troublesome. The inhabitants were alarmed in the following manner:
noises and blows by day were heard extremely loud, in every apartment
of the house. On going upstairs and stamping on any of the boards of
the floor, in any room, say five or six times, corresponding blows,
generally louder, and more in number, would be instantly returned. The
vibration of the boards caused by the violence of these blows would be
sensibly felt through a shoe or boot. Observe, the floors underneath
which these noises were heard are all of them immediately over rooms
that are ceiled. An effect not to be produced by any blows on the
ceiling was that the dust was thrown up from such boards as were beaten
with such velocity as to affect the eyes of the spectators.
“At midday the cause of these effects would announce its approach by
amazing and loud knockings in some apartment or other of the house,
above stairs or below, as might happen. The moment they were heard,
any person on ascending the stairs, and stamping with the feet, would
be answered somewhat louder; and then, what is extremely curious,
these noises would absolutely follow the persons through any of the
upper apartments. The joists and beams of the flooring opposed not the
slightest obstacle to its progress. Walls it would penetrate with equal
facility, as was manifest by its following any person into different
apartments.
“These phenomena by day continued almost incessantly for about five
weeks, when they gradually gave place to others still more curious
and alarming, which succeeded at night. There are two apartments in
this house--one within the other. In this room there is but one door,
not a single cupboard, and one very small chimney. The walls are of
stone, the flooring of new deal, extremely close, and not covered by
a carpet. There is one large modern window in the room. There is no
visible access to this room but through another, in which they who wish
to satisfy their curiosity constantly sit. The partition is thin, there
is also a window in it (it is of lath and plaster). In the room where
strangers sit, there is also one door only; and there is a kind of
landing-room at the top of the stairs opposite to this door.”
In the further room the servant-maids were sent to sleep. These
were now violently beaten, during the night, producing bruises and
swellings. Those who sat in the outer room could hear the blows being
administered. Mr. Colton went into the inner room and stood by the bed
where the maids were, and heard the blows rained on them. When he cried
for a light, it was brought in, but no person could be seen by him who
could have administered these blows.
The next phenomenon was this, not witnessed by Mr. Colton. He says:
“Mr. Chave, of Mere, no relation at all to Mr. Chave who rents the
house, can swear to the following fact. Sitting up to hear and see
these phenomena, he was alarmed by one or two loud shrieks; on rushing
into the room his course at the threshold of the door was arrested by
the following phenomenon. Every curtain of that bed was agitated and
the knots thrown and whirled about with such rapidity, all at the same
time, that it would have been by no means pleasant to have been in
their vortex, or within the sphere of their action.” The moon at the
time was full, and was shining into the room.
“This scene, accompanied with such a violent noise of the rings as
could not have been exceeded by four persons stationed one at each
curtain for the purpose, continued for about two minutes, when it
concluded with a noise resembling the tearing of a sheet from top to
bottom. Candles were then instantly produced, and many rents, one
very large one _across_ the grain of strong new cotton curtains, were
discovered.” Mr. Colton, however, on other occasions professes to have
seen the curtains violently agitated and a heavy Greek Testament
placed on the bed flung across the room. But it is worth noticing that
these things only took place when the women were in the bed, and never
when the candle was in the room. The maids now pretended to be so
frightened that they dared no longer sleep in their room, whereupon Mr.
and Mrs. Chave allowed them to remove into their apartment. The noises
followed them, an iron candlestick was flung across the room at Mr.
Chave’s head. Another significant matter noted by Mr. Colton, was that
the maids after one of these violent exhibitions were found bathed in
perspiration, the drops rolling from their brows.
Such is a brief summary of Mr. Colton’s narrative. It called forth a
pamphlet by Mr. Marriott, the editor of the _Taunton Courier_, that
had been prompted by Mr. Tally who was much annoyed at the probable
depreciation of the value of his house, and who gave notice to Mr.
Chave to quit it.
Mr. Marriott was doubtless right in his conjecture that there was
a plot among the servants, and that it was they who produced the
phenomena. He conjectured that the raps were dealt by a mop-stick at
the ceiling below the floors that seemed to be struck. He pointed out
that there were marks on the ceiling as if the mop-stick had been so
used, and he intimated that the set of hauntings was due to Mr. Chave
trying by this means to avenge a quarrel he had had with his landlord
over a bill.
To this Mr. Colton promptly replied, that it was true that there was a
mop-stick in the house, but that by means of the mop-stick the sounds
heard and the vibration of the boards casting up dust could not have
been effected. He and others had tried, and the marks observed on the
ceiling were caused by these trials. As to the quarrel over a bill, it
had not occurred. It was not to Mr. Chave’s interest to give the house
a bad name, for he had but recently rented and fitted it up, and it
would be an inconvenience to him to move; moreover, these supernatural
phenomena were doing him much harm, in injuring his business.
Mr. Colton now added further mysterious sights, but they rested on
nothing better than the testimony of the maids. One had seen a white
hand come out from under the bed, another had seen a livid arm hanging
down from the ceiling.
There can, I think, be little doubt that it was not Mr. Chave, but
the servant-maids who managed the whole series of phenomena. These
knockings could easily be transmitted through boards, and the curtains
tossed about, and books and candlesticks flung across the room, by
having horsehair attached to them. That is the true secret of the
Poltergeist manifestations in England, France, and Germany.
The authorities are:--
“Sampford Ghost. A Plain and Authentic Narrative of those Extraordinary
Occurrences, etc., by the Rev. C. Colton, /M.A./, Reg. Col.
Soc., Tiverton” (1810).
“Sampford Ghost!!! A Full Account of the Conspiracy at Sampford
Peverell, near Tiverton; Containing the Particulars of the Pretended
Visitations of the Monster. Taunton, 1810.” (This by Marriott.)
“Sampford Ghost. Stubborn Facts against Vague Assertions, etc., by the
Rev. C. Colton, M.A., Reg. Col. Soc., Tiverton” (1810). Answer to Mr.
Marriott.
“Sampford Ghost! Facts Attested and Delivered to the Public Relative to
these Extraordinary Occurrences, etc., by the Rev. C. Colton.... London
(n.d.).”
PHILIPPA CARY AND ANNE EVANS
In the month of August, 1672, the wife of a dyer of Plymouth, one
William Weeks, died after “many and frequent vomitings.” Shortly
after that Mr. Weeks and his daughter were seized with the same
symptoms--violent pains internally, cold sweats, faintings and
vomitings; and in an engraving of the period relative to the tragic
event about to be related, Mr. Weeks is shown in bed affected by this
last symptom. At the outset the physician who attended them suspected
poison, and he was confirmed in his suspicions when a neighbour who had
entered the house found a pot in the kitchen with “crude arsenick” in
it. Moreover, Mr. Weeks’s grand-daughter, child of a Mistress Pengelly,
was affected in precisely the same manner.
Philippa Cary, the nurse, together with Anne Evans, the servant, first
drew attention to themselves by counterfeiting sickness and vomiting,
but the general prostration and agony were lacking in their case. The
administration of emetics led to the recovery of the child and of Mr.
Weeks, but Mistress Pengelly died in great agonies.
This “horrid accident” caused much commotion, and the nurse and the
girl were arrested. The first brought before the mayor was Anne Evans,
“apprentice to the said Mistress Weeks, a poor child, whose mother
being dead, had been bound out in the Mayoralty of Mr. Peter Schaggel,
Anno 1672, by the Churchwardens and overseers of Charles parish, being
then about twelve or thirteen years old.”
The poor child Anne, on being questioned by the mayor, allowed that
she bought “a pottle of girts” in the market, and that when they had
been cooked she had noticed “some yellow thing in the girts,” and the
family were afflicted by incessant tortures after they had partaken
of it. There had been a dispute between Mrs. Weeks and the nurse, and
the latter had asked Evans whether she knew where she could get some
rat’s-bane. Cary admitted that there had been words between her and the
old lady, and said that it arose over the frying of some pilchards. She
added that Anne Evans was on bad terms with her mistress, and that the
girl had threatened to run away and join “the mountebanks.”
The mayor plied one witness against the other. Next Evans said that
as she was gathering herbs she found a packet of rat’s-bane, and on
showing it to Cary the latter exclaimed that was just the very thing
needed to “fit” Mrs. Weeks, and that a little dose of it would soon
“make work.” Next the girl mentioned that Cary abused her for removing
a great spider from some beer that Mrs. Weeks was about to drink. A
spider was, according to popular belief, a concentration of deadly
poison. Cary had said, “Thou shouldst have let it alone, thou Fool, and
not have taken it out, but shouldst have squatted it amongst the beer.”
When Cary was taxed with this, she denied having said any such thing,
but asserted that Evans had threatened to do away with her mistress “on
Saturday week was fortnight.”
The mayor continued his interrogations of each witness separately,
playing the statements of one against the other. Then Evans improved
her story by asserting that she saw Cary crush the rat’s-bane into
fine powder between two tiles, and she added that when she asked the
nurse what she was about Cary replied that she was making a medicine to
“fit” the old woman.
Having placed the powder in a cloam dish, she added small beer, and
allowed it to steep overnight. She then gave some of the poison to Anne
to put in the “Old Woman’s Dish” of porridge, adding, “You shall see
what sport we shall have with her to-morrow.”
But the amount then administered was small: it was designed to cause
only preliminary discomfort. After that, Cary said, “We shall live
so merry as the days are long.” She cautioned the girl to hold her
tongue, and told her that if she did so nothing could come out; and she
threatened that if Evans betrayed what had been done, she would lay all
the blame upon her. In due time Mrs. Weeks asked for her porridge, and
the girl put the arsenic into the bowl according to the instructions
she had received from the nurse. Later on Cary drank from a jug; and
after pouring in the poisoned liquor, administered it to Mr. Weeks, but
he did not relish the taste of it and passed it on to the others to
try. They all averred that it had a “keamy” taste, but, small though
the quantity was that they drank, all who tasted it had convulsions.
In some concern at seeing her master and mistress in such anguish, the
girl affirmed that she had exclaimed, “Alas! nurse, what have you done
that our master and mistress are so very ill?”
Cary replied, according to Anne’s statement, that “she had done God
good service in it to rid her out of the way, and that she had done no
sin in it.”
This confession was read over to Cary, who denied every particular.
Cary and the little girl--who, be it remembered, was only twelve or
thirteen years of age--were put in prison, and were to appear at the
next assizes. Cary and Evans found themselves “in the very suburbs
of Hell,” for the local prison was no better than “a seminary of all
vilainies, prophaneness and impieties.”
After months of waiting, the prisoners were sent to Exeter, where they
were tried for their lives. They responded “with heavy hearts though
with undejected countenances.” Sentence of death was pronounced against
them both, but they petitioned to be transported.
The unfortunate little girl was sentenced “to be drawn on a hurdle to
the place where she shall be executed, and there burnt to death.”
John Quicke was a Nonconformist minister, and he interested himself
in the criminals. “Methinks,” said he, “the very sentence should have
struck her dead; an emblem and lively picture of Hell’s torments. Drawn
as if dragged by devils. Burnt alive, as if in the Lake of Fire and
Brimstone already.”
The nurse, Philippa Cary, was ordered to hang till she was dead.
“Too gentle a death,” wrote the harsh Quicke, “for such a prodigy of
ungodliness. She pleads stiffly her innocence, disowns her guilt,
takes no shame, her brow is brass, she is impudent and hath a whore’s
forehead. If ever there were a daughter of Hell, this is one in her
proper colours. No evidence shall convince her. ‘Confess,’ saith she,
‘then I shall hang indeed. I deny the fact, none saw, none knew it but
the girl; it may be that vile person, my husband, hath a hand in it,
but he is gone. Some will pity me, though none will believe me, none
can help me.’” And now, according to Quicke, Satan helps Cary to “an
expedient that may help her life.” She pleaded before the judge that
she was in the family way. “If I must dye, let my child live.”
Thereupon the judge ordered a jury of matrons to be empanelled, but
they found that the plea of Cary was false.
As Plymouth had been the scene of the murder, the judge had little
difficulty in consenting to the petition of the relatives of Mrs.
Weeks that the execution should take place there. “Provided that
the magistrates of the towne, or Mr. Weeks, whose wife was by the
malefactors above named poysoned, shall defray the extraordinary
charges thereof, and shall undertake for the same before Easter Day,
being Sunday next. The day of execution is to bee on Thursday in Easter
weeke, but if you, the magistrate of the said towne, or Mr. Weeks,
shall fail to undertake before Easter Day to defray the extraordinary
charges thereof, then the execution on these malefactors is to be done
at the common-place of execution for this Countie,” i.e. at Exeter.
The local authorities gladly undertook the arrangements for carrying
out Lord Chief Justice North’s sentence, and for affording to the
citizens of Plymouth an exciting scene, and for the domestic servants
of that borough a moral warning.
Every endeavour was made to persuade Cary to confess, but she laid the
crime upon the girl. Of all the ministers who strove to turn her to
repentance, John Quicke, the Nonconformist, was the most importunate.
He warned her that “she had sworn a bargain with the Devil for secrecy
to her own destruction, that all would come out at last, as cunningly
and closely as she did carry it before men and angels; and, said I,
you are one of the most bloody women that ever came into gaol; you are
guilty of two murders, one of your master, another of your mistress,
and a third of having drawn in this poor girl like a Devil, as you are,
to joyn with you to ruin them and herself also.” Quicke further assured
her that he did “as verily believe she would be in Hell, unless there
were a very wonderful change wrought upon her, as that old Murderer,
her Father, the Devil, was.” Quicke was obviously not a man to move a
sinner to repentance. His exhortation made her cry, but extorted no
confession; and when Cary implored this sour and remorseless minister
to have some little pity and indulgence towards her, he declined to
tone his invectives till he knew that “her stony heart was riven and
shivered in pieces and her bones broken under her hellish wickedness.”
Waiting without the cell door whilst this appalling denunciation was
being delivered was “a crowd of vulgar persons,” all pressing and
impatient to obtain admission. The gaolers derived not a little revenue
by charging the inquisitive and curious with fees for admission to see
criminals condemned to death, and they reaped a good harvest on this
occasion.
During a subsequent visit, influenced by apparent relenting, Quicke
assured the two criminals that it was quite as “easy going to Heaven
from the stake and the gallows as if it was from their beds,” but then,
they must confess their guilt. But Cary was not to be induced to admit
anything. He was highly incensed that his words produced no effect, and
he abused her roundly as “a brazen impudent hypocrite thus to dissemble
with God and man”; and he warned her that, as she kept the devil’s
counsel, to the devil she would go. He added that he saw no promise of
a good result if he expended any more labour upon her. “Look to it,
woman,” he shouted to her at parting, “that this do not make thy Hell
hotter than ordinary.”
As the prisoners were conducted from Exeter on horseback, we are told
that the nurse exchanged ribald and obscene jests with the spectators,
and at the entrance to Plymouth the procession was met by thousands.
Persons of every age and sex and quality rushed forth to the suburbs
to see the arrival of the two unfortunates. Although, we are informed,
many had “bowels of pity for the poor girl,” none “hath charity for the
nurse.”
On being conducted to their cells, various ministers attended them;
but crowds poured in, tipping the gaolers, to have a sight of the
criminals, and the ministers of religion could effect nothing. The
nurse remained resolute in denying her guilt, but the little girl
admitted hers.
On the appointed day Philippa Cary and Anne Evans were escorted to
the gallows erected on the heights of Prince Rock. “The streets were
crowded, the Mayor, the Magistrates and Under Sheriff can hardly pass
for the throng. The poor maid was drawn on the hurdle. The posture she
lay in was on her left side, her face in her bosom, her Bible under
her arm, seeming like one dead rather than alive. At length we came,
though slowly, to the place of execution. Plimouth was then naked
of inhabitants, the town was easy to be taken, and the houses to be
plundered, if an enemie had been at hand to have done it. Catdowne,
the Lambhay, the Citadel, and Catwater are pressed with a multitude of
twenty thousand persons. But commanders, who have lived in wars and
seen great armies, and are therefore the most competent judges in this
case, estimate them at one-half. I write within compass. The maid,
being nailed to the stake, and the iron hoop about her, and the nurse
mounted on the ladder, she desires that the Relater may pray with
her.” With passionate invocations to the Deity, Mr. Quicke complied;
the crowd were invited at the close to join in the singing of a psalm,
and in this part of the ceremony the clear childish voice of Anne Evans
was heard to rise like that of the lark. Then Quicke laboured through
extemporary prayers of inordinate length, smiting at the flinty heart
of Cary, hitting right and left at impenitent sinners in those around.
It has been said that as a front rank of soldiers kneels to shoot, so
do certain divines in their prayers aim, not at God, but at those who
hear them. It was so with Quicke. Then the poor sufferers were urged
to avow their theological opinions with regard to certain dogmas of
religion, not this time by Quicke, but by other ministers.
The rope was now drawn close round the child’s neck, “and the hangman
would have set fire unto the furze before she was strangled; but some,
more charitable and tender-hearted, cryed to him to take away the block
from under her feet, which having been done, she soon fell down and
expired in a trice.”
The executioner could cause neither powder, wood nor fuel to catch fire
till the girl had been dead a quarter of an hour; and then, as the
flames kindled, the wind blew the smoke into the face of the nurse, “as
if God had spoken to her; ‘the smoke of My Fury and Flames of My Fiery
Vengeance are now riding upon the wings of the wind towards thee.’”
For two hours Cary was compelled to remain and watch the death and
burning of the little girl, and again attempts were made to wring
a confession from her. Such she steadily and persistently put from
her. When the word went forth to dispatch her, the executioner could
not be found. He had run off with the halter under the cliffs; and,
on being found, was carried by the exploring party to the scene and
cast dead-drunk at the foot of the gallows, there to sleep off his
intoxication, whilst the nurse was still pestered by the Nonconforming
ministers to repent and confess.
But the last words she uttered before being swung into the air were:
“Judge and revenge my cause, O God.” “A sure proof,” concluded Quicke,
“that she went into the lake of brimstone and fire, there to be
tormented for ever and ever.”
We are inclined to judge otherwise, and that she was guiltless of
intent to poison the Weeks family. This was done by the child, in a
fit of temper and resentment. Only after this had been done, did Cary
find it out, and, frightened for the consequences, simulated sickness
and cramps, lest she should be accused of the poisoning. As to Quicke’s
statement that on the ride into Plymouth she used obscene and ribald
jests, we do not believe a word of it. He was furious against her
because she would not confess; and he was not with her on the ride
to hear what her words were. He invented this, and put it into his
narrative to prejudice the reader against her who was not amenable to
his exhortations, and who accordingly galled his self-conceit.
The authorities for this tragic story are three:--
“Horrid News of a Barbarous Murder committed at Plimouth ... 1676.”
“Hell Open’d, or the Infernal Sin of Murther Punished. Being a True
Relation of the Poysoning of a whole Family in Plymouth ... by J. Q.
(John Quicke), Minister of the Gospel. London, 1676.”
“The Poysoners Rewarded, or the Most Barbarous of Murthers detected and
Punished ... London, 1687.”
Mr. Whitfeld has summed them up in his book, _Plymouth and Devonport,
in War and Peace_. Plymouth, 1900.
JACK RATTENBURY
The coasts of Devon and Cornwall, north and south, are bold, with
cliffs starting out of the sea, white near the Dorset frontier, then
red, and then of limestone marble, or, on the north coast, of slate
and schist. The rocks are riddled with caves, the highland is cleft by
narrow valleys sawn through their mass by descending streams. The whole
coast, north and south, lends itself to smuggling; and smuggling had
been carried on as a profitable speculation till it ceased to pay, when
heavy duties were removed, and when the coastguard became efficient.
The smugglers formerly ran their goods into the caves when the weather
permitted, or the preventive men, nicknamed _picaroons_, were not on
the look-out. They stowed away their goods in the caves, and gave
notice to the farmers and gentry of the neighbourhood, all of whom
were provided with numerous donkeys, which were forthwith sent down
to the _caches_, and the kegs and bales were removed under cover of
night or of storm. Few farmhouses and squires’ mansions were not also
provided with hiding-places in which to store the kegs obtained from
the free-traders. Only the week before writing this I was shown one
such in the depth of a dense wood, at Sandridge Park on the Dart;
externally it would have been taken for a natural mound or a tumulus.
But there are a concealed door and a descent by a flight of steps into
the subterranean cellar, that was carefully vaulted, and also carefully
drained.
The other day I saw an old farmhouse in process of demolition in the
parish of Altarnun, on the edge of the Bodmin Moors. The great hall
chimney was of unusual bulk, bulky as such chimneys usually are; and
when it was thrown down it revealed the explanation of this unwonted
size. Behind the back of the hearth was a chamber fashioned in the
thickness of the wall to which access might have been had at some time
through a low walled-up doorway, that was concealed behind the kitchen
dresser and plastered over. This door was so low that it could be
passed through only on all fours.