Loremen Podcast - Loremen S5Ep53 - Graveyard Jacks with Icy Sedgwick

Episode Date: October 10, 2024

Deputy Loreperson Icy Sedgwick (Fabulous Folklore with Icy) joins James and Alasdair, and she brings with her the stories of a Geordie graverobber and a Mackem resurrection man. It's Newcastle vs Sunderland, and the bones of the dead do not rest easy in this Tyne-Wear derby. Plus the Loreboys come up with several new business ideas. Anyone for glow-in-the-dark coffins? Come see the Loreboys LIVE in Manchester at GRUB on Sunday 20th October (2024) at 2pm: https://www.seetickets.com/event/loremen-live/grub/3168584 OR in Balham on Sunday 17th November on Who Knew It? with Matt Stewart: https://www.designmynight.com/london/pubs/balham/the-bedford/who-knew-it-with-matt-stewart-live?t=tickets This episode was edited by Joseph Burrows - Audio Editor. LoreBoys nether say die! Support the Loremen here (and get stuff): patreon.com/loremenpod ko-fi.com/loremen Check the sweet, sweet merch here... https://www.teepublic.com/stores/loremen-podcast?ref_id=24631 @loremenpod youtube.com/loremenpodcast www.instagram.com/loremenpod www.facebook.com/loremenpod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Lawmen, a podcast about local legends and obscure curiosities from days of yore. I'm Alistair Beckett-King. And I'm James Shakespeare. And James, would you like to have a little deputy law person? Oh, yes, I would, please. Well, that's great news, because in this episode from Fabulous Folklore, we are joined by Icy Sedgwick, novelist, podcaster and actual Geordie with the accent and everything.

Oh, her dark majesty herself. This is Icy Sedgwick with some graveyard jacks. James Shake Shaft. Yeah, Alistair Becket King. How are you there? How are you there in yourself? I'm good in myself. I thought you were going to say in your cell. How are you there? How are you there in yourself? I'm good in myself. I thought you were going to say in your cell. How are you in your cell there, James?

Is the bread, the water, is the, is the light that trickles in through the tiny barred window, keeping you in a good mood? Yeah, it's not bad. It's a monk cell, by the way, not a, not a prison cell. Not a prison cell. No, it's a cell that you chose to retire to. Exactly. Voluntarily.

Yeah. For the purposes of whatever it is monks do in those cells. And I think we all have a pretty good idea. Is doodling. Quite. I'm sorry. James, allow me to bring a little bit more light into that dank cell that you call your hermitage. Thank you.

It's a special guest who has patiently sat through all of that nonsense. Please welcome into your cell and to the podcast, Icy Sedgwick. Hello Icy. Hello, how are you going? I'm good thanks. How are you? I'm not so bad. I should have just started with me well hello there like I normally do on the podcast, but

I got too excited. Listeners I think will probably know Icy from A, the North East of England, B, the podcast Fabulous Folklore. Before we started, you said that your students call you Her Dark Majesty, is that correct? Yes, the good ones do, yes. Is that your preferred form of address? I will answer the most things at this point. Is it the first time we have to say Your Dark Majesty, but then on subsequent times we just

say like Dark Ma'am mom, like dark jam. I think James, whenever you say dark majesty, cause you said this several times off the recording, you want to say like dark manager S I think as if, as if I see his dark middle management. You're like your dark manager majesty. And that is really disrespectful. And to, to Icy and to managers and manageresses, to the middle management, to be honest. Dark assistant to the manager or manageress.

So Icy, you're like me, you're from the Northeast. You have more of a proper accent. Where, where, where are you from? I'm actually from Newcastle sort of, I went to Newcastle proper, like Tyneside. Yeah. Oh, the proper actually from Newcastle. There's a Newcastle? Yes, James. It's an incredible place. It's frightening how many people don't know there's a castle in Newcastle. Like,

where did we get the name from? Well, people from Newcastle don't know there's a castle. Wow. How new is it? Oh, I think it's about 1167. So it's been around a while. So I can see why some people might not have caught on yet. You never ask a castle its age, James.

Yes, how embarrassing. Fair enough. We'll let that one slide. I wonder, are there any towns that don't have the thing that the town is named for? I'm sure there's a bath in Bath. There's probably the rest of Newcastle's to be fair. Yeah, Newcastle under lime. We don't we don't count that really as a Newcastle, do we?

Under lime? What does that mean? Beneath fruit. How dare you? I mean, I'm coming back to Wetwang and of course Shitterton. Yes. Pratt's bottom is used to be in Kent. No place in County Durham is a place. I think that's in Durham. I just like the fact that up here we tend to name things after what they are.

So the village of Wall is right next to Hadrian's wall. It's almost like we don't want people to get confused. And Wall's End, the mystery that we will never penetrate. What happens there? What's the main deal about walls end? Alistair, have you just brought Icy here to interrogate her about? Yeah, don't you don't prompt me. I'll do it properly. So Icy, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. You are, we've used you as a source on this podcast before. We've, we have, I think it's outrageous that it's taken us this

long to get you on as a guest. I'm so sorry. Have you brought us a little piece of Northern folklore? I have, and because I'm going to forgive you for not having us on sooner, I've actually brought two stories. Oh, to make up for it. I kind of, kind draw attention to it in a way also passive aggressively to be like, come on, could have had me on twice, but it didn't happen, did it? So here's two stories. Yeah.

One of them on my submit is so short. There's almost hardly anything to it, but I thought I'd bring it anywhere just because I felt like if I'm going to represent Newcastle, I've got to represent Sunderland as well. That's yes, that's fair. But just a much smaller and less good story for Sunderland. Is that the idea? You can decide for yourself which one's more interesting. That's a nice tease.

You've done this before. You would never get that level of generosity from a person from Sunderland about Newcastle. That would never happen the other way around. If you're from Newcastle, you can be like, oh, Sunderland, yeah, it's a pretty nice place. You can say that, but it would never happen the other way around. If you're from Newcastle, you can be like, Oh, Sunderland. Yeah, it's a pretty nice place. You can say that, but it would never happen the other way around. I can't really talk because my dad's actually from Sunderland. So I'm like, you know, the product of both. Well, I'm from Durham and Sunderland used to be Durham. So I feel... What?

Well, all the places that are now Sunderland historically were County Durham. So they've just, they've nicked an awful lot of quality folklore from Durham. How? When normally a place gets bigger and encompasses a place, are you saying that it was bigger and then it got smaller? It's the Industrial Revolution. Like places that used to be not there over time became there. So is there sun in Sunderland though, going back to the Newcastle question?

There's never sun in the Northeast at all, James. I guess it means Southland, Sunderland? Oh, I did actually look it up when I did an episode on it. And I think it comes from like Sunderland and it's actually, I think it's like something to do with a sunder. Oh, or it could be sound, like a stretch of water. I can't remember, I think so. But you get loads of stuff with like Bishop Wearmouth

and Wearmouth as well. And it's quite difficult actually pointing to which one Sunderland is. Good North East knowledge. Could we have your first story then please, I see. I'm going to start off with the Newcastle one because I'm biased. And this is the tale of Jack the Bad Beedle. There's going to be Jeremy Beedle reference as I'm biased and open about that as well. And this is the tale of Jack the bad beadle. That's going to be Jeremy Beedle references. I know. And how dare you, how dare you suggest we would make a Jeremy Beedle.

I feel like if anything, we've been framed here, James. That's not what beadle's about. All right. Done. Finished. Yeah, I think that's it. Yeah. Yeah, you don't need much more of the stories than that other than just the really cool name. Hard to imagine a worse Beadle than Jeremy Beadle. So I'm very excited.

And one of the things that's cool about this one, I thought, is whenever you talk about folklore, a lot of the time you assume that the stories are going to happen like out in this rural area and it'll be all remote and what have you. But no, no, this one's like right from the city centre and it's All Saints Church, which is the one above the quayside if people are familiar with Newcastle. At the time it was one of four parish churches in Newcastle. They stopped burials there in 1853 because of a cholera epidemic, so beginnings of health and safety there. There was one of the people who worked there was this beadle called John Alderson, and he was found guilty of actually opening graves, but not for what you think he'd be opening them for. It's not

body snatching. It's just good old fashioned lead theft. So it steals the lead from the coffins of nine graves, I think it is. And when I was looking at the newspaper article it was amazing because he actually lifted the really heavy stones that you get over sort of these kind of graves and things and went in and he took the lead from the shells around the coffins and then any brass mountain and plains he just had them as well. And then he just left the actual coffin alone because he didn't really need that bit. I had to actually write this down because it was the way that the newspaper described it at the time. So the Newcastle Quran said that there was saddened to have to, and I quote, lay before our readers the disclosure of a horrible system of plunder connected with the final resting place of the dead, which for depravity and inhumanity

presents scarcely any parallel in the annals of crime." I mean, they really do over-egg the puddin' just a tad there. If only newspapers spoke like that now, they'd be much more entertaining. All he was doing was stripping the copper wires out of the coffins. He didn't touch the bodies. That's fine. Exactly. How much lead do you need? Well, he was claiming that it was just lying around. So he did that all, yeah, just found it.

So, yeah, in a technical sense, I suppose it was just lying around underground, buried in a grave. Well, the thing is, he was originally a bricklayer and his father was the previous beadle. And he was also the last person buried in the graveyard because he died in the cholera epidemic. And they just went, well, you can be the beadle now. I don't think that's necessarily how job succession works realistically, but that was what they did. They'd already had a bit of like lead went missing from the roof of the church. So people were like, that's quite unusual, but they couldn't prove who it was. And then eventually he was spotted because someone saw someone behaving strangely in a

church yard, which boggles the mind and then he went to a nearby Marine shop and then the police went in and asked the shop owner like who was that that you've just been selling things to. Who was that with that large coffin shaped piece of lead? Well I was wondering how big was this stuff or it would just be wandering around the streets with it but she goes in and she sort of says yes I bought lead from thele. And then he was like, she explains that he thought that he said he'd found it in a shed in the churchyard. Cause you know, that really famous thing that you do with your lead storage. That's my church ledge head.

I suppose a coffin is a sort of small underground one man shed, one person shed. Yeah. Yeah. In a way. Yeah. And I think part of it was obviously because Beadles would have once earned money from digging graves. Obviously if your graveyard is close to Burial's, you're obviously going to be looking to make up the deficit.

So don't let Rachel Reeves know this is what he did. One of the things was people could see him and there's like a street that run, ran along the side of the graveyard. It's not there now, called Silver Street. It in and of itself is quite interesting because at one point the wall of the churchyard actually collapsed into the the backyards of Silver Street just depositing dead bodies everywhere. That gives you an idea of how close these places were with each other. But people could see this lantern bobbing around in the graveyard.

So Alderson then let people think that it was a Phantom patrol in the graveyard so that nobody would come in to see what was happening when they saw this light bobbing around. Classic smugglers trick. And sometimes the ghost sounds a bit clanky, like he's carrying a lot of lead. That's just the chains. It does get slightly scoopy too as well. Eventually as I say, he's caught and him and his wife and his mother, and I think one of

the Bell ringer was his main accomplice. So him, his wife and his mother all got 18 months in prison and the Bell ringer got 12 months. And what was really weird is that was the longest sentence that you could actually be given. But being mob, as they're actually described in the paper, decided that was too lenient. And he more or less had to be like protected from being mobbed by this group of people. And then he became a quite detested figure in the area. And there was actually apparently, I'm not quite sure how you describe it because it's described as a song, but it doesn't exactly feel like top 40 material because apparently boys in the street used to sing if you want to rob the dead gant a

jack the bee the beetle he's the one who stole the lead pop goes the weasel and boys in the street that was like a boy band at the time i assume boys in the street yeah i mean eurovision quality stuff i think boys but with the z probably, I assume. Boys in Das Street, yeah. By the late 19th century, obviously people had sort of gotten over the shock, the depravity of this massive crime thing that had gone on. And parents would then tell their children that if they were naughty, Jack the Bad Beedle would come and steal them. Oh!

Presumably to sell them for scrap, I guess. He'll come and steal all your precious lead, kids. How would you like that? You wouldn't like it. Or get to bed. Come on. But because it's me and I had to include ghosts somewhere, people have still reported seeing a phantom light bobbing in the church yard. So people are wondering if Jack the Bad Beedle is still about his work. I will say the church yard is not a place that you'd want to dally in after night anyway. So I have a feeling there probably are lights bobbing around in the churchyard. Yes, you would just leave people alone to do whatever it is that they're doing in there.

But people do think it's Jack the Bad Beadle. So this camponologist assistant, this bell ringer, how long did the bell ringer get compared to the rest of them? He got 12 months. And the rest of them got 18, did you say? Yeah. That how involved could his mom have been? I feels like some of the accessories here can't surely have been that involved in the theft. Well, yeah, it's the fact that the bell ringer is actually described as he's accomplice, but then the other ones are just wife and mother. Obviously not the same person.

That would be a very different kind of story. No, maybe if the story was set in Sunderland, but it's not. It's set in Newcastle. Ouch, burn. Ow. Local rivalry burn. I'm not from either place. I have, I can say anything I want. Yes. That's the story of Jack the Bad Beedle. Oh wow. Jack. What he wanted in order to escape justice would have perhaps have been some kind of disguise. Maybe he could have disguised himself as a police officer with a false beard of some kind.

Easily disguise himself with a beard over his actual beard. A little beard, beard, yeah. I can't help thinking if he tried to sell the stolen goods somewhere that wasn't just literally across the street, that might have potentially been quite a good idea as well. Yeah, it's behind-sides 2020. I mean, it's easy for us to say that this plan was flawed, but at the time he was just doing the best he could with the advice of three people on his crime team. But blood is quite heavy. So maybe that's as far as he got. Yeah, but that bell ringing isn't easy. That bell ringer is going to have, I want to say quads.

Four arms. What are the, yeah, arms. What are the muscles in your arms called? Biceps. Do you have quads in your arms? No, they're in your legs. He might have had them in his arms because he would have been that strong. It was the belt. He rang bells that well. He could probably do it with his legs. Probably.

And use his hands for stealing lead. Yes. That's the perfect alibi. Oh, stealing lead? I was ringing bells the whole time. Explain that. Yes. No, because the lead would have to still be within... It would have to be in an arm ring.

...the length of the end of the rope. Yeah, it wouldn't work the whole thing out, James. I'm just saying it's a good idea. He could have tied extra rope to the ring, to the bell ringing rope, and then he could have been digging. A simple pulley system. Yes. And then as he digs, ding in the bell. I'm just digging the bell in here.

No, I'm just digging the bell in here. Which is a classic alibi. Where we get the phrase dead ringer in brackets. It's not that is a fake etymology. Well, I did have a question. I did have a question. Was it about how a bell ringer could use his legs? No, it was about what are those stone things on graves? Gravestones.

It's just called them stone slabs over the vaults in the newspaper articles, which was actually not as wordy as the rest of the article. But you know when in an old, ye olde graveyard, obviously, I know what a gravestones is, but the ones that look like little single beds, what are they? What are they about? Eh? That is, this is not like a setup for a Seinfeldian.

Sorry, you do Michael McIntyre style observations. Comedy. I do genuinely want to know. Fell asleep? Well, it seems unlikely because you're dead. It's the ultimate sleep. Well, the funny thing about them, and I can't quite imagine what this would look like, but you literally would lift them up and then underneath you would have a

vault with lots of shelves to put your dead on, which sounds like a weird form of filing. I've seen sort of what they look like in catacombs before. And it's, and you look at them and go, there can't be that much room underground, but yeah, apparently there was one of them that got very upset because he broke the lid of someone's coffin. And if they did notice as well, the big thing of the paper was upset about, apart from it all being such an inhuman act was the fact that we're all like respectable and wealthy people's coffins who got attacked. So I guess that's, Alison, we're going with, this is, uh, this is a little tie in plug, but we'd go into a cemetery the day after this episode comes out to do a

live gig. Yes, we have done some research onto it and it has catacombs in it. So it's got this underground filing system. Well my understanding was, and I may be wrong about this, you would be popped in your coffin, buried in the ground and left to do your thing to just sort of decompose until you were down to your bones and then you'd be added to the filing system. They take you out of the grave, dust up the little bones till you're just bones and pop you in the catacomb in a much more compact and less squashy form and then free up that grave for another

fleshy corpse. I think that's how it used to work. They did that with charnel houses. Catacombs tended to be more like the filing system as we're calling it now. And this is how sad I am. You know, in a word suddenly pops into your head and I went, I'm sure they're called locula. That's the name of the little shelves, like the compartments, the coffins and I call locula.

Great name. That's the kind of stuff I remember. I can't remember what I did yesterday, but I can remember. And they would need to be led lined because they're kind of out to the air. So you want to make sure they're sealed. Whereas the ones underground, you don't need to worry. The ones that are literally in the ground, you don't need to worry so much. Yeah.

I think that's a bit that I'm not, I think it's because people would keep going back in and then adding new members of the family to the vault that obviously have died. They'd want to kind of protect them in some way. So I just need to put that caveat in there. But the... I don't know, I think the other thing as well is the fact that this is the Victorians, and they're just like using lead for everything really. So we're just lucky that they weren't radioactive.

Consider it. You don't have to start getting into like radium and things like that. So yeah, glow in the dark coffins would have made it even more difficult for him. And spookier. Could have saved some money though. You know, you wouldn't need to light the catechism if you've got fully glow in the dark coffins. This is a great business idea, James.

Get yourself on drag instead with that one. I would love to see Peter Jones's face. Glow in the dark coffins. Yeah. Two words, glow in, four words, glow in the dark coffins. I think this is one of them pitches where we'd have to go off for a little huddle halfway through the pitch where we just say, how many words, how many words? It's how many count?

Yeah. It's glow in the dark. Is it two words because it glow in the dark? Cause it's all hyphenated. It's got hyphens in it though. I think a word counter would ignore that. I think it would, a word count on Microsoft Word would treat that as one word, I think.

Dink, dink, dink, Clippy, I see you're coming up with a new business idea. And frankly, I want in, you're not, you're not part of this Clippy. You are part of this. James, we're cutting Clippy out. Okay. I see. We've got to cut Clippy out of the deal. I see he's got stock in this, but Clippy is not part of this.

The three person thing is not a full person thing. We might need his help picking the lock. I don't know why we've become robbers. We're not the robbers are we in this scenario? No, we're just honest businessmen. Honest glow in the dark coffin. Maybe you could amend men. Honest, glow in the dark coffin. Maybe you could amend your name to be your glow in the dark majesty. Oh, that would be amazing.

That's like proper Halloween level stuff that. Okay. Okay. We'll put a pin in that business idea and we'll circle back later. Well, that was a chilling and hopefully profitable story from Newcastle. Thank you. I see. Can any story from Sunderland live up to the bar that you've just set? I don't know. I mean, do you think that like stealing lead from coffins is better or worse than body snatching?

I don't want to say that it's certainly not worse, but I don't want to say it's better because that suggests I approve of it. I should say before I start with this one that it misses quite a lot of quite pertinent details. So I don't know if this is a story that has just become legend without ever actually having happened, but it's still cool. So I thought I'd tell you anyway, because one story was Jack the Bad Beedle and this one is Half-Hanged Jack.

So for naming, I think, I'll be scoring quite highly for this one. This one, all the accounts talk about Sunderland Parish Churchyard, and I'm like, well, that's quite helpful, but which church is that? So my dad and I got some old maps out and found that it's actually Holy Trinity Church

because it refers in the story to Amur, and the only church that has Amor along one side is Holy Trinity. Again, it doesn't say when this happened, but I'm going to guess it was before 1832 because it involves body snatching. I know more than I should about the anatomy act of 1832 which sort of put paid to body snatching. And honestly, I'm fun for all the family having me at any kind of gathering. So just in case the listener knows less about body snatching, on the off chance the listener knows less about body snatching than you, would I be right in guessing that prior to that point, you weren't allowed to look at anybody's body, even if you were married to

them. And after that point, they made it legal to see bodies in a medical context. Is that correct? So it was basically in 1832. It meant that if you died under certain conditions, your body was like automatically donated to science for the purposes of anatomy lectures and so on. Is that one of those things murdered by a doctor? Certain situations. I want to know. I think it was things like, obviously if you died in say a workout and

nobody claimed your body stuff like that. Oh, depressing things. Yeah. It's weird cause like science is good, but like the way they got hold of all those bodies is not so good. Well, this is the, I want to say ironic, but one of the things that you come across is obviously some of the people who then get anatomized or body snatchers cause the criminals are one of the groups of people that can then be anatomized, which is what happened to William Hare. I was

getting the Birken hair mixed up, but one of them ends up getting anatomized. And then the turn D skin, like the outside of a notebook in a very fetching card case that you can actually see inside one of the shops in Edinburgh. It. Because it is just a really fancy form of leather. Well, well is it? Is it? I mean, yeah, it is, now that I think about it. I'm sure this has been covered before, but what part of the body is the card carrier? Like a little oyster card carrier?

A bit like what you would carry calling cards in that you would then leave when you went to visit someone. So I love the idea that someone's walking around with a card case made out of like a body snatcher, actually a murderer, because obviously a head never actually snatched anybody's. They didn't snatch the bodies. Yeah. Well, it is the ultimate body snatch to snatch a body that is currently alive. To create one.

To create a body. Yeah. But yeah, I just think that again, imagine the token point you would have if you rocked up somewhere and you were like, Oh, by the way, look at my card case. It's actually a person. Oh, I forgot my card case with human skin. Oh, how embarrassing. I've dropped my card case with the skin of a human being on it.

Who wants to talk to me? So I just get, it's still full of cards actually. I can't get rid of them. No, as long as they're on the cards. The thing is as well, when they talk about like books being bound in human skin, there I just get, it's still full of cards actually. I can't get rid of them. The thing is as well, when they talk about like books being bound in human skin, there is actually apparently a book in, and I don't know if this is true, but it's supposed to be in the stacks at Newcastle central library that was made out of a criminal skin and I haven't quite worked up the nerve yet to go in and go, can I have a look?

Cause it's all feels a little bit gross, but then a bit like, how's that going to make me look going in and going, can I see the dead person? But please. Is it like the Vis annual or something? One of the great texts of Newcastle. No, I think it's a little bit more mundane than that. There's that door, isn't there in Bristol that's meant to be covered in human skin in a pub?

Leather door. I wouldn't want a door covered in. Yeah. It's a, it's somehow it's a leather pub. A leather door. I wouldn't want a door covered in... Yeah, it's a... somehow it's a leather door. A leather door. A leather door. It's one of those... that's like something Donald Trump would want. Like, oh, this door isn't luxurious enough, but leather on the door. But human leather on the door. So it must have happened before 1830, because that was the year it became fun for all the family to cut up the bodies of condemned people. Anna So at some time before then, the person who,

the guy who becomes known as Half-Hanged Jack is only ever described as a local resident. He's never given an actual name, which is what gives me my first clue that this didn't actually happen because he's never named. And surely if he was a local resident, somebody would have recognized him, you would think. But you know, I'm not going to sort of cast aspersions or anything on where the story came from. But in it, he manages to dig up a body and he gets the body of a young woman. And then he decides he's going to carry her away from the churchyard by himself in a sack. And I can't help thinking the fact he hasn't got help shows he's probably not very experienced in this.

Yeah, no, you need at least one wife and mother-in-law involved in an operation like that. See, that's obviously where he went wrong. He didn't get the family involved. Manages to get this body into a sack and then puts a rope around the middle of it, which he then uses to drag it across the graveyard to the moor because he's obviously deciding I'll take the body away across the moor, which isn't the worst idea. And he manages to get the sack to the wall at the far side, but because he hadn't realized that the wall's only three foot on the churchyard side, but it's actually six foot drop on the moor side, he manages to get the sack up onto

the wall and somehow nobody really knows how, but he manages to get tangled up in the rope, which ends up around his neck. The body then falls backwards into the churchyard and he topples off the wall the other way onto the moor side, so of course he's then basically hanging. He must have also, I'm assuming, been a lot less than six foot in height, but he's then hanging sort of above the ground on the other side. I don't know how long he hung there for, but one of the watchers in the graveyard who was supposed to be keeping an eye out for body snatchers.

For exactly this sort of hijinks. Yeah. Obviously hadn't noticed any of the commotion up until this point. They then find this body snatcher then hanging and they describe him as being half alive, half dead. When they find him, he does die soon after, but then that's where he gets the nickname of Half-Hang Jack. And they're still talking about this in newspapers like years and years later, like everyone's like, Oh yay, cool story from Sunderland. And then dropping that one in there and it becomes this, this quite cool, interesting legend. But as I say, no one knows who Half-Hang Jack is other than a really bad body snatcher. I've heard Half-Hang it before, but I can't remember where. Like hang, it's spelled hang

IT, half hang it to someone. But I don't know if it was Jack. So I don't know if it was like a Jenny Greenteeth kind of name that is attached to loads of different ponds in the way that Jenny Greenteeth is attached to loads of ponds. I wonder if there are lots of half hang it or half hanged. There is another one that I got confused with, who's actually a guy who I think they hung him but like not properly. And he, again, they send him off to be anatomized and he wakes up on the dissecting table because he was only unconscious. And then I think that I can't remember if they actually hang him again properly this time or whether they just go, oh, well, what that was a horrible experience you've learned your lesson. I've heard both different versions so I can't

remember so yeah there does seem to be a lot of people only being half hanged. I guess that's why we have the phrase hanged until ye be dead you have to say until ye be dead otherwise it's just a little squeeze and then it causes lots of problems around the line. Yeah I suppose as well like it's just a little squeeze and then it causes lots of problems around the line. Yeah, I suppose as well, like it's quite difficult to ask for help in that situation, not just because you've got rope around your neck, because I'm coming down but not look at what's on the other end of this rope, please. And also I suppose the watchman, from their point of view, from within the churchyard, there's just like a body shaped sack sort

of twitching over by the wall, which would be quite terrifying. And sort of making choking noises I guess. Well, yeah, that would be the thing. If you had no idea that there was a person on the other end of the rope, you would be like, Oh my God, what is going on in that sack over there? It's not a sentence I ever thought I'd hear myself say. Yeah. I think you get over there and go, oh, it's fine. It's just a corpse. What?

What is this rope lead? Somewhere horrible. Yeah, so that's the Sunderland one. Well, that is a good story. Fair play to Sunderland. Beautiful. I mean, it just makes you think that working in a graveyard in the old days was a bit of a short straw kind of a job because you try and make a little bit of money on the side.

You get a good business idea going like we have with the dark coffins. Yes. And everyone's ganging up on you instantly. Everyone's the worst and most terrible thing. The newspapers are doing all pompous articles about how dreadful you are. You try and steal one body using some kind of Rube Goldberg rope contraption. And what happens? You half hang yourself. He didn't work there, right?

No. Okay. I forgot. I thought he worked there for a second. Well, I suppose he freelanced there in body stealing. The guy who worked there didn't have a particularly nice time coming in and finding the sack. Kate Innes I want to know if he got any kind of, what's the word, telling off by the people who actually ran the churchyard? Because you would be like, look, this body has already been dug up, put in a sack and taken all the way to the wall. But I found the body snatcher who did it. You would be like, but they got that far. Like would you end up with some kind of like note on your record that you weren't maybe that good at watching as a watchman?

Yeah, they should have one like a poster up like in the swimming baths of the things you're not supposed to do in the swimming baths. They should have that in churchyards with like tying a rope around a sack and pulling it. It's just a simple cartoon drawing of that happening and heavy petting and all the things you can't do in the churchyard. You should definitely not have a pet. If you see any of those things happening, no, no grabbing your knees up against your

chest and then jumping into a grave. Don't do that. It's not deep enough. Yeah. No bombing your grave. Yep. Bombing. That's what it's called.

I'd say it's fair to say no splashing. No, I think that's good life advice. Really? Probably. All right. To smoke. Cause it's open air. I mean, it's just making more business for the churchyard really, isn't it?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Good point. How old are we that we remember there being don't smoke in the swimming pool signs as if it wasn't a given that of course you wouldn't be smoking in this recreational area full of children. They had to say that. It was on the sign, right?

I'm sure it was on the, I'm sure they don't have the kind, the paint, will patrons kindly refrain from, I'm sure they don't have daily male cartoon style drawings of people, heavy petting on the sign anymore these days. That's probably all maybe just a given that you just treat people respectfully. I've got the classic image here. Oh, yep. Smokin is on it.

Why would you keep you later? Good point. Well, that's what I guess you'd call over one of the lifeguards. Like go live, yep. Smoking is on it. Why would you keep you later? Good point. Well, that's what I guess you'd call over one of the lifeguards. Like go like, mate. Can I do a breaststroke with a little Ciggy on the go? That's what the breaststrokes for, isn't it? That's the, it's famously this, this, the stroke you can smoke with. Surely the backstroke would be better for that.

No, the backstroke is for the older gents with their pipes. Just sculling, sculling with a pipe. And I suppose if you're sharing, that's what front crawl where you, because you're going to take a gas puppy three minutes, that's when you're passing it around. But yeah, most of them you can't do in, you shouldn't do in a grave of running, pushing, acrobatics or gymnastics, shouting, ducking, petting, bombing, smoking, and swimming in the diving area. All of those, I think, don't do in church either. Two fantastic stories there. Thank you very much. I see chilling, chilling, alarming and equally good as each other.

I'd agree. Unlike the cities. And equally good as each other. I'd agree. Unlike the cities. So thank you very much for bringing us those stories, Icy. James, are you ready to pass judgment on not just these stories, but Icy and the whole of the North East of England? Are you ready for that, James?

Well, yeah, come on. He's very confident. Are you sure? All right. You ready to do the scores? I am ready to score. All right. I see as your lawyer, I'm suggesting we go for the category of names to begin with. Some great names.

Some very great names. Jack the bad beetle is obviously a all time great name. See when you said that originally I sort of misheard it as a, like an Americanized version of like he was the original fifth Beatle and he was like a bad Beatle. I don't know. And the song, the bad song that came up, I suppose, fitted into that. The pop goes the weasel.

Hmm. Bye. And what was the name of that boy band? Boys in the street. Boys in the street. Boys in the street. Half hanged Jack as well. Sure. They're both Jacks, but it does not matter in this case.

They're so different. These Jacks. And what was the name? I see. What was the name of the, the, the, the body slot? I don't know if that's the word I want. Oh, the loculus. It's a loculus if there's one and it's a loculi if there's several.

Sounds like Latin to me, James. That's a pretty classy word. I've also just double checked my notes and I didn't actually tell you. The accomplice who only got 12 months, he's called Hewison Marshall. Hewison Marshall? Hewison Marshall. That sounds like two people who are a solicitor. Very sad that an innocent estate agent had to go down for this crime.

I'm just going to say, when you say the name of that newspaper, are you saying current in a Northern accent or is it a different word? No, it's a different word. It's not like a current bun, for example. What are you doing in Yorkshire accent? I don't know. It's the closest county I could get. Do you want me to spell it for you?

Yes. It's C-O-U-R-A-N-T. It's like a courier, but I don't know, upgraded. I think if I remember correctly, it goes on to become the Chronicle, but that was what it was called in the 1850s. Due to a typo, due to a massive typo. The other newspaper they that was what it was called in the 1850s. Due to a typo. A massive typo. The other newspaper they talked about it was the Newcastle Guardian and Tynemercury. Ooh.

So for newspapers were absolutely banging for names. What does the French word courant mean? Current or running? Oh, that seems quite fancy for Newcastle. Oh, it's Latin. That's why. Is it Latin as well? Add corrent or o corrent. Up to stay informed, up to date. According to, as I get their name wrong, Merriam-Webster, not Miriam-Webster, as they've referred to

the dictionary on previous episodes. No, she's a bell ringer, Miriam-Webster. O corrent means up to date. Great name. So that is good for great names. And I feel like you kind of embarrass yourself with the Northern accent. So I feel like, I feel like we're doing a little sympathy here. Black peddling. Yeah, I think it needs to be a five. An apologetic five. It needs to be a five read from a notes app. That's how much of an apology it needs to be.

Wow. Okay. I'll take that. Tearful apology five. Thanks, James. With your permission, I say I'm going to suggest we go with Supernatural for a second category. Now, I think after that humiliating defeat in the first round, James is going to probably hammer us on this one, but we- I think I am. I'm conferring privately James Stone.

Oh, I'm sorry. You're not listening to us. Thinking out loud about something else. All right. Second category supernatural. Oh, ghosts. What's that light over in the graveyard? The graveyard.

What's that light in what graveyard? What's that spooky? Is it an electric light caused by an electric current? Sort of tear myself up to give you another five. Right. OK, so aside from some people saying that nowadays there are some bobbing lights in the churchyard, which could be down to a much more human and natural reasoning. Are you thinking mobile telephones, James?

Yeah, it's just people like, it's just a Pokemon Go gym. Sorry, to be clear, I don't play Pokemon Go. Are you saying that like Spock or Bones or is it GYM? Is it GYM? It's just a Pokemon Gold, Jim. It's a Pokemon Gold, Jim. That's if Columbo was in Star Trek. Or the mashup we never knew we needed.

Half-Hanged Jack, there's nothing supernatural in that. A guy, apart from potential, I could give you a potential that the way the rope wraps around his neck in the short film version that we'll probably go and make with the proceeds of glow in the dark coffins could be like, that could be something a little bit spooky cause. You would at least have to play it in reverse to get that effect to happen. And that is going to look creepy, isn't it? And Jack's, the bad Beedle was putting around that there were ghosts when there

were no ghosts, because he wouldn't be able to do it. So I think it is unfortunately low. But that guard, the night watchman that saw half hanged Jackax ballast, I suppose, for want of a better word, would have seen that jant in a round and they would have probably got a bit of a fright. So I'm going to give it three. Oh, okay. All right. Because some of the stuff was frightening. Yeah. Yeah. We know we got off lightly there. I think he's still feeling bad about the accent. I did because I did it again.

It's moving north as you go. It's going to overshoot. You'll be in Berwick upon Tweed in no time. Our third category, James, is on the fence. Well, let me explain. You'll notice that ISE has been very diplomatic as to the relative merits of the Northeast's two great cities, Newcastle and Sunderland. Big, big rivalry there, especially football and stuff. And I know

a lot of soccer fans, as they like to be called, listen to this podcast. So I do take that seriously. You are big in the jock sphere. Huge with jocks. And so that's one example of being on the fence. Another example is the half hanged Jack, who's sort of, well, it's more of a wall than a fence, but... He was on the stone fence. Yeah, kind of stony fence in a way. Isn't a wall just a fence that persists?

It's a permanent fence. Permanent fence. Permafence. Yes. Possible business idea. Perman permanent fence. A permanent fence. A perma fence. Yes. Possible business idea. Permanent fence. Perma fence. It's kind of, yeah, a fence made of bricks. Is that the idea?

And you can't see through it. And who would a prolific seller of stolen lead rely upon more, James, than? Get ready, James. I'm ready. His fence. He would rely heavily on the fence. In the terminology of someone who receives and sells on stolen goods. Someone who receives and sells stolen goods.

So that is, and now I'm trying to get a bit worried. Three examples of things being on the fence. Is James now on the fence about the score? How are you feeling, James? Well, I think it's three things, right? And the most on the fence score one can give in the game of lawmen is three. Because it's like, I think it's quite good. But I don't, but I don't feel guilty about doing a bad accent.

Are the guilt worn off? Are we getting three? Yes, it's a three. It was good wordplay though. Thank you. Excellent wordplay. Excellent use of fence. All right. Well, I'm very, very confident as we move into the final category, but we can redeem ourselves. How do you score? I see, I see remember not me. Hmm. No, I'm not the one being scored here. How do you score I see stories in the category of good business ideas?

Oh, we've had so many just just just then you came up with the idea for lawmen the game. So the game of lawmen sorry. Oh, the game of lawmen. The game of lawmen. Yeah. I imagine like screwball scramble, but with like your head rolling up a staircase or something. I haven't worked out the details.

Badly around. I think it's not around haunted house. The game. Yes. Yeah. I kind of see you being a bit like most trap. Mouse trap. Yeah. Hmm. Hmm. And the thing comes down.

Yeah. Some sort of combination of all three. Mm hmm. I think we've got it. OK. The game of lawmen. That's another business idea. Glow in the dark coffins. Glow in combination of all three. I think we've got it. Okay. The game of law. That's another business idea. Glow in the dark coffins. Glow in the dark coffins.

G in the D sees. Yes. Wonderful. And who could forget the most permanent offenses? The wall. The wall. The offense you can trust. When we came up with that business idea of inventing walls.

So this, I think there's several that we've forgotten even in this list. So it's been a such a profitable blue sky thinking, no bad ideas kind of a session here, we've been throwing whatever a hacky sack is. I don't, I don't know what one is. I've never seen one, but I've is. I don't know what one is. I've never seen one, but I've heard the noise. That's less businessman thing. That's more hippie thing. I think hacky sack. I thought it was like your cool businessman, like Steve Jobs would have tons of what I

don't know what one is. It's anyway, I mean, you could make a business idea, whatever hacky sack is. That's another one that is in a way something you could make from the skin of a dead person, but it'd be a very specific part of that person. I forgot about human skin covered card boxes or whatever. Guys, we've just invented the scrotum once again big capitalism big tech once again big tech has reinvented the scrotum you just know somebody you'll add bluetooth to it at some point right yeah i mean it's five out of five all the way and just as a reminder to people

it is copyrighted by yes we have printed out this. We have posted this to ourselves. We've printed this out on a tape and posted it to ourselves. This is ours. It's three words, joint ownership. And I'll tell you, it's not involved. It's clippy. It's not part of this. I see you coming up with a multi-million pound business idea. Get him out of here! Fences, you can trust.

Get him out of here. I invented the fence. Right then. Well, yeah, five out of five, all definitely a hundred percent. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for enduring that, I see, for bringing those fantastic stories and for tolerating us for the length of an entire episode. Tell us more about where listeners, if the off chance that our listeners aren't familiar with your blog and podcast already, where can people find you? I'm kind of everywhere at this point except TikTok because TikTok is confusing and I'm too old for it.

And my website's acedwick.com and then you can find Fabulous Folklore pretty much everywhere at this point, including YouTube, which is quite nice because then people can leave me comments underneath. And then I can have a bit of a chat with people, which is lovely, which is hard nice. Cause then people can leave me comments underneath and then I can have a bit of a chat with people, which is lovely, which is hard to do on the other platforms. It is. I think you can chat. You can comment on Spotify that's come out recently and that seems quite nice.

It seems a nice thing, but yeah, the YouTube, yeah, that's a lot of very fun way to get involved. Are you chatting to people on YouTube, James? No, I'm just saying, yeah, that does sound good. And they say a comment. All right. Well, follow, I see she is everywhere, like oxygen or misinformation. Oh, you can't put me in misinformation in the same sentence. No, because you're not on TikTok, whereas misinformation is. So yeah, that's not fair. Just Google or just shout your dark highness.

Yeah, turn around several times. Wonderful. Thank you very much, Icy. That was wicked. And if you've listened to the end, you can get a discount on our human skin wallets, the lawmen branded human skin wallets. Well those were a couple of very bad jacks. Thank you very much, Icy, for coming on the pod. Thank you for listening, the listener. Thank Joe for editing the Joe.

Thank Joe for editing. And thank all the people that support us via patreon.com forward slash lawmen pod. They get extra episodes and access to the Law Folk Discord. Wow, this is the first time hearing of it. And we've got some live shows coming up, Alastair. We do indeed. If you're quick off the chase, you can see us in London on the 11th of October, 2024, which could feasibly be tomorrow.

Or you could see us in Manchester on the 20th of October. Links are just in the Link place. Links are out there in the ether. The bit, the bit, you know, the bit, the blurb. We'll pop them in there. A pair of bad Jack the Lads for your perusal, James. Are you ready? Yes, please.

Well, let's get started. Just not a computer over. Wow. Wow. It was very dramatic. It was very exciting for me to watch. You've got a POV of a falling computer. I thought it was falling for a second. It's just the computer. I'm fine. Just a small window.