Jekyll & Hyde

Gertrude Jekyll designed the formal garden at Townhill Park House and may have been involved with the Arboretum at Marlhill Copse, although woodland doesn't appear to be her normal style. Her brother Walter (a clergyman who gave up religion to become a 'planter' in Jamaica) was a close friend of Robert Louis Stevenson who seems to have borrowed the family name for the "Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" which was written when Stephenson was bedridden in Bournemouth and published in 1886. In the same year Sigmund Freud set up his first clinical practice in neuropathology in Vienna.

The first Baron Swaythling (Montagu Samuel - owner of Townhill Park House) was elected as MP for Whitechapel in 1885. After the murder of Annie Chapman by 'Jack the Ripper' in 1888 Montagu offered a £100 reward for discovery of the criminal - who was never found. The London stage version of 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' was forced to close down because of hysteria surrounding the Whitechapel murderer.

Ewen Montagu (2nd son of the 2nd Baron) was an intelligence officer in charge of double agents in WW2 who conceived 'Operation Mincemeat' - a way of deceiving the Germans into believing that Sardinia rather than Sicily was a target for Allied invasion. This involved the gruesome pretence that the body of a 'tramp', who had died after eating rat poison (often spread on bread), was that of a drowned British Major Martin carrying invasion plans. Montagu identified the corpse as "a bit of a ne'er do well, and the only worthwhile thing he ever did he did after his death". As he was a barrister before the war and judge afterwards, Ewan Montagu was clearly no stranger to 'habeas corpus'. It was subsequently revealed that the homeless person was Glyndwr Michael. The proceedings were somewhat sanitised in the 1956 film "The Man Who Never Was", (Montagu had written the book of the same name) in which Montagu plays an Air Vice Marshal (uncredited). Montagu died in 1985. It wasn't until 1997 that Glyndwr Michael's name was added to the grave in Huelva. It was subsequently discovered that he was born in Aberbargoed (in 1909) which is, curiously, where I went to school.

MarlHillCopse999@gmail.com

"The genesis for the ritual of planting a tree in the memory of a loved one is not new. The Jewish National Fund has linked its tree planting program [set up in 1908] and the revitalization of the forests in Israel with the honoring of individuals. Many synagogues have 'trees of life' with engraved leaves acknowledging the names of present and past congregants, and their families. And trees have been dedicated to Holocaust victims, righteous gentiles and many others. Our tradition embraces the tree as an important image of wisdom and life. We have the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden and the Torah itself is called a tree of life. Moreover, we have many parables, stores and Midrashim dealing with trees. " https://www.ritualwell.org/ritual/tree-memory

The Ist Baron Swaythling was a prominent Jewish banker who died in 1911 (He founded the bank Samuel Montagu & Co. which still exits today as a private equity bank). It seems very likely that his son and wife (from the Goldsmid banking family) commissioned the arboretum and gardens at Marlhill Copse, and planted the line of Montereys shortly afterwards to commemorate his death. The trees are not shown on the large scale OS map of 1908 but are in 1931 [see maps]. A further impetus could perhaps have been the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, on which another prominent Jewish financier (and perhaps known personally to the Montagu/Goldsmid family) of the time, Benjamin Guggenheim, died.