HAUNTED WIRRAL: The mysterious marriage wrecker

In this latest tale, Tom explores the mysterious marriage wrecker...

The authors of poison pen letters - those anonymous outpourings of anger or unmitigated detestation designed to thoroughly upset the recipient – saw delightfully twisted possibilities when the telephone was widely introduced into society in the early 20th Century.

Now the poison pen letter-writer was able to literally give a voice to his or her vitriol, and the sinister hater could actually get live feedback from the victims, listening to their gasps of shock at some telephonic insult, and of course, some menacing callers derived a sexual kick out their verbal tirades.

On November 30, 1955 the front-page banner headlines of The Daily Mirror read: POISON PHONE CALLS with the subheading: ‘Glamour-voice Girl tries to break up happy marriages’.

The story, which was the talk of the country, concerned a number of sinister telephone calls made in Birkenhead.

It all started in October 1955 when Lorraine and David, a newly-married couple in their twenties living on Birkenhead’s Arthur Street, heard the telephone in the hallway ring one evening.

Lorraine answered it because her husband was washing his hair in the bathroom, in preparation for a night out at the cinema.

The sultry-sounding female voice of the caller asked, ‘Is David there?’ ‘Why? Who’s calling?’ Lorraine asked.

She half turned and saw the bathroom door open, and David stood there in the doorframe, drying his hair.

‘Well who are you?’ asked the caller.

‘I’m his wife,’ said Lorraine, and David came over asking, ‘Who is it?’ But his wife held her palm out, gesturing for him to stay there.

‘David’s married?’ the woman asked, and then after a pause she hung up.

The seeds of suspicion had been planted in Lorraine’s mind, and even though David said he was not seeing anyone and had not given out his number to any female, Lorraine seemed very upset.

She decided not to go to the cinema, and the whole evening was ruined. Unknown to the couple, the malicious marriage wrecker was dialling two more victims, minutes after she’d frozen the air in the home of Lorraine and David.

This time the telephone rang in the lounge of a semi on a leafy stretch of Upton Road, where a 45-year-old lady named Penny, who was partially blind, answered.

Her 50-year-old husband Huw, a solicitor, was reading through a client’s papers in his study.

A female caller asked for Huw, and Penny said, ‘Yes, I’ll go and get him; he’s just up in his study.’

When Huw came down and answered the phone he discovered the caller had hung up, but she called back at 9pm sharp, and this time Huw was having a bath.

Penny asked the caller if she had telephoned earlier.

‘Yes, I couldn’t wait. Could you tell Huw I won’t be able to see him at the cottage as arranged?’

Penny and Huw had bought a cottage near Heswall which they hoped to let, once it had been renovated, and Penny thought this message from the unknown woman was a bit suspicious.

‘What do you mean, meet him? Who is this?’ Penny asked, but the caller hung up.

As soon as he got out of the bath, Penny told Huw about the ‘cancelled meeting’ at the cottage and with a look of puzzlement on his face he said he had not arranged to meet anyone there.

‘You do believe me don’t you?’ Huw asked, and Penny said: ‘She must know you – she knew your name and she knew about the cottage.’

‘Penny, I give you my word I am not seeing anyone behind your back!’

Huw told her, and he saw tears fall from his wife’s eyes.

He hugged her and said: ‘Penny, someone is pulling your leg, and if I get my hands on them...’

Penny mentioned her blindness and asked if she was a burden to him.

Huw said he loved her so much he was going to renew his wedding vows, and eventually, as more and more people received the “Poison Phone Calls” the Press investigated the weird case and Huw read the newspaper articles to a relieved Penny.

She realised she had been a victim of the evil home-wrecker who was now the talk of Britain.

Liverpool CID and a host of Birkenhead detectives worked in concert to apprehend the wicked woman who had singlehandedly waged a campaign against happily married couples.

As the police worked with the GPO (General Post Office), who were then in control of the telephone network to try and trace the spiteful woman with the sensual voice, theories abounded about her identity, and armchair detectives had a field day hypothesising on the whys and wherefores of the woman making the damaging phone calls.

She was horrifically disfigured, and unable to find love, she was determined to destroy those who were enjoying a blissful married life.

Others believed it was someone working in the telephone exchange, and some even thought the culprit was a female impersonator.

Then there was a strange statement from the police in December that year.

They hinted that they’d had several public phone boxes disconnected in Birkenhead, and that the cruel crusade against married couples had been brought to a definite end.

The weird calls stopped, and a rumour circulated across Wirral about the heartless caller hanging herself.

A year passed – and then the calls started again – or was it a copycat?

The police thought so, but one call was traced to a derelict gothic house on Devonshire Road, Prenton, and here a chilling discovery was made by the police: a woman, aged about 30, was found sitting in a high-back chair, with a connected telephone in her lap and a purring handset in her fist.

She’d been dead for at least three days, and her body was never identified...

Over the forthcoming weeks Tom will tell you more tales of the mysterious and the uncanny in the Globe.

Haunted Liverpool 28 is another dazzling collection of supernatural fact by Tom Slemen, England’s greatest writer on the paranormal.