"Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?" is a question that's haunted Worcestershire for nearly 80 years
Ominous graffiti turned an unsolved murder into a legend
Aux Features Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?
We explore some of Wikipedia’s oddities in our 6,315,292-week series, Wiki Wormhole.
This week’s entry: Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
What it’s about: An unsolved crime from the 1940s, in which the remains of an unidentified woman were found within a wych elm in Hagley, Worcestershire, England. The possible only clue to her identity was graffiti that appeared in nearby Birmingham a year later, asking “Who put Bella down the Wych Elm–Hagley Wood”
Biggest controversy: To this day, no one knows who put Bella in the wych elm, or whether or not her name was Bella. The message could have been left by the the killer, taunting the community and giving the name of their victim—or it could have been left by someone else, not wanting the murder to be forgotten, and assigning the name Bella to the victim arbitrarily. The large gaps in time between the murder (believed to have taken place in October of 1941 or earlier), the discovery of the body (April 1943) and the appearance of the graffiti (some time in 1944), makes it hard to connect any dots.
Strangest fact: The body might have remained undiscovered if not for some meddling kids. On April 18, 1943, Robert Hart, Thomas Willetts, Bob Farmer, and Fred Payne entered Hagley Wood. In the hopes of finding a bird’s nest, Farmer climbed an elm on the property. Instead, he found a skull. Since Farmer and his friends were trespassing, he returned the skull to its resting place and resolved not to tell anyone. But the youngest of the four boys, Willetts, had second thoughts and told his parents. They called the police, who found a full skeleton, as well as remains of a woman’s clothing and a gold wedding ring.
Thing we were happiest to learn: Forensic examination was surprisingly advanced in 1943. Nearly 60 years before CSI, medical examiner Professor James Webster was able to deduce that the woman had been dead for at least 18 months, believing she ha died of suffocation (there was a piece of taffeta in her mouth), and was placed in the tree soon after the time of death (the killer wouldn’t have been able to fit her in the trunk once rigor mortis had set in).
Thing we were unhappiest to learn: None of the conflicting theories are very helpful. Shortly after the graffiti appeared, a Birmingham sex worker said she had a former colleague named Bella, who had disappeared three years earlier. Nine years later, a woman named Una Mossop came forward and claimed her ex-husband Jack had confessed that he and a Dutch man named van Ralt had gone out for drinks with a young woman, and when she passed out from too much drink, they left her in a hollow tree, hoping—or so he claimed—she would be, “frightened into seeing the error of her ways.” Jack Mossop, who had recurring dreams about a woman in a tree, had been confined to a mental hospital, and died there before the body was found in Hagley Wood—that Una Mossop waited until 1953 to contact authorities has since called her story into question.
Another theory surfaced in 1953, also involving the Dutch. Someone claimed the victim was a Dutch woman named Clarabella Dronkers, and she had been killed by a German spy ring—consisting of a British officer, a Dutchman, and a music hall artist—for “knowing too much.” Wikipedia tactfully asserts that, “available records and evidence were unable to support the story.”
Best link to elsewhere on Wikipedia: That wasn’t the only theory involving German spies. Years after the murder, MI5 declassified their file on Josef Jakobs, the last man to be executed in the Tower of London. (Despite its reputation for brutality, only seven people were executed in the Tower between its construction in 1100 and the First World War, although over 100 executions were carried out on nearby Tower Hill.) Jakobs was a disgraced former officer of the Wehrmacht who had been recruited by the Abwehr, Nazi Germany’s army intelligence division. He parachuted into Britain, where he was meant to be joined by Clara Bauerle, a German singer and actress who had lived in England before the war and could speak with a flawless Birmingham accent. Instead, Jakobs broke his ankle during his parachute landing, was discovered by two farmers, and quickly turned over to the Home Guard. He was tried under the Treachery Act and executed by firing squad. It was theorized that Bauerle might’ve parachuted into England after Jakobs—and, if so, that she could’ve been the woman in the wych elm. It was decades later when it was discovered she had died in Berlin in 1942.
Further Down the Wormhole: We’re afraid this particular wormhole has reached the end of the line. After eight years, we’re wrapping up Wiki Wormhole next week, only a few entries shy of our original 6,315,292-week goal. Thanks to The A.V Club for letting me keep this not-terribly-pop-culture-related feature going for so long, and thanks to all of you for reading and commenting all these years. There’ll be more time for good-byes on Wiki Wormhole’s series finale next week.
107 Comments
What?! This series could have gone on forever. One less reason to continue reading the AV Club.
What?! This series could have gone on forever.Or at least six million weeks or so.Even if you restricted it to bands/movies/TV and musicians/actors you’d have plenty of material.
Are there any good alternatives ?Pop culture info with discussions, somewhat high-brow (or highish-brow), not drowned in gamergatey minorities-ruined-my-childhood comments, intolerant to racism yet capable of making a distinction between racism and anti-racist sarcasm, and not capitalizing too much on the reliable clickbaity violence of internet outrage ? And if possible not financed by Amazon ads ?Or is it a dead utopia in our day and age ?
“One less reason to continue reading the AV Club.”— The AV Club
It’s the only reason I come here on Sundays.
Recently I had an exchange with Mike Vago in the comments of a Wiki Wormhole. It ended when I suggested a future topic and he didn’t respond. Now I know why.
tbh, I probably added it to my list and then didn’t get to it in time.
Kinja does make it ever more difficult to respond to comments now.
And Popcorn Champs will be up to the current year in a few weeks. I guess it’s nothing but slideshows and barely coherent summaries of something someone did on Twitter from here on out.
This week’s column, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, was about the top movie of 2009, so Tom Breihan’s The Popcorn Champs should last until about the end of the year. And if it does, we’ll presumably also get (final?) entries in his A History of Violence and Age of Heroes columns as well.There’s also Caroline Siede’s When Romance Met Comedy, which is more open-ended, so it could last indefinitely or it could be ended with next week’s column.Random Roles and 11 Questions seem to be fairly well liked, but they’re far from regular features.
2013, not 2009.
Yeah, my bad; that knocks a couple of months of life expectancy off the column, so I guess in October we’ll find out what happens next.
The wiki entry is better writing than the article.
Why waste time on actually interesting articles when there’s worthless gossip and puritanical finger-wagging to engage in?
Forensic examination was surprisingly advanced in 1943… (the killer wouldn’t have been able to fit her in the trunk once rigor mortis had set in).
Not so much
Contrary to folklore and common belief, rigor mortis is not permanent and begins to pass within hours of onset. Typically, it lasts no longer than 8 hours at “room temperature”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigor_mortis
18 months prior to April 1943 would have been October 1941. It wouldn’t have been room temperature then, it would have been typical English weather of 34 F with miserable drizzle and winds in October.
Also November, December, January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August and September.
(I ‘m joking. If permanent rigor mortis was a thing, the English would find their Sunday legs of lamb to be impossibly hard and impossible to cut. At least, before cooking. After cooking I gather that’s the goal.)
An English friend once treated us to a “Sunday roast” at a local pub, which turned out to be a plate of beef, potatoes, and carrots all cooked to oblivion and tasting primarily of salt.
It’s more likely they stuffed her in the tree soon after death, than, say, kill her, leave the body wherever until rigor mortis sets in, then wait out rigor mortis until she was pliable again, and then stuff her in the tree.
It’s more likely they stuffed her in the tree soon after death, than, say, kill her, leave the body wherever until rigor mortis sets in, then wait out rigor mortis until she was pliable again, and then stuff her in the tree.On the other hand, they might have killed her and left the scene, coming back later after deciding they needed to hide the body. “Hey, remember that girl we killed yesterday? Let’s go back and stuff her in a tree, so that a bunch of wankers will have something to chat about eighty years from now!”
Awww, another of the good columns goes down.Thank you for the wonderful and random diversions, it will be missed.
Awww, another of the good columns goes down.Soon to be replaced by a weekly series of slideshow articles titled: “You Won’t Believe What This Actress Wore on the Runway” that will consist of 99 slides promising a big, salacious reveal, and then one slide failing to deliver on that promise.
Oh, come on now. You know it won’t be that.It will also be a few hacks noticing shit pop up in their twitter feed about some minor drama, and their beating up that up into a poorly-researched, lazily-written, snarky, yet pointedly non-committal article.
Yes, this is really sour news, but thanks for all the oddities.
If Wiki Wormhole is gone, then the prophecy is correct and the end times are here. It was nice knowing you all.
I’ve been hearing that since Phipps left, and yet the site’s still here!I’m really lucky to have been able to write this barely-pop-culture-related feature for as long as I have, but 8 years is a long time to do anything week-in-week-out, and I’ve spent the past few years afraid I was going to run out of topics well before my 6,316,790 goal, so it feels like the right time to move on.
We get it, Vago. You’re in the pocket of Big ‘Quality Of Life’.
Man, fuck Gawker.Thanks for years of great articles, Cookie!
At least there’ll be more room on the page for Sam, William, and Tatiana to reblog whatever dumb shit they see on Twitter.
I assume the goal of Herb is to eventually dump even them and just have the site be nothing but Kinja repeating random Tweets with no human intervention.
I don’t know… the past week or so, the bloggers have had some particularly stupid takes on some nothing burger Twitter trends, and those racked up some healthy piles of comments. That means more eyes on the page for longer, and that’s what brings in the ad bucks.The good investment would be more rebloggers with their “Cancel Culture’s Not Real But Here’s Another Celebrity Who Did a Bad Thing That Ruins Their Entire Body of Work” posts.
I guess 80 comments of just “wtf is this shit” still count.
A click’s a click and a comment’s a comment. It’s even better if you repost their “WTF Is This Shit” shitpost on your Facebook or Twitter and invite all your friends to check out the shit and see how dumb the author is.
Soooo…….Barsanti’s the most successful columnist on the site now?
No, not in recent weeks. Even if you add his spectacularly stupid Raiders of the Lost Ark pedophilia post (368) to his equally dumb Ellie Kemper apology post (424), he’s still blown out of the water by Tatiana’s staggeringly idiotic Ellie Kemper’s down with the Klan post (972).I’m not sure who’s ahead in career numbers. He may have the lead there.
Now I understand why the twat in charge is named Herb Spamfiller.
Every non-Twitter site eventually becomes nothing but snapshots of Twitter posts.
List of features the evil vulture demons have killed here in the past few weeks:A SidesTell Us About Your Pop Culture WeekendWiki WormholeSo don’t get too attached to your favorites, or frankly this site at all. The drool mouthed pencil pushers in the corner office don’t care what you like, they are just waiting for the day they can officially rename the site “Great Job, Internet” and then pivot entirely to video, thus fulfilling their mission to reduce the once proud AV Club to a shitty meme factory.
Being able to find replies.
It was just a few weeks ago that they finally fixed whatever it was that wasn’t letting me sign in, and now all of a sudden I can’t find replies to my comments. It’s like they won’t allow the commenting system to actually work, because people having any sort of attachment to the site is something they’d like to prevent. Way better if everyone who comes here does so because an article with a clickbaity headline was linked somewhere else.
Personally, I love having no idea if I’m banned from commenting on Jezebel (no idea why I would be as I’m not inflammatory there but w/e) or just if there’s a kinja snafu because these sites all feel like a giant goddamn shrug that works some days and other days just does what it feels like doing.
It’s really sad to see all of this stuff fall apart so much. I really miss Deadspin, for starters.
Yeah. I’m leaving about 80% fewer comments because I can’t even find the replies to them. Readership is FAR down since last year. Spamwielder, as you say, clearly wants no more engagement with us. Just give me one more reason to leave, Jimbo.
Highlight Reel over on KotakuThe entirety of the Deadspin community
Links in commentsSort io9 by Latest
I thought “Pivot to Video” died after Facebook reversed course on it. Current video content on AVC mostly seems to be interviews with actors involved in projects that I assume are paying AVC for promotion.
I come here to read about pop culture, not to watch videos. If it’s not a text article, I pass.
They’ve basically killed The Onion too, which is nothing but “News in Brief” “American Voices” and OGN, which is just awful.I assume they decided that anything longer than 100 words doesn’t fit some paradigm of user metrics, so even the old commentaries and point/counterpoint don’t fit what they figure is the coming Quibi revolution.
They sold off Clickhole so it’s still out there and semi-decent. Less satire and more absurdity than the old Onion but worth a look.
What puzzles me about Clickhole is there’s only 1-2 articles a day, a trend which started when they were still on Kinja.
Maybe I should be more worried about there not being a Home Video Hell last month than I initially was.
They’ve also seemingly gotten rid of Reasonable Discussions, of all things.
This has been my favorite recurring column for years. Thanks for brightening my Sunday mornings!
Thanks for reading!
So this is where Tana French got the idea for her novel The Witch Elm, although she set the story in contemporary Ireland.
She wasn’t subtle, haha – the UK/I title is “Wych Elm”!
Ahh, sad to see this feature go away! It’s always been a good Sunday morning read!
I’m sort of a latecomer to the column, having followed it regularly for only the past year or so, but I appreciate the skill with which you’ve chosen Wikipedia oddities and presented them with your own commentary to create a consistently-fun column. In fact, it was almost a year ago that you posted your column on the co-princes of Andorra, which is what convinced me to come back every Sunday:https://www.avclub.com/tiny-andorra-has-two-monarchs-for-just-77-000-people-1843578046I still think “responding with overwhelming force in the form of three constables and a sergeant” is the funniest bit of writing I’ve seen on this site in years.
We’re afraid this particular wormhole has reached the end of the lineDoes this mean you are leaving the AVClub entirely, Mike, or just not doing this feature?
Thanks for asking! I’ll still write for the site, but now I have to stop coasting and come up with articles to pitch! I might try and pitch a recurring feature down the line if I can come up with another format this sturdy (which seems unlikely, but WW was greenlit by Josh Modell on a whim after I did a Great Job, Internet about a funny Wikipedia page eight years ago, so one never knows)
Comedy troupes and their family trees, please. The Groundlings, Second City, The Kids in the Hall, The State, etc. did a whole lot of begat-ing.
It’s funny, maybe a decade ago, before I was writing for the site, I wanted to pitch AVC on a feature called The Chart, that would be pop culture maps of different kinds. And one of my ideas for the pitch was the Ben Stiller Show Family Tree, because a decade ago, virtually everyone in comedy could be traced back to that show—Cross and Odenkirk essentially pitched Mr. Show based on their work there; Garofalo soon after did Wet Hot American Summer with the State, and Poehler, which brings you into UCB, and on and on.But then I realized it’d be a ton of work and I’d probably have to learn web design to make it look halfway decent, so I abandoned the idea. But maybe I need to think about that again…
Just a map of Stella would be epic. Or young standups who had been on Carson. Or the nexus event that was They Came Together. Or the Apatow Troupe. SNL would be like tracing Ellis Island.Funny how isolated Monty Python seems to be, except for the combined university lineage and Spamalot, but I would like to see that mapped out, too.Please do this feature!
Have you learned nothing from corporate America? Scrawl it out by hand on a cocktail napkin, then hand it to some underpaid intern for the graphics.
I guess that was the only GJI that was actually a great job.
Very sorry to hear this column has ending. It has been the best av club feature for quite a while & the reason I made sure to check the site out on Sundays.
Aww, thanks. It means a lot that so many of you have stuck with me and the feature for so long!
Nooooooooooooooooooooooo! This was always my favorite thing to read on a Sunday. Thanks for all the wonderful diversions over the years. Man, this sucks.
This case is a creepy one. In the absence of more clear evidence, I suspect a secret coven of witches who turned against one of their own as her dark power grew too terrifying
It was Bella all along!
Artist’s recreation of Bella
I think it’s even more elaborate than that. Bella was placed in that tree by the coven as a child, and the coven’s power grew as the child and tree grew together . . . until Bella, drunk with power, decided to take matters into her own hands/branches, and the coven decided they had to stop her.
“………..in 1953, also involving the Dutch. Someone claimed the victim was a Dutch woman named Clarabella Dronkers”Clearly a victim of Dutch Elm Disease……………
I can’t believe I was the first person to star this comment.
We’re afraid this particular wormhole has reached the end of the line. After eight years, we’re wrapping up Wiki Wormhole next week, Goddammit Mike, only last week I posted to you how much your presence here and this column means to so many. Fuck, I knew I jinxed this.
It’s funny, I had a talk with my editor last week about your comment and we both agreed that the only thing for it was to shut this down immediately!
This is why we can’t have nice things. Nice going, Alien Jesus!
I’m surprised and disappointed that no one seems to be considering the possibility that it was the tree itself that killed and partially ingested the unfortunate woman. Has no one but me seen “Poltergeist?!”
It’s a tree just outside Birmingham, so the real question should be “has nobody but me read Tolkien!?”It may not have been a willow, but a ‘wych’ elm is hardly reassuring.
[things didn’t end well for the elms, though. Most of them were killed by the dutch elm disease outbreak of the 1960s. Fun fact: Dutch elm diseases appear to recurr every few thousand years; all the elms in Britain, other than some of the wych elms, come from their reintroduction by the Romans after the native elms had all been exterminated by some sort of ancient ur-DED…]
we’re wrapping up Wiki Wormholewell that fucking sucks
Hahaha, holy shit, Jez now has a peppy little SPONCON with some “influencers” or whatever that shows up in the /latest feed with no SPONSORED tag showing unless you click into it, so we can add that one to the Spanfeller Bullshit List(tm).Once June rolled around, they really threw the Fuckery Truck into high gear.
I think they racked up an impossible 7 comments last night for Saturday Night Social, lol. It stopped being anything resembling “social” years ago.
One more sign of the end times. Is the AV Club truly disbanding this time?
I said something similar in another column, but people have been saying that since Phipps/Robinson/Tobias/Koski/Rabin left. It’s like any other workplace, people move on to other jobs. The way I look at it is, almost every AVC writer I’ve enjoyed over the years is still out there, usually writing for one of the starts-with-a-V web sites, and then new writers keep coming through here too.(And for the record, I’m not leaving the site, just winding down this column, although I haven’t written anything besides WW in a few years, so I have to shake some rust off…)
Thanks for the reply Mike! I hope you take the doom and gloom comments in the way they’re intended, which is as a reflection of our affection for your work, and this column especially (the hyperbole and off-target nature of which are likely indicative of the various types of arrested development, chronic fear of change, desperate need for attention, and other types of psychological and emotional damage common to the commentariat, but that’s neither here nor there).I’ve been a big fan of this column and am glad to hear you’re ending it on your terms. I look forward to reading your work in the future, even if it ends up on some other site with a V in the name.
The guy who was responsible for doing the notification comment links has been fired, but, hasn’t he?
Fuck.There goes yet another distinguishing feature.Here’s to a site that just reviews the same stuff The Vulture does, caring less about fostering community and more about drive by Googlers
Let me join the chorus of the sad: Wiki Wormhole was amazing, this feature will be missed, and its loss is one more reason not to bother with the AV Club.Thank you for all the good articles.
1) Bummer this series is ending,B) Next week’s better be:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe
I remain amazed that so many features get cut when it’s not like *anything* is bringing in the kind of engagement the site used to when it would do full coverage of SCTV episodes
Hey, thanks to everybody for the kind words. I’ve really enjoyed writing this column for the last 8 years, and it means a lot that so many people have been regular readers (and commenters) for so long.I’ll still be writing for A.V. Club here and there, and if you can’t live without hearing me talk about a topic of interest every week, I started a podcast last fall called Why Is This Not a Movie?, inspired by years of people commenting with that phrase when I’d hit on a particularly cinematic WW topic. Various creative people (including one ex-AVC writer, and next week, an infamous AVC commenter) come on the show to pitch movie ideas, from book adaptations, to WW-like odd stories from history, to crazy ideas the guests come up with on their own.
…and next week, an infamous AVC commenter [s]… come on to pitch movie ideas…If it’s ZODIAC MOTHERFUCKER pitching his biopic, you won’t even need a Kickstarter. Just get him in front of the head of any self-respecting studio and it’ll be green lit.
This sucks so much! Don’t often comment but I’ve been an avid reader for years. How will I pass off all your hard research as my own incredible breadth of trivia to all my friends now?Do that work myself?!Not. Likely.
Dang, sorry to see this column go. I’ve really enjoyed it.
Thank you so much for keeping us entertained with your column. Godspeed!
Aw man, sorry to see the Wormhole go, but glad you’re sticking around, Vago.
Cannot wait for this podcast!
I’m going to miss reading Wiki Wormhole every Sunday. So I’m going to re-read the column starting from the beginning.Wiki Wormhole now joins Big Box of Paperbacks and HateSong in the feasting halls of AValhalla.
Tana French used this in one of her mysteries. One of the more recent ones which have seemed to polarize her readers. Apparently multiple plot lines are hard for a lot of people.
I loved Broken Harbor and Faithful Place, but I was pretty disappointed by The Witch Elm. It had nothing to do with plot lines, although I don’t recall there being that many, it just felt alienating and hollow (like the titular elm). The protagonist’s entire purpose was to be punished for being too privileged and smug.
It certainly rambled… for me. And I got that (punish for privilege) as well. I still checked the most recent out and will give it a go.
I liked The Searcher a bit better than The Witch Elm but if it was the first book I’d read by a new author, I would not be excited for the next one. I’m still hoping that she goes back to the Dublin detectives.
Oh, me TOO!
I’ve read Tana French’s The Witch Elm, so I can tell you the answer: Something very heartbreaking that has unintended ramifications for the people investigating the crime.
Yall need to hire a copy editor. I’m a copywriter and I make a million typos, but you have to fix those things before posting it to your site.
The body might have remained undiscovered if not for some meddling kids. “Scooby Doo and the Tree Full of Human Bones” is a helluva title.
Doesn’t need more than an extra “r” near the end for the porn parody title!
“Look out! Scooby’s got wood!”
If I don’t see an A.V. Club headline that says “R.I.P. Wiki Wormhole” next week, I’ll be greatly disappointed.