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THE COCK LANE GHOST
By Scaife, Hazel Lewis, 1872-1939
THE quaint old London church of St.
Sepulchre's could not by any stretch
of the imagination be called a fashionable
place of worship. It stood in a crowded quar-
ter of the city, and the gentry were content to
leave it to the small tradesfolk and humble
working people who made up its parish. Now
and again a stray antiquarian paid it a fleeting
visit; but, speaking generally, the coming of a
stranger was so rare as to be accounted an
event.
It is easy, then, to understand the sensation
occasioned by the appearance at prayers one
morning, in the year of grace, 1759, of a young
and well dressed couple whose natural habitat
was obviously in quite other surroundings.
As they waited in the aisle the man tall,
erect, and easy of bearing, the woman fair
and graceful there was an instant craning
of necks and vast nudging of one's neighbor;
and long after they had seated themselves a
subdued whispering bore further, if unneces-
sary, testimony to the curiosity they had
aroused.
Probably no one felt a more lively interest
than did the parish clerk, who, in showing
them to a pew, had noted the tenderness with
which they regarded each other. It needed
nothing more to persuade him that they were
eloping lovers, and that a snug gratuity was
as good as in his pocket. All through the
service he fidgeted impatiently in the shadows
near the door, and as soon as the congrega-
tion was dismissed and he perceived that the
visitors were lingering in their places, he
hurried forward and accosted them. His
name, he volubly explained, was Parsons; he
was officiating clerk of the parish; likewise
master in the charity school nearby. No
doubt they would like to inspect the church,
perhaps to visit the school; it might even be
they were desirous of meeting the pastor ? He
would be delighted if he could serve them in
any way.
"Possibly you can," said the man, "for you
doubtless know the neighborhood like a book.
My name is Knight, and this lady is my wife.
We He stopped short at sight of the
changed expression on the other's face, and
breesquely demanded, "How now, man?
What are you gaping at?"
"No offense, sir, no offense," stammered
the disappointed and embarrassed clerk. "I
beg your pardon, sir and madam."
There was an awkward pause before the
man began again. "As I was saying, my
name is Knight and this lady is my wife.
We have only recently come to London and
are in search of lodgings. If you know
of any good place to which you can recom-
mend us, we shall be heartily obliged to
you."
Whatever he was, Clerk Parsons was not a
fool, and these few words showed him plainly
that he was face to face with a mystery.
Elopers or no, such a well born couple would
not from choice bury themselves in this for-
bidding section of London. With a cunning
fostered by long years of precarious livelihood,
he at once resolved to profit if he could from
their need.
"I fear, sir," said he, "that I know of no
lodgings that would be at all suitable for you.
We are poor folk, all of us, and "
"If you are honest folk," interrupted the
lady, with an enchanting smile, "we ask no
more."
Her husband checked her with a gesture
and a look that was not lost on the now all-
observing clerk, though it was long before he
understood its significance.
"We are willing to pay a reasonable charge,
and shall require only a bed-room and a sitting-
room. If possible, we should prefer to be
where there are no other lodgers."
"In that case," responded the clerk, with
an eagerness he could scarcely veil, "I can
accommodate you in my own house. It is
simple but commodious, and I can answer
that my wife will deal fairly by you."
"What think you, Fanny?" asked the man,
turning to his wife.
"We can at least go and see."
This they immediately did, and to Clerk
Parsons's joy decided to make their home with
him. Nor did their coming gladden the clerk
alone. His wife and children, two little girls
of nine and ten, from the moment they saw
the "beautiful lady" conceived a warm attach-
ment for her. Her geniality, her kindliness,
her manifest love for her husband, appealed
to their sympathies, as did the sadness which
from time to time clouded her face. If, like
Parsons himself, they soon became convinced
that she and her husband shared some mo-
mentous secret, they could not bring them-
selves to believe that it involved her in wrong-
doing. For the husband too they entertained
the friendliest feelings. He was of a blunt,
outspoken disposition and perhaps a trifle
quick tempered, but he was frank and liberal
and sincerely devoted to his wife. For all in
the household, therefore, the days passed
pleasantly; and when Mrs. Parsons one fine
spring morning discovered her fair guest in
tears she felt that time had established be-
tween them relations sufficiently confidential
to warrant her motherly intervention.
"Come, my dear," said she, "I have long
seen that something is troubling you. Tell me
what it is, that I may be able to comfort, per-
haps aid you."
"It is nothing, good Mrs. Parsons, nothing.
I am very foolish. I was thinking of what
would become of me if anything should happen
to my husband."
"Dear, dear! and nothing will. But you
could then turn to your relatives."
"I have no relatives."
"What, my dear, are they all dead?"
"No," in a solemn tone, "but I am dead
to them."
In a voice shaken by sobs, she now unfolded
her story, and pitiful enough it was. She was,
it appeared, the sister of Knight's first wife, who
had died in Norfolk leaving a new born child
that survived its mother only a few hours. At
Knight's request she then went to keep house
for him, and presently they found themselves
very much in love with each other. But in
the canon law they discovered an insuperable
obstacle to marriage. Had the wife died
without issue, or had her child not been born
alive, the law would have permitted her, even
though a "deceased wife's sister," to wed the
man of her choice. As things stood, a legiti-
mate union was out of the question. Learning
this, they resolved to separate; but separation
brought only increased longing. Thence grew
a rapid and mutual persuasion that, under the
circumstances, it would be no sin to bid defi-
ance to the canon law and live together as
man and wife. This view not finding favor
with their relatives, and becoming apprehen-
sive of arrest and imprisonment, they had fled
to London and had hidden themselves in its
depths. Surely, she concluded, with a des-
perate intensity, surely fair-minded people
would not condemn them ; surely all who knew
what true love was would feel that they could
not have acted otherwise?
This confession, though it did not in the
least diminish her landlady's regard for her,
worked indirectly in a most disastrous way.
Whether driven by necessity, or emboldened
by the belief that his lodgers were at his mercy,
the clerk soon afterward approached Knight
for a small loan; and, obtaining it, repeated
the request on several other occasions, until
he had borrowed in all about twelve pounds.
Payment he postponed on one pretext and
another, until the lender finally lost all patience
and informed him roundly that he must settle
or stand suit. Then followed an interchange
of words that in an instant terminated the
pleasant connection of the preceding months.
Parsons was described as "an impudent
scoundrel who would be taught what honesty
meant." Parsons described himself as "know-
ing what honesty meant full well, and needing
no lessons from a fugitive from justice."
White with rage, Knight bundled his belong-
ings together, called a hackney coach, and
within the hour had shaken the dust of Cock
Lane from his feet, finding new lodgings in
Clerkenwell and at once haling his whilom
landlord to the debtors' court.
A little time, and all else was forgotten in
the serious illness of his beloved Fanny. At
first the physician declared that the malady
would prove slight; but she herself seemed to
feel that she was doomed. "Send for a
lawyer," she urged; "I w r ant to make my will.
It is little enough I have, God knows; but I
wish to be sure you will get it all, dear hus-
band."
To humor her, the will was drawn, and now
it developed that the disease which had at-
tacked her was smallpox in its worst form.
No need to dwell on the fearful hours that fol-
lowed, the fond farewells, the lapsing into a
merciful unconsciousness, the death. They
buried her in the vaults of St. John's Clerken-
well, and from her tomb her husband came
forth to give battle to the relatives who, shun-
ning her while alive, did not disdain to seek
possession of the small legacy she had left
him. In this they failed, but scarcely had
the smoke of the legal canonading cleared
away, before he was called upon to meet a
new issue so unexpected and so mysterious
that history affords no stranger sequel to tale
of love.
The first intimation of its coming and of its
nature was revealed to him, as to the public
generally, by a brief paragraph printed in a
mid January, 1762, issue of The London
Ledger:
"For some time past a great knocking hav-
ing been heard in the night, at the officiat-
ing parish clerk's of St. Sepulchre's, in Cock
Lane near Smithfield, to the great terror of
the family, and all means used to discover the
meaning of it, four gentlemen sat up there
last Friday night, among whom was a clergy-
man standing withinside the door, who asked
various questions. On his asking whether
any one had been murdered, no answer was
made; but on his asking whether any one had
been poisoned, it knocked one and thirty
times. The report current in the neighbor-
hood is that a woman was some time ago
poisoned, and buried at St. John's Clerken-
well, by her brother-in-law."
Instantly the city was agog, and for the
next fortnight The Ledger, The Chronicle, and
other newspapers gave much of their space to
details of the pretended revelations, though
they were careful to refer to names by blanks
or initials only.* These accounts informed
their readers that the knocking had first been
heard in the life time of the deceased when,
during the absence of her supposed husband,
she had shared her bed with Clerk Parsons's
oldest daughter; that she had then pronounced
it an omen of her early death; that it did not
occur again until after she had died; that, if
the soi-disant spirit could be believed, the
earlier knocking had been due to the agency
of her dead sister; and that, in her own turn,
she had come back to bring to justice the
villain who had murdered her for the little she
possessed. In commenting on this amazing
story, the papers were prompt to point out
that the knocking was heard only in the pres-
ence of the afore-mentioned daughter, now a
girl of twelve; and while one or two, like The
Ledger, inclined to credence, the majority fol-
lowed The Chronicle in denouncing the affair
as an "imposture."
The outraged husband, as may be imagined,
lost not a moment in demanding admission
to the seances which were proceeding merrily
under the direction of a servant in the Par-
sons family and a clergyman of the neighbor-
hood. He found that the method practised
was to put the girl to bed, wait until the knock-
ing should begin, and then question the alleged
spirit; when answers were received according
to a code of one knock for an affirmative and
two knocks for a negative. It was in his
presence, then, though not at a single sitting,
that the following dialogue was in this way
carried on:
"Are you Miss Fanny ?" "Yes."
"Did you die naturally ?" "No."
"Did you die by poison?" "Yes."
" Do you know what kind of poison it was ? "
"Yes."
"Was it arsenic?" "Yes."
"Was it given to you by any person other
than Mr. Knight?" "No."
"Do you wish that he be hanged?"
"Yes."
"Was it given to you in gruel?" "No."
"In beer?" -"Yes."
Here a spectator interrupted with the re-
mark that the deceased was never known to
drink beer, but had been fond of purl, and the
question was hastily put :
"Was it not in purl?" - "Yes."
"How long did you live after taking it ?"
Three knocks, held to mean three hours.
"Did Carrots" (her maid) "know of your
being poisoned ?" "Yes."
"Did you tell her?" "Yes."
"How long was it after you took it before
you told her ?" One knock, for one hour.
Here was something tangible, and Knight
went to work with a will to refute the terrible
charge brought by the invisible accuser. As
reported in The Daily Gazetteer, which had
promised that "the reader may expect to be
enlightened from time to time to the utmost
of our power in this intricate and dark affair,"
the maid Carrots was found, and from her was
procured a sworn statement that Mrs. Knight
had said not a word to her about being poi-
soned; that, indeed, she had become uncon-
scious twelve hours before her death and
remained unconscious to the end. The
physician and apothecary who had attended her
made affidavit to the same effect, and de-
scribed the fatal nature of her illness. It was
further shown that her death at most bene-
fited Knight by not more than a hundred
pounds, of which he had no need, as he was of
independent means.
Altogether, he would seem to have cleared
himself effectually. Still the knocking con-
tinued, and night after night the accusation
was repeated. He now resorted, therefore,
to a radical step to convince the public that he
was the victim of a monstrous fraud.
Asserting that little Miss Parsons herself
produced the mysterious sounds, and that she
did so at the instigation of her father, he se-
cured an order for her removal to the house of
a friend of his, a Clerkenwell clergyman. Here
a decisive failure was recorded against the
ghost. It had promised that it would knock
on the coffin containing Mrs. Knight's re-
mains; and about one o'clock in the morning,
after hours of silent watching, during which
the spirit gave not a sign of its presence, the
entire company adjourned to the church. Only
one member was found of sufficient boldness
to plunge with Knight into the gloomy depths
where the dead lay entombed; and that one
bore out his statement that never a knock had
been heard. The girl was urged to confess,
but persisted in her assertions that the ghost
was in nowise of her making.
Afterward, when the knocking had been
resumed under more favorable auspices, word
came from the unseen world that the fiasco in
the church was ascribable to the very good
reason that Knight had caused his wife's
coffin to be secretly removed. "I will show
them ! " cried the desperate man. With clergy-
man, sexton, and undertaker, he visited the
vaults once more and not only identified but
opened the coffin.
Meanwhile all London was flocking to Cock
Lane as to a raree-show, on foot, on horseback,
in vehicles of every description. Some, like
the celebrated Dr. Johnson who took part in
the coffin opening episode in Clerkenwell,
were animated by scientific zeal ; but idle curi-
osity inspired the great majority. The gossip-
ing Walpole, in a letter to his friend Montagu,
has left a graphic picture of the stir created
by the newspaper reports.
"I went to hear it," he writes; "for it is not
an apparition but an audition. We set out
from the opera, changed our clothes at North-
umberland House, the Duke of York, Lady
Northumberland, Lady Mary Coke, Lord
Hertford, and I, all in one hackney coach,
and drove to the spot; it rained in torrents;
yet the lane was full of mob, and the house so
full we could not get in ; at last they discovered
it was the Duke of York, and the company
squeezed themselves into one another's pock-
ets to make room for us. The house, which
is borrowed, and to which the ghost has ad-
journed, is wretchedly small and miserable;
when we opened the chamber, in which were
fifty people with no light but one tallow candle
at the end, we tumbled over the bed of the
child to whom the ghost comes, and whom
they are murdering by inches in such insuffer-
able heat and stench. At the top of the room
are clothes to dry. I asked if we were to have
rope dancing between the acts. We heard
nothing; they told us (as they would at a
puppet show) that it would not come that
night till seven in the morning, that is, when
there are only prentices and old women. We
stayed, however, till half an hour after one."
The skepticism patent in this letter was
shared by all thinking men. Letter after
letter of criticism, even of abuse, was poured
into the newspapers. No less a personage
than Oliver Goldsmith wrote, under the title
of " The Mystery Revealed," a long pamphlet
which was intended both to explain away the
disturbances and to defend the luckless Knight.
The actor Garrick dragged into a prologue a
riming and sneering reference to the mystery;
the artist Hogarth invoked his genius to deride
it. Yet there were believers in plenty, and
there even seem to have been some who thought
of preying on the credulous by opening up a
business in "knocking ghosts."
"On Tuesday last," one reads in The
Chronicle, "it was given out that a new knock-
ing ghost was to perform that evening at a
house in Broad Court near Bow Street, Covent
Garden; information of which being given to
a certain magistrate in the neighborhood, he
sent his compliments with an intimation that
it should not meet with that lenity the Cock
Lane ghost did, but that it should knock
hemp in Bridewell. On which the ghost very
discreetly omitted the intended exhibition."
Whether or no he took a hint from this
publication, it is certain that, finding all other
means failing, Knight now resolved to try to
lay by legal process the ghost that had rendered
him the most unhappy and the most talked of
man in London. Going before a magistrate,
he brought a charge of criminal conspiracy
against Clerk Parsons, Mrs. Parsons, the
Parsons servant, the clergyman who had
aided the servant in eliciting the murder
story from the talkative ghost, and a Cock
Lane tradesman. All of these, he alleged, had
banded themselves together to ruin him, their
malice arising from the quarrel which had
led him to remove to Clerkenwell and enter
a lawsuit against Parsons. The girl herself
he did not desire punished, because she was
too young to understand the evil that she
wrought. Warrants were forthwith issued,
and, protesting their innocence frantically, the
accused were dragged to prison.
Their conviction soon followed, after a trial
of which the only obtainable evidence is that
it was held at the Guildhall before a special
jury and was presided over by Lord Mans-
field. Then, "the court desiring that Mr.
K , who had been so much injured on this
occasion, should receive some reparation,"*
sentence was deferred for several months.
This enabled the clergyman and the tradesman
"to purchase their pardon" by the payment
of some five hundred or six hundred pounds
to Knight. But the clerk either would not or
could not pay a farthing, and on him and his,
sentence was now passed. "The father," to
quote once more from the meager account in
The Annual Register, "was ordered to be
set in the pillory three times in one month,
once at the end of Cock Lane, and after that
to be imprisoned two years; Elizabeth his
wife, one year ; and Mary Frazer, six months to
Bridewell, and to be kept there to hard labor."
Thus, in wig and gown, did the law solemnly
and severely place the seal of disbelief on the
Cock Lane ghost; which, it is worth observing,
seems to have vanished forever the moment the
arrests were made.
But, looking back at the case from the
vantage point of chronological distance and
of recent research into kindred affairs, it is
difficult to accept as final the verdict reached
by the "special jury" and concurred in by
the public opinion of the day. It is prepos-
terous to suppose that for so slight a cause as
a dispute over twelve pounds Clerk Parsons
and his associates would conspire to ruin a
man's reputation and if possible to take his
life; and still more preposterous to imagine
that they would adopt such a means to attain
this end. Of course, they may have had
stronger reasons for being hostile to Knight
than appears from the published facts. Yet
it is significant that when the clerk was placed
in the pillory he seemed to "be out of his
mind," and so evident was his misery that the
assembled mob "instead of using him ill,
made a handsome collection for him."
The more likely, nay the only defensible
solution of the problem, is that he, his fellow
sufferers, and Knight himself were one and all
the victims of the uncontrollable impulses of
a hysterical child. The case bears too strong
a resemblance to the Tedworth and Epworth
disturbances to admit of any other hypothesis.
Not that the Parsons girl is to be placed on
exactly the same footing as the Mompes-
son children and Hetty Wesley, and held to
some extent responsible for the mischievous
phenomena she produced.
On the contrary, the more one studies the
evidence the stronger grows the conviction
that in her we have a striking and singular in-
stance of "dissociation." She was, it is very
evident, strongly attached to the unfortunate
Mrs. Knight, doubtless felt keenly the separa-
tion from her, and, whether consciously or
subconsciously, would cherish a grudge against
Knight as the cause of that separation. The
news of Mrs. Knight's death would come as a
great shock, and might easily act, so to speak,
as the fulcrum of the lever of mental disintegra-
tion. Then, dimly enough at first but soon
with portentous rapidity, her disordered con-
sciousness would conceive the idea that her
friend had been murdered and that it was her
duty to bring the slayer to justice. From this
it would be an easy step to the development,
in the neurotic child, of a full fledged second-
ary personality, akin to that found in the
spiritistic mediums of later times.
Now, for the first time, her faculties would
seem to her astonished parents to be in the
keeping and under the control of an extraneous
being, a departed, discarnate spirit; and in
this error she and they would be confirmed by
the suggestions and foolish questions of those
who came to marvel. It needed another great
shock there being in those days no Janet or
Prince or Sidis to take charge of the case
the shock of the arrest and imprisonment of
her parents, to effect at least partial reintegra-
tion and the consequent disappearance of the
secondary self, the much debated, malevolent
Cock Lane ghost.
Finish