Category Archives: Justice

“The Mousetrap” at St. Martin’s Theater, London, Author Ji-Elle
(CC BY-SA 4.0 International)

WARNING:  Graphic Images

Thousands have enjoyed Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap”, the longest running play in the world.  Few realize that the play was inspired by a real life tragedy [1][2].

Fictional Plot

Set in a snowbound manor house, the mystery centers on the strangling death of a woman who mistreated the foster children in her care.  The principal suspect is one of those children, now grown and motivated by revenge.

Factual Basis

Because their parents were deemed unfit, England’s Newport Juvenile Court in May 1944 placed the three O’Neill brothers on whom the play is based under the jurisdiction of the Newport County Council [3].

In July 1944 the Council assigned custody of the two older boys — 12 y.o. Dennis and 9 y.o. Terence — to Reginald Gough and his wife Esther at Bank Farm in Hope Valley, Shropshire.  The youngest boy — 7 y.o. Freddie — was placed nearby.

When a short time later Terence was asked to write a school essay about his homelife, he said his foster mother was good and kind to him.  He said she bought him new clothes and gave him “lots to eat”.

But the name Hope Valley would prove haunting.  Terence later revealed that his essay was written under duress.  He knew instinctively that he would be in “huge trouble” if he told the truth.

Fatal Abuse

On January 9, 1945 Esther Gough phoned a local doctor to say that Dennis was having a seizure.  The doctor arrived to find the boy dead, a victim of severe abuse.  An inquest revealed that he had suffered cardiac arrest, as the result of a brutal beating.  The child was, also, badly undernourished, with painful septic ulcers on his feet. Continue reading →