Ghost Trickery at Worksop.
Amusing manifestations.
The freakish spirit laid.
A very extraordinary affair has taken place at Worksop, and the people generally were in consequence in a state of great excitement on Saturday morning when it was reported that “the spirits” had taken possession of a cottage house inhabited by a man named Joseph White, and had smashed nearly all his belongings. White is a general dealer, and lives on the new building ground, a part of Sandy lane. Early on Saturday morning, as the report spread, hundreds of people visited the cottages of which White’s is one. What had taken place was the subject of discussion among scores of groups, and the excitement increased as the marvels of the previous night became known.
Joseph White has lived in the cottage in question for some years. It is divided in the usual manner by a passage from the neat house, which serves as the road to the rear of the premises. His family consists of wife, an ailing child of two years, and an infant. There live with him his brother, a lad of twelve, and a lodger or two. An addition was made on Tuesday last, when a girl of eighteen came to stay with them until she got a situation. This girl was born in the workhouse at Worksop, and her mother lives in Worksop.
A little after eleven o’clock on Thursday night last noises were heard in the house. That night White spent at Sheffield, but the family, the lodgers, and the girl were in the house, as well as some of the neighbours. Some movements were noticed among the crockery and small articles in the house, both in the back and front rooms, and a salt cellar was thrown off the table several times, no-one being near it, and it bounced up the stairs. A couple of milk measures followed suit, and made things lively by prancing up and down stairs several times. On the mantel-piece in both rooms were ornaments, and some of these were thrown down at times when no-one was near them. Nothing was broken, and these strange antics were attributed to the brother of White who had gone to bed, and was trying to alarm those downstairs. He was called to, but replied that he was doing nothing. This continued up to one o’clock, when things became quiet.
White came home the next day, and was present at the proceedings which took place on the evening of Friday. He says that about ten o’clock his brother came in, and after getting his supper went to bed. The remainder of those in the house had supper, and he sat with his boots off while his wife put up some food for his brother to take with him to the pit next morning. A “fluttering” noise was heard at the back door, and was immediately followed by a similar noise inside at the staircase. Next was a noise of something coming downstairs, which stopped on the bottom step. He got up, opened the door, and found a corkscrew. He put it on the table, and it instantly vanished. This was followed by some coals, candles, and a surcingle, all of which likewise disappeared when put on the table.
The articles on the mantelpieces in both rooms now began to move about, and some falling down were broken. A glass salt-cellar on the table, which was being used by the wife, jumped right off the table, and when replaced jumped off again till part of the bottom came off, and its movements ended. Several cups and saucers did the same, as well as plates, while knives and forks fell about. There was a jar of good [?] on the table full of lard, and this, too, jumped to the floor and was broken. The next door neighbours hearing the noise crowded in, and, as all were terrified, it was decided to remove the sick child to the next house, the opinion being that these were signs of its death.
While the children were being taken away the movements of the smaller articles continued. Pictures in both rooms were thrown about and broken, and a clock which stood on a table at the side of a bed in the inner room was thrown down and broken. On the left by the door of the bedroom a chest of drawers, upon which was a pair of lustres and ornaments of various kinds, tilted itself on end, and all the things on the top were broken. The child next door appearing at this time to get worse, Dr Lloyd was sent for. White about this time went into the front room, and found every drawer in the chest of drawers pulled out, although every drawer was locked previously, and a suit of clothes which had been put in the bottom drawer was lying in the drawer next to the top. The keys were in his wife’s pocket.
Police-constable Higgs saw some of these curious proceedings. He says that about twelve o’clock he met a man named Denton, who lodges with White. Denton told the constable that he had better go to White’s, and he would see something that had never been known of before. On reaching White’s the back door was open, and Higgs stood for a few moments looking into the house, and distinctly saw a cupboard door fly open and a large wide glass bottle bound out. It fell on the floor near the door, and after a moment or two rose again and went past him into the yard, when it fell on the ground and was broken. Higgs then went forward towards the inner room, and as he reached the door he turned round in time to see a looking-glass fall from some drawers behind him and smash itself on the floor. As he looked a cup flew from the table, going towards the back door, and this was succeeded by a similar movement on the part of a jar containing flour which stood on a bin near the window. At this time only himself and the man Denton were in the room, and both were some distance from the articles.
Dr. Lloyd says that he was fetched to see White’s child. He reached the house about half-past twelve o’clock, and finding the child had been removed next door, went to it and operated on the abscess. The persons in the house told him what was going on next door, and asked him to step in. He found Police-constable Higgs in the room. What took place both saw. An Oxford picture frame stood on a chair, and then left the chair and fell in front of him. The doctor asked a boy (White’s brother) to pick it up, but he refused. At the end of the flour bin stood a china basin, and this the doctor saw rise into the air as high as some flitches of bacon at the ceiling, and then it fell at his feet, breaking into pieces. A movement of the lid of the bin was next seen, and the doctor, exclaiming that some one was in the bin, stepped forward and raised the lid to find it empty. Remarking upon the strange proceedings, he said “the devil must be in the house,” and left.
This was followed by further manifestations, but all became quiet in the house soon after one o’clock. Higgs, the police-constable, remained in the house for a couple of hours longer, but neither White’s household nor the next door people went to bed. About seven o’clock next morning the disturbances began again, and the news spreading hundreds of persons flocked to the neighbourhood. The spirit manifestations ceased again about nine o’clock on Saturday morning, and in connection with this Mr Arthur Currass, a respectable working man, says: – “I heard of what had taken place and went to White’s house. After standing talking with him at the yard fence, during which I could hear things knocking about in the house, White asked me to go in. I went in and followed him into the front room where the bed is to see the broken articles lying on the floor. I noticed a clock hanging on the wall over the foot of the bed, and while White was showing me the chest of drawers I was startled by a loud crash behind, and on turning my head found that the clock had left the wall, and was lying on the floor in front of the fireplace some yards away, with its end knocked out. We went back into the house, and I saw a pot ornament, a dog, jump off the mantelpiece on to the floor and break. This was followed by a cream jug, which jumped off the table on to the floor and was also broken.”
For the rest of the day nothing else took place till about four o’clock, at which time some bottles which had been placed on the mantelpiece in the bedroom were seen to fall and break, and a lamp glass cut some capers but did not break. Just before eleven o’clock on Saturday night people began to assemble near White’s house, expecting a renewal of the previous night’s proceedings. In the house at this time were gathered a score or so, bent on seeing all that could be seen. Some of these were gentlemen well known in Worksop, The room was lit by a low fire and single tallow candle, and about the fire were gathered White’s family, some of the people from next door, and some friends. Twelve o’clock came without anything taking place, and the whisper went round that there were too many present. The only incident apart from the shouting crowd outside, was a stone coming through the front window. When one o’clock had turned White told the company that he knew why nothing had taken place, and that it was because one of those who had been in the house on the previous night was absent. He further stated that someone had told him that the strange girl had “overlooked” the house. He had accordingly sent her away during the afternoon of Saturday, and that since her departure nothing had occurred. All hope of a further excitement being at an end, the company departed. Since then nothing further has been heard, and the “ghost” is now said to be “laid.”
Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 5th March 1883.
The Ghost Trickery at Worksop.
The excitement caused in the town of Worksop and the surrounding district by the extraordinary freaks of what was popularly termed “the ghost” is abating. The “ghost” seems to have been successfully laid on Saturday night, because since then no further manifestations have taken place. Joseph White, the occupier of the house which has suddenly gained such an exceptional notoriety, is described as a general dealer, and there seems to be no special reason why he should be “favoured” with any attention from a ghost. By this unexpected visitation he says that he has sustained damage to the extent of £6 or £7, and that he never wishes to see a repetition of what he witnessed on Friday and Saturday. He cannot explain the “phenomena,” and previous to Friday had never heard nor seen the like before, although he had lived in the house three or four years. He was not present in the house on the Thursday night when the noises were heard, but he was present on the Friday and saw his property smashed in an unaccountable manner. in his own words, “things flew about both rooms of the house. Knives, forks, salt cellars, &c., were thrown from the table; pots and bottles came from the cupboard, and dropped on the floor.”
What seems most remarkable is that some of these articles fell several times before they broke. He also said the pictures fell, articles from the mantelpiece “pranced” about, and from his statement matter must have been exceedingly lively; and it was not to be wondered that on these extraordinary “doings” becoming known large crowds should assemble to satisfy their curiosity.
White’s household consisted of himself, wife, his brother Thomas White, aged 21 years, an ailing child about two years, and an infant. During last week there was also living in the house a girl of apparently 18 years old, who had asked to be allowed to remain for a short time. This girl is said to have been brought up in the workhouse. Mrs White confirms the story of her husband, and quite a long catalogue of the “freaks” might be made out. White strongly denies that there has been any trickery of any sort used. “Did he feel afraid when he saw things flying about the house?” asked his interrogator. “Yes,” he replied, “at first, but I afterwards got used to it.” As would be noticed from our report yesterday Dr Lloyd who was attending the child witnessed a china basin rise from the table, almost to the ceiling, and then fall to the ground; and his observation is confirmed by Police-constable Higgs who had attended from motives of curiosity. Had the doctor remained for sufficient time and observed the other manifestations which hare said to have taken place, his account would have been exceedingly interesting. Higgs saw the cupboard door fly open and a glass bottle bound out. He also saw a tumbler fall from some drawers and smash on the floor.
With regard to the girl, she appears not to have been in the house on every occasion when anything unusual happened, and she certainly did not leave until after the “phenomena” had ceased on Saturday evening. Several persons visited White’s house yesterday – some from a distance – with the hope of unravelling the mystery, but how they succeeded has not been ascertained.
Our correspondent had an interview with the girl whom White said was the cause of all the disturbances which had taken place in the house last week. The girl gives her name as Eliza Rose, and says she is 18 years old, but she looks younger and is a small girl, appearing to be unable to do the strange things which are said to have taken place in White’s house. She is simple in her ways and speech, and not a likely person to design such extraordinary things. What she says agrees with what has already been published, except that she alleges that things began to break and jump about when a certain member of the family was present.
Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 6th March 1883.
The “Bewitched House” at Worksop.
The “Ghost” Missing.
The excitement that has arisen at Worksop in consequence of the extraordinary manifestations at the house of Joseph White, general dealer, continues unabated. White’s house is a small four-roomed semi-detached cottage, situate in John street, off Sandy lane. The two cottages form the whole buildings in that locality, and are some distance from other dwelling places, White’s cottage being adjacent to a pasture field, on the west side. For “spiritual manifestations” they are, perhaps, advantageously placed, the rooms being small, with ample scope for conjural effects, and plenty of spare ground outside.
The most incomprehensible notions are put forward as to the origin of the phenomenon. Electro-physiology, animal magnetism, and the likely mediums amongst the household to hold converse with the unseen world are theories each discussed with vigour. The testimony of some gentlemen who witnessed the movements and breaking of the articles is singular, and the explanation of the mystery or trickery is perplexing. The popular idea is that trickery has been practised by somebody, but to whom the origin is traceable is a matter not to be very definitely stated.
It is known that the property has been in the market for sale for some time, and that White has offered a certain sum for it to the owner, Mr Rhodes, who for many years was a traveller for Messrs. Smith and Nephew, brewers, and recently keeper of the Royal Hotel Vaults. The tenant and the owner have been unable to agree as to price, the former wishing to purchase at a considerably less sum than that asked by the present holder of the property. White himself denies any instrumentality in the spiritual demonstrations, and attributes the cause to higher than human powers.
The history of the girl Eliza Rose, who was an inmate of the house at the time, is a rather strange one. Her mother has been an inmate in the Workhouse at different times, extending over forty years, as an idiot. She was liberated a while ago, and married a man named Salmond, with whom she has resided at Bedlam square. She is said to have originally hailed from Whitwell, and Eliza Rose is her illegitimate child. The girl herself is somewhat of a morose disposition, and has been brought up in the Workhouse. White traces the commencement of the troubles in his household to her entrance, and the end of them to her departure. She left the workhouse on Thursday week, to go to service, but she appears subsequently to have turned up at White’s house, and asked Mrs White for shelter, being previously acquainted with her. Her desire was to stay with Mrs White until she procured a situation and the favour was granted. Since Saturday afternoon, after she left about six o’clock, none of the strange manifestations which so astonished the inhabitants have taken place.
The last article broken by the supposed “miraculous power” was thrown from the mantelpiece of the front room, next the kitchen, on the ground floor, used as a bedroom, between 4.30 and 5 p.m. on that day. Up to that time the girl referred to had lived in the house, and acting on the advice of friends, Mrs White, at the request of her husband, told the girl to leave the premises as speedily as possible. The girl took refuge with her grandmother, who lives elsewhere in Worksop, and since that time the house has resumed its wonted peace and quietude. White says, respecting this girl, that wherever she walked in the house the articles were broken, but neither he nor other persons, some of them of much respectability, can give an explanation as to the cause of the articles being broken.
Mr Currass, who is an active Primitive Methodist, is unable to say by what means the articles moved. He examined the pot dog when it descended from the mantelshelf in the living room, and could find no trace of string or other attachment on the broken pieces, and the clock over the bed in the front room was similarly a mystery. The statements of some of the witnesses of the events vary in the details. At the time that Currass was in the house there was a tinman named Coulter, also a well-known townsman. He says, in contradiction to what Mr Currass has stated, that he and White and Currass went into the room, and as they left, he (Coulter) being last, the clock began to strike. White made the remark that it had not gone for several months. A smash was heard, and he (Coulter), on looking into the room, saw the clock in the middle of the floor. White and Currass state that Coulter was not in the room, the former adding that Coulter was in the yard. These variations may, however, easily have arisen, considering the excitable nature of the incidents that were transpiring.
The subject, it need hardly be said, is affording abundant food for gossip and excitement at the present moment in Worksop. One prominent feature to be observed in visiting the place is a horse shoe, affixed near to the door of the neighbouring house, no doubt for the purpose of frightening away the spirits of the departed. “Joe White” and his family do not seem to have faith in these superstitious emblems, neither does he show much concern at the unusual visitation to his family.
Police-constable Higgs yesterday furnished a more detailed account of what transpired whilst he paid a visit to the premises. He states:- About ten minutes past twelve o’clock on Friday night I was met in Bridge street by Buck Ford, and Joe’s brother Tom White, and Dr Lloyd. Tom said to me, “Will you go with us to Joe’s, and you will see something you have never seen before?” I went; and when I got into the house Joe went and shut the cupboard doors. No sooner had he done so than the doors flew open again, and an ordinary sized glass jar flew across the kitchen out of the door into the yard. A sugar jar also flew out of the cupboard unseen. In fact, we saw nothing and heard nohting until we heard it smash. The distance travelled by the articles was about seven yards. I stood a minute or two, and then the glass which I noticed on the drawers jumped off the drawers a yard away, and broke in about a hundred bits. The next thing was a cup, which stood on the flour bin just beyond the yard door. It flew upwards, and then fell to the ground and broke. The girl said that this cup had been on the floor three times, and that she had picked it up just before it went off the bench. I said, “I suppose that cup will be the next.” The cup [?] a distance of two yards away from the flour bin. Dr Lloyd had been in the next house lancing the back of a little boy who had been removed there He now came in, and she began talking, the doctor saying, “It is a most mysterious thing.” He turned with his back to the flour bin, on which stood a basin. The basin flew up in the air obliquely, went over the doctor’s head, and fell at his feet in pieces. The doctor then went out. I stood a short time longer, but saw nothing further. There were six persons in the room whilst these things were going on, and as far as I could see there was no human agency at work. I have not the slightest belief in anything appertaining to the supernatural. I left just before one o’clock, having been in the house thirty minutes. Up to last night no further appearance of the “ghost” was recorded, but the house continued to be visited by numerous persons.
Interviewing the girl Rose.
Last night, a Worksop correspondent had an interview with the girl whom White alluded to as being the cause of all the manifestations which took place in his house on Thursday night, and up to Saturday afternoon. The girl, Eliza Rose, says she is 18 years old; but she is very small, and looks to be not more than 15, while physically she appears quite incapable of being the cause of the extraordinary occurrences which took place in White’s house, nor is there anything in her manner which would induce any one to think she could concoct and carry out such trickery.
She says that she went to White’s house on the Monday of last week. Mr White was not at home, but she knew his wife, and asked her to allow her to stay for a few days while she looked out for a situation as general servant. The inmates of the house were than Mrs White, a brother of White’s, aged 20; a younger brother about 12, a third of 7 or 8, and three little children. Nothing took place till Thursday night. White was at a sale near Sheffield, and did not come home that night. At half-past eleven o’clock she was engaged in washing pots at the table, when things began to go up stairs of their own accord. The children’s boots first went, and some meat bones that had been left at supper followed. She did not see them go up, but heard them rattling as they went up. Mrs White went after them, and found the boots and bones on the landing, at the top.
The eldest brother, Tom, was in bed, and so were the others. Mrs White thought it was Tom up to his larks, and she called out, asking what he was doing. He denied doing anything, and when Mrs White went up to him, he said he would take his dying oath that it was not him. The girl, after she had finished washing the pots, put them in the cupboard. Among the pots was a glass salt cellar. Mrs White went to the cupboard for something and missed the salt cellar, and asked the girl where it was. As soon as she asked for it a noise was heard on the stairs, and the salt cellar came tumbling into the room, and was followed by two pieces of hot coals which looked as if just taken off the fire. There was no fire upstairs. Mrs White picked up the coals and said they were hot, and she said Tom had taken them up with him. Next there came down stairs a pint and a half-pint measure, which a short time before had been placed on a bin in the kitchen. Had not missed the measures from the bin. The girl picked them up and placed them again on the bin.
A number of other things came tumbling down, five or six clothes pegs, a knife and fork, a brass candlestick, and an iron one. The brass candlestick was one which generally stood on the mantelpiece, and was not missed till it came tumbling down stairs. By about one o’clock the things had stopped coming down, and nothing more happened that night. Next day Mr White came home at five o’clock. Mrs White told him what had been going on, and he cursed and swore about it, said it was not true, and that some one had been larking in the house. At night, the brother, Tom, went to bed at eleven o’clock, and soon after he began to throw things down stairs. He threw a candlestick, two candles, and some carpets. He did it to frighten them, and then he laughed about it. About half-past eleven o’clock things in the house began to knock up and down and break themselves without anybody touching them. A pot dog flew off the chimney piece towards the door. Mrs White picked it up and put it back, when it flew off again and was broken.
The girl was then at the bin, washing up pots, and Mrs White was finishing baking, and there was no one in the room besides Mr White, Mrs White, and the girl. The brass candlestick next flew off the mantelpiece, going towards the back door. Everything flew towards that door. Mrs White, at twelve o’clock began to put up the “snap” for Tom to take with him to the pit. She had on the table a jug, salt, glass, a jar of lard, plates, and other things. She had just finished when the salt-cellar flew to the stairs and was broken. The jug jumped up, fell on the floor, and was broken. Some cups, saucers, plates, and other things fell off and broke. What did not break at first jumped up and down till they broke in pieces. The lard pot went up and twirled about till it got to the roof, when it fell and was broken against the back door. A knife, fork, and two glasses flew off the table. The “snap” also went off, and knocked about the floor till it was spoiled. When the things began to knock about in this manner, Mrs White knocked at the wall, and the people next door came, but they stood at the door looking in, and dare not go in.
Before the things began to knock about, three knocks came at the back door. Some plates which were on the bin flew off, and a corkscrew which was on the table flew to the back of the fire. Mrs White asked her to fetch the sick child out of the front room, and take it next door. As she went into the room, a set of drawers tipped up and a looking glass fell off towards the bed. She picked it up, and then took the child out of the room to the next house, and stayed there till Mrs White came and called her back. On going again into White’s house, she saw a lot of people in, and White was going from one room to the other. Was in Mrs Wass’s next door when the policeman came, and then went back to White’s house and stood against the bin. The policeman was at the inside door when the cupboard door flew open and glass jar flew out, went out at the back door, and broke in the middle of the yard. A pot with some treacle in it flew out the cupboard, fell in the middle of the room, broke, and made a mess, which Mrs White cleaned up. some plates came out of the cupboard and a basin which broke in the room, and then White shut the cupboard door.
Dr Lloyd came in and some others. A glass flew off the drawers, and then a basin on the bin lifted itself up, twirling about as it went up to the ceiling, which it hit, and then fell on the floor and broke. Dr Lloyd looked in the bin, said “Well, there’s nothing in; I think the devil’s in the house.” He then went out. More pots began to break, and a big pot of flour flew off the bin to the door, but did not break, but some flour was spilled out. It then went out into the yard and broke.
She went into the next house and could hear the things going on smashing till all was still. Next morning it began again at eight o’clock. Mrs White had just milked the cow, and had put the milk can on the table. She gave the sick boy some port wine out of a bottle and put the bottle on the table, and it at once jumped into the milk can. A cup went off the table and broke. She began to dress one of the children, when a clock that was in the other room on a table came banging against the middle door, and fell on the floor. The clock on the wall struck four, and fell on the floor. A glass milk jug fell off the bin, which Mrs White picked up and put back, and then it flew up and fell on the floor. Some pictures also fell off the walls, and the brass candlestick again fell off the mantelpiece, and dropped behind a Salvation Army woman who had come in. Nothing more happened till about four o’clock in the afternoon.
She was just then cleaning up the house, when a medicine bottle flew off the bin on to the floor, and a lamp glass in the inside room fell down, besides some bottles which had been put on the mantelpiece. She went away after tea, between six and seven o’clock. Whenever Joe White was left in the rooms by himself things began to break again.
Sheffield Independent, 6th March 1883.
Spiritualism Extraordinary.
Marvellous story of acrobatic crockery.
The inhabitants of Worksop, particularly the working classes, were thrown into a state of excitement on Saturday morning, by the report that extraordinary and mysterious manifestations had taken place during the night at the house of a man, named Joseph White, a general dealer, who with his family occupies one of the two four-roomed cottages off Sandy lane. In consequence of this, hundreds of persons flocked to the scene.
The man, Joseph White, has for a number of years occupied the house in question, which is divided from the adjoining one by the customary long passage from the street to the back of the premises. With White lives his wife, a child of two years (ailing), an infant in arms, a boy of 12 (brother of White), and a lodger or two. On the 27th ult. a girl of 18, out of a situation, also came to live with them, or rather, with them and the next door neighbour.
On the night of March 1, shortly after eleven o’clock, noises were heard in the house. White was at Sheffield, but his family were in the house, the girl before named, besides a neighbour or two, male and female. While they sat movements were observed among the small articles in the rooms back and front. A glass salt-cellar which was on the supper table, it is affirmed, was thrown down on the ground several times, and at length bounded upstairs in a remarkable manner. Two milk measures, a pint and a half-pint, followed suit, bounding upstairs and down again. Ornaments on the mantelpiece were moved and thrown down. These movements continued till after one o’clock, and then ceased.
The following night, White was at home and saw for himself what took place. His statement is in effect that just as he was about to retire to rest a fluttering noise was first heard at the outside of the back door, and was almost instantly followed by a similar noise at the staircase door inside the house. The time was about half-past eleven o’clock. Next a noise as of something coming down the stairs was heard. White ran, opened the door, and took up a corkscrew which he placed upon the table, and which instantly disappeared.
Other things came tumbling down stairs, coals, candles, a surcingle, all of which on being put on the table disappeared like the corkscrew had done. These matters were seen by all in the house. various articles on the mantelpieces in both back and front rooms now began to show signs of animation, some of them leaping down to the floor, and breaking to pieces.
A glass salt-cellar which his wife was using jumped clean off the table, and when replaced again deposited itself on the floor, and this was repeated till a portion of the bottom of the salt-cellar was broken off, after which its movements ceased. Cups and saucers which had been used at supper also jumped off the table and were broken, plates following suit, while knives, forks, and spoons were full of animation. On the table stood a large jar of brown earthenware, containing lard. This jumped clean off the table, and was smashed.
The inmates of the house were now in a state of alarm, and the next door neighbours, who had heard the din, came crowding in. The “racket” among the smaller articles in both rooms still went on, and many brittle things were broken into fragments. in the inner room, which is used as a bedroom, pictures were thrown down from the walls, a clock which stood on a table by the bed jumped up, fell to the ground, and was broken; a chest of drawers on the left of the doorway tilted up, and a pair of lustres, with a number of ornaments, were thrown down and broken.
The ailing child, which is suffering from an abscess in its back, began to cry and moan, and, thinking that the disturbances in the house were premonitory of its death, Dr. Lloyd was sent for. A consultation was held amongst the women, and it was decided to take the children into the next house, and leave only the men in the house. This was accordingly done. White at this time went into the front room, and found that a chest of drawers, by the door on the left, had every drawer pulled out, and that a suit of clothes which usually laid in the bottom drawer had been removed to the top long drawer. Before the disturbances began the whole of these drawers were locked, and at the time he found them open the keys were in his wife’s pocket.
Police-constable Higgs states that on the 2nd inst., at ten minutes past twelve o’clock, he met a man named Denton, who lodges with White. Denton told the constable that he had better go to White’s, and he would see something that had never been known of before. Accordingly Higgs went with Denton. On reaching White’s back door, which was wide open, Higgs stood for a few moments looking into the house, and distinctly saw a cupboard door fly wide open, and a large wide-mouthed glass jar rush out and fall on the floor within a yard of where he stood, and then, after a few moments, rise again into the air, and bolt past him into the yard, where it fell on the ground and was broken.
Higgs went forward towards the inner room, and as he reached the door he turned round and distinctly saw an old-fashioned looking glass jump off a chest of drawers behind him, falling on the floor and breaking the glass. A cup flew off the table towards the back door, and this was succeeded by a similar movement on the part of a jar of flour which stood on a bin. At this time there was no one in the room but himself and the man Denton, and both were at some distance from the articles.
Dr. Lloyd says that he was fetched to see White’s child. He reached the house about half-past twelve o’clock, and finding that the child had been removed next door, went to it. The persons in the house told him what was taking place next door, and asked him to step in. This he did, and found Higgs in the room. What then took place both saw. On a chair stood an Oxford picture-frame. This, the doctor says, left the chair, and fell at his feet. He asked a boy (White’s brother) to pick it up, but the lad refused to touch it. At the end of the flour bin stood a china basin, and this the doctor saw rise into the air as high as some flitches of bacon near the ceiling, and then it fell at his feet, breaking into fragments. A movement of the lid of the far end compartment of the bin attracted the doctor’s attention, and, exclaiming that someone was in the bin, he stepped forward, raised the lid, only to find it quite empty.
After remarking that these were strange proceedings, and that the devil must be in the house, Dr Lloyd went home. After various other manifestations, all became quiet in the house by a few minutes after one o’clock. Police-constable Higgs remained for a couple of hours longer, but none of the inmates went to bed.
Next morning, soon after seven o’clock, further disturbances began to take place, and as the news spread people flocked to the house. Respecting what took place up to nine o’clock on Saturday morning, Mr Arthur Currass, a respectable working man, says: – “I heard of what had taken place, and went to White’s house. After standing talking with him at the yard fence, during which I could hear things knocking about in the house, White asked me to go in. I went in and followed White into the front room, where the bed is, to see the broken articles lying on the floor. I noticed a clock hanging on the wall over the foot of the bed, and while White was showing me the chest of drawers I was startled by a loud crash behind, and on turning my head found that the clock had left the wall, and was lying on the floor in front of the fireplace some yards away, with its end knocked out. We went back into the house, and I saw a pot ornament, a dog, jump off the mantelpiece on to the floor, and break. This was followed by a cream jug, which jumped off the table on to the floor, and was also broken.”
During the remainder of the day nothing further took place till a short time after four o’clock, when a number of bottles, which had been placed on the mantelpiece in the inner room, were seen to fall down and break, and a lamp glass was thrown about, but not broken.
On Saturday night, about eleven o’clock, a large crowd began to congregate outside White’s house, and inside about 20 persons assembled for the purpose of seeing whatever manifestations might take place. Some of these were gentlemen of position in Worksop, who had come with the object of fathoming the mystery if possible. Round the fire were grouped White and his family, the next-door neighbours, and some of his friends. A low fire burnt in the grate, and the room was lit up by a solitary “dip.” Whether there were too many present for the “spirits” it is impossible to say, but there were no “manifestations” beyond a stone thrown through the front window by one of the crowd outside.
At half-past one White volunteered a statement to the effect that he knew how it was nothing was taking place. He said that “she” who had been living in the house all the week was not present. He alluded to the girl who had been staying with them. Hehad been told by someone that this strange girl had “overlooked” the house, and consequently he had sent her away at half-past four o’clock the previous afternoon, after which nothing further had taken place. Upon this statement, a general exodus ensued, and, but for White’s statement, the mystery remains a mystery still.
Up to Sunday evening, there had been no further manifestations. During the day, thousands of persons visited the vicinity of White’s house, and occupied themselves in discussing the incidents that had taken place in connection with what is now spoken of as “Joe White’s ghost.”
Mansfield Reporter, 9th March 1883.
https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000484/18830310/054/0008
quiet cynicism
Mysterious affair at Worksop. Spirit rapping extraordinary.
The town of Worksop was in an upraor on Saturday, consequent on the circulation of a report that the household goods of a man named Joseph White, a well-known dealer, were being smashed and removed by an unseen agency. All day large crowds of excited persons wended their way towards the part of the town called the New Building Ground, where White’s house stands – a semi-detached building in St. John’s-road – drawn thither by the exaggerated accounts of the mysterious occurrences.
It appears that on Thursday night about eleven o’clock, the family, with the exception of the husband, Joseph White and the boy George, were partaking of supper when three raps came at the door leading into the yard at the back of the house, which were immediately repeated as though answered by some person standing inside the room.
Other noises were heard on the stairs as though certain articles were being thrown down. On examination being made some clothes peges were found at the foot of the stairs; and next morning the boy George, who was in bed at the time, was charged with endeavouring to frighten the people downstairs. He protested his innocence and the matter dropped.
On the following night, the husband being at home and George in bed, as they were preparing to put out the light similar raps were heard, and a corkscrew came rattling downstairs. Immediately the cups and plates upon the table began to rattle, and a cut glass salt cellar was violently hurled against the yard door. A few minutes afterwards it again bounded against the door and was broken to pieces. Then the ornaments on the mantelpiece were agitated, adn the pictures on the walls shook on their hanging strings.
It was now midnight, and nearly all the crockery in the cupboards had been broken by being dashed to the floor. All the articles were thrown in the direction of the door, and when that was opened the cup of milk, knives, &c., were precipitated into the yard.White sells milk, and the milk cans went up and downstairs twice or thrice, but strange to say no one was hit or in any way injured. Black coals, but burning hot, came downstairs, and the whole house was like a demon’s den. The household removed into the relative’s next door, taking several valuable things with them.
On Saturday night a crowd of men occupied the house, and no further manifestations took place.
Newark Herald, 10th March 1883.
The freaks of the Worksop “spirits” are very amusing from an outsider’s point of view, but I dare say Mr White is glad they have ceased, at any rate for a time. To see your pieces of crockery flying from the shelves, and smashing into fragments on the floor, is far from soothing, and I don’t wonder that Mr White summarily ordered the young woman, whom he suspected of being nearly connected with these “spirit visitations,” to quit his house at once.
How the mystery – for it certainly seems to be a real mystery – will end I don’t pretend to say, but if it is ever discovered to have been a practical joke, the persons who practised it deserve to be punished. Practical jokes of this kind are relics of barbarism, and should be put down with a strong hand. People now-a-days are not very superstitious, and have ceased to be afraid of ugly old women who keep black cats, but still it may be confessed that ‘All these strange noises of things out of sight / Do make one feel something like fear.’
If strange noises give one such sensations, how much worse must it be to hear the bones which were left at dinner walking upstairs, or to see your clock get off its bracket and come down smash on the floor? Spirits are certainly very objectionable when they carry things so far as this, and if these “spirits” can be identified with certain bodily forms, these said forms should be made to smart for it. At least I’d make ’em if I were Mr White.
Sheffield Independent, 10th March 1883.
A Ghost.
Worksop is troubled with a ghost, a real, genuine, blood-curdling, unpleasant apparition. The ghost made its appearance, or rather we should say, made itself felt, at the shop of a general dealer. The manifestations of ghostly presence were somewhat peculiar. Dishes leapt from their moorings on the shelves, waltzed about the room, and broke in pieces on the floors. A china dog came off the mantelpiece with a “whirr” (whatever that may be), and landed on the top of a Dutch clock. After the delf racks had been going on in this fashion for some time, the general dealer’s family fled.
A police-constable went inside the house to see what was the matter, and before he had been in three minutes he had been the target for nearly the whole of a dinner service. A doctor followed him, and a basin found a resting-place on his head. He fled with lightning-like speed. The house is now considered to be hopelessly haunted. One peculiar feature in the case is said to be the fact that the general dealer who now rents the buildings very strongly desires to purchase them, but has not yet been able to come to terms with his landlord. “Haunted houses,” however, sometimes go at a cheap rate. Perhaps the dealer will now be lucky enough to get a bargain. Perhaps, too, when the deed is complete the ghost may be laid.
Tamworth Herald, 10th March 1883.
More truth about ghosts.
The town of Worksop has for several days been in a state of wild excitement, owing to the uproarious and disorderly proceedings of a “real ghost” in the house of a general dealer of that town named White. On Thursday night a corkscrew, being accustomed to opening things, opened the ball by leaping off a table to the back of the kitchen fire. Dishes leapt upon the floor, jumping up and down till they broke to pieces. After this a china dog jumped off the mantelshelf without a growl, and the fun became fast and furious. The White family fled, and the neighbours collected outside. Police Constable Higgs arrived, and a glass jar immediately flew out of a cupboard and across the yard. Dr Lloyd then came in, but, when a basin nearly fell upon his head, departed, opining that “the devil’s in the house.” It now remains, therefore, for the Society of Psychical Research to send down some trusted member of their Haunted Houses Committee to interview the witnesses afresh, and to give us their rationale of the occurrences. If such visits are to become common, it is to be hoped that the ghosts will confine their operations to the houses of general dealers and users of delf, for the effect in a house where blue china is highly esteemed would be simply heart-rending. Nothing would be better calculated to drive the patient across the narrow boundary line which separates chinamania from lunacy. But until the Society for Psychical Research has concluded its investigations the best rule of conduct for the possessors of valuable breakables would be to avoid the peculiar relations in which the general dealer White appears to have stood with regard to his landlord. He wanted to buy the house, and he wanted to buy it very cheap. A well-established ghost of destructive tendencies is a wonderful thing for lowering the price of a house; so it is just possible that the Worksop ghost has somehow been actuated by ordinary mundane motives.
Dundee Evening Telegraph, 13th March 1883.
Report on the Worksop Disturbances. By F. Podmore. April 11th, 1883.
At the beginning of March, 1883, the Retford and Gainsborough Times and other local papers gave accounts of some remarkable disturbances which had occurred in the first two or three days of the month, at the house of a small horse-dealer in Worksop, named Joe White. One or two members of the Society entered into communication with the principal persons named in the newspaper reports, and with a friend in the neighbourhood, who very kindly took some trouble in inquiring into the matter for the Society. But it soon became obvious that, as nearly all the witnesses of the occurrences related were of the humbler class, and unable, therefore, to write a connected account of what had happened, the best way to arrive at the truth of the matter was for one of us to go in person to make inquiries.
Accordingly, at the request of the Haunted House Committee, I went down to Worksop on the afternoon of Saturday, April 7th, with the intention of inspecting the actual scene of the occurrences, and of personally interrogating the principal witnesses; in order, if possible, to arrive at some rational explanation of the business. I spent the Saturday evening and the whole of the following day in my inquiries, and have, I think, obtained as intelligible and trustworthy a history of the matter as the lapse of time, the nature of the phenomena themselves, and the character of the witnesses will permit.
I derived my information from seven principal eye-witnesses of the disturbances, whom I interrogated, with the single exception of White himself, separately. I wrote out the statement of each witness in full immediately after the interview, and the three most important witnesses, Higgs, Currass, and White, subsequently read through my notes and signed them. The depositions of these three persons are printed in full below. My time was too short to allow a second interview with the four other principal witnesses, and I was unable, therefore, to obtain their signatures to the depositions; but I have incorporated the statements of all the principal witnesses in my report.
Besides the seven chiefly concerned, I questioned, in presence of White and his wife, three or four other witnesses of the disturbances, viz., White’s brother Tom, a bright-looking lad of 18 or 20; Solomon Wass and his wife, next-door neighbours of the Whites, the former an ordinary North countryman of the lower class, the latter a pleasant-looking, intelligent woman; and George Ford (Buck Ford), a man of about 28. From these I obtained general confirmation of the various incidents, as described by White, Higgs, &c., at which they had themselves been present; but time did not permit of much cross-questioning, nor of taking down their evidence in full.
White’s house has been built, according to his own statement, about seven years. He has only resided in it three years. I was unable to discover anything about the former occupants. The house stands at the other end of a piece of waste land, called the New Building Ground, with another house or cottage attached; the nearest separate building being a public-house, about 100 yards off. With that exception, there are no other buildings within about 200 yards.
The following sketch will illustrate the general plan of the house: –
There is no entrance to the house by the front, the front door being locked, and the joints secured with paper from the inside. Entrance is obtained by a covered passage, open at either end, which separates the two houses, and gives access immediately to a yard, surrounded on one side by high palings, and on the other three by piggeries, stables, and the two houses. The plan of the ground-floor of White’s house is apparent from the accompanying sketch. The kitchen is about 15 ft. square. The upper floor is divided into two rooms, the back one, corresponding to the kitchen, being used as a bedroom for Tom and the children; the front one as a store-house for bacon, horse-furniture, and various odds and ends. There is also a garret above this, into which I did not enter, it being at the time full of bacon in salt. The whole house, not excepting the bedrooms, is hung with bacon, the very staircase being lined with it, so that I had to draw my coat close to me in going up. A large part of the bacon, as I was told by White, had gone bad during the period of the disturbances.
The front or inner room on the ground-floor was an ordinary room, like all the rest of the house half filled with bacon, and containing, besides bedroom furniture, a large beer-barrel on trestles; everything in it filthily dirty.
I looked all over the house in daylight, but could discern no holes in the walls or ceilings, nor any trace of the extensive and elaborate machinery which would have been required to produce the movements by ordinary mechanical means.
The history of the disturbances, as gathered from the various witnesses whom I interrogated, appears to be briefly as follows: –
Nothing remarkable had been seen or heard in the house until about the 20th or 21st February, 1883, when, as Mrs White was alone with two of the children in the kitchen one evening, washing up the tea-things at the table, the table tilted up at a considerable angle; the candle was upset, and the wash-tub only saved Mrs W. holding it. She positively assured me that she exerted no pressure whatever upon the table, and the whole incident struck her as very extraordinary. Her husband made light of it at the time.
On Monday, February 26th, White was absent from home until the Wednesday afternoon. On the Monday his wife allowed a girl, Eliza Rose, the child of an imbecile mother, to come into the house and share her bed at night. White returned on Wednesday night, but left on the following morning until Friday afternoon. During that one night the girl slept on the squab. On Thursday night, March 1st, at about 11 p.m., Tom White went up to bed – the children having gone up some hours before. At about 11.30, Mrs White and Eliza Rose being then alone in the kitchen, various things, such as a corkscrew, clothes-pegs, a salt-cellar, &c., which had been in the kitchen only a few minutes before, came tumbling step by step down the kitchen stairs. Tom positively and solemnly denied having thrown the articles, and the mystery was increased when, at least 20 minutes after he had gone upstairs, no one having left the room in the interval, some hot coals were thrown down.
On the following night, March 2nd, at about the same hour – White, Mrs White, and Rose being in the kitchen – a noise was heard as of some one coming down the passage between the two houses, and stopping just outside the outer door. White told Rose to open the door, but she was too frightened to do so. Then they heard a surcingle and immediately afterwards some pieces of carpet thrown down the stairs. Then followed some knives and forks and other things. The girl picked them up; but they followed still faster. White then left the room to go up to Tom. During his absence one of the ornaments flew off the mantelpiece into the corner of the room near the door. Nothing was seen by the two women; but they heard it fall, and found it there. Their screams summoned White down; as he entered the room his candle went out, and something struck him on the forehead. The girl picked up the candle – which appears to have left the candlestick – and two new ones which had not been in th ehouse previously, from the ground; and as soon as a candle was lit, a little china woman left the mantelpiece, and fell into the corner, where it was seen by White. As soon as it was replaced it flew across the room again, and was broken.
Other things followed, and the women being very frightened, and White thinking that the disturbances presaged the death of his child, who was very ill with an abscess in the back, sent Tom (who was afraid to go alone) with Ford to fetch the doctor. Mrs White meanwhile took one of the children next door. Rose approached the inner room to fetch another, when things immediately began to fly about and smash themselves in that room. After this all appear to have been absent from the house for a short time. White then returned, with Higgs, a policeman, and, whilst they were alone in the kitchen, standing near the door, a glass jar flew out of the cupboard into the yard; a tumbler also fell from the chest of drawers in the kitchen, when only Higgs was near it. Both then went into the inner room, and found the chest of drawers there turned up on end and smashed. On their return they found Rose, Wass, and Tom White in the kitchen (? and Mrs Wass), and all saw a cream jug, which Rose had just placed on the bin, fly four feet up in the air and smash on the floor. Dr Lloyd and Mrs White then entered, and in the presence of all these witnesses, a basin was seen to rise slowly from the bin – no prson being near it except Dr Lloyd and Higgs. It touched the ceiling, and then fell suddenly to the floor, and was smashed. This was at 12 p.m. All then left except Tom White and his brother. The disturbances continued until about 2 a.m., when all grew quiet, and the Whites slept. At about 8 a.m., on Saturday, the 3rd, the disturbances began again.
White left the kitchen to attend to some pigs; and, in his absence, Mrs White and Rose were left alone in the kitchen. A nearly empty port wine bottle leaped up from the table about four feet into the air, and fell into a bucket of milk, standing on the table, from which Mrs White was filling some jugs, &c.
Then Currass appears to have been attracted to the scene. He entered with White, young Wass, and others, and viewed the inner room. They had but just returned to the kitchen, leaving the inner room empty, and the door of communication open, when the American clock, which hung over the bed, was heard to strike. (It had not done so for 18 months previously). A crash was then heard, and Currass, who was nearest the door, looked in, and found that the clock had fallen over the bed – about four feet broad – and was lying on the floor.*
(*It will be noted that there is a discrepancy between White’s and Currass’ version of this incident. Mrs White, however, confirmed her husband’s account; and I have little doubt that the statement in the text is substantially accurate. Currass is more likely than White to have been mistaken in his recollection of White’s position at the time; and Currass’ account of his own position does not differ greatly from that given by White. The material point, and on eon which both witnesses are agreed, is that no one saw the clock fall. Currass’ written statement is not clear on this point, but he told me viva voce that his attention was drawn to what had taken place by hearing the crash. He only then turned round and saw the clock lying on the floor. – F.P., April, 1883.
Shortly afterwards – no one being near it – a china dog flew off the mantelpiece, and smashed itself in the corner near the door. Currass and some others then left.
Some plates, a cream-jug, and other things, then flew up in the air, and smashed themselves in view of all who were in the kitchen – Rose, the Whites, and Mrs Wass.
White then lay down on the sofa; but disturbances continued during his siesta. In particular, some pictures on the wall next the pantry began to move, but were taken down at once by his brother. At about 2 p.m. a Salvation Army woman came in, and talked to White. Rose only was with them in the kitchen. A candlestick flew from the bin, and fell behind the Salvation Army woman, as she stood near the pantry door. She left the room in terror.
Other things followed at intervals. A full medicine bottle fell without breaking. An empty medicine bottle and a lamp-glass fell and broke themselves. It was then about 4 p.m., and White could stand it no longer. He told the girl she must go; she did in fact leave before 5 p.m. After her departure nothing whatever of an abnormal character took place, and the house has remained undisturbed up to the present time.
With regard to the positions of the persons present, in relation to the objects moved, it may be stated generally that there was no possibility in most cases of the objects having been thrown by hand. It will be seen, on reference to the depositions of the witnesses which are appended, that the objects were frequently moved in a remote corner of the room, or even in an adjoining room. Moreover, the character of the movements, in many cases, was such as to preclude the possibility of the objects having been thrown.
Of course the obvious explanation of these occurrences is trickery on the part of some of the persons present. In regard to this, it seems to me a matter of very little significance that most of the educated people in Worksop believe White himself to have caused the disturbance. For most educated persons, as we know, would not be ready to admit any other than a mechanical explanation, and if such an explanation be adopted, White, the owner of the house, a man of considerable intelligence, whose record was not entirely clean, and who was himself present on the occasion of nearly all the disturbances, must obviously be the agent. But whilst believing White to be at the bottom of the matter, none of the persons with whom I conversed were prepared with any explanation of his modus operandi. That he should have thrown the things was universally admitted to be impossible. And beyond this, I could discover little more than an unquestioning faith in the omnipotence of electricity.
No one professed to have any idea of what mechanical means could have been employed, or how they could have been adapted to the end in view. Still less did any one pretend to have discovered any indications in the house itself of any machinery having been used. Moreover, there was a total absence of any apparent motive on White’s part, supposing him to have been capable of effecting the movements himself. Whilst he was unquestionably a considerable loser – to the extent of nearly £9 as estimated by himself, though this estimate is probably exaggerated – by the articles broken, he appears to have reaped no corresponding advantage. The one motive which I heard suggested – if we disregard a report in one newspaper, subsequently contradicted in another, to the effect that White was anxious to buy the house, and to buy it cheap – was that he produced the disturbances in fulfilment of a sporting bet. But I saw no reason to regard this explanation as anything but a scholium evolved by some ingenious commentator from the facts themselves.
Again, had White himself been the principal agent in the matter, it is clear that he must have had at least two confederates, for he was not himself present during the disturbances on the Thursday night – which might, indeed, have been caused by his brother Tom – nor was either he or his brother present during some of the occurrences on the following day. Moreover, these confederates must not only have been extremely skilful, but they must have been capable of more than ordinary reticence and self-control. For it is remarkable that, with the single exception of the statements made by the girl Rose, no one professed to have heard even a hint from White himself, from his brother, or from any other, of any trickery in the matter.
Morevoer, it is hard to conceive by what mechanical appliances, under the circumstances described, the movements could have been effected. The clock, for instance – a heavy American one – was thrust out from the wall in a horizontal direction, so as apparently to clear a 4ft. bedstead which lay immediately beneath it, and the nail from which it depended remained in situ on the wall. The objects thrown about in the kitchen moved generally, but by no means always, in the direction of the outer door. And it is noticeable that, in most cases, they do not appear to have been thrown, but in some manner borne or wafted across the room; for, though they fell on a stone floor 15 ft. or 16 ft. distant, they were often unbroken, and were rarely shivered. And it is impossible to reconcile the account given of the movement of some other objects, variously described as “jerky,” “twirling,” and “turning over and over,” with the supposition that the objects depended on any fixed support, or were in any way suspended.
Lastly, to suppose that these various objects were all moved by mechanical contrivances argues incredible stupidity, amounting almost to imbecility, on the part of all the persons present who were not in theplot. That the movement of the arms necessary to set the machinery in motion should have passed unobserved on each and every occasion by all the witnesses, is almost impossible. Not only so, but Currass, Higgs, and Dr Lloyd, all independent observers, assured me that they examined some of the objects which had been moved, immediately after the occurrence, with the express intention of discovering, if possible, any clue to an explanation of the matter, but entirely failed to do so. These men were not over-credulous; they certainly were not wanting in intelligence; and they were not, any of them, prepossessed in favour of White. But they each admitted that they could discover no possible explanation of the disturbances, and were fairly bewildered by the whole matter.
Statement of Joe White. A fair witness. I think that he always intended to speak the truth, but that occasionally his memory proved treacherous. In all important points, however, he was corroborated by his wife (an excellent witness), Higgs, and Currass. – F. P.
I returned home about 7 on the Friday night (March 2nd). I had been absent from home on Monday and Tuesday nights: and it was during my absence that my wife took in the girl Rose, who shared her bed in the front inner room. I slept at home on Wednesday, and the girl then slept on the squab in the kitchen. I left again on Thursday morning, and returned as mentioned on the Friday.
When told by my wife and Tom what had happened on Thursday night, I said some one must have been tricking, and didn’t think much more about it. But I chaffed the lass (Rose) a good deal, for she was much frightened. About 11.30 on Friday evening, when my wife, the girl, and I were alone in the kitchen, just going up to bed, I heard a noise as if some one had come down the passage between the two houses, and were standing just outside our door. They didn’t knock; but I said to Rose, “Go and see who’s there.” But she was frightened and didn’t go. Then presently, a lot of things came rattling down the stairs. I don’t know what came first: but a lot of things came – a surcingle, bits of carpet, knives and forks, a corkscrew, &c. The girl went to pick them up, and put them on the table, and just as fast as she put them on more things came down. Then my wife said to me, “The salt cellar came down last night, but you won’t have it down to-night, for here it is on the table.” She was using it at the time for salting Tom’s dinner for next day. She had hardly said this, when the salt cellar flew off from the table, and into the corner near the outer door. Rose was in that corner, and not near the table: my wife was at the table, but certainly didn’t touch the cellar.
I saw the thing go, though I couldn’t believe my eyes. My wife didn’t see it go, but we both saw it as it struck the wall in the corner. All the salt was spilled out of it. I fairly couldn’t believe my own eyes; but I couldn’t help thinking it must be Tom. So I went upstairs to him, and told him to leave off. “Thou’lt frighten our Liz to death.” He said, “It’s not me, Joe. I’ll take my oath it isn’t. I’ve never thrown nowt down.” While I was still talking to him, I heard a crash downstairs; and the women screamed; and my wife cried, “Come down, Joe.” As I was just coming into the room the candle which I held in my hand went out – I don’t know how at all – and we were left in darkness, except for the firelight. Then something hit me on the forehead, and I cried out, “Who threw that?” Then there was a crash in the corner. I found out when we had a light again that the salt cellar had fallen again into the corner, and broken itself. Then I found out that the candle was not in the candlestick, and asked where it was. I told the girl to look for it, and then she felt among the things at the bottom of the stairs and picked up three candles, two of them quite new. We had only had two candles in the house (Mrs White expressly confirmed this – F.P.) which had been bought just before, and both had been partly burnt. I lit the old ones and left the new ones on the table; but they disappeared afterwards, and I have never seen them since.
When the candle was lit again, I saw the little china woman jump off from the mantelpiece, and go into the same corner. It fell on its side, and then righted itself, and stood upright, unbroken. I distinctly saw it go through the air; it passed near me as I stood about the middle of the room. None of us were near the mantelpiece. I picked it up, and presently it fell into the corner again, and broke itself. Then the tea-caddy and the candlestick, all from the mantelpiece, followed. Then I went out and found George Ford (“Buck” Ford), and asked him to fetch Dr Lloyd for the child – for they had told me that all this disturbance meant the death of the child, who was very ill with an abscess in its back.
Then I got my wife to take the little lad out, and lay him next door, he lying on the squab in the kitchen at the time. (Mrs W. denied this, and said he was in the inner room. – F.P.) Rose went with her, and they took all the children with them. Before going, Rose had to go into the inner room, and then things began to fly about there and make a disturbance. All had been quiet there before.
I went after the others into the next house and stayed there some little time. When I came back, I found Police-constable Higgs in the kitchen. He and I were alone there. (Rose all this time was next door.) We heard a crash in the inner room, and we went in – Solomon Wass and Tom, who had just entered, with us, and Higgs with his lantern, – and we found the chest of drawers turned up on end, and the lustres and looking-glass, and everything else that had been on it, in pieces on the floor. Then we came back into the kitchen, and we saw the cupboard door open, and a big glass jar flew out, and flew into the yard and broke itself. Also some things flew off the bin at the side of the door, from the end near the fire; and they pitched in the corner, and then went out in the yard. Things often pitched on the floor by the door first, and then got up again and flew out into the yard.
Then Dr Lloyd came in with my wife, and Higgs showed him what had happened in the inner room. Then when we had got into the kitchen again, and were all standing near the door of the inner room – Higgs, my wife, and Tom, and Wass, and Lloyd – who was about six feet from the bin, and the nearest to it of our party – we all saw a basin which was lying on the bin near the door, get up two or three times in the air, rising slowly a few inches or perhaps a foot, and then falling plump. (Mrs W. corroborated this, and so did Mr Wass, the next-door neighbour, who was also present. – F. P.) Then it got up higher, and went slowly, wobbling as it went, up to the ceiling, and when it reached the ceiling, it fell down all at once, and broke itself*
(*During this scene the room was lighted by one candle, Higgs’s lantern, and a blazing fire; so that the light was pretty good.)
Dr Lloyd then looked in the bin, saying the devil must be in the house, and then left. All the others shortly afterwards left, Mrs W., Rose and the children stopping in the next house. Tom and I sat in the chair on either side of the fire until the next morning at 8 a.m. Things kept on moving every now and then until about 2 a.m., and then was all quiet, and we got to sleep a bit. At about 8 a.m. I had to go out to see after a pig which had been pigging, and then things began again; and a lot of folks came in to see about it. Currass came in, and I went with him into the inner room and showed him the chest of drawers, he and I alone; we came out leaving the door open – I am quite sure it was open – and I was sitting near the fire, and Currass was just inside the kitchen, not far from the open door, when Wass’s little lad, who was sitting at the table, said, “There’s the clock striking,” meaning the big clock which hung over our bed. I couldn’t hear it, and I said it was a lie. Just then we heard a crash, and I asked what it was, and Currass looked round, and said it was the American clock had fallen right across the bed, and lay on the floor at the foot, with its bottom knocked out. Then I took it into the yard. I think – indeed I am sure, that Coulter was not here when all this happened. The other clock fell and was broken, but whether before or after I cannot remember; and he may have seen that. I don’t remember where the girl Rose was when the American clock fell. She may have been in the kitchen, but she certainly wasn’t in the inner room; no one was in that room, I am sure. I don’t remember saying just at that time, though I often did say, that wherever she went the things smashed.
After that, Currass and I and one or two others were standing near to the outer door talking, when the china dogs, or one of them, flew off the mantelpiece and smashed; and lots of things kept on flying into the corner and smashing. I saw one of the dogs leave the mantelpiece and go through the air. I don’t remember exactly when Coulter came; he may have been here when the china dog was smashed, but I don’t remember that he was. Then a cream jug fell off the table; it had done so four or five times without smashing. At last I filled it with milk, and had placed it on the bin, when it suddenly fell off and smashed, and the milk was all spilt.
Then I was tired, and lay down on the squab; but things kept moving. I was told some pictures on the wall began to move, but I didn’t see them. At about 2 p.m., a Salvation Army woman came in and was talking to me as I lay on the squab; she stood near the inner door; Rose was near the outer door, having brought in some carpet. There were two candlesticks on the bin, at the end near the fireplace. Suddenly something dropped behind the Salvation Army woman. No one saw it going through the air; but we turned round and found that it was one of the brass candlesticks. It was half balanced on the small end where the candle goes, and was wobbling about on the end. Then the Salvation woman said, “I must go;” and she went.
Then a little after, when Rose was going to lay down the carpet, and no one else in the room, a medicine bottle, full, fell from the bin on to the roll of carpet, about three or four yards off, and was broken. A lamp-glass had fallen several times without breaking; but at last that fell and broke. Then an empty bottle flew off from the mantelpiece. That was one of the last things that happened. Well then, I couldn’t stand it any longer. Wherever the lass seemed to go, things seemed to fly about. So I said to her, “You’ll have to go.” She began to roar. But my wife gave her some tea, and she went. That was between 4 and 5 p.m., very soon after the last disturbance. Nothing happened after she left. We sat up in the kitchen that evening, a lot of us, as the newspapers tell; but nothing happened at all.
I have been in the house three years. I think the house had been built four or five years before that. Nothing of the kind had ever happened in it before, as far as I know, except that once I thought I heard some one moving in the yard, and fancied it might be some one after the fowls; but there was no one there; and there was that strange tilting of the table when my wife was washing up the things about a week before.
The Wasses and the Willises (Mrs Willis is Wass’s sister) had lived together in the next house; but since all these disturbances, the Willises have left the house; but Mr and Mrs Wass are still there.
(Signed) Joseph White. New Building Ground, Worksop, April 8th, 1883.
Statement of Police Constable Higgs. A man of good intelligence, and believed to be entirely honest. Fully alive, as becomes his official position, to White’s indifferent reputation, but unable to account for what he saw. – F.P.
On the night of Friday, March 2nd, I heard of the disturbances at Joe White’s house from his younger brother, Tom. I went round to the house at 11.55 p.m., as near as I can judge, and found Joe White in the kitchen of his house. There was one candle lighted in the room, and a good fire burning, so that one could see things pretty clearly. The cupboard doors were open, and White went and shut them, and then came and stood against the chest of drawers. I stood near the outer door. No one else was in the room at the time. White had hardly shut the cupboard doors when they flew open, and a large glass jar came out past me, and pitched in the yard outside, smashing itself. I didn’t see the jar leave the cupboard, or fly through the air; it went too quick. But I am quite sure that it wasn’t thrown by White or any one else. White couldn’t have done it without my seeing him. The jar couldn’t go in a straight line from the cupboard out of the door; but it certainly did go.
Then White asked me to come and see the things which had been smashed in the inner room. He led the way and I followed. As I passed the chest of drawers in the kitchen I noticed a tumbler standing on it. Just after I passed I heard a crash, and looking round, I saw that the tumbler had fallen on the ground in the direction of the fireplace, and was broken. I don’t know how it happened. There was no one else in the room.
I went to the inner room, and saw the bits of pots and things on the floor, and then I came back with White into the kitchen. The girl Rose had come into the kitchen during our absence. She was standing with her back against the bin near the fire. There was a cup standing on the bin, rather nearer the door. She said to me, “Cup’ll go soon; it has been down three times already.” She then pushed it a little farther on the bin, and turned round and stood talking to me by the fire. She had hardly done so, when the cup jumped up suddenly about four or five feet into the air, and then fell on the floor and smashed itself. White was sitting on the other side of the fire.
Then Mrs White came in with Dr Lloyd; also Tom White and Solomon Wass. After they had been in two or three minutes, something else happened. Tom White and Wass were standing with their backs to the fire, just in front of it. Eliza Rose and Dr Lloyd were near them, with their backs turned towards the bin, the Doctor nearer the door. I stood by the drawers, and Mrs White was by me near the inner door. Then suddenly a basin, which stood on the end of the bin near the door, got up into the air, turning over and over as it went. It went up not very quickly, not as quickly as if it had been thrown. When it reached the ceiling it fell plump and smashed. I called Dr Lloyd’s attention to it, and we all saw it. No one was near it, and I don’t know how it happened. I stayed about ten minutes more, but saw nothing else. I don’t know what to make of it all. I don’t think White or the girl could possibly have done the things which I saw.
(Signed) William Higgs, G.E. 30. April 10th, 1883.
Statement of Arthur Currass, coal miner; a Methodist, and apparently a very steady, respectable man. Believed that White did it, but couldn’t guess how it was done. – F.P.
I had to go out on the Saturday morning (March 3rd) to get some swill for the pig, about 8.15 a.m. I passed by White’s house, and hearing a disturbance, I looked over the railings, and White said to me, “There’s something in the house that’s breaking all afore it.” I asked him what it were, and he told me to come and see. I got over the railings, and I followed White into his own house. He took me into the front place where the clock was hanging over the bed’s head, and was showing me a nest of drawers, where his suit of clothes came out of the bottom drawer into the top one but one. While I was looking at the drawer, and the broken pots there was lying there, the clock by some means came from the wall, slantingwise about seven feet, and dropped clear of the bed’s foot on to the floor. It had been fastened up on the wall, near the bed’s head, and it fell between the bed’s foot and the door. I said, “What is that?” White said, “It’s something else smashed.” I turned round and saw that it was the clock. The nail still remained in the wall.
The girl Rose was coming out of the kitchen towards the inner door, but had not got quite up to it. She seemed to be much frightened. White said to me, “It doesn’t matter a damn where that lass goes, there’s something smashes.” The clock was taken right away into the yard and placed on an empty cask, and there it stayed. White and I were alone in the front room wheen the clock fell. White and I then went into the back kitchen, and I remained about four feet from the outer door, with my face towards the fireplace. I then saw a pot dog leap from the mantelpiece, and come within about five feet of the pantry door and break, passing close to me. There was nothing attached to it, and there was no one near it. I then began to move away, and just then Coulter appeared. This would be between 8.30 and 8.45 a.m. Coulter had not come before whilst I was there, and had certainly not been present when the clock and the dog were broken. The clock was in the yard when he came, and I showed it him there.
(Signed) Arthur Currass. John Street, Worksop, April 8th, 1883.
I have given the evidence in this instance at considerable, – perhaps tedious, – length, because, of all the cases which have been investigated by representatives of the Society, it is, as it stands, one of the most difficult to harmonise with any explanation by ordinary material causes. The concordant testimony of so many honest and fairly intelligent persons certainly produced, as will have been seen from my report, a strong impression on my mind at the time. Nor do I see reason now to question my original estimate of their intelligence and good faith. If my verdict on the Worksop disturbances in 1896 differs from that which I gave in 1883, it is because many things have happened since, which have taught us to discount testimony in matters of this kind.
For it will be seen that the value of these reports, as testifying to the operation of some supernormal agency, depends wholly upon two assumptions, first, that the various witnesses – imperfectly educated persons, not skilled in accurate observation of any kind – correctly described what they saw: and second, that after an interval of more than five weeks, during which time the experiences had been discussed and compared and gaped at by every village fireside, and in the public press, they correctly remembered what they described. But in the course of the 13 years which have passed since I wrote my report, we have received some striking object-lessons demonstrating the incapacity of the ordinary unskilled observer to detect trickery or sleight-of-hand: and we have learnt to distrust the accuracy of the unaided memory in recording feats of this kind, especially when performed under circumstances of considerable excitement.
And, indeed, if we scrutinise the account as it stands, we shall find various discrepancies and contradictions in the evidence. (1) Thus, according to White, Higgs and he went into the front room first, to see the damage done there, and on their return to the kitchen a glass jar flew out of the cupboard. But according to Higgs’ version, it was after seeing the glass jar fly through the air that White and he went into the inner room. (2) White’s account is that two or three witnesses were present when the glass jar flew out; Higgs says, “that no one else was in the room at the time.” (3) There seems to be a doubt as to whether Rose entered the kitchen during Higgs’ visit. White does not mention her entrance at all. Higgs says they found her in the kitchen on their return from the inner room. (4) Currass says he was in the inner room on the morning of the 3rd when the clock fell. White says that Currass was in the kitchen. (5) Again, White cannot remember where Rose was at the time of the incident; whilst Currass says that she was near the inner door. (6) White and Currass agree that Coulter was not present when the American clock fell and was smashed. Now Coulter, whom I saw, and who impressed me favourably as an honest man, stated that he was present when the clock fell, and also during the immediately succeeding disturbances in the kitchen. (Coulter’s evidence was omitted from the account given in the text, originally printed in the Journal of the Society, as I did not at the time sufficiently realise its importance, and came to the conclusion that the man was telling a deliberate falsehood.)
Such are some of the discrepancies which appear in the evidence even as prepared and taken down from the lips of the witnesses by a too sympathetic reporter. It is probable that more and more serious discrepancies and contradictions would have been found if ther had been no speculation and consultation and comparison in the interval of five weeks; and if each witness at the end of that time had written an independent account of the incidents.
It would be idle, in the circumstances and at this distance, to speculate on the real cause of these disturbances. But it is to be noted that Eliza Rose – the daughter of an imbecile mother – was present, by all accounts, at most of the disturbances; that they began shortly after her entrance to the cottage and ceased with her departure; and that she was regarded by White himself as the prime cause of all that happened. And if one apparently honest witness could describe himself as having seen occurrences that he knew of only by hearsay; if others could be mistaken as to the sequence of important events, and the presence or absence at given times of particular persons; it is perhaps not unreasonable to conjecture that the statements made by White and others that some abnormal movements took place during Rose’s absence may have been incorrect, and that Rose herself, as the instrument of mysterious agencies, or simply as a half-witted girl gifted with abnormal cunning and love of mischief, may have been directly responsible for all that took place.
‘Poltergeists’ by Frank Podmore, in Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, v12 (1896-7).
The following phenomena were reported last year by the Gainsborough News and other English papers:-
“The town of Worksop was in an uproar on Saturday (March 3, 1883), consequent on the circulation of a report that the household goods of a man named Joseph White, a well-known dealer, were being smashed and removed by some unseen agency. All day long crowds of excited people wended their way towards the New Building Ground, where White’s semi-detached house stands, drawn thither by the exaggerated accounts of the mysterious occurrences said to have been witnessed by the inmates and others.
… As I entered the door I myself saw an Oxford frame slip out of the rocking-chair. I told the boy to pick it up; and he said he dare not. After hearing what the folks had to say, I was joining in the conversation, when a basin which had stood on the meal-bin suddenly began to rise in a slanting direction over my head and then fell at my feet, smashing into bits. I then left, thinking the affair very strange. I had not the slightest belief in the supernatural. I cannot account for what I saw. No one was nearer to the basin than myself, and, as far as I saw, there was no cause for the phenomenon. The room was dimly lighted by a candle.
… Wew were talking about the things, and the doctor was saying ‘It’s a mysterious thing,’ with his back turned to the flour-bin, when a basin which stood on the bin suddenly flew up slanting over the doctor’s head, to where some bacon was hanging on some hooks, and fell straight down and smashed at his feet. The doctor looked in the bin and found nothing, and thinking the devil was in the place, he left and went home. I stayed a short time longer, but nothing further occurred. About half-a-dozen persons were in the room whilst these things happened. As far as I saw, no human agency caused the articles to move and knock about. I have not the slightest belief in anything appertaining to the supernatural.
… White and I went in; I followed him into the front room; and he called my attention to the bare walls, saying that everything except the clock and a stuffed pigeon in a glass case, which remained on their respective nails, had been dashed to the ground and broken. The clock hung over the bed, which was right up in the corner of the room, with the head and one side close to the walls. While White was telling me that the chest of drawers before us had been turned topsy-turvy, we heard a smash, and on turning my head I saw the clock in the middle of the floor, with its end knocked out. It had cleared the bed, and was nearer the fireplace on the opposite side of the room. I was the nearest person to the clock when it hung on the wall. The servant girl opened the door of the room, and came inside just as the clock left the wall. If White or the servant had been instrumental in throwing the clock down, I could not have failed to have detected them.
We went back into the kitchen, and as I stood looking towards the fire, with the girl on my left hand engaged in some household duty, and White on my right hand, I saw a pot-dog ornament, such a one as you see in old people’s houses, smash on the floor in front of me. It had come off the mantelpiece, but I did not see it leave the mantelpiece. The things seemed to fly like lightning, and you only knew they were gone when you saw them broken on the floor. I picked up the broken dog, and closely examined it; but I saw no string nor spring on it, or on or near the mantelpiece or fireplace. Then I saw a cream-jug, which had stood on the table, jump to the floor and smash. I cannot account for the occurrences; and if I had not seen for myself I should not have believed that the removal of articles could have taken place in the way it did.
… White and his family, with the exception of his wife, agree in laying all the blame on the shoulders of the unfortunate girl, alleging that she had ‘over looked’ the house; but all agree in attributing the spiritual demonstration to powers higher than human.
…Our representative on Monday evening interviewed the girl Rose. She says she is eighteen years old; but she is very small, and looks to be not more than fifteen, while physically she appears quite incapable of being the cause of the extraordinary occurrences which took place; nor is there anything in her manner which would induce any one to think she could concoct and carry out such trickery.
…About half past eleven o’clock things in the house began to knock up and down and break themselves without anybody touching them. A pot-dog (i.e., an ornament in shape like a dog, but also a vase) flew off the chimney-piece towards the door. Mrs White picked it up and put it back, when it flew off again and was broken. The girl was then at the bin, washing up pots, and Mrs White was finishing baking, and there was no one in the room besides Mr White, Mrs White ,and the girl. The brass candlesticks next flew off the mantelpiece, going towards the back-door. Everything flew towards that door.
… All sorts of theories are put forward to account for the occurrences – galvanic batteries, animal magnetism; while some incomprehensible mediums are mentioned as causes by the ignorant, who know not that glass and earthenware are non-conductors of electricity.”
Although it is possible a few of the Worksop people read Scott’s “Rob Roy,” and learned thereby that there is a Highland parish of Balquhidder, somewhere not very far from the Clachan of Aberfoyle, we are quite sure that none of them ever heard of the strange manifestations which took place in and about a shepherd’s house in the Braes of Balquhidder, about the beginning of the present century, and which were witnessed at different times by a great number of people who came from different places in the neighbourhood, to watch and try to solve the mystery. The Balquhidder manifestations were of exactly the same kind as those reported in the above Worksop story. The cause of them was never found out. The Highlanders of that day believed in ghosts of the old-fashioned character, but they never before saw such tricks played with missiles, furniture, and everything that could be snatched or thrown as on that occasion.
[…]
in the Northern Chronical and General Advertiser for the North of Scotland, 31st December 1884.
Alleged Assault on a Girl.
John Chambers, 45, blacksmith, was indicted for assaulting and ill-treating Eliza Rose on August 6th. Mr Appleton, barrister, appeared for the prosecution and briefly opened the case, stating that the prisoner was charged with a common assault only.
Eliza Rose said she was employed at the Brickyard Farm, Styrrup. On the night in question she was taking some beef home, when the prisoner accosted her near the Sand Hills, and threw her down. She ran about 50 yards and sat down to rest. He caught her again and assaulted her, slapping her on the face. A whistle then blew, and he ran away.
She went to her mistress’s house, and told her what had occurred. The next morning the police brought the prisoner to her, and she identified him as the man who had assaulted her. She knew a man named Mayfield at Styrrup. She was found in a duck pond on one occasion in an exhausted condition, but did not go there to commit suicide. She did not have fits, but she was queer in her head sometimes. She did not know how she got into the duck pond.
By the prisoner: She did not say when prisoner was brought to her on the first occasion that she thought he was the man, she was sure of it.
Mrs Lucy Emily Cooper also gave evidence.
P.c. Spencer Lobley, of Oldcoates, said he received a description of the prisoner on the 7th, and went to Styrrup where he was working and asked him to go with him to Mr Cooper’s which he did. The girl looked at him, and said, “I believe he is the man.” The prisoner then spoke, and she at once said she knew him by his voice. She recognised him by his voice and features. He received the girl’s hat and dress from her, which were in the condition produced.
Prisoner denied the offence, and said he was never in the girl’s company. Evidence having been given to show that prisoner was elsewhere at the time of the alleged assault.
P.c. Lobley (re-called) said the girl Rose had been in service at a house at Worksop, where there was a scare of a ghost, and the pots and pans were thrown about, but he did not think Rose had anything to do with it, as the pots and pans still continued their performance after she left.
Mr Appleton then addressed a few remarks to the jury in which he asked whether they could rely on the statement of the girl, and whether she might not have been weak in the head on this particular night, as she was on the occasion when she was taken out of the duck pond.
The Chairman summed up the evidence, after which the jury returned a verdict of not guilty, and the prisoner was discharged.
Nottinghamshire Guardian, 29th October 1886.
Flying Furniture
When Worksop was alarmed by ghostly happenings
By the death of Mr Joseph White, of Worksop, old residents are forcibly reminded of the “Ghost Story” which in 1884 caused such a sensation, not only in Worksop and district, but much further afield.
Yesterday, our Worksop representative made inquiries into the subject from several who were intimately acquainted with what took place at the time. One gentleman, now a county magistrate and a member of the Worksop Board of Guardians, said he was present in the house when the strange happenings took place.
In 1884 he said the deceased lived in a small cottage in Sandhill-street, Worksop, about 200 yards from the very large house he subsequently bought and occupied and where he remained till death. He had gone, he said, to the stable to put his pony up, and on his return found a crowd outside. He went inside, and there saw furniture and other articles moving about the house.
First of all a jar of lard went up from the floor to the ceiling and came down again. A pair of valuable vases flew from the front room into the back yard, where they fell and were smashed to atoms, and furniture in all the rooms was moving just as though the things were being moved by hand. This sort of thing continued for several days in the presence of others without any conceivable reason.
The local corps of the Salvation Army came to the house and prayed that the devil might be driven out, and the Rev. G. Dobree, late vicar of St. John’s, Worksop, also prayed in the house that the strange proceedings might cease, and was himself a witness of several of the strange happenings. It was thought at the time that trickery on the part of White was the cause of the extraordinary proceedings, but this is discounted by the fact that White was away from home at the time.
Nottingham Journal, 22nd October 1919.
A noted figure has disappeared from the local stage in Mr Joseph White, of Sandhills House, a personage who was known far and wide, and who, from a most humble beginning, prospered exceedingly in this world’s goods. Mr White’s father and grandfather were Worksop born, and the former was unable to do much for his son in the way of giving him a start in life. As a matter of fact, Joe White, as he was popularly known, never went to a school, and never learned to read or write, though in later years, when fortune began to smile upon him, he acquired the art of signing his own name. From his very early days Mr White was a dealer in old iron, scrap, old horseshoes, and old horses, and these were sought out and purchased by him. Farms and agricultural land and other properties were invested in as his means allowed, so that it is generally supposed that he died a wealthy man. Whether he was or not, Mr White gave no indication by his outward appearance that he was anything more than an ordinary working-man. Fashionable attire made no appeal to him, but no one observing him in the street could pass by without noticing his strong commanding face, and his quiet look of self-possession. If Mr White had not a knowledge of books, he had a wonderful knowledge of men, and any person who hoped to take him down would have to get up very early indeed.
Of course, it is no more possible for us in writing about Mr White to refer to the “Worksop ghost” than it was for Mr Dick to leave out mention of King Charles’s head. In 1883, the house in Sandhill Street, in which Mr White then resided, was the scene of some remarkable phenomena, which have remained more or less inexplicable to this day. These occurrences created an excitement which spread far and wide, and resulted in investigation by an expert of the Psychical Research Society, who came to the conclusion that the case was “one of the most difficult to harmonise with an explanation of ordinary material causes.”
Tables moved, candles were upset; knives, forks, and crockery were thrown about; pictures left their places on the walls; bottles jumped four feet into the air; basins rose slowly and sailed up and down with a wobbling motion; a jar of lard fell from the ceiling on to the kitchen floor and floated upwards again; a bottle of medicine hurled itself on to the pillow of the bed where a sick child lay, and so forth. Many people in their wisdom attributed these manifestations to Mr White’s agency, but he happened to be absent when the chief of them occurred, and he was hardly the kind of man to destroy his own property for the mere fun of the thing. An explanation of the phenomena might perhaps be supplied by some of the eminent personages who are now making spoofology their study.
Sheffield Evening Telegraph, 25th October 1919.
The first case investigated by us occurred in the early part of 1883, at Worksop, in the house of a small horse-dealer, named White. I went to Worksop on April 7th, interviewed all the principal witnesses of the disturbances, took full notes of their evidence, and obtained signed accounts from three persons – White himself, Higgs (a policeman), and Currass (a neighbour). Briefly the account which I received was as follows:
On the 20th or 21st of February, Mrs White, being alone in the kitchen with two of her young children, was washing up the tea things, when the table, apparently without the contact of any person, tilted up at a considerable angle. The whole incident impressed her as very extraordinary. On Monday, 26th February, a girl of about sixteen, named Eliza R — , the daughter of an imbecile mother, came as a servant. On the morning of Thursday, 1st of March, White went away until Friday afternoon. On Thursday night at about 11 PM Tom White, Joe White’s brother, aged about twenty, went up-stairs to bed. The children, who also slept upstairs, had been in bed some hours previously. Mrs White and R– were then left alone in the kitchen. At about 11.30, a corkscrew, clothes-pegs, a salt-cellar, and many other things, which had been seen in the kitchen a few minutes before, came tumbling down the kitchen stairs. Some hot coals were also thrown down. Tom, who had been upstairs twenty minutes or half an hour, denied having thrown the things down.
On the following night at about the same hour, White, Mrs White, and R– being alone in the kitchen, a surcingle, pieces of carpet, knives, forks, and other things were thrown down-stairs. The girl picked them up; but they followed still faster. White then left the room to go up to Tom. During his absence one of the ornaments flew off the mantelpiece into the corner of the room near the door. Nothing was seen by the two women; but they heard it fall, and found it there. Their screams summoned White down; as he entered the room his candle went out, and something struck him on the forehead. The girl picked up the candle – which appears to have left the candlestick – and two new ones, which had not been in the house previously, from the ground; and as soon as a candle was lit, a little china woman left the mantelpiece and fell into the corner, where it was seen by White. As soon as it was replaced it flew across the room again and was broken. Other things followed, and the women being very frightened, and White thinking that the disturbances presaged the death of his child, who was very ill with an abcess in the back, sent Tom (who was afraid to go alone) with Ford (a neighbour) to fetch the doctor.
Mrs White meanwhile took one of the children next door. R– approached the inner room to fetch another, when things immediately began to fly about and smash themselves in that room. After this all appear to have been absent from the house for a short time. White then returned, with Higgs, the policeman, and, whilst they were alone in the kitchen, standing near the door, a glass jar flew out of the cupboard into the yard; a tumbler also fell from the chest of drawers in the kitchen, when only Higgs was near it. Both then went into the inner room, and found the chest of drawers there turned up on end and smashed. On their return they found R–, Wass (a neighbour), and Tom White in the kitchen, and all saw a cream-jug, which R– had just placed on the bin, fly four feet up in the air and smash on the floor. Dr Lloyd and Mrs White then entered, and in the presence of all these witnesses, a basin was seen to move slowly from the bin, wobbling as it rose in the air – no person being near it except Dr Lloyd and Higgs. It touched the ceiling, and then fell suddenly to the floor and was smashed. This was at midnight. All then left except Tom White and his brother. The disturbances continued until about 2 AM when all grew quiet, and the Whites slept. At about 8AM on Saturday, the 3d, the disturbances began again.
White left the kitchen to attend to some pigs; and in his absence Mrs White and R– were left alone in the kitchen. A nearly empty port-wine bottle leaped up from the table about four feet into the air, and fell into a bucket of milk, standing on the table, from which Mrs White was filling some jugs.
Then Currass appears to have been attracted to the scene. He entered with White, young Wass, and others, and viewed the inner room. They had but just returned to the kitchen, leaving the inner room empty, and the door of communication open, when the American clock, which hung over the bed in the inner room, was heard to strike. (It had not done so for eighteen months previously). A crash was then heard, and Currass, who was nearest the door, looked in, and found that the clock had fallen over the bed – about four feet broad – and was lying on the floor. Shortly afterward, no one being near it, a china dog flew off the mantelpiece, and smashed itself in the corner near the door. Currass and some others then left.
Some plates, a cream-jug, and other things, then flew up in the air, and smashed themselves in view of all who were in the kitchen – R–, Mrs White, and Mrs Wass.
A few more things followed at intervals, and then White could stand it no longer, and told the girl R– that she must go. With her departure the phenomena ceased altogether.
– It will be seen that the phenomena described are quite inexplicable by ordinary mechanical means. The actual witnesses of the disturbances, including Dr Lloyd, were satisfied that no trickery could have produced what they saw. Nor does any serious suggestion of trickery seem to have been made by any of the neighbours who were acquainted with the circumstances. Some persons seem to have suspected White himself; but, apart from the entire absence of motive (White was a considerable loser by the articles broken), no one was prepared with a suggestion of the mechanical means employed, beyond a vague allusion to the omnipotence of electricity. Moreover, White, it is admitted, was absent when the disturbances first broke out, and must, therefore, have had an accomplice. But no one saw any suspicious movement, or could point to any circumstance tending to throw suspicion on White or anyone else, though the phenomena occurred at intervals during a period of about forty hours, and frequently in broad daylight in the presence of several witnesses. At the time I was much impressed with the strength of the evidence in this case for supernormal agency, and concluded my report as follows:
“To suppose that the various objects were all moved by mechanical means argues incredible stupidity, amounting almost to imbecility, on the part of all the persons present who were not in the plot. That the movements of the arms necessary to set the machinery in motion should have passed unobserved on each and every occasion by all the witnesses is almost impossible. Not only so, but Currass, Higgs and Dr Lloyd, all independent observers, assured me that they examined some of the objects which had been moved immediately after the occurrence… that they could discover no possible explanation of the disturbances, and were fairly bewildered by the whole matter.”
[…] Now the value of the reports in these three cases [Durweston, Arundel, Worksop] as testifying to the operation of some supernormal agency depends upon two assumptions: first, that the various witnesses – for the most part imperfectly educated persons, not skilled in accurate observation of any kind – correctly described what they saw; and second, that after an interval varying from a fortnight in [Arundel] to more than five weeks in the other two, during which their experiences had been discussed and compared and gaped at by every village fireside, and embellished in the public press, they correctly remembered what they described.
The concordant testimony of so many honest and fairly intelligent persons to the marvellous occurrences in White’s house at Worksop certainly produced a strong impression on my mind at the time. Nor do I see reason now to question my original estimate of their intelligence and good faith. If my verdict in 1897 differs from that which I gave, according to the best of my ability, in 1883, it is because many things have happened since, which have taught us to discount testimony in matters of this kind. In the course of the fourteen years which have elapsed we have received some striking object-lessons demonstrating the incapacity of the ordinary unskilled observer to detect trickery or sleight of hand; and we have learnt to distrust the accuracy of the unaided memory in recording feats of this kind, especially when witnessed under circumstances of considerable excitement.
And, indeed, if we scrutinise the accounts of the various witnesses as they stand, we shall find omissions, discrepancies, and contradictions in the evidence. (1) Thus, according to White, Higgs and he went into the front room first, to see the damage done there, and on their return to the kitchen a glass jar flew out of the cupboard. But according to Higgs’s version, it was after seeing the glass jar fly through the air that White and he went into the inner room.
(2) White’s account is that two or three witnesses were present when the glass jar flew out; Higgs says “that no one else was in the room at the time.”
(3) There seems to be a doubt as to whether R. entered the kitchen during Higgs’s visit. White does not mention her entrance at all. Higgs says they found her in the kitchen on their return from the inner room.
(4) Currass says he was in the inner room on the morning of the 3d when the clock fell. White says that Currass was in the kitchen.
(5) Again, White cannot remember where R. was at the time of the incident; whilst Currass says that she was near the inner door.
(6) White and Currass agree that Coulter was not present when the American clock fell and was smashed. Now Coulter, whom I saw, and who impressed me favourably as an honest man, stated that he was present when the clock fell, and also during the immediately succeeding disturbances in the kitchen.
Such are some of the defects which appear in the evidence even as prepared and taken down from the lips of the witnesses by a too sympathetic reporter. It is probable that more and more serious discrepancies and contradictions would have been found if there had been no speculation and consultation and comparison in the interval of five weeks; and if each witness at the end of that time had written an independent account of the incidents.
From Podmore’s 1897 ‘Studies in Psychical Research’, chapter 5:
Case I. Worksop.
“Ghosts and Ghostly Phenomena”
[part of a lecture given by the Rev. J. Arthur Hynes]
Here is a more modern case given in the Journal of Psychical Research.
“A Mrs White, in a cottage at Worksop, was washing up the tea-things at the table, with two of her children in the room, when the table tilted at a considerable angle. Later in the month, White being from home, Mrs White extended hospitality to a girl, Eliza Rose, the child of an imbecile mother. On March 1st, White from home, at about 11.30 p.m. a number of things which had been in the kitchen a few minutes before came tumbling down the kitchen stairs. Only Mrs White and Eliza Rose were then in the kitchen. Later some hot coals made an invasion.
On the following night, White being at home in the kitchen with his wife and Eliza ,a miscellaneous throng of objects came in. White made vain research upstairs, where was his brother Tom. On his return to the kitchen a little china-woman left the mantelpiece and flew into the corner .Being replaced, it repeated its flight, and was broken.
White sent his brother to fetch a doctor; there also came a policeman named Higgs; and the doctor and the policeman saw, among other things, a basin and cream jug rise up automatically, fall on the floor and break. A clock which had been silent for eighteen months struck the house; a crash was heard, and the clock was found to have leaped over a bed and fallen on the floor. All the next day many things kept flying about and breaking themselves. White sent Eliza Rose about her business, and peace ensued.”
Drogheda Argus and Leinster Journal, 1st February 1930.