Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

Chicago police arrest bathers for indecency… 1920s?

British folklorists badly screwed up their own discipline in the late nineteenth century. When they should have been collecting the rich crops from the home counties and the north and midlands they, instead, indulged in premature comparative work, looking overseas for answers to stupidly ambitious questions. The comparison with some of Britain’s smaller European neighbours […]

Location: This spell is only attested in the Countryman, a British magazine in 1949, for Cornwall. Bit suspicious of its authenticity, but then desperate circumstances… (Anon 1950, 155) Aim: To assure that a sinner of his or her deathbed will get through the pearly gates. Ingredients: A black rooster, a death bed, a dying man […]

Dear Reader The above image comes from the web but my elder daughter wanted this picture of record on the web of two of Beach’s favourite friends. Happy times in the garden here. There follow the most interesting words sent in to StrangeHistory. Thanks to all contributors and linkers… Enjoy July! The mosquitoes have arrived […]

The Index Biography is a quiz pioneered by this blog and introduced in a previous post. The creator must find a biography of a famous individual from history, they must turn to the index and write down eight peripheral facts about the individual’s life. We offered up previously here Sheridan le Fanu and Joseph Stalin (he of ripe […]

The King’s Evil (aka scrofula) was a form of tuberculosis that created horrific injuries on the skin’s surface, particular in the neck area. It could only be cured, many early modern French and British sufferers believed, by contact with royalty: a sufferer would go to the king or queen, be touched, and cured. The practice […]

Hamelburg Prison, American Marines Louis K writes in late June: After reading your caption for the picture, I was mistified. According to my knowledge there was no (major) US Marines presence in the ETO (European Theater of Operations). And looking on the internet more or less confirmed that: So I wonder where the caption came […]

Sheltering under a Sherman tank on the Gothic line.

A Cruikshank pic: love the guy’s expression.

Love this. Late 19C British view of the two Irelands, Protestant and Catholic.

Beach was awfully fond of his snowball tag, and was disappointed when he simply ran out of good snowball stories. Imagine his joy then to run into some ghostly snowballs in Skinner’s Myths and Legends of Our Own Land. The year is apparently 1849 Forty-seven years ago, in the township of St.  Mary’s, Illinois, two […]

This fine ‘lost valley’ story comes from Texas, but the tale of the shepherd who accidentally walks through into a hidden dell or stumbles up, while chasing a lamb, onto an unknown plateau is probably as old as our Neolithic ancestors. This particular version was collected by J. Frank Dobie at the end of the nineteenth century. West […]

Beach has only once been to Bedfordshire, a tiny English county near London. He got stuck in its chief town, Luton, took a room in a sordid pub (the bookshelf had a rack full of well-thumbed pornographic magazines – if only Tripadvisor had been around…) and missed his bus.* In any case, enough of Luton. […]

Serial Killer in Chief