CHAPTER XLIII
“The Chamber of Horrors Rumour”—No reward has been, or will be, offered—The constable’s escapade—A nocturnal experience—Dumas’s comedy of the Chamber—Yeomen of the Halter.
We have speculated much upon the origin of what has come to be called “The Chamber of Horrors Rumour,” relating to a popular delusion that Madame Tussaud’s will pay a sum of money to any person who spends a night alone with the criminals assembled therein.
It need hardly be pointed out that no such ridiculous challenge was ever issued to the public, although the rumour has run for nearly twenty years, in spite of repeated contradictions.
I am not even hopeful that what I am writing now will produce the desired result of disabusing adventurous minds of this impression; in fact, denials on our part appear rather to have tended to give wider currency to the rumour. Thousands of letters have been received from volunteers of both sexes eager and anxious to undertake the ordeal for rewards which vary, in their imaginations, from £5 to £5,000.
Among the aspirants have been soldiers, sailors, ex-policemen, and even domestic servants, all of whom insisted that their nerves were equal to the task. Only the other day I received a letter from a Scotsman who intimated his willingness to forgo any pecuniary reward if only we would furnish him with a bottle of whisky and some sandwiches with which to regale himself as he sat at the feet of Burke and Hare.
The conclusion has somehow taken possession of our minds that this fallacious rumour emanated, innocently enough, from a story told long ago by one “Dagonet” of a man who was said to have been accidently locked all night in the Chamber. Originally, I imagine, people must have offered voluntarily to spend a night there for a consideration, and then, as the subject came to be talked about, it very easily grew into the form of a challenge said to have been made by us, which, of course, was never made and never will be made.
Considerable fillip was given to the rumour by the Chamber of Horrors scene in The Whip at Drury Lane Theatre in 1909.