Odd this day
A séance was held on this day to locate the elusive Scratching Fanny of Cock Lane. There were many séances, in fact, because the noisy ghost was a media sensation, but only this one featured Samuel Johnson.
Incidentally, let me be clear from the outset that I did not choose this historical incident merely for its name. Certainly not. I am above such things. Anyway…
Richard Parsons, church clerk and indebted drunk, lived on Cock Lane with his family, and let out rooms. One of his tenants was a William Kent, who had been married to one Elizabeth Lynes. When she died, he had taken up with her sister, Frances, known as Fanny. Because Elizabeth had borne him a child (which had not long survived its mother), Kent was told the church wouldn’t let him marry her sister, so he and Fanny posed as man and wife.
Kent had funds, so Parsons borrowed 12 guineas (somewhere in the region of £1,700 today) in order not to get shitfaced — heaven forfend — but to provide for his family. Parsons may also have discovered the Kents’ secret (which might explain why Kent lent him such a sum).
One weekend, when Kent was away, Fanny had Parsons’ daughter Elizabeth sleep in her bed, but they were kept awake all night by frightful noises. These went on for months, to the extent that neighbours came round to listen, but stopped when the Kents moved to a new address — where Fanny sadly died of smallpox.
By an extraordinary coincidence, they began again 18 months later, when Kent sued Parsons for recovery of the debt. And — remarkably — Parsons was able to ‘interpret’ the meaning of the scratching and banging. The ghost of Fanny wanted him to know that she had, in fact, been poisoned by William Kent with arsenic in a glass of warm, spiced ale.
The Lord Mayor of London ordered an investigation, and young Elizabeth — “a little artful girl” — was taken to a nearby vicar’s house where, according to Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson, she
declared that she felt the spirit like a mouse upon her back.
However, Elizabeth was required to keep her hands in view at all times, and — well, good lord, this tale positively brims with coincidence — no noises were heard.
It was, Dr Johnson declared,
the opinion of the whole assembly, that the child has some art of making or counterfeiting a particular noise, and that there is no agency of any higher cause.
Kent got £588 in compensation for the horrendous allegations against him, and added this sum to around £250 that he’d inherited from Fanny. This made her surviving sister Ann very suspicious. Kent went off, however, untroubled by the law, and like many a man of scruple before and since, became a stockbroker. Parsons went to the pillory and then prison for two years. Elizabeth went home and was not visited by ghosts again.
A satirical poem about the affair, The Ghost, suggested Johnson had been taken in by the business, and one Samuel Foote tried to turn it into a play, but was dissuaded. Dr Johnson threatened to beat him up.
