The Cock Lane Ghost

Before we go any further, I am Scottish, so I am going to need us all to behave ourselves about the fact that this ghost became known as Scratching Fanny. I am aware that I am asking the impossible.

Her actual name was Frances Lynes, usually called Fanny, and for several weeks in 1762 London became fascinated by claims that her ghost was communicating from beyond the grave through knocks and scratches inside a house in Cock Lane, near Smithfield. That would already have been enough to draw a crowd, but the supposed spirit was not merely making unexplained noises. It claimed that Fanny had been murdered by the man she had been living with and, before long, was providing details about exactly how he had supposedly done it.

At that point, London understandably cancelled whatever else it had planned.

BEFORE THERE WAS A GHOST

The story begins with William Kent, who had married Fanny’s sister Elizabeth. Elizabeth died after giving birth, and their baby survived only briefly. Fanny remained with Kent afterwards, and the two eventually fell in love, although there was a serious legal problem with their relationship. Under the marriage rules then recognised in England, Kent could not simply marry his deceased wife’s sister after his marriage to Elizabeth had produced a living child.

Fanny and Kent nevertheless lived together as husband and wife, and by 1759 they were lodging in Cock Lane in the home of Richard Parsons, deputy parish clerk of nearby St Sepulchre’s. Parsons also rented rooms to supplement his income and, at some point during Kent’s stay, borrowed money from him. This will become extremely relevant later.

The first strange noises were reported while Kent was away attending a wedding. Fanny asked Parsons’s young daughter Elizabeth to sleep beside her, and during the night they heard scratching and knocking sounds around the room. There was initially a beautifully ordinary explanation because a cobbler worked nearby, but that became less convincing when the noises were heard on a Sunday while the cobbler was not working.

Fanny reportedly became frightened and began to interpret the disturbances as some kind of warning. Later versions of the story sometimes suggested that this first haunting was the spirit of her dead sister Elizabeth, although the contemporary evidence is not entirely consistent about what anybody thought was responsible at that stage. What matters is that the noises were apparently being reported before Fanny herself died.

Kent and Fanny eventually left Cock Lane after his relationship with Parsons deteriorated over the unpaid loan. The disturbances stopped, and on 2 February 1760 Fanny died.

FANNY WAS BELIEVED TO HAVE DIED OF SMALLPOX

Fanny had become seriously ill towards the end of January. The doctor and apothecary who treated her believed that she was suffering from smallpox, which was hardly an unusual cause of death in eighteenth-century London, and after she died, she was buried in the vault beneath St John’s Church in Clerkenwell.

For roughly a year and a half afterwards, nothing particularly extraordinary appears to have happened at Cock Lane. Then William Kent successfully pursued Richard Parsons for repayment of the money he had lent him.

The scratching returned.

That does not prove that Parsons invented the haunting because he was angry about the debt, but it does give us a motive substantial enough to keep in mind while everything else unfolds.

THE NOISE FOLLOWED ELIZABETH

By early 1762, knocking and scratching were again being reported in the Parsons house, and this time the activity seemed particularly associated with Richard’s daughter Elizabeth, who was about twelve years old. The noises were described as coming from around her bed, and she was reportedly thrown into fits or violent agitation while they occurred.

People tried to find an ordinary explanation. Panelling was removed, rooms were searched and Elizabeth was moved from one part of the house to another, but the sounds supposedly followed her. There were also reports of an apparition, with Elizabeth claiming to have seen the figure of a woman and other witnesses later describing something pale or luminous moving through the house.

One visitor was apparently so frightened by what he believed he had seen that he went home ill. I would like to think that I would remain calm, observe the apparition carefully and make useful notes for the Archive. In reality, I suspect I would already be three streets away.

The haunting might still have remained a fairly ordinary London ghost story if somebody had not discovered that the noises could apparently answer questions.

ONE KNOCK FOR YES

Richard Parsons and a clergyman named John Moore began attempting to communicate with whatever was producing the sounds. A system developed in which knocks could be interpreted as answers, usually one for yes and two for no, while scratching was sometimes taken as a sign of displeasure.

The spirit identified itself as Fanny.

Then came the obvious questions. Had she died naturally? No. Had she been poisoned? Yes. Had William Kent poisoned her?

Yes.

The story had suddenly changed from a noisy house to a murder accusation supposedly delivered by the victim herself.

As the questioning continued, the allegations became more detailed. Fanny was said to have been poisoned with red arsenic placed in purl, an alcoholic drink made with ale. The ghost even indicated that Kent should be hanged for killing her.

Imagine being William Kent. You have already lost your wife, later lost the woman you loved, spent years dealing with a legally awkward domestic arrangement and then had to sue your former landlord for money he owed you. Now the dead woman you lived with is apparently accusing you of murder through a bedroom wall.

I would have been raging.

EVEN THE GHOST’S EVIDENCE HAD PROBLEMS

Detailed testimony sounds impressive until it begins contradicting people who were actually there.

During one questioning session, the ghost reportedly claimed that Fanny had told a former servant about the poisoning shortly before she died. Unfortunately, the servant was present and said that this could not be true because Fanny had been unable to speak at the relevant time.

The séance continued anyway.

There were other inconsistencies. Later accounts noted that the supposed spirit sometimes answered incorrectly, including giving the wrong first name for Fanny’s own father. This does not seem to have reduced the enthusiasm surrounding the case very much.

By this point Scratching Fanny had effectively become a supernatural murder witness whose evidence would have given any competent solicitor a migraine.

LONDON LOST ITS MIND

News of the haunting spread through newspapers, pamphlets and conversation, and Cock Lane became one of the fashionable attractions of London. Crowds gathered outside the house, visitors squeezed into the room where the noises were expected and people waited in near darkness, sometimes with little more than a tallow candle burning, hoping to hear the famous ghost for themselves.

Horace Walpole complained in a letter that London had become caught up in another ridiculous fashion and announced that the latest fashion was a ghost. He then admitted that he intended to go and hear it himself.

This is precisely the kind of hypocrisy I respect.

You can declare something complete nonsense all you like. If everybody else is going to see the murder ghost, apparently your coat is coming on too.

Walpole was far from alone. Members of fashionable society, aristocrats, clergy and ordinary Londoners all visited Cock Lane. Nearby taverns reportedly benefited from the crowds, and Parsons appears to have made money from people wanting access to the house.

It’s funny discovering that even in 1762 nobody wasted a good tourist attraction, or as others would call them, just plain nosy.

The financial arrangement also makes the case more awkward. The house belonged to a man who had recently lost a dispute over money with William Kent, the ghost living in that house accused Kent of murder, and people were now paying to experience the haunting.

KENT WENT TO HEAR HIS OWN ACCUSER

William Kent eventually attended one of the séances himself. During the questioning, the spirit was asked whether Kent would be hanged for murdering Fanny and reportedly answered yes.

Kent accused the supposed ghost of lying.

I rather like him for that.

Being publicly accused of murder would be infuriating enough, but having to sit inside a dark bedroom while some scratching noises predict your execution takes the situation somewhere completely different.

Kent had medical evidence on his side, but by then the ghost story had travelled far beyond Cock Lane. He needed more than his own denial, and eventually a group of investigators decided that the haunting should be tested under more controlled conditions.

This is where Samuel Johnson enters the story.

SAMUEL JOHNSON INVESTIGATES A GHOST

In February 1762, Elizabeth Parsons was taken away from Cock Lane to the Clerkenwell home of the Reverend Stephen Aldrich. A group gathered there to observe what happened, and among them was Samuel Johnson.

Yes, that Samuel Johnson.

Elizabeth was put to bed while several women remained with her and the other investigators waited nearby. For more than an hour nothing happened. Eventually the women reported hearing scratching and knocking, at which point the investigators returned to the room. Elizabeth said she could feel the spirit moving against her back like a mouse.

She was told to keep her hands outside the bedclothes.

The noises stopped.

That was already looking rather unfortunate for Scratching Fanny, but the supposed ghost had made an even more ambitious promise. During an earlier communication, Fanny had apparently agreed that she would knock on her own coffin.

Naturally, the investigators decided to give her the opportunity.

THEY ACTUALLY WENT TO THE CRYPT

At around one o’clock in the morning, members of the investigating party went to St John’s Church and entered the vault where Fanny had been buried. Once inside, they formally called upon the spirit to fulfil its promise and knock on the coffin.

Nothing happened.

There was no scratching, no knocking and certainly no spectral Fanny furiously tapping away from inside the coffin. There was simply a group of extremely serious eighteenth-century gentlemen standing underground in the middle of the night waiting for a corpse to make a noise.

I bloody love history.

Samuel Johnson later wrote an account of the investigation, and the group concluded that there was no evidence of supernatural activity. They believed Elizabeth Parsons had some way of producing the sounds herself, although they still did not know exactly how she was doing it.

That question led eventually to the most famous object in the entire affair.

A tiny piece of wood.

ENTER THE KETTLE BOARD

Elizabeth continued to be tested away from her family. At one stage she was placed in a suspended bed or hammock with her hands and feet positioned in such a way that producing the noises unnoticed would have been difficult. For two nights, nothing happened.

Then the investigation took a much darker turn.

The twelve-year-old was apparently told that if the noises did not return, she and her father might be sent to Newgate Prison. Shortly afterwards, the ghost returned.

Servants had meanwhile noticed Elizabeth hiding a small piece of wood in her clothing before going to bed. The object was roughly six inches by four and was normally used as a board beneath a kettle. Investigators discovered that she could use it to produce scratching sounds.

At first glance, that appears to solve everything. Scratching Fanny had been caught and, disappointingly, turned out to be kitchenware.

The contemporary evidence makes the ending less tidy.

THE KETTLE BOARD DID NOT EXPLAIN EVERYTHING

Accounts of the later testing suggest that the sounds Elizabeth produced with the little board did not entirely resemble some of the earlier noises. Elizabeth herself reportedly said that they were different, and at least some adults present agreed.

One interpretation offered at the time was that she had been frightened by the threat of prison and had attempted to create a noise because the investigators had told her that she needed to produce the ghost.

None of this clears Elizabeth of deception. She had demonstrated that she was capable of manufacturing scratching sounds, and the phenomena were strongly connected with her presence. When investigators restricted her movements or removed her from familiar surroundings, the haunting became far less impressive.

There were also obvious reasons for the adults around her to keep the affair going. Her father had a grievance against Kent, the murder accusation damaged Kent’s reputation, and public interest in the haunting could bring money into the household.

There is plenty here to support the conclusion that fraud was involved.

What the kettle board does not necessarily tell us is who began the deception, how early it started or how every sound reported during the previous months was produced.

Which is irritating, because I was quite prepared for the kettle board to sort the whole thing out.

THEN THERE IS ELIZABETH HERSELF

This is the part of the story I find much less funny.

Elizabeth Parsons was about twelve years old.

Whatever role she played in producing the disturbances, she became the centre of an enormous spectacle created and controlled largely by adults. Strangers came into her bedroom, clergymen questioned a supposed spirit through her, newspapers discussed the affair, investigators moved her between houses and tested her body in increasingly elaborate ways, and eventually somebody threatened her with prison if she could not produce the noises.

If Richard Parsons taught or encouraged his daughter to create the haunting as revenge against Kent, then Elizabeth was being used by her father. If she invented the trick herself and the adults later encouraged it once they realised how much attention it attracted, she was still a child caught inside something that had become far larger than she could reasonably control.

If some of the original noises had another explanation entirely, frightening a twelve-year-old until she manufactured a replacement was hardly an excellent investigative technique.

The story remains funny in places, but it becomes considerably less amusing when you look directly at her.

KENT TOOK THEM TO COURT

William Kent was not satisfied with being cleared informally by Samuel Johnson and a group of men who had spent part of the night standing in a crypt. He wanted his reputation restored properly.

In July 1762, Richard Parsons, his wife, Mary Frazer, the Reverend John Moore and another man named Richard James were tried at Guildhall on charges arising from the conspiracy against Kent.

The medical evidence was important. Fanny’s doctor and apothecary supported the original conclusion that she had died from smallpox, and no credible evidence showed that Kent had poisoned her with arsenic.

The defendants were found guilty.

Richard Parsons eventually received two years’ imprisonment and was ordered to stand in the pillory three times. His wife received a year’s imprisonment and Mary Frazer six months, while others involved reached financial arrangements with Kent.

Even then, the Cock Lane affair managed one final piece of absurdity. When Parsons stood in the pillory, the crowd reportedly treated him sympathetically and collected money for him rather than attacking him.

Apparently, London had spent so long enjoying Scratching Fanny that it had become emotionally attached to the franchise.

THE GHOST WAS WRONG

This is the part of the story that matters beyond the comedy.

William Kent was publicly accused of murdering Frances Lynes, yet the accusation did not come from a doctor, a witness or evidence found in her body. It came from knocks and scratches which people gradually turned into increasingly elaborate testimony.

The supposed ghost provided a murderer, a poison, a method and even an expected punishment. Meanwhile, the people who had treated Fanny during her final illness believed that she had died of smallpox.

The ghost story was more exciting, and excitement travels remarkably well.

The scandal became an example of credulity almost immediately. Pamphlets appeared; writers mocked it and satirical prints followed. Some Londoners believed the haunting, others thought it was obvious nonsense, and a third group apparently considered it nonsense while still visiting Cock Lane because everybody else was going.

Once again, we have not changed nearly as much as we like to imagine.

SO, WHAT WAS SCRATCHING FANNY?

There was almost certainly deception somewhere in the Cock Lane affair. Elizabeth was caught deliberately producing scratching noises, the disturbances followed her closely, her father had both a financial grievance against William Kent and a possible financial benefit from the crowds, and the murder accusation itself had no credible medical basis.

When Elizabeth was moved away from Cock Lane and carefully observed, the ghost became considerably less reliable.

That is strong evidence for a hoax.

What we cannot reconstruct with the same confidence is exactly how every reported incident happened or whether one explanation accounts for all of them. Several people may have been involved. Some noises may have been deliberately created, while others may have been misunderstood or folded into the story afterwards. Once the haunting became famous, every strange sound had an audience waiting to give it meaning.

None of that requires a ghost.

What it gives us instead is an eighteenth-century household filled with resentment, money, religious belief, frightened children, fashionable visitors, newspapers hungry for a sensation and adults who became increasingly invested in a story that had already escaped their control.

That is quite enough.

I still think my favourite image is Samuel Johnson and the other investigators entering the church vault at one o’clock in the morning because the ghost had promised to knock on its coffin. These were educated men attempting to investigate a supernatural claim seriously, and when the spirit offered them a test, they actually went to perform it.

Nothing happened.

They eventually climbed back out of the vault having learned very little from Fanny herself, but rather more about the people speaking on her behalf.

More than 260 years later, the Cock Lane Ghost remains one of the most famous supernatural scandals in London history. It tells us considerably less about ghosts than it does about what can happen when a strange noise, a good story and enough interested people all find themselves in the same room.

And if somebody ever invites me to an eighteenth-century séance and tells me the resident spirit is called Scratching Fanny, I am still asking several follow-up questions before I enter the building.