Mysterious Occurrence in Smithdown-lane.
The Police Baffled.
A mysterious occurrence has occupied the attention of the police for over a week in Myers-street, off Smithdown-lane, and up to the present the mystery is still unsolved. Some person or persons who have effectually managed to escape detection have at frequent intervals thrown large pieces of coal through the front windows of several houses in Myers-street, so that there is scarcely a whole pane of glasss left. One family have had to live entirely in the kitchen, the window of which has shutters, and these have been closed for protection.
The scene of this extraordinary bombardment has been visited by thousands during the last few days, the story having spread through the district. Various theories have been advanced to account for the occurrence, but, as stated, the mystery has not yet been solved.
Liverpool Daily Post, 6th March 1901.
The Coal-throwing Mystery.
Three children injured.
The mysterious coal-throwing in Myers street, which has up to now baffled the ingenuity of the police to detect, still continues at intervals. Unfortunately it has now assumed a more serious aspect, a child having been struck on the head with a piece of coal in one of the bombarded houses. Two little boys who passed the place yesterday afternoon were also struck on the head, and all had to be taken to the Royal Infirmary to have their injuries dressed.
The people residing in the district are getting exasperated over the affair, and yesterday a crowd attacked the back of one of the houses opposite the bombarded property, doing considerable damage.
Liverpool Echo, 9th March 1901.
The Coal-heaving Ghost at Liverpool.
Liverpool people have come to the conclusion they have a ghost in their midst. Somebody or something has been shying chunks of coal for a fortnight at a pair of houses in Myers-street, and the mystery even baffles the police.
Mr John Rogers, wife, and seven children are the chief sufferers, this family occupying in turn the two cottages on which the ghost expends its superfluous wrath in the form of expensive coal. When one house is in a state of bombardment the family packs up the household goods and moves next door, where there is peace until the heaver works round on the other flank and drives the family back to fort No. 1.
Thousands of people have visited the scenes of the nightly bombardment, the mystery of which is still open to solution.
The “Liverpool Post” says there is no better locality in Liverpool for ghosts, for the neighbourhood is tunnelled with vast subterranean passages, the work of a man who made houses deep in the sandstone, and feasted, and revelled, and jousted there in high style many years ago.
The ghost’s devastations are apparent. Battered windows, broken pictures, smashed crockery, a curious crowd bespeak the reality of the apparition. When visited on Monday by a “Daily Post” representative there was plentiful evidence internally of a real fear of the ghost. The windows of the cottages had their shutters up; all the windows were broken, and through them the cold wind whizzed, bringing discomfort to the poor children shivering inside. Three of these were in front of the fire, the apartment being lighted with two paraffin oil lamps. Day was turned into night [sic] for fear of the coal-throwing ghost.
Detectives have swarmed in the place, about the place, on the roofs, on the parting walls of adjoining houses – sentinels throughout the long cold night – searching for a clue, all in vain. The bombardment has steadily proceeded, the splintered glass has smashed and dashed itself to pieces, the spent missiles have been picked up by the detectives themselves, but where they come from passes comprehension.
The detectives have grown tired, but the ghost is as lively as ever. He or “she” keeps the poor persecuted family “on the trot,” and the coal is dispensed in pretty fair profusion, considering the price at which it is now selling. The police affect to believe that the coal comes from within; but this easy explanation of the mystery hardly squares with the discomfort of the suffering family and the illness of the crying children.
Nottingham Journal, 13th March 1901.
A Liverpool Mystery.
To the Editor of the Daily Post.
Sir, I have just read with astonishment, under the heading ” A Liverpool Mystery,” in to-day’s “Daily Post,” an account of recent occurrences in Myers street, which statement is very misleading and not in accordance with facts. This house only contains three bedrooms, study, parlour, kitchen, and cellar kitchen, and not “twenty odd rooms” as stated in the Daily Post. Until very recently I have always had a respectable, elderly housekeeper. Latterly a kind neighbour has cleaned up the kitchen for me. It is not true to say no stranger has crossed my threshold for thirty years, or twenty either; a constant old friend is a regular weekly visitor.
The detectives who have had the coal-throwing matter in hand are quite satisfied that they have solved the mystery in the only possible way it could be done. Not one of the rooms in the house commands the cottage. Only one sword; no scimitar! – Yours, etc. H. Evans. 17, Edge-vale, Edge-hill, Liverpool, Mar. 12.
Liverpool Daily Post, 13th March 1901.
The coal-throwing mystery, to which we referred the other day, continues to excite Myers street, Liverpool. The bombardment goes on, and no one knows whence or how come the lumps of coal. Three children were struck on the head yesterday, and had to be taken to hospital. Every fresh lump of coal is fuel for popular indignation, which as a result of the injury to the children took the form of an attack on the back of one of the houses opposite the bombarded property. The crowd does not believe in supernatural visitations of coal, and is retaliating by heaving bricks with considerable effect.
Northants Evening Telegraph, 12th March 1901.
A Liverpool Mystery.
A Hermit and Mrs Palmer’s Ghost.
Baffled Detectives.
A fortnight yesterday a strange “ghost” appeared in Liverpool. The apparition took an unusual form, its latent talent being displayed in a mysterious bombardment of two cottages in Myers-street. One of these cottages is occupied by Mr John Rogers, a respectable man, who is engaged at the Howe Electrical Engineering Works, Redcross-street. He has a wife and seven children, four of them very young. There is an empty cottage next door, though it would be more correct to say that the empty cottage is sometimes full, and sometimes the full cottage is empty. This is brought about by the humour and vagaries of the ghost. These two cottages are the object of the ghost’s wrath; not both together, but one after the other. So it happens that if the family is badly persecuted in one house, it shifts – flits with all necessary belongings to the next. If the other cottage is attacked, back the family goes to the one it has left, and the ghost ventilates its spite upon the other. Then it returns to the one it has left in peace, and the persecuted family packs up once more – beds, chairs, tables, pictures, are moved, and there is a truce for a while, but not for long.
This has been going on for a fortnight. Hundreds, thousands of people have visited the place, but only a few have been able to get through the premises attacked by the invisible hand, and fewer still have seen the interior of the building from which the mysterious flight of coal is supposed to have come.
There is no better locality for a ghost to caper about in all the broad acres covered by the city of Liverpool than is to be found in Edge-hill. Those who have lived in it know something of its unearthly noises, its shakings, its rumblings, and its shrieks and howlings. Much that is curious once happened there.
The neighbourhood abutting on Smithdown-lane is tunnelled with vast subterranean passages – the work of a rich and eccentric man named Williamson, who made houses, palaces and passages deep down in the sandstone, and feasted, and revelled, and jousted there in high style many years ago. Many of the Troglodyte chambers still remain, but their entrances have been blocked up by the London and North-Western Railway Company, which emptied debris and rubbish in them. Railway engineers do not believe in ghosts, though they know all about tunnels. Edge-vale and Myers-street are within the precincts of the “hollowed” district. It is here the ghost has appeared, and a very happy choice it has made.
Its devastations are apparent. Battered windows, broken pictures, smashed crockery, a curious crowd bespeak the reality of the apparition. When visited yesterday by a “Daily Post” representative there was plentiful evidence internally of a real fear of the ghost. The windows of the cottages had their shutters up; all the windows were broken, and through them the cold wind whizzed, bringing discomfort and disease to the poor children shivering inside. Three of these were in front of the fire,the apartment being lighted with two paraffin oil lamps. Day was turned into night for fear of the coal-throwing ghost.
Detectives have swarmed in the place, about the place, on the roofs, on the parting walls of adjoining houses – sentinels throughout the long cold nights – searching for a clue, all in vain. The bombardment has steadily proceeded, the splintered glass has smashed and dashed itself to pieces, the spent missiles have been picked up by the detectives themselves, but where they come from passes comprehension. The detectives have grown tired, but the ghost is as lively as ever. He or “she” keeps the poor persecuted family “on the trot,” and the coal is dispensed in pretty fair profusion, considering the price at which it is now selling. The police affect to believe that the coal comes from within; but this easy explanation of the mystery hardly squares with the discomfort of the suffering family and the illness of the crying children. No parent would be so foolish as to throw coal at her own windows from inside for the mere gratification of causing a scare and a crowd.
What, then, is this mystery? Thousands of human eyes have been turned to the darksome and fearsome-looking building, the back of which faces the haunted cottages. There lives a reputed hermit – a man who has long been in retirement, who has lived in the house for forty years, and has for years been, one may say, almost dead to the world. He lives alone – almost absolutely alone, in a very large house, once almost a palace, formerly inhabited by Major Brook, one of the early aristocrats of Liverpool, when these gentry flocked to “the hill” – Edge-hill, covered with heather, and then far from the town. It was then a place of beauty and recreation. That was many years ago. Only a dim vestige of its fashionable life now remains. Some of it appears in Chatham-place, in Mason-street, and elsewhere.
Mr Evans, the occupier of the house in question, is regarded as a prodigy – a man of means, eccentric, and peculiar. There are many peculiar rooms in his habitation, some of them commanding the haunted cottage. Stranger still is the fact that the house he occupies is the house where Mrs Palmer, the wife of Dr Palmer, the notorious poisoner, was born, and where she lived for many years. People are now asking – seeing the police have failed to fathom the mystery – if the Palmer ghost is not somewhat disturbed for some reason, and is mysteriously bent on revisiting the glimpses of the moon. The Palmer association and the coal-throwing apparition are being curiously linked together, though why it is not easy to see.
The “Daily Post” representative was specially permitted to visit Mrs Palmer’s old haunts, and had an interview with the hermit, which lasted for some time. There was a certain amount of courage necessary to explore the rooms. For twenty years or more – it was said for thirty years – no stranger had crossed the old bachelor hermit’s threshold. It seemed by one’s dread experience even to be so. The old gentleman was in a retired bedroom, about which there was a musty smell. He was in bed with skull cap on, and large-rimmed spectacles. He was the very man to make a good ghost, but he turned out to be very talkative, very intelligent, and very human and humane. He is a connoisseur of old pictures, old books, and curios, swords, scimitars, and a thousand and one oddments, some of them of considerable value. One hesitatesto say all one saw about the dust of ages which hung heavy upon the old man’s treasures, or how he lives and moves and has his being.
He was once in the South American trade, and made a competency – enough, he says, to keep him from the workhouse, and he vegetates, exists, alone, with the exception of an occasional visit from an old housekeeper – so that the condition of his twenty odd rooms or so may be better imagined than described. But the old hermit is hale and hearty, and full of recollections of old Liverpool. The hermit is seventy-two years of age, adn seems quite incapable of throwing coal at anyone’s windows, even if the angles of the “line of fire” permitted. One would say he had no fancy for throwing coal away, for his own rooms would be better for a little of the comfortable commodity. He burns fire in only one appartment – the kitchen – a high-roofed, curious, antiquated, lumbering place, where he sits and reads and muses. He is strong, and troubles himself not about glass windows, for his sitting-room is practically without a window, an old sheet sufficing to keep off the raw edge of the wind and the public gaze at bay – enough, perhaps, when a stalwart policeman lives within call and sight.
The hermit is not afraid of ghosts; but what theory can there be to explain a phenomenon which for a fortnight now has baffled the ingenuity and vigilance of one of the smartest detective inspectors in the Liverpool Police Force. One may well ask in conclusion, if the occupier of the cottage does not throw cobs of coal at her own window, and the hermit does not and cannot throw, and is too economical to throw them if he would, who is it that keeps up this most tormenting persecution? Until the police can solve the enigma, people will believe, rightly or wrongly, that the ghost of Mrs Palmer has some hand in the affair.
Liverpool Daily Post, 12th March 1901.
The “Coal-throwing ghost” affair.
Death of the gentleman hermit.
Early this week the old hermit, who resided in Edge-vale, Edge-hill, and who acquired some notoriety in connection with the coal-throwing ghost, which recently disturbed the neighbourhood of Myers-street, expired very suddenly. He lived almost completely alone for something like twenty years, being only visited at times by an old housekeeper, while a very kindly neighbour had a key of the house, and made an occasional visit to see that all was well. The old gentleman had not been heard moving about for some time, and on the neighbour who had access entering the premises the hermit was found stark and stiff, with his limbs partly out of bed, as if he had been trying to get up.
The old man was reputed to be very rich, and he certainly had wealth – money in the bank, shares, &c. In spite, however, of all his wealth, he lived an extraordinary life. He could not pass a piece of stray paper, an old iron hoop, or a disused “Echo” contents bill, when he went out. He was truly a “picker-up of unconsidered trifles.” Some of his rooms were full of rubbish, side by side with rare pictures, art objects, &c. The grime of ages was upon everything; the windows were festooned with dirty cobwebs, and the recesses were by no means odorous, for there was a damp and nasty smell pervading near all the chambers.
The hermit slept during the day, and wakened up at night, restless, if not miserable, to count his scrip and gold. He had a very loud voice, and when he was seen in bed (as our reporter saw him), with a skullcap on, a large pair of goggles, and ensconced in dirty sheets, he presented a weird and awe-inspiring spectacle. Yet he was kindly and affable, and was extremely intelligent.
It may be stated that the police, to whom the coal-throwing ghost gave considerable trouble, came to the clear conclusion that the deceased was not the coal ghost, though the back of his wandering hermitage overlooked the cottage which had so excited the wrath of the mysterious coal-thrower. The hermit often said he would remember in his will some people who had been specially kind to him, but the promise was either forgotten, or there was no time to give effect to it in any document.
Liverpool Daily Post, 31st May 1901.