Barometer | 16 June 2016

Houses of ill repute

The Austrian interior minister has suggested that his government will demolish the house where Adolf Hitler was born in 1889. Some other properties which have succumbed to the architectural equivalent of the death penalty:

— 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester, home of Fred West, was demolished in 1996 and turned into a pathway into the next street.

— 5 College Close, Soham, where Ian Huntley murdered the schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, was razed in 2004 and is now a patch of grass.

— The cottage in Ceinws, Powys, where Mark Bridger murdered April Jones was demolished in 2014.

— 10 Rillington Place, home to the serial killer John Christie, initially survived his trial in 1953, although the street was renamed Bartle Road. It was, however, demolished and replaced with council housing in the 1970s.

Pet killers

John Bradshaw, a cat behaviour specialist from Bristol University, has demanded that cats be bred to eliminate their hunting instinct. How much of a risk to wildlife is posed by cats? A survey of a sample of 964 cats by the Mammal Society last year suggested that Britain’s 9 million cats kill 275 million animals each year between them, including:

— 200 million mammals

— 55 million birds

— 10 million reptiles/amphibians

No. 1 with a bullet

How did Americans kill each other in 2013?

Handguns	5,780
Firearms (unknown type)	2,080
Knives/cutting instruments	1,490
Hands / fists / feet	687
Shotguns	307
Rifles	285
Other	1,620