Human Animals

by Frank Hamel

Certain animals are associated with certain families, and in many such instances the animal makes its appearance as a death-warning. Sometimes the animal in question, which is in the nature of a totem of the clan, is the family crest and has an occult connection with its traditions and history.

The Ferrers, whose country seat is at Chartley Park, near Litchfield, have a peculiar breed of cattle on their estates. The colour of the cattle is white with black muzzles. The whole of the inside of the ear, and one-third of the outside from the tip downwards is red, and the horns are white, with black tips, very fine and bent upwards.

In the year in which the Battle of Burton Bridge was fought and lost, a black calf was born into this stock and the downfall of the Ferrers family occurred about this time, giving rise to a tradition which has never been falsified, that the birth of a dark or parti-coloured calf from the Chartley Park breed is an omen of death within the year to a member of the Ferrers family.

The "Staffordshire Chronicle," of July, 1835, says, "It is a noticeable coincidence that a calf of this description was born whenever a death happened in the family. The decease of the seventh Earl Ferrers and of his countess, and of his son, Viscount Tamworth, and of his daughter, Mrs. William Jolliffe, as well as the deaths of the son and heir of the eighth earl and of his daughter, Lady Francis Shirley, were each preceded by the ominous birth of the fatal-hued calf. In the spring of 1835 a black calf appeared at Chartley, and before long the beautiful countess, second wife of the eighth earl, lay on her death-bed.

Birds of various kinds frequently make their appearance in families as harbingers of death. When the Oxenhams of Devonshire were visited by the apparition of a white bird they knew that one of the family was doomed. The well-known story is told by James Oxenham in a tract entitled "A True relation of an Apparition in the likenesse of a Bird with a white breast that appeared hovering over the death-beds of some of the children of Mr. James Oxenham, of Sale Monachorum, Devon, Gent."

One of the first members of the family to see the apparition was the famous John Oxenham, a young man of twenty-two, who was taken ill in the vigour of his youth, a great strapping fellow six foot and a half in height, well built, of comely countenance and of great intellectual gifts. He died on the fifth day of September, 1635, and two days before his death the bird with the white breast hovered over his bed. Charles Kingsley made use of this incident in "Westward Ho!" John Oxenham, in the midst of drinking a toast, suddenly drops his glass on the table and staring in terror at some object which he seems to see fluttering round the room, he cries out "There! Do you see it? The bird! The bird with the white breast!"

No sooner was John Oxenham in his grave than the apparition showed itself to Thomasine, wife of James Oxenham, who died on the seventh of September, 1635. She was quite a young woman and, according to the witnesses, Elizabeth Frost and Joan Tooker, the strange phantom was seen clearly fluttering above her sick-bed. The next member of the Oxenhams to whom the warning appeared was Thomasine's little sister, Rebecca, a child of eight, who breathed her last on September the ninth, following. And no sooner had the little girl been laid in her grave than Thomasine, infant of the above-mentioned Thomasine and James Oxenham, was taken sick and died on the 15th of September, 1635, the bird appearing also in this case.

It is impossible not to wonder what disease it was that carried off so many members of the Oxenham family within a few days of one another, and whether the bird was fluttering through the rooms the whole of the time, or whether it disappeared between the various deaths. Certain it is that it was not seen hovering over the sick-beds of other members of the family who recovered health. An earlier visitation had occurred in 1618, when the grandmother of the said John, a certain Grace Oxenham, had yielded up her soul into the hands of her Maker. Many later appearances of the famous bird are on record. A Mr. Oxenham who lived in Sidmouth for many years and who died between 1810 and 1821, was attended by an old gardener and his wife, who gave evidence that they had seen a white bird fly in at the door, dart across the bed in which their master lay dying, and disappear in one of the drawers of the bureau, but when they opened all the drawers to find the apparition, they could discover no signs of it.

In 1873 the Rev. Henry Oxenham gave the following version of the family story, which may be found in Frederick George Lee's "Glimpses of the Supernatural."[143]

"Shortly before the death of my late uncle, G. N. Oxenham, Esq., of 17 Earl's Terrace, Kensington, who was then head of the family, this occurred: His only surviving daughter, now Mrs. Thomas Peter, but then unmarried and living at home, and a friend of my aunt's, Miss Roberts, who happened to be staying in the house, but was no relation, and had never heard of the family tradition, were sitting in the dining-room immediately beneath his bedroom about a week before his death, which took place on December 15, 1873, when their attention was aroused by a shouting outside the window.