Page 54 - Top Cover Issue 9

54 TOP COVER ISSUE 9

HISTORY

The

Hammersmith

Ghost

or about six weeks On 3 January 1804 at about 10.30 in Smith was charged with murder
at the end of 1803 the evening, Francis Smith met up with a and he appeared at the Old Bailey on
the area around watchman, William Girdler, and told him 11 January. The jury tried to bring in a
Hammersmith in that he was going in search of the ghost. verdict of manslaughter but the judge,
London was in a Smith was armed and the watchman later Lord Chief Baron Macdonald, told
state of great alarm. said that he too always carried a pistol. them that he couldn’t accept that. They
FA ghost, sometimes Girdler had seen the ghost the previous must find the prisoner either ‘guilty’
in a white sheet, sometimes in a calf-skin week and had chased it but it got away. or ‘not guilty’ and that the prerogative
dress with horns on its head and glass He agreed to join Smith after he had of showing mercy lay with the Crown.
eyes, had been seen walking the streets completed his rounds and because it was Smith was found guilty and sentenced
and lanes at night. Some people even so dark they arranged that when they met to death but this was soon commuted to
claimed to have been attacked by it and up one would call out ‘who goes there’ to one year’s imprisonment.
it became a regular occurrence for groups which the other would reply ‘friend’. A John Graham, a shoemaker, later
of young men to arm themselves before short while later Girdler heard the sound admitted to being the ghost, saying that
going out in search of it. of a shot but took little notice because it had been to frighten his apprentice,
Thomas Millwood was a bricklayer ‘I hear them every quarter of an hour, and the case started the debate in legal
living in the area. His normal dress almost all night’. circles about whether a mistaken honestly
consisted of white linen trousers, a white Millwood had gone to visit his sister held belief of a risk to life justified an
flannel waistcoat and a white apron. One and mother in Black Lion Lane. After individual exercising their Common Law
evening he told his mother-in-law about staying for about half-an-hour he left and right of self-defence. The question would
how he had just frightened two ladies his sister saw him walk down the road. not be finally answered in the affirmative
and a gentleman in a carriage. The man Suddenly she heard a shout of ‘damn you, for another 184 years - until the case of R
had said ‘there goes the ghost’ to which who are you and what are you’ and she v Beckford in 1988! ■
Millwood took exception and threatened saw the flash of a gun going off. Millwood
to punch him. She begged him to change had met up with Smith who, believing
his clothes or to wear a top coat with all that he had found the ghost and was in
the talk about the ghost going on but he danger, had shot and killed him.
would have none of it.