The Dark History Of London
Ghosts that haunt the city of London are some of the most interesting and diverse in the world. This should come as no surprise. when we take in to account the dark and often brutal events that took place here in the past
The Black Dog Of Newgate
One of the oldest and most disturbing of the London Ghosts.
The Black Dog of Newgate has terrorized the city since the thirteenth century. The Demon Hound which haunted the infamous Newgate prison was said to have had it's origin in an act of cannibalism which was committed by the inmates of this terrible place. The victim of this sickening crime was said to have been a sorcerer, and indeed this may well have been the case, it seems that all of the prisoners that took part in this murder, all met there end by this Demonic Beast. The Black dog became something of a death Oman to the Prisoners. It was always seen the night before an execution, or the night before an inmate breathed his last breath. To this day the Dog is still seen despite the fact that the Newgate Prison was demolished in 1902.
Amelia Dyer
The name Amelia Dyer has been largely forgotten by Londoners in the 21st century. But to the citizens of the capital in the later years of the 19th century it was the name of the Devil herself. For Amelia was the most sickening and detested form of Criminal, she was a Child Killer. To this day nobody knows for sure how many children she killed, but some say she was murdering for at least 25 years which means the number could be truly staggering. In a time when unmarried mothers faced great hardship Amelia offered help to these desperate women, She did this by taking in there unwanted children and promising to find them new homes. At the same time she would also take a one off payment for the child's welfare. But what Amelia was really doing was taking the money for herself and then strangling the children, she got rid of the body's by dumping them in the River Thames. Amelia was sentenced to death for her crimes in 1896. It was as she was being led to the gallows she passed by a guard by the name of Scott. Stopping abruptly, she turned towards him and said "I'll meet you again some day, Sir " Scott was puzzled by this statement as the evil old woman was little more then minutes away from death. The years passed, Scott progressed in his chosen career. Then on the night before the prison was closed for good. The spirit of Amelia Dyer kept her promise. Scott was at work in one of the many offices that occupied Newgate. As he sat there at his desk he got the distinct impression that somebody was watching him. It was then that he heard a voice from behind him, turning round he found to his horror, looking at him from a grill in the doorway was the grinning face of Amelia Dyer.
Sarah Whitehead
One of the most Important buildings in the city is the Bank of England. Founded in 1694 the Bank plays a key part in the running of the nation’s economy. The ghost that haunts this grand building is the sister of a former bank employee. Her name was Sarah Whitehead. She lived during the early years of the 19th century. Her brother Phillip was a cashier at the bank. He was also a drinker and a gambler. The bank soon became aware of the kind of man he was, and promptly sacked him. Therefore with his income gone he was forced to get money by other means. He turned to forging bank notes. His crime however was quickly uncovered by the authorities, found guilty he was sentenced to death in 1812. Philip's friends withheld the news of his crime and execution from Sarah in a misguided attempt to protect her. Not long after Phillip's death. Sarah paid a visit to the bank to see how he was doing. She ask one of the cashiers where her brother was, the man not realising she was Phillip's sister told her the whole story of his crime and subsequent death. Sarah who was devoted to her brother was unable to handle the news. She had a nervous breakdown and refused to believe he was dead. From that point on she would come back to the Bank each day to ask after Phillip, the Bank workers took pity on her. Each time telling her that he wasn't in today, but they would pass on the message that she was looking for him. Over the long years Sarah took to wearing black each time she came to visit the Bank. Because of her style of dress the citizens of London took to calling her the Black Nun. It would seem that even in death poor Sarah was not to be reunited with her beloved Phillip, for she is still seen on dark nights when the city is quiet. She comes up and startles late night travellers and always asks the same question. "Have you seen my brother" Before vanishing in to thin air.
The Boudicca's Revolt
Queen Boudicca is one of Britain's most legendary figures. She was the warrior queen who led her people against the powerful Roman empire during the first century. Boudicca was a member of the Iceni, a tribe of people who lived in East Anglia. She was married to the Ruler of the Iceni, a man by the name of Prasutagus. The Romans conquered Britain in AD 43, and while some of the native tribes try to resist them, the Iceni chose to form an alliance with the Romans; This enabled them to negotiate arrangements that allowed Prasutagus to continue to rule. The Iceni became a client Kingdom loyal to Rome. When Prasutagus died a few years later he left his kingdom jointly to his daughters and Rome. Despite his wishes however the Romans refused to acknowledge his daughters claims to the land, deciding instead to rule the Iceni directly. Boudicca suffered terribly under the new Roman overlords. She was stripped and flogged while at the same time her daughters were raped by the Roman soldiers. By these cruel acts the Romans brought down on themselves a force that very nearly saw them driven from England. Boudicca retaliated by raising a huge army' against the Roman forces. Proving both an effective and fearless commander she set about destroying Roman rule in Britain. During her reign of terror it was believed that nearly 70,000 Roman people lost their lives to her marauding army. London or Londinim as it was known back then became her most famous victim. The Roman army which was fighting in Wales at the time was caught completely off guard by the rebellion, and what little force the Romans had in Londinim were not adequate to fight Boudicca's army. The Romans in Londinim chose the only option left to them. They ran leaving the city to its fate. Boudicca and her troops burnt the young city of London to the ground. The inhabitants of the settlement who didn't flee were slaughtered. So intense was the inferno that ravaged the city it left a mark in the soil, it appears as a red layer of earth. It can be seen to this day.
The Black Death
The Black Death struck Europe in the early fourteenth century. This terrible sickness was believed to have started in China, and moved along the Silk road to Europe. When the Plague ended several years later half the continent population was dead. At the time it was thought that the plague was God's punishment upon mankind for its many sins. Most people saw these dark days, as the end of the world. With no cure or treatment available and with the death toll rising day by day who could blame them? The sickness reached England in around 1347. London with its poor sanitation and overcrowded living conditions proved a fertile breeding ground. The Black Death for many centuries was believed to be the Bubonic plague, The spread of sickness being blamed on the Black rat and fleas they carried. It was believed that the plague mutated at some point in to Pneumonic strain of the disease. Pneumonic plague had a near 95% mortality rate killing within just three to four days. If you look at the symptoms of the sickness that were recorded you can see many similarities with those who suffer from both Bubonic and Pneumonic Plague. Symptoms included swelling around the arm pits, neck and groin. These swelling known medically as Buboes were extremely painful for those inflected with them. Other symptoms included high fever and delirium, and finely the vomiting of blood. With most cases those stricken with the plague died shortly after infection. For the best part of a hundred years the identity of the plague was never really questioned, that was of course until very recently when historians and scientist began to re-evaluate the data and began to find holes in their original hypothesis. Firstly, there was the rate at which the illness spread, the Black Death seem to spread faster than any other observed out-brake of either the Bubonic or Pneumonic Plagues. From records it has been estimated the Black death was moving at least 5 miles a day. Whereas with outbreaks of Bubonic plague it has been shown to spread much more slowly. In one instance taking a week just to spread down the length of street. Another likely nail in the Bubonic theory is the lack of evidence to support the belief that the Black rat was responsible for the spread of the disease. The Black rat is a Semi tropical species and there for not as wide spread in Northern Europe as once believed. Also while rats may have been very common in the large and over crowed cities, there is however very little evidence to show that they were a major problem in the more rural parts of the country. And yet in these less densely populated areas the plague still struck people down in large numbers, wiping whole towns and villages off the map. So if not Bubonic plague what was it that rained down so much destruction on the people of medieval England? A new and somewhat frightening idea that has come to light in recent years, it has been put forward that the plague may have been a Hemorrhagic virus very similar to the extremely deadly Ebola virus. If this is so it could account for the high number of dead and the very fast spread the Plague. Whatever it was that fell upon London in the year 1348 it left only death and misery in its wake. Mass graves had to be dug to accommodate the ever increasing number of dead. One of these burial pits was uncovered in an area of London called Spitalfields; the pit was hurriedly opened by the bishop of London. With 200 people dying a day it quickly reached its maximum capacity. Land owner Sir Walter Manny came to the rescue by donating land for another cemetery's in nearby Spittle Croft. It was believed in some cases that those dumped in these pits were not even dead, but too weak to call out, these poor victims were left to die with only the countless dead to bear witness to their end. When the Plague finely burnt itself out it had claimed over one third of the city's population, both rich and poor died in this disaster, including two ex-chancellors and three Archbishops of Canterbury.
The Great fire of London
One of the tragic moments in London history, the Great Fire of London saw much of the old Medieval city brunt to the ground. Out breaks of fire were by no means rare in the city, and considering the fact that London was a city primarily made of wood and thatch, it was easy to see why fire could spread so fast. For instance in Southwark in 1630 a fire broke out in the stables of an Inn, resulting in fifty homes lost. Just three years later another even larger fire took place at the North End of London Bridge, by the time fire was brought under control over eighty houses in the parish of St Magnus the Martyr were burned to the ground. Despite the scale of these earlier fires they could not hold a candle to the sheer size of the Great fire. The Fire it's self-began on the night of 2nd of September 1666 in the bakery of Thomas Farryner which lay on Pudding Lane. The baker it would seem had failed to properly dowse the hot amber's in his oven. Woken by smoke at around one o'clock in the morning Farryner found that the downstairs was engulfed by an inferno, so bad were the flames that he and his family could not use the stairs to get out, and instead had to escape through an upstairs window. However not everyone made it out of the house safely, a maid servant who was too scared to climb out the upper story windows was the first person to meet there end by the flames. Driven by an easterly blowing wind the flames spread quickly, the wind blew the hot amber's in to the yard of the nearby Star Inn which lay on Fish Street Hill. The yard of the inn was used to store Straw Piles. This made for ideal kindling for the flames and very quickly fire consumed the Inn. Next to go was St Margaret's Church and from there the fire spread to the warehouses that ran along the Riverside, these warehouses were used to store all kinds of flammable materials such as oil coal and spirits. As you can imagine this quickly proved disastrous for the city. To make matters worse the Medieval City was very different in its street lay-out than the present one today. Buildings were packed very close together, with the upper stories often over hanging the road by several feet. This meant that in some cases there was barely two feet separating the buildings on opposite’s sides of the road. So even without the strong blowing wind the fire would have found it very easy to have moved from home to home, and shop to shop. Two other factors aided the spread of the fire; firstly there was the long dry summer of 1666. Very little rain fell in the months before the fire, leaving a large percentage of the wooden structures ripe for burning. The second factor was the slow reaction of the authorities to act on this disaster. The blame mostly lies with the then lord Mayor Thomas Bloodworth. The Mayor had been informed of the fire not long after it had started, but having been awoken in the early hours of the morning by the night watchmen, because of this interruption he wasn't in the best of moods. Upon seeing the fire, he merely said "Pish a woman could piss it out" Before taking himself off back to bed. The Mayor would come to regret those words, for late that morning when the famous diarist and civil servant Samuel Pepys visited the site he found the fire had taken over 300 homes. By the end of Sunday the fire had spread for half a mile along the river front. The Lord Mayor by this time had lost any control over the disaster as Pepys would Famously recount upon a meeting with him in Cannon Street. The King had given the orders to Pepys that no property was to be spared in halting the spread of the fire. Fire breaks is a process which involved the demolishing of building in the path of the flames so as to deprive it of fuel it needs to spread. At the time it was one of the more effective methods of halting large fires. The Lord Mayor however was by this time in way over his head and responded by saying to Pepys "Lord what can I do? I am spent, people will not obey me, I have been pulling down houses but the fire overtakes us faster than we can do it. The reason why the Lord Mayor fire breaks did not work was because of their close deployment to the fire, the fire fighters had little time to both pull the building down and clear the site before the flames reached them. By the morning of the next day the fire was ragging in northern and western parts of the city. In an attempt to bring order to the rising chaos King Charles put his brother the Duke of York in overall control of the disaster management. The Duke had other problems to deal with other then the flames however. The main problem other than the fire was the ever-increasing attack on foreigners that were in the city, it is important to remember that at this time England was at war and it was believed by many in the city that the fire had been started by either the French or Dutch. The Duke's men had to take a number of foreign visitors in to custody for their own safety. The fire would rage for four days finely coming to an end on the 5th of September. By the time the fire was brought under control some 430 acres of the city had been burnt to the ground, close to 80% of the city had meet its end in the inferno. The death toll from the flames is believed to have been very small with only around 9 people being reported as killed, but the material cost was far higher. The flames destroyed over 13,200 homes. It consumed 87 city churches as well as the old Medieval St Paul's Cathedral.
Newgate Prison
Newgate prison is without doubt the most famous place of incarceration to ever stand in the Capital. The first record we have of the Prison comes from the 12th century. The Prison was rebuilt several times over its long history as it had something of a tendency to suffer misfortune usually during times of public unrest, such as the Peasant Revolt of 1381. The leader of the revolt Watt Tyler took it upon Himself to not only release the inmates, but then decided to burn the prison to the ground. The prison gained a reputation as a place of both death and suffering, with many who entered its dark confines, never seeing the outside world again. Even in death many of its inmates failed to escape the towering wall, their mortal remains were buried in the Lime pits under the area of the prison called Bird Cage walk. The Eighteenth century novelist Henry Fielding best summed up the place when he called it the prototype of hell. This was a very appropriate description of the Prison, for there was very little in the way of water or ventilation. New arrivals were often beaten and bulled by both inmates and guards alike. If you were a person who had money you could buy yourself better accommodation as well as other comforts, such as food candles and alcohol. Sadly for many that arrived there such luxuries were beyond their financial means. Not only were these inmates forced to rely on the charity of their fellow Londoners for food, but many of them were placed in the area of the prison called the Stone Hold. The Stone Hold lay underground and was described by one Inmate as "a terrible stinking dark and dismal place. Where Daylight never came". Convicts left down here had no bedding to lie upon and were forced to lie on the cold stone floor. If all these terrible conditions weren’t bad enough the place was often hit by out-breaks by a form of Typhoid called Gallow Fever. It was believed that many of the prisoners who had been sentenced to death never made it to the hang man’s rope because the fever took them first. One very nasty outbreak of the illness took place in 1750 and saw the deaths of forty-three people, including two judges in the Old Bailey Courthouse, which stood next door to the prison. To this day Judges at the Old Bailey, which now stands upon the site of the old prison, will sometimes carry small bunches of flowers known as poses. In the past it was believed that the sweet smelling flowers warded off the sickness, so the Judges still carry them in remembrance to the dark place that once stood there. While Newgate was seen by some as Hell on Earth. Too many however it was also a place of entertainment. With many of London citizens paying to meet some of its more famous inmates. One prisoner who drew in large crowds was a cat burglar by the name of Jack Shepard, Shepard became famous when he managed to escape from the prison no less than three times in the early 18th century. By far the biggest draw to the prison however were the executions. In 1783 the principle place of execution was changed from Tyburn to Newgate prison. With executions taking place there right up to the closure of the prison in 1902. The executions of convicted criminals would draw in masses of people. The author of Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens was present at some of these hangings, he was greatly disturbed by the attitudes of people who came to watch these executions. Not only did many of them get drunk, but most seem to show no regard what so ever for the gravity of what was taking place in front of them. Seeing the whole process as nothing more than a great day out rather than the ending of human life. It's not hard to see why he was so sickened by the scenes that he witnessed, and because of this he went on to campaign for an end of public execution's. Thanks to people like him these barbaric events finely came to an end in 1868 when the law was changed. The execution of prisoners from that point on would take place behind closed doors. By the time the prison closed in 1902 it was believed a grand total of over 1,168 people met there end there by way of the hang man’s rope. Though if we take a look at the number of people who died here for other reasons, such as sickness and murder the number becomes truly frightening.