Latest / Ridiculous History / The Cock Lane Ghost: Haunting, Hoax, Hysteria… or Hilarious?

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The Cock Lane Ghost: Haunting, Hoax, Hysteria… or Hilarious? · Ridiculous History

• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. This is ridiculous History. We hope
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: this is the podcast you're looking for. I want to
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: start with a question that is very tangentially related. No,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: you're asking me to give it to me. You're nol.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: I'm Ben. There's our super producer, Casey Pegram. Everyone say
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: hi Casey, Great, Hi Casey. Uh. The question is this, um,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: what is what's your favorite holiday? Ghost? Ween? Yeah? Is
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: that the same as Halloween? It's it's just a ghost
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: of your version. Okay, that's cool, that's cool. I'm a
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: I'm a true fan of Halloween. I say this in
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: full disclosure. As we get closer to this favored holiday,
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna be pushing for more and more spooky stories.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: You know, you push and you push and you push,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: and sometimes, Ben, sometimes you get what you need. There
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: we go. If you try, sometimes right, you just might
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: find Today's story is a ghost story. Yeah, And it's
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: also a story of people trying things yes on multiple levels.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: And and it's a story that I could see Guy
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Richie doing an adaptation of oddly Enough, because it has
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: that right element of the seedy underside of England. Like
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: he didn't he do one of the Sherlock Holmes movies.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: He did. I believe he did. Yeah, right, that's been
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Casey on the case. We always have to try to
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: have at least one Casey on the case. That one
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: was unexpected. Yeah, he just kind of popped in, which
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: I like sudden death court. I like it. He has
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: this button out there that he has to hit and
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: it's it's pretty cool. Yeah, we're we're all getting the
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: hang of it, and I think it's I think it's
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: normalized now. So guy Richie probably would do a good
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: job with this because it's got a lot of Cockney
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: accents to and a lot of usury and then loan
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: shark nous afoot and a lot of scams and cons.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: But without further ado, let us present the story of
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: the cock Lane Ghost. But we can't begin in cock Lane, right.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: We have to begin first with a pair of lovers,
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: William Kent and Elizabeth Lynes, who married in about seventeen
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: fifty six or seventeen fifty seven. That's very true, and tragically,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: the then Mrs Kent died in childbirth, leaving her husband William,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: to take care of a newborn baby boy. And this
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: was in Stoke Ferry Kent had kept an inn and
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: then later he was running the local post office. Now,
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden he was a single father, or
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: was he? You see, because Elizabeth had a sister and
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: her sister's name was Francis, commonly known as Fanny, and
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Fanny Um swooped in to help out with the childcare
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: because Kent found himself. I don't know, there's no exact
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: details as to why he couldn't raise the child himself,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: but he seemed inapt at the at the whole affair,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: and so he needed a woman's touch. Yeah, And unfortunately,
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: the infant, who was a boy, did not survive for
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: very long. And when the child unfortunately passed away, childhood
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: mortality being at a much higher rate in those days, Uh,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Fanny decided to stay on and become kind of a
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: housekeeper for William. But soon they began having their own
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: amorous relationship. Yeah. And I think there was even a
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: time where he kind of sent her away, and um,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: she wrote him letters saying, you know, I don't want
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: to say begging, but you know, expressing that her love
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: for him was real and that he should, you know, welcome,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: welcome her back with open arms and Eventually it worked
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: and he um and they ended up together. But this
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: is interesting because she was a relative of his former wife.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: It was not uh kosher for them to get married.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: It was it was against the law. Yeah, it was
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: against canon law for them to be married. And this
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: this is something that they were both aware of, and
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: it's one of the suspected motivations pushing William Kent to
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: originally leave Fanny and move to London. But she wins
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: them over with these passionate letters, and so he eventually says, Okay,
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: come move with me. Can meet me in London. I
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: live in East Greenwich. And they decide that they're gonna,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: you know, canon law be darned, They're going to live
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: together as man and wife. Canon law being like of
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: the Catholic Church, not some Catholic, not so much Catholic.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: There's England. I mean, canon law can be any organized religions,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: but the right. So the Anglican Church and the Methodists
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: will also appear and here later, despite the fact that
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: they have decided to in practice disobey canon law, they
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: do try to keep it on what we would call
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: the modern day the low. They keep it on the
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: down low. They still have wills in each other's favor,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: but they're trying to be discreet about this. They don't
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: want a bunch of people to know what they're doing.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: And they are not very successful with this because they
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: moved to some rooms near a place called the Mansion House.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: They're renting these rooms, and historians believe the landlords may
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: have learned about this illicit relationship from Fanny's other surviving relatives.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: And this is this is where we have to start
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: talking about Kent's John of what what does do well.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: This took me a couple of passes of some of
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: this research material to read until I happened upon an
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: article by our good pals at the Daily Mail um,
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: who you know, aren't exactly the most reputable source for
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: for stuff like this, but they had a really good
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: write up about this particular story that real quickly called
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: him for what he was, which is a loan shark,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: because he had done this several times. Because I was
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: reading another article where it kept saying how he was
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: always loaning his landlord's money, and at first I thought
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: I was misreading it, like does this did they mean
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: that landlords were leaning him money? And getting mad because
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: he wasn't paying. No, he was loaning the money and
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: then always got into trouble because of disputes about you
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: know how he was gonna get paid back. And I
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: think he used the term usury. Yeah, he's a userer,
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: which I would phrase as a loan shark today, a
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: userer being someone who makes questionable loans with unfair interest rates,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: and originally usually meant any sort of interest of any kind. However,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: in this case it was like his job. He loaned
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: people money and they were supposed to pay him back.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: This goes sour when their landlord at these rooms near
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: the mansion house decides that, hey, these people are living
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: in sin. I despised this. I am not going to
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: repay that money that you loaned me, Mr Kent And uh,
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: I read somewhere is the equivalent of about twenty pounds today,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: probably a little bit more than twenty pounds today, And
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: so can move to have that landlord arrested, which could
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: only bring tensions to the house. Yeah, and I think
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: you know they were asked to leave, right they were.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: They were evicted over this dispute. They were evicted over
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: this dispute. They had to find somewhere else to live
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: or round about. This time, they meet a clerk, a
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: parish clerk by the name of Richard Parsons. Yeah, he's
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: a clerk at UM, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: Sepulcher without Newgate. Okay, well I made I made the
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: first part up, but I was closed. I got the
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: key word right, which is a crazy word, a sepulcher.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: I just love it sound dash without Newgate. Yeah, where's
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Newgate in all this? It's not there, that's for sure,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: I know. Wow, Yeah, I don't understand. But yeah, that
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: religious connection is going to come into play here pretty shortly.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: But yeah, no, sooner do they move in? Um that
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: he kent loans this guy Parsons another sum of money,
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: um with the terms of a guinea a month in interest. Right,
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: he's got twelve. He loans them twelve guineas and they're
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: supposed to be repaid at that rate. Right, So oh,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: we should mention the most important part. When Parsons hears
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: about their plight, he is sympathetic and he says, hey,
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: you can use these rooms. You can live in these
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: rooms in my home on cock Lane, which is just
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: north of this church. And yes, your Noli is absolutely
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: right here. Shortly after Mr and Mrs Kent, as they
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: were calling themselves at the time, scandal casey, can I
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: get a gasp from the crowd? Perfect? Right as they
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: were moving in, Kent loaned Parsons twelve guineas. And then
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: it was shortly after that Kent goes to visit someone
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: I think for a wedding outside like he leaves town,
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: and then they hear these reports of strange noises. Yeah,
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: that's right, um. But before before that, um, this landlord
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: also discovered the nature of their relationship. She held that
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: over Kent's head again as as a way of saying,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: I'm not paying back this money because I got some
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: dirt on you. Yeah, because he knew about their plight
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: of needing a place to live, but maybe he did
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: not know the full extent of why they were out
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: of house and home. So at some point he found out, right,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Oh he did, he did, And it's not clear exactly
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: how he found out, probably very similarly to I don't know,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: maybe maybe another another snitching relative. Because you have to
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: remember too that this guy was doing something pretty untoward
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: in the puritanical eyes of the time. He was carrying
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: on with the sister of his dead wife, which would
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: have been frowned upon in this uh kind of society
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: In many places, it's still probably frowned upon today. Of
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Parsons was a family man himself, but also apparently a
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: bit of an alcoholic. Yeah. Yeah. He was considered a
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: generally nice guy around town, but known luckily as a
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: drunk with money problems. So he definitely needed those twelve
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: guineas to support his wife and his two daughters. He
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: had one daughter in particular, is very important to this story,
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: named Elizabeth, also called Betty by her friends and familiars,
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: and kent. When he traveled away from town, he asked
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Elizabeth to stay with Fanny because Fanny by this point
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: was several months pregnant. But then, yeah, as fate would
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: have it, the story takes another unfortunate turn where Fanny
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: dies of smallpox, taking along with her onborn child. Yeah. So,
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: the very first reports of these noises come from Elizabeth,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Betty and and Fanny, and at first, uh, Mrs Parsons
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: attributes them to a shoemaker and people are kind of
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: creeped out, but they're trying to figure out what's happening there,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: and Kent decided. Here's how the death went down. Kent
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: decided to that they needed to move to a other place,
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: but the place was not suitable. The place that they
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: were living in temporarily was not suitable for a woman
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: so far along in pregnancy. And as you said, um,
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: on February second, seventeen sixty, Fanny Lyle, also known as
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Mrs Kent, passed away with her child. Kent is the
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: sole executor of the will, the living Mr Kent, but
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: he had very valid fears about being legally in hot
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: water if people knew about the true nature of their relationship.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: In the will, he's just Mr Kent. Yeah. And I
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: think Fanny's brother had passed recently as well, leaving her
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: his portion of the family estate or whatever hundred and
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: fifty pounds, yeah, which was nothing to sneeze at. So
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Kent was do a decent little chunk of change. Um.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: I want to I I want to mention one thing too. Um.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: There was a great podcast episode from a show called
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: dig Dig podcast dot Org on the cock Lane Ghost
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: of London, and it had a few details in it
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: that I thought were super interesting, one of which was
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: and I've seen this in a couple of the places too,
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: but I like the way they put it. Um that
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: as Frank as Fanny was on her deathbed. Um, there
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: are multiple reports of people in the area in the
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: home seeing a ghost or a as some sort of
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: apparition manifest in the home while while Frank Fanny was
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: still alive. So this story gets really confusing in places.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna go ahead and put that up there right now,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: because the noises happened before Fanny died, and there was
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: a sense are some local reports that it was actually
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: Kent's deceased wife, his original wife, coming around and making
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: trouble and rattling chains because she was unhappy about said
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: uh carryings on with with her sister Elizabeth Lines. Yeah,
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: So what's key to notice here? As we established earlier,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: those strange sounds begin as soon as Elizabeth enters the picture,
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: the younger the Elizabeth Parsons, Elizabeth the daughter, yes, the
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: daughter of the landlord. Yes, the daughter of the landlord Parsons.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: And despite the problems that they have regarding the strange phenomenon,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: when Fanny passes away the Parsons family, here's no more
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: of these strange noises, and they kind of shrugged it
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: off as just one of the things. There's a great
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: blog called Strange Company which builds this as a walk
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: on the weird side of history, and they break down
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: some of the financial stuff here at the time the
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: two families left. At the time Kent moved himself and
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: his wife out of the Parsons household. Parsons still owed
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: Kent three guineas of those twelve you have been loaned.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: So Kent takes Parsons to court, and he takes him
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: to court successfully, he collects the three guineas. Now it's
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: January seven, teen sixty two, and guess what. The strange
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: noises start up again, even louder and more vehemently than before.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: Have we described these sounds yet been there? There were
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: a couple of variations that we'll get into, but the
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: main one was something of a scratch. Right. Originally they
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: were not, and then they became scratches the second time
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: they surfaced. Yeah, and it's crazy that the the evolution
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: of this sound. You know, there's always that you think.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: I think I've mentioned this on another show before, but
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: remember that episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm where Larry is
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: obsessed with the house sound yeah, can we play that
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: clip real quick. It's the noise. They're a noise? Yeah,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: what is it? It's probably just a house sound or
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: something house sound? Yeah, what's a house sound? It also
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: reminds me that Troupe and so many horror films where
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: someone goes it's only the wind, and in this case
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: they're like, trouble, not young Betty, He's only the cobbler.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: Tis but a cobbler tinkering away? Yeah, exactly, So cobbler's
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: can tinker, but can tinker's cobble ben? Anyone can cobble
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: the differences whether you can cobble well, I see, if
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: you can cobble well enough to trust trust your shoes afterwards.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: In this case, the shoemaker just makes that one appearance.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: Cobbler guy does not come back afterwards, but the noises
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: due as we said, they came back with a vengeance
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: right after that court case was decided in Kent's favorites. Right,
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: And at this point it's become a bit of a
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: of a local phenomenon, hasn't it. And the ghost has
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: earned a nickname, a rather body nickname. You say they're
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: talking about the cock Lane Ghost. No, No, scratching Fanny.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: Scratching Fanny, Okay, yes, they're both kind of body, if
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: we're being honest, their body to us. Yeah. I think
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: for them, cock Lane was just the name of their
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: street totally. But scratching Fanny over there, Fanny doesn't mean
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: the same thing as it means over here. I'm just
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: gonna put that out. That's absolutely true. A lot of
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: your British fans will find the term Fannie Pack hilarious
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: and scratching Fanny just sounds like something something told me.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: Sweden conjecture a bit on how the community and neighborhood
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: found out about this phenomenon and how the cock Lane
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: ghost or Scratching Fanny acquired this early renown. They had
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: checked originally with this cobbler to see if the cobbler
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: was working during the time that they heard these noises.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: Was it not on a Sunday? It was It was
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: at a time when the who wouldn't be working. I
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: think it was a Sunday Sunday, so that makes sense.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: And a neighbor named James Franzen said that he saw
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: a strange white here drifting through the Parsons home back when,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: back when Fanny was still alive. That's the one we
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: talked about earlier, the apparition that was when she was
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: on her death bet or whatever. And that's he also
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: said that he heard ghostly knockings in his own bed chamber.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: So picture this guy at the local pub around with
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: his buddies, right. That's how these words and rumors spread.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: And now people are starting not only to report the ghosts,
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: but to ascribe motive to scratching Fanny. So they said
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: that she was not here just to make a hubbub
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: and a hullabaloo, but that she was here with a mission.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: She was trying to get justice beyond the grave. And
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: people started to play back the details of Fanny's death
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: and life to themselves, and they started saying, yeah, what
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: Fanny might a will leave it? Everything she owned, took, kent,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: everything she had, every lost fall thing, and it in
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: it and uh. Then they noticed that Fanny's surviving sister,
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: Anne had arrived for the funeral and was very upset
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: that she couldn't take a look at her sister in
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: the grave. I think they couldn't open the coffin for
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: And then she said that, at least allegedly, Anne said
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: that Kent had done something dastardly, and that Fanny's surviving
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: siblings were all in good repair with her, you know
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: what I mean, They got along, there was any sibling
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: hate or rivalry. So why would she have left her
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: fortune to this loan shark dude? Right? You know surely
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: that was not a respected profession in those days. He
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: would have been seen as seen as a bit of
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: a of a confidence man, almost right. I mean, loans
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: in general were always a hot button issue. He was
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: called a usurer, not exactly kind words. Right, So people
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: started thinking that Mr William Kent was not quite the
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: grief stricken widow that he appeared to be. I don't
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: think I think it's time we get into when the
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: church starts getting involved. What do you think? Sure? So
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about the people who are
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: starting to observe this stuff. We have friends and walking
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: by first and neighbor and then we have more people
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: in the community finding out. But the word of this
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: spreads through London proper, beyond the neighborhoods to the entire city,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: London Town. So strangers are stopping by, Oh totally. And
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: I actually saw one mention about how um it had
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: made the narrow little side street of cock Lane Versus
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: virtually impassable because it was like, you know, just picture
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: some sort of street side attraction and people just be
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: qued up outside and you know, blocking the road. I
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: mean it was totally like that. Like, it was definitely
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: chock full of looky loose, right, and there was no
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: assigned time at which the apparently unearthly phenomen would occur,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: so people would just stay out in the street waiting
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: and drinking. And some famous people started to observe this too. Well,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: that's true, but that's um. When really things started heating
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: up was when Parsons himself. We remember he was a
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: clerk at the most Holy Church of the Separate without
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: not without with you new Gate, that's the one. And
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: he had some connects. One of these was a guy
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: by the name of John Moore, who was an assistant
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: preacher at uh St. Sepulcher's without as without New Game,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: and he was also the rector at a place called
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: Saint Bartholomew the Great, which was over in West Smithfield.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: And he, I don't know, for lack of a better term,
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: was like like an exorcist, right. He was coming in
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: there because there was also talk that young Elizabeth, that
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: the daughter of the landlord Mr Parsons, was possibly possessed, right,
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: because the thing that we would refer to as a
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: poulter geist today seemed to be closely associated with her,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: with Elizabeth Parsons specifically. Yeah. Right, And one of the
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: things that Parsons really wanted more to help him do
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: was to be a subject matter expert and established first
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: that there have been reports of Fanny's sister Elizabeth appearing
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: in ghostly form as Fanny was laying in her death bed.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: And then they said, okay, well, the spirit that's haunting
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: the Parsons house now, and particularly Elizabeth Parsons, must be
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: the spirit of Fanny herself and scratching Fanny. This didn't
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: sound too out of the ordinary, impossible back then in England,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: because there was a widespread belief in ghost You know,
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: Shakespeare has been around their ghost of plenty, and the
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: literature and the folklore of the time certainly think folks
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: who are a lot more willing to accept the stuff
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: without any proof, imaginations running wild like they do. And
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: also just the kind of zealous religious nature of the time,
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: and the fact that a member of the clergy would
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: take this issue that seriously speaks to the mindset I
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: think the public. Right Yet, and here's the other part.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: They did see themselves as rational investigators because you see,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: they devised a method of attempting to communicate with the ghost,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: transforming back from scratchings two knox right, and they said,
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: maybe we can speak with this ghost through a very
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: simple system, and we we can make sure it can
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: hear us and respond to us with these sounds it's making.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: And we'll set up a system and will explain it
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: allowed to the ghost or the entity, so that the
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: ghosts then knows the rules of interaction, will keep it simple,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: So no Morse code, nothing like that. Morse code wasn't
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: around by that time. What's the system, Ben, Well, if
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: there's a question where the answer is yes, you have
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: one knock, there's an answer with the question is no,
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: you have two knocks. But here's my question, like, what's
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: the space between two knocks and right? And does it
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: all get all gummed up when you ask things that
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: aren't yes or no questions? You know what I mean?
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: That was a clap. I think for the rest of
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: the podcast, Ben, I would like to communicate back with
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: you only with Knox, only with yes or no responses.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: Is that okay? So what was the line of questioning? Ben?
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: That the that the the extor system, I call him that.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: What how did you start grilling the ghost? It's interesting
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: because we have the we have the questions, and we're
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: fairly certain that we have the actual exact questions because
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: we found them in a cup full of different sources.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: I found them in a book called The Cocklane Ghosts
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: by a guy named Paul Chambers, and I think they've
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: been printed out in another couple of places. But we're
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: we're fairly certain these are the actual questions. Let's see,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: do you want to be the priest or do you
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: want to be the ghost? Um? Dealer's choice? Ben, Dealer's choice?
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: All right, I think you would be great for the
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: character of the priest. Ben. Thank you. First of all,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: I want to preface by saying that these are some
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: pretty leading questions for this ghost um, but but just
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: the same, we're going to present them here without comment. Casey,
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: can we get some tense music? Are you the wife
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: of Mr Kent? Did you die naturally? Was that two
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: or three knocks? Okay? Then bye? Poison. Imagine a pregnant
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: pause here did any person other than Mista Kent administer it?
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: And then at this point somebody in the audience shouts
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: has to asked the ghost if you shall be hanged?
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: And the question was asked and the ghost responded, leslie, yikes,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: I know, yeah, trial by ghost maybe maybe by ghosts.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: So so this is a to some people, to the
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: more religiously minded, this is a damning smoking gun for
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: Mr William Kent, because there's already that hubbub around town
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: about why would she have left him all of her
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: possessions when she had no falling out with her living family? Right,
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: So as as this posts quote unquote ghosts is answering
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: further questions, people decide that she had not died from smallpox,
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: but rather specifically from arsenic poisoning, and according to their theory,
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: the arsenic had been given to Fanny by Kent himself
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: two hours before she died, and now again allegedly her
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: spirit had returned for vengeance. And this experiment was repeated
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: several additional times. On January five, a guy, a reverend
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: by the name of Thomas Broughton, came to the house
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: and checked out the hauntings, and um, we start seeing
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: this popping up in the papers and them like kind
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: of because guy's being kind of tried in the court
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: of public opinion, because public opinion leans pretty heavily on
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: the word of ghosts. Apparently, right, the public ledgers started
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: publishing regular accounts of the Cockling ghost phenomenon, and more
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: and more people would read the paper and say, you
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: know that William Kent is a murderer. And Kent vowed
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: to clear his name. So he brought in two of
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: the doctors who had taken care of Fannie in her
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: last days, along with Reverend Broughton, and took them to
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: cock Lane and said, okay, let's do a seance. This
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: seance did not go the way that they thought it would.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: It started with a relative of the Parson family, a
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: lady named Mary Fraser, running around the room shouting Fanny, Fanny,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: why don't you come? Do come, pray Fanny come. Nothing happened.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: According to More, it's because they were too noisy. There's
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: a pretty incredible article that I found. Um that's from
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: the Derby Mercury, which was a paper of note, and
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: it's it's almost impossible to fully read because it really
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: is written and like almost Canterbury Tales type like which Yeah,
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: and it's a it's a large font to where the
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: lower case S is look like lower case f's. This
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: is the one from January twenty first, one that's right
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: priced at twopence and a halfpenny. It's a steel You
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: just don't know who's getting robbed. Yeah. The Derby Mercury
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: reported pretty extensively on this during the time that it
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: was happening. Are you gonna go for some interpretations here?
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: You know? I was thinking you might be able to.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: I was having a hard time. Um, let's see if
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: we can find a choice of graph Uh. It begins
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: with full some time past a great knocking and having
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: been heard in the night at the officiating parish clerks
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: of St Sepulchers and Cocklaye, near Smithfield, to the great
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: terror of the family, and all means used to discover
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: the meaning of it. Four gentlemen set up there on
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: Friday night, among whom was a clergyman who asked various questions.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: Questions is capitalized? Feel like we have to say it
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: that way? And the s F is really thrown me
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: for a loop? Can I can I give it a try,
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: give it a go. His asking if anyone had been
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: mad dad, nothing answered, But on his asking if anyone
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: had been poisoned, it's knocked six times. Various are the
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: conjectures in the neighborhood of this supposed specter, but the
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: cause as yet has not been discovered. My accent shifting.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: The report current in the neighborhood is that a woman
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: was some time ago poisoned and buried at St John's Clerkenwell.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: And he goes on in detail offering these question and
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: answers sessions across various days as proof. There there are
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: some parts of the narrative where you see investigators asking
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: the ghost to identify how many people were present in
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: the room, and even asking to the ghost to predict
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: the future as well. So one of the questions is
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: how long would it be before William Kent was executed?
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: And they said three years? Wow. And and the ability
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: to see into the future is another trait commonly associated
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: with ghosts or those who dwell beyond the veil. But
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: it's really kind of unconfirmable, isn't it to me? And
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: I could he could have said thirty years, he could
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: have said two weeks and the we shall also mentioned.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: This time William kent Is is married. He has his
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: third wife, not related to his previous two. And as
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: they were holding these seances, the Lord Mayor of London
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: becomes involved, and they also start moving Elizabeth the young
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: Elizabeth Elizabeth Parsons two different houses to conduct seances because
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: they say the ghost is somehow associated with her. Interesting
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: and also, there's just no way we can get through
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: cock Lane. The crowds are too pressing, so we have
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: to try somewhere else. When you do some like pop
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: up seances where in London town? So shall we get
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: to the twist? If you haven't already predicted it, here's
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: another twist. Yeah, let's just let's go for it. Uh.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: They keep having seances and more and more notable people come.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: One seance in February of seventeen sixty two, a Dr
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: Samuel Johnson is allowed to visit the seance and what what?
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: What do they find there? No? Well, and you may
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: recall earlier that there was some talk of the ghost
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: being kind of emanating or being associated with Elizabeth Parsons. Well, yeah,
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: it turns out she she'd been hiding some woodblocks up
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: her skirt and banging them together making those knocks. Yeah,
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: she had hidden the wood in her clothes, and following
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: a trial like she was busted. Busted, they found the
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: little pieces of wood and it explained all the past
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: imperfections of sale. Is where they said, oh, we have
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: to do it with the light slow, or we can't.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: The knocking stops if you look under the table where
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: the kid's legs are. So Elizabeth Parsons comes clean. She
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: says she's doing this because her dad made her. That's right,
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: the dad, Uh, the drunk who had apparently drunk his
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: one guinea a month um interest payments away after he
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: tried to extort Kent' See, I don't think Kent comes
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: off as a bully in this story. I think Parsons
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: comes off as as as more of the bully here. Um,
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: Ken's just trying to apply his trade. Man, He's not
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: forcing anybody to take the loan, He's just offering him.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: You know, I don't know. Maybe that makes me sound
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: like a bad guy, but that's how I feel. So, Yeah,
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: it was all in revenge of like him bringing legal
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: action against this guy. And you know, if if you
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: could accuse Kent of being anything. It was cheap because
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: a guinea isn't a lot, I don't believe. And we
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: talked about these being usurists rates because you know, it
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: almost sounds like I think it was a twelve guinea
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: loan and he was supposed to pay back that one
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: guinea a month and didn't get to go didn't go
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: to court until it was down to three guinea a
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: month or three guinea total. Yes, And I think that
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: Kent took him to court even though it wasn't even
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: that much money. It was more for the principle of
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: the thing, as far as he was concerned. So I
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: think in what I'm getting at is that clearly the
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: villain here is not Kent, despite you know, maybe maybe
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: it's not cool that he married his uh or semi
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: married his dead wife's sister, but I don't know. She
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: was there for him. She helped him raise the child,
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: and then they shared a tragedy together, you know, when
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: this this this child died, it seems fine to me.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: So yeah, it's very difficult. I would say unfair to
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: ascribe those personal motives if we don't really know this story.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: So I would I would say from their behavior it
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: seems like as a couple they were on the up
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: and up, despite the fact that society didn't improve of them. Ultimately,
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: society does side with Mr Kent at least because Parsons
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: goes to trial and he is sentenced to two years
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: in jail. Yeah, and he even has a co conspirator,
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: which I believe was his his maid, Mary Fraser. May
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: Mary Fraser uh not to be confused with friends. And
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of a lot of characters and names
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: in this story. It was it's it's a little bit
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: of a tricky woman. This is this is good. She
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: gets six months hard labor, which is no good. What
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: happened to the daughter though she was because she was
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: a miner, she didn't get anything. You don't hear about
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: anything happening to her. But it seems like she was
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: the one perpetrating the russ Maybe it was just because
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: he was contributing to her delinquency. But she was like
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: twenty years old. I believe she was of age. She
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: she had grown by that time, but it was probably
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: still thought to be a hapless pawn's traying the wishes
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: of her parents. And additionally, Parsons, who said he was
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: innocent by the way the whole time, and never confessed
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: was pilloried. A pillory for anyone who you kind of
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: recall the term, but you don't know exactly what it is.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: A pillory is when people are put in those weird
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: stocks that hold them at their neck and their wrists.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: It's a form of public humiliation. Does not sound like fun. Yeah,
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: they do it at the Renaissance fair though here in Atlanta. Yes,
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: But in contrast to the way the crowds would treat
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: other criminals in the pillory, people didn't throw rotten fruit
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: and meat at him. They actually took the opportunity to
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: walk around and collect money for him for his cause.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: Interesting because no matter what he had done, he still
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: hadn't married the sister of his dead wife. Wow man,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: full circle. So it really is more of a puritanical
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: judgment at the end of the day, a little, a
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: little bit more. And there's much more to the story
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: regarding the cultural context of the time, the religious controversy
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: between Methodists and Orthodox Anglicans, but that may be a
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: tale for another day. We hope you enjoy the story
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: of this early spiritual investigation skepticism versus spirituality versus scandal,
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: but this is far from the only ghost story that
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: will tell eventually, right, Yeah, you said we're gonna we're
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: gonna really lean into some ghost stories for the month
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: of October. Maybe I said I would. I would love to.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: But we're we are nothing if not a democracy, right,
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: So that's right to us. And let us know if
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: there are any spooky stories from history that you think
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: your fellow Ridiculous Historians would like to hear. And also
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: you know right to us if you're like, no, don't
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: tell any spooky stories. Yeah, you can write to us
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: at ridiculous at how stuff works dot com. You can
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: hit us up on Facebook or Instagram or were Ridiculous
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: History um. Please also join our Facebook group where we
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: have lots of fun discussions and that's a good place
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: to post any suggestions for us as well, because we
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: do kind of hang out in there, and that's called
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous Historians on Facebook. UM. Big thanks to super producer
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: Casey Pegram and Alex Williams, who composed our theme, as
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: well as Christopher hasciotis our research associate and erstwhile cameo
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: expert on the show. We need to have him back
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: on soon as well. As Eve's Jeff coach uh and
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: big thanks to you knowl and big thanks to you listeners,
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: and please stick around for our next episode where we
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: talk about what happened to the mad hatter who killed
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: the man who killed Abraham Lincoln. It's a doozy, folks.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: That's all for today. I guess we could end on
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: a knock knock joke. Sure,