After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Hammersmith Ghost: How to Murder a Poltergeist

Episode Date: October 29, 2023

Can it be murder if you think you're killing a ghost? In 1804 the London suburb of Hammersmith was being terrorised by a ghost. One man set out to hunt down whoever, or whatever, this was. He almost swung from the end of a rope for his troubles.Join Anthony and Maddy for this ghostly Halloween episode.Written by Maddy Pelling.Edited by Tom Delargy. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Kate Lister, Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Mary Beard and more.Get 50% off your first 3 months with code AFTERDARK. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe.You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi there, it's Maddy. I'm just jumping in to let you know that this episode contains some sensitive content. So if that's not for you, check out our back catalogue of amazing episodes. And if you're sticking with us, enjoy. It's a cold January night in 1804, and we're walking along a lane in Hammersmith, on the edge of London. Peppered along the road are small houses, cottages, taverns. All are lit up with an orange glow, their inhabitants gathered round warm halves in attempts to stave off the seasonal chill. Outside it's quiet. The only sound is our footsteps in the half-frozen slurry. The wind has an icy edge to it and everywhere remnants of snowfall gather in doorways and

against walls, refusing to budge. We're nearing the parish church. Its squat, medieval form is enveloped in darkness, as is the graveyard that surrounds it. Only the stones of the nearest graves can be made out, the tops of their pale forms just visible as we pass by. is silent. Until a scream rents the air. And then we see it. A white, tall figure shrouded in a billowing sheet rears up over a woman so terrified she's fallen to the floor amongst the dead. It raises its arms, almost formless, above her. We call out. The being, whatever it is, turns its head with an uncanny speed to look directly at us. Then, as quickly as it appeared, it rushes away, seeming to vault through the churchyard and tear away into the night. Well, after that very evocative introduction, welcome to After Dark Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal, our special Halloween episode with me, Dr. Anthony Delaney. And me, Dr. Maddy Pelling.

Maddy, you have gotten right to the heart of the Halloween vibes in this episode, and I'm totally here for it. We find ourselves in Hammersmith, as you said at the outset of your narration, on the edge of London. But tell us a little bit more about what's happening in Britain generally at this time's happening in Britain generally at this time or in Europe generally at this time. So the context for this story, which by the way is part ghost story, part true crime, part legal drama. So 1804, this is the year that William Wordsworth writes, I wandered lonely as a cloud, which incidentally, and this isn't really relevant to the topic, but this is a poem that he did steal from his sister Dorothy's journal.

Also, incidentally, I hate that poem. Again, nothing got to do with this, but sorry, Dorothy. I didn't realise it was yours. This is now an anti-William Wordsworth podcast. So sorry, William. So this year, Napoleon has been crowned emperor in France. We are one year away from British victory at the Battle of Trafalgar. And we're three years away from the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire. So that's the world that this is all taking place in. Hammersmith itself is on the western edge of London. It's not exactly a village, but it's smaller than it is now, I think it's fair to say. It fronts onto the River Thames, and it's a major route in and out of the city by road or by river. So there's lots of people passing through it, lots of tradespeople, lots of merchants, and they're the kinds of people who live in this area. And it's been a settlement since at least the medieval period. So it has

this kind of interesting, sort of strange spread of different buildings from different periods. And it's all sort of connected by this series of, I guess, really innumerable sort of lanes and byways that skirt around all the different streets and buildings. And this will become really relevant to the story, the fact that it's this kind of warren of dark alleyways and streets is really crucial. It's so evocative to think about Hammersmith as a place through which people pass through, and this coming and going point, but not necessarily one that a lot of people are staying in, although of course people are definitely dwelling there. But in terms of passing through, we have in 1804 apparently,

a ghost that has been plaguing this particular part of London. Yes. So the Hammersmith ghost has been plaguing the people of this place for a number of weeks. plaguing the people of this place for a number of weeks. We've got to think about the fact this is taking place in December and January, largely, of 1804 into 1805. It's dark. It's the winter season. This is a season where people are not only afraid of the dark, but afraid of death. There's a sort of a really deep-seated ancient fear of the dark and that is absolutely coming to play here. There are many sightings of this ghost and exactly what it is and how it's appearing to people and how it's interacting with them I think is really fascinating. So we have some accounts from the Newgate Calendar which is a publication that's published around the

trials and arrests and executions of Newgate prison. And the reason for this story's inclusion here will become clear in a short while. So one of these accounts, and I'll read it to you, it says, one poor woman in particular, when crossing near the churchyard at Hammersmith about 10 o'clock at night, beheld something she described rise from the tombstones. The figure was very tall and very white. She attempted to run, but the ghost soon overtook her and pressed her in his arms when she fainted, in which situation she remained for some hours till discovered by some neighbours who kindly led her home, took her to bed, from which, alas, she never arose. She became a ghost herself. I mean, that's interesting, isn't it? Because often with

these kind of newspaper accounts, or you know, you're seeing the new gay calendar here, it's usually quite factual. It's usually quite this happened, then this happened, then this happened. And I don't know, people probably may not have spent that much time reading 18th and early 19th century newspapers. They're laid out in columns. And sometimes you don't know you've gone into the next article sometimes, because they don't lay them out in the same way that we do now. And this would stand out to me if I was reading a newspaper from 1804 in its narrative quality, actually. To me, it doesn't even feel like they're trying to convince us that this was really an important piece of criminal or factual information.

To me, it feels like a scene setting. It feels like something they're trying to make us feel something. I mean, it definitely has a sort of Gothic quality to it, right? And we're at sort of the height of romanticism and an interest in the gothic in this period. But this is a real entity of sorts that is causing real problems. You know, it's described as having attacked this woman, it presses her in its arms. You know, are we actually reading, we're reading an assault here. Is it some kind of sexual assault? She's unconscious. She's discovered by the neighbors. She dies a few a few days later these are tangible pieces of evidence this is a tangible event who or what has caused this is a little bit unclear and this case starts to really divide opinions so some people think this is a supernatural phenomena and other people think that this is a local person assaulting people to scare them we're not really sure of the motive but this kind of threat starts to spread across Hammersmith and people start to get genuinely terrified that they are going to be attacked on the way home and don't

forget this is a busy place where okay maybe not that many people out at night in the cold but people are passing through this it's a major route you have to go through Hammersmith to get to where you want to go. The threat of being attacked as you do so is pretty serious. So it attracts a certain kind of vigilante. And one of the men who decides to try and catch this person is William Girdler, who's a night watchman. So he already has a role in the community, sort of of policing the streets and he stays out one night and he actually sees what he thinks is the ghostly figure and he gives chase and it actually outruns him now i think this bit is really crucial in telling us whether this is a real ghost or not he describes that the figure runs away from him down the lane and in order to escape quicker, it pulls off the shroud

covering it and legs it. And he does find the shroud but fails to catch the figure. So I think that maybe tells us that this is most likely a human being doing this. And the story starts to attract the attention not only of the press, but also of satirical artists at the time and for listeners i've given anthony a satirical print from this period the title is the hammersmith ghost can you just describe to us the scene and how it's kind of it's poking fun at this story i think yeah so what we have is a scene that takes place at nighttime. We can see a crescent moon up in the top left-hand corner, peeping out from behind some very dark gray clouds. You can also see kind of middle of the picture, what looks like a clock tower from a church,

probably just giving us some of the setting that's going on. Then on the right-hand side of the print, we have what looks like an old gentleman with a long white beard in a shroud in what we would maybe describe as a bed sheet, that stereotypical ghost image. And he is chasing a group of what? One, two, three, four people away, some of them on horseback. Well, one of them on horseback. There's a woman who's fallen over. She looks like she's potentially been at a tavern. There is a man, incidentally, in a great coat who's also running away from this i think he's the watchman because he's holding a lantern in one hand and a clacker in the other so he's in his great coat and there are hats flying everywhere there's a bat by the looks of it up near the flying by the moon as well there are dogs barking the lower left hand side of the picture there is a dog barking one of the things that i find interesting about the oh

there's a cat as well actually i'm just noticing that now there's a cat on top of the roof of maybe a watch house for a graveyard it's hard to see because it's just at the very edge of the image but there's a cat with its back arch so we're looking at bats cats ghosts we're getting a lot of early 19th century tropes here. One of the things which I find most fascinating about that shroud element or that bedsheet element as we kind of see it is in the late 18th century and early 19th century, there's this talk about how do we depict ghosts in imagery? How can we make them translucent? Sometimes it wasn't clear who was supposed to be dead in images and who was supposed to be dead. So actually they took and adapted this idea of the dead body being enshrined in shrouds. And this is developed into the kind of bed sheet image we have of ghosts now.

And we see that here at work in this image. So it's, it is satirical, obviously, as you said, Maddy, it's obviously poking fun at this whole scenario. Also, if you look at the bottom of the ghost's shroud there are two it looks like pegs basically i think he's on tiptoes i think he's oh maybe stilts yeah it's someone artificially making themselves taller yeah it looks like he's on stilts or yes he's artificially made himself more tall and more kind of imposing so it is saying this is this is a hoax basically absolutely so on the one hand

you've got people poking fun at this story but on the other you have the residents of hammersmith still being attacked this is you know something real is happening here and so the group of vigilantes grow william girdler the night watchman is joined by francis smith who is a 29 year old excise man and he's determined i. I think he, you know, he's 29 years old. I think he wants a bit of the glory of catching whoever's been doing this. And so the pair decide to join forces and patrol the streets in the hope of catching the Hammersmith ghost. What could possibly go wrong? So this is early 19th century ghostbusting at its very finest. Maddy, tell us what happens next.

On the 3rd of January 1805, William Girdler and Francis Smith set out into the dark, determined to catch the culprit, whoever or whatever it was. Around 10.30, they checked their weapons, both were armed with shotguns, and parted ways at the corner of Black Lion Lane, planning to meet up later. Half an hour passes, and Francis Smith has not seen a single soul pass by. It's particularly dark, and the murk seems to close in around him. He begins to feel uneasy. As the clock strikes eleven, he catches sight of something in the road up ahead. A pale figure, dressed in white, is making its way towards him. Fear shoots through Smith's body like lightning. He gathers himself, raises his weapon, and shouts,

Damn you! Who are you and what are you? The figure does not reply, but keeps on coming. Damn you, I'll shoot, he cries, steadying himself where he stands. Nothing. A pause. And Smith fires. The shot rings out in the night. The figure collapses. There, on the frozen ground before him, is a man.

Nothing more, nothing less. A man. His dusty, white clothes twisted where he has fallen, and his jaw shattered. He is dead. Catherine of Aragon Anne Boleyn Jane Seymour Anne of Cleves Catherine Howard Catherine Parr. Six wives, six lives. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and this month on Not Just the Tudors, I'm joined

by a host of experts to tell the stories of the six queens of Henry VIII, who shaped and changed England forever. Subscribe to and follow Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. so this is how you kill a ghost then this this is also slightly confusing right because there's so much going on it happens under the cover of darkness and as we're about to see even the people involved don't really understand what's just happened. So it is that this nighttime setting has made this a very confusing situation. So who has been shot, do we think, Maddy? So the dead man is one Thomas Millwood.

He's a young man. He's a bricklayer and he's wearing the white linen trousers and pale apron of his trade this is a typical outfit for a builder he's covered in dust and he's making his way home he's been to visit his parents and his sister and he's heading home i think to his wife he's not left the house that long ago in fact the house is so close to where he's killed that his sister is still at the door when she hears the gunshot and she actually is one of the first people on the scene. She rushes out to see what the commotion is about. Think about that.

Like that, we talk about frightening things here. And we often talk about this kind of haunting. I often kind of say, like, come back to the reality, because sometimes in the reality is the most frightening aspect of all. And the fact that his sister was close enough to hear a gunshot go off, she would have known he was in the vicinity. That's life-changing types of fear you know that that that just strikes absolute fear in me even let alone the thoughts of it let alone if if we'd been related to the person so it really is frightening

it is frightening and i think we have to think about this in the context that there's already a heightened sense of fear in hammersmith people People are panicking. Vigilantes have taken to the street. And suddenly this has gone from being a bit of a joke, a ghost story. Okay, some people have been attacked, but everyone's kind of having a bit of fun with this rumour. It's being reported in the press. No one's quite taking it seriously. Suddenly, we have a real tangible dead body in the street so the worst has happened in some ways it's sort of self-determination you know they set out these vigilantes with a gun and they've killed someone yeah so we know what happens next even though it's incredibly chaotic we know because of the court records because of course you know this is now a crime yeah there will be an investigation into this so the first sign other than john millwood the victim's sister who's called anne other than her rushing out of the house the next sort of sign that something has gone wrong is when a wine merchant called john lock is walking towards black lion lane and he comes into contact with

francis smith the excise man who's fired the shot. And Francis is completely hysterical. He's screaming that he shot someone. And Locke actually manages to sort of calm him down and he flags two other watchmen who are passing nearby and potentially have heard the fuss that's going on. And together, this group go back to the scene. And we have John Locke's testimony of what the scene looks like, because he's called as a witness in court. And so I thought maybe we could read some of this out. I'm going to read the voice of the lawyer in the trial who is asking the questions. And maybe, Anthony, you can give us some of John Locke's responses. And I think what this does, it's so

important to hear John Locke's voice, because not only does it give you the voice of a very early 19th century merchant who, you know, otherwise we wouldn't really hear from, but it really puts us into the scene. And it's the voice of someone who was there and really did witness this. So the court asks John to kind of describe the scene when he arrives, what the body looks like. So he says, what appearance had the body of the deceased? No appearance of life. Did you observe the head or any part of the body? I observed the head. It appeared to be shot on the lower part of the jaw on the left side. What did the prisoner, that's Francis Smith, the excised man who was fired the shot, what did the prisoner say? He seemed very much agitated. I told him what

I thought of the consequences of firing. He said he had fired and did not know it was that person. It was an extreme dark night. The prisoner appeared very much agitated and I advised him to go to his lodgings. Did he say anything had passed between him and the deceased? He said he had spoke to him twice and received no answer. Yes, wonderfully so. So much so that he could hardly speak. And do you recollect whether, in the disclosure, he told you of the conduct of the deceased and what he did? He said he had advanced to him and irritated his fears or something of that sort. So we have here, we've got a smoking

gun, we've got a panicked killer and we've got a dead body, but we're really not any the wiser of what's happened. So John Locke gives us this impression of the scene where Francis Smith is claiming that John Millwood, the victim, has come at him, that he's called in warning several times before firing. We don't know that's the case there are no witnesses who actually saw the killing take place and this will become a crucial question in the trial that unfolds yeah it's interesting isn't it because if francis smith is telling the truth then potentially i mean in one sense th Thomas Millwood actually might fit the description of what some of these people have been describing. So somebody who is tall and dressed in white

and that dustiness of his work clothing, and he's passing in and out around that area, visiting family around that time of night. So it's not like there's nothing here. But at the same time, if he did call out to him and if he didn't answer, then that's also suspicious, particularly knowing what's going on in that area at that time. But maybe Francis is just making this up. Francis Smith is just making this up and he hasn't actually called anything out and he just shot in fear just as a reflex action. So it's, yeah, there's kind of, you can really sense the confusion, even the contemporary confusion, it really comes across in some of this testimony. Absolutely. And it will now be up to the British courts, the British legal system

at the Old Bailey to kind of unpick this mess. Francis Smith is taken into custody by the Watchmen and must now await a trial for murder at the Old Bailey. If he is found guilty, the sentence will be death. What happens next will become a landmark trial in which the foundations and rationality of the British legal system will be tested. Court rise. On the 11th of January, 1805, Smith is hauled before a judge and jury who will need to decide his fate. Eight days before, the accused was frightened for his life by a dreadful

spirit in the darkness of the Hammersmith night. Now he faces the threat of death once more, this time at the hands of the state. He makes his plea to the judge, my lord I declare my innocence and that I had no intention to take away the life of the unfortunate deceased or any other man whatever. The whole case rests on this one point, can it be murder if you believed you were killing a ghost? And it raises the question as well of, did he set out to shoot a ghost or a human being? Does he really believe in the supernatural? Or did he always think, I'm going to take the life of someone pretending to be the ghost? There are just so many questions here and so many so many layers and what

i think so fascinating about the trial is that the witnesses are called from all areas of hammersmith life so we have the brewer's servant we have the brewer himself we have the young bereaved sister of thomas millwood it's a really diverse community of different sort of social ranks and professions and what unites them is this fear that they have been living under the threat of this ghost. And I think it's so fascinating. This is 1804 going into 1805, the beginning of the 19th century. When we think about belief in ghosts in witchcraft, we think about that as a much earlier phenomenon, as something that, you know, shapes the social history of the early modern period of the 16th and 17th century,

thinking about the witch trials. This is coming into the modern age. We're only a couple of decades away from Queen Victoria coming to the throne. And yet we're debating in a court of law the existence of a ghost, essentially. What's noteworthy about Smith's defence is that he doesn't actually say that Thomas Millwood was the Hammersmith ghost or pertained to be the Hammersmith ghost. That's something he could have said. So actually, I think that exonerates Millwood from any involvement in this as somebody who was carrying out these attacks. It's great to have these voices from the community. It really kind of fills in the archive of probably voices that

would have been lost otherwise, which is always the kind of dichotomy of these types of cases. The way these court documents are populated with these members of the community is really interesting, I think, Maddy. And one of the people who pops up is Mrs. Fulbrook, and Mrs. Fulbrook is Thomas Millwood's mother-in-law. And what I find particularly noteworthy about what she says is she's aware of the rumours of the ghost, and that means everybody in the community was aware of the rumours of the ghost. But she also points to the fact that Millwood had been mistaken for the ghost a few days earlier, which is interesting. Do you want to tell us about that? Yes. So she says in court and i quote on saturday

evening he that's thomas and i were at home for he lived with me he said he had frightened two ladies and a gentleman who were coming along the terrace in the carriage and that the man in the carriage had said there goes the ghost and thomas said he was no more the ghost than the other man was and asking him using a bad word did he want to punch in the head I begged him to change his dress I don't know that that's interesting because now there was me saying Millwood's off the hook and I you know I think he is but he has already been identified by other people that's his own mother-in-law saying that I mean you could forgive Francis Smith for thinking the same thing then absolutely Absolutely. And, you know, this ambiguity really shapes the case. So the jury retires for only three quarters of an hour.

That's all. And when they come back, they return a verdict not of murder, but of manslaughter. Now, this isn't really allowed in an early 19th century court. So the judge, who is Lord Chief Baron MacDonald. A few titles there. Lord baron that's grand just you need a few yeah yeah sure what's one title when you can have all of those exactly he refuses to accept the verdict and he says that the jury uh and i quote were not at liberty to find it so he says they really need to decide if the prisoner is guilty of the murder or not guilty,

and that those are the only options. And again, this is really sort of exposing the limitations of the British legal system. And they do, in the end, find Smith guilty, and he is sentenced to death. Now, that's not the end of the story. He's scheduled to be hanged the next day, and he's going to be dissected, which of course we know is typical of criminals who are tried and found guilty of murder in this period. And he's so sort of swept up in the drama of the court and so, you know, feeling the weight of what he's done and what awaits him that he actually faints in the dock and he has to be carried out by the guards. And know we can't blame him this is pretty shocking stuff but outside of the court there is actually widespread support for smith so given the fact that everyone's been so scared and that he sort of stepped up you know

he seems a bit of a hero that he became this vigilante and took to the streets and there's actually a petition that's presented to the king to pardon him. And Smith is actually pardoned at the last minute. And instead, his sentence is commuted to one year's imprisonment with hard labour, which, you know, still not very pleasant, but far better than being hanged and dissected. And actually, in the months following that, he receives a full pardon and is let off. So he does get away with the murder, really, whether he meant to do it or not. But the case itself, when it goes to court, it has this really long legacy.

And I think it's easy to sort of laugh about, you know, the fact that this is ultimately the story of someone who goes out thinking they're going to be able to kill a ghost and they do or don't. Interestingly, the attacks do stop in Hammersmith, which I think is fascinating in the weeks after Thomas Millwood has been killed. Although, you know, we could argue that whoever is really doing it is so scared they're going to meet the same fate, especially once Francis Smith is sort of released back into the community. You know, there's nothing to stop him

maybe doing it again. But the impact of the case and the way that it exposes these limitations, these legal limitations, is felt for essentially the next 200 years. So on the 200th anniversary of the killing of Thomas Millward in 2004, 50 lawyers actually met up outside the Black Lion pub to kind of mark this moment that triggers this debate, I guess, in British history. And I actually have a quote here from a barrister called Alan Murdy, who said this in 2004, and he was quoted in national newspapers at the time covering this story. And he also happens to be, or was then, the chairman of a paranormal investigation club called the Ghost Club. And he says of this case,

the trial and conviction of Francis Smith for murdering a man he mistook for a ghost illustrates a legal problem not settled for 180 years, and one which still generates argument. And I think that's so crucial to understanding the story, not only in its original historical context, but how we can maybe look back at it today. Can I ask you a question? I know I always push you with these things and you always very cleverly avoid them. Do you think he thought he was shooting a ghost? Do you think he thought there was even a ghost at all? I think Francis Smith was caught up in the hysterical fear that was gripping Hammersmith.

was caught up in the hysterical fear that was gripping Hammersmith. I think he had a sense of his own heroicism, which was possibly misguided, that he wanted to prove himself as this local hero. And I think in the moment, he fired when he maybe didn't. And I think he regretted it instantly. I don't think he meant to kill anyone. What about you, Anthony? Yeah, do you agree? I don't think he thought there was a ghost for any period of time. Controversial. Yeah, no, it's not.

No, I'm joking. Yeah, I don't think he ever thought there was a ghost because why would he have gone out with a pistol? There would have been another way to do that, I think. So the pistol is very much a living target as far as I'm concerned. I don't necessarily think he had planned to shoot though. I think he probably had thought there would be another way to come about this. But the pistol for me is telling in what he

thought he was going to encounter. And also the time period in terms of belief in ghosts. This is not a time that is overly subsumed in this idea of ghostly. And if they are, it's very much oral tradition, you know, sharing stories. Not that that doesn't unsettle people. Where I do agree with you is that there's very clearly this sense of panic and disorder and fear happening in Hammersmith. Because again, remember, it's not as big as it is today. It wouldn't be as well connected to London. So there's this kind of outpost of London where this specific thing is being targeted. So yeah, I don't think they ever thought it was a ghost, but I agree that potentially he didn't really know what he was doing when he pulled the trigger.

Mm-hmm. Well, listeners, you can make up your own minds and maybe let us know. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of After Dark, Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal. You can follow us wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want to leave us a review, that is always appreciated. Until next time, sleep tight. Well, thank you for listening to this episode of After Dark. Please follow this show wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. Don't forget, you can listen to all these podcasts ad-free and watch hundreds of documentaries

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