Construction Worker Gets Mistaken For a Ghost
Hysteria swept London in November of 1803, when rumors began circulating about a ghost wandering through the Hammersmith district in the city’s west. It was widely speculated that the ghost was that of a recent suicide buried in Hammersmith’s churchyard. That tracked with contemporary beliefs that suicides should not be buried in consecrated grounds because their souls would find no rest there.
Witnesses described the ghost as being very tall, and dressed all in white, with some adding horns and glass eyes to the description. Alarm at the sightings quickly grew to widespread panic, and then mass hysteria. Before long, people were reporting that they had not only seen the Hammersmith ghost, but had been attacked by it as well. Soon, fearful armed residents were patrolling the neighborhood.
That led to tragedy on the night of January 3rd, 1804, when Francis Smith, a vigilante customs officers, was patrolling the neighborhood while armed with a shotgun. Smith, who had been drinking in a pub before going out on patrol, came across a bricklayer, Thomas Millwood, returning home while wearing the typical outfit of his trade: white flannel clothes, with a white apron. Smith leveled his shotgun at what he took to be the ghost, and shot Millwood in the face, killing him instantly.
Smith was arrested and tried for murder. The judge instructed the jury that establishing malice was not necessary for a conviction and that all killings were either murder or manslaughter, absent extenuating circumstances that were not present here. Smith was convicted and sentenced to death, but his sentence was subsequently commuted to a year’s hard labor. As to the Hammersmith “ghost”, it later turned out that it had all been a prank that got out of hand, perpetrated by an elderly local shoemaker who wore the guise to frighten his apprentice.
