With a lurid glare in his sunken eyes;
Whose bony fingers point the track,
Of a phantom prey to a skeleton pack,
Whose frantic courser’s trembling bones
Pray a rattling theme to the hunter’s groans;
As he comes and goes in the fitful light,
Of the clouded moon on a summer’s night.
Then, a furious blast from his ghostly horn
Is over the forest of Hainault borne,
And the wild refrain of the mourner’s song
Is heard by the boatmen all night long,
That demon plaint on the still night air,
With never an answering echo there.
The story of the wharfs of the Isle of Dogs is a long history of violence and sudden death and there are many stories of ghostly happenings in the area. One of the more persistent concerns a ghostly clergyman seen as recently as July 1971, as well as on many previous occasions, in the vicinity of Ratcliff Wharf.
Running east from Ratcliff Wharf is Ratcliff Highway, notorious for years as the wickedest thoroughfare in London, where prostitutes sold themselves for the price of a drink and murder was commonplace. Not a few of the hard-headed and down-to-earth dockworkers and lightermen have stories to tell of strange happenings, ghostly lights, sudden echoing laughter, hollow voices from places apparently deserted and an atmosphere that many men have found downright frightening.
Mark Kitchener, a young lighterman from Islington, recalls his grandfather talking to him about a former vicar of Ratcliff Cross who was said to run a lodging house for seamen 200 years ago when nearby Limehouse was the haunt of ‘homeward-bounders’ sailors and seamen of the roughest kind who came ashore to drink and brawl. The house run by the vicar of Ratcliff became known as a place to be avoided, even by the toughest sea-men, for there were stories of men being murdered for their money, and anyone that made trouble was likely never to be seen again.
John Denning is a master builder contractor and one Sunday morning in July 1971 he was busy mixing cement on the empty quay and looking forward to a break for a mug of tea. He remembers hearing a clock chime and checking his watch and then, as he bent down to continue his work, he became aware of an elderly man, dressed in black and leaning on a cane, standing about twenty yards away, looking at him. Denning leaned on his shovel and called out a greeting to the stranger but he received no reply. The old man just stood there, his long white hair moving slightly in the breeze; and then the builder realized that the visitor was not looking at him, as he had at first supposed, but at something behind him. John Denning turned round to see what had attracted the attention of the man. He could see nothing untoward or unusual on the deserted wharf, but when he turned back there was no sign of the old man!
Greatly puzzled, for there was simply nowhere that the old man could have hidden in a few seconds, Denning stopped work and looked about him at the locked warehouses on one side and eight feet below the empty quay, the equally empty dock. He could see around the quayside for a distance of several hundred yards, but there was no movement anywhere. He walked to the edge and looked down at the quiet and undisturbed water. He could find no answer to the mysterious disappearance of the old man. A little later, when two of his workmen arrived with some materials, John Denning told them of the curious experience, and although he was very white and trembling slightly, they laughed the matter off and told him to forget it and have a cup of tea. Then, at eleven o’clock the same morning, one of the men, Peter Kinsley, saw the same figure.
Peter Kinsley was busy with two buckets of water at the far end of the quay (where John Denning had seen the old man) when he suddenly noticed a figure standing at the angle of the docks, looking out over the water towards the lock gates. He appeared to be quite solid and normal in every way and, thinking to himself that this must be the man his friend had seen, Peter Kinsley quietly put down the buckets he was carrying and walked towards the man who was about ten yards away from him, on his left. As he approached the figure he realized that he did look rather odd. He was wearing gaiters buttoned up at the sides and a high and close-fitting neckband; his clothes were black and sombre and the straight cane did not appear to have a handle. ‘I remember noticing the blue veins standing out on his wrinkled hand and the knuckles tightly clenching the stick,’ Peter Kinsley said later, ‘and then when I was about three yards from him, he just wasn’t there! He didn’t fade or become transparent or anything like that. He was there one second and gone the next.’
A week later, Terry Doyle, a newly-employed labourer who had been told nothing about the experiences of the previous Sunday, worked through the dinner hour to make up his time and when John Denning, John Clarke and Peter Kinsley returned to work he was still busy and said nothing, but a little later, when he and John Clarke met as they were filling their buckets, Terry said suddenly, ‘There was a funny old character hanging about here while you were away. He wore black clothes and looked like some sort of clergyman; an old fellow with a stick.’
After Terry had been told of the previous appearances of the ‘vicar’, he commented that the figure had not looked at all ghostly. Terry said he had gone out on to the dockside and saw the man, as he took him to be, standing some distance away, looking down at the water. He hadn’t thought any more about the matter until a little later when he walked on to the dockside again and he saw that the man was still there, and this time he noticed that the figure did look rather odd, especially the old-fashioned clothes. However, he continued his work and when he looked again the man was gone. A week later, the same figure was seen yet again and this time by both John Denning and John Clarke at the same time. It was about ten o’clock in the morning and John Clarke saw the figure first. Although he had not previously seen the mysterious form, he immediately recognised the description of John Denning, Peter Kinsley and Terry Doyle. He called out to John Denning, ‘Ha! There’s your ghost!’ John Denning looked up and saw the figure he had seen two weeks earlier. Both men turned to call their friends, but when they turned back the figure had disappeared.
During the weeks that followed John Denning and his companions continued to work at the same place, restoring a derelict warehouse, but they never saw the figure again. It is interesting to note that the figure never spoke or seemed aware of the human beings; it never looked directly at any of the witnesses; it appeared and disappeared suddenly and under seemingly impossible circumstances; and it was only seen on Sunday mornings. If we accept the evidence of the four men, the apparition of the vicar of Ratcliff Wharf is convincing and puzzling. John Denning is the son of a senior Foreign Office official, John Clarke is a former publishing assistant and Peter Kinsley used to be a journalist and is the author of three novels. The latter was filling in time before returning to his flat in Ibiza, working as an unpaid labourer to try to lose a bit of weight and toughen himself up. Terry Doyle is a devout Roman Catholic who had worked through his lunchtime to make up for the time he had taken off that morning to attend Mass. This entire account, I find, is entirely fictitious, and the creation of Frank Smythe (2010).
LAMBETH PALACE
One of the Thames ghosts is that of Queen Anne Boleyn making her last sad journey from Lambeth Palace in the barge with its shadowy oarsmen, carrying her to execution at the Tower. There is a strong tradition that Anne (whose ghost is also reputed to haunt Hever Castle in Kent, Bollin Hall in Cheshire, Blickling Hall in Norfolk, Marwell Hall in Hampshire, the church at Salle in Norfolk, the Tower of London and other places) was tried on the charge of adultery by Archbishop Cranmer in the undercroft of Lambeth Palace, on the banks of the Thames, and the sound of moaning, groans and occasionally Anne’s voice pleading her innocence has been heard at times by people passing near the door of the undercroft. The sounds are distinct and clear when they are first heard, but fade and die away as the hearer stops to listen.
The crypt is a strange and atmospheric place where scores of skulls and human bones have been discovered between
the five floors (probably built as successive attempts to keep out the river water) during excavation at different times, and it seems likely that the dark and sombre crypt has been used in the past as a secret burial place. It is the oldest and least restored part of the present palace.
After being found guilty of the charge on which she had been accused, tradition asserts that Anne was taken down the steps of the Water Tower to the boat and it is the stretch of the river by the Water Tower that is said to be the scene of this arresting and spectral reappearance.
Lambeth Palace itself has several ghosts. There is the phantom presence on the winding staircase in the Lollards’ Tower that sometimes manifests so strongly that visitors cannot proceed upwards and dogs can rarely be induced to pass the invisible influence. The stairs lead to the Lollards’ Prison, with its ominous iron rings and sad writings on the walls, which were scratched by the wretches imprisoned there over the years, and there is a haunted door which sometimes opens without difficulty and at other times locks of its own accord.
Lambeth Palace from Lambeth Bridge. Here the figure of Anne Boleyn has been seen on her last sad journey, in a phantom barge rowed by shadowy oarsmen.
During the Second World War, a member of the palace fire-fighting brigade always maintained that he owed his life to this door, for during an air-raid he hurried down the iron ladder from the roof but then found himself imprisoned by the door that had locked by itself. There he remained for over an hour until the door was forced open, but meanwhile the room to which it had been his intention to report received a direct hit and was entirely wrecked.
NATIONAL LIBERAL CLUB
In Whitehall Place, and facing the river across the public gardens, stands the white eminence of the National Liberal Club, founded in 1883 with W. E. Gladstone, the great Liberal leader, as President. The existing premises were opened in 1887, and the club’s library, which now includes Gladstone’s collection of 31,000 volumes and 33,000 pamphlets, was inaugurated by the former Prime Minister in 1888. Some years later, the club was the scene of apparent poltergeist activity.
Professor George John Romanes, a prominent Fellow of the Royal Society, a Professor of Physiology, a noted naturalist and a close friend of Charles Dickens, was also much interested in occult matters and he was one of the early students of psychic phenomena who strongly objected to the use of the word ‘supernatural’ since he believed that everything must have a place in nature. The correct term is now accepted to be ‘supernormal’.
Professor Romanes was in Scotland, investigating a poltergeist case in Ross and Cromarty, when the secretary of the National Liberal Club wrote to him to ask whether there was any living creature which, while encased within a wall, could produce sounds like knocks and raps.
Professor Romanes was intrigued by the enquiry and in replying said that he did not believe such a creature existed, and inquired about the reason underlying the question. The secretary then explained that for some time past he and his wife and family had been disturbed by sounds which apparently emanated from the walls of the rooms they occupied at the club, sounds for which they had been unable to find any rational explanation. He described the noises in some detail and the professor promised to call at the club on his return to London, but by the time he did so the disturbances had ceased. However, the club secretary gave him a full and first-hand account of the well-authenticated sounds and added a peculiar answer to the mystery.
The clubs of Whitehall. At the National Liberal Club (extreme right) poltergeist phenomena were reported by the secretary.
The secretary said that he had discovered that the noises always seemed to be heard in the vicinity of a young German maid who was employed at the club and, while it was certainly not suggested that she was in any way consciously responsible (indeed, this would not have been possible in the circumstances described), the noises had seemed to follow her and were heard to proceed from the walls of rooms when she was present, and (somewhat unfairly perhaps) she had been given notice in consequence. Since her departure the noises had ceased.
This case might well be described as a typical poltergeist infestation. The disturbances commence suddenly and inexplicably and in some way are associated with a young person, more often a girl than a boy, and when this person is no longer present the disturbances cease as inexplicably as they began. Professor Romanes endeavoured to trace the girl, who had gone back to Germany, but he was unsuccessful.
NEW SCOTLAND YARD (OLD PREMISES)
On the north bank of the river, near Westminster Bridge, stands the famous chequered tower block that marked for years the headquarters of New Scotland Yard, before new premises were erected in Victoria Street.
Before being moved to rooms in the new building the gruesome collection of criminal relics known as the Black Museum was housed in the basement of the Metropolitan Police Headquarters, and there the apparition of a headless lady was seen on many occasions.
These old police headquarters on the Thames Embankment are built upon a series of ancient vaults, and when the buildings were under construction, a carpenter, Fred Widborne, discovered a bundle in one of the dark vaults — a bundle that contained parts of a human body. The surgeon of ‘A’ Division at the Yard at the time, Dr Thomas Bond, established that the remains were those of a woman of about five feet nine inches in height but apart from the fact that the woman had been well nourished when alive, very little could be gleaned from the remains.
In the subsequent search for the head of the body, a police dog located a foot and other parts of the same body and with the help of these Dr Bond concluded that the woman had lived in comfortable circumstances, but the head, so important to identification, was never traced. A small silver crucifix bearing the name of a French convent was found with the remains and it was thought that the victim might have been a nun, or rather a Sister of Charity, but the parts of the dead body were never identified and no information was ever discovered as to the crime itself or how the remains came to be in the vaults. However, it seems likely that she was the (appropriately!) headless figure that was seen years later inside the museum.
The Black Museum began as a collection of exhibits from famous trials that were stored in a room in the basement of the Yard, to which favoured visitors were taken by members of the CID by way of dark and dismal underground passages that added to the eerie atmosphere of the occasion. After the First World War, the collection was arranged in some order and exhibits were added to enable the museum to be used for instruction and educational purposes.
When I visited the Black Museum some years ago it contained a collection of death masks of prisoners hanged at Newgate Prison and a staggering collection of housebreaking instruments and weapons used by criminals, including the skeleton keys, rope ladder, dark glasses and false arm that had belonged to Charlie Peace; the equally ingenious equipment once owned by ‘Flannelfoot’, a housebreaker who successfully eluded the police for years; relics of Sir Roger Casement and examples of forgery; mock jewellery used by confidence tricksters; and gambling contrivances employed by swindlers, including a ‘gold’ brick used in the Gold Brick Fraud.
There too I saw the rolling-pin used by murderer Ronald True; the knife used by Bywaters when murdering Thompson; the medicine chest that had belonged to Neill Cream, the Lambeth murderer; and several items connected with the Crippen case, including part of his pyjamas that he had used as wrapping for parts of his wife’s body, and the wireless telegram that led to his arrest — the first time wireless was used for such a purpose. More gruesome were the riding switch with which double-murderer Neville Heath had lashed Margery Gardner, and half a foot, gall-stones and false teeth of the last victim of John George Haigh, together with gloves and gas-mask that he had used for his own protection when destroying the bodies of his victims in baths of acid.
A few years ago, a janitor at the Yard saw a female figure standing near the door of the museum, which she proceeded to open, a figure which he took to be a nun, but when he went f
orward to see what she wanted the figure disappeared. As he reached the spot where the figure had been, he stopped in amazement and then, turning round, he saw the same form at the far end of the museum. This time the figure was facing him and he saw that the nun’s hood was empty: the figure was headless!
The late Mr ‘Gerry’ Dawson, who became museum curator in 1957, following his retirement as a detective inspector after twenty-seven years’ service in London, once told me that he had seen a dark figure in the museum several times but it always disappeared when he approached and he tended to think that it must have been a trick of the light, although it appeared in different parts of the museum. He also told me about a murderer’s death-mask from which mysterious hairs grew at one time, and although the curator cut the hairs short, they grew again slowly. The death mask was that of a murderer whose beard had been cut off before he was hanged as it might have hindered the hangman’s work. Charles ‘Gerry’ Dawson died in 1970 on his way to the Black Museum.
SOMERSET HOUSE
Somerset House, a palace when the Strand was known as the King’s Road, linking Westminster with the City of London, was later occupied by the Inland Revenue, Probate Registry and the Registrar General. The first government department to occupy Somerset House was the Admiralty, where Lord Nelson was a frequent visitor, and it is his ghost that has been seen within the precincts of this historic building, which was one of the first in this country to be designed in Italian Renaissance style. Canaletto knew Somerset House and painted several pictures from the terrace.
The present Somerset House has been in existence some two hundred years. The first Somerset House, a Tudor extravaganza, saw many a brutal death by dagger, sword or poison. That first house was built by the Duke of Somerset when he was Protector of all the Realms and Dominions of the King’s Majesty and Governor of His Most Royal Person — the ten-year-old Edward VII — in 1547. To find room for the noble building he had in mind he demolished several bishop’s houses, the old church of St Mary le Strand (rebuilt in the middle of the Strand in 1714-17) and a charnel house. It was said that more than a thousand cartloads of human bones were removed and buried in Finsbury Fields. There is some mystery about the architect of Somerset House, although it is generally thought to have been Sir John Thynne, who built haunted Longleat, a house that contains some of the features of old Somerset House.
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