WHO PUT NELLIE IN THE MARL HOLE?
The West Midlands region was famous for its Etruria marl pits, and those like Rattlechain were many across its towns. They were very dangerous places to work as we know, but also attracted many children who perished by misadventure after drowning in the flooded remnants. The Vono Lagoon very near to Rattlechain was one such more recent example.
Many of these industrial undertakings became abandoned before being bought by the very worst industrial dumping waste scumbags like Albright and Wilson. Most have now been lost to history and are now car parks and even housing estates hiding a sinister past of misery and despair. It is little wonder that the abandoned holes in the land were also magnets for suicide.
This occasional series will look at some of the stories behind these former marl holes, and if they can be identified, what remains of them today or what they became.
Between the wars there is no doubt that marl holes began to fade from brickmaking use. The 30th July 1931 Dudley Chronicle reported the death of a young woman named Nellie Colwell.
Nellie 21, was from Tividale and lived on The Dudley Road with her parents. The article states that she was found dead in “Sheldon’s marl hole”. This name rings immediate alarm bells in relation to The Lower City Road conman Sidney, who deliberately ran down brickmaking at Rattlechain post WW2 to sell off land. I aware that he had a brother, but not if there was a longer chain if you’ll excuse the pun of a family brickmaking dynasty. There is a little mystery however, and I doubt if this was Rattlechain brickworks marl hole as at this time at least, Rattlechain was still officially run by the sons of Samuel Barnett- at least in name. We also know that the pit was filled with water because she drowned, suggesting that this was an abandoned site not in use.
My best guess is that it refers to the Vono lagoon as it became or even the former sports pool where the Autobase carpark is now situated?
Her family worked at Edwin Danks , an Oldbury based boiler maker, and she herself had started work there from the age of 16. There are a few observations with this article and I will make them as we go along.
The presentation and subsequent phoney psychological term “neurasthenia” is typical of these fake psychotherapy quacks and the time. This is a time when shysters sold “nerve tonics” to poison people with, just as big pharma does now with their clot shot vaccines and antidepressants. Of course the whole psychiatry industry wants as many people as possible to have “mental illness” so they can diagnose falsely and prescribe more drug filth in greater doses. They are handsomely rewarded for this fraud by big pharma for every sucker they sign up and are reliant on hypochondriacs believing that they are “ill”.
It may well have been the case that Nellie was “depressed”, but there is no evidence presented that proves she committed suicide or drank or took any drugs before her death. This remember is at a time when swallowing white phosphorus poison, widely available, was a common form of suicide. The article and diagnosis by the coroner “she seems to have done away with herself” is also typical of a period where women were locked up for being non compliant or affected by some imagined mental illness. This third rate pillock was certainly no Quincy FFS! Where is the actual post mortem report, was she confirmed to have drowned based on physiological evidence?
I am not sure why if she committed suicide she would have gone to the trouble of removing her shoes or leaving anything behind? Could she swim? Maybe that is another question the coroner should have asked.
And so enter the token mystery man of letters whom the prat recording her death does not even attempt to identify or name or if she had ever met him in person. He could have lured her to her death, covered up the murder by dumping the body in the pit and staging the elaborate placing of belongings behind. Maybe I read too many detective novels. 😆
In conclusion it remains a mystery nearly 100 years later as to why Nellie Colwell died on her way to work. My own belief is that she did not intend to kill herself that day, but we will never know how she entered the marl hole or if there were any sinister events leading up to it. A marl hole would have been a good place to dump a body and claim a depressed young woman had killed herself. Someone may well have got away with murder.