson lipstick.^[43] She expressed concern at some aspects of Brady’s character; in a letter to a childhood friend, she mentioned an incident where she had been drugged by Brady, but also wrote of her obsession with him. A few months later she asked her friend to destroy the letter.^[121] In her 30,000-word plea for parole, written in 1978 and 1979 and submitted to Home Secretary Merlyn Rees, Hindley said:

Within months he [Brady] had convinced me that there was no God at all: he could have told me that the earth was flat, the moon was made of green cheese and the sun rose in the west, I would have believed him, such was his power of persuasion.^[122]

Hindley began to change her appearance further, wearing clothing considered risqué such as high boots, short skirts, and leather jackets, and the two became less sociable to their work colleagues.^[123] The couple were regulars at the library, borrowing books on philosophy, as well as crime and torture. They also read works by the Marquis de Sade, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky‘s Crime and Punishment.^[43][124] Although she was not a qualified driver (she passed her test on the third attempt, late in 1963), Hindley often hired a van, in which the two planned bank robberies. Hindley befriended George Clitheroe, the President of the Cheadle Rifle Club, and on several occasions visited two local shooting ranges. Clitheroe, although puzzled by her interest, arranged for her to buy a .22 rifle from a gun merchant in Manchester. She also asked to join a pistol club, but she was a poor shot and allegedly often bad-tempered, so Clitheroe told her that she was unsuitable; she did, though, manage to purchase a Webley .45 and a Smith and Wesson .38 from other members of the club.^[125] Brady and Hindley’s plans for robbery came to nothing, but they became interested in photography. Brady already owned a Box Brownie, which he used to take photographs of Hindley and her dog, Puppet, but he upgraded to a more sophisticated model, and also purchased lights anddarkroom equipment. The pair took photographs of each other that, for the time, would have been considered explicit. For Hindley, this demonstrated a marked change from her earlier, more shy and prudish nature.^[126]

As murderers

Hindley claimed that Brady began to talk about “committing the perfect murder” in July 1963,^[127] and often spoke to her about Meyer Levin‘s Compulsion, published as a novel in 1956 and adapted for the cinema in 1959. The story tells a fictionalised account of the Leopold and Loeb case, two young men from well-to-do families who attempt to commit the perfect murder of a 12-year-old boy, and escape the death penalty because of their age.^[128]

By June 1963, Brady had moved in with Hindley at her grandmother’s house in Bannock Street, and on 12 July 1963 the two murdered their first victim, 16-year-old Pauline Reade. Reade had attended school with Hindley’s younger sister, Maureen, and had also been in a short relationship with David Smith, a local boy with three criminal convictions for minor crimes. Police could find nobody who had seen Reade before her disappearance, and although the 15-year-old Smith was questioned by police he was cleared of any involvement in her death.^[129] Their next victim, John Kilbride, was killed on 23 November 1963. A huge search was undertaken, with over 700 statements taken, and 500 “missing” posters printed. Eight days after he failed to return home, 2,000 volunteers scoured waste ground and derelict buildings.^[130]

Hindley hired a vehicle a week after Kilbride went missing, and again on 21 December 1963, apparently to make sure the burial sites had not been disturbed. In February 1964, she bought a second-hand Austin Traveller, but soon after traded it for a Mini van. On 16 June 1964, 12-year-old Keith Bennett disappeared. His stepfather, Jimmy Johnson, became a suspect; in the two years following Bennett’s disappearance, Johnson was taken for questioning on four occasions. Detectives searched under the floorboards of the Johnsons’ house, and on discovering that the houses in the row were connected, extended the search to the entire street.^[131]

David and Maureen Smith, pictured around the time of the murders. David Smith’s statement to the police led to Brady’s arrest.

Maureen Hindley married David Smith on 15 August 1964. The marriage was hastily arranged and performed at a register office. None of Hindley’s relatives attended; Myra did not approve of the marriage, and her mother was too embarrassed—Maureen was seven months pregnant. The newlyweds moved into Smith’s father’s house. The next day, Brady suggested that the four take a day-trip to Windermere. This was the first time Brady and Smith had met properly, and Brady was apparently impressed by Smith’s demeanour. The two talked about society, the distribution of wealth, and the possibility of robbing a bank. The young Smith was similarly impressed by Brady, who throughout the day had paid for his food and wine. The trip to the Lake District was the first of many outings. Hindley was apparently jealous of their relationship, but became closer to her sister.^[132]

In 1964 Hindley, her grandmother, and Brady were rehoused as part of the post-war slum clearances in Manchester, to 16 Wardle Brook Avenue in the new overspill estate of Hattersley. Brady and Hindley became friendly with Patricia Hodges, an 11-year-old girl who lived at 12 Wardle Brook Avenue. Hodges accompanied the two on their trips to Saddleworth Moor to collect peat, something that many householders on the new estate did to improve the soil in their gardens, which was full of clay and builder’s rubble.^[133] She remained unharmed; living only a few doors away, her disappearance would have been easily solved.^[134]

Early on Boxing Day 1964, Hindley left her grandmother at a relative’s house and refused to allow her back to Wardle Brook Avenue that night.^[135] On the same day, 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey disappeared from a funfair in Ancoats.^[136] Despite a huge search she was not found. The following day Hindley brought her grandmother back home.^[137] By February 1965 Patricia Hodges had stopped visiting 16 Wardle Brook Avenue, but David Smith was still a regular visitor. Brady gave Smith books to read, and the two discussed robbery and murder.^[138] On Hindley’s 23rd birthday, her sister and brother-in-law, who had until then been living with relatives, were rehoused in Underwood Court, a block of flats not far from Wardle Brook Avenue. The two couples began to see each other more regularly, but usually only on Brady’s terms.^[139][140]

During the 1990s, Hindley claimed that she took part in the killings only because Brady had drugged her, was blackmailing her with pornographic pictures he had taken of her, and had threatened to kill her younger sister, Maureen.^[116] In a 2008 television documentary series on female serial killers broadcast on ITV3, Hindley’s solicitor, Andrew McCooey, reported that she had said to him:

I ought to have been hanged. I deserved it. My crime was worse than Brady’s because I enticed the children and they would never have entered the car without my role … I have always regarded myself as worse than Brady.^[141]

Incarceration

Brady

Ashworth Hospital, where Ian Brady is incarcerated as of 2012

Following his conviction, Brady was moved to Durham prison, where he asked to live in solitary confinement.^[142] He spent 19 years in mainstream prisons before he was declared criminally insane in November 1985 and sent to the high-security Ashworth Psychiatric Hospital;^[143] he has since made it clear that he never wants to be released.^[144] The trial judge had recommended that his life sentence should mean life, and successive Home Secretaries have agreed with that decision. In 1982, the Lord Chief Justice Lord Lane said of Brady: “this is the case if ever there is to be one when a man should stay in prison till he dies”.^[145]

In contrast to the common belief that serial killers often continue with their crimes until they are caught, Brady claimed in 2005 that the Moors murders were “merely an existential exercise of just over a year, which was concluded in December 1964″. By then, he went on to claim, he and Hindley had turned their attention to armed robbery, for which they had begun to prepare by acquiring guns and vehicles.^[146] In 2001 Brady wrote The Gates of Janus, which was published by Feral House, an underground US publisher. The book, Brady’s analysis of serial murder and specific serial killers, sparked outrage when announced in Britain.^[147]

Winnie Johnson, the mother of undiscovered victim, 12-year-old Keith Bennett, received a letter from Brady at the end of 2005 in which, she said, he claimed that he could take police to within 20 yards (18 m) of her son’s body but the authorities would not allow it. Brady did not refer directly to Keith by name and did not claim he could take investigators directly to the grave, but spoke of the “clarity” of his recollections.^[148] In early 2006, prison authorities intercepted a package addressed to Brady from a female friend, containing 50 paracetamol pills, a potentially lethal dose, hidden inside a hollowed-out crime novel.^[149]

The death, in November 2007, of John Straffen, who had spent 55 years in prison for murdering three children meant that Brady became the longest serving prisoner in England and Wales.^[150] As of 2012, he remains incarcerated in Ashworth. After Brady began a hunger strike in 1999 he was force-fed, fell ill, and was transferred to another hospital for tests.^[151] He recovered, and in March 2000 asked for a judicial review of the decision to force-feed him, but was refused permission.^[152]

Myra gets the potentially fatal brain condition, whilst I have to fight simply to die. I have had enough. I want nothing, my objective is to die and release myself from this once and for all. So you see my death strike is rational and pragmatic. I’m only sorry I didn’t do it decades ago, and I’m eager to leave this cesspit in a coffin.^[152]

[edit]Hindley

Immediately following the trial, Hindley lodged an unsuccessful appeal against her conviction.^[153] Brady and Hindley corresponded by letter until 1971, when she ended their relationship. The two remained in sporadic contact for several months,^[154] but Hindley had fallen in love with one of her prison officers, Patricia Cairns. A former assistant governor claimed that such relationships were not unusual in Holloway at that time, as “many of the officers were gay, and involved in relationships either with one another or with inmates”.^[155] Hindley successfully petitioned to have her status as acategory A prisoner changed to category B, which enabled Governor Dorothy Wing to take her on a walk round Hampstead Heath, part of her unofficial policy of reintroducing her charges to the outside world when she felt they were ready. The excursion caused a furore in the national press and earned Wing an official rebuke from the then Home Secretary Robert Carr.^[156] With Cairns’ assistance and the outside contacts of another prisoner, Maxine Croft, Hindley planned a prison escape, but it was thwarted when impressions of the prison keys were intercepted by an off-duty policeman. Cairns was sentenced to six years in jail for her part in the plot.^[157] While in prison, Hindley wrote her autobiography, which remains unpublished.^[158]

Hindley was told that she should spend 25 years in prison before being considered for parole. The Lord Chief Justice agreed with that recommendation in 1982, but in January 1985 Home SecretaryLeon Brittan increased her tariff to 30 years.^[145] By that time, Hindley claimed to be a reformed Roman Catholic. Ann West, the mother of Lesley Ann Downey, was at the centre of a campaign to ensure that Hindley was never released from prison, and until West’s death in February 1999, she regularly gave television and newspaper interviews whenever Hindley’s release was rumoured.^[159]

In 1990, then Home Secretary David Waddington imposed a whole life tariff on Hindley, after she confessed to having a greater involvement in the murders than she had previously admitted.^[145] Hindley was not informed of the decision until 1994, when a Law Lords ruling obliged the Prison Service to inform all life sentence prisoners of the minimum period they must serve in prison before being considered for parole.^[160] In 1997, the Parole Board ruled that Hindley was low risk and should be moved to an open prison.^[145] She rejected the idea and was moved to a medium security prison; the House of Lords ruling left open the possibility of later freedom. Between December 1997 and March 2000, Hindley made three separate appeals against her life tariff, claiming she was a reformed woman and no longer a danger to society, but each was rejected by the courts.^[161][162]

When in 2002 another life sentence prisoner challenged the Home Secretary’s power to set minimum terms, Hindley and hundreds of others, whose tariffs had been increased by politicians, looked likely to be released from prison.^[163] Hindley’s release seemed imminent and plans were made by supporters for her to be given a new identity.^[164] Lord Longford, a devout Roman Catholic, campaigned to secure the release of “celebrated” criminals, and Myra Hindley in particular, which earned him constant derision from the public and the press. He described Hindley as a “delightful” person and said “you could loathe what people did but should not loathe what they were because human personality was sacred even though human behaviour was very often appalling”.^[165] Home Secretary David Blunkett ordered Greater Manchester Police to find new charges against her, to prevent her release from prison. The investigation was headed by Superintendent Tony Brett, and initially looked at charging Hindley with the murders of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett, but the advice given by government lawyers was that because of the DPP’s decision taken 15 years earlier, a new trial would probably be considered an abuse of process.^[166]

[edit]Aftermath

Part of Stalybridge Country Park, where Hindley’s ashes were scattered in 2003

David Smith became “reviled by the people of Manchester”, despite having been instrumental in bringing Brady and Hindley to justice.^[167] While her sister was on trial, Maureen—eight months pregnant—was attacked in the lift of the building in which she and David lived. Their home was vandalised, and hate mail was regularly posted through their letterbox. Maureen feared for her children: “I couldn’t let my children out of my sight when they were little. They were too young to tell them why they had to stay in, to explain why they couldn’t go out to play like all the other children.”^[168]

After knifing another man during a fight, in an attack he claimed was triggered by the abuse he had suffered since the trial, Smith was sentenced to three years in prison in 1969.^[167] That same year his children were taken into the care of the local authority. His wife Maureen moved from Underwood Court to a single-bedroom property, and found work in a department store. Subjected to whispering campaigns and petitions to remove her from the estate where she lived, she received no support from her family—her mother had supported Myra during the trial. On his release from prison, David Smith moved in with the girl who became his second wife and won custody of his three sons. Maureen managed to repair the relationship with her mother, and moved into a council property in Gorton. She divorced Smith in 1973,^[169] and married a lorry driver, Bill Scott, with whom she had a daughter.^[170]

Maureen and her immediate family made regular visits to see Hindley, who reportedly adored her niece. In 1980 Maureen suffered a brain haemorrhage; Hindley was granted permission to visit her sister in hospital, but she arrived an hour after Maureen’s death.^[171] Sheila and Patrick Kilbride, who were by then divorced,^[172] were present at Maureen’s funeral, believing that Hindley might make an appearance. Patrick Kilbride mistook Bill Scott’s daughter from a previous relationship, Ann Wallace, for Hindley and tried to attack her before being knocked to the ground by another mourner; the police were called to restore order.^[173] Shortly before her death at the age of 70 Sheila Kilbride said: “If she [Hindley] ever comes out of jail I’ll kill her.”^[174] It was a threat repeated by her son Danny, and Ann West.^[175][176]

In 1972, David Smith was acquitted of the murder of his father, who had been suffering from an incurable cancer. Smith pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to two days’ detention.^[177] He remarried and moved to Lincolnshire with his three sons,^[167][178] and was exonerated of any participation in the Moors murders by Hindley’s confession in 1987.

Joan Reade, Pauline Reade’s mother, was admitted to Springfield Mental Hospital in Manchester. She was present, under heavy sedation, at the funeral of her daughter on 7 August 1987.^[179] Five years after their son was murdered, Sheila and Patrick Kilbride divorced.^[172] Ann West, mother of Lesley Ann Downey, died in 1999 from cancer of the liver. Since her daughter’s death, she had campaigned to ensure that Hindley remained in prison and doctors said that the stress had contributed to the severity of her illness.^[180] Winnie Johnson, mother of Keith Bennett, continues to visit Saddleworth Moor, where it is believed that the body of her son is buried.^[181]

The house in which Brady and Hindley lived on Wardle Brook Avenue, and where Edward Evans was murdered, was demolished by the local council.^[182]

Hindley died from bronchial pneumonia caused by heart disease, at the age of 60, on 15 November 2002.^[183] Cameras “crowded the pavement” outside, but none of Hindley’s relatives were among the congregation of six who attended a short service at Cambridge crematorium, as they were living anonymously in Manchester under assumed names. Such was the strength of feeling more than 35 years after the murders that a reported 20 local undertakers refused to handle her cremation.^[184] Four months later, Hindley’s ashes were scattered by a former lover, a woman she had met in prison,^[185] less than 10 miles (16 km) from Saddleworth Moor in Stalybridge Country Park. Fears were expressed that the news might result in visitors choosing to avoid the park, a local beauty spot, or even in the park being vandalised.^[186] Less than two weeks after Hindley’s death, on 25 November 2002, the Law Lords agreed that judges, not politicians, should decide how long a criminal spends behind bars, and thus stripped the Home Secretary of the power to set minimum sentences.^[187]

A 1977 BBC television debate discussed arguments for and against Myra Hindley’s release, with contributions from the parents of some of the murdered children.^[188] The case has been dramatised on television twice: in See No Evil: The Moors Murders and Longford (both 2006).

[edit]Lasting notoriety

Hindley “shouldered the greater public outrage” because of her gender, and she was popularly assumed to be “the devil incarnate”. The photographs and tape recording of the torture of Lesley Ann Downey, demonstrated in court to a disbelieving audience, and the cool responses of Brady and Hindley, helped to ensure the lasting notoriety of their crimes. Brady, who says that he does not want to be released, is rarely mentioned in the news, but Hindley’s repeated insistence on her innocence, and attempts to secure her release from prison, resulted in her becoming a figure of hate in the national media.^[189] Retribution was a common theme amongst those who sought to keep her locked away, and even Hindley’s mother insisted that she should die in prison—although out of fear for her daughter’s safety, and the desire to avoid the possibility that one of the victims’ relatives might kill her. Some commentators expressed the view that of the two, Hindley was the “more evil”.^[190] In 1987 she admitted that the plea for parole she had submitted to the Home Secretary eight years earlier was “on the whole […] a pack of lies”,^[191] and to some reporters her co-operation in the searches on Saddleworth Moor “appeared a cynical gesture aimed at ingratiating herself to the parole authorities”.^[189]0

THE DARK AND DISTURBING SIDE OF MENTAL TRAUMA AND PSYCHIATRIC TREATMENT USED ON A GREAT MANY LOST SOULS IN MENTAL ASYLUMS, MENTAL HOSPITALS & HOUSES OF CORRECTION …..VERY SAD, TRAUMATIC AND THOUGHT PROVOKING FOR SURE !!!

Built in 1791… Littledean Jail was a former House of Correction, Court House, Police Station and is now home to The Crime Through Time Collection . 

 

HERE IS A BRIEF INTERACTIVE, HOPEFULLY EDUCATIONAL  VIDEO AND PICTORIAL INSIGHT INTO SOME OF THE VERY THOUGHT PROVOKING  ELECTROCONVULSIVE THERAPY TREATMENT (ECT) .. USED ON PATIENTS HOUSED IN LUNATIC AND MENTAL ASYLUMS . BOTH HERE IN THE UK AND WORLDWIDE FROM THE VICTORIAN ERA THROUGH TO THE 1960’S . ALL OF  WHICH  WE FEATURE HERE ON DISPLAY AT THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION , LITTLEDEAN JAIL .

 

ORIGINAL 1930’s LEATHER BODY BELT COMPLETE WITH WRIST RESTRAINTS ACQUIRED FROM THE NOW CLOSED MONICA BRITTON MUSEUM COLLECTION AT FRENCHAY HOSPITAL , BRISTOL AND NOW ON DISPLAY HERE AT THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION , LITTLEDEAN JAIL , GLOUCESTERSHIRE, UKKK

 

ORIGINAL 1930’s LEATHER BODY BELT COMPLETE WITH WRIST RESTRAINTS ACQUIRED FROM THE NOW CLOSED MONICA BRITTON MUSEUM COLLECTION AT FRENCHAY HOSPITAL , BRISTOL AND NOW ON DISPLAY HERE AT THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION , LITTLEDEAN JAIL , GLOUCESTERSHIRE, UK

ORIGINAL 1930’s LEATHER BODY BELT COMPLETE WITH WRIST RESTRAINTS ACQUIRED FROM THE NOW CLOSED MONICA BRITTON MUSEUM COLLECTION AT FRENCHAY HOSPITAL , BRISTOL AND NOW ON DISPLAY HERE AT THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION , LITTLEDEAN JAIL , GLOUCESTERSHIRE, UK

ORIGINAL 1930’s LEATHER RESTRAINT STRAPS ACQUIRED FROM THE NOW CLOSED MONICA BRITTON MUSEUM COLLECTION AT FRENCHAY HOSPITAL , BRISTOL AND NOW ON DISPLAY HERE AT THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION , LITTLEDEAN JAIL , GLOUCESTERSHIRE, UK

ORIGINAL 1930’s LEATHER RESTRAINT STRAPS ACQUIRED FROM THE NOW CLOSED MONICA BRITTON MUSEUM COLLECTION AT FRENCHAY HOSPITAL , BRISTOL AND NOW ON DISPLAY HERE AT THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION , LITTLEDEAN JAIL , GLOUCESTERSHIRE, UK

ORIGINAL 1930’s LEATHER RESTRAINT STRAPS ACQUIRED FROM THE NOW CLOSED MONICA BRITTON MUSEUM COLLECTION AT FRENCHAY HOSPITAL , BRISTOL AND NOW ON DISPLAY HERE AT THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION , LITTLEDEAN JAIL , GLOUCESTERSHIRE, UK

ABOVE IS A VERY RARE “GLOUCESTER MENTAL HOSPITAL ” – METROPOLITAN WHISTLE DATING BACK TO THE EARLY 1920’S AS WAS USED BY THE CHIEF WARDEN IN THE INFAMOUS HORTON ROAD MENTAL ASYLUM , GLOUCESTER . USED PRIMARILY AS A FORM OF ALARM … PARTICULARLY SHOULD THEIR BE CAUSE FOR CONCERN WITH THE PATIENTS .

 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

The History of the Asylum

This section has been written to ammend the previous history pages of the Asylum, which were in desperately in need of replacing. The Victorian Asylum is a system that has long gone and it is doubtful that such a system will exist again. This section is dedicated to a building system that is now defunct and disappearing fast, planning mix ups and the will of the establishment to abolish the system have prevailed. We don’t hope to cover everything, or answer all your questions.  But this should hopefully answer a few questions you may have. Please note, any phrases used within this page is used within its historical context.

How did the Asylums come about?

The first recorded Lunatic Asylum in Europe was the Bethlem Royal Hospital in London, it has been a part of London since 1247 when it was built as a priory. It became a hospital in 1330 and admitted its first mentally ill patients in 1407. Before the Madhouse Act of 1774, treatment of the Insane was carried out by non-licensed practitioners, who ran their “Madhouses” as a commercial enterprise and with little regard for the inmates. The Mad House act established the licensing required to house insane patients, with yearly inspections of the premises taking place. In 1792, the York Retreat was set up by William Tuke. This was the first establishment in the UK to treat their patients as human beings and offer a therapeutic setting for them. Mechanical restraints were discontinued and work and leisure became the main treatment. In 1808, the County Asylum Act was passed, which allowed counties to levy a rate in order to fund the building of County Asylums. The intention was to remove the insane from within the Work Houses and provide them with more a sufficient and dedicated care system. However, due to the Act deficiencies, only 20 County Asylums were built around the country.

How did the mass construction come about?

Due to deficiencies of the 1808 Act, counties did not begin mass construction of Asylums throughout the country. It was not until the passing of the County Asylum / Lunacy Act in 1845 did the construction begin to take hold. Due to a change in the law, Counties were legally obliged to provide Asylum for their Lunatics. This Act, based on the work of John Conolly and Lord Shaftsbury saw the lunatics being treated as Patients and not prisoners.  It also took into account the moral treatment pioneered by William Tuke and saw the care of the lunatics being funded by the individual County. During this time, the Asylums become vastly overcrowded and rapid expansion of the ensued. Between the passing of the act and 1890, when the next act was passed, over 60 Asylums were built and opened (A further 40 were opened after this date).

What was it like for the Patients?

Without a time machine, it is hard to say! In all honesty, it varied depending on which era you looked at, conditions were ever changing. The most notable condition for the patients was the segregation of the sexes. It was not until the early 20th century that the sexes were allowed to mix, albeit they still slept in same sex wards. Patients lived within the confines of the hospital, privacy was minimal. Wards were able to house up to 50 patients, in very close proximity and little personal space. The daily regime was strictly regimented, with little room for variation and often under the watchful eye of staff. During the early years of the Asylums, wards were locked and security was kept high as attendants were fined for every patient that escaped on their watch. As the years passed, this was more relaxed, and by the time the asylums were coming to a close, patients were allowed much more freedom and were actively encouraged to leave the hospital and visit the local towns. Throughout the entire life of the Asylum system, patients were encouraged to work and undertake recreation. Local artisans were employed to teach skills and aid in the production of goods that were sold and used to fund social events. Sports teams were formed, and inter-hospital rivalries were formed. The able bodied were put to work around the hospital grounds, males running the farms and traditional male activities, and the females the laundry and kitchens. The sick and infirm patients were housed in their own wards and will have spent the majority of their time there. Angry, violent or suicidal patients were housed within the wards, and on occasions, locked within a padded cell. Seclusion rooms were also employed, but these were mainly used for patients who would disturb others during the night, in latter years they were sued for patients as a reward so that they could have some privacy.

What was the Work and Recreation?

Work and Recreation was central to life within the Asylum. Sport was made available to the patients, but walking within the grounds and woodlands was the most widely available. This started out as being heavily supervised walks, but as time passed, it was realised that other activities such as art, music and dancing were beneficial. The social activities of the hospital progressed with those of society as a whole, and holidays and interaction with outsiders was encouraged, helping to rehabilitate them. Sports became more prevalent as time passed, and many different teams were formed. The Farm was the main centre of employment for the male patients, where they grew food stuff for the hospitals consumption. The farms proved to be one of the most profitable activities the patients undertook, but with the advent of the NHS the farms began to close and the land sold off. The kitchens were also a great source of employment, with food grown and produced by the patients being served. Patients were also employed in the distribution of the dinners, and each patient undertook that task every day. So one patient would make porridge for the entire hospital, everyday! The Laundry was the largest female employer within the Asylums. Clothing and bedding were sorted in the wards, booked out and transported to the laundry for washing. Patients who worked in the laundry were normally housed within the Laundry Ward. There was also various other work departments around the buildings, dealing with trades such as shoe repair, printing, clothing repairs, the libraries and various aspects of the engineering departments. It was known for patients to be paid for the work.

How was it different for the sexes?

The Females

According to case notes, most women came in for short periods only simply to recover from the stress and exhaustion of their domestic lives – once rested and relaxed they were sent on their way.  Women were also admitted from problematic marriages or as a result of giving birth to illegitimate children – even if a result of rape.  Post natal depression was also a common reason for a women admittance. The females wards differed vastly from the male wards; they were based around Victorian ideals of femininity with little opportunity for them to go outside and even fewer opportunities to play games.  It was only later that this changed.  As with the tradition at the time the women’s activities were confined to the indoors, which led to a strong bond being formed between both female patients and staff.  The women were put to work throughout the asylum, mainly undertaking jobs in the needle room, the laundry and general housekeeping duties around the ward – the latter was kept for problematic patients. The daily routine of the ward remained unchanged for many many years, patients would rise at 7am for breakfast which would consist of coffee, tea or cocoa with porridge and bread as the main.  After breakfast the ‘good’ patients would have been taken to there respective jobs in the laundry or needle room – the others would have waited around until the airing courts were opened later in the morning.  Lunch would have been served at around 12:30 and would have consisted of food produced on the local farm; this was the main meal of the day.  The airing courts were then opened up again in the middle of the afternoon for just over an hour.  Tea was served in the early evening and was known to consist of bread and cake.  Due to staff shortages on the female side of the hospitals, nurses were known to have dosed the patients with paradehyde in the evenings to ease the load.

The Males

The majority of male patients within the asylum system before the first world war were often poor and without spouses to look after them.  After WWI, ‘Shell Shock’ was a prevalent condition among men admitted to the Asylums. At the time of this condition being diagnosed it cause controversy due to the condition being similar to the female psychosis.  Alcoholism and the delusion related with it were also common reasons for certification. Unlike the female sides of the asylums, the male sides were smaller in numbers.  Escape was more common with male patients than females; but due to the smaller numbers of males in some hospitals it was noted that they had a more stable time within the ward. The males wards had the same daily schedule as the female wards and instead of being involved with the laundry and needle rooms, they worked the kitchen and the bakehouse.  They were also involved in the daily housekeeping of the wards.  Other than the difference in activities the male wards were normally run with a stricter discipline; which most of the patients would have been used to given their backgrounds within the military.  The male population of the Asylums received a wider range of activities for their recovery; they were allowed to join sports teams and the hospital band (if there was one); there were also inter-hospital leagues fort hem to compete in.  Rational patients were also employed on working the farms and the upkeep of the grounds and gardens; they were also employed in various workshops and engineering practices.  One such example is an account from Severalls of a male patients were used to lay 2-inch piping to the cricket ground, and build a band stand.

What were the treatments that were used?

The treatments used throughout the history of the Asylums have varied massively. When the Asylums first opened, there was little knowledge of the psychiatric conditions or how to treat them. The lunatics were kept calm and occupied as much as possible, and when the need arouse then restraint was employed. The first therapy that was employed throughout the Asylum system was the treatment of General Paralysis of the Insane, caused by Syphilis, with Malaria infected mosquitoes. This treatment was used through until the 1950’s when a new drug was developed. The next treatment that was developed was the Deep Insulin Therapy, where it was believed that Schizophrenia was caused by a high blood sugar in the brain. Insulin would be administered until the body went into shock and then the patient was revived with a sugary dose of tea. In the 1930’s, two major treatments were developed in Europe, these were the Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) and the Lobotomy. Both these treatments involved stresses to the brain. ECT involved passing a current through the brain and induce an epileptic fit, which was known to cause injury to the patient. ECT proved to be very effective for patients suffering with depression and still used in very rare cases today. The lobotomy involved cutting the brain tissue within the frontal lobes of the brain. This had mixed results and was discontinued in the 50’s. The big breakthrough in the psychiatric treatments was the introduction of drugs to the Asylum system. The first drug to be used, discovered by a French Naval Surgeon was  (Largactil) and was the first antipsychotic to be developed and it had a huge impact on the condition of patients. This development led to the rapid introduction of drugs within the psychiatric world. The next large development was talking through patients problems, and occupational therapy.

Were mechanical restraints used?

In short, yes. Before the advent of drugs and other treatments, manic, aggressive and suicidal patients were dealt with through restraint. Padded cell were also used to house patients who were self harming, or violent towards other (see our padded cell section). The most common restraints were the “straight jacket” and fingerless gloves. Both of these inhibited the movement of the patient. Less common forms were the used of continuous baths – patients were placed in a warm bath and a sheet affixed over the top, with their head and shoulders coming through it – and bed restraints. In the early years of the Asylums, restraints were common place, and their used recorded. After the 1890 Act, the use of restraints was severely limited and had to be approved by a medical officer and each use recorded.

Why did they close?

They had become to large, unwieldy and the system had opened itself up to abuse.  In 1961 the Minister of Health, Enoch Powell was invited to speak at the AGM of the National Association for Mental Health.  In his speech he announced that it the government of the day intended to “the elimination of by far the greater part of the country’s mental hospitals.”  At the same time, regional boards were asked to “ensure that no more money than necessary is spent on upgrading and reconditioning”.  This announcement had stunned the medical professions as there had been no indication that the government was going to head in this direction; only a handful of experimental community care programmes existed around the country.  It would take 25 years for these plans to take afoot and the closures to start. There were two reasons for the decline in the large institutions, the advancement in psychiatric treatment meant that a standard hospital was able to provide care to acute cases that required immediate attention, and the drugs available meant that patients did not need twenty-four hour care.  This meant that the traditional asylum was left with fewer long term patients to care for – patient numbers reduced from over 150,00 in 1950 to 80,000 in 1975.  The second reason for the closure of the mental hospitals was the passing of the Mental Health Act 1983 – this saw the people being committed to the large asylums being given back their full rights and having the ability to appeal their certification; it also saw the mentally deficient being moved back into the community under the care in community projects. The first hospital to close due to the shift in medical treatment and public perception was Banstead Hospital in 1986, others followed suit over the next twenty years, with only a handful remaining open today.  The medical staff at many hospitals still keep in contact with their old patients to make sure that the arrangements are working for them.   The hospitals themselves either stand empty and derelict, or have been demolished and converted to cheap affordable housing, with only a few reminders to the residents of the previous history there. The Victorian Asylums are now a long forgotten memory, however in a recent NHS study, they have found that people suffering from mental illnesses recover when they are in a safe environment and are involved in their treatment, rather than being allowed to fend for themselves.  In speaking with a number of retired nurses who had worked within the system, they were unsure as to whether the mass closures and the entire move to the care in the community method was the right one.  One even felt that the number of hospital that closed shouldn’t have been so high, with a few being kept as regional specialists that could provide a more comprehensive support system.  At the grounds of Horton Hospital, two of the old villas have recently been refurbished to act as a care home for the mentally ill.

DARK TOURISM HERE IN THE UK…. A HISTORICALLY AND HOPEFULLY EDUCATIONAL INSIGHT INTO THE HISTORY OF THE NOTORIOUS KU KLUX KLAN. A WHITE SUPREMACIST, EXTREMIST, SATANIC AND TERRORIST ORGANIZATION… STILL VERY MUCH ACTIVE WORLDWIDE TODAY …

WHAT GOES ON BEHIND THESE WALLS …. STAYS BEHIND THESE WALLS .!!!!!!!!!!

THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION

PLEASE DO BE AWARE THAT WE HAVE NO LINKS OR AFFILIATION TO ANY EXTREMIST ORGANISATIONS OF ANY KIND WHATSOEVER ….. WE ARE SIMPLY A  FREE SPEECH, POLITICALLY INCORRECT VISITOR ATTRACTION THAT FEATURE A GREAT MANY HISTORICALLY SENSITIVE AND  TABOO SUBJECT MATTERS THAT NO OTHER VISITOR ATTRACTION DARES TO COVER . 

AS WE ALWAYS SAY …. IF EASILY  OFFENDED , DISTURBED  OR OF A SENSITIVE NATURE THEN PLEASE DO AVOID A VISIT TO LITTLEDEAN JAIL 

Above is an intriguing video showing Mo Asumang, daughter of a black Ghanaian father and a white German mother, talks to BBC News about her experiences making her new documentary, The Aryans, in which she confronts racists, both in Germany and among the Ku Klux Klan in America.

THE KU KLUX KLAN EXHIBITION AT LITTLEDEAN JAIL …. Deemed by many to be politically incorrect.. though in our view and indeed by a great many black people, an historically significant and educational insight .

Above : US President Donald Trump allegedly pictured here with members of the infamous and notorious Ku Klux klan .

THE KU KLUX KLAN EXHIBITION AT LITTLEDEAN JAIL ……A PART OF BLACK AMERICAN HISTORY THAT SHOULD NOT BE HIDDEN UNDER THE CARPET .

Below is an interesting video news item relating to an insight into the new KKK

PLEASE DO BE AWARE THAT  THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION , IT’S OWNER , OR ANY OF IT’S STAFF HERE AT LITTLEDEAN JAIL HAVE 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”….EVEN IF ON OCCASIONS, SENSITIVE , THOUGHT PROVOKING SUBJECT MATTERS THAT INCITE STRONG DEBATE 

BELOW IS A VERY BRIEF PICTORIAL INSIGHT INTO SOME OF THE KU KLUX KLAN  EXHIBITION ITEMS ON DISPLAY HERE AT LITTLEDEAN JAIL 

Ku Klux Klan

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“KKK” redirects here. For other uses, see KKK (disambiguation).

Ku Klux Klan

Ku Klux Klan rally, Gainesville, Florida, December 31, 1922.
In existence
1st Klan	1865–1870s
2nd Klan	1915–1944
3rd Klan1	since 1946
Members
1st Klan	550,000
2nd Klan	3,000,000–6,000,000[1] (peaked in 1920–1925 period)
3rd Klan	5,000–6,000
Properties
Origin	United States of America
Political ideology	White supremacy White nationalism Nativism Anti-communism Christian terrorism[2][3] Neo-Confederate Anti-Catholicism Antisemitism
Political position	Far-right
Religion	Protestant Christianity
1The 3rd Klan is decentralized, with approx. 179 chapters.

Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right^[4][5][6][7] organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically expressed through terrorism.^[8][9] Since the mid-20th century, the KKK has also been anti-communist.^[8] The current manifestation is splintered into several chapters and is classified as a hate group.^[10]

The first Klan flourished in the South in the 1860s, then died out by the early 1870s. Members adopted white costumes: robes, masks, and conical hats, designed to be outlandish and terrifying, and to hide their identities.^[11] The second KKK flourished nationwide in the early and mid 1920s, and adopted the same costumes and code words as the first Klan, while introducing cross burnings.^[12] The third KKK emerged after World War II and was associated with opposing the Civil Rights Movement and progress among minorities. The second and third incarnations of the Ku Klux Klan made frequent reference to the USA’s “Anglo-Saxon” and “Celtic” blood, harking back to 19th-century nativism and claiming descent from the original 18th-century British colonial revolutionaries.^[13] The first and third incarnations of the Klan have well-established records of engaging in terrorism and political violence, though historians debate whether or not the tactic was supported by the second KKK.

First KKKThree Klans

The first Klan was founded in 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee, as a charitable organization to help widows and orphans.^[14] by veterans of the Confederate Army.^[15] They named it after the Greek wordkuklos, which means circle. The name means “Circle of Brothers.”^[16]

Although there was no organizational structure above the local level, similar groups arose across the South, adopting the name and methods.^[17] Klan groups spread throughout the South as an insurgent movement during the Reconstruction era in the United States. As a secret vigilante group, the Klan targeted freedmen and their allies; it sought to restore white supremacy by threats and violence, including murder, against black and white Republicans. In 1870 and 1871, the federal government passed the Force Acts, which were used to prosecute Klan crimes.^[18] Prosecution of Klan crimes and enforcement of the Force Acts suppressed Klan activity. In 1874 and later, however, newly organized and openly active paramilitary organizations, such as the White League and the Red Shirts, started a fresh round of violence aimed at suppressing blacks’ voting and running Republicans out of office. These contributed to segregationist white Democrats regaining political power in all the Southern states by 1877.

Second KKK

In 1915, the second Klan was founded in Georgia. Starting in 1921, it adopted a modern business system of recruiting (which paid most of the initiation fee and costume charges to the organizers) and grew rapidly nationwide at a time of prosperity. Reflecting the social tensions of urban industrialization and vastly increased immigration, its membership grew most rapidly in cities, and spread to theMidwest and West out of the South. The second KKK preached “One Hundred Percent Americanism” demanded the purification of politics, calling for strict morality and better enforcement ofprohibition. Its official rhetoric focused on the threat of the Catholic Church, using anti-Catholicism and nativism.^[19] Its appeal was directed exclusively at white Protestants.^[20] Some local groups took part in attacks on private houses and carried out other violent activities. The violent episodes were generally in the South.^[21]

The second Klan was a formal fraternal organization, with a national and state structure. At its peak in the mid-1920s, the organization claimed to include about 15% of the nation’s eligible population, approximately 4–5 million men. Internal divisions, criminal behavior by leaders, and external opposition brought about a collapse in membership, which had dropped to about 30,000 by 1930. It finally faded away in the 1940s.^[22] Klan organizers also operated in Canada, especially in Saskatchewan in 1926-28, where it attacked immigrants from Eastern Europe.^[23]

Third KKK

The “Ku Klux Klan” name was used by many independent local groups opposing the Civil Rights Movement and desegregation, especially in the 1950s and 1960s. During this period, they often forged alliances with Southern police departments, as in Birmingham, Alabama; or with governor’s offices, as with George Wallace of Alabama.^[24] Several members of KKK groups were convicted of murder in the deaths of civil rights workers and children in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. Today, researchers estimate that there may be approximately 150 Klan chapters with upwards of 5,000 members nationwide.^[25]

Today, a large majority of sources consider the Klan to be a “subversive or terrorist organization”.^{[25][26][27][28]} In 1999, the city council of Charleston, South Carolina passed a resolution declaring the Klan to be a terrorist organization.^[29] A similar effort was made in 2004 when a professor at the University of Louisville began a campaign to have the Klan declared a terrorist organization so it could be banned from campus.^[30] In April 1997, FBI agents arrested four members of the True Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Dallas for conspiracy to commit robbery and to blow up a natural gas processing plant.^[31]

First Klan 1865–1874

Creation and naming

A cartoon threatening that the KKK would lynchcarpetbaggers. From the Independent Monitor,Tuscaloosa, Alabama, 1868.

Six well-educated Confederate veterans from Pulaski, Tennessee, created the original Ku Klux Klan on December 24, 1865, during Reconstruction of the South after the Civil War.^[32][33] The name was formed by combining the Greek kyklos (κύκλος, circle) with clan.^[34] The group was known for a short time as the “Kuklux Clan.” The Ku Klux Klan was one among a number of secret, oath-bound organizations using violence, including the Southern Cross in New Orleans (1865) and the Knights of the White Camelia (1867) in Louisiana.^[35]

Historians generally see the KKK as part of the post Civil War insurgent violence related not only to the high number of veterans in the population, but also to their effort to control the dramatically changed social situation by using extrajudicial means to restore white supremacy. In 1866, MississippiGovernor William L. Sharkey reported that disorder, lack of control and lawlessness were widespread; in some states armed bands of Confederate soldiers roamed at will. The Klan used public violence against blacks as intimidation. They burned houses, and attacked and killed blacks, leaving their bodies on the roads.^[36]

A political cartoon depicting the KKK and the Democratic Party as continuations of the Confederacy

In an 1867 meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, Klan members gathered to try to create a hierarchical organization with local chapters eventually reporting up to a national headquarters. Since most of the Klan’s members were veterans, they were used to the hierarchical structure of the organization, but the Klan never operated under this centralized structure. Local chapters and bands were highly independent.

Former Confederate Brigadier General George Gordon developed the Prescript, or Klan dogma. The Prescript suggested elements of white supremacist belief. For instance, an applicant should be asked if he was in favor of “a white man’s government”, “the reenfranchisement and emancipation of the white men of the South, and the restitution of the Southern people to all their rights.”^[37] The latter is a reference to the Ironclad Oath, which stripped the vote from white persons who refused to swear that they had not borne arms against the Union. Gordon was said to have told former slave trader and Confederate GeneralNathan Bedford Forrest about the Klan. Forrest allegedly responded, “That’s a good thing; that’s a damn good thing. We can use that to keep the niggers in their place.”^[38] Forrest went on to become Grand Wizard, the Klan’s national leader.^[15][39][40]

Nathan Bedford Forrest

In an 1868 newspaper interview, Forrest stated that the Klan’s primary opposition was to the Loyal Leagues, Republicanstate governments, people like Tennessee governor Brownlow and other carpetbaggers and scalawags. He argued that many southerners believed that blacks were voting for the Republican Party because they were being hoodwinked by the Loyal Leagues.^[41] One Alabama newspaper editor declared “The League is nothing more than a nigger Ku Klux Klan.”^[42]

Despite Gordon’s and Forrest’s work, local Klan units never accepted the Prescript and continued to operate autonomously. There were never hierarchical levels or state headquarters. Klan members used violence to settle old feuds and local grudges, as they worked to restore white dominance in the disrupted postwar society. The historian Elaine Frantz Parsons describes the membership:

Lifting the Klan mask revealed a chaotic multitude of antiblack vigilante groups, disgruntled poor white farmers, wartimeguerrilla bands, displaced Democratic politicians, illegal whiskey distillers, coercive moral reformers, sadists, rapists, white workmen fearful of black competition, employers trying to enforce labor discipline, common thieves, neighbors with decades-old grudges, and even a few freedmen and white Republicans who allied with Democratic whites or had criminal agendas of their own. Indeed, all they had in common, besides being overwhelmingly white, southern, and Democratic, was that they called themselves, or were called, Klansmen.^[43]

Historian Eric Foner observed:

In effect, the Klan was a military force serving the interests of the Democratic party, the planter class, and all those who desired restoration of white supremacy. Its purposes were political, but political in the broadest sense, for it sought to affect power relations, both public and private, throughout Southern society. It aimed to reverse the interlocking changes sweeping over the South during Reconstruction: to destroy the Republican party’s infrastructure, undermine the Reconstruction state, reestablish control of the black labor force, and restore racial subordination in every aspect of Southern life.^[44]

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Interview with Nathan Bedford Forrest

To that end they worked to curb the education, economic advancement, voting rights, and right to keep and bear arms of blacks.^[44] The Ku Klux Klan soon spread into nearly every southern state, launching a “reign of terror against Republican leaders both black and white. Those political leaders assassinated during the campaign included Arkansas Congressman James M. Hinds, three members of the South Carolina legislature, and several men who served in constitutional conventions.”^[45]

Activities

Three Ku Klux Klan members arrested in Tishomingo County, Mississippi, September 1871, for the attempted murder of an entire family.

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Why the Ku Klux

Klan members adopted masks and robes that hid their identities and added to the drama of their night rides, their chosen time for attacks. Many of them operated in small towns and rural areas where people otherwise knew each other’s faces, and sometimes still recognized the attackers. “The kind of thing that men are afraid or ashamed to do openly, and by day, they accomplish secretly, masked, and at night.” With this method both the high and the low could be attacked.^[46] The Ku Klux Klan night riders “sometimes claimed to be ghosts of Confederate soldiers so, as they claimed, to frighten superstitious blacks. Few freedmen took such nonsense seriously.”^[47]

The Klan attacked black members of the Loyal Leagues and intimidated southern Republicans and Freedmen’s Bureau workers. When they killed black political leaders, they also took heads of families, along with the leaders of churches and community groups, because these people had many roles in society. Agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau reported weekly assaults and murders of blacks. “Armed guerrilla warfare killed thousands of Negroes; political riots were staged; their causes or occasions were always obscure, their results always certain: ten to one hundred times as many Negroes were killed as whites.” Masked men shot into houses and burned them, sometimes with the occupants still inside. They drove successful black farmers off their land. “Generally, it can be reported that in North and South Carolina, in 18 months ending in June 1867, there were 197 murders and 548 cases of aggravated assault.”^[48]

Klan violence worked to suppress black voting. More than 2,000 persons were killed, wounded and otherwise injured in Louisiana within a few weeks prior to the Presidential election of November 1868. Although St. Landry Parish had a registered Republican majority of 1,071, after the murders, no Republicans voted in the fall elections. White Democrats cast the full vote of the parish for Grant’s opponent. The KKK killed and wounded more than 200 black Republicans, hunting and chasing them through the woods. Thirteen captives were taken from jail and shot; a half-buried pile of 25 bodies was found in the woods. The KKK made people vote Democratic and gave them certificates of the fact.^[49]

In the April 1868 Georgia gubernatorial election, Columbia County cast 1,222 votes for Republican Rufus Bullock. By the November presidential election, however, Klan intimidation led to suppression of the Republican vote and only one person voted for Ulysses S. Grant.^[50]

Klansmen killed more than 150 African Americans in a county in Florida, and hundreds more in other counties. Freedmen’s Bureau records provided a detailed recounting of Klansmen’s beatings and murders of freedmen and their white allies.^[51]

Milder encounters also occurred. In Mississippi, according to the Congressional inquiry:^[52]

One of these teachers (Miss Allen of Illinois), whose school was at Cotton Gin Port in Monroe County, was visited … between one and two o’clock in the morning on March 1871, by about fifty men mounted and disguised. Each man wore a long white robe and his face was covered by a loose mask with scarlet stripes. She was ordered to get up and dress which she did at once and then admitted to her room the captain and lieutenant who in addition to the usual disguise had long horns on their heads and a sort of device in front. The lieutenant had a pistolin his hand and he and the captain sat down while eight or ten men stood inside the door and the porch was full. They treated her “gentlemanly and quietly” but complained of the heavy school-tax, said she must stop teaching and go away and warned her that they never gave a second notice. She heeded the warning and left the county.

By 1868, two years after the Klan’s creation, its activity was beginning to decrease.^[53] Members were hiding behind Klan masks and robes as a way to avoid prosecution for freelance violence. Many influential southern Democrats feared that Klan lawlessness provided an excuse for the federal government to retain its power over the South, and they began to turn against it.^[54] There were outlandish claims made, such as Georgian B. H. Hill stating “that some of these outrages were actually perpetrated by the political friends of the parties slain.”^[53]

Resistance

Union Army veterans in mountainous Blount County, Alabama, organized “the anti-Ku Klux”. They put an end to violence by threatening Klansmen with reprisals unless they stopped whipping Unionists and burning black churches and schools. Armed blacks formed their own defense in Bennettsville, South Carolina and patrolled the streets to protect their homes.^[55]

National sentiment gathered to crack down on the Klan, even though some Democrats at the national level questioned whether the Klan really existed or believed that it was just a creation of nervous Southern Republican governors.^[56] Many southern states began to pass anti-Klan legislation.

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871

In January 1871, Pennsylvania Republican Senator John Scott convened a Congressional committee which took testimony from 52 witnesses about Klan atrocities. They accumulated 12 volumes of horrifying testimony. In February, former Union General and Congressman Benjamin Franklin Butler ofMassachusetts introduced the Civil Rights Act of 1871 (Ku Klux Klan Act). This added to the enmity that southern white Democrats bore toward him.^[57]While the bill was being considered, further violence in the South swung support for its passage. The Governor of South Carolina appealed for federal troops to assist his efforts in keeping control of the state. A riot and massacre in a Meridian, Mississippi, courthouse were reported, from which a black state representative escaped only by taking to the woods.^[58] The 1871 Civil Rights Act allowed President Ulysses S. Grant to suspend Habeas Corpus.^[59]

Benjamin Franklin Butler wrote the Civil Rights Act of 1871 (Klan Act)

In 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant signed Butler’s legislation. The Ku Klux Klan Act was used by the Federal government together with the 1870 Force Act, another act that President Grant signed, to enforce the civil rights provisions for individuals under the constitution. Under the 1871 Klan Act, after the Klan refused to voluntarily dissolve, President Grant issued a suspension of Habeas Corpus, and sent Federal troops into 9 South Carolina counties. The Klansmen were arrested and prosecuted in Federal court. More African Americans served on juries in Federal court than were selected for local or state juries, so they had a chance to participate in the process.^[59][60] In the crackdown, hundreds of Klan members were fined or imprisoned.

The Klan declines and is superseded by other groups

Although Forrest boasted that the Klan was a nationwide organization of 550,000 men and that he could muster 40,000 Klansmen within five days’ notice, as a secret or “invisible” group, it had no membership rosters, no chapters, and no local officers. It was difficult for observers to judge its actual membership. It had created a sensation by the dramatic nature of its masked forays and because of its many murders.

In 1870 a federal grand jury determined that the Klan was a “terrorist organization”.^[61] It issued hundreds of indictments for crimes of violence and terrorism. Klan members were prosecuted, and many fled from areas that were under federal government jurisdiction, particularly in South Carolina.^[62] Many people not formally inducted into the Klan had used the Klan’s costume for anonymity, to hide their identities when carrying out acts of violence. Forrest ordered the Klan to disband in 1869, stating that it was “being perverted from its original honorable and patriotic purposes, becoming injurious instead of subservient to the public peace”.^[63] HistorianStanley Horn writes “generally speaking, the Klan’s end was more in the form of spotty, slow, and gradual disintegration than a formal and decisive disbandment”.^[64]A reporter in Georgia wrote in January 1870, “A true statement of the case is not that the Ku Klux are an organized band of licensed criminals, but that men who commit crimes call themselves Ku Klux”.^[65]

Gov. William Holden of North Carolina.

While people used the Klan as a mask for nonpolitical crimes, state and local governments seldom acted against them. African Americans were kept off juries. In lynching cases, all-white juries almost never indicted Ku Klux Klan members. When there was a rare indictment, juries were unlikely to vote for a conviction. In part, jury members feared reprisals from local Klansmen.

Others may have agreed with lynching as a way of keeping dominance over black men. In many states, officials were reluctant to use black militia against the Klan out of fear that racial tensions would be raised.^[60] When Republican Governor of North Carolina William Woods Holden called out the militia against the Klan in 1870, it added to his unpopularity. Combined with violence and fraud at the polls, the Republicans lost their majority in the state legislature. Disaffection with Holden’s actions led to white Democratic legislators’ impeaching Holden and removing him from office, but their reasons were numerous.^[66]

The Klan was destroyed in South Carolina^[67] and decimated throughout the rest of the South, where it had already been in decline. Attorney General Amos Tappan Ackerman led the prosecutions.^[68]

In some areas, other local paramilitary organizations such as the White League, Red Shirts, saber clubs, and rifle clubs continued to intimidate and murder black voters.^[69]

In 1874, organized white paramilitary groups were formed in the Deep South to replace the faltering Klan: the White League in Louisiana and the Red Shirts inMississippi, North and South Carolina. They campaigned openly to turn Republicans out of office, intimidated and killed black voters, tried to disrupt organizing and suppressed black voting. They were out in force during the campaigns and elections of 1874 and 1876, contributing to the conservative Democrats regaining power in 1876, against a background of electoral violence.

Shortly after, in United States v. Cruikshank (1875), the Supreme Court ruled that the Force Act of 1870 did not give the Federal government power to regulate private actions, but only those by state governments. The result was that as the century went on, African Americans were at the mercy of hostile state governments that refused to intervene against private violence and paramilitary groups.

Whereas the number of indictments across the South was large, the number of cases leading to prosecution and sentencing was relatively small. The overloaded federal courts were not able to meet the demands of trying such a tremendous number of cases, a situation that led to selective pardoning. By late 1873 and 1874, most of the charges against Klansmen were dropped although new cases continued to be prosecuted for several more years. Most of those sentenced had either served their terms or had been pardoned by 1875. The Supreme Court of the United States eviscerated the Ku Klux Act in 1876 by ruling that the federal government could no longer prosecute individuals although states would be forced to comply with federal civil rights provisions. Republicans passed a second civil rights act (the Civil Rights Act of 1875) to grant equal access to public facilities and other housing accommodations regardless of race. Ironically, the Klan during this period served to further Northern reconstruction efforts, as Ku Klux violence provided the political climate needed to pass civil rights protections for blacks. Although the Ku Klux Act of 1871 dismantled the first Klan, Southern whites formed other, similar groups that kept blacks away from the polls through intimidation and physical violence. Reconstruction ended with the election of President Rutherford B. Hayes, who suspended the federal military occupation of the South; yet blacks still found themselves without the basic civil liberties that Congressional Republicans had sought to secure.^[70]

In 1882, the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Harris that the Klan Act was partially unconstitutional. It ruled that Congress’s power under the Fourteenth Amendment did not extend to the right to regulate against private conspiracies.^[71]

Klan costumes, also called “regalia“, disappeared by the early 1870s (Wade 1987, p. 109). The fact that the Klan did not exist for decades was shown when Simmons’s 1915 recreation of the Klan attracted only two aging “former Reconstruction Klansmen.” All other members were new.^[72] By 1872, the Klan was broken as an organization.^[73] Nonetheless, the goals that the Klan had failed to achieve itself, such as suppressing suffrage for Southern blacks and driving a wedge between poor whites and blacks, were largely accomplished by the 1890s by militant Southern whites. Lynchings of African Americans, far from being ended by the Klan’s disintegration, instead peaked in 1892 with 161 deaths.^[74]

The second Klan: 1915–1944

Refounding in 1915

Three events in 1915 acted as catalysts to the revival of the Klan:

• The film The Birth of a Nation was released, mythologizing and glorifying the first Klan.
• Jewish businessman Leo Frank was lynched near Atlanta after the Georgia governor commuted his death sentence to life in prison. Frank had been convicted in 1913 and sentenced to death for the rape and murder of a young white factory worker named Mary Phagan, in a trial marked by intimidation of the jury and media frenzy. His legal appeals had been exhausted.
• The second Ku Klux Klan was founded by William J. Simmons at Stone Mountain, outside Atlanta. It added to the original anti-black ideology with a new anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, prohibitionistand antisemitic agenda. Most of the founders were from an Atlanta-area organization calling itself the Knights of Mary Phagan, which had organized around Leo Frank’s trial. The new organization emulated the fictionalized version of the Klan presented in The Birth of a Nation.

The Birth of a Nation

An illustration from The Clansman: “Take dat f’um yo equal—”

Movie poster for The Birth of a Nation. It has been widely noted for reviving the Ku Klux Klan.

William J. Simmons founded the second Ku Klux Klan in 1915

Branford Clarke illustration in The Ku Klux Klan In Prophecy by Bishop Alma Whitepublished by the Pillar of Fire Church in 1925 at Zarephath, NJ

Director D. W. Griffith‘s The Birth of a Nation glorified the original Klan. His film was based on the book and play The Clansman and the book The Leopard’s Spots, both by Thomas Dixon, Jr. Dixon said his purpose was “to revolutionize northern sentiment by a presentation of history that would transform every man in my audience into a good Democrat!” The film created a nationwide Klan craze. At the official premier in Atlanta, members of the Klan rode up and down the street in front of the theater.^[75]

Much of the modern Klan’s iconography, including the standardized white costume and the lighted cross, are derived from the film. Its imagery was based on Dixon’s romanticized concept of old England and Scotland, as portrayed in the novels and poetry of Sir Walter Scott. The film’s influence and popularity were enhanced by a widely reported endorsement by historian and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson.

The Birth of a Nation included extensive quotations from Woodrow Wilson’s History of the American People, as if to give it a stronger basis. After seeing the film in a special White House screening, Wilson allegedly said, “It is like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.”^[76] Wilson’s remarks immediately became controversial. Wilson tried to remain aloof, but finally, on April 30, he issued a non-denial denial.^[77] Wilson’s aide, Joseph Tumulty said, “the President was entirely unaware of the nature of the play before it was presented and at no time has expressed his approbation of it.”^[78]

The new Klan was inaugurated in 1915 at a meeting led by William J. Simmons on top of Stone Mountain. A few aging members of the original Klan attended, along with members of the self-named Knights of Mary Phagan.

Simmons stated that he had been inspired by the original Klan’s Prescripts, written in 1867 by Confederate veteran George Gordon in an attempt to create a national organization. These were never adopted by the Klan, however.^[79] The Prescript stated the Klan’s purposes in idealistic terms, hiding the fact that its members committed acts of vigilante violence and murder from behind masks.

Social factors

Photograph on Page 4, February 1923 edition of The Good Citizen

From Klansmen: Guardians of Liberty1926 ill. by Rev. Branford Clarke

“The End” Referring to the end of Catholic influence in the US. Klansmen: Guardians of Liberty 1926

The Second Klan saw threats from every direction. A religious tone was apparent in all of its activities; indeed, “two-thirds of the national Klan lecturers were Protestant ministers,” says historian Brian R. Farmer.^[80] Much of the Klan’s energy went to guarding the home, in its view, says historian Kathleen Blee, to protect “the interests of white womanhood.”^[81]

The second Klan arose during the nadir of American race relations, in response to urbanization and industrialization. Massive immigration of Catholics and Jews from eastern and southern Europe led to fears among Protestants. The Great Migration of African Americans to the North stoked racism by whites in Northern industrial cities; thus the second Klan would achieve its greatest political power not in any Southern state, but in Indiana. The migration of African Americans and whites from rural areas to Southern cities further increased tensions. The Klan grew most rapidly in urbanizing cities which had high growth rates between 1910 and 1930, such as Detroit, Memphis, Dayton, Atlanta, Dallas, and Houston. InMichigan, more than half of the members lived in Detroit and were concerned about urban issues: limited housing, rapid social change, competition for jobs.^[82] Stanley Horn, a Southern historian sympathetic to the first Klan, was careful in an oral interview to distinguish it from the later “spurious Ku Klux organization which was in ill-repute—and, of course, had no connection whatsoever with the Klan of Reconstruction days”.^[83]

In an era without Social Security or widely available life insurance, it was common for men to join fraternal organizations such as the Elks or the Woodmen of the World to provide for their families in case they died or were unable to work. The founder of the new Klan, William J. Simmons, was a member of twelve different fraternal organizations. He recruited for the Klan with his chest covered with fraternal badges, and consciously modeled the Klan after those organizations.^[84]

Klan organizers, called “Kleagles“, signed up hundreds of new members, who paid initiation fees and bought KKK costumes. The organizer kept half the money and sent the rest to state or national officials. When the organizer was done with an area, he organized a huge rally, often with burning crosses and perhaps presented a Bible to a local Protestant minister. He then left town with the money. The local units operated like many fraternal organizations and occasionally brought in speakers.

The Klan’s growth was also affected by mobilization for World War I and postwar tensions, especially in the cities where strangers came up against each other more often. Southern whites resented the arming of black soldiers. Black veterans did not want to go back to second-class status in the United States. Some were lynched, still in uniform, upon returning from overseas service.^[85]

Activities

Simmons initially met with little success in either recruiting members or in raising money, and the Klan remained a small operation in the Atlanta area until 1920, when he handed its day-to-day activities over to two professional publicists, Elizabeth Tyler and Edward Young Clarke.^[86] The Klan now expanded exponentially, reaching a mass national base by 1925. The remodeled Klan downplayed the old issues left over from Reconstruction, and focused on anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic, anti-Communist and anti-immigrant appeals. It now sold itself as a nativist and strenuously patriotic organization, and it emphasized its support for vigorous enforcement of prohibition laws. Most of its members lived in the North and West.

Prohibition

Historians agree that the Klan’s resurgence in the 1920s was aided by the national debate over prohibition.^[87] Thus Prendergast contends that the KKK’s “support for Prohibition represented the single most important bond between Klansmen throughout the nation”.^[88] The Klan opposed bootleggers, sometimes with violence. In 1922, two hundred Klan members set fire to saloons in Union County, Arkansas. The national Klan office was finally established in Dallas,Texas, but Little Rock, Arkansas was the home of the Women of the Ku Klux Klan. The first head of this auxiliary was a former president of the ArkansasWCTU.^{[89][verification needed]} Membership in the Klan and in other prohibition groups overlapped, and they often coordinated activities.^[90]

Labor and anti-unionism

In southern cities such as Birmingham, Alabama, Klan members kept control of access to the better-paying industrial jobs but opposed unions. During the 1930s and 1940s, Klan leaders urged members to disrupt the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which advocated industrial unions and was open to African-American members. With access to dynamite and using the skills from their jobs in mining and steel, in the late 1940s some Klan members in Birmingham began to perpetrate bombings in order to intimidate upwardly mobile blacks who moved into middle-class neighborhoods. “By mid-1949, there were so many charred house carcasses that the area [College Hills] was informally named Dynamite Hill.”^[91] Independent Klan groups remained active in Birmingham and were deeply engaged in violent opposition to the Civil Rights Movement.^[91]

Urbanization

Stone Mountain, site of the founding of the second Klan in 1915

A significant characteristic of the second Klan was that it was an organization based in urban areas, reflecting the major shifts of population to cities in both the North and the South. In Michigan, for instance, 40,000 members lived in Detroit, where they made up more than half of the state’s membership. Most Klansmen were lower- to middle-class whites who were trying to protect their jobs and housing from the waves of newcomers to the industrial cities: immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, who tended to be Catholic and Jewish in numbers higher than earlier groups of immigrants; and black and white migrants from the South. As new populations poured into cities, rapidly changing neighborhoods created social tensions. Because of the rapid pace of population growth in industrializing cities such as Detroit and Chicago, the Klan grew rapidly in the U.S. Midwest. The Klan also grew in booming Southern cities such as Dallas and Houston.^[92]

In the medium-size industrial city of Worcester, Massachusetts in the 1920s, the Klan ascended to power quickly but diminished as a result of opposition from the Catholic Church. There was no violence and the local newspaper ridiculed Klansmen as “night-shirt knights”. Half of the members were Swedish American, including some first-generation immigrants. The ethnic and religious conflicts between Worcester residents is discussed. Swedish Protestants fought against Irish Catholics for political and ideological control of the city.^[93]

For some states, historians have obtained membership rosters of some local units and matched the names against city directory and local records to create statistical profiles of the membership. Big city newspapers were often hostile and ridiculed Klansmen as ignorant farmers. Detailed analysis from Indianashowed the rural stereotype was false for that state:

Indiana’s Klansmen represented a wide cross section of society: they were not disproportionately urban or rural, nor were they significantly more or less likely than other members of society to be from the working class, middle class, or professional ranks. Klansmen were Protestants, of course, but they cannot be described exclusively or even predominantly as fundamentalists. In reality, their religious affiliations mirrored the whole of white Protestant society, including those who did not belong to any church.^[94]

The Klan attracted people but most of them did not remain in the organization for long. Membership in the Klan turned over rapidly as people found out that it was not the group they wanted. Millions joined, and at its peak in the 1920s, the organization included about 15% of the nation’s eligible population. The lessening of social tensions contributed to the Klan’s decline.

The burning cross

Cross burning is said to have been introduced by William J. Simmons, the founder of the second Klan in 1915.

The second Klan adopted a burning Latin cross as its symbol. No such crosses had been used by the first Klan, but the burning cross was used as a symbol of intimidation by the second Klan.^[95] The burning of the cross was also used by the second Klan as a symbol of Christian fellowship, and its lighting during meetings was steeped in Christian prayer, the singing of hymns, and other overtly religious symbolism.^[12]

The practice of cross burning had been loosely based on ancient Scottish clans’ burning a St. Andrew’s cross (an X-shaped cross) as a beacon to muster forces for war. In The Clansman (see above), Dixon had falsely claimed that the first Klan had used fiery crosses when rallying to fight against Reconstruction. Griffith brought this image to the screen in The Birth of a Nation; he portrayed the burning cross as an upright Latin cross rather than the St. Andrew’s cross. Simmons adopted the symbol wholesale from the movie, prominently displaying it at the 1915 Stone Mountain meeting. The symbol has been associated with the Klan ever since.^[96]

Education

In 1921, in an attempt to gain a foothold in education, the Klan bought Lanier University, a struggling Baptist university in Atlanta. Nathan Bedford Forrest, grandson of the confederate general by the same name, was appointed business manager, and the school would teach “pure, 100 percent Americanism”. Enrollment was dismal and the school closed after its first year of Klan ownership.^[97]

Political role

Sheet music to “We Are All Loyal Klansmen”, 1923

The Good Citizen July 1926 Published byPillar of Fire Church

Branford Clarke illustration inHeroes of the Fiery Cross, 1928

The Klan had numerous members in every part of the U.S. At its peak, claimed Klan membership exceeded four million and comprised 20% of the adult white male population in many broad geographic regions, and 40% in some areas.^[98] The Klan also moved north into Canada, especially Saskatchewan, where it opposed Catholics.^[99]

The Klan issue played a significant role at the bitterly divisive 1924 Democratic National Convention in New York City. The leading candidates were Protestant William Gibbs McAdoo, with a base in areas where the Klan was strong, and Catholic New York Governor Al Smith, with a base in the large cities. After weeks of stalemate, both candidates withdrew in favor of a compromise. Anti-Klan delegates proposed a resolution indirectly attacking the Klan; it was narrowly defeated.^[100][101]

In some states, such as Alabama and California, the KKK worked for political reform. In 1924, the Klan became active in local politics in Anaheim, California. The city had been controlled by an entrenched commercial-civic elite that was mostlyGerman American. The elite gave little support to the prohibition laws—the mayor, for example, had been a saloon keeper. The Klan, led by the minister of the First Christian Church, represented a rising group of politically oriented non-German citizens who had been shut out of influence and who denounced the elite as corrupt, undemocratic and self-serving. Cocoltchos says the Klansmen sought to create a model orderly community. There were about 1200 Klan members in orange County, and Cocoltchos tracked them through local records, comparing them to 300 prominent anti-Klan activists. The economic and occupational profile of the pro and anti-Klan groups shows the two were similar and about equally prosperous. Cocoltchos finds no evidence of status anxiety. The Klansmen were all Protestants, as were most of the antis, but the antis also enlisted many Catholic Germans. The Klansmen had a much higher rate of voting and joining nonpartisan civic groups (such as the Chamber of Commerce) than the othersbefore they joined the Klan, suggesting to Cocoltchos it was a high sense of civic activism that led to joining the KKK in the first place. The Klan easily won the hotly contested local election in Anaheim in April 1924. They systematically fired Catholic city employees and replaced them with Klansmen. The new city council tried to strictly enforce prohibition, and the Klan held large rallies and initiation ceremonies over the summer. The opposition organized, bribed a Klansman for the secret membership list, exposed the Klansmen running in the primaries and defeated most of them. The antis stepped up the campaign in 1925 and succeeded in a hotly contested election in voting to recall the Klansmen who had been elected in April 1924. The Klan in Anaheim quickly collapsed, its newspaper closed after losing a libel suit, and the minister who led the local Klavern moved to Kansas.^[102]

In Alabama the Klansmen were among the foremost advocates of better public schools, effective prohibition enforcement, expanded road construction, and other political measures which benefited lower-class white people. By 1925, the Klan was a political force in the state, as leaders such as J. Thomas Heflin, David Bibb Graves, and Hugo Black manipulated the KKK membership to try to build political power against the Black Belt planters, who had long dominated the state.^[103] Black was elected US senator in 1926; President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Black to the Supreme Court not knowing he had been active in the Klan in the 1920s. In 1926, with Klan support, Bibb Graves won the Alabama governor’s office. He was a former Klan chapter head. He pushed for increased education funding, better public health, new highway construction, and pro-labor legislation. Because the Alabama state legislature refused to redistrict until 1972, however, even the Klan was unable to break the planters’ and rural areas’ hold on legislative power.

Its predecessor had been an exclusively partisan Democratic organization in the South. The second Klan grew in the Midwest, where for a time, its members were courted by both Republicans and Democrats. The KKK state organizations endorsed candidates from either party that supported its goals; Prohibition in particular helped the Klan and some Republicans to make common cause in the Midwest. In the South, however, the southern Klan remained Democratic, closely allied with Democratic police, sheriffs, and other functionaries of local government. With continuing disfranchisement of most African Americans and many poor whites, the only political activity took place within the Democratic Party.

Resistance and decline

The Ku Klux Klan rose to prominence in Indiana politics and society after World War I. It was made up of American-born, white Protestants of many income and social levels. Nationally, in the 1920s, Indiana had the most powerful Ku Klux Klan. Though it counted a high number of members statewide (over 30% of its white male citizens^[104]), its importance peaked with the 1924 election of Edward Jackson for governor. A short time later, the scandal surrounding the murder trial of D.C. Stephenson destroyed the image of the Ku Klux Klan as upholders of law and order. By 1926 the Ku Klux Klan was “crippled and discredited.”^[105]

D. C. Stephenson, Grand Dragon of the Indiana Klan. His conviction for murdering a young white schoolteacher in 1925 devastated the Indiana Klan.

D. C. Stephenson was the Grand Dragon of Indiana and 22 northern states. He led the states under his control to separate from the national KKK organization in 1923. In his 1925 trial, he was convicted for second degree murder for his part in the rape and subsequent death^[106] of Madge Oberholtzer. After Stephenson’s conviction in a sensational trial, the Klan declined dramatically in Indiana. Historian Leonard Moore concluded that a failure in leadership caused the Klan’s collapse:

Stephenson and the other salesmen and office seekers who maneuvered for control of Indiana’s Invisible Empire lacked both the ability and the desire to use the political system to carry out the Klan’s stated goals. They were uninterested in, or perhaps even unaware of, grass roots concerns within the movement. For them, the Klan had been nothing more than a means for gaining wealth and power. These marginal men had risen to the top of the hooded order because, until it became a political force, the Klan had never required strong, dedicated leadership. More established and experienced politicians who endorsed the Klan, or who pursued some of the interests of their Klan constituents, also accomplished little. Factionalism created one barrier, but many politicians had supported the Klan simply out of expedience. When charges of crime and corruption began to taint the movement, those concerned about their political futures had even less reason to work on the Klan’s behalf.^[107]

Many groups and leaders, including prominent Protestant ministers such as Reinhold Niebuhr in Detroit, spoke out against the Klan. In response to blunt attacks against Jewish Americans and the Klan’s campaign to outlaw private schools, the Jewish Anti-Defamation League was formed after the lynching of Leo Frank. When one civic group began to publish Klan membership lists, the number of members quickly declined. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoplecarried on public education campaigns in order to inform people about Klan activities and lobbied against Klan abuses in Congress. After its peak in 1925, Klan membership in most areas of the Midwest began to decline rapidly.^[92]

In Alabama, KKK vigilantes, thinking that they had governmental protection, launched a wave of physical terror in 1927. They targeted both blacks and whites for violation of racial norms and for perceived moral lapses.^[108] This led however to a large backlash beginning in the media. Grover C. Hall, Sr., editor of the Montgomery Advertiser, began publishing a series of editorials and articles that attacked the Klan for its “racial and religious intolerance”. Hall won a Pulitzer Prize for his crusade.^[109] Other newspapers kept up a steady, loud attack on the Klan, referring to the organization as violent and “un-American”. Sheriffs cracked down. In the 1928 presidential election, the state voted for the Democratic candidate Al Smith, although he was Catholic.

Klan membership in Alabama dropped to less than 6,000 by 1930. Small independent units continued to be active in Birmingham, where in the late 1940s, members launched a reign of terror by bombing the homes of upwardly mobile African Americans. Activism by such independent KKK groups increased as a reaction against the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Imperial Wizard Hiram Wesley Evans sold the organization in 1939 to James Colescott, an Indiana veterinarian, and Samuel Green, an Atlanta obstetrician. They were unable to staunch the declining membership. In 1944, the IRS filed a lien for $685,000 in back taxes against the Klan, and Colescott was forced to dissolve the organization in 1944. Local Klan groups closed over the following years.^[110]

Ku Klux Klan members march down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. in 1928

Due in part to the Klan terror directed at them, five million blacks left the South for northern, midwestern and western cities from 1940 to 1970.

After World War II, folklorist and author Stetson Kennedy infiltrated the Klan and provided information to media and law enforcement agencies. He also provided secret code words to the writers of the Superman radio program, resulting in episodes in which Superman took on the KKK. Kennedy’s intention to strip away the Klan’s mystique and trivialize the Klan’s rituals and code words may have contributed to the decline in Klan recruiting and membership.^[111] In the 1950s, Kennedy wrote a bestselling book about his experiences, which further damaged the Klan.^[112]

The following table shows the change in the Klan’s estimated membership over time.^[113] (The years given in the table represent approximate time periods.)

Year	Membership
1920	4,000,000[114]
1924	6,000,000
1930	30,000
1980	5,000
2008	6,000

Later Klans, 1950 through 1960s

Soviet propaganda poster (Freedom, American style, 1950, by Nikolay Dolgorukov and Boris Efimov), showing the KKK’s lynchings of blacks.

The name “Ku Klux Klan” began to be used by several independent groups. Beginning in the 1950s, for instance, individual Klan groups in Birmingham, Alabama, began to resist social change and blacks’ improving their lives by bombing houses in transitional neighborhoods. There were so many bombings in Birmingham of blacks’ homes by Klan groups in the 1950s that the city’s nickname was “Bombingham”.^[24]

During the tenure of Bull Connor as police commissioner in the city, Klan groups were closely allied with the police and operated with impunity. When the Freedom Riders arrived in Birmingham, Connor gave Klan members fifteen minutes to attack the riders before sending in the police to quell the attack.^[24] When local and state authorities failed to protect the Freedom Riders and activists, the federal government established effective intervention.

In states such as Alabama and Mississippi, Klan members forged alliances with governors’ administrations.^[24] In Birmingham and elsewhere, the KKK groups bombed the houses of civil rights activists. In some cases they used physical violence, intimidation and assassination directly against individuals. Many murders went unreported and were not prosecuted by local and state authorities. Continuing disfranchisement of blacks across the South meant that most could not serve on juries, which were all white.

According to a report from the Southern Regional Council in Atlanta, the homes of 40 black Southern families were bombed during 1951 and 1952. Some of the bombing victims were social activists whose work exposed them to danger, but most were either people who refused to bow to racist convention or were innocent bystanders, unsuspecting victims of random violence.^[115]

Among the more notorious murders by Klan members:

• The 1951 Christmas Eve bombing of the home of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) activists Harry and Harriette Moore in Mims, Florida, resulting in their deaths.^[116]
• The 1957 murder of Willie Edwards, Jr. Klansmen forced Edwards to jump to his death from a bridge into the Alabama River.^[117]
• The 1963 assassination of NAACP organizer Medgar Evers in Mississippi. In 1994, former Ku Klux Klansman Byron De La Beckwith was convicted.
• The 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four African-American girls. The perpetrators were Klan members Robert Chambliss, convicted in 1977, Thomas Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry, convicted in 2001 and 2002. The fourth suspect, Herman Cash, died before he was indicted.
• The 1964 murders of three civil rights workers, Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner, in Mississippi. In June 2005, Klan member Edgar Ray Killen was convicted of manslaughter.^[118]
• The 1964 murder of two black teenagers, Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore in Mississippi. In August 2007, based on the confession of Klansman Charles Marcus Edwards, James Ford Seale, a reputed Ku Klux Klansman, was convicted. Seale was sentenced to serve three life sentences. Seale was a former Mississippi policeman and sheriff’s deputy.^[119]
• The 1965 Alabama murder of Viola Liuzzo. She was a Southern-raised Detroit mother of five who was visiting the state in order to attend a civil rights march. At the time of her murder Liuzzo was transporting Civil Rights Marchers.
• The 1966 firebombing death of NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer Sr., 58, in Mississippi. In 1998 former Ku Klux Klan wizard Sam Bowers was convicted of his murder and sentenced to life. Two other Klan members were indicted with Bowers, but one died before trial, and the other’s indictment was dismissed.

There was also resistance to the Klan. In 1953, newspaper publisher W. Horace Carter received a Pulitzer prize for reporting on the activities of the Klan. In a 1958 North Carolina incident, the Klan burned crosses at the homes of two Lumbee Native Americans who had associated with white people, and they threatened to return with more men. When the KKK held a nighttime rally nearby, they were quickly surrounded by hundreds of armed Lumbees. Gunfire was exchanged, and the Klan was routed at what became known as the Battle of Hayes Pond.^[120]

While the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had paid informants in the Klan, for instance in Birmingham in the early 1960s, its relations with local law enforcement agencies and the Klan were often ambiguous. The head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, appeared more concerned about Communist links to civil rights activists than about controlling Klan excesses against citizens. In 1964, the FBI’sCOINTELPRO program began attempts to infiltrate and disrupt civil rights groups.^[24]

As 20th-century Supreme Court rulings extended federal enforcement of citizens’ civil rights, the government revived the Force Act and Klan Act from Reconstruction days. Federal prosecutors used these laws as the basis for investigations and indictments in the 1964 murders of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner;^[121] and the 1965 murder of Viola Liuzzo.^[122] They were also the basis for prosecution in 1991 in Bray v. Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic.

Contemporary Klan: 1970s–present

Violence at a Klan march inMobile, Alabama, 1977

Once African Americans secured federal legislation to protect civil and voting rights, the KKK shifted its focus to opposing court-ordered busing to desegregate schools,affirmative action and more open immigration. In 1971, KKK members used bombs to destroy 10 school buses in Pontiac, Michigan.

Altercation with Communist Workers Party

Main article: Greensboro massacre

On November 3, 1979, five protesters were killed by KKK and American Nazi Party members in the Greensboro massacre in Greensboro, North Carolina.^[123] This incident was the culmination of attempts by the Communist Workers Party to organize industrial workers, predominantly black, in the area.^[124]

Jerry Thompson infiltration

Jerry Thompson, a newspaper reporter who infiltrated the KKK in 1979, reported that the FBI’s COINTELPRO efforts were highly successful. Rival KKK factions accused each other’s leaders of being FBI informants. Bill Wilkinson of the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, was revealed to have been working for the FBI.^[125]

Thompson, the journalist who claimed he had infiltrated the Klan, related that KKK leaders who appeared indifferent to the threat of arrest showed great concern about a series of civil lawsuits filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center for damages of millions of dollars. These were filed after KKK members shot into a group of African Americans. Klansmen curtailed activities to conserve money for defense against the lawsuits. The KKK also used lawsuits as tools; they filed a libel suit to prevent publication of a paperback edition of Thompson’s book.

Tennessee shooting

In 1980, three KKK members shot four elderly black women (Viola Ellison, Lela Evans, Opal Jackson and Katherine Johnson) in Chattanooga, Tennessee, following a KKK initiation rally. A fifth woman, Fannie Crumsey, was injured by flying glass in the incident. Attempted murder charges were filed against the three KKK members, two of whom—Bill Church and Larry Payne—were acquitted by an all-white jury, and the other of whom—Marshall Thrash—was sentenced by the same jury to nine months on lesser charges. He was released after three months.^{[126][127][128]} In 1982, a jury awarded the five women $535,000 in a civil rights trial.^[129]

Michael Donald lynching

After Michael Donald was lynched in 1981 in Alabama, the FBI investigated his death and two local KKK members were convicted of having a role, including Henry Francis Hays, who was sentenced to death. With the support of attorneys Morris Dees and Joseph J. Levin of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Donald’s mother, Beulah Mae Donald, sued the KKK in civil court in Alabama. Her lawsuit against the United Klans of America was tried in February 1987. The all-white jury found the Klan responsible for the lynching of Donald and ordered the Klan to pay US$7 million. To pay the judgment, the KKK turned over all of its assets, including its national headquarters building in Tuscaloosa.^[130] After exhausting the appeals process, Hays was executed for Donald’s death in Alabama on June 6, 1997. It was the first time since 1913 that a white man had been executed in Alabama for a crime against an African American.^[131]

Neo-Nazi alliances and Stormfront

Main article: Stormfront (website)

In 1995, Don Black and Chloê Hardin, former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke‘s ex-wife, began a small bulletin board system (BBS) called Stormfront. Today, Stormfront has become a prominent online forum for white nationalism, Neo-Nazism, hate speech, racism, and antisemitism.^{[132][133][134]} Duke has an account on Stormfront which he uses to post articles from his own website, as well as polling forum members for opinions and questions, in particular during his internet broadcasts. Duke has worked with Don Black on numerous projects including Operation Red Dog in 1980.^[135][136]

Modern statistics

The modern KKK is not one organization; rather it is composed of small independent chapters across the U.S.^[137] The formation of independent chapters has made KKK groups more difficult to infiltrate, and researchers find it hard to estimate their numbers. Estimates are that about two-thirds of KKK members are concentrated in the Southern United States, with another third situated primarily in the lower Midwest.^{[138][139][140]} KKK members have stepped up recruitment in recent years, but the organization grows slowly, with membership estimated at 5,000–8,000 across 179 chapters. These recent membership campaigns have been based on issues such as people’s anxieties about illegal immigration, urban crime and same-sex marriage.^[141] Many KKK groups have formed strong alliances with other white supremacist groups, such as neo-Nazis. Some KKK groups have become increasingly “Nazified”, adopting the look and emblems of white power skinheads.^[142]

On November 14, 2008, an all-white jury of seven men and seven women awarded $1.5 million in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages to plaintiff Jordan Gruver, represented by theSouthern Poverty Law Center against the Imperial Klans of America.^[143] The ruling found that five IKA members had savagely beaten Gruver, then 16 years old, at a Kentucky county fair in July 2006.^[144]

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has provided legal support to various factions of the KKK in defense of their First Amendment rights to hold public rallies, parades, and marches, as well as their right to field political candidates.^[145]

Current Klan splinter divisions have grown substantially since the 2008 election of U.S. President Barack Obama, the first African-American to hold the office;^[146][147] the Klan has expanded its recruitment efforts to white supremacists at the international level.^[148] Current membership estimates by the ADL hold at a national estimate of five thousand.^[140]

Ex-Grand Wizard David Duke has claimed that thousands of Tea Party movement activists have urged him to run for president in 2012^[149] and he is seriously considering entering the Republican Party primaries.^[150] Duke has also released a video detailing his platform.^[151] In the video, he pledges that as president he would stop all immigration to the U.S., including legal immigration, and says that he “will not let Israel or any nation dictate our foreign policy.”^[152] He has also claimed that he would be “willing to risk life and limb, endure the barbs of the media” to mount “the most honest campaign for president since the time of our Founding Fathers.”^[153] However, Duke is legally disqualified from running for public office as part of his 2002 guilty plea for tax evasion.^[154]

Current Klan organizations

A list is maintained by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL):^[155]

• Bayou Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, prevalent in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and other areas of the Southeastern U.S.
• Church of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan^[138]
• Imperial Klans of America^[156]
• Knights of the White Camelia^[157]
• Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, headed by national director and self-claimed pastor Thom Robb, and based in Zinc, Arkansas.^[158] It claims to be the biggest Klan organization in America today.

Other countries

Aside from Canada, there have been various attempts to organise KKK chapters outside of the United States. In Australia in the late 1990s, former One Nation founding member Peter Coleman established branches throughout the country,^[159][160] and in recent years the KKK has attempted to infiltrate other political parties such as Australia First.^[161] Recruitment activity has also been reported in Britain.^[162][163]

Vocabulary

Membership in the Klan is secret. Like many fraternal organizations, the Klan has signs which members can use to recognize one another. A member may use the acronym AYAK (Are you a Klansman?) in conversation to surreptitiously identify himself to another potential member. The response AKIA (A Klansman I am) completes the greeting.^[164]

Throughout its varied history, the Klan has coined many words^[165] beginning with “Kl” including:

• Klabee: treasurers
• Klavern: local organization
• Imperial Kleagle: recruiter
• Klecktoken: initiation fee
• Kligrapp: secretary
• Klonvocation: gathering
• Kloran: ritual book
• Kloreroe: delegate
• Imperial Kludd: chaplain

All of the above terminology was created by William Simmons, as part of his 1915 revival of the Klan.^[166] The Reconstruction-era Klan used different titles; the only titles to carry over were “Wizard” for the overall leader of the Klan and “Night Hawk” for the official in charge of security.

The Imperial Kludd was the chaplain of the Imperial Klonvokation and he performed “such other duties as may be required by the Imperial Wizard.” The Imperial Kaliff was the second highest position after the Imperial Wizard.^[167]