The Cock Lane Ghost

When

1762 date from records made at the time

Where

Cock Lane near Smithfield Market, London, United Kingdom

Verdict

Hoax

A knocking “ghost of Fanny” accused a widower of poisoning his lover – crowds besieged the house until a committee including Samuel Johnson exposed the fraud.

What happened

In a house on Cock Lane, a few minutes’ walk from St Paul’s Cathedral, the moneylender William Kent lodged with Fanny Lynes – the sister of his late wife, whom canon law forbade him to marry. Strange knocking was already heard there at the time. Fanny died of smallpox in 1760, and Kent won a debt dispute against the landlord, the parish clerk Richard Parsons. Then the knocking returned – this time around Parsons’ young daughter Elizabeth. In early 1762, at séances, the “ghost” began answering questions with knocks: one for yes, two for no. “Scratching Fanny”, as she became known, claimed that Kent had poisoned her with arsenic. The lane was choked with onlookers, aristocrats and clergymen came to listen, and newspapers covered the affair, which even became entangled in the quarrel between Methodists and the Church of England.

Witnesses

Richard Parsons and his family, William Kent, hundreds of curious visitors from clergymen to aristocrats; Samuel Johnson sat on the committee that investigated the case.

Explanations and hypotheses

A committee including Samuel Johnson waited in vain for a promised sign at Fanny’s coffin in the vault of St John’s Church, Clerkenwell. When the girl was watched more closely, she was caught with a small board she used to knock out the answers. She had been acting under pressure from her father, who wanted revenge on Kent. Parsons and his accomplices were convicted; he was pilloried and imprisoned for two years, and Kent’s name was cleared. The “ghost” was later mocked by William Hogarth and Charles Dickens.

Hoax A proven or admitted hoax.

Sources

More: Wikipedia (en)