Hammersmith Ghost Murder

In late 1803, accounts of ghost sightings began to circulate in Hammersmith, England. This led to a tragic event, and a legal case that revealed some limitations in existing English law. 

Research:

• “The case of the murdered ghost.” BBC News. January 3, 2004. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/3364467.stm
• “Fears of a Ghost and the Fatal Catastrophe.” The Morning Chronicle. Jan 5, 1804. https://www.newspapers.com/image/394016127/?match=1&terms=Francis%20Smith
• Feikert-Ahalt, Clare. “The Case of a Ghost Haunted England for Over Two Hundred Years.” Library of Congress Blog. In Custodia Legis. Law Librarians of Congress. Oct. 30, 2015. https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2015/10/the-case-of-a-ghost-haunted-england-for-over-two-hundred-years/
• Castle, Terry. “Phantasmagoria: Spectral Technology and the Metaphorics of Modern Reverie.” Critical Inquiry. Autumn, 1988, Vol. 15, No. 1.pp. 26-61. The University of Chicago Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1343603
• “FRANCIS SMITH. Killing; murder. 11th January 1804..” Proceedings of the Old Bailey.
• “The Hammersmith Ghost: London’s Paranormal Murder.” Discovery UK. Jan. 7, 2025. https://www.discoveryuk.com/mysteries/the-hammersmith-ghost-londons-paranormal-murder/
• “The Hammersmith Ghost.” Cambridge Chronicle and Journal. Jan. 14, 2804. https://www.newspapers.com/image/975790052/?match=1&terms=Hammersmith%20ghost
• Kirby, R.S. “Kirby's Wonderful and Scientific Museum: Or, Magazine of Remarkable Characters, Volume 2.” 1804. https://books.google.com/books?id=ggMhkDz-33EC&source=gbs_navlinks_s
• Medland, W.M. and Charles Weobly. “A Collection of Remarkable and Interesting Criminal Trials, Actions at Law, &c: To which is Prefixed, an Essay on Reprieve and Pardon, and Biographical Sketches of John Lord Eldon, and Mr. Mingay, Volume 2.” Badcock. January 1804. Accessed online: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=c5YuAAAAYAAJ&rdid=book-c5YuAAAAYAAJ&rdot=1
• Mitchell, Edwin Valentine, ed. “The Newgate calendar :
  comprising interesting memoirs of the most notorious characters who have been convicted of outrages on the laws of England.” Garden City Pub. Co. 1926. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006759756
• “Murder – Hammersmith Ghost.” The Bury and Norwich Post. Jan. 18, 1804. https://www.newspapers.com/image/394552157/?match=1&terms=Hammersmith%20ghost
• “The Reath Hammersmith Ghost.: The Bath Journal. Jan. 16, 1804. https://www.newspapers.com/image/975620428/?match=1&terms=Hammersmith%20ghost
• “Regine v. Gladstone Williams.” Transcript of the Shorthand Notes of Marten Walsh Cherer Ltd., 36-38 Whitefriers Street,
  Fleet Street, London, EC4Y 8BH. Telephone Number: 01-583 7635, Shorthand Writers to the Court. https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Crim/1983/4.html

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy B. Wilson. Happy Almost Halloween. Yeah.
As I mentioned on an earlier episode this month, I

(00:25):
haven't been as halloweene, I feel like as usual. I
don't know if that's just the time anxiety lurking in
the air everywhere around, or if I'm just more of
a skeptic than ever. I don't know, but anyway, this
one is probably our most Halloween. Today's episode covers a
case of a lot of people believing there was a

(00:46):
ghost hanging around and something that happened as a consequence
of that concern over a ghost that then became a
huge legal battle. This is a case of mistaken identity
and I feel like it also uh needs a little
bit of a heads up that there is some gun violence.

(01:06):
But it's also legally an interesting story because this is
a case that brought to light a problem in British
law that would have ramifications for a long time before
it was conclusively settled. And we'll get into all of
that today as we talk about the Hammersmith Ghost murder.
So in late eighteen oh three, frightening accounts started circulating

(01:29):
in Hammersmith, England today that is a borough of London.
The stories were all really similar, and they were told
by a variety of local residents who all appear to
have witnessed the same thing. That was a tall figure
draped in white, described as an apparition. This apparition was

(01:50):
seen in town, often in the churchyard, but occasionally moving
outside of that space. Some people claimed to have been
attacked by this phantom. As these accounts became more and
more common, they also became more and more detailed. The
ghost was said to appear right after the town clock
struck one am, although it could also pop out at

(02:13):
other times. It was associated with Black Lion Lane, specifically
which was at the edge of the neighborhood, near undeveloped fields,
and soon the ghost even had an identity and was
believed to be the spirit of a man who had
died by suicide in eighteen oh two, allegedly by slitting
his own throat. Some accounts even stated that this apparition

(02:35):
occasionally appeared with horns. Others said that he had glass eyes,
and sometimes instead of all white, he was said to
wear the skin of a beast in an account that
was written mere months after the events were talking about.
In this episode, which was part of the series of
books cataloging the interesting happenings of the time called Kirby's

(02:58):
Wonderful and Scientific Museum, there was even the assertion that
locals believed there might be multiple ghosts. These accounts persisted
to the point that the whole area started to be
genuinely concerned. In one instance, a mister Russell, who was
the driver of an eight horse carriage, was so frightened

(03:18):
by the ghosts that he abandoned his team and a
carriage filled with sixteen people and just ran away. Those
passengers were just left hanging with the ghost. I guess
as the ghost things got worse as rumors spread that
people were even dying of shock upon seeing or interacting
with the ghost. In one such case, a pregnant woman

(03:40):
was described as having fainted when she saw the ghost
after passing near the graveyard at Saint Paul's, and then
it is said to have reached out and put its
arms around her. She was found unconscious on the ground
and taken to a home of a nearby resident. She
reportedly died there a couple of days later, although there
isn't any real substantiation for this story. For example, nothing

(04:05):
ever mentions her name. Because of all this, though there
were very real fears about being on the street, people
started staying inside after sundown. In an effort to put
an end to the perceived threat that was holding the
town in a state of constant fear. Armed patrols were
made up of citizens and they started mounting these patrols

(04:27):
at night. This was more than twenty five years before
London got its official police force, the Metropolitan Police, so
this was not an unusual means of dealing with a
problem involving public safety. Some of the men in these
patrols did not think there was a ghost. They suspected
a very real person was just scaring the area's residence

(04:49):
and they wanted it to stop. On one patrol, a
ghost was chased, but this supposed ghost was able to
elude his pursuers, he said, who have removed the sheet
as he ran, but then could not be identified. In
a lot of cases, it seemed that the purported ghost
knew which roots the patrols would take and then stuck

(05:11):
to alternate streets. And paths. Yeah, this is often described
as being a neighborhood that had a lot of alley's sideways,
et cetera. So it was kind of amaze and it
was easy for someone to evade capture. On January third
of eighteen oh four, one of these patrols was out
and about, but in this case it was not a group.

(05:32):
It was a man on his own named Francis Smith.
Smith was an excise officer who was twenty nine years old,
and he and another man, William Girdler, were both out patrolling,
but they had decided to separate to cover more ground.
The two men had worked out a call and response
set of phrases so that if one approached the other,

(05:52):
they would know that it was the person that was
also on patrol and nothing sinister. So one of them
would open with who goes there or perhaps a similar
sentiment like who is it? The other would respond with
a friend, and then the final confirmation was advance friend.
So this seems like a great code, but it is
all based on the presumption that no one else would

(06:13):
be out in the streets except the two of them
and perhaps something or someone sinister. After the two men
parted ways, to patrol, Francis Smith spotted a figure in
white near Black Lion Lane. Hoping to end this terror
in the community, Smith raised the weapon he was carrying

(06:34):
and fired, and the figure fell to the ground. When
Smith approached his target, he was horrified to see that
it was a man wearing white work clothes that were
white linen trousers with a white waistcoat, apron, and even shoes.
The victim was twenty two year old Thomas Millwood that
was a bricklayer who was walking home from visiting his

(06:56):
father after work when Francis Smith mistook him for the
ghost or a prankster pretending to be a ghost. Allegedly,
this was not the first time someone had thought he
was the ghost, but previous incidents had ended without any
kind of serious repercussions. After Smith realized what he had done,
he went looking immediately for help, and he ran into

(07:18):
two men named Stowe and Locke, and he told them
that he had shot a man that he had believed
to be a ghost. Initially, according to a statement given
by Stowe to the paper, Smith didn't really seem to
realize that he would be in trouble legally, or that
he had done anything wrong. Smith then told them that
he had spoken to that person twice and received no

(07:39):
answer before he fired. Stowe and Locke returned with Smith
to the scene of the shooting to see that Millwood
was indeed dead. Smith also put out word at a
local pub that he needed to speak with William Girdler,
the man he had been out on watch sort of with,
but not really, and then when Girdler got the message,
he too went to the scene of the shooting. The

(08:02):
coroner's examination indicated that Thomas Millwood died from a single
gunshot to the head. The bullet had entered through his
mouth at the left jaw, passed through his spine to
the exit at the back of his neck. According to
the coroner's report, his face was blackened from the flash
of gunpowder, and the death was recorded as a quote

(08:24):
rash act of wilful murder. Locke and Stowe had advised
Smith to go home, although he had, according to their
later testimony, asked them to take him into custody themselves,
but they wanted to wait and see how things played out,
and when the police went to Smith's home once the
situation had escalated with that coroner's determination, Smith went with

(08:46):
the authorities readily. We'll talk about how his legal case
played out after we pause for a sponsor break. A
lot of people had come to Francis Smith's defense in
the course of the coroner's inquiry. He was not disputing

(09:09):
the fact that he had fired the shot that killed Millwood.
He acknowledged that he was panicked and agitated when he
saw the white figure. But Smith was also known to
everyone as a very gentle and kind man. No one
believed he went out on patrol the night of the
shooting with anything but good intentions. Additionally, a lot of

(09:30):
people willingly made statements about the low visibility in the
town the night of the shooting, noting specifically that if
you stood on one side of Black Lion Lane, the
low lighting, mist and hedges planted along it made it
difficult to see across the lane in the dark. Black
Lion was known to be dim and shadowy because there
were hedges on both sides of the lane, so seeing

(09:53):
a white form, it actually would have been pretty difficult
to make it out as a corporeal human person. This
is something paranormal. Based on the coroner's findings, Francis Smith
was arrested He pleaded not guilty, with the defense that
his actions were accidental based on a case of mistaken identity.
He was tried at the Old Bailey on January thirteenth,

(10:16):
ten days after the incident, on the charge of wilful murder.
The case that played out would impact British law and
change the way people talked about murder charges. Francis Smith
was adamant during the trial that his actions were born
out of a very real fear, and that he had
believed he came into the presence of the ghosts that
had been rumored to be terrorizing the neighborhood. He had

(10:38):
initially told the court that he wished for his counsel
to speak for him, but he was told that in
terms of answering the charges, he had to speak for himself,
and that his counsel was there solely to question the witnesses.
So Smith stated in his first remarks to the court quote,
I can only declare that I went out with a
perfectly good intention. After calling to the deceased twice and

(11:00):
receiving no answer, I became so agitated that I did
not know what I was about. But I solemnly declare
that I am innocent of any malicious intention against any
person whatever. There are some inconsistencies in the various accounts
as to whether Smith believed he was shooting at a
specter or whether he believed he was shooting at someone

(11:22):
pretending to be a ghost to menace the neighborhood. Some,
including the testimony of John Locke, make it sound as
though Smith knew it was a person. Locke specifically said
during the trial testimony quote he informed me he had
shot a man who he believed to be the pretended
ghost of Hammersmith. But that leaves a little room for interpretation,

(11:46):
as Smith was relaying the news of the shooting to
Locke after he himself had discovered that he had shot
a man. As we'll see in a moment, the defense
made the case that there was a very real sense
of a ghost threat in the neighborhood. The prosecution's case
made the entire ghost story out to be just utterly ridiculous.

(12:07):
Even news accounts that ran ahead of the trial had
dismissed the apparition rumors. It's really silly. The Morning Chronicle
ran a piece about the shooting on January sixth, so
that's three days after it, which read quote the neighborhood
of Hammersmith has for some time been alarmed by a
ridiculous rumor of a ghost, which is said to have
paid its nocturnal visits to the fields adjacent to Black

(12:30):
Lion Lane. That same article quoted Thomas Millwood's sister Anne
Millwood as describing a snippet of speech that she heard
when she went to the door to watch her brother
as he walked away from the house. She heard a
voice say quote, damn you, who are you? And then
stand else I'll shoot you right before she heard the

(12:50):
gun being fired, and worried about her brother, but unable
to see him again because these gloomy and dim lighting situation,
call her brother's name and got no answer, And at
that point she alerted her father and her mother and
a lodger who lived with the Millwood family about it,
but they dismissed what she had heard as street noise,

(13:12):
and still very worried about her brother Thomas, went out
by herself and she found him dead in the lane.
A lot of witnesses came forward to vouch for Smith's
good character. Even Millwood's mother in law, missus Fulbrook, was
a witness for the defense. She told the court quote,
on Saturday evening, he and I were at home, for
he lived with me. He said he had frightened two

(13:35):
ladies and a gentleman who were coming along the terrace,
and a carriage. For that, the man said he dared
to say, there goes the ghost. That he said he
was no more a ghost than he was, and asked him,
using a bad word, did he want a punch of
the head. I begged of him to change his dress.
Thomas says, I, as there is a piece of work

(13:57):
about the ghost, and your clothes look white, pray do
put on your greatcoat that you may not run any danger.
I don't know what answer he made. He said he
wished the ghost was catched, or something of that sort.
One thing the defense counsel asked witnesses was about the
many groups of men who had gone on patrol. According

(14:18):
to court proceedings, They asked John Locke, quote, you know,
I believe, however unfortunate, it has turned out that almost
all the young men had gone out. When Locke answered
in the affirmative, the follow up question was quote, which
was publicly known and talked about. So it seems this
line of questioning was to establish before the court that

(14:39):
everyone knew that armed men were prowling the streets looking
for a specter, so in disregarding that danger, Thomas had
somehow been responsible for what had happened to him. Then
the defense introduced the idea that there was potentially a
legitimate ghost haunting Hammersmith. They called a man named Tom

(15:00):
Groom who worked for a brewer named Burgess, and Grun
stated that while he and a colleague were walking through
the churchyard, he very clearly felt hands around his throat,
though neither of the men could see anything. This was
laying the groundwork that there were enough credible instances of
people saying they had interactions with the Hammersmith ghost that

(15:22):
it was reasonable for Francis Smith to believe that was
what was before him when he pulled the trigger. The
Lord Chief Baron MacDonald gave orders to the jury that
they must decide if Smith was guilty or not. Those
orders included the instructions quote it would be impossible to
calculate the dangerous consequences which would ensue if men were

(15:45):
permitted to take upon themselves the right of shooting others
for certain crimes. If a man goes out with the
intention of shooting robbers and kills a person who is
offering him no violence. He is guilty of murder. However,
are disgusted the jury might feel in their own minds
with the abominable person guilty of the misdemeanor of terrifying

(16:07):
the neighborhood. Still, the prisoner had no right to construe
such misdemeanor into a capital offense, or to conclude that
a man dressed in white was a ghost. In this case,
there was a deliberate carrying of a loaded gun, which
the prisoner concluded he was entitled to fire, but which
he really was not, and he did fire it with

(16:27):
a rashness, which the law does not excuse. In all
the circumstances of the case, no man is allowed to
kill another rashly. The judge also told the jury that
they could not take into account whether Francis Smith was
a good man or not, that they just had to
consider the facts of the case, and the facts of

(16:48):
the case were obvious. Francis Smith admitted to shooting Millwood,
but because of the odd circumstances, it seems the jury
tried to mitigate the outcome of the trial by fining
Smith guilty not of murder but of manslaughter that would
automatically carry a much lighter sentence. The problem, though, was

(17:09):
that MacDonald and the two other judges in the case,
Justices Rooke and Lawrence, stated they could not accept that
outcome because Smith had not been on trial for manslaughter.
This was just a matter of following the letter of
the law. So the jury was instructed to once again
deliberate with the option of delivering a guilty verdict or

(17:30):
an acquittal for murder based on the evidence of the case.
The judges also reminded the jurors that Thomas Millwood had
not done anything on the night of the shooting other
than walk home wearing white. He had not menaced anyone,
he had not tried to run. But they also noted
that even if he had, even if he had been

(17:53):
a prankster trying to scare people by feigning to be
a ghost, that could only be considered a nuisance, which
at most could be cited as a misdemeanor. After the
second round of deliberation, which took an hour, the jury
came back with the verdict that Francis Smith was guilty
of murder. This automatically resulted in a death sentence, and

(18:16):
the bench ruled that Smith was to be hanged and
that his body would be donated to a medical college.
Knowing this was bound to stoke a controversy, the Lord
Chief Baron Archibald MacDonald promised to bring the matter before
King George the Third. This was a scenario where the
facts of the case were covered in the press in
detail and everyone knew what had happened. It was perceived

(18:39):
by almost everyone as an accidental shooting, but also with
the understanding that in legal terms there wasn't much leeway
to find Smith anything other than guilty. Still, he did
have a lot of public support, and the King also
recognized the unusual circumstances in the way that the law
did not not really allow for any kind of nuance

(19:02):
in a case like this, so the monarch actually issued
a pardon three weeks after the initial guilty verdict. The King,
unlike the jury, did have the power to change the
outcome of the case and issue a guilty verdict instead
for the lesser charge of manslaughter, and to dictate the
terms of the sentencing. Francis Smith was to be imprisoned

(19:23):
for one year to perform hard labor. The proceedings of
the Old Bailey list a remission of imprisonment for Francis
on July twelfth of eighteen oh four, so his sentence
was reduced at that point for good behavior. But after
that he sort of vanishes from the historical record. But
what about the ghost? Thomas Millwood was a plasterer or

(19:45):
a bricklayer, Various different accounts call him, each of those.
He happened to be wearing white work clothes. He was
not a spirit lurking in the graveyard waiting to scare people.
So what had all those ghost sightings about. Well, initially
after the shooting, sightings of the ghost did stop, and

(20:05):
then the day after Francis smith sentencing, the Hammersmith Ghost
stepped forward to confess. And we'll talk about that right
after we hear from the sponsors that keep the show going.

(20:25):
On January fourteenth, a shoemaker named John Graham reached out
to authorities to state that he had been putting a
sheet over his head and then walking around Hammersmith scaring
people as a prank. This had initially started just as
a prank against his employees. The men had been telling
Graham's kids ghost stories and it really frightened the children.

(20:48):
So Graham thought he would frighten the grown men to retaliate,
and then it turned out he liked doing it. It
was fun to scare people, so he started going out
into the graveyard in his ghost disguise. Although Graham had
come forward, a lot of people in Hammersmith were not convinced.
They continued to believe that something spectral was lurking in

(21:11):
their neighborhood, waiting to reach out and get them if
they found themselves in close proximity to it, and there
were reports that the ghost was cited many times after
the trial concluded, and John Graham claimed to have been
the ghost. This has given rise to theories that there
may have been copycats wanting to just keep the prank going,

(21:33):
but finding any hard evidence about that is just about
impossible given that nobody else ever came forward, So it
could just as easily be that people thought they saw
the ghost even if no one was keeping up the prank.
And some of these sightings, which continued for several decades,
really upped the ante on the odd details, including some

(21:54):
accounts that this ghost was seen breathing fire. I love
that he becomes much more demo on it be as
time goes on. Now he's got horns, Now he's got
glass eyes, Now he breathes fire. The idea that Francis
Smith's murder trial introduced that the British legal system needed
to be able to handle cases where a person truly
believed they were acting in self defense or for the

(22:16):
good of someone else against something supernatural, was actually debated
for the next one hundred and eighty years, and it
wasn't until another case in nineteen eighty three that there
was a definitive ruling on such cases, though it did
not involve the supernatural, but a case of misunderstanding the situation,
and that was Regina versus Gladstone Williams. So Regina is

(22:38):
the word often used in British cases to indicate that
the case is brought by the Crown. I think the
Brits might pronounce it regina. I think so too, but
I don't love that now, sorry to all of my
British friends. It sounds so much like other things to
me that I cannot do it in my soul. This
appellate case is written up with the following information as

(23:00):
its introductory explainer quote On ninth March this year, Gladstone
Williams appeared in the Inner London Crown Court charged with
assault occasioning actual bodily harm. After a trial, he was
convicted and was given a conditional discharge for twelve months,
together with certain financial penalties. He now appeals on a

(23:21):
point of law against his conviction. The facts were somewhat
unusual and were as follows. On the day in question,
the alleged victim, a man called Mason, saw a black
youth seizing the handbag belonging to a woman who was shopping.
He caught up with the youth and held him, he said,

(23:42):
with a view to taking him to a nearby police station,
but the youth broke free from his grip. Mason caught
the youth again and knocked him to the ground, and
he then twisted one of the youth's arms behind his
back in order to immobilize him and to enable him.
He said, what once again to take the youth to
a police station. The youth was struggling and calling for

(24:06):
help at this time, and no one disputed the fact.
Upon the scene. Then came the appellant, who had only
seen the latter stages of this incident. According to Mason,
he told the appellant first of all that he was
arresting the youth for mugging the lady, and secondly that
he Mason was a police officer. That was not true.

(24:28):
He was asked for his warrant card, which obviously was
not forthcoming, and thereupon something of a struggle ensued between
Mason on the one hand, and the appellant and others
on the other hand. In the course of these events,
Mason sustained injuries to his face, loosened teeth, and bleeding gums.
The appellant put forward the following version of events. He

(24:53):
said he was returning from work by bus when he
saw Mason dragging the youth along and striking him again
and again. He was so concerned about the matter that
he rapidly got off the bus and made his way
to the scene and asked Mason what on earth he
was doing. In short, he said that he punched Mason
because he thought if he did so, he would save

(25:14):
the youth from further beating and what he described as torture.
So the cliff notes, a person claiming to be an
off duty policeman saw a kid stealing a woman's bag
and chased and tackled him, and a passerby thought that
the kid was being attacked by this person who said
they were an off duty policeman and interceded, But that passerby,

(25:36):
Gladstone Williams, thought he was protecting an innocent person because
he did not have all the facts of the situation
when he acted, and there was that confusion where it
was claimed that he was a policeman and he wasn't.
And Williams, the one who interceded, thinking he was saving
this kid, was charged and convicted of assault, but Williams

(25:57):
appeal led to a ruling that established precedent regarding charges
where people use force but can establish that their intent
and understanding of the situation was inherently lawful. That ruling reads,
in part quote, in a case of self defense or
the prevention of crime is concerned, if the jury came
to the conclusion that the defendant believed or may have believed,

(26:20):
that he was being attacked or that a crime was
being committed, and that force was necessary to protect himself
or to prevent the crime, then the prosecution have not
proved their case. If, however, the defendant's alleged belief was mistaken,
and if the mistake was an unreasonable one, that may
be a peaceful reason for coming to the conclusion that

(26:43):
the belief was not honestly held and should be rejected.
Even if the jury come to the conclusion that the
mistake was an unreasonable one, if the defendant may genuinely
have been laboring under it, he is entitled to rely
upon it. I'm so sorry all of that legal discussion

(27:05):
landed in your basket, but also legal discussion that I
hate for the record, Like, what do you mean if
I am understanding this correctly? This is the kind of
argument that's used to justify people being like I shot
that guy. Oh, yes, one hundred percent. We should talk
about this on behind the scenes. Yeah but yeah, yeah, yeah,

(27:27):
we should talk about it behind the scenes. Although the
law may have become a settled matter according to some locals,
Thomas Millwood has not, because now there are reports that
Milwood has, in his ghost form, been haunting the Black
Lion Pub on the street where he died. The pub
has been there since the latter half of the seventeen hundreds,

(27:47):
although specific dates on its origin do seem to vary.
The pub would have been one of the primary public
places where the Hammersmith Ghost would have been discussed and debated,
and Millwood's body was taken there for examination by mister Flowers,
who worked for the Coroner's office after he had been shot.
There have been employees of the pub who have claimed

(28:09):
over the years that they see Thomas frequently. In two
thousand and four, the Ghost Club, which was founded by
Charles Dickens in eighteen sixty two, had a meet up
at the Black Lion Pub to mark the two hundred
year anniversary of the shooting. There is a plaque outside
the pub that mentions the ghost. It reads quote the
Black Lion, formerly known as the Black Lion spelled with

(28:30):
a y, A public house has stood on the site
for well over two hundred years. Originally a piggery, it
is reputed that the pig farmer started brewing beer for
himself and his friends. This proved so popular that it
overtook his agricultural interests as his main occupation. The Hammersmith
Ghost started haunting Black Lion Lane in Saint Paul's Churchyard

(28:52):
in eighteen oh four. One night in Excise, Officer Francis
Smith filled his blunderbuss with shot and him self with
ale before killing an unfortunate white clothes bricklayer, Thomas Millwood,
whom he had mistaken for the ghost. It was at
the Black Lion that the body was taken and an
inquest held later. So, in a bit of historical irony,

(29:16):
a man mistaken for a ghost and shot because of
that mistake has now become a ghost in his own right,
at least according to local lore. And that is the
last of our halloweeners for the year. Do you have
some email that may or may not be Halloween related,

(29:38):
has nothing to do with Halloween? Oh well, it's a suggestion,
but also one that I have had a lot of
people ask me about this lately. Even it came into email,
and I have been doing a number of book signings
at conventions lately for Killer Cocktails, and several people have
asked me if we were going to do this topic.

(29:59):
So I feel I should just tell people wear them
at on it. This is from our listener Samantha, who writes, Hello,
all have loved your podcast for many years and was
excited and surprised to look through the catalog and not
find anything on this particular subject. Perhaps I missed it
but maybe it would be a fun upcoming episode. My
six year old daughter asked to understand the history of

(30:19):
stuffed animals, and in our research we found how interesting
the life of Margaret Steife, the German seamstress turned toy
maker was. Perhaps something was mentioned during the many different
Teddy Roosevelt pods, but I could not find anything particularly
about her life and experiences. Would love to know your thoughts. Sam. Okay, Sam,
here's the scoop. It's always on my list. I'm always

(30:40):
poking at it. And because I had been talking about
in the last year my Koala project that talked about
ad nauseum on the show, a lot of people have
been like, ooh, is this part of a lead up
to do a maybe? Is the answer kinda yeah. Part
of it is that I want to be thorough. And
there are instances of stuffed toys of a variety of

(31:01):
types going back way deep into history, and some of
those are a little bit tricky because plushies like clothing
are made of things that degrade really easily compared to
things like oh yeah, metal and whatnot. So there's a
lot of theoretical we think this may have been a
toy or maybe it's just a piece of cotton wadding

(31:23):
that we were confused by. There's a lot of those,
but I'm it's always in the back of my head
and it's one I would love to do. It's a
slow burner, that's the answer. But the introduction of Margaret
Stiffe is a subject is actually a great idea. So
that may be the thing that turns the corner at
least a little bit, because I love plushies. Yeah, when

(31:45):
I read this email, I'd like, did a super quick
google and I was like, oh, that does sound very
interesting because I like, I know about Stife, I know
about the company, but I do not know about this person. Really. Yeah,
there are a few kind of heritage stuffed toy companies
would be fun to talk about as well as there's
another really cool initiative regarding recycling stuff toys that I

(32:07):
would love to talk about. So it's on my list,
my love list, and hopefully I'll get to it sooner
than later. Maybe that would make a good holiday episode
this year, because who doesn't listen. Plushes are very near
and dear to my heart. I am a grown adult
woman who carries a plush with me everywhere I go. Listen.
Peeps rides in my carry on bag on all my trays. No,

(32:27):
he's been all over the world with us. I just
love them anyway. Thank you so much, Sam for that idea,
for reminding me to think about this in a new way.
And the answer is, hopefully I will meet your six
year old's history needs, but I don't know when. Sorry,
that's not more substantial of an answer. If you would

(32:49):
like to write to us about stuffed animals or anything else,
you can do that at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
You can also subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app,
where you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff you Missed
in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more

(33:11):
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.