by Carolyn Tytler

Created on: February 27, 2010   Last Updated: February 28, 2010

In the late Fall of 1803, fear gripped the residents of the Hammersmith area of London, England.  Mysterious events had been reported after dark, in and around the local cemetery. It seems that a ghostly, white figure was frightening passing residents. The spectre would emerge from the black shadows of the tombstones and moan, sigh, and thrash about before terrified witnesses.

The unhappy soul was thought to be that of a local man who had committed suicide a year previously, by slitting his throat.  His remains were interred in that same graveyard.

Events reached a crisis stage after a woman died because of the supposed haunting.

One cold, foggy December evening, about 10:00 pm, a local lady decided to take a short cut home so she could sit by her warm fireside a little sooner than she had planned. As she cut through the cemetery,  a figure she later described as "very tall and very white", sprang up from behind a grave stone and grabbed her.

The terrified villager tried to escape but terror turned her feet to lead. As the spectre wrapped his white-clad arms around her, she fainted.

Several hours later, concerned neighbors found her wandering in a state of shock  amid the graves. They gently led her home and helped her into bed. However, she did not recover and died within two days. It was generally believed that she had been frightened to death.  

Some local men formed a Neighborhood Watch Committee to see that such a unfortunate event was not repeated. Among their number was a young excise officer, Francis Smith.

One night on the way home from work, Smith stopped in at the local pub.  Fortified with false courage, he went to his lodgings, took up his gun, gunpowder and shot and set out to stalk the ghostly figure on his own.

As he walked cautiously up Black Lion Lane, he suddenly saw a "white-clad" figure advancing toward him. Twice, he ordered the apparition to speak and identify itself.  The form was silent. It kept coming towards him.  With increasing panic, he shouted, " Speak out or I shall shoot!"  Still it advanced.

Gripped with terror, Smith raised his gun and fired. The figure fell to the ground. It was a man, after all. Smith recognized Thomas Millwood, a local bricklayer dressed in his usual working clothes: white trousers, white apron, and a white linen jacket. Thomas Millwood was dead; Smith's shot had gone through his mouth and exited through the back of his neck.

Francis Smith, now totally contrite and extremely upset, was arrested. A Coroner's Inquest was held at the Black Lion Pub  at the end of the lane where the crime had occurred. and a verdict of wilful murder was brought against Smith.  He was sent to Newgate Prison to await his trial at the Old Bailey.

The trial concluded on January 25, 1804. Francis Smith was found guilty of murder and sentenced to be hanged.  The man who had killed a ghost was sentenced to die himself.

However, justice was not completely blind in this instance. In view of extenuating circumstances,  a stay of execution was granted and later, Francis Smith's sentence was commuted to one year in prison.

What of the original ghost?  A local shoemaker named Graham later confessed to having played the role. It seems that his apprentices had been frightening his children with ghost stories and he decided to give them a  fright to remember by dressing up and scaring them as they walked home.

If you visit the Hammersmith  area of London, be sure to visit the Black Lion Pub which is still in business today. The landlord says that eerie, inexplicable occurrences often take place within its walls. The pub displays a plaque marking its ghostly history.

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