Loppington.
Delusion or Illusion: A Strange Story.
A series of occurrences which have caused great excitement in the neighbourhood of Loppington have just taken place. At a secluded farm called “The Woods,” which is about a mile and a half from Loppington, and nine or ten from Shrewsbury, resides a farmer named Hampson, and about four o’clock on Thursday afternoon the servants were in the kitchen of the farmhouse, preparing tea. On the fire was a saucepan, in which were some eggs boiling, and this “jumped,” as the girls declared, off the fire, while the tea things were thrown from the table and smashed. Some of the hot cinders were also thrown out of the grate, and set fire to some clothes in a basket.
So far, the explosion of some material in the grate might have been sufficient to account for the occurrence; but what is said to have occurred subsequently will not bear such an explanation. On the table was a paraffin lamp, with a globe, and the globe was “lifted” off the stand and thrown across the room, the lamp itself being left on the table. A mat under the lamp took fire, and the inmates of the house becoming alarmed, they ran out for the neighbours.
Among others who went to the house was a Mr Lea, an adjacent farmer, who states that when he approached the house it seemed as if all the upstairs rooms were on fire, “as there was such a light in the windows.” Mr Hampson consequently went upstairs and made an examination but everything was safe and in the usual order.
As things were continuing to jump about the kitchen in a manner which was altogether inexplicable, and many were getting damaged, Mr Hampson decided to remove everything that was in that apartment outside. He accordingly took down a barometer from the wall, when something struck him on the leg, and a loaf of bread which was on the table was thrown by some invisible means and hit him on the back. A volume of “Pilgrim’s Progress” was thrown or “jumped” through the window, and a large ornamental sea-shell, went through in a similar fashion. In the parlour a sewing machine was thrown about and damaged, and has had to be sent to be repaired.
The nurse was nursing the baby by the fire when some fire leapt from the grate, and the child’s hair was singed and its arms burnt. The girl was so alarmed that she set off to a neighbour’s, and on the way there her clothes took fire, and had to be torn from her body. During the evening, while the girl was at the neighbour’s, a plate which she touched while having her supper was apparently thrown on the floor, and the pieces were picked up by some unseen agency, and put in the centre of the table. Other occurrences are said to have taken place in the neighbour’s house while the nurse girl was there, the whole lasting considerably over half an hour.
As no one could explain the cause of what they witnessed, the police were communicated with, and made full enquiries from the inmates of the house and others, the result being that they ordered the coal to be consumed in the open air believing it to contain some explosive substance, but it burnt quietly away. Those who witnessed these occurrences tell a marvellously straightforward story, and curiously enough none of them attributed it to any supernatural cause, as might have been expected in a quiet country locality, but they say it was “something in the coal or in the air,” while one or two fancy it was some electrical phenomena.
Eddowes’s Journal, and General Advertiser for Shropshire, and the Principality of Wales – 7th November 1883.
Loppington. An Exciting Scene at a Farmhouse.
Yesterday afternoon week, a scene which caused considerable consternation amongst the inmates took place, it is alleged, at the Woods Farm, occupied by Mr Joseph Hampson. If the statements of the eye -witnesses are true, and from the manner in which they are given there is no reason to doubt their credibility, the ordinary laws of nature appear to have been suspended for some hours, and the place became a perfect pandemonium during that period.
Mr Joseph Hampson is a member of the Ellesmere Troop of Yeomanry, and on the day in question he left his house to attend Bagley Coursing Meeting. At his farm he left his wife and two children, a servant, Priscilla Jane Adams, and a nurse girl, Emma Davies, about 14 years of age. About four o’clock Mrs Hampson was preparing tea in the kitchen of the farm, when to her alarm a saucepan placed ont he fire for boiling eggs “jumped off” on to the floor. A tea-cup was then heard to fall off the table, and the cloth was seen to be slipping, and before it could be stopped the cloth was on the floor and most of the things smashed.
The nurse girl went into the parlour, which adjoins the kitchen, and saw a sewing-basket on the table in flames. This was on the centre of the table. A paraffin lamp was standing on the table in the kitchen, and suddenly the globe and chimney were lifted off, dashed to the ground and smashed. The mat on which the lamp was standing burst into flames, and, although stamped upon by the girl, could not be extinguished for some time.
The other servant went to open a cupboard under the stairs, when all the crockery on two shelves were dashed against the opposite wall and smashed. She closed the door hurriedly, and a lump of salt inside the cupboard was apparently hurled against the door and burst it open.
The neighbours were summoned, as the inmates were greatly alarmed, and Mr Lea, a well-known farmer in the neighbourhood, came down. As he entered the house, he said, “There is a light in the window upstairs, and the house appears to be on fire.” This window has a northerly aspect. He (Mr Lea) then went upstairs, but could not discover anything.
The whole of the things on the mantle-piece were then thrown to the opposite side of the kitchen, and several ornaments broken. The clothing of Mrs Hampson’s infant, four months old, was set on fire, and the child burnt on the hand and arms, and its head-dress singed. An American timepiece and a silver pepper-box, won by Mr Hampson at a yeomanry sword cutting competition, were again placed on the mantle-piece, and the former was again dashed against a cupboard, and smashed the face of an eight-day clock.
Several other occurrences of a kindred nature took place, the manifestations lasting until about eight p.m.; some portion of them being witnessed by Mr Hampson, Police-constable Bowen, of the Shropshire County Constabulary, stationed at Loppington, and several of the neighbours.
Several articles were thrown through the windows by the same mysterious agency, and all the witnesses we have examined testify that what they say is merely a plain statement of facts. The place has been visited by several people during the week, and all are unable to account for what certainly is a most novel phenomena. The residents of the house do not believe that it was any supernatural visitation, and have courteously afforded every assistance to strangers. The heap of broken articles outside the farm on Saturday, the burnt clothing, &c., the broken windows, and the marks on the articles dashed about, all testify to the correctness of the statements made.
The above narrative is a portion only of the statements made to our reporter by the eye-witnesses of the affair, but it is sufficient to show the extraordinary character of an occurrence which is certainly novel and unique, and which has caused considerable excitement in the neighbourhood.
Shrewsbury Chronicle, 9th November 1883.
Mysterious occurrences at a farmhouse.
Extraordinary statements.
The farmhouse partially wrecked.
Considerable excitement has been caused in the neighbourhood of Ellesmere, Wem, and Shrewsbury by some remarkable occurrences which are reported to have taken place at a farm called “The Woods,” where a farmer named John Hampson resides. “The Woods” is situated about five miles from Welshampton, a mile and a half from Loppington, and nine or ten miles from Shrewsbury. With the exception of a farm about one hundred yards distant, there is no house within half a mile.
It appears that just as dusk was closing in on Thursday, November 1st, Mrs Hampson was about to get tea ready, and put a saucepan of water on the fire for the purpose of boiling an egg. When the water began to boil Mrs Hampson placed the egg in, as usual, but the saucepan suddenly “shot,” as the servants declare, off the fire into the middle of the kitchen. The cups and saucers had been arranged on the table, and one of them fell on to the floor and smashed. Of course Mrs Hampson was a little surprised at this, but not very much so, as she thought the cat had been pulling at the table cloth, and had brought the cup over the edge of the table; but directly afterwards, when she saw the table partially turn over, apparently without being touched, and all the cups fall, she was thoroughly frightened, and ran up to Mr Lea’s farm.
Mr Hampson had not at this time returned home from Bagley Coursing Meeting. Mr Lea at once went down, and when he arrived near the house he saw, as he describes it, “a light in all the upper windows, just as if the house was on fire,” but on entering the front door and going up the stairs all was dark.
Meanwhile something had set fire to some clothes in the kitchen, and Mr Lea went in to try and put out the flames. Just then there was a noise like the report of a pistol, and the furniture and other things in the kitchen began to jump about in a manner which seemed altogether inexplicable. One of the farm servants says:- “The things began to fly about smick, smack, the very same as if there was war!”
Mr Lea decided to get some of the things outside, as they were being damaged, and accordingly he took hold of a barometer and carried it out. He returned, and was in the act of reaching the gun, when he was struck by a loaf of bread, and at the request of his wife he left the house. A little cupboard in the kitchen burst open, and a bar of salt was thrown out of it on to the middle of the dairy floor. A small time-piece which stood on the mantel-shelf was thrown on the ground near the door.
When Mr Hampson came home, finding it there, he placed it on a chair; and one of the servants afterwards placed it where it had stood before; and after being knocked about in this fashion it is asserted that it was not damaged, and that it did not stop. Mr Lea, with assistance succeeded in getting a number of articles out of the house, and once when he was coming out a large kitchen table which stood uner the window followed him to the door, and it, it is asserted, probably would have gone further if the width of the door would have allowed it.
On the table there stood a double-wick paraffin lamp with a globe on it, and the globe was “lifted” off and thrown across the room, and the other part of the lamp was left standing on the table. Meanwhile things in the parlour had been taking pretty much the same course, for a volume of the “Pilgrim’s Progress” came flying through the parlour door and out to the walk opposite the front door; whence, after lying there a short time, it jumped up on the window sill.
When the mysterious affair began, a little servant girl, aged thirteen or fourteen, whose home is at Weston, near Baschurch, was in the kitchen taking care of the child. Their clothes immediately began to singe and smoulder in patches; and the child’s face and arms were burnt. The fire in the clothes of both the girl and child were extinguished, and they set off for Mr Lea’s farm, the girl taking with her two shawls which also had been burning. When she reached the farm her clothes broke out into a mass of flames, and they were torn from her body by Mrs Lea. The clothes of the child also took fire again, but it was soon put out. The two shawls began to burn again, and they were placed by some one in a small [sic – tub?] which was about half full of water; but they immediately sprung out again, and were eventually kept in the tub by the weight of a pan-mug.
Mrs Lea was carrying a cream jug which Mr Hampson had won in a cavalry competition, when it suddenly leapt from her hand on to the causeway.
Strange occurrences are said to have taken place at the neighbour’s house during the evening. A plate she touched while eating her supper was apparently thrown on the floor, and the pieces were picked up by some unseen agency and placed in the centre of the table! The flower pots were carried out of Mr Hampson’s house, and being placed on the grass-plot they all began to move and jostle against each other.
During the evening Mrs Lea went down to the house to fetch a bottle of brandy, which Mrs Hampson told her she would find in a certain cupboard; and immediately she opened the door a large dish was hurled out into the centre of the kitchen. Mrs Lea having got the bottle at once shut the cupboard door, for, as she says, “the other things were clattering.” Other pieces of furniture were hurled into the most curious places, and a pepper box was found the next morning on top of the clock, while a large sewing machine in the parlour was found very much damaged, at the opposite end of the room to that in which it formerly stood.
About the time of the disturbance one of the inmates of the house was kneading some dough for baking purposes, and when things had settled a little, she was taking it to the oven when some of the loaves were suddenly removed from the tray. The loaves were left in the oven all night, and although they were quite hard the next morning they were not baked brown, and the servants say they tasted “sulphry!”
A policeman subsequently arrived and stayed with Mr Hampson at the house all night. On Friday a large number of persons paid a visit to the house, and four policemen were there during the day making full enquiries. Thinking there might be some kind of explosive material in the coal, they ordered it to be consumed in the open air; but it burned quietly away.
On Saturday, just about dinner time, the servant girl threw some coal on the boiler fire in the dairy, when it was all thrown back again on the floor. Thomas Williams, a young farm servant, then went to replace it, when a brick flew out from the back of the grate right across the dairy.
The place was visited by scores of persons on Sunday. On Tuesday the farm was found to have been deserted by the family, and paper-hangers were busy in the kitchen. The front windows were all broken, and there was a heap of broken pitchers and glass in the yard.
Wrexham Advertiser, 9th November 1883.
An Extraordinary Story.
From the neighbourhood of Wem, a town on the Shrewsbury and Crewe branch of the London and North-Western Railway, some unaccountable proceedings are reported as having recently occurred. At Wood’s Farm, four miles from Wem, occupied by Mr Hampson, his wife, two children, and two female servants, while the family were just about to sit down to tea, at four p.m., when it was still daylight, a saucepan suddenly jumped off the fire, and this was followed by the tea things being swept off the table and smashed. Several pieces of burning coal were then hurled off the fire, and set the clothing of an infant four months old in flames, and before the clothes could be removed the child was severely burnt on the hand and arm, and its hair was singed off its head.
A small American clock on the mantelpiece was next dashed violently to the ground, and several other articles on the mantelpiece were also thrown down and broken. Something was thrown against the face of a large cased clock, and shivered the glass and face, and a lamp globe and chimney were smashed. The mat of the lamp took fire from a piece of burning coal falling on it, and a basket on the parlour table was also discovered in flames.
The neighbours were fetched in, amongst them being Mr Lea, a neighbouring farmer, a police-constable named Bowen, and others, and although the smashing of crockery and the hurling of articles from one side of the room to the other continued, they could not discover the cause. Mr Lea and Police-constable Bowen were both struck by things thrown by an unseen agency. It was feared that the house would be set on fire by the burning coal, and consequently the fire was removed from the grate and the furniture from the house.
All went outside, but several things were flung from the inside through the windows. In the kitchen six panes of glass were broken and several in the parlour.
Strict inquiries have been made by the police and others, but there appears to be no elucidation of the mystery. M Hampson says he cannot account for it unless it is something in the coal; but the coal could not throw articles about the room. The affair has caused considerable talk in the neighbourhood, and a great amount of incredulity is expressed.
Exmouth Journal, 10th November 1883.
Emma Davies.
The nine days’ wonder in Shropshire is at an end, having furnished during the orthodox period a large amount of opportunity for discussions, wise and unwise. Emma Davies, who was the heroine of the mystery, has been interviewed by a medical man and a special correspondent, and has confessed that all the supernatural occurrences of which she was supposed to be the cause were mere tricks in which she indulged for her own gratification.
It is not very flattering to the intelligence of the British public in general, and of the inhabitants of Weston Lullingfield in particular, that they should have been successfully imposed upon by a child of twelve years old, even if she was aided in her pranks and pretences by the parents and neighbouring people. In a remote country district there is, indeed, nothing very surprising in the fact that a girl should be credited with preternatural powers, or that tables, chairs, buckets and hammers should be believed capable, proprio motu, of jumping about and dancing attendance on a witch whether young or old.
But it must be observed that a belief in the incredible doings of Emma Davies has spread a good deal further than the county in which she lived. Accordingly this morning – after the whole imposture had been unmasked – a morning paper, which has not yet discovered that circumstance, gives evidently in all good faith nearly a column of narrative furnished by a special reporter, enumerating a whole host of inexplicable phenomena, and assuring us that the “remarkable occurrances” referred to “continue to excite the greatest interest.” Most of the testimony upon which the tales rest is that of the girl’s mother; but the fact that she imposed also upon a meeting of Primitive Methodists shows that, for a beginner, the girl has talents of a rare kind, and bids fair to be some day a successful proficient in th eline of business developed by Messrs. Maskelyne and Cooke.
Globe, 15th November 1883.
Information was conveyed to Shrewsbury on Saturday of some extraordinary phenomena at the farm of Mr Hampson, Frankton Wood, near Wem. The previous Thursday every article in the house took fire spontaneously, including a cot in which a baby was sleeping. The baby was burnt severely. The furniture was dashed about, and all the china and glass was broken. Trustworthy eye-witnesses of some of the occurrences are perfectly mystified. Some clothing was taken outside the house, when it burst into flames in the presence of neighbours.
Morpeth Herald, 10th November 1883.
Weston Lullingfield.
Sequel to the Loppington Mystery.
The extraordinary occurrence at the house of Mr Hampson, of the Woods, Loppington, has found an early sequel at the village of Weston Lullingfield, near Baschurch, situated about three miles distant from the Woods, and confirms to a great extent the strange events that transpired there a few days ago. It appears the servant, Emma Davies, who is in her 13th year, and resided with the Hampsons, was discharged from their employ, as during her presence they felt anything but comfortable.
She returned to her parents, who reside in a semi-detached cottage on Weston Common. On Thursday she had occasion to visit a sister-in-law living near by, who had been washing the household linen. Immediately upon entering the house a bucket, containing suds, began moving mysteriously about, and spilt the contents over the floor. The family Bible and another book, which were lying on a side table, jumped on to the hearth, narrowly escaping the flames. On the girl attempting to pick them up, a boot, which was on the floor, was hurled across the room, over her head, striking the mantelpiece. Nothing further occurred until Mrs Jones (the sister-in-law) and the girl went out to hang some things upon the hedge for drying. Those that the girl placed jumped over into the road, but the others remained in their places. Mrs Jones now became alarmed, and the girl also became very ill, and was taken home by a passing trap.
On arriving there her presence was the means of a lump of coal leaping from the grate on to the table, and one of the flower pots in the window was shattered to pieces. The house stands somewhat off the road with others scattered all around.
From information obtained from actual witnesses, some very remarkable occurrences took place during the previous night. They commenced about dusk and continued until morning. Household and other articles frequently flew about in a most mysterious and alarming manner. Brushes, books, scissors, buttons, and crockery were hurled about, and six panes of glass were broken in the room. A neighbour, who was in the house, received a slight injury by a passing knife, another standing 150 yards away was struck by a stone, while another had some soil thrown at him. An ulster of the girl’s, which was in the room, had the whole of the buttons torn off; and outside the house, both front and side, were to be seen bricks, broken crockery, glass, stones, &c., which could not in any way be accounted for.
Five members of the Shropshire Constabulary visited the place on Friday to investigate the affair, and although doing their utmost to obtain information they were unable to fathom the mystery. The girl, who could not be persuaded to say much, was induced to lay the cloth, tea things, &c., but nothing unusual occurred that was observable. She was also induced to walk out with her mother. The Rev – Tuke, vicar of Weston Lullingfield, visited the house on Thursday evening, and read and engaged in prayer with her; and he was also present on Friday. Dr. Corke, of Baschurch, was sent for during the afternoon, but did not arrive until five o’clock. He made a close examination of the girl and the circumstances of the previous night. He however, was unable to obtain much information from her. Subsequently he stated that she was in a very excitable and nervous condition but did not think she was in any way designing.
It may be mentioned that the father, who was a witness of the scenes on Thursday night, has made a statement of the facts to the police. Both he and his wife are sadly distressed at the occurrence. On the 16th July last, at the Baschurch Petty Sessions, the girl Emma Davies charged a youth named Thomas Jones with indecently assaulting her. The youth was fined £2 and costs, although positively declaring his innocence; and his mother, who lives near to Oswestry, firmly believing his story, spoke very bitterly to the girl on the matter.
It is needless to say the matter is causing the greatest excitment in the district, and although no superstition existed in connection with the occurrences at the Woods it prevails to a great extent among the residents at Weston. The place has been visited during the past few days by crowds of people anxious to obtain a glimpse of the girl and satisfy themselves that what has been said is no idle tale.
It is reported that on Saturday and Sunday there were more extraordinary manifestations in connection with the girl Emma Davies at Weston Lullingfield. Police-constable Taylor, of the Shropshire Constabulary, remained in the house until late on Saturday. During the time he was there the fender moved from the fire-place into the middle of the room, and on being replaced came forward a second and third time. A cushion placed at the back of a chair on which the girl sat several times flew across the room, and all the stiches in her apron were undone, followed later on by the buttons upon her dress being wrenched off.
Miss Maddox, the village schoolmistress, has made a statement to the correspondent to the effect that she called to see the girl, a former pupil, on Saturday evening, and had not long been seated when she observed both the chair and the girl rise from the floor. She took the girl on her lap and sat in the chair herself, and immediately the girl’s boots flew off, and although replaced the same thing happened twice afterwards.
On Sunday a box in a bedroom was hurled across the floor, and a number of cups and saucers were smashed.
We understand that the girl has now been removed from her home to a distance, under the care of a doctor, who is sanguine he will cure her in a week. Thousands of persons have visited the various spots where the alleged manifestations took place.
Eddowes’s Journal, and General Advertiser for Shropshire and the Principality of Wales, 14th November 1883.
When the Shropshire mystery was first mooted, we raised the cry of caveat penny-a-liner. We pointed out that the extraordinary tricks of Miss Emma Davis were but the effects of hysteria or conjuring, and that she would soon be a victim to the arts of the correspondents. We further hinted that certain Spiritualists would not let the opportunity slip of securing “something good” for their jugglery. Unfortunately the girl has confessed in the full blush that she did these things herself, and that the flying furniture was urged on its wild career by her efforts alone. There is no punishment for such forward young hussies except the birch-rod. But then, who is to apply it?
The Sportsman, 16th November 1883.
The Shropshire Manifestations.
The Mystery Unravelled.
A special correspondent of the Daily News writes, under date Wednesday night, from Wem, near Shrewsbury: – After not a little trouble I have discovered the girl Emma Davies. the general facts of what has for some time been known as “The Shropshire Mystery” I had mastered on my journey from the town, but Shrewsbury I found so demoralised by the two days’ races that no additional information could be given. Of course I could get no quarters, and if they had been obtainable, anyone who knows what an English provincial town is during a race meeting will be aware that they would have been worth leaving alone if accommodation could have been doled out. After a long journey in the frosty weather, which had yesterday covered all the ponds with ice, I had, thanks to these Isthmian games, as Lord Palmerston called them, to go further afield, and in course of time found myself at the White Horse Hotel, at Wem, a comfortable and somewhat old-fashioned town in north Shropshire. It was too late to go in search of Emma Davies.
Already had I lost time on her trail at Weston Lullingfield and Baschurch, and indeed had well nigh given the damsel up as a hopeless quest. But Mr Bellis inspired me with courage by the information that the girl was in the neighbourhood, and the conversation of the gentlemen who sat round the snug fire in the bar whetted my anxiety to probe the mystery to the very bottom. It was not altogether a professional zeal which fired me. Spiritualism has long been a subject of interest to me who have been a tough customer amongst the believers. Tables would never rap for me. Even Mr Bishop had to give me up for a bad job; and I could recall the afternoon very many years ago when in the interests of the Daily News I entered the darkened cabinet of Maskelyne and Cook, and was subject to indignities which I bore, but could never explain.
But at last here was a promising mission. I had been despatched to inquire into the truth of statements that bore the stamp of truth upon their face, if ever statements could be said to do so. At last it seemed as if my yearnings after an insight into the mysteries of the supernatural were to be satisfied, and that I was to be recompensed for the bitter disappointment once experienced in waiting long days to see a certain fat lady float out of a window into an adjacent tenement. For me whom the gods of the table-rappers and thought-readers had not loved, there was at least Emma Davies.
Something of the case of course I knew from the newspapers. On Wednesday, the 21st October, so far as I had gathered, the family of Mr Hampson, a farmer and maltster, near this little town of Wem, was considerably startled by the jumping of a saucepan from the parlour fire, and the sweeping off the table, and smashing of tea things. I have spent some time to-day with Mrs Hampson and her husband, and can vouch for the fact that they were startled. Hot coals leaped as if possessed. The cushion of the couch and the hearthrug were burned. Worst of all the clothing of a baby, sitting near in his perambulator, was set on fire, and the child was burned. A small American clock was thrown to the ground, and the face of a fine eight-day clock and other ware were shivered. Mr Hampson, supposing that there was something wrong with the coals, which he had recently received from Cannock Chase, had the fire placed in the kitchen.
The kitchen communicates with the parlour by a single door, and when the door is open the two rooms are practically one apartment. On the Thursday some more alarming occurences disturbed the peace of Mr and Mrs Hampson. The fire again played unaccountable pranks, and small articles of furniture were hurled about, and windows were forced out of the frames. Somehow the uncanny business was associated with Emma Davies, the nurse girl who was sent home to her mother’s at Weston Lullingfield.
Here more unaccountable proceedings were reported, as the readers of this and all other daily papers will have already gathered. For more than a week we have been informed how upon the approach of Emma Davies buckets moved away and upset, coal hammers bolted from house to road, and domestic utensils moved about when she came near, without any visible motive power. The girl’s own mother stated that a clothes brush flew about, that a hymn book jumped off a table on to the hearth, that a knife was hurled across the room by an unseen hand, and that bricks and dirt flew about th ehouse. These stories spread about in the neighbourhood and lost nothing in the telling. Mr Hampson’s place, known as The Wood, was besieged for days by curiosity-mongers, and Emma Davies was freely spoken as of a girl possessed of some unknown agency. It is a pretty and substantial country district, but it was for the time given over apparently to a very superstition. the good people of Weston Lullingfield, Baschurch, and the other villages, imagined that the Devil or some accredited representative was in their midst.
In the bar parlour of the White Horse at Wem last night, the discussion centred round Emma Davies and her exploits. The manner in which furniture flew about in her presence and the story of her boots and ulster flying off her body without assistance were narrated. Some denounced the entire story as an imposture, others believed it. The most extraordinary and ridiculous things are evidently believed by many persons in this district. I heard a gravely told description last night of Emma Davies going into a yard, and of four pigs standing on their heads and singing the National Anthem. most of us saw that the narrator was attempting a hoax, but one or two gentlemen received the narrative in all faith, and are no doubt assidulously passing it on to-day.
This morning my industrious psychical research brought me an introduction to Dr Mackey, the assistant of Dr Corke, of Baschurch. Dr Corke was one of the earliest called in to look after the mysterious Emma Davies. He saw nothing himself that would warrant him in supposing that the girl was possessed of supernatural powers; but observing that she was being worried by hordes of interviewers, he took her away from her mother’s home, and brought her to Wem on Sunday last. Dr Mackey is resident at this branch house at Wem, and meeing him in the street this morning all my hopes of at last discovering something respectable in the matter of spiritualism were rudely shattered by his assertion that Emma Davies had confessed that she had played all these wonderful tricks on her own account. It was a cruel shock.
In common, I presume, with other readers of morning papers I had watched this interesting affair from day to day; had wondered why the spirits had been so unkind as to hurl a copy of the Sword and Trowel through the parlour window of Mr Hampson’s house, and had speculated much as to why furniture should back out of rooms and slinnk through windows when Emma Davies was near. But Dr. Mackey’s statement was as plain as the historical pikestaff. Emma Davies had confessed to him and to Miss Turner, Dr Corke’s housekeeper, that she had made the buckets, looking-glasses, books, &c., jump, move, and tumble about.
In the company of a friend who turned up in Wem during the day on the same mission as mine, I went with Dr Mackey to Aston Lodge to see Emma Davies, Miss Turner, who has been keeping a close watch upon the girl since Sunday, very kindly assisted us in our interview, and informed us that all she herself had seen that was remarkable was a violent movement of a bucket in which the girl was washing her hands, a sort of jumping behaviour on the part of a chair, and an indication of liveliness by a piece of bread. But, unfortunately, Dr Mackey had already told me that the bubble was burst.
We saw Emma Davies, a plain-looking child not thirteen years of age, and very childish in appearance. She pretended for a while to cry when Miss Turner and the doctor requested her to go through some of her tricks for our benefit, but there were no tears, though there was abundant evidence that the girl was a finished performer in her attempts to appear overwhelmed with sorrow and convulsion. By-and-bye she told us that her confession to the doctor was the truth; that she had herself played the tricks which have caused the whole country-side to gape open-mouthed ever since the first of November; that in short, the mysterious spirits had nothing to do with the business, and that nothing more remarkable had happened than could be credited to her own sleight of hand.
The little girl was somewhat hysterical at first, but by-and-bye she showed us how she made a bucket jump and a chair retreat at the double. It was all effected by a slight jerk of the hand, and when once we knew there was nothing supernatural to be expected, it seemed very common-place. The girl perhaps deserves some pity. Her statement is that she was put up to the game by fellow-servants, and there can be no doubt that the credulity of the people hereabouts made them easy victims, if not assistants, to the delusion.
As neither Emma Davies nor her people, who are simple labouring folks, have put forward any claim to supernatural power, it will not be fair to speak of them as imposters. The thing, at any rate, is over now, and Emma Davies need not be treated as a heroine. Some time since she figured in a police case, charging a boy with assault. The most remarkable part of this so-called mystery is the successful hoodwinking of the local public, and the more than nine days’ wonder which has been caused. the details which have been from time to time published I have inquired into, and cannot find a single case which does not admit of easy explanation. For the novelist who would work up materials showing how easily sensible people can be befooled, I can recommend nothing better than the newspaper reports of this Emma Davies sensation.
A drive to “The Wood” gave me a chat with Mr and Mrs Hampson and the fellow-servants who, according to Emma Davies, had suggested the pranks by which she has been distinguished. It was here that the thing began by the explosion in the fire grate. It seems pretty clear that there was something wrong with the Cannock Chase coal, and that upon the purely accidental discharge of some foreign substance in it a theory of mystery was built up.
A waggoner named Williams admitted to me that he learned some tricks at a harvest festival in a public-house, and told Emma Davies and another girl how to make furniture move of its own accord. Upon the slightest pretext, after the blowing out of the windows and so forth by the explosion in the fire grate, the deeds of the little nurse girl were manified, and the child finding herself the observed of all observers, with some degree of cleverness jerked about books, buckets, and small articles of furniture until this morning, when she confessed to Miss Turner how it was all done. There is, of course, some degree of mystery about this affair, and that is how so trumpery a cause could have produced so ridiculous an effect. Mystery else there is none.
Aberdeen Press and Journal, 16th Novembeer 1883.
Two of our London contemporaries have instituted investigations into the phenomena connected with the girl, Emma Davies, which have caused so much excitement in Shropshire, and the result is an exposure of not very heinous practical joking on the part of this supposed possessor of supernatural powers, set on by some fellow-servants of hers, and of amazing credulity on the part of a considerable number of the surrounding villagers.
The girl has confessed that she was taught by a waggoner on the farm where she was employed how to make furniture move about as of its own accord, he having picked up the trick from a strolling conjuror at a village feast, and the waggoner admits the soft impeachment. This is the black art Emma Davies has practised, and out of a few such performances of hers, together with an explosion of some unusually gaseous coal in a fire at the house in which she worked, the people in the neighbourhood of Weston Lullingfield have woven for themselves a wonderful tissue of mystery and miracle, which shows that, at any rate in our western rural districts, faith and fancy are not yet extinct faculties.
Leeds Mercury, 16th November 1883.
Extraordinary proceedings in Shropshire.
A Shrewsbury correspondent says: –
A sequel to certain extraordinary occurrences at The Woods, Loppington, near Shrewsbury, happened on 8th inst., at the village of Weston Fullenfield [sic], about two miles from Mr Hampson’s farm, and is sufficiently conclusive to confirm the events that took place there early in last week. The servant, Emma Davies, who resided with the Hampsons, was discharged, the farmer and his wife feeling anything but comfortable at her presence.
On the 8th inst. the girl went to assist Mrs Jones, a neighbour, to wash the household linen, but had not long been engaged in this occupation when the bucket in which she was washing jumped about the house, throwing water and clothes in all directions. The family Bible and other books placed on a side table did the same, narrowly escaping the flames. On attempting to pick them up a boot flew over the girl’s head, striking the mantelpiece. Later on, when both women went out to place the clothes on the hedge for drying, those that the girl placed jumped over into the road. Mrs Jones, getting alarmed, ordered the girl home.
On arriving there her presence induced a lump of coal to leap from the fire across the room to a table; and the flowerpots in the window also behaved in an extraordinary manner. The girl shortly afterwards went out to fetch her father, but before proceding far she became very ill and fell down in the road. She was conveyed back to her home and a physician called in.
The same correspondent adds: – I visited Weston Fullenfield on Saturday afternoon for the purpose of inquiring into the extraordinary occurrence in connection with the young girl Emma Davis, and found sufficient evidence to confirm every detail of the remarkable event. The girl, who is in her thirteenth year, resides in the village with her parents. On returning to her home last evening the household and other articles commenced moving about in all directions in the most mysterious manner. This continued during the night.
Six panes of glass were broken in the room, and outside the greatest disorder prevailed, and on the side of the house were strewn broken bricks, crockery, glass, stone, &c., which could not be accounted for in any other way.
One woman was struck with a stone 150 yards off; another, who was in the house, received a wound on the arm from a knife passing her, and an ulster belonging to the girl had every button torn from it in the room.
A number of the Shropshire constabulary visited the premises on Saturday to investigate the extraordinary circumstances, but were unable to solve the mystery. The girl was made to do some household work, but nothing unusual was observable.
Dr Corke, of Baschurch, was called in, and made a close examination of the girl, but was unable to obtain much information from her. He stated that she was in a very excitable and nervous state, but was not a designing girl.
The matter is causing the greatest excitement throughout the whole neighbourhood, and much superstition prevails in the village.
A correspondent who has visited the girl Emma Davies, suspected of being concerned in the extraordinary “manifestations” at Wood Farm, West Lullingfield, writes: Emma Davies, amid tears and lamentations, confessed in my presence that she was an imposter. She showed how she made chairs and buckets move about the room by the simple expedient of pushing them with her hands and feet. This mischievous child is thirteen years old, and short for her age. She has dull, tow-coloured hair, blue eyes, a small forehead, a snub nose, fat cheeks, and a weak chin.
Nevertheless, she is, after her rustic fashion, a consummate actress. Her pretence of flinging the furniture about, as if moved by unseen hands, was most skilful. She now avers that many weeks ago the hind Thomas Williams, a loutish fellow, having seen a strolling conjurer perform his tricks in a public-house, showed her fellow-servant, Priscilla Jane Evans, how they were done, and that Priscilla confided the secret to her.
Priscilla denies this, but Thomas confessed to me, with a grin on his vacuous countenance that he might have told her “how to shift things for a joke.”
So much for the so-called Shropshire mystery, which has disturbed the repose of a wide district for an entire fortnight. The credulous rustics have unconsciously invented most of the ridiculous tales, scaring themselves with imagined terrors. For, as the hero in Laureate’s poem, “Maud,” truly says, “Jack, on his alehouse bench, has as many lies as a Czar.”
Northampton Mercury, 17th November 1883.
The Extraordinary Occurrences at Loppington and Weston.
The “Mysterious” Circumstances Explained by Confession of the Imposter.
The remarkable occurrences at Loppington and Weston Lullingfield, which were reported in last issue, were simply, as sensible people at once concluded, the ingenious handiwork of the servant girl Emma Davies, whom “the mystery followed wherever she went”.
The girl’s trickery was found out by Dr Cooke, and his assistant, Mr Mackay, under whose care she was, and at length she was brought to confess to being the author of all the “mysterious manifestations.”
Of the “miracles” related during the past week, however, extraordinary accounts are given, the following being a few very mild specimens of tales told:-
She did not retire until about half-past two on Saturday morning. She slept until about nine o’clock; she “jumped nervously in her sleep.” While she slept “everything was quiet”; but “directly she awoke, a little work-box flew off the chimney-piece across the room to the stairs door. There was a tremendous row; the room might have been falling in. The noise upset the woman who lives in the adjoining house. The girl then got up, and as she was coming towards the door, a large swing looking-glass fell from the dressing table; but it did not break.”
On Monday, a Mrs Dean, of Cockshutt, an aunt of the girl’s, stated that on Saturday she plaited the girl’s hair and tied it up four times, and it came down each time. She went out of doors, and as she closed the door a knife seemed to be drawn off the table. Her cousin then went after her into the garden, and he saw a saucepan “jump off the bench” towards her. Mrs Dean afterwards went with her and she appeared very much excited and frightened. As soon as they got inside a building a number of garden tools hanging on the wall all fell down with a clatter, and a garden fork seemed to spring towards the girl; and the handle hit her in the face. She was subsequently sitting near the kitchen window, between two or three neighbours, when a reel of cotton was moved off the table on to the ground three or four times. Then a brush and a comb and a pair of scissors were thrown to the ground. She could hardly keep anything in her hands. She was eating a crust and it left her three or four times. She wanted to go in the fire, and was very wild at times; it took three or four to hold her.
Five policemen were here, and they questioned her. She seemed very much frightened. She was induced to lay the cloth and put the tea things on the table, but nothing unnatural occurred. One of the policemen saw her slippers “shoot” off her feet, and soon afterwards her boots came off continually. A lot of old clothes which hung on pegs in the room were flung on her back. Then a large circular piece of wood was hurled out of doors, and some tools there rattled as if they were being shaken by some one. In the house two buckets moved towards the girl; and when she got to the door several articles of dress came right in her face, like as if they were blown by a wind. A butter dish on the table was dashed to the ground close to Mrs Davies’s feet, and just at the same time the cups and saucers were all taken off the tray and thrown up to the ceiling, falling into atoms.
Miss Maddox, the village schoolmistress, also made a singular statement. She said she paid a visit to the girl, a former pupil, on Saturday evening, and had not long been seated when she “observed both the chair and the girl rise from the ground.” Not being of a superstitious turn of mind she took the girl on her lap and sat in the chair herself, but no sooner had she done this than “both the girl’s boots flew off her feet, and although replaced the circumstance was repeated twice.” Miss Maddox said she felt a “great force at the time at the girl’s feet,” and saw many other things during her visit that convinced her of the truth of the reported mysterious proceedings that have caused so much excitement. There were several members of the Methodist chapel at the house on Saturday, who sang a hymn the girl was very fond of, but she did not then take any notice or join in.
According to other accounts, about one o’clock on Sunday morning the girl “appeared to get quieter,” and was persuaded to go to bed. She slept until two o’clock on Sunday. She was restless in her sleep, and directly she awoke the pillow passed from underneath her head on to the floor. A neighbour brought her some potatoes and a leg of fowl, and she was eating it when the pillow was taken away again; and she said, “Oh dear, I can’t eat any more; that’s frightened me.” She got up and was going out of doors in the afternoon, when an iron dish and a blue plate were thrown towards her, and that “frightened” her much. During the day other pitchers were broke; they seem to be drawn towards her. She was taken for a walk in the fields in the afternoon, and seemed very much afraid of the crowd of people.
“At tea she tried to eat an egg, but the spoon seemed to spin out of her hand into the air. She could not hold her bread and butter, and a saucer flew from her hand. Several neighbours came in and prayed with her, but she did not seem to notice them. On Sunday night she got more excited than ever, and cried out several times: ‘Fire! Fire! I must go in the fire; I must be burnt. Oh! let me go.’ Then she would say, ‘Oh, here’s the old woman again; she’s knocking me and pinching me.’ She struggled hard, to get to the fire. The preacher came from the chapel and began to pray, but she raved so that they had to take her out. Then she got loose and ran across the garden, but her uncle caught her.
Dr. Corke, of Baschurch, and his assistant, came shortly afterwards, and sent the crowd away, as they were exciting her. In reply to Dr Corke’s questions, she said she should like to go with him, and she went away in his trap. Dr Corke said he could not believe about the things flying about, but while he was there a cushion was thrown across the kitchen.”
Some of the strange occurrences on Saturday night were witnessed by Supt. Edwards and Police-constable Taylor, of the County Police. “The fender moved out from the hearth” several times during their stay, and on Sunday a number of visitors who gave biscuits and apples to the girl were “astonished” to see that each time she put a piece to her mouth it was knocked across the room by some unseen power.” In addition to “the whole of the buttons being wrenched off her ulster,” the sewing in her apron “all became undone,” followed later on by “the buttons on her dress dropping off.”
The Occurrences at Loppington.
Peace now reigns at the quiet country farm called The Woods, and visitors are becoming few and far between. Mrs Hampson has taken up her abode there again, the windows are repaired, and everything goes on as before. Mr Hampson says that early in the month of August last he noticed something strange about the girl, but he did not think much about it at the time. At night she would sit in a chair, near the fire, and would fall asleep almost before she had sat down. She would ramble in her sleep and make grimaces; they thought at the time she was doing it as a joke. Getting up in her sleep she would invariably walk to the fire and would push her hands towards it. No doubt she would have been burned several times if no one had been there to stop her. She would occasionally tremble and scream just as he had seen her do at home during the last day or two. She seemed to be insensible for a time after she had awoke, and one night it took them nearly three hours to bring her round properly. She called them all by other names. She used to look very “wild and startled when she awoke.”
About a fortnight before the affair took place at The Wood, Mrs Hampson heard a noise in the parlour and went in. The girl was nursing the child on the sofa, and a large shell was lying on the ground near the table. The girl said it had fallen off the mantelpiece itself; and “although Mrs Hampson did not then believe her, she thinks now that it must have been so. It was the same shell that was hurled through the window afterwards.”
Mr Hampson assesses the damage at £14. Besides other things spoilt, broken, and damaged, were the face of the clock, a silver timepiece, two dozen china cups and saucers, two dozen plates, a sewing machine, two vases, four glass dishes, two dozen ale glasses, 10 loaves of bread, two tablecloths, two hearthrugs, a silver cream jug, two glass water-jugs, and a lamp.
[Further particulars of these matters will be given in a later edition.]
Wellington Journal, Saturday 17th November 1883.
The mystery of Wood’s Farm has died hard, and it is not by any means flattering to the intelligence of the police and the inhabitants of the neighbourhood that the imposture should be exposed, after all, by the exercise of a little common sense, and astuteness, in the proceeding of the medical man who had taken charge of the author of all the mischief. Mystery, really, there was none. Sufficient ridicule had been poured upon it from the first, and we may take credit ourselves for helping to dissipate some of the nonsense engendered by the so-called “manifestations” at the home of the Hampson family.
We had already written for this week’s issue a strong protest against the continuance of the mummery, asserting that it was capable of easy solution, and arguing that the sooner the authorities set themselves about the task, the sooner would common sense receive the vindication it so sorely needed. The bubble has burst now – burst in a lame and impotent fashion – but the result has proved the soundness of the course we ventured to suggest should be taken.
Such impostures are not singular. History carries us back to the Cock Lane Ghsot, as it was called, a “ghost” which kept London in commotion for a considerable time, and its mysterious operations were clearly traced to the ingenuity of a servant girl. Then Stockwell, near Vauxhall, became celebrated from a similar circumstance. Cups and saucers rattled down the chimney-pots, and pans were whirled down stairs or through the windows, and hams, cheeses, and loaves of bread disported themselves as though, to quote an ancient record, “the devil was in them.” The good lady of the house invited her neighbours in to protect her, but their presence, as at the Woods Farm, did not put a stop to the insurrection of china, and every room in the house was strewed with the fragments. Frightened almost out of her wits, the inmate of the house sought refuge at the home of a neighbour, taking with her her servant; and here, at this house, too, the work of destruction commenced and continued, until the servant was detected in the imposture. It was proved to be solely the work of her mischievous fingers, and she was ultimately punished for the offence.
As to the precise manner in which the Lullingfield “mystery” was solved we refer our readers to another column. The disclosure reveals the lamentable fact that a large amount of credulity must have existed in that locality. By no other means could Emma Davies have succeeded for so long a time in baffling the means taken to ensure her detection. Unfortunately, however, the extraordinary performances of the crockery ware at Woods Farm, and the sympathetic cord which seemed to connect that at the girl’s own home, were a good deal exaggerated, and, although the “whole country side” has not “gasped open-mouthed since the 1st of November” – as the Fleet Street writers gracefully put it – there is something astonishing in the way in which they have evidently laid themselves open to be deceived. However, we can only hope there will be no more extraordinary “manifestations,” either of “bewitched” crockery or profound ignorance.
Presumably, order once again reigns at Woods Farm, as it does at Warsaw, and now that the cups and saucers and American and other clocks have returned to their normal state of quietude, and no longer, by the assistance of Emma Davies, inspire superstitious terror in the minds of a too credulous people, we hope the “Shropshire Mystery” will be quietly consigned to the limbo of the past.
Wellington Journal, Saturday 17th November 1883.
“Extraordinary occurrences.”
With respect to the “extraordinary occurrences” near Shrewsbury, the Medical Times remarks: “The whole account is an interesting illustration of how hysteria and imposture subtly combined can form the basis of a sensational story, when helped out by a large element of hearsay and superstition in the report of the alleged ‘facts.’
It is instructive to read, in connection with the case, the remark of Dr Wilks, that ‘the strangest vagaries of human nature are those which occur in young females in the early stages of womanhood.’ The behaviour is often like that of one ‘possessed of a devil,’ for the acts are not those of an ordinary criminal who has an object in his wicked deeds, but are often purposeless mischief.
When you see a paragraph in the newspapers headed ‘Extraordinary occurence,’ and you read how every night loud rapping is heard in some part of the house, or how the rooms are being constantly set on fire, or how all the sheets in the house are torn by rats, you may be quite sure that there is a young girl on the premises.”
Edinburgh Evening News, 17th November 1883.
Wood Farm Mystery.
Gas, not ghosts, is the origin of the mystery which has puzzled the wiseacres of Shropshire and the contiguous counties for the past fortnight. The people of the district for miles round do at this moment most implicitly believe that the extraordinary manifestations described as having taken place at the Wood Farm, West Lullingfield, a fortnight ago, are due to supernatural causes, and probably many of them will continue to believe for the rest of their natural lives, this full and minute explanation notwithstanding.
It is already notorious that Farmer Hampson and his family were, on the morning of October 31st last, thrown into a state of consternation at finding the furniture of the house to be suddenly imbued with powers of locomotion, and their astonishment was unbounded when, on what they believed to be the evidence of their own eyesight, the hands of the eight-day clock in the kitchen sprang through its glass front, and, immediately returning whence they came, slapped that unoffending chronometer sharply in the face. then, so it is said, the fire leaped out of the grate and burned the baby, and the chairs, linking arms, danced round and round the table, and the fire-irons, mounting upon the dresser, cut a series of nimble capes, as if determined to add to the general confusion by a private exhibition of gymnastic ironmongery.
All this and more was, until yesterday, credited not only by Farmer Hampson and his wife, but by hundreds, and probably thousands, of folk who prided themselves upon their common sense. So intense has been their condition of credulity that they do not appear to have doubted a story put about by a local wag to the effect that on the afternoon of the reported initial disaster, the farmer, going out into his yard, beheld a trio of porcine choristers sitting up on their hams, and singing “God save the Queen,” under the directorship of a ring-nosed pig, beating time with a dibble. Such nonsense would seem too ridiculous to be credited, but for the fact that the wildest rumours concerning this affair have passed current hereabout as gospel truth.
Even the rural police are said to have been thrown off their balance and to have failed to account for the affair, either as the result of personal inquiries or from “information received.” Shrewsbury town, up to its eyes in the business and pleasure of racing during the past week, has yet found time to gossip under its breath about the haunted farm and the strange goings on there.
Shrewsbury, indeed, had a ghostly trouble of its own. For six whole months a gentleman and his family residing in the Cherry Orchard have been kept awake at nights by rappings on the wainscots, and continual nocturnal rings of bells all over the house. They have, therefore, determined to change their habitation, hoping that the spirits may not be disposed to follow them into another parish.
During an interview yesterday morning with Colonel Edgehill, chief of the county police, that urbane official informed me that, though he was cognizant of the Wood Farm scare, yet no one had instituted a criminal prosecution against any offender, assuming any offence had been committed. It did not come within his province to interfere. Looked at from the spiritualistic point of view, he deemed the entire proceedings as beneath contempt.
The good people of Shropshire, on the other hand, while implicitly believing that the furniture of the farm danced to the piping of the Prince of the Powers of the Air, somehow, -how is not even yet exactly explained – coupled the name of Emma Davies, nurse girl in the rustic establishment of Mr and Mrs Hampson. This Emma Davies is thought to be a juvenile sorceress in league with the Evil One. Serious folk are ready to testify that they have seen her seated upon a cane-bottomed chair floating about in mid-air; that at her approach buckets and brooms take to capering and curvetting like the roan horse observed by Sir Launcelot at the gates of “the dim rock city” in the “Idylls of the King;” and a well-known sectarian serial publication, in half calf, is reported to follow Emma about like a dog.
Subsequent to my interview with Colonel Edgehill, I visited Emma at the house of Dr Cook, at Wem, whither on Sunday evening last she was removed from the cottage of her parents, labouring people at Wesson, in order that she might be under medical supervision. For it is a fact that the girl pretended to possess magical powers, and played all kinds of pranks with the chairs and tables in the aforesaid cottage at Wesson. She made three-legged stools waltz round the room, and zinc pails hide in the corners.
Before describing what I saw and heard at Dr Cook’s, it will, however, be better to recount the evidence of Mr and Mrs Hampson at Wood Farm. After a pleasant drive of five miles through the Shropshire lanes, I arrived at the West Lullington homestead, situated in a well wooded pastoral country dotted with ancient half-timbered houses, many of them dating from the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The air was keen and bright, the ice lay an inch thick upon the ponds, their dull grey contrasting with the shining leaves of the frequent holly bushes already bearing a grand crop of scarlet berries. If spirits were about in that beautiful frosty air, they lay concealed out of the glowing sunshine which flooded wood and meadow with cheery winter gladness.
The Wood Farm consists of about fifity-five acres, partly arable, partly pasture, Mr Hampson’s profits being principally derived from his business of a maltster. His house is small, the ground floor consisting of a kitchen or keeping room, some 15ft square, leading directly into a smaller compartment used as a scullery. Both he and his wife are young, of middle height, and fair complexion. They were willing and, indeed, anxious to afford me all the information they possessed. Mrs Hampson said that about a fortnight ago, one day in the morning, the fire leaped out of the grate in the parlour, set light to the sofa, and severly burned the face of her baby, lying in its perambulator, in charge of the girl Emma Davies; and she showed me the child, which still retains a large scar, as from a burn, on the left cheek.
Thereupon she ran to fetch a neighbour, who also witnessed the coal shoot from the grate all over the room, and who is supposed to have wondered at the furniture dancing about as if possessed by Lucifer. When Mr Hampson returned home in the afternoon he was told of what had occurred, and attributed the manifestations to natural causes not unconnected with the coal in the grate. His wife was, however, less sceptical.
Emma Davies, who had a habit of falling asleep inopportunely and talking in her slumbers, was altogether a mysterious person, and, in Mrs Hampson’s opinion, was at the bottom of the trouble. Consequently the farmer’s wife felt certain in her own mind that more disturbances would follow. Sure enough, next day the spirits renewed their visits. This time there was no fire in the parlour, but there was one in the kitchen leading out of it; the door between the two being open. Again the coal jumped out of the fire; once more the furniture gyrated about the floor; a little clock on the mantelshelf stepped down and flung itslef upwards against the face of a big clock against the wall; and the sectarian serial already referred to threw itself off the table out of the window, smashing the window-frame and breaking five panes of glass. All this Mrs Hampson believed, and, in spite of assurances to the contrary, still believes. How, she suggests, could it be otherwise, bearing in mind Emma Davies’ habit of falling asleep when she should have kept awake, and that young person’s strange power of causing the furniture to tumble about the house?
Besides Mr and Mrs Hampson, I saw at the farm a hind named Thomas Williams and Emma’s fellow servant Priscilla Jane Evans – of whom hereafter. That the farmer and his wife were dreadfully frightened is manifest from the fact that they sent Emma back to her parents and themselves fled the farm. They remained absent for a week, during which time the place has been visited by hundreds of curious sightseers from Shrewsbury, Wellington, and neighbouring towns, the majority of whom credit the idle and foolish rumours which attribute the explosions to the work of evil spirits.
To return to the house of Dr Cook at Wem. There I saw Mr Mackey, Dr Cook’s assistant, and an intelligent young lady, Miss Turner, the doctor’s housekeeper. I likewise saw and spoke with the girl Emma Davies, who, amid tears and lamentations, confessed in my presence and in that of Miss Turner and Mr Mackey that she was an imposter. She showed us how she made chairs and buckets move about the room by the simple expedient of pushing them with her hands and feet. This mischievous child is thirteen years old, and short for her age. She has dull, tow-coloured hair, blue eyes, a small forehead, a snub nose, fat cheeks, and weak chin. Nevertheless, she is, after her rustic fashion, a consummate actress. Her pretence of flinging the furniture about, as if moved by unseen hands, was most skilful.
She now avers that many weeks ago the hind, Thomas Williams, a loutish fellow, having seen a strolling conjuror perform his tricks in a public house, showed the girl Priscilla Evans how it was done, and that Priscilla had confided the secret to her. Priscilla denies this; but Thomas confessed to me, with a grin on his vacuous countenance, that he might have told her “how to shift things for a joke.”
So much for the so-called Shropshire mystery, which has disturbed the repose of a wide district for an entire fortnight. The credulous rustics have unconsciously invented most of the ridiculous tales, scaring them with imagined terrors. for, as the hero in the Laureate’s poerm, “Maud,” truly says, “Jack, on his alehouse bench, has as many lies as a Czar.” – Daily Telegraph.
Dublin Daily Express, 17th November 1883.
The Extraordinary Proceedings Near Shrewsbury.
Statement by the Girl’s Mother.
The Imposture Exposed.
A Shrewsbury correspondent has paid another visit to Weston Lullingfield, and was informed that there had been more extraordinary manifestations in connection with the girl Emma Davies. Police-constable Taylor, of the Shropshire Constabulary, remained in the house until late on one evening. During the time he was there the fender moved from the fireplace into the middle of the room, and on being replaced came forward a second and a third time. A cushion placed at the back of a chair on which the girl sat several times flew across the room, and all the stitches in her apron became undone, followed later on by the buttons upon her dress being wrenched off.
Miss Maddox, the village school-mistress, made a statement to the correspondent to the effect that she called to see the girl, a former pupil, and had not long been seated when she observed both the chair and the girl rise from the floor. She took the girl on her lap and sat in the chair herself, and immediately the girl’s boots flew off, and although replaced the circumstance was twice repeated.
On another day a box in a bed-room was hurled across the room, and a number of cups and saucers were smashed.
Full particulars of the extraordinary proceedings have been sent up to the honorary secretary of the Psychical Research Society, with the object of inducing the committee to investigate the matter.
The girl, Emma Davies, has been removed from her home to a distance, under the care of Dr. Yorke, who feels sanguine that he will cure her in a week.
During the past few days both the Woods Farm and the cottage at Weston have been visited by some thousands of persons anxious to obtain a glimpse of the girl, and satisfy themselves that what has been said is no idle talk.
A reporter has interviewed the mother and the neighbours of the child, and has obtained the following narratives: – Mrs Davies said: “On last Thursday evening Emma went down to the house of her brother Edward, living in Wharf Road. While there she was helping her sister-in-law to hang out some clothes, but the collars and other small articles jumped off the hedge as fast as she could put them on, while those put on by her sister-in-law did not move. They went into the back kitchen, where there was a bucket filled with soapsuds, and, directly Emma passed, it moved several yards and upset. Then just as they got into the kitchen the Bible flew off a table on to the hearth, and a pair of boots were hurled over their heads against the mantelpiece, while the mat was thrown from the door into the middle of the road. The coal hammer was also thrown into the road, and when it was fetched back it went again.
“Emma then walked home, and told me they had sent her home, as the things had begun to fly about like they did at “The Wood.” I was baking at the time, and I thought perhaps the bread would not bake, as it would not at “The Wood.” I told her to stay outside. Afterwards I went out to cut sticks, and my daughter went up to the door. She at once shouted, “Mother, there is a lump of coal on the table.” I went in the house, and found a large piece of burning coal on the table opposite the fire, and I put it on the fire again with the tongs.
“I was very much alarmed, and told Emma to go out. She went out through the back door and just as she passed a bench a large stein filled with water which stood on it leaped after her, and, falling on the pavement near her, broke into atoms. I told her she had better fetch her father, who works at Petton, and she started. On the way, however, she became suddenly ill, and she was brought back in a trap. She screamed frightfully, and directly she came in the house a flower-pot began to clatter. I called in a neighbour to look at it. It moved to the edge of the sill, and I pushed it back.
“My husband then came home, and said he would not believe that such things had taken place. Shortly afterwards another piece of coal shot off the fire. Three or four neighbours were in the house at this time, and we all agreed to go outside, and take my daughter with us. There were a lot of people outside. We had just got out when there seemed to come a shower of stones, broken tiles, bricks, and soil. Some of them struck the windows, some fell on the slates, and one large lump of soil fell on my shoulder. We did not know where they came from.
“We at once went inside the house again, and just then there was a barst as if bottles were breaking. I suppose that was the upstairs window breaking. Then the clothes brush flew over our heads and went under the fire. It was put back, but it again jumped into the hearth, and was put back three times afterwards. Emma was at this time in the kitchen. A Primitive Methodist hymn-book jumped off the table three or four times into the hearth, and there are the black marks on it. A knife that had been left on the table was also hurled across the room. None of us except the little boys went to bed that night (Thursday). There were a lot of Primitive Methodists here, and we had a prayer meeting. The girl seemed to be very much frightened, and trembled violently when the things were moving.
“On Friday morning pieces of bricks and soil continued to fly about, and we did not know where they came from. A neighbour, Mrs. Kynaston, who was sitting in a chair in the house, was struck in the arm, and two or three pieces afterwards came through the doorway. My daughter drank a good deal, but we could get her to eat nothing scarcely.
“On Saturday morning, about half-past two, she went to bed and slept until about nine. She jumped nervously in her sleep. While she slept everything was quiet, but directly she awoke a little work-box flew off the chimney-piece right across the room to the stairs door. There was a tremendous row, as if the roof had fallen in. The noise upset the woman who lives in the adjoining house, and she had to go away. The girl then got up, and as she was coming towards the door a large looking-glass fell from the dressing-table, but it did not break.”
Mrs. Davies here appeared so much depressed that the interviewer addressed his questions to Mrs. Dean, a woman who had been called in to nurse the children. Mrs. Dean said: “I plaited the girl’s hair, and tied it up four times, and it came down each time. She went out of doors, and as she closed the door a knife seemed to be drawn off the table. Her cousin then went after her into the garden, and he said a saucepan jumped off the bench towards her. I afterwards went with her, and she appeared very much excited and frightened. As soon as we were got inside a building a number of garden tools hanging on the wall fell down with a clatter, and a garden fork seemed to spring towards Emma, the handle striking her in the face.
“She was subsequently sitting near the kitchen window, between two or three neighbours, when a reel of cotton, which I was using, was moved off the table on to the ground three or four times. The brush and comb and a pair of scissors were thrown on to the ground. Two men from Baschurch came to the window, and shouted to her mother, who was sitting at the upstairs window, that they would like to see the little girl. The girl heard them, and said, “Oh, aunt, they shall not see me; I’ll go upstairs,” and she ran up at once. She could hardly keep anything in her hand. She was eating a crust upstairs, and it left her three or four times, and I had to pick it up for her. Her hair came down each time. She then wanted to go in the fire, and was very wild. At times it took three or four of us to hold her.
“Five policemen were here, and they questioned her. She seemed very much frightened. She was induced to lay the cloth and put the tea-things on the table, but nothing unnatural occurred. One of the policemen saw her slippers shoot off her feet soon afterwards. Her boots came off continually. I stooped down once to put them on, and a lot of old clothes which were hanging on some pegs were flung on my back. She said, “Aunt, my shoe!” I said, “I will put it on fast enough this time,” and I stooped down to fasten it. Just then the candle-stick went against the wall, and we were left in the darkness. I shouted for a light, and her father came. Then a circular piece of wood was hurled out of doors, and some tools there rattled as if they were being shaken by some one.
“As we came in the house two buckets moved towards us, and when we got to the door several articles of dress came right in our faces, like as if they were blown by a wind; a butter-dish on the table was dashed to the ground close to Mrs. Davies’ feet, and just at the same time cups and saucers were all taken off the tray and thrown up to the ceiling, falling into atoms.
“The schoolmistress kept the girl outside for some time, and soothed her, telling her nothing could hurt her if she would put her trust in God. All then came into the house again. When the chair which the schoolmistress sat on with the girl moved several times, the girl trembled very much.
“She had always been a regular attendant at the chapel Sunday-school, and as there were several chapel people in the house, they decided to sing a hymn. She was very fond of the people. They sang as well as they could, although they all appeared frightened; but it did not seem to take the attention of the girl, and she did not join in it. While we were sitting the large table-tray moved, and we were all frightened. About one o’clock on Sunday morning she appeared to get quieter, and we persuaded her to go to bed with us. She slept until two o’clock on Sunday. She was restless in her sleep. Directly she awoke the pillow passed from underneath her head on to the floor. A neighbour brought her some potatoes and the leg of a fowl, and she was eating it when the pillow was taken away again, and she said, ‘Oh dear, I can’t eat any more – that’s frightened me.’
“She got up, and was going out of doors in the afternoon, when an iron dish and a blue plate were thrown towards her, and that frightened her very much. During the day other pitchers were broken. They seemed to be drawn towards her. We took her for a walk in the fields in the afternoon, and she seemed very much afraid of the crowd of people. At tea-time the cups and saucers would have fallen again if I had not seen the tray moving and prevented it. At tea she tried to eat an egg, but the spoon seemed to spin out of her hand into the air. She could not hold her bread and butter, and a saucer flew from her hand. Several neighbours came in, but she did not seem to notice them.
“On Sunday night she got more excited than ever, and cried out, several times, “Fire, fire! I must go in; the fire must be burnt. Oh, let me go.” Then she would say, “Oh, here’s the old woman again, she’s knocking me and pinching me.” She often said something about an old woman. She struggled hard to get to the fire. The preacher came from the chapel and began to pray, but she raved so madly that they had to take her out.
“Then she got loose, and ran across the garden, but her uncle caught her. Dr. Cook, of Baschurch, came shortly afterwards, and sent the crowd away, as they were exciting her. In reply to Dr. Cook’s questions, she said she should like to go with him, and she went away in his trap. Dr. Cook said he could not believe about the things flying about, but while he was there a cushion was thrown across the kitchen. There were many other strange things happened, which I cannot think of just now.”
A neighbour, who lives about sixty yards away, said she heard one or two loud reports. She also went over to the house, and a large brick fell right at her feet. As she went in the girl was wearing an ulster, and all the buttons were torn off it at once by some unseen agency. On Thusday the girl appeared quite cheerful, and when the stones hit the door or dropped on the roof she would say, “There’s another coming.” She (the neighbour) did not believe until she saw them, but she was convinced now. Persons from all parts of the country have arrived to see the girl.
Another correspondent says the farm called The Wood, near Ellesmere, Salop, has resumed its quiet and original appearance. The house has been repaired, and Mrs. Hampson has returned to reside there. The visitors are now not nearly so numerous. The cottage at Weston Lullingfield, where the girl Emma Davies resides, continues to create a good deal of excitement in the district. There is no truth in the statement that Mr. Hampson sent a piece of coal for examination to ascertain if there was any explosive substance therein. The girl Davies has been removed to a distant abode.
The Standard of Friday published the following from a special correspondent: –
Various researches into the causes and results of human folly have led me far; but I never thought it possible for a simple servant girl of thirteen years old to put a whole district in commotion, and to deceive scores of grave and respectable people. Newspaper correspondents flocked to Shrewsbury in order to find out whether Emma Davies had or had not shown symptoms of demoniacal possession; hardly a cabman in the town had not been engaged at one time or another since Sunday last in driving out through the golden lanes of beeches towards Baschurch and Weston Lullingfield. From Stafford onward I heard nothing but talk about the remarkable girl and her influence on tables, chairs, basins, and buckets.
My first inquiry convinced me that something was wrong, and when I heard that “a gentleman from London” had seen Miss Davies, and taken a confession from her, I only heard something which I had expected. I went to the house where all the “electric” manifestations took place. On the road I stopped one countryman after another, and I found that the tale of the girl’s doings had spread over the whole country side. One person after another assured me that the girl’s allegations were true. A stout waggoner I spoke to declared that he had seen half bricks and fragments of tiles come flying through the window of the room in which Emma Davies sat; a reporter for a local journal thought that “there was something in it;” and the only man I met who exhibited signs of scepticism was a trainer of horses, who said, “Don’t like it, Sir. She’s gammoned the gentleman from London, but it won’t go down.”
As soon as I saw Dr. Corke, of Prescott, I knew that the confidences of my roadside friends were without value, save in the one instance I have named. Dr. Corke gave me the most perfect reasons for supposing that the girl had engaged in a course of deception. I need not lengthen my letter by any description of the feats accomplished by Emma Davies. suffice it to say that she confessed herself to be a little imposter. Had she gone through her first tricks in the presence of shrewd men of the world, she would have taken no one in. But she played off every one of her manifestations in front of yokels, and she succeeded.
I went to her house, and I am now utterly astonished at the amazing fatuity of the persons who allowed such a story to go forth. I knew from the child’s own lips that she had lied; I had her confession off by heart. I knew that “gentlemen from London” had seen her. Yet I found the women in the row opposite the house willing to tell me legend upon legend, and Mrs. Davies, the “medium’s” mother, was prepared with a grave and deliberately circumstantial narrative of teh remarkable occurrences which the girl had declared to be mere tricks.
Why should the mother of Emma Davies have given me a long and touching narrative of circumstances which her own child had described as “arranged cheats?” I do not know. I only know that in one hour after my arrival at Shrewsbury I was convinced of the deceit practised by the sharp little girl, and I was also convinced that I stood almost alone in my scepticism, even after the girl had plainly described and illustrated her own modes of practising fraud.
Let me give the plain story told by Mrs. Davies. I took it down in presence of Mr. Bayley, Principal of Wellington College; and Mr. Bayley will support me when I say that the story was told me an hour after we had heard the child’s confession. Said Mrs. Davies – “We was sittin’ there, where the family Bible lies, and the Bible jumped across the room. Then, sir, my girl went out of the house for a bit, with two of them taking care of her, and I heard a thump and thud like you was hittin’ a drum, and two panes came out. It was a thing like a tile that flew through the panes, sir. Well, me and my husband we both had a cup of tea, and we sat down and we cried. Then in the morning I was in here, and she was fast held in the next room, and before I could say a word she comes in, and the dish I had in my arms flew up to the ceiling and fell down in a heap. Here’s the pieces. Then, sir, we hears a bang that afternoon, and we goes out, me and my husband; and we notices a big pot broken, and then the girl comes to us, and she trembles very awful, and she says, “Oh, keep that old woman from me.” She says, “Throw yourself in the fire,” “Cook yourself,” “Roast yourself,” and “I must go into the fire.” Then the Bible begins to jump awful over the room, and some bits of bricks they falls, and the tea-cups gets broken, and me and my husband we kneels down and prays. She is as healthy a child as there is in the world, sir, and I think the Lord has done this.”
This verbatim report may give some people curious thoughts. The woman may have believed what she said. I do not dispute it, but all the time she was speaking I knew that the confession of Emma Davies had been written down, and I almost pitied the poor creature who quavered forth all the misunderstood details of a ridiculous fraud. I went to see Miss Maddox, the school-mistress. That lady told me gravely that she had seen a chair rise off the ground with Emma Davies in it. I asked, “How far did the chair go up?” and Miss Maddox marked the point on the edge of the “dresser.” From this measurement I should say that Miss Davies floated off the ground at a height of three and a half feet.
Miss Maddox then went on seriously to tell me how her pupil’s laced boot flew off six times, and jumped to the far side of the room. Miss Maddox also gave me a description of the “great knocks” which she heard at the partition wall; but every attempt that I made to get definite and reasonable particulars was answered by a long string of irrelevant trivialities. I knew that the poor lady had been victimised by her acute pupil, and yet I could not help listening with quietness to the vague and tremulous sentences in which she expressed her entire faith.
And now I have something to say which concerns the public. Mr. Tuke, the clergyman who watches over the parish in which Emma Davies lives, has received letter upon letter from believers in “spiritual” influences. Some of these letters are positively passionate in their sincerity and eagerness. One, which I read, says “My beloved Emma Davies – hold firm. You are in communion with the other world. I once disbelieved; but, oh! my sister, I do believe now. Hold firm, and receive all communications from the land of spirits with calm. By and bye you will find peace.”
I heard a score of similar statements; and now I rest convinced that, in spite of the frank exposure made by the little servant girl, there will be hundreds of people who will believe her first story and not her second. If I were to write down the stories gravely told me on the road and in the train, I should cause readers to think I had begun joking. I never heard such miraculous concoctions in my life. The men who have employed themselves in seeking the child who raised the commotion have no idea of the real aspect of the whole affair. Over a great district some hundreds of decent folk are of the opinion that the time of miracles has come again.
Emma Davies is but a poor little impudent servant, yet the glamour cast around her by foolish men cannot easily be dispelled. On the strength of as wild a tale as was ever told to reasoning beings she has been made into a heroine; and even the avowal of her guilt, which is in my ears as I write, will not make some people change their opinions. They have decided that a gifted and unfortunate creature is in some way or other subjected to suspicion, and they will defend her and drive her into further follies and frauds. Already the people in the quarter where the girl lives are divided into two parties, and violent quarrels arise whenever the affair is discussed. How far the dispute may go I cannot foretell; but if this roguish servant girl, who acknowledges her deception and grins at it, were to set up as a martyr, she would easily gather a set of believers.
I have gone over the whole district, and it would be very easy to make a good deal of fun over the whole transaction; but I fear that fun will not do. Emma Davies is a precocious young swindler; she owns it, and there is little more to be said. The spiritualists may as well dismiss the frivolities of Emma Davies from their minds. The tricks prove nothing, help nothing, and are of no use save to show that reasonable men and women should be always ready to feel incredulous. The sooner the girl is sent to an industrial school the better will it be for her and for the community.
in Leighton Buzzard Observer and Linslade Gazette, 20th November 1883.
… For more than a week we have been informed how upon the approach of Emma Davies buckets moved away and upset, coal hammers bolted from house to road, and domestic utnsils moved about when she came near, without any visible motive power. The girl’s own mother stated that a clothes brush flew about, that a Hymn-book jumped off a table on to the hearth, that a knife was hurled across the room by an unseen hand, and that bricks and dirt flew about the house. These stories spread about in the neighbourhood and lost nothing in the telling. Mr Hampson’s place, known as The Wood, was beseiged for days by curiosity-mongers, and Emma Davies was freely spoken of as a girl possessed of some unknown agency.
It is a pretty and substantial country district, but it was for the time given over apparently to superstition. The good people of Weston Lullingfield, Baschurch, and the other villages imagined that the Devil or some accredited representative was in their midst. Some denounced the entire story as an imposture, others believed it. The most extraordinary and ridiculous things are evidently believed by many persons in this district. I heard a gravely told description on Emma Davies going into a yard, and of four pigs standing on their heads and singing the National Anthem. Most of us saw that the narrator was attempting a hoax, but one or two gentlemen received the narrative in all faith, and are no doubt assiduously passing it on.
My industrious psychical research brought me an introduction to Dr Mackey, the assistant of Dr Corke, of Baschurch. Dr Corke was one of the earliest called in to look after the mysterious Emma Davies. He saw nothing himself that would warrant him in supposing that the girl was possessed of supernatural powers; but observing that she was being worried by hordes of interviewers, he took her away from her mother’s home, and brought her to Wem on Sunday last. Dr Mackey is resident at this branch house at Wem, and meeting him in the street on Wednesday morning all my hopes of at last discovering something respectable in the matter of spiritualism were rudely shattered by his assertion that Emma Davies had confessed that she had played all these wonderful tricks on her own account. It was a cruel shock. I had watched this interesting affair from day to day; had wondered why the spirits had been so unkind as to hurl a copy of the Sword and Trowel through the parlour window of Mr Hampson’s house, and had speculated much as to why furniture should back out of rooms and slink through windows when Emma Davies was near. But Dr Mackey’s statement was as plain as the historical pikestaff. Emma Davies had confessed to him and to Miss Turner, Dr Corke’s housekeeper, that she had made the buckets, looking-glasses, books, &c., jump, move, and tumble about.
“In the company of a friend who turned up in Wem during the day on the same mission as mine, I went with Dr Mackey to Aston Lodge to see Emma Davies. Miss Turner, who has been keeping a close watch upon the girl since Sunday, very kindly assisted us in our interview, and informed us that all she herself had seen that was remarkable was a violent movement of a bucket in which the girl was washing her hands, a sort of jumping behaviour on the part of a chair, and an indication of liveliness by a piece of bread. But, unfortunately, Dr Mackey had already told me that the bubble had burst.
We saw Emma Davies, a plain-looking child not thirteen years of age, and very childish in appearance. She pretended for a while to cry when Miss Turner and the doctor requested her to go through some of the tricks for our benefit, but there were no tears, though there was abundant evidence that the girl was a finished performer in her attempts to appear overwhelmed with sorrow and convulsion. By-and-by she told us that her confession to the doctor was the truth; that she had herself played the tricks which have caused the whole country-side to gape open-mouthed ever since the first of November; that in short the mysterious spirits had nothing to do with the business, and that nothing more remarkable had happened than could be credited to her own sleight of hand.
“The little girl was somewhat hysterical at first, but by-and-by she showed us how she made a bucket jump and a chair retreat at the double. It was all effected by a slight jerk of the hand, and when once we knew there was nothing supernatural to be expected, it seemed very common-place.
The girl perhaps deserves some pity. Her statement is that she was put up to the game by fellow-servants, and there can be no doubt that the credulity of the people hereabouts made them easy victims, if not assistants, of the delusion. As neither Emma Davies nor her people, who are simple labouring folks, have put forward any claim to supernatural power, it will not be fair to speak of them as imposters. The thing at any rate is over now, and Emma Davies need not be treated as a heroine. Some time since she figured in a police case charging a boy with assault.
The most remarkable part of this so-called mystery is the successful hood-winking of the local public, and the more than nine days’ wonder which has been caused. The details which have been from time to time published I have inquired into, and cannot find a single case which does not admit of easy explanation. For the novelist who would work up materials showing how easily sensible people can be befooled, I can recommend nothing better than the newspaper reports of this Emma Davies’ sensation.
A drive to ‘The Wood’ gave me a chat with Mr and Mrs Hampson and the fellow-servants, who, according to Emma Davies, had suggested the pranks by which she has been distinguished. It was here that the thing began by the explosion in the fire grate. It seems pretty clear that there was something wrong with the Cannock Chase coal, and that upon the purely accidental discharge of some foreign substance in it a theory of mystery was built up.
A waggoner named Williams admitted to me that he learned some tricks at a harvest festival in a public house, and told Emma Davies and another girl how to make furniture move of its own accord. Upon the slightest pretext, after the blowing out of the windows and so forth by the explosion in the firegrate, the deeds of the little nurse girl were magnified, and the child finding herself the observed of all observers, with some degree of cleverness, jerked about books, buckets, and small articles of furniture until Wednesday morning, when she confessed to Miss Turner how it was all done. There is of course some degree of mystery about this affair, and that is how so trumpery a cause should have produced so ridiculous an effect. Mystery else there is none.”
Eddowes’s Journal, and General Advertiser for Shropshire and the Principality of Wales, 21st November 1883.
Confession of Emma Davies.
A Special Correspondent of the Daily News has visited the scenes of the late “manifestations” at Wood Farm, Loppington, and at Weston Lullingfield. We publish below the resultof his experience. He remarks:-
“Something of the case of course I knew from the newspapers. On Wednesday, the 21st October, so far as I had gathered, the family of Mr. Hampson, a farmer and maltster, near the little town of Wem, was considerably startled by the jumping of a saucepan from the parlour fire, and the sweeping off the table and smashing of tea things. I have spent some time with Mrs Hampson and her husband, and can vouch for the fact that they were startled. Hot coals leaped out as if possessed. The cushion of the couch and the hearthrug were burned. Worst of all the clothing of a baby, sitting near in his perambulator, was set on fire, and the child was burned. A small American clock was thrown to the ground, and the face of a fine eight days clock and other ware were shivered. Mr Hampson, supposing that there was something wrong with the coal, which he had recently received from Cannock Chase, had the fire placed in the kitchen. The kitchen communicates with the parlour by a single door, and when the door is open the two rooms are practically one apartment.
On the Thursday some more alarming occurrences disturbed the peace of Mr and Mrs Hampson. The fire again played unaccountable pranks,and small articles of furniture were hurled about, and windows were forced out of the frames. Somehow the uncanny business was associated with Emma Davies, the nurse girl, who was sent home to her mother’s, at Weston Lullingfield. Here more unaccountable proceedings were reported. For more than a week we have been informed how upon the approach of Emma Davies buckets moved away and upset, coal hammers bolted from house to road, and domestic utensils moved about when she came near, without any visible motive power.
The girl’s own mother stated that a clothes brush flew about, that a Hymn-book jumped off a table on to the hearth, that a knife was hurled acorss the room by an unseen hand, and that bricks and dirt flew about the house. These stories spread about in the neighbourhood and lost nothing in the telling. Mr. Hampson’s place, known as The Wood, was besieged for days by curiosity-mongers, and Emma Davies was freely spoken of as a girl possessed of some unknown agency. It is a pretty and substantial country district, but it was for the time given over apparently to superstition. The good people of Weston Lullingfield, Baschurch, and the other villages imagined that the Devilor some accredited representative was in their midst. Some denounced the entire story as an imposture, others believed it. The most extraordinary and ridiculous things are evidently believed by many persons in this district. I heard a gravely told description of Emma Davies going into a yard, and of four pigs standing on their heads and singing the National Anthem. Most of us saw that the narrator was attempting a hoax, but one or two gentlemen received the narrative in all faith, and are no doubt assiduously passing it on.
My industrious psychical research brought me an introduction to Dr. Mackey, the assistant of Dr Corke, of Baschurch. Dr Corke was one of the earliest called in to look after the mysterious Emma Davies. He saw nothing himself that would warrant him in supposing that the girl was possessed of supernatural powers; but observing that she was being worried by hordes of interviewers, he took her away from her mother’s home, and brought her to Wem on Sunday last.
Dr Mackey is resident at this branch house at Wem, and meeting him in the street on Wednesday morning all my hopes of at last discovering something respectable in the matter of spiritualism were rudely shattered by his assertion that Emma Davies had confessed that she had played all these wonderful tricks on her own account. It was a cruel shock. I had watched this interesting affair from day to day; had wondered why the spirits had been so unkind as to hurl a copy of the Sword and Trowel through the parlour window of Mr Hampson’s house, and had speculated much as to why furniture should back out of rooms and slink through windows when Emma Davies was near. But Dr Mackey’s statement was as plain as the historical pikestaff. Emma Davies had confessed to him and to Miss Turner, Dr Corke’s housekeeper, that she had made the buckets, looking-glasses, books, &c., jump, move, and tumble about.
In the company of a friend who turned up in Wem during the day on the same mission as mine, I went with Dr Mackey to Aston Lodge to see Emma Davies. Miss Turner, who has been keeping a close watch upon the girl since Sunday, very kindly assisted us in our interview, and informed us that all she herself had seen that was remarkable was a violent movement of a bucket in which the girl was washing her hands, a sort of jumping behaviour on the part of a chair, and an indication of liveliness by a piece of bread. But, unfortunately, Dr Mackey had already told me that the bubble had burst. We saw Emma Davies, a plain-looking child not thirteen years of age, and very childish in appearance. She pretended for a while to cry when Miss Turner and the doctor requested her to go through some of the tricks for our benefit, but there were no tears, though there was abundant evidence that the girl was a finished performer in her attempts to appear overwhelmed with sorrow and convulsion. By -and-by she told us that her confession to the doctor was the truth; that she had herself played the tricks which have cuased the whole country-side to gape open-mouthed ever since the first of November; that in short the mysterious spirits had nothing to do with the business, and that nothing more remarkable had happened than could be credited to her own sleight of hand.
The little girl was somewhat hysterical at first, but by-and-by she showed us how she made a bucket jump and a chair retreat at the double. It was all effected by a slight jerk of the hand, and when once we knew that there was nothing supernatural to be expected, it seemed very commonplace.
The girl perhaps deserves some pity. Her statement is that she was put up to the game by fellow-servants, and there can be no doubt that the credulity of the people hereabouts made them easy victims, if not assistants, of the delusion. As neither Emma Davies nor her people, who are simple labouring folks, have put forward any claim to supernatural power, it will not be fair to speak of them as impostors. The thing at any rate is over now, and Emma Davies need not be treated as a heroine. Some time since she figured in a police case charging a boy with assault. The most remarkable part of this so-called mystery is the successful hoodwinking of the local public, and the more than nine days’ wonder which has been caused.
The details which have been from time to time published I have inquired into, and cannot find a single case which does not admit of easy explanation. For the novelist who would work up materials showing how easily sensible people can be befooled, I can recommend nothing better than the newspaper reports of this Emma Davies’ sensation. A drive to ‘The Wood’ gave me a chat with Mr and Mrs Hampson and the fellow-servants, who, according to Emma Davies, had suggested the pranks by which she has been distinguished. It was here that the thing began by the explosion in the fire grate. It seems pretty clear that there was something wrong with the Cannock Chase coal, and that upon the purely accidental discharge of some foreign substance in it a theory of mystery was built up.
A waggoner named Williams admitted to me that he learned some tricks at a harvest festival in a public house, and told Emma Davies and another girl how to make furniture move of its own accord. Upon the slightest pretext, after the blowing out of the windows and so forth by the explosion in the firegrate, the deeds of the little nurse girl were magnified, and the child finding herself the observed of all observers, with some degree of cleverness, jerked about books, buckets, and small articles of furniture until Wednesday morning, when she confessed to Miss Turner how it was done. There is of course some degree of mystery about this affair, and that is how so trumpery a cause should have produced so ridiculous an effect. Mystery else there is none.”
Eddowes’s Journal, and General Advertiser for Shropshire and the Principality of Wales, 21st November 1883.
Illustrated Police News, 24th November 1883.
The Weston Lullingfield Mystery.
The Medical Times remarks: – “The whole account is an interesting illustration of how hysteria and imposture subtly combined can form the basis of a sensational story, when helped out by a large element of hearsay and superstition in the report of the alleged ‘facts.’ It is instructive to read, in connection with the case, the remark of Dr. Wilkes, that ‘the strangest vagaries of human nature are those which occur in young females in the early stages of womanhood.’
The behaviour is often like that of one ‘possessed of a devil,’ for the acts are not those of an ordinary criminal who has an object in his wicked deeds, but are often purposeless, or for the simple love of mischief. When you see a paragraph in the newspapers headed ‘extraordinary occurrence,’ and you read how every night loud rapping is heard in some part of the house, or how the rooms are being constantly set on fire, or how all the sheets in the house are torn by rats, you may be quite sure that there is a young girl on the premises.”
in Eddowes’s Journal, and General Advertiser for Shropshire, and the Principality of Wales, 28th November 1883.
The Alleged Shropshire Mystery.
The girl, Emma Davies, of Weston Lullingfield, has been interviewed by some local reporters, and has emphatically declared that her alleged confession that she knew how the tricks were performed was forced from her by the violent accusations of some of the London reporters.
She states that one of the two who waited upon her at Dr Corke’s represented himself to be a police-constable, and threatened to take her to prison if she did not confess it was a trick; they also slapped her hands, and one of them, on leaving, kissed her. She appears very indignant at their conduct.
The manifestations have since continued, and last week the girl was taken to London by a lady and gentleman, with her parents’ consent, and they have promised to do well by the girl.
Cheshire Observer, 1st December 1883.
The poltergeist in Shropshire.
Sir, – Having just returned from the scene of the marvellous phenomena in Shropshire for the purpose of investigating the still more marvellous explanation, viz., that a child 12 years old should have succeeded for several days in destroying the contents of a house, whilst the master, mistress, and neighbours stood looking on, and were unable to see who or what was the destroying agent, until the child chose to reveal that she herself was all the time flinging about the said contents.
Allow me to announce to those of your readers who may care to know, that such was not the case; but that the child was coerced, by means of slaps and threats of jail, into making a “confession,” totally regardless of truth, and that although the destruction ceased for a short time, it has, in a measure, recommenced with the last few days at the home of her parents, with whom she now resides, much to the discomfort of herself and them.
I am yourse obediently, C.E. Isham, Downton Castle, Ludlow, Dec. 10.
P.S. I need not add that those concerned in the destruction never believed a word of the confession.
Northampton Mercury, 15th December 1883.
An attempt, as we announced yesterday, is being made to revive what was known as the “Shropshire Mystery,” and the girl, Emma Davies, the medium of the “supernatural agencies,” has been interviewed at her home in the village of Weston Lullingfield, by several members of the Psychical Research Society, which is evidently languishing for want of a Christmas bogie. One of them, Sir Charles Isham, has written to the Medium and Daybreak, the organ of the supernatural, stating that Emma’s recent confession that her uncouth proceedings were the results of merely mechanical agency, was extorted from her by “slaps and threats of gaol.” A clergyman and doctor have also visited the girl, and their inquiries are said to have resulted in the same finding. Clearly the girl herself is not a credible witness; but it is more probable that her last, and not her first, “confessions” are the least worthy of belief, and are quite as likely to have been extorted by bribes or threats. In the meantime, the girl’s parents might do worse than listen to the proposals which are said to have been made by certain music-hall proprietors, who are anxious to bring to themselves gain by the adoption and exhibition of the medium. The members of the Psychical Society have certainly shown wisdom in the choice of season for the revival of the “mystery.” Christmastide is nothing without its “creeping stories and weird tales,” the more so as we are told that the British ghost is in a state of decay.
St James’s Gazette, 28th December 1883.
The great excitement, writes a correspondent, which was caused by the Shropshire mystery some time ago has revived. Agents from the Society for Psychical Research have been down to investigate the affair, and visits have also been made to Weston Lullingfield, the village in which the alleged extraordinary occurrences took place, the residence of Emma Davies, and to the schoolmistress by many other people, owing to the denial of the girl Davies of her alleged confession having necessitated further inquiry.
As well as the agents sent down by the Psychical Research Society, it transpires that several local members of the society have been to Weston. Sir Charles Isham, Bart, arrived there a few days since, and having made inquiries, wrote to the Medium and Daybreak, saying that the alleged confession was extorted by slaps and threats of jail.
The Rev. Mr Williams was there for two days early in the week. Dr Calloway called at the residence of the girl’s parents on Thursday, and made some inquiries in the village, in addition to two other gentlemen from Shrewsbury, whose names did not transpire. Proprietors of theatres and music-halls, it is stated, have made offers wishing to adopt the girl. Her parents, however, are firm in their determination to keep her under their own roof, and both strongly declare that they attribute the proceeding to a supernatural agency, and a great deal has been done to substantiate their notion by the host of letters sent them from all parts.
Wrexham Advertiser, 28th December 1883.
Notes. The North-Shropshire Poltergeist.
During the past month every newspaper in the kingdom, probably, has published something about the “racketing spectre” that was supposed to haunt the house of Mr Hampson of The Wood, near Ellesmere, and now that “Emma Davies,” stands confessed as the culprit it is curious to see how old superstitions linger in the district. The special correspondents of the Standard and the Daily News do not seem to have recorded this, but twice I observe the Oswestry Advertizer reporter has remarked on the belief that Emma was “In the Well.” This, of course, refers to Ffynnon Elian, – a century ago a terror not only in Wales, but far over the borders; and although it has been drained, and its surroundings demolished for many years, its name is still potent. This, I think, is worth recording in Bye-gones. N.W.S.
Bye-gones relating to Wales and the Border Counties. November 28th, 1883.
(Ffynnon Elian being a famous cursing well.
According to a local newspaper, the interest in the tricks of the girl, Emma Davies, has been revived, and the Society for Psychical Research has sent down agents to Weston Lullingfield to investigate the matter. Sir Charles Isham has written to the Medium and Daybreak complaining that the girl’s confession was extorted by threats of gaol. The Rev. Mr. Williams was there for two days this week, and Dr. Callaway called at the house of the girl’s parents last week and made some inquiries in the village. The girl is said to have had offers from people who wish to adopt her, and from managers of theatres and music halls. Her parents, who are determined to keep her under their own roof, are strongly inclined to attribute the proceedings to a supernatural agency.
Salisbury and Winchester Journal, 5th January 1884.
Revival of the Loppington and Weston Lullingfield “Mystery.”
Further “Scientific” Investigation.
We should have thought that all interest in the thoroughly exposed “manifestations” reported to have occurred some 12 months ago in connection with the girl Emma Davies, servant at Woods Farm, Loppington, had died out, but such does not appear to be the case. A correspondent in that neighbourhood writes:-
“Within the past few days, an elderly gentleman, who is said to belong to some scientific society in London, has been about here making inquiries relative to what was at one time termed ‘The Shropshire Mystery,’ and which consisted, it will be remembered, of certain vagaries on the part of a girl named Emma Davies. The gentleman has visited the Rev. Mr. Tuke, Dr. Corke, the parents of the girl, and many others in the neighbourhood, and made a searching inquiry, but with what result I am unable to say.”
On October 30th, a gentleman answering to the description given by the correspondent in question called at the office of this paper, and asked to be allowed to examine the files with the view of obtaining information as to what had been published in regard to Emma Davies’s case. This he was allowed to do, and he was furnished with copies of the issues containing reports of all that had transpired. He stated that he had been to Wem, Loppington, and Weston Lullingfield, and after his investigation he had come to the conclusion that the girl was “not an impostor, but that some supernatural agency had been at work.”
The neighbours had told him, he said, that the girl had made a false accusation against a young man, and that in consequence of this the parents of the accused had prophesied that “two black marks” would be placed upon her. Since that time the girl had become very strange in her manner, and had acted like “one possessed,” mysterious occurrences taking place wherever she went.
In the course of conversation, the gentleman, who appeared exceedingly anxious to meet with some one who had seen the girl, was recommended to pay a visit to Mr. J. Bayley, principal of Wellington College, who, in company with the representative of the London Standard sent over at the time, had interviewed the mysterious Miss Davies, and who would doubtless furnish him with the result of his observations.
To Mr. Bayley the visitor accordingly went, and, presenting his card, on which was inscribed “Mr. Wentworth Holworthy,” was very courteously received by that gentleman. From information gleaned from Mr. Bayley, it appears that Mr. Holworthy commenced by stating the object of his visit, and asked Mr. Bayley if he had interviewed the girl herself, if he had thoroughly investigated the case, and what his impression was. He further asked if he (Mr. Bayley) was at all biassed in the matter. Mr. Bayley replied that as far as human nature permitted him he had shorn himself entirely of bias. He had interviewed the girl. Whilst he felt it was right, for the sake of those who would have to examine the results of the investigation, that all information supplied to him by the mother and those interested in the case should be carefully weighed, at the same time he must say that it was hard to believe that in these days there was any necessity for miracles.
Mr. Holworthy, whilst admitting that Mr. Bayley had made a careful and thorough investigation of the case, still inclined to the opinion, from what he had heard at the farmhouse at Loppington – which, by the way, Mr. Bayley had not visited – that the girl was not an imposter, but that she was “demonically possessed,” and that “the manifestations observed were of a supernatural character.” If such things had occurred in the days of old, he could see no reason why they should not occur now. Mr. Bayley quaintly rejoined that in one sense he believed the girl was “demonically possessed.”
Mr. Holworthy proceeded to describe the results of spiritualistic manifestations which he himself had witnessed, whereupon Mr. Bayley gave him a humorous description of his experience of a spiritualistic seance which he once attended, and in which he succeeded in rather discomfiting the “medium.” Further, he put this question to his visitor: If you persist in believing that all this was the work of some supernatural agency, how do you account for the fact that the girl exhibited some of her clever tricks in the presence of Dr. Corke’s assistant and the housekeeper, and confessed that they were nothing but tricks?
Mr. Holworthy replied that there was a little difficulty there, but that the statement of the servant girl scarcely coincided with that of the housekeeper. Mr. Bayley remarked that he came to the conclusion that the whole thing was an imposture before Dr. Corke’s assistant gave information of the girl confessing that all these supposed phenomena were only tricks which she could easily and dexterously perform.
In the course of the conversation, Mr. Holworthy said he had seen the clergyman of the parish, who had told him that he had been at the house, but that nothing occurred whilst he was there, though directly after he had left the “manifestations” exhibited themselves in an extraordinary manner. This elicited from Mr. Bayley the remark that that showed the girl only performed her deceptive feats in the presence of those who were not quick enough to detect her. Having further discussed the matter, Mr. Holworthy thanked Mr. Bayley very much for the information he had so readily supplied, and took his departure.
Superstition, it is said, dies hard; but it seems almost incredible that a gentleman of Mr. Holworthy’s evident intelligence should, after all the exposures which have been made, still cling to the idea that “something supernatural” occurred in this case. Rather, one would have thought, he might have arrived at the conclusion, from the hard logic of facts, that the whole thing was the outcome of a perverse disposition, on the part of a sharp girl of mischievous tendencies. Mr. Holworthy is doubtless an ardent disciple of psychological research, but whether he his satisfied with having travelled so far to gain so little is best known to himself.
Wellington Journal, 8th November 1884.
The Shropshire Mystery. To the Editor.
Sir, – Your last issue contains a reputed solution of the mysterious events which have so lately upset your neighbourhood, and which have also – as I read – attracted the attention of the curious in such matters from all over the country.
I do not object to the good-humoured chaff which characterises your remarks upon the letters that have been received by the persons in whose houses the events were reported to have taken place, but I do contend that whilst you have placed before your readers a complete and interesting account of the manifestations themselves – collected apparently from the circumstantial reports of eye-witnesses – you have given us sadly too little information as to the means whereby these occurrences were produced, which, at the time of their production, frightened, confounded, and puzzled a whole neighbourhood.
I am not going to dispute the reputed fact that the girl Emma Davies has, by her unaided cunning, been able to play off upon those with whom she resided a series of astonishing tricks – astonishing, not so much in that which was done by her, as in the fact that none of the close watchers and victims could detect that the events were tricks and nothing more. It is hardly to be supposed that her employers would have stood shivering amidst the wanton destruction of their property if they had been able to detect the culprit in their midst, and it says little for the strength of mind of Mr. Hampson and his family that they permitted themselves to be driven from their house by what is now stated to have been a very palpable fraud.
Nor does it say much for the astuteness or detective capacity of the five members of the Shropshire constabulary who are reported to have been present together on one occasion when the “fraudulent mysteries” were in progress, that they failed altogether in the first duty of a policeman to suspect.
That hysterical girls do very strange things is a fact which cannot be doubted, but one needs only to observe the papers carefully to note how frequently a highly-wrought imagination will accuse its possessor of unreal crime. That the girl Emma Davies should have been hysterical to the verge of madness, can be easily supposed, but it is questionable whether, being in such a condition, she would not be the more amenable to such threats of punishment which would no doubt have been held out as the alternative of confession
I think then that it is due to the public that the doctor who has so promptly unmasked a fraud, should declare the methods by which the fraud has been performed – he has surely extracted this amount of information from his penitent. The various acts of it are specified in your account in a most circumstantial manner. Is it now to be denied that “fenders moved from their place to the middle of the room,” or that “a chair was raised, with the girl sitting in it, clear from the floor”? Or, if these things and others are not denied as facts, then let us know how they are done; the knowledge will enable us to unmask any similar mysteries which may occur in the future.
I remain, Sir, yours respectfully, R. S. C.
Leeds, Nov 20, 1883.
Wellington Journal, 24th November 1883.
also in this edition:
A Proposal in Form. (By Funny Folks’s “Lunatic Lover.”)
Emma Davies, Emma Davies, most mysterious of slaveys, Can you give a heart that’s virgin to a lunatic like me?
We might live a life blood-chilling, if to speak the word you’re willing, In a pretty haunted cottage, say, beside the sounding sea.
There we’d start our small housekeeping, and with epidermis creeping, I should bless the day propitious on which you and I were wed;
For my bliss would be past telling, when within our humble dwelling You should make the kitchen-table circle batwise round my head.
Emma Davies, Emma Davies, leaving pots and pans and gravies To the common class of women who can’t mediumize a scrap,
You should call the grand “pianner” in your sweet, seductive manner, Or induce the four-post bedsteads to make curtseys to a chap.
If you saw me worn and jaded by the work through which I’d waded, In the busy haunts of commerce and among the urban throngs,
‘Twould be yours, as wifely treasure, to extemporize a measure, Danced with minuet-like quaintness by the poker and the tongs.
Emma Davies, Emma Davies, yearning soul like mine most brave is, And though normal man may shun you, I’m dissimilar, I guess.
I’ve a fancy for what’s “eerie,” and you would not find me weary Of the ghastly fascination which you seemingly possess.
In my hours of rabid madness you would brim me up with gladness By your tricks with chair and scuttle, or with sideboard and settee;
So be mine, and juggle featly, and two lives shall flow on sweetly, ‘Mid the furniture’s convulsions in our cottage by the sea.
Wellington Journal, 24th November 1883
The Lullingfield “Manifestations.”
To the Editor.
Sir, – In your issue of the 17th you hit hard at the police and the eye-witnesses of the “manifestations” at the Woods Farm and other places. You deny them any “common sense” in connection with the affair, reserving to yourselves and the doctors, &c., that very useful commodity.
The respectability and veracity of these eye-witnesses is, however, beyond question, and that many of the things named in your issue of the 17th took place there is no doubt. I would like to ask the question – Is this testimony to be treated with contempt and entirely set aside because a little, simple, afflicted, rustic girl of 12 summers, away from home, in a doctor’s house, amongst strangers, says she “did it?” Scores of people have confessed to things which it has been proved they have never done, and I say it is positively unfair to the child to give to the world as truth the utterances of one whose mind and body is impaired.
The Loppington mystery will not die on such flimsy evidence as that, against an array of respectable witnesses, who are free to speak the truth and have no other desire. I should think it was the duty of those who really do believe that the girl has done so much damage, to charge her with the same before the magistrates, and let the matter be investigated on oath. It is a serious matter to brand for life a girl, poor though she be, as an imposter and destroyer of her employer’s property without giving such an one and her parent an opportunity to meet the charge.
Yours truly, Alteram Partem.
Wellington Journal, 1st December 1883.
The Lullingfield “Manifestations.” To the Editor.
Sir, – With your kind permission I would say a few words on the above subject. However it could be expected that eye-witnesses of the phenomena would believe the “confession” said to have been obtained from the girl I cannot imagine. Those who have “explained” the matter, and the manner in which they endeavoured to “settle” the affair, are positively more surprising than the phenomena alone.
Now I have had considerable experience in legerdemain, and I resolutely affirm and maintain that it is absolutely impossible to produce such phenomena by such means without the cause being observed. It may be said that the actual facts were greatly exaggerated, but let us only refer to that part of the reported phenomena which is testified to by reliable witnesses. There has not been the slightest reliable evidence reported to show that the girl had any control over the manifestations at all.
Mr. Hampson will not deny that the sewing-machine was broken by performing a variety of antics in the parlour, while the girl was elsewhere, and the machine or its surroundings could give no clue as to the cause of its unusual proceedings. How is a child of 12 summers to so arrange her conjuring appliances as to perform this supposed sleight-of-hand trick without the most obtuse observer discovering them? The idea is absolute nonsense. Does the professional conjuror allow the witnesses of his tricks to go behind the scene? But where are the instruments used by this clever Emma Davies, where are the wires, &c., and lastly who taught her the clever business? If such an idea could for a moment be reasonably entertained, that she could do these things by sleight of hand, she would not require to wash clothes any more, or engage in any such drudgery.
From what I understand of the manifestations from the evidence of the eye-witnesses I am positively of opinion that Emma Davies knows no more how to produce the phenomena that were seen than a piano knows about the music that may be produced by means of it. A more reasonable solution of this knotty problem would be found in the reports of societies experienced in such matters, and which they have made a study, and there the interested reader may find things possibly never before dreamt of in his philosophy.
I am, sir, yours faithfully, INVESTIGATOR.
Wellington Journal, 8th December 1883.
The Shropshire ‘mystery’.
The excitement which was manifested in what is known as the Shropshire mystery, a few months ago, has been revived. Agents from the Psychical Research Society have been down to investigate the affair, and visits have also been made to Weston Lullingfield, the village at which the extraordinary occcurences are said to have taken place, and the residence of Emma Davies, and to the school and schoolmistress, by many other people, owing to the denial of the girl Davies of her alleged confession having necessitated further inquiry.
It transpired also that several local members of the above society have been at Weston. Sir Charles Isham, Bart., arrived there a short time since, and having made inquiries, wrote to the Medium and Daybreak, saying that the alleged confession was extorted by slaps and threats of the gaol. The Rev. Mr Williams, was there for two days recently, and Dr. Callaway called at the residence of the girl’s parents, and made some other inquiries in the village, in addition to two other gentlemen from Shrewsbury.
Several proprietors of theatres and music halls have, it is stated, made offers to engage the girl, but her parents remain firm and say that she shall stay under their own roof, declaring that the late proceedings are attributable to supernatural agency, their views being supported by hosts of letters sent them.
North London News, 29th December 1883.
The After-life of Emma Davies. (By “One of the People.”)
Mankind is given to be morbidly curious, and I am afraid I am no exception to the rule. Not long since a circumstance – or, more properly speaking, perhaps, a series of extraordinary circumstances – happened in Shropshire, to which public attention was forcibly directed. I allude to the “wonderful events” at Weston Lullingfield.
Without laying myself open to the imputation of being superstitious, I had at the time no difficulty in associating the child Emma Davies with all the “manifestations” that took place. There were those who firmly believed the girl was merely the medium of an “evil spirit,” or that she was possessed of some mysterious agency by which Weston Lullingfield and the neighbourhood had been set at their wits’ end; whilst others were convinced that the whole affair was an imposture. Everybody, however, agreed that the girl was in some manner connected with those “extraordinary events,” and, for my own part, I think on this occasion everybody was right. With the exposure of the tricks, however, public interest in the life of Emma Davies began to wane, and, like a great many other events of more transcendant importance, her deeds have probably slipped from the memory of most people. Happening, however, to be in the neighbourhood of her home the other day, the idea occurred to me that although Emma Davies had died out of men’s minds, probably she still existed in the flesh, and that some particulars as to her career since the “manifestations” in question would not be unacceptable to a good number of your readers, and accordingly I set out in quest thereof.
The villages of Weston and Weston Lullingfield are, perhaps without exception, the quietest and dreariest it was ever my chance to pass through. Situate upon a flat stretch of country, they seemed to me utterly void of interest, and if it be – though I very much doubt it – that “evil spirits” are prone to seek the charms of solitude, then I can easily understand why they selected Weston Lullingfield as a temporary dwelling-place, although I might not be equally conversant with their desire to make Emma Davies the medium of their manifestations.
I did not know the precise locality of the home of the Davieses, and perforce had to inquire. I knocked at a roadside cottage door, but the silence of the tomb reigned therein, as it seemed to reign everywhere else around. But even here was evidence of superstition, for over the doorway was nailed the customary horseshoe which follows in its train. By dint of further inquiry, however, and the exercise of a good deal of ingenuity in escaping the awkward contretemps of sticking fast in the mud, I reached the girl’s home.
It is one of a short row of cottages built within a stone’s throw of the main road, and each one of the houses has a clean and home-like look. My knock was answered by the appearance of a respectably dressed woman, busily knitting, who informed me that she was the Mrs. Davies I was in search of, and invited me to sit down. The cottage is miserably small, and presuming that she and her husband have brought up their family within its walls, I should imagine the task one of considerable difficulty. It is possible to sit in the centre of the kitchen and well-nigh touch the whole of the furniture standing against the sides of the room, and this fact to me afterwards seemed brimful of significance.
At the table sat a boy of some 10 years, eating his dinner, whilst under the only window in the room was a sententious individual in the garb of a drainer or farm labourer, with his elbows on his knees and his chair so much a-tilt that his hands formed a convenient resting-place for his chin. Mrs. Davies, I think I said, was busy knitting, and she continued doing so during the whole of our conversation.
My first question of course related to Emma. Was she at home and was she well? – “She’s very well, thank God” (a good deal of emphasis in the expression), “now, but she’s gone to school.” Then she had not gone out to service again? No, nor had they any intention of sending her at present. Had anything extraordinary happened lately? – “Not for more than six weeks now, I’m thankful to say, and me and the master prays night and morning that nothin’ of the sort may occur again.”
I ventured to remark that, from what I had read, some very extraordinary things had happened, at which Mrs. Davies paused in her knitting, as if to lend emphasis to the assertion, and declared it was “summat awful.” “Why, sir, where you are sittin’ the things flew about the house like mad. The tea things jumped off the table, the books fled round the room, and lumps of coal flew out of the fire all across the room. Emma used to run out of the house, for although they never hurt her they went so near her the child was frightened to death. One day she was sitting there (pointing to an armchair), and the salt-cellar began to move and followed Emma to the door, and the drawer jumped out of the dresser, too.”
I admitted that such occurrences were remarkably strange indeed, but had she no idea of the meaning? “No more than a baby, sir. They did say in the papers that the poor child did it all herself, but we (meaning her husband and herself) knew better. And the neighbours knew she didn’t, too. She wasn’t able, indeed. Sometimes the flower-pots in the window threw themselves upon the floor and were smashed, and the kettle emptied itself on the hearth, and a pretty mess we had, I can assure you.” “But have you never had any suspicion” I inquired, “in your mind, that Emma did all these things herself?” “We had at first, but we watched her, and the neighbours watched her, and we saw she couldn’t do ’em.”
Now all this might be very convincing to Mrs Davies and her neighbours – indeed the woman’s observations rather conveyed the impression that she was endeavouring to strengthen them in her own mind by continued repetition – but to an unprejudiced observer it was apparent that there was a great deal attributed to the “spirits” which might have been as readily performed by Emma Davies herself, and this idea was confimed by the unwillingness of the mother to admit that no one actually saw the “manifestations” take place. Indeed it seems to have been the custom of the whole family to take their departure in the most unceremonious fashion the moment any article of domestic utility began to evince signs of uneasiness. “We used to go through that door pretty sharp, I can tell you, when they did begin,” added Mrs Davies. “And Emma,” I queried, “where was she?” “Oh, in the doorway or in the house.”
As therefore your readers may possibly have observed, the girl was so situated that it would not have been a very difficult matter for her to throw the things about almost with impunity, and almost without possibility of discovery. I conveyed this thought to the mother’s mind, but she immediately scouted the idea. “Don’t tell me the girl did it. Who threw the stones and brick-ends through the window at night, I should like to know? Not Emma.”
“But surely,” I ventured, “Emma did not remain in the house whilst the stones were thrown. Where was she?” “Outside, with the neighbours holding her by the arms.”
Of course I do not pretend to know why the neighbours thought it incumbent upon them to secure the arms of Emma Davies when this extraordinary fusillade commenced, but I have a shrewd suspicion, and I am afraid it was so thinly disguised that my scepticism became apparent, for Mrs Davies assured me again and again that “it was not Emma who did it.” “But to my mind,” I replied, “you do not seem to have been careful enough to watch.” “Not careful enough! Didn’t one of the neighbours stand on the stairs when the looking-glass jumped off the table, and the pillows flew about the room?” “But did she actually see those articles leave the positions they occupied?” “She saw ’em on the floor, and I should think that’s sufficient.” it might possibly have been so for the credulous mother of Emma Davies and the terrified neighbour who watched upon the stairs, but to me it had a convincing impression the other way.
“Ask him what he thinks of it,” Mrs Davies said, pointing to the sententious individual on the chair under the window. “He will tell you somethin’.” Unfortunately, however, my friend the drainer was not gifted with so easy a flow of language as worthy Mrs Davies, and he conveyed a good deal more information by what he mysteriously left unsaid than by what he gave utterance to. “Well, I can’t say as I knows much about it, but I’ve seen some run goin’s on, sure enough.” I inquired in what relationship he stood to the girl. “None at all,” he replied, listlessly toying with a short, dirty clay pipe; “but when I’m over in these parts, doin’ a bit, you see her” (indicating Mrs Davies with the stem of the aforesaid pipe) “does my bit of weshin’ for me.” “Tell the gentleman what you know, John,” put in the woman. But John, practically, knew very little indeed. True it was he had been in the house whilst some of the “manifestashuns” had been taking place; nay, he had even “minded Emmer,” whatever that might mean, but there was such an indefinite idea in John’s mind concerning what happened, or he was so carefully unwilling to disclose what he knew, that I felt there was little to be learnt in that quarter.
Going upon another tack, I inquired of Mrs Davies if she could account for all the disturbances that went on. No, she couldn’t, and what was more, she didn’t believe anybody else could. They had been the wonder of all the country round, but nobody had been found to elucidate the mystery. “Unless,” I remarked,” it was Emma herself.”
“The poor child couldn’t do it, sir, and I shall feel very much offended if you say she could.” Pressing her still more closely upon this point, the woman took refuge in the explanation of otheres – “The neighbours suppose she had an evil spirit;” and not being exactly able to dispute the assertion – for I believe there is a large amount of truth in it – I took refuge in silence.
“But, thank God, it’s over now – it has been over these six weeks – and I hope it may never come again.” This was Mrs Davies’s wish, fervently uttered indeed, and if it be true that the domestic utensils of the little household were destroyed in the fashion they are alleged to have been there was great reason why she should be thankful. “Then you have not had any trouble with her since,” I asked? “None at all, sir; we’ve kept her at home ever since, and she has only been going to school these two days, and the —“. Here, however, the good woman came to a pause. The potatoes had disappeared – without the aid of Emma this time – from the dish in front of the youngster at the table, and his attention having been thus diverted from a pleasant occupation, he commenced drumming the table with a spoon. Thereupon he had to be arranged in order for school, and the process somewhat interfered with our conversation. All things, however, have an end, and so in course of time had his toilet, and he took his departure, having previously cast a lingering and regretful look upon the empty platters.
“Does Emma enjoy good health?” I queried. “Yes, the doctor says she is a sound, healthy girl. Sometimes she wakes in the night and cries out, and we have to take her into our bed, but she seems well enough in the daytime.”
I felt, at this period of the conversation, that there was little more to be gleaned by further inquiries, and therefore prepared to leave. During the talk I had with Mrs Davies she related many of the circumstances attending the girl’s life at the Wood Farm , most of which however it would not be necessary to repeat, for they are no doubt still in the memory of most people; and a great deal was said concerning which I must preserve a discreet silence. I was disappointed, however, in not being able to see Emma, the centre figure of all this wonderful phenomena, and something of the kind must have appeared in my manner, for, before I left the cottage, Mrs Davies informed me that if I cared to see her daughter I could do so by calling at the village school, a permission of which I at once resolved to avail myself.
I called at the village school. There was the usual hum of school life. Some were stitching, and some were writing, but, as on all such occasions, there was considerably more noise than was absolutely necessary for either operation. I knocked loudly to be heard above the din, and the door was opened by the schoolmistress herself. Could I see the little girl Emma Davies? I could. Was it fancy, or did there lurk a look of grim defiance in the schoolmistress’s eyes as she said so? Whilst ruminating on the question, the good lady turned upon heel and left me standing in the porch. By-and-bye, however, the schoolroom door reopened, and a timid, shrinking little figure, in black dress and white pinafore, looked up with great wondering eyes into mine.
Was it possible? Was this Emma Davies? Was this the author – knowingly or unknowingly – of all the mischief at Woods Farm and the little home at Weston Lullingfield? Surely not! Could it be that a child like this, looking every bit as young as the thirteen years of life laid to her credit would allow, was able to set detection at defiance, to fling chairs and tables about with her tiny strength, and to spread consternation where’er she moved? And, yet this was Emma Davies. There could be no doubt about it. She was sent out to me as the veritable author of all the mischief, and although the schoolmistress had not deemed it necessary to observe the form of introduction there could be no mistake.
I asked the child if she was well, and she answered simply that “she was better now.” And did she like school? She did. Better than service? Yes, better than service. And for my own part, school, I think, is by far the best place for her at present. The child has rather a winning manner, and although nervous and shy, behaved herself as well as a child possibly could behave. She was scrupulously clean and neat, but had a strange twitching motion of the hands and arms, so noticeable sometimes as to be almost painful to observe.
I was anxious to know something of her alleged confession to the newspaper men, and the child, with all apparent truthfulness, stoutly asserted that she had only admitted doing such things “because the gentlemen threatened to have her taken away by the police” if she did not. “Did you do it, Emma?” I asked. “No sir, I did not,” was the child’s reply, and as she appeared a good deal distressed by the cross-examination I had subjected her to, I shook hands with her and left the school.
No doubt the reader will judge from the questions put to the mother that I have not the slightest belief in anything supernatural in connection with the disturbances which followed the presence of Emma Davies, and the conclusion may also have been drawn that I believe Emma herself not physically incapable of producing them. Both assumptions are true. I do not. But at the same time, I believe it would have been impossible for her to do anything of the sort if she had been properly watched, but the minds of the foolish people by whom she was surrounded had become so tainted by fright and a desire to feed superstition, that they were unable or unwilling to detect the imposition that was being practised upon them. And this was simply the opportunity of which little Emma Davies availed herself.
Wellington Journal, 1st March 1884.
Report of the Society for Psychical Research on the “Shropshire Mystery.”
The Hon. Sec. of the Physical Phenomena Committee has presented to the Society the report of his personal and careful investigations into the mysterious disturbances which occurred in a farmer’s house in Shropshire last November. It is summed up in the following terms:-
“I consider that there is abundant evidence of some trickery on the part of the girl, E.D., at Wood’s Farm; but that some portion of the phenomena cannot be referred to this cause if the statements of Mrs Hampson and Priscilla Evans as to what occurred in E.D.’s absence, and the description given by Priscilla Evans of the crockery coming out of the cupboard, can be at all relied on. Still, if the case were an isolated one, the evidence is not of so satisfactory a nature as to justify the assumption that phenomena as to justify the assumption that phenomena unexplainable by trickery actually took place; but, on the hypothesis that there are cases on record in which trickery and genuine preternatural phenomena were combined, this case might, with some degree of probability, be included amongst them. – Frank S. Hughes, B.A. (Cantab) – December 3rd, 1883.”
The Editor of the Journal of Society for Psychical Research appends the following note:-
‘(Whatever opinion may be formed upon this case, this much is clear – that the statements of newspaper reporters must be received with extreme caution when they deal with matters of this kind. It was asserted that Emma Davies confessed to having, by trickery, produced all the mysterious phenomena, that she had learnt how to do the tricks from a waggoner who had seen them done at a fair, that Priscilla Evans admitted she was a confederate, and that ‘other mystery there was none.’ All these assertions appear to be incorrect. — Ed.)’
Ulverston Mirror and Furness Reflector, 22nd March 1884.
Case V. Wem.
In November, 1883, a series of disturbances broke out at Wood’s Farm, near Wem, in Shropshire, in the presence of a small nursemaid, Emma D., a girl about thirteen years of age. The phenomena, as testified to by the farmer and his wife – intelligent persons – the local schoolmistress, and various neighbours, included violent movements of small objects and much smashing of crockery. Emma D. was seen by several witnesses to be levitated, chair and all; and the baby’s clothes were on several occasions found alight, with a spent match lying near. No trickery was detected on the part of the girl; and many of the manifestations, as described to us, were certainly inexplicable by trickery.
The disturbances began on the 1st of November. On Friday the 9th, Emma D., who had got into a very nervous state, was placed in a doctor’s house at Wem, and put under charge of his housekeeper, Miss Turner. From this lady and Dr. Mackey, the late Mr Hughes, who investigated the case, learnt that after the child’s arrival:
“certain manifestations took place, similar in character to those that preceded them, and for two or three days they were quite unable to detect any fraud, though no manifestation ever took place when the girl was not in such a position that she might have produced them by ordinary trickery.
“Thus, in the presence of Dr Mackey and Miss Turner a piece of bread jumped across the room, the girl not being actually seen to throw it. On another occasion when Miss Turner had left the room, the girl suddenly screamed, and when Miss T. returned, a pair of slippers were on the sofa which had just before been seen on the hearth-rug. Again, when Miss T. had just turned her back to the girl, the usual scream was heard, and turning round Miss T. saw a bucket in the air descending to the ground. A knife on another occasion was thrown across the room, being in the air when Dr. Corke’s servant was entering the room.
“On Tuesday morning, however, Miss Turner was in an upper room at the back of the house, and the servant of the establishment and Emma D. were outside, Emma having her back to the house, and unaware that she was observed. Miss Turner noticed that Emma D. had a piece of brick in her hand held behind her back. This she threw to a distance by a turn of the wrist, and while doing so, screamed to attract the attention of the servant, who, of course, turning round, saw the brick in the air, and was very much frightened. Emma D., looking round, saw that she had been seen by Miss Turner, and apparently imagining that she had been found out, was very anxious to return home that night.
“Miss Turner took no notice of the occurrence at the time, but the next morning (Wednesday) she asked the girl if she had been playing tricks, and the girl confessed that she had, and went through some of the performances very skilfully, according to Miss Turner’s account.”
Notwithstanding this exposure the girl persistently denied that she had produced the previous disturbances.
It may be added that, though Dr. Mackey considered the child to be quite normal, Mr Hughes found some evidence of unusual precocity on her part; and she had, according to her mother’s statement, been subject to fits since the outbreak of the disturbances. Moreover, the schoolmistress stated that during some of the disturbances Emma D. cried out that an old woman was at her and would not let her breathe.
From Ch.5 of ‘Studies in Psychical Research’ by Frank Podmore (1897).
Probably unrelated, but interesting:
When I was at College I had among my friends a man of exceptionally fine character and beautiful disposition. He was also a man of far more than average mental power. He was always near the top of the examination lists and manifested great sanity of judgment in our college debates and discussions. Our friendship was of the most intimate kind and we often talked together of our early days; of our homes and our families. One day, by some chance, our talk led us to our family traditions of supernatural interventions. I had only a commonplace story to tell [a crisis apparition of his grandmother’s brother]. Then my friend, with the most deliberate calmness, told me one of the most amazing stories I have ever heard.
He was brought up in a Shropshire village, though he went to Liverpool when he was about 15, and the events he related occurred in Shropshire. A girl cousin of his was stricken down with a mysterious illness and the most extraordinary things began to happen. Some supernatural energy seemed to possess inanimate things in her immediate vicinity. Cups and plates jumped from the dressers and smashed on the floor. My friend assured me that he himself had seen two big stones leap out the garden and crash through the windows of the bedroom in which she was then lying. For some weeks such things were continually happening and then the girl recovered as mysteriously as she had fallen sick, and at once everything about her became normal again. My friend told me that he would never have believed that such things had really happened if he had not seen them with his own eyes. The facts were beyond dispute. He had no explanation of them to offer – they had been a continuous, and sometimes painful problem to himself.
Yarmouth Independent, 29th December 1917.
Poltergeists again.
Referring to my articles of June 14 and 21, Mr Shenton (Little Stretton) has written: “Perhaps it may interest you to know that a similar case occurred at Weston Lullingfields either in the year 1883 or 1884; the manifestations all seemed to centre around a child aged about eight years. The happenings were almost identical with those described by Mr Harry Price. For several weeks a local paper published accounts under the heading ‘A Shropshire Mystery’. At last a Dr Cooke of Baschurch took the child home with him, and after a few days announced that she had confessed that she had been taught conjuring tricks, and had made use of the knowledge just to cause a sensation. Many people were sceptical of the alleged confession and pointed out that it was a physical impossibility for her to be the cause of some of the phenomena; they also said that a child of her age, after several days’ questioning in such an atmosphere, would be ready to confess anything. Some years afterwards a relative of mine told me that Dr Cooke had admitted that he could not account for some of the things himself. Of course, at that time, scarcely any of us had heard of the word ‘poltergeist’ and would not have known the meaning of it if we had.”
Shrewsbury Chronicle, 22nd November 1946.
And things that go bump in the night.
John Dromgool looks back at the ghostly events which beset a Burlton farm more than a century ago.
Take off down a winding country lane near Loppington in the heart of the North Shropshire countryside and the tranquility of it all hardly inspires fear of ghosts and things that go bump in the night. But don’t be misled. Amateur local author Miss Marjorie Jones can tell you a thing or two to make the hairs on the back of your neck tingle. Indeed, she has told many folk about what she has called “The Mystery at Maltkiln farm” in a sell-out short history of the area that makes up Burlton village and its surrounds in the triangle of the A528 Shrewsbury to Ellesmere road and the B4397 to Loppington.
Maltkin Farm, now the home of Eric and Gladys Reeves, used to be known as Burlton Wood. Just over a century ago, it made the national newspaper headlines with the behaviour of a poltergeist which attached itself to young nursemaid, Emma Davies. “I am perfectly certain it happened,” says Miss Jones, who has old news cuttings to back her story which she presents as a one-and-a-half page “interlude” in her book of Burlton’s history, its people and her own childhood recollections. The publication has raised about £500 for Loppington Parish Church restoration fund. She found the interesting cuttings from a London daily among her late stepmother’s personal effects.
It seems that when the present Maltkiln Farm was Burlton Wood, maltster and farmer John Hampson and his wife, Mary, lived there. Labourer Charles Jenkins and a maid servant, Mary Morgan, both young people, also lived in. As Miss Jones puts it: “Little would have been known of this family had it not been for the extraordinary occurrences which befell the family in 1883.”
John Hampson was 25 and his wife 23. They had a small baby to which 12-year-old Emma Davies was nursemaid. Miss Jones takes up the story: “It seems that Emma Davies was sitting by the fire in the kitchen nursing the baby and the servants were preparing tea. Suddenly, the eggs which were being boiled in a saucepan on the fire jumped out and the tea things were thrown from the table and smashed; hot cinders were thrown out of the grate and set fire to some clothes in a basket; a paraffin lamp globe was lifted off its stand and thrown across the room.” Even stranger things followed when a neighbour went to help because he thought the upstairs room of the Hampsons’ home was on fire – there was “such a light in the windows.” On investigation, everything was in order…
“However, as there was pandemonium downstairs, he decided to rescue some of his furniture and was struck on the back by a loaf of bread whilst removing his barometer from the wall! At the same time the sewing machine was thrown about and damaged, and ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ jumped through the window, followed by a large ornamental shell.” Author Miss Jones says this was only a glimpse of the mad happenings. When the police were called they decided it was something to do with the coal in the hearth and ordered it to be burned in the open-air believing it contained some explosive. But it burned quietly away…
Witnesses told a straightforward story without blaming any supernatural cause, explaining it away as “something in the coal or in the air”, or some electrical phenomena. However, when the nursemaid, Emma, ran off frightened to the neighbouring farm, the strange phenomena followed her. Her clothes caught fire and crockery flew around when she was near. Miss Jones writes: “It wasn’t surprising that the Hampsons dispensed with the survices of the little nursemaid, and, as far as Burlton is concerned, that was the end of the story.” But Emma’s home was only three or four miles away at Weston Lullingfields and her involvement was followed with immense excitement and possibly exaggeration. The Press was also fascinated and one daily, possibly The Times, carried a report of about 2,000 words detailing the bizarre events which happened around the unfortunate child.
Havoc occurred wherever she stepped and, not surprisingly, the terrified girl went mad. Hymns and prayers rendered with great fervour by chapel members failed to exorcise her. Finally, a Doctor Cook of Baschurch was sent for and little Emma went with him, presumably to the local lunatic asylum.
Villagers weren’t speaking to the Press about it but, apparently, it was widely believed that the girl had been bewitched, or had been cursed by one of the women from the canal barges. Miss Jones herself learned from a villager in more recent times that Emma recovered – or her poltergeist left her. “Whichever you caare to think,” says Miss Jones. “She married in her late teens and lived happily ever after.”
The former Burlton Wood Farmhouse.
South Shropshire Journal, 29th June 1990.