Duncan Walker
A Ripper runs amok on the streets of Brentford
Relax! It only happens in a novel,
The Rising of the Moon (1945), by Gladys Mitchell, but I can recommend it as an interesting read, especially for Brentfordians trying to identify the locations she describes in Brentford.
Gladys Mitchell (1901 -1983), lived in Brentford.
It is a detective story based in Brentford, I think about the 1920s-30s, about a Ripper running amok on the streets of Brentford. There are lots of descriptions in it of places in Brentford, including Brentford Dock and others such as:
"We crossed one of the mouths of our little river, as it ran beside the canal which had been cut from it, by means of narrow lock gates which were not used for boats but only to regulate the water. Then we had to cross two bridges. Once across these we ran up a narrow path between the two basins where there was a village of disused hoppers and barges, and came past the little public house called the Brewery Tap and into Catherine Wheel yard. This alley led up to the High Street and very shortly we were on our way up the Half Acre to Mr Taylor's field."
Gillian Clegg in ‘Brentford Past’ says: “Gladys Mitchell was educated at the Rothschild school in Brentford High Street and later taught History, English, Spanish and athletics at St Paul’s School. As a child she lived in Windmill Road and later York Road. In 1938 she was sharing a house with her friend Winifred Blazey at 18 Swyncombe Avenue. Mitchell wrote over 50 novels, most of them featuring her eccentric detective Mrs Bradley. ‘The Rising Moon’ is about a killer who runs amok on the streets of Brentford.”
Philip Larkin considered The Rising of the Moon to be Gladys Mitchell's best novel. The sleepy Thames-side town of Brentford is evoked memorably, and seen as a place of adventure and mystery, with murder acting as a dangerous game in the fairy-tale world that is life as seen through the eyes of the two boy heroes at the centre of the book: Simon and Keith Innes.
In addition to her 66 Mrs. Bradley novels Mitchell also used the pseudonyms of Stephen Hockaby (for a series of historical novels) and Malcolm Torrie (for a series of detective stories featuring an architect named Timothy Herring) and wrote ten children's books under her own name.
The paperback is readily available at Amazon
[I first came across Gladys Mitchell a few years back in 2007, when I started a topic on the BrentfordTW8 site called ‘Authors who lived in the Brentford Area and Brentford appearing in literature’ (put the title or part of it in the search on BrentfordTW8 it was a great topic)].