Residence





	Residence


	The Christies’ arrival in 10 Rillington Place

		It is generally reported that Mr and Mrs Christie moved into 10 Rillington Place in December 1938 - however, this is incorrect as they in fact took up occupation some eighteen months earlier although initially in the upper rooms that were subsequently occupied by the Evanses.

Above - the electoral register for 1936 was “in force” between 15 October 1936 and 14 October 1937. As can be seen, the entry for “Aldridge, Alice” at 10 Rillington Place is crossed through by hand with a date of “12/6” which was usually done to signify a person having either moved out or died during the currency of the register. In fact she is known to have died sometime in the last quarter of 1936, aged 81, and “12/6” must therefore signify 12 June 1937, probably the date when the register was manually amended. Mr & Mrs Smith are believed to have been the previous tenants of the ground floor having moved in in about 1929.

Above - the register for the following year, 1937, was in force for the period 15 October 1937 to 14 October 1938 and, as can be seen, already contains the names of Mr and Mrs Christie. For administrative reasons it is the case that the “qualifying date” for inclusion in a register of electors is some four months prior to the start of the in-force period which, in the case of the 1937 register, equates to early/mid-June 1937 at the latest and by which time the Christies must, of course, have been in residence. Christie himself said that he had moved into the house in 1937 and, in this instance, was evidently telling the truth.

Electoral records for the war years were either incomplete, not compiled or officially destroyed in case of enemy invasion. The 1945 register contains no entries for the property whereas the 1946 and 1947 registers show the Christies, Charles Kitchener, the elderly tenant of the first-floor rooms, and one Henry C Williams who must have been the previous tenant of the top-floor rooms into which the Evans family subsequently moved.


	Ten years on and the arrival of the Evanses

It is known that Timothy and Beryl Evans moved into the top-floor rooms at 10 Rillington Place on 24 March 1948 and so the name of Evans, Timothy J duly appears in the electoral register for that year, effective from 15 October 1948 and the qualifying date some four months prior. Beryl’s name is not shown as she had only attained the age of twenty at the time of her death and, before 1970, the minimum age to vote in local and parliamentary elections (and so appear in the electoral register), was twenty-one.


	Above - an extract from the 1948 electoral register reflecting the Evans family’s arrival at Easter of that year. Oddly, Mr Williams’s name is still included although Evans’s sister Eileen had observed the “Flat To Let” sign in the top-floor window, it having become vacant on 9 March 1948.

The register for 1949 contained the same names as those shown above (except for Williams, Henry C) and reflecting the fact that the Evans family was still intact by the qualifying date of 10 June 1949. The next year’s register (1950) had a qualifying date of 20 November 1949 and Evan’s name still appears, notwithstanding his departure for Wales on 14 November, Beryl (and Geraldine) having been murdered the week before. By the following year (1951), the register - whose qualifying date was 20 November 1950 - contained only the Christies’ names; by this time, all three members of the Evans family were deceased.


			Left - an extract from the 1952 register. Ethel Christie’s name is still shown as her murder did not take place until 14 December 1952. This register is also the first to contain the name of Beresford Brown. Beresford Dubois Brown was a top-floor tenant who was given permission by the landlord to have use of the ground-floor kitchen left vacant after Christie’s departure in March 1953. It was his noticing of a hollow sound behind some wallpaper applied to a door which led to the discovery of the three bodies in the alcove behind. It is striking to note that there are no fewer than eight adults registered to vote at the house as at 20 November 1951 - a large number for such a cramped, ill-equipped house originally designed for single family occupation, and there were probably still further transient and non-registered occupants at any given time. The house had been acquired in 1950 by a Jamaican owner and Christie would later complain of the effect upon his (and his wife’s) health of the premises being operated as a virtual brothel by “coloureds”.

		Left - an extract from the 1954 register shows the situation at the house at 20 November 1953. As is known, by this date Ethel Christie had been murdered in the house and Reginald Christie had been hanged for this, and was responsible for at least five other murders on the premises. Furthermore, the house and grounds had been subjected to extremely thorough searching and evidence gathering by the police which would have made normal occupancy difficult for a time and this, perhaps with the associated notoriety of the address itself, may account for the reduced numbers. The landlord had made a claim against the Metropolitan Police for the cost of repairs and loss of rent.

		Left - the 1955 register no longer contains any reference to Rillington Place, it having been renamed Ruston Close in May 1954.

	Left - the 1971 register and last-ever entries for the street. Just four adults remained at the qualifying date of 10 October 1970 - by the end of that year the street and virtually all its houses were gone.

(Bartle Road first appeared in the electoral register for 1979-1980, the qualifying date for which was 10 October 1978)


	[Home] [Summary of events] [Mapping] [Pictures] [History] [History] [Residence] [Documents] [Mythology] [Links] [Disclaimer etc]


	© 2009-10 10-rillington-place.co.uk


	(Revision: July 2010)