Memories
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What happened next?
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| Ron Piper with the front page story about Reginald Wright's exhumation |
EVER watched a thriller series on TV, only to miss the final episode? Or found the last two pages missing from a whodunit mystery?
If so, then spare a thought for Ron Piper, who is enduring a reality version of this trauma.
Ron, from Hullbridge, recently came across a 52-year-old front page from the Southend Pictorial. Ron features in the background of the photograph.
"I'd completely forgotten the whole thing until I started to read the story," he says.
Absorbed, Ron read the report to the footnote saying "Continued on page 13."
The trouble is, Ron doesn't have a page 13. "I've searched the house high and low, but page one is all I can find," Ron says.
Faced with this suspense Ron has put out a desperate, if rather unusual, appeal. Does anybody have a copy of the missing page?
Under normal circumstances, the Echo would be able to help, but 1956 copies of the Pictorial are missing from our archives.
This is the story so far. One day, in June, 1956, Ron, who worked for the old Canvey council, was told to report to Benfleet cemetery. There he assisted in exhuming the body of Reginald Wright, who had died a few weeks earlier. No explanations were offered, but the operation was related to a tragedy that had taken place a few weeks after his death.
The whole of Essex had been horrified by the deaths of two-year-old twins, the Wrights, in a houseboat fire in Canvey Creek. By that stage, the man in Benfleet cemetery was already dead.
The Southend Pictorial reported Reginald Wright, who lived on a neighbouring houseboat, the Buchra, had left his home on the evening of April 17, saying he was going for a stroll, Shortly afterwards he had collapsed on the towpath. Mr Wright died in the ambulance taking him to hospital. This happened a few weeks before the fire which killed the little boys.
Mr Wright's body was exhumed under the instructions of Det Supt Barkway, head of Essex CID. Dr Francis Camps, the famous Home Office pathologist who inspired the Expert, the first ever TV pathologist series, took samples of the soil. Mr Wright's body was removed to the mortuary at Rochford hospital.
At this point, according to the Pictorial: "Rumours started to circulate"... and there the story ends, its denouement lost with the missing page 13.
What rumours? What was the outcome? What connection did a man with the same surname as the twins, who had died several weeks before them, have to do with their tragic deaths?
Would anybody with the missing page and some of the answers please contact Memories and help to put Mr Piper out of his misery. E-mail tom.king@nqe.com or call 01268 469470.
3:26pm Thursday 5th June 2008
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