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Musical Museum survival appeal.

I'm a volunteer tour guide at the Musical Museum in Brentford, London. https://www.musicalmuseum.co.uk/

It is a very satisfying role because I watch the delight and wonder on the visitors' faces when they see and hear the instruments used for music reproduction through the ages. We have musical boxes, polyphons (the precursors of juke boxes) self-playing organs and pianos including player pianos and reproducing pianos that play the actual performances of famous pianists of the past including Gershwin, Rachmaninoff and many others. There are phonographs, gramophones, juke boxes that play 78s and a mighty Wurlitzer Cinema organ in our concert hall. The collection is of national and international importance because it restores and preserves working examples of extremely rare instruments.

Loss of income during the Covid shutdown followed by huge inflation in the museum's costs mean that the museum can no longer pay its way so this year, our 60th, might be the last. We have trimmed our costs to the bone but must find money urgently to keep the doors open as we change the way we operate.

If you value a historic musical resource, you may wish to support the museum's survival crowdfunder but if it doesn't seem that important to you, I understand that and I apologise for the intrusion. Here's the crowdfunder link.

https://gofund.me/5632515e

If you feel able to, it would be great if you can also pass on the appeal to anyone you think might be interested.

David Lusty ● 45d0 Comments ● 45d

Unsolved Hammersmith murders.

Are all the links between Abertillery and Hammersmith double child killer Harold Jones and other unsolved murders just coincidences?
Here are the facts.
(1) Just before Jones was released from prison he repeatedly informed the prison authorities that he did not want to lose the desire to kill. That was the same desire that he admitted that he had in 1921 as a 15 year-old boy.
(2) The governor of Maidstone prison from where Jones was eventually released stated in a report: "He is callous but would be the last to admit it. Sad as it may seem I can see no hopeful prospect for Jones in the future." The prison chaplain also reported that he felt Jones was a "no-hoper."
Professor Mike Berry, (Consultant Clinical Forensic Psychologist.) visited Abertillery and a number of London locations during the filming of Dark Son - The Hunt for a Serial Killer over a 12 month period. His conclusion was that Harold Jones was the Hammersmith killer. (8 unsolved London murders that were the largest unsolved murders in British criminal history.) He stated that he believed after reviewing all the evidence that Jones after leaving prison had killed again and again,
(3) Jones had lived 2 streets away from 3 of the 8 women murder victims in Fulham and Hammersmith as well as 50-100 yards away from murder victim Ignac Ulycz in Putney. The police in the 1960's were not aware of Jones' past and he was never a suspect in any of the murders until after 2008.
(4) Jones' own daughter has stated that her father would leave her and her mother at home at the times of the killings and book into Rowton House, a doss-house in Hammersmith whenever her parents would have a row. The daughter stated that she now believes her father would do this in fear that he may kill his wife in temper. Jones' own son-in-law stated that "There's no smoke without fire is there?"
(5) One woman prostitute told the police that she had got into a punter's car with a man who showed her a London Metropolitan Police warrant card. She panicked and quickly exited the car. The man offered her some cash. Was the man Harold Jones using his father-in-laws police warrant card. (His father-in-law John Widdows was a retired London Metropolitan police officer.) The woman some time later became the 7th of the 8 murdered women.
(6) Harold Jones stored the bodies of Abertillery murder victims Freda Burnell and Florence Little in Abertillery until it was convenient to dispose of their bodies. At least 4 of the Hammersmith victims were stored before being dumped at various London locations.
(7) All Hammersmith victims were demure and childlike in stature.
(8) Harold Jones had an oral fixation at the time of the Abertillery child murders. It is recorded by his then 13 year-old girlfriend Selina Mortimer that Jones had asked her to spit in his mouth. The Hammersmith killer also had an oral fixation by removing the teeth or dentures of his victims.
(9) At least 4 of the Hammersmith victims had been stored (in an electricity sub-station on the Heron Trading Estate Acton) before being dumped at various London locations. Jones' daughter has stated that her father had worked as a sheet metal worker in Acton but wasn't aware of where in Acton. This is something only the police would be able to ascertain.
(10) After Harold Jones was jailed for the murder of Florence Little he bragged about his ability to outfox the police during the earlier inquiry into the murder of Freda Burnell. He said: "The arrival of the men from Scotland Yard fascinated me. I had only read of Scotland Yard men before. Now I saw them in the flesh - and I beat them." I am convinced that Harold Jones went to his grave in 1971 knowing that he had beaten them again.
I am in contact with adult children of 5 of the 8 Hammersmith murder victims. Learning of the deaths of their mother's has had an incredibly negative impact on them. They all feel cheated that it seems as though the police have no appetite for reviewing the case.
I am also in contact with the families of 2 men that have been wrongly named as the killer. (Mungo Ireland and former world light-heavyweight boxer Freddie Mills.) They are also distraught that their fathers' good reputation has not been restored. Freddie Mills' daughter Amanda told me that owing to the stigma regarding her father that she hasn't told her teenage son that his father was a famous world champion boxer.
THE SHOW MUST GO ON.

Neil Milkins ● 629d0 Comments ● 629d