The Daily Post had a two page article plus old pictures on the Rhyl "mummy in the cupboard" case last week.
So, I'm in the pub and I'm going to tell you another boring but true tale.
I helped in the investigation into this murder. Yes. And it is possible I might have affected the outcome. But, unlikely.
I had just moved to Rhyl working in Barclays Bank. The discovery of the mummy had just hit the news stands, and suddenly Rhyl was on the world wide stage.
The police soon found out that Mrs Harvey had an account with us back around the nineteen thirtys, not much news there.
However, some weeks later we received a head office circular. These were sent on a regular basis to every branch of Barclays in the U K and every branch had to do whatever the circular said they had to do.
T his one ordered every branch to examine their "opened and closed accounts" book for the whole period from 1936 up to date, 1960 . And to search for around six different names with no connection whatsoever with each other de.g. John smith, Margaret Davies, joe soap etc.
This was a virtually impossible task, a computer could do it easy, but humans -- no way. In Rhyl we managed to find around 15 or so of these books, all with around 50 pages and around 20 entries per page?
We soon realised that this had something to do with the mummy case. The bank bosses decided that this job couldn't be done in normal working hours, so they gave several of the staff three or four books to take home and go through them at night, and see if they turned up anything.
I took my three books home, I think I spent around 3 hours going through one of them, and then I was supposed to go through again looking for a different name.
Well I, for one, got well fed up and that was the last search I made. Returning the books around four days later --- no, I haven't found anything.
I've no doubt that many of the other 2000 odd branches around the country did the same, but of course Rhyl was the most obvious branch. Mrs Harvey was supposed t o have opened accounts in fictions names to put the illegal cash she was collecting from the mummy's pension.
Mike
P.S. it's not nice to joke about a murdered person, but it was a long time ago and it always made me laugh when it went the rounds at the time. Quote. You know that the mummy was not the person who the police thought it was. No --- it was the Irish hide and seek champion.
