Cock Lane Ghost House

In 1762 a lodging house on Cock Lane, a narrow street beside London's Smithfield market and minutes on foot from St Paul's, produced the best-documented haunting of the eighteenth century — and the only famous one that ended in a criminal conviction. Three names carry the file: William Kent, who had run a post office in Norfolk; Richard Parsons, the officiating parish clerk of St Sepulchre's, who let him rooms; and Parsons's eleven-year-old daughter Elizabeth. Kent's wife, Elizabeth Lynes, had died in childbed about eleven months after their marriage of 1756, and canon law barred him from marrying her sister Frances, known as Fanny, because the child of that marriage had been born alive. He came to London alone; Fanny followed, and they lodged first near the Mansion House, then with Parsons in Cock Lane, then in Clerkenwell, where Fanny died of smallpox on 2 February 1760. Almost two years later, in January 1762, knocking and scratching began around Elizabeth Parsons's bed and answered questions by code — one knock yes, two no — accusing Kent of poisoning Fanny with arsenic. Crowds filled the lane; Horace Walpole came with the Duke of York and heard nothing. A committee convened with the Lord Mayor's approval, and including Samuel Johnson, tested the spirit in a Clerkenwell vault on the night of 1 February 1762 and reported that the child had "some art of making or counterfeiting particular noise". On 10 July 1762 Parsons, his wife, an interpreter and two associates were convicted of conspiracy before Lord Mansfield; Parsons was pilloried and jailed for two years.

Most eighteenth-century hauntings survive as hearsay. The Cock Lane affair survives as paperwork. It was reported month by month in the London magazines, investigated by a committee that met with the Lord Mayor's approval, written up by Samuel Johnson, versified by Charles Churchill and engraved by William Hogarth — and it ended not in a legend but in a courtroom, before the Lord Chief Justice and a special jury, with convictions, a pillory and prison sentences. Almost everything below can still be read in type that was set within months of the events. The pamphlet nobody signed. The Mystery Revealed, "Printed for W. Bristow, in St. Paul's Church-yard", 1762, carries no author's name; it has long been attributed to Oliver Goldsmith, and it is the fullest early account of the background, told from the accused man's side. It reports that in 1756 Mr K— married "Miss E— L— of I— in the county of Norfolk"; they lived together some eleven months, and, shortly after he took the post office at a Norfolk town, she died in childbed. The child was born alive and died soon after — a detail that decided everything, because it meant that canon law would not allow him to marry his late wife's sister, who had been living with the couple as a companion. He came up to London alone, meaning to buy a place in a public office and hoping that "absence and dissipation" would end the attachment. It did not: she wrote that she would follow him "even on foot" if he did not find her "a more creditable conveyance", and a friend of his brought her up to town on the Yarmouth stage. In London they lived openly as husband and wife under his name. How they came to Cock Lane. The Annual Register for 1762 tells it plainly. Richard Parsons, the officiating parish clerk of St Sepulchre's, saw "a genteel couple standing in the aisle" at early prayers, ordered them into a pew, and when the gentleman thanked him and asked about lodgings in the neighbourhood, Parsons "offered his own house". Kent lent his landlord money and afterwards sued him for it. The pamphlet returns to that debt more than once, and adds a second date: the dead woman's relations had filed a bill in Chancery against Kent in November 1761 — "just two months before this infernal agent appeared to strengthen their plea". The first noises, and the death. They came while Kent was away in the country and Fanny, pregnant and unwilling to sleep alone, had taken Parsons's eleven-year-old daughter Elizabeth into her bed. The household blamed a neighbouring shoemaker, until Fanny got out of bed one Sunday night and called out to ask whether the shoemaker worked on Sunday nights too. The couple then moved to Bartlet Court, Clerkenwell. There she caught smallpox. According to the narrative published on 23 January 1762 by a Mr Brown of Amen Corner and summarised in the Gentleman's Magazine, she died on 2 February 1760, was buried in the vault under the church of St John, Clerkenwell, and her sister, who attended the funeral, was surprised to find no plate on the coffin and was not permitted to see the body. January 1762. The knocking began again at Parsons's house around the first of January, this time around the child, who was "thrown into violent fits and agitations". A code was fixed — one knock for yes, two for no, scratching for displeasure — and the questions were put by the father and by a woman attendant. The Gentleman's Magazine printed a session verbatim on the night of 12 January, and its flatness is what unnerves: "Whether she was brought to an untimely end by poison? yes.—In what was the poison administered, beer or purl? purl.—How long before her death? three hours." And further on: "Whether she should be at ease in her mind if the man was hanged? yes." The magazine appended its own verdict in the same column: "As the impostor will probably soon be discovered, let this short detail suffice to shew the tendency of it; the whole of the nonsense would fill a magazine." The town. Horace Walpole wrote to Sir Horace Mann on 29 January 1762 that "the reigning fashion is a ghost — a ghost, that would not pass muster in the paltriest convent in the Apennine. It only knocks and scratches; does not pretend to appear or to speak. The clergy give it their benediction; and all the world, whether believers or infidels, go to hear it." He went the next day, and described it to George Montagu on 2 February: "I went to hear it — for it is not an apparition, but an audition." He travelled from the opera in one hackney coach with the Duke of York, Lady Northumberland, Lady Mary Coke and Lord Hertford; "it rained torrents; yet the lane was full of mob, and the house so full we could not get in — at last they discovered it was the Duke of York, and the company squeezed themselves into one another's pockets to make room for us." Inside were fifty people, one tallow candle, washing lines strung overhead, and a child "whom they are murdering there by inches in such insufferable heat and stench". Nothing knocked. They were told, "as they would at a puppet-show", that it would not come till seven in the morning. The committee. The plan of examination was printed in the papers and signed by "Ste. Aldrich, Rector of St John's, Clerkenwell" and "James Penn, Lecturer of St Ann's, Aldersgate", who recorded that they had acted "upon the approbation of the lord-mayor". The girl was to be brought to Aldrich's house without anyone connected with her, undressed and put to bed by a lady of character, with clergy, a physician, a surgeon, an apothecary and a justice of the peace present. On the night of 1 February 1762 the company assembled. They sat over an hour and heard nothing; when knocks and scratches were finally reported, the girl said she felt the spirit "like a mouse upon her back" and was required to hold her hands outside the bed, after which no evidence of any preternatural power appeared. At one in the morning they went into the church and down to the vault where Fanny lay, because the spirit had promised, by an affirmative knock, to strike her coffin. "The spirit was solemnly required to perform its promise, but nothing more than silence ensued." The report ends: "It is therefore the opinion of the whole assembly, that the child has some art of making or counterfeiting particular noise, and that there is no agency of any higher cause." Who wrote that. The Gentleman's Magazine would only say that "this account was drawn up by a gentleman of veracity and learning". Boswell named him thirty years later, on the authority of Dr John Douglas, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury: after the examiners were satisfied of the fraud, "Johnson wrote in their presence an account of it, which was published in the newspapers and Gentleman's Magazine, and undeceived the world". Boswell adds that Johnson later "expressed great indignation at the imposture of the Cock-lane Ghost, and related, with much satisfaction, how he had assisted in detecting the cheat". The end of it. On 25 February Kent went down to the vault with a clergyman, the undertaker, the parish clerk and sexton and two or three gentlemen, because it was being said that the coffin had been moved; the undertaker recognised it at once, "as there was no plate or inscription", and it was opened and the body found inside. Meanwhile the girl was moved from house to house and finally slung in a hammock with her hands and feet extended and tied; for two nights there were no noises. Told that if nothing were heard she and her parents would go to Newgate, she hid under her stays a board "about four inches broad, and six long" that was used to set the kettle on, and knocked on it. She was searched and caught. Richard Parsons, his wife Elizabeth, Mary Fraser (who had acted as interpreter between the ghost and its questioners), a clergyman and a tradesman were tried at Guildhall on 10 July 1762 before Lord Mansfield by a special jury and convicted of conspiracy against the life and character of William Kent; the trial lasted above twelve hours. Sentencing was deferred some seven months so that the parties might compound. The clergyman and the tradesman paid — the Gentleman's Magazine put the damages and costs at "580 l. and upwards" — and were dismissed with a severe reprimand. In February 1763 Richard Parsons was ordered to stand three times in the pillory in one month, once at the end of Cock Lane, and then to be imprisoned two years; his wife one year; Mary Fraser six months in Bridewell at hard labour. He appeared to be out of his mind on the first appointed day and it was put off; on the days he did stand, the crowd, which normally came to abuse, "took so much compassion of him, that instead of using him ill, they made a handsome collection for him".

Cock Lane is a real street and you can walk it in three minutes, but be clear about what survives: the lodging house does not. Walter Thornbury's Old and New London printed an engraving captioned "The 'Ghost's' House in Cock Lane" in the nineteenth century, so a building was being pointed out then; today nothing on the lane is listed, and the City of London's own Smithfield Conservation Area appraisal describes "a number of substantial post-war office buildings" in the streets around Cock Lane and Hosier Lane, with the corner of Snow Hill and Cock Lane held by "a curved, appropriately proportioned 1980s building". There is no plaque and no house to see. What is worth seeing on the lane itself. Cock Lane runs from Giltspur Street down to Snow Hill, in the City of London, EC1A, and it keeps the sinuous medieval alignment that the conservation area document singles out. Two views are formally protected by the City: the view along Cock Lane to the curved western end of the street, and the view of St Sepulchre without Newgate with the dome of St Paul's behind it, taken from the junction of Snow Hill and Cock Lane — worth standing still for, because it is close to what the crowds of January 1762 would have had in front of them. At the Giltspur Street end is Pye Corner, which the City describes as marking "the western extent of the Great Fire in the area", commemorated by the small gilded figure it calls both the Fat Boy and the Golden Boy; the City's schedule records it among the area's monuments at the corner of Cock Lane and Giltspur Street, and lists 1-4 Giltspur Street as Grade II. The street is public, free and always open. Nearest Underground stations are St Paul's and Farringdon; City Thameslink is on Holborn Viaduct at the foot of Snow Hill. Richard Parsons's church. St Sepulchre without Newgate, now Holy Sepulchre London and known as the National Musicians' Church, is two minutes away at Holborn Viaduct, EC1A 2DQ — the church where Parsons was officiating clerk and where he first showed Kent and Fanny into a pew. Admission is free. Advertised building opening hours are Monday 11:00-15:00, Tuesday 08:30-14:30, Wednesday 08:30-18:30, Thursday 08:30-14:30, Friday 10:00-16:00 and Sunday 10:30-16:00, with Saturday varying; the parish asks visitors making a special journey to email first, since hours change with staffing. Fanny's church, and the vault. The Priory Church of the Order of St John and its twelfth-century crypt stand in St John's Square, Clerkenwell, a fifteen-minute walk north. This is where Fanny Lynes was buried and where the committee went down at one in the morning on 2 February 1762. The Museum of the Order of St John, at St John's Gate, St John's Lane, EC1M 4DA, is free and open Wednesday to Saturday, 09:30-17:00, with the Cloister Garden open Monday to Saturday from 09:30 to dusk. The church and crypt, however, can only be seen on a guided tour: "The Lost Priory" (45 minutes, church and crypt) or "Knights, Revellers & Saviours" (60 minutes, church, crypt and the historic rooms in the gate). Tours cost £15, or £11.25 with an Art Pass or Blue Light Card, and £1 for Islington residents; they must be pre-booked through the museum's Eventbrite, with tickets released mid-month for the following month. Private groups from six people can be arranged on 020 7324 4005. Farringdon station is five minutes' walk. Do not expect to find the coffin: the crypt was tidied in 1860 by order in Council, the coffins piled into the aisles and the doorways bricked up. A practical warning. Nothing here is a ghost attraction, and two of the three sites are working churches. The one thing this file can promise is that the sources are as close as the stones: the Gentleman's Magazine volume for 1762, the Annual Register for that year, The Mystery Revealed and Walpole's letters are all free to read on the Internet Archive, and Johnson's report of the night in the vault is two pages long.