The work is never done...
The life of The Jigsaw Murders and my ongoing duty to honour the past continues
Hello and welcome to this week’s A-B-C of Writing True Stories newsletter.
My true crime book The Jigsaw Murders: The True Story of the Ruxton Killings and the Birth of Modern Forensics was published at the end of May.
I remember telling my agent and my editor that I could have gone on writing about this story for another five years and I still wouldn’t have turned over every stone.
I unearthed masses of new information about the case that had not been published before, or at least hadn’t seen the light of day for 90 years.
Yet there came a point — my looming deadline — where I had to stop looking and translate my research into a story.
But I sensed there was still much that remained unknown. Publication of the book would inevitably reignite interest in the landmark case and I braced myself for a torrent of new information that I could never have tracked down otherwise.
Hidden away
And so it proved.
I was deluged with messages and calls from people whose parents or grandparents had been patients of Dr Ruxton in Lancaster. Their anecdotes had clearly been handed down through the generations, but there was nothing especially new or insightful in this.
Then I was contacted by a woman who had copies of letters written by Ruxton while on remand at Strangeways Prison in Manchester as he awaited trial in 1936.
My jaw hit the ground.
It was brilliant that she had come forward and was happy to share them with me. But I was also frustrated that fate had not introduced her to me prior to publication.
Forensic brilliance
The Canadian family of the Lancaster photographer whose breakthrough ideas helped to solve the Ruxton murders contacted me and shared interesting details about their relative.
They were proud of his achievements and were delighted that I had been able to honour him in my book.
Living memories
The most recent revelation was being introduced to (probably) the last member of victim Mary Rogerson’s family who actually knew her.
Kathleen Whitaker, now aged 94, was Mary’s cousin. She still lives in the Lancaster area and was a Rogerson by birth. Her father was the brother of Mary’s father. She was eight at the time of the murders and she recalls the horror of the case and the effect it had on the family.
She often stayed at Mary’s parents’ house in Morecambe and recalls Mary talking affectionately of Ruxton’s children, whom she cared for.
Kathleen recalls Mary’s coffin being carried by her father and her uncle at the funeral in Overton churchyard, near Lancaster, in 1936, and how she would go every Saturday to lay flowers on her cousin’s grave.
The plot was never marked with Mary’s name, instead bearing only a simple stone with a moving inscription from her parents. Kathleen recalls charabancs of visitors arriving in Overton intent on finding Mary’s grave in the churchyard. She was under strict instructions from the Rogerson family never to reveal which was Mary’s resting place.
I have carefully squirrelled away this new research and I want to include it in a revised edition if it is published in paperback.
Duty to the past
I am now writing my next book and to all intents and purposes my work on The Jigsaw Murders is complete.
What this has taught me, however, is that when you write about true events, your responsibility to the truth, the past and to the people you write about never ceases.