46 Lower Belgrave Street, October 2023
On the evening of the 7th of November 1974, Sandra Rivett walked downstairs to the basement to make herself and the mistress of 46 Lower Belgrave Street a cup of tea, but she never returned. She had recently started working as a nanny for the Lucan family and it should have been her night off. Instead, she had asked to go out the previous evening with her boyfriend. It was this coincidence that put her in the basement of the house that evening and led to her murder. Her employer, Veronica Lucan, was watching television with her eldest daughter while the other two children had been put to bed. After Sandra didn’t return, Veronica went downstairs to check and it was there at the top of the stairs, she was hit in the head with a pipe four times. Veronica and the attacker struggled before she was able to run thirty yards down the street to The Plumber’s Arms. She burst into the pub, barefoot and covered in blood saying, “Help me, help me, help me! I’ve just escaped being murdered, he’s in the house. He’s murdered my nanny!” She identified her attacker and Sandra’s murderer as her estranged husband, John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan.
The Plumber’s Arms, October 2023
When the two first met, John Bingham was an eligible bachelor known for a passion for power boat racing, his fashionable moustache and driving a green Aston Martin. He was nicknamed ‘Lucky’ due to his gambling career, while Veronica was a pretty upper middle-class girl who worked for a litho-print company. The two were introduced by Veronica’s sister and brother-in-law. In her memoir, A Moment in Time, Veronica describes their marriage as an inevitability due to their ages of 29 and 26. After a short courtship, they married in November 1963. Veronica admits that marriage was a requirement for women at that time and that she felt it was her duty as a wife to give John a son and heir. She gave birth to three children, Frances, George, and Camilla, but pregnancy and motherhood further isolated her from those around her. She suffered from postpartum depression and experienced paranoia and hallucinations.
From A Moment in Time (2018)
The two officially separated in January 1973 as their marriage had deteriorated with John’s rising gambling debts and Veronica’s mental health. Veronica alleges in her memoir that John repeatedly gaslighted her, including moving things around the house while she was not home and instigating arguments so he could record them to use in court. John asserted that Veronica was too mentally unstable to care for the children and he was given interim custody after they separated. Perhaps John’s experience of being separated from his own parents and sent to America as a child during World War II informed his protectiveness of his children. After a bitter legal battle, he was devastated when Veronica was awarded custody of them and was determined to win them back After the separation, John had hired private detectives to follow Veronica and sometimes was spotted following the children. He was dedicated to gaining custody of the children again. However, due to his mounting gambling debts and lawyer expenses, he was becoming more desperate for resolution. The custody agreement stipulated that the children must have a nanny, and eventually, 29-year-old Sandra Rivett was hired.
A photo of Sandra Rivett from A Moment in Time (2018)
Sandra was born in 1945 had spent part of her childhood in Australia before moving to the UK. She’d had a son at age 18 whom her parents raised and another son at 21 who was adopted. She married a seaman named Roger Rivett, but they had separated by the time she started working for the Lucan’s. She got along well with both the children and Veronica and had told her mother that she was very happy there.
While it is difficult to ascertain what exactly happened that night, Sandra was murdered and shoved into a canvas mail bag and Veronica was then attacked by the man she identified as her husband. The two fought before she was able to convince him that she would not turn him in, and she escaped to get help. That evening, John drove to a friend’s house where he wrote several letters getting his affairs in order and asked her to post them. He explained that he had been passing by the house at Lower Belgrave Street when he saw a fight and had gone into the house to help. He then drove to Newhaven, East Sussex where he posted his last letter and abandoned his car. He was never seen again.
The mystery of Lord Lucan’s disappearance continues to haunt those who were involved. He was convicted of Sandra’s murder at an inquest in 1975, but his now adult children maintain his innocence. His aristocratic birth and rich connections have encouraged conspiracy theories of his escaping to live a life of quiet luxury. He has been ‘spotted’ in South Africa, France, Mozambique and Australia, but these sightings have never been confirmed. John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan was confirmed dead in 2016 and Lady Veronica Lucan passed in 2018. Veronica’s relationship with her children was strained after the bitter custody battle and their father’s disappearance and was never able to recover. In the aftermath of the murder, three children were left without a father and two sons would never have the chance to meet their birth mother. While the mysterious circumstances of Lord Lucan’s disappearance have taken the public’s imagination, the women at the centre of it are often forgotten.
Further Reading
Fox, James, ‘The Luck of the Lucans’, The Sunday Times Magazine, 8 June 1975, pp. 24–39
Hill, Rosemary, review of Death in Belgravia, by Laura Thompson, London Review of Books, 5 February 2015 <https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n03/rosemary-hill/death-in-belgravia> [accessed 3 November 2023]
Lucan, Veronica, A Moment in Time (London: Mango Books, 2018)
Ashton Kessler 
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