Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This account of a particularly lively poltergeist appeared in the “Edmonton Journal,” August 15, 1939:

The Germans have a word for it; so have the Africans of the West Indies. The disciples of Herr Hitler call it "poltergeist"; the children of Mother Africa speak of it in awesome breath as "duppy" or "duppy 'pon de 'ouse.' The German word "poltergeist" is made up of the words "polter" meaning noisy and "geiste" meaning spirits. A "duppy." to the West Indian negro, is the ghost or spirit of one who has departed this life which returns to earth to avenge the wrongs to its corporeal master, But as to whether such uncanny events as are ascribed to "duppy 'pon de 'ouse" or poltergeist are occult, psychic or plain human prankstering, who can tell? Certainly, His Honor the Acting Magistrate who presided over the court in that weird and mysterious case in Grenada on a day in January in 1935 was as frankly mystified as anyone else who had listened to the two days' hearing of evidence. One witness after another including a police detective detailed to the case had corroborated a macabre story of ghostly goings on. The case was typical of many others of its kind in the West Indies.

It had started one night at around seven o'clock when the mother, two daughters and grandchild who lived together in a little house had been startled out of their wits by hearing stones falling on the roof of their home. Surprised and puzzled they had gone to the windows and looked out to see if by chance it had been a joke or the act of some mischievous person. In the meanwhile, queer things were happening inside the house. Entering one of the rooms one of the women was petrified with fear when a table suddenly advanced by itself towards her; as it did so, a chair following suit made two or three jumps in her direction. Elsewhere in the house a heavy iron moved itself along a shelf and a picture or two just left the wall and fell on the floor. All the while the stones continued to fall on the roof until at midnight they stopped as suddenly as they had begun.

The women cowered in fear in the darkness until daylight, the girl claiming to see strange people moving around in the house, who, however, were not visible to the others. The next morning they reported the matter to the police and that night several detectives were sent to investigate. Secreting themselves in the surroundings they waited and watched. They did not have to wait long. Suddenly the quiet of the night was broken with the steady thud of stones falling on the roof of the house.

Evidence was given that the detectives searched the grounds and surroundings but could find no one around. Again the little girl claimed to see the mysterious figure in white. The detectives went to the spot she pointed but could find no one although she claimed the figure was still standing there. The detective relates that one morning he went to the house and removed the stones from the roof and just as he had finished doing so the girl pointed to the roof and said she saw a man sitting there holding a parcel. Looking in the direction he could see no one but going to the spot which, by the way, he had just cleared off, he picked up a parcel which he found contained a script, a bottle containing some liquid and some loose powder which he turned over to the Chief Police.

The detective also states that while was in the house a stone came through the roof without leaving a hole and fell at his feet. The evidence of the detective corroborated practically in every detail that given by the mother, her daughters and grandchild and some of the crowd who had been attracted to the scene by curiosity. To cut a long story short these weird happenings continued nightly for several weeks. The mother relates that to propitiate the spirits she made a 'sacrifice.' This probably was in the form of a salacca, a mixture feast and 'burnt offering' practised by the more primitive and superstitious among the natives of this island. Apparently the spirits refused to be bought off so easily and the stone pelting and other queer doings continued.

Terrified, the occupants took refuge elsewhere visiting their home only in daylight. And then one night the house mysteriously took fire and dissolved away in flames. It was at the ensuing court of enquiry to investigate the source and origin of the fire that the amazing evidence recorded above was produced; and it was no wonder, indeed, that presiding magistrate decided that "no evidence could be found as to the cause or origin of fire."

The Troubles At Euston Square

"Illustrated Police News," June 7, 1879, via Newspapers.com

Evil and depravity can have a certain fascination if they are cloaked in a benign or attractive exterior.  It is doubtful that true-crime researchers would still be talking about Ted Bundy if not for the fact that those who knew him thought he was perfectly normal.  And there is a reason why the Devil is often depicted as a handsome man.  Similarly, the following Victorian-era scandal would probably be long-forgotten if it had not happened in a seemingly respectable middle-class household blighted by one or two small oddities, like corpses turning up when least expected.

Matilda Hacker of Canterbury, England, embodied a classic Victorian stereotype:  a rich but miserly, highly eccentric spinster.  In August 1877, Miss Hacker took affront at the rates Canterbury charged her.  In protest, she split town--leaving the rates unpaid--took on the surname of “Huish,” (presumably to avoid the tax authorities,) and engaged a room in a lodging house owned by Mr. and Mrs. Severin Bastindoff at No. 4 Euston Square, London.

So far as is known, life at No. 4 went on quietly enough until Sunday, October 14.  The Bastindoffs were away for the day, leaving Matilda alone in the house with the maid, 24-year-old Hannah Dobbs.  That day, something very terrible happened within the walls of the lodging house, although we are fated to never know exactly what that was.  The following morning, Severin sent Hannah to Matilda’s room to collect her rent.  The maid returned with a five-pound note that she said “Miss Huish” had just given her.  Two days later, Hannah informed the Bastindoffs that their lodger had moved out.

Well, people do abruptly come and go out of rooming houses.  Mrs. Bastindoff dismissed the old lady from her mind and went to clean the room for their next tenant.  She noticed there was a large stain on the carpet that someone had done an inexpert job of trying to wash away.  It looked a bit like blood.  Odd, that.  (Before you ask, much later in our story, when life began getting pretty interesting for the Bastindoffs, it was proven that the stain was blood.)

Life went on.  Miss Huish/Hacker was completely forgotten by the world until May 9, 1879, when  the cellar at No. 4 was cleared so a lodger could store coal there.  The workmen were surprised to find that the cellar contained something more than the usual junk and debris:  a human body, with a rope around the neck.  Police soon determined that the corpse was that of the former lodger, Matilda Hacker.

It did not take Hercule Poirot to immediately focus on Hannah Dobbs as the chief suspect, and she was swiftly arrested and charged with murder.  She was the last person known to have seen the victim alive.  Soon after Hacker “moved out,” (which, in the spiritual sense, I suppose she did,) Hannah gave one of the Bastindoff children the former lodger’s now-empty cash-box.  The maid began wearing a watch and some jewelry her employers had never seen before.  She said they had been bequeathed to her by an uncle who had recently died.

Investigators easily determined that Hannah had no uncle, alive or dead.  The same watch and jewelry were later found in a pawn shop.  The shop’s owner identified Hannah as the person who had pledged the items.  All in all, it was looking like as pretty a case of circumstantial, but conclusive, evidence as any detective would like to see.

Hannah stood trial at the Old Bailey in July 1879.  Her defense relied almost solely on the unlikelihood that a slender young woman could single-handedly, in a relatively brief time, kill a grown adult, hide the body in the cellar, and tidy up the crime scene.  (The implication was that some unknown stranger had sneaked into the house, murdered Hacker, carried the corpse to the cellar, and exited without Hannah having a clue that anything was amiss.  Very Lizzie-Bordenish.)  As a side note, the proceedings were considerably enlivened by testimony suggesting that Severin and Hannah’s relationship had been much more than mere master and servant--something, naturally, that Mr. Bastindoff stoutly denied.

At the end of the trial, the judge, perhaps surprisingly, summed up for acquittal, and the jury obliged.  Hannah was given her freedom, and it looked like Matilda Hacker’s murder was destined to become a mystery that would be quickly forgotten.

Well, not forgotten by everyone.  George Purkiss, proprietor of the “Illustrated Police News,” published a pamphlet about the case that was a defamation lawyer’s dream.  Not only was Hannah Dobbs described as a murderer who had, no doubt, committed other crimes, but Purkiss alleged that she had been Severin’s mistress both before and after becoming his household’s maid.  Severin wasted no time applying for an injunction against further distribution of the pamphlet and suing Purkiss for libel.  Just to show that life is full of odd coincidences, the libel suit took place in the same courtroom, and before the same judge, that Hannah Dobbs had recently faced.

Unfortunately for Mr. Bastindoff, his experience at the Old Bailey was not as fortunate as his maid’s had been.  When Hannah was cross-examined, she was forced to admit that she had previous convictions for theft, as well as other peccadillos that caused the judge to call her “a most infamous person.”  She also confessed to having been Severin’s mistress.  It was demonstrated in court that Severin and Hannah had stayed together at a Redill, Surrey, inn, posing as man and wife.  (Severin argued unconvincingly that the man who had been with Hannah was actually his brother Peter.)  Insinuations were made that Severin was the real murderer, with Hannah being merely his accessory.  In short, Bastindoff came off as such a sordid figure that not only was Purkiss acquitted, Severin was found guilty of perjury and sentenced to a year of hard labor.  

Sadly for the ghost of Matilda Hacker, this was the last word on her murder, but you could say she at least got some small measure of revenge.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

Featuring music from the Strange Company Orchestra!

The forgotten Fifth Crusade.

The gangs of 1970s Brooklyn.

A visit to Waltham Abbey.

A memorial to a murdered postmaster.

How ancient humans regarded eclipses.

How new technology is finding old cities.

U-Boat action off the coast of Gaza, 1917.

Ancient Egyptian princesses were probably damn good archers.

The rise and fall of Salisbury steak.

The legend of a Roman legion in China.

The difficulties of getting a decent photo of a funeral procession.

800 million years ago, our solar system may have seen one damn big kaboom.

Because I know you can't get enough of Viking hygiene.

A mysterious ancient culture.

The Witch of Great Paxton.

The strange case of the "Beast of Gevaudan,"

Researching the survivors of Pompeii.

The hotel that was born from a family feud.

The Indian maharaja who saved Polish orphans. 

The electricity of moss.

Tales of phantom airplanes.

A "tell-tale skull."

This may be the greatest true-crime case ever.

The ghost of King Tut may well be wishing that archaeologists had never found him.

The world's oldest post office.

Moon landing conspiracies a go-go.

The mystery of the "Baghdad Battery."

A look at the letters of Heloise.

A wooden structure from half-a-million years ago.

A murder mystery is finally solved.  However, since it took place in the 16th century and the culprits were mosquitoes, don't count on an arrest.

A suicide at a Junior High School.

An "asteroid" turns out to be something that's really puzzling astronomers.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll talk Victorian murder.  In the meantime, let's follow the science!

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This account of a strange figure that seemed to take fashion tips from the Ku Klux Klan appeared in the “Syracuse Post Standard,” December 8, 1901:

CAZENOVIA, Dec. 7.-The usual calm of this quiet village has given way to unwonted excitement.

Strong men do not venture out at night unarmed, and even the most daring urchins have suddenly discovered a new charm in an evening at home. The cause of this state of things is the advent of some apparently unearthly object which wanders at will about the streets frightening men. women and children. The apparition is variously described as ranging in height from five to six feet. By some it is said to have a slight figure, while others, who claim to have good reason to know of what they are talking, declare it to be of much greater dimensions.

It sulks behind hedges, in the shadow of buildings and glides between the lofty elms for which Cazenovia is noted. Its head is described as enclosed in a white hood which terminates in a point which sways backward and forward as the ghost glides over the ground. The figure below the head is robed in a long flowing mantle of snowy whiteness. Several times on its nightly errands it has been seen to display threateningly a long. rusty knife and a revolver which glistens in the moonlight.

Its favorite haunts seem to be about the old skating rink, the Inhigh Valley Station, and Sullivan street. A few nights ago several boys were chased into a house by the strange object, but that same night it also was pursued through a vacant lot by three men, when it suddenly disappeared.

One evening some sash factory hands were wending their way homeward along the railroad tracks, boasting of the heroic deeds they would do if the apparition should appear to them, when on rounding a curve they were surprised by the subject of their conversation.  Without a moment's hesitation they took to their heels and did not once stop for breath until they burst excitedly into their own homes. 

Some insist that it is simply some boy out for a little fun. Others say it is merely a delusion. Still others believe it to be a sick man slightly demented. Another theory is that it is someone having the interest of the village at heart and is trying to do the young lads a service by frightening them off the streets at night.

As far as I can tell, the mystery of this armed-to-the-teeth apparition remained unsolved.

The Great Eater of Kent

Some people make it into the history books by becoming world leaders.  Some do so through acts of daring or heroism.  Some do so by creating immortal works of art.  And some, like the hero of today’s post, do so by eating an entire sheep in one sitting.

It’s a funny old world.

About all we know for sure about Nicholas Wood of Harrietsham, Kent, England, is that he would have been a devil at today’s “all you can eat” buffets.  Virtually all of our information about him comes from a 1630 pamphlet, “The Great Eater of Kent,” written by a poet named John Taylor, who was Wood’s self-appointed impresario.  Taylor was more interested in promoting his protege’s gastronomical feats than providing personal information, with the result that his work is less a biography and more of a 17th century infomercial.

Wood was born circa 1585.  He was a farmer who owned a reasonably large amount of land, and he was said to be a strongly-built man capable of great physical labor.  Some time around 1610, he began marketing his prodigious appetite, taking on a variety of wagers about how much he could eat.  According to Taylor, Wood “did eat a whole sheep, of 16 shillings price, and raw at that, at one meal.  Another time he eat 30 dozen of pigeons.  At Sir William Sedley’s he eat as much as would have sufficed 30 men.  At the Lord Wottons in Kent, he eat at one meal four-score and four rabbits…He made an end of a whole hog at once and after it swallowed three pecks of damsons.”

Impressive, if a bit monotonous.

One of the few times that Wood lost a bet was, it must be said, a bit of a cheat.  A man named John Dale asserted that he could fill the Great Eater to satiety for the cost of just two shillings.  After Wood took the bet, Dale bought 12 loaves of bread which he soaked in a “mighty ale.”  Halfway through this bibulous meal, Wood fell into a drunken stupor which lasted for nine hours, enabling Dale to win the wager.  Another defeat came at the hands of Sir William Sedley, who had the resources to compile such an enormous feast that it sent Wood toppling to the floor, literally knocked out by food.  His stomach was so distended it looked like it might burst.  Sedley’s alarmed servants, fearing the meal would be Wood’s last, carried him to the fireside and smeared his torso with fat, in the hope that it would make his belly more flexible.

By the next day, Wood had revived, but Sir William decided to add insult to injury by having the poor man dragged outside and put in the stocks as an object of public mockery.  (One hopes that Sedley’s peculiar ideas about hospitality earned him a lot of rejected dinner invitations.)  Happily, Wood afterwards regained his pride through his rabbit feast at the castle of Lord Wotton.

Taylor and Wood first met in 1630, when Taylor was visiting an inn in Kent.  There, Taylor observed Wood polishing off a light breakfast of a leg of mutton, sixty eggs, three pies, and a huge black pudding.  Wood was still hungry afterwards, and as the inn was now swept clean of food, a waiter ran out to grab a live duck from a nearby pond.  Wood devoured the bird, leaving nothing but the beak and quills.

Taylor was deeply impressed by the nauseating display.  He gave Wood twenty shillings to come up to London to perform at the Bankside bear garden.  Taylor pictured an extravaganza where his new friend would devour a wheelbarrow full of tripe, and as an encore, eat “as many puddings as would reach over the Thames.”  In later shows, he would wow the crowds by eating a fat calf and twenty sets of sheeps’ innards.  To entice Londoners to the spectacle, Taylor wrote his pamphlet describing Wood’s “admirable teeth and stomacks exploits.”   Wood’s belly was lyrically extolled as the “rendez-vous or meeting place for the Beasts of the Fields, the Fowles of the Ayre, and Fishes of the Sea.”

Wood did indeed travel to London, but, sadly, right before his debut, the Great Eater came down with a bad case of nerves.  Londoners were a notoriously brutal lot, and he feared dealing with some embarrassing--and dangerous--practical joke, such as the one he had suffered at the hands of John Dale.  Besides, he had recently lost all but one of his teeth, as the result of eating a shoulder of mutton--bones and all.  You might say the thought of facing a London crowd caused Wood to lose his appetite.  Without saying a word to anyone, Wood did a runner.  Taylor never saw him again.  It is said that Wood died in poverty soon afterwards, having sold everything he possessed to satisfy his tragically large appetite.

Taylor--no doubt muttering, “Ah, what might have been!”--had to settle for extolling Wood’s gastronomical feats in verse:

Thou that putst down the Mault below the wheat,

That dost not eate to liue, but liue to eate:

Thou that the Sea-Whale, and Land Wolfe excels:

A foe to Bachus, Champion of god Bels:

I wish if any foreine foes intend

Our famous Ile of Britaine to offend,

That each of them had Stomacks like to thee,

That of each other they deuour'd might bee.

Some haue drunke healths at once (to purchase fames)

As there are letters in their Mistris names,

Others there are, that drinke by rub and square,

And sound round drinkers there aboundance are,

These barely goe with making Barly deare,

And cunningly transforme themselues to Beere,

Or potent Ale, or Iuice of French or Spanish,

Or Smoake, (which Time and Coyne doth banish:)

These are the sleights that halfe the world inchants,

These are the principles of woes and wants:

But thou art free from drinking by the great,

Meat is for men, and thou wer't made to eate.

Though Maximinus, Romes great Emperour,

Did forty pound of flesh each day deuoure,

Albinus th'Emperour did him surpasse,

Fiue hundred Figges by him downe swallow'd was,

Of Peaches he consum'd one hundred more,

Of great Musckmellons also halfe a score,

One hundred Birds, all at one meale he cast

Into his paunch, at breaking of his fast.

Pago surpassed both these two together,

A Bore, a hundred loaues, a Pigge, a Weather,

All this the Rascall swallow'd at a meale,

(If Writers in their writing, true doe deale.)

But sure I am, that what of thee is writ,

Is sure (although not all the truth, or halfe of it:)

Thou dost exceed all that our age e're saw,

Thou potent, high, and mighty men of maw.

FINIS

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

And greetings from the Strange Company mail room!

A teenager who died in the American Revolution has finally been identified.

An ancient Roman fossil collector.

The strange case of the "Leavenworth Look-Alikes."

The legend of what may have been the first underwater tunnel.

Casual snapshots of the Romanovs.

The strange case of the Beale Ciphers.

A diplomat's widow with murder on her mind.  Lots of murder.

A tour of Icelandic turf houses.

A mysterious death in a toilet.  Yeah, definitely not how you want to go.

If it's time for the Link Dump, that means it's time to rewrite human history again.

The murder of a "squeeze fiend."

Hard times for body-snatchers.

Earl of Bolingbroke, disappointed father.

Let's talk Viking hygiene.

How to hold a medieval tournament.

A human "sixth sense."

A visit to an "island full of idiots."

Football culture in Early Modern Britain.

An ancient Maya scientist.

A giant bird in Kentucky?

A real-life inspiration for "Les Miserables."

The medieval custom of "proxy marriages."

A case of matricide.

Some influential medieval women.

How trees are archives.

A Brooklyn Bigfoot.

That's a wrap for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll meet a man who gained brief fame for being anything but a picky eater.  In the meantime, here's some vintage Cyndi Lauper.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

A ghost that was, you might say, all things to all people was reported in the “Moncton Transcript,” February 1, 1922:

London, Jan. 30-Eastbourne is being troubled, or entertained, by a "ghost" mystery.

A strange apparition has been seen several times gliding along the Crumbles, near the fishermen's huts, and across Fishermen's Green. As the place is within 800 yards of the spot on which Irene Munro was murdered, some of the local residents accept the theory that the spirit of the murdered girl is abroad by night; but one of those who has seen the "ghost" says it was a male figure.

It was first seen in the half-light of a December morning by Mг. Richard Prodger, a fisherman, who says he was walking towards the huts when an apparition, clothed in a long black gown, suddenly rosе from the ground in front of him. As he moved forward the ghostly figure went ahead some distance. When he stopped the ghost stopped also.

"It was wearing a thing like an ulster cape, that reached down to the ground," he says. "It did not walk: it glided along. It wore also a big round hat.

"Three times I stopped, and the ghost stopped, too. It continued in front of me right across Fishermen's Green, and then suddenly sank into the ground and disappeared. I walked to the spot but saw no signs of the ghost. If I had not been loaded down with beat-hooks I should have gone for it."

The same apparition has been seen by Mrs. Goldsmith, caretaker of the Fishermen's Institute, adjoining Fishermen's Green. She says the ghost was white and luminous. She was walking near the huts when the strange figure emerged from between two of them like a white cloud. She stopped, trembling with fright, when, just as suddenly, the apparition disappeared--"vanished into nothing."

Bolder spirits are making nightly visits to the spot in an effort to run the strange visitor to earth.

Mr. Prodger is certain that the figure looked like a man who hanged himself in a house close to the huts, and thinks it is only natural that he should return to his old home at Christmas time.

On the other hand, Mrs. Goldsmith is equally sure that Irene Munro walks The Crumbles every night, while a girl who saw the ghost on her way home one night said she could "see right through it" as it glided along and vanished through the side of a hut.

More superstitious people dare not face the desolate waste after dark.