Cock Lane Ghost
The scandalous affair of the Cock Lane poltergeist in 1760–2 aroused much interest, and was eventually proved to be a fake. At the centre of events were two men, William Parsons, a landlord, and his lodger William Kent. The latter was a widower, but he had with him as his mistress his late wife’s sister Fanny. Kent had lent money to Parsons, who was so unwilling to repay it that they quarrelled, and Kent sued Parsons. At about this time Kent went off on business, and in his absence Fanny became very alarmed at scratching noises in her bedroom, which she believed were made by her sister’s ghost, and were a warning that she herself would soon die too. In view of what happened later, it is significant that during Kent’s absence Fanny was sharing her room with Liz Parsons, the landlord’s eleven-year-old daughter. When Kent returned, he and Fanny changed their lodgings to Bartlett Court, where Fanny caught smallpox and died.
The manifestations then began in earnest in Cock Lane. Scratching and rapping were constantly heard in Liz’s room, and the ‘spirit’ announced, through the child, that she was Fanny’s ghost, and that William Kent had poisoned her. Crowds flocked to the house, for which Parsons charged them an entrance fee, and crammed themselves into a small, dark, and airless room where the ghost might, or might not, be willing to answer questions by rapping once for ‘yes’ and twice for ‘no’. The prevailing mood, according to contemporary reports, was somewhat frivolous, and all the taverns of the area were making a fortune by supplying food and drink to the visitors.
However, a local clergyman, seeing how serious was the accusation made against Kent, called upon various gentlemen ‘eminent for their rank and character’ to investigate; one of them was Dr Johnson. They visited the crypt where Fanny was buried, and found that, contrary to what Parsons had promised, the ghost did not communicate with them by rapping on the coffin lid. When Liz was caught with a wooden clapper hidden in her clothing, the fraud was exposed. Parsons was found guilty of conspiracy, pilloried, and imprisoned for two years.
There are many references to the affair in contemporary newspapers, and in the letters of sophisticated Londoners such as Horace Walpole and William Hogarth. An indignant pamphlet attributed to the writer Oliver Goldsmith gives a detailed account, protesting that a man of good character, such as Kent, should never have had his reputation destroyed by an accusation of murder made upon such flimsy evidence.
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SOURCE:
Haunted England : The Penguin Book of Ghosts – Written by Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson –
Copyright © Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson 2005, 2008