February 2026

These deeply macabre murders were committed by the serial killer John Haigh who was convicted of six murders but insisted that he had committed nine. Haigh had worked as the chauffeur for William McSwan whose family-owned amusement arcades and property around London. Haigh, who had been brought up in a strict Plymouth Brethren household, had a string of fraud convictions and was jealous of the lifestyle enjoyed by McSwan. On 6th September 1944 Haigh lured McSwan to the basement (“More Seating Downstairs”) of a property on the Gloucester Road where he beat him over the head with a lead pipe and disposed of his body in a 40 gallon drum filled with concentrated sulphuric acid.

When McSwan’s parents wondered where their son had gone, Haigh reassured them that he had simply gone to Scotland. They persisted with their questions over many months and on the 2 July 1945 Haigh lured them to the basement in Gloucester Road by assuring them that “Willie would be there” and promptly shot them both. Again, he disposed of the bodies in concentrated sulphuric acid. He was finally caught after murdering his final victim in February 1949, found guilty and hanged.

If you are standing on the platform at Sloane Square tube station and look up you will see a very large rivetted pipe overhead. What you are looking at is one of the Lost Rivers of London this one being the River Bourne which rises in Hampstead and flows through Kilburn (this was its original Saxon name “kil” meaning royal and “burn” meaning river), Paddington, Westbourne Grove, Hyde Park, Knightsbridge (this was a bridge over the River Bourne), down Sloane Street, Sloane Square, Bourne Street and out into the Thames. The diversion happened when Queen Caroline wanted to create the Serpentine in Hyde Park in 1732 and the River Bourne was dammed to create the body of water but flowed out the southern side into Knightsbridge. Over time it became an open sewer and was encased in its rivetted pipe as a result. But there are not too many train platforms in the world where a river flows above your head.

The house my parents had in London when I was a child was in a small pretty square off the Brompton Road. As a dedicated footballer I would spend hours kicking a ball against the wall in the small garden skittling flower pots and generally driving everyone mad. I discovered only five years ago and with some astonishment that Annie Chapman, the second victim of Jack the Ripper, had grown up the other side of the wall I had been battering with my football. Her father was a cavalryman in the Life Guards and their barracks were on Raphael Street.

I had always thought that Jack the Ripper and his victims were exclusively in Whitechapel but that is not where their lives took place, solely where their horrific murders happened. And so, while you are sitting in the basement dining area of KFC on Gloucester Road slowly munching your way through a Family Bucket the realisation may dawn on you that all is not as it seems and horrific murders happened inches from your fries.