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From maniacal horses to bat-men on the moon: 14 strange newspaper headlines from history
Muckraking journalists and money-hungry editors have been publishing sensational stories since newspapers first began. Hilary Mitchell flicks through the archives and reveals some of the weirdest press cuttings of all time
1. "German ghouls: corpses converted to soap and explosives” Yorkshire Telegraph and Star, April 1917 If you think that ‘fake news’ is a new phenomenon, think again. One of the most notorious pieces of misinformation actually dates to the First World War. During the conflict, a gruesome rumour spread that German leaders were using “Kadaververwertungsanstalten” – ‘corpse factories’ – to turn the dead bodies of their own soldiers into products such as soap, candles, and even bombs. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/German-Ghouls-0741ad1-e1769765897344.jpg" width="620" height="411" alt="A newspaper clipping with the headline GERMAN GHOULS across the top" title="German leaders were creating soap and explosives out of corpses, claimed this 1917 newspaper article. In reality, they were victims of a deliberately shocking propaganda campaign (Image by the Newspaper Archive)" /> The lurid story unsurprisingly sparked widespread outrage, but it wasn’t true. It was a purposefully shocking piece of war propaganda, and the German government protested in the strongest terms against the “loathsome and ridiculous” claims. However, that didn’t stop the Yorkshire Telegraph and Star gleefully reporting on the hoax in April 1917, in an article that claimed the Germans were making “dividends from death” by distilling glycerine from dead bodies “and so obtaining some portion of their explosives.” 2. "O Dammit wants his name changed" The Richmond Climax, 6 June 1913 Orlando Dammit was featured in the 6 June issue of the equally curiously named Richmond Climax newspaper. The short article explained that the man wanted to change his name from “O. Dammit” because he “can’t tell whether people are calling him or merely venting injured feelings when they say ‘O, dammit.’” It’s not clear what he wanted to change his name to, or if he was successful in his attempts to change it, but presumably he would have been happy with anything that didn’t begin with the letter ‘O’. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/Vampires-in-Rhode-Island-Public-Domain-3e1421d-e1769766218331.jpeg" width="620" height="413" alt="A newspaper clipping with the headline BELIEVE IN VAMPIRES across the top" title="Rhode Islanders were convinced the undead were sucking the blood of their own relatives and causing consumption – sparking ‘vampire hysteria’ throughout the state" /> 3. "Vampires in Rhode Island" Boston Evening Transcript, 18 January 1896 On 18 January 1896, a particularly strange story ran in the Boston Evening Transcript. The headline was ‘Vampires in Rhode Island’, and the story went on to explain: “Respectable people [are] digging up the bodies of defunct relatives… The belief is that persons dead of consumption leave their graves and suck the blood of members of their own families.” This outbreak of ‘vampire panic’ was sparked by a wave of tuberculosis (then known as consumption) in New England. Some rural communities decided that the often-fatal illness was the work of the undead and began exhuming bodies, looking for what they believed were signs of vampirism, such as fresh blood in the heart. The most famous case occurred in 1892 in Exeter, Rhode Island, when the body of a young woman called Mercy Brown was exhumed. Her heart was reduced to ashes and given to her sick brother as a remedy for his own illness. He died anyway – after all, burned organs aren’t a cure for TB – but the story became a lasting symbol of the panic. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/Ouija-boardPublic-Domain-7d2ac73-e1769766295767.png" width="904" height="1000" alt="A newspaper clipping with the headline CONSTANT USE OF OUIJA BOARD DRIVES SEVEN PEOPLE INSANE across the top" title="Rooted in the Victorian obsession with spiritualism, encounters with ouija boards were common. The story of Adeline Bottini, featuring an alleged séance in the nude, was particularly dramatic" /> 4. "Constant use of ouija board drives seven people insane" The Long Beach Telegram and The Long Beach Daily News, 4 March 1920 In 1920, Long Beach newspapers reported that a 15-year-old girl in California had introduced “the [ouija board] and convinced other six [people] of its spiritual power”. The story went on to claim that all seven of the people involved were now under observation in the “insane ward”. The girl at the heart of the scandal was one Adeline Bottini, who police alleged was performing séances in a state of undress, “the better to communicate with the spirits”. Ouija boards were first commercialised in 1890 by a businessman from Baltimore, towards the tail end of the Victorian obsession with spiritualism: the belief that the living could communicate with the spirits of the dead. The craze began in 1848 with the Fox sisters in New York state, whose séances drew wide attention, and it didn’t take long before copycat socialites started to host similar gatherings. At these, participants were – unlike poor Adeline Bottini – always fully clothed. Read more | Fake news and the Dreyfus affair: the media-fuelled scandal that divided France <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/Boy-Eats-BibleGettyImages-164563808-960838d-e1769766508270.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A cartoon of a boy wearing a pink T shirt, green trousers, a blue backwards cap on his head, and blue shoes, eating a blue Bible" title="In one of the more trivial stories from rural 1920s Hilton, Mellzo McCoy munched on the family Bible, resulting in an appearance in the newspaper – and a stomach ache" /> 5. "Boy eats Bible" The Hilton Record, 17 June 1926 “Unknown to his parents, Mellzo McCoy ate the family Bible with the exception of the covers and a few pages. The loss was only discovered when Mellzo complained of a stomach ache.” This 1926 snippet in The Hilton Record – the weekly community newspaper for the village of Hilton in Monroe County, New York – definitely won’t win any awards for the most detailed news article of all time. This is probably why it was buried on page eight of the publication, alongside another article (‘Bee Causes Wreck’) about a man losing control of his vehicle after a bee got into it. When it comes to stories like this, it’s important to understand how local papers worked at the time. Rural weeklies like the Record often had unpaid neighbourhood correspondents who contacted them with (fairly trivial) stories about what had happened in their neck of the woods. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/Terrified-by-Donkey-f14e9ba-e1769766740393.jpg" width="620" height="414" alt="A black and white illustration shows a woman falling to the floor in front of a donkey" title="Scared to death by the sound of a donkey’s footsteps behind her, a young woman’s sad demise ended up in the Illustrated Police News, known for its lurid coverage (Image by The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved. With thanks to The British Newspaper Archive)" /> 6. "Trampled to death by a donkey" Illustrated Police News, 21 July 1883 The Illustrated Police News was a sensationalist Victorian weekly newspaper published in Britain, infamous for its lurid crime coverage and emotive illustrations. It launched in 1864 and this rather sad story ran in their 21 July 1883 edition. It recounts the final hours in the life of a young woman who had set off to visit her grandparents and heard footsteps behind her. She ran for her life. Her grandfather found her body the next day, noticed his donkey standing close by and concluded that she’d been frightened by the sound of the animal following her home. Although the stories featured in the Illustrated Police News were reported in a very melodramatic way, they were, unlike the German ‘corpse factory’ article above, completely true. The publication’s content, though bombastic, was based on police reports, coroners’ inquests and court reporting. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/Children-Not-Fish-Public-Domain-889d371.jpg" width="299" height="258" alt="A newspaper clipping with the headline CHILDREN NOT "FISH" SO CAN'T BE MAILED across the top" title="After at least two separate attempts to send children via mail, the postal department had to step in. Children, they said in 1920, were not “harmless animals” so couldn’t be mailed" /> 7. "Children not 'fish' so can't be mailed" Des Moines Tribune, 16 June 1920 “Children do not come within the classification of ‘harmless animals’, and therefore are not mailable,” the Des Moines Tribune reported the postal department as saying in 1920, apparently prompted by two applications to ship children around the country inside packages. Parcel post was still a relatively new phenomenon in 1920, having been introduced in 1913. Some inventive parents realised that the cost of sending a package was often cheaper than a train ticket and news reports of the time carried stories about attempts to mail children: for example, in St Louis in 1913, a mother allegedly tried to mail her eight-year-old to relatives a few hundred miles away and in 1914, a 10-year-old-boy was purportedly mailed as a parcel to his grandmother. 8. "Battle with a bald eagle" San Francisco Call, 9 October 1891 The San Francisco Call was known for its flamboyant coverage, and this thrilling tale of a balloonist’s high-altitude encounter with an eagle, published in 1891, is a great example. The article describes the ascent of a 24-year-old named Arthur Cleveland in a hot air balloon. Once he had climbed to 3,000 feet, “he saw a huge bird flying swiftly toward him” and became aware it was a bald eagle. The article goes on to describe Cleveland’s daring – and victorious – battle with the rogue bird. He later retrieved the dead eagle, only to discover the local constable wasn’t too impressed; he suggested Cleveland be fined $550 for killing a protected species. Read more | A Victorian-era journalist snuck into an infamous asylum, and what she exposed shocked New York <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/Real-Puppy-Love-Public-Domain.jpg-f48d0e7-e1769767410147.png" width="620" height="413" alt="A newspaper clipping with the headline REAL PUPPY LOVE HERE AS DOGS GO ELOPING across the top" title="Canines under the spell of Cupid were the news of the day in 1910s Minneapolis – showing the sensationalism of early 20th-century press" /> 9. "Real puppy love here as dogs go eloping" The Minneapolis Morning Tribune, 2 March 1911 It must have been a slow news day in Minneapolis on 2 March 1911, as one of the headlines in the Tribune appears to have been about dogs having sex. The rest of the headline reads: ‘Canines Fall Under Shafts of Cupid and Kennel Society is Stirred, Four Hundred of Dogdom Buzzes over Scandals Among Young Set, Irate Husband of French Poodle on Warpath after His Rival.’ Although the full details of the story are lost in the mists of time, it’s another good example of early 20th-century press sensationalism, one which also documents the rise of pet culture we still have today. The early 1900s saw a rise in the popularity of organised dog breeding, which in turn led to the formation of kennel clubs; these sometimes became embroiled in controversies and rivalries, which were equally good tabloid-fodder. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/Bat-Men-GettyImages-1397982878-a7ec22c-e1769767491349.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white illustration of large winged creatures flying around a mountainous area with a river running through it" title="A lithograph depicts the lunar civilisation that New York newspaper The Sun claimed had been found on the moon (Image by Getty Images)" /> 10. ”Bat-men on the moon” The Sun, New York, 1835 In August 1835, New York newspaper The Sun published a series of six articles claiming that life had been discovered on the moon. Not only life, in fact, but an entire lunar civilisation. The stories, credited to the famous astronomer Sir John Herschel and supposedly sourced from a (non-existent) Edinburgh paper, detailed lunar landscapes populated by bison, goats, unicorns, tail-less beavers, and bat-like humanoids called ‘Vespertilio-homo’ who built temples. The articles claimed that discoveries had been made using a revolutionary new telescope. It turned out that the hoax was the work of one of The Sun’s reporters who later admitted to inventing the stories to boost sales. However, The Sun never issued a formal retraction, making the ‘Great Moon Hoax’ one of the most famous examples of 19th-century ‘fake news’. 11. "Man doesn't trust horses" Amador Ledger, 3 October 1902 Letters to the editor aren’t a new phenomenon, as this extract from the Amador Ledger, itself lifted from Harper’s Weekly, shows. In this example, a man from Kentucky wrote into Harper’s to share his opinion that, in his long experience, “every horse at some time in his life develops into a homicidal maniac… I have driven one commonplace horse every other day for six years over the same road and then had him go crazy and try to kill himself and me because a leaf fluttered down in front of him.” The entry had the subheading: ‘Part maniac and part idiot, is what one man calls them’, which many present-day horse owners will no doubt relate to. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/TypistGettyImages-97226313-cb961e1-e1769767620435.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white cartoon of a woman sitting at a typewriter" title="In an eerie ‘true ghost’ story, a woman reportedly saw a ghost fall from a building in Aldwych, London – the same building from which a woman had previously fallen to her death (Image by Getty Images)" /> 12. "Girl typist saw a ghost fall in city street" Sunday Mirror, 29 July 1934 In July 1934, the Sunday Mirror reported the case of a typist who claimed to have seen a ghost fall from a building in Aldwych, London. She fainted and was carried into a nearby chemist’s shop. When she regained consciousness, she told reporters she’d seen a girl fall from a high window and land at her feet. Interestingly, 18 months earlier, a young woman had actually fallen from an upper storey at that very location and was killed. The typist claimed she had no prior knowledge of the tragedy – whether you believe her is entirely up to you. As noted above, the mid-19th century saw a rise in spiritualism and séances. As a result, papers often reported ‘true ghost’ stories or mysterious happenings. However, by the 1920s and 30s these stories had begun to decline in mainstream tabloids, so this 1934 Mirror story is a bit of a (spooky) outlier. Read more | Did he photograph the ghost of a president? Meet the scheming Victorian who exploited a grieving America <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/Devil-WorshipGettyImages-1387752195-62248fc-e1769767805608.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Seven people are standing in a line with their heads bowed slightly forward. Each is wearing a black hooded gown and a red devil mask on their faces" title="The global ‘satanic panic’ of the 1980s led to many stories of witches and ritualistic practices. In Utah, a 12-part series in the Provo Daily Herald was dedicated to devil worship (Image by Getty Images)" /> 13. "Satan worship in Zion" Provo Daily Herald, July–August 1985 No, this isn’t a particularly far-fetched plot from hit Netflix series Stranger Things: the US newspaper Provo Daily Herald really did publish a series of 12 articles in 1985 alleging widespread devil worship in Utah Valley. The articles were written by two reporters, Patrick Christian and Vicki Barker, who claimed to have interviewed “dozens” of psychologists, therapists and law-enforcement officers so they could “educate readers about the prevalence of Satanic worship in this area”. Subjects of the articles included a teenager who, it was claimed, drank animal blood after meeting a Satanist in seventh grade. Also, two Utah County Sheriff's deputies reported on “covens of witches” operating in abandoned buildings. Proof of these claims was lacking, to say the least, and the Provo Daily Herald faced criticism for adding fuel to the global ‘satanic panic’ that gripped the media in the 1980s. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/Tiger-WoodsGettyImages-1097899790-f941754-e1769767906185.jpg" width="620" height="747" alt="A man wearing a black Nike sports jacket and black Nike cap stands holding multiple white golf balls in his hand" title="Tiger Woods holding his custom-made golf balls, which caused a stir following his endorsement of Nike Tour Accuracy ones (Image by Getty Images)" /> 14. "Tiger Woods plays with own balls" Associated Press wire story, 2000 The editor of this news story by journalist David Kravets was either very naive or purposefully channelling their inner Carry On scriptwriter when they crafted this saucy headline in the year 2000. The story is about the fact that pro golfer Tiger Woods had endorsed Nike Tour Accuracy golf balls in adverts, when (shock horror!) he actually played with custom-made balls unavailable to amateur players. Nike was eventually forced to confess that the balls Woods played with had a slightly harder inner and outer core than the balls sold to the public. It wasn’t exactly the most exciting story of all time, which is possibly why it was given such a cheeky, Barbara Windsor-esque headline.
From goat eyelids to bread: history's 12 strangest sex toys
Our ancestors weren’t quite as prudish as we like to think they were. Hilary Mitchell looks at some of the tools past generations have used in the pursuit of sexual pleasure – from steam-powered vibrators to goat eyelids
This article contains explicit descriptions of sex and sexual practices throughout – please use discretion 1. The Hohle Fels phallus Around 28,000 years ago, an effigy of a human penis was left inside Hohle Fels cave, southwestern Germany. Made from fine-grained siltstone, the object was meticulously ground, polished and etched with grooves at both ends. Given its polished surface and true-to-life size, some researchers have suggested it may well have been an early masturbatory aid – or the first-ever dildo, to put it bluntly. However, that was not the artefact’s only possible purpose. When University of Tübingen archaeologist Nicholas J Conard first announced the find in 2005, he suggested that it was also used for knapping flints. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/1D3GB1X-3e0e6f1-e1764240558215.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A man holds a phallus-shaped object in his hands, while a woman points to it. In the background, a group of people are working on excavating the floor of a cave" title="Archaeologists Nicholas Conrad and Petra Kieselbach pose with the Hohle Fels phallus shortly after its discovery in 2005" /> 2. Bread Yes, that’s right. As well as being a staple food in ancient times, bread may also have been used for less salubrious purposes. A passage from the Babylonian Talmud, for instance, contains a description of what should be done to treat a man afflicted by a puncture in his penis. The suggested solution is that a piece of warm barley bread should be placed on the man’s anus to induce ejaculation, proving whether or not the perforation has properly healed. Notably, the ancient Greeks are also said to have used makeshift sex toys known as olisbokollikes: batons of stale bread that were inserted into the anus, using olive oil as lubrication. It may sound far-fetched (and could have just been a rude joke), but the practice is mentioned in the lexicon of Hesychius of Alexandria, compiled in the fifth or sixth century AD. 3. Goat eyelids Texts from ancient China describe penis rings made from a rather unusual material: goat eyelids, often with the eyelashes left intact. These were reportedly used between the third and fifth centuries AD to enhance sexual pleasure and performance by trapping blood within the penis. The elasticity of the goat eyelid was presumably the major selling point, but leaving the eyelashes on suggested they played a part too, potentially providing extra stimulation for both parties. By the 1600s, some Chinese men had upgraded their penis ring technology. These more modern devices were made from materials like jade and ivory, and were ornately carved, often depicting dragons. The dragons’ tongues usually extended to form a protruding nub, which could be placed against the woman’s clitoris to enhance her pleasure during intercourse – a forerunner to today’s clitoral stimulators. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/4GettyImages-1052933946-4c20b47-e1764240604387.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Evidence from ancient China suggests that goats’ eyelids were used to heighten sexual pleasure for both men and women (Image by Getty Images)" title="Evidence from ancient China suggests that goats’ eyelids were used to heighten sexual pleasure for both men and women (Image by Getty Images)" /> Read more | What did the Tudors think was ‘good’ sex? These tips and tricks were key to relationships in the 16th century 4. Apadravya (‘apparatus’) Even if you’re not remotely interested in the history of sex and sexuality, you’ll have likely heard of Vātsyāyana’s third-century AD tome, the Kama Sutra. As well as guidance about living a healthy sex life, the Sanskrit text also extols the virtues of using apadravya (‘apparatus’) to enhance one’s pleasure, describing the use of dildos, penis extenders and other sex aids made of wood, rubber, gold, silver, copper and ivory. Some of the devices are particularly unusual: one is shaped like a flower bud, while another resembles an elephant’s trunk. If that wasn’t enough, the Kama Sutra also contains instructions for creating artificial vaginas made of “hollowed-out pumpkins” and bamboo moistened with oil or ointment. Sounds a bit more effective than bread… 5. The Science Museum’s luxury ivory dildo One of the best-documented early modern sex toys is currently in the care of London’s Science Museum. Labelled “ivory dildo with a contrivance for simulating ejaculation”, the 18th-century device takes the form of an erect penis and includes a small pump and reservoir, seemingly intended to cause fluid to shoot out at an opportune moment. Curiously, the catalogue entry also states that the item was “found in the stuffed seat of a Louis XV armchair, which was in a convent on the banks of the Seine, near Paris”, but how it got there is a mystery sadly lost to the mists of time. 6. George Taylor’s steam-powered ‘Manipulator’ he ivory dildo might have been very novel in many ways, but one crucial thing that it didn’t do was vibrate. So where did the concept of the vibrator come from? The answer, it appears, lies in a steam-powered device from 1869 known as the ‘Manipulator’. Invented by American physician George Taylor, the Manipulator was not a theme park ride as its name suggests, but a large, padded table connected to vibrating ball, which would be positioned against the patient’s pelvic area as they lay on the device. The ball – which was powered by a coal-fired steam engine – provided continuous mechanical stimulation and was described as a “medical vibrating and kneading machine”. The Manipulator was an adaptation of a similar machine created by Swedish physical therapist Gustaf Zander; Taylor merely improved on Zander’s ideas by attaching his ‘Medical Rubbing Apparatus’ to what was, in effect, a stationary steam engine. However, Taylor warned physicians who bought the device that treatment of female pelvic complaints with the Manipulator should be supervised to prevent “overindulgence”. 7. ‘Rubber women’ Rubber, in its natural form, has been known and used for thousands of years, but modern rubber as we know it today was developed much later. In 1839, American inventor Charles Goodyear discovered vulcanisation, a process that made rubber strong, elastic and weather-resistant, paving the way for a wide range of industrial and consumer applications – some of which were later exploited for erotic purposes. Selected accounts suggest that, by the 1850s, manufacturers were producing rubber items that could be interpreted as early forms of sex dolls. These items have been described as ‘rubber women’ or femmes en caoutchouc in French, though they were not explicitly advertised as sex toys. The first mention of manufactured sex dolls in academic literature appears in Iwan Bloch’s The Sexual Life of Our Time (1908), where he claims they were marketed primarily to sailors. However, modern scholarship suggests that Bloch relied heavily on fictional sources and exaggerated advertising, calling into question the book’s accuracy. Given the modern popularity of sex dolls, however, it seems plausible that variations on the theme may have existed in the early 20th century. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/7.Femme-en-Caoutchouc-c16ea73-e1764241535367.png" width="620" height="413" alt="An illustration shows a man holding a rubber woman in his arms" title="A 19th-century French song, La Femme en Caoutchouc (‘The Rubber Woman’), tells the story of a sailor’s ‘relationship’ with a sex doll. The affair does not end well, as indicated by the illustrations adorning this edition of the sheet music" /> Read more | Rich men, reckless affairs and ruined reputations: the scandalous lives of London's 18th-century courtesans 8. Granville’s ‘Percuteur’ Large, steam-powered vibrators like George Taylor’s ‘Manipulator’ were far too bulky and costly for most physicians, so British doctor Joseph Mortimer Granville decided to invent a smaller, spring-driven electromechanical vibrator known as the ‘Percuteur’. After patenting his device in the early 1880s, Granville was adamant that it should only be intended for therapeutic use on men, stating: “I have avoided, and shall continue to avoid, the treatment of women by percussion… simply because I do not want to be hoodwinked… by the vagaries of the hysterical state.” It’s not clear whether fellow doctors heeded Granville’s advice, but it’s important to note that vibrators at the time were viewed primarily as medical instruments rather than sexual devices. Indeed, Dr Carol Queen – curator of the Antique Vibrator Museum in San Francisco – has cautioned against calling these early vibrators ‘sex toys’, saying: “The vibrators were not marketed and sold for this purpose. They were healthcare devices that just happened to cause orgasm if you knew where to apply the vibration… there is no evidence that people who owned or used them knew this… though there’s also no evidence that they didn’t.” 9. Dr Young’s Ideal Rectal Dilators Modern butt plugs did not originate as sex toys, but as treatments for a range of ‘rectal ailments’, including constipation and ‘nervousness’. They were first patented in 1892 and marketed as ‘Dr Young’s Ideal Rectal Dilators’ from 1893 to 1940. They were sold in sets of four, in increasing sizes, and advertisements and surviving sets show that each dilator had an olive or bullet-shaped tip and a flanged base to prevent full insertion – a shape strikingly similar to today’s butt plugs. The devices were made of rubber, and the instructions suggested they be used with either Dr Young’s Piloment lubricant or Vaseline. Like early vibrators, they were marketed as ‘healthcare devices’, but back then – as now – the human anus contained a great deal of nerve endings, meaning inserting the dilators into the rectum will have caused many ‘patients’ to experience sexual pleasure. To paraphrase Dr Carol Queen, there’s no evidence to suggest that people did use these dilators during sex – but, equally, there’s nothing to say they didn’t. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/9Credit-CreepyCuteTreasuresEtsyDr-Youngs-Rectal-Dilators-7f08bac-e1764241593117.jpeg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A set of Dr Young’s Ideal Rectal Dilators. The box’s instructions suggest that the user should keep their chosen dilator inserted for “half an hour” to achieve the best results (Image by CreepyCuteTreasures/Etsy)" title="A set of Dr Young’s Ideal Rectal Dilators. The box’s instructions suggest that the user should keep their chosen dilator inserted for “half an hour” to achieve the best results (Image by CreepyCuteTreasures/Etsy)" /> 10. Louis B Hawley’s Patented Penis Stiffener In 1907, US inventor Louis B Hawley sprang into action to quite literally support men with erection problems. Hawley’s patented ‘surgical appliance’ took the form of an external splint to keep the penis erect, with a covering to help hold it in place. Unfortunately, there are no first-hand accounts of how comfortable the device would have been for both parties, though given later patent writers’ critiques about its design being bulky and awkward, it’s probably fair to speculate that the answer may well have been “not very”. However, this early prototype did pave the way for more modern penis ‘stiffeners’, most notably Dr F Brantley Scott’s inflatable device, which was first sold in the 1970s and made up of two inflatable silicone cylinders with a reservoir and pump. That, in turn, led to the advent of surgically implanted and inflatable prostheses, which are still helping people enjoy robust and vigorous sex lives today. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/10GettyImages-837400890-547dfa0-e1764241628703.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Physicians have long sought new ways to treat erectile dysfunction – including the creation of inflatable prostheses (Image by Getty Images)" title="Physicians have long sought new ways to treat erectile dysfunction – including the creation of inflatable prostheses (Image by Getty Images)" /> Read more | Queen Victoria’s voracious appetite for food and sex 11. Hand-cranked ‘massagers’ The earlier question of “but did people really use these things to masturbate?” raises its head again as we look at hand-cranked vibrators like Dr Macuara’s Blood Circulator, which was sold throughout the early 1900s and could deliver 6,000 vibrations per minute. At this time, masturbation was widely viewed as shameful, and ‘obscene’ content was illegal in the US under the 1873 Comstock Act. This meant that vibrators could not be openly advertised as sexual products. However, according to sex toy historian Hallie Lieberman, “it’s impossible to deny that sexual uses for vibrators weren’t known”. The makers of the Bebout Vibrator, for example, made their target market very clear in a 1908 advert, describing their device as “gentle, soothing, invigorating and refreshing [and] invented by a woman who knows a woman's needs”. Interestingly, many of these hand-cranked devices came with dildo-like attachments – though these were ‘officially’ intended to treat uterine complaints. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/11-2RX45AW-0c62c65-e1764241663308.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Dr Macuara’s Blood Circulator could deliver 6,000 vibrations a minute – but it was never explicitly marketed as a sex toy (Image by Alamy)" title="Dr Macuara’s Blood Circulator could deliver 6,000 vibrations a minute – but it was never explicitly marketed as a sex toy (Image by Alamy)" /> 12. The Oster Stim-U-Lax This scalp massage device, marketed to barbers, promised to deliver “several thousand rotating-patting Swedish-type massage movements per minute” via the operator’s fingers. But it wasn’t only used on scalps. A frank first-hand account by US sex educator Betty Dodgson (1929–2020) describes using an Oster Stim-U-Lax with her lover in 1966, explaining: “One day he was getting a haircut when his barber ended with a scalp massage using a vibrating machine that was strapped onto the back of his hand. Grant got the bright idea that it would be great for sex. On our next date, Grant brought out his new toy for us to try. Although I wasn't all that crazy about getting off on a mechanical device, my motto is to always try everything at least once.” It was, according to Dodgson’s account, extremely effective, and led her to become a keen advocate for vibrators from that point onwards. Dodgson is even credited with helping to bring such sex toys into the mainstream, promoting devices such as the now-ubiquitous Hitachi Magic Wand, first marketed in 1968.
Which treasures were lost when Titanic sank, and what did some survivors smuggle onto lifeboats?
When Titanic sank in April 1912, undoubtedly the highest cost was the more than 1,500 people who perished in the disaster on the Atlantic Ocean. But with the prestige of its maiden voyage attracting wealthy clientele, there was also a huge number of treasures on board. Hilary Mitchell reveals the historical riches lost to the sea – from ancient trinkets to Victorian art valued as the most valuable of its day…
It’s an eerie photograph, to say the least. A two-foot-tall bronze statuette of the Roman goddess of the hunt, known as Diana of Versailles, peers sightlessly to the right, the carefully cast, delicate folds of her tunic tarnished and darkened by decades of salt water. Originally gracing the mantlepiece of the ornate fireplace in Titanic’s opulent first-class lounge, she now lies half-buried in the abyssal darkness, 2.5 miles below the ocean’s surface. The picture was taken in 2024 by oceanographers from RMS Titanic Inc, a US company that holds the rights to the 113-year-old wreck. The statuette hadn’t been caught on camera since 1986, when marine scientist Bob Ballard led an expedition to the site using the deep-sea vehicle Alvin. Eight subsequent visits had failed to locate her, and there was some concern she had been illegally salvaged and sold. Finding her was like “finding a needle in a haystack”, said James Penca, a researcher on the RMS Titanic Inc. project. She was rediscovered in the final hours of the three-week-long dive. The statuette isn’t an original Roman bronze. It’s a replica of a much-larger marble sculpture currently on display in the Louvre in Paris, itself a partially restored Roman copy (first or second century BC) of a lost Greek bronze original attributed to Athenian sculptor Leochares (c325 BC). However, it was valuable in its own right; a prestigious, costly piece of decoration. In some ways, the Diana statuette can be used as a symbol to represent thousands of artefacts that were lost when Titanic hit an iceberg and sank beneath the waves on her maiden voyage in the early hours of 15 April 1912, resulting in the tragic, harrowing deaths of more than 1,500 men, women and children. Who was the richest person to die in the Titanic disaster? On its maiden voyage, Titanic was transporting many of the era’s wealthiest people to the US, several of whom were returning from lengthy sojourns in Europe. One of these elite passengers was John Jacob Astor IV, who was thought to be among the richest people in the world at that time, with a net worth of roughly $87m (equivalent to $2.83bn today) when he died in the disaster. Read more | Titanic passengers: 8 stories of people who sailed on the liner A year after the tragedy, The New York Times reported that the claims brought against Titanic's operator, the White Star Line, had reached more than $16m ($16,804,112.23 to be precise, equivalent to over half a billion today), a combination of death, personal injury and lost property claims. One Mrs Irene Wallach Harris claimed $1,000,000 for the loss of her husband, Henry Birkhardt Harris, a Broadway producer and theatre owner – which The Washington Post reported was “the heaviest of the 279 claims so far filed” in January 1913. These claims, many of which can be accessed online, offer a partial record of some of the items lost in the sinking of Titanic. However, many more valuables have been completely lost to history – because their owners joined them on their journey to the bottom of the freezing ocean. John Jacob Astor IV’s young wife Madeleine, who survived the disaster, is not on the list of claimants, but other first-class passengers did put in requests for compensation. These petitions shed some light on the huge array of finery some of these wealthy individuals brought on board. Which Egyptian artefacts were on Titanic? American socialite and philanthropist Margaret Brown – later dubbed ‘The Unsinkable Molly Brown’ – put in an insurance claim for $14,623 following the tragedy. Her lost items included an ermine opera cape valued at $300, a Brussels lace gown ($375), a $700 sealskin jacket, a necklace worth a staggering $7,000 – about $220,000 today – and “three crates of ancient models for Denver museum”, which were worth $500 in total. That’s over $16,000 today. These “crates of ancient models” contained Egyptian antiquities, which Brown had collected during her travels to the country before boarding Titanic. It’s not known what, exactly, these chests did contain, but it’s possible to hazard a guess. In 1912, tourists visiting Egypt could purchase a range of historically and archaeologically significant relics, as the trade in ancient artefacts was still relatively unregulated. Though the Antiquities Service of Egypt was working to curb looting at the time, enforcement was inconsistent. Many genuine ancient artifacts were openly sold in markets. Some of the most commonly available relics included Shabti figures (also known as ushabtis or shawabtis), which were statuettes placed in burials from the Middle Kingdom – between about 4,000 and 3,500 years ago – until the Ptolemaic Period, around 2,300 years ago. It was also possible to buy genuine New Kingdom (c1550–1070 BC) scarab amulets and original canopic jars containing mummified organs. Remarkably, Margaret Brown carried one of these treasures, a shabti, with her onto lifeboat number 6 when she abandoned ship. According to The Molly Brown House Museum, based in Denver, Colorado, “Molly thought to take her treasured three-inch turquoise-colored Egyptian statue purchased in Cairo and placed it in her pocket for luck.” She is believed to have gifted it to Arthur Rostron, captain of Carpathia, after the liner rescued her and the other Titanic survivors. According to Egyptologist Paul Boughton, who spent some time tracking it down, it eventually made its way into a 1998 exhibition called Titanic: Fortune and Fate at The Mariner’s Museum in Newport News, Virginia. History's Greatest Conspiracy Theories Member exclusive | Was the moon landing faked? Did Shakespeare actually write his plays? Were the pyramids built by aliens? Expert historians offer their perspectives on history's biggest conspiracy theories. Listen to all episodes now What was the most expensive item to go down with Titanic? Unfortunately, none of the other Egyptian artefacts that Brown intended to donate ended up in a museum. They’re down in the depths, with the Diana of Versailles sculpture, as well as the most expensive single item of property that was lost that night: a painting titled ‘La Circassienne au bain’ by French artist Merry-Joseph Blondel. This large, neoclassical artwork was brought on board by a Swedish businessman, 28-year-old Mauritz Håkan Björnström-Steffansson. It was valued at $100,000 (which would be around $3m today). When compensation claims were filed in January 1913, the painting was highlighted by the press as the largest claim made against the White Star Line for a single piece of baggage. Björnström-Steffansson survived the disaster, by jumping onto the empty bow of one of the last lifeboats to be launched from the starboard side of Titanic: a craft known as Collapsible D, which entered the water at 1.55am, just 25 minutes before the ship sank completely. ‘La Circassienne au bain’ had been completed by Blondel in 1814, and it was exhibited at the Paris Salon at the Louvre the same year. The subject of the portrait is a Circassian (Eastern European) woman, who is pictured getting into a bath – rather awkwardly, if surviving etchings are to be believed. According to contemporary reports, it didn’t initially set the art world alight, but as Blondel became more famous, the work became more popular, and its value went up. It’s not known for how much Björnström-Steffansson’s claim for ‘La Circasienne au bain’ was settled, but it’s unlikely that he received the full $100,000. The total eventually paid out to claimants was $644,000, significantly less than the $16,804,112.23 that had been asked for. Was there a car on Titanic? Artefacts and artwork weren’t the only expensive items lost at sea that night; an extremely valuable French-made car also sank beneath the waves. Fans of the 1997 smash-hit James Cameron movie Titanic will no doubt remember the steamy scene where Jack (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) and Rose (Kate Winslet) consummate their simmering romance in the back of a 1912 Renault Type CB Coupé de Ville in the ship’s cargo hold. Although James Cameron played fast and loose with some historical facts while making the film, the car wasn’t one of them. There was indeed a 1912 Renault Type CB Coupé de Ville on board, although it was probably sealed in a crate to protect it against damage and therefore not easily accessible to amorous twenty-somethings. The car was purchased in Europe by one William Carter, an American millionaire (and keen polo player) who was travelling with his family. He survived by boarding the very last lifeboat to be launched from Titanic, Collapsible C, which entered the water at 2am. At that point, Titanic's forecastle deck was almost completely submerged. William Carter was joined on Collapsible C by White Star Line managing director J Bruce Ismay. Both men would later face criticism for not going down with the ship, particularly given the fact that 166 women and children were still on board when it sank into the Atlantic Ocean. Read more | An inferno that claimed 33 lives: the story of a deadly Victorian disaster But the millionaire polo player defended his and Ismay’s actions shortly after the disaster. In a statement to The New York Times given on 22 April 1912, Carter said: "The statements which have been made by Mr. Ismay's conduct are an injustice to him […] The women that were in the boat were from steerage, with their children. I guess there were about forty of them. Mr. Ismay and myself and several of the officers walked up and down the deck, crying 'Are there more women here?' We called for several minutes and got no answer. One of the officers then declared that if we wanted to we could get into the boat if we took the place of a seaman. He gave us this preference because we were among the first-class passengers. Mr. Ismay called again, and after we got no reply we got into the lifeboat.” Carter later put in a claim for $11,670.00, including $5,000 for the car – equivalent to around $162,000 today. He also requested compensation for two pet dogs, which he said were worth $100 and $200 respectively. Although there were reports at the time that he was travelling with his prized polo ponies, he did not claim for their loss, so it seems unlikely that they were on board. Were any valuable literary works lost in the sinking of Titanic? Another unique item that was lost that night included one of the most lavishly decorated books the world has ever seen: a jewel-encrusted edition of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. The stunning edition of the Rubáiyát, a selection of quatrains attributed to Omar Khayyám ‘(the Astronomer-Poet of Persia’) was the work of acclaimed bookbinder Francis Sangorski, and had been commissioned by John Stonehouse, manager of Sotheran's bookshop in London. The book was encrusted with 1,050 jewels including specially cut rubies, topazes and emeralds. Around 100 square feet of gold leaf and 5,000 pieces of leather were also used. After it was completed, the Daily Mirror described it as "the most remarkable specimen of binding ever produced". Sotheran's put the book on sale for £1,000 – the equivalent of around £97,000, but it failed to sell. "It was three times more expensive than anything else in Sotheran's stock. I think it was just too expensive for the UK market," the bookshop's managing director, Chris Saunders, told the BBC in 2022. On 29 March 1912, the book went to auction at Sotheby's and was purchased by the agent of a New York book dealer called Gabriel Wells, who paid £405 for it, quite the bargain. Unfortunately, Wells’s celebrations were set to be short-lived. The book narrowly missed a crossing on 6 April and was instead taken aboard the next ship, RMS Titanic, and was lost. Quiz | How much do you know about RMS Titanic and the sinking disaster? Egyptian antiquities, a Neoclassical painting, a car, a jewelled book: all now sit at the bottom of the ocean, and unlike the Diana of Versailles sculpture, none have been spotted by any visiting divers. What has been seen, though, are scores of shoes belonging to the men, women and children who died that night, left behind after the bodies of their owners decomposed over time. It’s a ghoulish reminder of the real treasures that were lost with Titanic: human beings. Who knows what these people travelling to start their new life in America might have achieved when they got there; how many never got the chance to be acclaimed novelists, or artists, or bookmakers, or car designers. The world might look very different today if there had been enough lifeboats for everyone on board, meaning that more than 1,500 potential-filled lives were not cut short.
Who were the real Forty Elephants? The true story of Mary Carr and the all-woman crime gang
In Disney+ drama A Thousand Blows, viewers are transported into the violent underworld of 1880s London to meet an all-female crime syndicate – The Forty Elephants. Was this a real organisation, who was its leader, and who else was really involved? Hilary Mitchell takes up the true tale of their ingenious plots, and their hapless marks…
Steven Knight doesn’t mess around with the subject matter for his gritty, historical British crime dramas. Like Peaky Blinders before it, new Disney+ drama A Thousand Blows catapults viewers head on into the seedy underbelly of 1880s London; a simmering hotbed of illegal, underground boxing rings overseen by various crime syndicates – including notorious all-female gang, the Forty Elephants. But just who, exactly, were the Forty Elephants, and what’s the truth behind Steven Knight’s carefully crafted Disney+ miniseries? On the podcast | Bruisers and bare knuckles: the brutal world of Victorian boxing Were the Forty Elephants real? Yes, the Forty Elephants – also known as the Forty Thieves – were a real, all-female crime gang that operated in London for a considerable length of time. According to London historian and crime expert Brian McDonald, author of Gangs of London: 100 Years of Mob Warfare (2010), the first mention of the Forty Elephants appeared in newspapers in 1873, and they remained active until the mid-20th century. View Green Video on the source website When researching, McDonald pored over birth and death records, newspaper articles and out-of-print books in the British Library archives to uncover the women’s modus operandi, and discovered that were incredibly creative in the way they used the fashions of the time to their advantage. Read more | Victorian murder scandals: what six killings tell us about women's lives in the 19th century In the late 1800s and early 1900s, women’s clothing was multi-layered; skirts fell all the way to the ground, while bustles and hoops created an almost tent-like effect, ideal for hiding stolen goods. The Forty Elephants enhanced their outfits even further, tailoring their dresses to allow them to easily squirrel away expensive items and walk away from high-end department stores unnoticed. They even sewed hidden pockets into their hats to conceal their loot. They were allied with separate male-led gangs – but were largely independent with strict rules and a clear hierarchy. Read more | A bodice-ripping revolution: how Victorian women cast off deadly fashion trends Why were they called the Forty Elephants? The Forty Elephants probably took their name from the district they operated from: Elephant and Castle, in South London. The ‘Forty’ part is a bit less clear, however, but it’s thought that it could possibly refer to the number of women in the gang. The women didn’t only operate in Elephant and Castle; their crime empire spanned all of London, and even some neighbouring towns. One of the gang’s main strengths was their skill at ‘fencing’ – a term for reselling – the goods they shoplifted. McDonald found that items were disposed of through a chain of fences in London. Cheap loot went to street market traders, jewellery to pawnbrokers, and clothes were sold to shady shops that were willing to replace labels and remodel designs. Who was the real Mary Carr? Mary Carr (played by Erin Doherty) is one of the central characters in A Thousand Blows and was one of the gang’s first leaders – a founder ‘elephant’, if you will. Contemporary publication Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper described her as being “noted for her good looks and engaging manners [who] managed to get round her a gang of young women who gave her complete obedience as their leader.” Carr played an essential role in turning a loosely organised group of petty thieves into the well-oiled machine it eventually became, helping them to refine their strategy. She enforced discipline and turned her home, 118 Stamford Street in south London, into the gang’s first base of operations. Her leadership saw the gang’s activities become increasingly organised. With increased organisation and activity though, came heightened scrutiny. Sensational trials took place when the gang was implicated in the 1895 abduction of a traveller child, Michael McGee – as well a vicious gang attack of a female rival, Nellie Stanley, that same year. History's greatest scandals: the Victorians Member exclusive | Take a journey through the backstreets of 19th-century Britain to explore the darker side of Victorian life Listen to all episodes now Carr was jailed in 1896 for kidnapping. At her trial, two detective sergeants named Gray and Brogden informed the Court that the prisoner was known as “the Queen of the Forty Thieves,” a gang of young females who “infested the Strand.” What links did the Forty Elephants have to Victorian boxing? Prize fighting – a no-holds-barred form of bare-knuckle boxing that was particularly attractive to gamblers – was made illegal in England in 1829, but that didn’t stop people continuing the tradition despite the risk of fines and imprisonment. It just drove it underground: into the smoky backrooms of pubs, back yards, hidden basements and – sometimes – remote, rural areas. For example, crime records show that in mid-1856, a group of London promoters hired a train and transported up to 500 people to a Suffolk village to stage a fight between two men named James Massey and William Hayes. When caught, the pugilists and five members of the prize-ring were charged with breach of the peace and assault, and jailed. Read more | Bill Richmond, the ‘Black Terror’: the story of Britain's first black sports star The illegality of the sport meant that it was interwoven with the rampant gang activity in London at the time, so it’s likely that the Forty Elephants would have had a degree of involvement in it. Who was Diamond Annie? Around the same time Mary Carr was jailed in 1986, another gang leader was born: Alice Diamond, later nicknamed Diamond Annie (played by Darci Shaw). The 1911 Census of England and Wales tells us that she was 14 in that year and living with her parents and siblings in Southwark, South London. By the time she was 17, she already had a string of thievery convictions and in early in WW1 she was arrested for using fake ID to gain access to an ammunition factory – possibly trying to procure explosives with which to explode safes. By 1915, aged just 19, she’d risen through South London’s criminal underworld to become the new “queen” of the Forty Elephants. The gang perfected their department store theft skills under her reign, terrorising high-end West End shops – including Harrods and Liberty – with their large-scale shoplifting sprees. Even more ambitiously, the Forty Elephants carried out a series of jewel heists during Diamond’s leadership, where they posed as guests at high-society events. Hidden in plain sight, they pickpocketed jewellery while they were there, and gathered information that they could later use to stage burglaries. How was Diamond Annie caught? Such high-profile robberies caused police to intensify attempts to catch the gang, and Diamond was finally arrested in 1925, with the media reporting every twist and turn of the trial, highlighting Diamond’s impressive levels of organisation and control. The Daily Express wrote that Diamond “used to have information brought to her from all parts of London—daily bulletins of places and people earmarked for plunder—and it was she who directed the entire operations of the gang. Nothing was done unless the ‘queen’ gave the order.” What happened to the Forty Elephants? At the conclusion of Alice Diamond’s trial, the Daily Express wrote (rather poetically): “The police smashed up the gang when they trapped the ‘queen.’ But it still drifts in twos and threes across the stage of this theatre of crime.” The gang didn’t cease to exist when Alice was jailed, but the Forty Elephants did experience a period of decline. A new Queen, Lillian Rose Kendall, eventually took charge – but things were never quite the same for the all-female gang after that. They were rocked by the rise of new, more violent gangs during the Great Depression, and also saw their number dwindle during World War II. The Forty Elephants had all but vanished by the 1950s. Their activities, particularly in the context of Victorian and Edwardian London, demonstrate that women, even in an era of strict gender norms, could carve out their own space in the criminal world. A Thousand Blows is available to stream on Disney+. You can sign up to Disney+ for £7.99 a month or £79.90 a year now.
Lupus, lymphoma – or murder? Why Jane Austen's mysterious cause of death has puzzled historians for years
In BBC drama Miss Austen, Jane's sister Cassandra is on a mission to destroy a cache of letters following the 41-year-old Jane's death. But by destroying these documents, which may have contained key medical details about Jane's final illness, Cassandra denied historians vital evidence, causing wild theories about her cause of death to swirl for years. Hilary Mitchell investigates how much we know about the real story…
The medical landscape in the early 19th century was – unsurprisingly – vastly different to today. During the lifetime of Jane Austen, who died in 1817 at the age of 41, diseases were rife and often fatal, and knowledge of human anatomy was scanty. A visit to the doctor was expensive and there was little effective treatment available beyond alcohol, opium, and bloodletting with leeches. Germs had yet to be identified, antiseptics and antibiotics were unheard of, and surgery was performed without anaesthetic. Most medicine was herbal and came from apothecaries who made remedies and gave general health advice. Most of the ‘cure-alls’ on sale at the time were entirely without benefit. For example, London’s Old Operating Theatre museum owns a domestic medicine chest from that period, which contains a bottle of Steers’s Chemical Opodeldoc, a popular liniment. An eye-opening 1783 advert for Opodeldoc lists the many things it can cure – everything from tendon injuries (“In wounded Tendons it is likewise of the greatest Service, by Preventing the Juice which oozes out of them from fixing) to injured horses that are “strained in the back Sinews… or have their Backs galled”. Not bad for an ointment that was, according to a recipe in 1856 text The Medical Formulary, just a mixture of soap, alcohol, camphor and ammonia. What was Jane Austen’s cause of death? Against this backdrop of confusion about the nature of illnesses and how to cure them, it should come as no great shock to discover that Jane Austen’s official cause of death was never clearly documented. Instead, her family and attending physician – the esteemed Dr Giles King Lyford, a surgeon at the county hospital at Winchester – recorded that she died of a vague illness referred to as "consumption" or "decline." No post-mortem was ever performed. Jane Austen's letters describe how she was plagued by awful ill health in the final years of her life, which left her bedridden at her home in the village of Chawton, near Alton in Hampshire. In May 1817 she wrote a letter to her friend Anne Sharp, detailing a recent “attack”, explaining: “My chief [sic] sufferings were from feverish nights, weakness & Languor. This Discharge was on me for above a week, & as our Alton Apothy [Apothecary] did not pretend to be able to cope with it, better advice was called in. Our nearest very good, is at Winchester, where there is a Hospital & capital Surgeons, & one of them attended me, & his applications gradually removed the Evil.” Jane travelled to Winchester to place herself in the care of Lyford two days later, but she never returned home. She died on 18 July 1817 with her devoted sister, Cassandra, by her side. Was Jane Austen murdered? Whenever there’s a significant gap in any important historical record, theories – both rational and not-so-rational – will inevitably spring up, and Jane’s death is no different. One of the most outlandish ideas to be put forward in recent years is that Jane was murdered. In 2011, crime novelist Lindsay Ashford seized on the fact that traces of arsenic had been found in the Pride and Prejudice author’s body, and concluded that she must have been poisoned. According to the Guardian, while reading Jane’s letters, the crime novelist spotted the following sentence, written shortly before her death: "I am considerably better now and am recovering my looks a little, which have been bad enough, black and white and every wrong colour." Ashford realised the symptoms could be ascribed to arsenic poisoning, which can cause "raindrop" pigmentation, where patches of skin go brown or black. After discovering that a lock of Jane’s hair had tested positive for the substance, she said: "I don't think murder is out of the question," she said, adding: “In the early 19th century a lot of people were getting away with murder with arsenic as a weapon.” However, Ashford’s claims were dismissed by Professor Janet Todd, who edited the Cambridge edition of the works of Jane Austen, who noted that many 19th century ‘cure-alls’ contained arsenic, including remedies that claimed to treat rheumatism, which Jane could have taken. If not murder, how did Jane Austen die? Another illness that may have caused Jane’s symptoms is Addison’s Disease, first proposed by English physician and author Zachary Cope in 1964. This rare condition involving adrenal insufficiency, causes fatigue, weakness, weight loss, and white and dark patches on the skin. This diagnosis has fallen out of favour over the years. One key issue with it is that tubercular Addison’s is often rapidly fatal, yet Jane was ill for about a year before her death in 1817. A third plausible candidate for Jane’s cause of death is Hodgkin’s disease, a form of lymphoma. Journalist Claire Tomalin took issue with Cope’s diagnosis in her 1997 book Jane Austen: A Life, proposing Hodgkin’s instead, a conclusion also reached by Annette Upfal, professor of British literature at the University of Queensland, in a 2005 Medical Humanities article. In her letters, Jane described experiencing periodic fevers, a hallmark of Hodgkin lymphoma. Hodgkin’s is also a slowly progressive condition, which matches Jane’s year-long decline. Her fevers also seemed to come and go in cycles, a distinctive characteristic of the illness. An even more recently proposed theory is that Jane may have died of systemic lupus erythematosus. This chronic autoimmune disease affects multiple organs, causing fatigue, joint pain, skin issues, and organ damage – and also causes recurrent fevers – all symptoms that align with descriptions of her illness. The theory was put forward in 2022 by retired surgeon Michael Sanders following a comprehensive review of all of Jane’s surviving letters. Did the burned letters hold the secret to Jane Austen’s death? Were more symptoms described in any of the thousands of letters burned by Cassandra? It seems very likely; and just a few additional details could have helped historians to solve this medical conundrum conclusively. Of the approximately 3,000 letters Jane Austen is thought to have written, only about 160 remain, many heavily edited by Cassandra or others. However, it’s likely that she only had the best of intentions in doing so – a desire to protect and preserve Jane’s public image. Jane’s characters showcase the author’s stinging wit and ability to come up with incredible takedowns and scathing retorts. Her letters may well have contained critical or unflattering comments about family members or influential people of their time. It’s also worth noting that Jane was a private individual and may not have wanted her correspondence to be preserved. Nor might Cassandra have foreseen the letters’ historical value. Few people at the time could have predicted that we’d be still talking about Jane today, or that Cassandra’s actions would form the basis for a BBC drama more than 200 years on.