This
kindly looking old cove is the Reverend Basil Andrews, for forty years the
chaplain at Kensal Green Cemetery. The most famous funeral service he
conducted, certainly the one he remembered in later life, was for Winston
Churchill’s two-year-old daughter Marigold in August 1921. A grief-stricken
Churchill asked the assembled press photographers not to take pictures and it
is always said that they quietly left without taking any shots of the private
funeral. But researching the life of Reverend Andrews I came across a grainy photo on the
front page of the Daily Mirror for Saturday 27 August 1921 which shows a
clergyman, it must be him, conducting the final part of the service in
front of an open grave. Churchill stands with stooped shoulders, supporting
himself with a walking stick, by Andrews’ side. A large crowd of mourners is gathered on the
far side of the grave; it seems to have been a very public ‘private’ funeral
for the two-year-old. Thirty years later a disgraced Andrews was recalling the
funeral for the benefit of a journalist, from the Sunday Dispatch, whose
distrust of the cleric’s uncorroborated word was so great that he felt obliged
to go and check the story in newspaper files. The Reverend Basil Andrews was,
it has to be said, not a man to be trusted.
Basil
Claude Hudson Andrews was born at the vicarage of St Luke's, Kentish Town in
1867. His father Charles was the vicar of St Luke's and Basil was the youngest
of seven children. He was educated privately at St Edward’s School Oxford and,
for reasons which were almost certainly nothing to do with religious
conviction, he decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and become ordained
as a clergyman in the Church of England.
At the age of 24 he became a missionary in South Africa, where he spent
four years before moving on to take up a clerical position in Toronto. In
Canada he made his first marriage, to Annie Maud Rackham in December 1895. The
couple had two children, a son Arthur who was born in 1897 and a daughter Naomi
who was born in January 1901 but died just a month later (Arthur was also to
die young, in 1922 at the age of 25). The marriage evidently did not go well
because a couple of years later Basil returned to England apparently abandoning his
wife and young son in Canada. He then spent three years as a curate at the
parish of St Leonards, in Watlington, Oxfordshire before his tenure ended in
mysterious circumstances. In 1907 he became the chaplain at Kensal Green
cemetery, a job he remained in for the next forty years.
The
1911 census shows the 43-year-old Basil living at Flat 5, 89 Elgin Crescent
with his 27-year-old ‘wife’, Emma Louise Andrews. In truth Basil and Emma were,
ironically, living together without benefit of clergy. Basil was, after all,
still married to Annie in Canada. At the same time he also seems to have been
carrying on a relationship with a woman called Alice Clark as she gave birth to
a son in Hackney in 1913 and Basil is the registered father. Despite this his
relationship with Emma seems to have been a serious one; they were certainly still
masquerading as man and wife on the 1921 census, though she may not have known about his amorous adventures in Hackney. Basil could have made an
honest woman of Emma as his first wife died in March 1921. He may have
been able to marry her even earlier; Annie remarried in 1915, either because
she and Basil had divorced or because she thought she could get away with
bigamy. In any case Basil was free to remarry by 1921 at the latest but there
is no record of a marriage ever taking place.
Electoral records show Emma as living at Elgin Avenue with Basil until
1931; she then disappears from the record, untraceable now because Andrews was
never her real name.
Financial
difficulties as well as Basil’s reluctance to pop the question were probably the
cause of the breakdown of his relationship with Emma. By 1925 Basil was
bankrupt, owing £6500 to his creditors and having only £300 in assets. Although
he wasn’t admitting it to anyone, Basil was a gambler and a spendthrift. To the
court he claimed that he had only got into financial difficulties trying to
help out an unnamed friend. This is from the Kensington Post of 09 January
1925;
A
CHAPLAIN’S GUARANTEE, At Bankruptcy Buildings, Carey Street, the first meeting
was held of the creditors under a receiving order made against Basil Claude
Hudson Andrews, clerk in Holy Orders, whose address was given as Elgin Avenue.
The receiving order was made on the debtor’s own petition. From the statement
made by Mr. Walter Boyle, Senior Official Receiver, it appeared that the debtor
estimated his liabilities at £6,500, and his assets at £300, apart from a claim
of against a friend, who was an undischarged bankrupt. The debtor was ordained
in 1890. He had taken duty in South Africa and in Canada, and from 1906 until
1908, when he was appointed chaplain at Kensal Green, he acted as organising
secretary for the Church of England Waifs and Strays Society for the dioceses
of Oxford and Peterborough. He became guarantor for his friend, who had
borrowed £500 from a moneylender, and to meet his guarantee he had himself been
forced to obtain loans. In the hope that his friend might repay him, he had
borrowed from moneylenders. He attributed his insolvency to the high interest
he had to pay. It was decided that the estate should remain in the hands of the
Official Receiver.
In 1932 Basil married again, this time a wealthy widow, Edith Isabella Henderson. Edith, and her money, seem to have kept Basil out of trouble for the next 20 years. He retired from Kensal Green in 1947 and the couple carried on living quietly in the Elgin Crescent flat until Edith died in 1952. Following her death the 85-year-old Basil found himself gradually slipping into a way of life that would eventually make him, temporarily at least, the most famous, and notorious, clergyman in England. Quite what happened we do not know but by 1955 Basil was apparently almost destitute, no longer living at Elgin Crescent, hanging around the Cumberland Hotel in Bayswater, helping himself to continental breakfasts and whatever else he could cadge from the staff or guests, betting heavily on the horses and asking for favours from the other shady characters who used the hotel as a base for their shady activities.
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| Jack 'Spot' Comer and his wife Margaret (Rita Molloy) after his acquittal on stabbing charges |
In
the hot afternoon of Thursday 11 August 1955 an argument between two middle-aged
men broke out outside the Bar Italia on Frith Street in Soho. The argument
quickly turned violent and both men pulled out blades. The two combatants were 43-year-old
Jacob Colmore aka Jack Comer or Jack Spot and the slightly younger and taller George
Arthur Albert Dimeo aka Albert Dimes or Italian Al. The fight, in which both
men were seriously injured, was the climax of a long running power struggle between
Jewish gangland boss Jack Spot and his one-time protegee Billy Hill. Hill
encouraged Dimes to refuse to pay protection money to Spot and the result was
the fracas outside the Bar Italia. That no one was killed in the fight is
generally credited to Mrs Stone Hyams. the 13 stone wife of a Frith Street greengrocer,
who laid about both men with a cast iron frying pan. When Spot found himself in
court charged with stabbing Dimes a key witness was the Reverend Basil Andrews
who had apparently witnessed the fight from the other side of Frith Street and
quite clearly seen Dimes pull his weapon first and inflict the first wound. The
jury drew the conclusion that Spot had acted in self defence and he was acquitted.
The Reverends performance in the witness
box may have convinced the jury but the police and perhaps more crucially, the
press, were not fooled. The police were chary of questioning 88-year-old
clergymen on whether he had perjured himself in the witness box but the press
had no compunctions. Basil found himself besieged in his rented room by Fleet
Street’s finest.
“When I was living in Inverness-terrace,” he later recalled, “I was bombarded by these beastly reporters who have no decency in them and who do nothing but bully and nag and treat you abominably. They came upstairs while I was in bed and when I opened the door, they put their foot in the door and treated me disgracefully. It is a disgrace for the Press to treat a man like at. I believe a reporter of the Daily Telegraph came to my room and he happened to be an extremely nice man. I do not know his name. He asked me lots of questions about my life. He said: ‘Of course, in the future, at some time or other, if you tell us a story it might be worth your while,’ something to that effect.” Garrulous Basil ended up confiding in the nice man from the Daily Telegraph, the newspaper published, the police questioned Basil and by December Spot’s 27-year-old Mrs. Margaret Comer, of Hyde Park Mansions, Marylebone; Peter MacDonough, 45, of Upper Berkeley-street, Mayfair; Morris Goldstein, 43, of Gore - road, Hackney, and Bernard Schack, 53, of Maple-place, Stepney found themselves behind the dock accused of conspiracy to pervert the course of Justice. Basil was the main prosecution witness. According to the daily Express he “said in a pulpit-loud voice at Bow-street court yesterday: “The evidence I gave at the Old Bailey trial of Jack Comer was all lies. I never saw the fight I described; I was not even there. I got £64 for the lies I told.” Under questioning from the prosecution barrister and the 3 counsels for defence he told the court that he had been first approached by McDonough in the Cumberland Hotel, then met Goldstein and Schack before been driven by car next day “to a flat in Hyde Park Mansions from Inverness-terrace, Bayswater, where I was living. At Hyde Park Mansions we went to a flat on the fifth floor. I was shown into a very nicely furnished sitting-room with large armchairs and was introduced to Mrs. Comer. She was extremely nice and offered me a cup of tea. She was very friendly and pleased to see me. I think she expressed herself as being so thankful that I was going to help them. She was in a terrible state of anxiety about her husband. I felt extremely sorry for her. At the end of my first visit to the flat Mrs. Comer gave me a £1 note. . . I am not positive whether it was £1 or 10s. to pay for a taxi.” Basil was taken to Frith Street to fix the topography of the knife fight in his head, and comprehensively rehearsed in his story before been taken to see Spot’s solicitor to make a statement. The jury found all four defendants guilty. Margaret Comer was fined £50 but the three men were all given jail sentences, McDonough and Schack 12 months and Goldstein two years.
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| A few months after his wife's conviction for conspiracy, Jack and Rita were attacked by a gang of Billy Hill's enforcers, including Mad Frankie Fraser. In this famous photo Jack shows off his injuries from the attack |
The
perjuring parson had found himself an unexpected celebrity following the
initial trial. The newspapers were keen to find out more about him and contrary
to what he told the court in the conspiracy case, it wasn’t just the Daily Telegraph
he had spoken to. Even when he did
refuse to speak to journalists some old acquaintances were not so reluctant, turning
out to be blabbermouths who could just not stop themselves talking once a
reporter flipped open his notebook and asked them a question or two. This is from the Daily Herald of 26 September
1955;
In
the past two years Mr. Andrews appears to have abandoned the settled life which
he had hitherto led. For about 40 years he lived at a flat in Elgin-avenue,
Maida Vale—first with his wife and later, after she died, alone. Since leaving
there two years ago he has had a number of addresses. Mrs. Gertrude Vizard,
caretaker of the Elgin-avenue flats, remembers him. "He had many friends
at Oxford," she said last night, "and was often visited by a woman
from Oxford who had a young daughter. He was a kind and quiet gentleman, but
never had much money. I once lent him £8 to settle an income tax demand but he
paid me back." The Rev. Basil Andrews had appointments in Canada until
came this country in 1901 and became curate at St. Peter's, Eaton-square, S.W.
Then for 40 years he was chaplain at Kensal Green Cemetery until he retired in
1947. In the last few years has worked the tough streets of Soho among
criminals and girls who have "gone astray."
Even
more damaging was the story in the Sunday Dispatch on the 2nd of October 1955
which appeared under the headlines ‘From diamond fields to the West End stage,
the strange life of the ‘Jack Spot’ parson, Women travelled miles to hear him
preach’;
"The
parson with the silver voice." That is how the people of Watlington,
Oxfordshire, remember the Rev. Basil Andrews, key witness in the sensational
Jack ("Spot") Comer case. Older parishioners recall the tall, dark,
wavy-haired curate whose brilliant preaching filled the church 45 years ago.
They remember that many women came from miles around to hear him. For three
years they thronged to listen to the "dapper" curate. Then Mr.
Andrews went as suddenly as he came. "He disappeared from the White House
at Church Close with his smartly dressed wife and son one week-end," Mr.
Harold Searly, 70-year-old clothier, told me, "In a way we were sorry to
him go. We will never forget his three years at St. Luke's Parish Church."
Mr. Surly said It was understood that Mr. Andrews left because women
parishioners were paying him too much attention. "I was always in the
congregation," Mr. Searly added. "So were my sisters. He was so
interesting. He helped the church no end. He was a vigorous worker and looked
after the choir. Two years ago he came back to our village. I hardly recognised
him. He told me he was retired and wanted to meet old friends."
Mr.
F. Storer, of the Mill House. Cooksham-road, Watlington, told me: "He
stayed here sometimes with my mother and father. He was a great friend of the
family. I know of no relationship between us, though my sister, Mrs. Sybil
Owen. of Eastleigh, Southend, Garsington, Oxford, has been described as his
niece. I saw him about four years ago. He came here with Sybil and I drove him
around. My mother knew him before she married my father, who was organist at
St. Luke's Church.” Friends of Mr. Arthur Owen, Sybil's husband, told me:
"Mrs. Owen has been away for three years. She returned Just over a week
ago. I was surprised to see that she has become a blonde after three years
away."
Later.
Mr. Andrews became minister at All Souls Church of England Chapel in Kensal
Green Cemetery. He had a flat in Elgin Avenue, W. In the past ten years he was
a fairly frequent visitor to a public house at Kensal Green. He would go in,
drink five pints of beer and have a set lunch. It was not unusual for him to
leave a half a crown tip. In the neighbourhood people told me: " He used
to buy a midday racing paper. He telephoned his bets. Sometimes his language
was unclerical."
In Soho Mr. Andrews was also well known. "In the years I've known him he always liked a gamble," a friend said. The silver tongue of the whitehaired. bent-shouldered Rev. Basil Claude Andrews has not deserted him in his 89th year. He tells how, at the age of 23, he went to South Africa as a missionary. He shook hands with Cecil Rhodes within 60 minutes of disembarking at Cape Town. But for his wanderlust, he says, he could have been a bishop in Toronto, Canada. After three years In South Africa. and wandering round the diamond fields of Kimberley, meeting and drinking with "some of the worst scoundrels in the world," Andrews sailed for Canada. There. in Toronto he became secretary to the bishop and priest-vicar at the cathedral. Mr. Andrews's next recollection takes him to London's West End and he believes the Lyric Theatre. There he had tea on the stage with actress Marie Löhr while the curtain was down between acts. Another experience he tells about was reading the burial service at Kensal Green Cemetery over the child of Winston Churchill. who was then Colonial Secretary. (This service—on two-year-old Marigold Frances Churchill — has been verified in newspaper files). Not long ago. Mr. Andrews says. he went for help--because he was hard up—to the Rt. Rev. Cyril Eastaugh, Bishop of Kensington. "But." says Mr. Andrews. his thin lips tightening, "the bishop was most unsympathetic. He despises me because I have borrowed money and not pad it back, and in particular, borrowed it from members of the Church."
After
the trial, and rather unusually or an 88-year-old man, the Reverend Basil
disappears from the official record. Given that he was 88 he can’t have lived
for very much longer but there is no trace of a death record for Basil Andrews
in the UK, in Ireland or abroad. Did embarrassed relatives spirit him away? Quite
possibly; there are rumours that he died in 1963, though no records are available
to back this up. The rumours originate from Australia; his son with Annie Clark
moved to New Zealand in the 1920’s. Perhaps Basil spent his final years living
down under, living under an assumed name.
His
death isn’t the only mystery still unsolved from Basil’s colourful life. James
Morton in an article for the Law Society mentions in passing that Basil lived
for 20 years with a woman called Ruby Young. Coincidentally Ruby was also
someone who achieved national notoriety as a result of appearing as a witness
in a court case. Her 15 minutes of fame had come in 1907 when she gave evidence
in the trial of Robert Wood who was accused of murdering Phylis Dimmock, a prostitute,
in Camden Town. Phylis had been found at her lodgings with her throat cut
clutching a postcard of a rising sun. A photograph of a postcard was printed in
the papers and Wood, an artist, came forward to admit not only that the drawing
was his but that he had known Phylis. Wood also persuaded Ruby Young, an old
girlfriend of his, to give him an alibi for the night of the murder, but she
later changed her mind and went to a journalist and the police with the story. Ruby
was called as a prosecution witness and she suddenly found herself famous. It
had become clear in the course of her evidence that she had had an intimate
relationship with Wood, and she was attractive and not averse to posing for
newspaper photographers. This did not go down well with the jury who seemed to believe
the defence’s suggestion that Ruby had made the whole thing up to get the £100
reward offered by The News of the World for anyone able to identify the
handwriting on the rising sun postcard. Wood was found not guilty. If Morton is
correct when would Ruby Young have lived with Basil? We know that Basil did
live with a woman for more than 20 years; the woman who on the 1911 and 1921
census and the electoral roll is named as Emma Louisa Andrew. Are Ruby and Emma
the same person living under different names?
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| Is this Emma Louisa Young? |
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