April 12, 2025 • 39 mins
In 1762, crowds from across London gathered in hopes of seeing something the papers called "The Cock Lane Ghost". This alleged spirit was known to communicate in knocks and scratches, reacting to yes or no questions and, according to some observers, seeking justice from beyond the grave. But who was this spirit, exactly? What did this poltergeist have to do with William Kent and his ongoing dispute with landlord Richard Parsons? In today's classic episode, join the guys as they delve into the strange, strange story of the Cock Lane ghost.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Alright, fellow Ridiculous Historians, we're returning with a classic episode
for this week. I've been your nol. Y it is, dude,
do you remember back in seventeen sixty two when everybody
came to see something called the Cockling Ghost?
Speaker 2 (00:22):
How could I forget with a name like that? It's
seared into my memory, and boy, oh boy, hopefully it
will be seared into years too, Ridiculous Historians. After listening
to this classic episode.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the show.
(01:05):
This is Ridiculous History. We hope this is the podcast
you're looking for. I want to start with a question
that is very tangentially related. No, you're asking me, Yeah,
give it to me your nol. I'm Ben. There's our
super producer, Casey Pegram. Everyone say hi Casey, Great, Hi,
Hi Ca. See the question is this what is what's
(01:27):
your favorite holiday?
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Ghost? Owen? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Is that the same as Halloween?
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah, it's it's just a ghost of your version.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Okay, that's cool, that's cool. I'm a I'm a true
fan of Halloween, and I say this in full disclosure.
As we get closer to this favored holiday, I'm going
to be pushing for more and more spooky stories.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
You know, you push and you push and you push,
and sometimes, Ben sometimes you get what you need. There
we go.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
If you try, sometimes you just might find Today's story
is a ghost story.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Yeah, and it's also a story of people trying things
yes on multiple levels.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
And it's a story that I could see Guy Ritchie
doing an adaptation of, oddly enough, because it has that
right element of the ced underside of England.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Well, like, didn't he do one of the Sherlock Holmes movies.
He did? I believe he did. Yeah, all right, that's
been Casey on the case.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
We always have to try to have at least one
Casey on the case.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
That one was unexpected. Yeah, he just kind of popped in.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
I like sudden Death Court.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
I like it. He has this button out there that
he has to hit and it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Yeah, we're all getting the hang of it, and I
think it's I think it's normalized now.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
So Guy Ritchie probably would do a good job with
this because it's got a lot of Cockney accents too,
and a lot of usury and the loan sharkiness afoot
and a.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Lot of scams and cons but without further ado, let
us present the story of the cock Lane Ghost. But
we can't begin in cock Lane, right. We have to
begin first with a pair of lovers, a William Kent
and Elizabeth Lynes, who married in about seventeen fifty six
(03:16):
or seventeen fifty seven.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
That's very true. And tragically the then missus Kent died
in childbirth, leaving her husband William, to take care of
a newborn baby boy.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
And this was in Stoke Ferry. Kent had kept an
inn and then later he was running the local post office. Now,
all of a sudden he was a single father, or
was he? You see, because Elizabeth had a sister, and
her sister's name was Francis, commonly known as Fanny's.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Right, and Fanny swooped in to help out with the
childcare because Kent found himself. I don't know. There's no
exact details as to why he couldn't raise the child himself,
but he seemed inept at the at the whole affair,
and so he needed a woman's touch.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Yeah, And unfortunately, the infant, who was a boy, did
not survive for very long. And when the child unfortunately
passed away, childhood mortality being at a much higher rate
in those days. Fanny decided to stay on and become
kind of a housekeeper for William. But soon they began
(04:28):
having their own amorous relationship.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Yeah, and I think there was even a time where
he kind of sent her away and she wrote him
letters saying, you know, kind of I don't want to
say begging, but you know, expressing that her love for
him was real and that he should, you know, welcome
her back with open arms. And eventually it worked and
they ended up together. But this is interesting because she
(04:55):
was a relative of his former wife. It was not
kosher for them to get married. It was it was
against the law. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Against canon law for them to be married. And this
is something that they were both aware of, and it's
one of the suspected motivations pushing William Kent to originally
leave Fanny and move to London, but she wins him
over with these passionate letters, and so he eventually says, Okay,
(05:25):
come move with me, Come meet me in London. I
live in East Greenwich. And they decide that they're gonna,
you know, canon law be darned, They're going to live
together as man and.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Wife, canon law being like of the Catholic Church.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Not so much Catholic, not so much Catholic. This is England.
I mean, canon law can be any organized religions law,
but so the c all right, So the Anglican Church
and the Methodists will also appear and here later. Despite
the fact that they have decided to in practice disobey
canon law, they do try to keep it on what
(06:02):
we would call in the modern day the low. They
keep it on the down low. They still have wills
in each other's favor, but they're trying to be discreet
about this. They don't want a bunch of people to
know what they're doing. And they are not very successful
with this because they moved to some rooms near a
(06:23):
place called the Mansion House. They're renting these rooms, and
historians believe the landlords may have learned about this illicit
relationship from Fanny's other surviving relatives. And this is where
we have to start talking about Kent's job. What does
Kent do? Noel, Well, this took me.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
A couple of passes of some of this research material
to read until I happened upon an article by our
good pals of the Daily Mail. Who you know, aren't
exactly the most reputable source for stuff like this, but
they had a really good write up about this party
story that Real quickly called him for what he was,
which is a loan shark, because he had done this
(07:06):
several times. Because I was reading another article where it
kept saying how he was always loaning his landlord's money,
and at first I thought I was misreading it, like
does this do they mean the landlords were loaning him
money and getting mad because he wasn't paying. No, he
was loaning the money and then always got into trouble
because of disputes about you know, how he was going
(07:27):
to get paid back, And I think you use the
term usury.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Yeah, he's a user, which I would phrase as a
loan shark today, a user being someone who makes questionable
loans with unfair interest rates. And originally usery meant any
sort of interest of any kind. However, in this case
it was like his job. He loaned people money and
(07:53):
they were supposed to pay him back. This goes sour
when their landlord at these rooms near the mansion house
decides that, hey, these people are living in sin. I
despise this. I am not going to repay that money
that you loaned me, mister Kent, and I read somewhere
(08:13):
as the equivalent of about twenty pounds today, probably a
little bit more than twenty pounds today. And so Kent
moved to have that landlord arrested, which could only bring
tensions to the house.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Yeah, and I think you know they were asked to leave, right,
They were evicted over this dispute.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
They were evicted over this dispute. They had to find
somewhere else to live. Around about this time, they meet
a clerk, a parish clerk by the name of Richard Parsons.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Yeah, he's a clerk at the Church of the Holy.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Sepulcher, Saint Sepulcher without Newgate.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Okay, well I made the first part up, but I
was closed. I got the keyword right, which is a
crazy word, a Sepulcher. I just love it. I love
goth sounding dash without Newgate. Yeah, where's Newgate in all this?
Speaker 1 (09:07):
It's not there, that's for sure.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
I know.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Wow, Yeah, I don't understand, but yeah, that religious connection
is going to come into play here pretty shortly. But yeah, no,
sooner do they move in that he Kent loans this
guy Parsons another sum of money with the terms of
a guinea a month in interest.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Right, he's got twelve. He loans them twelve guineas and
they're supposed to be repaid at that rate. Right, So oh,
we should mention the most important part. When Parsons hears
about their plight, he is sympathetic and he says, hey,
you can use these rooms. You can live in these
rooms in my home on cock Lane, which is just
(09:52):
north of this church. And yes, Nola is absolutely right here.
Shortly after, mister and missus Ken as they were calling
themselves at the time, scandal casey, can I get a
gasp from the crowd? Perfect? Right as they were moving in,
Kent loaned parsons is twelve guineas. And then it was
(10:15):
shortly after that Kent goes to visit someone I think
for a wedding outside like he leaves town, and then
they hear these reports of strange noises.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Yeah, that's right. But before that, this landlord also discovered
the nature of their relationship and held that over Kent's
head again as a way of saying, I'm not paying
back this money because I got some dirt on you.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Yeah, because he knew about their plight of needing a
place to live, but maybe he did not know the
full extent of why they were out of house and home.
So at some point he found out, right.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Oh he did, he did, and it's not clear exactly
how he found out, probably a very similarly to I
don't know, maybe yeah, maybe another snitching relative. Because you
have to remember too that this guy was doing something
pretty untoward in the puritanical eyes of the time. He
was carrying on with the sister of his dead wife,
which would have been frowned upon in this kind of society.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
In many places, it's still probably frowned upon today. Of
Parsons was a family man himself.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
But also apparently a bit of an alcoholic. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
He was considered a generally nice guy around town, but
known luckily as a drunk with money problems, so he
definitely needed those twelve guineas to support his wife and
his two daughters. He had one daughter in particular, is
very important to this story, named Elizabeth or also called
(11:48):
Betty by her friends and familiars, and kent. When he
traveled away from town, he asked Elizabeth to stay with Fanny,
because Fanny, by this point was months pregnant.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
But then, yeah, as fate would have it, the story
takes another unfortunate turn where Fanny dies of smallpox, taking
along with her unborn child. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
So the very first reports of these noises come from Elizabeth,
Betty and Fanny, and at first Missus Parsons attributes them
to a shoemaker, and people are kind of creeped out,
but they're trying to figure out what's happening there, and
(12:32):
Kent decided. Here's how the death went down. Kent decided
that they needed to move to another place, but the
place was not suitable. The place that they were living
in temporarily was not suitable for a woman so far
along in pregnancy. And as you said, on February second,
(12:53):
seventeen sixty, Fanny Lyle, also known as Missus Kent, passed
away with their child. Kent is the sole executor of
the will, the living mister Kent, but he had very
valid fears about being legally in hot water if people
knew about the true nature of their relationships, right, and
(13:16):
the will, he's just mister Kent.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Yeah, And I think Fanny's brother had passed recently as well,
leaving her his portion of the family estate or whatever.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yeah, one and fifty pounds.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah, which was nothing to sneeze at. So Kent was
due a decent little chunk of change. I want to
I want to mention one thing too. There was a
great podcast episode from a show called Dig a Dig
podcast dot Org on the Cocklane Ghost of London, and
it had a few details in it that I thought
were super interesting. One of which was and I've seen
this in a couple other places too, but I like
(13:48):
the way they put it that as Fanny was on
her deathbed, there are multiple reports of people in the
area in the home seeing a ghosts or as some
sort of apparition manifest in the home while while Frank
Fanny was still alive. So the story gets really confusing
it in places. I'm gonna go ahead and put that
(14:08):
out there right now, because the noises happened before Fanny died,
and there was a sense are some local reports that
it was actually Kent's deceased.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Wife, right, his original.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Wife coming around and making trouble and rattling chains because
she was unhappy about said carryings on with her sister
Elizabeth Lines.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Yeah, so what's key to notice here? As we established
earlier those strange sounds begin as soon as Elizabeth enters
the picture, the younger, the Elizabeth Parsons.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Elizabeth the daughter Buddy. Yes, the daughter of the landlord.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Yes, the daughter of the landlord Parsons. And despite the
problems that they have regarding these strange phenomenon, when Fanny
passes away, the Parsons family hears no more of these
strange noises, and they kind of shrugged it off as
just one of the things. There's a great blog called
(15:08):
Strange Company which builds this as a walk on the
weird side of history, and they break down some of
the financial stuff here. At the time the two families left.
At the time Kent moved himself and his wife out
of the Parsons household, Parsons still owed Kent three guineas
of those twelve v you have been loaned. So Kent
(15:31):
takes Parsons to court, and he takes him to court successfully,
he collects the three guineas. Now it's January seventeen sixty two,
and guess what, the strange noises start up again, even
louder and more vehemently than before.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Have we described these sounds yet been there? There were
a couple of variations that we'll get into, but the
main one was something of a scratch.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Right. Originally they were knocks and then they became scratch.
Is the second time they surfaced.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Yeah, And it's crazy that the the evolution of this sound.
You know, there's always that you think. I think've mentioned
this on another show before, but remember that episode of
Curb Your Enthusiasm where Larry is obsessed with the house sound. Yeah,
we play that clip real quick. It's the noise is
(16:27):
you're a noise? Yeah? What is it? It's probably just
a house sound or something a house sound? Yeah, what's
a house sound?
Speaker 1 (16:41):
It also reminds me of that trope in so many
horror films where someone goes, it's only the wind. In
this case, they're like, trouble, not young Betty, tis only
the cobbler.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Tis but a cobbler tinkering away?
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
So cobblers can tinker, but can tinker's cobble?
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Anyone can cobble. The difference is whether you can cobble well.
I see, I see, if you can cobble well enough
to trust trust your shoes afterwards. In this case, the
shoemaker just makes that one appearance. Cobbler guy does not
come back afterwards, but the noises do. As we said,
they came back with a vengeance right after that court
(17:21):
case was decided in Kent's favor.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
That's right. And at this point it's become a bit
of a of a local phenomenon, hasn't it. And the
ghost has earned a nickname, a rather baldy nickname.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
You say, you're talking about the Cocklane Ghost.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
No, No, scratch and Fanny.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Scratch and Fanny, Okay, yes, they're.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Both kind of body if we're being honest.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
They're body to us.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
I think for them, Cocklane was just the name of
their streets.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
No, totally, But scratch and Fanny right over there, Fanny
doesn't mean the same thing as it means over here.
I'm just gonna put that out.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
That's absolutely true. A lot of your British fins will
find the term fanny pack hilarious.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
And scratch and Fanny just sounds like something.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Something told me. So we can conjecture a bit on
how the community and neighborhood found out about this phenomenon
and how the Cockling Ghost or Scratching Fanny acquired this
early renown. They had checked originally with this cobbler to
(18:21):
see if the cobbler was working during the time that
they heard these noises.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Oh, was it not on a Sunday?
Speaker 1 (18:28):
It was it was at a time when he wouldn't
be working. I think it was a Sunday Sunday, so
that makes sense. And a neighbor named James Franzen said
that he saw a strange white figure drifting through the
Parsons home back when, back when Fanny was still alive.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
That's the one we talked about earlier, the apparition that
was when she was on her deathbed or whatever, and
that's the guy.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
He also said that he heard ghostly knockings in his
own bedchamber. So picture this guy at the local pub
around with his buddies, right. That's how these words and
rumors spread. And now people are starting not only to
report the ghosts, but to ascribe motive to scratching Fanny.
So they said that she was not here just to
(19:09):
make a hubbub and a hullabaloo, but that she was
here with a mission. She was trying to get justice
beyond the grave. And people started to play back the
details of Fanny's death and life to themselves and they
started saying, eh, what Fanny might a will leave it?
Everything she owned? Took Kent everything she had, every lost
(19:33):
faulthing in it, ate it. And then they noticed that
Fanny's surviving sister Anne had arrived for the funeral and
was very upset that she couldn't take a look at
her sister in the grave. I think they couldn't open
the coffin for her. And then she said that, at
(19:54):
least allegedly, Anne said that Kent had done something dastardly
and that Fanny's surviving siblings were all in good repair
with her, you know what I mean. They got along.
There wasn't any sibling hate or rivalry.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
So why would she have left her fortune to this
loan shark dude? Right? You know, surely that was not
a respected profession in those days. He would have been
seen as a bit of a confidence man, almost right.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
I mean, loans in general were always a hot button issue.
He was called a userer, not exactly kind words. Right,
So people started thinking that mister William Kent was not
quite the grief stricken widow that he appeared to be.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
I don't think I think it's time we get into
when the church starts getting involved, what do you think?
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Sure, So let's talk a little bit about the people
who are starting to observe this stuff. We have friends
and walking by first and neighbor, and then we have
more people in the community finding out. But the word
of this spreads through London proper, beyond the neighborhoods of
the entire city London Town, so strangers are stopping by,
(21:13):
Oh totally.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
And I actually saw one mention about how it had
made the narrow little side street of cock Lane Versus
virtually impassable because it was like, you know, just picture
some sort of street side attraction and people just bequeued
up outside and you know, blocking the road. I mean
it was totally like that, Like it was definitely chock
full of lookie.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Loose, right, and there was no assigned time at which
the apparently unearthly phenomenon would occur, so people would just
stay out in the street waiting and drinking. And some
famous people started to observe this too.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Well that's true, but that's when really things started heating
up was when Parsons himself. We remember he was a
clerk at the most Holy Church of the Separate Without
with you Newgate, that's the one. And he had some connects.
One of these was a guy by the name of
John Moore who was an assistant preacher at Saint Sepulchers
(22:14):
without Newgate as without Newgate, and he was also the
rector at a place called Saint Bartholomew the Great, which
was over in West Smithfield. And he, I don't know,
for lack of a better term, was like an exorcist, right.
He was coming in there because there was also talk
that young Elizabeth, the daughter of the landlord, mister Parsons,
(22:35):
was possibly.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Possessed, right, because the thing that we would refer to
as a poultry geist today seem to be closely associated
with her, with Elizabeth Parsons specifically. Interesting, yeah, right, And
one of the things that Parsons really wanted more to
help him do was to be a subject matter expert
(23:01):
and establish first that there have been reports of Fanny's
sister Elizabeth appearing in ghostly form as Fanny was laying
in her deathbed. And then they said, okay, well, the
spirit that's haunting the Parsons house now, and particularly Elizabeth Parsons,
must be the spirit of Fanny herself. Hence scratching Fanny.
(23:24):
This didn't sound too out of the ordinary, impossible back
then in England, because there was a widespread belief in
ghost you know, Shakespeare's been around their ghost of plenty,
and the literature and the folklore of the time.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Well, I certainly think folks who are a lot more
willing to accept the stuff without any proof, imaginations running
wild like they do. And also just the kind of
zealous religious nature of the time, and the fact that
a member of the clergy would take this issue that
seriously speaks to the mindset I think the public. Right.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Yeah, And here's the other part. They did see themselves
as rational investigators, because you see, they devised a method
of attempting to communicate with the ghost, transforming back from
scratchings to knocks, right, And they said, maybe we can
(24:21):
speak with this ghost through a very simple system, and
we can make sure it can hear us and respond
to us with these sounds it's making. And we'll set
up a system and we'll explain it aloud to the
ghost or the entity, so that the ghost then knows
the rules of interaction, and we'll keep it simple, so
(24:41):
no Morse code, nothing like that. Morse code wasn't around
by that time.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
What's the system?
Speaker 3 (24:46):
Then?
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Well, if there's a question where the answer is yes,
you have one knock, there's an answer with the question
is no, you have two knocks. But here's my question, like,
what's the space between two knocks and right? And does
it all get all gummed up when you ask things
(25:06):
that aren't yes or no questions? You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (25:10):
That was a collap I think for the rest of
the podcast, Ben, I would like to communicate back with
you only with knocks, only with yes or no responses.
Is that okay? So what was the line of questioning?
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Ben?
Speaker 2 (25:23):
That the that the the exor system? I call him that?
How did he start grilling the ghost?
Speaker 1 (25:29):
It's interesting because we have the we have the questions,
and we're fairly certain that we have the actual exact
questions because we found them in a couple of different sources.
I found them in a book called The Cocklayin and
Ghosts by a guy named Paul Chambers, and I think
they've been printed out in another couple of places. But
(25:49):
we're we're fairly certain these are the actual questions. Let's see,
do you want to be the priest? Or do you
want to be the ghost dealer's choice, Ben, Dealer's choice,
his choice, all right, I think you would be great
for the character of the priest.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Ben. Thank you. First of all, I want to preface
by saying that these are some pretty leading questions for
this ghost, but just the same we're going to present
them here without comment.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Casey, can we get some tense music?
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Are you the wife of mister Kent? Did you die naturally?
Was that two or three knocks?
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Okay? Then by poison?
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Imagine a pregnant pause here, did.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Any person other than mister Kent administer it? And then
at this point somebody in the audience shouts.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Has to ask the ghost if you shall be hanged?
Speaker 2 (27:00):
And the question was asked and the ghost responded lustly.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Yikes, I know, yeah, trial by ghost to maybe maybe
by ghost. So this is a to some people, to
the more religiously minded, this is a damning smoking gun
for mister William Kent, because.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
There's already that hubbub around town about why would she
have left him all of her possessions when she had
no falling out with her living family?
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Right, So as as this ghost quote unquote ghost is
answering further questions, people decide that she had not died
from smallpox, but rather specifically from arsenic poisoning, and according
to their theory, the arsenic had been given to Fanny
by Kent himself two hours before she died, and now
(28:00):
again allegedly her spirit had returned for vengeance.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
And this experiment was repeated several additional times. On January fifth,
a guy, reverend by the name of Thomas Broughton, came
to the house and checked out the hauntings. And we
start seeing this popping up in the papers, and them
they kind of this guy's being kind of tried in
the court of public opinion, because public opinion leans pretty
(28:32):
heavily on the word of ghosts.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Apparently right, the public ledgers started publishing regular accounts of
the Cockling ghost phenomenon, and more and more people would
read the paper and say, you know that William Kent
is a murderer. And Kent vowed to clear his name.
So he brought in two of the doctors who had
(28:55):
taken care of Fanny in her last days, along with
Reverend Broughton, and took them to cock Lane and said, okay,
let's do a seance. This seance did not go the
way that they thought it would. Started with a relative
of the Parson family, a lady named Mary Fraser, running
(29:15):
around the room shouting Fanny, Fanny, why don't you come,
do come, pray Fanny come. Nothing happened, according to Moritz,
because they were too noisy.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
There's a pretty incredible article that I found that's from
the Derby Mercury, which was a paper of note, and
it's it's almost impossible to fully read because it really
is written in like almost Canterbury Tales type language.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Yeah, and it's a large font to where the lowercase
s's look like lowercase f's. This is the one from
January twenty first, one twenty second.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
That's right. Priced it two pence and a halfpenny.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
It's a steal. You just don't know who's getting robbed.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
The Derby Mercury reported pretty intensively on this during the
time that it was happening. Are you wanna go for
some interpretations here?
Speaker 2 (30:06):
Know, I was thinking you might be able to. I
was having a hard time. Let's see if we can
find a choice graph.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
It begins with for some time past, a great knacking
having been heard in the night that the officiating parish
clerks of Saint Sepulchers in Cocklane near Smithfield, to the
great terror of the family, and all means used to
discover the meaning of it. Four gentlemen set up there
on Friday night, among whom was a clergyman who asked
various questions. Questions is capitalized.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
I feel like we have to say it that way. Yeah,
And the has really thrown me for a loop. Can
can I give it a try? Yeah, give it a go.
On his asking if anyone had been mad dad, nothing answered,
But on his asking if anyone had been poisoned, it's
knocked six times. Various are the conjectures in the neighborhood
of this supposed specter, but the cause as yet has
(30:56):
not been discovered. My accent shifting. The report current in
the neighborhood is that a woman was some time ago
poisoned and buried at Saint John's clerking well.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
And it goes on in detail, offering these question and
answer sessions across various days.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
As proof.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
There are some parts of the narrative where you see
investigators asking the ghost to identify how many people were
present in the room, and even asking to the ghost
to predict the future as well. So one of the
questions is how long would it be before William Kent
(31:39):
was executed? And they said three years.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
And the ability to see into the future is another
trait commonly associated with ghosts or those who dwell beyond
the veil.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Yes, but it's really kind of unconfirmable, isn't it. I mean,
I could he could have said thirty years, he could
have said two weeks, and.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
We shall us. I mentioned at this time William Kent
is married. He has his third wife, not related to
his previous two. And as they were holding these seances,
the Lord Mayor of London becomes involved, and they also
start moving Elizabeth the young Elizabeth Elizabeth Parsons two different
(32:24):
houses to conduct seances because they say the ghost is
somehow associated with her.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Huh huh interesting phua thunket.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
And also, there's just no way we can get through
cock Lane the crowds are too pressing, so we have
to try somewhere else.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Will you do some like pop up seances? Ywhere?
Speaker 3 (32:45):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (32:45):
Yeah, London Town.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
So shall we get to the twist if you haven't
already predicted it, here's another twist?
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Yeah, let's just let's go for it.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
They keep having seances, and more and more notable people come.
One seance in way of seventeen sixty two, a doctor
Samuel Johnson is allowed to visit the seance. And what
did they find there?
Speaker 2 (33:07):
No, Well, and you may recall earlier that there was
some talk of the ghost being kind of emanating or
being associated with Elizabeth Parsons. Well, yeah, it turns out
she'd been hiding some woodblocks up her skirt and banging
them together, making those knocks.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Yeah, she had hidden the wood in her clothes, and
following a trial like she was busted, busted, they found
the little pieces of wood, and it explained all the
past imperfections of seances where they said, oh, we have
to do it with the lights low, or we can't.
The knocking stops if you look under the table where
(33:48):
the kid's legs are. So Elizabeth Parsons comes clean. She
says she's doing this because her dad made her.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
That's right, the dad, the drunk who had apparently drunk
his one guinea a month interest payments away after he
tried to extort Kent. See, I don't think Kent comes
off as a bully in this story I think Parsons
comes off as more of the bully here. Kent's just
trying to apply his trade. Man, He's not forcing anybody
(34:17):
to take the loan, He's just offering it, you know.
I don't know, maybe that makes me sound like a
bad guy, but that's how I feel. So, yeah, it
was all in revenge of like him bringing legal action
against this guy. And you know, if you could accuse
Kent of being anything, it was cheap because a guinea
isn't a lot, I don't believe. And we talked about
these being usurists' rates because you know, it almost sounds
(34:39):
like I think it was a twelve guinea loan and
he was supposed to pay back that one guinea a month.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Yep, and didn't get to go didn't go to court
until it was down to three guinea a month or
three guinea total.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Yes, And I think that Kent took him to court
even though it wasn't even that much money, was more
for the principle of the thing as far as he
was concerned. I think in what I'm getting at is
that clearly the villain here is not Kent, despite you know,
maybe maybe it's not cool that he married his uh
or semi married his dead wife's sister. But I don't know.
(35:13):
She was there for him, she helped him raise the child.
They shared a tragedy together, you know, when this child died.
That seems fine to me. So, yeah, it's very difficult.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
I would say, unfair to ascribe those personal motives if
we don't really.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
Know this story.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
So I would I would say from their behavior, it
seems like as a couple they were on the up
and up, despite the fact that society didn't approve of them. Ultimately,
society does side with mister Kent at least because Parsons
goes to trial and he is sentenced to two years
in jail.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Yeah, and he even has a co conspirator, which I
believe was his his maid, Mary Fraser mayor Mary Fraser,
not to be confused with friends. And there's a lot
of a lot of characters and names in this story.
It's it's a little bit of a tricky woman. This
is good. She gets six months hard labor, which is
no good. What happened to the daughter though she was
because she was a minor, she didn't get anything. You
(36:08):
don't hear about anything happening to her but it seems
like she was the one perpetrating the ruse. Maybe it
was just because he was contributing to her delinquency. But
she was like twenty years old. I believe she was
of age.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
She had grown by that time, but it was probably
still thought to be a hapless pawn. Yeah, that's straying
the wishes of her parents and additionally Parsons who said
he was innocent by the way the whole time and
never confessed was pilloried. A pillary for anyone who you
kind of recall the term but you don't know exactly
(36:39):
what it is. A pillary is when people are putting
those weird stocks that hold them at their neck and
their wrists. It's a form of public humiliation.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
Does not sound like fun. Yeah they dude at the
Renaissance fair though here in Atlanta.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Yes, But in contrast to the way the crowds would
treat other criminals in the pillary, people didn't throw rotten
fruit and meat at him. They actually took the opportunity
to walk around and collect money for.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Him for his cause.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Interesting because no matter what he had done, he still
hadn't married the sister of his dead wife.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Wow man full circle so it really is more of
a puritanical judgment at the end of the day.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
A little, a little bit more, and there's much more
to the story regarding the cultural context of the time,
the religious controversy between Methodists and Orthodox Anglicans, but that
may be a tale for another day. We hope you
enjoy the story of this early spiritual investigation skepticism versus
(37:44):
spirituality versus scandal. But this is far from the only
ghost story that we'll tell eventually, right.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Yeah, he said, we're gonna really lean into some ghost
stories for the month of October.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Maybe, I say, I would love to. Well, we are
nothing if not a democracy, right, so that's fair. Write
to us and let us know if there are any
spooky stories from history that you think your fellow ridiculous
historians would like to hear. And also, you know, write
to us if you're like, no, don't tell any spooky stories.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
Yeah, you can write to us at ridiculous at HowStuffWorks
dot com. You can hit us up on Facebook or
Instagram or we're Ridiculous History. Please also join our Facebook
group where we have lots of fun discussions and that's
a good place to post any suggestions for us as well,
because we do kind of hang out in there and
that's called ridiculous historians on Facebook. Big thanks to super
(38:37):
producer Casey Pegram and Alex Williams, who composed our theme.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
As well as Christopher ajaciotis our research associate erstwhile cameo
expert on the show. We need to have him back
on soon, as well as Eve's Jeffcoat. And big thanks
to you NOL and big thanks to.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
You listeners, and please stick around for our next episode
where we talk about what happened to the mad hatter
who killed the man who killed Abraham Lincoln. It's a doozy, folks.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
That's all for today. I guess we could end on
a knock knock joke.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Sure. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Alright, fellow Ridiculous Historians, we're returning with a classic episode
for this week. I've been your nol. Y it is, dude,
do you remember back in seventeen sixty two when everybody
came to see something called the Cockling Ghost?
Speaker 2 (00:22):
How could I forget with a name like that? It's
seared into my memory, and boy, oh boy, hopefully it
will be seared into years too, Ridiculous Historians. After listening
to this classic episode.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the show.
(01:05):
This is Ridiculous History. We hope this is the podcast
you're looking for. I want to start with a question
that is very tangentially related. No, you're asking me, Yeah,
give it to me your nol. I'm Ben. There's our
super producer, Casey Pegram. Everyone say hi Casey, Great, Hi,
Hi Ca. See the question is this what is what's
(01:27):
your favorite holiday?
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Ghost? Owen? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Is that the same as Halloween?
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah, it's it's just a ghost of your version.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Okay, that's cool, that's cool. I'm a I'm a true
fan of Halloween, and I say this in full disclosure.
As we get closer to this favored holiday, I'm going
to be pushing for more and more spooky stories.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
You know, you push and you push and you push,
and sometimes, Ben sometimes you get what you need. There
we go.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
If you try, sometimes you just might find Today's story
is a ghost story.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Yeah, and it's also a story of people trying things
yes on multiple levels.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
And it's a story that I could see Guy Ritchie
doing an adaptation of, oddly enough, because it has that
right element of the ced underside of England.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Well, like, didn't he do one of the Sherlock Holmes movies.
He did? I believe he did. Yeah, all right, that's
been Casey on the case.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
We always have to try to have at least one
Casey on the case.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
That one was unexpected. Yeah, he just kind of popped in.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
I like sudden Death Court.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
I like it. He has this button out there that
he has to hit and it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Yeah, we're all getting the hang of it, and I
think it's I think it's normalized now.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
So Guy Ritchie probably would do a good job with
this because it's got a lot of Cockney accents too,
and a lot of usury and the loan sharkiness afoot
and a.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Lot of scams and cons but without further ado, let
us present the story of the cock Lane Ghost. But
we can't begin in cock Lane, right. We have to
begin first with a pair of lovers, a William Kent
and Elizabeth Lynes, who married in about seventeen fifty six
(03:16):
or seventeen fifty seven.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
That's very true. And tragically the then missus Kent died
in childbirth, leaving her husband William, to take care of
a newborn baby boy.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
And this was in Stoke Ferry. Kent had kept an
inn and then later he was running the local post office. Now,
all of a sudden he was a single father, or
was he? You see, because Elizabeth had a sister, and
her sister's name was Francis, commonly known as Fanny's.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Right, and Fanny swooped in to help out with the
childcare because Kent found himself. I don't know. There's no
exact details as to why he couldn't raise the child himself,
but he seemed inept at the at the whole affair,
and so he needed a woman's touch.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Yeah, And unfortunately, the infant, who was a boy, did
not survive for very long. And when the child unfortunately
passed away, childhood mortality being at a much higher rate
in those days. Fanny decided to stay on and become
kind of a housekeeper for William. But soon they began
(04:28):
having their own amorous relationship.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Yeah, and I think there was even a time where
he kind of sent her away and she wrote him
letters saying, you know, kind of I don't want to
say begging, but you know, expressing that her love for
him was real and that he should, you know, welcome
her back with open arms. And eventually it worked and
they ended up together. But this is interesting because she
(04:55):
was a relative of his former wife. It was not
kosher for them to get married. It was it was
against the law. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Against canon law for them to be married. And this
is something that they were both aware of, and it's
one of the suspected motivations pushing William Kent to originally
leave Fanny and move to London, but she wins him
over with these passionate letters, and so he eventually says, Okay,
(05:25):
come move with me, Come meet me in London. I
live in East Greenwich. And they decide that they're gonna,
you know, canon law be darned, They're going to live
together as man and.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Wife, canon law being like of the Catholic Church.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Not so much Catholic, not so much Catholic. This is England.
I mean, canon law can be any organized religions law,
but so the c all right, So the Anglican Church
and the Methodists will also appear and here later. Despite
the fact that they have decided to in practice disobey
canon law, they do try to keep it on what
(06:02):
we would call in the modern day the low. They
keep it on the down low. They still have wills
in each other's favor, but they're trying to be discreet
about this. They don't want a bunch of people to
know what they're doing. And they are not very successful
with this because they moved to some rooms near a
(06:23):
place called the Mansion House. They're renting these rooms, and
historians believe the landlords may have learned about this illicit
relationship from Fanny's other surviving relatives. And this is where
we have to start talking about Kent's job. What does
Kent do? Noel, Well, this took me.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
A couple of passes of some of this research material
to read until I happened upon an article by our
good pals of the Daily Mail. Who you know, aren't
exactly the most reputable source for stuff like this, but
they had a really good write up about this party
story that Real quickly called him for what he was,
which is a loan shark, because he had done this
(07:06):
several times. Because I was reading another article where it
kept saying how he was always loaning his landlord's money,
and at first I thought I was misreading it, like
does this do they mean the landlords were loaning him
money and getting mad because he wasn't paying. No, he
was loaning the money and then always got into trouble
because of disputes about you know, how he was going
(07:27):
to get paid back, And I think you use the
term usury.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Yeah, he's a user, which I would phrase as a
loan shark today, a user being someone who makes questionable
loans with unfair interest rates. And originally usery meant any
sort of interest of any kind. However, in this case
it was like his job. He loaned people money and
(07:53):
they were supposed to pay him back. This goes sour
when their landlord at these rooms near the mansion house
decides that, hey, these people are living in sin. I
despise this. I am not going to repay that money
that you loaned me, mister Kent, and I read somewhere
(08:13):
as the equivalent of about twenty pounds today, probably a
little bit more than twenty pounds today. And so Kent
moved to have that landlord arrested, which could only bring
tensions to the house.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Yeah, and I think you know they were asked to leave, right,
They were evicted over this dispute.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
They were evicted over this dispute. They had to find
somewhere else to live. Around about this time, they meet
a clerk, a parish clerk by the name of Richard Parsons.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Yeah, he's a clerk at the Church of the Holy.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Sepulcher, Saint Sepulcher without Newgate.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Okay, well I made the first part up, but I
was closed. I got the keyword right, which is a
crazy word, a Sepulcher. I just love it. I love
goth sounding dash without Newgate. Yeah, where's Newgate in all this?
Speaker 1 (09:07):
It's not there, that's for sure.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
I know.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Wow, Yeah, I don't understand, but yeah, that religious connection
is going to come into play here pretty shortly. But yeah, no,
sooner do they move in that he Kent loans this
guy Parsons another sum of money with the terms of
a guinea a month in interest.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Right, he's got twelve. He loans them twelve guineas and
they're supposed to be repaid at that rate. Right, So oh,
we should mention the most important part. When Parsons hears
about their plight, he is sympathetic and he says, hey,
you can use these rooms. You can live in these
rooms in my home on cock Lane, which is just
(09:52):
north of this church. And yes, Nola is absolutely right here.
Shortly after, mister and missus Ken as they were calling
themselves at the time, scandal casey, can I get a
gasp from the crowd? Perfect? Right as they were moving in,
Kent loaned parsons is twelve guineas. And then it was
(10:15):
shortly after that Kent goes to visit someone I think
for a wedding outside like he leaves town, and then
they hear these reports of strange noises.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Yeah, that's right. But before that, this landlord also discovered
the nature of their relationship and held that over Kent's
head again as a way of saying, I'm not paying
back this money because I got some dirt on you.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Yeah, because he knew about their plight of needing a
place to live, but maybe he did not know the
full extent of why they were out of house and home.
So at some point he found out, right.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Oh he did, he did, and it's not clear exactly
how he found out, probably a very similarly to I
don't know, maybe yeah, maybe another snitching relative. Because you
have to remember too that this guy was doing something
pretty untoward in the puritanical eyes of the time. He
was carrying on with the sister of his dead wife,
which would have been frowned upon in this kind of society.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
In many places, it's still probably frowned upon today. Of
Parsons was a family man himself.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
But also apparently a bit of an alcoholic. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
He was considered a generally nice guy around town, but
known luckily as a drunk with money problems, so he
definitely needed those twelve guineas to support his wife and
his two daughters. He had one daughter in particular, is
very important to this story, named Elizabeth or also called
(11:48):
Betty by her friends and familiars, and kent. When he
traveled away from town, he asked Elizabeth to stay with Fanny,
because Fanny, by this point was months pregnant.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
But then, yeah, as fate would have it, the story
takes another unfortunate turn where Fanny dies of smallpox, taking
along with her unborn child. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
So the very first reports of these noises come from Elizabeth,
Betty and Fanny, and at first Missus Parsons attributes them
to a shoemaker, and people are kind of creeped out,
but they're trying to figure out what's happening there, and
(12:32):
Kent decided. Here's how the death went down. Kent decided
that they needed to move to another place, but the
place was not suitable. The place that they were living
in temporarily was not suitable for a woman so far
along in pregnancy. And as you said, on February second,
(12:53):
seventeen sixty, Fanny Lyle, also known as Missus Kent, passed
away with their child. Kent is the sole executor of
the will, the living mister Kent, but he had very
valid fears about being legally in hot water if people
knew about the true nature of their relationships, right, and
(13:16):
the will, he's just mister Kent.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Yeah, And I think Fanny's brother had passed recently as well,
leaving her his portion of the family estate or whatever.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yeah, one and fifty pounds.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah, which was nothing to sneeze at. So Kent was
due a decent little chunk of change. I want to
I want to mention one thing too. There was a
great podcast episode from a show called Dig a Dig
podcast dot Org on the Cocklane Ghost of London, and
it had a few details in it that I thought
were super interesting. One of which was and I've seen
this in a couple other places too, but I like
(13:48):
the way they put it that as Fanny was on
her deathbed, there are multiple reports of people in the
area in the home seeing a ghosts or as some
sort of apparition manifest in the home while while Frank
Fanny was still alive. So the story gets really confusing
it in places. I'm gonna go ahead and put that
(14:08):
out there right now, because the noises happened before Fanny died,
and there was a sense are some local reports that
it was actually Kent's deceased.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Wife, right, his original.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Wife coming around and making trouble and rattling chains because
she was unhappy about said carryings on with her sister
Elizabeth Lines.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Yeah, so what's key to notice here? As we established
earlier those strange sounds begin as soon as Elizabeth enters
the picture, the younger, the Elizabeth Parsons.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Elizabeth the daughter Buddy. Yes, the daughter of the landlord.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Yes, the daughter of the landlord Parsons. And despite the
problems that they have regarding these strange phenomenon, when Fanny
passes away, the Parsons family hears no more of these
strange noises, and they kind of shrugged it off as
just one of the things. There's a great blog called
(15:08):
Strange Company which builds this as a walk on the
weird side of history, and they break down some of
the financial stuff here. At the time the two families left.
At the time Kent moved himself and his wife out
of the Parsons household, Parsons still owed Kent three guineas
of those twelve v you have been loaned. So Kent
(15:31):
takes Parsons to court, and he takes him to court successfully,
he collects the three guineas. Now it's January seventeen sixty two,
and guess what, the strange noises start up again, even
louder and more vehemently than before.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Have we described these sounds yet been there? There were
a couple of variations that we'll get into, but the
main one was something of a scratch.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Right. Originally they were knocks and then they became scratch.
Is the second time they surfaced.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Yeah, And it's crazy that the the evolution of this sound.
You know, there's always that you think. I think've mentioned
this on another show before, but remember that episode of
Curb Your Enthusiasm where Larry is obsessed with the house sound. Yeah,
we play that clip real quick. It's the noise is
(16:27):
you're a noise? Yeah? What is it? It's probably just
a house sound or something a house sound? Yeah, what's
a house sound?
Speaker 1 (16:41):
It also reminds me of that trope in so many
horror films where someone goes, it's only the wind. In
this case, they're like, trouble, not young Betty, tis only
the cobbler.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Tis but a cobbler tinkering away?
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
So cobblers can tinker, but can tinker's cobble?
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Anyone can cobble. The difference is whether you can cobble well.
I see, I see, if you can cobble well enough
to trust trust your shoes afterwards. In this case, the
shoemaker just makes that one appearance. Cobbler guy does not
come back afterwards, but the noises do. As we said,
they came back with a vengeance right after that court
(17:21):
case was decided in Kent's favor.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
That's right. And at this point it's become a bit
of a of a local phenomenon, hasn't it. And the
ghost has earned a nickname, a rather baldy nickname.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
You say, you're talking about the Cocklane Ghost.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
No, No, scratch and Fanny.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Scratch and Fanny, Okay, yes, they're.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Both kind of body if we're being honest.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
They're body to us.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
I think for them, Cocklane was just the name of
their streets.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
No, totally, But scratch and Fanny right over there, Fanny
doesn't mean the same thing as it means over here.
I'm just gonna put that out.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
That's absolutely true. A lot of your British fins will
find the term fanny pack hilarious.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
And scratch and Fanny just sounds like something.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Something told me. So we can conjecture a bit on
how the community and neighborhood found out about this phenomenon
and how the Cockling Ghost or Scratching Fanny acquired this
early renown. They had checked originally with this cobbler to
(18:21):
see if the cobbler was working during the time that
they heard these noises.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Oh, was it not on a Sunday?
Speaker 1 (18:28):
It was it was at a time when he wouldn't
be working. I think it was a Sunday Sunday, so
that makes sense. And a neighbor named James Franzen said
that he saw a strange white figure drifting through the
Parsons home back when, back when Fanny was still alive.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
That's the one we talked about earlier, the apparition that
was when she was on her deathbed or whatever, and
that's the guy.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
He also said that he heard ghostly knockings in his
own bedchamber. So picture this guy at the local pub
around with his buddies, right. That's how these words and
rumors spread. And now people are starting not only to
report the ghosts, but to ascribe motive to scratching Fanny.
So they said that she was not here just to
(19:09):
make a hubbub and a hullabaloo, but that she was
here with a mission. She was trying to get justice
beyond the grave. And people started to play back the
details of Fanny's death and life to themselves and they
started saying, eh, what Fanny might a will leave it?
Everything she owned? Took Kent everything she had, every lost
(19:33):
faulthing in it, ate it. And then they noticed that
Fanny's surviving sister Anne had arrived for the funeral and
was very upset that she couldn't take a look at
her sister in the grave. I think they couldn't open
the coffin for her. And then she said that, at
(19:54):
least allegedly, Anne said that Kent had done something dastardly
and that Fanny's surviving siblings were all in good repair
with her, you know what I mean. They got along.
There wasn't any sibling hate or rivalry.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
So why would she have left her fortune to this
loan shark dude? Right? You know, surely that was not
a respected profession in those days. He would have been
seen as a bit of a confidence man, almost right.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
I mean, loans in general were always a hot button issue.
He was called a userer, not exactly kind words. Right,
So people started thinking that mister William Kent was not
quite the grief stricken widow that he appeared to be.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
I don't think I think it's time we get into
when the church starts getting involved, what do you think?
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Sure, So let's talk a little bit about the people
who are starting to observe this stuff. We have friends
and walking by first and neighbor, and then we have
more people in the community finding out. But the word
of this spreads through London proper, beyond the neighborhoods of
the entire city London Town, so strangers are stopping by,
(21:13):
Oh totally.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
And I actually saw one mention about how it had
made the narrow little side street of cock Lane Versus
virtually impassable because it was like, you know, just picture
some sort of street side attraction and people just bequeued
up outside and you know, blocking the road. I mean
it was totally like that, Like it was definitely chock
full of lookie.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Loose, right, and there was no assigned time at which
the apparently unearthly phenomenon would occur, so people would just
stay out in the street waiting and drinking. And some
famous people started to observe this too.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Well that's true, but that's when really things started heating
up was when Parsons himself. We remember he was a
clerk at the most Holy Church of the Separate Without
with you Newgate, that's the one. And he had some connects.
One of these was a guy by the name of
John Moore who was an assistant preacher at Saint Sepulchers
(22:14):
without Newgate as without Newgate, and he was also the
rector at a place called Saint Bartholomew the Great, which
was over in West Smithfield. And he, I don't know,
for lack of a better term, was like an exorcist, right.
He was coming in there because there was also talk
that young Elizabeth, the daughter of the landlord, mister Parsons,
(22:35):
was possibly.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Possessed, right, because the thing that we would refer to
as a poultry geist today seem to be closely associated
with her, with Elizabeth Parsons specifically. Interesting, yeah, right, And
one of the things that Parsons really wanted more to
help him do was to be a subject matter expert
(23:01):
and establish first that there have been reports of Fanny's
sister Elizabeth appearing in ghostly form as Fanny was laying
in her deathbed. And then they said, okay, well, the
spirit that's haunting the Parsons house now, and particularly Elizabeth Parsons,
must be the spirit of Fanny herself. Hence scratching Fanny.
(23:24):
This didn't sound too out of the ordinary, impossible back
then in England, because there was a widespread belief in
ghost you know, Shakespeare's been around their ghost of plenty,
and the literature and the folklore of the time.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Well, I certainly think folks who are a lot more
willing to accept the stuff without any proof, imaginations running
wild like they do. And also just the kind of
zealous religious nature of the time, and the fact that
a member of the clergy would take this issue that
seriously speaks to the mindset I think the public. Right.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Yeah, And here's the other part. They did see themselves
as rational investigators, because you see, they devised a method
of attempting to communicate with the ghost, transforming back from
scratchings to knocks, right, And they said, maybe we can
(24:21):
speak with this ghost through a very simple system, and
we can make sure it can hear us and respond
to us with these sounds it's making. And we'll set
up a system and we'll explain it aloud to the
ghost or the entity, so that the ghost then knows
the rules of interaction, and we'll keep it simple, so
(24:41):
no Morse code, nothing like that. Morse code wasn't around
by that time.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
What's the system?
Speaker 3 (24:46):
Then?
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Well, if there's a question where the answer is yes,
you have one knock, there's an answer with the question
is no, you have two knocks. But here's my question, like,
what's the space between two knocks and right? And does
it all get all gummed up when you ask things
(25:06):
that aren't yes or no questions? You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (25:10):
That was a collap I think for the rest of
the podcast, Ben, I would like to communicate back with
you only with knocks, only with yes or no responses.
Is that okay? So what was the line of questioning?
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Ben?
Speaker 2 (25:23):
That the that the the exor system? I call him that?
How did he start grilling the ghost?
Speaker 1 (25:29):
It's interesting because we have the we have the questions,
and we're fairly certain that we have the actual exact
questions because we found them in a couple of different sources.
I found them in a book called The Cocklayin and
Ghosts by a guy named Paul Chambers, and I think
they've been printed out in another couple of places. But
(25:49):
we're we're fairly certain these are the actual questions. Let's see,
do you want to be the priest? Or do you
want to be the ghost dealer's choice, Ben, Dealer's choice,
his choice, all right, I think you would be great
for the character of the priest.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Ben. Thank you. First of all, I want to preface
by saying that these are some pretty leading questions for
this ghost, but just the same we're going to present
them here without comment.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Casey, can we get some tense music?
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Are you the wife of mister Kent? Did you die naturally?
Was that two or three knocks?
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Okay? Then by poison?
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Imagine a pregnant pause here, did.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Any person other than mister Kent administer it? And then
at this point somebody in the audience shouts.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Has to ask the ghost if you shall be hanged?
Speaker 2 (27:00):
And the question was asked and the ghost responded lustly.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Yikes, I know, yeah, trial by ghost to maybe maybe
by ghost. So this is a to some people, to
the more religiously minded, this is a damning smoking gun
for mister William Kent, because.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
There's already that hubbub around town about why would she
have left him all of her possessions when she had
no falling out with her living family?
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Right, So as as this ghost quote unquote ghost is
answering further questions, people decide that she had not died
from smallpox, but rather specifically from arsenic poisoning, and according
to their theory, the arsenic had been given to Fanny
by Kent himself two hours before she died, and now
(28:00):
again allegedly her spirit had returned for vengeance.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
And this experiment was repeated several additional times. On January fifth,
a guy, reverend by the name of Thomas Broughton, came
to the house and checked out the hauntings. And we
start seeing this popping up in the papers, and them
they kind of this guy's being kind of tried in
the court of public opinion, because public opinion leans pretty
(28:32):
heavily on the word of ghosts.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Apparently right, the public ledgers started publishing regular accounts of
the Cockling ghost phenomenon, and more and more people would
read the paper and say, you know that William Kent
is a murderer. And Kent vowed to clear his name.
So he brought in two of the doctors who had
(28:55):
taken care of Fanny in her last days, along with
Reverend Broughton, and took them to cock Lane and said, okay,
let's do a seance. This seance did not go the
way that they thought it would. Started with a relative
of the Parson family, a lady named Mary Fraser, running
(29:15):
around the room shouting Fanny, Fanny, why don't you come,
do come, pray Fanny come. Nothing happened, according to Moritz,
because they were too noisy.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
There's a pretty incredible article that I found that's from
the Derby Mercury, which was a paper of note, and
it's it's almost impossible to fully read because it really
is written in like almost Canterbury Tales type language.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Yeah, and it's a large font to where the lowercase
s's look like lowercase f's. This is the one from
January twenty first, one twenty second.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
That's right. Priced it two pence and a halfpenny.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
It's a steal. You just don't know who's getting robbed.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
The Derby Mercury reported pretty intensively on this during the
time that it was happening. Are you wanna go for
some interpretations here?
Speaker 2 (30:06):
Know, I was thinking you might be able to. I
was having a hard time. Let's see if we can
find a choice graph.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
It begins with for some time past, a great knacking
having been heard in the night that the officiating parish
clerks of Saint Sepulchers in Cocklane near Smithfield, to the
great terror of the family, and all means used to
discover the meaning of it. Four gentlemen set up there
on Friday night, among whom was a clergyman who asked
various questions. Questions is capitalized.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
I feel like we have to say it that way. Yeah,
And the has really thrown me for a loop. Can
can I give it a try? Yeah, give it a go.
On his asking if anyone had been mad dad, nothing answered,
But on his asking if anyone had been poisoned, it's
knocked six times. Various are the conjectures in the neighborhood
of this supposed specter, but the cause as yet has
(30:56):
not been discovered. My accent shifting. The report current in
the neighborhood is that a woman was some time ago
poisoned and buried at Saint John's clerking well.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
And it goes on in detail, offering these question and
answer sessions across various days.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
As proof.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
There are some parts of the narrative where you see
investigators asking the ghost to identify how many people were
present in the room, and even asking to the ghost
to predict the future as well. So one of the
questions is how long would it be before William Kent
(31:39):
was executed? And they said three years.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
And the ability to see into the future is another
trait commonly associated with ghosts or those who dwell beyond
the veil.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Yes, but it's really kind of unconfirmable, isn't it. I mean,
I could he could have said thirty years, he could
have said two weeks, and.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
We shall us. I mentioned at this time William Kent
is married. He has his third wife, not related to
his previous two. And as they were holding these seances,
the Lord Mayor of London becomes involved, and they also
start moving Elizabeth the young Elizabeth Elizabeth Parsons two different
(32:24):
houses to conduct seances because they say the ghost is
somehow associated with her.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Huh huh interesting phua thunket.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
And also, there's just no way we can get through
cock Lane the crowds are too pressing, so we have
to try somewhere else.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Will you do some like pop up seances? Ywhere?
Speaker 3 (32:45):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (32:45):
Yeah, London Town.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
So shall we get to the twist if you haven't
already predicted it, here's another twist?
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Yeah, let's just let's go for it.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
They keep having seances, and more and more notable people come.
One seance in way of seventeen sixty two, a doctor
Samuel Johnson is allowed to visit the seance. And what
did they find there?
Speaker 2 (33:07):
No, Well, and you may recall earlier that there was
some talk of the ghost being kind of emanating or
being associated with Elizabeth Parsons. Well, yeah, it turns out
she'd been hiding some woodblocks up her skirt and banging
them together, making those knocks.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Yeah, she had hidden the wood in her clothes, and
following a trial like she was busted, busted, they found
the little pieces of wood, and it explained all the
past imperfections of seances where they said, oh, we have
to do it with the lights low, or we can't.
The knocking stops if you look under the table where
(33:48):
the kid's legs are. So Elizabeth Parsons comes clean. She
says she's doing this because her dad made her.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
That's right, the dad, the drunk who had apparently drunk
his one guinea a month interest payments away after he
tried to extort Kent. See, I don't think Kent comes
off as a bully in this story I think Parsons
comes off as more of the bully here. Kent's just
trying to apply his trade. Man, He's not forcing anybody
(34:17):
to take the loan, He's just offering it, you know.
I don't know, maybe that makes me sound like a
bad guy, but that's how I feel. So, yeah, it
was all in revenge of like him bringing legal action
against this guy. And you know, if you could accuse
Kent of being anything, it was cheap because a guinea
isn't a lot, I don't believe. And we talked about
these being usurists' rates because you know, it almost sounds
(34:39):
like I think it was a twelve guinea loan and
he was supposed to pay back that one guinea a month.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Yep, and didn't get to go didn't go to court
until it was down to three guinea a month or
three guinea total.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Yes, And I think that Kent took him to court
even though it wasn't even that much money, was more
for the principle of the thing as far as he
was concerned. I think in what I'm getting at is
that clearly the villain here is not Kent, despite you know,
maybe maybe it's not cool that he married his uh
or semi married his dead wife's sister. But I don't know.
(35:13):
She was there for him, she helped him raise the child.
They shared a tragedy together, you know, when this child died.
That seems fine to me. So, yeah, it's very difficult.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
I would say, unfair to ascribe those personal motives if
we don't really.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
Know this story.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
So I would I would say from their behavior, it
seems like as a couple they were on the up
and up, despite the fact that society didn't approve of them. Ultimately,
society does side with mister Kent at least because Parsons
goes to trial and he is sentenced to two years
in jail.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Yeah, and he even has a co conspirator, which I
believe was his his maid, Mary Fraser mayor Mary Fraser,
not to be confused with friends. And there's a lot
of a lot of characters and names in this story.
It's it's a little bit of a tricky woman. This
is good. She gets six months hard labor, which is
no good. What happened to the daughter though she was
because she was a minor, she didn't get anything. You
(36:08):
don't hear about anything happening to her but it seems
like she was the one perpetrating the ruse. Maybe it
was just because he was contributing to her delinquency. But
she was like twenty years old. I believe she was
of age.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
She had grown by that time, but it was probably
still thought to be a hapless pawn. Yeah, that's straying
the wishes of her parents and additionally Parsons who said
he was innocent by the way the whole time and
never confessed was pilloried. A pillary for anyone who you
kind of recall the term but you don't know exactly
(36:39):
what it is. A pillary is when people are putting
those weird stocks that hold them at their neck and
their wrists. It's a form of public humiliation.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
Does not sound like fun. Yeah they dude at the
Renaissance fair though here in Atlanta.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Yes, But in contrast to the way the crowds would
treat other criminals in the pillary, people didn't throw rotten
fruit and meat at him. They actually took the opportunity
to walk around and collect money for.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Him for his cause.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Interesting because no matter what he had done, he still
hadn't married the sister of his dead wife.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Wow man full circle so it really is more of
a puritanical judgment at the end of the day.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
A little, a little bit more, and there's much more
to the story regarding the cultural context of the time,
the religious controversy between Methodists and Orthodox Anglicans, but that
may be a tale for another day. We hope you
enjoy the story of this early spiritual investigation skepticism versus
(37:44):
spirituality versus scandal. But this is far from the only
ghost story that we'll tell eventually, right.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Yeah, he said, we're gonna really lean into some ghost
stories for the month of October.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Maybe, I say, I would love to. Well, we are
nothing if not a democracy, right, so that's fair. Write
to us and let us know if there are any
spooky stories from history that you think your fellow ridiculous
historians would like to hear. And also, you know, write
to us if you're like, no, don't tell any spooky stories.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
Yeah, you can write to us at ridiculous at HowStuffWorks
dot com. You can hit us up on Facebook or
Instagram or we're Ridiculous History. Please also join our Facebook
group where we have lots of fun discussions and that's
a good place to post any suggestions for us as well,
because we do kind of hang out in there and
that's called ridiculous historians on Facebook. Big thanks to super
(38:37):
producer Casey Pegram and Alex Williams, who composed our theme.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
As well as Christopher ajaciotis our research associate erstwhile cameo
expert on the show. We need to have him back
on soon, as well as Eve's Jeffcoat. And big thanks
to you NOL and big thanks to.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
You listeners, and please stick around for our next episode
where we talk about what happened to the mad hatter
who killed the man who killed Abraham Lincoln. It's a doozy, folks.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
That's all for today. I guess we could end on
a knock knock joke.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Sure. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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