Design journalist Leanne Cloudsdale tells us of her fondness for one of the best-known artworks in the city.

Not quite (but very nearly) as gruesome as it sounds but, as Hull Tour Guide Paul Schofield explains, they may be closer than you’d expect.

Eyes down for a tale of fraud, full houses and fat ladies as our illegal gaming correspondent Angus Young gets his card marked.

Fraud cases come in all shapes and sizes. Perhaps the most notorious recent example is John Darwin, who faked his own death in 2002 in a canoeing accident to allow his wife Anne to collect his life insurance. Unknown to the insurance company, he was alive and well and secretly living in the house next door in Seaton Carew.

Hull’s most famous fraud case stayed very much on dry land but left hundreds of bingo fans across the city up the creek without a paddle, cheated out of thousands of pounds in cash prizes. It actually involved two scams – one lasting a few weeks and the other spanning the best part of 18 months – and both centred on one of Hull’s top venues at the time – the Phoenix social club in Hessle Road.

The first fraud was relatively crude. It involved the club’s owner Michael Brown calling out the numbers in bingo games and manager Albert Penhallurick checking the card when a win was called out. Unknown to those playing, the punter who called a win hadn’t won fairly at all. Instead, along with the club’s card checker, he was in on the scam with a predetermined set of numbers already agreed and shared by the four men. The resulting cash prize was then split between them.

The second con featured the same routine but much bigger cash prizes. This was because it involved a series of so-called ‘link bingo’ games played simultaneously in 19 social clubs across Hull. The group of clubs operated under the New Allied Bingo Club banner, with the Phoenix acting as a nerve centre where the balls would be drawn, their numbers called and relayed to each venue via a radio system. Brown was also New Allied’s treasurer. Under link bingo, tickets were sold at each club up to a predetermined time, usually before  mid-evening  interval. This was intended to allow the numbers of tickets sold at each club to be telephoned through to the Phoenix to allow the prize money to be calculated before each game. A small CCTV camera was set up to film the balls as they appeared from the machine in a move designed to convince players at the other clubs everything was above board.

However, when some games were underway the camera would helpfully not work properly while the interval was used by those involved in the fraud to get into their positions. With Brown once again directing operations, 88 games were fixed in the same way as the initial fraud. In many cases, so-called ‘runners’ sitting next to ‘winners’ would use the interval to race to the Phoenix control room to double check the agreed numbers would be announced later in the evening. Some of the runners at outlying clubs would phone in to make similar checks. Overall, the gang shared  prize money totalling £14,314.

Inevitably, suspicions were eventually raised and the police were called in. The subsequent investigation led to charges being brought against 23 men who all eventually admitted their part in the swindle.

When they all appeared for sentencing at York Crown Court in March 1977 the place was packed. The men were represented  by 15 barristers and it took half an hour to read out all the 32 charges against them. Mastermind Brown, who pleaded guilty to 26 offences, was given a 12-month jail sentence suspended for two years. His brother-in-law Stephen Evans was handed a nine-month sentence suspended for two years. Most of the others were given fines ranging from £10 to £500. All of the men were connected to the Phoenix while none of the other club proprietors were implicated in the racket. In passing sentence, Judge Stanley Price said: “There could not be a case which more clearly underlines that dishonesty does not pay.”

The scandal cast a shadow over the Phoenix’s reputation but the venue was already living on borrowed time. By the end of the decade it had been demolished to make way for the new roundabout under the Daltry Street flyover as part of the construction of the new Clive Sullivan Way dual carriageway.

Angus Young

Rachel, of Rix, talks us through what she does at work, which may not be quite what you’d expect.

Wonderful children’s book illustrator Petr Horáček was at the Big Malarkey and he told us all about the artists who inspire him.

Another interesting tale for the ‘Well I Never Knew That’ file from our unrealised suburbs correspondent Angus Young.

Sir James Reckitt’s Garden Village is rightly regarded as one of the gems of East Hull. Constructed between 1907 and 1913, the village featured 600 houses built on 140 acres of land with most of the new homes being occupied by employees of the famous company bearing the philanthropist’s name. Today the neighbourhood retains much of its original charm and is still a popular place to live.

However, relatively few people know about another similar but much smaller historic model village on the other side of Holderness Road.

Just after the First World War, the British Oil and Cake Mills Ltd. (BOCM) bought 42 acres of land to build facilities and services for its employees. The plans included up to 500 houses along with a library, concert hall, social club, tennis courts and a pavilion, cricket and football pitches and even a 15-foot wide cinder running track. The first phase of the BOCM garden village was opened in 1921 featuring 56 houses on the south side of The Broadway and one fully completed street – Seafield Avenue.

To avoid uniformity, there were 11 different house types of four different sizes laid out as either semi-detached pairs or short terraces. The aptly-named Sunshine Houses were built in terraces of just four properties, each one with large living rooms positioned to get the sun throughout most of the day.

Further house-building was slow but Maybury Road was developed to the east as part of the original BOCM plan to form a boundary to the village. Intended residential development on the land in between halted when the Second World War began.

The war also saw the sports pitches and cinder track being used for anti-aircraft units while the construction of post-war prefabs on the remainder of the land originally purchased by BOCM effectively ended the stylish garden village project before it had really properly got underway.

Altogether, only 74 BOCM houses were built but thanks to original tree-planting, the intentionally wide spaced-out streets and a healthy amount of mock-Tudor panelling, there’s still a pleasing 1920s urban village feel to the place. As such, it’s officially recognised as a Conservation Area, The designation provides a degree of protection under city council planning policy when it comes to any new planning applications being considered.

Another BOCM legacy can also be found in Cleveland Street in the shape of the  company’s former social club which stands on the corner of Mulgrave Street. Built in 1904 for company employees, it was known as both the New Cleveland Club and the Pearson Club over the years. The landmark building is currently being converted into a residential home for adults with mental health issues.

Angus Young

Currently appearing at Hull Truck in Oliver Twist, actor William Relton kindly guides us round some of his current favourite things.

Altogether now – ‘I Saw A Mouse’ ‘Where?’ You either remember it or you don’t, and director and clog-wearing rodent fan Andrew Pearson definitely does.

From furniture to fame, author and pop fan Nick Quantrill reports from Bev Road on a celebrated musical duo.

If the phrase ‘a receptacle for every wretchedness’ doesn’t make you want to read this, nothing will. By our wretchedness receptacle correspondent Angus Young.

You might be forgiven for thinking Parliament Street looks pretty much how it was first imagined when the idea of building it was first unveiled in September 1794. Today it remains Hull’s most complete Georgian Street, lined with elegant properties originally designed for “genteel families”. However, one eye-catching feature intended to cement its reputation as one of the most desirable places to live back in the day ended up never getting built.

The street’s story began with a notice published in the weekly Hull Advertiser stating that an application was due to be submitted to the next session of Parliament for “opening and making a new Street…and also for building of a row of Houses on each side of intended Street, with suitable convenience.” So began a process known as a Tontine investment scheme, with private subscribers being sought to fund the acquisition of existing properties for demolition followed  by the construction of the new street from Whitefriargate to Quay Street and ultimately the Dock – later known as Queen’s Dock – which had opened in 1778.

A further notice published two weeks later said: “The erection of a new street from Whitefriargate to the Dock side, as proposed to be done by Tontine subscription, would be in every point of view,  one of the most eligible improvements which this town has undergone in several years. Beside the advantage of opening a spacious and elegant communication between two places very much frequented, it would be a means of removing from one of the most beautiful Streets in the town a place which is, at present, a receptacle for every wretchedness.”

This dim view reflected a densely-populated neighbourhood of squalid tenement housing only accessible by narrow alleyways, including the evocatively-named Mug House Entry and White Dog Entry. The newspaper notice painted a brighter picture of the area’s future: “The houses on the new Street, on account of their contiguity with the Dock, would be a very desirable situation for people in business  and would no doubt be taken with great avidity.”

Despite the likes of William Wilberforce becoming an investor through the subscription scheme, increasing costs around the acquisition of existing properties raised doubts over its viability and progress slowed.

In May 1795 the necessary legislation was passed to create the street, the Act of Parliament inspiring its eventual name. However the uncertain financial situation forced a re-think and, reluctantly, the subscribers agreed to cut costs by shelving original proposals to build a large ornamental archway at one end of the street. The archway had been intended to not only provide a suitably grand architectural statement confirming Parliament Street’s status as the poshest address in town but also to possibly hide views of the less attractive Quay Street and the dockside beyond.

Meanwhile, the wider scheme dragged on. The first building plots were eventually sold at auction in 1796 but it would be another two years before the first newly-built houses were offered for sale. Building plots continued to be sold by auction over the next two years. One sale in 1799 involving  five plots at the southern end of the street included “a quantity of old bricks lying on the ground” presumably from the recently-demolished slums.

By the following year the street’s first residents were moving in but any hopes that their arrival might encourage a re-think over the archway faded away. They would end up having to put up living close to the dirty dockside at one end of the street after all.

Angus Young