Haunted London

by Peter Underwood

  Some years after his sighting of the Grey Lady, Edwin Frewer was approached by one of the hospital physicians, Dr Anwyl-Davis, who had had an almost identical experience one day in April, 1937. It was in the same corridor of the hospital and the figure seems to have disappeared at almost exactly the same spot. Dr Anwyl-Davis never forgot the encounter and often described the experience. As the lifelike apparition approached him, he raised his hat and bid her good morning. The figure made no reply but continued on her course, seemingly oblivious to the presence of Dr Anwyl-Davis. A moment later the figure had vanished.

  Although the appearance of the ghost nurse frightened them, it did not foretell the death of either Charles Bide, Edwin Frewer or Dr Anwyl-Davis, but there is evidence that the form was seen by five patients shortly before they died, and it was probably seen by many others.

  One evening in September, 1956, a nurse was filling the water jugs in the ward at about 8.30 pm, and when she came to the bedside of an elderly man suffering from cancer of the lung he told her there was no need to fill his water jug as he had already been given a glass of water. Since no other nurse was on the ward at the time, the night nurse was somewhat puzzled and asked the patient who had given him the water. He replied that the very nice lady dressed in grey who was standing at the foot of the bed had done so. The nurse looked in the direction of the old man’s smiling gaze but she could see nothing and certainly there was no ‘lady in grey’ anywhere in the ward. Two days later the old man died.

  Two months later another nurse in the same unit, but a different ward, was washing the back of a man of seventy who had widespread malignant disease, but who was, however, expected to recover sufficiently for him to go home. Suddenly the patient asked the nurse whether she always worked with ‘that other nurse’. No other nurse being present at the time, the patient was asked which other nurse he meant and he pointed in a certain direction where the nurse could see no real person. The patient said the ‘other nurse’ was dressed differently and she often came to see him. He died shortly afterwards.

  Thirteen months later in December, 1957, the figure was seen again in the ward where the patient had been given a glass of water in September, 1956. During the night a man of thirty-seven, suffering from widespread cancer, asked the nurse about a lady warming her hands by the fire. No one was in fact by the fire and when he was asked to describe the figure, he said, ‘The person in the grey uniform.’ He died a couple of days later.

  Two months later in February, 1958, a similar figure was seen yet again in another ward in the same unit. This time the patient was a woman suffering from a malignant disease. One morning she told the night nurse that during the night she had been visited by a lady dressed in grey who had been very kind to her and had given her a cup of tea. She died next day.

  A year later in February, 1959, another female patient, a young pregnant woman of twenty-eight with multiple myelomatosis, had a very similar experience in the same ward. During the night, she said, a nice woman, sympathetic and kind, stood at the foot of the bed. She did not find the figure at all frightening, but she too died a few days later.

  These five first-hand examples of a ‘grey lady’ in one unit were collected by a doctor at the hospital who became interested in the long-standing legend that in the wards of that particular unit a lady in grey has sometimes been seen by patients who died shortly afterwards. His findings were subsequently published in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research.

  The fact that the figure has invariably been described as wearing grey is extremely interesting in view of the fact that the present sisters’ uniform of Oxford blue dress with white apron and collar, only came into use in the early 1920’s. Previously a grey dress had been worn. In addition to these experiences, which were all written and signed by the nurses voluntarily, a number of other reliable accounts of the Grey Lady appearing to patients who died soon afterwards were obtained by word of mouth but dates, names and other details are no longer available.

  There is written evidence however for one other appearance that took place in a different ward of the same unit some years ago, and vouched for by a state registered nurse. While she was on night duty she was called, as night sister, to supervise the giving of a dangerous drug to a patient known to be dying from malignant disease. She asked the patient whether she could make her more comfortable in bed, whereupon the patient replied that the other sister had just done so. There was no other sister on duty at the time and neither the night nurse nor any other nurse had recently attended to the patient, who died the following day.

  The sceptical will point to the fact that patients in hospital wards specializing in the treatment of malignant disease are likely to be under the influence of pain-killing drugs and therefore in a state of delirium and likely to experience hallucinations, and this is true to the extent that all the patients in the six accounts described would have had analgesic drugs at the ward sister’s discretion; these drugs have opium derivatives or synthetic analogues of morphia, and the hallucinogenic properties of these drugs have not been fully explored, yet the fact that six quite separate reports are so similar would seem to outweigh objections on this score. It is extremely interesting to notice that more than a dozen dying patients in one unit of a massive hospital had almost identical ‘hallucinations’. These ‘hallucinations’ had all the impressions of reality to the person concerned who was able to reconcile the apparition with specific articles and particular parts of the ward, and was able to describe, soberly and sensibly, the experience to the nurse concerned.

  The Chaplain of St Thomas’s, the Rev. Kingsley R. Fleming, respects the integrity of those who have seen the ghost. ‘I’m convinced that it is possible to be aware of such manifestations,’ he told me when I was at St Thomas’s in April, 1973; ‘Obviously there must always be in these cases a spiritual awareness in the person and a willingness to accept what is happening to them ... Hospitals are places of constant crisis ... There is a terrific super-charge of emotion and feeling and people who die are not always able to come to terms with their anguish or remorse.’

  The legend of the Grey Lady is known widely throughout the staff of the hospital, although it is obviously guarded from the patients and no factual basis has been discovered for the legend. There is a story that a nursing sister fell to her death down a lift shaft at the turn of the century; another story says the ghost is that of an administrative sister who committed suicide in her office on the top floor of the haunted unit; a third rumour tells of a nurse throwing herself off the balcony because she was responsible for the death of a patient, and a fourth says the ghost is that of a sister who died in Block 8 from smallpox. (This block, prior to demolition, was a maternity unit.) It has not been found possible to obtain confirmatory evidence for any of these deaths. Some of the nurses maintain that the Grey Lady is only visible from mid-calf upwards, due to the fact that she appears on the floor level of the wards as they were before the present block was rebuilt.

  THE THOMAS À BECKET, BERMONDSEY

  The Thomas à Becket in the Old Kent Road is built on the site of an eighteenth-century gallows and strange happenings have been reported at times from the pub that used to be known as the ‘Boxers’ Pub’, for the first floor constituted a gymnasium where at least one contender for a world title fight did his training.

  At one time, when Arthur Ward had been landlord for five years, he found the disturbances so bad that he would not sleep alone at the pub. At this time the pub’s cat and dog would not go upstairs to the top floor; bedroom doors were impossible to open and police and firemen had to break them down. Although no coal was then used at the pub, only coke, fires were found on several occasions to be made up, ready for lighting—with coal!

  Once a customer, scoffing at the idea of ghosts, found his glass of beer shattered in his hand. Another customer, Albert Williams, a hearty butcher, declared that he had no fear of ghosts and accepted a bet of £5 that he would stay half an hour alone in the top-flo
or room in broad daylight—within two minutes he came running down and paid over his £5!

  TOWER CINEMA, PECKHAM

  The old Tower Cinema at Peckham was at one time reported to be haunted, and both the chief projectionist and the assistant manager stated that they saw the figure of a man walking in mid-air in the auditorium at midnight, one Saturday in 1955.

  The apparition was seen ten feet above the auditorium and it was later discovered that this was the approximate ground level before the theatre was built on what was once consecrated ground. An 1819 map shows that a chapel once stood on the site or very nearby.

  Mr Jerry Adams (the projectionist) and Mr Bernard Mattimore (the assistant manager) were on their way towards the rear exit when half-way down the darkened auditorium they both saw simultaneously the form which seemed to glow with a light of its own.

  They stopped in their tracks and watched the figure walk slowly across the stage in front of the closed curtains and vanish into a bricked-up organ recess. They described the figure as dressed in clothes of ‘an early period’, and they agreed that the man appeared to be middle-aged.

  A year previously a builder’s labourer had reported seeing the same figure in the same position, and in 1953 two upholsterers stated that they saw a ghost in the cinema when they were working there late one evening. One of them was so frightened that he refused to return to do any more work there.

  A number of other incidents were recalled by various people that were never satisfactorily explained. Workmen reported that bags of cement were split open and thousands of cigarettes ruined by water that dropped from a ceiling where there was no hole or waterpipe, and when it was not raining. The same men were startled when scaffolding that had been erected by experts collapsed when they started work.

  TRAFALGAR AVENUE, CAMBERWELL

  Something very strange seems to have troubled the Stringer family when they lived at Trafalgar Avenue, Camberwell, and their chief fear was fire. The family had so many inexplicable fires that they told me no company would insure them against fire.

  I talked for several hours with Graham and Vera Stringer who occupied the double flat with their four-year-old son Steven. They told me that in the four years they had been at Trafalgar Avenue they had been worried by something that had practically destroyed their home with unaccountable fires. Most of the fires took place around Easter time.

  A few weeks before Easter, 1958, Mrs Vera Stringer went to bed early as she was not feeling well. She left her husband in the living room doing some typing. He went up to bed at about 10.30, with a cup of tea. As their bedside clock was stopped, Graham Stringer went downstairs to check the time. He hurried back to say that the living room was on fire. Together Vera and Graham threw water over a chair on which all little Steven’s toys had been placed in a plastic bag. They succeeded in quenching the fire but the toys were destroyed.

  On Good Friday morning, 1959, Mrs Vera Stringer told me she popped down the road to buy some hot-cross buns, having unpacked a parcel from her mother-in-law which contained some knitted clothes for Steven, a tie for Graham and some nylon stockings for herself. As she returned to the house she saw smoke coming from the living room window. Indoors she discovered that her husband, finding the contents of the parcel alight, had thrown water all over the woollies and other things. He had put the fire out but all the gifts were ruined.

  On Easter Monday, 1960, Mrs Stringer was in the kitchen when she smelt burning. She hurried into the living room and then into Steven’s bedroom, but everything appeared to be all right, until she went into her own bedroom where her husband had left a pullover, shirt and vest on a chest of drawers. The clothes were blazing. Once again the fire was extinguished but the clothes were ruined and the chest of drawers badly scorched.

  Around Easter, 1961, there were no fires, but a mysterious and vague ‘grey column of fluorescent light’ was seen twice, once in Graham Stringer’s darkroom and once in the living room where it floated from one comer of the room to disappear in the opposite corner. Footsteps were often heard, the sound of doors opening and closing, and one morning the Stringers found the big window-pane in the kitchen smashed. It looked as though a fist had been put through it and glass was scattered all over the garden, although nobody had heard a sound.

  Around Easter, 1962, two rooms were found alight. On the first occasion Mrs Stringer was in bed and her husband had just left for work. Suddenly she noticed the smell of burning and she was terrified to find smoke on the stairs and flames three feet high in the living room. She raced down to the basement to telephone the fire brigade. They soon had the blaze under control and Graham Stringer came home from work to help clear up the mess. In the afternoon Vera Stringer was at the launderette, leaving her husband in the garden trying to salvage what he could of the living room carpet, when she heard fire-engines and a neighbour ran in to her and said, ‘Go home at once—you’ve got another fire! ‘ This time it was Steven’s room—Graham Stringer had looked up from the garden and seen the bedroom curtains alight. There was no form of heating in the room and it is difficult to suggest how the fire could have started—excluding human intervention. After 1962 the fire-raising ‘phantom’ seems to have ceased activity.

  WIMBLEDON COMMON

  An unusual ghost in south London is an eighteenth century spectral highwayman, ‘Jerry’ Abershaw, who is reputed to gallop his steed across Wimbledon Common at night—a habit that could cause complications since a revision of local bye-laws in 1971 prohibits ‘unauthorised’ horse-riding between half an hour after sunset and half an hour before sunrise! Abershaw paid the penalty for his crimes and in 1795 his body swung from the gibbet that used to stand at Wimbledon Hill.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE GHOSTS AT THE TOWER OF LONDON

  The Tower of London—the name still causes a shudder, as well it might, since for nearly a thousand years prisoners of the state have been confined, tortured and executed in this sombre collection of ancient and massive buildings. Some say there have been murders within the confines of these stout and high walls and certainly there have been suicides. If violent happenings and tragic deaths can cause hauntings, then surely the Tower should be more ghost-ridden than most places, and so it is.

  From the well-documented apparition seen by a Keeper of the Crown Jewels and his wife two hundred and fifty years ago, to the ghost of a ‘long-haired lady’ seen in the Bloody Tower in 1970, stories of ghosts and ghostly happenings at the Tower are legion. There is no doubt that there are convincing reports, extending over many years, of very curious occurrences, including appearances of Anne Boleyn, the Countess of Salisbury, Sir Walter Raleigh and the murdered boy princes.

  Julius Caesar has been credited with establishing the White Tower, the oldest building and the original tower from which the present collection of buildings takes its name. Shakespeare supports this assumption in his Richard II and Richard III but John Stow, the Elizabethan antiquarian, expresses scepticism, pointing out that Caesar came only to conquer ‘this barbarous country’ and none of the Roman writers ‘make mention of any such buildings created by him here’.

  It seems likely that William the Conqueror, in 1078, began to build the great keep (known as the White Tower because white Caen stone was used) on the base of a Roman bastion, a work later supervised by Gundulf, Bishop of Rochester and Grand Master of the Freemasons. Some authorities have suggested that the name is derived from the Bryn Gwyn or White Hill upon which the tower was erected, white being a Celtic synonym for ‘holy’; whilst others believe that it was so-called on account of the whitewashing it received in the reign of Henry III.

  Ralph Flambard, chief adviser to King William II, was imprisoned in the White Tower in 1100 after the king, as every schoolboy knows, was killed by an arrow while hunting in the New Forest. In one attempt to escape, Flambard, his bishop’s staff in his hand, fell from a window to the ground sixty-five feet below and was picked up unhurt. He lived for many years and was later successful in escaping fr
om the dreaded Tower, received a pardon, regained his bishopric and was responsible for the completion of the nave of Durham Cathedral. Griffin, son of Llewellyn, Prince of Wales, was less successful when he tried to imitate Flamhard in his method of escape, and was found by the guards with his neck broken.

  The perfect little Chapel of St John in the White Tower is the earliest Norman building in London. Here rested Richard II’s body in 1400 after he had been murdered in Pontefract Castle; here too the body of Elizabeth of York, Consort of Henry VII in 1503, lay in state after she had died in the Tower in childbirth. Five hundred tapers and candlesticks surrounded her bier. Here, while praying before the altar in 1483, Sir Thomas Brackenbury received instructions to put to death his nephews, the young princes, and the pathetic ghosts of these young brothers have long been reputed to haunt the vicinity of the White Tower, where their bodies were buried at the foot of the staircase, although they were murdered by Sir James Tyrell and two assistants in the Bloody Tower.

  It may be that this murder gave the tower its name—it was originally called the Garden Tower as its upper storey opens on to that part of the parade ground which was formerly the Constable’s garden. At all events the silent ghosts of Edward V and Richard, Duke of York, have also been seen here, hand in hand, in white nightgowns, at the angle of a wall, outside the gate to the right, where the little bodies were hastily buried by their murderers. In 1674 excavation revealed the bones of two young boys. Charles II believed them to be the royal remains and they were buried in Westminster Abbey.

  There is a story that the ghost of Thomas à Becket (murdered in 1170) was seen in 1241 when Henry III was strengthening the fortress. In these building operations he was delayed by two serious reverses. On the night of St George’s Day, 1240, when the work was nearly finished, the foundations suddenly gave way and the new structure fell apart as it might have done from an earthquake. The work was restarted and in twelve months was almost complete again. On the same night, St George’s Day, 1241, according to Matthew Paris (the outstanding Latin chronicler of the thirteenth century, a valuable historian and a monk) a priest saw a stem-faced, venerable figure in archbishop’s robes walk towards the newly-erected building and strike the walls with a cross which he carried—whereupon the building fell down. In the vision the priest enquired of an attendant nearby who the figure might be and received the answer, ‘The blessed martyr, St Thomas Becket.’