Poison Pen

Robin Hood's Bay, on the rocky Yorkshire coast, is an old fishing village isolated by sea and moor. Picturesque houses climb crazily up a steep cliff. Saint Stephen's Church, at the top of the cliff, is one of the centers of community life for most of the 800 villagers. There they go for a crowded weekly calendar of services, whist drives, community sings, jumble (rummage) sales and church dances. There, since 1944, tall, sturdy Rev. Arthur Patrick has presided over his flock. Until last month, few in Robin Hood's Bay knew what a blight had been eating away at that flock for the past 20 years.

Spring Cleaning. It began in 1928 with a series of anonymous letters attacking the vicar, then Canon Desmond Lloyd Wilson, for shooting at birds. Within a few months the letters had driven him from Robin Hood's Bay. His successor, too, resigned under a barrage of anonymous scurrility. One later incumbent of Saint Stephen's got more peace of mind; his wife, without his knowledge, intercepted anonymous letters which arrived for him each week.

Parson Patrick received his first just after he had given the church a spring cleaning. "Now that you have cleaned the church," it read, "would you clean the damned filthy rotten minds of your congregation?" Patrick listened among his parishioners, soon learned that he was not the only target of the poison penman. One woman came to him and threatened to throw herself off the cliff if she got another insulting letter. A respected old villager was accused of fathering his own daughter's child. A heartbroken mother, whose baby had just died, was accused of killing the baby herself. Some thought the letters must come from a member of the church choir: caustic remarks about their singing regularly arrived for the choristers. Sample: "If you must sing, get some bird seed."

For the Best. In the tight little community, such malicious letters set people to watching their neighbors with fear and suspicion. Mrs. Arthur Streatin, wife of a retired sea captain, got a letter asking if she knew that her daughters "kept open house" for local men. "I stayed home from church for months. After all, I wasn't sure whether the culprit was sitting in the next pew." The apparent basis for the letter to Mrs. Streatin was the fact that her daughters had given an innocent party for other villagers.

Parson Patrick decided to bring the secret suffering into the open. One Sunday last month, when the time came to start his sermon, he told the worshipers: "Today you'll have a treat. I'll read you a sermon sent to me in the form of a letter. Some of your names are mentioned in it, but ... it's all for the best."

Read Them & Laugh. The letter read: "Don't you think it is about time you gave a sermon to your flock about the disgraceful scandal mongering and backbiting by members of your church, especially your warden's wife. She has not a good word for anybody who does not fall with her. She should remember that she is ... at best only a washerwoman and not too clean at that. She thinks she and her poor half-witted man own the church. . . . You poor mutt. . . . You [and your wife] are a bright couple of spiving gluttons."

"Such letters," said Patrick when he had finished reading, "have been visiting grief and pain on this village for 20 years. I've determined to put a stop to it. If you receive such letters, my advice to you is to read them, have a laugh over them, then hand them over to me."

Big Baby. The vicar's sermon, said one villager, "set the place on fire." Many a poison-pen victim, who had suffered in silence, thinking that he or she alone had been singled out for attack, rushed to the vicar with his story. Within a fortnight he had several hundred letters to take to the police. Burly Storekeeper Richard Knightly Storm boasted of having got his first 15 years ago: "You felt out in the cold if you hadn't received one." Relieved villagers gave the anonymous writer a jeering name: "The Big Baby."

For 18 days after the vicar's sermon, there were no letters. One woman, who didn't think the blight was over, predicted that they would start again with the next new moon. Last week she got one: "You are a fine one to talk about the full moon affecting anyone as you are a daft bitch whether the moon is full, new or waning. ... If the vicar wasn't so dull he would easily find out who is sending these poison letters."

The vicar, who is now pretty sure he knows who Big Baby is, is not dull, but at week's end he had still not named the poison penman of Robin Hood's Bay.

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