The Welch Story

Welch was only ever known as just Welch (without any forenames) until Dennis "Bickie" Crawford (who was only known as "Bickie") started calling him "Welk." How this came about is now lost in the mists of the early to mid-Sixties, but it caught and even a home-spun satirical magazine - titled Welch - was eventually renamed Welk, much to Bickie's delight. The character himself is a slightly eccentric figure who still occupies the same rambling Victorian house today as he did all those many years ago.

The magazine would devote a theme to its subject and tried to appear bi-weekly. Often the theme would be macabre, and this is probably where most of the urban legend about Welch has its roots.

Welch, who was slightly older than the rest of us, didn't help matters by the interests he held, namely taxidermy, osteology, anatomy, chemistry, and collecting exotic and sometimes dangerous animals, including, amphibians, reptiles, fish, spiders and insects. He also collected skulls and skeletal parts.

He was dismissive of all aspects of the supernatural, looking upon belief in same with total disdain.

His acquaintances chiefly comprised of "Bickie," Saunders (Len),  Steve (Howe), and, of course, me. He was probably closest to "Bickie"; though Steve seemed to get on all right with him. Together we investigated the haunted Marlborough Theatre on Holloway Road; an experience that left Steve traumatised (though he doesn't go as far as that in his autobiography All of My Yesterdays (2020), and makes needless errors in his recounting of the experience. Also, no mention is made of Welch, "Bickie," or myself. A guitarist by the name of Yoss does get a mention in Steve's book. He was a very good friend of mine, but only became aware of Welch through other people. This would later become a problem with regard to the myths surrounding Welch. They would all be disseminated by individuals who had not met him, and didn't know him any better than they knew Burke and Hare with whom he would be compared by the photographer Don McCullin who it is believed attended the same secondary school as Welch, and, latterly, the author Paul Adams who took his cue from a false caption created by McCullin. The Cockney cameraman and I are portraiturists. I had already photographed Welch in the same pose that McCullin would adopt when he came to snap him in the large front room on the ground floor of his north London house. Welch must have shown my work to McMullin who, more or less, copied it when he posed his subject between two human skulls in an identical manner. The difference is that McCullin added sensational captions (they would change down the years) to ensure his controversial picture of Welch commanded maximum public attention.

In 2015, the author Paul Adams made the following astonishing claim whilst talking to an audience:

"What we do know in the 1960s is that Highgate Cemetery was being utilised as a source for occult supplies in the form of stolen skulls and other body parts during the period of 1962 at the latest. In that year famous war photographer Don McCullin composed this astonishing photograph [a black and white image of a bearded man between two skulls is shown on the screen] of a local character, a man he knew by the name of Welch. Now according to interviews he's given over the years, Welch was heavily into black magic, and other contemporary sources confirmed that he was also involved in a small and highly secretive body-snatching ring operating in both Highgate and Kensal Green cemeteries."

The image attributed to Don McCullin emulates my photograph taken some time prior to McCullin. The concern, however, is the appalling libel committed by Paul Adams' public allegation, which I know to be completely false. I found Welch an introverted and unusual person, but he was most certainly not "a source for occult supplies" and most definitely not "heavily into black magic." He would have treated such a thing and anyone involved in it with contempt. Welch, of course, became aware of David Farrant when the latter fed a false story to a Hornsey Journal newspaper reporter by the name of Roger Simpson. This is where the "occult supplies" and "black magic" fabrications have their origin. The journalist realised he had been led up the garden path by Farrant and no story was ever published. Indeed, it is from this point, partly due to the manufactured nonsense fed to them, that the Hornsey Journal started to gather incriminating evidence against David Farrant. This much, at least, I learned from that newspaper when talking to one of their senior journalists in the previous century. It should be added that Paul Adams was a very close friend and collaborator of the late David Farrant. This is the context of the defamation. Farrant himself was found guilty of graveyard vandalism, tomb desecration and black magic at Highgate Cemetery in 1974 and, together with other offences, was sentenced to four years and eight months imprisonment. Adams skips over that detail 

I visited Welch in the new century, and we stood talking on his doorstep for well over a couple of hours. He asked about "Bicky" and some of the others, but did not invite me inside. I was pleased about that because I wanted to leave all the memories undisturbed and in situ. We spoke as if we had only seen each other the previous week, but it had been almost half a century. He seemed no different. He remembered all the merchandise bearing his name, including a 45rpm record on the Macabre label. He enjoyed it at the time, despite being an introvert, and it somehow bonded us. I informed him that my father had recently died. He seemed emotionally distant and unattached. I wondered about his own father (known as the "Count") who wore the darkest prescription lens I have ever seen. And, of course, his mother who was a gentle soul. I sensed they were no longer with us.

Welch is a name that crops up in The Vampire Hunter's Handbook (Gothic Press, 1997) as someone involved at the outset in an informal group researching strange phenomena in the early Sixties. He himself was a sceptic who held no beliefs and dismissed all practices, whether black magic or religious, in equal measure. In other words, he was an atheist who had no time for the hidden world.  Being such a sceptic, and therefore unlikely to be impressionable, was also a useful control to have present when examining alleged hauntings. I was originally introduced to him by "Bicky," a mutual friend who was also an enthusiastic researcher with an open mind and part of the same group.

Welch is second from the left, next to "Bicky" and Stephen Howe (who is seen on the far right).