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Many years ago, in a futile attempt to get into publishing, I worked in various London bookshops, including Hatchard's in Piccadilly, and the old Foyle's in the Charing Cross Road. This was the Foyle's of the notoriously eccentric Christina Foyle (in other life, Mrs Ronald Batty)- and I may well write a post about her at a later date. But that's for another day.
Now, as any bookseller can tell you, there are two decidedly dodgy sections in which to lurk in a rancid mackintosh: Occult and True Crime. I must confess to having a passing adolescent curiosity in both. True Crime, despite those lurid paperback covers, is an especially fascinating subject- as much for its human- and often poignant- element, as for its macabre conundrums. George Orwell understood this only too well in his essay "The Decline of the English Murder", and for connoisseurs of extermination, us Londoners do exceedingly well. And oh what murders! For the English have elevated this to a high art form. Take your pick folks, we're spoilt for choice: Jack the Ripper and the Whitechapel Murders, the bizarre Whitehall Torso Mystery, the pathetic Dr Crippen (39, Hilldrop Crescent), Brides-in-the-Bath-Smith, the glamorous Mrs Rattenbury, The Croydon Poisoning (The Riddle of Bathurst Rise), the ghastly necrophilic Christie at number 10, Rillington Place; 'Group Captain' Neville Heath, the tragic Ruth Ellis; and John George Haigh, the seedy hotel lounge lizard, conman and seducer of lonely widows, also known as The Vampire of South Kensington.
I'm also currently enjoying a nerdy little obsession with the Balham Mystery (aka The Bravo Poisoning), which is a worthy companion to any of the above- partly because Mrs Aitch happens to be the great-great-great granddaughter of one of the suspects, and also because it gives a fascinating insight into the daily life of a well-to-do Victorian household drowning in a toxic sea of dubious tinctures and homeopathic remedies. My mother-in-law is obsessed with the case, and claims to have attended a 'Bravo Murder' dinner party in which none other than Dame Agatha Christie starred as a surprisingly unimpressive guest. It's a long story.
Florence Bravo
It's also a slightly complicated yarn, and I will do my best to explain what happened:
In 1876, a Mrs Ricardo (née Florence Campbell of Buscot Park, Berkshire), takes out a lease on The Priory, Balham. Mrs Ricardo is an attractive, voluptuous widow ('smart' in both the English and American sense); considered 'fast' by the standards of Victorian Society. She's also rich- which helps- following her marriage to the late Alexander Ricardo, an alcoholic Captain in the Coldstream Guards.
In those days, Balham was a bucolic semi-rural enclave on the far outskirts of London, surrounded by fields, market gardens and common land- an hour or two's carriage drive away from the luxurious delights of the Big Smoke, but with enough distance to create the illusion of a secluded pastoral idyll. The Priory still stands, a Regency Gothick wedding cake of a house in the Strawberry Hill style, now surrounded by the grime of the inner London suburbs, and divided up into sinfully luxurious flats for the aspirational classes.
Now for several years, Mrs Ricardo has been having a scandalous affair with the elderly Dr James Mamby Gully, a distinguished- if naive- Society physician (some might say quack), forty years her senior: this liaison involved a secret abortion, and the pair being caught in flagrante delicto on a sofa in Tooting Bec. Honestly, you couldn't make it up.
Dr Gully by Spy, from Vanity Fair, 1876
So a few months after she's moved into The Priory, Florence dumps poor old Dr Gully and decides to marry a young mercurial barrister with a weak chin called Charles Bravo. And before I forget, there's a rather sinister ladies' companion called Mrs Cox, the secretive heiress to a fortune in the West Indies. And a disgruntled coachmen, Griffiths, who was sacked a few weeks earlier for driving Mrs Bravo's carriage into a stationary milk cart in Bond Street. So we're all set up for a game of Real-Life Victorian Cluedo.
On the night of Tuesday, April 18th, 1876- four months into their marriage- Charles Bravo retires to bed, following a tetchy dinner with Florence and Mrs Cox. This includes a fish first course (whiting), roast lamb and an anchovy and egg savoury, washed down with more than several glasses of Charles's favourite Burgundy. Within minutes, he's desperately ill- fighting for his life, fatally poisoned- it's discovered later- by four grains of tartic antimony (a dangerous emetic, used by the Victorians to cure worms in horses) slipped into his bedside water bottle.
The Bravo Household; The Priory, Balham. The sinister Mrs Cox (presumably) to the left; Charles in the centre, Florence (presumably) to the right.
No less than five doctors are summoned, including the distinguished physician, Sir William Gull, Bt.- later, in the subsequent century, to be the conspiracy theorist's favourite- if wonderfully nutty- suspect for Jack the Ripper. Poor Charles lingers on for a few days- writhing- sporadically- in agony- and dies on Friday, 21st April 1876.
Yet, one hundred and forty years later, we still don't know what happened. One theory has it that Charles committed suicide: certainly at the subsequent inquest Mrs Cox claimed that he had told her exactly that. And there's an intriguing idea that Charles had been feeding small doses of antimony to Florence to stop her drinking habit (unsurprisingly, it makes you feel nauseous), and had then, accidentally- and slightly implausibly- taken it himself to counter the effects of swallowing laudanum. Another theory has Mrs Cox slipping the antimony into the water jug (it's invisible and tasteless when mixed with water, apparently), and then creeping back to Florence's bedroom unnoticed.
Mr. Charles Bravo (né Charles Delauney Turner) 1845-1876, National Portrait Gallery
And what about dear old Dr Gully? If anybody had a reason to murder Charles Bravo, surely it had to be the Good Doctor? Agatha Christie certainly thought so. He had the motive, and as a physician he certainly had the means. But did he have an alibi? Could he have crept into the Priory, mixed a sachet of tartic antimony into the water, and departed from the house unobserved? And then we come to Florence. Several writers over the years have pointed their ink-stained fingers at her. Both Mrs Cox and Florence claimed that Charles had treated her brutally, and was threatening to cull members of the household, including Mrs Cox, in an attempt to curb Florence's extravagance. Following the inquests, she moved to the South Coast, changed her name to Turner, and continued to drink heavily, finally dying of alcoholic poisoning in 1878. She was 33 years old.
And there you have it. "In a nutshell, my dear Milo", as Andrew Wyke says in Anthony Shaffer's Sleuth. Of course, the story's far, far more complicated than I have indicated; but I hope, at least, armchair detectives, come the next rainy and stormy night, I may have whetted your appetite for more. There are several books to add to your amazon wish list: Death at the Priory by James Ruddick, Suddenly at the Priory by John Williams, Dr Gully by Elizabeth Jenkins, How Charles Bravo Died by Yseult Bridges, and my favourite of them all, Murder at the Priory by Bernard Taylor and Kate Clarke.
I've trawled my crowded bookshelves for some appropriate recipes, which are reproduced below; so that if the inclination suddenly takes hold- you too can recreate that infamous last dinner at the Priory. Chemical properties of antimony included:
Eliza Acton's Baked Whiting à la Française (From Modern Cookery for Private Families, 1845)
Proceed with these exactly as with soles au plat of this chapter. or pour a little clarified butter into a deep dish and strew it rather thickly with finely-minced mushrooms mixed with a teaspoonful of parsley, and (When the flavour is liked, and considered appropriate) with an eschalot or two, or the white part of a few green onions, also chopped very small. On these place the fish after then been scaled, emptied, thoroughly washed, and wiped dry: season them well with salt and white pepper, or cayenne; sprinkle more of the herbs upon them; pour gently from one or two glasses of light white wine into the dish, cover the whitings, with a thick layers of fine crumbs of bread, sprinkle these plentifully with clarified butter, and bake the fish from fifteen to twenty minutes. Send a cut lemon only to table with them. When the wine is not liked, a few spoonsful of pale veal gravy can be used instead: or a larger quantity of clarified butter, with a tablespoonful of water, a teaspoonful of lemon-pickle and of mushroom catsup, and a few drops of soy.
Robin Mc Douall's Roast Lamb (from Clubland Cooking, 1974)
I don't know where to get mutton. It doesn't pay farmers to keep sheep until they become mutton: they are all slaughtered as lambs- sometimes rather elderly lambs- lamb dressed as mutton, to reverse the bitchy expression of Edwardian ladies about each other. Roasting a leg of lamb, I put a good deal of rosemary and some chopped garlic with it. I haven't bough a shoulder for years as I've never learnt to carve one. Carré d'agneau (American 'rack of lamb') I like very much but put no herbs with it. With a saddle I might put a few slices of onion. Times per pound are nonsense: you must learn by trial and error. I start a gigot in a very hot oven, turn it round, lower the heating and probably, for a small leg enough for six, cook it for not more than an hour.
Red currant jelly is nice, if you're not drinking a very grand wine. Mint sauce kills any wine. Pretend you've got mutton and have onion sauce. I like a little nutmeg grated into the gigot.
Mrs Beeton's Scrambled Eggs with Anchovies (Oeufs Brouillés aux Anchois) (from The Book of Household Management, 1861)
Ingredients—3 eggs, 3 anchovies, ¾ of an oz. of butter, 1 tablespoonful of cream or milk, a teaspoonful of essence of anchovy, toast, butter, capers, parsley, pepper and salt.
Method.—Skin and bone the anchovies, and cut them into fine strips. Cut the toast into pieces 3 inches long and 2 inches wide, and spread them thickly with butter. Beat the eggs slightly, then put them with the butter, cream, and anchovy essence into the stewpan, and season to taste. Stir by the side of the fire until the mixture thickens, put it on the toast, lay the strips of anchovy across, forming a lattice, and place a caper in each division. Re-heat in the oven, then serve garnished with parsley.
Time.—40 minutes. Average Cost, about 10d. Sufficient for 5 or 6 persons. Seasonable at any time.
Chemical Properties of Antimony- Sb
Atomic mass: 121.75 g.mol
Ionic Radius:0.245 nm (-3); 0.062 nm (+5); 0.076 nm (+3)
Boiling Point: 1587˚C
Antimony is a semimetallic chemical element which can exist in two forms: the metallic form is bright, silvery, hard and brittle; the non metallic form is a grey powder. Antimony is a poor conductor of heat and electricity, it is stable in dry air and is not attacked by dilute acids or alkalis. Antimony and some of its alloys expand on cooling.
Antimony has been known since ancient times. It is sometimes found free in nature, but is usually obtained from the ores stibnite (Sb2S3) and valentinite (Sb2O3). Nicolas Lémery, a French chemist, was the first person to scientifically study antimony and its compounds. He published his findings in 1707. Antimony makes up about 0.00002% of the earth's crust.
Posted by Luke Honey on Saturday, 25 January 2020 at 11:41 AM | Permalink
Tags: agatha christie, balham priory, charles bravo, cluedo, death at the priory, dr gully, dr james gully, elizabeth jenkins gully, florence ricado, jane cox, mrs cox, murder at the priory, robin mcdouall, sleuth, the priory balham, whodunnit