Madame Guillotine

My rather nice husband bought me this Cockney necklace from Tatty Devine as a surprise present.

Hello again. I’ve been really quiet, haven’t I? Sorry about that but it’s all in a good cause as I stupidly decided to commemorate 1.5 million blog hits by moving my blog to self hosting (it’s almost done and, if you’re interested, I’ll be selling some VERY limited advertising space just as soon as it’s finished); writing my Minette and detective novels (both going well and I also know what my next two books will be about – one of which may come as a bit of a surprise to long term readers of this blog!) and also working on a TOP SECRET project that I hope to be able to share with you in a couple of week’s time.

Wuthering Heights!

In the meantime, I’ve trotted back again to share this object of loveliness with you! It may LOOK like a vintage copy of Wuthering Heights but is actually my new Kindle case. How brilliant? I’ve had my Kindle for almost a year now but didn’t get a case until now as, frankly, I couldn’t find one that wasn’t either intolerably plain and cheap looking or just plain ugly. Imagine my delight, therefore, when my friend Faye from Scandal and Hysteria posted about We Love Odd‘s amazing ‘Run For Covers’ Kindle cases. Faye went with the Alice in Wonderland case but I opted for Wuthering Heights as, although it’s not my most favourite book, I loved the simple aesthetics and also couldn’t resist having ‘Gothic Novel’ on the front!

We Love Odd seem to stock more cover designs all the time and currently have cases with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dracula, Macbeth and more. They are also very lovely people.

New boots! I’m a bit in love.

Other top buys this week have been my beloved and very beautiful Doctor Marten Triumph 1914s and some of the new Illamasqua collection, including a rather wonderful black glittery nail polish. I’ve basically given up pretending that I’m not a goth – how could I when I’m off to see my beloved Fields of the Nephilim play in London on Halloween? I mean, you don’t get much more goth than that, do you?

Brewing Stars with Little Bear.

I’ve also been buying more art for our house – I’m in love with this print by Lisa Falzon and have two more Madame Talbot prints coming – I succumbed to the Halloween and Absinthe prints, which will add a dash of colour to my collection!

Has anyone else bought Royal Style: A History of Aristocratic Fashion Icons by Luise Wackerl? It is a wonderful look at the most exquisite aristocratic and royal style icons from Medieval times to the modern day and is really lovely to look at.

I have to dash now but not before letting you know that I’m off to Buckingham Palace on Monday to have a snoop around the state rooms and also the exhibition of the Queen’s diamonds. I’m also going to be taking in the new Pre-Raphaelite exhibition at the Tate so expect full reports about both next week before I head to the Jack the Ripper Conference in York! Cor, busy!

We went to a wedding at Ashton Court, an estate just outside Bristol, on Saturday and they had these marvellous fake eighteenth century portraits about the place – including this imaginative version of Lawrence’s portrait of Queen Charlotte. I want one for my bedroom!

Oh and if you’re in the UK and interested in blogging, you may like to know that I will be talking about self publishing on the ‘Getting Published’ panel at the first Mumsnet Blogfest in London on the 10th of November. I’m a bit excited about getting to hobnob awkwardly with the likes of Jeanette Winterson and Caitlin Moran for the day!

Ah, where would the blogging community be without Halloween and its creepy culinary, cake, cinematic and sartorial delights? We history bloggers can have spooky fun too though! Oh yes. I mean, for many of us, it might as well be Halloween every day as we share tales of historical bloodshed, misery and woe but that doesn’t mean we can’t make a special effort once in a while!

Once upon a time, many years ago, I made one of my boyfriends take me to the Ten Bells pub in Whitechapel, which is, of course, well known as the favoured drinking spot of at least one of Jack the Ripper’s unfortunate victims. We fought our way to the bar through a crowd of hipsters, Ripper walk attendees and supercilious locals, bought GIN and then returned to stand at a spot by the door. Now, I am pretty sure there was no one standing near us but nonetheless as I chatted to the person I was with (he was probably giving me a hard time about something as that was his wont), I distinctly felt a pair of hands come from behind and gently rest on my hips. I looked around and saw no one there but then a feeling of unease descended on me and I insisted that we leave straight away.

I’ve been back to the Ten Bells several times since then and haven’t had the same thing happen again but the feeling of unease remains and I’ve never managed to last longer than it takes to knock back one GIN before I have to leave.

As you all know (yawn, yawn, yes I know) my great-great-great grandfather, David Lee, was a police sergeant in Whitechapel’s H Division in 1888, when the Ripper murders were going on, which is pretty creepy considering I’ve been obsessed with the Whitechapel murders since I was fourteen and had no idea that one of my ancestors was there on the very spot itself. Have the echoes of what he saw back then floated down through the decades? I’m guessing not. However, there is a family tendency to join the police force and I remember one of my cousins who was in the Met and did the Whitechapel beat telling me when I was very young that he often felt what felt like a woman pushing past him near one of the murder sites only for, you guessed it, there to be no one else actually there.

There have actually been reported sightings of the Ripper’s victims pretty much ever since they met their unfortunate and tragic ends. Within a few years of Polly Nichols’ murder on Bucks Row (now Durward Street), there were reports of people seeing her body lying on the ground as it was discovered, surrounded by an unearthly glow and apparently it can still be seen there from time to time.

The next woman to be murdered, Annie Chapman, is said to be have been seen walking down Hanbury Street on gloomy Autumn evenings with a spectral man, presumably her killer while other unfortunate people have reported hearing the sounds of her murder actually being committed, which is doing better than people actually at the time, who reportedly heard nothing at all. It’s also said that a ghostly headless woman with a bloodstained apron seen around Hanbury Street is the shade of poor Annie, who was almost decapitated by the Ripper’s knife.

For several months after her murder, Berner Street was said to be haunted by the ghost of poor Elizabeth Stride, who was found dead in a yard on the night of 30th September 1888. Spooked passersby reported that late at night, it was possible to hear the unfortunate woman’s screams and struggling as she was attacked although when they peered into the darkness there was nothing to be seen.

Unwary late night visitors to Mitre Square at the end of September have reported seeing the grisly sight of Catherine Eddowes’ body lying where it was found on the cobbled ground. I feel bad now for making one of my friends lie down on the very spot and assume the same position as Eddowes so I could take a photograph of her. Sorry Saiira!

Mary Jane Kelly is perhaps the most famous and enigmatic of the Ripper’s victims so it comes as no surprise that she too features in a ghostly tale. It was said at the time that for several months after her murder she could be seen dressed in black and looking sadly out of the window of her room.

Finally, if you ever find yourself on Westminster Bridge at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve watch out for the spectral shadow of a man that can apparently be seen rushing desperately over the side of the bridge and plunging into the icy water below. This is said to be the phantom of the Ripper himself as tormented by his terrible crimes he took his own life only to be condemned to repeat the moment of death over and over again…

If you want another spooky tale, check out my post about the Haunted Skull of Burton Agnes Hall.

‘I have heard of ancient men, of good credit, report that these single women were forbidden the rites of the church, so long as they continued that sinful life, and were excluded from Christian burial, if they were not reconciled before their death. And therefore there was a plot of ground called the Single Woman’s churchyard, appointed for them far from the parish church’ - John Stow, Survey of London, 1598.

One of the saddest spots in central London, a few minutes walk away from the busy, thriving Borough Market in Southwark, Cross Bones graveyard is the final resting place of around 15,000 Londoners, mostly women and infants who had been denied a proper burial in consecrated ground.

The earliest burials at the site were of prostitutes, also familiarly known as Winchester Geese as since 1161 they had been licensed by the Bishop of Winchester to work the streets and alleys around the Liberty of the Clink area of Southwark, which was well known to be a den of vice and crime. In Medieval London, ‘goose bumps’ was the term used to describe the first signs of venereal disease, most probably caught in the stews of Southwark around the notorious Clink prison.

Photo – Inspector Juve.

Denied proper burial thanks to their trade, the prostitutes of the area were instead buried without ceremony in the Cross Bones graveyard, where the bodies were piled on top of each other. Excavations have revealed that most of the skeletons in Cross Bones belong to either women or infants who had either been born dead or expired shortly after birth and were therefore also denied burial in consecrated ground. Later on in its history, the euphemistically named ‘Single Women’s Graveyard’ was used as a general pauper’s cemetery for the poor of the area. It was also a favourite hunting ground for bodysnatchers, seeking out specimens for the teaching hospitals of London.

In 1853, Cross Bones was closed due to being overcrowded and therefore a risk to health and would have been built over had not the local residents strongly resisted any attempts to develop the spot. Nowadays it is a strange place, loved by locals and fiercely protected by them against the occasional attempts to gain planning permission for office blocks and car parks on the site. The gates to the burial ground are festooned with tributes and flowers left by visitors, turning it into a makeshift shrine to the lost and forgotten women and children of early modern London.

Since 1998 it has become traditional for hundreds of people to gather at Cross Bones with candles, songs, gin and flowers on Halloween night to pay tribute to the ‘outcast dead’ of the graveyard. It’s my intention to join them this year with a bottle of gin to sprinkle in tribute. It’s interesting that when I first visited the grave of Mary Jane Kelly in St Patrick’s, Leytonstone (where it turns out members of my own family are interred, although I didn’t know it at the time), I instinctively took along a bottle of gin to leave on her grave. It now seems that this is the right and proper thing to do when honouring a dead lady of the night, which pleases me rather.

Photo – The Centre of the World.

‘For tonight in Hell

They are tolling the bell

For the Whore that lay at the Tabard,

And well we know

How the carrion crow

Doth feast in our Crossbones Graveyard.’ — John Crow’s Riddle, John Constable.

Thanks to Lucy Fur Leaps for alerting me to Cross Bones! I’ve been thinking about it ever since…

When I was a little girl we lived for a while in the countryside near Beverley in Yorkshire, which was rather lovely as we had an amazingly creepy church in our village, Dalton Holme and also lots of splendid countryside to roam around. One of the best things about the area for me though was our proximity to Burton Agnes Hall, an incredibly beautiful Elizabethan manor house with the most wonderful gardens.

I spent many, many happy hours at Burton Agnes at that time, wandering around the beeswax and pot pourri scented mansion, with its beautiful light filled long gallery at the top of the house and sauntering through the gardens, pretending to be Marie Antoinette or Anne Boleyn or whoever was my current historical crush at that time.

The really, really thrilling thing about Burton Agnes though was the ghost story attached to the house, which as it is Halloween, I am going to share with you now.

Burton Agnes Hall was built in the early years of the seventeenth century by Sir Henry Griffith, who planned to live there with his three beautiful daughters. The three girls were all enthralled by the creation of their father’s gorgeous new house, but it was Anne, the youngest and prettiest who was particularly in love with the estate and was fond of wandering around the grounds and neighbouring land, planning the new gardens and imagining the happy life that lay before them all.

However, on one of Anne’s countryside rambles, she was set upon by a gang of robbers who took her possessions and then viciously beat her before leaving her for dead. She was discovered and brought home to the hall, but it was too late and the unfortunate girl died a few days later of her wounds.

Anne fell into a fever in her final hours and is said to have been in despair at the thought of leaving her beloved family home forever and so begged her aghast sisters to ensure that a piece of her would always reside there by removing her head after death and secreting it within the walls of the Hall.

Unsurprisingly her family nodded and smiled and agreed to do as she asked but as soon as she was dead, she was interred, head intact in the nearby churchyard and everyone thought that that was the end of that.

They were wrong. Shortly the burial of poor Anne, her family’s peaceful nights at the Hall were shattered by strange bumps and moans and horrible, spine curdling screams of horror and panic. At first they tried their best to ignore the racket but then finally and in despair and desperation, they decided to bring up Anne’s coffin and do as she had asked.

From the moment that the skull was brought into the house, peace and serenity reigned at Burton Agnes Hall and there were no more reports of horrible disturbances until an unfortunate chambermaid, encountering the skull in a cupboard threw it with some disgust out of an open window, whereupon the bangs and screams began again until the skull was retrieved and placed indoors again.

Later inhabitants of the house, spooked by the presence of the ghastly grinning skull of a murderered girl did their best to rid themselves of it by burying it in the garden, but with no luck as again the nights were shattered by hideous screams.

In the end, it was decided that the best policy was to place the skull in a secret spot within the walls of the house, probably behind some panelling in the great hall so that its presence could be easily ignored and so that Anne’s spirit can reside in peace in her beloved home.

I remember that as children we used to love surreptitiously tapping the panelling in the Great Hall, wondering which one hid the terrifying screaming skull, but with no success. I wonder if the local children still do this now? I used to stare up at the portrait of Anne sitting with her two sisters which hung high on the wall in the great hall, gazing down on us with pop eyed indifference. She was clad in sombre funereal black, which was a stark contrast to the bright, shimmering silks worn by the other girls and was intended to denote her premature demise.

And that is the story of the screaming skull of Burton Agnes Hall.

As you may or may not have noticed, I’m a huge fan of the pottery company Emma Bridgewater and always get very very excited just before Christmas and Halloween in anticipation of their special edition mugs.

They’ve just released this year’s designs and, wow, how super cute are these bats? This design is available as a 1/2 pint mug, a baby mug and a serving bowl. I’ll definitely be getting a 1/2 pint mug to add to my collection just as soon as pay day comes around (groan! I know!).

They’ve re-released their pumpkin mugs from last year too, which is fab so I’ll be getting one of those as well! Their 1/2 pint mugs are a bit pricey maybe (£15.95 each) but I think they are well worth it!

Ooh, which reminds me that Dave bought me one of their Union Jack 1/2 pint mugs and a dove candle for my birthday in a couple of weeks time, so that’s three new mugs for my collection next month! Yipee!