by Beezy Marsh
The quest for the truth is something that led me to become a journalist and it has shaped my character too. I have an unswerving drive to speak out when I sense injustice, to stand my ground and to be heard. I can trace that all the way back to the courtroom of the Newcastle Assizes in 1910 and the hangman’s noose which silenced my great-grandfather, John Alexander Dickman, one of the last men to be hanged in Newcastle Gaol. I see it in the letters that my great-grandmother, teacher Annie Sowerby Bainbridge Dickman, wrote to the newspapers and the Home Secretary to fight for her husband’s life. I come from a long line of very strong women and that is a powerful thought for me when facing up to any difficulties.
My Great-Aunt Kitty was formidable, ahead of her time, and I owe her for a lot of my strength and determination, not to mention my love of writing, although I used to find her scary when I was little. She grew up in a world in which women didn’t have the vote and were not equal to men in the workplace. She was fiercely protective of all women’s rights: to vote, to have a say, to be heard, and she instilled that in my mother, who passed it on to me.
Kitty didn’t live to see me become a journalist, to write the front page articles of national newspapers, or be a published author. I like to think she would have been proud of me, but quietly so, without too much fuss because that was not her way. I knew her as an old woman, living in a sheltered flat in Newcastle, making cups of tea, which she served at her highly polished dining table. I was a child of the seventies, tomboyish, a bit wild, and my lack of manners made her look askance. She’d smile to herself when she watched me arguing with my brother. Perhaps she saw in me a kindred spirit, an echo of the auburn-haired girl who played rough and tumble with her brother Harry at the turn of the century, before their lives were turned upside down by a murder.
She died when I was eleven. It’s a shame I didn’t get to know her better, but I feel, in some small way, through writing this book, I know her now.
I would like to thank my Uncle John, the oldest surviving member of the Dickman family, for his insights, advice and memories which have helped me to shape this story. I would also like to thank Rowan and Michele, my ‘secret’ cousins, for their memories and help. I wish I could have known their parents, William ‘Roy’ and Zena, but that was not to be and we are now one family.
I would like to thank my editor, Ingrid Connell of Pan Macmillan, for her incredible support, kindness and advice. Working in such a great environment is a joy because the process of writing can feel very solitary at times. Ingrid was with me every step of the way and I would also like to thank assistant editor Charlotte Wright for her eagle eye and valuable input, and copy-editor Lorraine Green for her help.
I am very lucky to have the total support of my husband Reuben and my boys, Idris and Bryn, as well as my dear friends Sally and Marcus; Jo, Mark and Clare; and Hannah and Tania.
There is no substitute for true friends and the love of your family.
Whatever has happened in the past, tomorrow brings with it the possibility that we can make different choices, because our actions in this life define who we really are.
What’s your story?
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the Acton History Group for their support and research, including the lovely book Tin Hats, Doodlebugs and Food Rations by Maureen Colledge, which relies on newspaper reports from the time, as well as oral history from local people. This helped me confirm stories about the war told to me by my grandmother Annie, my Great-Aunt Elsie and my mum. I am also very lucky to have had the backing of the We Love Acton W3 Facebook group, which provided many memories of my gran’s time in Acton.
The case against my great-grandfather John Alexander Dickman is studied by law students today and remains controversial because of the nature of the evidence used to convict him and the possibility that there was police collusion. It resulted in a change in identification parade line-up procedures.
Several writers have researched this case incredibly thoroughly and I can recommend the work of authors John J. Eddleston, May the Lord Have Mercy on Your Soul, and Diane Janes, Edwardian Murder, for further reading. I was able to form my own opinions about the guilt or innocence of my great-grandfather by reading their works and studying the Home Office records of the trial held at the National Archives at Kew. John J. Eddleston offers the intriguing possibility of having unmasked the real killers. He also scotches another theory, namely that my great-grandfather was responsible for another killing in 1908, of a wealthy woman Caroline Luard, in Kent, having allegedly fiddled a cheque that she sent him after he had requested financial help in an advert in The Times. Eddleston points out that the trial evidence included all the details of my great-grandfather’s two bank accounts from that time, and there was no reference to a cheque from Mrs Luard. It seems to me that this other murder case was most likely to have been pinned on John Alexander after his execution when disquiet about the case was growing.
I also relied on local newspaper reports from the Northern Echo, where I spent many happy years as a reporter back in the 1990s, and also the Newcastle Evening Chronicle and the Newcastle Journal. I can still recall looking through the old bound copies for the first time and reading the reports of my relative’s trial and hanging, which sent a shiver down my spine. I reproduced the front-page news story about the execution exactly as it was reported in the Northern Echo the morning after it happened and I would like to thank Newsquest Media Group for the permission to do so.
Experts from the Great War Forum were very generous with their time and help in identifying my grandad’s regiment in World War One as many of the records were destroyed by a German bomb during World War Two, which makes research difficult. The kindness and enthusiasm of these experts made a real difference to me.
George Orwell’s account of living in London dosshouses in the 1930s, in Down and Out in Paris and London, helped to put my grandfather Harry’s experiences in context. Life for the underclass without the safety net of any welfare state was a very grim one indeed.
The last word of thanks must go to you, my readers, who have been so supportive and enthusiastic about me writing a sequel to All My Mother’s Secrets. Thank you for reading me. You make it all worthwhile.
The official Facebook account for all my book news is beezymarshauthor and you can follow me on Twitter or Instagram @beezymarsh. You can sign up for book updates and all my news on my blog on my website beezy-marsh.com.
Research Sources
Colledge, Maureen, Tin Hats, Doodlebugs and Food Rations, Acton History Group, 2014
Laybourn, Keith, The General Strike of 1926, Manchester University Press, 1993
Rev J.O. Coop, The Story of the 55th (West Lancashire) Division, Naval and Military Press, Amazon, 2018
Janes, Diane, Edwardian Murder, Sutton Publishing, 2007
Eddleston, John J., And May the Lord Have Mercy On Your Soul, Bibliofile Publishers, 2012
Salmon, Thomas W., The Care and Treatment of Mental Diseases and War Neuroses (Shell Shock) in the British Army, Old South Books, Amazon, 2018.
I also viewed archive material, films and pictures from the following sources:
Pathé News
British Newspaper Archive
The National Archives at Kew
Forces War Records
Acton Gazette, Northern Echo, Newcastle Evening Chronicle, Newcastle Journal, the Shipbuilder
Great War Forum: www.greatwarforum.org
The Long Long Trail website for World War One regiments: www.longlongtrail.co.uk
BBC news and radio archives: www.bbc.co.uk
Beezy Marsh is an international number one bestselling author who puts family and relationships at the heart of her writing. She writes fiction as well as memoir and biography and still finds time to blog about her life in Oxfordshire, as an imperfect mum to two boys. She’s also an award-winning investigative journalist, who spent more than twenty years making the headlines in newspapers including the Daily Mail and the Sund
ay Times. Beezy is a firm believer that sisters, mothers and wives are the glue that binds everything together and ordinary lives are often the most extraordinary.
Also by Beezy Marsh
All My Mother’s Secrets
Keeping My Sisters’ Secrets
Mad Frank and Sons
Mr Make Believe
First published 2019 by Pan Books
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