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thing came from far toward the house, passed through the roof, and then settled heavily on the floor, and
again, after an interval, as if the same winged thing rose and passed away as it had come'. Mr. Im Thurn
thinks the impression was caused by the waving of boughs. These Cock Lane occurrences were attributed to
ventriloquism, but, after a surgeon had held his hand on the child's stomach and chest while the noises were
being produced, this probable explanation was abandoned. 'The girl was said to be constantly attended by the
usual noises, though bound and muffled hand and foot, and that without any motion of her lips, and when she
appeared to be asleep.' {166} This binding is practised by Eskimo Angakut, or sorcerers, as of old, by
mediums () in ancient Greece and Egypt, so we gather from Iamblichus, and some lines quoted from Porphyry
by Eusebius. {167} A kind of 'cabinet,' as modern spiritualists call a curtain, seems to have been used. In fact
the phenomena, luminous apparition, 'tumultuous sounds,' and all, were familiar to the ancients. Nobody
seems to have noted this, but one unusually sensible correspondent of a newspaper quoted cases of knockings
from Baxter's Certainty of the Worlds of Spirits, and thought that Baxter's popular book might have suggested
the imposture. Though the educated classes had buried superstition, it lived, of course, among the people,
who probably thumbed Baxter and Glanvill.
Thus things went on, crowds gathering to amuse themselves with the ghost. On February 1, Mr. Aldrich, a
clergyman of Clerkenwell, assembled in his house a number of gentlemen and ladies, having persuaded
Parsons to let his child be carried thither and tested. Dr. Johnson was there, and Dr. Macaulay suggested the
admission of a Mrs. Oakes. Dr. Johnson supplied the newspapers with an account of what happened. The
child was put to bed by several ladies, about ten o'clock, and the company sat 'for rather more than an hour,'
during which nothing occurred. The men then went down-stairs and talked to Parsons, when they were
interrupted by some of the ladies, who said that scratching and knocking had set in. The company returned,
and made the child hold her hands outside the bedclothes. No phenomena followed. Now the sprite had
promised to rap on its own coffin in the vault of St. John's, so thither they adjourned (without the medium),
but there was never a scratch!
'It is therefore the opinion of the whole assembly, that the child has some art of making or counterfeiting
particular noises, and that there is no agency of any higher cause.'
In precisely the same way the judges in the Franciscan case of 1533, visited the bed of the child where the
spirit had been used to scratch and rap, heard nothing, and decided that the affair was a hoax. The nature of
the fraud was not discovered, but the Franciscans were severely punished. At Lyons, the bishop and some
other clerics could get no response from the rapping spirit which was so familiar with the king's chaplain,
Adrien de Montalembert (1526-7). Thus 'the ghost in some measure remains undetected,' says Goldsmith,
and, indeed, Walpole visited Cock Lane, but could not get in, apparently after the detection. But, writing on
February 2, he may speak of an earlier date.
Meanwhile matters were very uncomfortable for Mr. K. Accused by a ghost, he had no legal remedy.
Goldsmith, like most writers, assumes that Parsons undertook the imposture, in revenge for having been sued
for money lent by Mr. K. He adds that Mr. K. was engaged in a Chancery suit by his relations, and seems to
COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE 58
Cock Lane and Common-Sense
suspect their agency. Meanwhile, Elizabeth was being 'tested' in various ways. Finally the unlucky child was
swung up in a kind of hammock, 'her hands and feet extended wide,' and, for two nights, no noises were
heard. Next day she was told that, if there were no noises, she and her father would be committed to
Newgate. She accordingly concealed a little board, on which a kettle usually stood, a piece of wood six
inches by four. She managed this with so little art that the maids saw her place the wood in her dress, and
informed the investigators of the circumstances. Scratches were now produced, but the child herself said that
they were not like the former sounds, and 'the concurrent opinion of the whole assembly was that the child
had been frightened by threats into this attempt. . . . The master of the house and his friend both declared that
the noises the girl had made this morning had not the least likeness to the former noises.' In the same way the
Wesleys at Epworth, in 1716, found that they could not imitate the perplexing sounds produced in the
parsonage. The end of the affair was that Parsons, Mary Frazer, a clergyman, a tradesman, and others were [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]