Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

Bored, got nothing to do? Here’s a thought. Why not blind a friend for a lark? There are a couple score newspaper stories from 1850-1950 of workmen, companions and complete strangers giving victims pipes that have been doctored with gunpowder. Typically the smoker puts a match to the shag of tobacco, takes a deep breath and […]

Beach is eternally worried about mystics, people who have or believe that they have paranormal powers. Where do they come from? What do they mean? Most studies of ‘mystics’ put them in a historical tradition. The Cunning Man in the English or, for that matter, New England countryside in the 1700s draws on Christianity, Anglo-Saxon […]

A busy day today so here is a little 19C story: A practical joke of a strange kind was played recently on a young lady travelling in first class railway carriage in the West Riding of Yorkshire…. She had the carriage to herself until, at the station from which the train had a long run […]

Location: this spell seems to have been used throughout the west Midlands and North of England. Aim: to seduce a man or to cement a sexual relationship with a man. Ingredients: flour, water, salt, a good sense of rhythm and an ample backside. Method (i) young woman makes bread (ii) when the bread is ready […]

Beach has recently been looking at ring stories in his quest for Victorian urban legends. Here is one that sounds simply impossible: though if any poultry experts want to contradict: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com A doctor, residing in Moringa, in Australia, writes to the Revue Sanitaire to solicit the attention of naturalists to the […]

Obviously this never happened. But credit to the hack who came up with it. Note the event took place in France, the favourite land of madness for 19C English journalists… A curious duel has taken place in a travelling circus temporally stationed in village outside Paris. Two acrobats quarrelled and resolved to fight a duel. […]

Here is a nice immortal story from late seventeenth century Italy. It appears in a very curious book entitled: Johann Heinrich Cohausen, Hermippus redivivus, or, The sage’s triumph over old age and the grave. If you want to be immortal you should probably give it a read. In any case, Beach introduces Signor Gualdi. There […]

Location: West Ireland Aim: To rescue a man, woman or child captured by the fairies as they ride by in their fairy breeze: note that in Ireland it was commonly believed that the fairies travelled across the country is winds, typically whirling winds. Ingredients: A fairy wind, some dirt. Method: Ireland 1808 (Neilson 1808) (i) […]

A few weeks ago Beach offered a description of fairy traditions from Marrie Walsh’s An Irish country Childhood (1996). While reading he was also struck by this tradition about weasels. What is fascinating here is that the weasel is given (in a country where snakes are in short supply) the role normally given in European […]

It is the most extraordinary inscription. This mill-stone rock, which once stood on the top of Tory Hill in County Kilkenny in Ireland, has been taken as proof of Carthaginian contact and settlement or at least trade with Ireland in antiquity. The words clearly read (give or take some distorted letters) Beli Dinose, a reference to […]

***David B gets it, scroll down for answer**** 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 […]

When we experience unusual phenomenon then, of course, our filters are almost as important as the phenomenon itself. Take a series of sheep killing cases that recently made quite an impression on Beach. The narrative breaks down into three sections: Mystery, Mystery Solved, Perception. Each of these in three parts: a, b and c. The […]

In December 1910 a Dr. Stillman, head of the laboratory at the Stevens Institute of Technology, New York, decided to offer some lucky guests a synthetic meal: ‘On the side table were test tubes, bunsen burners, retorts, bottles of various reagents, and so forth.’ Do we glimpse here the beginning of molecular gastronomy? The menu […]

Location: Magic spells for determining future husbands and wives are to be found throughout Britain. But spells usually involve church porches. This spell with a prayer book is only to be found in the English west country. Aim: To see your future spouse. Ingredients: table, fire, food, drink, prayer book, attractive partner. Method: West Country Spell […]

Imagine that you are born in the industrial heartlands of England to a working class family in the mid nineteenth-century. Aged six you are already sent out to earn a crust: let’s say you have to drive a donkey for a cruel master. You never get an education worth the name and still by your […]