Cock Lane and Common-Sense

At the end of the volume, a later hand added, in manuscript, that the truth of the contemporary record was confirmed by the tradition of the oldest sisters who had received it from eye-witnesses of the earlier generation. The writer says that she had great difficulty in finding the printed copy, but that when young, in 1630, she received the tale from a nun, then aged ninety-four. This nun would be born in 1536, ten years after these events. She got the story from her aunt, a nun, Gabrielle de Beaudeduit, qui étoit de ce tems-la. There is no doubt that the sisters firmly and piously believed in the story, which has the contemporary evidence of Adrien de Montalembert. Dufresnoy learned that a manuscript copy of the tract was in the library of the Jesuits of Lyons. He was unaware of an edition in 12mo of 1580, cited by Brunet.

To come to the story, one of our earliest examples of a ‘medium,’ and of communications by raps. The nunnery was reformed in 1516. A pretty sister, Alix de Telieux, fled with some of the jewels, lived a ‘gay’ life, and died wretchedly in 1524. She it was, as is believed, who haunted a sister named Anthoinette de Grolée, a girl of eighteen. The disturbance began with a confused half-dream. The girl fancied that the sign of the cross was made on her brow, and a kiss impressed on her lips, as she wakened one night. She thought this was mere illusion, but presently, when she got up, she heard, ‘comme soubs ses pieds frapper aucuns petis coups,’ ‘rappings,’ as if at the depth of four inches underground. This was exactly what occurred to Miss Hetty Wesley, at Epworth, in 1716, and at Rio de Janeiro to a child named ‘C.’ in Professor Alexander’s narrative. 79 Montalembert says, in 1528, ‘I have heard these rappings many a time, and, in reply to my questions, so many strokes as I asked for were given’. Montalembert received information (by way of raps) from the ‘spirit,’ about matters of importance, qui ne pourroient estre cogneus de mortelle créature. ‘Certainly,’ as he adds, ‘people have the best right to believe these things who have seen and heard them.’

The rites of the Church were conferred in the most handsome manner on the body of Sister Alix, which was disinterred and buried in her convent. Exorcisms and interrogations of the spirit were practised. It merely answered questions by rapping ‘Yes,’ or ‘No’. On one occasion Sister Anthoinette was ‘levitated’. Finally, the spirit appeared bodily to her, said farewell, and disappeared after making an extraordinary fracas at matins. Montalembert conducted the religious ceremonies. One case of hysteria was developed; the sufferer was a novice. Of course it was attributed to diabolical possession The whole story in its pleasant old French, has an agreeable air of good faith But what interests us is the remarkable analogy between the Lyons rappings and those at Epworth, Tedworth, and countless other cases, old or of yesterday. We can now establish a catena of rappings and pour prendre date, can say that communications were established, through raps, with a so-called ‘spirit,’ more than three hundred years before the ‘Rochester knockings’ in America. Very probably wider research would discover instances prior to that of Lyons; indeed, Wierus, in De Praestigiis Daemonum, writes as if the custom was common.

It is usual to explain the raps by a theory that the ‘medium’ produces them through cracking his, or her, knee-joints. It may thus be argued that Sister Anthoinette discovered this trick, or was taught the trick, and that the tradition of her performance, being widely circulated in Montalembert’s quarto, and by oral report, inspired later rappers, such as Miss Kate Fox, Miss ‘C.’ Davis, Miss Hetty Wesley, the gentlewoman at Mr. Paschal’s, Mr. Mompesson’s ‘modest little girls,’ Daniel Home, and Miss Margaret Wilson of Galashiels. Miss Wilson’s uncle came one day to Mr. Wilkie, the minister, and told him the devil was at his house, for, said he, ‘there is an odd knocking about the bed where my niece lies’. Whereupon the minister went with him, and found it so. ‘She, rising from her bed, sat down to supper, and from below there was such a knocking up as bred fear to all that were present. This knocking was just under her chair, where it was not possible for any mortal to knock up.’ When Miss Wilson went to bed, and was in a deep sleep, ‘her body was so lifted up that many strong men were not able to keep it down’. 80 The explanation about cracking the knee-joints hardly covers the levitations, or accounts for the tremendous noise which surrounded Sister Anthoinette at matins, or for the bright light, a common spiritualistic phenomenon. Margaret Wilson was about twelve years of age. If it be alleged that little girls have a traditional method of imposture, even that is a curious and interesting fact in human nature.

As regards imposture, there exists a singular record of a legal process in Paris, 1534. 81

It may have been observed that the Lyons affair was useful to the Church, as against ‘the damnable sect of Lutherans,’ because Sister Alix attested the existence of purgatory. No imposture was detected, and no reader of Montalembert can doubt his good faith, nor the sincerity of his kindness and piety. But such a set of circumstances might provoke imitation. Of fraudulent imitation the Franciscans of Orleans were accused, and for this crime they were severely punished. We have the Arrest des Commissaires du Conseil d’État du Roi, from MS. 7170, A. of the Bibliothèque du Roi. 82 We have also allusions in the Franciscanus, a satire in Latin hexameter by George Buchanan. Finally, we have versions in Lavaterus, and in Wierus, De Curat. Laes. Maleficio (Amsterdam, 1660, p. 422). Wierus, born 1515, heard the story when with Sleidan at Orleans, some years after the events. He gives the version of Sleidan, a notably Protestant version. Wierus is famous for his spirited and valuable defence of the poor women then so frequently burned as witches. He either does, or pretends to believe in devils, diabolical possession, and exorcism, but the exorcist, to be respectable, must be Protestant. Probably Wierus was not so credulous as he assumes to be, and a point of irony frequently peeps out. The story as told by Sleidan differs from that in the official record. In this document Adam Fumée counsellor of the king, announces that the Franciscans of Orleans have informed the king that they are vexed by a spirit, which gives itself out by signs (rappings), as the wife of François de St. Mesmin, Provost of Orleans. They ask the king to take cognisance of the matter. On the other side, St. Mesmin declares that the Franciscans have counterfeited the affair in hope of ‘black-mailing’ him. The king, therefore, appoints Fumée to inquire into the case. Thirteen friars are lying in prison in Paris, where they have long been ‘in great wretchedness and poverty, and perishing of hunger,’ a pretty example of the law’s delay. A commission is to try the case (November, 1534). The trouble had begun on February 22, 1533 (old style), when Father Pierre d’Arras at five a.m. was called into the dormitory of ‘les enfans,’ – novices, – with holy water and everything proper. Knocking was going on, and by a system of knocks, the spirit said it wanted its body to be taken out of holy ground, said it was Madame St Mesmin, and was damned for Lutheranism and extravagance! The experiment was repeated before churchmen and laymen, but the lay observers rushed up to the place whence the knocks came where they found nothing. They hid some one there, after which there was no knocking. On a later day, the noises as in Cock Lane and elsewhere, began by scratching. “M. l’Official,” the bishop’s vicar, ‘ouit gratter, qui etoit le commencement de ladite accoutummée tumulte dudit Esprit’. But no replies were given to questions, which the Franciscans attributed to the disturbance of the day before, and the breaking into various places by the people. One Alicourt seems to have been regarded as the ‘medium,’ and the sounds were heard as in Cock Lane and at Tedworth when he was in bed. Later experiments gave no results, and the friars were severely punished, and obliged to recant their charges against Madame de Mesmin. The case, scratches, raps, false accusations and all, is parallel to that of the mendacious ‘Scratching Fanny,’ examined by Dr. Johnson and Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury. In that affair the child was driven by threats to make counterfeit noises, but, as to the method of imposture at Orleans, nothing is said in the contemporary legal document.

We now turn to the account by Sleidan, in Wierus. The provost’s wife had left directions for a cheap funeral in the Franciscan Church. This economy irritated the Fathers, who only got six pieces of gold, ‘having expected much greater plunder’. ‘Colimannus’ (Colimant), an exorcist named in the process, was the ringleader. They stationed a lad in the roof of the church, who rapped with a piece of wood, and made a great noise ‘when they mumbled their prayers at night’. St. Mesmin appealed to the king, the Fathers were imprisoned, and the youth was kept in Fumée’s house, and plied with questions. He confessed the trick, and the friars were punished. Of all this confession, and of the mode of imposture, nothing is said in the legal process. From the whole affair came a popular saying, c’est l’esprit d’Orléans, when any fable was told. Buchanan talks of cauta parum pietas in fraude paranda.

The evidence, it may be seen, is not very coherent, and the Franciscans may have been the deceived, not the deceivers. 83 Wierus himself admits that he often heard a brownie in his father’s house, which frightened him not a little, and Georgius Pictorius avers that a noisy spirit haunted his uncle’s house for thirty years, a very protracted practical joke, if it was a practical joke. 84 This was a stone-throwing demon.

A large book might easily be filled with old stories of mysterious flights of stones, and volatile chairs and tables. The ancient mystics of the Levant were acquainted with the phenomena, as Iamblichus shows. The Eskimo knew them well. Glanvill is rich in examples, the objects flying about in presence of a solitary spectator, who has called at a ‘haunted house,’ and sometimes the events accompany the presence of a single individual, who may, or may not be a convulsionary or epileptic. Sometimes they befall where no individual is suspected of constitutional electricity or of imposture.

We may select a laughable example from a rare tract. ‘An authentic, candid, and circumstantial narrative of the astonishing transactions at Stockwell, in the county of Surrey, on Monday and Tuesday, the 6th and 7th of January, 1772. Published with the consent and approbation of the family and other parties concerned, to authenticate which, the original copy is signed by them. London, 1772, printed for J. Marks, bookseller, in St. Martin’s Lane.’

The dramatis personæ are old Mrs. Golding, of Stockwell parish, ‘a gentlewoman of unblemished honour and character’; Mrs. Pain, her niece, a farmer’s wife, ‘respected in the parish’; Mary Martin, her servant, previously with Mrs. Golding; Richard Fowler, a labourer, living opposite Mrs. Pain; Sarah Fowler his wife – all these sign the document, – and Ann Robinson, Mrs. Golding’s maid, just entered on her service. Ann does not sign.

The trouble began at ten a.m. on January 6, when Mrs. Golding heard a great smash of crockery, an event ‘most incident to maids’. The lady went into the kitchen, when plates began to fall from the dresser ‘while she was there and nobody near them’. Then a clock tumbled down, so did a lantern, a pan of salt beef cracked, and a carpenter, Rowlidge, suggested that a recent addition of a room above had shaken the foundation of the house. Mrs. Golding rushed into the house of Mr. Gresham, her next neighbour, and fainted. Meanwhile Ann Robinson was ‘mistress of herself, though china fall,’ and seemed in no hurry to leave the threatened dwelling. The niece of Mrs. Golding, Mrs. Pain, was sent for to Mr. Gresham’s, Mrs. Golding was bled, when, lo, ‘the blood sprang out of the basin upon the floor, and the basin broke to pieces!’ A bottle of rum, of sympathetic character, also burst. Many of Mrs. Golding’s more fragile effects had been carried into Mr. Gresham’s: the glasses and china first danced, and then fell off the side-board and broke. Mrs. Golding, ‘her mind one confused chaos,’ next sought refuge at Mr. Mayling’s for three-quarters of an hour. Here nothing unusual occurred, but, at Mr. Gresham’s (where Ann Robinson was packing the remains of her mistress’s portable property) a ‘mahogany waiter,’ a quadrille box, a jar of pickles and a pot of raspberry jam shared the common doom. ‘Their end was pieces.’ Mrs. Pain now hospitably conveyed her aunt to her house at Rush Common, ‘hoping all was over’. This was about two in the afternoon.

At eight in the evening, the whole row of pewter dishes, bar one, fell from a shelf, rolled about a little, and ‘as soon as they were quiet, turned upside down; they were then put upon the dresser, and went through the same a second time’. Then of two eggs, one ‘flew off, crossed the kitchen, struck a cat on the head, and then burst in pieces’. A pestle and a mortar presently ‘jumped six feet from the floor’. The glass and crockery were now put on the floor, ‘he that is down need fear no fall,’ but the objects began to dance, and tumble about, and then broke to pieces. A china bowl jumped eight feet but was not broken. However it tried again, and succeeded. Candlesticks, tea-kettles, a tumbler of rum and water, two hams, and a flitch of bacon joined in the corroboree. ‘Most of the genteel families around were continually sending to inquire after them, and whether all was over or not.’ All this while, Ann was ‘walking backwards and forwards’, nor could they get her to sit down, except for half an hour, at prayers, ‘then all was quiet’. She remarked, with stoicism, ‘these things could not be helped’. Fowler came in at ten, but fled in a fright at one in the morning. By five, Mrs. Golding summoned Mrs. Pain, who had gone to bed, ‘all the tables, chairs, drawers, etc., were tumbling about’.

They rushed across to Fowler’s where, as soon as Ann arrived, the old game went on. Fowler, therefore, like the landlord in the poem, ‘did plainly say as how he wished they’d go away,’ at the same time asking Mrs. Golding ‘whether or not, she had been guilty of some atrocious crime, for which providence was determined to pursue her on this side the grave,’ and to break crockery till death put an end to the stupendous Nemesis. ‘Having hitherto been esteemed a most deserving person,’ Mrs. Golding replied, with some natural warmth, that ‘her conscience was quite clear, and she could as well wait the will of providence in her own house as in any other place,’ she and the maid went to her abode, and there everything that had previously escaped was broken. ‘A nine-gallon cask of beer that was in the cellar, the door being open and nobody near it, turned upside down’; ‘a pail of water boiled like a pot’. So Mrs. Golding discharged Miss Ann Robinson and that is all.

At Mrs. Golding’s they took up three, and at Mrs. Pain’s two pails of the fragments that were left. The signatures follow, appended on January 11.

The tale has a sequel. In 1817 an old Mr. Braidley, who loved his joke, told Hone that he knew Ann, and that she confessed to having done the tricks by aid of horse-hairs, wires and other simple appliances. We have not Mr. Braidley’s attested statement, but Ann’s character as a Medium is under a cloud. Have all other Mediums secret wires? (Every-day Book, i. 62.)

Ann Robinson, we have seen, was a tranquil and philosophical maiden. Not so was another person who was equally active, ninety years earlier.

Bovet, in his Pandæmonium (1684), gives an account of the Demon of Spraiton, in 1682. His authorities were ‘J. G., Esquire,’ a near neighbour to the place, the Rector of Barnstaple, and other witnesses. The ‘medium’ was a young servant man, appropriately named Francis Fey, and employed in the household of Sir Philip Furze. Now, this young man was subject to ‘a kind of trance, or extatick fit,’ and ‘part of his body was, occasionally, somewhat benumbed and seemingly deader than the other’. The nature of Fey’s case, physically, is clear. He was a convulsionary, and his head would be found wedged into tight places whence it could hardly be extracted. From such a person the long and highly laughable tale of ghosts (a male ghost and a jealous female ghost) which he told does not much win our acceptance. True, Mrs. Thomasin Gidley, Anne Langdon, and a little child also saw the ghost in various forms. But this was probably mere fancy, or the hallucinations of Fey were infectious. But objects flew about in the young man’s presence. ‘One of his shoe-strings was observed (without the assistance of any hand) to come of its own accord out of his shoe and fling itself to the other side of the room; the other was crawling after it (!) but a maid espying that, with her hand drew it out, and it clasp’d and curl’d about her hand like a living eel or serpent. A barrel of salt of considerable quantity hath been observed to march from room to room without any human assistance,’ and so forth. 85

It is hardly necessary to add more modern instances. The ‘electric girl’ Angélique Cottin, who was a rival of Ann Robinson, had her powers well enough attested to arouse the curiosity of Arago. But, when brought from the country to Paris, her power, or her artifice, failed.

It is rather curious that tales of volatile furniture are by no means very common in trials for witchcraft. The popular belief was, and probably still is, that a witch or warlock could throw a spell over an enemy so that his pots, and pans, tables and chairs, would skip around. The disturbances of this variety, in the presbytery at Cideville, in Seine Inférieure (1850), came under the eye of the law, because a certain shepherd injudiciously boasted that he had caused them by his magic art. 86 The curé, who was the victim, took him at his word, and the shepherd swain lost his situation. He then brought an action for defamation of character, but was non-suited, as it was proved that he had been the fanfaron of his own vices. In Froissart’s amusing story of Orthon, that noisy sprite was hounded on by a priest. At Tedworth, the owner of the drum was ‘wanted’ on a charge of sorcery as the cause of the phenomena. The Wesleys suspected that their house was bewitched. But examples in witch trials are not usual. Mr. Graham Dalyell, however, gives one case, ‘the firlote rynning about with the stuff popling,’ on the floor of a barn, and one where ‘the sive and the wecht dancit throw the hous’. 87

A clasped knife opened in the pocket of Christina Shaw, and her glove falling, it was lifted by a hand invisible to several persons present. One is reminded of the nursery rhyme, – ‘the dish it ran after the spoon’. In the presence of Home, even a bookcase is said to have forgotten itself, and committed the most deplorable excesses. In the article of Mr. Myers, already cited, we find a table which jumps by the bedside of a dying man. 88 A handbag of Miss Power’s flies from an arm-chair, and hides under a table; raps are heard; all this when Miss Power is alone. Mr. H. W. Gore Graham sees a table move about. A heavy table of Mr. G. A. Armstrong’s rises high in the air. A tea-table ‘runs after’ Professor Alexander, and ‘attempts to hem me in,’ this was at Rio de Janeiro, in the Davis family, where raps ‘ranged from hardly perceptible ticks up to resounding blows, such as might be struck by a wooden mallet’. A Mr. H. falls into convulsions, during which all sorts of things fly about. All these stories closely correspond to the tales in Increase Mather’s Remarkable Providences in New England, in which the phenomena sometimes occur in the presence of an epileptic and convulsed boy, about 1680. To take one classic French case, Segrais declares that a M. Patris was lodged in the Château d’Egmont. At dinner-time, he went into the room of a friend, whom he found lost in the utmost astonishment. A huge book, Cardan’s De Subtilitate, had flown at him across the room, and the leaves had turned, under invisible fingers! There are plenty of bogles in that book. M. Patris laughed at this tale, and went into the gallery, when a large chair, so heavy that two men could scarcely lift it, shook itself and came at him. He remonstrated, and the chair returned to its usual position. ‘This made a deep impression on M. Patris, and contributed in no slight degree to make him a converted character’ —à le faire devenir devot. 89

Tales like this, with that odd uniformity of tone and detail which makes them curious, might be collected from old literature to any extent. Thus, among the sounds usually called ‘rappings,’ Mr. Crookes mentions, as matter within his own experience, ‘a cracking like that heard when a frictional machine is at work’. Now, as may be read in Southey’s Life of Wesley and in Clarke’s Memoirs of the Wesleys, this was the very noise which usually heralded the arrival of ‘Jeffrey,’ as they called the Epworth ‘spirit’. 90 It has been alleged that the charming and ill-fated Hetty Wesley caused the disturbances. If so (and Dr. Salmon, who supports this thesis, does not even hazard a guess as to the modus operandi), Hetty must have been familiar with almost the whole extent of psychical literature, for she scarcely left a single phenomenon unrepresented. It does not appear that she supplied visible ‘hands’. We have seen Glanvill lay stress on the apparition of a hand. In the case of the devil of Glenluce, ‘there appeared a naked hand, and an arm from the elbow down, beating upon the floor till the house did shake again’. 91 At Rerrick, in 1695, ‘it knocked upon the chests and boards, as people do at a door’. ‘And as I was at prayer,’ says the Rev. Alexander Telfair, ‘leaning on the side of a bed, I felt something thrusting my arm up, and casting my eyes thitherward, perceived a little white hand, and an arm from the elbow down, but it vanished presently.’ 92 The hands viewed, grasped, and examined by Home’s clientèle, hands which melted away in their clutch, are innumerable, and the phenomenon, with the ‘cold breeze,’ is among the most common in modern narratives.

Our only conclusion is that the psychological conditions which begat the ancient narratives produce the new legends. These surprise us by the apparent good faith in marvel and myth of many otherwise credible narrators, and by the coincidence, accidental or designed, with old stories not generally familiar to the modern public. Do impostors and credulous persons deliberately ‘get up’ the subject in rare old books? Is there a method of imposture handed down by one generation of bad little girls to another? Is there such a thing as persistent identity of hallucination among the sane? This was Coleridge’s theory, but it is not without difficulties. These questions are the present results of Comparative Psychological Research.

HAUNTED HOUSES

Reginald Scot on Protestant expulsion of Ghosts. His boast premature. Savage hauntings. Red Indian example. Classical cases. Petrus Thyræus on Haunted Houses. His examples from patristic literature. Three species of haunting spirits. Demons in disguises. Hallucinations, visual, auditory, and tactile. Are the sounds in Haunted Houses real or hallucinatory? All present do not always hear them. Interments in houses to stop hauntings. Modern example. The Restoration and Scepticism. Exceptional position of Dr. Johnson. Frequency of Haunted Houses in modern Folklore. Researches of the S. P. R. Failure of the Society to see Ghosts. Uncertain behaviour of Ghosts. The Society need a ‘seer’ or ‘sensitive’comrade. The ‘type’ or normal kind of Haunted Houses. Some natural explanations. Historical continuity of type. Case of Sir Walter Scott. A haunted curacy. Modern instances. Miss Morton’s case: a dumb ghost. Ghost, as is believed, of a man of letters. Mr. Harry’s ghost raises his mosquito curtains. Columns of light. Mr. Podmore’s theory. Hallucinations begotten by natural causes are ‘telepathically’ transferred, with variations, to strangers at a distance. Example of this process. Incredulity of Mr. Myers. The spontaneous phenomena reproduced at ‘séances’. A ghost who followed a young lady. Singular experience of the writer in Haunted Houses. Experience negative. Theory of ‘dreams of the dead’. Difficulties of this theory; physical force exerted in dreams. Theory of Mr. James Sully. His unscientific method and carelessness as to evidence. Reflections.