Brown Dick of Blackstone Edge

This version of the legend in all its melodramatic Victorian glory is adapted from the ‘Lancashire Burns’ Edwin Waugh’s dialect telling.[i] Most of the action takes place a little outside Calderdale, but I’ve decided to include it here.

The Ghost of Brown Dick (Larisa Moskaleva)

            One snowbound mid-winter evening, a party of travellers were sheltering from the weather by the warm fire of the White House Inn, Blackstone Edge. The wind whistled around the pub as if all the witches of Pendle were frozen and riding the storm on a mad boggart hunt in the air. Suddenly, the Inn door burst open and in staggered a man shivering violently, teeth chattering and as white as milk. He asked for water, and told the party that he had ‘seen summat’.

The frozen traveller told how he had been visiting his dying uncle in Sowerby and was now travelling home across the moor. As he approached the White House Inn, he saw a tall figure in a fur cap 20 yards ahead of him. Thinking he would like some company in this lonely and desolate landscape, he called out but received no answer. He did, though, notice that the figure’s clothes didn’t seem to be ruffled by the howling wind. As the traveller approached, the figure turned and showed its long white face was streaked with blood. Then the figure started to melt away into the moonlight before drifting across the moors towards the stone known as Robin Hood’s bed. It was this sight which led to the terrified traveller bursting through the White House door.

The assembled party listened in amazement to the story. Some were sceptical; after all they had never seen a ghost. And even if ghosts did exist, they were not sure why clothes and fur caps should also have ghosts. However, two gamekeepers who were present remained quiet during the discussion, before one turned to the other and said: ‘He’s seen Brown Dick.’ He then proceeded to tell the tale of Brown Dick of Blackstone Edge.

            In the distant past, the White House Inn was kept by a widow and her beloved son Dick, whom she doted on and spoilt rotten, giving him everything he wanted and always letting him have his own way. Of course, being brought up this way meant that Dick (or Brown Dick as he came to be known) soon fell in with a bad crowd: Iron Jack’s gang. Iron Jack led this violent bunch of highway robbers, thieves and murderers and they terrorised the neighbourhood. They robbed travellers on the lonely moor, burgled the surrounding farms and cottages, and people who crossed them sometimes disappeared, never to be seen again. Dick’s mother, though, would not believe that her beloved son would ever be involved in such business.

            Brown Dick was often away from home for a couple of nights at a time, but on one occasion when he didn’t come back after a week his mother began to worry. More and more weeks passed and still her son did not return, leaving his poor mother more and more distracted. She placed two candles in the window of the inn every night to guide him home should he return, but he never did. If the howling wind across the moor rattled the inn’s door, she would open it and call out her son’s name to no avail. She even took to wandering across the desolate Blackstone Edge crying for him to come home.

            One night, the Inn was dark except for the usual two candles flickering in the window, when three men burst in. They were carrying a fourth man who was grievously injured with a gunshot wound. The three men were travellers who had met Iron Jack and his crew and the gang had attempted to rob them. They resisted and a fight ensued in which Iron Jack was accidentally shot by one of his own men. The cowardly gang left their leader for dead and escaped into the night, leaving the three travellers to carry Jack to the nearest shelter, which happened to be the White House Inn. It was clear that Iron Jack’s wound was so serious that he was not long for this world and so a parson and a doctor were sent for from Littleborough.

            Iron Jack knew he was dying and confessed to many murders, but he said that the deed that troubled him most was the murder of Brown Dick. This had happened when the gang had completed a successful robbery and had headed over to Robin Hood’s Bed to divide up the spoils by lantern light, for it’s said that no matter how much of a gale is blowing on the moors, Robin Hood’s Bed is always wind free. The gang, though, fell out about how the ill-gotten gains should be split and Brown Dick was murdered and buried there near Robin Hood’s Bed.

            Iron Jack refused to name the treacherous colleagues who had deserted him and soon expired. Brown Dick’s remains were found where Iron Jack had indicated and they were removed to Ripponden church yard. His poor mother went mad with grief and could often be found sitting by his grave singing to her lost son. One day she was found lying dead over her errant boy’s grave and was at last reunited with her darling son.

            Now that Brown Dick had been laid to rest, some say that his mother’s ghost walks the moors of Blackstone Edge despairingly calling for her wayward son.[ii]

            Of course, the White House Inn still stands out there on the moors, though in his 37 years of running the pub, landlord Pete Marney hasn’t seen the ghost of Dick or his mum. However, he told me that some customers have had spooky experiences in the pub: ‘people have sworn blind to have witnessed paranormal activity mainly in the loos and some have even been sober when making the claims.’[iii]

[i] Edwin Waugh, Tufts of Heather (1881)

[ii] According to the garbled retelling of the legend in Todmorden Advertiser and Hebden Bridge Newsletter, 22 November 1926

[iii] Email from Pete Marney to author 7 April 2021

Old Red Eyes ~ The Ghost of Todmorden Station

There was a great deal of alarm in Todmorden at the end of May 1864.[i] Rumours had circulated that one Saturday at midnight, the night watchman on the station platform had seen a ghost and that subsequently both the ghost and the watchman had disappeared. The following Sunday and Monday great crowds gathered round the station to enquire what had happened to the poor watchman and what he had witnessed that night.

            Thankfully, the watchman turned up safe and well, but he had seen something. As he patrolled the platform that night, he saw a strange shape, white and silent, gliding towards him. As it was midnight, dark and lonely, he feared that there might have been a terrible rail accident (all too common at the time) and that he was witnessing a spirit bringing news of the catastrophe. In the words of the Courier:

‘His fears chained him to the spot, and, to add to his excitement, when this something came within the light of his lamp… he saw that it was perfectly white, and had a most brilliant red eye like a flame…’

            The terrified watchman ran to get help from station staff before approaching this fearful red-eyed spectre. However, on closer inspection the ‘ghost’ turned out to be an escaped ferret.

[i] Halifax Courier, 3 June 1854

Return of the Slasher… with Drugs?

In the November of 1938, reports began to emerge of a razor blade wielding maniac roaming the streets of Halifax and mounting violent and terrifying slashing attacks on his mostly female victims. The fear of this attacker led to vigilante mobs roaming the streets, businesses staying closed and widespread fear and panic. The attacks escalated beyond police control and then, strangely, the horrible assaults spread across the country….

… Until Scotland Yard arrived in Halifax and began to re-interview the victims. One by one, the victims admitted they had slashed themselves and made up the story of the mystery attacker. It was a classic case of mass hysteria. Read the incredible full story in my book Weird Calderdale.

But could something similar be happening now?

There are numerous reports in the media this week of young women being physically spiked with a mystery drug in nightclubs. Typically, the victims might feel suddenly much more intoxicated than expected from the amount of drink they had consumed. They may also feel nauseous and dizzy and perhaps suffer from loss of balance, vomiting or unconsciousness. Some claim to have found what seems to be a scratch or pin prick about their body which is assumed to be the result of being maliciously injected with an unknown substance.

A widely reported example was that of Sarah Buckle, a Nottingham student. She became so sick on a night out that she spent 10 hours in hospital. She also had a bruise on her hand, about which a nurse speculated: ‘It seems as if you’ve been spiked possibly by a needle’.[1]

According to Superintendent Kathryn Craner of the Nottinghamshire Police: ‘a small number of victims have said that they may have felt a scratching sensation as if someone may have spiked them physically… We do not believe that these are targeted incidents; they are distinctly different from anything we have seen previously as victims have disclosed a physical scratch type sensation before feeling very unwell…. This is subtly different from feelings of intoxication through alcohol according to some victims.’[2]

But to me, this bears all the hallmarks of a Halifax Slasher type episode of mass hysteria. This isn’t to say that this kind of spiking is impossible, though surely it seems rather unlikely. After all, research suggests that the malevolent figure of the predatory male spiking innocent girls’ drinks with date rape drugs in night clubs in order to molest them is largely a myth. Actual evidence of this type of drink spiking is extremely rare.[3]      

Yorkshire Evening Post 28 November 1938

An Australian study examined blood of 97 people who suspected the had had their drink spiked. Guess how many of that sample actually had any sedative or other drug (aside from narcotics knowingly taken) in their system? That’s right. None of them.[4]

But if you’re worried that you’ve been spiked through your drink or intravenously, the Express helpfully gives us a checklist of symptoms to look out for:

  • Feeling “drunker”
  • Loss of balance
  • Visual problems
  • Lowered inhibitions
  • Confusion
  • Nausea
  • Vomiting
  • Unconsciousness[5]

It may be noticed that these ‘symptoms’ are not dissimilar from being, well, pissed.

The prick marks the women have found upon themselves were often not noticed or barely felt at the time and could have been caused by innocent or accidental means. I suspect most people could find evidence of a ‘pin prick’ somewhere on their body if they tried. In the case of Sarah Buckle, it seems that the idea of being spiked with a needle was suggested by the nurse, not something the student had suspected.

There’s an understandable pressure to ‘believe the victim’, but the Halifax Slasher hysteria of 1938 (as well as other similar panics such as the London Monster in the late 18th century or the Mad Gasser of Mattoon in the 1940s) demonstrates that people do sometimes imagine things that didn’t happen or simply make stuff up. This may be especially true in times of anxiety. The Halifax Slasher hysteria occurred in the build up to World War Two, and against a background of tabloid fascination with razor wielding gangsters.  Add to this the status, respect, sympathy and attention afforded to ‘victims’, and the stage is set for imagined and/or invented attacks.

And it’s safe to say that after living in a climate of fear for the last couple of years, today’s young people will have plenty to feel anxious about. Added to this is also the understandable concern generated by the horrific abduction and murder of Sarah Everard by a depraved policeman. The Halifax Slasher mass panic was spread by word of mouth in tight working-class communities, but also in the local and national press which encouraged more ‘victims’ to concoct or imagine slashing attacks. In the spiking cases, though, it seems clear to me that social media platforms have played an important role in the spreading of this modern myth.

I wonder if these stories of malicious ‘needle spikers’ jabbing young women in nightclubs operate as a kind of dark fairy tale warning with the nightclub standing in for the dangerous forest (don’t stray from the path, girls!) and the needle wielding maniac playing the role of the Big Bad Wolf. Perhaps these fears also reflect unconscious concerns about the Covid vaccines, or guilt about being out and having fun after 18 months of dour Covid Puritanism, but that’s just my speculation.

It’s with some of trepidation that I write this, as I wouldn’t want to be seen as ‘blaming the victim’ or downplaying real cases of sexual abuse. Perhaps I’m wrong, and there really are hordes of despicable needle spikers preying on young women. But as of yet no physical evidence of drugs in the allegedly spiked women has been found. And we need to look at these apparent spikings in the light of what we know about mass hysteria and how it operates. The strange case of the Halifax Slasher presents us with an important lesson in this regard.

But dialling down irrational fears benefits everyone, except, perhaps, sensation hungry news media and petty authoritarians. Going out and having fun is part of being young and portraying young women as helpless victims in need of protection is just Victorian sexism, pure and simple.

The bogeyman does not exist.

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/needle-spiking-nightclubs-women-injections-b1942724.html#:~:text=Spiking%20injections%2C%20also%20known%20as%20needle%20spiking%2C%20take,person%20is%20injected%20with%20drugs%20using%20a%20needle.

[2] Ibid

[3] Adam Burgess, Pamela Donovan and Sarah E. H. Moore (2009) ‘Embodying uncertainty? Understanding Heightened Risk Perception of Drink ‘Spiking ’’, British Journal of Criminology, 49, pp.848-862. doi:10.1093/bjc/azp049

[4] Paul Quigley et al (2009) ‘Prospective study of 101 patients with suspected drink spiking’, Emergency Medicine Australia, 21(3) pp.222-228 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1742-6723.2009.01185.x

[5] https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/life/1509077/spiked-signs-symptoms-how-to-tell-drink-spiking-needles-evg

Todmorden UFOs ~ Previously undiscovered historical UFO sightings from the 19th and early 20th centuries!

This experience can be found in a letter to the editor of the Todmorden Advertiser from 1932, and is perhaps the strangest of the pre-saucer era sightings I uncovered in researching Weird Calderdale. It is signed ‘Old Lydgatian’ and is reproduced below in full.

A CURIOUS PHENOMENON

“Sir,- One day this year, in about the third week in September, I was witness of a curious phenomenon. As I was walking the Royd hills in the cool of evening I happened to lift up my eyes unto the hills (somewhere in the direction of Orchan Rocks), and to my intense surprise I saw, hanging in the heavens a glorious globe of green. This object was semi-transparent, and moving from North to South (i.e., from right to left) at a high pace, emitting a high-pitched whistle as it went. When it was – as far as I could judge – directly over an historic monument known as Stoodley Pike, it suddenly changed from green to yellow, and from yellow through all the remaining longer wave length colours of the spectrum. When it had reached a fiery glowing red, it hung for a moment motionless, and suddenly faded away as a tale that is told.

Could any of your readers give me an explanation of such a curious – shall I say – manifestation?”[i]

None of the paper’s readers could explain this strange sighting, but it goes to show that strange things have been witnessed in the skies above Todmorden and its neighbouring towns for a long time.

[i] Todmorden Advertiser 18 December 1931

Weird Calderdale Bonus Chapter ~ The Halifax Witch Doctor

Here’s a chapter about a strangely comic episode from the mid 19th century that didn’t make the final edition of the book due to space considerations….

The Halifax Witch Doctor

‘The plaster and the pills, and the bottle that I gave him would fotch t’ watter from him. The pills are harmless. I know what they would do. There is not a better pill made. I would give them to a child a month old. I have had them twenty years. I will allow anybody to analyse them.’

(John Brierley, the Halifax Witch Doctor)

John Brierley, known as the Halifax Witch Doctor, attracted large crowds across the north of England. People would queue all day and longer for a consultation and to benefit from his unorthodox treatments. Travelling healers like Brierley were seen as quacks by the medical establishment, yet people demanded their services. Brierley himself hit the headlines nationwide when one of his patients died shortly after receiving an odd diagnosis and bizarre treatment at the Witch Doctor’s hands. The subsequent inquest found Brierley and his methods under scrutiny from the coroner and representatives of the medical establishment, led by surgeon, Mr Payne. This was no laughing matter for Brierley: if Payne determined Brierley to be the cause of death, he could face a prison sentence. It was a laughing matter for the rest of the country, though. Reports of the inquest were widely published featuring lengthy transcripts of the farcical proceedings with Brierley’s speech in broad Yorkshire. Much of this dialogue has been reproduced in this chapter with original spelling and punctuation.

Death of a Mattress Maker

Richard Lindley was not a well man. The 48-year-old mattress maker from Sheffield suffered from a range of chronic lung and chest complaints, and it was these conditions which, against the advice of his wife, led him to seek the help of a hugely popular unorthodox (some would say quack) healer known as the Halifax Witch Doctor who had been attracting crowds of patients across the north of England.

          So, on Friday 13 May 1849, Lindley set off from his home in Duke Street, Park, to try and secure a consultation with the ‘Witch’. Unfortunately, though, the crowds jostling to see the famed healer were so great that, despite waiting for much of the day, Lindley was unable to obtain a consultation. Lindley returned in the early hours of the following morning and finally got to meet the renowned doctor, who had set up his consultancy in a tavern in Townhead Street, Sheffield.

          After examining the patient, the Halifax Witch (whose real name was John Brierley) reached a singular diagnosis. According to Brierley: ‘I put my hand on his breast and told him his chest was filled with water, and his heart was beating in the wrong place.’[1] Brierley gave Lindley some medicine, some tablets and a plaster for his chest, but he also had to tackle the problem of Lindley’s heart being three inches too low. In order to rectify this, some volunteers held Lindley’s arms behind his back while moving them around in circles and at the same time Brierley massaged Lindley’s heart until it had moved back into its correct place. Lindley was cured, or so the Witch assured him (providing, he added, dropsy did not set in). Two weeks later, Lindley was dead.

The Halifax Witchdoctor at the Inquest ~ Day 1

The inquest into Lindley’s demise provides a fascinating and sometimes hilarious snapshot of the conflict between unorthodox, eccentric ‘quack’ doctors and the medical establishment. The nineteenth century was a golden age for the quack as transport and technological developments meant they could expand their patient base, but the scrutiny they were facing from the press and the medical establishment meant there was an increased suspicion of some of the ‘treatments’ they offered. For the Halifax Witch Doctor, though, stakes were high: if the inquest jury decided that his treatment had caused the death of his patient, he would face criminal proceedings, probably the end of his lucrative career and reputation and perhaps even prison.

During the inquest into Lindley’s death many details about the Witch Doctor and the way he practised emerged, much to the amusement of the press. The transcript of the hearing was widely reported around the country, though curiously, not in Halifax. The coroner was Thomas Badger.

CORONER: Well, Sir, what is your name?

BRIERLEY: My name is Mister Brearley [sic].

CORONER: Your name is not Mister, is it?

BRIERLEY: Yes, it is: Mister John Brearly [sic] is my name.

CORONER: Very well. Where do you live?

BRIERLEY: I live at Cross-Hill House, Halifax.

CORONER: What are you?

BRIERLEY: I am a doctor.

CORONER: To what college do you belong?

BRIERLEY: I belong to no college, only the Whitworth doctor, I do the same as the Whitworth doctor does.                                                                                     

The Whitworth Doctors were an extended family of practitioners based in the village of Whitworth, near Rochdale. Their illustrious career began one evening when their founding father blacksmith James Taylor (1708-1777), who was also adept at treating horses and other animals, found his skills were just as in demand for human patients. A cottage industry was born with many of Taylor’s family being involved in the manufacture of pills and other treatments. The sick came from all over the country and the doctors achieved widespread fame. Taylor’s patients included royalty and anecdotes are still told about the Taylor family and their exploits.[2] John Brierley was, so he claimed, the cousin of George Taylor, one of the Whitworth Doctors who succeeded James, and though he was not taught how to doctor by him nor received any training, he had ‘watched him a little’.[3]

The coroner goes on to ask about how Brierley became a doctor:

CORONER: What trade were you brought up to?

BRIERLEY: I have doctored eight and twenty years [the witness replied indignantly], and I was brought up to nothing else.

CORONER: How old are you?

BRIERLEY: I am forty-two years of age. I was brought up to the trade of doctoring and bone-setting.

CORONER: Were you apprenticed to anyone?

BRIERLEY: I had no need to be ‘prentice. I started doctoring when I was twelve years of age. I put a knee to rights when I was twelve years of age.

CORONER: What was the matter with it?

BRIERLEY: It was dislocated.

CORONER: But how were you trained? Were you at college?

BRIERLEY: I have nivver tacken no college, but I have doctored for eight and twenty years.

          Having established that Brierley had been working as a doctor since he was twelve years old and had never had any training, the Coroner went on to ask about the treatment of the hapless Richard Lindley.

CORONER: What did you do to him [Lindley]?

BRIERLEY: I put my hand on his breast and told him his chest was filled with water, and his heart was beating in the wrong place. I gave him a small bottle to take five drops in lump sugar, four times a day, and I gave him a box of pills. The bottle on the table is what I gave to him.

CORONER: What does it contain?

BRIERLEY: Oh, nothing but the oil of juniper. He was to take two pills every night. The pills are anti-bilious.

CORONER: What are they composed of?

BRIERLEY: Eh?

CORONER: What are they made of?

BRIERLEY: I don’t exactly know what the anti-bilious is made on; I buy them of Dr Howorth, of Rochdale. I don’t make them; I haven’t time. He told me they were anti-bilious, and that’s good for digestion, I know. I never heard on grumbling on ‘em.

CORONER: Then if you don’t make them, how do you know they are anti-bilious?

BRIERLEY: Why, they are.

CORONER: But how do you know that?

BRIERLEY: Because he calls ‘em so, and they are so on top o’t’ box. I know by the feeling, from them and ‘tothers, that they’re anti-bilious.

CORONER: We will test your knowledge. Do you know any of the ingredients of which they are composed?

BRIERLEY: Yes; they are composed of anti-bilious.

CORONER: But do you know any one ingredient in them? Can you tell what they are made of?

BRIERLEY: Yes, I can. There’ll be a little saltpetre and soap, and there’s other materials that I don’t know. There’s soap in all pills. Pills could not be made without.

CORONER: You say the deceased had water in the chest; what did you do to him?

BRIERLEY: I put a plaster on his chest and telled him to keep it on.

CORONER: What else did you do to him?

BRIERLEY: I put my finger on his chest.

CORONER: But what did you and the three men do at him?

BRIERLEY: We put his arms out behind him, and I placed my thumb on different parts of his chest, and pressed gently. I told him to take that bottle of stuff.

CORONER: What had the other three men to do?

BRIERLEY: They were there to stick to him, and keep his arms moving, but not to punish him.

CORONER: Did you tell him that his heart was out of place, and three inches too low?

BRIERLEY: Yes, I did sir.

CORONER: What did you do to get it into its right place?

BRIERLEY: I just pressed his heart till it beat into its right place. Two men were then holding his arms back, and another man was behind, but he did nothing. I put his heart right.

CORONER: Did you tell him he would then be a sound man?

BRIERLEY: Yes, I told him he would be a sound man provided that dropsy did not take place.

CORONER: What sort of plaster did you put on him?

BRIERLEY: It’s one of my own.

CORONER: What is it?

BRIERLEY: One of my own plasters.

CORONER: Yes, but what is it made of?

BRIERLEY: It’s made of stuff on purpose. I don’t know that I’m compelled to tell all t’ stuff it’s made of.

CORONER: But, probably, you will have to tell.

BRIERLEY: Well, then, it’s nothing but beeswax and rosin, and a little lard, coloured, and nothing else. It is spread on a skin.

CORONER: When did you see the deceased again?

BRIERLEY: He came again on the following Tuesday, and I grumbled at him for taking the plaster off. He said he would not do so any more but he did.

CORONER: Did you explain to him what it was for?

BRIERLEY: Yes.

CORONER: What?

BRIERLEY: I explained to him that it was to fotch t’ watter out of his chest, which it did do.

CORONER: Did it?

BRIERLEY: Well, shoo’s here (the widow), shoo knows. The plaster and the pills, and the bottle that I gave him would fotch t’ watter from him. The pills are harmless. I know what they would do. There is not a better pill made. I would give them to a child a month old. I have had them twenty years. I will allow anybody to analyse them.

CORONER: I will find out tomorrow what they are.

A JURER: Did you think his lungs were affected?

BRIERLEY: Yes, and drownded with watter.

CORONER: Then the deceased only visited you twice?

BRIERLEY: No.

CORONER: What did he pay you?

BRIERLEY: I can’t speak to that.

CORONER: Was it four shillings?

BRIERLEY: It might be.

CORONER: Why did you not attend him afterwards?

BRIERLEY: Because he did not come. He should have written to me, and then I would have seen him or anybody else.

CORONER: Have you anything more to say? We shall have the man opened, and then we shall see whether you put his heart into its right place.

BRIERLEY: Well, if his heart has gone back out of its place, it’s nothing to me. I told him to be gentle with it.

CORONER: Did you ever see a man’s heart?

BRIERLEY: Yes, many a one. I have seen men opened.

CORONER: Were you apprenticed to the Whitworth Doctor?

BRIERLEY: No; George of Whitworth and me was cousins.

CORONER: Did you get your education from him?

BRIERLEY: I watched him a little. He never taught me, because he died before I commenced business.

          At this point in the inquest a juror asks whether Brierley would have visited Lindley had he sent for him. Brierley’s reply, if it is to be believed, gives us an indication of his success.

BRIERLEY: Yes, I would. I have people under me in the Isle of Man, and in Liverpool, and all over, and when a letter comes I go. I know by t’ telegraft when they want me, and I go directly if there is danger. The telegraft often costs me £4 a week. I have above a thousand patients under me at the present time, and they bide a good deal of looking after, so many of ‘em as there is.

          It was becoming increasingly apparent that the Halifax Witch Doctor himself was not at all well, having been thrown from his horse and carriage the previous night:

CORONER: I understand you were thrown out of your gig and hurt last night; were you much hurt?

BRIERLEY: Oh no; I had only three ribs broken. I set them myself this morning, and plastered them up. I was driving a proud mare, and she shied, and no one could help it. I once fell three storeys, and had my shoulder broken, and I set that myself. I set my own shoulder. I never had no one else.

          If Brierley is to be believed, his medical skills were great indeed. However, his injured ribs would return to the spotlight when the inquest resumed.

          The evidence so far was read out to Brierley and he was asked to sign it. He refused, saying he had forgotten his spectacles but would take the paper home and return it signed. To the great amusement of the crowds present, he continually refused to affix his signature and ‘fenced with the question a considerable time.’ The amusement and astonishment of the spectators only grew as it became obvious to all that the great healer was illiterate and not even capable of signing his own name. Eventually, Brierley made his mark on the paper and the inquest was adjourned to the following Tuesday to allow for a post-mortem with Brierley being instructed to attend.

~

The Halifax Witchdoctor at the Inquest ~ Day 2

The following Tuesday, the inquest took up where it had left off, this time at the Coroner’s office in Bank Street, Sheffield. The Coroner’s first question was as to why the Halifax Witch Doctor had not attended the post-mortem as he had been instructed to do.

CORONER: Had you notice given you to attend the post mortem examination?

BRIERLEY: I was not fit. I should have died if I had offered to go.

CORONER: What I ask is, did you receive notice when the examination was to be made?

BRIERLEY: Yes; and I sent word I could not attend. I had to send for Mr Cheetham to attend me…

CORONER: Who is Mr Cheetham – a surgeon?

BRIERLEY: Yes; and I had to send for a physician to see what must be done at me. He sent Mr Turton, who bled me…

CORONER: Was that in consequence of the accident you had on Thursday, when you say you had three ribs broken?

BRIERLEY: Yes.

          At this point the healer put his hands to his chest and grimaced, perhaps ostentatiously, with apparent pain.

CORONER: You appear unwell now. Are you still suffering from the effects of the accident?

BRIERLEY: Yes. I am not fit to be here now. I’ll allow any doctor or physician to examine me.

          There was clearly some scepticism among the jury as to Brierley’s claims. One member asked if he was not actually in Sheffield on Saturday attending to patients, something that would not be possible if he was in as infirm a state as he claimed. Brierley replied that he was riding round Sheffield in a cab but only on the doctor’s orders to take some air.

          At this point in the inquest, the unorthodox healer comes face to face with the representative of medical orthodoxy: the rather unfortunately named surgeon Mr Payne. Payne had treated Lindley for numerous conditions including pleurisy, bronchitis and lumbago and it was Payne who was first called for when Lindley was found dead. Payne was also the lead surgeon in Lindley’s autopsy which found Lindley to be in an advanced state of decomposition. His lungs were darkened and engorged with blood. The Coroner felt compelled, no doubt, to ask about the position of Lindley’s heart which Brierley had claimed had been several inches too low.

CORONER: Where did you find the heart?

PAYNE: [With great indignation, as if he thought the Coroner was trifling with him] In its proper place.

CORONER: Was it drowned in water?

PAYNE: No.

CORONER: Having detailed the appearance of the body presented, I would now ask you what was the cause of the man’s death?

PAYNE: Pulmonary apoplexy.

CORONER: Arising from what causes?

          At this moment, one can sense Payne’s inner conflict between his professional outrage at Brierley’s ludicrous treatments and his honesty as to whether this treatment was the cause of Lindley’s death:

PAYNE: I understand that the deceased had undergone certain manipulations….

CORONER: [Interrupting] From what do you understand that?

PAYNE: From the evidence taken before you last Friday.

CORONER: You must not go upon that. Every case must stand on its own merits. Speaking from the appearances you found on examining the body, what, in your opinion, was the cause of death?

PAYNE: There was nothing in the appearances presented on the post-mortem examination but what might have arisen from natural causes…

CORONER: From your statement, it would appear that the man was asthmatic?

PAYNE: Yes, he has suffered from bronchitis.

CORONER: Would it be proper for such a man to have his arms extended, and pressed back, and thumbs pressed upon his chest to lift his heart into its proper place?

PAYNE: I should say it was highly improper, and calculated to do serious injury.

CORONER: Can you say that the treatment has caused his death?

PAYNE: No.

          The glimpses we have of Payne in the proceedings suggest that he is outraged at the treatment his former patient had received at Brierley’s hands. And yet, though he states that the treatment was ‘highly improper’ and likely to cause ‘serious injury’, he does not go so far as to say the Witch Doctor’s quackery caused Lindley’s death. One senses he is struggling with this.

          Payne showed indignation at the questions the Coroner asked him, but this was no doubt nothing compared to what he felt next. Brierley suddenly grabbed Payne’s arm and began lifting it up and down. ‘That is all the punishment the man had inflicted upon him,’ Brierley exclaimed while pumping the furious surgeon’s arm.

          Interestingly, Payne claimed that one of the doctors involved in the post-mortem believed that Brierley’s treatment had in fact accelerated Lindley’s death. This opinion was based on what he had heard from witnesses to the treatment. The Coroner could not, though, accept any evidence that was not based on the inspection of the corpse. As Mr Payne summed the matter up: ‘I think, at the same time, that the treatment was injurious; but I cannot say that Brierley has accelerated his death, and I think that no one else could say so.’

Epilogue

          And this was the end of the matter, as far as the Coroner was concerned. Lindley’s cause of death was pulmonary apoplexy and a verdict to that effect was returned. In summing up, though, the Coroner let his feelings be known as to the crowds of patients queuing up for Brierley’s services. They were simpletons, he said, pulling no punches. He continued: ‘For such numbers to put their lives in the power of a man of so little education that he could not write his name, and did not even know the composition of the medicines he prescribed, he thought did not say much for the discernment of John Bull.’ Finally, the Coroner added that although he was normally a grave man, Brierley’s extraordinary statements had left him struggling to keep his gravity and a straight face.

Notes

[1] Sheffield and Rotherham Independent 5.5.1849

[2] Patricia Chisnall (1959) Whitworth Doctors Whitworth: Whitworth Historical Society

[3] Westmorland and Kendal Advertiser 12 May 1849

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