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