Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

***I’m putting a series of Victorian Urban Legends posts up to draw the reader’s attention to my forthcoming book: The Nail in the Skull and Other Victorian Urban Legends. This legend (with full references) will appear in a second volume. If anyone can fill in missing pieces or offer other sources… I’ll be grateful and you’ll […]

***I’m putting a series of Victorian Urban Legends posts up to draw the reader’s attention to my forthcoming book: The Nail in the Skull and Other Victorian Urban Legends. This legend (with full references) will appear in a second volume. If anyone can fill in missing pieces or offer other sources… I’ll be grateful and you’ll […]

***I’m putting a series of Victorian Urban Legends posts up to draw the reader’s attention to my forthcoming book: The Nail in the Skull and Other Victorian Urban Legends. This legend (with full references) will appear in a second volume. If anyone can fill in missing pieces or German sources… I’ll be grateful and you’ll be […]

***I’m putting a series of Victorian Urban Legends posts up to draw the reader’s attention to my forthcoming book: The Nail in the Skull and Other Victorian Urban Legends. This legend (with full references) will appear in a second volume. If anyone can fill in missing pieces or German sources… I’ll be grateful and you’ll […]

Introducing Spiking Zara a nineteen-year-old fresher at Nottingham Uni (UK) had, 11 October of this year, an extremely unpleasant experience. After entering a nightclub in the city Zara had a ‘complete blackout’ and the next morning she could, on waking, remember nothing of what had happened to her: ‘It’s not a blur of memory, it […]

I’ve never heard of these shenanigans before but my immediate reaction is ‘urban legend’. In urban legends, remember, ‘razor blades’ are put in everything from Halloween sweets or apples (US) to lipstick (Iran), to slides (stuck there with chewing gum) so why not behind posters? After all, ‘if someone was to tear [a poster] off […]

Doppelganger and Familiar Robber This is a very unusual story and has two acts. Note that it is put here for the familiar robbers story in the second part: the subject of two previous posts, one from the US one from Spain. But is the doppelganger tale also an urban legend? The story is messy. […]

That Joke The words are famous and supposedly came out in a verbal duel between Lady Astor (Britain’s first active woman MP) and, from a different wing of the Conservative party, Winston Churchill. Lady Astor: ‘If I were your wife I would put poison in your coffee.’ Churchill: ‘Nancy, if I were your husband I […]

Here is a nice French story from a period when hypnotism was given far too much credit for being able to make people do things that they did not want to do. We are in 1894. A strange story is related of an extraordinary affair which is said to have occurred in one of the […]

Busy day. Lots of work and final papers to grade, but would love to know whether this can be paralleled: drbeachcombing AT gmail DOT com On the 8th of November, 1871, a public officer at  Colchester reported that having seen a report in the Shipping Gazette that a bullock had been picked up by the […]

This is a very enjoyable ghost story: it is classed as an urban legend because this blogger has come across it before but cannot remember where. Can anyone help: drbeachcombing AT gmail DOT com The text comes from The Life and Times of Henry Lord Brougham (the good Lord’s autobiography, published in 1871: flor. 1778-1868). […]

A duel was described in a British compendium in 1784: the Weekly Entertainer since you ask. The full text is below for connoisseurs, but what was remarkable about it was that eight men died and 2 were injured. Briefly the story went as follows. A group of friends in a tavern in Galway had an argument. At […]

The rarest form of Victorian urban legend is the sexual one: it is not the Victorians did not tell racy stories, it is that generally speaking no one dared to publish them. Here is one that somehow slipped through the net. Beach’s favourite detail are the stripes. In a suburb of Dundee a golden discovery […]

This story is haunting and involves ice: so December fare. In 1844 young man left a village near Chamouny [Chamonix], on pilgrimage to the Convent St. Bernard, in consequence of a vow made before gaining the belle of the village. After leaving the convent, he went to several places and bought some linen, with the […]

This story appeared in Table Talk in 1870. Not having easy access it is taken here from the British press. Was it true or wasn’t it? When in India with my regiment, we were, at one time, quartered at a place where there was a missionary station. Some of the officers (as was frequently the […]