HALLOWEEN


Gurning ghoul


Lowndes Square, close to the top end of Sloane Street, has its own spectre – a white-haired old woman who sits in a wheelchair and pulls faces at anybody who looks at her. She is said to be the ghost of a woman who, in the early part of the 20th century, had a stroke and was taken to live with her daughter and family in the square. On sunny days, she would be put outside into the street to watch the world go by. But the stroke had deprived the woman of speech and she communicated instead by pulling faces.


Grisly murder There’s no ghost attached to this story, but there should be. In 1870, handyman Walter Miller was plastering a property at 24 Wellington Square when he decided to bash his employer, 84-year old Elias Huelin, over the head with a spade. The victim was relieved of his possessions and bundled into a cupboard. Scotsman Miller then strolled to another of Huelin’s property at 15 Paultons Square where he strangled the housekeeper with a length of rope and dumped her in a box. Incredibly, he then toured Chelsea’s taverns buying everybody a drink and attempting to pass himself off as Huelin’s nephew, recently arrived from Jersey. His plan, such as it was, appears to have been to lay claim to the deceased’s properties. It all came unstuck when he hired a greengrocer and his cart to move the box with the dead housekeeper in it. The greengrocer spotted blood and called for a policeman. Miller – not the highest note in the orchestra by a long way – pleaded not guilty and tried to blame the double murder on the very character he had himself invented, the nephew. He was sentenced to death.


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