John Hervey, the 7th Marquess of Bristol ... decadence and self-destruction.

 The Satanic Marquess: She flushed three kilos of his cocaine away, but the wife of John Hervey still couldn't save him from self-destruction

By MARCUS SCRIVEN

UPDATED: 08:39 GMT, 16 November 2009 / http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1228109/The-Satanic-Marquess-She-flushed-kilos-cocaine-away-wife-John-Hervey-save-self-destruction.html

To the world at large, he was a man with everything. But the real life of John Hervey, the 7th Marquess of Bristol, was one of chronic addiction - to sex, drugs and alcohol. In the second part of our riches-to-rags tale, his friends describe how they looked on helplessly as his self-destructive streak spiralled out of control - crashing his helicopter because he ignored the fiuel gauge, or driving at 140mph on the hard shoulder of a motorway. His inevitable demise caused much rueful shaking of heads among acquaintances, but - perhaps surprisingly in view of his appalling behaviour - also real sorrow among employees and locals ...

The guest list was as glittering as one might expect for the wedding of 29-year-old John Hervey, one of Britain's most eligible and flamboyant bachelors.

Eighties icons Bryan Ferry and Wayne Sleep mingled with John's society friends, Jasper Guinness and Dai Llewellyn among them, plus a selection of his former lovers - both male and female. George Melly and Joe Loss led the music.

This was, without doubt, going to be an occasion to remember - although not, perhaps, in the way the young bride, Francesca Fisher, had hoped.

The wedding ceremony earlier in the day had passed off uneventfully; the evening would add another lurid chapter to John's extraordinary reputation - even if memories differ as to what exactly happened as the 400 guests began to drift away from Ickworth, John's spectacular Suffolk mansion, towards the sanctuary of bed.

One version of events suggests that, at around 3am, the groom and what one guest calls his 'inner circle' had migrated to his private quarters in the east wing of the house - without the bride - for some unspecified purpose.

Francesca herself recalled, 20 years later, that after searching frantically for her new husband in the small hours of the morning she had finally tracked him down to an upstairs room, where she found him inhaling cocaine with a group of friends.

One of John's former male lovers remembers a slightly different sequence. In the early hours, he says, he and another close friend had joined John in the morning room. John locked the door behind them.

There they remained, talking; there were no drugs. Eventually they heard the door being thumped. Francesca appeared. John was the first to speak. He kept it brief. 'F*** off,' he had said.

'I want to go to bed now, John,' said his bride.

'Go to bed then,' he replied.

'John, it's my wedding night,' Francesca had protested.

'I love these two more than I'll ever love you,' John cackled - a sound his former lover had heard so often before. Then there were just two other sounds - Francesca crying and her retreating footsteps.

Perhaps the omens had been clear during John's stag weekend a week earlier. The groom-to-be had, it was said, spent around half an hour in his private helicopter hovering above Ickworth in the company of a picturesque young man - thereafter assuring his friends that this would be 'absolutely the last time' that he would go in for 'that kind of thing'.

It was not to be, however. Neither did John - even after he became the Marquess of Bristol on his father Victor's death in 1985 - find the inner strength to be able to conquer the demons of drink and drug abuse that had plagued him for years, as he had vowed to do.

Within two years, the marriage was over. Yet John's friend Tim von Halle remembers Francesca to this day as 'a great woman' - the person who 'almost turned John' around.

'I can remember her going through rooms [at Ickworth] chucking out drugs and all sorts of things,' says the wife of another of John's friends.

Francesca herself recalls an especially productive sweep which ended with her putting 'three kilos of cocaine down the loo”.

After his wedding, John had initially appeared to be in better shape, says one friend, 'always very polite, correct. Arguably, that was his facade'.

But in other company, cracks had begun to appear. He was now beginning to attract a new strain of hanger-on in addition to his usual entourage: those craving a fix of his notoriety.

Francesca particularly remembers 'a little guy with black hair, called The Rat, and his sidekick, Wiggy'. This pair were occasionally joined by another friend, Paddy McNally, at whose Verbier residence Francesca endured a difficult weekend.

'All they talked about was Fergie [Sarah Ferguson] because she was going out with Andy [Prince Andrew],' says Francesca.

'It was such a big deal that Paddy had been her previous boyfriend.'

John, it seems, took against McNally's house in some way - 'he ripped it apart, and then we left' reports Francesca.

But he continued to see his new circle of friends in London, particularly over lunch at one Chelsea restaurant from where he would return to his young bride 'coked up'.

Despite these lapses, she knew her husband was fighting a battle he was desperate not to lose.

In an interview shortly before his wedding, he spoke of his desire to have children, and of his wish that they should have a happier, more conventional upbringing than his own.

'I was acutely aware,' John explained, 'that when I was growing up my father was quite old and was never able to do any of the things with me that I'd like to have done as a child.'

Randle Siddeley, a friend from Suffolk, says that, for once, John had erred on the side of understatement. 'John could never do anything right,' he says. 'His father was forever castigating him, always coming down on him from a great height, just persecuting him.'

He recalls, for example, John receiving 'the bollocking of a lifetime' one Sunday lunchtime, while the guests in the Ickworth dining room sat in appalled silence.

'Victor just humiliated John in front of everybody,' he says. 'It was cruelty personified.'

'He wasn't really brought up by anybody - staff excepted,' says Imogen von Halle. 'For a lot of the time, he brought himself up.'

But by the mid-1980s John had convinced himself that he was ready for parenthood. Francesca, however, was not - at least not until confident that John had got the better of his addictions.

'I wanted him to clean up for a few months,' is how she puts it. As long as John was at Ickworth, that seemed possible.

He was fine the first year,' she says. 'It was when he went back to New York to sell his house there that everything got really out of control.'

She did not accompany him. 'He was only going for a few days, but then he stayed quite a long time: long enough to do himself a lot of harm. A major binge.'

Nearly 20 years later, she reflected that she had been lucky to have John 'on pretty good form' for as long as she had, a time when she felt loved and happy. She reiterates the point today, describing John as 'amazing'.

Without her, John's life speedily unravelled. On October 6, 1988, John was jailed for a year for possession and importation of drugs. He emerged on April 28, 1989, released early for good behaviour, apparently unscathed.

Announcing that he had made £4 million 'buying and selling property in the North of England' while inside, he said it felt fantastic to be free and when asked what he had learned about drugs, he replied: 'Don't carry them on your person.'

By now John was entering the final stage of his brief and tragic journey.

By then, say friends, it was nothing out of the ordinary to find him banging against the roof of their cars with the undercarriage of his helicopter. 'You just accepted it,' says one. 'That was normal.'

It was normal, too, that John should feast on cocaine, grab a shotgun and repeatedly fire it into the air while howling abuse at those members of the public who had paid to visit Ickworth's gardens ('****ING PEASANTS, ****ING NATIONAL TRUST'), and just as normal that those lunching with him should not bat an eyelid.

His friend Henry Wodehouse describes how as a 17-year-old he attended a never-to- be-forgotten shooting weekend at Ickworth.

In the first drive after an 11 o'clock break for alcohol, he says, John had swung his gun enthusiastically at a hare, fired and instead hit Wodehouse just below the right knee, 'four pieces of shot, like four hornet stings'.

'Bugger, missed it,' John said.

'No, you bloody didn't. You got me instead.'

'Oh, sorry, old boy, better luck next time.'

Fizzing with pain and rage - but aware that John, still drunk from the previous night, was past the point of rational communication - Wodehouse spent the remaining three drives 20 yards behind the line of guns, out of immediate danger.

Many years on, such reckless behaviour was eating away at him. It seemed normal that John's movements should become jerkier as his alcoholism and addictions caught up with him, making 'his appearance sinister, his hair longer and oilier'.

It seemed normal that he should have 'five suits made each week in materials more suited to soft furnishings'; and that he should entertain 'frantically, seven days a week, as though he could not bear his own company'.

It became normal that disdain for the fuel gauge should send his Hughes 500 helicopter plummeting from the sky into a ploughed field, as it did with John's secretary Angela Barry on board: ('Where's the ****ing telephone?' shrieked John on reaching the nearest farmhouse, through which he stamped mud, oblivious of its owners); normal that a visitor (George Milford Haven) should be greeted by the news that John had blown the door off the fridge the night before (courtesy of the shotgun once more); normal that he should habitually smash up the furniture at Ickworth, some of it priceless; normal, too, that he should become the object of police attention and should, in consequence, suffer periodic seclusion in clinics and a second custodial sentence in 1993.

A terrible toll was being taken on his body. His nose, remembered his friend Nick Ashley, appeared 'to have assumed a life of its own' and his hands had become 'gnarled and twisted'.

His body clock adhered to a nocturnal pattern or no pattern at all. What nobody knew was that in 1986, the year his marriage fell apart, he had been told that he was seriously ill.

Like many promiscuous men of that era, he had contracted HIV Aids - though it was never publicly acknowledged.

'He was too proud to talk about it,' says Nick Ashley, who would not learn of the diagnosis until much later.

'I think a lot of the drug-taking, the massive drug-taking, was denial,' says another friend, James Whitby.

A third reflects that John 'knew he was not long for this world'.

Cocaine and heroin were no longer a pleasure but had mutated into crutch and cradle, life becoming insupportable without them. 'He was usually in bed, asleep or with cold turkey; he just didn't want to be bothered,' remembers Whitby.

John's driving had always been erratic. Roger Lane-Smith, John's solicitor, recalls how over the years he had often received urgent phone calls from John seeking advice. 'He was always in trouble,' says Lane- Smith. 'He rang one day and said: "I've just had an incident with the Ferrari." '

The solicitor sought elaboration.

'Oh, I was coming up the M11,' said John, 'and there was a lot of traffic in front of me, and I got very, very irritated with all this traffic. I floored the accelerator, I just overtook everything, must have got up to 140 mph, then the police stopped me.'

Lane-Smith had heard worse. 'That's bad, John, but you know ...' he began.

'You don't understand,' John explained. 'I was on the hard shoulder.'

Negotiating gridlocked traffic via the hard shoulder at twice the legal speed limit had obvious appeal, but even this dimmed in comparison with the special challenge that unfailingly greeted John at Ickworth, once the cattle grid had been crossed and the National Trust's 20mph signs confronted.

A friend recalls the experience: 'The drive at Ickworth - he'd do 100mph with me in the car, screaming. In a Ferrari. This was during the day, with National Trust visitors wandering around, not at 4am. People with dogs and children. He was completely bonkers a lot of the time. The more you screamed, the more he liked it.'

Another friend recalls the triumphal phrase habitually uttered after each return to Ickworth: 'I did the last stretch at 120mph.'

Speeding, particularly when taken to potentially suicidal or homicidal extremes, was a cause for satisfaction, a reminder to himself, and a demonstration to others, that rules were for little people.

By the 1990s - and when not banned from the road - John's driving took on a terrifying new dimension, especially when at the wheel of his Aston Martin, which had been 'tweaked' by Formula 1 specialist Cosworth.

'Every time he had a rush of heroin, the car would slow down from 180mph to 30mph; every time the coke dribbled down the back of his nose, he went from 30mph to 180mph,' says James Whitby.

'You felt you were in a sort of steam catapult on an aircraft carrier, permanently being pulled backwards and forwards.'

In his helicopter, a delay followed each lift-off while John paused for cocaine (snorted off his flight map), a stimulus thereafter regularly supplemented by shots of vodka Collins.

In 1998 John sold the remaining lease on the east wing of Ickworth to the National Trust, reportedly for just under £100,000. The Trust was now outright owner of the whole property. 'I want a totally financially hassle-free life,' John explained.

It was not to last long. His fortune dissipated and his body ravaged by disease, he died on January 9, 1999, surrounded by long-time members of his staff, in whom he had inspired extraordinary levels of devotion.

Local coroner Bill Walrond announced that John's system had contained a cocktail of legal drugs and cocaine, leading to multiple organ failure.

Recording a verdict of 'dependence on drugs', he said: 'This is a particularly tragic case. But I suspect that Lord Bristol is as deserving of sympathy as he is of censure.'

Many of the residents of his village would agree. At the time of John's death, one of them, a retired bank manager and former church warden, then in his 90s, spoke to the village's new rector, Brian Raistrick.

'If you'd known how he was treated as a child, how he was expected to behave as a child, you would understand,' he said.

It was a sentiment, Raistrick learned, shared by all 'who had known John for years, from childhood, not his friends, but ordinary people'.

When John's will was published, his beloved half-brother George issued a brief statement to the Press.

'We all know he was quite a flamboyant character and he pretty much lived the way he wanted to,' it read.

'He made the most of his life - he packed more in his 44 years than most people do in their whole lives.'

Others close to John disagree with this generous and loving verdict. In the words of John Knight, who had known the family for 50 years, the tragically early death had been 'a dreadful, wicked waste: something that should not be'.

It seems that John himself had understood something of this. 'You can buy something that is self-gratification,' he had once said poignantly to an interviewer. 'But self-gratification does not last long enough and it does not turn into happiness.'

But enlightenment had come too late.

Extracted from Splendour & Squalor: The Decline And Fall Of Three Aristocratic Dynasties by Marcus Scriven, published by Atlantic Books on December 1

 The end of the peer

At 16, he inherited £1m. At 21, another £4m, a sheep station in Australia and four oil wells. But by 44, consumed by his insatiable appetite for alcohol, drugs and rent boys, he was dead. He'd blown £30m. So why did flamboyant aristocrat John Jermyn, seventh Marquess of Bristol, devote his life so spectacularly to self-destruction, asks Anthony Haden-Guest

Anthony Haden-Guest

The Observer, Sunday 22 January 2006 / http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2006/jan/22/features.magazine37

The driver taking me to Ickworth from Bury St Edmunds station has only jolly memories of John Hervey, the seventh Marquess of Bristol. 'We would pick him up at half past one or two in the morning. He would just get in. He didn't need to say where he was going,' he says. 'He was very funny. Even when he'd had one or two. It's a £10 or £12 ride. He would hand over £50 and say keep the change. He was a good bloke.' He says his mother had worked at the house, so had seen Hervey up close, and she had liked him, too.

At our destination, a group of local journalists is assembled. This Palladian space station of a country house was built in 1795 for Frederick Bristol, the wildly eccentric Earl Bishop, and this tour is to show off the National Trust development which - I quote the release - 'will provide fantastic visitor facilities, including a new shop and restaurant, interpretation about the Hervey family and a stunning venue for functions, weddings, conferences and special events'.

It is a mild, drizzly day, squelchy underfoot. All around is the great park with sheep as close to the ground as silver fridge magnets, symmetrical oaks, a blasted tree beside the drive.

The interior is minimalist. 'We haven't tried to do pastiche. We haven't done country house,' Richard Hill, the project manager, says, as he conducts us around. 'This is what used to be - and still will be - the Orangery... behind this wall is a new hibernaculum for the bats ... '

It is one Brideshead moment after another.

I feel like saying, 'I have been here before,' but keep my trap shut and continue on the tour.

It was Cristina Zilkha, the singer, and sharp-tongued lyricist, who introduced me to John Jermyn, as he then was, and as his friends would always call him. It was in Manhattan at the end of the Seventies. She took me to a lunch he was giving at 21, the club on 53rd Street. He was pink, tall, sleek, in a green velvet suit, and crackled with an odd mix of watchfulness and obstreperous confidence. I liked the over-the-topness. Viscount Jermyn indeed seemed a handy addition to the Brit pack - who, according to Manhattan lore, could hardly be cajoled into paying for a lunch, let alone giving one - then part of the European wave swamping New York.

On future occasions Jermyn would frequently be wearing a coronet tiepin of cartoony size, something you might expect to find in a fancy Christmas cracker.

Jermyn was, in short, a throwback to a time before aristocrats had taken to disguising themselves as middle class, and could be as flashy, overbearing and whimsical as any oligarch today. Even in Disco Manhattan he stood out. A cobblestone street led to his townhouse, which looked out on to the East River, and it was typical of the tales he cultivated around himself that he'd claim that watching jumpers was a favourite diversion. He was a master of the cutting line, the heartless anecdote. He was gay, but not camp, and the friends with whom he seemed most comfortable were straight.

Jermyn was an excellent host and his small get-togethers were remarkable, both for the guests - I ran into Mick Jagger there, the Andy Warhol entourage, le tout Eurotrash - and for the provisions. Even in the Studio 54 VIP basement, drugs would tend to be consumed in small, cliquish groups. Here, cocaine and heroin were catered like flowers. Jermyn, in short, was a man of huge appetites, apparently under control. It seemed a rare working model of excess.

In all this Jermyn was living up to a family history - that history of which the National Trust promises an 'interpretation' - which is as darkly extravagant as any. Lady Mary Wortley Montague, the bluestocking wit, famously observed: 'The world consists of men, women and Herveys.' John, Lord Hervey, son of the first marquess, is merely the best known, thanks to being Alexander Pope's target as 'Sporus':

'Satire or sense alas! Can Sporus feel?

Who breaks a Butterfly upon a Wheel?

Yet let me flap this Bug with gilded wings

This painted Child of Dirt that stinks and stings.

The sexuality of Sporus also preoccupied Pope:

'Fop at the Toilet, Flatt'rer at the Board,

Now trips a Lady, and now struts a Lord.'

Jermyn would blame a family disposition to depression - he called it 'bad blood' - when things began tumbling out of control. He had come into £4m when he was 21 and inherited 16,000 acres of farmland and woods in three counties. He was at one time perhaps worth as much as £30m. In 1999, when he died of 'multiple organ failure' at the age of 44, on drugs to assuage an insatiable neediness, everything had gone up, more or less literally, in smoke.

It would be facile, though, to see Jermyn purely in terms of his whole family, of which the two kickiest current members are his younger mediagenic half-sisters, Lady Victoria Hervey, who appeared on the reality TV show The Farm, and her younger sister, Lady Isabella, who did her reality stint on Celebrity Love Island. His relationship with his father seems more relevant.

A handsome sociopath, Victor Hervey was briefly a career criminal. He and two confederates collaborated with Soho professionals on a couple of jewel robberies. According to the Daily Mirror, the July 1939 trial was attended by 'expensively gowned Mayfair women, some wearing dark glasses and heavy veils'. Victor, then 23, and the nephew of the fifth Marquess, got three years. The court recorder observed: 'The way of the amateur criminal is hard. But the way of the professional is disastrous.'

Victor Hervey did his time in Brixton, Wormwood Scrubs, Maidstone and Camp Hill on the Isle of Wight, getting a year off for good behaviour. This is positively the last good behaviour that was to be attributed to him. He treated his son and heir with indifference and contempt. 'John had an unhappy childhood,' says a close friend, Patrick Donovan. 'His father was ghastly to him,' says Robin Hurlstone, a former lover.

Hurlstone says Victor sent his son a telegram to announce he was marrying his secretary, Yvonne, a woman his son loathed. It read: 'I hope you are happy.'

'He hurled a glass,' Hurlstone says.

After Jermyn's death, the Marquess of Blandford, who knew him from Harrow, told a reporter: 'Victor created the monster that John became.'

Ickworth had been surrendered to the National

Trust in lieu of death duties in 1956, when Jermyn was two, and at the insistence of his grandfather's widow, who had forebodings of its fate. The deal was that the family got to occupy the East Wing. Jermyn went to Harrow, where he modelled himself on Oscar Wilde, inherited a million at 16 and was soon drinking half a bottle of vodka a day. After Harrow, he went to work though. He took over a garage on Fulham Broadway, set to renovating classic cars and was shortly doing well enough to focus on houses. He had a sharp business brain.

In 1975, Victor Hervey put a tranche of the Ickworth goods and chattels on the market and moved to Monte Carlo, a tax exile. Jermyn moved into the East Wing and bought back the furniture. At 21 he came into £4m, plus a sheep station in Australia and four oil wells in Louisiana. He also entered upon a grown-up liaison. 'I was in the same house as his brother Nicholas at Eton,' Hurlstone says. 'He looked at me and told Nicholas: he's the one I want. I was 18. He was 21.'

Soon Jermyn followed his father into tax exile in Monte Carlo, but found it dreary and moved to Paris. To convince the tax authorities that he was doing his time in the principality he'd send Tom Foley, his manservant, down to switch the lights off and on, and to use the telephone. Patrick Donovan first met him at the racing event, the Arc de Triomphe: 'There was this chap standing in front of me. He had long fair hair ... a shiny suit ... patent-leather shoes ... a coronet stickpin ... he looked like a used-car salesman.' They bonded anyway. Sebastian Taylor, another friend, a backgammon player turned commodities trader, says, 'John wanted to be thought of as a used-car dealer. It turned him on. He was Byronic in the sense that Byron hung around with boxers and street people. He loved low-life.'

Jermyn took a flat in the Rue de Bellechasse, installed trompe l'oeil paintings by a fashionable muralist, and shelves of books. 'Some of them were quite good,' Donovan says, but found they had been bought by the yard by George Renwick, a decorator of the time. 'John had no interest in art. He never read a book,' Donovan says.

Hurlstone believes that it was in Paris that the rot began to set in. 'He was a boy who craved attention. He had this Byronic aura. There was a sense of danger,' he says. 'He kept his foot down hard on the self-destruct pedal. Everything began to go out of control. It was horrible for his friends to watch. But there was nothing one could do.' Other furnishings in the Rue de Bellechasse included a four-poster bed above which hung a heavy, gilt-wood coronet. Jermyn dearly loved coronets and coats of arms and plastered his - a snow leopard - wherever it took his fancy, which was everywhere. He would boast that this particular coronet once toppled when he was hard at it, nearly squashing a rent boy.

Manhattan in the Studio 54 era was the next obvious destination and intimates say that it was here that Jermyn segued from alcohol and cocaine into heroin and freebasing. These began to affect his judgment. I had written a piece for New York magazine about New Yorkers who had constructed small working aircraft in their apartments. Jermyn was particularly intrigued by one fellow who had constructed a pilotless drone. He was fascinated by the fact that it would fly below the radar and wanted to meet the plane-maker. I procrastinated. It didn't happen.

On 19 May 1983, Jermyn was arrested at seven in the morning, for trafficking in $4m worth of heroin. Actually, Jermyn's real offence had been living high with no visible means of support. He hired Thomas Puccio, the lawyer who had previously represented Claus von Bulow. Charges were reduced to a misdemeanour. But it had cost Jermyn a cool million and Monaco had dropped him like a hot coal.

He returned to Ickworth. And a new life. Cleaning up, marriage, an heir.

Francesca, the daughter of Douglas Fisher, a Chelsea property developer, met Jermyn when a friend, Mark Cecil, took her to Ickworth for the weekend. Francesca Fisher was elfin. 'She doesn't arrive. She alights,' says a friend, Aoife O'Brien.

Jermyn had just come back from spending time with Christina Onassis. 'Christina wanted to marry him,' Francesca says. 'That was the rumour. He couldn't handle that one. He always used to laugh about that.' The Onassis union, supposedly the brainchild of the Argentinian polo player Luis Basualdo, never came close to gelling. But Francesca had caught Jermyn's eye. 'Apparently, after I left he told his accountant, "I'm going to marry that girl,"' she says.

In September 1984, a week before Jermyn's 30th birthday, they were married at Ickworth. She was 20.

Francesca found herself alone on their wedding night. She found him freebasing with his intimates. One of them tells me simply, 'I don't remember a thing.'

The two were in love, though. At first things went well. The ogreish Victor died the following year and Jermyn was now the seventh marquess. He also persevered at something that didn't come easy: unstimulated contentment.

'I was lucky to have him on pretty good form for the first two years,' Francesca says. 'But after that I was pretty glad not to be around.'

What went wrong?

One close friend speculates that Jermyn was despairing of parenthood. Then he got an offer on his New York house.

'He went back to sell the house and he went on this massive binge. He didn't know how to stop. And that was when he got involved with ... I don't know what. A lot of rent boys,' Francesca says. One friend remembers Jermyn showing him the cover of a porn cassette, calling the director, and having the star flown up from Los Angeles. 'He liked fresh-faced all-American boys in chinos,' the friend says. Not just all-Americans. Toby Young, the journalist, recalls Jermyn hitting on him at the Cafe de Paris. 'I had all my hair then,' Young says, wistfully.

Francesca walked out of Jermyn's life with the art dealer, Roberto Shorto.

At Ickworth, I sensed a new extravagance in his demeanour. His moods were volatile, he was reckless at the wheel of a car. And apparently at the controls of his helicopter. 'He was an inspired pilot. I would let him fly me any time,' a close friend says. 'He couldn't do radar, though. He would steer by an AA map on his knees, while snorting coke off the map. And he would order that all the lights at Ickworth be turned on when he was getting back.'

Sebastian Taylor says: 'He didn't have fuel at Ickworth so he bought an army-surplus tanker, which sat there, full of fuel. And he used to go from Ickworth to see his mother, who was in Newmarket, for Sunday lunch. He would get in his helicopter and use it just like that.

'Once, after a major bender, he was completely fucked up, he had taken everything. It was Sunday, he went out to his helicopter, he didn't bother to check anything, he got into it and just went straight up. He didn't notice that there were clouds. And once you're in the clouds you're fucked. You can't see anything, you're completely disoriented. So he went straight up and came out at the top. There he was, sitting in a helicopter with a blanket of white puffy clouds beneath him.

'Most people would be dead after this,' Taylor says. 'He said he looked around, put it on auto-pilot. He had a cocktail shaker in the cockpit, so he shook himself a Bloody Mary, had a couple of lines of coke and called the control tower in Cambridge. And somehow he came down, going sideways at 150mph and, without crashing into the control tower, he landed.'

But this luck had begun to run out. The chronology turns to a morbid drumbeat.

In 1986, a friend, Andy Pierce, who had been trying to break a heroin habit, and who was staying with Jermyn at a rented villa in Porto Ercole in Tuscany, fell and killed himself. A Sunday Times headline read: 'Marquess linked to socialite "murder"'.

Nothing came of this, but what had seemed colourful excesses became increasingly dark-toned. The hybrid, half-shy, half-peacock was becoming wholly unbridled. He claimed he had enjoyed 2,000 of the rent boys he called 'twinkies'.

In 1986, a close friend tells me, he learned that he had contracted Aids. His behaviour started to become increasingly aberrant. 'It was then that he started doing those things like shooting at punts,' the friend says.

In 1988 the Jersey police found 13g of coke in his helicopter at St Helier. He did seven months in the island jail, La Moye. So now two Herveys had been jugged.

In 1991, he was deported from Australia. In December 1992, he got 10 months for possession of narcotics. It was noted in court that he had burned through £7m in 10 years. In May 1994, he was released from Downside Open Prison after serving five months. In June he started selling up.

Nick Ashley, a close friend, who had the title of estate manager, says: 'For four years I was presiding over a daily fire-sale. I used to think about the first Hervey arriving on this land in 1475. And how in a way it was my duty to see that the Herveys stayed here for another 500 years.'

But everything was melting. The goods and chattels went for £2.5m, and 2,300 acres of farmlands and woods for £3.5m. That same year, the National Trust started trying to evict him from the East Wing, citing his crazy driving and his two out-of-control Irish wolfhounds. His friends were also melting away from a house now nicknamed 'Sickworth'. The last house parties would be composed of 'twinkies', mostly with a whiff of the street. Finally, he sold off what was left of his lease to the National Trust for £100,000. In June 1996, he left the house for the last time.

'I was there the last day,' Nick Ashley says. 'It was a Friday. The sale was on Tuesday and Wednesday. Sotheby's had people everywhere, running cables, putting up marquees. There was a bloke at the bottom of the steps. I think he was wearing a Sotheby's smock. He was eating a banana.

'John said, "Can you ask Dalmeny to tell that man not to eat his lunch outside my house?" Lord Dalmeny being the Sotheby's grand panjandrum.

'It was amazing the way that John could simply blot out unpleasantness,' Ashley says. 'I didn't see him after 1996. I was the estate manager. And there was no more estate to manage.'

I can no longer remember precisely when John Jermyn last telephoned, or why. I was in London and went around to see him in a house off Eaton Square. He was less ebullient, but didn't seem in noticeably poor shape. The place was in no way down-at-heel, but he was complaining about money. A first. At least, to me.

I spotted an oblong Warhol on one of the shelves, a small painting of the sort Andy would sometimes present to people whose company he valued: a silkscreen of a dollar bill. I picked it up and noticed a few prick-holes. Jermyn said carelessly that he sometimes threw darts at it. He was no aesthete. I suggested that he sell it, and called Sotheby's for a rough valuation: $20,000. So I took it back to New York where a dealer handled the sale.

I would sometimes call Jermyn on subsequent visits. He would sound frail, distant. It was said that he had become reclusive, that he was dying, that he was resting up in the Bahamas, that his rooms were filled with hi-tech security, including camera surveillance, and that he would order his drugs on multiple, constantly charged mobile phones. 'He was lost in coke paranoia,' says a friend.

He was said to be thin, stooping, aged, walking with a stick.

He died on 10 January 1999 at Little Horringer Hall, once part of his estate. From there you can see the dome of Ickworth.

He left most of his estate to his companion of 11 years, James Whitby, and £25,000 to his chauffeur. The loyal Foley also got £25,000 or 'repayment of his mortgage, whichever the greater'.

Lady Isabella, Lady Victoria and the eighth Marquess, his half-brother, were left little or nothing.

There was just £5,000 in the estate. This was soon engulfed by expenses. The will was perhaps John Jermyn's last folly.

 Ickworth House is a country house near Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, England. It is a neoclassical building set in parkland.

The house built between 1795 and 1829, was formerly the chief dwelling of an estate owned by the Hervey family, later Marquesses of Bristol, since 1467. The building was the creation of Frederick Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry who commissioned the Italian architect Asprucci to design him a classical villa in the Suffolk countryside. The Earl died in 1803, leaving the completion of house to his successor.

In 1956, the house, park, and a large endowment were given to the National Trust in lieu of death duties. As part of the handover agreement, a 99-year lease on the 60-room East Wing was given to the Marquess of Bristol. However, in 1998 the 7th Marquess of Bristol sold the remaining lease on the East Wing to the National Trust. This wing is now a 27-bedroom hotel.

The 7th Lord Bristol sold the remaining lease of Ickworth back to the National Trust in 1998. He was succeeded by his half-brother Frederick William Augustus Hervey, 8th Marquess of Bristol (born 19 October 1979). The National Trust refused to sell the remaining lease term back to the 8th Marquess, thereby contravening the Letter of Wishes which states that the head of the family should always be offered whatever accommodation he chooses at Ickworth.

The family's once private East Wing is now run as The Ickworth Hotel and apartments on a lease from the National Trust. The apartments are in Dower House which is in the grounds.[2]

The West Wing at Ickworth House went uncompleted until 2006, when a joint partnership between the National Trust and Sodexo Prestige led to its renovation and opening as a centre for conferences and events. The first wedding in the property's history took place in 2006.

Ickworth House, the ground floor. 1: Library; 2: Drawing Room; 3: Dining Room; 4:Entrance and (inner) Staircase Hall; 5:Smoking Room; 6:Pompeian room; 7: Orangery & (unfinished) West Wing; 8: East (Family) Wing; 9: Portico; 10: Topiary Garden.

« Paris 1900, la Ville spectacle » / 2 Avril - 17 Août ... à Paris, naturellement ...

Monet, cabaret and absinthe: Paris yearns for 'la belle époque'

French national confidence is in sharp decline – but Paris 1900, an exhibition at the Petit Palais devoted to the capital's golden age, might reclaim some pride

Kim Willsher in Paris

The Observer, Saturday 15 February 2014 / http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/15/paris-1900-belle-epoque-exhibition-petit-palais

It is 1900 in Paris and the "city of light" is at its most glittering. The "long depression" of the late 19th century is over, the horrors of the Great War are yet to come and la belle époque – as it would come to be known – is in full swing.

Fauré, Saint Saëns, Debussy and Ravel are making music; Rodin is working on The Thinker. Renoir, Monet, Cézanne, Pissarro and Degas are busy painting scenes depicting everyday life in the city; Pablo Picasso, recently arrived from Spain, is about to embark on his Blue Period.

By day, the Dreyfus affair still divides France and throws up new political movements. By night, the cabarets of Pigalle entertain absinthe drinkers and card players and Sarah Bernhardt captures hearts in the short "talking movie" Le Duel d'Hamlet.

Emile Zola is writing Travail (published the following year when his compatriot, Sully Prudhomme, was to win the first Nobel prize for literature) but has turned his hand to photographing the Universal Exhibition, the event that will capture the spirit of the new century and France's idea of itself as the cultural, innovative and inspiring centre of the new world. It is a period of peace and prosperity; France is confident, optimistic and looking outward on a sizeable empire (second only to Britain's).

This is still the city many foreigners imagine when they think of Paris. But it is a far cry from Paris 2014. The "temporary" Eiffel Tower, a relative novelty in 1900, may still be standing. There is peace and a certain prosperity in the Haussmann boulevards of chic arrondissements with their designer shops and Michelin-starred restaurants. But France is morose, inward looking, pessimistic by nature, unsure of itself and so lacking in confidence that even a teasing, if unflattering, photograph of its president on the front page of the Guardian can cause a national trauma and accusations of "le French bashing".

Enter Christophe Leribault, 49, the energetic new director of the Petit Palais and the man behind a new exhibition that will take the French capital back to its glorious past. Who? Where? Leribault is not a household name, even in France, and Le Petit Palais, officially the Paris Museum of Fine Arts, is only marginally so.

The museum, a stunning edifice built on the right bank of the Seine in 1900, is, as its name would suggest, overshadowed by its big sister next door, Le Grand Palais. Leribault, described by colleagues as looking like an "eternal adolescent", arrived at Le Petit Palais a year ago and decided that the very select and specific exhibitions it had organised until then were not going to put it on the tourist map, despite its location yards from the Champs Elysées.

The Paris 1900 exhibition, which will run from 2 April to 17 August, is the culmination of Leribault's efforts to get the museum noticed at home and abroad. This week he will travel to London to meet journalists to "create a buzz" around the event.

Leaping up from his desk to delve among the piles of catalogues in his office, Leribault hopes he will still have time to visit the Tate, the National Gallery and buy some art books during his cross-Channel day trip.

Paris 1900 will feature 600 exhibits as eclectic as la belle époque itself. There are, of course, the paintings, but also clothes, posters, photographs, films, furniture, jewellery, sculptures and even restaurant menus from the era.

It also promises "scientific and technical innovations, cultural effervescence and Parisian elegance".

The exhibition is arranged around the theme of the Universal Exhibition, entitled Paris, Window on the World.

Leribault admits that it has become a mythical era, but adds: "Paris is still living off that image. If you go to Japan or China, that is the picture people have of the city."

He added: "There was an atmosphere of optimism and life being one big party at the time. Of course, nobody imagined what would happen afterwards with the outbreak of the first world war. If they thought war would happen, they imagined it would be over quickly.

"French gastronomy was becoming more widely known and Paris was showing not just its cultural and inventive side, but its festive side. There was opera, theatre, circuses and Paris by night, including the maisons closes [brothels] and fashion.

"Paris was one great party. There was a spirit of confidence, of joie de vivre, with so many things going on at the same time. Even the future king of England came to Paris to enjoy himself. It was the capital of everything. It was one big party with elements of the funfair about it," Leribault adds.

Leribault is coming to London not just to sell the exhibition, but also Le Petit Palais itself, situated on Winston Churchill Avenue and long overlooked as a museum despite a major renovation seven years ago.

The Beaux Arts style building, designed by Charles Girault, was intended to be a temporary structure, like the Eiffel Tower, but won over Paris residents who refused to let it be torn down.

It has been nicknamed a "mini-Louvre" but without the crowds and the school groups, and with the bonus of free entry to the permanent exhibition, as well as a peaceful cafe and a beautiful garden. Leribault says that the new exhibition will remind Parisians, and foreign visitors, of what was, perhaps, one of the city's finest hours.

"La belle époque was very fluid artistically; there were lots of different movements and excesses. People were saying, 'we don't know where we are going but lots of things are happening and we are going to have pleasure and fun. We may even mock ourselves, that's how fun it is.'

"Of course, everything collapsed 14 years later with the outbreak of war. But in 1900 nobody had any idea of what was going to happen. In that sense it's a fascinating period."

He added: "And if the myth of la belle époque has endured until now, it's not just because of the contrast with the horror of the Great War that came after it, but because it is founded on a real cultural abundance."

L’exposition « Paris 1900, la Ville spectacle » invite le public à revivre les heures fastes de la capitale française au moment où elle accueille l’Exposition Universelle qui inaugure en fanfare le 20e siècle. Plus que jamais la ville rayonne aux yeux du monde entier comme la cité du luxe et de l’art de vivre. Plus de 600 oeuvres – peintures, objets d’art, costumes, affiches, photographies, films, meubles, bijoux, sculptures… - plongeront les visiteurs du Petit Palais dans le Paris de la Belle Epoque. Les innovations techniques, l’effervescence culturelle, l’élégance de la Parisienne seront mis en scène comme autant de mythologies de ce Paris dont la littérature et le cinéma n’ont cessé depuis de véhiculer l’image dans le monde entier.

Dans une scénographie inventive intégrant le tout nouveau cinématographe au fil du parcours, le visiteur est convié à un voyage semblable à celui des 51 millions de touristes qui affluèrent à Paris en 1900.

Le parcours organisé autour de six « pavillons » débute par une section intitulée « Paris, vitrine du monde » évoquant l’Exposition Universelle. A cette occasion, les nouvelles gares de Lyon, d’Orsay et des Invalides sont construites tout comme la première ligne du « métropolitain ». Des projets architecturaux, des peintures, des films mais aussi de pittoresques objets souvenirs et des éléments de décors sauvegardés, rappelleront cette manifestation inouïe.

Mais Paris 1900 ne saurait se résumer à l’Exposition Universelle : la Ville lumière proposait bien d’autres occasions d’émerveillement et de dépenses. Dans les magasins de luxe et les galeries d’art, les amateurs pouvaient découvrir les créations des inventeurs de l’Art Nouveau, présenté ici au sein d’un second pavillon dédié aux chefs-d’oeuvre de Gallé, Guimard, Majorelle, Mucha, Lalique…

La troisième section dévolue aux Beaux-Arts démontre la place centrale de Paris sur la scène artistique. À cette époque, tous les talents convergent vers la capitale pour se former dans les ateliers, exposer dans les Salons et vendre grâce aux réseaux montants des galeries d’art. Des toiles du finlandais Edelfelt, de l’espagnol Zuloaga ou de l’américain Stewart, évoqueront ce climat international. Mais l’accrochage confronte aussi les oeuvres de Cézanne, Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Vuillard, avec celles de Gérôme, de Bouguereau ou Gervex, gloires acclamées tant de l’Académisme que de l’Impressionnisme enfin reconnu, du Symbolisme tardif ou de figures plus nouvelles, comme Maillol ou Maurice Denis, tandis que triomphe l’art d’un Rodin.

Le visiteur découvre ensuite les créations d’une mode parisienne triomphante qui affichaient son succès dès l’entrée de l’Exposition Universelle dont la porte monumentale était surmontée d’une figure de Parisienne habillée par Jeanne Paquin. Les maisons de couture de la rue de la Paix attirent un monde cosmopolite et richissime, qu’imitent les midinettes. Les plus beaux trésors du Palais Galliera, telle la célèbre cape de soirée signée du couturier Worth, seront accompagnés de grands portraits mondains par La Gandara ou Besnard, et d’évocation du monde des modistes et des trottins sous le pinceau aussi bien de Jean Béraud que d’Edgar Degas.

Les deux derniers pavillons offriront une plongée dans le Paris des divertissements : des triomphes de Sarah Bernhardt à ceux d’Yvette Guilbert, de Pelléas et Mélisande de Debussy à l’Aiglon de Rostand, de l’opéra au café-concert, du cirque à la maison close. Autant d’illustrations des côtés brillants et obscurs d’une cité qui se livrait sans compter afin de conforter l’idée qu’elle demeurait la capitale du monde et la reine des plaisirs. Les lieux mythiques comme le Moulin Rouge ou le Chat Noir, deviennent les sujets favoris d’artistes comme Toulouse-Lautrec. Des grandes demi-mondaines Liane de Pougy ou la belle Otero à l’enfer de la prostitution et de la drogue, l’exposition montre l’envers du décor, thèmes qui se révéleront être des sujets porteurs de révolutions esthétiques.

Si le mythe de la Belle Epoque a perduré jusqu’à aujourd’hui, ce n’est pas seulement par contraste avec l’horreur de la Grande Guerre qui lui succéda, c’est bien parce qu’il repose sur un foisonnement culturel réel dont cette exposition veut rappeler la force inégalée. Plus beau joyau architectural subsistant de l’année 1900 à Paris, le Petit Palais consacre enfin à cette époque phare une grande exposition, accompagnée d’un programme événementiel et d’un parcours complémentaire dans les galeries permanentes enrichies de toiles inédites des collections : un juste hommage comme jamais Paris ne l’avait encore proposé.

Commissaires :

Christophe LERIBAULT, directeur du Petit Palais

Alexandra BOSC, conserva­teur au musée Galliera

Dominique LOBSTEIN, historien de l’art

Gaëlle RIO, conservateur au Petit Palais

http://www.petitpalais.paris.fr/fr/expositions/paris-1900-la-ville-spectacle

 The birth of the first International Exhibition in 1855 was fueled by a desire to re-establish pride and faith in each nation after a period of war. The succession of exhibitions followed in the same pattern; the regeneration of nationality after war. Eight years before the launch of the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle the Republic of France announced the exhibition to be one which welcomed and celebrated the coming of a new century. Countries from around the world were invited by France to showcase their achievements and lifestyles; the Exposition Universelle was a uniting and learning experience. It presented the opportunity for foreigners to realize the similarities between nations as well as the unique differences. New cultures were experienced and an overall better understanding of the values each country had to offer was gained. The learning atmosphere aided in the attempts to increase cultural tolerance, necessary after a period of war. The early announcement and the massively positive response disenchanted the interest that had been circling around the first German International Exposition. The support for the exhibition was widespread, countries immediately began to plan their exhibits, but despite the enthusiasm the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle was not a financial success as only two thirds of the expected public was in attendance. It is suspected that the Exposition Universelle did not do as financially well as expected because the general public did not have the funds to participate in the fair.

Collyer Brothers

The ultimate hoarders: Extraordinary story of the two reclusive brothers found dead side by side under tons of junk in New York mansion in 1947

Homer and Langley Collyer were killed by one of their own junk booby traps

They were crushed and buried by the collapsing debris inside their house

By KERRY MCQUEENEY

PUBLISHED: 15:57 GMT, 15 October 2012 | UPDATED: 16:48 GMT, 15 October 2012

/ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2217953/Homer-Langley-Collyer-Hoarder-brothers-killed-clutter-New-York-mansion.html

It might seem like a relatively new - and bizarre - phenomenon; extreme hoarders who fill their houses so full of clutter that their bodies lay undiscovered for, sometimes, weeks after their death.

However, two brothers in 1940s New York arguably set the gold standard in stockpiling junk when they died entombed in their own clutter.

Crushed by his own booby trap: Extreme hoarder Langley Collyer

Homer and Langley Collyer were killed by one of the many booby traps they had set to deter outsiders, but their bodies were hidden by tons of garbage and were not found for weeks.

The brothers' story began in the beginning of the 20th century but ended in 1947 when they died side-by-side buried under piles of rubbish that had accumulated in their Manhattan row house.

One of the junk tunnels created by the brothers. The two men were killed by collapsing debris

Homer, the older of the two, was blind and was cared for by younger brother Langley at the house in Harlem.

Langley believed his brother's sight could be restored with a diet high in vitamin C so he fed Homer 100 oranges a week.

In the meantime, Langley began keeping years' worth of newspapers so his brother could read them once his sight had been restored.

What started as a well-meaning but misguided gesture escalated over the years into an out-of-control collection that engulfed their home and the brothers became recluses, prisoners in their own house.

Stockpile: The authorities discovered an astonishing array of bizarre items collected by the Collyer brothers

The extent of the brother's junk collecting finally came to a head in March 1947 when the authorities received a tip-off that someone had died in the property.

At first, it was near-impossible to gain entry to the house. Tons of debris - including old newspapers, phonebooks and furniture boxes - were slowly removed from the front foyer but rescuers found themselves blocked out by walls of rubbish.

Homer and Langley Collyer were killed by one of their own junk booby traps but their bodies were hidden by tons of garbage and were not found for weeks

It wasn't until a patrol officer broke a window on the second floor and climbed through that the first body was discovered, the Unclutterer website reported.

After two hours spent climbing through junk and debris the body of Homer was found lying among boxes and trash. However, his younger brother was nowhere to be seen.

A massive hunt was launched, with the authorities searching places as far away as Atlantic City in a bid to find the missing brother.

It was near-impossible to gain entry to the house. Tons of debris were slowly removed from the front foyer but rescuers found themselves blocked out by walls of rubbish

However, three weeks later it dawned on them he had been under their noses all along, according to Unclutterer.

The body of Langley was found just ten feet away from where his older brother had died, but he was buried under tons of debris.

The extent of the brothers' junk collecting only emerged in March 1947 when the authorities received a tip-off that someone had died in the property

The authorities discovered that Langley had actually been the first to die, killed by one of the many booby-traps he had set up to deter outsiders from coming inside house of junk.

He had been bringing food to his older brother when it collapsed on top of him, crushing him to death.

More than 100 tons of rubbish - including more than 25,000 books - was eventually removed from the house, with the authorities discovering an astonishing array of bizarre items collected by the Collyer brothers.

Among them were pickled human organs, hundreds of yards of unused silk and fabric, the folding top of a horse-drawn carriage and the chassis of an old Model T.

Entombed in their own clutter: Authorities trying to gain access to the Fifth Avenue mansion in the 1940s

A section of the library in the Collyer brothers' home. More than 25,000 books were discovered in the house 

Junk and debris: More than 100 tons of rubbish was eventually removed from the house by the authorities

 Langley Collyer: The Mystery Hoarder of Harlem

Langley Collyer: The Mystery

Hoarder of Harlem

By Fred Penzel, Ph.D. / http://www.wsps.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=72:langley-collyer-the-mystery-hoarder-of-harlem&catid=0:&Itemid=64

On March 21st, 1947, at 8:53 a.m., the New York City police department received a phone call from a man giving the name of Charles Smith, notifying them that he believed a man was dead inside a decaying building on Fifth Avenue in Harlem. Officers arrived on the scene by 10 a.m., and cordoned off the house in order to hold back the crowd that had gathered. The police removed an iron grill-covered basement door from its hinges, only to find the entrance completely sealed off by a solid mass of debris. Thus was thrust before the public one of the best-known and most mysterious compulsive hoarding cases of all time.

Compulsive hoarding is a form of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), a neurobiological condition, most likely genetically based. OCD comes in a wide variety of forms, of which hoarding is only one. Compulsive hoarders may collect only certain types of things, or they may indiscriminately save everything. We are not talking here about collecting things that are valuable or important such as art, coins, or stamps. Hoarders generally tend to save things that are of little or no value, or if the things they save do have real value, they tend to save them in ridiculously larger quantities than would ever be necessary. One of the main obsessive thoughts that causes sufferers to do this is their worry that if they throw a particular item away, it will be lost forever, and they may one day be in need of it in order to be able to use it, to be able to remember it, or something connected with it. They seem to have difficulty discriminating between what is or will be useful, and what is not. Some hoarders can freely admit that the things they are saving are currently broken or damaged and unusable. They will stubbornly insist, however, that they will someday repair or refurbish the items and either make use of them or give them away.

Another reason for hoarding resembles the type of thinking seen in hyper-responsible obsessions. It is the idea that each thing they save and/or repair might be useful to others (rather than themselves), and that the hoarder would be responsible (and therefore blameful and guilty) for another person not having this vital item should the need arise. They may also rationalize that what they are doing is actually “recycling,” and are performing a community service by conserving resources. Throwing away something that could possibly be reused is seen as being highly irresponsible. In actuality, there really is no need for what they have saved, there is no one to give the items to, and the only result is that the hoarder is burdened with a house full of junk.

Some of the things most commonly saved include newspapers, magazines, lists, pens, pencils, empty boxes, pamphlets, old greeting cards, junk mail, old appliances, outdated books and even assorted labels, string, rubber bands, plastic containers, bottles, and bottle caps. In the most extreme cases, people have been known to save such things as empty matchbooks, used tissues, old cigarette butts, bird feathers, old cars, discarded paper cups, used aluminum foil, paper towels, lint, and hairs. Some of these sufferers will even rummage through other people’s trash, and bring home obvious junk that to them, seems quite useful or repairable. Compulsive savers can accumulate large amounts of things, creating storage problems and fire or health hazards. Their houses can take on the appearance of having been ransacked, with floors waist-deep in trash and debris, rooms filled wall-to-wall with overflowing paper bags and cardboard boxes. Many sufferers can only make their way around their homes by creating aisles around and through the trash. Problems with municipal authorities are not uncommon, and hoarders are sometimes evicted or charged with violation zoning or public health laws. Ironically, the majority of people who save things compulsively rarely use or look at these things. Their security comes from merely having the things around "just in case" and in not having to make what seem like difficult decisions about what to discard.

Let us now return to our story. Its main figures are two brothers, Homer Lusk Collyer (b. Nov. 6th, 1881), and Langley Collyer (b. October 3rd, 1885). The Collyers were part of one of New York’s oldest families, a branch of the well-known Livingstons. Their ancestors had come over to America on the ship “Speedwell” in 1664, about a week after the Mayflower. The family had been members of the congregation of Trinity Church since 1697. Their father, Dr. Herman L. Collyer was a successful and renowned gynecologist, and his father, William Collyer, was said to have been one of the leading shipbuilders in America. In 1909, Dr. Collyer moved his family from Murray Hill to a fine upper middle class home in Harlem. It was a three-story brownstone located at 2078 Fifth Avenue (at 128th Street). Beyond his fame as a physician, the doctor was known to be a bit eccentric, paddling a small canoe to work each day at City Hospital on Blackwell’s Island in the East River. He would subsequently paddle home at the end of his day, and then carry the boat on his head back to his house.

Dr. Collyer’s two sons seemed destined for successful lives of their own. Both attended Columbia University, where Homer earned a law degree, and his younger brother graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering and chemistry. Homer went on to practice admiralty law, but Langley, so far as is known, never held employment, and spent his time playing the piano. He is reputed to have won prizes as a concert pianist, but this cannot be verified. Perhaps Langley’s inability to establish a career was an early sign of personal difficulties he may already have been experiencing.

It was probably a warning of things to come when in 1917, the brothers had their telephone disconnected, after being billed for long distance calls they claimed to have never made. This may have been the beginning of what would become a growing isolation from the outside world. Six years later, in 1923, Dr. Collyer died. Several years prior to his death, for reasons unknown, he had moved from his Fifth Avenue home to one at 153 West 77th Street. His sons remained at the family home with their mother. It is possible that a family breakup may have occurred. Life seems to have taken an abnormal turn for the two brothers in the year preceding the death of their mother in 1929. It appears that their gas was shut off in 1928, and they also seemed to have given up the convenience of running water and steam heat, and began using kerosene to light their home and to cook with. Water was obtained from a public fountain four blocks from their home. This was all clearly out of step for people of their education and social status.

Despite all this, nothing appeared out of the ordinary to those in the outside world. The brothers were said to be courteous, cultured, and shy. The only sign that something might be amiss was that no one was ever permitted to enter their house. Around 1928, Homer worked for another attorney, John R. McMullen, who later became the family legal advisor. Homer next worked for City Title Insurance doing research in the New York City Hall of Records. He was described, at the time, as being courtly, and dressing in 19th century attire, presenting a rather Victorian appearance. He was said to resemble a gentleman of the 1880’s.

In 1932, Homer purchased a building across the street at 2077 Fifth Avenue for $8,000. He planned to divide it into apartments and to rent them. This plan was never realized, as he suffered a stroke in 1933, becoming blind as the result of hemorrhages in both of his eyes. With one exception, he was reportedly never seen outside of his home again. Langley then gave up his music to take on the job of nursing his brother back to health. No physician was ever consulted. Langley apparently believed that the cure for his brother’s blindness was for him to eat 100 oranges a week, and to keep his eyes closed at all times, in order to rest them. The brothers possessed a large library of medical books, and it would seem that Langley felt he had the information and knowledge necessary to treat his brother.

At some point in the 1930’s, the West 77th Street home where their father had lived was sold, and the new owner, a Mrs. Peter Meyer, discovered an intact Model T Ford in the basement. It is not clear how it got there. Mrs. Meyer is said to have paid a workman $150 to disassemble the car and put the pieces in the street. This somehow came to Langley’s attention, and for reasons known only to him, he carried the car piece-by-piece back to the basement of his Fifth Avenue home. It would appear that along with the loss of their other utilities, the brothers had no electricity, as Langley apparently tried to connect a generator to the car’s engine in order to provide power, but was unsuccessful.

The brothers eventually came to the attention of the general public when they were mentioned in an article written by Helen Worden, a reporter for the World-Telegram. A real estate agent named Maurice Gruber was attempting to buy some farmland in Queens that belonged to the brothers. Their refusal to respond to his letters or to answer the door when he tried to see them in person resulted in Gruber keeping a vigil at their home. In her article, Worden referred to Langley Collyer as “the mystery man of Harlem,” and included in it, a whole range of sensational rumors that had been circulating about the brothers and their home. It was said to contain all sorts of rich furnishings, a vast library of books, and huge amounts of money that Langley would not trust to banks.

Worden, herself, kept a watch on the Collyer’s home, and finally caught up with her elusive quarry one night, as he was leaving the house to go on what was one of his regular after dark shopping trips. She questioned Langley about a boat (his father’s) and the Model T Ford said to be in their basement. Langley confirmed these stories. Rather than clearing up the mystery, Ms. Worden’s article seemed to have only increased the speculation and rumors about the brothers, and during the 1930’s other articles were written about the brothers in the New York papers. The brothers were depicted as wealthy hermits, living in a storehouse of money and valuables. People visited the house, banging on the doors or attempting to see them, while neighborhood children committed various acts of vandalism that included breaking windows. As windows were smashed, Langley systematically boarded them up instead of replacing them.

Throughout this time, and most likely the result of a case of compulsive hoarding, Langley was hard at work filling the once attractive home with huge amounts of newspapers, cardboard boxes, barrels, metal cans, tree branches, scrap metal, and other assorted trash. In the case of the newspapers, it is said that he believed that his brother Homer would someday regain his vision, and would then want to catch up on the news he had missed. He was known to prowl the streets at night, gathering items from curbside trash piles and bringing them home. No one knows how many years he had been actively engaged in this collecting. His foraging resulted in all three floors of the house being filled with literally tons of things he had collected. Perhaps it was his knowledge of engineering that enabled him to arrange the boxes and packing cases in interlocking arrangements that concealed a maze of tunnels that only he knew. Langley was said to harbor fears of being burglarized, and there had, in fact, been several attempted break-ins over the years by those perhaps lured by the tales of stockpiled riches. The home became a sort of fortress for the brothers, with booby-traps constructed of great piles of debris rigged with the aid of trip wires to fall on unsuspecting intruders. This, of course, only served to increase the brothers’ growing isolation. If their goal was to keep the world out, they were succeeding.

Although the brothers were by no means poor, Langley is also said to have regularly rummaged through garbage cans seeking food. He went begging at butcher shops for scraps, and was known to have walked as far as Williamsburg, in Brooklyn to purchase stale bread at the lowest possible cost. The Collyers again appeared in the newspapers in April 1939, when, armed with a court order, a city marshal together with representatives of the Consolidated Edison Company entered the brother’s two Fifth Avenue buildings and removed the gas meters, which had been in a state of disuse since 1928. A crowd said to be as large as 1,000 people gathered outside their home to see what was happening.

Homer’s last appearance outside the house is said to have occurred a number of months later on January 1st, 1940. Sgt. John Collins, a city policeman from the 123rd Street station who was familiar with the Collyers, spotted the two brothers carrying a large tree limb from across the street into their basement. Langley guided the branched end, while Homer held up the other end.

Although the brothers did everything they could to avoid public scrutiny, it had its own way of intruding into their solitude. Ironically, it was their reluctance to encounter the outside world that continually brought the world to their doorstep. It appears that not paying taxes and other bills was a symptom of their reclusiveness, and it caused them no end of trouble. The most highly publicized example occurred in August of 1942, when the Bowery Savings Bank foreclosed on a mortgage that amounted to $6,700 plus interest (no interest had been paid since 1940). After going to state Supreme Court, the bank obtained permission to evict the brothers from their home. The very same day, however, the Collyer’s attorney, John R. McMullen, met with bank officials with an offer by his clients to repurchase the property. As the house was seen to be in very poor condition, it appeared that the Bowery Savings was not all that eager to repossess it. Mr. McMullen had never actually been allowed in the brothers’ house, so instead, Langley, who almost never appeared in daylight, had walked all the way to his attorney’s office on Park Row to discuss the matter. Mr. F. Donald Richart, vice president in charge of real estate for the bank, consented to give the brothers “a generous amount of time” so that they could work out the details of the repurchase.

There were growing rumors on the street, around this time, that Homer had died and that his body was still in the house. Sgt. Collins of the 123rd Street station (mentioned earlier), took it upon himself to look into the matter. He encountered Langley, and somehow got his permission, despite some reluctance, to enter the house through the basement door. In a surreal journey through a labyrinth of tunnels in the trash and homemade booby-traps that lasted a half hour, Langley led the officer to the bedroom where Homer was to be found. What happened next is told in Sgt. Collins own words. “I switched on my flashlight, and there was Homer sitting up like a mummy. He was on a cot, a burlap bag beneath him and an old overcoat on the foot of the cot, and he spoke directly to the officer. “I am Homer Collyer, a lawyer. I want your shield number. I am not dead. I am blind and paralyzed.” Langley subsequently made a complaint to the police department about the incident, but no action was ever apparently taken on the matter.

In the matter of the Bowery Savings Bank, it seems that no repurchase offer was ever worked out, so in October, Supreme Court Justice Bernard Botein signed an order permitting the City Sheriff to evict the brothers from their brownstone. This same judge’s decision, which had been issued in August, was now about to be carried out. The bank, still trying to not have to resort to force, repeatedly mailed eviction notices to the brothers, who never responded.

The Bowery Savings Bank was not to be put off indefinitely. As the new owner of the building, they were required by the city to make repairs to the property according to the city’s building and sanitary codes. At the end of September, they dispatched a crew of workmen to the house to begin carrying out the repairs that had been ordered by the Department of Health. A number of police officers and patrol cars were sent to the scene to manage the inevitable crowd that had gathered, as it always did whenever any activity took place at the Collyer home. As the workmen went about repairing a falling stone cornice, replacing missing window panes, and removing piles junk from the rear of the property, Langley Collyer called out to them from an upper story window, demanding to know by what right they were trespassing on his property. The contractor was then forced to stop work and obtain a copy of the city order, in order that the repairs might continue.

On November 19th, following the brothers’ repeated refusal to respond to various notices, the bank requested that the city sheriff carry out the eviction order and enter the house by force, if necessary and remove the brothers. In short order, at 10 o’clock, there showed up at the Collyer’s door two deputy sheriffs, Herman A. Murray and Gillespie Anderson, police captain Christian Zimmer of the 128th Street Police Station, Dr. Marshall Rose, sheriff’s physician, John Redfield of the Bowery Savings Bank, and Joseph and Herman Cohen, a father and son, respectively, who were both locksmiths. Mr. McMullen, the Collyer’s attorney, met them there. The group took turns pounding on the door for over an hour, but the only answers were echoes. A crowd collected on the sidewalk, hoping to get a glimpse of what was going on at the “haunted house,” as it had come to be known in the neighborhood.

The locksmiths then tried for another hour, in vain, to force the lock on the large wooden front doors, but were unsuccessful because of all the rust and corrosion. Going to the rear of the house, they were able to remove an iron grille-covered door leading to the basement with the help of the two deputies. Here, they found themselves stymied again, as they found their way barred by a mass of wire netting, behind which was a solid mass of crates, barrels, and large tin canisters from floor to ceiling. Seeking another entrance, they next moved on to another rear door, and tore away its rotted boards, only to find a further wall of garbage cans, trunks, crates, and pieces of rusted iron. Breaking in yet another rotted door next to this one, they were met with a similar obstruction.

Covered with dust, and feeling frustrated, the team returned to the front of the building to form a new plan of action, and decided to now make their way into the building via a window. One of the locksmiths, Joseph Cohen, swung up from the top of the front stoop and made his way to the ledge of one of the building’s high north windows, where he forced open the shutters. He then broke a windowpane with a hammer, and climbed in through the now empty frame. His son Herman stood outside the window on the ledge and peered in at his father, who by this time was half-choked with dust. As with the other parts of the house encountered thus far, the room was filled to overflowing with various and sundry items – heaps of old sheet music, gilded picture frames, Christmas ornaments, broken plaster cherubs, piles of books, garden baskets, etc. Joseph Cohen finally managed to work his way downstairs to the front entrance where he and deputy Murray were able to open a path near the door. Clouds of choking dust enveloped them, making the going difficult, and breathing an effort. They eventually opened a parlor door and made it into a hallway where they encountered further barricades. Suddenly, they were greeted by a weary voice from out of the gloom, asking, “What is the meaning of this?” Deputy Murray replied, “I have an eviction notice.” Langley then asked him, “Is Mr. McMullen here?” McMullen, who had by now worked his way to the barricade called out to his client, “They will put you out, Mr. Collyer, unless your keep the agreement.” Langley replied, “Do what you think best.” Following his attorney’s advice, Langley then borrowed a pen from the deputy, and signed a check for the full amount, thus ending the invasion.

But the Collyer’s troubles were not yet over. They came in for some further unwanted attention in February 1943, but this time from the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS was now pursuing Homer for what it claimed was $1900 in income tax arrears plus interest that had accumulated over the previous twelve years. Homer was notified that unless this sum was promptly paid, the house he owned at 2077 Fifth Avenue would be sold at auction on February 3rd. This was the building across the street he had purchased with the intent to divide into rentable apartments. The ever-patient Mr. McMullen hoped his client would come through at the last minute, as had happened previously, although the attorney had been unsuccessful in his attempts to contact the brothers. On the day of the auction, the IRS representatives waited for over an hour beyond the scheduled auction time, and finally, the property was put up for bid. When no bids were offered, and with Mr. McMullen present, the government took possession, although it was not eager to do so due to the poor condition of the property. It was so rundown, that it hardly seemed worth the effort. Beyond the building being of little worth, there were also the problems of the cost of the auction itself, not to mention the $3,000 in back taxes on the property owed to the City of New York that had been unpaid since 1938. According to the rules, the government would have to hold onto the property to allow Homer the chance to pay what he owed and get his property back. He never paid, and it does not appear that the government ever went any further in the matter of taking possession of the building, as will be seen.

Over three years later, the Collyers once again found themselves in the news. On July 23, 1946, two police officers, Daniel Pesek and John Killoran, while on radio car patrol, heard noises coming from 2077 Fifth Avenue. Upon further investigation, the officers discovered two men stealing plumbing and electrical fixtures from the building. The two patrolmen tussled with the vandals, capturing one of them, a homeless man named George Smith, aged 25. Officer Killoran hurt his leg when he fell through a hole in the floor. The officers then attempted to contact Langley in order to get him to swear out a complaint against the thief, but speaking to them through his locked door, he refused to do so. Despite his lack of cooperation, Langley was named as the complainant, and notified that if he did not appear in court, the city would issue him a subpoena. He still refused to cooperate, but after officer Pesek tried several times to serve him with the subpoena, he relented. It seems that time and again, only the threat of legal action could pry loose the reclusive Langley from the decrepit building he and his brother called home. On July 27th, dressed in turn-of-the-century garments, he appeared in the city’s Felony Court as complainant against Smith. What was particularly unclear about all this was that technically, the Collyers no longer owned 2077 Fifth Avenue. Langley clearly did not accept all this, and prior to signing the complaint, he stated, “My invalid brother, Homer Lusk Collyer, and I still own that house and we have the keys to it.” He added, “The government seized the property on the contention we did not pay income taxes, but we are going to sue and get that property back, because the government can’t demand income taxes from us when we had no income.” The brothers had, in fact, never surrendered the keys to the building. He went on to relate that this was the third incident in which he had had to go to court to swear out a complaint against criminal intruders at his home.

The last time either of the Collyer’s was seen alive, was the result of yet another tax problem with New York City. It seems that the brothers owned two land parcels in Queens County, which they had inherited from their father. The city had wanted this land for new streets and other purposes, and Langley, together with Mr. McMullen, had had a meeting about this with the city’s Corporation Counsel the previous October. After Langley refused two summonses to testify before Supreme Court Justice Charles C. Lockwood, the land was condemned by the city, and the brothers were awarded $7500, which was substantially less than its appraised value. Unfortunately, they would see none of this award, in any case, as the city claimed the brothers owed it $27,000 in back taxes. Interestingly, a news article about this in the New York Times mentions that the brother’s only regular means of contact with the outside world was a crystal radio set.

Which brings us back to the beginning of our story on the morning of March 21st, 1947, with the police receiving the phone call from the mysterious Mr. Charles Smith. The police had received a number of such calls over the years, but as usual, they were obliged to respond. An officer was dispatched to the scene, but was unable to open the front door. He then put out a call to Police Emergency Squad 6, which arrived on the scene at 10:00 a.m. They began by cordoning off the Collyer’s house in order to hold back the crowd of curious onlookers, which grew as large as 600 people. The officers began their search by using crowbars and axes to try to force an entrance into the house. They broke their way through an iron grille-covered door to the basement in the front of the house, but as had happened in the past, they immediately found themselves confronted by the usual floor-to-ceiling wall of crates, newspaper, furniture, and odd pieces of junk.

For their second attempt to gain entry, the officers obtained ladders from the Fire Department and tried the windows on the upper floors. Unfortunately, many of the shutters on the windows couldn’t be opened, and it wasn’t until 12:10 p.m. that a patrolman William Barker was able to make his way through a second story window. Patrolman Barker was not seen for several minutes, and on his return to the window, called to his fellow officers, “There’s a DOA here.” In response, Detective John Loughery made his way up the ladder in order to view the body, as other officers began to batter in the wooden front doors with axes. They were again faced with another massive obstruction of neatly tied bundles of newspaper, as well as cardboard boxes filled with assorted contents. Although they tried to tear down the wall of debris, they were forced to admit defeat. Meanwhile, Detective Loughery related what he had seen – the emaciated body of a white-haired man dressed in a tattered gray bathrobe, sitting upright, and tentatively identified as Homer Collyer. The medical examiner, Arthur C. Allen, arrived at 3:45 p.m., and declared that the individual had been dead for approximately ten hours.

The next order of business was to locate Langley, who was nowhere to be found on the premises. It was reasoned that if he were within the house, he would have made an appearance by this time, as he usually did. Police were perplexed about how Langley was able to enter and leave the building, but neighbors stated that he regularly entered and left on his daily shopping trips via the front basement’s iron-bound door. After their own struggle to enter, the officers refused to believe that this was possible. According to the New York Times, the entranceway past the basement door contained “… an old stove, several umbrellas, numerous packages of newspapers, a gas mask canister, an old stove pipe, and a broken scooter.” There were also numerous rats seen darting around and through the piled trash. An inspection of the rest of the premises through various windows and around the second floor where they had entered revealed that the entire house was packed with debris of various kinds. It appeared that the building was riddled with a maze of tunnels through which Langley had moved, pulling bales of newspaper in behind him, to prevent intruders from entering. The police also found tin cans and piles of heavy debris wired together to form booby traps, in which the cans would sound an alarm, and a mass of junk would fall on the unsuspecting invader.

Homer Collyer’s body was taken away in a body bag to the police van that would transport it to the morgue. An autopsy was to be conducted to determine the cause of death, although foul play was not suspected. The crowd, milling around on the sidewalk hoping to see what was going on inside, and trading stories about their unusual neighbors, and the fabled wealth that was rumored to be hidden in the house. Some believed the numerous cardboard boxes that filled the house were stuffed with cash. As they searched further, police found newspapers lying around that dated from as far back as 1915. Strewn everywhere were such things as hats, boxes of Christmas cards, a folding chair, a broken sled, and automobile seat, part of a piano frame, etc. The police were careful to put everything back in place, including the materials they had removed to be able to enter the building. They then boarded up the house at 5 p.m., at which time, Attorney McMullen arrived on the scene. He took charge of all papers, notes, and letters discovered there by the police, and stated to the press that he was sure his elderly client would soon be in touch with him. He also quoted Langley as having said that they were entitled to live their own lives.

The next day’s papers puzzled over the missing Langley. No one had any idea of where he might be found, with the exception of Mr. McMullen, who told reporters, “Your guess is as good as mine, but I think he is in the house, myself.” Detectives from the 123rd Street station thought that he might still be out on one of his shopping trips to Brooklyn. These were sometimes known to last as long as twenty-four hours, because he made the trip on foot. Deputy Inspector Christopher Salsieder announced that if Langley did not show up by 1 p.m. on March 24th, a missing person’s alarm would be issued. In the meantime, it was decided to not perform an autopsy, as the cause of death was believed to be the result of “ateriosclerotic heart disease,” which, it was said, could be determined by external examination. Later reports seem to indicate, though, that an autopsy was finally performed.

Of course, the usual publicity-seekers were quick to come out of the woodwork. William Rodriguo, a sometime Democratic politician from Harlem, came forward, claiming to be the “Charles Smith” who had phoned the police, touching off this latest incident. He stated that he had used a false name due to not wanting to get involved, but had later changed his mind. He added a further touch of mystery to the story, telling police that he had been told of the Collyers’ deaths by an unknown man he had met in front of their house the morning of his phone call.

The next day, on the 23rd, the crowd outside the decaying brownstone had grown to several thousand people. Langley had still not appeared, and the curious were hoping for a glimpse of him, or failing that, his remains. One man showed up with a shovel and began digging in the building’s front yard, but was removed by the police. A stream of autos from as far away as New Jersey and Connecticut crawled by the building in a regular procession. The daily papers thirsted to know about the contents of the house, rumored for years to contain numerous grand pianos, a Model T, and a boat. Inspector Joseph Goldstein of the Tenth Division speculated that a thorough search of the entire house would occupy a police emergency squad for three weeks. They were to begin work later that day, following an inspection by the Department of Housing and Buildings and the Board of Health. The strategy would be for police officers to begin with a search of the top floor, dumping the contents into the backyard. It was decided that the items removed would not be taken away until the Public Administrator or an heir of the Collyers gave approval. A relative of the brothers, William Collyer of Yonkers, turned up at the house that day, relating to reporters that his mother and sister had visited the brothers in 1928, and noted that the house, at that time, contained no furniture, but was already filled with quite a bit of debris.

The clearing of the building began the next day on the 24th. This first stage of the operation, the clearing of the top floor, began that afternoon, headed by Inspector Goldstein. After Mr. McMullen declared Langley missing at 1:15 p.m., and after officials from the two city departments declared the building safe to enter, the officers of Emergency Squad 6 began their task by sending over a ladder from an adjoining rooftop. After climbing across, they broke open several skylights and a roof trapdoor, through which they entered the building. Once inside, they smashed windows in order to get some badly-needed ventilation. A large crowd, whose numbers now ran as high as 2,000 watched the spectacle from the street, windows, fire escapes, and rooftops, cheering each time a sizeable object was thrown into the yard below. Among these items were a gas chandelier, the folding top of a horse-drawn carriage, a rusted bicycle, a child’s chair, an automobile radiator, dressmaking dummies, a sawhorse, a rusted bedspring, a kerosene stove, a doll carriage, a checkerboard, and numerous bundles of newspapers. A team of sixteen men inspected each object as it was thrown out, looking for valuables and important papers to be saved. They found enough ledgers, correspondence, and legal documents to fill eight crates which were taken to the West 123rd Street station to be looked over by someone from the Public Administrator’s office.

At 3 p.m., Inspector Goldstein called off the search for Langley for that day, and sent his men to check out the basement. They found the walls lined with ceiling-to-floor bookcases containing over 2,000 dust-covered volumes, among them numerous books on the law and engineering. Reporters and a family member were allowed to have a look around, and among the newspapers and cardboard boxes there were as many as five pianos. With much effort, the officers cleared a path to a stairway, but were unable to open up the stairway itself. While clearing this area, they stumbled on a generator, which may have been used to produce electricity. Some of the debris removed was piled in the front areaway, and included a kiddy car, three women’s hats, a box of curtain rings, a green toy bus, some lead pipes, and a Metropolitan Opera program from 1914. At 4 p.m., the Emergency Squad forced their way into the first floor. Aided by searchlights powered by a portable generator, they made out a mahogany mantelpiece containing a large cracked mirror resting against a wall, an old RCA radio in a corner, and a large pile of furniture covered with dust standing in the middle of the floor. The windows were covered with a filthy green drapery. At this point, the search was ended for the day, with the police boarding up the windows, and piling the collected debris in a section of the yard surrounded by a tall iron fence. Langley had still not been found, but the police were determined to return and finish their search.

The following morning at 10 a.m., the officers resumed their search. It was now March 26th, with still no sign of the missing brother. The day was particularly windy, blowing some of the old newspapers down the street, where they were snatched up by the ever-present crowd as souvenirs. The overwhelming mass of debris the police removed from the house consisted largely of old newspapers, cardboard boxes, magazines, and pieces of wood. Among the other assorted things uncovered that day included a nursery refrigerator, a beaded lampshade, a box of toy tops, and a toy airplane. In the basement, they found the chassis of the fabled Model T Ford, thus confirming one rumor. Important documents and papers continued to turn up, and these were removed to the 123rd Street station. Any useless material that could be combustible was carted away in two truckloads by the Department of Sanitation, to be burned in its incinerators. The first load weighed 6,424 pounds, and the second a bit less. One rumor that was put to rest was the existence of a secret basement tunnel connecting the brother’s two buildings. In addition to discovering a further maze of tunnels, several new booby-traps were found, consisting of things such as cans, or large tree limbs (as large as twenty inches in diameter), set to drop on unwary intruders. The police were becoming increasingly convinced that Langley was not to be found alive on the premises, but they were determined to continue their search of the entire house. Inspector Goldstein stated that the work would continue, “… until we are sure Langley Collyer is not in there, dead or alive.” One theory was that his body might yet be found stuck in one of the booby-trapped tunnels. Assistant Chief Inspector Frank Fristensky, Jr. told the press that it would take them several more days before they had a clear picture of what the interior of the building contained. Attorney McMullen had already become concerned about the brother’s tangled finances and their numerous bank accounts. He estimated their worth to be in the six-figure range, not including the real estate they owned.

Work continued on the 26th, much as it had the day before. The Emergency Squad began work at 10:00 a.m., halting briefly at noon when some confusion arose over whether proper legal authorization for their work had been obtained. At 2:30 efforts to clear the top floor resumed, with the searchers tossing large amounts of material from the windows. Relatives watching the operation from the street complained to the police that they were being less than careful in discarding things, and risked discarding items of value, as well as important papers. This resulted in the officers being somewhat less energetic in clearing things out. One particular item that attracted attention was the discovery of a .22 caliber pistol and holster, along with ammunition of various types. This was turned over to the Police Ballistics Bureau. A report submitted to the Public Administrator of New York County by Deputy Chief Inspector Conrad Rothengast stated that it was believed that Langley Collyer was dead based upon the facts that the brother had never been away from his home for more than twenty-four hours, and that the death of Homer would certainly have been cause for him to have at least contacted his attorney or his relatives.

The next day, the New York Times reported that the Surrogate, a Mr. James A. Delahanty, was unable to appoint Francis J. Mulligan, the Public Administrator as temporary administrator of the Collyer brother’s estate. While everyone in the case agreed that Langley Collyer was most likely dead, Mr. Delahanty felt that definite proof was required for such a move to be made. Various affidavits from such people as John R. McMullen and William Rodriguo were due to be submitted to Mr. Delahanty. As of the 27th, police searchers still had been unable to turn up any trace of the missing Langley, although they did turn up a cigar box containing three more revolvers, a sixteen-gauge shotgun, a .22 caliber rifle, a .30 caliber rifle, a two-foot long bayonet, and a three-foot long cavalry saber. Near the spot where Homer’s body had been discovered, they found another old cigar box containing thirty-four bank books from various savings banks. Eleven of them had been canceled, and they showed savings totaling $3,007 dollars.

By March 28th, the police were having their hands full following up on numerous tips they were receiving, concerning the whereabouts of the missing Langley. Officers were dispatched to the Borough Hall-Jay Street Station in Brooklyn after a conductor reportedly saw him board the subway there. They also searched a group of boarded-up summer hotels and bungalows in Asbury Park, New Jersey; a place where the brothers had spent time between 1901 and 1907, and where it was thought Langley might be hiding. In the meantime, Surrogate Delahanty finally appointed Francis J. Mulligan as temporary administrator of Langley’s estate, in addition to being made administrator of Homer’s. Following these appointments, police halted their intensive search for Langley in the Fifth Avenue home, and decided, instead, to begin shipping the contents to an unused school building at 67 Rivington Street on the 31st, where they would be inspected for valuables and important papers. Items of obvious value were to go to this location, while things that were obviously trash would be removed by the Department of Sanitation.

On the following day, Mr. Mulligan, as administrator, visited the city morgue to claim the body of Homer. Funeral arrangements were set for April 1st, to be held at Cypress Hills Cemetery in Queens, where the family owned a plot. Police were still hard at work tracking down various leads. Their latest took them to New Jersey. A waitress in Tuckerton reported to police that she had served food to a customer who appeared to fit Langley Collyer’s description, which by then, had been widely distributed. She added that the man had subsequently boarded a bus headed for Atlantic City. Police in that city then proceeded to make a sweep of hotels and rooming houses.

Police recommenced their search on the 31st as planned, beginning at 8:30 in the morning. It appeared that they would be able to clear about one room per day, and there were an estimated twelve rooms in the building. The workforce at the house now consisted of two detectives and five laborers hired by Mr. Mulligan. Their work concentrated on the front basement room, which was found to hold 3,000 books, numerous telephone directories, a Steinway piano, a horse’s jawbone, a Model T Ford’s engine block, numerous campaign buttons, and large amounts of newspaper, as usual, tied up neatly in bundles.

Homer Collyer’s funeral was held on April 1st, but of the fifty-three people who were present, only two actually knew him. Both were neighbors. Seventeen cousins of the Collyers were also in attendance. John R. McMullen also attended, hoping that perhaps that Langley would appear at last. Said Mr. McMullen to the press, “I had hopes until the last minute that Langley would be here if he were alive.” When questioned if he believed Langley was still alive, he replied, “One guess is as good as another.” The police search for the missing brother continued. They sent out 500 pictures of him to every New York City police precinct, and also to the police in eleven states. Efforts to clear the house were now in the second day. The detectives and laborers continued their methodical work. By the end of that day, nineteen tons of trash and objects had been removed. The bulk of this came from the first floor hallway. It was decided by the Public Administrator that Langley’s estate would pay for the use of a school building where valuable items from the home were being stored. The Department of Housing and Buildings, meanwhile, ruled that the house would eventually have to be repaired or demolished.

On the 3rd, it was thought that the mystery of Langley’s whereabouts had been solved when a body resembling his description was discovered floating in the East Bronx in Pugsley’s Creek, but the excitement ended abruptly when the body was identified as an elderly man who had recently disappeared from a houseboat.

By the 7th of April, workers had removed approximately 103 tons of rubbish from the home, with twenty-two tons having been removed on that day alone. Among the more interesting items found at that point were five violins that were to be sent for appraisal. It was estimated by the supervising detectives that it would take another week to ten days to clear out the structure. Down at the Missing Persons Bureau, Detective Charles Meyers offered the theory that “Everything points to Langley being dead in the building.” He added that the results of an autopsy on Homer indicated that there had been no food or liquid in the invalid’s stomach. Detective Meyers concluded that, “Homer died for lack of care.” It simply did not add up that Langley would have allowed his brother to die unattended, or simply not show up at his funeral.

It would ultimately turn out that Detective Meyers was correct, as on April the 8th, Langley’s body was finally discovered, pinned by one of his own booby-traps in that same room on the second floor where Homer’s body was previously found. The work of clearing the house that day had proceeded as usual, with workers from the Public Administrator’s office and police working their way through the second floor. By 3:30 that afternoon, about seventeen tons of material had been removed and loaded onto Department of Sanitation trucks. Shortly afterwards, a detective, Joseph Whitmore emerged from the building and asked reporters waiting on the scene to follow him. He led them to a corner drugstore. Placing a call to his headquarters, he reported, “We’ve got him.” He went on to explain that he, and detective John Loughery, had located Langley’s body. Loughery added, “We were scraping around in the rubbish when we saw a foot sticking out.”

Within an hour, as word spread of the discovery of the body, a crowd of around 500 locals who had gathered to watch the day’s work at the house, swelled to over 2,000. Police higher-ups, including Commissioner Arthur W. Wallander, soon arrived on the scene. The commissioner commended detectives Whitmore and Loughery for their work in the investigation.

Thomas A. Gonzales, the medical examiner, spent a half hour examining the corpse. He estimated that Langley had been dead at least two weeks, and possibly as long as four, and that the cause of death was either starvation or suffocation. Langley’s body lay on its right side, inside one of the two-foot-wide tunnels that was part of the maze he had created, his head turned toward the area where his brother’s cot had been, only eight feet away. The room, itself, was filled with piles of newspapers, books, old furniture and tin cans. The materials that had apparently trapped Langley were a suitcase, three metal bread boxes, and bundles of newspapers. One particularly unpleasant detail was that the numerous rats that infested the house had gnawed at his partially decomposed body. Jacob Iglitzen, who also happened to be the druggist from whose store the phone call had been placed, subsequently identified the body. He stated that he was able to recognize Langley’s face, although it was somewhat decomposed. He also identified Langley’s clothes. Overall, the evidence appeared to indicate that Langley had been killed by falling debris, and that his invalid brother, Homer, died from dehydration and malnutrition. Attorney McMullen, told the press that he planned to confer the next day with Joseph A. Cox, an attorney for the city’s Public Administrator, concerning the handling of the brother’s assets, which were now estimated to be in the range of $100,000 distributed among various bank accounts and real estate holdings. This finally laid to rest the popular notion that the brothers were multimillionaires.

The next day, on April 10th, the medical examiner concluded that Langley Collyer had been smothered by the debris, which had collapsed upon him, and had been dead for at least a month before his brother, Homer. A funeral was held the next day on the 11th at Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn. The Reverend Dr. Charles T. Bridgeman, the assistant pastor of Trinity Church presided. There were forty persons in attendance, including many cousins.

The saga of Langley Collyer was not quite finished, however. A month later, the Commissioner of Housing and Buildings, Robert F. Wagner, Jr., announced that the house at 2078 Fifth Avenue still contained substantial filth and garbage, and that it remained “a distinct menace to health.” He requested that the public administrator in charge of the brother’s estate, Francis J. Mulligan, clear out the building, in order that the property could be surveyed. Findings would then be sent to the state Supreme Court so that the city could receive permission to demolish the building. On June 30th, Supreme Court Justice J. Edward Lumbard signed the order for demolition. An inspector from the Department of Housing and Buildings had noted that the “roof beams were water soaked, rotted, and defective,” and that all the floors throughout the entire building are sagging and defective.” The city would next seek bids on the demolition of the building, and sometime after, the Collyer mansion was no more. As a final chapter, the lot at the corner of 128th Street was publicly auctioned on March 1, 1951.

Unfortunately, Langley Collyer lived in an era when problems such as compulsive hoarding were regarded as eccentricities; something to be laughed at or ridiculed. Assuming that even had he been able to come to grips with the fact that he had a serious problem, there is little that would have been done for it at that point in history. Back in the first half of the 20th century, problems such as OCD were treated with psychoanalytic-type talk therapies, which produced little in the way of results. Even today, we still read reports of individuals whose trash-filled properties have been condemned, or who were forced by law to clean up dwellings, which have been declared public nuisances or even health risks. Municipal governments and the media still seem to not understand what is going on in these situations, and that these are individuals in serious need of help.

Sufferers of O-C disorders can be found to have varying degrees of insight. They may differ in their ability to recognize that they have a disorder, or that their behaviors are not those of the average person. It would appear that Langley Collyer, if he in fact had OCD, might have been one of those with a lower level of insight into his problem. It may well be that he believed his hoarding behaviors served a valuable purpose of saving money; an ironic notion, considering that the brothers were relatively well off for the era they lived in. It would also seem that in terms of reclusiveness, Langley and his brother became caught in an insidious loop. That is, as their behavior moved further and further away from the norm, and people’s reactions to them became more critical and judgmental, they pulled in their boundaries and cut themselves off even more. This, in turn, would most likely have served to make them seem even more abnormal to outsiders, resulting in even more harsh treatment by the outside world.

Nowadays, compulsive hoarding is regarded as treatable via behavioral therapy and medication. Sufferers can learn to clean up their dwellings, and to keep them that way. In behavioral treatments for OCD, individuals are encouraged to gradually confront situations that cause them to feel anxious, while at the same time, resisting the performance of the compulsions they ordinarily use to relieve their anxiety. This approach is known as Exposure and Response Prevention. In the case of hoarding, we are talking about gradually sorting out and discarding things that have been accumulated. This may be done under the direct supervision of a therapist working on the scene, or by giving the individual weekly or daily homework assignments.

Before the actual work of therapy begins the therapist makes a thorough behavioral analysis in order to determine what is being saved, how it is being saved, and where it is being saved. This may involve either a home visit by the therapist to directly observe the scene, or the patient may bring in photographs showing views of all areas of the home. Clutter and trash may be dealt with either by location or category, and in either case, is approached by first working on things that are easiest, and then working towards those that are more difficult. For instance, the therapist may pick a particular room, closet, or area for the individual to begin clearing out, and then, over time, assign tasks designed to accomplish this. Alternatively, as some people tend to save only certain types of things, therapy may start by earmarking these particular items for removal, wherever they may be found. One example would be people who save excessive quantities of newspapers, magazines, etc. having to bundle and put out a certain amount of them each week. Or in the case of those who have accumulated large amounts of clothing (old or new), having to throw out or donate a set number of articles between therapy sessions. In addition to this activity, the therapist will work with the individual to establish a set of rules for what can and cannot be saved, and in the case of saved items, how to store or arrange them in a neat and organized fashion. Some therapists will set up a rule governing how long an item may be kept without being used, before it is considered in need of disposal. With my own patients, I have always used what I refer to as my “Three Year Rule.” Under this rule, any item that has not been used in any way during the previous three years must be discarded. There can be exceptions, of course, as in the case of family heirlooms, antiques, valuable collections, family photos, or useful tools, etc. Where people’s lives and dwellings have been disorganized for long periods of time, these rules are necessary to establish some kind of order, and to prevent the person from falling into chaos again. In all cases, the ultimate goal is to get the sufferer to take personal responsibility for the state of their dwelling, and to accept that they really do have a problem.

Some people seem to think that the ultimate solution should be to descend upon a sufferer’s home, and forcefully clean the place out. While this might remedy the immediate problem, nothing else really changes, and within a period of time, the dwelling will fill up with things again in the same way as before. In addition, the anger and anxiety on the part of the sufferer that would result from such a remedy would probably only push them away from seeking help in the future.

The story of Langley and his unfortunate brother remains as a cautionary tale – an example of just how serious hoarding can become when left untreated. With appropriate therapies, however, such extremes of behavior can be prevented from engulfing the lives of otherwise intelligent and potentially productive human beings.

Dr. Fred Penzel is a licensed psychologist who has specialized in the treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders since 1982. He is the Executive Director of Western Suffolk Psychological Services in Huntington, Long Island, New York, a private clinic dedicated to the treatment of neurobiological disorders. Dr. Penzel is the author of the self-help book Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders: A Complete Guide To Getting Well And Staying Well, and also The Hair Pulling Problem: A Complete Guide to Trichotillomania. Dr. Penzel is a charter member of the Science Advisory Boards of both the Obsessive-Compulsive Foundation and the Trichotillomania Learning Center. He is also a frequent contributor to the newsletters of both organizations. Dr. Penzel conducts numerous workshops and lectures on OCD, Trichotillomania, and related disorders both nationally and internationally.