The fantastic black dog legends of England swirl through centuries, painting a picture of hulking, shadow‑cloaked hounds whose eyes blaze like coals and whose forms shift from solid to smoky at a whim.

Why These Fantastic Black Dog Tales Captivate Us

From royal chambers to lonely farm lanes, each encounter showcases a mix of terror, mystery, and unexpected guardianship that keeps readers both shivering and fascinated.

10 The Cardinal’s Visitor

The earliest verifiable black‑dog legend dates back to 1552. That year Cardinal Crescentius of London was drafting a letter to the pope when “a huge black dog with great flaming eyes, and long ears dangling down to the ground” slipped into his chamber and crawled beneath his table. He summoned servants to remove the creature, but no trace could be found. Shortly after, the cardinal fell gravely ill, remained bedridden, and spent his remaining days crying, “Drive away the black dog! Drive away the black dog!” at a menace only he could see.

9 Attack Of The Black Dog

According to a contemporary pamphlet, on Sunday, August 4, 1577, the town of Bungay, Suffolk, was struck by a sudden, violent rainstorm that plunged the interior of its church into darkness, illuminated only by occasional lightning flashes. In the midst of the tempest, a massive black dog burst onto the scene, sprinting down the nave. It passed between two kneeling worshippers, whose necks were instantly twisted backward, killing them instantly. Another man was bitten on the back, causing a grotesque wound that, oddly, did not prove fatal. The church clerk, knocked from a gutter-cleaning task by a thunderclap, also encountered the spectral hound as it fled.

The same day, a similar black dog thundered through the nearby Blythburgh church, leaving two men and a boy dead and scorching the hand of another parishioner.

8 The Milkman Of Aylesbury

In 1890, a milkman from Aylesbury habitually cut through a gap in a hedge to reach his grazing fields. One evening he discovered the passage blocked by a towering, fiery‑eyed black dog. Recognizing that this was no ordinary animal, he chose the longer route around the beast. Night after night, the same ominous dog sat in the hedge gap, and the milkman consistently detoured.

Over time, his fear waned. One night, accompanied by a fellow traveler, he decided to confront the creature. He raised the pole he used for his milk buckets and struck with all his might. The dog vanished instantly, and the milkman collapsed, rendered speechless and paralyzed for the rest of his life.

7 Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

On the Isle of Man, Peel Castle is reputedly haunted by the “Mauthe Doog,” a black dog that roams its rooms, favoring the guard chamber’s fire. While guards were still posted, they treated the phantom canine with respect, never disturbing it.

One drunken night a soldier boasted he would “try whether it were dog or devil.” Whether he struck or merely touched the creature, he was instantly rendered sober and speechless, then died three days later “in agonies more than is common in a natural death.”

6 Real Phantom Dog?

By the late 1800s, collectors began publishing black‑dog legends, but occasional first‑hand reports also surfaced. In his 1890 compilation, Edwin Sydney Hartland reproduced many of these tales—including the Aylesbury milkman story—and added an account he’d heard in 1856 from a “respectable, intelligent woman.”

The woman recounted a night walk with her husband toward Lyme in Dorsetshire when a dog‑sized animal approached. When she asked her husband what it was, he claimed he could see nothing! The creature, now only a few yards away, had grown to the size of a young calf, its shaggy black coat and fiery eyes unmistakable. As it passed, the air grew cold. The animal continued to enlarge, eventually reaching the height of the trees before fading into a cloud and disappearing.

Hartland noted this as an example of how even an intelligent observer could experience hallucinations.

5 The First Study

The study of black dogs stepped out of legend and into the paranormal in 1938, when folklorist Ethel Rudkin—prompted by her own encounter—began gathering accounts from Lincolnshire residents. The subsequent entries on this list stem from her meticulous work.

Rudkin discovered a significant number of locals who either witnessed a black dog themselves or knew someone who had. She also noted that each phantom seemed to have a specific range and home location, allowing for regional “territories” to be mapped.

4 Guardian Angels

Rudkin collected a story of a woman—dating before 1905—who shopped in Scunthorpe and walked home toward Crosby. En route, she sensed a large black dog following her, though she had never seen it before. Finding the creature friendly, she ignored its presence and continued.

Later, she passed a group of laborers who whispered about the “uncivil things” they might have done to her if that dog hadn’t been with her. Grateful for the unseen escort, she called her husband to meet the marvelous animal upon arrival, only to find the dog had vanished completely.

In 2001, an internet variation recast the woman as a young college student saved by angels—a reminder that angels often eclipse black dogs in modern storytelling.

3 How Not To Treat A Black Dog

Another Willoughton account tells of a woman walking along a road by Blyborough Fishpond who became aware of a large black dog trailing her. Annoyed, she deliberately slowed her pace to let the beast catch up.

When the dog stood side by side with her, she struck at it with her umbrella—only to watch the umbrella pass right through the spectral hound without a single scratch. The dog continued alongside her until they reached the lane’s end, where it vanished into the sky or a tree.

2 Doing God’s Work?

Rudkin also recorded the tale of a lay Methodist preacher—father to a woman—who, on a winter night, found himself escorted down a lane by a black dog while traveling to various appointments. Before the dog appeared, he felt an “uncanny” sense that something was wrong.

When the dog manifested, he tried to shoo it away, but the creature lingered until they reached the lane’s end. Once it vanished, the unsettling feeling lifted, and the preacher concluded that the phantom hound had been sent that night to protect him from an unknown danger.

1 Just Plain Weird

Perhaps the strangest story Rudkin gathered—one she herself found hard to believe—concerns a nurse who visited a farm near Kirton in 1908. While the children were discussing the local black dog, they asked the plucky nurse what she’d do if she met the beast on her way home. She jokingly replied, “I shall put ‘im in my pocket!”

After the children fell asleep and her duties were done, the nurse set off for Kirton. In the night’s darkness, a unmistakable black dog approached, circling her furiously. It barked, “Put me in your pocket! Put me in your pocket!” in a haunting, echoing voice.

Garth Haslam, an anthropologist specializing in folklore and religious studies, has been researching such anomalies for over 30 years. You can explore his work at anomalyinfo.com.

While the Victorians may not have been into vampires or witches, their fascination with the eerie was undeniable. Telling ghostly yarns on a cold winter night was a beloved hobby, and the rise of Spiritualism only added fuel to the fire. In this roundup of 10 spooky supernatural legends, we’ll wander through haunted houses, phantom encounters, and bizarre apparitions that kept the era’s citizens awake at night.

10 spooky supernatural Tales That Will Give You Chills

10 The Hotwells Haunting

In April 1831 a retired solicitor, his daughter, and three servants settled into an aging mansion called Hotwells on the outskirts of Bristol. Within a fortnight two of the servants fled, swearing that a phantom black dog and a massive ape prowled the corridors, while unsettling noises echoed from the attic and courtyard, sounding like people being beaten or strangled.

The house continued to drive away staff, yet the lawyer himself experienced nothing out of the ordinary until a November night when a blood‑curdling scream jolted him awake. The shriek seemed to rise from the roof, followed by the clatter of twenty‑odd men ripping tiles off the roof and hurling them into the garden.

When he rushed outside to investigate, the garden and roof were eerily quiet. After a few more strange episodes, the lawyer sold the property in 1832. Subsequent owners reported similar disturbances, and the building was eventually demolished.

9 The Ghost Of Anne Boleyn

The Tower of London, notorious for its hauntings, is said to be the final resting ground of many restless spirits. Among them is Anne Boleyn, the ill‑fated second wife of Henry VIII, who met her end on the Tower’s scaffold in May 1535. Legends claim her apparition drifts through the Queen’s House, the very chamber where she spent her last nights before the execution.

In 1864 a guard stationed at the Queen’s House reported a sudden apparition: a floating, luminous white figure materialized before him. When the guard thrust his bayonet into the apparition, the ghost continued to hover, causing the terrified soldier to faint. He was later discovered unconscious by a superior.

The guard faced a court‑martial for neglecting his post, but the case collapsed when fellow guards corroborated his story, confirming they too had witnessed the same spectral figure.

8 The Thing In 50 Berkeley Square

On Christmas Eve 1887, two sailors, Edward Blunden and Robert Martin, decided to bunk for the night in the infamous 50 Berkeley Square, a London house reputed for its chilling paranormal activity. Penniless after a voyage from the West Indies, they broke into the vacant dwelling with little concern for the rumors.

While Martin slept upstairs, a strange, shapeless mass surged up the staircase and crashed into the room, prompting him to flee in terror down the stairs and out of the house. He ran to a nearby policeman and recounted the terrifying encounter.

Unfortunately, his friend Blunden never escaped. In a desperate bid to avoid the unseen monster, he leapt from a bedroom window, only to impale himself on a spiked railing below.

7 The Ghost Of Theodore Alois Buckley

On the chilly night of February 2, 1856, Kenneth R.H. Mackenzie was drifting off to sleep when a cold hand brushed his face. Opening his eyes, he found his friend Theodore Alois Buckley standing at his bedside. Buckley said nothing, simply walked to the window, lingered a moment, and then vanished.

Mackenzie was unaware that Buckley had died three days earlier. The two had made a pact in 1850 that whichever of them died first would return to visit the other as a specter. Buckley kept his promise, reappearing later with an old letter he had penned.

The ghostly visitation left Mackenzie shaken, but it cemented the eerie legend of Buckley’s post‑mortem promise and his uncanny ability to keep it.

6 The Luminous Chamber Of Taunton

In an 1873 edition of Notes and Queries, a contributor named T. Westwood recounted a tale he’d heard three decades earlier from a squire in Taunton. The squire, returning home from his nightly hunts, repeatedly noticed an abandoned house whose central window glowed with an eerie, steady light. He christened the illuminated space “The Luminous Chamber.”

Curiosity finally got the better of the squire and a companion, who resolved to uncover the source of the glow. After searching every room, they left the luminous one for last. Upon opening its door, they found only a few pieces of furniture, yet the light bathed the room uniformly, as if it were an intrinsic property of the space.

The caretaker later explained that the family who owned the house never used that particular room. He argued that the phenomenon was not supernatural but rather a natural luminescence inherent to the chamber.

5 The Ghosts Of Darlington Station

On a frosty night in 1890, night watchman James Durham sought warmth in the porter’s cellar of Darlington train station, lighting a fire to enjoy a snack. Suddenly, a man dressed in antiquated attire entered, accompanied by a black retriever, and without warning, the stranger punched Durham.

Durham attempted to retaliate, but his fist passed right through the apparition’s body. The phantom then called for his dog, which bit Durham’s calf before both vanished through the same doorway they had entered, despite there being no other exit.

Weeks later, an elderly gentleman named Edward Pease learned of the incident and explained that a railway worker had committed suicide years earlier, matching the description of the ghost and his black retriever, thereby providing a tragic backstory to the spectral encounter.

4 The Pig‑Faced Lady Of Manchester Square

In the winter of 1814, London buzzed with rumors of a grotesque woman bearing a pig’s face, said to reside with her family in Grosvenor Square. The tale grew wilder as crowds allegedly pursued her carriage, and Sir William Elliot claimed he’d been assaulted by the bizarre lady.

By February 1815, the story caught the eye of The Times, which published a sardonic commentary after a man placed an advertisement seeking the lady’s hand in marriage. The newspaper mocked the episode, lamenting that “Our rural friends hardly know what idiots London contains.”

3 The Ghost Of William Field

In 1804, wheelwright William Field took his own life by hanging in South Moreton. For over four decades his restless spirit haunted the vicinity of his barn, striking terror into the hearts of locals. By 1850, a cadre of eleven clergymen grew weary of the hauntings and resolved to perform an exorcism.

During the ritual, two brothers, John and James Parkes, concealed themselves beneath straw to observe. Before the ghost could be banished, it pleaded for a choice: a nearby rooster or “two mice under the straw.”

The clergy obliged, presenting the rooster, and then drove the ghost into a pond, somehow driving a stake into its ethereal form to keep it confined.

2 The Kissing Ghost Of Renishaw Hall

In 1885, Sir George Reresby Sitwell celebrated his twenty‑fifth birthday with a lavish party at his ancestral home, Renishaw Hall. One female guest, after retiring to her chambers, complained of a cold sensation kissing her skin while she lay in bed. Sir George, a noted skeptic, dismissed the claim, but his friend Mr. Turnbull took it seriously, noting that another woman who had stayed in the same room years earlier reported similar invisible kisses.

Sir George, famed for debunking séances, publicly ridiculed the phenomenon, asserting that ghosts were mere hallucinations and that a woman’s testimony was unreliable. Yet the eerie accounts persisted.

Later, an empty coffin was discovered beneath the floorboards of the allegedly haunted guestroom. The coffin’s occupant remains a mystery, though some speculate it belonged to a boy who drowned in the eighteenth century.

1 The Willington Mill Haunting

Between 1831 and 1847, businessman Joseph Procter Jr. and his family occupied Willington Mill, a mill house erected upon the site of a former witch’s cottage. The early years passed uneventfully, but by 1835 the Procters and their servants began to hear inexplicable footsteps pacing an empty room above the nursery. Soon, the house echoed with knocks, ringing bells, and disembodied voices.

No one was spared. Children’s beds not only shook but were circled by invisible footsteps each night. One girl reported seeing the severed head of an elderly woman staring at her from the bed, while another claimed a eyeless woman perched on her mother’s mattress.

The Procters’ home became a parade of apparitions: a large white cat that sauntered into a furnace, a ghost that peered at neighbors through an upper‑story window, and a dancing handkerchief‑like object that fluttered outside. These bizarre sightings were recorded by the family, their friends, and visitors alike.

Over the centuries, England has seen a surprising parade of everyday pastimes suddenly stamped as illegal. These bans, often born from wartime needs, moral panic, or sheer bureaucratic oddity, feel almost comical to modern eyes. In this roundup we explore the ten most eyebrow‑raising activities that were once prohibited across the British Isles, illustrating how the law can sometimes chase the absurd.

10 Activities Unbelievably: The Bizarre Bans

10. Playing Football

Football, the beloved global sport, was an outright offense in the thirteenth century because King Edward II feared it diverted men from the noble art of archery—England’s premier weapon of war against Scotland. The monarch’s edict was a strategic push to keep the populace battle‑ready, making the kicking of a leather ball a punishable distraction.

Back then the game resembled a chaotic village melee rather than the organized spectacle we know today. Entire towns could field thousands of participants, each scrambling to hurl a rudimentary ball into a makeshift goal, sometimes even a church doorway, turning the pastime into a full‑scale melee of mud, shouts, and broken windows.

The ban resurfaced under Edward III in 1349, again citing the need for archery practice, especially after the Black Death had thinned the ranks of his army. Subsequent monarchs—Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry V—reiterated the prohibition, each insisting that the sport’s popularity threatened martial readiness.

Even centuries later, in the seventeenth‑century Manchester, local authorities outlawed football not for military reasons but because rambunctious matches frequently smashed windows, prompting a civic crackdown on the noisy pastime.

9. Selling Wine In Bottles

The seventeenth‑century advent of the coal furnace enabled glassblowers to craft sturdier bottles, allowing wine to be stored in glass rather than the traditional clay vessels. However, without a standardized capacity, bottles varied wildly—some holding a modest 600 ml, others swelling to 800 ml—largely depending on the glassblower’s lung power and regional practices.

This lack of uniformity created a marketplace nightmare: consumers could never be certain how much wine they were purchasing, leading to disputes and mistrust. Consequently, several nations, England included, enacted statutes banning the sale of wine in unstandardized bottles to protect buyers from being short‑changed.

Eventually, the monarchy lifted the restriction, and a de‑facto standard of 750 ml (approximately 25 oz) took hold, a volume now universally recognized across Europe, North America, and beyond.

8. Driving Alone

The early days of motorised transport were a legal free‑for‑all, but the patchwork of local rules quickly turned into a hazard. Each city, street, and even individual carriage could be subject to its own set of regulations, creating a bewildering maze that actually increased accidents rather than reducing them.

To impose order, Parliament passed the Locomotive on Highway Act of 1861, mandating that every vehicle be operated by a trio: a driver, a coal‑feeding stocker, and a “red‑flag” man who walked ahead with a lantern to warn pedestrians and other road users. This human‑controlled brake also forced the vehicle to crawl at a walking pace. Known colloquially as the Red Flag Act, the rule remained in force until 1896, when it was finally repealed.

7. Christmas

Between 1644 and 1660, Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector, along with Puritan MPs, outlawed Christmas throughout England and the New England colonies. They deemed the season’s revelry—carols, feasting, and merrymaking—as sinful excesses that insulted God.

Celebrating the holiday became a criminal act; even traditional dishes such as mince pies and plum pudding were forbidden. Town criers roamed the streets proclaiming “No Christmas, no Christmas!” while secret gatherings persisted underground. The ban was finally lifted in 1660 when the monarchy was restored, reinstating the festive customs we cherish today.

6. Beating Or Shaking Rugs, Carpets, And Mats In The Street

The Town Police Clauses Act of 1847 bundled a collection of oddball prohibitions, one of which made it a punishable offence—up to 14 days’ imprisonment and a £200 fine—to beat or shake any rug, carpet, or mat on a public street. The only loophole permitted shaking doormats before 8 a.m., a concession for early‑morning dust‑busting.

That same act also outlawed kite‑flying, prohibited the use of slides during rain or snow, and forbade throwing anything other than snow onto the streets. Moreover, only sand could be laid down for road‑surfacing, unless it was needed to prevent pipe freezing or to address safety concerns. Even an accidental chimney fire could land an offender in trouble under the act.

5. Not Offering ‘Royal Fish’ To The Monarch

Since a 1324 edict by King Edward II, any whale or sturgeon caught in British waters—or washed ashore—automatically becomes property of the reigning sovereign. Known as “royal fish,” these prized marine specimens must be offered to the monarch when discovered.

One notable incident involved a fisherman who landed a massive 140‑kg sturgeon, valued at over £8,000, and presented it to Queen Elizabeth II. The Queen, in a rare gesture, allowed him to keep the fish. However, a later dinner for thirty guests was abruptly cancelled when the palace claimed another sturgeon, after a missed phone call and a delayed response, demonstrating the law’s lingering bite.

4. Obstructing Your Neighbor’s Sunlight

The Prescription Act of 1832 enshrined the “right to light,” protecting any window or opening that has enjoyed twenty years of uninterrupted sunshine. Under this law, a neighbour cannot erect a building, extension, or renovation that would shade that opening, safeguarding the owner’s access to natural light.

Disputes are often resolved using the famed “45‑degree rule”: a line drawn from the centre of the affected window at a 45° angle toward the proposed structure. If the new construction crosses that line, it violates the right to light, potentially resulting in fines, demolition orders, or partial tearing down of the offending build. Though the rule has faced recent scrutiny, it remains enforceable.

3. Coffeehouses

In 1675, Charles II issued a proclamation outlawing coffeehouses, deeming them hotbeds of idle gossip and political rumor‑mongering. The decree also banned the sale of coffee, chocolate, sherbet, and tea from any establishment, aiming to curb what the crown saw as a threat to public order.

These venues had become synonymous with the term “coffeehouse politician,” a label for men who spent their days debating and scheming over a cup. Although the law was slated to take effect on 10 January 1676, it was repealed two days early—on 8 January—thanks to the intervention of ministers who themselves enjoyed coffee, saving the culture that would later fuel the Enlightenment.

2. Eating Potatoes In Court

When potatoes first arrived in Europe, they were shrouded in superstition. Critics claimed they caused everything from leprosy to impotence, and in France they were even blamed for soil depletion. In England, Sir Walter Raleigh introduced the tuber, offering it to Queen Elizabeth I, who hosted a banquet featuring the new vegetable.

Unfortunately, the kitchen staff, unfamiliar with the plant’s toxic foliage, discarded the edible tubers and boiled the poisonous leaves and stems instead. The resulting meal made everyone ill, prompting a swift ban on serving potatoes in the royal court—a prohibition that lingered until the tuber’s reputation was finally rehabilitated.

1. Owning Swans

Since a 12th‑century decree, the British monarchy claims ownership of all mute swans inhabiting its waterways, a law originally intended to prevent commoners from feasting on these regal birds. Today, the Crown no longer dines on swans, but it still protects and registers them, especially those gliding along the River Thames and its tributaries.

Each summer, a tradition called “swan upping” sees the Worshipful Companies of Dyers and Vintners, alongside the Royal Swan Uppers led by the Queen’s Swan Warden (a professor of zoology at Oxford), round up, mark, and check the health of the birds. As the royal barge passes Windsor Castle, the uppers salute the monarch, raising their oars in tribute to “Her Majesty the Queen, Seigneur of the Swans.”

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10 risque stories from Merry Old England show that the nation’s prim veneer often hid a wildly titillating underbelly. Britain has always had something of a reputation as being a bit stuffy. A closer look at some centuries‑old history shows that they were really anything but, and some of the stories that have gotten inconveniently left out of our typical history books are enough to make almost anyone today blush.

10 Risque Stories Uncovered

10. The Great Bed Of Ware

The Great Bed of Ware was originally built sometime around 1590, and it was first installed in an inn in the town of Ware. The first record we have of it is in the travel records of a German prince who stayed at the inn, which had gotten quite a name for itself thanks to its massive, four‑poster bed.

The bed was so well known for a very obvious reason that Shakespeare even used it as a rather tongue‑in‑cheek way to describe something of a huge size. In 1689, the huge bed became even more notorious with the story that it was once host to 26 people— butchers and their wives— although just what went on that night has been lost to history. While that was thought to be done on something of a dare, its maximum occupancy was usually limited to around four couples.

Acquired by the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1931 and recently loaned to a museum back in its old hometown, the Great Bed of Ware wasn’t just another bed—it was a tourist attraction. The entire thing is covered with elaborate carvings of leaves, animals, and other designs typical of the Elizabethan period. Along with those are carvings of the initials of the people who slept in the bed during the centuries it was in use. The bed’s designs are scarred by declarations of love we’d recognize today, and parts of it are still smeared with the remains of red wax seals left behind by amorous couples. The Great Bed of Ware was first given its official name by Ben Jonson and is still popular among tourists.

9. The Guidebooks To Nighttime Entertainment

London has always attracted people from all over the world. Today, we can hop online and find out everything we need to know about what we want to do while we’re there, but in the 18th century, they needed something a little more low tech.

The result was a series of guidebooks that would give the visiting young man all the information he needed to make an educated choice about which lady he was going to spend his evenings with and his money on. Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies was one of the most popular guidebooks, selling thousands of copies every year. The book featured reviews of the different ladies that were up for hire, told what their specialties were, what they were—or weren’t—willing to do, and it even told which ones should be steered clear of, as they were likely to be carrying some kind of disease.

The book didn’t pull any punches and gave pretty straightforward assessments, like that of Miss Emma Ell‑tt of Gray’s‑In‑Lane. The book stated that she was very attractive . . . until she spoke, at which point “she pours forth such a torrent of blackguardism that shall destroy every attracting feature.” It went on to say, “Our damsel is therefore the most agreeable looking girl when asleep.”

Harris’s wasn’t the only book out there, either. There was also Swell’s Night Guides, which described the best places to find prostitutes (as well as reviews of pubs and nightclubs), and it also gave the addresses for “introducing houses,” which were usually labeled as something more innocent for the uninitiated. Behind the sign for the dressmaker or the doctor were houses where the lonely could knock on the door and be matched with a woman for the night. And, if that wasn’t your thing, the book also specified which clubs would allow you behind the scenes to meet the dancing girls.

Unfortunately, there aren’t many copies of the books left—they were meant to be used, after all, not saved.

8. Elizabeth Needham

While the term “risque” might have a certain connotation, it definitely doesn’t always mean the stories have a happy ending.

One of the most famous—or infamous—brothel madams of the 18th century was Elizabeth Needham. While most respectable brothel owners and prostitute‑keepers valued experience, Mother Needham valued something else: virginity. Her preferred method of recruitment turned into something that was universally disdained once it came to light. She’d scope out all the coaches that were bringing in young girls who had come to London to seek their fame and fortune, and she would approach them with an innocent offer of work. It was only when she had taken her pick of the prettiest girls and returned them to her brothel that she revealed what she really did, and there’s no doubt that quite a few girls found their innocence ending thanks to Mother Needham.

Needham catered to a certain class of people that included members of the military and of the aristocracy. But when it was decided that London was due for a spring cleaning in 1731, her brothel was raided. Mother Needham was arrested and ordered to spend two sentences standing in the pillory of Park Place.

She only made it to one. When her sentence was amended to not stand in the pillory but to lie in front of it, she was confronted with a crowd that was livid about the way she’d been recruiting her girls. It was a crowd that was also armed with bricks and rocks; she was stoned, and she died of her injuries on May 3, 1731.

7. One Of The First Comics

Mother Needham was also the inspiration for what became one of the first examples of a story told in pictures—the early comic strip.

The 1730s marked something of a turning point in the way in which prostitutes were viewed in London. Prior to the crackdown on prostitution, they were often seen as jaded, morally corrupt women, and after the 1730s, there was a gradual swing toward their depiction as women who had fallen into the life because they had no other choice. When William Hogarth published A Harlot’s Progress, he was telling the story of Moll Hackabout in six scenes, beginning with the very moment Mother Needham lured a naïve country girl to the city.

The work shows Moll’s rise as a kept woman of a wealthy Londoner, then her fall to the level of a common prostitute, her confinement to prison, and her ultimate death from a venereal disease. A Harlot’s Progress wasn’t just a popular social commentary; it also meant that Hogarth was ultimately credited with bringing the idea of captioned prints that told a complete story into the modern era. The newly found status of this burgeoning art form is one that we recognize today—a credible storytelling medium that’s not quite traditional art and not quite traditional literature, but something in between.

6. Theresa Berkley And The English Vice

BDSM has recently been thrown into the spotlight with books and movies that attempt to make it more mainstream, but it’s definitely nothing new. In Victorian England, the practice of flagellation was so common that it even had a name—Le Vice Anglais, or The English Vice. Many of the brothels of London weren’t just your ordinary, run‑of‑the‑mill brothels; instead, they came complete with whips and birch branches.

The evolution of flagellation is a strange one. It’s thought that what started out as a religious punishment branched out to become the punishment of choice for school‑age children, and when those children grew up, it became something much more erotic. Rather than being an era where people were sexually repressed, the Victorian era—and Theresa Berkley—started an era of BDSM.

It was such a lucrative trade that Berkley became known as one of the premiere specialists in flagellation, running a specialized brothel from her establishment at 28 Charlotte Street, Portland Place. Reviews of her place talk about her varieties of whips, the birch branches that she always kept wet and pliant, and the tools with which she could work the skin of even those people who had grown callouses from years of being whipped.

Berkley is also credited with the creation of the Berkley horse (pictured above), a particularly long‑lived example of her innovative tools.

5. Teresia Phillips’s Apology

When Teresia Phillips wrote and released her serialized autobiography, it made a lot of people very nervous. She was one of the most notorious—and prolific—courtesans of the early 18th century, and the book was called An Apology for the Conduct of Mrs. T.C. Phillips, which is one of the most epically passive‑aggressive titles we’ve ever seen.

The contents had the potential to be so scandalous that no respectable publisher would touch it, and she was forced to print and distribute it herself. Released in several parts, it detailed things like the likes and dislikes of her favorite rakes—including information on which men preferred married women, who could use their marital status to escape the disgrace of an accidental pregnancy.

The first volume was released in 1748, and by then, she had several decades of living and prostituting to draw from. One of the first people named in the book was the man who would become the Earl of Chesterfield, whom she accused not only of liking young virgins, but of keeping her as his mistress when she was little more than 13 years old, taking her virginity by force. Over the next few years, she told about her illegal marriages, the men who spent money on her, and her trips and travels.

When she released her autobiography, she also took advantage of her reputation to cement her foothold in a very particular field: the establishment of a reputable sex shop. Called The Green Canister, it was set up in what was then Half Moon Street (now Bedford Street) in the notorious Covent Garden. Unfortunately, there aren’t any stock records left, but we do know that she hired some young boys to hand out printed advertisements for her wares. These included condoms made from sheep intestines, which were also distributed in bulk to area brothels.

4. The Winchester Geese

In death, the women who were known as the Winchester Geese were denied the right to a church burial. Instead, they ended up in unconsecrated ground and in places like Cross Bones Cemetery. But in life, they had something of an odd, almost religious aura.

Covent Garden wasn’t the only place in London associated with some of mankind’s baser pleasures; Southwark has operating brothels that dated back to Roman and Viking occupations of the area, and by the time London Bridge was built, Southwark was under the control of the Bishop of Winchester. One of the richest dioceses in England, their wealth was cemented in 1161 with the establishment of 39 rules that governed the work of the area’s prostitutes. These women became known as Winchester Geese because of their pale chests, and they were protected by laws that allowed them to come and go as they pleased, called for worker registrations, and prevented them from working on religious holidays or for free. (If they were caught performing their services for a personal lover, the “fine” was a dunking in raw sewage and banishment from the fold.)

Because they were registered workers, that meant they were taxed by the Bishop of Winchester. The church was also the organization that was responsible for enforcing the regulations and getting rich off the girls’ work, but when they died, they weren’t allowed to be buried on church property. The result was something only a little less formal than a mass grave, but bizarrely, not all the names of the women buried there have been forgotten. Recently, excavations have been going on at cemeteries like Cross Bones, and in 2010, the remains of a young woman who died around the age of 19 from advanced syphilis were identified as belonging to Elizabeth Mitchell, who was admitted to the nearby St. Thomas’s Hospital in 1851 and died on August 22.

3. The Floating Brothel

At the end of the 18th century, Britain had started shipping its undesirables off to Australia. In July 1789, the Lady Julian was loaded with around 240 of Britain’s female convicts. Ranging in age from 11 to 68, the women were sent abroad with the hopes that they would help populate the new colony.

It wasn’t long before things went exactly as you might expect. Most of the women had been in jail for crimes that were then capital offenses, which meant that many were in for nothing more than shoplifting. Once on board and out at sea, the steward of the ship broke their chains and enslaved them in a completely different way. Every crewman on the ship was allowed to take a “wife” from among the lot. John Nichol, the steward, claimed a girl named Sarah Whitelam for his own. She had been convicted of petty theft.

The only record we actually have about what went on during the journey comes from Nichol’s own memoirs, and it’s pretty dire stuff. Every time the ship docked at a new port—including Rio de Janeiro and the Canary Islands—they opened the doors and had the women ply their trade. Nichols was thought to have acted as a facilitator, heading out into the city and to other ships to let them know that there were women waiting for sailors that had been out to sea for way too long.

We know that there were at least a handful of births on the ship, but we don’t have a lot of names. Whitelam was one of those who gave birth, and weirdly, it was deemed one of the only ways for the women condemned to the life of a pioneer to make enough money to have a chance at something more.

2. Holland’s Leaguer

Sadly, a lot of the details of Holland’s Leaguer have been lost, but what we do know is pretty epic. The brothel was one of the most famous brothels of Bankside, run by an enterprising madam named Elizabeth Holland. Far from your ordinary establishment, it was a former manor house completely surrounded by a moat and accessible only via a drawbridge, a feature that would eventually prove useful.

The term “leaguer” refers to a military camp, although the brothel was probably only given the name during the winter of 1631–1632, when it withstood a famous “siege.” Local law enforcement had arrived to shut the brothel down and evict the residents, probably after a new landlord purchased the lease. But Elizabeth Holland lured the soldiers onto the drawbridge and then dropped it beneath them, depositing them in the moat. According to the most popular version of the story, they not only ended up taking an impromptu swim, but the women of the brothel took the opportunity to empty all of their chamber pots onto them.

Naturally, the authorities weren’t pleased, and Elizabeth Holland was summoned before the infamous court of Star Chamber. Prudently, she seems to have decided to skip town instead. Shortly afterward, the residents of the brothel started a successful petition to get government protection from rioting apprentices who plagued the area every Shrove Tuesday. As part of the petition, they swore that Elizabeth Holland had vanished six weeks ago and nobody had seen her since. Since there is no record of a trial, we can conclude that Elizabeth successfully escaped the long arm of the law. Perhaps she even returned to London and appears in the historical records under a different name.

1. Nell Gwyn And Orange Moll

While the vast majority of England’s prostitutes had incredibly hard lives and died young, Nell Gwyn’s story is proof that it’s all about getting noticed by the right people.

For the young, low‑born girl, it all started when she was selling oranges at Drury Lane. Mary Meggs, otherwise known as Orange Moll, was in charge of concessions for some of the most highly visible theaters of the area and would employ a handful of girls to “sell oranges.” While they certainly did sell fruits and candies to theater‑goers, they did much more than that, too. They were often the go‑between when wealthy theater patrons needed a way to get messages back to the actresses who had caught their eye. While Orange Moll had troubles that kept her in and out of court, Nell soon caught the eye of actor Charles Hart.

It wasn’t long before the little orange seller had become his mistress, and he recognized her for her talents on stage as well as backstage. By the time she was passed along to Charles Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, Hart had become known affectionately as Charles the First. Buckhurst became Charles the Second, and her Charles the Third? The real King Charles II.

Nell was one of at least a dozen of the king’s mistresses, but she had a trait that the others didn’t—the public liked her. By the time she retired from the stage, she was pregnant with the king’s child, whom she managed to acquire a title for in spite of never having one herself. Her methods were simple and straightforward—whenever the king was around, she’d refer to the boy as, “You little bastard.” Needless to say, Charles was a little horrified at this completely accurate name for his son, who was given the title of the Duke of St. Albans.

Nell would only outlive the king by a few years, but she also never forgot where she came from. She’s now credited with a plaque in Hereford that names her as the founder of the Chelsea Hospital.

The majority of people know that humanity’s past was far from spotless. Between eyebrow‑crafting from mouse skin, a British king who swore bathing would ruin his health, the Romans’ love affair with lye (a blend of ash and urine) for laundry, and the millennia‑long wait for toilet paper, our hygiene record reads like a comedy of errors. What most folks overlook, however, are the downright odd aromas that wafted through 18th‑century England. Brace yourself for the top 10 bizarre odours that defined Georgian life.

Why the Top 10 Bizarre Scents Still Fascinate Us

9 Tobacco

When Georgian England erupted with social activity, pipe‑smoking was the badge of a gentleman’s leisure. By the early 1700s, however, tobacco earned a sour reputation. Women were thought to be especially sensitive to the fumes, and a pipe‑laden husband risked his marriage. Public puffing became a breach of etiquette, and the genteel class frowned upon the cloud of smoke invading drawing‑rooms.

Enter snuff – the fashionable alternative of inhaling finely ground tobacco through the nostril. While it spared everyone a smoky haze, snuff came with its own chorus of coughs, grunts and spitting. Its chief advantage was that the scent stayed close to the user, sparing unsuspecting bystanders. Yet even this discreet habit sparked complaints; churchgoers muttered about the noisy snortings that punctuated sermons.

8 Fish

Georgian marketplaces were a far cry from today’s sanitized supermarkets. With no packaging, expiry dates, or health regulations, buyers lived by the motto “caveat emptor.” To avoid the dreaded stomach‑upset, households printed manuals teaching citizens how to judge food by scent. A fish or cut of meat emitting a slick, “slimy” odor was a clear sign to steer clear.

Even game birds weren’t exempt; pheasants were examined around the neck for a “tainted” whiff, while butter required a personal knife for testing, lest a merchant hand over the choicest slice. The Billingsgate women, famed for vending fish, were notorious for their sweaty demeanor and sharp tongues, making the sniff‑test feel like an insult to their credibility.

Consequently, many Georgians refused to partake in the ritual of smelling their purchases, deeming it an affront to the seller’s honor. The very act of testing turned a simple market visit into a socially charged performance.

7 Paint

Although it may seem odd to rank paint among the most memorable aromas, Georgian diarists frequently lamented its pungency. Redecorating was a rare, almost ceremonial event, so the sharp, oily perfume of linseed‑oil and turpentine lingered long after the brushes were put away.

The Italian physician Bernardino Ramazzini observed that painters often lost their sense of smell from prolonged exposure to these chemicals. So enthralled was he by the world of odours that he advocated writing a comprehensive “natural and physical history of odors.”

6 Ammonia

The scent of ammonia is unmistakable, a sharp sting that instantly alerts the trigeminal nerve – the same nerve that governs facial expressions. In Georgian England, ammonia was harvested from fermenting urine and became a popular “reviver of the senses.”

Society placed a premium on a keen nervous system; a “sensitive nerve” was a mark of refinement, especially among women, who were thought to be prone to anxiety. Novels and stage plays of the era even featured heroines daringly inhaling corked bottles of ammonia to sharpen their wits. Smelling salts, essentially concentrated ammonia, were touted as lifesavers for the drowned or asphyxiated.

Ammonia wasn’t the only odd stimulant. Some adventurous souls experimented with pumping tobacco smoke up the rear – a bizarre, and decidedly unpleasant, method of “waking up” that made the era’s medical folklore all the more colorful.

5 Marzipan

The Industrial Revolution coincided with a surge in urban living, giving city‑dwelling Georgians access to exotic ingredients. Marzipan, a confection of ground almonds, sugar, and rose water, quickly became a favourite. Its sweet, nutty aroma signalled the end of a meal, and the treat was affordable enough to appear on many a household table.

Beyond its culinary appeal, marzipan was sculpted into miniature figures – people, animals, even tiny castles – that graced dining tables as decorative centrepieces. These edible sculptures added a fragrant flourish to Georgian banquets, marrying taste and art in a single bite.

4 Wigs

While marzipan provided sweet décor, Georgian wigs were true works of hair‑craft. Hair was piled onto pads and wire frames, then blended with horsehair to achieve towering styles. The 1760s favored an egg‑shaped silhouette that later stretched into the iconic pouf.

The Duchess of Devonshire made headlines with a three‑foot tower of hair, studded with stuffed birds, waxed fruit, and even model ships. Such extravagance came at a steep price, and the wigs were often worn for weeks without washing. Inevitably, insects took up residence, prompting women to fashion scratching rods to dislodge the unwelcome tenants.

3 Body Odor

Georgians lived in a paradox of glamour and grime. While daily splashes of water refreshed faces and hands, a full‑body wash was deemed harmful to health. Women’s heavy gowns trapped sweat, and without modern deodorants the resulting stink could be overwhelming.

Clothing was rarely laundered – a dress might see a wash only once a month, while under‑garments were changed more frequently but cleaned with the same lye mixture the Romans used for laundry. The combination of sweat, infrequent washing, and harsh cleaning agents created a formidable, lingering body odor that defined the era’s private scentscape.

2 Bad Breath

Georgians also grappled with a less pleasant oral aroma. Early tooth‑powders contained sulfuric acid, which stripped enamel and left a harsh chemical aftertaste. To combat the foul breath, people chewed herbs or swallowed parsley, hoping the fresh scent would mask the rot.

When a tooth became hopeless, it was yanked from the gum with pliers – no anesthetic, just raw determination. Some sought porcelain replacements, while others, often impoverished, sold their own teeth to make a living, turning dental decay into a grim marketplace.

1 Bodily Fluids

The mystery of Georgian women’s sanitation remains a puzzling chapter in history. Without modern undergarments, they relied on nature and a porcelain jug called a bourdaloue, clutched between the thighs beneath their skirts. Remarkably, ladies could continue conversing while relieving themselves, turning a private act into a public performance.

These ten distinct scents – from lingering bodily fluids to the lingering sweet whiff of marzipan – paint a vivid picture of a time when personal hygiene was a communal concern. Though today scented wigs are rarer, body odor and bad breath persist, now mitigated by showers and deodorants.

Top 10 incredible smells that will blow your mind – a lingering reminder that even centuries later, our noses remember the past.

If you ever find yourself whisked back to the Middle Ages, you’ll want to pack a nose plug. The everyday reality of medieval England was a relentless assault of filth, thanks to a complete lack of modern sanitation. Below are 10 truly disgusting facts that show just how nasty life could get.

10 Truly Disgusting Facts About Medieval England

10 People Piled Garbage And Feces In Front Of Their Homes

When a typical English household filled its chamber pots and accumulated rotting food, the law demanded they haul the whole mess beyond the city limits. In theory, that sounded reasonable, but in practice most families simply dumped the filth onto the street right outside their doors rather than make the trek.

Consequently, the sidewalks became a chaotic mosaic of chicken bones, empty pots, and other refuse. Folklore even claims that men were expected to let women walk on the inner side of the pavement so that any rain‑washed dung would land on the gentleman’s head instead of the lady’s.

King Edward II finally tried to curb the chaos in the 14th century, issuing a decree that required all filth deposited before houses to be removed within a week and ordered pigs to be kept off the streets. The law did little to stop the piles, so the wealthy resorted to perfumed handkerchiefs to mask the stench while the crown hired workers to clear the roads.

9 The Sewers Flooded When It Rained

Even on a typical day the streets reeked, but a storm turned them into a nightmare. Medieval roads were built of dirt and cobblestones that sloped toward a central rain‑water ditch meant to divert water away from foot traffic.

Unfortunately, townsfolk used those ditches as a convenient trash can, stuffing everything from broken pottery to discarded food into them. When heavy rain finally arrived, the clogged channels couldn’t handle the flow, spilling over and dragging months of accumulated waste into the streets.

When the clouds cleared, the thoroughfares were left slick with wet debris and slowly drying feces, turning the whole town into a foul, soggy mess that lingered for days.

8 Doctors Would Pee On Your Wounds

If a soldier was cut in battle, a doctor would often reach for a surprisingly familiar antiseptic: fresh urine. Following the advice of the king’s personal surgeon, physicians would urinate directly onto the wound, believing the ammonia would stave off infection.

The practice wasn’t limited to simple cuts. Medieval medics used urine to treat burns, bites, and a host of other ailments, trusting its chemical properties to disinfect. Though it sounds revolting, the method sometimes succeeded in preventing gangrene.

One of the most bizarre accounts involves Italian physician Leonardo Fioravanti, who, after a soldier’s nose was severed, scooped up the organ, dusted it with sand, and then peed on it before stitching it back on. The soldier survived and could smell again—thanks to a very unconventional treatment.

7 People Thought Bathing Made Them Sick

During most of the medieval period, citizens actually visited public baths fairly regularly and kept themselves reasonably clean. That changed dramatically after the Black Death swept across Europe.

Doctors, desperate to explain the catastrophe, blamed frequent washing for opening the pores and weakening the body, making people more vulnerable to the plague. They issued edicts forbidding bathing, even warning patients not to wash their faces.

Consequently, many townsfolk abandoned personal hygiene altogether, believing that water itself was a disease‑spreading agent. The sudden shift turned once‑clean public spaces into grimy, unsanitary zones.

6 Male Fashion Showed Off The Bulge

By the 14th century, modesty had taken a back seat in English fashion. Men began wearing a tiny doublet called a courtpiece that hung only a couple of inches below the belt, leaving the lower half essentially exposed.

To accentuate the effect, they paired the short jacket with the thinnest, tightest leggings possible, designed to make the male bulge as visible as a flag on a battlefield. The goal was clear: flaunt what nature gave you.

As the trend evolved, codpieces grew larger and more padded, serving as both a fashion statement and a status symbol. Knights even incorporated massive metal codpieces into their armor, turning the crotch area into a conspicuous, often pointed, protrusion.

These exaggerated accessories served no practical purpose beyond bragging rights, essentially shouting, “I’m armed, I’m proud, and I’m not going anywhere.”

5 Families Slept On Filthy Dirt Floors

For most commoners, a proper wooden floor was a luxury. Instead, homes featured compacted earth covered with rushes, herbs, and grass to provide insulation.

While the plant layer helped retain warmth, it also trapped food scraps, vomit, and other waste, creating a perfect breeding ground for rats and insects. Residents rarely gave the rushes a deep clean; they would simply replace the top layer, leaving the grimy, decades‑old base untouched.

A Dutch visitor once described English homes as “harboring expectoration, vomiting, the leakage of dogs and men, ale dropping, scraps of fish and other abominations not fit to be mentioned.” With no beds, families slept directly on this filthy floor, pressing their faces into a crust of old vomit and droppings every night.

4 Doctors Spread Dung On Expecting Mothers

Childbirth in the Middle Ages was a perilous affair, and physicians had few effective remedies. Many turned to prayer, magic, and, oddly enough, animal waste.

Monks and midwives would gather around a laboring woman, invoking divine assistance, while some practitioners covered the expectant mother in eagle’s dung, hoping the strange mixture of vinegar, sugar, and feces would somehow protect her and the unborn child.

When mystical methods failed, nobles sometimes relied on relics, such as a sacred girdle kept by a Yorkshire abbey, believed to possess life‑saving powers. Despite these efforts, roughly one‑third of children died before age five, and about 20 percent of mothers perished during childbirth.

3 Aborted Fetuses Were Used As A Contraceptive

Before modern birth‑control, women seeking to avoid pregnancy turned to folk practitioners who sold unsettling charms. These amulets contained a bizarre blend of weasel testicles, a child’s tooth, and a severed finger from an aborted fetus.

The logic was that such grotesque components would ward off conception. In addition, these “love potions” often incorporated extracts from aborted babies, which customers would drink, believing the macabre brew would prevent pregnancy.

While the methods were undeniably disturbing, they likely succeeded in keeping many women from conceiving, simply because the concoctions were so repulsive that few would want to become pregnant while using them.

2 Everyone Was Infested With Lice

Lice and fleas were a universal nuisance across medieval England, affecting both the rich and the poor. Families often gathered in circles to pick the parasites from each other’s hair and clothing.

Travelers, especially crusaders, praised the skill of laundry women who could not only wash garments but also “pick fleas” with the efficiency of apes. The problem intensified among the lower classes and spread beyond England’s borders.

English pilgrim Margery Kempe wrote home about German peasants who, after a day’s work, stripped naked and sat in a ring, methodically removing vermin from one another’s bodies. The infestation was a constant, gritty reality of medieval life.

1 The River Thames Was Full Of Rotting Meat

Perhaps the most nauseating sight in medieval London was the Thames itself, choked with rotting animal carcasses. Butchers routinely bundled unsold, spoiled meat and hurled it over the bridge into the river.

The practice was so common that a particular crossing earned the nickname “Butcher’s Bridge,” its stonework forever stained with dried blood and entrails spilling from carts.

Although a law in 1369 attempted to stop the dumping, the river remained a dumping ground for centuries. Complaints persisted, with locals lamenting that the filth made the water uninhabitable. It wasn’t until the 19th century that concerted efforts finally cleared the Thames, ending five hundred years of putrid pollution.

England is next up in the series where we take a look at some of the most intriguing mysteries from a country’s dark and bewildering history. Aliens, ghost ships, unsolved murders, poltergeists, unexplained disappearances, they can all be found right here.

10. The Balham Mystery

The death of Charles Bravo became preserved in London lore as Murder at the Priory, or sometimes the Balham Mystery. In April 1876, a well-to-do lawyer died after several days of suffering, following what multiple physicians concluded was a clear case of antimony poisoning. So then, naturally, the new question became “Who killed him? And why?”

At the time, Bravo had only recently married a woman named Florence Campbell. Before her marriage, she had had a scandalous affair with an older, married doctor. Her reputation in Victorian society wasn’t exactly spotless so, in the eyes of many, she became the obvious suspect. But then again, she was the rich one in the marriage so, if money was the motive, then it was Bravo who should have been trying to poison her. And that is actually what some people believed – they thought that he intended to kill Florence and ingested some poison by mistake, thinking it was genuine medicine. 

Other popular suspects included the doctor who used to have an affair with Florence Campbell, a disgruntled coachman that Bravo had recently fired, and Mrs. Jane Cox, Florence’s companion whom Bravo had also threatened with dismissal. All were plausible, but the true identity of the poisoner remains unknown to this day.

9. The Enfield Poltergeist

One night in August 1977, Peggy Hodgson called the police to her home in Enfield to report hearing strange noises and objects being knocked over. She didn’t know at the time that she was about to launch one of the biggest paranormal sensations in English history.

Her haunting became known as the Enfield poltergeist and it seemed to center around two of her daughters, 12-year-old Margaret and 11-year-old Janet. Dozens of people unrelated to the Hodgsons ended up reporting various strange happenings such as hearing sudden noises and disembodied voices, seeing drawers and doors open by themselves, while tables and chairs moved on their own across the floor.

So was it genuine? Well, most paranormal investigators thought so, which isn’t really surprising. Also not surprising was that plenty of skeptics dismissed the whole case as nothing but the antics of two clever and bored girls, which were then sensationalized by newspapers looking for a good story. Decades after the fact, Janet admitted to faking some of the alleged phenomena with her sister, although she insisted that most of it had still been genuine.

Like with most of these cases, the paranormal activity stopped suddenly in 1979, but the legend of the Enfield poltergeist still lived on long after that.

8. The Vanishing of Mary Flanagan

The disappearance of Mary Flanagan has the ignoble distinction of being Scotland Yard’s oldest missing persons case. On New Year’s Eve, 1959, the London teenager left her home in West Ham to attend a party at her workplace. When her parents realized that she did not return home the following day, they went to the refinery where the 16-year-old worked and were dismayed to discover that she never showed up to the party that night. Mary Flanagan had last been seen heading for the metro station before she vanished, never to be heard from again.

An investigation revealed that Mary had called in sick and not showed up for work for the last two weeks. This actually gave her family hope that her disappearance had been planned, and that instead of something sinister happening to Mary, she ran away with her boyfriend. Her family knew a bit about him – his first name was Tom, he was an Irish immigrant and he may have worked as a stoker for the merchant navy. His last name could have been McGinty, except that there was no Tom McGinty employed by the navy.

Even if Mary Flanagan ran away with her boyfriend, it still seemed unlikely that she would not reach out to her family in the decades that followed. That is why police were reluctant to dismiss her as simply a “typical teenage runaway,” and why the case was officially reopened in 2013, hoping that modern technologies and policing methods might yield new clues. So far, no luck…

7. Who Shot Robert Pakington?

While we’re talking about dubious honors, we should also mention Robert Pakington, possibly the first handgun murder victim in the history of London, killed almost 500 years ago.

Pakington was a merchant involved with the Worshipful Company of Mercers and a Member of Parliament. He was also a big critic of the clergy which, at the time, placed him at odds with the Catholics and in the favor of the Protestants. Anyway, on the morning of November 13, 1536, Pakington was on his way to church when somebody shot him dead. Although plenty of people heard the booming noise, the identity of the killer was concealed by a heavy mist that had set over London that day. 

Pakington became regarded as somewhat of a martyr, and many people accused the clergy of being behind his murder. Several names have been put forward, but chroniclers of that time could not agree on the identity of the culprit, which will likely remain a mystery forever.

6. The Truths and Falsehoods of Elizabeth Canning

Back in 1753, an 18-year-old maid named Elizabeth Canning made her appearance in a deplorable state, with a shocking story to tell. She had been missing for a month, time during which she said that she had been held prisoner in a brothel, being restrained and denied food unless she agreed to work as a prostitute. Eventually, Canning managed to escape and returned to her mother’s home.

After telling her story to outraged friends, neighbors, and family members, Elizabeth took the police to the house where she had been imprisoned and identified her captors: two women named Susannah Wells and Mary Squires. They were arrested and Canning’s case was taken on by a prominent London magistrate named Henry Fielding. Bizarrely, back then assault was not as serious as theft, which carried with it the possibility of the death penalty, so Mary Squires was actually sentenced to death for stealing Elizabeth’s corset.

Not everyone was convinced by Canning’s story, and among the skeptics was Sir Crisp Gascoyne, the Lord Mayor of London, who decided to open his own investigation. He found witnesses who could testify in favor of Wells and Squires, as well as other witnesses who said they had been bullied into testifying for Canning by an angry mob of her supporters. The case took a dramatic new turn, as Elizabeth Canning now stood accused of perjury.  

This pretty much split the entire city in two camps: the Canning supporters who believed that she had been kidnapped, and the skeptics who thought that she made up the whole thing to conceal something scandalous, such as a secret birth or some kind of criminal plot.

In the end, Mary Squires was exonerated, and Elizabeth Canning was found guilty and sentenced to seven years’ transportation to America. There, she married and never returned to England, and the true story behind her disappearance still remains unknown.

5. The HMS Eurydice

The year 1878 saw one of England’s worst maritime disasters during peacetime when the Royal Navy corvette HMS Eurydice was caught in a snowstorm and sank off the Isle of Wight, during a return voyage from Bermuda, taking 281 men to their cold, watery graves. The wreckage was refloated later that same year, but it had been so badly damaged that, ultimately, it was decided to break it up.

However, that has not stopped sailors from seeing the HMS Eurydice, now as a ghost ship, still sailing the waters of the English Channel, particularly near Sandown Bay on the Isle of Wight. In the 140 years that have passed, there have been numerous sightings of the vessel, including in 1998 when Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex, claimed to have spotted the ghost ship along with a film crew while making a documentary. 

And there was an even stranger encounter, reported by Commander Lipscomb during the 1930s. While he was in charge of a submarine around the Isle of Wight, he saw that he was on a collision course with an old-fashioned, full-rigged ship, and ordered immediate evasive maneuvers to avoid striking it. After the danger had passed, the ghost ship was nowhere to be seen.

4. The Ghosts of Hampton Court

It won’t surprise you to discover that England has loads of haunted places, from old castles, to inns and pubs, to roads that were once preyed upon by highwaymen. Today, we will only be looking at one location, but it is said to be one of the most haunted places in England, and it is also one of the biggest. It is Hampton Court Palace in London, the 500-year-old royal palace originally intended for the Archbishop of York, Thomas Wolsey, but used mainly by King Henry VIII.

There are several ghosts which allegedly make their residence at Hampton Court, and two of them used to be married to Henry VIII. The first is Jane Seymour, the king’s third wife, who died at Hampton Court during childbirth. People have reported seeing her on the Silverstick Stairs which led to the room where she passed away. The second apparition belongs to Catherine Howard, Henry’s fifth wife who was beheaded for adultery and treason when she was only 19 years old. Her ghost is a lot louder and angrier and can allegedly be heard screaming down the corridor, pleading with the king, the same way she did in life when she was arrested and taken to be executed.

Then there is also the third ghost known as the Grey Lady, believed to be Sybil Penn, a 16th century servant and wetnurse who died of smallpox. She appears to be the busiest of all the Hampton Court ghosts. People have reported seeing her and hearing her working on a spinning wheel numerous times since 1829, after her tomb was disturbed during renovations.

3. The Hoxton Horror

The most notorious mystery from Victorian London has to be the true identity of Jack the Ripper, but he was hardly the only one responsible for gruesome, unsolved murders at that time. Another case from around that era which is almost forgotten nowadays was dubbed by newspapers of the time as the “Hoxton Horror.” 

On July 10, 1872, mother and daughter Sarah and Christiana Squires were found murdered inside the stationery shop that they owned and ran. They both had been bludgeoned with a hammer or an iron bar, and the store was in complete disarray, seemingly the target of a robbery.

The biggest conundrum in the case seemed to be a disagreement over the time of the murders. Multiple witnesses claimed to have seen the mother and daughter between 9 and 11 a.m., and one witness was adamant that they saw Sarah Squires in the door of her shop at 12:30. However, inside the store, investigators found a broken clock which, presumably, had been knocked over during the fight and it had stopped at 12 p.m.

Authorities were never able to figure out this discrepancy. Was the witness simply wrong or did they see someone else by the door, perhaps even the killer? Police only had one solid suspect – Sarah Squires’ son – but he was locked up in an insane asylum at the time, so the Hoxton Horror went on to become another one of London’s unsolved mysteries.

2. The Rendlesham Forest Incident

England has had more than its fair share of UFO sightings, but none are more famous than the Rendlesham Forest Incident, sometimes referred to as “Britain’s Roswell.”

Forty years ago, something strange happened near the Woodbridge Royal Air Force station in Suffolk. At the time, it was being used by the US Air Force, and between the dates of December 26 and December 28, 1980, several members of personnel reported seeing strange, colorful lights moving through the forest, as well as a metallic, glowing object. When they investigated one morning, they found a glade with burn tree marks, broken branches everywhere, and three indentations in the ground in a triangular pattern.

The story gained steam a few years after the event, when the US Government released the memo written by deputy base commander Lt. Col. Charles Halt, which described the incident. Since then, it has become one of the most popular sightings among UFO enthusiasts.

As far as the skeptics were concerned, they put forward alternative explanations such as the lights coming from the Orfordness Lighthouse or from natural phenomena like a meteor or a bright star, but if the eyewitnesses are indeed telling the truth, then nothing accounts so far for all of the strange things they reported seeing.

1. Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm?

On April 18, 1943, four young boys entered Hagley Woods in Worcestershire, looking for bird nests. One of them decided to climb a wych elm that looked promising, but he didn’t find any nests. Instead, inside the hollow trunk he saw a human skull.   

One of the boys told his parents who alerted the police. The following day, detectives and forensic experts were on the scene, and they recovered most of the skeleton of a young woman who had been murdered at least 18 months earlier. She appeared to be in her mid 30s and was about five feet tall. The victim had very protuberant teeth, which gave her a distinctive bite and this, in turn, gave authorities hope that she would soon be identified. However, the weeks turned into months, turned into years, and the identity of the woman was still a mystery.

Some of the popular theories said that the victim had been a prostitute, or a spy, and even a sacrifice in a witchcraft ritual.

The case took an unusual turn the following year, when a piece of graffiti appeared in Birmingham, which read “Who put Bella down the Wych Elm – Hagley Wood?” Was this a taunt from the killer and the woman was actually named Bella or simply a prank? Police looked into the new lead but again came up short. Ever since then, the graffiti keeps appearing on occasion, and while we may never find out who put Bella in the wych elm, at least it serves to remind people of one of England’s greatest wartime mysteries.