Rose West: The Making of a Monster (5 page)

ECT is a controversial treatment and, as the Royal College of Psychiatrists in London acknowledges, no one really knows how
it works. However, although it can be effective in cases of severe depression, there are others who have suffered substantial
memory loss and been left in a confused state afterwards, not always improving over time. Some patients reported feeling as
if they were in a trance afterwards, or even zombie-like, and it has also been known to cause personality changes. As Laurence
Olivier was to say of his wife, Vivien Leigh, she was ‘not the same girl’ after receiving ECT for her illness. Although this
treatment is still available today, it is used less often and even banned in some European countries. It does, however, appear
to have been popular in north Devon during the 1950s. A former neighbour and contemporary of Daisy’s explained how she too
had undergone ECT at this time, and believes she also suffered adverse effects from it.

In Daisy’s case, her therapy was reviewed after her second session, when the psychiatrist voiced the opinion that her illness
was far more serious than he’d at first believed. Bill was particularly sympathetic to his wife’s mental health problems,
and insisted she continue with her course of treatment, pregnant or not. Bill had worked with electricity since his training
in his youth: he knew all about such matters; he’d even had a few shocks himself at work, and if a few volts helped her, so
be it. Indeed, he might even have relished this idea as, while serving in the Navy, he had secretly administered shocks to
the Wrens, laughing about his ‘little prank’ to his colleagues. Although no one back at home – and certainly not Daisy – knew
about that.

Daisy’s psychiatrist, in line with Bill’s thoughts on the matter, decided to continue her treatment throughout the pregnancy,
until the course was completed. This meant that as Rose lay silently growing in her mother’s womb, so Daisy had more shocks
blasted to her brain, sending convulsions through her body – the last one being just days before Rose was born.

There has been little research on the use of ECT with pregnant patients, and expert opinion is divided on it but, given the
damage ECT can do to the patient, it seems unlikely the foetus would remain unaffected in every case. And when Rosie did finally
arrive at the Highfield Maternity Hospital at Northam, her behaviour would soon give cause for concern amongst her own siblings.

Nonetheless, when Daisy finished her last ECT session and came home with a shaved head and clutching the new addition to the
family in her arms, no one could miss what an exceptionally lovely baby Rosie was, with her olive skin, dark hair and soft
brown eyes, just like her mother. People would remark on how beautiful the child was, and in Northam still do today. But to
Rosie the world must have appeared a topsy-turvy kind of place where, as a toddler, she needed to hang her head upside-down
to understand it, and as a baby rocked her head on the hood of the pram for hours on end.

‘Stop that, Rosie!’ her older siblings complained as she rhythmically bashed her head against the cot at night in the bedroom
she shared with them. ‘Stop it! We can’t go to sleep!’ They protested – though not too loudly for fear of waking ‘Dad’.

Despite her rocking, Rosemary Pauline, as her proud parents named her, though shortening it to Rosie, was said to be a ‘good
baby’ who rarely cried. However, while she was ‘good’ perhaps in terms of being less tiring for a mother with a demanding
child, babies are not normally quiet for long: crying is the only way they can communicate their needs in their first few
weeks and months of life, so this might be seen as a little worrying. As
well as rarely crying, as Rosie got older she would continue to swing her head in front of her for long periods of time, inducing
a trance-like state. At other times her large eyes were said to look vacant while life went on around her as she daydreamed,
inhabiting a world of her own: Rosie’s world.

The kinds of behaviour Rose exhibited can be indicative of learning difficulties. They might even have been linked to the
ECT treatment her mother received at the time, which might not have had the safety standards of today, but again, no one knows
for sure. Moreover, children, whether challenged intellectually or not (and we don’t know that Rose was), are known to rock
and swing their heads simply to obtain comfort from it or to relieve boredom, as in the case of neglected babies. Children
also daydream or withdraw into themselves to escape the difficulties they face in their everyday lives, such as abuse or neglect.
But it is unlikely that Rosie was neglected, as when her older siblings were at home, they were constantly around her; and
when they weren’t, Bill was there lending a hand. Rosie was also to be the baby of the family for another four years, with
all the attention this brought her, until her brother Graham was born in 1957.

Neither the ECT treatment nor Bill being at home helped lift Daisy’s depression for long. The washing line would be full of
old army blankets flapping in the breeze as Daisy’s cleaning obsession became ever more ‘manic’, as neighbours described it.
Daisy at the time had army blankets on the front-room floor to keep the carpet clean, but would frequently wash the blankets
to ensure they were also pristine. Alongside this, there was also a strong smell of bleach in the house.

Bill had not been home long, when he too appeared to be out of sorts. Local men who’d been demobbed some years earlier had
the first pickings of the few jobs that existed in the area. Despite Bill’s electronic skills and his naval records showing
he was of good character, there was nothing for him. He was a man
who had always provided for his family, and now he couldn’t. And although he remained able to laugh and joke with people he
met on the street, and was still very charming, at home he became listless and depressed.

Historically, there were often problems when men came home from the services. In the Navy, where discipline was rigid, there
was also a strong pecking order. And, as the men were all stuck on a ship together for weeks on end, there was a lot of male
bonding as the men depended on each other for their lives – it was an adrenalin-fuelled existence. That adrenalin wasn’t there
at home, and fathers like Bill found themselves at the bottom of the pecking order on their return, as their wives had become
used to running the house on their own. Just as it took time for spouses to readjust to one another when they came home on
leave, when the men returned permanently, domestic abuse was common, particularly amongst the unskilled. There was certainly
domestic violence in some homes in the Northam area, and, Daisy’s illness aside, the Letts too were finding it difficult to
adjust. They had by now been married for over a decade, but had never really lived together – until now. Clearly it was going
to take time to adjust.

Alongside this, without his uniform, Bill, like many ex-servicemen, would have felt a loss of self-esteem along with the respect
it would have automatically commanded him. Bill, however, soon rectified this situation by inventing his
own
uniform: a black French beret worn at a jaunty angle, and a button-down, khaki raincoat with his ubiquitous suit and tie
beneath – even in the hottest of weather. Everyone in the village would see Bill coming in his slightly bizarre, self-styled
uniform – albeit that his leaky shoes were stuffed with newspaper as he tramped round the area looking for work.

Despite his skills, it was many years before Bill would find permanent work. The work he was able to find in between was a
succession of short-term, low-paid jobs. When there wasn’t even
temporary work around, he and a friend, Ronnie Lloyd, set up a tent on the beach in the summer to sell Daisy and Mrs Lloyd’s
home-made cakes and sandwiches to holiday-makers. None of this would have helped Bill’s view of himself, and it wasn’t long
before he began to talk incessantly about the happy times he’d had in the Navy. ‘You should have seen the port when we laid
anchor.’ ‘The sea was clear, we could have swum for miles.’ With time on his hands, he continually complained to his wife,
‘I should have stayed in the services. There’s nothing here for me. I made a mistake.’

Of course Bill
had
sacrificed his career because of his wife’s illness, but his constantly reminding her of it didn’t help Daisy with her own
problems. Besides which, Daisy was keeping quiet about the other mistake he’d made in the Navy, which the children wouldn’t
find out about until many years hence …

Bill’s parents, still living close by, stepped in to try to help out the family when they could. But things had not become
any easier between Daisy and Bill’s mother, Bertha, over the years. Bertha had long since transferred her attentions from
her husband to her only child. When the younger, attractive Daisy came along, replacing her in her son’s affection, she, like
the evil queen in
Snow White,
became jealous. Bertha found fault with her daughter-in-law whenever she could, criticising the way she looked after the
children and spreading rumours about her in the village. And all these years later, she still disapproved of the beautiful
Daisy.

Despite the bad blood between them and the fact that Daisy had hated living with her cold in-laws, she and Bill agreed to
their eldest girl, Patsy, going to live there at different times during her childhood. Perhaps they had wanted to relieve
some of the financial pressures at home, or the overcrowding problem there, now that baby Rosie was starting to walk. Thus,
when Patsy wasn’t away at the orphanage with her sister, the little girl spent most of her time at her grandparents’, being
taken on trips to
the circus and generally indulged by them. Though Rose would have been too small to notice this, it not unnaturally made some
of the younger children envious to see their sister being spoilt with gifts of teddy bears, watches and pocket money that
they didn’t have. Yet, how Patsy truly fared here we will never know, as she died many years ago. However, other children
in Northam were told by their parents to keep away from ‘old Mr Letts’, who was not just selling his services as a gigolo
to the wealthy widows who lived in big houses on the hill, but was also rumoured to be an unhealthy person for children to
be around.

Even with Patsy moving in with her grandparents, things did not seem to be improving greatly at number 57 where, as soon as
Bill went out, Daisy would be heard disciplining the children. As a former neighbour remembered, ‘She did the hitting and
the screaming at the kids. Making them tidy their rooms all the time. One morning she made them all go out and eat their breakfasts
on the wall [at the front of the house]. She made a show of it.’

As the neighbour, a small child at the time, watched the Letts children enviously from across the road, she asked her mother:
‘Mum? Can we have breakfast outside?’

‘No,’ her concerned mother replied, ushering her away from the scene. ‘Go back in the house and sit up at the table.’

As the little girl retreated down her front path, she glanced back and noticed something different about Daisy. ‘She was black
and blue that day as they all sat there by the wall eating their bowls of cereal.’

While Bill was hitting Daisy, horrified neighbours also noticed Daisy being cruel to the older children, who were in their
early teens at the time.

As a former neighbour remembered: ‘When the girls arrived home from school she had them in the back yard checking their hair
for nits. You could hear their screams next door. She’d go out and hose them down in the back yard – there was a high
wall but you’d see her [Daisy] hosing them, and brushing their hair really hard. With all the washing and scrubbing she did,
it’s a wonder they had any skin left.’

On the rare occasion that Daisy allowed one of the girls out to play, her little friend, Gill Job, was startled by Daisy’s
reaction when they returned home afterwards.

‘Joyce was thrashed when I took her out one day to the Burrows, on the beach. We’d catch horses and ride them there on the
sand. You fell off (you just wore your knickers in those days) and would get sand and mud all over you. Joyce was running
across the beach, laughing and screaming … like she’d never been able to let off steam before. She went home with sand and
mud on her and was beaten black and blue. I wish to God I’d never taken Joyce with me that day after what happened.’

Few people, however, knew what went on inside the Letts’ house, where outward appearances were everything. And if times were
not so good for some in Prime Minister Macmillan’s brave new world, Bill still had his pride. He had been brought up in a
childhood home where everything had its place and there was a place for everything. This sense of order had been reinforced
in the services, and it was he rather than Daisy who wanted everything to be shipshape and spotless, despite their having
several young children. His home and family was the one area where he could exert some control over his life; where he had
power – and he was going to use it. Just a speck of dust on the picture rail would lead to an irrational response, and in
no time at all, Bill would fly into one of his terrifying rages where he’d lash out with his fists. Daisy had taken such terrible
beatings she probably took the children outside to eat their breakfasts on the wall that day in an effort to shame Bill into
stopping, while letting the world know what her ‘charming’ husband was really about.

Up until this point, Bill’s friend Ronnie Lloyd was the only
other person who had known the real reason why Daisy didn’t speak to the neighbours during her husband’s absences: Bill was
controlling Daisy, even when he was thousands of miles away at sea. This quiet man was in fact paranoid that his beautiful
wife was going to have an affair, as his other girlfriends had done. He’d accused her of being oversexed and beaten her into
submission with his fists and a slipper behind closed doors. He’d told her who she could speak to and who she couldn’t, and
even went after the local grocer, telling him not to serve his wife if she came into the shop (though the shopkeeper and his
wife ignored him). Bill expected Daisy to obey his rules for no other reason than he’d set them. If she broke them, he’d hit
her; if she kept them, he hit her – behind closed doors where only Rosie and her siblings would see.