A variation on this theme is for the reflection to be that of a figure dressed in the clothes of a bygone era.
BANK
Bank Monument is one of the largest and most complex subterranean railway stations in the world. The station, which is named after the nearby Bank of England on Threadneedle Street, was opened in 1900 for the Central London Railway whilst Monument Station had been completed for the (Inner) Circle Line about 100 yards away in 1884. The City and South London Railway (later part of the Northern Line) tried to save on costs by excavating beneath St Mary Woolnoth Church to build the lift-shafts and station. After much objection the railway company bought the crypt for what is now the Northern Line booking hall, so the entrance that once led to the crypt now leads into Bank Underground Station. The bones of the dead were moved for reburial at the City of London Cemetery at Ilford in 1900.
Bank Station received a direct hit by a bomb in January 1941. It penetrated the road surface and exploded in an escalator machinery room killing fifty-six people and injuring sixty-nine. In 1982, as the station was closing, a worker who was walking across the ticket hall heard a banging coming from inside the lift despite the fact that he just checked it and knew that there was no one else around.
The most famous ghost associated with the station as well as the nearby Bank of England is reputedly that of Sarah Whitehead who has gained the nickname of the ‘Bank Nun’ (or in some cases the ‘Black Nun’). Construction workers building that part of the Underground first saw her in the late nineteenth century. Some years later a member of staff chased what he thought was an old lady locked in the station during the early hours of the morning. Just as he thought he had caught her up she disappeared down a corridor with no possible exit. Some years later an employee reported seeing a female figure which suddenly vanished. There have been further sightings up to recent times of the ghost of Sarah desperately searching for something or somebody.
The story of Sarah goes back to 1811 when her brother was charged with forgery and brought before the Old Bailey to stand trial. Her brother, Philip Whitehead, who is referred to as ‘Paul’ at the trial on 30 October 1811, was a former employee at the Bank of England. Whitehead had worked as a clerk in the cashier’s office at the bank but had resigned from his job on 2 August 1810. The crimes with which he was charged were against a number of businessmen and not the bank itself. The law took a very grave view of forgery and it was an offence for which the penalty was mandatory – judicial hanging. And so it was with Paul. At the age of thirty-six he was sentenced to death and subsequently executed.
His devoted sister Sarah had been taken to a house in Fleet Street and protected from all news of her brother. Anxious to find out about his whereabouts she set off to the Bank of England where a clerk who, presumably not knowing who she was, blurted out that her brother had received the death sentence. Stunned and shocked by this news, Sarah could not come to terms with what she had been told and it clearly affected her mind. Shortly after she took to visiting the bank on a regular basis dressed in black crêpe, veil and long dress, still asking for her brother. The staff nicknamed her the ‘Bank Nun’, but her visits were a source of pity as well as a nuisance to the bank. Staff and customers were made uneasy by her brooding presence.
Despite the bank trying to come to a financial arrangement whereby she would agree to stop hanging around the building, Sarah continued with her visits and loitered near the entrance consistently over the period between 1812 and 1837, attired in a heavy mourning dress which contrasted strangely with her painted cheeks. Her ghost, also dressed in black, was heard to be asking ‘has anyone seen my brother?’ Sarah was reputedly buried in the old churchyard of St Christopher-le-Stocks, which afterwards became part of the bank’s gardens.
Bank of England. The ‘Old Lady of Threadneedle Street’ is a refashioning of a Palladian building originally erected in 1734.
This is only one of several entrances to Bank Station, but it gives little idea of the extensive and confusing complex of passages below.
BETHNAL GREEN
Bethnal Green Station, which is on the Central Line between Liverpool Street and Mile End stations, was the scene of the worst civilian disaster of the Second World War. The East End of London had experienced heavy bombing raids during the war, but on 3 March 1943, 173 people (twenty-seven men, eighty-four women and sixty-two children) were killed and ninety-two injured in a crush whilst attempting to enter the station.
As the siren sounded at 8.17 that evening, hundreds of people ran from the darkened streets to Bethnal Green Tube Station where some 500 people were already sheltering. Within minutes 1,500 people had entered the shelter. Ten minutes later loud noises nearby panicked many of those who were still trying to enter the station. There was pushing, shoving and then a surge forward. The scene was absolute chaos, certainly not helped by the dimly lit and wet staircase. A woman near the bottom of the staircase slipped, leaving others to fall over, and within seconds over 300 men, women and children were crushed into the tiny stairwell. Rescuers found it almost impossible to help, and eyewitness accounts described the awful ‘screaming and hollering’ as people were ‘piled up like sardines’. The panic had been caused by a salvo of rockets fired a quarter of mile away at Victoria Park by an experimental new weapon, not by German bombs. The authorities had ‘forgotten’ to warn local people that these trials were going to take place. At the time the Ministry of Defence placed an embargo on any publicity and did not release information about the incident until 1946.
Plaque at Bethnal Green. In spite of efforts at the time to surround this disaster within a wall of secrecy, virtually everyone in London knew it had happened.
Entrance to Bethnal Green Tube Station; the scene of the mass fatalities.
Years later there were reports of noises similar to those of women and children screaming. In 1981 a station foreman was working late at Bethnal Green Station. He had seen to the usual tasks of securing the station and doing the paperwork when he heard the low sound of voices. As he stopped what he was doing the sound became more and more distinctive. It was the noise of children crying but it gradually grew louder and was then joined by the sound of women screaming. This went on for some ten to fifteen minutes until, overcome with fear, he left his office.
A plaque dedicated to those who lost their lives can be seen above the entrance to the station and a further monument is in the process of being erected.
BRITISH MUSEUM
The British Museum Station, which has long been a disused ‘ghost’ station, was located on Bury Place near to the museum and was opened in July 1900 by the Central London Railway to service what came to be known as the Central Line. With Holborn Station (opened in 1906) less than 100 yards away, it was decided in 1933 to combine the two stations, and the platforms at British Museum Station were taken out of service. During the Second World War the platforms were bricked up to protect those sheltering from passing trains, though it would appear that these walls were later removed. British Museum Station was used as a military administrative office and emergency command post up to the 1960s. In 1989 redevelopment of the area saw the demolition of the station at street level.
Just before its closure a rumour was circulated that the ghost of an ancient Egyptian haunted the station dressed in a loincloth and headdress. He would emerge late at night and walk along the disused platform wailing as he went. It was said the he was in search of a mummy, possibly a lost princess. As the story grew it caught the attention of a national newspaper who offered a cash reward for anyone who would dare spend a night in the station, although no one took up the challenge.
The ghost story was related to the curse of Amen-Ra’s tomb. Princess Amen-Ra, known as the ‘Unlucky Mummy’ because of the disasters associated with it, died in 1050 BC. The coffin of the Egyptian princess arrived at the British Museum in 1889 and the label on the lid read ‘Painted wooden mummy-board of an unidentified woman’. It should be noted that the British Museum claim that the
y only ever had the coffin lid, not the mummy.
However, the plot thickens. As the Titanic crossed the Atlantic in April 1912 the English journalist and passenger William T. Stead told a ghost story about an Egyptian mummy and the translation of an inscription on the mummy’s case. The inscription warned that anyone reciting it would meet a violent death. Worse still, the mummy was on the Titanic because it had been sold to an American archaeologist who arranged for its removal to New York. The story that circulated was that seven of the eight men who heard the story, and Stead himself as narrator, went down with the ship.
By 1980 the Washington Post (17 August 1980) made reference to it when attempts were being made to salvage remains of the Titanic: ‘Some hunters have spoken darkly of the famous mummy that was allegedly on board, saying it transferred the curse of all who disturbed its grave to the vessel’s maiden voyage and to all search efforts.’
The 1933 film Bulldog Jack added to the myth that the British Museum Station was haunted by an Egyptian ghost. The film, a comedy thriller starring Ralph Richardson, Fay Wray and Jack Hulbert, involved a plan to steal a valuable necklace, but this all went wrong once the robbers were in the British Museum. The film climaxes in an exciting chase on a runaway train in the London Underground, which also features a secret passage leading into a sarcophagus in the museum.
The idea of an Egyptian ghost dressed in loincloth and headdress looking for a (dubious) mummy on the platform of a station somewhat stretches the imagination. Nonetheless, it is testimony to the power of the press to generate a good, but fictitious, story – something the press has long been very adept at doing.
COVENT GARDEN
Covent Garden Underground Station was opened on 11 April 1907 and is now on the Piccadilly Line. The platforms are accessed primarily by lift (an important point in relation to a ghostly experience which took place here). Moves are afoot (in 2009) to redevelop parts of the station to cope with the heavy use of commuters and tourists.
Covent Garden had a popular and influential minister in the Revd Dr John Cumming (1807–81) who spent much of his time preaching prophecies about the end of the world. In 1860 he commented that, ‘…the forthcoming end of the world will be hastened by the construction of underground railways burrowing into infernal regions and thereby disturbing the Devil.’
The area has a long association with the theatre and the oldest of these is the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane. It was this association that provided one of the most famous ghosts of the Underground, that of actor William Terriss (1847–97). Terriss, whose real name was William Charles James Lewin, was a popular leading actor of melodramas as well as being a dapper and fashionable man known for sporting trademark white gloves and a cape. Despite him being the darling of audiences he clearly had enemies who envied his success. One particular enemy was Richard Archer Prince, jealous of the recognition that Terriss was getting.
Prince was a struggling actor who had become increasingly mentally unstable and had acquired the nickname ‘Mad Archer’. The last straw came on 16 December 1897 when Prince received a letter from the Actors Benevolent Fund (ABF) stating that they were ending the allowance they had been giving him. In his anger Prince went to the Adelphi Theatre where he knew Terriss had his own private entrance and waited for him to turn up for the evening performance. As Terriss entered, Prince ran towards him and stabbed him three times with a knife. A crowd quickly pounced on Prince whilst a doctor attended to Terriss, but the actor died a few minutes later. Prince had somehow convinced himself that Terriss had been responsible for the ending of the money he had received from the fund. A plaque on the wall by the stage door of the Adelphi Theatre commemorates Terriss. At his trial on 13 January 1898 the jury declared Prince to be guilty but not responsible for his actions, and he was sent to Broadmoor.
The ghost of Terriss reputedly haunts both the Adelphi Theatre and Covent Garden Station. Many staff at the station have reported incidents after it has been closed to passengers at night with the ghost manifesting itself in a number of ways. The sound of disembodied gasps and sighs, knockings in the lift and sightings of a ghost-like image of a man were some of the manifestations. Peter Underwood, probably Britain’s leading authority and writer on the paranormal, recorded in his book, Haunted London (1975), an account told to him by an Underground ticket collector, Jack Hayden. On a cold November night in 1955 after the last train had gone Jack was locking the gates when he suddenly saw a tall, distinguished man with a very sad face and sunken cheeks ascending the emergency stairs towards him. When Jack realised the man might be locked in, he shouted to him to wait and he would let him out. However, by the time Jack undid the gate the man was nowhere to be seen. Four days later Jack saw the man again wearing an old-fashioned grey suit and some light-coloured gloves. Jack asked the figure if he needed the cloakroom but he did not answer and just moved away and disappeared within seconds. Understandably Jack was reluctant to tell anyone of his experience for fear of ridicule. It was only another few days after the second sighting that Jack and one of the guards heard a screaming noise with no one apparently around to make it.
Jack described the ghost to an artist who drew an image of the man which was then passed on to Psychic News. They in turn looked through photographs which they showed Jack, who recognised the man he saw in the Underground. It was William Terriss. This story is also born out by a similar experience to that in a Channel 5 documentary, Ghosts of the Underground (2006). Another ex-Underground worker, a lift operator, described seeing a tall man in old-fashioned clothes in 1972. Like Jack Hayden, when he was shown a photograph of William Terriss, he instantly recognised it as the man he had seen.
Covent Garden Station opened in 1907 and has a typical Leslie Green-designed frontage. The distance between here and Leicester Square Tube is the shortest between any two stations on London’s underground system.
Has the ghost of William Terriss finally decided to rest forever?
There have been no reported sightings of the ghost of Wiliam Terriss since. From the 1960s traffic congestion had become a huge problem and the area was threatened with major redevelopment, but a public outcry pressured the Home Secretary, Robert Carr, in 1973 to give listed building status to many of the surrounding buildings. It may be that William’s ghost came to rest but as changes to develop the station are due to take place it may provoke the ghost of Terriss into a new burst of activity.
FARRINGDON
Farringdon Station is located close to Smithfield Market and is famously haunted by the ghost of thirteen-year-old Anne Naylor, who was brutally murdered in the eighteenth century. The station was opened in January 1863 as the terminus for the original Metropolitan Railway from Bishop’s Road, Paddington – the world’s first underground railway. This area has witnessed tournaments, duels, the huge Smithfield meat market nearby, the debauchery and rowdiness of Bartholomew Fair (1133–1855) and executions, both hangings and burnings. It is also the site of a plague pit. Smithfield is one of London’s most historic districts, but seems relatively unvisited by tourists.
In 1758 Anne Naylor and her sister, along with five other girls from parish workhouses, were apprenticed as milliners to Sarah Metyard and her daughter, Sarah Morgan Metyard. Anne was described as being of a sickly disposition and found the work difficult and could not keep up with the other girls. She was singled out by the evil Sarah Metyard and daughter who punished her with barbaric and repeated acts of cruelty, made all the worse when she tried to escape. Some of the other girls saw Anne’s body tied with cord and hanging from the door. They cried out to the sadistic women to help her but Anne only received more beatings with a stick and hearth brooms. Poor Anne was locked up alone, bruised, exhausted and starved, and within a few days she died. Her body was carried into the garret and locked up in a box where it was kept for upwards of two months, until it had putrefied and was crawling with maggots.
Eventually the mother removed the body, tried to cut it into pieces and then carried it to what is no
w Charterhouse Street – close to Farringdon Station. She was unable to get rid of the body parts and she dumped them in the grate of a sewer. The remains were later discovered by a night-watchman who reported it to the ‘constable of the night’.
Four years had passed after Anne’s murder and it seemed that she would be denied retribution and justice for her brutal murder. It was, however, the continual disagreements between the mother and daughter which proved to be their downfall. The young Sarah Metyard wrote a letter to the overseers of Tottenham Parish informing them about the murder and both mother and daughter were subsequently arrested. The Metyards were also indicted for the wilful murder of Mary Naylor, Anne’s sister, aged eight years.
Both mother and daughter were sentenced to be executed at Tyburn (near to where Marble Arch now stands) and then taken to the Surgeon’s Hall to be dissected in public, a form of aggravated punishment. On Monday 19 July they were led from Newgate Prison in a cart on the two-mile journey to Tyburn. The mother was described as being in a fit during the journey and left ‘this life in a state of insensibility’. As for her daughter, she wept incessantly from leaving Newgate until the moment of her death on the scaffold. After the execution both were ‘conveyed in a hearse to Surgeons’ Hall, where they were exposed to the curiosity of the public, and then dissected.’
One would like to believe that Anne Naylor found peace but it appears her tormented soul wanders Farringdon Station where she has been nicknamed the ‘Screaming Spectre’. Over the years there have been regular reports of the ghost of Anne, the sound of her screams echoing down the platform, and passengers claiming to hear the screaming of a young girl as the last train leaves the station at night.
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