[HPFGU-Catalogue] UPDATE, OT

[Barry Arrowsmith]

>
>  PS In typing morsmordre, I am struck by the similarity in sound
>  with 'Moor's murderer' - which in the UK is a reference to a very
>  awful series of murders carried out by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley.
>  They tortured and killed children up on the Yorkshire Moors in the
>  1960s and have since become a byword for depravity.
>
>  Hindley died recently in prison, but Brady is still alive. Some of
>  the children's remains have never been found, and Brady, in
>  particular, has played a long cat and mouse game with the authorities
>  in trying to identify where he buried them.
>
>  I just wondered if there was any association in JKR's mind when she
>  devised the name for this skull sign.
>

For some reason reminders of the 60s seem to have been everywhere I've 
looked in the past week - books, websites, conversations. Philby, 
Profumo (that classic photo of Christine Keeler has turned up on 3 
separate occasions), the Duchess of Argyll and the Headless Man - damn! 
but we had some cracking scandals in those days. Modern politics is 
milk and water stuff by comparison.

Then just an hour before you mention the Moors Murderers I had a phone 
call from an ex-girl-friend and among other things she reminded me that 
one evening, '64 I think it was, before they were caught, we'd been out 
to a pub near Cannock Chase and got stopped and the car searched on the 
way home. Another child had gone missing.....

Unlikely that Jo would pick  on it specifically I think - she'd only 
have been about a year old at the time.

I'd always assumed it was derived from 'mort' and 'mordre' - death and 
bite - death-eaters. Still, you never know.

Barry


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