Orchestral Girl.
Singular Phenomenon which is Puzzling Country Doctors.
(From our own correspondent.) Newmarket, Thursday.
Doctors are puzzled by the curious case of a girl which is interesting the people of the countryside around Newmarket. The Rev. W.H. Bray, vicar of the village of Brinkley, reported to the guardians that the girl, who is boarded out, was suffering from a rare deformity, causing her to emit curious sounds. His parishioners, he said, described the girl as having a band of music inside her.
The people with whom the girl lives assert that when she is upstairs they can often hear the band playing downstairs, and the village schoolmistress states that the curious sounds can sometimes be heard all over the school when the girl is present.
The victim of this strange malady is a strong and apparently healthy girl of 14. She suffers no ill-effects, and says the sounds are distinctly musical. Certainly those who have heard them assert that at times they resemble a distant band playing.
As the trouble is apparently getting worse, the lady medical inspector of the school advises the patient’s removal to hospital for operation. Doctors consulted are unable to explain the nature of cause of this curious phenomenon.
Evening News (London), 28th October 1909.
Human Musical Box.
Doctors investigate strange case of young girl.
A human musical box has been discovered at Brinkley, a village near Newmarket. The vicar of the parish has informed the Board of Guardians that one of the girls, aged 14, has something strange about her inner mechanism which causes her at times to give forth musical strains. The melodies have moved the villagers to assert that the girl has “a band of music inside her.”
In the schoolhouse the noises, said the vicar, could be heard all over at times, and the people with whom the girl is boarded say that when they are upstairs they can hear the “music” in the room below.
The case is quite a mystery, and the girl is to be sent to the Addinbrookes Hospital for special examination.
Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 29th October 1909.
It is a curious story that the “Cambridge Daily News” has to tell in a report of the meeting of the Newmarket Board of Guardians:
The Rev. W.H. Bray asked the attention of the Board to the case of a girl boarded out at Brinkley, who had a peculiar disease described by the people who knew her as a band of music within her. The “band” sounded such loud music that the girl had to be sent into the Infirmary of the Workhouse and she was there some months when the band was supposed to be silent. But the strains had begun again, though not so loudly. It was not a matter for joking; it was a very serious matter indeed. The sounds could be heard all through the school in whatever part of the school she was, and when the girl was upstairs the sounds could be heard all through the house. The girl ought to go to Addenbrooke’s for an operation. She was a fine, strapping girl.
And Mr. Bray added, in reply to a question: “I have never heard the music myself, but it is described by those who have heard it as ‘a band of music’.”
It would be interesting to hear more of this case, which sounds as if it might interest the Psychical Research Society not less than the doctors at Addenbrooke’s. Strains of music proceeding from persons are, we believe, among the rarer phenomena which are alleged in connection with “mediums.” The Rev. W Stainton Moses, if we remember aright, occasionally gave out music – or it was given out that he gave it out. In its present state, the Newmarket story is incomprehensible.
London Daily News, 30th October 1909.