by Gitta Sereny
Newcastle is the urban center for many nearby mining villages and shipyards. Coal mining has for some time been a dying industry in Britain, and the shipyards throughout the economically depressed 1960s suffered from labor troubles and increasing competition from abroad. Throughout that decade, Newcastle had the dubious distinction of having the highest crime record (35,882 indictable crimes in 1970), the highest rate of alcoholism (six to eight pints of brown ale per night the accepted norm), and one of the consistently highest unemployment figures of any city in Britain (4.2 percent against the national average of 3.5 percent).
Despite these disadvantages the people of Newcastle are warm and friendly and nowhere more so than in the partly very poor working-class districts such as Scotswood where half the men are frequently out of work.
Scotswood, an area covering half a square mile inhabited by around 17,000 people, lies on a hill three miles from the city center. In the late 1960s, large tracts of Scotswood land were cleared for re-building. Already in the streets nearest to the city several ten- to twelve-story monsters had been built to take the overflow from streets like Woodland Crescent, Whitehouse Road, and St Margaret’s Road, which were still lined with condemned houses. If the streets of Scotswood could be described as being in layers, then St Margaret’s Road would be the first layer at the foot of the hill and Whitehouse Road, running above and parallel, the second. Both these streets look out over railway tracks, a large tract of waste land—the “Tin Lizzie”—Scotswood Road, the huge Vickers plant, the River Tyne, and the city.
Whitehouse Road, wide and windswept on top of the hill, is a clean and elegantly curving street, with generous pavements, ample space for bicycling and parking, and a spectacular view of the city. The red-brick, terraced, semidetached houses, here as well as in St Margaret’s Road and all the nearby streets, date from between the two world wars and are Council property. Many of the gardens are well cared for with shrubs, flowers, or, if nothing else, a little grass. Someday, this street, because of its position, could become “fashionable” and the houses “converted” into valuable “period” properties.
But, for the present, most of the tenants pay the Council £2.20 rent a week (about $5.50) with rebates available in hard times. They huddle around the coal-fed fireplace in the front room—the only heating; watch slot-television; fight to keep up payments to the “tallyman” or “clubs”; live with the constant threat of unemployment, and try to cope with anger, lethargy, despair, and their destructive effects: petty crime, gambling, and drink for the men, nervous breakdowns for the women, and fights and demoralization for the children. Despite these hardships many of the houses in Scotswood are neat and clean, many of the parents kind and honorable, many of the children intelligent and bright-eyed.
In May 1968, June and George Brown and their children, Martin and Linda, were such a family.
CHAPTER TWO
MARTIN BROWN
25 May 1968: Four Years and Two Months Old
THE BROWNS’ HOUSE at 140 St Margaret’s Road is the same as most of the others: downstairs the kitchen and sitting room, upstairs two bedrooms and a bath. But the front room is warm and tidy—with a settee and comfortable armchair, a pleasant rug on the floor. The fire is almost always kept burning; somehow these houses always retain the damp of the long days of rain.
On Saturday, 25 May 1968, Martin got up around 6:30 A.M. as he always did. He was four years and two months old and had a sturdy body and a ravenous appetite, wavy, light blond hair, a round mischievous face, a fair complexion, and blue eyes—“shiny blue,” as his mother said later. He loved his one-year-old sister Linda, and his “Mam” June, and “Dad” Georgie, whom he more often than not called by his first name.
He also loved the Bennetts, the next-door neighbors. “They loved him like: he was that kind of lad—grown people could talk to him,” his mother told me later. Rita Finlay, June’s older sister, lived two blocks down the street with her four children, and he loved her too.
Martin and Linda’s bedroom was the smaller of the two. There were Martin’s bed and Linda’s cot, no sheets but plenty of blankets and pillows, a teddy, a doll, and a few plastic cars. On Saturdays and Sundays, the Browns had a lie-in, so Martin was careful not to make a sound when he went down to the scullery to get himself a piece of bread and a glass of milk. When he’d finished his downstairs, he brought some up for Linda. He stood on tiptoe and, leaning over the side of the cot, carefully held the cup for the baby, waiting patiently while she ponderously chewed and rechewed her piece of bread. “He always did that,” said June. “I’d hear him coax her, ‘Come on, Linda, drink yer milk.’” Later he got her up and dressed her, and just before nine they went in to wake up their mother. “He had his breakfast around nine,” June said. She is blonde with long hair and a fringe (bangs), and a slightly tremulous, warm smile. “Sugarpops,” she said, “them were his favorites. He got his anorak—I was in the scullery—I heard him call, ‘I’m away, mam, tara Georgie’; that was the last I saw or heard of him.”
Later that Saturday morning—though they didn’t remember exact times—John Hall and Gordon Collinson, two workmen from the Newcastle Electricity Board, noticed a small boy in a blue anorak watching them disconnect power cables from derelict houses in St Margaret’s Road. They had put up a railing around the hole in the ground where they worked and a canvas tent against the ever-threatening rain.
Martin probably came and went all morning, because at eleven he dropped in on his Aunt Rita at 112 St Margaret’s Road. Rita Finlay, a little blowzy, with shoulder-length black hair and a quick temper, is a mother-earth figure. She yells easily and laughs easily, spends easily and, no doubt, gives easily too. “I love kids,” she says, and one believes her. “I had an arrangement with June—she worked, you see, so our mam had Linda, and I had Martin every day while she was out at work; except Saturday and Sunday. Saturday I’d have a late lie-in and then I’d clean my house from top to bottom. And I’d do my hair like, to step out you know, at night. Well, that Saturday morning I woke up with Martin’s face looming over me. ‘Fita,’ that was what he called me, ‘are you going to get up?’ he says, and I don’t mind telling you, I was mad, I really was. ‘Will you get out of here?’ I screamed at him—I hate to say it now, but I did, I really did, I let him have it and I pushed him out, ‘you get out of here. . . .’ My mam had come by too. Martin, he was crying, and she said, ‘Now, there’s no need to shout at him,’ and she gave him an egg on toast. He was standing munching it on the stairs and still crying; so I went to him, you know, and I says, ‘Now you stop crying. It’s all right. Is it all right now, Martin?’ and he nodded like. No, I don’t remember seeing him go then—we didn’t think to watch when they came and went, you know—all the kids are all over the place—Martin—everybody was his friend. . . .
“Norma Bell and Mary Bell came in later,” Rita went on. “Norma was a nice girl—I loved that girl, I really did. I felt that close to her. She was always here—she loved my John, who was three then. She loved baby-sitting and she was that good with him. I didn’t like that other one, that Mary Bell, but they were always together, so they came here together too. It was a lovely day, that Saturday. I’d said I’d give the kids their dinner in the garden. But I was first going to see my mam, and I had enough common sense not to leave the bairns alone ever. So, when I came back from seeing my mam—it must have been about a quarter to three—because I knew I’d have to buy some things for dinner, and Dixon’s shop across the road opened at three (after lunch)—those two girls must still have been here, waiting for me to come back.”
It was just about then that Martin was noticed again. “He came in just before Dixon’s shop opened,” said June Brown, “to get some money off Georgie for his lollipop—I didn’t see him.”
Dixon’s shop is a small, wooden shack, ten feet back from the street. The window is full of sweets, pencils, blocks of paper, cigarette advertisements, cheap lighters, red-ribboned boxes of chocolates, ice-creams a
nd darning wool. There are thousands of such shops all over the country, still the principal source of casual shopping for many families and the main suppliers of sweets and ice-cream for their children.
At five minutes past three, Martin Brown stood in a queue of children, waiting to buy his lollipop.
Mr. Dixon’s son, Wilson, an organist by profession, had known Martin since he was born. He had come over from Winlanton, six miles away, as he frequently did on busy days to help his father. “I went down to the shop about five past three,” he said. “There were many young children outside. Martin was among the crowd when I opened the shop and served one or two other children. By that time it was ten past three. When Martin wanted to be served he was standing with his fingers in his mouth. I scolded him because his hands were filthy. I served him and several other children. He went out. By that time it would be about a quarter past three. I think he bought a lollipop.”
“I was in Dixon’s shop,” Rita Finlay says. “Wilson Dixon says now I wasn’t, but I was: because I remember him smacking Martin’s hands because he’d had his fingers in his mouth and he was all black from playing. ‘Can I come up and have my dinner?’ Martin said, and I told him, ‘go back home and wash your hands.’ ‘I can wash them at your house,’ he said, so I let him. And I gave him bread and he took a knife to put on butter. ‘Don’t use the butter,’ I said, ‘use margarine—the best butter is for tea.’ He was angry. ‘I’m not coming to your house bloody no more,’ he said. ‘I won’t come again. . . .’ But he couldn’t stay mad for long. ‘Oh, don’t be like that, Fita,’ he said and then he went and that was the last I saw of him.”
The old condemned houses in front of which the men from the Electricity Board were working were only a few yards up and on the other side of the street from Rita Finlay’s house. At 3:30 P.M., just fifteen minutes after Martin Brown had been seen by Wilson Dixon, three boys, John Henry Southern, sixteen; Walter Long, thirteen; and Fred Myhill, eight, entered No. 85 to look for scrap-wood which they needed to build a pigeon dovecote. The house was boarded up in front, so the boys got in through the back yard. Going up to the first floor, Walter Long went to look in the front and the two other boys into what had been the back bedroom. When Walter heard one of them shout, he ran to see what was going on.
A small boy was lying in front of the window, on his back on the rubble-covered floor, with his arms outstretched and with blood and saliva coming from his mouth.
Fred Myhill, the youngest of the three, fled at once, and Walter and John ran out to get the electricians, who were having a cup of tea in their shelter outside No. 85.
“We knew the little boy right away,” said John Hall. “I’d given him some biscuits earlier on,” said Gordon Collinson. “We hadn’t seen him again after lunch,” John Hall continued.
“I ran to call an ambulance,” said Gordon Collinson. The call, officially recorded by the ambulancemen, was received at 3:35 P.M.
“I gave him the kiss of life,” said John. “I just held him in my arms all the time. He looked dead to me like. His body was cold.”
Walter Long felt sick after he and John Southern had brought the workmen up, and went to another room to get some air. While he stood with his head out of a window overlooking St Margaret’s Road, he saw two dark-haired girls walking toward the house. The road was otherwise empty at the time. They stopped directly underneath his window and the smaller one, whom he knew—Mary Flora Bell—said to the other, “Shall we go up?” “Howay then, let’s go up,” Walter says he heard the taller one reply.
The girls then climbed through a partly boarded-up window on the ground floor of the house next door, No. 83, went through into the back yard and through a partly demolished outhouse into No. 85. Walter Long stopped them as they came up the stairs, he told the court later.
“Get away down,” he shouted.
“That’s all right—the police know I’m here,” he says Mary Bell replied. “They weren’t allowed up though—they were told to go away,” he said.
“It seemed like just minutes after I’d last seen Martin,” says Rita Finlay, “there was a knock on the door and when I went, it was them two: Norma and Mary; and I said, ‘What do yous want?’
“‘One of your bairns has had an accident,’ the other one said first—you know, that Mary. ‘No,’ she said, then, ‘I think it’s your June’s. But there’s blood all over . . .’ But I thought it couldn’t be Martin—I’d just put him out. It had to be John. I hadn’t seen him in some time . . . I’d put on some sausages to cook and put half my hair in curlers after I’d put Martin out—that’s how little time it was since. But them two girls had come two times before to say that a bairn had had an accident; both those times I said, ‘Did you tell his mother?’ Both times they said, ‘No, we came to tell you.’ So I says, ‘Why tell us, go tell his mam.’ So when they came this time I thought they were having us on. But then I seen this woman wave to us from the street and I dropped everything, sausages and all, and I didn’t even think of the bairns—I just left them and ran. Even when I got there, I didn’t really believe it. I tripped over a brick in the back yard and pulled myself up on somebody and when I looked, it was Mary. There she was next to me again. She said, ‘I’ll show you where it is.’ I was going hysterical, I told her to get out of my way and followed a man up some stairs into a small bedroom where I saw Martin in the arms of another man. He looked asleep like. I kept saying, ‘He’ll wake up in a minute. He’s asleep—that’s all.’”
“It was about 3:35 or a bit later,” June Brown recalls, “when Georgie talked to somebody at the door. He turned round—when I saw his face I knew. I knew something had happened. Georgie stayed with Linda—I just ran. I didn’t know where it was, but I turned into the old houses, I just knew it was there. When I got there, Rita was there and she kept saying, ‘He’s just asleep,’ but I knew—I knew he was dead. When they brought him down I saw him—his face was—you know, graylike, mouselike—I knew. . . . They tried to revive him in the ambulance. I watched them, but I knew.”
The police, informed by the hospital just after 3:40 P.M. that Martin was dead, sent a sergeant and constables from the uniformed division (who are in charge of accidents) straight to the scene. They arrived after Martin’s body had been removed. As far as they could see there was no sign of a struggle or fall. There was a hole in the ceiling, but it was diagonally opposite where Martin had been found. He couldn’t possibly have fallen across the room.
There was a thick layer of dust everywhere, and none of it had been disturbed except where, of course, all the people who had handled Martin had stood, or squatted with him in their arms. That evening, the pathologist, Dr. Bernard Knight, carried out a post mortem and found it impossible to determine the cause of the boy’s death. Martin had been fit, well nourished, and healthy. There were no external injuries except a trivial knee bruise. His clothing was not torn nor damaged, nor were there any broken bones. The only abnormality the internal examination revealed was a small hemorrhage in the brain which was slightly swollen.
“I thought at first that the most likely possibility was poisoning,” Dr. Knight said, “because of the circumstances and because there were empty bottles found in the house. But this was later ruled out when the analysis revealed no drugs or chemicals.”
“They asked us hundreds of questions,” June Brown said, “whether anybody in the family had had fits and all that—it went on for days. They took me to see Martin. I don’t know what I thought he’d look like. They warned me, about the autopsy like, but I didn’t think. How can we know what it’s like? But when I saw him, you know, with brown sawdust in his nose and everywhere, I . . . I said nobody else was to see him.”
Dr. Knight said later that another possible explanation—asphyxia—had occurred to him, but strangulation which left no pressure marks whatever seemed quite impossible; Martin’s neck had been unblemished. So he had discarded it.
The Uniformed Division, for some reason without further inquiry
, accepted that Martin’s death had been an accident, and the C.I.D. (Criminal Investigation Department) was never brought into the case.
“The day after Martin died,” Rita Finlay said, “it was a Sunday—those two girls, Norma and Mary, came and asked to take John out. I thought it was very good of them. With having four children I was a bit upset and I said, ‘If you dress him you can take him, but you will have to make sure he is tidy.’ They washed his face and combed his hair and they took him away. They came every day after that to play with him, or to take him to the shops. They kept asking me, ‘Do you miss Martin?’ and ‘Do you cry for him?’ and ‘Does June miss him?’ and they were always grinning. In the end I could stand it no more and I told them to get out and not to come back. I couldn’t think, you know, why they were doing it, but then I was upset like so maybe I just didn’t think.”
That Sunday, 26 May, was Mary Bell’s eleventh birthday, and Mary and Susan—Norma Bell’s eleven-year-old sister who also occasionally played with Mary—took Mary’s Alsatian for a walk in Hodkin Park. “Mary asked us whether I’d sent her a birthday card,” Susan said, “and I said I had. But Mary said I hadn’t and chased me all the way back to our house with her dog and then she tried to strangle me.”