Ghost Hunting Gone Wrong: The Hammersmith Ghost of 1804 and Sprectrecide in Self Defense

 

        The night of January 3, 1804 is bitterly cold and moonless.  The residents of the borough of Hammersmith on the western outskirts of London are ill at ease and on edge as a still winter’s darkness descends over their neighborhood.

Since early November of the previous year the people of this working class suburb have been reporting sightings of a white, sometimes formless almost translucent spectre floating through the air.  Some, especially those that have the misfortune of having to pass by the Hammersmith churchyard after nightfall on their way home from work, have even claimed to have been groped or attacked by the shrouded spirit.

Speculation in the neighborhood has been running rampant.  Many believe that the so-called “Hammersmith Ghost” is the disembodied spirit of a man who hung himself the previous year and was buried in the consecrated ground of the churchyard.  According to English law, up until the year 1882, it was not only a sacrilege but also a crime to bury suicide victims on consecrated ground.

In late November of 1803 a woman walking home through the churchyard said that the spirit had, “forced itself upon her,” as she attempted to flee from it in terror.  It wasn’t until hours later, after she had already been reported missing, that local residents had discovered the woman lying unconscious among the headstones as dawn broke over the horizon.

A few weeks later a brewer by the name of Thomas Groom along with a fellow co-worker, was also walking home through the Hammersmith churchyard when he said that he felt a presence creep up from behind him.

Groom later said that he turned around and let out a startled cry when he felt something like a man’s hand clutch his throat.

“What is it?” his fellow brewer called out upon hearing Groom’s terrified cry.  But there was no answer in reply because Groom was lying unconscious on the ground by the time his co-worker caught up to him.

Groom would later testify that he had attempted to fight back against the supposed spirit, but that as he struggled he felt something soft, “like a greatcoat” wrap around him that caused him to pass out.  Neither he nor his co-worked claimed to have any recollection of what the attacker looked like.

Hammersmith Churchyard circa 1804

        By the time of that cold moonless January night at the beginning of 1804 the residents of Hammersmith are in the grips of fear and panic--possessed by a veritable ghost frenzy,

Sightings of the spectre are now occurring on a nearly nightly basis.  Most people claim to have been startled by a white shrouded figure who without warning unexpectedly leaps out from behind buildings and trees and shouts, “Boo! Hah Hah!” and then sprints away into the darkness of the night.

Not everyone believes the town is being haunted by a supernatural enemy.  On the night of December 29, 1803 a night watchman named William Girder said that he saw the ghost on a street called Beaver Lane in the vicinity of the church while making his rounds.  He said that he gave chase to the spirit and that he saw a figure discard what looked to him like a large white tablecloth as he ran after it down the street.

Uncertain of what was stalking them in the night, as 1803 turned to 1804, the residents of Hammersmith began to arm themselves for protection and organized vigilante patrols to catch the spirit.  In an era before professional municipal police forces the residents of Hammersmith felt left with no choice but to take matters into their own hands.

On the evening of January 3, 1804 William Girder, making his rounds once again at the corner of Beaver Lane met up with an armed citizen, twenty-nine year old Francis Smith.  Smith was carrying a shotgun and he told Girder that he was out that night ghost hunting.  Girder agreed that he would meet back up with Smith at around 11:00 pm that same night and see whether or not he and Smith could, “take the ghost if possible.”

Just after 11 o’clock that night Francis Smith saw a white figure standing a few paces in front of him on Beaver Lane.

“Damn you!  Who are you or what are you?”  Smith yelled out to the white figure.

For a moment there was silence and the figure did not respond to Smith’s challenge.  

“Damn you!”  Smith repeated.  “I’ll shoot you!”

Upon hearing no response again Smith pulled the trigger.

Hearing the shot ring out in the still dark night Girder and two other local men named John Locke and George Stowe rushed to the scene.

Upon arriving on Beaver Lane the three men report that they found Smith in a, “state of great agitation,” clutching his shotgun.

Lying dead on the ground is the body of Hammersmith bricklayer Thomas Millwood.  Millwood is dressed all in white wearing the white linen trousers and white apron of the bricklayer’s trade that he has worn everyday on his way to and from work.  On the night of January 3, 1804 Thomas Millwood had been out late after paying a visit to his sister’s house which was located in the vicinity of Beaver Lane.

Smith has shot him right through the jaw and pellets from the shotgun entered Millwood’s skull leaving the bricklayer dead at their feet with blood gushing from his face and brain matter oozing out of his head.

The three men, seeking to protect their fellow ghost hunter, advised Smith to return home immediately, but before he can get away twenty-nine year old Francis Smith is taken into custody by a local constable who had also happened by the area upon hearing the gunshot ring out in the night.

Thomas Millwood’s body is brought to a nearby inn and laid out on a table where a local surgeon by the name of Mr. Flowers examined it and pronounced him dead as the result of a gunshot wound that, “entered the left side of the lower jaw and penetrated the vertebrae of the neck.”

1804 Depiction of the Hammersmith Ghost

        Oddly enough, it was revealed later on in court testimony, that Millwood’s wife who apparently wasted no time in getting remarried and was already listed in court records from the Old Bailey as Mrs. Fulbrooke only two weeks later at the time of the trial had warned her deceased husband to cover up his all whie work clothes with a coat whenever he went out as he had already been mistaken for the Hammersmith Ghost on a previous occasion.

“On the Saturday evening previous...he said he had frightened two ladies and a gentleman.  He said that the man had said, ‘there goes the ghost’.  Thomas says I, as there is a piece of work about the ghost, and your clothes look white, pray do put on your greatcoat that you may not run any danger,” Mrs. Fulbrooke, the widow of Thomas Millwood testified at the trial of Francis Smith.

In spite of the local panic over the Hammersmith Ghost, and the fact that there were dozens of self-appointed armed ghost hunters roaming the area the night of Millwood’s murder, Francis Smith was put on trial before the Old Bailey less than two weeks later and charged with the crime under English law of willful murder a charge analagous to first degree murder in the United States.

The judge on the case at the time, Lord Chief Baron Sir Archibald Macdonald advised the jury that what he termed malice, or what we might more aptly call causality, was not required to convict a defendant of murder, but merely an intent to kill another human being was enough to convict a defendant with the crime of willful murder.

Based on the testimony in court Lord Macdonald determined that even if the defendant Francis Smith genuinely believed that the deceased had in fact been a ghost that the supposed spectre had done nothing to justify being shot and that as a vigilante ghost hunter, Mr. Francis Smith was at fault for having done nothing to apprehend the apparition prior to resorting to the use of deadly force.

Lord Macdonald advised jurors not to use testimony as to Francis Smith’s good character to exonerate the defendant, but rather he pointed to the testimony of Thomas Millwood’s sister which stated that although Smith had challenged her brother’s true identity he had pulled the trigger almost immediately without giving her brother enough time to even respond either way.

Judge Lord Macdonald advised the jury to find Smith guilty of murder asserting that the fact that Smith believed the deceased to have been a ghost was irrelevant to the case.  However, after deliberating for less than an hour the jurors came back with a lesser verdict of manslaughter.

At this point, Lord Macdonald overruled the jury’s decision and said that Smith must either be found guilty or not guilty of the charge of willful murder and that a lesser charge could not be substituted in its place.  

The jury went back into deliberation and found the defendant guilty of the crime of willful murder.  Upon his conviction Lord Macdonald sentenced Smith to the customary punishment of death by hanging and dissection, but he did agree to appeal the case to the King for further review given the fact that the act of murder was done under duress and a mistaken belief that the victim was in fact a ghost.

It was during the review process that Smith’s sentence was commuted from death by hanging to one year’s hard labor due to the public outcry over the sentence and sympathy for Francis Smith whom many felt had acted in self defense.

During the review process, and upon further investigation of the crime, it came to light that the real “Hammersmith Ghost” was in fact a man named John Graham.  John Graham is reported as having been an elderly shoemaker in 1804, perhaps over seventy years old, and it is said that he perpetrated the hoax of the Hammersmith Ghost by covering himself in a white sheet and scaring people in the vicinity of the Hammersmith churchyard on purpose.

Graham supposedly committed his prank out of spite because he was angry that a young shoemaker's apprentice had been frightening his grandchildren with ghost stories and he wanted to get back at younger residents in the community by making them believe that ghosts were real just as this apprentice had scared his young grandchildren by causing them to believe that ghosts were real.

Interestingly, there is no record of John Graham having ever been charged or prosecuted for pretending to be the Hammersmith Ghost.

It would not be until 1984, over one-hundred years later, after hearing a similar  case in which a murder had been committed when a defendent intervened in a situation which he erroneously believed to be an assault in progress that the concept of acting under a mistaken belief as a criminal defense to lessen the severity of charges or punishment would be largely accepted and written into the laws of the United Kingdom.