Drunk Funerals April 16, 2025
Author: Beach Combing | in : Uncategorized
These were some footnote funerals from Beach’s project, some months ago, to record bizarre 19C funerals. How our Victorian ancestors got excited about alcohol. Here is a nice whisky bottle scene, by now a stock of many films. It is difficult not to sympathise with the defendant in this 1897 case.
At Lichfield Police Court on Wednesday Thos. Nourse, of Fisherwick, was charged with indecent behaviour at a funeral in Whittington Churchyard. Evidence was given to the effect that while a friend of defendant, Sergeant Patrick Davis, was being interred with full military honours, the defendant deposited a bottle of whiskey in the grave, and on it being handed back to him he poured the contents on the coffin. His defence was that he was a friend of deceased, and had simply carried out his friend’s wish in pouring the whiskey down. The case was dismissed.
Here is one priggish account from 1886:
An extraordinary scene occurred at Newtown, on Monday, at the funeral of Richard Jones, who was killed on the previous Saturday the bursting of a cannon the Liberal demonstration. [wth?!?] The interment was at the cemetery, and the Rev. Mr. Jackson officiated. At the conclusion a young woman had a fit, and a local preacher sent for some brandy, when the local female captain of the Salvation Army remonstrated with him for obtaining the liquor, the preacher told her he was a better Christian than she was, or she would tuck up her sleeves and help. The ‘captain’ then came forward, and the preacher, who was much excited, pushed her roughly back. The girl then revived, and the ‘captain’ exclaimed, ‘Thank God your lips are not stained with brandy.’ The affair has caused some sensation in the locality.
But there are some all out drunk fights, 1870: the surname and the fact of a Catholic priest might suggest Irish migrants (navies?) in Britain.
It was proved that on the above day the Rev. W. R. Kenny, Roman catholic priest, vexed by the conduct of the defendant and other mourners – they were all intoxicated – struck him with an umbrella. Grady immediately knocked the priest down, and the latter, on rising, proceeded to the mortuary chapel to perform the burial service. This over, the coffin was ordered taken to the grave, but Fox would not permit it, he had both removed. He came up again, obstructed the passage the cortege, and was struck by Grady. The two men and, not to be behind hand, some of women, all more or less intoxicated, had a ‘set to,’ and the scrimmage was continued while the interment was taking place.
Here is a drunk wife (Mrs Francis), an angry crowd and a fight at the graveside in 1895.
On the day of the funeral Mrs. Francis arrived the house a state intoxication, and was so violent that the undertaker first refused to allow her to enter the coach. On her promising to be quiet lifted her in it, as she was too intoxicated to step alone. On the road to Bow Cemetery she became very abusive, and objected to the presence of several women who had been invited.
The husband’s lovers or just chance dislike?
She was refused admission into the chapel where the burial service was held, and at the grave side a free fight occurred. Mrs. Francis would have been thrown into the grave on the top of her late husband’s coffin, but for the intervention of the cemetery authorities. ‘It was her blood,’ she told Mr. Dickinson, which ‘watered her husband’s coffin and not her tears.’
This all comes from a subsequent court case.
Ghost Flap in Derbyshire April 16, 2025
Author: Beach Combing | in : Uncategorized
Beach introduced before the term ghost riot: we also need another expression for the occasional ghost flaps, when entire communities go ghost crazy. Here is a nice one from 1858 for Great Hucklow. Hucklow is in the hilly Peaks. The village of Hucklow, situated between Eyam and Tideswell, has been of late thrown into a […]
Live Victorian Burials April 15, 2025
Author: Beach Combing | in : Uncategorized
The whole Victorian theme of the live burial is well known: there are several doctorates to be written in this vast theme. Here are some real accounts from the nineteenth century. Of course most of the time these revivals were rumours rather than reality, like this one from 1891 Wales. The Welsh newspapers report an […]
Angry Funerals April 15, 2025
Author: Beach Combing | in : Uncategorized
The Victorians did so many things better than us, but close to the top of the list are funerals. Here are some ‘angry’ Victorian funerals, most from the second half of the nineteenth century. The most common scenes just involved family arguments. Here is one from 1875 with a dispute over a will: On Thursday morning […]
A Suicidal Welsh Ghost? April 15, 2025
Author: Beach Combing | in : Uncategorized
Over the years Beach has offered several Welsh ghost stories: remember the ghostly rabbits, or the jumping Welsh ghosts. Welsh ghost stories as, indeed, with almost all things Welsh are just better. A strange ghost story comes from the Principality. There is a friendly society at Pontardowe, in the Swansea Valley, among whose rules is […]
In Search of the Hag March 18, 2025
Author: Beach Combing | in : UncategorizedDavid Hufford’s study of nightmare is well known. Many of us have had the experience of feeling a crushing weight on our chest while sleeping. This experience is often associated with a creeping sense of menace and often the presence of some supernatural bogey in the room: it is even sometimes claimed that the supernatural […]
The Pixie Wars March 3, 2025
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
Supernatural entites are tied to places and they are known by specific terms in different localities: this is something that we easily lose touch with when we read and write about the supernatural. Beach wants to give here just one version. ‘Pixies’ are a south-western word for fairies: though there are hints that these pixies […]
Victorian Urban Legends: Fine Art February 25, 2025
Author: Beach Combing | in : UncategorizedA couple of fine art urban legends. We live in a world where painting no longer has the same social value: what would be the modern equivalents of these? Drbeachcombing At yahoo DOT com A man who was furnishing saw in Wardour-street an old portrait which he admired, but for which the dealer asked, as […]
Headingley Monster February 24, 2025
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
Here is a weird and disturbing story from the Sheffield Evening Telegraph, 16 Apr 1912: Leeds Family Terrorised; Woman Bitten. For three months past, a strange little beast has been alarming a Headingley household. It has been variously held to be weasel, a rat, or some strange creature from the East. On several, occasions the animal […]
St Charles Fort? February 23, 2025
Author: Beach Combing | in : UncategorizedCharles Fort was a fiercely eccentric and independent individual who collected, in the early twentieth century, anomaly reports, as some of his contemporaries collected cigarette cards. He described and lovingly collated these anomalies in five books he published between 1906 and 1932: after thousands of visits to libraries, most in New York. These books are […]
Are Mermaids Fairies? July 1, 2024
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Medieval, Modern
Chris starts our new podcast episode (Mermaid 101) with this question (see title) and I answer ‘yes’. Mermaids (which have featured for over a decade on this site) are social supernatural beings who happen to live in the water rather than on land. They are essentially marine fairies. But there is an important difference in […]
Early Modern Fairy Sex Spell June 1, 2024
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
This month’s podcast is on sex and the supernatural. The most extraordinary text I ran across in preparing for our hour ride is the following spell from an early modern English text, edited by Frederika Bain in her ‘The Binding of the Fairies: Four Spells’, Preternature 2 (2012), 323-354. It describes the ritual you should […]
Karl Banse: The Man Who Made the Case for Mermaids May 1, 2024
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
Just a quick post as we move towards the summer. The podcast goes on with me and Chris recently talking about fairy artifacts, the Philip experiment (‘how to invent a ghost’) and this month ‘spectral evidence: the supernatural in court’. I, meanwhile, am diving into mermaid-lore, a love that started many years ago on this […]
The Wood Diva February 5, 2024
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
***I’ve been absent for a couple of months because I was locked out of the account! Just to let you know that Chris and I continue to do our podcasts and there has been an episode on medieval x-files and now bird spirits. This is a fragment of an article on Fairy Census 2 I’ve […]
The Dancing Fairies of Sennen Cove: December 12, 2023
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
This month Chris and I have been enjoying, on the Boggart and Banshee podcast, a fascinating fairy encounter at Sennen Cove, a hamlet, in Cornwall. In 1888 two young women go out to the well at midnight, up on the hill behind their house. I’ve put on this Victorian OS map a red line for […]
