The Show – Travel Channel – Mysteries at the Museum – Woman in the Wych Elm – Season 12, Episode 8 (2016)Original Air Date – 11 November 2016TV Series – Mysteries at the MuseumTime Stamp – 25:32 to 31:29 and 3 minutes at the endOptomen Productions Last summer (2016), I was contacted by the archivist […]
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It’s taken a few blogs to get to the actual contents of the notebook referenced at Josef’s court martial, but I think it’s been a necessary preamble. Josef apparently hadn’t seen the notebook since he left The Hague and it wasn’t included in any of his lists of possessions drawn up by the Ramsey Police
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Over the last couple of years, I have written a series of blogs about a couple of mysterious notebooks found in the KV 2/27 file on Josef Jakobs at the National Archives. The two notebooks, one blue and the other black, belonged to a lad named Kenneth Clifford Howard. Given that there was not a
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I came across a few interesting news articles from 2015 that, while a bit far afield from the story of Josef Jakobs, are intriguing nonetheless (see links below). The stories centre on some Dutch farmers in Norfolk who were apparently building secret airfields and hangers for Germany’s invasion of England. For 4 years, commencing in
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A number of spies were executed in England during World War I, most of them were shot at the Tower of London, and one, Robert Rosenthal was hanged at Wandsworth Prison in July 1915. Carl Hans Lody was the first spy to be caught and executed. He was buried in the East London Cemetery in
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There’s been a flurry of activity around Jan Willem Ter Braak the last couple of weeks. The media has learned that a gravestone is going to be placed on his grave and there have been a couple of articles that have come out. The Cambridge News and the Daily Mail have similar articles that both
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The sad tale of Engelbertus Fukken, alias Jan Willem ter Braak has recently been published in more detail by Jan Willem van den Braak (no relation). The author’s persistent research tracked down relatives of the unfortunate Fukken who filled in some of his background story. Their astonishment at having such an infamous character in their
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The Book Rough Justice – The True Story of Agent Dronkers, the Enemy Spy Captured by the British; David Tremain; Amberley Publishing; The Stroud, Gloucestershire; 2016. Summary Johannes Marinus Dronkers was a poor sod of a guy. A Dutchman who struggled to make a living in Nazi-occupied Holland, he was an easy mark for the
I wrote a blog post a couple of weeks ago about the release of the police files from the Bella in the Wych Elm case. The files now reside in the custody of the Worcestershire Archives. I emailed them asking about digitization of the files, access, etc. The files have been digitized (yay!) and include
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I came across a podcast site last week that is rather interesting. The Unexplained Podcast is produced by Richard Maclean Smith and has garnered some great reviews. Smith tackles the Bella in the Wych Elm saga in two podcasts. The first aired on January 26, 2017 and the second aired on February 11, 2017. Various
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