by Howard Pyle
They began by asking: Q. “In what was the poison administered — beer or purl?” A. “Purl.” Q. “How long before your death?” A. “Three hours.” Q. “Is the person called Carrots able to give any information about the poison?” A. “Yes.” Q. “Are you Kent’s wife’s sister?” A. “Yes.” Q. “Were you married to Kent?” A. “No.” Q. “Was any other person beside Kent engaged in the poisoning?” A. “No.” Q. “Can you appear visibly to any one?” A. “Yes.” Q. “Will you do so?” A. “Yes.” Q. “Can you go out of this house?” A. “Yes.” Q. “Can you follow this child everywhere?” A. “Yes.” Q. “Are you pleased at being asked questions?” A. “Yes.” Q. “Does it ease your mind?” A. “Yes.” (Here a mysterious noise, compared to the fluttering of wings round the room, was heard.) Q. “How long before your death did you tell Carrots that you were poisoned?” A. “One hour.” Carrots admitted that this was so. Q. “How long did Carrots live with you?” A. “Three or four days.” Carrots attested the truth of this. Q. “If the accused shall be taken up, will he confess?” A. “Yes.” Q. “Will it ease your mind if the man be hanged?” A. “Yes.” Q. “How long will it be before he is executed?” A. “Three years.” Q. “How many clergymen are there in the room?” A. “Three.” Q. “How many negroes?” A. “Two.” One of the clergymen, holding up a watch, asked whether it was white, yellow, blue, or black; to which he was answered black. The watch was in a black shagreen case. Q. “At what time in the morning will you depart?”
A. “At four o’clock;” which, strange to say, was the case.
The mysterious rustling of wings appears to have been a great card in the ghostly programme, and subsequently the additional evidence of two other clergymen, who also heard the same mysterious sounds, was added to what had already been published. It was, they said, repeated several times, and was taken as a sign that the spirit was pleased.
London had now become thoroughly aroused. The newspapers were full of the affair, the coffee-houses buzzed with it, and a dozen different pamphlet accounts burst into an ephemeral life in Grub Street garrets, and fluttered out into the light of the reading world.
It became the fashion of the day. Horace Walpole interlards it in a letter written to Mann — a letter relating chiefly to the death of the Czarina and the complicated state of European politics. “I am ashamed to tell you,” says he, “that we are again dipping into an egregious scene of folly. The reigning fashion is a ghost! — a ghost that would not pass muster in the paltriest convent in the Apennines.
It only knocks and scratches; does not pretend to appear or to speak. The clergy give it their benediction; and all the world, whether believers or infidels, go to hear it. I, in which number you may guess, go to-morrow; for it is as much the mode to visit the ghost as the Prince of Mecklenburg, who is just arrived.”
Cock Lane and the surrounding courts and alleyways were crowded not only with the motley masses from the mazy wilderness of courts and alleys in the surrounding of St. Paul’s, but also with high-stepping, rustling beaux and dames from the neighborhood of St. James’s, where coaches and chairs fairly blocked the adjoining way.
We can only see a reflected picture of nether London and its excitement in records of the time; of the manner in which it affected high life we have several accounts, among the most amusing and clever of which is another letter from the ubiquitous Walpole, written in the intervals of his busy gossip of politics, the court, the opera, recapitulation of the droll bric-a-brac which he collected at his still droller mansion at Strawberry Hill, to Montague, then in Ireland. “I could,” says he, “send you volumes on the ghost, and I believe if I were to stay a little I might send its life, dedicated to my Lord Dartmouth, by the ordinary of Newgate, its two great patrons. A drunken parish clerk set it on foot out of revenge, the Methodists have adopted it, and the whole town of London think of nothing else. Elizabeth Canning and the rabbit woman were modest impostors in comparison of this, which goes on without saving the least appearances.
The Archbishop, who would not suffer the Minor to be acted in ridicule of the Methodists, permits this farce to be played every night, and I shall not be surprised if they perform in the great hall at Lambeth. I went to hear it, for it is not an apparition, but an audition. We set out from the opera, changed our clothes at Northumberland House — the Duke of York, Lady Northumberland, Lady Mary Coke, Lord Hertford, and I, all in one hackney-coach — and drove to the spot. It rained torrents, yet the lane was full of mob, and the house so full we could not get in. At last they discovered it was the Duke of York, and the company squeezed themselves into one another’s pockets to make room for us. The house, which is borrowed, and to which the ghost has adjourned, is wretchedly small and miserable. When we opened the chamber, in which were fifty people, with no light but one tallow candle, at the end, we tumbled over the bed of the child to whom the ghost comes, and whom they are murdering by inches in such insufferable heat and stench. At the top of the room are ropes to dry clothes. I asked if we were to have rope dancing between the acts? We had nothing. They told us, as they would at a puppet-show, that it would not come that night till seven in the morning — that is, when there are only ‘prentices and old women. We staid, however, till half an hour after one. The Methodists have promised them contributions; provisions are sent in like forage; and all the taverns and ale-houses in the neighborhood make fortunes. The most diverting part is to hear people wondering when it will be found out; as if there were anything to find out; as if the actors would make their noises when they can be discovered. However, as this pantomime cannot last much longer, I hope Lady Fanny Shirley will set up a ghost of her own at Twickenham, and then you shall hear one. The Methodists, as Lord Aylesford assured Mr.
Chute two nights ago at Lord Dacre’s, have attempted ghosts three times in Warwickshire.”
Nor were the fingers even of intellectual and literary London entirely clean of the dabbling in this squalid supernaturalism.
Some years later, when Mr. Boswell ventured to question Doctor Johnson, he received a rebuff from his idol even more boorish and bearish than usual. The subject of the Cock Lane ghost was evidently a sore one with the worthy lexicographer, and the snub royal was administered with more than ordinary of the bludgeon stroke. But though the good doctor then took pains to intimate that, so far from his having been partial to the spirit of Miss Fanny, it was very largely owing to his particular pen strokes administered through the newspapers that the props of superstition which boosted up the ghost were knocked from under it, it is nevertheless almost certain that he was one of a party that went down into the crypt of St. John’s, Clerkenwell, to hear the “audition” rap upon its own coffin lid. There is hardly a doubt but that it was his pen that wrote the deliciously funny account published in the Gentleman’s Magazine at the time. “The supposed spirit,” says that account, “had publicly promised by an affirmative knock that it would attend one of the gentlemen into the vault under the church of St. John’s, Clerkenwell, where the body is deposited, and give a token of her presence there by a knock upon her coffin. It was therefore determined to make this trial of the existence or veracity of the supposed spirit.
While they were inquiring and deliberating they were summoned into the girl’s chamber by some ladies who were near her bed, and who had heard knocks and scratches. When the gentlemen entered, the girl declared that she felt the spirit like a mouse upon her back.
“The spirit was then very seriously advertised that the person to whom the promise was made of striking upon the coffin was then about to visit the vault, and that the performance of the promise was then claimed. The company at one o’clock went into the church, and the gentleman to whom the promise was made went, with one more, into the vault. The spirit was solemnly required to perform its promise, but nothing more than silence ensued. The person supposed to be accused by the spirit then went down with several others, but no effect was perceived.”
Churchill wrote a now unreadable poem strung upon the
theme of the ghost, in which he tells how
“Thrice each the pond’rous key apply’d,
And thrice to turn it vainly try’d; and then how
“Silent All Three went In, about,
All three turn’d Silent, and Came Out.”
Elsewhere in the poem the author thus describes the Pomposo of this scene:
“Pomposo, insolent and loud;
Vain idol of a scribbling crowd,
Whose very name inspires an awe,
Whose ev’ry word is Sense and Law,
Who, proudly seiz’d of Learning’s throne,
Now damns all Learning but his own;
But makes each Sentence current pass
With Puppy, Coxcomb, Scoundrel, Ass;
For ’tis with him a certain rule,
The Folly’s prov’d when he calls Fool.”
There can be no doubt as to whom that likeness fits; so, in spite of the worthy doctor’s assurance to his friend Boswell, one cannot help but believe that he himself really was, as reported, one of those poor funny gulls that went down into the crypt of St. John’s, Clerkenwell, to hear Miss Fanny rap on her own coffin lid.
III.
For some months the ghost and her chosen medium seemed to have carried everything their own way. The voice of those who would have called for a reasonable examination into the matter was drowned on the one hand by the clamor of those who believed, on the other hand by the laughter and jeers of those who disbelieved. But at last the voice of cooler common-sense began to make itself heard, as it is, in the long-run, always sure to do. First it became publicly known that Miss Fanny’s fortune, for which her husband was supposed to have murdered her, amounted to only £100; then, that the physician who attended her in her last sickness had declared that, so far from Miss Fanny’s having been murdered, she had died of confluent smallpox; and finally that Mr. Kent had loaned his landlord a considerable sum, for the recovery of which he had brought suit against him.
The finding, as a possible root of the whole affair, such a palpable motive as revenge against an overpressing and clamorous creditor tipped the balance, perhaps, with the greatest weight of all; it shook the faith of those who believed most firmly. The child from whom the whole scandal originated was now (by order of the Lord Mayor, it appears) removed from her father’s house, and subjected to a strict and rigorous examination.
At first the result was not very promising. The noises seemed rather to increase than to diminish in violence. Nevertheless, the steady drift of the current was now set full against the ghost and its abetters.
Numberless little circumstances seemed of a more and more suspicious nature. One account says: “About twenty persons sat up in the room, but it was not until about six o’clock in the morning that the first alarm was given, which, coming spontaneously as well as suddenly, a good deal struck the imagination of those present. The scratching was compared with that of a cat on a cane chair. The child appeared to be in a sound sleep, and nothing further could be obtained. Those who sat around discussed the matter in low tones, questioning what would be likely to happen to the child and her father should the trick be discovered. About seven o’clock the girl seemed to awake in a violent fit of crying and tears. On being asked the occasion and assured that no harm should happen to her, she declared that her tears were the effect of her imagining what would become of her father, who must be ruined and undone if the matter should be supposed to be an imposture.
“‘But,’ said they who were present, ‘who told you anything about an imposture? We supposed you to be sound asleep.’
“To which she answered, ‘But not so sound but what I could hear all you said.’”
So, the tide having turned fully against the marvellous rapping and scratching, the world of London demanded imperatively that the mystery should at once be solved. So one day, as a final test, the girl’s bed was swung up in the manner of a hammock, about a yard and a half from the ground, and her hands and feet were tied as far apart as might be without hurting her and fastened with fillets. This was repeated for two or three nights successively, and during that time no noises were heard. It was now felt to be almost a matter of certainty that those noises, whatever they were, had emanated from the child herself, and it was not long before the denouement happened which all the disbelievers had looked forward to with the most perfect confidence — a dénouement which forever wrecked the lives of the unfortunate clerk of St. Sepulchre’s and his family, and nearly drove him to madness. Feeling now sure that the poor wretched little creature had some means by which she produced the mysterious noises, the examiners began, with an almost inquisitorial severity, to press her to confess; but, in spite of all, she still persisted in the denial of any trickery. She was then told that if she did not make the ghost heard within half an hour, she herself and her father and mother would be sent to Newgate. At that the miserable little hussy began crying, and asked that she might be put to bed to try if the noises would come.
“She lay in bed,” says one of the accounts, “much longer than usual, but no noises; this was on Saturday.
“Being told on Sunday that the ensuing night only would be allowed for trial, she concealed a board about four inches long and six inches wide under her stays.
Having got into bed, she told the gentlemen that she would bring Fanny at six the next morning.
“The master of the house, however, and a friend of his, being informed by the maids that the girl had taken a board to bed with her, impatiently waited for the appointed hour, when she began to knock and scratch upon the board, remarking, however, what they themselves were convinced of, that these noises were not like those that used to be made.
“She was then told that she had taken a board to bed with her, and on denying it, searched, and caught in a lie.
“The two gentlemen who, with the maids, were the only persons present at this scene, sent to a third gentleman to acquaint him that the whole affair was detected, and to desire his immediate attendance; but he brought another along with him.
“Their concurrent opinion was that the child had been frightened into this attempt by the threats which had been made the two preceding nights; and the master of the house also and his friends both declared that the noises the girl had made that morning had not the least likeness to the former noises. Probably the organs with which she performed these strange noises were not always in a proper tone for that purpose, and she imagined she might be able to supply the place of them by a piece of board.”
The next morning all the newspapers and coffee-houses buzzed with the news that the trick of the ghost had at last been found out. And that, after all, it was nothing but a little imp of a girl scratching upon a piece of a board.
IV.
One can faintly imagine what must have been the feelings of poor Mr. Kent, the butt and victim of it, while all this had been going on. At first he seems to have brought evidence in rebuttal of the same grotesque sort as the accusations fulminated against him. He was one of those, as has been said, who paid that midnight visit to the crypt of St. John’s. He employed a pamphleteer to write a somewhat elaborate defence, in which many of his most private and sacred affairs were set forth at length, especially his relations with “Miss Fanny,” the manner of her death, etc., etc. An accusation had been brought forward by the believers in the ghost that Mr. Kent, fearing the detection of his guilt, had had the body secretly removed from the vault. Whereupon Mr. Kent, together with a clergyman, the undertaker, the clerk and sexton of the parish, and two or three gentlemen, went down into the crypt, overhauled the coffins piled up therein, and identified the particular one in which “Scratching Fanny” lay.
At last, upon the final supposed detection of the fraud, he instituted a civil suit for libel against all those concerned in the affair in which his credit had suffered so severely.
We read in the Gentleman’s Magazine, July 10, 1762: “Come on before Lord Mansfield in the Court of the King’s Bench, Guildhall, a trial by
a special jury, on an indictment against William Parsons and Elizabeth his wife, Mary Fraser, a clergyman [Mr. Moore, curate of St. Sepulchre’s], and a reputable tradesman [one Mr. James], for a conspiracy in the Cock Lane ghost affair to injure the character, etc., of Mr. William Kent; when they were all found guilty. The trial lasted above twelve hours.”
Richard Parsons was ordered to be set on the pillory three times in one month, and imprisoned two years, his wife one year, and Mary Fraser six months in Bridewell, to be kept to hard labor. Mr. Brown, for publishing some matters relating to that foolish affair, was fined £50 and discharged.
Mr. Moore, the curate, and Mr. James, the tradesman, were sentenced to pay Mr. Kent a round sum of money as indemnity; some say between £500 and £600.
Such was the verdict of the court. The verdict of the great, many-headed was given as undoubtedly and as emphatically in favor of the defendant. Among the riffraff and the ragtag of the neighborhood of Cock Lane, faith in the ghost had neither weakened nor waned. They believed in it still, and as heartily as ever. In one of the journals of the day we read, under date March 16, 1763: “Parsons, the fellow who was principally concerned in the Cock Lane ghost, stood on the pillory at the end of Cock Lane, and instead of being pelted, had money given him.” Elsewhere we read of the unusual sympathy of the mob, and of a drunken fellow, who jeered at the unfortunate man whilst he stood in the pillory, being knocked into a kennel by some indignant neighbor of the whilom clerk.
As for that poor Miss Fanny, her bones seem destined to lie very uneasily. In the earlier part of this century we hear of her again from her restless resting-place. “While drawing the crypt of St. John’s, Clerkenwell,” says Mr. J. W. Archer, “in a narrow cloister on the north side, there being at that time coffins, fragments of shrouds, and human remains lying about in disorder, the sexton’s boy pointed to one of the coffins and said that it was ‘Scratching Fanny.’ This reminded me of the Cock Lane ghost. I removed the lid of the coffin, which was loose, and saw the body of a woman, which had become adipocere. The face was perfect, handsome, oval, with an aquiline nose. Will not arsenic produce adipocere? She is said to have been poisoned, although the charge is understood to have been disproved. I inquired of one of the church-wardens of the time, Mr. Bird, who said the coffin had always been understood to contain the body of the woman whose spirit was said to have haunted the house in Cock Lane.”