Lord Bonkers' Diary: Violent Bonham-Carter's manor

Friday

To Whitechapel to conduct a party of tourists about the yards and courts of this insalubrious district. Today we are concerned neither with the crimes of Jack the Ripper (Nanny would often regale me with tales of them) nor with the life and times of Sir Percy Harris (the tour that brings the most visitors to our capital), but with the career of that notorious gangster Violent Bonham-Carter

I tell them of Bonham-Carter’s early struggles and patronage of Barbara Windsor (the black sheep of the royal family and, when they first met, a promising bantamweight) and take them for a drink at the Lame Deliverer – the very pub where Violent is said to have done away with the biscuit magnate Jack “The Hat” McVitie.

The landlord, who witnessed this notorious incident whilst enjoying a ginger beer in short trousers, is quick to point out that McVitie was widely thought to be “getting lairy” and to be “well out of order” – it was, after all, Violent’s manor. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the affair, a good time is had by all and I depart for St Pancras with enough in tips to keep me in Auld Johnston for another year.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South-West 1906-10.

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Diary

• Monday: "I Made Eastleigh Happen"
• Tuesday: The Cleggs in Switzerland
• Wednesday: Rutland six-card stud
• Thursday: Clegg on Milton Keynes