A Burglar Caught by a Skeleton & Other Singular Tales from the Victorian Press (53 page)
Read A Burglar Caught by a Skeleton & Other Singular Tales from the Victorian Press Online
Authors: Jeremy Clay
Tags: #newspaper reports, #Victorian, #comedy, #horror, #Illustrated Police News
There was a happier ending to the story of Mrs Lewsey and the phantom London hotel (p.
62
). She had checked in with her four-year-old son, left him in a room to go shopping, then couldn’t find the address again. Nearly a week later, after an appeal in the press, the boy was discovered, being looked after by the owner of the hotel, which was several miles east of the streets she searched. Mrs Lewsey, who had been in ill-health after the death of a child three months earlier, was also robbed while she was staying in London.
The ghastly tale of the Liberals who roasted and ate a dog to celebrate a school board election in West Bromwich (p.
73
) turned stomachs across Britain. The original story was broken by the
Birmingham Gazette
. The rival
Daily Post
sent a reporter to the pub where the election feast had been staged, and heard a markedly different account. Three men had arrived at the inn with a dog, claimed the landlord. First they tried to sell it, but killed it when there were no takers. Before they buried the body, a man cut off one of the legs, the landlord said, and there was some ‘very disgusting larking with the limb’ before it was chucked into the fire. One of the three men was a Tory, said the
Post
, a paper edited by one of the founders of the National Liberal Foundation. The
Gazette
was staunchly Tory. Make of all that what you will.
With mouths agape in Shropshire in November 1883 at the supernatural antics of servant girl Emma Davies (p.
187
), the
Daily News
sent a reporter along to investigate. The teenager soon confessed it was all a trick, saying the other servants had put her up to it. ‘The little girl was hysterical at first but by-and-by she showed us how she made a bucket jump and a chair retreat at the double’, said the paper. ‘It was all effected by a slight jerk of the hand, and when once we knew there was nothing supernatural to be expected, it seemed very commonplace. The most remarkable part of this so-called mystery is the successful hoodwinking of the local public, and the more than nine days wonder which has been caused.’
Thirteen years on from the Regent’s Park ice disaster of 1867 (p.
235
), when 40 people drowned in water up to 12 feet deep, the calamity claimed one more victim. The father of a girl who had died took his own life after being ‘low-spirited for years’.
In 1886, the ice broke again, with 100 skaters plunged suddenly into the water. But after the first tragedy, the depth of the lake had been reduced to around four feet. All that was lost this time round was a number of hats.
The startling Dr William Price (p.
176
), the druid arrested on a Welsh hilltop as he tried to burn the body of a dead baby, was a true eccentric: a champagne-quaffing, anti-smoking vegetarian with an inclination for nude picnics, who once fled the country dressed as a woman after instigating a Chartist revolt. It was his own son’s body he tried to burn that day in 1884: little Iesu Grist (Jesus Christ, in Welsh), fathered by Price at the age of 83 with his twentysomething housekeeper. He successfully defended himself at Glamorganshire Assizes in Cardiff, dressed in a white robe with a fox head-dress, and was discharged. The case paved the way for the act that legalised cremation in Britain.
The tragedy at Sunderland’s Victoria Hall, which claimed the lives of 183 children, forced a change in the law that required all emergency exits to open outwards. Two inquiries were held, but no one was held responsible for bolting the door shut. The memorial to the victims in Mowbray Park was vandalised in 2009.
The crushing truth about Wanker Simmons, alas, is that she never existed; it was nothing more than a newspaper cock-up. The Mayoress of Henley was actually Mrs W. Anker Simmons.
INDEX
Note: Hyperlinked page numbers in this electronic version of the index correspond to the page numbers in the printed edition. Since your e-reader may only show a portion of the printed page, you may need to scroll to find the index topic.
Aberdeen
292
–3
The Aberdeen Journal
104
Ajmere
13
The Alnwick Mercury
87
Amesbury
77
Amsterdam
154
Altoona
22
Anderson
221
Ashby St Ledgers
68
Austin
265
–6
Bad Beyhausen
88
Barnsley
31
Baschurch
189
Bath
267
Baltimore
53
Bawtry
106
Beckenham
6
Bedminster
243
–5
Belfast
38
Benicia
285
Bennetsville
94
Berlin
225
Bermuda
155
Berrow’s Worcester Journal
31
,
210
Bethnal Green
79
Bidston
61
–2
Birkenhead
60
Blackburn Rovers
126
–8
The Blackburn Standard and Weekly Express
222
Blois
182
Blythe
49
Bomagny
40
Bootle
174
Boston, MA
98
Bow
167
Bradford
72
Brazcka
182
–3
Brentford
169
Brentwood
147
Brimington
92
Brixton Deverill
220
Brookwood
137
Buckholm
99
Buckingham Palace Gate
279
Budingen
246
Buire
80
Burr Oak
230
Bury St Edmunds
204
Cambridge
204
Cape de Gata
43
Carlisle
258
The Carlisle Journal
251
Castlebar
195
Châtre-Langlin
171
Chelsea
206
Chesterfield
92
Christchurch, NZ
261
Cilli
284
Cimarron
286
Cincinatti
164
The Citizen
, Gloucester
53
,
71
,
86
,
103
,
106
,
119
,
131
,
169
,
185
,
200
,
204
,
217
,
224
,
260
,
270
,
273
,
282
Cleckheaton
58
Coleford
216
Coney Island
3
Constantinople
208
Cork
269
The Cork Examiner
152
The Cornishman
148
The Cornwall Royal Gazette
198
Cossington
120
Crewe
107
Crystal Palace
6
Darwen
126
–8
Daventry
69
Dawley
19
Deepwells
231
Denver
8
Deptford
202
Derby
81
The Derby Daily Telegraph
118
The Derbyshire and Chesterfield Herald
238
The Devon and Exeter Daily Gazette
111
,
154
The Dundee Courier and Argus
8
,
19
,
46
,
49
,
70
,
148
,
198
,
207
,
253
,
258
,
279
,
287
Dublin
261
Dublin Bay
102
Dunedin, NZ
276
Dungannon
39
Dyserth
103
Eastbourne
85
Edgware Road
280
The Edinburgh Evening News
14
,
112
,
147
,
171
,
179
,
225
,
243
,
250
,
276
Elephant and Castle
144
Ely
107
The Era
79
Eransus
228
The Evening News
, Portsmouth
29
,
86
,
116
,
136
,
154
,
155
The Evening Post
, Dundee
100