Foul
Deeds Indeed Looking up Packer Street towards the notorious 'Gank' an area of depravity, crime and pestilence.
When I was approached to write a ‘dark history’ of Rochdale my initial reaction was “no way”. Having produced a few straight local history books, the prospect of churning out a collection of ‘foul deeds, suspicious deaths, ghost and ghoul stories’, seemed a bit distasteful and pretty unchallenging. Two things changed my mind. Firstly, having simultaneously looked at the possibility of doing similar projects on Salford and Oldham, it was obvious that those tales originating from the Rochdale area were far more varied and more interesting. In many cases, they were just downright weird! Secondly, given that much of the action took place during Rochdale’s expansion during the Industrial Revolution, the stories provided a fascinating insight into 12
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local social development. Needless to say, it was the poor and uneducated that provided the majority of victims...and perpetrators.
two murdered nephews seeking revenge for their deaths by the hand of their evil uncle Richard de Clegg.
Not always though; the book begins with a classic ghost story, our local version of the murder of the Princes in the Tower, the legend of Clegg Hall Boggart. Even now, as the wind whips down from Blackstone Edge and Clegg Hall stands silhouetted by a gibbous moon, it is no stretch to imagine the
The Rake Inn at Littleborough and the Baum at Rochdale provide other locations for supernatural stories to be taken with a cup of cocoa and a healthy pinch of salt, but things get very bizarre with the tale I called ‘Poor Annie’s Ghost’.