Arthur Eric Williams and Erica D'Anitoff Williams died 3 February 1940
editArthur Eric Williams, eldest son of John Osborn Williams, owner of the Labrador development company limited and Erica D'Anitoff Williams, his infant daughter died in suspicious, acrimonious circumstances in the early hours of 3 February 1940 in a house fire in [1] Port Hope Simpson.
R.C.M.P. opened-up their own investigation about the tragic deaths
editAs a result of research findings by Llewelyn Pritchard, v.s.o. teacher in [2] Port Hope Simpson 1969-70 who returned for the town's [3] Coming Home celebrations in July 2002, the [4] Royal Canadian Mounted Police decided to open up their own investigation in August 2002 about whether or not foul play had occurred. Since no satisfactory explanation for what happened has yet been found their file remains open.
Newfoundland Rangers police force kept under authority of Department of Natural Resources
edit[5] Sir John Hope Simpson kept the Newfoundland Rangers out from under The Department of Justice. He battled over many years, even after he had returned to England in 1936, to keep the Newfoundland Rangers force he had set-up under the jurisdiction of his old Department of Natural Resources instead of agreeing to them being relocated under the more natural authority of the Department of Justice. ]] -->
J. O. Williams wanted to avoid his name being discredited prior to the start of the Public Enquiry into the financial affairs of his Labrador development company limited held in St. John's, Newfoundland, which reported in 1945
edit[6] John Osborn Williams, needed to avoid any whiff of a scandal in Port Hope Simpson about the circumstances in which the deaths occurred. The people undoubtably felt betrayed because they had come to the settlement on the twin promises of well-paid work with houses provided for their families. Neither of which happened. Williams had borrowed British taxpayers money under false intentions and the Dominion Office, London wanted to completely sever their business relationship with him. Therefore they had cunningly engineered a Public Enquiry into the financial affairs of his company in the hope that he would be discredited by its disclosures. Prior to the Enquiry they had set about collecting evidence from their contacts in Cardiff, his home city, to show Williams as of unreliable, untrustworthy character ill– suited to be entrusted with the development going on in Labrador.
Circumstances surrounding the deaths
editSpring of 1939 Williams sent his eldest son, Eric, as he was known, out to report back on what was going in Port Hope Simpson after learning that surplus stores worth $80,000 were at the store. The average profit on the stores was claimed to be $12,000 by Williams’ side in the Public Enquiry but for the year in which Keith Yonge took them over they showed a loss of $8,000. Mr Hudson, secretary of the Labrador Development Company, also cast doubt on Yonge’s trustworthiness. Fall 1939 Eric realised that the financial prospects for the company were looking bleak indeed. He had advised his father that the management in St. John’s should be left to himself and Chesman, company secretary and that the Labrador development company was fast losing ground. Despite what his son had advised and the attempted Government take-over of his companies, Williams persisted in trying to exercise control over matters from Cardiff.
25 August 1939 Williams wanted an investigation into Yonge’s activities and his true motives about planning to take over the Company exposed.
editOctober 1939 Yonge had in effect taken over the operation at Port Hope Simpson for himself whilst still employed as manager. Williams’ view of Eric was that there no question of appointing him as manager. He considered that in his absence, Eric practically owned the company. However, when Eric did more than just report back and intervened at Port Hope Simpson by sending $62000 worth of surplus stores back to St. John’s, Yonge threatened to resign and Eric was recalled by the Newfoundland Commission of Government. Then after funds were cabled from Cardiff, Eric returned to Port Hope Simpson with little time to prepare for the season and decided to make a contract with Keith Yonge to cut wood for the company. November 1939 Williams' opinion was that the government had humiliated his son by supporting the manager against the owners of the company and that Yonge had tried to grab the company for himself. Eric, on behalf of his father, had made the best of a bad job when he made the Yonge contract. When Keith did not wish to carry out Eric’s instructions he appealed over his head to the board of directors in St John’s. 5 January 1940 Williams claimed that the money for wages had now been remitted and Chesman was referring to both Eric and Keith as company Number Twos in his exchange of cables and letters with Williams. Chesman implied there was confusion about who was in charge and he stressed to Williams that there was a need for him to pay the wage cheques. Yonge remained isolated and unable to pay the employees at Port Hope Simpson and therefore was in trouble with his work force. He wanted arrangements in place to give him sole control of the Company after Eric’s death. Williams stated that it was only the death of his son that made the contract so profitable for Yonge because there was nobody to control it. Williams was deliberately kept in the dark about the business situation of the company by Yonge who was being supported by Chesman in St. John’s. Chesman kept on telling Williams how bad things were from his point of view, but his salary increase and other increased company expenses only heightened Williams’ suspicions that he was collaborating with Yonge against him. Chesman’s suggestion that Williams should hand over practical control to either the local board of directors or Yonge and himself showed that he was seeking to use the situation to his personal advantage. Eric Williams was a director of Jayo Shipping Company, J. O. Williams and Company Limited and the Labrador Development Company Limited when he died on 3 February 1940. Although Eric was not the main partner or actual owner of the parent Company, J. O. Williams Limited when he died, he was definitely the chosen one. His father was not exaggerating when he viewed Eric’s position in the company as almost equivalent to his own when he went out to Port Hope Simpson in 1939. Eric had been groomed by his father to take over the running of at least one if not all of his three companies. If anything had happened to Williams then Eric would have taken over. Or if anything had happened to Eric then Keith Yonge, would have been free to make his own move into Eric’s, his good friend in his father’s mind, business position. Saturday 3 February 1940 The Evening Telegram in St John’s first reported the tragic deaths of Eric and Erica. Williams was obviously grief - stricken and bitter. It is rumoured that many locals believed that Keith Yonge may have taken the law into his own hands with the assistance of Mrs. Olga Williams, with whom it was rumoured he was having an affair at the time, as terrible revenge against the man who had brought so much misery to Port Hope Simpson. Unfortunately, Fraser died before the public enquiry took place so he took his secrets to the grave with him. But what is known is that Chesman was the closest director to Yonge in the time leading up to the deaths. Yet he had never acted to stop the Yonge Contract between Eric and Keith from going ahead. Faced by an agreement between the owner’s eldest son and the company manager he did not intervene. Evidence clearly shows that he was benefiting at the Company's expense instead. March 1940 Yonge’s accounts for the company store were exposed by the government’s auditor as not having been independently verified. The auditor also doubted that the relevant documents for the store had been destroyed by a fire and he suspected over $25,000 would have been chargeable to Yonge had he kept proper accounts. On the other hand, Wilcox from the British Treasury stated in a more general way, that the Newfoundland government had failed to exercise enough supervision over operations as required by the loan from the colonial development fund. April 1941 Keith Yonge had offered his services to the War Office, only to be turned down and Williams was complaining that Yonge had not even sent him the measurement of his son's tomb. He remained highly suspicious of Yonge's motives and actions. September 1942 Williams had even resorted to seeking Peter Dunn’s permission, Commissioner of Natural Resources, for Yonge to send him the measurements of his son’s tomb, complaining that he had already made three requests without reply. Dunn replied that Yonge had said he had forwarded the measurements several times. Yonge was not prevented by the government from communicating directly with Williams on personal matters. It is known that a personal letter from Keith Yonge was received by Williams at around the time of the deaths but its contents are kept as a family secret. About a month before the deaths, Williams complained that the Bank of England was responsible for holding up his wage payments amounting to $11,000 for further enquiry. No annual meeting of the Labrador development company was held from 1938 to 1941 and the auditors complained of the unsatisfactory way in which accounts had been kept in certain respects although Bradney, the government’s auditor, did not absolve the company’s government director of blame in that regard.
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[7]Cover-up begins 1940 Williams’ counsel at the public enquiry had wrongly stated that Thomas Lodge was the first government director of the Company. Lodge had in fact taken over from Fraser who was trying to deal with problems facing him on a number of fronts. Lodge’s appointment was a typical Dominion Office response to his past indiscretions. He was given a strict order to keep a lid on things. He was faced with the death of the owner’s eldest son and grand–daughter in incriminating circumstances; a Commission of Government that had been negligent in not making sure that 400 houses had been built and not having made sure that one of their own people was on the Company’s board of directors in St. John's from July 1939 to February 1940; his own government, which was wide open to a successful claim being brought against them by Williams for mismanagement and loss of earnings whilst they were supposed to be in control; Williams had not kept up to date with his loan repayments; there remained unpaid wages in Port Hope Simpson; people were starting to leave the settlement for higher earnings elsewhere; a logging operation had completely fallen apart; the Second World War had started; trans–Atlantic ships were unavailable and so no pit props could be shipped out even if they had been able to produce them; Chesman, a part–time government director approved of by Williams, had been taking more expenses than he should have done; a manager in Port Hope Simpson who wanted to take over the company for himself and an owner who always pretended to be short of money. 7 June 1940 Williams remained under pressure to settle his debts on top of which Chesman and Yonge were trying to take over control of his company. On the next day, Williams appeared to have handed over complete control to the Commissioner of Natural Resources. It had taken a public enquiry that reported in May 1945 on the affairs of the company from 1934–1944 before the actions of officialdom were seen to be done. But from the British government's point of view they made it well known that they considered Chief Justice Dunfield had exonerated him. In fact Dunfield blamed Williams and other parties for his company's unsatisfactory state of affairs. That is what the Dominion Office resented. The response by the civil servants at the office had been to keep on throwing good money after bad as Clutterbuck and his men sought to extricate themselves from the bungled business relationship with Williams that Sir John Hope Simpson had first set-up. One year after Williams first arrived in Port Hope Simpson they realised that he could not be trusted. But they were up against something of their own making, something the civil service held very dear: their own tradition that they must never break ranks. Even when fundamental mistakes of judgment had been made by one of their own, the golden rule still applied: “never go public". They were caught in a "Catch 22" situation. There was simply nothing they could do to break that treasured mould that had worked so well for so long, and now it was working against them as it covered everybody's tracks including the man they were after. 3 June 1940 Chesman, government director of the Company claimed that Claude Fraser had instructed him to wire J O Williams stating that unless rentals were paid at once and other outstanding amounts arranged, “They will stop any export and take necessary action PROTECTION”. By “PROTECTION”, Fraser was referring to the British government’s need to defend its position against any claim for compensation that Williams might make against them. The telegrams implied that Fraser was carrying a heavy burden, “He(Fraser) forced to resign and place full position before Government.”
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Obstruction of justice by British Government Just about the worst thing that could have happened would have been a full-blown Newfoundland Rangers investigation into the two deaths. The chances of the Dominion Office's motive for the public enquiry being brought to light were too great to bear thinking about. Fortuitously for the government, Sir John Hope Simpson and the civil service brigade had managed to keep his Newfoundland Rangers within the Department of Natural Resources and out from under the Department of Justice. No full and properly recorded police investigation into the deaths ever took place even though a Ranger's detachment was based in Port hope Simpson and a medical Doctor had attended to Olga at the time. Instead it was covered-up by Claude Fraser and Thomas Lodge in true English civil service tradition. Along the same sort of lines, the recommendations of Chief Justice Brian Dunfield’s public enquiry were conveniently ignored and marginalised almost into oblivion by the British government as being merely Dunfield’s point of view. Williams went on to secure further loans from the colonial development fund despite the British treasury’s notable reluctance to continue subsidising his activities at taxpayers' expense. 13 July 1944 Williams sailed out for the Public Enquiry. He had stayed in Cardiff most of the time all the troubles had been going on. Understandably so, since he was reputed to be the third largest importer of pit props into the U.K. and he had to attend to his other business elsewhere. After the public enquiry was finished, Williams wanted Judge Dunfield’s recommendations implemented (which they were by 1948), but the British government and Newfoundland Commission of Government’s initial response was to ignore them. The treasury had repeatedly voiced its own concern about financing Williams any more and the civil servants at the Dominions Office, whilst holding on to their long term view about developing the Labrador, had finally woken up to the fact that they had to stop oiling Williams’ business because it was clogging up their own works. British Government tricked by Williams and neglectful about their duties After Eric’s death, the company was well on its way out of the frame. The British government realised they had been in neglect of their duties by not ensuring that one of their own directors was in place on the company’s board from July 1939 – February 1940. They also realized they had been responsible for running the business at a loss after they had taken it over. To say the least, they knew they had been tricked by Williams into releasing development funds for purposes other than for those they were originally intended. They wanted Williams removed from the scene as soon as possible to protect them from any claim of compensation being made against them. They were definitely shaken and wanted to make absolutely certain that they could prevent any claim for special compensation from Williams from ever being successful. Eric Cook, Williams' counsel at the public enquiry submitted that the government should compensate the Company for the loss it suffered after it took over. By 1944, the Newfoundland government had been in control of the company for four years. The difference between the two sides' statements about how well the company was doing was quite remarkable. The government had no choice other than to submit audited figures showing losses of $211,500 from 1940 to 1943 whilst Williams’ counsel claimed a trading profit of over $120,000 from 1934 to 1940. Although Williams did admit to a shortage of working capital in 1940, the audited accounts presented on his behalf at the public enquiry were unreliable due to the lack of proper minute - taking and full accounting by the company. Williams, as owner, was responsible for the degree of accuracy of all the figures he had sent to Bradney for inspection. Further evidence that casts grave doubt on the accuracy of his figures is that other government figures supplied to the enquiry showed a huge difference from those Williams had supplied. 25 August 1943 Tait was arguing to Clutterbuck at the Dominions Office in London that Williams and his company figures were misleading. Throughout the period from 1934 to 1947, Williams presented a consistent message: that his company was very short of cash to pay his employees’ wages in Port Hope Simpson. Chief Justice Dunfield stated that a large part of the blame should fall on Williams himself for the failure to build the 400 houses and for his company’s financial position but that he was not the only party to blame. Williams was most adept at deliberately causing doubt and confusion in other people’s minds. Although Bradney, the auditor general, stressed to the public enquiry the limitations of his conclusions based on the material he had been given there is now not a trace of doubt that Williams had far more money than he revealed. For instance, in a letter to Yonge he wrote,
Pleased to say I am not at all worried about the government position as at a pinch I can clean the slate but this is in dead confidence. In 1939 we shipped about 27,400 cords from Newfoundland and Labrador for which we cable out $370.000 and last year a further £2,200…I think you know…what information you have received from me that you must keep to yourself.
When Judge Dunfield’s report on the public enquiry came out it meant the Dominion Office’s plan to discredit Williams’ character had seriously backfired. The government wanted the report buried after local publication. On the whole, I should imagine that the Commission will be content to bury the main bodies of both reports as deeply as their publication locally permits.
Chadwick J. C., Dominion Office, London, 29 June 1945
Unsustainable development Dunfield found that Williams had run out of liquid cash reserves which was essential to scale up the operations. He considered that the government was also responsible for the company and had pressed Williams to cut more timber to provide more work for the people. Dunfield knew that $19400 per annum of capital had to be re-paid to the government ($1.00 per cord on limited production) plus the heavy interest on the government loan and that it was initially planned to cut 50000 cords of timber per annum. Dunfield’s conclusion was that neither Williams nor the government fully appreciated how much the Port Hope Simpson project would cost and so the company was under-funded right from the start. It found itself in a vicious circle where it did not have sufficient funds to expand and without the expansion, its overheads could not be carried. Dunfield clearly implied that he was not exactly confident about the financial health of the company from the outset. His judgment was that the government went from being a supportive partner to being a strict creditor. Then the Second World War came and stopped the free export of pit props. The people from 1934-39 received according to Dunfield, not less than $800,000 in wages when they might have been on the dole. Dunfield acknowledged Williams’ particular line of skill, but thought that he was not experienced in other fields and that he himself had admitted so. The $250,000 reinvestment Williams made in Labrador from his Newfoundland trade, coupled with the money from his Cardiff company hid the true position according to Dunfield, which was that the Labrador enterprise needed a much greater capital investment and a larger working capital than had been provided. Dunfield laid the blame firmly on Williams and said that the government was also to blame for failing to fulfill its partnership contribution in the circumstances. Dunfield thought the government lacked the right calibre of officials, with the right training to work successfully with Williams the businessperson. Dunfield went so far as to say in his final report that Williams should perhaps be given another chance. Dunfield was in fact quite sympathetic towards Williams and definite that he was not entirely to blame for what had happened. He knew that the Government had gained more than it had lost on the venture and he would not swallow the vitriolic anti-Williams propaganda. He had found no evidence to justify the bad impression that other people and he had held before the start of the enquiry about Williams. Dunfield might have over-reacted against the very suggestion that he should take part in any sort of rigged public enquiry to attack Williams’ character and discredit him. Instead, he recommended that the Government and Williams should try again. 1941 Behind the scenes, the Dominion Office and the Commission of Government had been unable to make a success of running the Labrador Development Company. In fact, Williams never relinquished legal control of the company and he and his solicitors knew there was nothing the British Government, the Dominions Office, the Commission of Government, or anybody else could do about it. At a time of war, Claude Fraser was concerned about protecting the British government from Williams making any claim for compensation against them and from being given any opportunity of enquiring too deeply into Eric and Erica’s deaths. So he used what he knew best – the civil servant’s tradition of keeping his mouth shut and spreading a veil of silence and mystery over what had really happened. The fact that there was no full police investigation into the deaths at the time says volumes about the cover–up by Fraser and others that obviously went on. Fraser threatened the Labrador development company with his resignation because he was caught in a moral dilemma of trying to keep on hiding the John Hope Simpson “unsavoury inheritance” whilst also trying to act in the best interests of the Labrador development company which he knew was mainly responsible for the unsavoury nature of the business relationship in the first place. He was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. The full position included telling the government about the corruption of “the Hope Simpson group” which had been hidden all along by civil service tradition and above all else by Fraser’s silence. 1942 But it is clear what the role of his manager in Port Hope Simpson now entailed. Keith Yonge with Ranger Clarence Dwyer were jointly responsible for trying to develop a more cooperative spirit between the company and the loggers. But since the company was shutting down when this initiative was tried it suggests Yonge was clutching at straws as the men were leaving the place for work elsewhere. In his official capacity, Yonge essentially had to do as Williams told him, although Yonge's actions also showed him to be somebody who was fully capable of taking care of himself. He had negotiated "The Yonge Contract", which meant that even whilst employed as its manager, he was contracted to sell wood to the company at very favourable prices. His lucrative contract was successfully completed after the death of Eric. The fact that Eric Williams had removed so much of the surplus stores to St John’s, away from Port Hope Simpson, also points the finger of suspicion at Yonge for pocketing earnings from the sale of excessive supplies at the company’s store. June 1943 Fraser, the loyal, dedicated civil servant had been committed to an asylum in St John’s and died not very long afterwards. 9 August 1943 It had become clear that J. O. Williams and Company continued to buy wood from the Labrador development company. The articles of association of both the Williams’ companies had not been changed by Sir John Hope Simpson nor by later commissioners to prevent that from happening. Coupled with the other material evidence about the value of the stores at Port Hope Simpson, the size of the government loan, the import of wood from other countries and his domestic arrangements taken together, all point towards the fact that Williams was not the impoverished businessperson. November 1943 Williams and his solicitors had felt they had a good claim for compensation against the government for their three years of mismanagement from 1940 to 1943 and for damage to Williams' reputation. In their view the government directors, "Have been negligent in the performance of the duties imposed upon them by virtue of their office, and it may well be that they have laid themselves open to charges of a more serious nature.” On the other hand, it is now clear that unless Williams saw a financial profit then he contributed as little as he could towards the well - being of the loggers and their families. His pattern of responses showed him to be somebody who never gave up on his dream of developing the Labrador which is explained by the simple fact that he was allowed to get away with pretty much anything he wanted to under the guise of development. 1947 In the early days of the commission, the other commissioners were effectively ruled by Simpson and Lodge and had never managed to fully regulate what was going on at Port Hope Simpson even when their own nominees sat on the company's board from 1940. As a body of civil servants they mainly adopted a bystander's role in relation to the company's activities, and either ignored or did not know what the local manager and the owner were up to all along. It was not until the men in Port Hope Simpson had withdrawn their labour for good that the departure of Williams from the scene later in 1948 had become inevitable. But Williams still harboured thoughts about developing into fishing, and he used the threat of making a claim for compensation against the government as a powerful bargaining chip in securing an unusually profitable final timber contract in 1946. In 1947, Williams bemoaned the fact that he found a derelict township on the site of Port Hope Simpson when ironically he had been mainly responsible for its dereliction in the first place. With the benefit of hindsight, a fundamental mistake was made in both Britain and Newfoundland in ever having agreed that the government of Newfoundland should be run by a collection of civil servants instead of politicians. Decision-making had been very poor on such crucial issues as repeatedly lending very large sums of money to Williams, not insisting that the original terms of the development loan should be adhered to and not effectively regulating the company’s activities in Port Hope Simpson. Events also tell us about what the civil servants at the Dominion Office were prepared to do in order to achieve their objective of discrediting Williams. The effect of English civil service tradition was seen in the appointments of certain government officials to hide the mistakes they had made whilst the Dominions Office had to conceal the Catch 22 situation in which they had become tangled.
Cover-up continues... The surviving relatives of J. O. Williams and Olga Wiseman (Williams) have both stated that the deaths of Eric and Erica is something that is not talked about in their families. Discepancies in the tombstone's inscription at Port Hope Simpson about the two deaths 1. At some point during the 1920s Williams had built Labrador House, in Ogmore–by–Sea, near Bridgend in Wales. But, strangely, about 20 years later, it was not included as part of the address he chose for himself and Ethel to be engraved on his son and granddaughter’s epitaph. Instead the arguably, grander-sounding name of Southerndown, actually located only about a mile from Ogmore, was chosen instead. 2. Erica was born on 15 July 1936. Therefore, assuming Eric recorded the date of birth for her certificate correctly, Erica’s age at death was 43 months two days and not 18 months as carved in stone at Port Hope Simpson. This remains a large discrepancy in the illegitimate child’s age. Williams who chose the words for the inscription and who supervised their carving back in Wales, deliberately concealed the truth about his own granddaughter’s age. He used the deaths of both Eric and Erica in 1940 to suit his own two-fold purpose. Firstly, he saw the deaths as a way of maximising the effect of public sympathy on the judgment of those who would be scrutinising his own business situation in the impending public enquiry. Secondly, he was prepared to do whatever it took to avoid any risk of a scandal reflecting badly upon himself. Deliberately altering Erica’s age on her tombstone in order to maximise the effect of public sympathy was her grandfather’s way of distracting attention away from any possible scandalous allegations. Since local people believed that Eric’s wife was having an affair with Yonge, the local company manager at the time, Williams’ strategy was to keep public sympathy uppermost in people’s minds. Considering the nature of the newspaper articles that followed this seems to have been successful. No whiff of a scandal ever got back to the sharp– minded Clutterbuck or Chadwick at the Dominion Office, who would have welcomed it as proof that Williams was of an unreliable and untrustworthy character - ill– suited to be entrusted with the development going on in Labrador. Local men, acting on the instructions of Yonge, company manager (who effectively ruled the way of life in the settlement), quickly buried the remains of Erica and Eric in a concrete grave with a simple, inscribed headstone. A tombstone was later built on top. The tombstone was a memorial to Eric according to his father. However, when I re-visited the tombstone on 29 July 2002 I read, additional words on the first headstone compared to the final epitaph that is there today: Having saved his wife he died in the flames with his daughter Erica. Williams had deliberately left out the above words in the final inscription back in Cardiff. By then he would have known about the completely different circumstances leading up to the deaths than the one relating to their accidental deaths in a forest fire. A forest fire” that was supposed to have happened on 2 February 1940, yet of which there is no mention in newspaper article of the time. The RCMP serious crimes team investigating the deaths have also found no evidence of the same. The final version of the epitaph shows that true to form, Williams was not even prepared to praise his own son’s final, possibly heroic, actions. Instead, he chose to change the whole tone of the message (which was even more surprising considering the high regard still held for Eric in the family) from a tribute to a choice and style of words to suit his own purpose. Indeed, close examination of the final epitaph shows that half of the writing misleading consists of a statement that Arthur Eric Williams was the son of a Mr. and Mrs. J. O. Williams living at a false address. Sadly, the myth that the tombstone is a proper family memorial to Eric is still perpetuated by Williams’ descendants today. As far as the house he built on top of the cliff slopes at Ogmore–by–Sea was concerned, the name he chose represented his 1920's ambition for developing large areas of The Labrador. He had built it himself overlooking the Bristol Channel near Bridgend, South Wales with a nameplate that does not say Labrador House at all, which is how the property is known by locals and how it appears on his son and granddaughter’s epitaph in Port Hope Simpson, but only as “Labrador.” In November 1934 Lodge’s view of Williams was that he was an odd bird with very large ideas about the future. According to her birth certificate, Erica Anitoff Williams was born on 15 July 1936 to Eric and Olga at 29 St. Isan Road, Heath, Cardiff. However, an aerial photograph dated March 1937 and oral history prove conclusively that no house had even started to be built at that address until 1939 at the earliest and that the first person to live there in 1939 was a Mrs. Watson. The building of 29 St. Isan was not completed until after the war according to David Elliott its current owner. Erica was not born at 29 St. Isan Road because there were only fields in the area in 1937. Discrepancies numbers three and four now become clear: 3. Eric had recorded a false address for his daughter’s place of birth and 4. his own place of residence when he registered the birth two years later on 31 August 1938. Since his father didn’t want to give the game away about where he and Eric were living at the time of Eric’s death so discrepancy number five occurred, this time in the Jayo Shipping Company records where Eric’s place of residence was entered. 5. They show that he had recorded Eric’s place of residence on 13 February 1940 (ten days after he first knew of his son’s death) as 29 St Isan Road, Cardiff instead of 23 Kenilworth House, Castle Court, Cardiff, Wales where Eric had last been living before he went out in 1939. The most obvious thing for Williams to do was to omit any reference at all to Eric and Erica’s address on their tombstone and that’s exactly why the sixth discrepancy occurred. 6. He instead instructed the stone mason to inscribe the inaccurate, different address for Ethel and himself of Labrador House, Southerndown, Wales instead of 14 Dunraven House, Castle Court, Cardiff, Wales which was their main address on the day that Eric and Erica had died. Williams maintained the secrecy about the location of their permanent address even after the deaths. Also pertinent is the fact that Dunraven Bay where Ogmore-by-Sea and Southerndown are both situated, is that many legends of smuggling are associated with this dramatic spot.
References
edit- http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/porthopesimpsonhist - based on reading letters by Sir John Hope Simpson and Lady Quita Simpson; original correspondence about the Public Enquiry; relevant texts, journals, manuscripts, websites and first-hand experience in Port Hope Simpson - Tombstone was written from the research report that the R.C.M.P. received on 18 February 2003. Although this manuscript was my attempt to use the report for the people of Port Hope Simpson, its inception lies more than anything else in the innocent curiosity of an 18 year old boy. It tells the story about Port Hope Simpson's troubled history.
- http://porthopesimpsontwounsolveddeaths.blogspot.com - tells the full story that led to the police investigation