Sorry this is a long thread.
Dear Gransnetters
I would really appreciate some advice on two levels: practical and philosophical. I’ve discovered my Aunt on a Murder Tour and Podcast Website. I knew she had been murdered in 1942 in London, before I was born. She was 42 and was walking home from a café in the blackout when she was pulled into an air raid shelter and strangled by a serial killer who went on to murder 3 more women that week.
The most upsetting part of reading this account is that some of the facts are just made up and the characterisation is cruel and biased. The name of my grandmother is wrong, a life insurance payout is invented, which “paid for good schools for the 4 sisters”, (3 - they were 37,27 and 19!) etc. etc.
On a personal note my Aunt is described as never having had a boyfriend, lonely, depressed and dowdy, with a photo of her looking very serious and plain. However, a newspaper described her as charming and intelligent and published a photo of her smiling and happy in a glamorous looking coat. My mother idolised her - she studied hard to leave a humble home in County Durham to become a pharmacist and was about to catch a train from London to Grimsby to take up a position as manager of a pharmacy when she was so cruelly murdered.
I have written very tactfully to the person who has published this podcast and leads this tour to ask him to correct the factual mistakes and to give a more rounded picture of my Aunt, perhaps to include the report of her as charming and intelligent and asking how he knew she had never had a boyfriend? He said he obtained his information from police files and I expect he did get much of it, but I can’t understand any researcher who would not want to hear from actual relatives.
He has replied that, IF I can prove correct facts and that she had another side to her he would put it in the amendments. This would be futile, as I doubt whether anyone would bother to look at them. My questions are: do I have any powers to compel him to amend his version of things? His account appears on the Wikipedia page in the citations. I am so sad to think that my Aunt might be remembered in the way this vile man depicts her. I feel compelled on my family’s behalf to honour my Aunt’s memory but this has been going on for about six months and is very distressing, even though I never knew her. Any advice would be very welcome.
Shall we reboot our cartoons thread again? 😁