March

March has been a busy month for Jersey’s courts. They ruled on the gruesome case of a French woman who set a barmaid’s clothes on fire, a bomb hoax that brought St Helier to a standstill and a girl’s death by starvation while in custody – and they also saw the Channel Islands’ first death sentence passed after the death penalty itself had been abolished.

Jersey Zoo and Jersey Airport both opened their doors for the first time during March, and Terence Alexander, the actor who played Charlie Hungerford in Bergerac, was born.

Channel Television viewers were introduced to Oscar Puffin when, in March 1963, he appeared on screens for the first time, and in cinemas the film Another Mother’s Son, telling the story of Jersey’s Louisa Gould, had its big screen premiere. St Helier­-born actress Alma Stanley, one of the biggest stars of her day, died penniless and in prison.

Mystery surrounded two deaths: that of a signalman who fell and cracked his head at Fort Regent, and of a banker who was found dead in a pirate cave. Nobody knows how the banker ended up in Jersey, but one thing was certain: he hadn’t washed up on the tide as he was too far into the cave when his body was discovered for the sea to have put him there.