← After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal
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- [00:00]
Maddy
Hello everyone, it's me, Maddy. I am back. Well, not quite. I will be back on the pod very soon, but in the meantime, if you've missed your fix of Anthony and me together, you can now catch us live on stage at Conway hall in London on the 7th of May. There we'll be discussing my brand new book, Truth and Lies in the Age of Enlightenment. Out that very same day, we'll be discovering how fake news is nothing new. Chatting about what it's like to spend time in the darker side of the Georgian world and meeting the three extraordinary, bizarre and often frightening characters at the heart of the book. Copies of Hoax will be available on the night which I'll be signing after the show and hopefully chatting to as many of you as possible. So get your tickets now. The link is in the show notes. You can go to the Conway hall website or follow the link in my Instagram bio. I'm so excited about this book and I just can't wait to share it with you all. Do come along. It is going to be the most fantastic evening.
- [01:05]
Narrator
See you there.
- [01:08]
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- [02:15]
Narrator
Death was no stranger in 18th century London. It peered from the city's heap graveyards swung with the heads of traitors from the heights of Temple Bar and drifted through alleyways with the fog. And yet, in the wet, colourless January of 1762, something happened that made even this hardened city stop and shiver. Because one night at the ragged edge of Smithfield, Londoners became convinced that the veil between the living and the dead had finally torn. The story began as whispers. Scratches in the walls of a narrow house in Cock Lane. Strange knocks in the dark, a trembling girl in a white nightcap claiming nightly communion with a ghost. And in a city hungry for marvels, the tale didn't spread so much as detonate. Soon, butcher and bishop, gossip monger and grand dame, all pressed shoulder to shoulder in the filthy stairwell of that crooked little house, desperate for a glimpse into the beyond. Even Horace Walpole, parliamentarian wit, connoisseur of the bizarre, couldn't resist.
- [03:42]
Maddy
One evening, after an outing at the
- [03:44]
Narrator
opera with the Duchess of Northumberland, Lady Mary Coke and the King's own brother, the Duke of York, curiosity tugged them from velvet seats and candlelit chambers into disguise and out into the rain slicked streets. Through Fleet street, they rattled past taverns, spilling their last drinkers into the night toward the knot of lanterns, a noise gathering at the mouth of Cock Lane. There, elbowed and jostled by London's masses, the royal party climbed the creaking staircase to the topmost room. Thick wainscoting ropes overhead, a single guttering candle, and at the centre, a pale, silent child waiting for the dead to speak. The crowd held its breath. One knock for yes, two for no. A simple code, they said, for a spirit restless for justice. Walpole's party, half delighted, half unnerved, slipped back into their carriage and out into the night. For days afterwards, the city buzzed with rumors and scandal. But what was it that they'd glimpsed? Was it a haunting or a hoax?
- [05:18]
Maddy
An innocent young girl possessed by a spirit from beyond the grave? Dark, candlelit houses, sparkling, spooky crypts, accusations of murder and celebrity seances. This nearly 300-year-old ghost story has it all. It even gave us the immortal line we all know now. Knock once for yes, twice for no. This is after dark and we're heading to 1762 and to London's Cock Lane, where the living and the dead seem dangerously close. Hello, everyone. I'm back. Briefly.
- [06:28]
Anthony
I'm back. It's December. We've gone back in time. Maddie is still pregnant.
- [06:33]
Maddy
I'm still pregnant. No. You'll be hearing this hopefully towards the end of April, beginning of May. I have popped back up in Anthony's life pre me returning properly to the podcast because I have a book coming out.
- [06:47]
Anthony
Not content with a human baby.
- [06:49]
Maddy
I've made a book baby.
- [06:50]
Anthony
She's made a book baby, too. So this is the first of two episodes about Maddie's new book, Hoax, Truth and Lies in the Age of Enlightenment, which is out with profile books and available from 7th May in stores and online. If you're listening before that, pre order, what do you need to do?
- [07:09]
Maddy
Pre order, Please pre order. It's so important. Tell everyone why it's important to pre order. Because I think often if you're not an author, you're maybe not aware of. It's so crucial, isn't it?
- [07:18]
Anthony
Yes. So pre ordering is really important for authors because it lets bookshops know that there is demand for the book that they need to order. X amount of books in makes them more interested in it, makes it more interested. It also shows that there's a bit of momentum behind that book. So there's more likely that newspapers are going to pick up and review it so that you will find out about it or the podcast Beyond After Dark are inviting you on. So this is a really kind of. And do you know what, let's be really honest about it, actually. It's a really nerve wracking and almost it's going to sound a bit weird, but like it is a bit soul berry. You're like, oh God, I worked really
- [07:48]
Maddy
hard, I created this and now it goes out into the world and people are allowed to judge it.
- [07:53]
Anthony
Yeah. So a little. It's also a little boost for the author just to be like, oh my God, I've got some pre orders ready to go.
- [07:59]
Maddy
Someone wants to read it.
- [08:00]
Anthony
Somebody does want to. Well, I've already read it, so I was gonna say I want to read it, but I've read it again.
- [08:04]
Maddy
He's done his homework.
- [08:04]
Anthony
I have. But we are recording this in December, as we say, because Maddie will be with a real baby. And we wanted to do this because it's so exciting to have this book coming out. And. Okay, first let's talk about the ways potentially in which After Dark has shaped this book.
- [08:25]
Maddy
Ooh, good question.
- [08:27]
Anthony
It's like not very different. It's very different from your first book. It's not like your first book necessarily. And so how do you think After Dark has informed this?
- [08:36]
Maddy
Because this is the audience, our listeners have really informed this in terms of what they respond to on the show. This is a book that's told in three thirds with three different stories. And it is very story led. There is a lot of history in here. There's a lot of archival research. Like I've done a proper job, it's solid history. But I tell it in a way that I hope people will want to keep turning the pages. I want them to feel excited what is coming next? These are such weird, revelatory, bizarre, important stories and they're stories that some of them, people might be a little bit familiar with, particularly the one we're going to talk about today, but they might not know all of the details. But there are others in here that you will never have heard of and that you will honestly be shocked by. I mean, there's some really weird human behavior in this. So in terms of After Dark, I think. I don't know about you, but I think the show has taught me so much about how to storytell and it's changed my writing for the better. It's changed also. I can now picture our listeners when I'm writing and I know what I want to say to them.
- [09:37]
Anthony
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, yes.
- [09:39]
Maddy
So it has really informed it in a lot of ways. This is very scary being a guest on this show, by the way.
- [09:43]
Anthony
You're not a guest. This is, you know, this is your home. But we'd have to do this to sell your books. We're doing it. It's totally worth our while. Right, So I want to talk to you about the Cock Lane Ghost. So that is going to be the topic that we are on.
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Maddy
That is going to be the topic for today.
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Anthony
We said it is very After Dark coded and we're starting with a ghost. So this makes total sense. Now give After Dark listeners the context of this time. We are in the sweet spot for us, the 18th century. We know and love this century. For those who are maybe new to this or new to our work or your work, or 18th century, what's going on at this time?
- [10:18]
Maddy
Okay, so this is a century. We always talk about this as our favourite century. It's so important. So much happens. It is the sort of popular idea that we have of the 18th century is this age of Enlightenment, right? This idea that rationality and science and reason and learning took over from the superstition and the magical thinking of the past. And this book looks at how that is very much not the case. And, you know, this idea of enlightenment, literally bringing light to things, actually cast a lot of shadows. And in those shadowy edges, all kinds of people were up to all kinds of things in terms of a little bit of context. So the Cocklingo, specifically, this book starts out in the 1760s, well, the late 1750s really, and it runs all the way to the 1820s. So my absolute favourite, framing mid century to almost mid century. There are things like the British museum opens in 1759. This idea of bringing order to Things, taxonomizing things, putting things into categories, collecting things, stealing things, displaying stuff. Everything has a place, has a purpose. Animals, objects and people, of course, are categorized in this way, in this time. So everything is about rationalizing stuff. In the 1750s, we have things like the Gregorian calendar comes in. So the way that the Georgians understand the world, the way that they're telling time even, is changing. They are putting order onto everything, or attempting to. But of course, underneath the surface, there's kind of a strange tension that's bubbling away all the time and manifests in lots of different ways. So we have things like in 1756, we've got the Seven Years War that's going on and the coronation in 1761 of George III, who's my favourite of the Georges, I think, by a long way. But we also have things, you know, so on the one hand that seems, you know, a new monarch has come to the throne. Everything is exciting and new and glamorous and grand. But we also have, in 1760, into 1761, Tacky's revolt in Jamaica, which is one of the biggest revolts by enslaved communities in this period. The Foundling Hospital that we've done an episode on before is founded in this moment as well, slightly before, but it's operating to cater for people in the City of London who have no option but to give their children up because of the poverty and the chaos that exists in the Georgian world. So you have this kind of binary idea of everything being sort of neoclassical. You think of the 18th century, it's all its columns, its grand architecture, Everything is under control. And then you have chaos. You have William Hogarth depicting Gin Lane and people sort of spilling down steps because they're so drunk, and dropping their children and hanging themselves in upstairs rooms. This is a world in which people are struggling to navigate the changes that are happening culturally, where their place is within it. And within that world, into it, creep a number of liars who want to take advantage of this uncertainty. And the idea with the book, I think, really, that I had, was I take cases that have obvious lies told in them and obvious imposters, people who pretend to be something they're not. But actually, at the beginning, in the introduction, I ask the reader to decide for themselves who the real liars are and who is. Who's taking advantage, who is profiting from the lying? And, yeah, you have to kind of navigate that for yourself, as you're about to find out in this episode.
- [13:50]
Anthony
Well, it's you profiting from the lying now, selling a Book about it?
- [13:53]
Maddy
Yes, please. Okay.
- [13:55]
Anthony
So. And this, I think, is really apt in terms of the first case that we're gonna look at, which is called Playing Ghost. Set the stage for us. Set the scene. We have some key characters that we're going to need to know. In this particular case, we do.
- [14:10]
Maddy
So we're gonna spend a lot of time in grimy northeast London around Smithfield, but we're not there yet. So we start off very pleasantly in the countryside in Norfolk. And we have three main characters, if you like, who I want to introduce you to. Now, the first of these is William Kent. He is a young man who's living in Norfolk. He has inherited a business from his father. He's never really had to work that hard. And he is a mummy's boy. He sort of famously traipse. I mean, he's a grown man, but he famously traipses around after her. She sort of rules his life. He is a womanizer as well. He has various relationships with local women. And he is intrinsically ambitious. And this is something to remember about him, that he. Nothing is ever enough for him. Now he has a relationship with Elizabeth Lynes, or Elizabeth Kent, as she's about to become.
- [15:03]
Anthony
Oh, spoiler. Married.
- [15:04]
Maddy
Yes. So Elizabeth is very much not from the same social class as William Kent. He is, you know, sort of lower, middling, or I suppose, what we might now call sort of upper working class. She is a gentleman's daughter. They live in the big house.
- [15:17]
Anthony
Wow. It's a big difference. You can't overstate that.
- [15:20]
Maddy
Yeah, yeah. Now, they somehow strike up a relationship. Kent is. He's charismatic for all his faults, and women are drawn to him. And by the time they go up the aisle, which, by the way, her family do not approve of. But it's necessary because by the time they get to the altar, she's showing she is pregnant. So this is a situation of like, this isn't ideal, but we're going with it. So they marry and they live together for a little while. He uses her dowry to buy a local inn, so he's moving up in the world. He's like, I made something for myself, and my wife's hot and pregnant. And they're gentle.
- [16:01]
Anthony
Mercantile class.
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Maddy
Exactly. But Elizabeth's time is drawing nearer and nearer. Obviously, they've got married well into the pregnancy, so it's not long before she's about to give birth.
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Narrator
And.
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Maddy
And to help her do this, her sister from the same posh family called Fanny Lynes, comes to live with them in the tavern. Right. So Elizabeth eventually goes into labour, Fanny's with her, which was, you know, ordinary for the time. There would have been some other midwives there who don't get referenced in the archive, but Fanny's there and tragically, she sees her sister die in childbirth in front of her. Now, the child survives and this is really key to what happens next. So the next few weeks, Fanny continues to live in the house, which is quite unusual. And she has elder brothers at this time who are like, could you please come back to our respectable domestic household?
- [16:49]
Anthony
I think that word's really key there.
- [16:50]
Dan Snow
Right.
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Anthony
Respectability is under threat here.
- [16:53]
Maddy
Exactly. You know, one sister's been ruined by this guy, like, you need to come home. But Fanny's not having any of it. She has fallen for William Kent and Jesus.
- [17:00]
Anthony
Fanny.
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Maddy
I know. I mean, he must have been. He must have had something about him. He doesn't appeal to me from everything that I know about him, but she's like, I'm smitten. I see what Elizabeth saw in him and, you know, there's an opening in the household, let's say. So they look after the child together, but under canon law, legally speaking, they can get married and William, you know, they start a relationship. But under canon law, so church law, it is considered incestuous because the child from Elizabeth is still living. Now, that child dies quite quickly, and as far as I can tell, there's nothing sinister about this. It's a sickly child from birth. Obviously its mother has died. She's not there to feed it. It's a series of tragic, tragic events. But even with the child dead, because it survived the mother, it's still an incestuous marriage, which means that Fanny's family could legitimately object to it, break the marriage apart, even if it was legally binding in the first place. And so William does what he thinks is the right thing, slash the most advantageous thing to him.
- [18:05]
Anthony
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [18:05]
Maddy
And he decides to go to London. He's like, sorry, Fanny, everyone in the village knows we've been having a relationship and now the baby's dead, I'm kind of, you know, I've cut my ties, really. I'm going to cash in on the inn and I'm going to go to London and make my name in the big smoke, which, you know, mid 18th century, a lot of people were doing. And Fanny is devastated. She. Now, this is according to William Kent, and we have his version of events. We do not have Fanny's version of events. Bear that in mind, he says. That she pesters him, she doesn't leave him alone. She writes to him constantly. How dare you have left me. I'm gonna come to London. I am gonna take the stagecoach. I'm gonna walk there. I might be raped and murdered on the way. It'll be your fault, because I need to come here, but I'm coming. I need to be with you. You've abandoned me. And he has abandoned her. They've started. Whether it's a sexual relationship, it's certainly a romantic relationship that everyone in the community is aware of. Her reputation is ruined already. Yeah, yeah, gone. So eventually he gives in. He relents. He's like, go on, then. What a gentleman. And the pair elope to London. Now, elopement in this moment is something that's becoming increasingly common. We're getting novels like Samuel Richardson's Pamela or Virtue of all this.
- [19:13]
Anthony
Remind me, what year are we in here?
- [19:15]
Maddy
We're in. So at this point, we're in 1759, going in 1760.
- [19:19]
Anthony
So the marriage act has passed.
- [19:21]
Maddy
Yes.
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Anthony
So even though this elopement thing is going. So that's kind of. It's now more formalized marriage ceremony.
- [19:26]
Maddy
Yeah. Marriage act comes in because of all of these elopements. So the Marriage act is essentially to try and regulate some of what's happening. Because, you know, elopement can be a form of stealing wealth. You know, marriage is essentially wealth management. It's asset management in this period. And if that is interrupted by romance and people running off together who haven't got a plan, this can be an issue for big families. So they elope. Like many people in Fanny's mind, I think the idea is that she is deeply in love with him, he's deeply in love with her. Nobody's going to know in London that they're not married. And so they turn up, they get rooms near Mansion House, which is the residence of the Lord Mayor in a relatively respectable part of the city. It's not, you know, he's got a
- [20:09]
Anthony
bit of money in his pocket now after the sale of the inn.
- [20:11]
Maddy
Yeah. I mean, they're renting rooms in a house with a landlord, but they introduce themselves as the Kents.
- [20:16]
Anthony
Sure.
- [20:16]
Maddy
This is my wife, Fanny. Hello. Nice to meet you. And that's how they live for a little while. And there might end us their story, were it not for William Kent.
- [20:24]
Anthony
Well, I'm sorry, but that would be a really boring book. And I know your book is not boring. So it's. What happens now is where this takes this turn.
- [20:34]
Maddy
Kent, he Is so ambitious. And he's always trying to get one up on people. He always wants to be in control. Which again, makes me doubt his account of Fanny a little bit. And he does something that he does several times in his life. He lends money to the landlord. And he's sort of bolstered by this. He feels empowered that, you know, this guy now owes me money. I'm living in his house, but I'm in charge. I'm a big shot. And he lets slip that they're not married. And the landlord is like, oh, that's an issue, because nobody else is going to want to rent rooms here. You're making this not respectable.
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Anthony
You're bringing it down.
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Maddy
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're lowering the tone. You need to go.
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Anthony
That's what happens everywhere I go.
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Maddy
You're just lowering the tone. It's so embarrassing. Yeah. Everywhere we go out together, I'm like, sorry, I guess we're leaving again. So he through a series of kind of disputes with him, the landlord. The landlord ends up in death's prison because he won't pay the debt. And Kent and Fanny are kicked out. And they're now on the street. They don't know where to live, so they have to find somewhere new to live.
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Anthony
Where are they gonna go, Maddie?
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Maddy
Where are they gonna go? What's the name of this episode? Okay, so one day they head towards Smithfield, which is a less salubrious part of town, let's say. You know, this is lovely now. Yeah, beautiful. Now, Smithfield market, which is, you know, there's a version of it still there, but that's very much in play in the 18th century. It's this kind of riotous place. There are animals being slaughtered, bro. Brought in from the countryside for slaughter. Here there's an annual fair with fortune tellers and performers. And, you know, it's a sort of. It's a slightly dingy, dirty place. There's lots of medieval winding streets. This isn't the sort of glistening, gleaming, grand 18th century city that you get closer to the river, but it's all they can afford. And also they've got to move away from the area where they've revealed they're not married. So they're looking for anonymity again. So they walk into St. Sepulchres now. Friend of the pod.
- [22:23]
Anthony
Yes.
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Maddy
Why is this church important to us?
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Anthony
So very close to Newgate Prison. And these are the last bells that you hear if you're condemned. And they will chime the night before, but then they'll Chime the day as well. So there's loads of songs about St. Sepulchurs. It's a real landmark in the history of death in London and crime and regulation. So they're moving within this. This is a really, like.
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Maddy
It's a darker place.
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Anthony
Yes. I mean, think about the poverty and the suffering that's going on essentially right across the street in Newgate. You know, this is.
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Maddy
This is a grim part of church, actually. Have you been to the church, by the way?
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Anthony
I have, yeah.
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Maddy
It's gorgeous. It's absolutely stunning. And still very much frozen in the moment that Fanny and William would have known.
- [23:03]
Anthony
Which.
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Maddy
Yeah. And I. The first time I walked in, I was researching this and I was, you know, had that journey of them coming from Norfolk in my head and to stand in that place was incredible. So they go into the church and they think maybe someone in here will know some rooms to rent. So they sit for a service and they watch their potential neighbors coming in and out of the church. And the rector comes up to. Talked to them at the end. Now I'm gonna introduce him in a minute.
- [23:23]
Anthony
Okay, so this. Okay, New characters.
- [23:25]
Maddy
New characters.
- [23:25]
Anthony
Well, in a minute. Hold on. Yeah, go on.
- [23:26]
Maddy
Yeah. So he has his own reputation, we'll get to that. But he says, hello, you're new here, welcome. What's the crack? What are you doing? And they say, oh, we have moved to London recently. We're a newly married couple. We're looking for rooms to rent. Do you know, anywhere. And he says, that's so funny because I live on Cock Lane, right behind this church. And I rent the first two floors of my house and currently they're empty. Would you like them? And they go, yes, please. Thank you very much.
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Anthony
I also think that says something about how they are presenting. Right. Cause you talked about this and you've hinted at this about the veneer of. Well, in Fanny's case, it's true, but the veneer of respectability that he's able to adopt and has now grown into.
- [24:09]
Maddy
And as you say, for Fanny, it's not a performance. She's a gentleman's daughter. She would be well spoken, she's well dressed. Still at this stage, she's in the clothes from her family home that has been brought for her. That she is clearly of a different class.
- [24:22]
Anthony
Like there's already hoaxing here, you know,
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Maddy
like, this isn't the case on all fronts, my friend.
- [24:27]
Anthony
But, you know. Oh, yes, yes, okay, yes, right, spoiling. So the rector is saying, I've got two floors. Come in Here now. And we'll have an outside.
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Maddy
So I will now introduce you to the rector. So this guy's name is Richard Parsons and he's the rector of St Sepulchres. He and has a reputation locally for being a bit of a drunk.
- [24:47]
Anthony
Yes.
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Maddy
And also there's a really strange incident with him in the summer before that's reported in the newspapers. And I found like one tiny fleeting reference to this where he and his wife and I'll introduce her in a minute, receive a letter, a malicious like poison pen letter to their house accusing him of being involved in some way, we're not sure how, in the death of a young woman, a respectable young woman in this area. And there's no more information than that. But it's reported in the local paper.
- [25:17]
Anthony
Yeah, there's enough there for people know
- [25:19]
Maddy
not to trust him, you know, he's unreliable. But of course Fanny and Kent are not locals. They don't know. So they say that's fantastic.
- [25:26]
Anthony
And a bit desperate.
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Maddy
They're desperate, yeah, yeah. So he says we can go right now and look at the rooms. So they do. And in the household they find Elizabeth Parsons, who is Richard's wife. They also find little Elizabeth or Betty and she is gonna be crucial to our story. Little Betty Parsons who at the time is 10 years old. And then we also have Anne Parsons who is the youngest daughter and she's six.
- [25:46]
Anthony
Okay.
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Maddy
So on the surface, according to Fanny and Kent, you know, there's a husband and wife, there's two little girls, they seem non threatening. The house is sort of flat fronted, small. It's just one room on top of another with a staircase connecting them all. It's quite dingy, but they get the attic room to sleep in and a room as a sort of parlor. What more could they want?
- [26:11]
Anthony
It's fine for now because this.
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Maddy
Because you know what's going well?
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Anthony
Well yes, that too. But also because this so captured my imagination so many years ago before I you even knew you, let alone that. I went to see if I could find the house, but it's not there.
- [26:24]
Maddy
Unfortunately it was not done in the 1960s.
- [26:41]
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Dan Snow
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- [28:33]
Maddy
Here.
- [28:48]
Anthony
We have this domestic setting and as you say, there's respectability, the seeming respectability amongst that domestic setting that they are now inserting themselves into.
- [28:57]
Maddy
Yes. So life at Cock Lane for several months is totally fine. There are tensions that start to bubble, but the family are friendly. Now, Kent himself still has business going on in Norfolk. He hasn't transferred everything to London, so he's away a lot. He sort of neglects Fanny, really. He's away so much that he. He is absent from her life and she by now is pregnant and she is, you know, rapidly expanding. Aren't we all?
- [29:27]
Anthony
She's like you, Maggie.
- [29:28]
Maddy
She's like me. Well, do you know, it's so interesting in this book. Like, there's so much of every single character, every single female character in this book is pregnant and has a child at some point. And I found myself more drawn to that side of their story than I would have otherwise been actually, because of experiencing this myself. So it's really interesting what you bring as a historian at certain points in your life.
- [29:50]
Anthony
Can I just pause here for one second. That in real time now, because obviously we're recording this in advance. There is a world in which you are now at home with a child. When listeners are listening to this and that child is screaming its head off
- [30:01]
Maddy
and you're going, like, what is happening in my life?
- [30:04]
Anthony
But in a good way.
- [30:05]
Maddy
Yeah, sure.
- [30:05]
Anthony
The tarot cards, remember they said it was going to be good.
- [30:07]
Maddy
They said it was going to be fine. It'll be fine. Yeah. It's all under control, guys.
- [30:11]
Anthony
So weird timelines in my head right now are freaking themselves out, basically.
- [30:15]
Maddy
Time travel.
- [30:16]
Anthony
We're in the future. Yeah, okay.
- [30:17]
Maddy
Okay. So Fanny's pregnant. Like I am currently, but also not currently.
- [30:21]
Anthony
Not when you're listening to this. Yes.
- [30:23]
Maddy
Yeah. So when Kent is away, the Parsons basically lend little Betty, who's 10, to Fanny to sleep in her bed. Because coal is expensive, it's cold at the top of the house. And this was like. This is fairly ordinary. This is an unusual thing. So Fanny, who is rapidly ballooning, is sleeping with this little girl in the bed with her and they become. I can say that I have experienced it. They become quite close. They spend a lot of time together, you know, for little Betty, who's grown up in the squalor of Smithfield, here is a gentleman's daughter and she's sleeping in her bed. This is a glamorous young woman who she would never otherwise come into contact with. And there's a little bit of an obsession there, I think there's certainly a connection, but Betty is fascinated, let's say. Now, the other thing that Kent does to make his wife, non wife, feel more comfortable in this environment and also to assert his own social class as he sees it, is that he hires a day servant for Fanny. So this is a young woman called Esther Carlisle and she comes to the house, she helps Fanny dress, she, you know, empty the chamber pot, change her sheets, whatever, and she helps her undress at the end of the day and that kind of thing and does her hair and whatnot. Now, the Parsons family don't take to this particularly well. They see this for what it is, that it's pretension and a bit ridiculous. And poor old Esther, she has very red hair and they nickname her Carrots and they. No, I know, it's quite mean. And they sort of mock her every time she comes into the house. So there's again, tension is building and there's a sort of difference between the landlord's family and the renters and the way that they want to Use the domestic space and live their lives is starting to become kind of. It's very obvious that it's very different.
- [32:01]
Anthony
I feel so sorry for Carrots McGee, or whatever her name is.
- [32:04]
Maddy
Poor Esther Carlisle.
- [32:06]
Anthony
That's Thornton.
- [32:06]
Maddy
Yeah. And she. We are gonna see her again as this story goes on. She's an important character, but we don't really have any kind of archival evidence of how she felt about this, about being called Carrots. I can't imagine. She loved it. So two things happen around this time, well, several things, actually, that really start to tip the scales. It's a sort of series of weird events that start to happen. One of the things is that when Kent is away, Parsons, Richard Parsons, the dad, will invite his friends over, not least the landlord of the Wheat Sheaf, which is the pub just at the end of the road, and they will just sit up all night and get drunk. And Fanny doesn't love this. Even though she's in the attic room, she locks the bedroom door. You know, these are really drunk men downstairs. She doesn't really know. Her husband's away and her and little Betty will lock themselves away and she can't really sleep. She's pregnant, she's exhausted. Also something I'm currently experiencing, you know, and it's starting to make Fanny uneasy. She's feeling nervous and maybe a little bit paranoid. Certainly that's how Kent interprets it. I think she has a right to be kind of pissed off in this environment, you know. The other thing that happens is Kent decides to lend his landlord money again. So he lends Parsons 12 guineas, which is a not inconsiderable sum. And the arrangement is that he will pay back one guinea per month for a year with interest. So this is a way of Kent making an extra bob or two.
- [33:24]
Anthony
One guinea a month.
- [33:26]
Maddy
Okay, yeah, yeah, exactly. But for, you know.
- [33:28]
Anthony
No, you're right.
- [33:29]
Maddy
For Parsons, this is a significant amount. He is only a rector, so he has a meager income from the church and he drinks a lot of that away. So this is gonna get him into trouble. Now, this is when the first ghostly thing starts to happen as well.
- [33:43]
Anthony
So let's pause here for a second to understand. So we've seen these two casts of characters come together all the way from
- [33:48]
Maddy
Norfolk with so unlikely that they would ever cross paths.
- [33:51]
Anthony
We have the lines, slash Kents, and they have come. They're lying. We go to St Sepulchre's. The rector there says, I've got. I've got rooms that you can. So they've gone in there. Parsons is a bit of a drinker. Fanny's upstairs, pregnant now with little Betty. And they've locked themselves in. Cause there's men coming and going when William is away. So we have a house that is tumultuous. We have a house that's unsettled. We have a house that the door is kind of always open and people are coming and going and traveling through. And again, worth pointing out that although there would have been traffic through, Fanny's original family home wouldn't have been in the same way.
- [34:29]
Maddy
No, it's. Fanny's kind of trapped here. When Kent's not there, where's she gonna go?
- [34:33]
Anthony
Yeah, this is a real fall for her, even.
- [34:36]
Maddy
And this isn't necessarily a safe area. She's not gonna be going for a walk by herself.
- [34:41]
Anthony
So when we look at historic hauntings or ghost apparitions, ghostly apparitions, there's often something that is worth bearing mind about the location. And this is called the Cock Lane ghost. So it's so key in this of where she has found herself.
- [34:57]
Maddy
This domestic space, this environment in which this all takes place is so important. And this is something that we see again and again with 18th century hauntings and even earlier, certainly early modern hauntings, you know, towards even the end of the medieval period onwards. There's this idea. You know, we find ghosts in taverns, we find them at crossroads, we find them everywhere. But the ghost in the household has particular place in the cultural imagination. And there are. You know, I go into this in the book. There are so many cases leading up to this one where people are being supposedly haunted by sounds, by visions, by ghosts that are attacking them in some way, physically hurting them. Almost like what we would today call a poltergeist. When you start to look into those cases, you find there is tension between the husband and wife or the master, and the servants or the children are being mischievous in some way. One of the most famous cases we have at the beginning of the 18th century is John Wesley, the Methodist preacher. When he's a small boy, he's away at school with his brother, but his father is a vicar in Lincolnshire. And the rectory there that he lives in with his wife and servants and several daughters. I think two daughters starts to become haunted by, first of all, steps running up and down upstairs. And then there's sounds. There's the sound of a horn that blasts at night. And it gets worse and worse. And this all happens at the Christmas period. I just think this is really interesting that Christmas always comes into it. So Much or sort of wintery months anyway, and eventually it dies down. And there have been so many interpretations of the relationship between the husband and wife and what was going on there. Have huge political and religious difference within their household. And they're arguing all the time. And then there's problems with the servants as well. And so how much of this is imagination? How much is actual mischief being done? People are making these noises.
- [36:42]
Anthony
People off, basically.
- [36:43]
Maddy
Yeah. The girls wake up and their beds have been moved. They're pricked with needles and they bleed. You know, what is going on here? So there's so many cases like that leading up to this. And this is what we see in Cock Lane. So it's not the first of its kind, but it becomes the archetype because of the scandal that's gonna attach itself to it.
- [37:00]
Anthony
So what? It so becomes the archetype. That's so true. What is the pattern of initial hauntings, then?
- [37:06]
Maddy
Okay, so while Fanny and Kent are still living there, Kent's away a lot, as we say. They start to hear. And this originates in the attic, so where Betty is sleeping in the same bed as Fanny. And we start to get these knocking sounds. The whole room is wrapped in wainscoting, so, you know, wooden paneling, floor to ceiling, which is incredibly. It sounds grand, but it's really grimy and rotten and, you know, covered in, like, coal dust and stuff. It's really grim up there. We start to get these knockings. They're kind of like wraps on the wood. And then there's also a scratching sound. And this will often happen at night when the two. Well, the woman and the young girl are in bed. And at first it's just Fanny who can hear it. And Betty sleeps through it often. So Betty, you know, Fanny literally sees her asleep in the bed next to her. So it can't be Betty, surely. And Fanny says this to the rest of the household. She says to the Parsons, you know, I can hear these sounds. I can't sleep. What's going on? Are you making them? Is it something in the house? And they say, we all live very close to our neighbours here. We have a cobbler who works next door. It's probably just him doing his work at night. Until one day on a Sunday, they hear the noises and they go around to the cobbler and say, what are you cobbling? Yeah, what are you cobbling? And he says, nothing. It's a Sunday. I've not been doing anything. And eventually other people in the household do start to hear this. Kent hears it when he's back one time, Elizabeth Parsons, the wife, starts to hear it. Even Richard admits that he can hear the noises. And this starts to. You know, you think about Fanny. She's already uneasy. She's got these drunk men downstairs. Her husband's away a lot. She's getting into the last stages of pregnancy. She's also so exhausted and she's starting to feel unwell. And this is something that's gonna escalate. But it's really starting to get to her now. And then one night, a really strange occurrence happens. And I read this in multiple different accounts from multiple different perspectives, and tried to reason with myself of what this could be. Whether this is. They're already hyped up in its imagination. It's an element of the story that doesn't really fit with the pattern of everything else. And I still don't know where it sits. And I'm kind of fascinated by it. So one night, Richard Parsons is downstairs drinking with his friend James Franzen, who's the landlord of the Wheat Sheaf, right? And James Franzen gets up to go and use the chamber pot. So he moves towards the stairs. Maybe the chamber pot is upstairs or something. You know, he's there sat in the kitchen on the ground floor. So he gets to the staircase, and remember that this is, you know, really tight, enclosed, dingy space. And there's this narrow staircase that wraps around the height of the building. And when he gets to the stairs, he looks up and there is a figure on the stairs, floating an inch or so above the steps. It's a woman. And she's all in black. And her dress and her hair are kind of fluttering and shimmering. And he obviously has been drinking quite a lot. And he looks up at her and he has to sort of steady himself on the wall. Cause he's so pissed, but also shocked by what he sees. And as he does so, he swears that she kind of beckons to him with a finger. But then when he looks back up, she's gone. And he reports this everywhere. He's like, oh, my God.
- [40:20]
Anthony
It's funny. He's the owner of an inn, isn't it?
- [40:22]
Maddy
That he might be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he's like, come to my young guy. Guys. Yeah. Guys, I just saw this. So word quickly spreads. The house on Cock Lane. Little bit haunted, a little bit freaky. Within a few days, even Fanny and Kent decide they've had enough, right? They move out. Fanny is, as I say, moving to the last stages of her pregnancy. And she is now seriously unwell. She has a fever, she can't breathe very well, and these little red pustules are starting to appear on her body.
- [40:52]
Anthony
Oh, dear.
- [40:53]
Maddy
So Kent realizes, he calls the doctor, and the doctor's like, you gotta take her somewhere else. Like, this is not the environment for this woman to be in. So he moves her to other lodgings very reluctantly, because he doesn't wanna pay. He's such a sort of miserly person when he's not benefiting from it. But he's like, really? I have to pay for new rooms. Like, these are fine. Fanny, cheer up. He does move her eventually. She is incredibly ill. It's smallpox, which, you know, is a kind of serial killer in Georgian London at this time. Not sure where she gets it from. It's highly contagious. No one in the Cocklane house has it. Kent doesn't have it, of course. They could be carriers of it and not present the symptoms. But it's interesting that nobody has the symptoms, but Fanny does. Now, before the end comes for poor Fanny, Kent does get in touch with her sister, who is living in London.
- [41:49]
Anthony
There's another sister?
- [41:50]
Maddy
There's another sister, yeah. This isn't dead, Elizabeth. This is just another sister. And, you know, Fanny's family have not heard from her since she eloped. This is. You know, you think about in Pride and Prejudice, Wickham and Lydia running off together, like. Like once you get into London, you disappear. They have no idea. Yeah, exactly. So this sister is kind of shocked and overjoyed. And then also the tragedy of her sister dying of smallpox now. So she rushes to her bedside and they kind of have this reconciliation. And for a little while, Fanny seems to rally and her sister is there, and this is wonderful. But a few days later, tragically, she does die and she dies still pregnant. And I find that so sort of haunting. And, you know, that's the real haunting of this, I think. It's so tragic. And Kent, once again has lost his wife in all but name, and also another child. So he's devastated. But even in his grief, he makes some strange decisions. So he has the funeral at St John Clerkenwell, which is just slightly north of Smithfield. And Fanny. This is a very quick burial. Fanny is put into a coffin and her sister, when she comes to the funeral, is outraged because she realizes there's no brass nameplate on the coffin. Because Kent doesn't, under the scrutiny of God in church, want to lie that they're married and he doesn't want the scandal attached to him that this pregnant lady was not his actual wife. So he leaves her unnamed in an unmarked coffin and she's put into the crypt under St John Clerkenwell, which is still there. The rest of the church was bombed in the Second World War, but the crypt is still there. Luckily, it doesn't have coffins in anymore, but it did well into the 19th century. And it's the most incredible space. I recommend anyone to go into that. It's extraordinary. So she's put into there and you know her story again, that might have been the end of it. Like a thousand million other women in London in this moment who have eloped, who have put their faith in a man who has let them down, who have died of a disease, who have died in childbirth or died pregnant or, you know, whatever it is. She's put into the coffin, she's put into the crypt, that's the end. But.
- [43:58]
Anthony
But it's not.
- [44:00]
Maddy
She's not gonna stay down there for long.
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Maddy
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- [45:10]
Maddy
Now.
- [45:10]
Anthony
This is where the story starts to become iconic in many ways.
- [45:16]
Maddy
This is the part people might know.
- [45:17]
Anthony
Exactly. This is the reason that we're here in a way that. That. And it's interesting and it's the reason that things like After Dark exist. And it's one of the. There's some unusual things happening there. We've talked about a potential ghost appearing at the top of stairs with. Way behind me.
- [45:34]
Maddy
Yeah.
- [45:34]
Anthony
And there's. Okay, there's knocking going on and it's a bit like, oh, what's going on? This is all, you know, and especially, you know, talk about knocking in the house.
- [45:40]
Maddy
The knocking seems like a sidebar to the main event. Right. It seems like there's this human drama playing out and there's just some knocking. It's a bit Weird. But it's nothing.
- [45:49]
Anthony
Yeah. Now we're about to. We talked about a stage earlier. We're about to take center stage in terms of.
- [45:56]
Maddy
I'm so glad you've said that because so much of the book is the language of the book. I tried to make it about performance and, you know, I opened the book with a street conjurer and end it with this idea of theatre as well. So I love that you've kind of picked up on that language.
- [46:09]
Anthony
It's also. And this is one of the highlights of the book for me, I think, is this sense of place in it. And so when you are in this bedroom that we are going to come back to in a minute. When you're in there, you know, all you have to imagine is the wooden floors. And then there is drapery.
- [46:23]
Maddy
Yeah, yeah. Essentially curtains.
- [46:25]
Anthony
It's just one hall. They build a stage. Well, it is a stage and they build a stage. So it's like there are. And I'm sure we'll describe it in a bit. There is also this sense of people are. No, I'm not gonna spoil it.
- [46:38]
Maddy
Pure theater.
- [46:38]
Anthony
Yes, yes, it's pure theater, basically.
- [46:40]
Maddy
But let's get to that point. Okay, so cut to two years later. We're now in 1762. Kent, you will be unsurprised to hear, has moved on and is getting married again.
- [46:53]
Anthony
Legitimately linked to the other line, sister.
- [46:55]
Maddy
Luckily, no. It's an unwitting young woman who knows nothing of his past. But in order to do that, business hasn't been going so well for him for the last two years. Cause, you know, he's a bit of an asshole. So he decides he needs those 12 guineas plus. Interesting that he'd. He'd lent. He lent it two years ago and he's not had a penny paid back. So, you know. Now the other thing to say about Kent, and I think this is really important in the story, and you can read it two different ways, is that Fanny's family find out when she dies two years prior, that she changed her will, even though they weren't married in William Kent's favor. Which means not only is anything that belongs to Fanny to go to him, but if one of the members of her very well to do respectful family die and Fanny is left money, it will go to Kent. And in this moment, two years later, one of her brothers dies and suddenly Kent's inheriting, like, quite a considerable amount of money. And they find out about this. Yeah, again. And they're like, that, man, he's being as dry, he's bleeding astride. We thought we'd got rid of him two years ago. He drove Fanny to the grave, as they see it, and they really do see it as that. And he buried her in an unmarked coffin. What a bastard. And now he's claiming an inheritance from a family that he does not know. So they've got that drama going on. And then you've got him calling in the debt from Parsons two years later. So he writes to Parsons. He's like, remember me from two years ago? Pay up, please.
- [48:32]
Anthony
Give me a 12 gimmick.
- [48:34]
Maddy
Is Richard Parsons gonna take this line down?
- [48:35]
Anthony
No, because he's a drunk.
- [48:37]
Maddy
Yeah. So, okay. He says, gosh, it's really funny that you bring this up now and that you mention this because you know that knocking that was happening in our house two years ago when you were here, it started up again, and it's escalating a little bit. And I think there's a message in it.
- [48:56]
Anthony
I don't know. What is it?
- [48:57]
Maddy
Yeah. What was that?
- [48:59]
Anthony
It might be a message got to do with you.
- [49:01]
Maddy
By now, the knocking is really centered around little Betty herself. So you remember she was sleeping in the attic.
- [49:06]
Anthony
She was there.
- [49:07]
Maddy
She was there. Yes. Was she making the noises? She was seemingly asleep the whole time. But now every time she goes to bed, she falls asleep and the knocking starts up. And Parsons cops onto this. And what the actual origins and the mechanics of this are is so unclear. Is this supernatural? I know your answer's gonna be no. Is this Parsons the dad, choreographing this?
- [49:36]
Anthony
Maddie, your book is called hoax?
- [49:38]
Maddy
Yeah, I'm just leaving it open for people to interpret. Or is it little Betty herself? We don't know. And I kind of. I leave it a little bit open in the book. I have my suspicions of the way that this worked, but I do try and leave it as open as possible for people to decide. But Parsons himself decides, you know what? We need someone to take a look at this knocking, because it's kind of freaking us all out. So he asks his friend, who is the rector at Saint Barts the Great, which is also in Smithfield, if anyone's never been to there. It's absolutely amazing. Medieval church. It's incredible. And very grimy and dark. He must have been in the bath. Yeah, it's really incredible. So the rector from there comes over and he's like, why have you called me here? What's this about? Why are we stood in your daughter's bedroom? Your daughter, who's 12 at this point, and we're just watching her sleep. This is so weird. Anyway, the knocking starts up and they're both like, whoa, this is weird. This is very strange. And they kind of hype themselves up and eventually they come about, this method of communicating, shall we say, with the spirit, whatever it is that's making the knocking. And they say, and people. This will be so familiar to people because it's been used in every Hollywood film, every ghost story. Afterwards, they say, knock once for yes and twice for now, and we're gonna.
- [50:59]
Anthony
Most Haunted.
- [50:59]
Maddy
Exactly.
- [51:00]
Anthony
Have you seen Most Haunted?
- [51:01]
Maddy
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And this, you know, people did this a little bit beforehand. As I say, there's a lot of ghost stories pre Cochlane, but this is when this is cemented in popular culture. So they say, knock once for yes, twice for no. And they put questions to it. And at first the questions are like, are you a spirit? Knock? Yes, I am. Are you haunting us? Yes. And eventually the questions escalate to be, are you the ghost of Fanny Lyons who lived here two years ago? KNOCK. Did you die naturally? Well done.
- [51:37]
Anthony
Forgot about the counting.
- [51:38]
Maddy
Yep. You didn't die naturally. Hmm. Did William Kent murder you? Yep. Word gets out.
- [51:48]
Anthony
So now we have a ghost and a murder.
- [51:50]
Maddy
We have an accusation of murder against someone who wants his cash back.
- [51:55]
Anthony
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [51:55]
Maddy
And so this is how Parsons plays the game. And he invites people in the local area. At first, it's just the local area to come and witness this. Every single night, Betty is put to bed. She falls asleep, seemingly, and the knocking starts. And people are invited to ask their own questions, but always about Fanny and Kent. And don't forget, this is a scandal about people who eloped, who are living out of wedlock. And interestingly, they moved Fanny from her own bedroom up into the attic, the room where not the murder took place, but the other crimes, right? This, you know, having a sexual relationship outside of marriage. This is the place where Fanny developed her pregnancy. This is a sort of sinful, shameful sight. All of a sudden. This is scandal made into theatre. And as you say, the room itself, when people come to see this, there's the bed with the curtains drawn back, little Betty in there, like, with the blanket up to her chin and a little white cap on. And, you know, she's this tiny, malnourished 12 year old. And so this is no longer just people from the area of Smithfield that are coming to the house suddenly. This is in the newspapers. Everyone's like, have you heard about the ghost? That you can go and Talk to. And it's accused, interact with. It's accused a man who's supposedly a gentleman of murder. This is escalating and escalating and soon we have people like, we have aristocrats coming. We have artists, we have writers, we have people who are interested in the question of is there life after death, do ghosts exist? But also people who are like, I just want to see this theater. This is so exciting.
- [53:20]
Anthony
And you open this chapter.
- [53:21]
Maddy
I do, I open it. I open the beginning of the book with a group of aristocrats going, including Horace Walpole, who is an mp, he is a designer, he's a writer, he's a sort of flamboyant, know it all, he's insufferable. But he's one of the biggest sort of commentators of the 18th century. We have so much of his writing.
- [53:42]
Anthony
Too much.
- [53:42]
Maddy
Yeah, too much. He's a real bitch. But good fun. He goes with a series of friends, including the King's own brother, the Duke of York. So this has reached the top of society. This is the King's brother, George III's brother, stepping into this tiny, gross little lane with this grim little house.
- [54:03]
Anthony
Would never have been in this space,
- [54:05]
Maddy
would never have known that this existed. You know, this is outrageous. This is crazy. And he stood in the bedroom of a 12 year old from the lowest ranks of society waiting for some knocking to happen. This is how big this get. And we have an image of one of the seances. This is a satirical cartoon at the time because, you know, you always talk about skepticism as well. This is a time of great debate and there's real worry about getting duped about whether things are real or not, how we can tell what's real. This is the age of scientific experiment. How do we prove things are real? And these seances are seen by some as theatre, but also by others as an experiment, a scientific experiment to prove whether ghosts exist. So describe for us this image in Fanny's bedroom, please.
- [54:47]
Anthony
Okay, so it says English credulity or the invisible ghost. And we have a much bigger room than it would have been.
- [54:55]
Maddy
To picture this is very generous.
- [54:57]
Anthony
So we have a very big room, but actually it wouldn't be that big at all. There is a bed on the right hand side. Again, quite a grand bed, but we're incorporating the curtains into this now. So it's not a four poster bed at all. Within the bed, which looks.
- [55:12]
Maddy
This is hilarious. Betty is a toddler.
- [55:14]
Anthony
Yes. This is a baby beside another baby, by the way, there's another little baby Head popping up and then over it. I mean, you're gonna have to tell me what that is, Maddie. But I mean, it looks to me. Okay, it looks a bit like it's a weird judge type thing with a hammer or something. I don't really know what it is, but it's glowing. Oh, is that what it is?
- [55:32]
Maddy
Well, so there's this idea that the people who are questioning this are questioning at the moment because you can't see the ghost. You can only hear it. And so it's this idea that, like, it can't possibly be real because there's no visual evidence. And in this particular cartoon, we get this kind of. You know, this is meant to be the ghost of F. And she's holding a mallet in her hand. Cause she's knocking, right? Oh, I see.
- [55:56]
Anthony
This is.
- [55:56]
Maddy
She's arming.
- [55:57]
Love's Rewards Advertiser
Oh, my God.
- [55:57]
Anthony
So funny.
- [55:58]
Maddy
Yeah, yeah. And this is a kind of comedy version that we see of her again and again. She has, like, a hammer on her.
- [56:02]
Anthony
Oh, it genuinely is funny.
- [56:03]
Maddy
Yeah.
- [56:03]
Anthony
Okay. Oh, that's taking the piss out of. That's undercutting it so much.
- [56:08]
Maddy
And there was huge debate. This elicited so many jokes and so much seriousness. And people could not decide the Stella
- [56:14]
Anthony
looking under the bed, where it's coming from.
- [56:16]
Maddy
This is so interesting because this artist has clearly been reading the papers because on one of the seances, there's a man who comes with his own candle. He lights. Cause the room is kept very, very dark, you know, for the atmosphere. And this guy looks into the bed and shouts, you know, this is ridiculous. It's just a series of pulleys and levers. And when he looks into the bed, the bed starts to shake and the ghost is angry and he is removed from the room. So, you know, there's. Even within this space, there are people you can see. There's loads of speech bubbles coming out from people's mouths. And everyone is debating what does they. And so many religious men were drawn into this. So not only is the royal family drawn in, but the church is drawn in. And so many of them believe.
- [56:53]
Anthony
And then there's this blind figure coming in through the door as if, you know, I'm walking into this space blind in so many ways. As in, like, blind to the truth.
- [57:03]
Maddy
Willingly blind to. This is the big sort of debate of the book is, you know, how much do people want to be liked? How much do we enjoy a good hoax? We want to be duped.
- [57:14]
Anthony
And it's in this picture because this looks like a night out and it absolutely was.
- [57:19]
Maddy
You know, this is. You go to the theater in the early evening and then you pop across to this other theater, Cock Lane, later on.
- [57:27]
Anthony
Now, at the heart of this, albeit a ghostly accusation, is an accusation of murder nonetheless. And so we're talking about like legal people getting involved. Sorry, we're talking about church people getting involved. We're talking about very high levels of society getting involved. And there's an accusation of murder on the table. So what happens there?
- [57:47]
Maddy
Yeah, so this gets to the point where the Lord Mayor of London is called in because there are calls from people going to the. To say William Kent should be arrested. He killed Fanny Lynes. And the papers report that he killed her with arsenic, that he beat her to death. You know, it escalates. This sort of rumor mongering occurs. And Kent actually himself goes to the lawmaker, is like, are you gonna do something right? Because I can't conduct my business, I can't get married. This woman doesn't want to marry me anymore. Her family's saying I'm a murderer. You know, nobody will exchange money with me or anything. And you know, all of this is going on. And the other thing that I want to just point out about this is that we have Kent. You know, as sort of dreadful as he is, he's not guilty of murder and he is being accused. But also the other person at the center of this who is gonna start to suffer is little Betty herself. Yes, she is 12 years old at this point, on the cusp of womanhood and she, you know, this is the theatrical scene in her bedroom is dubbed by the papers Miss Fanny's Theatre. And, and you know, as amusing as we might find the word Fanny now, they found it just amusing in the
- [58:51]
Anthony
18th century joke, by the way, didn't I do really well?
- [58:53]
Maddy
You did really well. So it becomes known as scratching Fanny of Cock Lane. You know, people really play into this idea of sort of sex and shame and scandal and Betty herself, little 12 year old Betty has to undress into her night shift every night in front of all these strangers and get into bed and perform, going to sleep. And people are watching her, they're scrutinizing her every move and, and she becomes this kind of living fleshy proxy for the dead ruined woman who was much older than her. I mean, it's really, really grim.
- [59:25]
Anthony
And it becomes more grim, I think, and we'll see this when we kind of come to sum up, but it becomes more and more grim when we think about potentially. You talked about who's hoaxing who and who may have been orchestrating this. Because in some ways, it's the very people that you would have hope would be protecting her rather than exploiting her.
- [59:44]
Maddy
Yep. But that's not the case. So we have the seances going on on the one hand, and then the accusation of murder. Someone needs to deal with it. So the lord mayor is like, okay, I'm gonna put together a committee of learned Enlightenment men to sort this out.
- [59:58]
Anthony
That'd be me. I'd come in, I'd be like, right,
- [59:59]
Maddy
guys, I know everything. Yeah, it's fine.
- [60:02]
Anthony
I know nothing. But, yeah.
- [60:03]
Maddy
So the head of this committee and I talk about all the. The people who are in it in the book. But for the sake of this, we'll go with the head of the committee, who is Dr. Samuel Johnson. Never heard of him.
- [60:12]
Anthony
Heard of him? Yeah. No. Good. He does a nal dictionary.
- [60:15]
Maddy
And interestingly, he really believes in ghosts. So, you know, there's even.
- [60:20]
Anthony
You see, He's a funny old man, isn't he?
- [60:22]
Maddy
I'm so obsessed with him. He's absolutely fascinating. I mean, we should do a whole episode on him. He's really interesting. But we think maybe your idea of the Enlightenment would be the learned men don't believe in this stuff, and it's the unlearned, unwashed people at the bottom of society who do. That's really not what you find here. And so, Simon, John, Constance, like, I want to prove that this is real. He's not setting out to prove it's false. He's like, I really want this to be real. I'm really interested in this idea that Fanny has come back, and I want to hear what she's got to say.
- [60:47]
Anthony
Can we apply this enlightenment rigor?
- [60:49]
Maddy
So that's. Can we do a proper experiment? So they first of all start attending the seances, and then they're like, do you know what? I think we need for scientific continuity to remove Betty to a different site. So Betty starts to be taken to different houses around London. These are no longer houses like the one that she is used to, she's grown up in. These are the houses of aristocrats. And she really becomes a victim of abuse here. I mean, this is really grim. You say that, you know, the people around her, like her father, for example, and her mother, should be protecting her. They are often not allowed to accompany her now. And she is going to, you know. Not that they were helping in the first place.
- [61:24]
Anthony
No, exactly.
- [61:25]
Maddy
Yeah. But they're really not able to help now. So she's taken to different houses. And sometimes she's made to sleep in a room or even in a bed with grownups she doesn't know, men and women. At one stage, she's made to sleep with a servant who. This woman holds a. Holds her arms by her side all night and puts her own legs over Betty's legs to stop her from moving. And the sounds still happen, reportedly at one point. And this. When I read this, I heard such a shiver at one point. She is. This. Betty is suspended on a series of ropes above the floor of the room. So quite high up, they don't even bother with a bed. And, you know, her arms and legs are tied to the corners of the room. This is, I mean, sort of like horror film, poltergeist stuff, really. But it's being done to her by human beings. And, you know, it's really, really grim.
- [62:13]
Anthony
A collection of human beings. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's.
- [62:16]
Maddy
And people who shouldn't necessarily.
- [62:16]
Anthony
People coming together to go, ah, yeah,
- [62:18]
Maddy
who've been officially appointed to do this to her. And sometimes the noises happen, sometimes they don't. There's no definitive evidence. They can't decide what to do. And so they come up with this other idea. They're like, okay, maybe we need to go straight to the source. We need to go to the ghost herself. Betty is maybe irrelevant or she's complicating things. She's lying, she's acting. It's muddying the waters. So they decide instead they're going to take the approach that they're going to do a seance in the crypt at St John Clerkenwell where Fanny was buried two years earlier.
- [62:46]
Anthony
She should go straight to the source.
- [62:47]
Maddy
Go straight to the source. Not only this, but they make William Kent go with them. Okay, and you think this is a man who buried Fanny two years ago. More theatre, more theatre. And I think this is interesting. I think Kent does want to go because he wants to prove his innocence. But they get down into the crypt and he has to identify which one is her coffin. And they open the coffin. He thinks she's been dead for two years. She was pregnant when she dies. This is very, very, very grim and sad and upsetting for everyone. So they do that. They open the coffin, what they think is her. I mean, there are hundreds in there and these are coffins that have already moulded and fallen into each other. And it's impossible to tell, but they pick one that is plausibly her.
- [63:25]
Anthony
Yeah.
- [63:26]
Maddy
And they call on her ghost to come and they say, now's the time. Accuse William Kent. He's here. And nothing happens. Of course nothing happens. And so they come out of the crypt, and for them, that is the end of the story. They're like, we've proven it. It's all fine, it's all done. But Betty herself continues to be toured around London. And people refuse to believe the committee that this was false. They're like, no, no, no, this is real. It's still real.
- [63:51]
Anthony
Story's too good, guys.
- [63:53]
Maddy
It's too entertaining. And, you know, people determination to believe in this. And eventually Betty is caught out. And I always wonder, is this the first time she's done this? Because, you know, maybe it's her family doing these sounds because Betty herself is in bed. Often she's made to have her hands out the bed so people can see what she's doing. One night, though, she's in an aristocratic house and she waits till everyone's left the room. And they're putting so much pressure on her about the noise that's not coming. And they're saying. They're talking loudly in the room when she's there, saying, oh, your dad's gonna go to prison for this. You're gonna go to prison for this. So she's really. She needs to do something. She feels she needs to do something. So when everyone's gone, she jumps out of the bed and she goes to the fireplace in the room. She takes a wooden board that is used for putting the kettle on and she puts it down the front of her nightdress and gets back into bed so that she can knock on it, bless her. But two serving women have been watching her through the keyhole, and they see her. And for most people, that's the end. They're like, we caught ya. Yeah. The fallout is really immense, so. And it doesn't happen in the way that you'd think. So the Parsons family themselves are arrested and Richard Parsons is accused of trying to cause the death of William Kent through false accusation. Wow. So this is serious.
- [65:05]
Anthony
What a strange way to come about doing that.
- [65:07]
Maddy
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yes. This isn't. You know, you lied about there being a ghost and brought all of London, including the aristocracy, to your door. This is. Is you nearly killed a man. The stakes are high. So he goes to trial with his wife, with James Franzen of the Wheat Sheaf, a handful of other people who are involved, and interestingly so, they get some hard labour, they don't get a horrendous sentence. Richard Parsons is sentenced to be put in the pillory three times, including once at Cock Lane.
- [65:38]
Anthony
That can cost you your life.
- [65:39]
Maddy
Yeah. So this is really. It's really dangerous. Usually people throw rotten veg at you, Rotten dead animals. They can beat you. Nobody touches him. He's so popular in that area for what he's done. People defend him. They stand around him in a ring and make sure he's not hurt. Samuel Johnson, on the other hand, mocked horrendously in the press, mocked on stage. The West End booms, by the way, with this new ghost on the scene, there are a thousand plays that come out. Plays about other ghosts from the past are re. Put on. There's scenes of royalty meeting the Cock Lane ghost. There's jokes about. About country bumpkins coming into the city and finding it's the city folk who are stupid and believe in stuff and all of that.
- [66:17]
Anthony
Yeah, exploiting them.
- [66:18]
Maddy
Yeah, exactly. And Samuel Johnson gets so pissed off that he actually. He threatens to have a fist fight with one of the playwrights. He's like, I will knock you out. Stop accusing me of this.
- [66:26]
Anthony
He's a big man.
- [66:27]
Maddy
He was a big man. He could handle himself. So it ends in ways that you don't necessarily think. Who were the liars here? Everyone, to a certain extent.
- [66:38]
Anthony
Everyone's trying to exploit. Everyone that's not a woman or a girl is trying to exploit somebody in this story, like, really like.
- [66:45]
Maddy
And, you know, Fanny and Betty are the victims of it. I think.
- [66:48]
Anthony
You know what has. I'm gonna talk about legacy to round this conversation off in a second. But actually, what strikes me about it is, and this comes across in your book as well, is that Betty becomes the really dark collateral to everyone else's crack. Okay, I know Kent is being accused of murder. I know all of that. Like, I know you know. I know.
- [67:09]
Maddy
But Betty is a child, but she's
- [67:11]
Anthony
being strung up in certain instances. And, you know, the way you say when parson's in the stocks and nobody really cares, and then they're taking the piss out of Samuel Johnson, all that kind of thing. What strikes me about that. And again, this is what I took from the book. And it's interesting to see what people will take in all these different things. Is that how desperate people are for entertainment, we say? Hosting a podcast about dark history and how we are so willing to enter
- [67:36]
Maddy
into that space and people are so. So it's human nature to want to believe in it. And Betty's forced to deliver that to people. And what I find so tantalizing is that in the End. Betty disappears from the archive. We don't know what happens to her. From the second that she's caught with the bit of wood down her dress, does she just walk home? She doesn't go up in court. She's too young to be taken up in court. She's not accused of anything. The rest of her family are. She's just let go. Does this ruin the rest of her life, this trauma?
- [68:04]
Anthony
Yeah, I mean, there's no way she's skipping away into the sunset with no impact.
- [68:08]
Maddy
But don't forget she had a relationship with Fanny. She felt close to her, they had several months together where she was sort of enamoured with this glamorous woman who died tragically. How does that shape the rest of your life? I don't know. But this is, you know, this is a case that causes such a scandal because it implicates, as I say, royalty. The mayor of London there are writers, Enlightenment thinkers, and it really rocks the boat in terms of what is the Enlightenment? Where is Britain going in this moment? We think of ourselves as the head of, of this great empire, as moving on and creating progress all the time. That we are superior to everyone else and we can order things and apply rules because we are better. We know what we're doing, we understand how the world works. And this shows that that is absolutely not the case and also reveals a society that is willing to believe stuff that ain't true.
- [68:57]
Anthony
And what if you, if you were to see the legacy of this ghost story or this hoax story in modern day either entertainment or cultural events, where do think it lies?
- [69:09]
Maddy
It's there in every poltergeist case that happens in the next few centuries. You know, this idea of the knocking, of communicating with the ghost. As I say, it doesn't start with cock Lane, but this is the moment where it becomes okay, this is cemented in our imagination. Like this is, you know, knock once, knock twice, whatever. You see it in Victorian ghost stories. You see it in the Battersea poltergeist case, the Enfield poltergeist case.
- [69:32]
On Deck Advertiser
It's very Battersea Sea Poltergeist.
- [69:32]
Maddy
Yeah, yeah, definitely. You see it in Hollywood. You know, this, this case has never left us.
- [69:39]
Anthony
Well, Maddie will return from the past to the present again next week with more hoaxy hijinks where we will be talking about another chapter from her book, Hoax, which is out on the 7th of May.
- [69:51]
Maddy
7th of May.
- [69:52]
Anthony
Pre order it now.
- [69:53]
Maddy
Yes, please.
- [69:54]
Anthony
And until then, here's hoax. Enjoy it.
- [69:59]
Maddy
This is a marketing proof copy because at this point in time time in December while I'm still pregnant. We're pre recording this.
- [70:05]
Anthony
We don't it's not even printed. That's how. That's how in the future we are.
- [70:08]
Maddy
So it will not quite look like this. It will be a bit more glam.
- [70:12]
Anthony
Like me.
- [70:12]
Maddy
Like you.
- [70:13]
Anthony
Thank you for watching and listening to After Dark. We will talk to you soon.
- [70:25]
Maddy
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Maddy
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