The haunting of Yorkshire Jack

The tragic tale of how a sailor known as Yorkshire Jack was hounded to his death began when the woman he loved was hanged for murder. 

This took place early in the 19th century in the Mount’s Bay area of Cornwall. This is just to the east of Penzance, the Bay taking its name from the island of St Michael’s Mount that is its most prominent feature. 

A man named Polgrain had taken a wife who was much younger than himself. This was Sarah, who grew tired of her husband and took a lover of her own age, this being Yorkshire Jack. She decided to murder Mr Polgrain and nearly got away with it. 

After the death certificate was signed with “natural causes” given as the reason for death, rumours started to spread after Jack moved into Sarah’s house. So many people reckoned that there had been foul play that Polgrain’s body was eventually exhumed and found to be full of arsenic. 

Sarah was tried, found guilty of murder and sentenced to hang, which in those days was done in public.

Sarah asked that Jack could accompany her on to the scaffold, and as the noose was placed around her neck she kissed Jack and was heard to say “You will – you promise you will?” to which Jack replied “I will, Sarah, I will”. 

After the execution there are reports that Sarah’s ghost had been seen in the locality, at places which she and Jack had frequented. 

The person who saw Sarah’s ghost more than anyone else was Yorkshire Jack, whose character changed completely in the months after the hanging. He became morose and short-tempered, with a habit of constantly looking over his shoulder. 

Jack went back to sea, but Sarah would not leave him alone even there. He proved to be a difficult shipmate, especially when his fellow sailors also felt that there was an extra person on board whom they were unable to see. 

When Jack’s ship came back to Mount’s Bay he told his shipmates that Sarah had made him promise on the scaffold that he would marry her at midnight that day. He had agreed, thinking to comfort her in her last moments, but he had not imagined that she would try to bind him to that promise after she was dead. He now realized that she wanted to be bound to him in death because she could not do so when alive. 

At midnight on the day that Jack had told this tale, the shipmates heard a light tap-tap of feet in high-heeled shoes. They followed the footsteps to where Jack lay in his hammock with a look of terror on his face. He got up and proceeded to the ship’s foredeck, followed by the footsteps. 

Jack then jumped overboard, never to be seen again. The shipmates said that they could hear the sound of church bells, as if chiming for a wedding. 

In later years people claimed they could hear wedding bells out at sea on Mount’s Bay, together with a ghostly voice saying “I will” before it was lost on the wind. 

Is this a story you can believe?

© John Welford

Superstitions concerning doors

Doors, and how they are used, have long featured in various superstitions that people have held down the centuries. In particular, forbidding the entry of evil spirits and the exit of good luck have been regarded as being of particular importance.

The porch of the front door, which is the main entrance, should be protected by a good luck charm. This could be a small statue – a household god in ancient Rome – or a horseshoe, but the latter must always be nailed so that the points are at the top, otherwise the good luck could fall out!

When you first move into a new home you must use the front door the first time you enter it, because the back door is not protected against evil spirits and one or more might slip in alongside you. You must also ensure that visitors to your home always leave by the same door by which they entered, because otherwise they will take the owner’s good luck out of the house when they leave.

If a door opens of its own accord – maybe due to a gust of wind – a visitor is on their way, and if a door slams, that could mean that the good spirits that look after your home might be injured or trapped!

Doors and windows should be left open when a baby is born or someone is dying. This is so that the person’s soul can enter or leave without hindrance.

The Romans had the idea that it was unlucky to allow someone to enter your home with the left foot first. Wealthy Romans even employed servants to make sure that this never happened. This is the origin of the “footman” who formed part of the establishment of well-to-do families in more recent times.

Do you actually believe in any of these superstitions? And, if so, why?!

© John Welford

Peeing in 21 seconds

Do you know how long it takes you to empty your bladder? How about your cat, dog or horse? Do you reckon that the time will be more or less for the elephants at the zoo? Would it surprise you to learn that there is absolutely no difference?

It turns out that it takes 21 seconds for a healthy mammal – of any species – to empty a full bladder. As you might expect, an elephant has a much larger bladder than a mouse, but the mechanism for emptying it compensates so that the peeing time is exactly the same.

This amazing discovery was made by Patricia Yang, a mechanical engineer based at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the research earned her an “Ig Nobel Prize” – this being an award given to scientists whose work is either absurd or bizarre. In this case, the “bizarre” label seems to be more appropriate, as it conjures up a vision of the lady in question going round her local zoo armed with a stopwatch and waiting for various animals to go to the loo.

Patricia Yang did not stop there. She also worked out that all animals that poop in cylindrical form - including humans – take twelve seconds to do so. Personally, it always takes me a lot longer because I take the newspaper with me to the smallest room!

© John Welford

Animals make elements

The Ig Nobel prizes are awarded every year to scientists and others whose work is so bizarre or downright absurd that it deserves to be brought to public attention. The awards are made at Harvard University, and it is surprising just how many recipients actually turn up to be generally mocked for their efforts.

One such prize was awarded (in his absence) in 1993 to Louis Kervran, who had come up with the theory that living creatures could perform nuclear fission and fusion within their own bodies. This would explain, for example, how chickens produce the calcium needed to make eggshells – they combine atoms of potassium and hydrogen, apparently.

Kervran’s theory was based on atomic numbers. Every element has its own number, which is the number of protons in the nucleus of its atoms. Simple mathematics shows how, for example, a sodium atom (number 11) combines with an oxygen atom (number 8) to produce an atom of potassium (number 19). All such combinations, according to him, must involve either oxygen or hydrogen (number 1). Likewise, atoms can split to form new atoms that are their own number minus either 1 or 8.

Louis Kervran was convinced that these processes are going on all the time, but “official” science had always made the mistake of looking for chemical processes in “dead” matter and not living organisms. If only they had looked at animals they would have seen these transformations taking place all the time.

In his book “Biological Transformations”, Louis Kervran failed to explain exactly how this happens. According to him, it just does.

An Ig Nobel prize was never more fully deserved!

© John Welford

The Oxebode, Gloucester

The Oxebode is a street in central Gloucester, southwest England, that does not look particularly remarkable – a typical shopping street with broad pavements and several mature plane trees to shade it. However, the unusual name – found nowhere else in the country – is a clue to the strange story that  is associated with it.

Oxebode is a corruption of “ox body”. The story goes back to medieval times when oxen – castrated bulls – were often used in England as draft animals for hauling carts or drawing ploughs. It was the unfortunate fate of one such ox that gave the street its name.

Gloucester is a city that dates back to Roman times, although the oldest domestic buildings to be seen today are from the 15^th century. In mediaeval times Mitre Street was lined by houses that leaned towards each other on either side and were almost touching at the end of the street as it led into Northgate Street. Indeed, the funnel was so narrow that an ox, being led to market, became wedged solid between the houses and could not be freed. 

The solution to the problem was somewhat gruesome but it did the trick to the satisfaction of all concerned, with the sole exception of the ox.

A local butcher was summoned to kill the ox where it stood and cut it up into pieces of meat that were then sold to the local populace. 

The event led to the street being renamed Oxbody Street and to a local nursery rhyme: 

There’s an ox lying dead at the end of the lane
His head on the pathway, his feet in the drain.
The lane is so narrow, his back is so wide,
He got stuck in the road twixt a house on each side. 

He couldn’t go forward, he couldn’t go back
He was stuck just as fast as a nail in a crack.
And the people all shouted ‘So tightly he fits
We must kill him and carve him and move him in bits’.

So a butcher dispatched him and then had a sale
Of his ribs and his sirloin, his rump and his tail.
And the farmer he told me ‘I’ll never again
Drive cattle to market down Oxbode Lane’.

© John Welford

Dilys Price: skydiver

Dilys Price is a remarkable woman and the holder of a number of world records, her speciality being solo skydiving at an advanced age. She began this hobby at the age of 65 and is still doing so – at the time of writing she is 86 and shows no sign of giving up.

She was born in Cardiff, Wales, in 1932 and followed a career as a dance teacher. She had the idea of practicing dancing in the air and joined a skydiving school so that she could adopt ballet positions as she hurtled down from an aeroplane.

When she was a mere youth of 69 she decided to try jumping from a balloon rather than an aeroplane. She did so from 5000 feet above the Arizona desert, which meant jumping into what is known as “dead air” – no wind but plenty of unpredictable thermals in the unusually thin air of that region. The net result is that one plunges earthwards like a stone.

After plenty of instruction from experts, Dilys made her first jump, which was a perfect success apart from landing on a cactus.

Dilys enjoyed the experience so much – apart from the last bit – that she just had to do it again. This time she landed in the exercise yard of Arizona’s state prison.

Dilys Price – who has been awarded the OBE for her charitable and practical work on behalf of disabled people – has to count as one of the UK’s most notable eccentrics.

© John Welford

One hour's TV was enough to start with

On 2^nd November 1936 the very first television broadcast by the BBC was made. It began at 3pm and lasted for exactly one hour. It was received by around 400 people in the London area who had been supplied with “Baird Televisors” and consisted of speeches, a news bulletin, and a variety show that included singing, jugglers, comedians and dancers. All very informative and entertaining!

The BBC had a problem from the outset because two rival transmission technologies were on offer – those offered by John Logie Baird – who had made the decisive breakthrough in the development of television in 1926 – and the Marconi-EMI joint venture. That first broadcast used the Baird system, with the choice being made by the traditional British method of tossing a coin! However, the rival system eventually prevailed.

But why only one hour of broadcasting to start with? There were several reasons, one being a lack of suitable material! Other reasons were the belief that viewers (who were referred to as “lookers-in” in the early days) would suffer from eye strain if they watched for too long, and a concern that too much television would disrupt family life. It could just be that they were right about this one!

© John Welford