Mr. Kent, the accused person, had, in the mean while, proved his innocence, by certificates from the physician and apothecary who attended upon the deceased female. The base attack upon his character appears to have been prompted by revenge. While lodging with Parsons he had lent him some money, which, after much forbearance, he was compelled to recover by a suit at law. The malignant offender, however, did not escape punishment; he, with others who had lent themselves to his imposture, being ultimately brought to trial, and found guilty of a conspiracy.
In 1778, the Stockwell ghost, as it was denominated, spread terror in the village from whence it derived its name, and was for some time a subject of general conversation and wonderment. Its pranks have been described in Sir Walter Scott’s amusing “Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft,” and consequently it is unnecessary to dwell upon them here.
For a long period after this, it would seem that ghosts were either out of fashion, or had become averse from exhibiting before multitudes, and were determined to confine their efforts to the scaring of country bumpkins. It was not till 1810 that a supernatural case of any importance occurred. This case was, it must be owned, far more interesting and startling than its predecessors; it having been managed with such consummate skill as to baffle all attempts to penetrate the mystery. The house of Mr. Chave at Sampford Peverell, in Devonshire, was the scene on which the wonders were acted for several months. The spiritual agent appears to have occasionally assumed the form of some nondescript animal, which always eluded pursuit, and to have had an extreme dislike of women, whom it always pummelled unmercifully. The Rev. C. Colton, the author of Lacon, who endeavoured, but in vain, to find out the cause of the disturbance, tells us that he examined several females who had slept in the house, many of whom were on oath, and they all, without exception, agreed in affirming that “their night’s rest was invariably destroyed by violent blows from some invisible hand, by an unaccountable and rapid drawing and withdrawing of the curtains, by a suffocating and almost inexpressible weight, and by a repetition of sounds, so loud as at times to shake the whole room.” Numerous other respectable witnesses also testified, and offered to do so on oath, to various astonishing circumstances. Suspicions having been expressed that the whole was a juggle, carried on by Mr. Chave and his servants, they made an affidavit denying, in the most explicit terms, any knowledge whatever of the manner in which the sights and sounds were produced. A reward of 250l. was at length offered to any one who would throw light on this obscure subject. Tempting as this bait was, no one came forward to seize it. After a while the hubbub ceased; but, like Junius, the mischievous disturber of Sampford Peverell remains to this day undiscovered.
In another part of the country, a few years before the Sampford ghost began his vagaries, a fatal example of excessive credulity was afforded by a man and his wife, named Perigo. The wife being ill, Perigo applied to one Mary Bateman to cure her. Bateman declined the task, but said that she had a friend at Scarborough, a Miss Blyth, who could “read the stars,” and remove all ailments whether of body or mind. To enable this reader of the stars to gain a knowledge of the disease, it was said to be necessary that the sick woman should send her a petticoat; it was accordingly delivered to Bateman. There was, in truth, no such person as Blyth; but a pretended answer from her was read to the credulous Perigos, in which they were told that they must communicate with her through the medium of Bateman. As a commencement, they were directed to give Bateman five guinea notes, who would return an equal number in a small bag; but they were informed that, if curiosity induced them to look into the bag, the charm would be broken, and sudden death would ensue. In this manner forty guineas were at various times obtained, all of which, they were assured, would be found in the bag when the moment came for its being opened. Demand followed demand without intermission, and still the poor deluded beings continued to satisfy them. Clothing of all kinds, bedding, a set of china, edible articles, and thirty pounds more, were among the sacrifices which were made to the rapacious impostor. On one occasion the fictitious Miss Blyth ordered Perigo to buy her a live goose, for the purpose of being offered up as a burnt offering to her familiar, for the purpose of destroying the works of darkness.
The work of darkness was, indeed, approaching to its consummation. Beggared by the repeated calls on his purse, Perigo began to be anxious to open the bags, and regain possession of the contents. Unable any longer to put him off, the female fiend brought a packet, which she said came from Scarborough, and contained a potent charm. The contents were to be mixed in a pudding, prepared for the purpose, and of that pudding no one was to eat but Perigo and his wife. They obeyed, and the consequences were such as might be expected. The husband ate sparingly, for he disliked the taste, and he escaped with only suffering severe torture; the wife fell a victim.
It will scarcely be believed that, so deeply rooted was her credulity, the unfortunate woman, even when she was almost in her death agony, extorted from her husband a promise to follow the directions of the murderess. Two or three days after the wife had ceased to exist, a letter came, pretending to be from Miss Blyth, which seemed more like the composition of an incarnate demon than of a human being. Instead of expressing the slightest sorrow, it attributed the death of the woman to her having dared to touch the bags; and it added a threat which was not unlikely to send a weak-minded man to join his murdered partner: “Inasmuch as your wife,” said the writer, “has done this wicked thing, she shall rise from the grave; stroke your face with the cold hand of death; and you shall lose the use of one side.”
Had his blood been any thing but snow-broth, so much injury and insult must have roused him. But the wretched gull long persisted to yield a blind obedience to his infamous deceiver, who fleeced him without mercy. It was not till he was rendered desperate by the threats of his creditors, that he ventured to open the bags. He, of course, found them filled with trash. His neighbours, to whom he bewailed his hard fate, were possessed of more courage and sense than he was, and they carried Mary Bateman before a magistrate. She was committed for the murder of the wife, was found guilty at York assizes, and suffered on the gallows the penalty of her crime.
The next character who claims our attention, though living for a great part of his life under a disguise, must not be branded as an impostor. The person alluded to is the celebrated Chevalier, generally known as Madam, D’Eon. This remarkable individual, who was born at Tonnerre, in France, in 1728, was of a good family. D’Eon was a man of brilliant parts, a writer by no means contemptible on various subjects, an accomplished diplomatist, and a brave officer. At one period he was minister plenipotentiary to the British court. A bitter quarrel with the Count de Guerchy, who succeeded him as ambassador, is assigned as the reason for his not returning to France. It is probable, however, that the real cause of his stay in this country was his acting as private agent of Louis the Fifteenth, by whom he was allowed a pension. D’Eon continued to reside in London for fourteen years, and was in habits of friendship with the most distinguished persons.
Now comes the mystery; which still remains, and perhaps must ever remain, unsolved. Rumours, at first faint, but daily acquiring strength, had long been floating about, that D’Eon was a woman. There were certain feminine indications in his voice and person, and he was known to be averse from all affairs of gallantry, and to manifest extreme caution with respect to females. At length it began to be generally believed, both in England and France, that he had no title to wear the dress of a male. Wagers, to a large amount, were laid upon this subject; and, in 1777, one of them produced an indecent trial before Lord Mansfield. “The action was brought by Mr. Hayes, surgeon, against Jacques, a broker and underwriter, for the recovery of seven hundred pounds; Jacques having, about six years before, received premiums of fifteen guineas per cent., for every one of which he stood engaged to return a hundred guineas, whenever it should be proved that the Chevalier D’Eon was actually a woman.” In this cause, three seemingly unexceptionable witnesses, two of whom were of the medical profession, positively swore that they had obtained such proof as admitted of no contradiction that D’Eon was of the female sex. A verdict was in consequence given for the plaintiff; but it was afterwards set aside on a point of law.
The humiliating manner in which, by this trial, he was brought before the English public induced D’Eon to quit England. But it is a singular circumstance that M. de Vergennes, one of the French ministers, in a letter which he wrote to D’Eon, declared it to be the king’s will that he “should resume the dress of his sex,”—meaning the dress of a woman—and that this injunction was repeated on the Chevalier arriving in France. It was obeyed, and, till the end of his long life, D’Eon dressed, and was looked upon, as one of the softer sex. Early in the French revolution, he returned to England, still as a female, and remained here till his decease in 1810. Death proved the folly of those who had forced him into petticoats; for his manhood was placed beyond all doubt by an anatomical examination of the body. Why he was metamorphosed, and why he continued to acquiesce in the change when he might have safely asserted his sex, there appear to be no means of discovering.