Home, Sweet Home (or not) Trivia Quiz

Answer: U.S. President Harry S Truman and his family

The Trumans moved into Blair House while the White House was undergoing a complete restoration. The house, which was built in 1810 for James Lowell, the first Surgeon General of the United States, takes its name from the Blair family, which owned the house from 1830 until the 1940s. In 1942, it became the property of the U.S. government, which enlarged it to include four other houses in the same block, and it is now used to accommodate visiting heads of state.

Interesting trivia: It was over dinner in Blair House on April 18, 1861 that Montgomery Blair, Postmaster General in the Lincoln administration and one of Lincoln's most trusted advisors, sounded out Robert E. Lee on the possibility of his taking command of the Union forces in the impending civil war. Lee, who was at that time an officer in the Federal Army, told Blair that he could not bear arms against his home state of Virginia, which would be on the opposing side in any conflict with the Union, and three days later resigned his commission in the U.S. Army to take up command of the CSA troops.

Answer: John Lennon

The apartment building is, of course, the famed Dakota Apartment House, an exclusive West Side address. Lennon was shot outside the apartment block by a deranged fan, Mark David Chapman, on December 8, 1980 (December's other Day That Will Live in Infamy!).

The Dakota was also the location for Roman Polanski's chilling film version of Ira Levin's 'Rosemary's Baby' in 1966. The star of 'Rosemary's Baby' was Mia Farrow.

Answer: John Reginald Christie

10 Rillington Place was a seedy house in a seedy street in a seedy part of Ladbroke Grove, in Notting Hill, London. Christie was the primary tenant of the house, which had been divided into three flats. He and his wife Ethel occupied the ground floor flat. Between 1943 and 1952, Christie murdered eight people at 10 Rillington Place (his wife was the last of his victims), becoming one of the most notorious British serial killers. Two of his victims were Beryl Evans and Geraldine Evans, the wife and daughter of the third floor flat tenant, Timothy Evans. Evans was charged with the murders of his wife and daughter, and in a gross miscarriage of justice, he was found guilty and hanged in 1950. Christie was subsequently tried for eight murders and hanged in 1953.

Ludovic Kennedy, the distinguished British author and journalist, wrote '10 Rillington Place' in 1965, to highlight the injustice that had befallen Evans, and the book led to the establishment in 1966 of the Brabin Commission which examined the case. Home Secretary Roy Jenkins issued a posthumous pardon for Evans in 1966, following publication of the Brabin report. Richard Attenborough starred as Christie in the 1971 film based on Kennedy's book, with John Hurt in the role of Evans. Rillington Place underwent a name change and became Ruston Close, and was eventually demolished.

Answer: Anne Hathaway

Anne Hathaway's picturesque home in Shottery, Warwickshire has graced many a chocolate box and biscuit tin, and attracts hordes of tourists annually. The 26-year-old Anne married the 18-year-old William Shakespeare in November, 1582, and three years later was left with three children while her husband headed for the bright lights of London and immortality as a playwright. Anne died in 1623, seven years after her errant husband, and is buried beside him in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church in Statford-upon-Avon.

Catherine Parr was the sixth wife of Henry VIII, and she had the good fortune to outlive him. Dilys Powell was a well-known British critic, and Mary Ann Evans was the real name of author George Eliot. None of them ever lived in Shottery, Warwickshire.

Answer: Charles Dickens

In buying Gad's Hill Place, Dickens fulfilled a childhood dream. He had often admired the red brick mansion while he was out on walks with his father, commenting that he'd like to live there. Papa Dickens suggested that if young Charles persevered and worked very hard, he might achieve such a goal.

After he had made his mark as a popular novelist and had accrued the necessary funds, Dickens bought Gad's Hill Place for the then-princely sum of 1,750 pounds. By the time Dickens and his family moved in, the house was in quite a dilapidated state and he immediately embarked on a program of repair and renovation. Dickens died at Gad's Hill in 1870. Since 1925, Gad's Hill Place has been a private school, and during the summer months it doubles as a conference centre.

Answer: The Prime Minister of Canada

Originally built in 1867-68 for Joseph Merrill Currier, a wealthy lumber baron, the beautiful stone house on the cliffs above the Ottawa River, was designated as the official residence of the Canadian Prime Minister in 1950. The first PM to live there was Louis St. Laurent, and the present occupant (at time of writing in June, 2006) is Stephen Harper.

The Canadian Governor-General, Michaelle Jean, lives in Rideau Hall, and the official residence of the Leader of the Opposition is called 'Stornaway'. Arthur Briggs lives in my imagination.

Answer: Sir Noel Coward

'Firefly Hill' was one of Noel Coward's primary residences (the other was Les Avant in Switzerland) and he died and was buried there in 1973. Ian Fleming's home in Jamaica was called 'Goldeneye' and that's where he wrote his Bond novels. Princess Margaret's holiday home was on the island of Mustique in the Caribbean, and Peter Sellers, as far as I know, didn't have a house in Jamaica, although he may well have visited his good friend Princess Margaret on Mustique.

Answer: The Chancellor of the Exchequer

Everyone knows that 10 Downing Street is the official residence of the Prime Minister of the U.K., but not many people (except British civil servants) know that No 11 is the official residence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. However, when Tony Blair became PM in 1997, Tony and Cherie and their (then) three children moved into the more spacious 11 Downing Street attic apartment while Gordon Brown, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, a bachelor, moved into the more cramped quarters of the attic apartment at Number 10. Relations between Blair and Brown have been somewhat strained since the onset of the Iraq war, and Brown is widely touted as the next leader of the Labour Party.

Another bit of trivia: Britain's Finance Minister is called the Chancellor of the Exchequer because back in the days before there was even a parliament, the person in charge of the monarch's money kept the accounts in order with the aid of a chequered table cloth (don't ask - all I know is what I read!). The Chancellor of the Exchequer is also known as The Second Lord of the Treasury (the First Lord of the Treasury is the P.M.).

Answer: 221b Baker Street

There really is a 221b Baker Street in London, you know. In fact, there are two of them. One housed the Abbey National Bank until it moved into its new headquarters on Triton Square in 2002, and the other is not on Baker Street at all but on the north side of Marylebone Road. It houses the Sherlock Holmes Museum, which is an exact replica of the house described in Conan Doyle's novels. (Yes, there are 17 stairs leading up to Holmes' apartments.)

Trivia note: While Conan Doyle created the violin playing and morphine addiction as part of his famous character, the deerstalker cap, the Inverness cape, and the Meerschaum pipe all came later - from dramatizations of the Holmes' stories.

Answer: Dr. Crippen

Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen has gone down in history as the first murderer ever to be apprehended with the aid of a wireless message sent by the new transAtlantic cable. He and his wife Cora Turner (whose stage name was Belle Elmore) moved to the U.K. from the United States in 1900. Unfortunately, Dr. Crippen's homeopathic medical credentials were not sufficient for him to be granted a licence to practice medicine in the U.K., so he became a pharmaceutical salesman. The couple moved into 39 Hilldrop Crescent, where, in January of 1910, Crippen poisoned, dismembered and buried Cora under the floor of the cellar. Crippen told friends that Cora had left him and that she had returned to the U.S. His young lover Ethel LeNeve moved into 39 Hilldrop Crescent and the neighbours became suspicious when they saw Ethel wearing Cora's jewellery and clothes. Scotland Yard was called in and the house was searched. The police found nothing, and Inspector Dew, who was in charge of the case, believed Crippen's story. Crippen, however, panicked and made his escape with Ethel, who was disguised as a boy. They boarded the SS Montrose, sailing for Quebec. Meantime, the police searched the house again and found human remains in the cellar, and the hunt was on for the doctor. Unfortunately, Crippen had booked first class passage on the Montrose, and Captain Kendall, who kept abreast of happenings on both sides of the Atlantic via wireless, recognized the pair in his daily mingling with the first class passengers. Kendall shot off a telegram to Scotland Yard, and Inspector Dew took a faster ship and got to Quebec ahead of the Montrose. He boarded the Montrose from the pilot's boat, and Crippen and LeNeve were arrested. They were returned to London for trial at the Old Bailey. Crippen was found guilty and was hanged in November 1910, while Ethel was acquitted, and eventually moved to Australia. Interesting trivia: When Crippen learned how he had been tracked down, he cursed both Captain Kendall and the S.S. Montrose. Kendall survived the curse, dying at the advanced age of 91 decades later. However, the Montrose was not so lucky. Just prior to World War I, the British government bought her, filled her with ballast, and moored her in the Channel off the mouth of Dover harbour as a defence against attack. On December 28, 1914, the Montrose broke her mooring and drifted toward the Goodwin Sands. The navy sent men after her, but it was too late. The four men who managed to get aboard the drifting ship were hastily taken off just as she began to break up. The last man off the Montrose was named Crippen (cue the spooky music). More interesting trivia: As a young constable, Dew was the first policeman on the scene of Jack the Ripper's last murder in Whitechapel.

Just for the record, Enid Blyton lived in a house called 'Green Hedges' in Beaconsfield, about 25 miles out of London, Oscar Wilde lived in a much more fashionable part of London than lower middle class Hilldrop Crescent, and Inspector Lestrade lives in the Sherlock Holmes stories.