History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

This the story of a 1950s swindle to get money from young couples desperate to buy their own homes. The brains of the scheme lived in West Hampstead, Kilburn and Willesden. On 11 September 1956, five men appeared at the Old Bailey charged with fraud. They were William Frederick Montgomery (46) a clerical assistant of 2a Riffel Road Willesden, John Frederick Attenborough (54) the company negotiator of Albion Street Dunstable, Herbert Henry Skelly (35) master builder of Manor Road Dagenham, Richard Neel (46) travel agent of Beckenham Road Beckenham, and Ernest Rea (79) the company director of Katherine Road East Ham. They were charged with conspiring together between February 1953 and January 1955, to defraud people to buy a home from the Harmsworth Building and Construction Company Ltd. 120 prospective buyers paid deposits totalling £23,184 (today worth about £870,000), for homes that were never built. All five men pleaded ‘not guilty’. Deposits were not returned, and the company went t...