JOHN SAMUEL HUMBLE WEARSIDE JACK
August 21, 2010
It’s 12:00 at night and I’m sitting here listening to Nat King Cole on my record deck. I like old vinyl …even the feel of it. Today I bought an old Gene Vincent LP in town and that was my excitement for the day. I go into the record stores every day and wander around…… That’s about all I do. I often feel I should be ‘doing something’ – but what ? It’s strange really , the fact that I don’t know anybody. It is I suppose remarkable…. – It doesn’t bother me , at least no more than anything else but it is rather strange – sort of. But that’s neither here nor there. So what’s all this got to do with John Samuel Humble ? Well , nothing really ….nothing in particular.
He was on TV tonight , a programme about him that is and it got me thinking. He seems a rather tragic figure , a lonely man – a loser , to use a somewhat cruel phrase but for all that his hoax was a great success. If it wasn’t for DNA and modern science they never would have caught him. There was quite a lot of footage of him being interrogated and much of the time he did not look too well , his hands appeared to be shaking ….. His crime of course was serious but he looked more like a victim himself. I do like the man’s name ; John Samuel Humble has a certain ring to it - It would be a great name for a serial killer. He looked defeated , in fact every photo of the man I’ve seen reinforced the idea I have of him as a victim. But the actual hoax , the tape that is , sounded very convincing. Why he did it we just don’t know and it’s likely that he doesn’t know either. He was surprised and even frighted at the success of the whole thing and went so far as to phone the police to warn them that it was in fact a hoax. You could say he was a bit too clever for his own good.
But he’s famous now. He’s immortalised himself. He’s a celebrity of sorts. If he was a different kind of man he could ( when he get’s out of prison) probably make a good living out of being Wearside Jack. As it is a lot of other people will no doubt manage to capitalise on the whole thing. He seems to have had a sad and lonely life and there is no reason to belive that that will change when he gets out. He’ll go down in history as some sort of unfortunate / dimwit / fool …..or worse. There is a Wearside Jack on Facebook but it’s just some rock group ( they’re probably useless). Wearside Jack/ John S. Humble is famous. His name /names will outlive ours. He’s not quite ‘cool’ but he’s made his impression. So – so what. What’s the point ? What does all this prove ?
If all this had happened in the good old days Humble would have become a caution. Parents would be telling their children , ” If you don’t go asleep Wearside Jack will get you” or “If you don’t eat your greens I’ll have to tell Jack”. If it had occurred in the 30′s in the USA someone would probably have written a ballad about the man. Sonia Sutcliffe meanwhile has moved back into the home she shared with Peter Sutcliffe. She’s probably there right now all alone in one of the upstairs bedrooms looking out the window like some latter day Anthony Perkins. It’s strange that she should have become a stress councillor of all things, but there are a lot of strange people out there aren’t there.
EDWARD EVANS MOORS MURDERS BRADY HINDLEY
July 24, 2009
Edward Evans was the last and least remembered victim of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. Of the child victims he was the oldest and at 17 hardly a child as we would understand it today. We know nothing , or next to nothing about him or his family. The only reference I can find to him on the Internet is this site dedicated to the graves of famous people.…..and he isn’t even famous ! Quite a few people have left virtual flowers on this virtual grave of his but I suspect these are the same sort people who have endless ‘friend’s on facebook and such like. There is something very sad or worse than sad about all this. It’s almost as if he might never have existed if it hadn’t been for Brady and Hindley.
The night he died they picked him up late in some train station. A brief encounter. There is something romantic and yet depressing about an English railway station at night. I’ve always liked them….that closing scene in Cathy Come Home . The good old days when dirt and grit mingled in the air as steam engines shunted in the background. Oh yes , I’ve always had a soft spot for the British and their trains. I remember as a child looking out the window of the Hollyhead train as it sped on it’s way to London and seeing young children with notebooks and biros looking up at the trains. I was fascinated by these young train spotters. Town after town and village after village and there they were…. so earnest , so serious with heads going up and next minute heads going down as they scribbled down the number of the train. I had no idea what they were doing but I wanted so much to be one of them. A night journey on the ferry from Dublin and then 6 hours on the Hollyhead train….a real adventure for a boy in those days and a fond memory. Of course it’s not the same today. Things were much better , more atmospheric , in those black and white days.
Britain in the 60′s. A brown ale and a BSA Bantam doing a ton up in Chelsea , or trying to. This is the England that Evans grew up in and this is the England he died in. Gone and forgotten -that England and Edward Evans. He was the last victim in one of the most celebrated crimes ever and still he never really managed to become famous. A failure in death as in life. If you’d seen him in the street back then you would have forgotten him in the time it took to pass him by. There is no moral to any of this. There’s no great hidden truth , no remarkable ‘what might have been’. He was a rent boy with no distinguishing features. Beyond that we know nothing.
No , he’s not famous and we rarely if ever hear of him but there IS something about him ….the fact that , like us , he’s so unremarkable and so easy to forget. He’s a bit like the unknown soldier but without the dramatic aspect. .. an Everyman but without the capital E. He would never have made it onto the property ladder if he had lived….His was , incredibly, a much more innocent age , a far less brutal time than ours in spite of everything that happened. He could never have guessed that 40 years after his death someone like me would be writing about him and that someone like you would be reading it. And what would he have made of it all ? And if we could bring him back , if we could sit him down in some railway station coffee bar for one more British Rail cup of tea what might he have to say of his killer Ian Brady ? Would he feel hate or pity . ? Would he curse him for his lost youth and life or see in Brady a fellow lost soul ?
When we hear the name John Reginald Christie we think of tea , a nice cup of tea before the hands go around the neck for the last time. With Brady it was wine , cheap German wine and then the axe and the blood . For me when I think of railway stations my mind goes back to Britain in the 60′s. Memories memories. The British have always produced the best ( most interesting ) murderers but their is nothing quite so pathetic as the British murder victim. “Don’t be a victim” isn’t that what we say today ! No , we don’t really like victims. That weakness they seem to posess is out of kilter with these modern times. We are uncomfortabe with those who allow themselves to become victims. Railway stations and blood , tea and wine , killers and victims , Edward and Ian – memories memories.
