Rose West: The Making of a Monster (6 page)

And, despite how it looked to the neighbours, Bill was actually the one fixated with cleanliness. He insisted on the girls’
nails and hair being inspected regularly, and soaked the carpets in bleach to kill off any germs. He had developed obsessive-compulsive
disorder (OCD) and wanted his own home even more pristine than his parents’. Fearing his wrath, Daisy constantly scrubbed
the house and the children so as not to provoke him – though, of course, if he had a mind to it, nothing would stop him beating
them. In the end, Daisy appears to have become so worn down by Bill that she simply threw in her lot with him – taking on
board his OCD and other irrational behaviours as if they were her own, as she hit the children and constantly cleaned. It
was a kind of
‘folie à deux’,
or ‘madness of two’ which is sometimes also referred to as ‘shared paranoia’. Put simply, it is where one partner takes on
the irrational ideas and behaviours of the dominant – though ironically more disturbed – partner.

This wasn’t the man Daisy thought she had married, a kind man like her father; but was instead a monster who changed from
Jekyll to Hyde in a flash. And as the neighbours might have
said – had they known – Bill had quite simply driven Daisy right round the bend. While Rosie and her siblings had two mentally
ill parents whose behaviour shaped their childhood and psychological development.

I
F ROSIE WAS A
quiet baby, she was also a well-behaved child who liked to sit and play with her dolls rather than join in with the games
of her more boisterous siblings. It hadn’t been for the want of trying, but as Rosie grew up she found it difficult to grasp
things. ‘It was frustrating trying to teach her anything and you had to show her several times. You’d be fed up by then,’
her brother Andy said. ‘My parents shouted at her to try to make it sink in.’

The little girl with long dark hair right down to her waist would irritate her siblings. ‘Come on, Rosie! Keep up! Keep up!’
they’d call to her as they hurried to get to school or run an errand, but to no avail, as Rosie always lagged behind. And
soon, kids being what they are, they nicknamed her Dozy Rosie – which was the name that her father both encouraged and played
into …

But although Rose struggled to keep up physically and intellectually, her contemporaries remember her as being polite and
always doing as she was told. There were others, however – neighbours and peers – who barely remembered her at all, as she
was so quiet as to be almost invisible. Rose probably learnt this as a way of coping, for when Bill was at home the house
was deathly quiet, and meals would be taken in silence. If the children so much as wriggled in their chairs or dared start
eating before their father, Bill’s face would contort into a terrifying expression before he lashed out at them verbally and
with his
fists. But, as Andy Letts said of his younger sister Rosie, ‘She was so quiet and obedient that Dad didn’t notice her to tell
her off.’ Instead she would sit quietly doing her sewing or knitting, which her mother had taught her.

The family were constantly walking on eggshells around Bill, even quite literally when he smashed all the eggs on the floor
in front of his hungry family: the only food they had that day. He would also spoil all the food they had by pouring salt
into it and, on one occasion, put soap in the gas cooker so that Daisy couldn’t cook hot food for herself and the children.
As soon as Bill stormed out, Daisy rushed round to the neighbours, sobbing. Mrs Cloke went round to help her clean it out
and to clean up the kitchen, where Bill had tipped the contents of the dustbin all over the floor.

As Bill continued to wreak havoc on his family, Daisy was desperate to take the children and leave him, but with no women’s
refuges at the time, and her mother seriously ill, she simply had nowhere to go. Daisy was also too ashamed to tell her family
the truth about Bill. And as he was such a well-versed ‘street angel, house devil’, who would believe her anyway when everyone
thought
she
was the problem? But as time went on, opinion began to change as Bill’s paranoia and irrational outbursts became impossible
to hide even from the neighbours. Bill had returned home early from work one day to find Daisy innocently exchanging the time
of day with other women outside the house. Flying into a rage, he punched Daisy in the face, grabbed her by the hair and dragged
her back into the house, where he continued beating her. The neighbours were so shocked they called the police. But times
were such that abuse in the home was neither uncommon nor always taken seriously; indeed, a small group of children, who watched
the incident from further along the road, had seen it in their own homes often enough too.

The three oldest girls had breaks from home at the orphanage, where Daisy no doubt hoped they might have a safe and
better life. During sporadic periods when she wasn’t depressed, Daisy did try her best to help the children lead a normal
life – to enjoy the kind of childhood she’d had herself. On rare occasions, this included allowing friends of the children
to come round to play. But even then she would be on edge, for Daisy knew if Bill found out about it, he would ‘discipline’
her and the children. Rita New, then Williams, a childhood friend of oldest girl Patsy, remembers: ‘Mrs Letts was a very kind
lady; she was lovely, and even though they were poor she made me Spam sandwiches for my tea with the girls. But as soon as
the dad was about to come home from work, I had to go home.’

Daisy felt knots in her stomach and her teeth began to chatter as the time approached for Bill to return, which pre-school
Rosie would have picked up on. The children also lived in fear of their father and, as well as abiding by his strict rules,
had to undertake duties he set them. These ‘duties’ were household chores, which he expected the school-age children to do
both before and after lessons each day. If the children didn’t wake up on time, Bill threw a bucket of icy water over them
as they slept in the bed beside young Rosie. And if the chores weren’t done to Bill’s satisfaction – if he found even so much
as a grease mark on the windowsill – he would make them clean the entire house from top to bottom all over again.

From mopping the bathroom floor to scouring the kitchen clean, this pattern of existence was like being on board ship. And
even those children too small to clean had to help with the washing and ironing. ‘You didn’t dare argue with him,’ as Andy
said. ‘One look from him would send the fear of God through you.’ As Daisy and the older children tried to ensure everything
was ‘shipshape’ so as not to provoke Bill, Rosie learnt a valuable lesson early on: to be obedient and to keep her head down
to survive.

To Rosie and her siblings who didn’t go away to school and therefore knew no different, nothing Bill did was extraordinary;
to them it was normal, while to most outsiders ‘Dad’ was still seen as the smart and charming man in the beret. And if others
thought he was charming, then it validated that view: it must be right.

In early 1959, Rosie, never having been read a bedtime story, set off for her first day at Northam Primary School, armed only
with this view of life, and where she was to remain as quiet and eager to please as she was at home. In class Rosie was said
to sit and stare at the blackboard for hours; her voice and language was still baby-like, and she continued to suck her thumb
long after the time children usually stop, obviously still needing the comfort it gave her.

Rosie did not do well academically and was held down a year at the school. This is not necessarily a measure of her intelligence,
for although Rose lacked maturity, children from troubled backgrounds often have problems concentrating at school as it has
little or no meaning in their struggle for survival. Practice at the school was such that less able pupils were made to stand
in the corner, wearing a dunce’s cap. Rose was one of those children. Even given the era, it was neither a usual nor acceptable
form of punishment for a child. The school already had a poor record for the 11+ exam, and was subject to local speculation
– it was rumoured that a particular teacher liked to touch the girls there if he could. A child with learning difficulties
was also said to have been caned there before Rosie arrived, although the slipper was the usual form of punishment for all
the pupils.

However, Rosie continued to be ‘polite’, ‘steady’ and ‘sensible’ with her teachers for the most part – slipping under the
radar here, too, while her inability to join in with her peer group left her isolated and open to being teased. Little wonder
that Rosie would either stay off school or, when she went, preferred to play with children younger than herself, or played
alone at break-time: in Rosie’s world.

Yet, although being slow at her lessons, Rose was later able to write very well, and particularly since being in prison. Her
letter as a young teenager to Fred – ‘Last night made me realise we are two people, not two soft chairs to be sat on …’ –
even shows a gift for words.

When Rosie’s baby brother Graham came along, the little girl at last found she had a playmate – even if it was at home. ‘Baby!
Mummy! Baby!’ she yelped with glee as Daisy let her help bathe and feed him. She was to do the same when her youngest brother,
Gordon, arrived three years later in 1960, when Rosie was almost seven. A few years later, this behaviour would develop into
something shockingly inappropriate and disturbing, suggesting that Rosie’s boundaries had become seriously blurred along the
way.

It is deeply ironic that Rose would demonstrate such a strong maternal instinct so young. It is possible that she enjoyed
spending her free time with her younger siblings because they were small and helpless and could neither challenge her nor
make her feel foolish. Significantly, Rose would later lose interest in her
own
babies as soon as they grew a little older and developed wills of their own. Being held back a year at school also gave Rosie
the opportunity to discover the power she had over younger children. On one occasion she was said to have gone home with a
gang of younger children from her class, pouring them imaginary cups of tea on the grass verge outside her house.

If things were beginning to pick up for Rosie at this time, by the mid to late 1950s they were also improving for the rest
of the family, when Bill found full-time work at last, at Bernard Smith’s TV repair shop in nearby Barnstaple. With his background
in electronic engineering, the job was ideal for Bill, who serviced the televisions and went round to people’s homes to install
them. The family had a decent income at last, and Bill was given a works’ van to drive around in. As television was such a
new and glamorous phenomenon at the time, it also gave Bill
status in the village. This was important to Bill, who liked to brag of his achievements, to mark himself out as superior
to others in the village. That said, the neighbours had already begun to notice all was not quite right with Bill, who at
times seemed almost delusional.

Having taken to digging potholes in his back garden for no apparent reason after work, he then began digging a trench to create
a ha-ha. These are the deep ditches commonly found at stately homes, which divide the formal gardens from the rest of the
grounds – but Bill was putting one in the tiny front garden of his council house. As a former neighbour remembered, ‘He had
to fill the ditch in eventually, as there was mud everywhere. But he never did the back garden where they [the kids] played,
it was a mess.’

But if Bill had delusions of grandeur, he could still charm the ladies, and he is alleged to have had an affair with the wife
of a respected small businessman while on his rounds in the area. Bill’s relationship with his own wife continued after the
affair petered out, although Daisy might well have wished that her husband had run off with another woman; for, as she later
told her family, she had by now come to hate Bill. And her feelings towards him would not change, even after his death.

Bill, on the other hand, was unconcerned about Daisy, although he did harbour a soft spot closer to home …

T
HE EXPERIENCE OF EVERY
child growing up in the same household is different, and this was the case with the Letts children. As Rosie’s older brother,
Andy, was growing up, his father was extremely cruel to him. Bill saw his first-born son as competition: a threat to his own
masculinity in a house hitherto full of women, so that no matter what Andy did to try to please Bill or to seek his approval,
he never could. Andy, like Rose, had been brought up with his father at home from day one after his birth. And with no other
experience of life at this time other than at Morwenna Park Road, Andy spent many years blaming himself for his father’s violent
outbursts, believing that he had to be a better son to make things right. The younger boys, Graham and Gordon, when they came
along, were also savagely beaten by their father, and Bill also attacked Joyce and Patsy. But for Rosie and her sister Glenys,
three years her senior, the story was different.

While Daisy did whatever she could to stop Bill beating Andy if the chores weren’t up to scratch, Rosie and Glenys were often
spared doing them. Glenys was away at ‘naval school’ between the age of 6 and 8, together with her big sisters, but when she
came home, Bill allowed her to sit in the bedroom reading her comics while the other children did the work around the house.
Bill knew Glenys was bright and she was looked on as the brains of the family, later going to night school and working at
GCHQ, the Government Communications Headquarters in
Cheltenham. Joyce’s role was that of the ‘little mother’ of the house, a mini-Daisy doing the washing and ironing and helping
with the children, while Patsy went to live with their grandparents. Soon after Rosie started school, she too was given her
share of the chores to get on with. But Rosie was as slow to do these as everything else, and whined in her babyish voice
(which she retained as an adult). To spare her their father’s wrath when he got home, the other children did her chores for
her. But then, to her siblings’ amazement, Bill began allowing her to duck out of doing them altogether.