The Cock Lane Ghost: with Emma Clery

Dominic is joined by the inimitable Prof. Emma Clery - author of The Rise of Supernatural Fiction 1762-1800 and Professor of English Literature at Uppsala University, Sweden. They continue this month’s theme of the supernatural, taking you on a journey into the heart of an event that caused a sensation in Georgian London, and would inspire Dickens decades later …

The real life story of The Cock Lane Ghost set the stage for an earnest debate between Anglicans and Methodists - the former skeptical the latter credulous towards a spirit realm - where the dead can seek out the living and communicate with them. The alleged haunting in Cock Lane quickly spiralled in the first months of 1762, with many great figures of the age Samuel Johnson, Horace Walpole and Prince Edward, Duke of York attending seances to cross examine the ghost. At the heart of the controversy lay the very serious charge of murder that the ghost - known as ‘Scratching Fanny’ - was trying to convince her hearers of, and the very real possibility of the man accused being sent to the gallows.

It will come as no surprise to you that Dickens loved this story! Mentioning it not only in articles but in three of his novels - through Mrs Nickleby’s flighty imagination, the disgruntled temper of Mrs Pipchin, and as Prologue to the madness and terror that engulfs A Tale of Two Cities …

Joining us to bring to life the real characters from this story - in the form of articles, letters and transcripts - are the fantastic actors Peter Bray and Rachel Winters.

Additional Sound Effects in this episode have been used under license from Epidemic Sounds

Original cover headshot of Dominic Gerrard © Jane Lloyd / Original cover headshot of Emma Clery © Emma Clery / Background Drawing detail of Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism (1762) by William Hogarth, sourced by Wikimedia Commons

Transcript

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SPEAKER_03 0:16

Hi everyone. As I speak to you right now, the mist outside my window has rolled down the hillside, and the church steeple has disappeared. All sense of time and place has dissolved. It seems the perfect setting to continue with this month's theme of the supernatural and take you on a journey into the heart of an event that caused a sensation in Georgian London and would inspire Dickens decades later. The real-life story of the Cochlane Ghost set the stage for an earnest debate between Anglicans and Methodists, the former skeptical, the latter credulous towards a spirit realm where the dead can seek out the living and communicate with them. The alleged haunting in Cochlane quickly spiraled in the first months of 1762, with many great figures of the age, Samuel Johnson, Horace Walpole, and Prince Edward, Duke of York, attending seances to cross-examine the ghost. At the heart of the controversy lay the very serious charge of murder that the ghost, known as Scratching Fanny, was trying to convince her hearers of, and the very real possibility of the man accused being sent to the gallows. It will come as no surprise to you that Dickens loved this story, mentioning it not only in articles but in three of his novels, through Mrs. Nickleby's flighty imagination, the disgruntled temper of Mrs. Pipchin, and as prologue to the madness and terror that engulfs a tale of two cities. Here to talk to us about this extraordinary haunting and its influence on the gothic genre that seems to immediately follow it is the inimitable Emma Clarey, author of The Rise of Supernatural Fiction 1762 to 1800, and professor of English literature at Uppsala University, Sweden, where she specialises in 18th and 19th century British literature. Her recent projects include a study of the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft for Oxford University Press. And joining us to bring to life the real characters from this story in the form of articles, letters, and transcripts are the fantastic actors Peter Bray and Rachel Winters. And I owe a special mention to the author Professor Douglas Grant and the writer and television producer Paul Chambers for their invaluable books on the Cochlane Ghost. Let us begin. Along London's winding streets, the timber-framed houses list and creak. Through a low arched passageway leading from the Church of St. Sepulchres to the rank cells of the condemned in Newgate, Richard Parsons, the parish clerk, rings the execution bell and calls on the prisoners within to prepare themselves for death.

SPEAKER_02 3:25

All you that in the condemned hole do lie, prepare you, for tomorrow you shall die. Examine well yourselves in time, repent, but you not to eternal flames be sent. And when Saint Sebal Sepulch's bell tomorrow tolls, the Lord above have mercy on your souls.

SPEAKER_03 3:55

Parsons at this moment in life has distinguished himself as a drunk and all round disreputable character. As he zigzags his way down the dark streets back to his home in Cock Lane, he has no idea that he is soon to be immortalized as a folk hero to some or scandalized as a defamer to others. One Sunday morning in October, at St. Sepulchre's, where presumably Richard Parsons has sobered himself up, a young couple enter the church who Parsons has never seen before. They appear cut from a more respectable cloth than many of the types that he is used to mixing with. They introduce themselves as William and Francis Kent, lately arrived from Norfolk. It appears that they need lodgings, and Parsons seizes the opportunity of taking rent off them and having higher bred people living under his roof. Despite appearances, however, it turns out that William Kent's calling is that of a usurer, so a man after Parsons' heart after all. Before long, Parsons has borrowed twelve guineas from Kent to be paid back over the following twelve months. Time passes, and William and Frances appear happily settled under Parsons' roof. With Francis befriending Parsons' twelve-year-old daughter, Betty. Frances falls pregnant, and while William is away on business in the country, young Betty shares a bed with her. It is on one of these occasions that Francis and Betty are disturbed in the night by the sound of scratching and knocking. They can't explain where the noises are coming from, or what could be causing them. There is a shoemaker nearby on Cock Lane. There is also the Smithfield Meat Market that could undoubtedly send thumps and scrapes echoing along the narrow streets. But there is a problem. These noises, now occurring frequently at night, can also be heard on a Sunday. It also turns out that William and Frances have a secret. They are not married. In fact, William was married to Francis' sister, Elizabeth Lynes, but Elizabeth had died during childbirth. She had carried her baby to term, and even though the child also died soon after, canon law prevented William from now being able to marry Elizabeth's sister Francis, so they had fled south from Norfolk, to the anonymity of the metropolis, where they could live as husband and wife. This secret might have been safe with Richard Parsons, were it not for the fact that he had fallen behind in his repayments of Kent's loan to him. And when the unlawful couple moved out of Cocklane, Parsons and his wife were free to put it about that the knocking sounds in their house, which had begun with the arrival of William and Francis and was still occurring, must be the angry spirit of Elizabeth Lyons haunting her sister and ex-husband. Enter James Franson, landlord of the Wheat Sheaf Pub, also on Cock Lane, a man of very nervous disposition with a childlike terror of the supernatural. One night Parsons invited Franson to his house, but when the landlord got there, Parsons was out. Seated at the table instead were Parsons' wife and daughter Betty. As Franson sat to take a drink with them, he heard the sound of knocking against the parlour wall and scratching noises that sounded like a wild animal. Franson was stricken with fright and got up to leave, but as he headed to the door a movement behind him made him turn around. Sweeping up the stairs in the gloom was a glowing white figure. The spectre paused, raised an arm, and beckoned him to follow. Dumbstruck, Franson mechanically began to approach it. Suddenly a door slammed in front of him, and young Betty Parsons blocked his path, warning him not to follow. Franson had had enough. He fled the house back to the empty inn and tried in vain to recover from his fright. He had not been there long when there was a knock at the door.

SPEAKER_02 8:33

It was Parsons. Give me the largest brandy you have. Why? What what's the matter? Franson, as I was going into my house just now, I saw the ghost. And so did I, and have been greatly frightened of since. Bless me. What could be the meaning of it?

SPEAKER_03 8:52

It would never seem to matter to Franson that by his own description, this apparition looked like something in white, seemingly in a sheet. His nerves would never recover from the shock of what he had seen that night. Half a mile away, in Bartlett's Court, Francis Lyons lay gravely ill, for both she and William, having grown up far away from the city, were not used to fighting off its many diseases, such as smallpox. And on the second of february, seventeen sixty, she died. Meanwhile, the knocking at Parsons' house on Cock Lane continued, and as the rumour of the haunting began to spread, something seemed to happen to the ghost itself. It was no longer believed to be the spirit of Elizabeth Lyons, but her newly deceased sister Francis. The fact that the sounds had started while Francis was still alive did nothing to destroy this new narrative. The ill blood had now boiled over between William Kent and Richard Parsons, when Kent had sued for the remaining guineas that Parsons owed him. And now a rumour began to be put about that Francis's ghost, known as Scratching Fanny, was seeking revenge, her claim being that she had been poisoned by doses of arsenic as she had lain ill, and that her murderer was her pretend husband William Kent. Another chilling detail about the ghost. Like many poltergeists through the ages, it had attached itself to the young twelve-year-old Betty Parsons and would reveal itself through its nocturnal wrappings in rooms where Betty was present. The stage was now set for the great Cochlane haunting. Emma, hello and welcome to Charles Dickens A Brain on Fire. It's fantastic to have you with us for this Halloween episode.

SPEAKER_05 10:57

Thank you so much. I'm delighted to be here.

SPEAKER_03 11:00

Oh, I'm I'm so excited to have you here because um we're going to talk about something that's quite a big event in uh 1762, but seems to have lost its place in our collective imagination. The story of the Cock Lane Ghost. And you've written on this in in your book, The Rise of Supernatural Fiction 1762 to 1800. When you think back to all that time you spent researching this, what are the aspects of that case that that jump out at you?

SPEAKER_05 11:33

Yes, well, thank you for asking about that. I was casting my mind back to being a PhD student, that was my PhD thesis. It was a real phenomenon. And as you say, not at all well known, even in even in spite of passing references within Dickens's work. People don't know much about it. It seemed to me such an interesting case in drawing together a number of disparate characters representing different attitudes to the supernatural. Um, whether they take it very seriously and seek, as it were, scientific evidence that there are such things as spirits, or whether they're simply captivated by the craze that arose around it, treating a ghost as entertainment. Um that's the way I began the study in the end. And I found it really productive, particularly because of Horace Walpole's involvement. So just two years later, he writes and publishes what is usually called the first Gothic novel, The Castle of Atranto.

SPEAKER_03 12:38

Aaron Powell Yes. I wanted to put this question to you about, you know, in the age of the Enlightenment, how on earth does it cause this medieval kind of superstition to flare up? In the 1760s, how had society formed itself to enable it to be completely swamped with hysteria over the story of this ghost?

SPEAKER_05 12:59

Well, it's a crazy thing, isn't it? You would think that um at the peak of Enlightenment, certainly the process, the cultural process of secularization was accelerating at this time. But what the case of the Cochrane Ghost really revealed for me was that actually this treatment of um the spirit world as entertainment was part of that process. So though it seems very contradictory, and there were some who, as I said, took it very seriously and wanted to contest the phenomenon on religious grounds, um, for the most part, as you say, it was a kind of craze. It was just a cultural media event.

SPEAKER_03 13:43

So I can imagine that in where you've got reason emerging, you have its opposite fighting back. And perhaps the Cochrane Ghost sets the stage in a way for this contest.

SPEAKER_05 13:55

Yes. Yes, I think it very much does. It does seem a kind of case study in the clash of different perspectives on um religion and superstition.

SPEAKER_03 14:06

And do you think that this event actually, because it was entertaining for people, did that lead Walpole then to write his first Gothic?

SPEAKER_05 14:15

I think so. Um he himself treated the whole um setup, which he saw as very theatrical, like a kind of immersive theatre experience, like like performance art almost. I mean, there's a lot to say, of course, about why there was a ghost at all and what the backstory was. But when you went to try to bear witness to the ghost, what you would be listening out for were knocks. And so the way that interaction with the ghost developed, you asked it questions and it would knock once for yes and two for no.

SPEAKER_02 14:55

Spirit? Are you the soul of a departed person? Are you the soul of a person once living in this house? Are you the departed soul of Miss Francis' lines? Are you returned for a purpose? In life, were you harmed by someone? Were you murdered? Were you poisoned by someone? Was the person who administered the poison known to you? Was this person William Kent? No.

SPEAKER_05 15:54

And then if it thought that your questions were impertinent, it would scratch violently in protest. And so it's really an extraordinary account from Horace Walpole because he goes with a whole crowd of fashionable people, extremely high born, um, in a hackney coach out to the East End um to Cocklane, um in a in a really gr grubby or gritty part of town. And he writes to his friend George Montague.

SPEAKER_02 16:32

I could send you volumes on the ghost. The Methodists have adopted it, and the whole town of London think of nothing else. I I went to hear it, for it is not an apparition, but an audition. We set out for the opera, changed our clothes at Northumberland House, the Duke of York, Lady Northumberland, Lady Mary Coke, Lord Hartford, and I, all in one hackney coach, drove to the spot. It rained torrents. Yep. 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 another's pockets to make room for us. The house 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 there 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 stayed, however, till half an hour after one.

SPEAKER_05 17:54

So I think that that really vividly punches up what the experience was like of trying to go and hear this ghost. Uh, and people visited nightly from I think January when it was first revealed in in a newspaper account, um, right through to early February.

SPEAKER_03 18:16

Yes, I love that quote. I love how it shows the haphazard, clumsy side of it all, where they're falling over poor Betty Parsons' bed, the child that the ghost has allegedly attached itself to. And then there's serious intent as well. So Samuel Johnson really wants to get to the Samuel Johnson, wants to get to the bottom of it, doesn't he?

SPEAKER_05 18:36

Yes, I I think in a way the fascination of the Kotling case, as with other cases of um uh purported haunting, um that there was a real fear of atheism at this time, of a slide into disbelief in in the afterlife and in God ultimately. And so um certain clergymen uh were always on the lookout for um uh evidence that would back up belief in the afterlife. And actually from the 17th century onwards, I did a bit of uh going back into the earlier history of people taking interest in hauntings. And the Royal Society, which was the first important scientific foundation in the late 17th century, was extremely interested in cases of hauntings and poltergeists. They would actually set up along scientific lines experiments to test hauntings and write up the cases in order to persuade doubters and try to put religious belief on an empirical footing. You know, there's all sorts of contradictory elements to the ghost-seeing phenomenon in the 18th century as the Enlightenment continues. Um, the two things sort of go hand in hand for a little while. You know, writing in this very clear scientific manner goes along with an interest in hauntings. And so when news of the Cocklane Ghost emerged in January 1762, a number of clergymen were very interested straight away. Really, they were the early adopters of the ghost and wanted to test it in various ways by asking it to respond in certain ways or appear in certain places. And Samuel Johnson became part of the committee of investigation into this haunting because he was very interested in the question of ghosts and the afterlife. And he actually had a great fear of death. I mean, for someone who's known as um this great authority, Johnson's Dictionary, Lives of the Poets, and so on, and a philosopher in his novel Rasilas, he had a lot of neuroses. And one of them was obsessive fear of death. So he would wake at night and and ponder these things. And yeah, this was another opportunity to try to get these fears factually laid to rest, you could say.

SPEAKER_03 21:18

Then there's a moment in the story where the the ghost is interviewed, isn't it, as you were saying a moment ago with with Knox? And I think it's the Reverend Aldrich, who doesn't believe that it's real, finds a lot of background on the alleged ghost of Francis Fanny Lines, and asks questions of Fanny that she should really know the answer to, had she you know, if she is that spirit, and she gets a lot of them wrong.

SPEAKER_02 21:43

Was your father's name John? That's wrong, it was Thomas. Was your father buried at Licham? Wrong again.

SPEAKER_03 22:03

At this moment in our story, Richard Parsons, undoubtedly starting to feel the heat and wanting to deflect suspicion of himself, calls in Esther Carlyle to communicate with the ghost. And secure the charge of murder against William Kent, who is also present at the seance. Esther was William and Frances's maid during Frances' illness and death. Esther's nickname is Carrots, on account of her bright orange hair. The Reverend Moore, again, a believer eager to prove the ghost reality, conducts the interview, with Parsons looking on in agitation.

SPEAKER_02 22:44

Um Carrots. This house has been troubled by knocking and scratching noises for nearly three years. We have deduced that the agent behind these noises is the ghost of your former mistress, Miss Fanny Lines. The ghost tells us she was given poison two to three hours before she died, and you were witness to this. Miss Fanny says that she told you who gave her poison just before her decease. We believe that the murderer was your old master, Mr. William Kent.

SPEAKER_01 23:24

She never told me any such thing, I'm sure. My master and mistress were very loving and lived happily together.

SPEAKER_03 23:31

Neither Parsons or the Reverend Moore had counted on Carrots being a young woman of courage and integrity. Her communication with the ghost does not go to plan.

SPEAKER_02 23:44

Spirit, how long before your death did you tell Carrots, your servant, that you had been poisoned?

SPEAKER_01 23:53

I protest! My mistress was not capable of speaking for days before her death.

SPEAKER_02 23:59

Ah, but she may have done so, though you might not have understood it. Spirit, is Carrots in the room? Does she know anything of the murder? Is your murderer here? If Carrots and her master are taken up before a magistrate, will they confess?

SPEAKER_01 24:25

Are you really my mistress?

SPEAKER_00 24:31

Are you angry with me, madam? Then I'm sure, madam, you should be ashamed, for I've never hurt you in my life.

SPEAKER_03 24:39

And then they they set up this meeting, don't they? They say, Well, let's go, let's go and find your coffin, and if you rap on the lid of your coffin, do you do you agree to do that? And they go down into the vault.

SPEAKER_02 24:49

The company at once 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 then supposed to be accused by the spirit, then went down with several others, but no effect was perceived. Upon their return, they examined the girl, but could draw no confession from her. Between two and three she desired, and was permitted, to go home with her father. It is, therefore, the opinion of the whole assembly that the child has some art of making or counterfeiting particular noises, and that there is no agency of any higher cause.

SPEAKER_03 25:39

And then of course there's no rapping on the coffin lid. Then the cracks in the story start to appear. What I find so interesting is public opinion is so strong, isn't it? And it's so fickle. And because the main conspirator behind it all, Richard Parsons, comes off at the end in terms of public opinion as the good guy, as the victim, even though he concocted the entire thing, it seems. Which is so interesting. He's put in the pillory three times and he's treated with kindness. Whereas his daughter, the treatment of his daughter Betty, is really quite looking at it with contemporary eyes, it's really not okay. Yes.

SPEAKER_05 26:13

Well, I the thing that struck me about her involvement, I remember when I first read Douglas Grant's book, was that of course she's around the right age to be connected with the poltergeist. It's quite typical for an early adolescent girl to be connected with uh events of this kind. It reminds me a little bit of the exorcist, actually. I guess that's that's a girl of a similar age. But yes, clearly, you can hear from Horace Walpole's account, it must have been extremely uncomfortable and pressured for her. And she was constantly being examined. You know, they were she was in bed in a stuffy, oppressive room in a house, a small house, and crowds of people were coming in and watching her. And then on the other hand, presumably, she was part of the conspiracy, of course, and um she was under pressure to conceal what was going on. At the end, they discovered that she had a small block of wood with her, but how that was missed for several weeks is extremely mysterious.

SPEAKER_02 27:18

You were seen taking a board to bed with you.

SPEAKER_05 27:22

No, sir, I didn't. It's really difficult to say um what the domestic context must have been for this. Her father, Richard Parsons, was an alcoholic and had financial problems. She probably was under a lot of pressure. And maybe there was a background even of uh coercion.

SPEAKER_03 27:44

Yeah. What I find it so interesting is the Cocklane Humbug ballad, I think it's called, they refer to her as Little Missy or something, and and and what and how deceitful she is and what a liar she is.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

The town it has long been in pain about the phantom in Cocklane. To find it out, they strove in vain, not one thing they neglected. They searched the bed and the room complete to see if there was any cheat. Where little miss that looked so sweet was not the least suspected. Then soon the knocking it began, and then the scratching it would come. If you was poisoned, tell us true. The yes, knock one, for no, knock two. The gentleman returned again and told young Missy flat and plain that she was the agent of Cock Lane who knocked and scratched for Fanny. Twas false. Each person did agree. Miss begged to go with her daddy, and then went into the country to knock and scratch for Fanny.

SPEAKER_03 28:55

And in Grant's book there's one reference, I think, where one of the authorities would say, Well, if she comes near me, I'm going to whip her. This is a twelve-year-old girl who's trying to protect her father. She's caught by a maid when she's because she's moved around from house to house as well, isn't she? That's the other thing. It doesn't all take place in Cock Lane the whole time. She's forced to go and sleep in a stranger's room with people she doesn't know present. And I think there was a guy called Missita towards the end who challenged her, saying, If this ghost doesn't show up, your dad's in big, big trouble. And so she's left alone, but there's a maid spying on her, and she goes and finds a piece of wood from the fireplace, I think, and then does some knocking, but of course the knocking sounds completely different to the knocks that have been happening before. So there's a whole ensemble there that must have been doing all of the knocking. But it's funny because I know it's not real, but I find it very um perplexing how on earth it was carried out. I know that Richard Parsons at one point has the wainscut taken down by a carpenter, doesn't he, to have checked out and nothing is found.

SPEAKER_05 29:57

Yes, it is really difficult to know how it could have um tricked people for as long as it did. And yes, it is interesting that people seem to have very little empathy with her position. I mean, to be bound up as well in a ghost story that with so many disturbing and tragic sides to it, how much she was aware of one can't know.

SPEAKER_01 30:22

A set of old wives, silly peers, and mad bucks repaired to Cock Lane with a hella baloo, where Fanny, delighted to find the room filled to discover the cheat, began her old pranks with a furious scratching against one of the planks.

SPEAKER_05 30:44

In Charles Churchill's caricatured version of the event, Pomposo, um in other words, Samuel Johnson, is joined by two others from the committee, the investigating committee. Silent. All three went in about, all three turned silent and came out. So emphasizing the silence there. Nothing happened, basically, when they got down to the crypt containing Fanny Lyne's coffin.

SPEAKER_03 31:13

The difficulty with this case is that there's self-interest on every side, isn't there? You can't find anyone that hasn't got skin in the game and a desperate need for it to go one way or the other.

SPEAKER_05 31:23

Well, I suppose the question might be why would he murder her? Um, and something that's often mentioned, because, you know, ostensibly, this is a love story. William Kent was married to Elizabeth Lines. Elizabeth died giving birth to their first child, who then also died. And Fanny was the sister of Elizabeth and had come to stay with them to help with the housekeeping. And then William Kent and Fanny fell in love. They discovered only rather belatedly, I think, after a proposal of marriage, that they wouldn't be able to marry legally. Perhaps this wasn't well known at the time. It's a little puzzling. And so initially they parted, but found that they wanted to be together and decided to live more anonymously in the city. That's why they came to London. Now, something that's often mentioned, I think, in Counts of Them, and this might be, this could be seen as a um cause of the murder, was that they made they made wills entirely in favour of each other. There were also a lot of aspersions cast on on William Kent at this time. I mean, subsequently he's been called a loan shark. So he was someone pretty interested in money. Could that have been a reason for him to kill Fanny? It does seem a little unlikely. And I believe that there were witnesses who came forward to say that yes, she did catch smallpox and that's what she died of. So it's curious. I mean, there was a lot of besmirching going on on all sides, as you said.

SPEAKER_03 33:00

What do you think the legacy then of this entire case has been? We might have touched on it a little bit, but the idea that gothic fiction, there's an appetite out there now for the supernatural to be made entertaining for people. Large numbers of people want to.

SPEAKER_05 33:15

Yes. Well, I I think that Horace Walpole, who is a very interesting character in his own right, people may have heard of him. He had a fantastic art collection. He um had constructed very much to his um his own prescription, uh, a little Gothic castle at Strawberry Hill, which you can still visit today. Uh, he was very interested in um Gothic architecture and ornament, um, and also quite interested in um medieval history. But he hadn't up until that point written anything of the kind that he then went on to write, straight after the Kotling ghost phenomenon, which was the Castle of Atranto. And this was first published as a found manuscript, as the genuine article. It was passed off as uh Italian legend that had been translated into English just recently. And it was only when it became a wild success, this gothic story of a usurper who's haunted by the previous prince of the sovereignty in the south of Italy, um, and all kinds of strange phenomena occur. It wasn't after until after this became a huge success that he revealed that it was actually a modern concoction. Um, what I argued was that he found his audience when he went to see the Cochrane Ghost. He saw the way people were responding, the amount of interest and excitement, any kind of ghostly phenomenon that he thought, I'm gonna test this out. I'm gonna test this out in in fictional form. And so I think it was a bit of a brainwave for him. And the rest is history, you know, the gothic genre, the horror genre. I I think it's arguable that they all derive from this moment.

SPEAKER_03 35:16

That's amazing. That's so incredible, yeah. You mentioned apparently Dickens makes a number of references to the Cockladen Ghost, not just in household words or somewhere, but in three of his novels, which I find fascinating. Um are you able to tell us a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_05 35:33

Well, I'm certainly no Dickens expert. I should say that straight away. Dickens for me is pure pleasure, and um I often think of reading a Dickens novel as like eating a huge box of chocolate, super deluxe, in literary form. So Dickens is my fun, but I couldn't resist just checking up on what he'd said about the Cochlene ghost and and why he said it. And it was very intriguing to do that because he presents the Cochlane Ghost in a number of different contexts. As you say, there was an article in Household Words about it, but that was fairly late in his career. I think the the earliest reference is in Nicholas Nickleby from 1839, and it's a really wonderful scene with Mrs. Nickleby bringing in the Cochlene ghost as a family connection. She's got this very flighty train of thought, and Smike going to bed prompts her to think about other people in bed, and and straight away she thinks of the Cocklane ghost.

SPEAKER_01 36:42

I hope that this unaccountable conduct may not be the beginning of his taking to his bed and living there all his life, like the thirsty woman of Tutbury, or the Cocklane Ghost, or some of those extraordinary creatures. One of them had some connection with our family. I forget, without looking back to some old letters I have upstairs, whether it was my great-grandfather who went to school with the Cocklane Ghost, or the thirsty woman of Tutbury who went to school with my grandmother. Miss La Creevy, you know, of course. Which was it that didn't mind what the clergyman said, the Cocklane Ghost or the Thirsty Woman of Tutbury? The Cocklane Ghost, I believe. Well, then I have no doubt that it was with him my great grandfather went to school, for I know the master of his school was a dissenter, and that would, in a great measure, account for the Cocklane ghost behaving in such an improper manner to the clergyman when he grew up.

SPEAKER_05 37:48

So the Cochlane ghost went to school. Um presumably Fanny Lines, but she refers to the ghost as a he. So there's something very confused about it, I suppose, quite appropriately. Yes. Um here she's um implying that the Cochrane ghost was impudent towards the clergyman by refusing to properly reveal her presence. And it all gets more and more confused. But it's it's really just uh a strange scrambled reference um mediated through the confused mind of Mrs. Nickleby. But I think what's interesting here is that Dickens has picked up, he obviously knows a lot about the case, uh, on the fact that it was a flashpoin, say, Anglicanism and Methodism. That was very interesting. Um, the Methodists were accused of being propagators of superstition. They were keen on any kind of strange phenomena that would seem to show the spiritual world. And so they were keen on ghosts, but it led to a revival of anti-Methodist sentiment. For example, in the caricatures by William Hogarth that make reference to the Cochlane ghost. So it seems to be a way of attacking the Methodist challenge to the established Anglican Church. So that is something that occurs to Mrs. Nickleby in association with the Cochrane Ghost. Um, that seems very distinctive. The next example of a reference to the Cochrane Ghost is in Dombey and Son in chapter eight. And this is my favourite one, I think. This comes in connection with Mrs. Pipchin, the child queller in Brighton. So poor little Paul Dombey is sent there to um lift his spirits, as it were, brought to this boarding house, very peculiar boarding house. And there's there's lots of gothic reference brought into the passages dealing with Mrs. Pipchin. She sounds like a rather terrifying gothic villain with a stony face, stony mottled face. And um at one point she sort of transfigures into the Colklane ghost. So there's a section of this house which is known as the castle, one gothic element. There's a section of the house downstairs called the dungeon, where naughty children are sent to knock some sense into them. And but actually the children also go down there to play with uh the niece of Mrs. Pipchin, who's a lot more approachable and is known as Berry.

SPEAKER_01 40:38

As it rained after dinner, and they couldn't go out walking on the beach, and Mrs. Pipchin's constitution required rest after chops, they went away with Berry, otherwise Barinthia, to the dungeon, an empty room looking out upon a chalk wall and water butt, and made ghastly by a ragged fireplace without any stove in it. Enlivened by company, however, this was the best place after all, for Berry played with them there, and seemed to enjoy a game at romps as much as they did. Until Mrs. Pipchin, knocking angrily at the door like the Cocklane ghost revived, they left off, and Berry told them stories in a whisper until twilight.

SPEAKER_05 41:22

So there are quite a lot of nice early gothic elements there. This is classic Dickens' and it's sort of bringing together comedy and the macabre and the fantastical.

SPEAKER_04 41:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 41:34

And there's also a strong identification with the perspective of the child, which we don't get, of course, in the original Cockling documentation. So we've got a child caught up in a way in a gothic plot. And then it really emphasizes the oral nature, that is to say, you hear the ghost rather than see it. And then the final example is, I think, probably the most famous one from uh A Tale of Two Cities. So right at the start of A Tale of Two Cities, when he's doing his period setting. Um the famous line, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. And then he seems to suggest the example of the Cochrane goes to uh himself.

SPEAKER_02 42:19

It was the age of wisdom. It was the age of foolishness. It was the epoch of belief. It was the epoch of incredulity.

SPEAKER_05 42:34

The moment you you introduce that binary of wisdom and foolishness, belief and incredulity, it seems to invite for him thoughts of the Cochlane ghost. And this is even though, or rather, in spite of the fact that he's trying to open the novel in 1775 and the Cocklane Ghost incident happened.

SPEAKER_03 42:55

13 years earlier.

SPEAKER_05 42:56

Exactly. So he simply can't resist bringing it in again.

SPEAKER_02 43:01

Even the Cochlane Ghost had been laid only around a dozen of years after wrapping out its messages.

SPEAKER_05 43:08

This seems to relate to another side of his experiment with historical fiction. He is writing historical fiction, but what he really wants to do is show how similar the past was to the present. So he's bringing in a much more recent case of a poltergeist. I feel like this is very typical of him. He's really not a Walter Scott when it comes to historical fiction. He wants to demonstrate, actually, that the past can be very similar to the present because human nature doesn't change and human foibles don't change. It's his characteristic mixing of comedy with horror. I think that's absolutely what appealed to him in the case of the Cochrane ghost, that it was so ridiculous and at the same time quite macabre. The two things together are characteristically Dickensian.

SPEAKER_03 44:00

Absolutely. Well, Emma, this has been so fantastic. Thank you ever so much. I've really, really enjoyed this.

SPEAKER_05 44:07

You're very welcome.

SPEAKER_03 44:09

No, it's been lovely to meet you.

SPEAKER_05 44:10

We count this as a meeting these days, don't we?

SPEAKER_03 44:13

I say we've met. Yeah. There you go. And so the Cochlane haunting was exposed as a humbug. Richard Parsons was sentenced to two years in prison and made to stand three times in the pillory for his conspiracy to take away the life of William Kent. As he was taken down, he called out to the packed court how many had heard the knockings besides him. His wife was also sentenced to a year of hard labor at Bridewell. In spite of the clear evidence of fraud, some witnesses, such as Anne Bray, held firmly to the belief that these noises must have been supernatural.

SPEAKER_01 44:54

We often heard the noises, but could never tell from whence they proceeded. I have heard knockings and scratchings when the girl has been asleep in bed, and the sounds seem to come from the wainscut and other parts of the room, and not from the bed. I do not think the noise was made by the girl, but by a ghost or some other preternatural noise.

SPEAKER_03 45:19

Tantalizingly, nearly a hundred years after this event, the artist J.W. Archer visited the vaults of St. John's Clarkenwell to make sketches of the Gothic chamber. He was surrounded by broken coffins and could see glimpses of mummified corpses. There was one coffin, however, that his guide pointed out to him as belonging to Scratching Fanny. Archer forced the lid off the coffin as his guide held up the lamp. What he saw was the face of a handsome woman with an aquiline nose, and that her remains were perfectly preserved. He then adds, if I remember rightly, she was otherwise declared to have died of smallpox. He searches the face for the telltale marks and can find nothing, adding, of this disease there was not the least sign. Could Frances Lyons have been poisoned after all?