And it starts with
the source of the media frenzy: The History of Kilburn and West Hampstead – an otherwise entertaining and informative blog, authored by Marianne Colloms and Dick
Weindling.
Dick Weindling
Photo courtesy of Friends of West Hampstead Library
Mr. Weindling, kindly, replied to my e-mail and outlined his findings as follows:
Samuel Litchfield, an importer of Dresden china, lived in
Leighton House between 1870 and 1875.
William George Strickland, a master tailor, lived there from 1876 to 1881.
Detail: Strickland had a shop (Strickland &
Sons) in Mayfair near Bond Street at 14 Clifford Street to be precise.
Alfred Savill moved in 1881 and out in 1887.
Detail: In his opinion, this was probably
Alfred Savill - the founder of Savills, the well-known estate agents, still in
business today.
The bottom line was; no documentary evidence of Lillie Langtry having lived there existed or had been found.
Should there have been any? I wondered ...
Elsewhere, they described their sources as follows:
Unfortunately, at some point in our e-mail exchange, my penchant for lateral thinking seems to have annoyed Mr Weindling and he felt there was no
point in us continuing ...
What did I expect? The
gentleman to rewrite his MBE-accredited piece to accommodate my doubts? Come on!
Anthony J. Camp, MBE
No photos of Mr. Anthony J. Camp exist or could be found on-line
Next in line was Anthony John Camp, MBE – a laureate
genealogist and former director of the Society of Genealogists whom, I assumed, was their mentor …
According to Dick and Marianne, Mr. Camp had provided them with "help
and information about Lillie Langtry"; information which was then used, I presume, to write their scoop but, it is not clear what information the gentleman actually provided ...
One Upmanship
Fortunately, Mr Camp had been curating Lillie Langtry’s page on Wikipedia and a
certain “Inspector Colombo” (sic) had already "interrogated" him there.
For the full version of Inspector Colombo's "interrogation" please scroll down to the "Lillie Langtry and Hampstead" paragraph.
As I anticipated, from Adrienne
Corri’s assessment of Mr Camp's persona, the gentleman was not a fan of Hard-Talk - and didn’t seem to have much sense of humor either. He described "Inspector
Colombo" questions as "a tirade of invective"!
Was this the exasperated response of someone who
expected compliance but got facts instead? I wondered ...
Here is a resumé of Mr Camp’s exchanges with “Inspector Colombo:
Main points:
His main points reflected those
of Dick Weindling and Marianne Colloms but there were differences ...
A couple of examples:
Mr. Camp: “The local historians have shown that no evidence can be found that
Lillie Langtry ever lived at 103 Alexandra Road (Leighton House), Hampstead, or
ever visited the house."
"Ever visited the house"? Should there have been any? What? CCTV footage?
Sources:
Mr. Camp did reveal some of his sources and I quote:
“The yearly City of Westminster Polls*,
already cited and available online, show that the house was occupied by Samuel
Litchfield from 1873 to 1876 (…) and then yearly from 1877 by William George
Strickland, the retired tailor whose family appears at that address” (quote).
The problem was that Dick Weindling had given us (as quoted) another set of dates. Not exactly the same. Let us compare:
“Samuel
Litchfield, an importer of Dresden China, lived in Leighton House between 1870
and 1875” (not between “1873 and 1876” as Mr Camp put it) and “William George Strickland - a master tailor -
lived there in between 1876 to 1881” (not “from 1877” as Mr Camp stated.)
OK. They could have
been quoting from memory and typos do happen but, one thing was for sure, these dates could not be trusted - assuming they were that
Poll Books and Electoral Registers:
It is also important to
clarify there is a difference between so-called poll
books and electoral registers!
* Poll
books listed voters names (as electoral registers later did) but they also recorded
how each person voted. They were published from the late 17th century until
1872 when the passing of the Ballot Act resulted in
their effective abolition.
Nonetheless, I decided to try Mr. Camp's tip, but when I googled for "the yearly City of
Westminster Polls” nothing relevant popped-up ...
Subsequent searches returned more pertinent bits and bytes; except the dates were not computing!
Did Mr Camp mean the London
Metropolitan Archives *?
* The City of Westminster website makes it clear that poll
books for 1749, 1774-1820 and the relevant electoral registers for 1873-1899 are held at the London Metropolitan Archives - not the Westminster City archives …
At any rate, no one seems to have paused to ask the obvious question:
Andrew Yaras
© Andrew Yaras
Last but not least, I wondered if Mr. Andrew Yaras might have more relevant information to share with us ...
Andrew Yaras was the son of Mrs. Electra
Yaras whom, you might recall, was central to the 'storians piece and the headlines that followed. Born and bred in Leighton House, he lived there until the
bulldozers moved in 1972.
But that was then and now, for all I knew, Andrew could be back in
Greece enjoying his retirement and nursing a cool drink on a beach but, I decided to give it a try. I mailed him and guess what? He replied!
What did he make of the media frenzy?
He was rather philosophical. "Well, they found what they found - or failed to find. Let them enjoy their fifteen minutes
of fame!"
Andrew was convinced there was some connection, some association
of Lillie Langtry with his childhood's home; perhaps not exactly as it had
been romanticized over the centuries, but one thing was for sure, he knew his
mother was not lying.
Why was he so sure?
Because “this was something that had always been talked about in the
family. Many, many years before the area was earmarked for demolition around 1965. It was not something that my mother invented - as they assumed - to try and
prevent the house from being demolished ..."
And yes, it was possible that his parents had been told about the legend when they bought
the lease of Leighton House (which was in January 1946 - not in the
1950s - as reported) but he suspected the legend was
already in place by then.
Why?
Because some of the Eyre Estate workers who would, on occasion,
service the house, knew about the house's association with Lillie. Had they invented it too?
Other things transpired...
For example, his mother had never been an actress as such. She
was a tour director, as the press correctly reported in the mid
60s and early 70s - but more of it later.
What about the ghost of Lillie Langtry? I asked him next ...
The ghost of Lillie
Langtry
Andrew explained that the apparitions - and the poltergeists
-
had taken place around the time his mother was expecting him. He wasn't around. Obviously. But, his father
remembered some of it; for example that book banging up and down on her bedside
table in the dead of the night (as reported); now, whether his mother was a "medium" - or became one during pregnancy - and would, on occasion, channel the spirit of Lillie,
he couldn't tell, but ...
He did feel her genuine experiences were used by
the 'storians and the Press - not to mention the 'pedia copyists - to support a
certain narrative, sell a story and in the process denigrate his mother.
A fair point!
Skeptics do tend to describe anomalous phenomena as "anecdotal". The result of "attention
seeking" or "deceit" ...
Oddly enough, Lillie Langtry's ghost has been reported in two other
houses she lived in London - which, by the way, were not earmarked for
demolition (...)
One was her former marital home at 17 Norfolk Street in Mayfair
(now 19 Dunraven Street); the other, a house in Pont Street in
Knightsbridge - now "The Cadogan Hotel" -
where around Christmastime her ghost still pays an occasional
visit to its guests (...)
The truth is; paranormal events cannot always be dismissed as old wives' tales as a visit to the prestigious Society
for Psychical Research website will inform.
And in case one would rather experience the phenomena first hand, why not turn up for a séance at the Spiritualist Association of
Great Britain - a favourite of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle back in the
day?
The College
of Psychic Studies in South Kensington would be another option, otherwise it's all in a book by Dr. Alan Sanderson - a former NHS consultant in Psychiatry - subtitled: "True Stories on the Survival of Consciousness After Death".
But continuing …
Adrienne Corri
No. His mother was not acquainted with actress Adrienne Corri as suggested. As far as he knew, she never tried to contact Adrienne.
He certainly did not contact her or asked Adrienne "to add to the
publicity in a last-minute attempt to get a preservation order on the house" - as the
'storians and the Press alleged …
Adrienne Corri happened to pop by Leighton House with a reporter, rang
the bell and that was it. My mother was not at home at the time, I was.
Now, whether Adrienne had read about the legend in the press or had
always known about it, he wasn't sure. Some neighbours did, that was for sure.
Perhaps the visit made more sense to her then. Adrienne had become part of the
movement to save the area, and theirs was a building with some history about to
be reduced to rubble…
"About a thousand neighbours were involved in a
fight to save the street - not just our house - and started a petition. We signed it too, of course!"
© The Daily Telegraph, 9 October 1971
Were they all that gullible?
The
local MP, Henry Brooke (left) and the Hampstead & St. John's Wood
preservation became involved.
Sir John
Betjeman (right) an authority on English architecture and Prof. Hugh Casson (below), later President of the Royal Academy, joined in ... (1)
Were they all that gullible? Most unlikely ...
My
first impression of Andrew Yaras, was that of an educated gentleman with
an open personality. He didn't come through as the type that
would "lie for keeps", but, I knew what cynics would say:
"Suppose he
had been wrong about the myth being already in place when his parents
moved into Leighton House in 1946? He wasn't alive then, was he?"
"Suppose his mother did invent the myth in 1965 - as a last ditch bid to stop the house from being demolished - as the 'storians and their illustrious consultant alleged?"
Could it be proved otherwise?
© Ghost image courtesy of Creepy Pasta
(1) Sir John Betjeman photo courtesy of National Portrait Gallery. Sir Hugh Casson courtesy of Mary Evans Picture Library. Henry Brooke, MP courtesy of Wikipedia.
