On Saturday the 30th of July, 1853, the dead body of a young woman was
discovered in a field at Littleport, in the Isle of Ely. The body has not
yet been identified, and there can be little doubt that the young woman was
murdered. At the adjourned inquest, held on the 29th of August, before Mr.
William Marshall, one of the coroners for the isle, the following
extraordinary evidence was given:
"James Jessop, an elderly, respectable-looking labourer, with a face of
the most perfect stolidity, and {288} who possessed a most
curiously-shaped skull, broad and flat at the top, and projecting
greatly on each side over the ears, deposed: 'I live about a furlong
and a half from where the body was found. I have seen the body of the
deceased. I had never seen her before her death. On the night of
Friday, the 29th of July, I dreamt three successive times that I heard
the cry of murder issuing from near the bottom of a close called Little
Ditchment Close (the place where the body was found). The first time I
dreamt I heard the cry it woke me. I fell asleep again, and dreamt the
same again. I then woke again, and told my wife. I could not rest; but
I dreamt it again after that. I got up between four and five o'clock,
but I did not go down to the close, the wheat and barley in which have
since been cut. I dreamt once, about twenty years ago, that I saw a
woman hanging in a barn, and on passing the next morning the barn which
appeared to me in my dream I entered, and did find a woman there
hanging, and cut her down just in time to save her life. I never told
my wife I heard any cries of murder, but I have mentioned it to several
persons since. I saw the body on the Saturday it was found. I did not
mention my dream to any one till a day or two after that. I saw the
field distinctly in my dream and the trees thereon, but I saw no person
in it. On the night of the murder the wind lay from that spot to my
house.'
"Rhoda Jessop, wife of the last witness, stated that her husband
related his dreams to her on the evening of the day the body was
found."
In Mr. John Hill Burton's _Narratives from Criminal Trials in Scotland_, is
a chapter entitled "Spectral and Dream Testimony," to which the above
evidence will be a curious addition.