Jimmy Savile's Headstone, Removed And Dumped

The following story comes courtsey of SKY News, related videos and the Funeral Directors comments on the removal of the Headstone may be seen by clicking on the bold script.

The late TV star's headstone is to be sent to landfill after its removal from a cemetery by his family amid new sex abuse claims.

 

 

 

 

Police investigating sexual abuse allegations made against Sir Jimmy Savile say they are pursuing 120 leads going back 50 years. Sky's Katie Stallard reports.

 

Sir Jimmy Savile's gravestone is going to be broken up and dumped after being removed from a cemetery in Scarborough amid new sexual abuse claims.

Scotland Yard says up to 25 young girls were allegedly targeted by the late television star over a period dating back to 1959.

His family said it took the decision to remove his headstone, which bears Savile's image and lists his accomplishments, as a mark of respect to others buried in the cemetery. It had only been in place for three weeks.

"(We) are deeply aware of the impact that the stone remaining there could have on the dignity and sanctity of the cemetery," a statement released on behalf of the family said.

                                                                                                            

"Out of respect to public opinion, to those who are buried there, and to those who tend their graves and visit there, we have decided to remove it."

Scarborough Borough Council said the work was carried out shortly after midnight - ahead of the scheduled time of 7.30 on Wednesday morning - to minimise disruption and potential vandalism. Police shut the gates of the cemetery as it took place.

Despite making the request, his family did not know it would be removed under the cover of night and the decision to do it then was made by the council and funeral directors.

The elaborate tombstone has been taken to a stonemason's yard in Leeds where the inscription will be ground down. It will then be broken up and sent to landfill.

                                                                                                                  

The grave, in which Savile was buried at an angle so he could "see" Scarborough Castle and the sea, will remain unmarked.

Funeral director Robert Morphet, who organised Savile's funeral in November last year and oversaw the dismantling of the headstone, said that once the family had come to terms with the outcome of various investigations they will make a decision as to how the grave should be marked in the future.

A number of memorials to Sir Jimmy have also been removed, including an inscription on the wall at Leeds Civic Hall in recognition of his charity work, and a street sign in Scarborough, North Yorkshire.

A plaque outside his home has already been defaced.

                                                                                                             

Scores of sexual abuse claims against Sir Jimmy have been made to the police and the NSPCC charity in recent days.

It follows an ITV documentary examining historic claims about the presenter's behaviour with children, which aired last week.

Commander Peter Spindler, head of specialist crime investigations at Scotland Yard, said the allegations span four decades, with information suggesting abuse was on a "national scale".

"At this stage it is quite clear from what women are telling us that Savile was a predatory sex offender," he said.

Some 120 leads are being followed up by detectives, with five different police forces involved.

                                                                                                                      

Police have so far recorded two allegations of rape and six allegations of indecent assault against the former Top of the Pops presenter. The youngest victim was 13 at the time of the alleged attack.

Mr Spindler said the first allegation dates back to about 1959 but most claims seemed to be from the 1970s and 80s.

Sky News' crime correspondent Martin Brunt said: "I think we now have acceptance by the investigators that the scale of this is truly big and growing."

Prime Minister David Cameron has hinted that Sir Jimmy could be posthumously stripped of his knighthood.

                                                                                                                     

However, the move would require a change in the law as technically when the former DJ died last year the honour ceased to exist.

TV presenter and founder of the charity ChildLine, Esther Rantzen, is backing a petition to have him stripped of his knighthood, which if left unchecked, she said "taints the whole honours system".

In an interview with Sky News, Rantzen, who worked at the BBC alongside Savile, added: "From my point of view, [the revelation] absolutely wrecks the image of a charity fundraiser and the friend of royalty and the friend of a prime minister.

"For me now, I'm afraid, Jimmy Savile will be remembered as a predatory paedophile."

                                                                                                                             

There have also been calls for Saville to have his papal knighthood removed - although as for the civil order it also ceases to exist after death. He was awarded this in 1990, the same year as he was knighted in the Queen's Birthday Honours.

A spokesperson for the Catholic Church in England and Wales told Sky News: "If the allegations prove to be true and the Church had known about it at the time, the papal knighthood would not have been awarded."

The NSPCC is urging anyone abused or harmed by Savile to speak out and contact them and the police.

The charity’s head of child protection awareness, Christopher Cloke, told Sky News: "We need to learn from these very, very tragic circumstances so we can better protect children today."

 

 

The Circulation of Blood

The small nearby village of Hempstead, Essex, is noteworthy for two reasons. Firstly it is the final resting place of the famous Physician William Harvey and secondly it is the birthplace of the infamous Highwayman Dick Turpin. 

The remains of William Harvey

Discoverer of the Circulation of the Blood

were reverentially placed in this Sarcophagus, by

The Royal College of Phsyicians of London

in the year 1883

William Harvey was an English physician who was the first to describe accurately how blood was pumped around the body by the heart.
Harvey was born in Folkestone, Kent on 1 April 1578. His father was a merchant. Harvey was educated at King's College, Canterbury and then at Cambridge University. He then studied medicine at the University of Padua in Italy, where the scientist and surgeon Hieronymus Fabricius tutored him.

William Harvey

Fabricius, who was fascinated by anatomy, recognised that the veins in the human body had one-way valves, but was puzzled as to their function. Harvey took the foundation of Fabricius's teaching, and went on to solve the riddle of what part the valves played in the circulation of blood through the body.

On his return from Italy in 1602, Harvey established himself as a physician. His career was helped by his marriage to Elizabeth Browne, daughter of Queen Elizabeth 1's physician, in 1604.

In 1607, he became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and, in 1609, was appointed physician to St Bartholomew's Hospital. In 1618, he became physician to Elizabeth's successor James I and to James' son Charles when he became king. Both James and Charles took a close interest in and encouraged Harvey's research.

Harvey's research was furthered through the dissection of animals. He first revealed his findings at the College of Physicians in 1616, and in 1628 he published his theories in a book entitled 'Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus' ('An Anatomical Study of the Motion of the Heart and of the Blood in Animals'), where he explained how the heart propelled the blood in a circular course through the body. His discovery was received with great interest in England, although it was greeted with some scepticism on the Continent.
 Around 1650, Eliab Harvey, brother of the famous Doctor William Harvey, excavated a crypt for the family coffins and built a chapel and schoolroom (now the vestry) over it.

Harvey was also the first to suggest that humans and other mammals reproduced via the fertilisation of an egg by sperm. It took a further two centuries before a mammalian egg was finally observed, but nonetheless Harvey's theory won credibility during his lifetime.

Harvey retained a close relationship with the royal family through the English Civil War and witnessed the Battle of Edgehill. Thanks to Charles I he was, for a short time, warden of Merton College, Oxford (1645 - 1646).
He died on 3 June 1657.

In 1882 the 15th century tower fell down rendering the church unusable until 1888, after a restoration programme had been completed. In 1883 the Royal College of Physicians removed William Harvey’s coffin from the crypt and placed it in a Carrara marble sarcophagus in the Harvey chapel, leaving 49 other members of the family in the crypt.
In 1933 the Harveian Society of London gave money for the rebuilding of the tower.

St. Andrews, Hempstead, Essex

The other interesting fact about the village of Hempstead, is that it is the birthplace of Britain's most infamous Highwayman 'Dick Turpin', who was born at the Bluebell Inn, Hempstead in 1705. He was later caught for horse theft and executed by being hanged in York.

Dick Turpin and his horse Black Bess

The Bluebell Inn

Moat Farm Murder

The Final Resting place of Camille Cecile Holland in Saffron Walden Cemetery

The inscription on the memorial above reads as:

‘In sympathetic memory of Camille Cecile Holland, of Maida Vale, London, who died at Clavering under distressing circumstances on the 19th May, 1899, aged 56 years.’

As the grave used to appear.

The distressing circumstances of which Miss Holland's memorial speak, were due to one Samuel Herbert Dougal, who had shot Camille at close range and then dumped her body in a ditch on Moat Farm where the unmarried couple had lived. However, Camille's body and indeed her murder were not discovered until some 4 years later, as a result of Dougal being found guilty of fraudulently forging a cheque in Miss Holland's name.

Dougal had been a Sergeant in the Royal Engineers when he married his first wife, Lovenia Martha in Nova Scotia who had died at the age of 37 on June 29th 1885, six weeks later he married Mary Herberta Boyd, who by the Oct 6th of that same year had also died aged 28.

With the loss of two wives in under 4 months, if anyone had suspicions, they had kept it to themselves.......

Dougal was fifty-two, a former soldier, a womaniser and a convicted forger who had been sentenced to 12 months hard labour, but had served only two months when he tried to kill himself and spent the remaining time in an asylum.

The ill-fated Miss Holland met Dougal in 1898, she was an independant fifty-five year old spinster with a small fortune of her own.

He was a charmer who soon overcame Miss Holland’s religious, moral and social scruples. Within three months they were living together as man and wife, however they never married.

There is no doubt that Dougal's motives were entirely mercenary, as he persuaded

Miss Holland to use nearly a quarter of her capital in buying Moat Farm, for which Dougal had the contract put in his sole name. However Miss Holland insisted that it be put in her name instead, perhaps she hoped that Dougal would settle down and farm; that he would stop his lecherous ways with other women and from drinking too much brandy.

Perhaps she felt she had finally found a man to love her or perhaps she believed her reputation was now so compromised she had to make the best of what she had.

In any case, she was not to know what his plans for her were and that her last attempt to assert herself might have been the very reason why she had to die – because Dougal knew he had not fully mastered her.  

  

On 27 April 1899, Samuel Dougal and Miss Holland moved to Moat Farm, an isolated place surrounded by farmland between the village of Clavering and the hamlet of Rickling and so Miss Holland brought her little dog, Jacko with her to whom she was devoted.
The farm was at the end of a muddy cart track; the house, only accessible by a footbridge over the moat. The post was left in a box at the far end of the lane and every morning Dougal would walk down to collect it. No tradesmen ever called – everything was fetched in the trap.

On the 16th May several days after their new maid joined them, Dougal made inappropriate advances towards her and tried to enter her bedroom, she called to Camille who then slept with her for the next few nights.

On Friday 19 May, Miss Holland told the maid that Mr Dougal was taking her shopping in the trap, but a few minutes later as she waited by the bridge over the moat, Dougal shot her with his revolver. He then buried her in a disused ditch between the farmyard and the moat.

Later that evening Dougal returned alone. He told the maid that ‘Mrs Dougal’ had decided to go to London. The following morning, he claimed to have had a letter from his ‘wife’ (though the post had not arrived), saying that she had gone to stay with a friend.
This was of little consquence to the maid who had arranged for her mother to collect her that morning, after collecting her wages she promptly left.

On the same day he sent a telegram to his real wife ~ his third ~ inviting her down to the farm. He introduced her to the local clergyman as his daughter. The real Mrs Dougal was soon wearing some of Miss Holland’s clothes and jewellery, and generously gave the clergyman’s wife a shawl and some sheet music that had once belonged to her.

A few months later, Jacko, Camille's dearly beloved dog, turned up at the home of Mrs Wiskens, the Saffron Walden landlady that Miss Holland had resided with prior to moving into Moat Farm, whilst it was being made ready for her to move into. Mrs Wiskens, had been surprised and hurt that Camille had not said goodbye to her, so she wrote to Moat Farm, where upon Dougal eventually collected the dog. He avoided questions on the whereabouts of Miss Holland.

As the years passed, Dougal gradually sold Camille's shares and withdrew her money, it was easy for him to forge Miss Holland’s signature and so he transferred the ownership of the farm to himself. At first he was a popular addition to the neighbourhood – genial, talkative, an excellent shot; always ready to stand a drink or contribute to a good cause. He was noteworthy too for having one of the few bicycles in the neighbourhood, and also the very first car ~ which he referred to as his ‘locomobile’.

His biggest vice was women, for he had a succession of affairs close to home and barely

bothered to conceal them, this included a simultaneous relationship with two sisters and their Mother. He then denied paternity when served with affiliation orders.

People began to talk about Moat Farm. Stories circulated about Dougal giving bicycling lessons to naked girls in the meadow to the north of the house. ‘What a picture,’ wrote F. Tennyson Jesse in mounting excitement, ‘in that clayey, lumpy field, the clayey, lumpy girls, naked, astride that unromantic object, a bicycle, and Dougal, gross and vital, cheering on these bucolic improprieties...!’

People began to remember the past and started to ask questions about what had happened to Camille. Amongst them was the real Mrs Dougal, who had run off with another man, and whom Dougal was now trying to divorce.

Doubts soon turned into suspicions, and in March 1903, a trail of forgeries came to light after a close examination of Miss Holland's finances since May 1899. It soon became apparent that Dougal's invented story of Camille's departure was shown to be false and this led to a full-blown police investigation into Miss Holland’s disappearance.

But even before the body was found, the case aroused widespread interest. Police took up residence in the house, they drained the moat and dug up many parts of the surrounding land.
According to The Times, six thousand ‘excursionists’ swooped on the farm during the Easter Bank holiday of 1903. Souvenir hunters were armed with ‘Kodaks’. Food vendors sold peanuts and other snacks. An enterprising photographer printed postcards of the scene and sold them to the tourists.

At last they found the body of a woman. The corpse had become quite decayed. But enough of the clothing remained for Camille's shoes to be indentified by her shoemaker as belonging to her. The pathologist remarked that had Dougal concealed her on the farmyard midden, the acidic nature of it would have left little or nothing to indentify.

On the 22nd June 1903, Dougal was charged that he did feloniously, willfully and with malice aforethought, kill and murder Camille Cecile Holland at Clavering.
Dougal pleaded his innocence saying that it had been a dreadful accident and blamed the excesses of too much brandy.
The jury took less than an hour to return their verdict of guilty, where the Judge sentenced Dougal to execution by hanging.
On the 14th July 1903 Dougal was hanged and buried in an unmarked grave in the confines of Chelmsford Prison. 

As for Jacko, Camille's much loved dog, he was given a home by the landlady Mrs Wiskens, and even after the dog's own demise, he remained an object of admiring curiousity when he was stuffed and placed on a side table in the parlour where Miss Holland used to sit.

- He is now to be seen on display in the Essex Police Museum.