Haunted London (9 page)

A number of the older houses in the square were haunted within living memory. One was the scene of a murder and thereafter the murdered woman’s ghost was sometimes seen on spring mornings in the vicinity of the hall and stairway. The murder took place one April morning. The house next door had haunted rooms at the top of the property and a former occupant told me of distinct footsteps that were often to be heard approaching one of the doors, although nothing was ever seen. Other people in the house maintained that they frequently saw the ghost of an elderly man in the lower part of the premises.

Mrs P. Fitzgerald, the artist, of Worthing, Sussex, once had a studio in Red Lion Square, in a house owned by Dr Josiah Oldfield. One night as she returned to her studio Mrs Fitzgerald saw a poorly-dressed woman, almost a gipsy, come out of the house and the strange figure seemed to hiss at the artist as she passed, ‘Lady, don’t paint the bridge.’ When Mrs Fitzgerald turned to reply, there was no sign of the figure and Dr Oldfield informed her that he had no knowledge of anyone with such a description, although he seemed reluctant to discuss the matter.

A few days later Mrs Fitzgerald was asked to paint a roof garden which had a bridge leading from one floor to another and something, she knew not what, made her refuse the commission. On the day that she would have been working on the painting the whole bridge and part of the roof garden collapsed and it is likely that she would have been killed had she agreed to paint the bridge.

Years later Dr Oldfield told her that a gipsy, suspected of witchcraft, had been killed by a mob on the premises at the time of the Great Fire of London. In December 1972, my friend Dr Peter Hilton-Rowe was good enough to tell me about yet another haunted house in Red Lion Square and Mrs Beryl Sweet-Escott of Dedham, Essex, has recounted her experience for me, as follows:

I have a vivid recollection of an apparition I saw on the staircase of a house in Red Lion Square. I think it was in the summer of 1936, but at all events it was a bright and sunny day. A dressmaker who lived on the third floor was making me a garment of some kind (I cannot remember her name, unfortunately) and I had an appointment for a fitting, probably about 3 p.m. I started to climb the stairs — a fine, wide Georgian staircase, uncarpeted, with the usual twists and turns. At the corner, before reaching the second floor, a charming old gentleman stood back to let me pass. He was white-haired, wore a long blue coat, white breeches and stockings, and buckled shoes. He had what I think was a three-cornered hat under his left arm. He bowed and smiled and I passed on up the stairs. What is odd to me is that I was neither surprised nor alarmed. He was not, I would say, transparent, but appeared semi-solid, if you know what I mean.

In the middle of my fitting, I said to my dressmaker friend, ‘I thought I saw a ghost on your stairs.’ ‘Oh, did you?’ she said, mouth full of pins. ‘What did he look like?’ I described him and she said matter-of-factly, ‘Oh yes, we all know him here — we’ve seen him several times and we’re rather fond of the old boy. He’s quite harmless of course, and always has such nice manners!’ I never saw any of the other occupants of the house. I have an impression that it was Number 10 but am not sure.

THE STRAND, WC2

Mr Alan Dent, the well-known theatre and book critic, has related to me his experience of seeing the ghost of Baroness Burdett-Coutts in the Strand, just east of Coutts’s Bank, one sunny June morning during the Second World War.

There had been a heavy air-raid the night before and under the clear summer sky workmen were busy clearing away the rubble and broken glass. Suddenly, Alan Dent noticed an elderly lady walking ahead of him, a somewhat singular figure in Edwardian dress: black satin, white lace beneath the bone-supported collarette, a small black and feathery hat, diamond earrings, black shoes and hands hidden in a dark muff. She was clearly walking and not floating as many ghosts are traditionally said to do.

As he followed the figure he had the fancy that he had seen her once or twice before, once in Long Acre and another time in Oxford Street, but always from the rear. This time he decided to pass the old lady and then look back and obtain a full view. As he quickened his steps and passed her, he had a glimpse of a pale complexion and a slight pout as she continued in an unhurried but purposeful way.

Passing Coutts’s Bank, having been out of sight of the figure for less than thirty seconds, Alan Dent paused at a shop window and then looked round and prepared to walk back the way he had come. But there was no sign of the old lady. She had completely vanished and there was no one in front of him for the whole length of the bank. She was not crossing the road and she was not on the opposite pavement. Nor, at that moment, was there any taxi or car in sight, in either direction. Deciding that she must have entered the bank, Alan Dent hurried to the entrance where a commissionaire was just opening the doors, the time being ten o’clock. No one had yet entered the bank by the front door.

Some days later Alan Dent happened to describe this strange experience to the landlord of a tavern in Long Acre, a shrewd old Welshman named Arthur Powell, who listened carefully to the story and then suggested that the figure sounded like the Baroness Burnett-Coutts going into her own bank. He recognized Dent’s description for he had seen the old lady many times as his father had been one of her coachmen. But she had died forty years before.

Baroness Burnett-Coutts was a great friend of Charles Dickens and Henry Irving and the Duke of Wellington, also of Queen Victoria until 1881. Then the sixty-seven-year-old baroness married her former secretary, an American forty years her junior. Queen Victoria was not amused, rather she was shocked and she never visited the baroness again. When Baroness Burnett-Coutts died, at the age of ninety-two in 1906, King Edward VII said she was the most remarkable woman in the kingdom after his mother. The baroness’s family told Alan Dent that her ghost is also reported as having been seen in the East End of London where the Baroness endowed a market and a block of dwellings in Bethnal Green. And Alan Dent never walked along the Strand without thinking about the baroness and hoping to see her again.

Coutts Bank in the Strand where the ghost of Baroness Burnett-Coutts was seen by theatre-critic Alan Dent.

THEATRE ROYAL, DRURY LANE

The best known of all theatre ghosts is the Man in Grey at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. I first heard the story from that great theatre historian W. J. Macqueen Pope many years ago, and it was a fascinating account, for ‘Popie’ told me that he had himself seen the ghost, not once but several times.

The ghost is a slim figure of a young man dressed in grey. He has a white wig, carries a three-cornered hat, wears riding boots and has a sword hanging from his waist. One summer afternoon in 1955, ‘Popie’ showed me the precise track of the ghost. He is first seen occupying the first seat of the fourth row of the upper circle and then moves across the theatre along the gangway at the back until finally he disappears at the far end into the wall near the royal box.

The figure is always seen in daylight between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. and all witnesses agree on the romantic attire, although some people say that he has powdered hair and is not wearing a wig, and others report that he is wearing the tri-corn hat. Invariably, no sound accompanies the appearance or movement of the apparition, which walks leisurely and without hurrying, as though he is thoroughly accustomed to the theatre — as indeed he was.

‘Popie’ thought that the young man, whose handsome face with square chin has been clearly seen so many times, probably had a girl friend in the theatre in the eighteenth century. She was possibly a favourite of the theatre manager of the time and the young man may have been ordered out; perhaps an argument and a fight followed, and the young man fell, mortally wounded by a stab from a dagger, and the body was hastily walled-up in a little passage along which he had walked every night to meet his sweetheart.

This theory is based on a discovery in mid-Victorian days when during structural alterations workmen on the upper circle reported that part of the main wall sounded hollow. When the wall was broken down a small room or part of a passage was disclosed, and on the floor lay the skeleton of a man with a Cromwellian-style dagger still embedded between the ribs. A few pieces of cloth were found among the bones, but they crumbled to dust as soon as they were touched. The place where the gruesome discovery was made corresponds exactly with that part of the wall where the ghost is said to disappear. The walls where the skeleton was found were unaltered during the 1796 rebuilding and after the fire of 1809.

An inquest followed the discovery, but in the absence of contemporary evidence an open verdict was returned and no one knows who the victim was or why he was killed. The remains were buried in a little graveyard on the corner of Russell Street and Drury Lane; a place that ceased to be a burial ground in 1853 and is now marked by a small open space and children’s playground, known as Drury Lane Gardens.

It seems indisputable that scores of people have seen this daylight ghost and ‘Popie’ told me that once, during a rehearsal, the ghost walked while over a hundred people were on stage and seventy of them saw it. ‘Popie’ himself saw the phantom many times over the years, both before and after the Second World War and in his history,
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
, he writes that he wished to put on record that he had seen this apparition ‘on numerous occasions’.

Oddly enough, the ghost is regarded as a good omen for its appearance during rehearsals or during the early days of a run at the Theatre Royal invariably seems to forecast a success for the production. The ghost was reported to have been seen within a few days of the opening nights of such successful musicals as
Glamorous Nights
,
Careless Rapture
,
Crest of the Wave
and
The Dancing Years
. The ghost was not seen before or during the run of
Pacific 1860,
which turned out to be a failure, but he was seen again just before the successful runs of
Oklahoma
,
Carousel
,
South Pacific
,
The King and I
and
My Fair Lady.

The Dancing Years
was playing the night war broke out and Ivor Novello called everyone in the half-empty house down into the stalls so that they would be less vulnerable should bombs fall. One did fall on the theatre three years later; it landed in the bar where the fire-wardens were sleeping, but it failed to explode. The wardens moved out of the room and twenty minutes later an incendiary bomb came down through the same hole and set everything alight. People have always been lucky at ‘The Lane’. Even the ghost, appearing as it does only between the hours of 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., has never really frightened anyone.

One spring morning in 1938 a theatre cleaner was in the upper circle. It was just after 10 a.m. and a rehearsal was in progress. As soon as the cleaner entered the circle she saw a man dressed in grey and wearing a strange hat, sitting on the end seat of the fourth row, by the centre gangway, gazing down at the stage. She thought that it must be an actor, but decided to make sure, and, putting down her pail and broom, she went to speak to the figure. As she drew near it seemed to melt and had soon disappeared. Then a movement caught her eye near the exit door on the right-hand side of the circle and she saw the same figure, just as it vanished into solid wall. She said she had never heard of the Man in Grey, although her description fitted with other first-hand accounts, even to the sword and riding boots.

Some years earlier, during a matinee performance, a lady occupying a seat in the upper circle asked an attendant whether actors in the musical came out among the audience. They did not do so in that performance, and the attendant asked the reason for her question. The lady replied that she had noticed a man in a long grey cloak, with a white wig and three-cornered hat, pass through the entrance doors ahead of her. There was no person in the theatre remotely resembling such a description. Over the years, firemen, theatre officials, producers, theatre-goers, visitors and residents have all seen a strikingly similar figure.

However, on the two occasions that psychic investigators visited the theatre they had little success. The first occasion was during a period when several people had claimed to see the ghost. The party consisted of six people, including Wentworth Day; Harry Price, the noted psychic investigator; Jasper Maskelyne of the famous conjuring family; and Macqueen Pope. Suddenly, Wentworth Day’s secretary gripped his arm and pointed to the wall where the skeleton was discovered. Wentworth Day told me that he looked immediately and saw a grey-blue, almost luminous light hovering there, then it moved across the darkness of the royal box. It seemed to move with the odd and uneven action of a man with a limp and then vanished. A moment later, the same form appeared at the back of the upper circle, in mid-air, about four feet from the floor. Again it moved unevenly, seeming to have no shape and certainly casting no shadow. Suddenly it was gone. No one else in the party turned quickly enough to see anything. A few years later, another party of celebrities, including Tod Slaughter and Valentine Dyall, spent several hours at the theatre and were even less fortunate — none of them heard or saw anything inexplicable, as I relate in my biography of Boris Karloff.