Littlehampton libels

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The featured article for Tuesday, 16 December 2025, is Littlehampton libels.

The Littlehampton libels were a series of letters sent to numerous residents of Littlehampton, in southern England, over a three-year period between 1920 and 1923. The letters, which contained obscenities and false accusations, were written by Edith Swan, a thirty-year-old laundress; she tried to incriminate her neighbour, Rose Gooding, a thirty-year-old married woman.

Swan and Gooding had once been friends, but after Swan made a false report to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children accusing Gooding of maltreating one of her sister's children, the letters started arriving. Many of them were signed as if from Gooding. Swan brought a private prosecution against Gooding for libel; in December 1920 Gooding was found guilty and imprisoned for two weeks. On her release the letters started again, and Swan brought a second private prosecution against Gooding. In February 1921 Gooding was again found guilty and imprisoned for twelve months.

While Gooding was in prison, two notebooks were found in Littlehampton. They contained further obscenities and falsehoods and were in the same handwriting as the letters. As a result, Gooding's case came to the attention of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Archibald Bodkin, who thought that there had been a miscarriage of justice. An investigation by Scotland Yard cleared Gooding of involvement in sending the letters and she was released from prison. When the letters started up again, the focus of police attention moved to Swan and she was put under surveillance. She was seen to drop a libellous letter and prosecuted in December 1921. Despite the evidence against her, the judge intervened in the prosecution's questioning and the case collapsed.

In early 1922 the letters began arriving again. By October the police and detectives from the General Post Office (GPO) were involved, all targeting Swan. GPO detectives caught Swan sending another libellous letter in June 1923. She was arrested, found guilty and imprisoned for a year. In 2023 a film about the events, Wicked Little Letters, was released; it stars Olivia Colman as Swan and Jessie Buckley as Gooding. A similar case of libellous letters being sent over several years was reported in 2024, in the village of Shiptonthorpe, East Yorkshire; parallels were observed with the events at Littlehampton.

This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:57 UTC on Tuesday, 16 December 2025.

For the full current version of the article, see Littlehampton libels on Wikipedia.

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