• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Diana Dors' Missing Millions

More details about the cracking of Dors' cipher (plus some tidbits about the case) can be found in these 3 articles at the ciphers section of a German science blog site.

2015 (In German; with comments)

Die verschlüsselte Nachricht der Schauspielerin Diana Dors
https://scienceblogs.de/klausis-kry...elte-nachricht-der-schauspielerin-diana-dors/

2018 (Same article; in English; with different comments)

Revisited: Diana Dors’ encrypted message and her lost millions
https://scienceblogs.de/klausis-kry...dors-encrypted-message-and-her-lost-millions/

2020 (New article; in English; with new comments)

Diana Dors’ second cipher mystery
https://scienceblogs.de/klausis-krypto-kolumne/2020/12/07/diana-dors-second-cipher-mystery/
 
According to this online article Pyewacket was the name of an upscale fashion / clothing shop in Kemp Town (Brighton). The shop was established in the mid-Seventies and was still operating through the time of Dors' death.

https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/5103843.diana-dors-mystery-deepens/
Great. Maybe back to "cellar of the [XXX] shop" issue? Pywacket was the name of witch's familiar and a cat in Bell Book and Candle as Max noted above but Dors was not in Bell Book and Candle.
 
More details about the cracking of Dors' cipher (plus some tidbits about the case) can be found in these 3 articles at the ciphers section of a German science blog site.

2015 (In German; with comments)

Die verschlüsselte Nachricht der Schauspielerin Diana Dors
https://scienceblogs.de/klausis-kry...elte-nachricht-der-schauspielerin-diana-dors/

2018 (Same article; in English; with different comments)

Revisited: Diana Dors’ encrypted message and her lost millions
https://scienceblogs.de/klausis-kry...dors-encrypted-message-and-her-lost-millions/

2020 (New article; in English; with new comments)

Diana Dors’ second cipher mystery
https://scienceblogs.de/klausis-krypto-kolumne/2020/12/07/diana-dors-second-cipher-mystery/
What a strange story! From what they're saying on these sites, Dors had cancer and knew she was dying and gave one of her sons a piece of this puzzle to her money, then she passes on and her husband committed suicide a few months later and allegedly knew the solution to this puzzle, yet did not tell the children?
But the most confusing part of the story is that Dors apparently filed for bankruptcy at some point?
Good luck to those children, hope they can sort it out.
 
Great. Maybe back to "cellar of the [XXX] shop" issue? Pywacket was the name of witch's familiar and a cat in Bell Book and Candle as Max noted above but Dors was not in Bell Book and Candle.

"Pyewacket" was also alleged to be something Dors' evil housekeeper character Mrs. Wickens shouted to scare children in her 1972 film The Amazing Mr Blunden.

DDors-Wickens.jpg

https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/5103843.diana-dors-mystery-deepens/
 
Last edited:
Pyewacket was a Siamese, who peed in my mum's (mechanical) typewriter with some regularity. Every time that occurred, my Dad would have to apply liberal amounts of WD40 to the levers.

Mum says he came as one of a pair, already named - the other was called Scheherazade.

I remember Dad pressing its nose onto an ink pad and then using its nose to make “potato prints” on the doorframe – I’m not sure why, but it made me laugh at the time.

Matthew-Hopkins.jpg
 
Last edited:
Wow - sounds like a business all on its' own!

The great Elmore Leonard wrote a crime novel with such an endeavour as background. Essentially, the guys involved found assets that were lying unclaimed and then tracked through the records until they found the current legal owner (by no means as straightforward as that makes it sound, in many cases). The finders then go to the unwitting beneficiary, tell them that they have, say, half a million dollars due to them, and ask for a very hefty percentage as a finding fee, before passing on any information that may lead to those assets.

The beauty of this for the finder is that once a lost asset is identified, tracking back from the money to the current theoretical beneficiary – as complex an operation as it may be – is relatively straightforward compared to the reverse process. There will be a known starting point (the assets) and logical administrative routes to follow therefrom - whereas a distant beneficiary, even when given precise knowledge of the amount due to them, but with no knowledge of what form the assets take or which family member, friend or institution is their source - or even how far to look back in the history of all those things - will potentially be presented with of tens of thousands of unknowns when trying to take the reverse path.

Leonard’s novel (I can’t recall the title just now) is set in the US – and there will be some legal differences country to country.* Also, I suspect dormant bank accounts are much more opaque than things like shares and investments, insurance policies, pensions etc.

*I have in the past (this is in the UK) been approached by an independent company regarding shares owned by my then deceased aunt, who I held power of attorney for. I was told the shares existed, but no other details pending a payment to them.
 
"Pyewacket" was also alleged to be something Dors' evil housekeeper character Mrs. Wickens shouted to scare children in her 1972 film The Amazing Mr Blunden.


https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/5103843.diana-dors-mystery-deepens/

Dors had tried to break into Hollywood in 1956, but returned to England late in the year under something of a cloud, having failed. Kim Novak, star of Bell, Book and Candle which featured Pyewacket, was an established Hollywood actress whose career in 1956 was on the up and up. They were both of the “blonde bombshell” type.

l’m not a cryptanalyst, but l’d stake ten bob that there’s a toehold there which would assist someone a lot smarter than me in deciphering Dors’ code.

maximus otter
 
The great Elmore Leonard wrote a crime novel with such an endeavour as background. Essentially, the guys involved found assets that were lying unclaimed and then tracked through the records until they found the current legal owner (by no means as straightforward as that makes it sound, in many cases). The finders then go to the unwitting beneficiary, tell them that they have, say, half a million dollars due to them, and ask for a very hefty percentage as a finding fee, before passing on any information that may lead to those assets.

The beauty of this for the finder is that once a lost asset is identified, tracking back from the money to the current theoretical beneficiary – as complex an operation as it may be – is relatively straightforward compared to the reverse process. There will be a known starting point (the assets) and logical administrative routes to follow therefrom - whereas a distant beneficiary, even when given precise knowledge of the amount due to them, but with no knowledge of what form the assets take or which family member, friend or institution is their source - or even how far to look back in the history of all those things - will potentially be presented with of tens of thousands of unknowns when trying to take the reverse path.

Leonard’s novel (I can’t recall the title just now) is set in the US – and there will be some legal differences country to country.* Also, I suspect dormant bank accounts are much more opaque than things like shares and investments, insurance policies, pensions etc.

*I have in the past (this is in the UK) been approached by an independent company regarding shares owned by my then deceased aunt, who I held power of attorney for. I was told the shares existed, but no other details pending a payment to them.
There was (is?) a show on BBC daytime TV that followed a firm that did this. Reuniting people with money they didn't know they were entitled to, for a fee of course.
 
Dors had tried to break into Hollywood in 1956, but returned to England late in the year under something of a cloud, having failed. Kim Novak, star of Bell, Book and Candle which featured Pyewacket, was an established Hollywood actress whose career in 1956 was on the up and up. They were both of the “blonde bombshell” type.

l’m not a cryptanalyst, but l’d stake ten bob that there’s a toehold there which would assist someone a lot smarter than me in deciphering Dors’ code.

maximus otter
Kim Novak is another beauty, given the royal treatment by Hollywood and the media. Diana Dors was every bit as beautiful, strange how she did not have the same success. Guess it's just a matter of what agent you have, and Luck...........
 
I'm willing to bet that Diana Dors did not have millions to her name, having spent it over the years.
Her career did tail off a bit before she died, so perhaps this made her burn through money.
I can't conceive of a situation where she'd invent a puzzle for her inheritors to solve before they could inherit her estate. It just seems mad.
I think Alan Lake got into a situation where he'd relied on Diana and then she was gone. He probably tried to trace any money that was left and found that they had less than he'd thought.
 
I'm willing to bet that Diana Dors did not have millions to her name, having spent it over the years.
Her career did tail off a bit before she died, so perhaps this made her burn through money.
I can't conceive of a situation where she'd invent a puzzle for her inheritors to solve before they could inherit her estate. It just seems mad.
I think Alan Lake got into a situation where he'd relied on Diana and then she was gone. He probably tried to trace any money that was left and found that they had less than he'd thought.
Oh never thought of that, perhaps he found there was nothing left?
While battling cancer, perhaps she was on some heavy meds that affected her thinking?
And it's a bit puzzling that at some point Dors apparently filed bankruptcy, another problem.
 
Oh never thought of that, perhaps he found there was nothing left?
While battling cancer, perhaps she was on some heavy meds that affected her thinking?
And it's a bit puzzling that at some point Dors apparently filed bankruptcy, another problem.
I wouldn't say there was nothing left - but it was probably not enough to pay creditors and have the same level of lifestyle.
They were living in one of the most expensive parts of the UK, surrounded by other mega-rich people.
I grew up living nearby and my Dad saw Diana Dors around the town a few times. She always looked upset or angry for some reason.
I seem to recall briefly seeing her once as we drove past.
 
I used to live not for from the strange guy called Raymond Sanderson who owned a number of suitcases of various stuff Diana Dor's had once owned in which he bought back in 1992 but I think he died a few years a go.

 
I wouldn't say there was nothing left - but it was probably not enough to pay creditors and have the same level of lifestyle.
They were living in one of the most expensive parts of the UK, surrounded by other mega-rich people.
I grew up living nearby and my Dad saw Diana Dors around the town a few times. She always looked upset or angry for some reason.
I seem to recall briefly seeing her once as we drove past.
Dors was probably upset at facing bankruptcy after having lived a grand lifestyle.
They say that you are better off never having had big money, than having it and then losing it all.
 
Last edited:
From what I remember, the story went that Diana moved to Hollywood and tried to get in the showbiz community's good books by holding a grand party. Unfortunately it ended with her humiliatingly pushed into a swimming pool, and she complained so bitterly her previous hotness got very cold very quickly.

But really what happened is that blonde bombshells were ten a penny in Hollywood at the time, and the vehicles her studio put her in were just not much good, so her career there fizzled out. She then put on weight for a character role back in Britain and couldn't get back to her previous hourglass figure, so she became a character actress. The Brits continued to support her because she seemed game for all sorts of roles and TV appearances, but internationally, she never took off.

The British film industry was heading towards the doldrums anyway at the time, and she was another casualty of that, but she was famous enough here to work consistently to the end of her life.
 
Dors was probably upset at facing bankruptcy after having lived a grand lifestyle.
They say that you are better off never having had big money, than having it and then losing it all.

This touches on multiple points that nobody seems to have invested much effort in noting, much less investigating ...

(1) Dors was noted as having lived a lavish celebrity lifestyle even after her days as a top-tier sexpot had faded into the past. It's anybody's guess whether she ever managed to keep her apparent spending habits under control. In her later years her income was less, and if she'd been given to continuing to "live in the manner to which she was accustomed" there's little reason to believe she had much money left.

(2) Much earlier (in the late Sixties) she'd gone through bankruptcy and had to pay fines for non-reporting of taxable income and non-payment of applicable taxes. That earlier crash occurred during and following the period when she'd left management of her financial affairs to her first two husbands. In the shadow of these problems, when she married Lake, she allegedly took personal control of her finances and became even more furtive about accepting payments only in cash. It's unclear how competently she managed her own finances from that point onward.

(3) By all accounts Lake was a hopeless alcoholic in the final years. If he'd been privy to details of Dors' financial holdings, who's to say he never dipped into them himself or served as a cause for recurrent expenses that had to be paid from Dors' assets?

(4) Her son (Mark Dawson) claimed Dors revealed the alleged existence of the fortune and gave him the partial code document approximately 1.5 years before her death (May 1984). That would be late 1982 - the year of her cancer diagnosis. She had a year and a half in which to spend a lot of her money on medical-related expenses, during which time she had a bout with meningitis and two surgeries to remove tumors. Depending on what course(s) of treatment she'd begun when she revealed all this to Dawson, one may well wonder whether her state of mind affected the accuracy of what she told him.

My point is that regardless of how much mystery surrounds how much money she'd hidden away there are plenty of reasons to suspect it had been draining away, especially from 1982 onward.
 
Back
Top