The Kindly Poltergeist: A Christmas Story

Via Newspapers.com

What’s Christmas without a ghost story?  This rather sweet example of the genre--complete with a happy ending!--appeared in the “Somerset County Herald,” December 18, 1948:

Mr. Henry Transom, M.A.. came to Taunton in 1730 to teach classics at the local Grammar School.  The same year arrived the newly-appointed Headmaster, the Rev. James Upton. M.A., an Editor of Classical Texts, who came from the rectory of Monksilver, and in later years served the Parish Church of Bishop's Hull.

Taunton then was a small town with a population of about 5.000. Many of the old thatched houses in East-street and East Reach had been destroyed by fire during the three sieges, when the town was defended by Robert Blake. Henry Transom was a bachelor, aged 40, and rented two rooms in a charming Tudor gabled house in East-street, practically opposite the present County Hotel.  This old house has gone. 

Henry was a robust Christian, and regularly attended the services at St. Mary's Church. His friends spoke of him respectfully as "Inasmuch."

The craze for drinking quantities of cheap spirit was as common in Taunton as in other towns. This unpleasant habit spread rapidly among the poor of that period, owing to a bad mistake on the part of the government. Farmers complained that they could not sell their grain, and the government thought of a very stupid way to help them.

It encouraged the manufacture and sale of spirits, specially gin, by canceling the heavy tax on its production and the need for a licence to sell it. The distillers now bought up all the grain the farmers could let them have, but the effects of the crude, badly-made spirit on the health and character of many poor people were disastrous. Insanitary houses, bad drinking water and dirty streets encouraged the spread of small-pox and cholera. The death mortality of children was very high.

All this Henry Transom noted with pain and deep concern. He was well up in the history of the ancient Greek physicians, who gave freely to the poor and to the stranger, not only of their skill but also of their substance. In therapeutics the school of Hippocrates waited vigilantly upon Nature: it used physical means such as diet, medicinal herbs and waters, fresh air and gymnastics: it did not interfere violently by bleedings or by drugs. Surgery, by this direct and natural study of facts, attained a degree of positive excellence. whereas in the early 18th century England rough operations were still performed by barbers and apothecaries.

A City company, the Barber Surgeons, would cut your hair, corns or throat in the same establishment. To Transom familiar were the legends about Aesculapius, the Greek father of physicians, who in statues was represented sitting on a throne, with one hand holding a rod entwined with snakes, and the other leaning on a serpent's head, suggesting his power over evil. This study of Greek medicine had a powerful influence over his outlook on life.

Thomas Guy had given a large portion of the huge fortune he had made out of heavy investments in South Sea Company stock to found Guy's Hospital In 1722. Other London hospitals were soon built.

Transom, out of his meagre salary, sent a handsome gift to the St. George's Hospital, founded in 1733. How he did hope that Taunton would follow the example of London!  

One evening Henry, a keen Bible student, pondered long over a sentence that lit up the sacred page:--"I was sick, and ye visited me." Henceforth, his ministrations to the sick, his benefactions to the infirm, including a regular order every Christmas for seven parcels of delicacies to be sent anonymously to convalescents, won him a niche in the hearts of many of the poorest of the poor. He believed that fifty per cent of sick persons needed prayer more than pills, meditation more than medication.

He took many risks in visiting sick people, and eventually contracted small-pox from which he died in 1759, a year of severe drought. Friends who knew Transom well spoke of his spirit of goodwill and graciousness that seemed to impregnate the very bricks of his rooms. Later Tenants reported that the warmth of his personality seemed to survive in the rooms.

A corn merchant. Mr. George Marshall, bought the house in 1801. His only child was Henry, aged 10, who was a scholar at the Taunton Grammar School. This was the year when the Headmaster, the Rev. John Townsend, confined the boys one day to the School premises, so that the curious could not see nine men hanged at Stone Gallows, Rumwell, for bread stealing. in 1802, not long before Christmas.

Henry was laid low with a severe attack of pneumonia. Fortunately, the father was able to call in a nurse very different from the "Sairey Gamp" type of that period. The night of the crisis, which was Christmas eve, when she was fighting to save the boy's life (in Transom's bedroom) she declared two extraordinary phenomena happened. A luminous patch appeared on the bedroom wall on which she distinctly saw the outline of a rod and a serpent, and a man's figure glided past her, placed a gentle hand on the boy's forehead, and a voice spoke quietly: "I was sick and ye visited me." The visitor vanished seemingly through the wall. The room seemed filled with a gracious Presence, there was nothing frightening about the experience. From that moment the patient was on the road to recovery, a welcome Christmas gift indeed!

Those who were told the story and remembered Henry Transom had explanations to offer. Two rooms now apparently became the focus of kindly poltergeist activity. On one occasion a roll of bandages appeared from nowhere, at another time the family Bible was paranormally opened at St. Matthew, chapter xxv.  Pencil markings appeared spontaneously at times on the walls. One marking, iatros, written in Greek characters, was deciphered as the Greek word for "physician.'' Sometimes the house seemed filled with the fragrance of medicinal herbs.

On the 11th of April, 1810, the foundation stone of the Taunton and Somerset Hospital was laid, and everything became normal again in Henry Transom's old home in East-street. His spirit was now at rest.

Merry Christmas to the benevolent spirit of Mr. Transom, and all my readers!