It is easy to assume that poison pen letters are a thing of fiction, usually found in Agatha Christie stories, but the recent film,Wicked Little Letters, starring Olivia Coleman and Jessie Buckley, reminded me of this fascinating crime and, when I investigated further, I discovered some strange personal coincidences. Online I came across a scandalous local case from here on the Isle of Wight, which took place in the 1930s, and which featured a principal victim called Miss Willoughby, which happens to be my birth name. I was intrigued and set out to find out more. As stated at the beginning of the film, which was also based on a real-life case: ‘This is more true than you’d think…’
The first letters
‘The Anonymous Letter Scandal’ began in 1934 in the quiet village of Brighstone in the south of the Island. The first poisonous missives were received by Miss Willoughby, who was the headteacher of the village school and also led the church choir. Following ‘differences’ between Miss Willoughby and the choir, she resigned her post, after which the letters began to arrive through her letterbox, with one of first saying, ‘I should like you to be shut up with one hundred strong men…You are not fit to teach children.’
After six months of this targeted campaign, Miss Willoughby was so traumatised that she left the Isle of Wight and moved across the Solent to the village of North Boarhunt, near Portsmouth. However, she did not escape the poisonous pen and, after she informed the Brighstone post office of her change of address, she received another anonymous letter to her new home, saying:
Give three cheers for the Brighstone people now that Willoughby woman and her wicked old mother have gone. Danger! Beware husband snatcher – she is a devil for the men.
After Miss Willoughby’s departure, the letters continued in earnest. Over the next four years, some 200 were posted through the doors of unsuspecting villagers. According to the County Press, they were of ‘an indecent nature,’ sometimes containing ‘substances of a disgustingly offensive character’. Also, the handwriting had been disguised.
A local investigation
The local police were at a loss and they could uncover no clues about the author of the letters. However, the course of the investigation changed when, in March 1932, the newly-appointed Deputy Chief Constable Morrison took over the case, after which he too started to receive taunting letters, saying ‘You may be a damned clever copper, but I am one too many for you.’
Superintendent Morrison joined forces with the village postmistress, Edith Jane Creeth, who had also been a target of the poison pen campaign. He gave her some marked stamps to sell, in an attempt to trace the writer, but the experiment failed. However, when Edith showed him some letters that she’d received, he noticed that they hadn’t arrived through the post. Also, he spotted a wireless licence in her handwriting, which seemed to match the script on some of the letters. Mrs Creeth denied any involvement: ‘It is very like my writing, but I have not written the anonymous letters…It hurts my dignity that you should think I should have sent the letters.’
Edith Jane Creeth was 48 years old. She had been married to John Edward Henry Creeth since 1905, after which they had settled in his home village of Brighstone, where he was the blacksmith. They had one daughter, Gladys who, by this time, was also married. Edith was the subpostmistress for the village, and her husband, in addition to his metalwork buiness, worked as the postman. He was also a special constable.
In June 1934, Edith appeared before the magistrates at Newport police court, charged with 27 counts of sending obscene and offensive literature through the post. The prosecutor, W E Done, claimed that the postmistress had sent letters to herself and to her husband to ‘divert suspicion’. Home Office handwriting expert, Gerald Francis Gurrin, attested that he had examined 130 to 140 of the letters, as well as a substantial number of documents, which Edith had signed. He concluded that all but two of the letters had been written by the same hand, and that there were ‘a long series of features of similarity’ between the anonymous correspondence and the samples of Mrs Creeth’s handwriting. He even produced photographs and a table of the common characteristics. Edith pleaded not guilty and was committed for trial at the next assizes.
Postmistress in the dock
Edith Creeth’s trial opened on 16 July 1932 at the county assize court in Winchester. The postmistress, who was wearing a blue and white summery dress and a large, straw hat, once again pleaded not guilty. As at the previous hearing, the prosecution was based on the graphological similarities. It was also revealed that she had developed the habit of intercepting the mail van driver who took the post to Newport everyday, and giving him unfranked letters, which would later be stamped with the Newport postmark. Interestingly, many of the anonymous letters bore that same mark. One witness, George Newton, from Newbury, testified that, while he had been staying at the post office in Brighstone, Mrs Creeth had brought a letter for his wife. He said: ‘She [Mrs Newton] had rushed upstairs with it. She [his wife] was deeply distressed and almost collapsed.’ The contents of the letter were not read out in court.
Gerald Gurrin was present at the trial. He explained how he had studied the letters with a microscope, and some of the characters had unique features relating to the position in which the pen had been held. The defence countered that it was the work of a copycat poison pen letter writer. Describing the correspondence as ‘degrading’ and ‘beastly’, he added:
‘Even in their worst dreams, in their [the jury’s] most horrid nightmares, would they imagine that a woman could have written this intimately sordid, debauched stuff, which might have been concocted by the habitué of places in Buenos Aires?’
The trial continued for six days, at the end of which, Edith’s defence counsel concluded that they were not dealing with London or New York but a ‘little village in the Isle of Wight’, which had become a ‘raging inferno of suspicions’. Despite the evidence seeming to be stacked against her, Mrs Creeth was acquitted. There were no more letters, and the case remained unsolved.
I visited Brighstone to see where the drama had unfolded, and I was struck by how small this quaint village really is. The church where Miss Willoughby ran the choir was at one end of the main street and the former post office at the other, with several thatched cottages and a pub in between. Due to its size, I could imagine how torrid this affair had become, especially with such a voluminous corrrespondence over a long period of time.
As Sherlock Holmes remarked to Dr Watson in ‘The Adventure of the Copper Beeches’:
You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there.