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Stories attached to social outcasts

lordmongrove

Justified & Ancient
Joined
May 30, 2009
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When i was a lad (1970s) there was an old man in Nuneaton called Tom Dye. He wore a flasher type raincoat, was balding, painfully thind and rode around on a little moped grining in an imbecilic manner.I think he was mentaly disadvantaged. School lore had it that he was a pervert who interfeared with kids. Everyone was scared of 'being bummed off Tom Dye). To my knowlage there was absolutly no evidence that he ever did anything like that but it was a legend at Hartshill School.

Did anyone else have these sort of rather crule school stories about odd locals?
 
Strange women often have a Miss Havisham legend attached to them - as if women are not capable of being weird in themselves but need a good jilting to start them off.

In Southport, where I grew up, the Pink Lady (loads about her on any Southport Message Board) was erroneously believed to have gone strange when left at the altar. :spinning
 
Strange women often have a Miss Havisham legend attached to them - as if women are not capable of being weird in themselves but need a good jilting to start them off.

There seems a fair tradition of it, going back at least to Matthew 'Monk' Lewis's Crazy Jane poems, one nicely rendered here.

But you probably knew that already James. :lol:

Where i grew up, there were lots of nasty rumours about other kids or teenagers that were learning disabled or sometimes just badly looked after, I can;t really think of any about adults, besides a local bogeyman figure that did not appear to be an actual or specific person and was simply known as 'nasty man'.
 
We had a few, firstly like Tom Dye we had Bent Barry. Again no idea really why this guy had that name or who first gave it to him, really I think honestly the only thing you'd notice about him was a slight limp. I think he was openly gay but that wasn't a big deal so no idea why he was singled out. He wasn't mocked by us kids or anything he was just known as Bent Barry.

Then we had Grant who used to push a Dachshund around in a wheel barrow customised like a Mod scooter with loads of mirrors etc, while wearing an old leather flying helmet and goggles. No one was ever unkind to or about him I'm pleased to say.

Lastly being Wales and our habit of including someone's job or one of their characteristics in their name, we have/had in Mumbles an alcoholic who never made through the afternoon drinking session called Dai Oblivion.
 
Where I grew up there was Captain Beaky, an old guy with a massive nose who lived with a younger guy with obvious learning difficulties (looking back on it now) who was either his little brother or possibly his son.

They used to chase us down the road if our football went into their garden! Actually chase us, shouting abuse at us - basically threatening to kill us.

And then there was the particularly ugly lady who, when we saw her down the shops, would have to endure a chorus of "Frankie" by Sister Sledge (?) by every kid when she walked past. Poor woman.
 
we had Bent Barry

Where we lived when i was an older teen we had Peter the Puff, Paul the Puff and Harry Bendover. Probably says more about the people that gave them those names than the people themselves. :roll:
 
JamesWhitehead said:
In Southport, where I grew up, the Pink Lady (loads about her on any Southport Message Board) was erroneously believed to have gone strange when left at the altar. :spinning
,
I remember her from the late 60s early 70s. Wasn't she Purple rather than Pink though?

Then I lived in Diss in the late 70s and we had Sheriff Bunny an elderly chap who dressed as a cowboy. He had a toy gun belt, but kept his ciggies in the holster as the story went the police had confiscated his toy pistol to avoid misunderstanding. He rode a rackety old bike, that the locals referred to as "Trigger."

There was another character, middle-aged man in a crumpled suit and mac. He had briefcase chained his wrist, which contained "secret papers" and he reckoned that some mysterious agency was following him and spying on him.
 
Timble: I remember her from the late 60s early 70s. Wasn't she Purple rather than Pink though?

Yes, I think the discussions online tend to call her that.

She turned more purple as she got older. I fear we all do. My brother Aki backs me up on that. :)
 
Didn't we already have a thread on this?
Lots more of example of local 'individuals'.
 
I recall we had (and actually they are still around) two fellows, one called Noddy and the other called Strawberry. My pal told me that Strawberry had once taken the (imaginary) drug 'strawberry field' which supposedly takes you up on a blistering high for over 10 months then either leaves you back in your right mind or forever remodelled upstairs. The fellow just looks anxious and has worn the same rain coat for the last twenty years so far as I can make out.
The other chap, Noddy has obviously some sort of learning difficulty and just potters up and down the road with a litre bottle of pop under his arm. Apparently he is quite old although he has only begun to show signs of age in recent years
 
On the DigitalSpy thread, if you were bothered to read all 60 odd pages, there was someone whose story was about the local weirdo, sadly it turned out later that he did infact abuse/kill a girl. This was in North Wales somewhere...

While they are sometimes just unfortunate oddbods there is always the chance that they are actually more sinister.
 
McAvennie_ said:
On the DigitalSpy thread, if you were bothered to read all 60 odd pages, there was someone whose story was about the local weirdo, sadly it turned out later that he did infact abuse/kill a girl. This was in North Wales somewhere...

While they are sometimes just unfortunate oddbods there is always the chance that they are actually more sinister.

I saw that story - it was about a bloke called Mad Howard; I'm from that neck of the woods and remember him very well.

As I recall it was only really by virtue of his Dad being a local business owner and quite wealthy and him having some kind of genetic condition that made him mature very very young that people assumed 'he was okay really'. The fact was that he had a long string of minor offences, usually involving sexual harrassment of teenage girls and indicent exposure to the same. He used to peep through the window of a girl I know, and they had to get the council to re-house them because the Police couldn't watch the place 24 hours to catch him.

It all culminated in the awful murder of Sophie Hook and he was locked away forever. There's still a number of people out there who are convinced that he's innocent and he was conveniently framed by the Police, but I think I've got a little more faith in our justice system and forensic science.

Regardless of that, the streets are certainly safer without him - he wasn't just 'a local oddball', he was a dangerous psychopath and troublemaker who people had been complaining about for years.
 
milk23 said:
My pal told me that Strawberry had once taken the (imaginary) drug 'strawberry field' which supposedly takes you up on a blistering high for over 10 months then either leaves you back in your right mind or forever remodelled upstairs. The fellow just looks anxious and has worn the same rain coat for the last twenty years so far as I can make out.
That puts a new spin on an ad I saw today: it was in the window of a student bar, and was advertising a 'Strawberry Foam Party'... :shock:
 
Up north in Sunny Sunderland we have a few local characters, the main one at the minute is the Bag Man, so called because he has lots of bags. He'll walk so far, put the bags down, then walk back to his other bags, carry them to where the other bags are then back and so on. Rumour is that he carries everything he owns is there, and is homeless. Alledgedly, some one I know followed him and he apparently lives in a nice house... I must admit though, when I see him wandering around I want to buy him some better quality carriers as I hate seeing the bags split, but my other half always says no. Don't know what his actual story is but I think he's got a facebook page... :shock:
 
A character in North Kent Town* was called "Fag-ash Lill"(A moniker I've heard in many locations). She was an elderly eccentric, habitation unknown, who dressed in soiled/used/scavenged clothing and always had a lit cigarette in her mouth. Local legend had it that she was a 60's fashion model who, on loosing her looks lost her mind.
No evidence, no further reasoning.


*A small Victorian seaside resort wot I lived in for many years.
 
I think Leeds had a fag-ash lil cira 1950s, although it's possibly a retelling of Woodbine Lizzy, who was 30s/40s, and probably did exist as there are photos of her.

A few very old guys still remember her. Guess she made an impression.
 
Back in my home town we had 'Toxic Terry' who sniffed petrol. You could smell him before you saw him. There was also a short chap who looked like he lived rough and played a mouth organ for money. The story went that he was a computer genius who got fed up with the stress and decided to live without a job.
 
Spudrick68 said:
There was also a short chap who looked like he lived rough and played a mouth organ for money. The story went that he was a computer genius who got fed up with the stress and decided to live without a job.

Yeah, I've often considered that as an alternative career too.
 
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