In 1676, when the daughter was six years old, Mrs. Alceald died, and the child was sent home, and remained there till 1679, when a Mrs. Myltstre, her maternal aunt, "having greatly increased her means, forsook the canaille and low habitations of Wapping, came into a polite part of the town, took a house among people of quality, and set up for a woman of fashion," and thither did she invite the Stobbines and their daughter to spend the winter with her. Among her visitors were her husband's brother, who had the title or rank of captain, and who seems to have been a bully and gamester—a "blood," in a flowing wig and laced coat—and there was another relation, who practised as an apothecary.
All these five persons dined together on the birthday of the little girl Stobbine, when a terrible catastrophe ensued. In a spirit of play, it was presumed, she took up a sword that was in the room, and pointing it at Mr. Stobbine, cried, "Stick him, stick him!"
"What!" said he, "would you stab your father?"
"You are not my father; but Captain Myltstre is."
Her father, upon this, boxed her ears, and was instantly run through the body by the captain. "Down he dropped," we are told, and then his wife, her sister, the captain, and the apothecary, all trampled upon him till he was quite dead, and interring him secretly, gave out that he had returned to the West Country. Time passed on, and though inquiries were made, and messengers sent after the missing Stobbine, he was heard of no more for a time. His daughter was sent to a distant school, and her mother, "who pretended to go distracted, was sent to a village a few miles out of town, where the captain had a pretty little box for his convenience."
A memory of the terrible scene she had witnessed haunted the daughter, she had nightly horrible dreams and frights, to the terror of a young lady who slept with her; and she always alleged that a spectre haunted her, a spectre visible to her only, and on these occasions she would exclaim, with every manifestation of horror,
"There is a spirit in the room! It is Mr. Stobbine's spirit. Oh, how terrible it looks!"
These appearances and her paroxysms led to an inquiry before a justice of the peace; and without any warning given, the whole of the guilty parties were apprehended and committed to the Gate-house, tried at the Old Bailey, "and condemned, to the entire satisfaction of the county, the court, and all present."
After this, Stobbine's troubled spirit appeared no more. Mrs. Myltstre was hanged, and her body was thrown into the gully-hole near her old house in Wapping; Mrs. Stobbine was strangled and burned. The captain and the apothecary were hanged at Tyburn, and the latter was anatomized; and so ended this tragedy.
Another remarkable detection of murder through the alleged appearance of a ghost, occurred in 1724.