If I Were Your Husband I Would Drink It: History of a Joke March 20, 2018
Author: Beach Combing | in : ModernThat Joke The words are famous and supposedly came out in a verbal duel between Lady Astor (Britain’s first active woman MP) and, from a different wing of the Conservative party, Winston Churchill. Lady Astor: ‘If I were your wife I would put poison in your coffee.’ Churchill: ‘Nancy, if I were your husband I […]
Mermaid Monday: Grimsby Lady March 19, 2018
Author: Beach Combing | in : ModernThis report came out in 1809 in the wake of the famous Caithness mermaid letters. Last week, whilst a sloop belonging to Beverley, was at anchor in Hawk Roads, near Grimsby, a boy on board saw the appearance of a woman at some distance, whom he supposed by some accident had unfortunately fallen overboard a […]
Spell: Grow a Little Man! March 18, 2018
Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval, ModernLocation Germany, mid Europe? Aim to create a small living man Ingredients horse manure, semen, a gourd, some human blood. Method (i) Hollow out the centre of the gourd and place ripe horse manure with the semen inside it. (ii) Seal the gourd up. (iii) After forty days, or after the semen begins to move […]
What Happened to William Hare? March 17, 2018
Author: Beach Combing | in : ModernIntroduction William Burke and William Hare were two ne’er-do-wells who, in 1828, discovered that murdering people in the Edinburgh slums and selling their corpses to doctors made for good money. They were finally arrested after an incredible sixteen men and women had been done away with. Burke was tried, found guilty and hung; his common […]
Three Beggar’d Tales March 14, 2018
Author: Beach Combing | in : ModernThis is a French story about a beggar in London (though recorded in a London newspaper…) The beggar in question was, it seems, in the habit of sitting at one of our bridges, accompanied by a dog with a placard inscribed ‘Blind’ attached to his neck, and was fortunate enough to awaken the charitable sympathies […]
Gay Fairies: When and Why March 14, 2018
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, ModernIntroduction It was only a matter of time… In English ‘fairy’ has several different meanings. The primary one is, of course, a supernatural creature with or without wings. But somewhere down the list is a gay man. Where does this idea come from and when did it gain currency? Who Cares? It could be argued […]
Victorian Urban Legend: Hypnotic Thievery March 13, 2018
Author: Beach Combing | in : ModernHere is a nice French story from a period when hypnotism was given far too much credit for being able to make people do things that they did not want to do. We are in 1894. A strange story is related of an extraordinary affair which is said to have occurred in one of the […]
Mermaid Monday: Mermaid Exhibited in Rome March 12, 2018
Author: Beach Combing | in : ModernThis horror story dates to 1841. It comes to us by a long route. This text is taken from a British newspaper, which excerpted from an American newspaper, which translated from the Revue Britannique, which took its information from the Italian press. Is it true? Drbeachcombing AT gmail DOT com Can it be traced back […]
Victorian Urban Legend: Ox Ring March 11, 2018
Author: Beach Combing | in : ModernBusy day. Lots of work and final papers to grade, but would love to know whether this can be paralleled: drbeachcombing AT gmail DOT com On the 8th of November, 1871, a public officer at Colchester reported that having seen a report in the Shipping Gazette that a bullock had been picked up by the […]
Cake-Eating Fairy in 19C Staffordshire March 10, 2018
Author: Beach Combing | in : ModernIntroducing Nancy This little passage is a troubling one for all kinds of reasons. In the mid-late nineteenth century, an itinerant preacher recounted an experience from his time in Staffordshire (a Midlands English county that ranged, in this period, from the beautifully wild to the grimily industrial). He had evidently begged a bed in the […]
Ghosts and a Bleeding Corpse in the Courtroom March 9, 2018
Author: Beach Combing | in : ModernIntroduction In that wonderful book by Andrew Lang, Dreams and Ghosts (1897) there is a description of a phantom finding its way into a British courtroom in 1829 (pp. 143-144). Lang did not have access to the British Newspaper Archive – what fun he would have had there! – so his reference is brief and unsatisfactory. Here is […]
The Coker Hill Haunting 4: The Counter Spells March 5, 2018
Author: Beach Combing | in : ModernThe Coker Hill haunting is unusual, first, in that we know that the locals believed it was a case of ‘overlooking’ or witchcraft (rather than a ghost); and, second, in that we know two of the spells employed against this malicious use of witchcraft. Spell One Matters were beginning to look serious and it is […]
The Coker Hill Haunting 3: A Witness March 4, 2018
Author: Beach Combing | in : ModernThe journalist himself arrived once the haunting had officially come to an end. However, he found one individual, ‘a well-to-do, respectable, intelligent man’, who had been in the building on Sunday 13 June when as many as three hundred neighbours had gathered to hear the noises. When I got in the sound seemed to be […]
The Coker Hill Haunting 2: The Events March 3, 2018
Author: Beach Combing | in : ModernThe haunting began after the resident mother had a fit 4 June 1880. Noises started up immediately around the house. This went on for several nights – the knocking performances commencing shortly after midnight, in the orthodox fashion. The woman became somewhat alarmed these singular visitations, she could not sleep, the children were frightened, and […]
The Coker Hill Haunting 1: Dramatis Personae March 2, 2018
Author: Beach Combing | in : ModernBeach has recently become interested in a nineteenth-century ghost case from Somerset in southern England that has it all: there are witches, there are sprites, there are magpies, there are spells and counter spells, there is a spirit that rolls around the room, and there is a magic lantern. There are unfortunately few sources: only […]