Skip to main content

News

Update on Clara Bauerle and the Bella in the wych elm story

  • 16th December 2016

Earlier in the year we posted a blog ‘Who put Bella in the wych elm‘ as part of our Monthly Mysteries series.  In it we hinted that the link with Clara Bauerle, the German singer and actress, was one which was still being actively explored.  We can now reveal that the researcher who was following this lead believes she has finally laid this story to rest.

Giselle Jakobs recently published a blog in which she stated that she had finally traced a copy of Clara Bauerle’s death registration.  This indicated that Clara died on 16 December 1942 from veronal poisoning in a Berlin hospital so could not be the mystery woman discovered in Hagley Wood in April 1943.

For details of Giselle’s discovery and a copy of the death registration please see her original blog post.

 

Maggie Tohill

Cataloguing Archivist

Comments are closed.

Related news


  • 19th May 2026
A lovely little limerick

For National Limerick Day, we would like to highlight perhaps our tiniest archive. It is National Limerick Day this month because it’s the 214th birthday of Edward Lear. He was the English artist, author and poet who popularised limericks in his 1846 Book of Nonsense published for children. With this in mind, we took a...

  • 16th May 2026
Hartlebury Castle Surrenders 1646

Today, 16th of May, marks 380 years exactly since the supposedly humiliating surrender of Hartlebury Castle during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (also known as the English Civil War). This event in 1646 was recorded by a single contemporary commentator, Henry Townshend of Elmely Lovett. He recorded that it was a place “which put...

  • 14th May 2026
W.P. Harper, famous football referee of Stourbridge

On 23rd April 1932, during the F.A. Cup final between Newcastle United and Arsenal, a refereeing decision would create controversy and change the result of the game. The referee, one W. P. Harper of Stourbridge, allowed an equalising goal for Newcastle that appeared to go out of play before ending in the net. Newcastle would...