History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

This is a famous, and in many ways unique, case from 1949.  The Background Stanley Setty was born as Salman Seti or Salik in Baghdad in 1903. The family moved to Manchester in 1908 where his father was a cloth merchant. Stanley worked in the business until 1920 when his father abandoned his wife and children and went to live in Italy. To earn a living, Stanley set up a shipping business with his brother David and when that failed, worked on his own account as a cloth dealer. Unfortunately, he lost a great deal of money gambling and was declared bankrupt in 1927. To avoid his creditors, Stanley left the country in December 1927 to stay with his father in Milan. He returned in April 1928 and at his bankruptcy hearing it was said Stanley bought cloth on credit, selling it cut price on the same day, and not paying the suppliers. That August he pleaded guilty to multiple offences under the Bankruptcy and Debtors Acts. When the judge sentenced him to 18 months in prison, Setty’s mother h...

There have been over 60,000 burials in Hampstead Cemetery in Fortune Green Road since it was opened in 1876. But this sad story is about four bodies that were found above ground, the result of suicide and perhaps, murder. Alfred Chambers In 1884, the body of Alfred Pierpoint Chambers was discovered by a grave digger lying face downwards on the grave of his wife. Alfred was a photographer with a studio in Clapham. Alfred and Ellen were married in 1867, but since her death in 1882, Alfred had been very depressed. The post mortem revealed he had taken cyanide which was used in processing photographs. Henry Butterworth In December 1885, an inquest was held on Henry Butterworth, the owner of a chemist’s shop at 70 Tottenham Court Road. Today it is CEX electronics store, one of the few surviving original properties, immediately south of Goodge Street underground station. His widow Elizabeth told the inquest court that Henry had left home on the 26 November, saying he...

In the late 1950s Veronica Murray, known as ‘Ronnie’, came from Londonderry to find work in London. She eventually worked as a prostitute on the streets and clubs of Soho, and in June 1958 rented a room at 58 Charteris Road in Kilburn. When Ronnie had not been seen by her friends in Soho for several days, one of them phoned her Turkish landlord Ratomir Tasic. A shocking sight awaited him as he entered her room on 19 December 1958 . Ronnie had been beaten to death and was lying across her bed. The murder squad detectives led by Superintendent Evan Davies, found that she had been hit several times on the head with an ornamental dumbbell. Some unusual circular marks were found on her body, but the fingerprints at the scene did not match any on file. The police released a photo of Veronica a few days later but this produced no suspects and the case went cold. Veronica 'Ronnie' Murray A year later on 11 October 1959 , Mrs Mabel Hill was celebrating her birthday in L...

It was May 1942 and London was in the middle of the War, when Pauline Barker was murdered at 184 Belsize Road . The story did not receive much attention in the press. Here we use the Metropolitan Police files from the National Archives to look at the stories of the main participants in this sad crime. The house has since been demolished as part of the Council redevelopment in the area. Pauline Barker was born in Islington in 1899, the daughter of Frederick Charles Barker and Lydia Care. He was a solo harpist and she was a leading contralto with the Carl Rosa Opera Company, they married in London in 1898. But the marriage did not go well and Frederick left Lydia in 1910 and she sued for divorce in 1911. Frederick said in the divorce papers the reason he left her was because of: Her violent temper and ungovernable behaviour and constant and habitual use of filthy, disgusting and obscene language and constant disagreements for ten years which have rendered his married life...