HAUNTED S A L I S B U RY Left, top to bottom: Was Prince Albert Victor really Jack The Ripper; Joshua Scamp’s cursed Odstock grave; murdered little Teddy Haskell now haunts Meadow Road; the Haunch of Venison contains a mummified hand
THE MOTHER WHO KILLED?
Charles II stayed in Salisbury in 1665, to escape the plague, and housed his servants at The Rifles Museum. The ghost of one of the servants, a lady dressed in grey said to have died from influenza, has been seen sitting and moving around the building. She is not alone though, a cavalier has also been seen on several occasions. He might technically be a ‘poltergeist’ as museum staff have reported items having been found moved or lost following his visits.
Teddy Haskell was a cheerful, popular and active boy, who loved sport – particularly keeping goal at football - despite having had his right leg amputated at the age of six after contracting tuberculosis. On 31 October 1908, at 10.30pm that Saturday Hallowe’en night, while sleeping in his bed in Meadow Road in the Fisherton area of Salisbury, the twelve-year old was fatally stabbed in the throat. It was hinted his widowed mother had found it difficult to cope and the temptation of Teddy’s own money, which he had been saving to pay for a replacement artificial leg, had finally proved too much. His ghost has been spotted kicking a football in the street.
THE ODSTOCK CURSE
THE MURDERED TWINS
LADY IN GREY
In 1801 a gypsy named Joshua Scamp was convicted of stealing a horse from Semington, near Melksham and condemned to death. Prior to the hanging at Fisherton, near Salisbury, the gypsy community had made considerable efforts to save Scamp from the deadly punishment, believing him to be innocent. Turns out they were right, and Scamp died to protect his guilty son-in-law. Scamp’s sacrifice was remembered by the gypsies who made yearly pilgrimages to St Mary’s Church, Odstock, where he was buried, but the church put a stop to their visits. In revenge, the Gypsy Queen cursed them and soon after the preacher went mute following a stroke, a farmer went bankrupt, the sexton died of a heart attack and others deemed culpable suddenly disappeared, while unknown skeletons appeared on a grave on Odstock Down.
In August 1842, at the Summer Assizes in Salisbury, 35 year-old Irishwoman Margaret Easter was tried for the wilful murder of her two-year-old twin children, Charles, who she was accused of having thrown into a tub ‘wherein was a quantity of hog’s wash, whereby he was choked, suffocated, and drowned and there did die’ and Mary Ann, who had drowned in a washtub.
GHOSTS IN WAITING
The waiting room at Salisbury Station is still haunted by the spirits that perished that night of the Salisbury train crash of 1906, when a train was completely derailed, and smashed into a milk train and a light engine, killing 28 people. People have sensed a noticeable change of temperature in certain areas of the room. There have also been several sighting of the spirits of suicides in the same waiting room.
HIS MALEVOLENT MAJESTY
The official line is that Prince Albert Victor known as Prince Eddy, then second in line to the throne, died suddenly in the influenza epidemic of 1891-92. However, rumours have long abounded that he was incarcerated in the Fisherton Asylum after being certified insane. In 1970, Dr Thomas Stowell published an article Jack the Ripper – A Solution suggesting that Prince Eddy was in fact Jack The Ripper. He claimed Eddy was suffering from syphilis, which he had contracted whilst on tour in the West Indies. This disease drove the Prince insane and led him to launch the Autumn of Terror in Whitechapel in 1888. Adapted from Haunted Salisbury by Frogg Moody and Richard Nash (£9.99, published by History Press, and available from Salisbury Information Centre). Frogg also helps organise the Timezone Tours with Matt Pike and Ruby Vitorino. They conduct historical, in-costume, walks to explore the darker side of Salisbury and have a number of Hallowe’en special events and tours lined up.
For more: www.facebook.com/ salisburyhistorytours
www.mediaclash.co.uk I SALISBURY LIFE I 21