Haunted London (2 page)

At the far end of the court a piece of the old City wall on Roman foundations divides the gardens of the court from the Old Bailey, formerly the infamous Newgate Prison and immediately on the other side of the wall there was a narrow passage which was, in fact, the Newgate Prison graveyard, for here the criminals were buried in quicklime, after walking along the passage to attend and return from their trials. The whole area was covered with a massive iron grating in those days and was known officially as Birdcage Walk, but to the warders and to the prisoners it was Dead Man’s Walk. Many walked over ground that was to become their graves, and the wall, black with the dirt of ages, formed the perimeter of the prison graveyard.

For many years, there have been reports of a mysterious and unexplained dark shape crawling along the top of this wall at night-time, an eerie scraping noise of heavy boots and the occasional rattle of chains breaking the dark silence that surrounds this sad place.

In 1948, a minor canon of St Paul’s Cathedral who lived in Amen Court (where, a century earlier, Richard Barham said his windows gave him ‘a fine view of a hanging wood!’) maintained that he saw the ghost of Jack Sheppard, not once but several times. Sheppard, the most famous cat-burglar in the annals of crime, was born in the East End of London in 1702. He was caught in April 1724, and he escaped three times before being finally executed at Tyburn in the November of the same year.

One of these escapes was from Newgate, and according to official records Sheppard was lodged in one of the deep dungeons reserved for the worst criminals, and loaded with some hundred and fifty kilogrammes of iron fetters; yet, with the help of a file passed to him by a girl friend, Jack soon loosened his chain from the dungeon floor, slipped his small hands through the handcuffs and tied his fetters as high up as he could with his garters. By means of a chimney he was soon on the roof of Newgate where he made his way to the wall at the end of Dead Man’s Walk and there dropped into Amen Court and freedom. Recaptured in due course, Newgate became Sheppard’s last prison and this time he was watched day and night until he left for Tyburn.

It would seem that occasionally the ghost of Jack Sheppard returns to re-enact his daring escape from Newgate. He must find Amen Court little changed.

Amen Court near St Paul’s Cathedral where a dark figure occasionally crawls along the top of the old City wall. This is possibly the cat-burglar Jack Sheppard re-enacting his daring escape from Newgate Prison.

THE BANK OF ENGLAND

One of the least-known ghost stories of the City concerns a charming garden deep within the precincts of the mammoth Bank of England building (nearly four acres) with its fortress-like and windowless walls. The bank is sometimes referred to as ‘The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street’ — a name that may have its origin in a ghost... The Bank of England, founded in 1694, carried on business at the old Grocers’ Hall, where the City entertained Cromwell in 1649, until the bank was established in a building on the present site in 1734. This area of the City is historically important as being one of the busiest parts of Roman London. Here in Roman times stood the wharfs and offices of firms trading upon the then navigable Wall Brook, one of no fewer than seven rivers and streams now channelled in iron conduits beneath the present Bank. Two of the tessellated pavements of those Roman Londinium offices are still to be seen, not far from the position in which they were found, while preserved in the bank’s own museum are the sandals, shoes and hob-nailed boots of men and women who must have trodden those pavements.

New wings and extensions were added in 1781 and 1788-1833 (when Sir John Soane was architect to the bank) and rebuilding continued until 1940. From 1780, when the bank was attacked during the Gordon Riots, a military detachment guarded the building each night until 1973. Now the island site is guarded by electronic surveillance.

The old Bank of England was haunted by the apparition of a man nearly eight feet high, a bank cashier in the days when bodies were often dug up and used for dissection. This cashier’s one great fear was that, after he was dead, resurrectionists would get hold of his enormous body, and he persuaded the bank governor of the time to agree to his being buried inside the bank premises. This was duly done and the burial of the ‘giant’ is included in the bank records. The gigantic and frightening ghost used to flit along the bank corridors after the bank guard had been posted, and it sometimes rattled the sentries’ rifles. During the course of some excavations, the ‘giant’s’ coffin was unearthed. It was found to consist of eighteenth-century lead, was seven feet eight inches long and bound with an iron chain.

The huge central block of the bank rises to a height of over a hundred feet and encloses a garden court, flanked by open vaulted colonnades, and it is here that the apparition known as the Black Nun has been seen on many occasions.

I heard the story first-hand from a Bank official some years ago. He told me that the so-called Black Nun was in fact the sister of Philip Whitehead, an apprentice cashier at the Bank in 1811. An ambitious but thoroughly unscrupulous young man, he used his good appearance and plausible tongue to establish himself and his nineteen-year-old sister, Sarah, in a splendid London mansion. There he entertained tricksters and adventurers until the bank heard of his dubious activities and he was asked to resign. His gambling losses mounted and he became more and more in debt, until finally some of his ‘friends’ suggested that he forge a few cheques to see him over the difficult patch. He did so and was discovered, arrested and, on 2 November 1811, condemned to death at the Old Bailey.

Sarah lived on in a fool’s paradise, for her friends could not bear to tell her what had happened; they even arranged for her to move to new lodgings so that she would not hear the tolling of St Sepulchre’s bell when her brother was led from the debtors’ prison to the scaffold. Puzzled by his long absence, she journeyed one day to the bank to inquire about her brother and there the whole story was blurted out to her. She left the bank in a dream — quite unable to accept what had happened — and for the rest of her life she lived in a world apart, travelling each day to the bank where she would loiter outside and then suddenly slip inside and ask whether her brother was in that day. Always the answer would be, ‘Not today, madam.’ Often she would murmur, ‘Tell him when he comes that I have called,’ and she would depart, only to linger outside until the bank closed. All the bank employees came to know her and to feel compassion for the sad figure, dressed from head-to-foot in black, and her crudely-painted face earned for her the nickname of Rouge et Noir or the Black Nun (for her head was invariably covered with black material, like a nun). She was never in want, for the bank officials often gave her money as they passed; a room was provided for her and a small annuity ensured that she did not starve.

Some people even think that she gave the Bank the name of the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, for whatever the weather she made her pilgrimage every working day for nearly forty years, until her death, which occurred suddenly when she was about sixty. She was buried in the old churchyard of St Christopher-le-Stocks that afterwards became the bank’s garden, where her form has been seen wandering aimlessly along a stone pathway.

One witness told me that he was in the gallery of the bank that looks down on the bank garden when a friend pointed out to him the figure of a woman in a black dress walking with curious uncertainty along a path in the garden. ‘It’s the Black Nun!’ my informant was told and he watched the odd figure walking in a groping, hesitant fashion, almost like a blind person, moving seemingly without purpose along the stone pathway composed of old gravestone slabs, her hollow and sad face glimpsed for a moment, crudely made-up with powder and rouge. Suddenly the figure dropped to its knees and seemed to beat a stone slab frantically with clenched fists, sobbing and shaking its head from side to side in an agony of grief. The next moment the figure had disappeared but the Bank garden, silent and still, an oasis in a busy world, continues to harbour its ghostly Black Nun.

COCK LANE, CITY

This is probably the best-known ghost of the City of London. In January 1762, the London newspapers were full of the popular mystery, and the sensation attracted the attention of many notables of the day. Oliver Goldsmith is credited with writing a treatise on the subject, whilst Dr Samuel Johnson concluded that the child concerned was consciously responsible. Horace Walpole changed his clothes before visiting the little terraced house, and even the Duke of York, accompanied by Lady Northumberland, Lady Mary Coke and Lord Hartford, made the journey to Smithfield; the latter writing afterwards about the ‘wretchedly small and miserable’ house in which fifty people were crowded by the light of one candle about the bed of the child ‘to whom the ghost comes’.

The story revolves around a stockbroker named Kent who, following the death of his wife in 1757, took rooms with his wife’s sister, Fanny, at the house of a man named Thomas Parsons, a clerk of St Sepulchre’s church, in Cock Lane in 1759. Kent loaned some money to his landlord, and when all efforts for its return failed he sued Parsons. This resulted in considerable animosity between the two men, especially on the part of Parsons. Meanwhile, Fanny was taken ill, and when Parsons’ twelve-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, shared Fanny’s bed during the time that Kent was away attending a wedding in the country, they were disturbed by strange scratching noises and apparently inexplicable knocks and rappings. Fanny was very alarmed and believed that the noises were warnings of her impending death but Parsons attributed the disturbances to a neighbouring cobbler — until it was discovered that the noises were heard on a Sunday when the cobbler was not working. It was then suggested that the mysterious sounds were caused by the spirit of Fanny’s dead sister, admonishing her for cohabiting with Kent. Parsons became interested and invited neighbours into the house to hear the strange noises, much to the distress of the ailing Fanny.

When Kent returned, he and Fanny made wills in each other’s favour and secured new lodgings in Bartlet Court, Camberwell, where Fanny died in 1760; the litigation between Kent and Parsons was still unresolved. Fanny was buried in the vault beneath St John’s church, Clerkenwell, and after her departure from Cock Lane until her death eighteen months later all was quiet and peaceful.

With the death of Fanny (from smallpox, according to the death certificate) the noises returned to the house in Cock Lane, seemingly centring on any bed occupied by little Elizabeth Parsons, who trembled and shivered uncontrollably at the loud sound of whirring wings, taps and scratching noises. Her father is reported to have tried in vain to discover a normal explanation, even removing floorboards and wainscotting.

Eventually, a nurse, Mary Frazer, suggested that the raps might be messages in code, and by accepting one rap for ‘yes’ and two for ‘no’ Parsons questioned the entity and deduced that the disturbances were caused by Fanny, who claimed that her death had been the result of poisoning with red arsenic in a draught of hot ale administered by William Kent — and she wanted to see him hanged! Questions on matters of fact produced answers that were sometimes right, sometimes wrong, as, for example, when she said that her father’s Christian name was John instead of Thomas. It was stated that Elizabeth saw a shrouded figure standing by the bed, without hands. Other witnesses said that they saw a ‘luminous apparition’ with hands, and the noises apparently followed Elizabeth, even when she visited other houses.

Now Cock Lane became the street with the ‘house of wonder’ and crowds of neighbours and sightseers thronged the narrow lane between Newgate Street and West Smithfield night and day. The house, Number 33, has long since been demolished; it figures in Hogarth’s plate, ‘Credulity, Superstition and Fanaticism’.

At one stage, the communicating ‘ghost’ promised to rap on its own coffin in the vault of Clerkenwell Church, but when the assembly (including Samuel Johnson) hastened there they were rewarded by complete silence and murmurings of disbelief began to be heard.

Cock Lane became thronged with sightseers and Kent’s reputation was maligned throughout the city, although many people, including Oliver Goldsmith, assumed that Parsons was at the bottom of the matter in revenge for having been sued by Kent. Finally the authorities decided to investigate the affair.

The investigating party discovered that when they held the hands of Elizabeth Parsons all the noises stopped. It was not until they threatened the child with Newgate Prison that a few scratching noises were heard as she wriggled and squirmed. Examination disclosed a small board concealed between her stays and it seemed that the secret was out.

Kent then indicted Parsons, his wife, his daughter, the servant Mary Frazer, the clergyman and several tradesmen who were all convicted of conspiring against his life and character. Thomas Parsons was sentenced to be placed three times in the pillory at the corner of Cock Lane, and to be confined for two years in prison. His wife was to be imprisoned for a year and Mary Frazer for six months. The sentence on the clergymen and tradesmen was postponed so that they could make good their misconduct by paying several hundred pounds to Kent.