A Burglar Caught by a Skeleton & Other Singular Tales from the Victorian Press (33 page)

The Ancient Druids.

Attempt to Burn a Child’s Body

The Press Association’s Pontypridd correspondent telegraphs that an extraordinary sensation has been caused in Pontypridd and district by the arrest of Dr Price, a surgeon of some considerable celebrity in Glamorganshire and other Welsh counties.

It is stated that an infant child of his housekeeper died in Dr Price’s house, and he was seen last night to carry the child’s body towards an adjacent hill top, with the apparent intention of burning it according to the rites of the Ancient Druids, in which he is a believer, and for the purpose he had obtained an empty tar barrel.

He was followed, however, by a crowd, who, but for the intervention of the police, would have severely dealt with the doctor. An investigation is now being held into the circumstances attending the child’s death. Dr Price was brought before the Pontypridd magistrates this morning, and admitted to bail until Wednesday next.

The Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette
, January 15, 1884

Superstition in England

In the recent case at Hedingham – that Mecca of Eastern Counties Toryism – the people have advanced a step even beyond pig-roasting.

There has been a deaf and dumb man there for years, believed, we suppose on some sort of evidence, to be a Frenchman. He does not seem to have been peculiarly obnoxious, for, in spite of his infirmity, he was just before his death dancing with the villagers in the tap-room of the local public house.

Emma Smith, however, grade unknown, but well to do in the world, fell ill, had pains which she could not account for, felt unearthly aches, and, in short, had a touch of the nervous fever, not uncommon in half-drained villages. She attributed it to ‘Dummy,’ the only name borne by her unfortunate victim.

Accordingly she sought him in the tap-room, and offered him three sovereigns to unbewitch her. The poor wretch, understanding nothing of the matter declined the money, and then two men, Samuel Stammers, builder, and George Gibson, bricklayer, tried to compel him to kiss her, judging, apparently, with a quaint confusion between Christianity and Paganism, that the ‘kiss of peace’ would undo the evil wrought by witchcraft.

The poor dumb wretch still did not understand, whereupon he was seized by Mrs Smith, dragged to the brook, and ducked repeatedly. Emerging, he was again offered the £3, but, ‘dazed’ with the assault and the cold water, he only sat himself down on a heap of stones.

The woman seems to have interpreted this into persistent wizard malignity, beat him over the head with a stick, and then plunged him in the stream again, beating his head on the stones.

Her assistant in the good work, Stammers, seems by this time to have been alarmed, and the wretched dumb man, who was even then ill of a lung disease, was allowed to crawl home.

Utterly bewildered and miserable, he crept on to his bed, dressed as he was in his dripping clothes, and next day was found dying of acute inflammation of the lungs. He was conveyed to the Union Infirmary, and so died, ignorant, of course, to the last of the possibility of having given offence. A more horrible case of cruelty never was recorded.

The coroner’s jury, nevertheless, could not come to a decision. They argued for two hours – about Stammers’ guilt only, says the local reporter, but that must be an error – and were at length discharged without a verdict, and the case referred to the Hedingham bench of magistrates.

They will probably do justice, for the belief in black magic, as we have said, now annoys the upper class; but all the incidents, the belief in the supernatural power of an old dumb Frenchman over his acquaintance, the lavish offering to propitiate his malice, the trust in a compulsory kiss, the savage and protracted cruelty displayed to a wizard to whom the assailant was still offering sacrifice, and the jury too puzzled to know if a death of the kind involved manslaughter, make up a picture which may, perhaps, lower for an hour the tone of our habitual paeans over English humanity and civilisation. What could Africans do worse to propitiate a fetish?

The Dundee Advertiser
, September 25, 1863

Singular Superstition

At Willenhall, yesterday, two young men, brothers, named Green, were charged with assaulting an elderly woman named Roberts. The elder brother admitted striking the woman on the nose, and said he did to draw her blood, she having threatened to bewitch him.

His mother died lately, and he believed the complainant had killed her by witchcraft. The magistrates characterised the assault as cowardly, and fined the prisoners 40s and costs, or two months.

The Edinburgh Evening News
, June 4, 1878

The Earthquake Prophecy

The prophesised earthquake, which was to have come off on Wednesday last, and have demolished St Paul’s Cathedral, and the neighbourhood for miles around, disappointed the credulous Irish in the regions of St Giles’s.

The
Standard
says that the scene witnessed in the neighbourhoods of St Giles’s and Seven Dials during the whole of the day was perhaps the most singular that has presented itself for many years.

Many of the Irish resident in those localities have left for the shores of the Emerald Isle, but by far the larger number, unblessed by the world’s goods, have been compelled to remain where they are, and to anticipate the fearful event which was to engulf them in the bowels of the earth.

The frantic cries, the incessant appeals to Heaven for deliverance, the invocations to the Virgin and saints for mediation, the heart-rending supplications for assistance, heard on every side during the day, sufficiently evidenced the power with which this popular delusion had seized the minds of those superstitious people.

Towards the close of the day a large number of them determined not to remain in London during the night, and with what few things they possessed took their departure for what they considered more favoured spots. Some violent contests arose between the believers and the sceptics – contests which in not a few cases were productive of serious results.

The poor Irish, however, are not the only persons who have been credulous in this matter: many persons, from whom better things might have been expected, were amongst the number who left London to avoid the threatened catastrophe.

To the Gravesend steam-boat companies the ‘earthquake’ proved a source of immense gain; and the same may be said with regard to the various railways. Long before the hour appointed for the starting of steam-boats from London Bridge Wharf, Hungerford Market, and other places, the shore was thronged by crowds of decently-attired people of both sexes, and, in many instances whole families were to be seen with an amount of eatables and drinkables which would have led one to suppose that they were going a six weeks’ voyage.

About eleven o’clock the Planet came alongside the London Bridge Wharf, and the rush to get on board of her was tremendous, and in a few minutes there was scarcely standing room on board. The trains on the various railways were, throughout the whole of Tuesday and Wednesday morning, unusually busy in conveying passengers without the prescribed limits of the metropolitan disaster.

To those who had not the means of taking trips to Gravesend or by railway, other places which were supposed to be exempted from the influence of the ‘rude commotion’ about to take place, were resorted to. From an early hour in the morning, the humbler classes from the east end of the metropolis, sought refuge in the fields beyond the purlieus of Stepney.

On the north, Hampstead and Highgate were favoured with a visit from large bodies of the respectable inhabitants of St Giles’s and Primrose Hill also was selected as a famous spot for viewing the demolition of the leviathan city.

The darkness of the day and the thickness of the atmosphere, however, prevented it being seen.

The Westmorland Gazette and Kendal Advertiser
, March 26, 1842

A Dangerous Witch

A lady residing near Blois, in France, has just fallen a victim to her avarice and belief in supernatural agencies combined, and has paid dearly enough for her folly to induce her, one would think, to renounce intercourse with wise women in future.

She possessed a considerable fortune but wanted to increase her riches, and for this purpose consulted a sorceress. The latter went to her residence, conferred with some invisible assistants, by whose advice the lady was told to place all her money in a certain drawer, not to open it for a given time, or the charm would be broken, and before retiring to rest to throw a marvellous white powder into the fire. If these conditions were carried out, the fortune, she was told, would be doubled.

They were carried out, but the result was a distinct deception for the credulous believer in the supernatural. Whilst she abstained from opening the drawer the sorceress emptied it at leisure, and when she threw the white powder into the fire a terrible explosion ensued, she was severely injured, and the house set fire to.

It is satisfactory to know that this dangerous witch has been taken into custody.

The Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette
, August 14, 1884