But first what was a Mechanics Institute. They were established at the beginning of the 19th century. Historically, they were educational establishments formed to provide adult education particularly in technical subjects, to working men. As such, local industrialists often funded them on the grounds that they would ultimately benefit from having more knowledgeable and skilled employees. The Mechanics' Institutes were used as 'libraries' for the adult working class, and provided them with an alternative pastime to gambling and drinking in pubs. In practice however the fees demanded from Mechanics Institute put them out of the reach of many of the working men of Leek. The Leek Literary and Mechanics Institute was initially founded in 1837 and it moved to the present location in the early 1860s. It was described as a very impressive structure with a commodious reading room and lecture theatre. It was the only library in town prior to the establishment of the Nicholson Institute in 1884.
One of the earliest speakers at Leek in late January 1864 was a 25 year old Londoner Henry Wainwright. He was an acknowledges expert on the 18th century poet Thomas Hood and Wainwright spoke on the "Wit, Whims and Oddities of Thomas Hood. The meeting was chaired by Lord Norton and the money raised for the building fund totalled £13 7s 1d. It was a very successful meeting.
Move forward 11 years and Wainwright is in a very different situation. He had a brush making business in East London and lived in the Whitechapel Road. Right next door was the Pavilion theatre - and Henry did love a trip to the theatre, socialising with many performers, even inviting them back to dine with his wife - though the younger, prettier actresses were entertained elsewhere. And, when he met a hatmaker by the name of Harriet Lane, he set her up as 'Mrs King' in various East end residences, the last being in Stepney's Sidney Square. But, Henry tired of Harriet's charms. She was murdered and her body was buried under the floor at his warehouse. A year later, in 1875, with the warehouse sold and about to change hands, Henry exhumed the corpse, cutting it into pieces, which he wrapped in thick canvas cloth. He certainly did try to move the remains, even asking a member of staff to help with transporting them to his new premises - claiming they contained hair for his trade. When the poor workman complained at the stench, Wainwright assured him that it would 'blow off'. A little while later, out in the street, when he complained again at the weight, Wainwright became exasperated, leaving his employee alone with the parcels while he went off to find a cab.
He returned and loaded the packages into the cab and then travelled on alone. But during his absence, the suspicious employee had sneaked a look and discovered a decaying hand. He did not challenge Wainwright at the time, fearing he might be murdered too, but as soon as the cab set off, a constable was informed and, in due course, Wainwright was detained, red-handed, with blood seeping out through the cloth in his arms. However, there was a twist. Wainwright was hanged for the crime, but during the court case it came out that he had a brother, Thomas, and Henry had encouraged Thomas to woo Harriet in his place - hoping to make their break easier. When Harriet's body was found, Thomas had long disappeared. Some believe that Henry, having already lost his reputation, sought to protect his brother's name, taking the blame for her death on himself.
Prior to the Mechanics Institute cottages occupied the site. One of the cottages a Mrs Yates an oatcake maker. She was known to augment her supply of wood for her business by stealing from neighbours. They were determined to teach her a lesson and hid an amount of gunpowder in a pilfered amount. The subsequent detonation served Mrs Yates right and cured her of her stealing.
I was driving past my old school at Carmountside. The school was closed in the mid 80s and the site demolished a few years later. The last part of the school was the Youth and Adult Centre, which was pulled down a decade ago. In a very short time the area has returned to meadow and woodland and the area green where once it was concrete and cement. It has taken less than 30 years to obliterate any trace of the High School that had existed from 1938 to 1985. The power of nature to reclaim the landscape was very evident.
It got me thinking and I have been aware that in recent months I have been negative about developments in the City Council and the lack of progress on a number of key projects such as the Bus Station. I have resolved to try to put forward a positive idea that I hope will be received in the spirit it is sent out.
I have previously expressed an interest in addressing one of the main problems facing the City that of the high level of derelict land. Brown field and other empty sites is a prominent feature of the Stoke on Trent landscape. Can any urban area have as bad an entrance as Stoke does for travellers arriving at Stoke station from the North? The wastelands around Etruria and Cliffe Vale are a main source of embarrassment and I am mortified that for the stranger this is the first impression that they will have of the City.
I believe or at least hope that brown could be turned to green and ultimately gold. In short we should be looking to use derelict land to grow biofuel/ biomass crops. Can it be done? I think that at the very least it ought to be investigated. There are signs that other areas in the country are looking in this way to unlock the potential of former industrial land. Teeside University is seriously looking at ways in which areas around Middlesborough can be turned into profitable use. Last month the Teeside project won an award following evidence that grasses can be grown on derelict sites that has good biofuel potential
Likewise in the States to quote from one site
"The rapid growth of the biofuels industry is good news for many farmers, but using land to grow crops for fuel, rather than food has raised public concern about the impact on food prices in the United States and beyond. So what if farmers started growing oilseed crops such as soybeans, sunflower and canola, and ethanol crops such as corn, on land that isn’t suitable for growing food?
Michigan State University professor Kurt Thelen is experimenting to find out whether such crops can thrive in previously contaminated soil. Even more, Thelan’s group is testing whether or not the plants can actually assist in site clean-up by taking in contaminants from the soil, a process known as phyto-remediation [see "Blue skies ahead for phytoscience," SIJ, March 2003].
Funded by DaimlerChrysler (NYSE: DCX), NextEnergy, a Detroitbased non-profit that supports energy technology development, and the university, Thelan’s group last summer planted a two-acre plot of oilseed crops, corn and ethanol on a 120-acre former Superfund site in the greater Detroit area.
"Yieldwise, we had a very good year," Thelan says. "And we don’t expect to find contamination — the remediation work was done years ago. But we know that just by having plants, we are increasing the microbial activity in the soil, and that has some bioremediation effects."
When I attended a Green Energy conference last February at Staffs University I mentioned this as a possibility and my comments were well received. I was in contact with a number of organisations who were keen to explore the potential of using the brownfield sites of Stoke for some useful purpose.
There are obviously a number of positives that could derive from this
- Creating employment opportunities in the City
- Cleaning and turning to good use previously redundant land
- Reducing good agricultural land usage for biofuel use
I believe that this has real potential and have been in contact with Dr Bridges who expressed an interest. I am keen myself to support this agenda.
I didn’t realise it then but over 160 years ago Wetley Moor was the scene of a violent death in which my great great great great grandfather Thomas Sherwin would play a significant part. He was born in 1817 and was part of an extended family that lived in the area for at least 150 years before his birth. His great grandfather John Sherwin was born at the beginning of the 18th century, John’s remains lie in St Mary’s Church in Bucknall. Thomas Sherwin’s mother was Susannah Forrester another well known local family. In 1838 Thomas married Sarah Hewitt and at the time that these events had two children James and Enoch. He was clearly a man of some intelligence and could write his name in a beautiful copper plate hand. As his marriage certificate attests. Thomas Sherwin was a collier. Small mines and coal pits existed around the moor. Mining as an activity had flourished from the middle of the 18th century and reached a peak just after the First World War When I was a child in the 60s there was always the fear that there was a mine shaft that could open up on the unwary, whether that be man or beast
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But the focus of the story shifts to the uncle of Thomas Sherwin’s wife. William Hewitt was 60 in June 1841 and a former miner. The newspaper report stated that he lived a mendicant lifestyle. He seemed in a woeful state. The newspaper described him as a "frugal man and disreputable" One of the witnesses at the trial said that shortly before Hewitt’s death the old man was seen carrying a load and looking "clemned"- a dialect word for starving.
He would have been thought old in the context of the early 19th century when the expectation of life for working men would have been very low, not much beyond 60. William Hewitt had got into trouble the previous year when he and his brother were imprisoned at Stafford for stealing fowl. He was in jail in October 1840 and released the following spring. The hovel that Hewitt built on the moor had been pulled down and he was homeless. William Hewitt lived by staying at the homes of people who lived on the moor, or by sleeping rough. He did think of changing his life and at the trial Thomas Sherwin recalled a conversation with Hewitt who told him that he wanted to build a house. He had 16 gold sovereigns and a Mr Perry owed him £22- enough to build something. Hewitt was a miser although everyone knew that he had money. A farmer called Wilshaw saw a drunken Hewitt drop his money on the road in front of him. His aside is reported in the Staffordshire Advertiser in the report of the inquest in June 1841. Wilshaw’s responded to his neighbour’s difficulties with banter.
"What, William, are you going to mend the road with sovereigns?
Wilshaw mentioned this episode to William Simpson, a fellow, according to the newspaper, "of unprepossessing appearance and intemperate habits". Simpson liked a pint and a couple days before the death of Hewitt complained about having no money and that he was looking for work.
Hewitt’s body was found at 7am on the 19th June 1841 by a man called Holland. Holland was looking at collecting sand for a house that he was building on the Common. The body had been seen the previous evening by a party of young women walking from Lane End. They thought that the old man was drunk. Holland called on Thomas Sherwin who lived nearby and they established that Hewitt was dead. The body was lying on its back in a stone pit. The left arm was folded across the stomach. His head was resting on a rock. There were two deep head wounds and the body, according to Sherwin, was stiff and cold. The left trouser pocket had been cut off, and Hewitt’s purse was missing. In the other pocket were one shilling and sixpence and 4 pence in copper. They called a constable.
A few days afterwards an inquest was held in Hanley when the details of the death of Hewitt were investigated. I get the impression that the examination of the circumstances that led to the man’s death was quite thorough in the short time that was allowed. The Surgeon who examined the body determined that Hewitt was beaten with a stone and that his death was not due to a fall. Constable Allen, the investigating police officer after a search around the quarry found a lump of grit stone about 5 inches across, matted with blood and hair. It was concluded that it was the murder weapon. The cause of death was a fractured skull with two heavy blows to the back of the head. The brain had not been exposed by the attack.
The Magistrate, Job Meigh made frequent interruptions especially about the drinking culture at the time. There was a reference to the chief suspect drinking in a pub in Bucknall, the day after the death of the old man- Sunday 20th June. The pub had been opened at 7 am where beer and gin had been drink for several hours. Meigh did not approve of the "impropriety of disrespecting the Sabbath, by allowing tippling to such an extent on a Sunday; and after giving the landlady of the "Dog and Partridge" a suitable caution, hoped the constable would strictly due his duty.
The jury returned the verdict of "wilful killing" The Police already had a suspect in custody. William Simpson had been apprehended by the authorities. Simpson’s mother who gave evidence at the inquest was hysterical: she recognised that her son faced the prospect, if he was charged with murder, with death by hanging.
Simpson was seen the day of the killing. He lived close by and one witness Thomas Sherwin’s Aunt Mary Sherwin, a woman in her early 40s saw Simpson walking in the direction of Armshead from Washerwall at about 2pm, very close to the old man who was warming himself by a clod fire. George Forrester, the uncle of Thomas Sherwin, passed Simpson on a footpath in the direction of the old quarry where earlier he saw Hewitt.
I have seen a map of 1900 of the area. Wetley Moor is about 80 acres in size and rises to above 800 feet in height. It is a leftover of the Gritstone Edge that runs northwards towards Leek into the Pennine Chain. The area is criss-crossed with stone walls and footpaths. There is a great deal of evidence of mining and quarrying in the area, the landscape is dotted with shafts and stone pits. There are three quarries on the map and a footpath that cuts behind a spot called the "old quarry" and bends towards the trig point of 857 feet and then on Luzlow and Bagnall.
I am assuming that Hewitt was killed at the site of the old quarries; some distance away from being overlooked from nearby houses
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Simpson luck changed radically the day after Hewitt’s death. He had money and was spending it freely. He redeemed a coat that he had in pawn since April with sovereigns and paid off drinking debts. He "went up Hanley" where he met his mother and drank liberally in the New Inn. He paid off the debt he has run up in that pub by asking what his "shot" was. He bought a smock frock for 8 shillings and in the town met a man called Lunn, an old drinking companion and offered to loan him a shilling.
The following morning Simpson met with Thomas Sherwin and roused the landlady of the "Dog and Partridge" in Bucknall. The two men stayed there for a few hours, drinking beer and gin. Simpson ate bread and cheese. Sherwin and Simpson parted company and Simpson slept off the effect of the drink in an empty fodder bin. He was found there by Constable Allen.
Simpson was wearing a waistcoat when he is arrested and detained in Hanley. On examination the Constable noticed a dark stain that could be blood on the left sleeve and asked Simpson how the garment got to be stained. Simpson claimed that he had a nose bleed in the cell although there is no evidence of bleeding in the newly changed bed straw.
Simpson was also asked how he came by the money. He replied that he had worked for it and it was money that he got for "bark peeling past Newcastle". Bark Peeling was a long-established woodland craft which used the same techniques for centuries. The bark contained a chemical derivative which was used to process animal hides. As proof of his story he produced a receipt although the Constable reported there was a considerable difference between the money that he had received and the recent spending spree
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It looked as if Simpson was doomed.
Justice worked very swiftly in the 19th century and the following month Simpson was on trial for his life at Stafford Assizes. The case was tried by Mr Justice Coltman, an experienced judge he had been trying capital cases for a number of years. Mr Kinnersley and Mr Greaves lead for the prosecution while Simpson defended himself. Reading the trial reports few working men could afford the costs of a defence lawyer and had to rely on their wits in the proceeding that were to follow he was to demonstrate some skill in self advocacy. The odds were stacked against them. The prosecution made great play that the evidence was circumstantial, but put strong arguments why they believed that Simpson was guilty
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The names that gave evidence that day and in the other trials are still common in North Staffordshire, names such as Wilshaw, Matthews, Forrester, Bailey, Holland, Mayer, Machin, Leese, Allen, Fallows, Hewitt and Sherwin
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The only evidence that seemed to help Simpson is witness’s inconsistency over the material and ownership of the purse that Simpson has on him at the time of the arrest, there is an inconclusive attempt to link the purse to Hewitt
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All that Simpson said in his defence at the trial is reported in the Staffordshire Advertiser of the 24th July 1841.
I am innocent of the charge as an unborn child; I have no witness here as I know of
The Jury took 10 minutes to reach a verdict and found the defendant "Not Guilty".
There was astonishment in the crowded court; Mr Justice Coltman was unprepared for such a result. I imagine that he was getting ready to don the black cap and pronounce the death penalty. The affair does not end there, however. Simpson went on a heavy drinking bout in the pubs of Stafford on the night of the acquittal and under the influence ranted and raved.
The people who gave evidence against him were a "damned lot of forsworn witnesses all together and when he got home he will make them stand further"
I am assuming that Simpson felt that he had been conspired against and as the Forrester’s, Hewitt’s and Sherwin’s were all related had plotted against him.
The speech was heard by Constable Thomas Stone of Bagnall who warned Simpson that he had a narrow escape and should think himself very well off. Stone warned that if he continued in that way of threatening witnesses then he would find himself in custody.
This did not deter Simpson.
Well, I will. I will never kill another man, if I had killed him. If Lunn had gone with me to Kingsley Wakes I should have taken the six sovereigns, and should have hanged and nothing will have saved me.
He was rearrested and a trial date fixed for the following March when he was to be tried with manslaughter and larceny.
Thomas Sherwin was not a witness at the 1842 trials. On 31st October 1841 he was killed in a gunpowder explosion in a pit. He died at a pit in Bucknall. The explosion also took the life of a 12 year old boy Walley. The new mines that grew up in the 19th Century depended on men and children to work long hours in often dangerous conditions. Accidents were common.
During the 19th century, on average, 4 miners were killed a day. Thomas Sherwin left a wife and two small boys. The children will not have known their father. Sarah Sherwin remarried Charles Wilshaw in 1853.
The following spring Simpson faced the lesser crimes of manslaughter and robbery. The trial was played out again with little new evidence. The newspaper reported that Simpson questioned the witnesses on the subject of the colour and material of the purse that Hewitt had with considerable shrewdness.
For a second time, Simpson was found not guilty while admitting that he had taken the purse from Hewitt’s corpse. The third trial was a formality and was over in minutes; Simpson was found guilty and transported to Australia for seven years.
The Judge at the trial in passing sentence made the following remark,-
It would ill become me, now that you are convicted of this offence, to comment on the degree of guilt in which you have been involved in the same transaction; this is a matter between you and God.Transportation of convicts to Australia started in 1787. By 1840 transportation to New South Wales ceased but continued to Tasmania and Western Australia until 1853. Prisoners who received a transportation sentence were not normally allowed to return to the UK. It is estimated that from 1789-1870 over 150,000 Britons forcibly colonised Australia in this way.
Most prisoners receiving a transportation sentence were sent initially to the Prison Hulks in London and served the first part of their sentence in solitary confinement before being assigned to a convict ship and leaving England.
In one sense Simpson was fortunate to get a sentence of 7 years, at the same Assize a man from Penn near Wolverhampton was sentenced to 10 years for stealing a sheep
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Given the evidence how would modern forensic detection have worked? Fingerprint evidence was not introduced until 1900 and DNA was first used in 1986. I imagine that today work would have been done on the blood on the sleeve of Simpson’s waistcoat. The purse would have been examined to see if it contained material linking it to Hewitt. A pathologist would be able to ascertain how and when Hewitt met his death, and how the way the fateful wounds were delivered. Evidence would have been taken over time to try to link Simpson and Hewitt.
This piece began with a death and ends with a death. Thomas Sherwin was not the first or last Sherwin to die as a consequence of mining. Over 40 years after the death of Thomas, 3 other Sherwin’s went underground to die. In October 1889 fire damp at the Mossfield Colliery near Longton took the lives of 64 miners. Three of the miners were Thomas, Charles and Samuel Sherwin, Sam was 16. The father William was also a miner and never went down the pit again. With the compensation from the mining company the father and mother opened a bakery in Werrington. A story has it that a pair of clogs belonging one of the young men was hung over the grave in Caverswall Graveyard.
The cockpits were in general a hurly-burley place where all social classes mingled intent on their frenzied betting and the matches. Though every town of any size boasted a cockpit, country gentlemen were known to hold matches in their drawing rooms. This pastime was a common enough practice to prompt furniture makers to offer cockfighting chairs. It is said that the new wife of the Earl of Derby prevailed upon him to end the practice of cockfighting in their drawing room.
For all the evils inherent in the fighting sports, they did play an incidental role in the movement of sport towards more equitable competition. Cocks fought in a ring and were precisely paired by weight in all the more heavily staked cock fights, much more so than were their human counterparts in bare-knuckles bouts. Gamecocks were also thoroughly trained for their match long before any but rudimentary training was thought necessary for human fighters. The popularity of cocking and the large sums staked on the contests were a strong incentive to refine and balance the competitions. The current set up for tournaments had its genesis in cock-fighting
By the end of the 18th century regard for the sport divided along class lines. The aristocracy and the labouring class rather favoured the sport whilst the liberal educated middle classes rather frowned on it. Local Miners a hardened breed in those days tended to support cockfighting and would flock into Newcastle in race week in June. The convention being that cock fighting at the ample yard in the Cock in the grounds of St Giles take place in morning before the bloods went off to Knutton to watch the races. Other popular venues included the Green at Penkhull and a secluded spot near Salverley Green between Cresswell and Fulford. There is a local story that a posse of local police raised the establishment and pursued the local gentry across fields in a vain attempt to catch participants
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Leek itself was a popular place for blood sports in the early 19th century. An 80-year-old man writing in the 1880s recalled the Leek of his youth and the raucous atmosphere that followed sporting activities
"I can remember the block of stone in the centre of the market place to which the bull was tethered, and also the crowds, which used to assemble to see the "game" though I was too small to venture there. At Wakes Time there used to be bear baiting on Ball Haye Green and in the Black Swan yard. Wakes and Fairs have not altered greatly in character, except that the presence of the police has checked the old times battle which took place between "town" and "country" and between different sets of men from different villages. I have seen as many as three of these battles take place simultaneously in the Market Place and though fists were the only weapons used, the combatants carried marks for many days afterwards".
But even by 1820 the sport was falling out of favour and by 1849 the practice was made illegal. Scotland followed by the end of the century. This does not mean the blood sport ended participants still carried out the nefarious activity even up to the present day.
The story of John Nadin executed for the murder of his master Farmer Robert Brough in August 1731 is a very well known one in the area. Nadin came to work as a labourer at White Lee a farm owned by Robert Brough, initially it is said that the two men got on well. There is a local legend that Nadin saved the life of the farmer when he fell into a flooded River Dane. However, a woman comes into story with fatal consequences. Brough’s wife, Julia was so passionately in love with the labourer she eventually persuaded him to murder her husband, only to betray him to the police after the deed was done. The evidence was stacked up against him and after a short trial at Stafford, he was found guilty and returned to Leek to face the gallows. The judge ordered that he was to hang at his master’s door and afterwards his body to be conveyed to Gun Hill, and hung in chains. Nadin spent his last night in a pub- the Cock- which stands on the site of the present Tourist Information Office in Leek. No doubt in his misery he will have heard the drunken carousing of the townspeople anticipating his lingering death. He was the last person to be hanged from the public gibbet locally and witnessed by the choir of Leek Parish Church and a large crowd of morbid onlookers. According to Henry Miller writing in his book Olde Leek it was said that the body hung on the gibbet until the body fell apart.
But what exactly was meant by gibbeting? The hanging up of a body by chains and in an iron framework became more commonplace after the 18th century. It is thought by historians to be a response to a crime wave. Lawmakers thought that by displaying the body of the criminal in this way that it would serve as a deterrent to others who might be thinking of a life of crime- think of the gibbet as a Georgian form of the CCTV. The body of the criminal was displayed either at the place of the crime or at a prominent spot to attract as much horror as possible.
The body of the executed man was covered with pitch which acted as an effective preservative. There is a story of an executed murderer in the 1760s near Coventry whose remains could still be seen 60 years after his death. The conserving effects of the bitumen were not always so effective. The body would often be picked at by birds or insects and gradually disintegrated birds sometimes nested in the cavities of the body that had open up.
Even more terrible were stories of criminals found guilty of particularly heinous crimes of being locked alive in the iron cage of the gibbet and left to starve to death although this cruel practice was dispensed with by the time of the first Elizabeth.
By the 19th century the sight of some wretch hanging from a gibbet was a common sight and hard it is to believe children were sometimes given time off from school to see the edifying spectacle of a criminal’s remains treated in this way.
There were many gibbets scattered around the country. They were often marked on maps. It is recorded that nearly 100 were erected on Hounslow Heath- an area west of London and a haunt of highwaymen- alone. A gibbet still stands on Caxton Heath on the road between Cambridge and St Neots and one can well imagine how the siting of the gibbet and the rotting human remains carried within its chains must have shocked the locals. Dickens captures the sense of the supernatural that gibbets exude well in Great Expectations. At the beginning of the novel Magwich the convict is described as lumbering towards the gibbet on the forlorn marsh, its chains holding the skeletal remains of a pirate. They were generally seen to be haunted places as the ghost of the miscreant yearned for a Christian burial. Gibbets were often situated on parish boundaries stopping the troubled soul from wandering too far.
The last occasion that a body was gibbeted occurred in 1832 and this is an instance when the old world met the new in that the victim was a trade unionist William Jobling, who had led a coal strike in the North East. He was arrested and convicted of a trumped up (or at least this is what his supporters say), charge of murder. Shortly, afterwards the law changed and gibbets began to be taken down although it is reported that the gibbet on Gun Hill was still standing as late as the 1870s.
The 1999 film "Sleepy Hollow" starring Johnny Depp features a headless horseman who terrorises a remote community in upstate New York during the early years of the 19th century. The phantom slaughters the locals before being packed off to hell by the actions of the hero. Tales of headless ghosts often crop up all over the country and Staffordshire Moorlands has its own examples of such a phenomena which panicked the people of the area over hundred years ago. One winter’s night in the 1900s an Onecote farmer was returning from Leek market. He had a successful day at market and did not notice the sound of thundering hooves on that lonely moor coming up fast behind him. Suddenly, he was picked up and found himself seated on horse back behind a headless horseman. The horse galloped over hedges and through fields clearing obstacles effortlessly. Eventually the farmer was thrown from the horse dazed and injured near to his home, and shortly afterwards he died. Another local shortly afterwards encountered the dreadful spectre and survived the experience, but his horse and dog both died of fright.
Seven clergyman were got together to exorcize the spectre and managed to compel it to speak. The horseman told them that he was one of four evil spirits that were compelled to wander the earth until the end of time. A writer recording in the 1940s added two other elements to the story. It was suggested that it was the ghost of a peddler murdered by robbers who as a macabre joke cut off his head and set the headless body on a horse; or it was the ghost of a knight killed in the wars with the Scots whose horse was bringing his master home to the Moorlands
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I can well imagine on a dark night people in the remote country areas listening out in a state of fear for the sound of a neighing house and the clatter of galloping hooves on ice hardened ground thinking that the phantom was in the area.
Another headless ghost on a white horse and clad in armour is also alleged to hunt the lanes between Farley and Alton and in the neighbouring county of Derbyshire a lane between Great Longstone and Ashford in the water is said to be haunted by a procession of 12 men carrying an empty coffin thought by a folklorist to be a death omen.
The headless ghost is one of the classic ghost stereotypes present in folk tradition throughout Europe. It has been suggested that it is a shorthand way of talking about apparitions, like ghosts being dressed in white or rattling chains. It is a curiosity because death by decapitation was a rare form of punishment from the Middle Ages onwards and it was a fate usually reserved for the aristocracy as readers of the "Orrible History" series will no doubt remember. Such stories however do crop up throughout the country and for some authorities it was believed that they were often used to keep people off the streets so that criminals could engage in their nefarious activities. In 1804 a correspondent in the Morning Chronicle noted that a smuggling gang operating along the Pembrokeshire coast travelled in a hearse drawn by the imitation ghosts of six headless white horses in order to frighten off custom officers.
Others have proposed that the preponderance of "headless" ghost sightings in the west of the country is that it is an echo of pre Christian beliefs. The Celts practised a cult of collecting heads as they believed that the soul was located there and at death the head is separated from the body as the soul departs. The severed head was a powerful symbol from them as indicated in the medieval Welsh tale of Bendigeidfran or Bran the Blessed whose head lies buried in the foundations of the Tower of London as a palladium against foreign invasion or the decapitation of the Green Knight in the poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" the climax of which is played out some experts believe at Ludschurch in the Staffordshire Moorlands.
I have always appreciated Ken Dodd and recently I summoned up enough courage to write to him. Ken Dodd has been an entertainer as long as I have been alive. He started the year before I was born in 1954. I recall him on TV in the 60s and of course the Diddy Men. There used to be a TV puppet series in around 1965. When we were only holiday in Wales we found a rather battered copy with Mick the Marmiliser and Dicky Mint. Phoebe has the copy now. My letter to Dodd tells all, but in chatting away to others it is clear that for many he has been a central part of their lives. Someone in their early 50s was telling me that they saw him on Morecambe Pier when he was 7. Another friend of mine determined not to like him because of Dodd’s supposed Tory sympathies went to a Christmas event in Burslem determined not to like him but Ken won him over. I suppose I like him because he is last of a breed that stretches back to the Victorian times. The torch has been passed from Dan Leno to George Robey to Max Miller to Sid Field and on to Ken Dodd and from then perhaps Peter Kay.
Dear Mr Dodd,
I thought that I would drop you line because I am a great admirer of your work. Truth is I have been working up the courage to write to you and the opportunity presented itself when I was researching an article for a local newspaper on the 1950s. I saw an advert in the Leek Post and Times dated July 1956 for the summer show at the Central Pier at Blackpool. You were second on the bill below Jimmy James and above Jimmy Clitheroe. I suppose most people were, physically anyway, were above Jimmy Clitheroe.
I will always regard a show I saw you do on the "Good Old Days" that was recorded on Norwegian Television in September 1975. I was living in a remote part of the country and feeling a little home sick when you came on following the typical orotund introduction from Leonard Sachs. You stopped half way through the show to remove a coat hanger, which I still think one of the funniest things. It made me very happy and for a time forget my loneliness.
I have seen you a few times live including a performance at Ellesmere Port- "Ellesmere Port is not twinned with anywhere, but it does have a suicide pact with Grimsby". And at the Victoria Hall in Hanley as you warned we did get home to Leek as the milkman was arriving. However. I often think that the idea of a suicide pact could be extended to include my hometown Stoke on Trent but the suicide pact would also involve Hull and Burnley.
I work part time on the tills at Morrison’s in Leek so I try to work in a bit of your material especially when someone buys a cucumber. "What a wonderful day to push a cucumber through a neighbours letterbox and shout the Martians have landed".
If it is a good day I manage a bit of my own material. A man bought two bottles of wine and a tin of Brasso. I warned him of the consequences of getting them mixed up ""a terrible end, but a lovely finish". I hope you approve.
Regards
