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The Cock Lane Ghost: Ledger

The first intimation of its coming and of its nature was revealed to him, as to the public generally, by a brief paragraph printed in a mid January, 1762, issue of The London Ledger: "For some time past a great knocking having been heard in the night, at the officiating parish clerk's of St. Sepulchre's, in Cock Lane near Smithfield, to the great terror of the family, and all means used to discover the meaning of it, four gentlemen sat up there last Friday night, among whom was a clergyman standing withinside the door, who asked various questions. On his asking whether any one had been murdered, no answer was made; but on his asking whether any one had been poisoned, it knocked one and thirty times. The report current in the neighborhood is that a woman was some time ago poisoned, and buried at St. John's Clerkenwell, by her brother-in-law." Instantly the city was agog, and for the next fortnight The Ledger, The Chronicle, and other newspapers gave much of their space to details of the pretended revelations, though they were careful to refer to names by blanks or initials only.* These accounts informed their readers that the knocking had first been heard in the life time of the deceased when, during the absence of her supposed husband, she had shared her bed with Clerk Parsons's oldest daughter; that she had then pronounced it an omen of her early death; that it did not occur again until after she had died; that, if the soi-disant spirit could be believed, the earlier knocking had been due to the agency of her dead sister; and that, in her own turn, she had come back to bring to justice the villain who had murdered her for the little she possessed. In commenting on this amazing story, the papers were prompt to point out that the knocking was heard only in the presence of the afore-mentioned daughter, now a girl of twelve; and while one or two, like The * It is proper to observe that the name Knight given to the leading actor in this singular drama rests on inference merely. Doubtless from a fear of libel suits, the contemporary newspapers and magazines speak of him only as Mr. —, or Mr. K-, there being, so far as the present writer has been able to discover, only one publication (The Gentleman's Magazine) so bold as to refer to him as Mr. K-t. Nowhere is his identity made clear. Judging from the prominence of those who rushed to his defense, he would seem to have been a person of considerable importance. The Cock Lane Ghost Ledger, inclined to credence, the majority followed The Chronicle in denouncing the affair as an "imposture."

The outraged husband, as may be imagined, lost not a moment in demanding admission to the séances which were proceeding merrily under the direction of a servant in the Parsons family and a clergyman of the neighborhood. He found that the method practised was to put the girl to bed, wait until the knocking should begin, and then question the alleged spirit; when answers were received according to a code of one knock for an affirmative and two knocks for a negative. It was in his presence, then, though not at a single sitting, that the following dialogue was in this way carried on: "Are you Miss Fanny?" --- "Yes." "Did you die naturally?" "No." "Did you die by poison?" - "Yes." "Do you know what kind of poison it was?" "Yes." "Was it arsenic?" - "Yes." "Was it given to you by any person other than Mr. Knight?" - "No." "Do you wish that he be hanged?" "Yes." "Was it given to you in gruel?" — "No." "In beer ?" - "Yes."

Here a spectator interrupted with the remark that the deceased was never known to drink beer, but had been fond of purl, and the question was hastily put: "Was it not in purl?" "Yes." "How long did you live after taking it?"