It's easy to miss things.
Last Friday, when I visited Bradford, I was very close to the house shown at the top of this blogpost. It was the marital home of one of Britain's most infamous mass murderers - Peter William Sutcliffe whose tabloid nickname was The Yorkshire Ripper. He killed at least thirteen women and was at large between 1969 and 1981. He terrorised the north of England until he was caught here in Sheffield in January 1981.
He married Sonia Szuma in 1974 and a few years later they were able to buy the house on Garden Lane in the Heaton district of Bradford. I understand that Sonia Sutcliffe, at the age of 74, still lives in that house. It may seem ghoulish I know but I would have liked to walk down Garden Lane to snap a picture of my own. The image at the top was snipped from Google Streetview.
It is tempting to wonder what drove Peter Sutcliffe to commit his terrible acts. So much has been written about him but when it comes to motivation a lot of the verbiage is pure speculation - guesswork. Sonia was a respectable primary school teacher but nearly all of The Ripper's victims were prostitutes. The couple never had any children though Sonia suffered an unknown number of miscarriages. At some stage she was judged by health services to be impaired by paranoid schizophrenia.
After this past Wednesday's visit to Barnsley, I realised I had missed something else and was reminded of this by blog chum Dave in County Cork, Ireland. It wasn't a murderer's house I had missed but the statue of a boy from a novel holding a kestrel.
The novel concerned is "Kes" or "A Kestrel for a Knave" by the late Barry Hines. The hero he created in that book was a teenage boy called Billy Casper - born into an obscure and challenging life on a Barnsley social housing estate. Billy had nothing going for him but he managed to train a young kestrel. I sometimes say that if you want to understand the real England you should read "Kes". The statue is located on Cheapside in Barnsley. I must have been within twenty five yards of it.
So frustrating. I can see that another day trip to Barnsley will be required.
from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/Z8FPDxS
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