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Why do ‘wicked’ witches wear pointed hats? The real history explained
There have been many examples of pointed hats in history, but it remains unclear how any of them became a must-wear for the witches
We’re off to see… the Wicked Witch of the West, as she returns to the silver screen in Wicked: For Good, the second part of the fantasy epic based on the popular stage musical. But where would Elphaba be without her trademark look, including the iconic black, pointed and wide-brimmed hat? Along with a cat, broomstick and black robes, the pointed hat is a required feature of any depiction of the typical ‘evil witch’, and has been for centuries. How it became the headgear of choice, however, remains the subject of numerous theories – as there is no single hat to point the way to the archetypal witch. The myth of the alewives Before getting to the major theories, there is one that can be debunked. The internet is well-populated with the claim that the image of the witch began with alewives, medieval women who brewed ale in their homes and sold it locally. Dominating the brewing industry for a time, these women could achieve a degree of financial independence. In an era where any woman who baulked social norms was suspicious, this autonomy would have been enough to single them out, putting them at risk of being accused of witchcraft. In addition, the fact that they stood over bubbling cauldrons while brewing and wearing pointed hats to be easily spotted at markets, it is clear why some have argued that alewives were the inspiration for the image of the witch. Except, there is just zero historical evidence to back this up. The highly symbolic history of the pointed witch hat Instead, theories have taken in pointy hats from throughout history, some with highly symbolic meaning. The Phrygian cap of antiquity, for instance, came to represent liberty and freedom in the American and French Revolutions of the 18th century, while the ancient Romans presented freed slaves with a special pointed felt cap, called a pileus. In medieval Europe, the hennin came into fashion: an extremely tall cone with flowing material hanging out of the top. Yet while it certainly has a resemblance to the witch’s hat, it was the preserve of noblewomen rather than the typically poor and disenfranchised targets that most often provoked accusations of witchcraft. Persecution and prejudice Other pointed hats became symbols of persecution, which could be a more promising place to look. The Fourth Lateran Council, a meeting of church leaders convoked by the pope in 1215, decreed that all Jews had to distinguish themselves by wearing distinctive clothing. In some regions, this included a tall, conical hat called the pileum cornutum. That one was usually yellow or white, though. Quiz | Would you have been accused of witchcraft? A more likely origin can be found in the persecution of the Religious Society of Friends, a Christian movement founded in the mid-17th century. Better known as the Quakers, they rejected the established doctrines of the church, refused to conform with many social norms, and they believed in equality for all. Two upshots of this were that the Quakers would not take off their hats in the accepted display of respect and they permitted women to preach, which caused consternation in England and colonial America. Quaker women became a source of ridicule and condemnation, and their hats – which got pointier over time – came to be associated with the evils of society. Watch now | What is a witch? Don't miss episode 1 in our Academy on the history of witchcraft While none of these theories are conclusive, a pattern does emerge of pointy hats being worn by minority groups. So, as the witch hunts took hold in Europe, it is possible to see a rationale to equip the typical image of a witch with a hat that has a history of identifying someone as a troublesome ‘other’. By the 18th century, the witches seen in woodcuts firmly established the pointed hat as part of the uniform. In the 1720 book, The History of Witches and Wizards, for instance, a behatted witch can be seen flying on a broomstick – alongside a demon, no less – enshrining the conical pointed hat in the spooky, fantastical tradition.
When was the first toilet invented? What did people use before the modern flush? What are the origins of the term 'crapper'? To mark World Toilet Day, Julian Humphrys explores the history of Britain's loos
A... is for Ajax Although Elizabethan writer and courtier John Harrington wasn’t the first person to design a flushing toilet – Londoner Thomas Brightfield had done so in 1449 – he was the first to provide a written specification for one. In 1596, he penned his Metamorphosis of Ajax (a pun on ‘jakes’, a slang word for a privy) in which he described a remarkably modern-sounding device that he’d installed in his house. This incorporated a pan with a seat and a cistern filled with water. When a handle was turned, the water washed the contents of the pan into a cesspool. Although Harrington installed one for Queen Elizabeth I in Richmond Palace, cost, problems of water supply, and lack of sewers meant that the idea wouldn’t catch on for centuries. B... is for Bazalgette By the 1850s, London’s growing population was producing unmanageable amounts of sewage. Cesspools leaked and overflowed, contaminating water supplies, and matters weren’t helped by the outpourings of the increasingly popular water closet. London’s Commission of Sewers had ordered that cesspools and house drains should be connected to sewers, but these fed directly into an increasingly noisome River Thames. Following the ‘Great Stink’ of 1858, when the smell from the river was so bad that MPs even considered abandoning Westminster, the Metropolitan Board of Works was tasked with overhauling London’s sewerage system. Civil engineer Joseph Bazalgette (1819–91) was put in charge of operations. His 16-year project included embanking parts of the Thames, constructing 1,100 miles of street sewers, 82 miles of main interceptor sewers and building four monumental pumping stations, all designed to take the sewage eastwards to be discharged into the river away from heavily-populated areas. Watch | 10 minutes of toilets through time View Green Video on the source website C... is for Crapper In 1866, Yorkshire-born industrialist and plumber Thomas Crapper opened the world’s first bathroom showroom in Chelsea. For the first time, people could actually see sanitary products in place. Some were even plumbed in so that potential customers could try before they bought. In the late 1880s, Crapper was asked by the Prince of Wales to install lavatories at Sandringham, and he went on to supply sanitary ware for both Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle. The idea that one of our more robust terms for a bowel movement is derived from his name is a myth – that word was in use well before Crapper became famous. However, it is possible that the American word ‘crapper’, meaning a lavatory, became popular after US soldiers in Britain in 1917 saw his name stamped on the cisterns in some public toilets. Read more | How did knights in armour go to the toilet? D... is for Dung The infamous 1618 Defenestration of Prague, which saw three Catholic officials thrown from a third-floor window in Prague Castle, helped trigger the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War. Remarkably, all three survived the 50-foot fall. Catholic sources claimed they were saved by divine intervention, while Protestants ascribed their survival to the fact that they landed on a huge pile of dung beneath the window. E... is for Espionage It’s hard to believe that the unremarkable public toilets in the small Hampshire town of New Alresford played a part in the Cold War. But they did. Harry Houghton used them as a dead letter box in his dealings with Soviet spy ‘Gordon Lonsdale’. A plaque on the toilet wall recalls how in 1961, Houghton was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment for his part in the Portland Spy Ring, which sold secret information from the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment to the Soviet Union. F... is for Fleet Street Inspired by the success of Jennings’ toilets at the Great Exhibition (see ‘J’), the Royal Society of Arts tried to cash in on the act. On 2 February 1852, it opened London’s first modern public toilet (for men) at 95 Fleet Street. Women had to hang on a little longer; the first female public toilet opened at Bedford Street nine days later. Delicately dubbed ‘public waiting rooms’, they featured water closets in wooden surrounds and cost two pence to use. But, despite being extensively promoted by handbills and even an advert in The Times, only 58 men and 24 women used the rooms in the first month. Within six months, they were closed. G... is for Garderobe Originally a term for a storeroom for clothes and valuables, a garderobe is now usually used to describe a medieval privy, particularly in a castle. Actually, the two uses were by no means mutually exclusive, as the ammonia from urine helped deter moths and other parasites. Many garderobes were built into the thickness of an outer wall, and consisted of a stone or wooden seat over a vertical shaft. Others were sited in a projecting turret over an open drop. Depending on the design, the excrement would either hit the ground or land in a pit (which had to be periodically cleared out by an individual known as a ‘gong farmer’), or drop into a moat or river. The garderobes of some coastal castles, like St Andrews, simply projected over the sea and let the tide do the work. Garderobes could be a weak spot in a castle’s defences. During the siege of the mighty Château Gaillard in 1204, the French captured its middle bailey after sneaking up one of its garderobe chutes. When Henry III commissioned a new privy for Guildford Castle, the Clerk of Works was specifically told to fit bars to its outlet to deter intruders. H... is for Hampton Court To cope with the sanitary needs of the vast numbers of Tudor courtiers who assembled there, Hampton Court Palace boasted a huge communal garderobe. Known as the ‘Great House of Easement’, it was two storeys high and could accommodate 28 people simultaneously. Occupants sat side by side on oak planks and their waste was carried into the Thames via brick-lined drains. The building still stands today, although now it has a different function: it’s the office of the Chief Executive. I... is for Ironside It’s always a good idea to check that a vacant toilet really is vacant. The 12th-century writer Henry of Huntingdon gives this account of the death in 1016 of English King, Edmund Ironside: “When Edmund, fearful and most formidable to his enemies, was prospering in his kingdom, he went one night to the lavatory to answer a call of nature. There the son of Ealdorman Eadric, who by his father’s plan was concealed in the pit of the privy, struck the King twice with a sharp knife in the private parts, and leaving the weapon in his bowels, fled away.” Edmund Ironside: Anglo-Saxon warrior king J... is for Jennings When the Great Exhibition opened in 1851 in Hyde Park, one of its landmark attractions was Britain’s first paid-for flushing public toilets, which were designed and installed by Hampshire-born plumber George Jennings. For the price of a penny, visitors were provided with a clean toilet seat, a towel, a comb and a shoe shine. Records show that during the exhibition, over 675,000 pennies were spent. K... is for King Elvis Presley wasn’t the only King to die on the toilet. On 25 October 1760, George II’s valet was waiting outside the water closet for his master to finish his morning ablutions when he heard what he described as “a noise louder than the royal wind” followed by a crash “like the falling of a billet of wood from the fire”. He rushed in to find the king dying on the floor. A subsequent post-mortem revealed that he had died from an aortic aneurysm, which had probably been caused by straining. Read more | Showering, teeth brushing and donning underwear: the strange history of our daily routine L... is for Luther Was the Protestant Reformation thought up on the toilet? It’s quite possible. Martin Luther, the German Augustinian friar who was a seminal figure in the Reformation, suffered from constipation. He spent many hours in contemplation on the toilet, and later wrote that he was “in cloaca” – or in the sewer – when the belief that salvation was gained through faith not deeds came to him. M... is for Monasteries Many of Britain’s medieval monasteries still retain the remains of their communal toilets. Dubbed necessaria (for obvious reasons) or reredorters (because they stood behind the dorter or dormitory), they could be quite extensive in size. One of the most impressive can be found at Muchelney Abbey in Somerset. Unique in having a thatched roof, it’s a two-storey affair that the monks entered at first-floor level from their dormitory. N... is for Nightmen In the days before sewers, people in towns had to find a way of disposing of their excrement. This is where the nightmen came in. So-called because by law they could only work at night, it was their job to empty the excreta from people’s cesspits and cart it away. They usually operated in teams of four. One man, the ‘holeman’, went into the cesspit and filled a tub lowered by a colleague called the ‘ropeman’. Once full, it was pulled back up and two ‘tubmen’ carried it to a waiting cart. The night soil was then taken away and mixed with other rubbish before being sold to farmers as manure. O... is for Orford For those with an interest in medieval toilet arrangements, Orford Castle in Suffolk is a must-see. Its 12th-century keep is equipped with garderobes served by a system of chutes, which directed their discharge to a single area at the back of the tower. Like most castles, the majority of Orford’s toilets are of the sit-down variety, but it also boasts a rarity – a stand-up, triangular ‘poke and pee’ urinal in the corridor outside the constable’s chamber. Handily placed to save a night-time walk to one of the main garderobes, it now offers modern visitors an almost irresistible photo opportunity. P... is for Pepys An entry in Samuel Pepys’ diary offers an insight into the rather ramshackle state of 17th-century London’s sanitary arrangements, even for the well-to-do: “20 October 1660: This morning one came to me to advise with me where to make me a window into my cellar… and going down my cellar to look, I put my foot into a heap of turds, by which I find that Mr Turner’s house of office is full and comes into my cellar, which doth trouble me…” Things weren’t any better at court. The antiquary Anthony Wood acidly commented that when Charles II and his court descended on Oxford in 1665, “though they were neat and gay in their apparel, yet they were very nasty and beastly, leaving at their departure their excrements in every corner, in chimneys, studies, coalhouses, cellars”. Q... is for Queen If the 17th-century antiquarian John Aubrey is to be believed, Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, may well have regretted not paying a precautionary visit to the privy before being presented to Queen Elizabeth I. In his Brief Lives, a splendidly scandalous collection of anecdotes about the great figures of Tudor and Stuart England, Aubrey writes: “This Earl of Oxford, making of his low obeisance to Queen Elizabeth, happened to fart, at which he was so abashed that he went to travel for seven years. On his return, the Queen welcomed him home and said ‘My lord, I had forgotten the fart’.” R... is for Rome Toilet walls have always been a temptation for idle scribblers, and things were no different in the days of ancient Rome. One such wall in a house in the Roman town of Herculaneum (which, like Pompeii, was destroyed in AD 79 by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius) bears the words “Apollinaris medici Titi Imperatoris hic cacavit bene” – roughly translated, that’s “Apollinaris, physician of the Emperor Titus, had a good crap here”. S... is for Stool One of the most sought-after jobs in the Tudor court was the position of Groom of the Stool. The Stool in question was a ‘close stool’, a fixed or portable commode, and the Groom’s job was to help the king undress before using it and to supply him with water, towels and a washbowl when he had finished. Whether the Groom was actually required to wipe the Royal Bottom is a matter of debate. Read more about the men who changed Henry VIII’s underpants The reason why this apparently lowly job was so desirable was the fact that it gave the holder an intimate access to the king that no other office holder enjoyed. Because a word in the king’s ear could make or break a courtier, it was important to keep on the right side of the Groom, and people would often petition him to pass on their concerns or requests to the monarch. As time went on, the Groom’s duties expanded until they came to act more as personal secretaries. Sir Anthony Denny, Henry VIII’s last Groom of the Stool, was also given the great responsibility of caring for the ‘dry stamp’, which was used to sign the king’s name on documents. In addition to the influence they enjoyed, Grooms of the Stool enjoyed high pay and a range of perks, including being given the king’s old clothes and furnishings. T... is for Torrens In 1868, William McCullagh Torrens, Liberal MP for Finsbury, introduced the Artizans and Labourers Dwellings Act, enabling local authorities to clear away houses without proper sanitation and erect decent dwellings for the working classes. Despite powerful opposition, the bill was passed. U... is for U-Boat In April 1945, just weeks before the end of World War II, German submarine U-1206 was cruising in the North Sea off Peterhead at a depth of about 60 metres when problems with the pressurised flushing system of its on-board toilet caused a leak, which flooded the hull with seawater. When this came into contact with the ship’s batteries, poisonous chlorine gas was created, leaving the captain with no option but to surface. U-1206 was quickly spotted and attacked by Allied aircraft, forcing the captain to order his crew to scuttle the U-boat and abandon ship. V... is for Vespasiennes Vespasiennes were metal open-air public urinals that were first erected in Paris in 1834, in a bid to put an end to indiscriminate public peeing (by men). They took their name from the Ancient Roman emperor Vespasian who, according to legend, imposed a tax on the collection of urine (which was used in tanning and laundries) from Roman public toilets. Vespasiennes were once a common sight on the streets of Paris; in the 1930s, there were over 1,200, but now, only one remains – on the Boulevard Arago in the 14th Arondissement. W... is for Westonzoyland After the Duke of Monmouth’s defeat at the Battle of Sedgemoor in July 1685, the nearby church of St Mary’s, Westonzoyland was pressed into service as a temporary prison for hundreds of Monmouth’s defeated rebel followers. Two comfortable toilets have recently been installed in the church, but no such facilities existed in Monmouth’s time… the church accounts record the expenditure of 5s 8d on frankincense, pitch and resin to fumigate the soiled building after the prisoners had been removed. X... is for Xylospongium How did Romans wipe their bottoms? They used a sponge on a stick called a xylospongium. In communal toilets, they were kept in tubs of water in front of where you sat. You took one, rinsed it, used it, and then put it back. The well-preserved Roman latrine at Housesteads on Hadrian’s Wall still has the channel which contained the running water used to wash the sponges. Writing in the middle of the first century, the philosopher Seneca described how a Germanic gladiator used a xylospongium to commit suicide: “He withdrew in order to relieve himself – the only thing he was allowed to do in secret and without the presence of a guard. While so engaged, he seized the stick of wood tipped with a sponge, devoted to the vilest uses, and stuffed it down his throat.” Y... is for York Although pay toilets didn’t appear until the 19th century, the towns and cities of medieval Britain appear to have been well-equipped with public privies. The first recorded public convenience in York was sited in an arch of the old Ouse Bridge. In 1380, one William Graa left 40d a year in his will to provide "a light in the common jakes at the end of Use Bridge”. One section of Conwy’s town walls houses a group of 12 projecting stone latrines, while London boasted Whittington’s Longhouse, a huge public toilet over the Walbrook river. Opened in 1421, it had seats for 64 men and 64 women. Z... is for Zagreb If you visit the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb, check out Croatia’s most historic toilet. A magnificent blue-and-white porcelain creation, it was installed for the visit of Emperor Franz Joseph I when he opened the neo-baroque theatre in 1895. Use it and you’ll be sitting where a range of historical figures have sat over the years, including Franz Joseph, Ustaše leader Ante Pavelić and Marshal Josip Broz Tito. This article was first published in the June 2018 issue of BBC History Revealed magazine
Let’s think before we flush, with Dr Christopher Harding
We can take lessons from Edo Japan about how we deal with our waste, Dr Christopher Harding tells Dr David Musgrove
There is a campsite at the foot of the South Downs which has tremendous toilets. In a corner of the field, you’ll find a gaggle of handsome timber cubicles, boasting rustic carpentry and impeccable cleanliness. Each cubicle has a raised box inside, with a hole in the middle framed by a comfortable wooden seat. Obviously that’s where you do your business. Then you throw in a handful or two of sawdust from a bucket to the side, and that’s the job done – no flushing involved (obviously you wash your hands, but there are taps outside for that). It’s a relaxingly rural experience that would encourage anyone to dwell on the merits of water-free composting toilets, for that is what they are. You can even educate yourself on what happens to the waste you and your fellow campers are producing because there is an informative handout explaining how it’s turned into a rich compost rather than being washed away to a sewage treatment works. It’s the sort of thing that the residents of Edo period Japan would have been at ease with. I spoke to Dr Christopher Harding, a scholar of Japanese history at the University of Edinburgh, and his Life Lesson from History is that we could learn a thing or two from the way that the Japanese historically dealt with their waste. Peace, prosperity and the problem of poo The Edo period runs from the early 1600s to the middle of the 19th century, an era of peace overseen by the Tokugawa shogunate based in Edo, now Tokyo. With peace came prosperity, and Edo grew to be the largest city in the world at the start of the 18th century. That urban explosion also meant an explosion of excrement, which had to be attended to. You might imagine that the Edo solution was to build sewers and flush it away, particularly as the Japanese at the time were big innovators in municipal water management. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-640505355-2a09790.jpg" width="2654" height="2114" alt="A photograph showing a town square with a well in the middle. All around there are ramshackle buildings and there are many stone steps leading up from behind the square far into the background" title="A water well in a public square in the town of Ikao, Japan, c1890s. The well would have been shared by ordinary townspeople (Image by Getty Images)" /> “They created this huge aqueduct, the Tamagawa Aqueduct, which took water from the Tama river all the way into what’s now Tokyo,” notes Chris. “They used uncut water channels first, and then as the water comes closer into Edo and starts branching out, you have underground water pipes, mostly made of wood, sometimes made of masonry, which if you’re lucky enough to have a big samurai home, brings water straight into your house. Or if you’re one of Edo’s more ordinary townspeople, it’ll take it into row houses where multiple families would live. You’d have a shared well fed by these wooden waterways where you could draw water from. So, I think it’s amazing that they did that and these services were provided not just to the elite of Edo but to everybody.” Read more | Is this toilet the ultimate Anglo-Saxon status symbol? Inside Harold II’s ‘ensuite’ With all the effort to get fresh water into the city, the residents were very mindful of not wasting it. They used it several times over – cleaning rice first, then bathing in it, then watering their plants – before it was channelled away into moats or rivers. What it wasn’t used for was flushing away sewage. The citizens of Edo knew that their poo was a valuable commodity, to be gathered and used, rather than just removed. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-2181019793-92fa448.jpg" width="3642" height="3444" alt="A photograph showing three Japanese women washing rice in large wooden barrels. Two of them are pouring rice from smaller barrels, while the other stands astride one of the large barrels" title="Water was used several times over in Edo Japan, beginning with washing rice, as shown in this image from c1873-83 (Image by Getty Images)" /> People did their business in shared cesspits, and then on a regular basis, collectors would come and empty them and take the waste away in buckets, oxcarts or sometimes on canal-boats. It would be stored in huge pits outside the city, mixed with rice straw, and allowed to decompose, before local farmers took it to manure their fields. Vegetables were returned from the fields to the city in return for the human fertiliser coming the other way. This was valuable stuff, and the waste from the samurai was particularly prized because of the perceived better quality of the poo they produced, given their richer diets. In Osaka, Chris explained, “fights used to break out between different groups of farmers because they wanted access to the fertiliser – or the night soil – from samurai”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/2BDYG4P-14aee0b.jpg" width="3053" height="4500" alt="An illustration showing a group of samurai soldiers: one is in the toilet, while the other three squat outside it, reacting to the bad smell" title="This 1834 example of toilet humour depicts squatting samurai in Japan. Their ‘night soil’ was particularly prized as fertiliser for farms (Image by Alamy)" /> The economics of excrement According to Leicester University’s Dr Richard Jones, talking to me recently about the history of manure on the HistoryExtra podcast, this was not unique to Japan. “It has been traditional, in Asia in particular, to make more use of human excrement than has been the case in Europe. There are a number of reasons why that should be the case. The great global historian Alfred Crosby argued that Europe came to economic dominance in the medieval period because the continent had a lot of large domestic animals, and they provided power and protein, but above all, they provided manure. So we have animal manure in large quantities in western Europe. By contrast, in Asia, where there is an absence of these large ungulates, capturing human excrement and using that in the fields is an economic imperative.” Read more | A brief history of the toilet: wiping, washing – plus, who invented the flush? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/W2749E-61737c0-e1763454353863.jpg" width="1190" height="1295" alt="A Japanese farmer, c1880s, wearing a mino (straw raincoat) carries buckets of (probably) night soil, collected from private homes for use as fertiliser (Image by Alamy)" title="A Japanese farmer, c1880s, wearing a mino (straw raincoat) carries buckets of (probably) night soil, collected from private homes for use as fertiliser (Image by Alamy)" /> In Edo Japan, the value of human waste as fertiliser was definitely recognised, and according to Chris Harding, there wasn’t a strong sense of disgust or taboo associated with handling it. When European visitors arrived in Japan towards the end of the Edo period, they often remarked that the streets of Japanese cities did not have the unpleasant smells found in cities such as Paris or London. This was attributed to the efficient and systematic collection and removal of waste. Part of the reason that the streets were clean was that in Edo Japan, there was strong social pressure from the local community to stick to the rules and use shared facilities like toilets in the proper way. Embarrassment would come not from being in close proximity to excrement, but rather from not acting in a socially approved way. Edo citizens knew where their poo was going, and they were happy to have a close relationship with their waste, because everyone knew that it would be removed quickly and then perform a valuable service as fertiliser. The sewage question In the end, it was western influence in the Meiji period, which followed the Edo, that brought to an end this sustainable circle of human manure farming. Sewers were built that were in part modelled on the infrastructure projects that were being developed in the likes of London and Paris. In Europe, there was much more impetus for the swift removal of sewage from urban centres, through waterborne systems, and much less interest in using human waste as manure. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-2673360-6ce8c9d.jpg" width="3692" height="2560" alt="The foundations being built for a London sewer. What to do about the ‘sewage question’ was much debated in UK newspapers (Image by Getty Images)" title="The foundations being built for a London sewer. What to do about the ‘sewage question’ was much debated in UK newspapers (Image by Getty Images)" /> Incidentally, it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that Britain would adopt waterborne sewage networks. The ‘sewage question’ was much reported on in the newspapers, as commentators considered what could be done to rid Britain’s growing urban cities of the stuff that was causing a great stink and polluting the rivers. Even though Joseph Bazalgette’s magnificent waterborne sewers were demonstrably cleaning up mid-19th century London, at the same time Reverend Henry Moule of Fordington was advocating use of his patented mechanical earth closet. This was essentially the Victorian equivalent of the composting toilet enjoyed on glamping sites today. Sewage farms were also developed, with raw excrement pumped onto fields, but it was basically the volume of poo that caused the waterborne system to win out over these other ideas because that was the only way to shift the material out of town quickly enough. Read more | What did Victorians do with their poo? The battle over the 19th-century excrement explosion Here in the UK, we’re still tied to that Victorian sewer network, with most of our waste going to chemical treatment plants. As Richard Jones explained, “People might be surprised to know that sewage is still being used in modern day agriculture: it just happens not to be in a liquid form. But the solid materials that are precipitated out at wastewater treatment plants, the so-called sewage sludge, when treated and dried and turned into what is euphemistically now called bio-solid, is still spread in significant tonnages across large areas of agricultural land today”. Nowadays, as we once more struggle to manage the increasing volumes of waste flowing into our sewers, it’s a moment to reflect on whether we might benefit from a closer relationship to our waste today. Edo Japan offers an interesting comparison to our current situation, and a different way of doing things. Rather than flushing and forgetting, it’s a good time to think about whether there are more sustainable ways to deal with our waste. Sewage today comes complete with micro-particles and other hidden nasties, so I’m not suggesting we should all have composting toilets fitted in our houses, but maybe we should at least have the conversation about it. This article is part of HistoryExtra's Life Lessons from History Substack newsletter. Subscribe to the newsletter for more articles and podcasts exploring the ways in which history can help us live better, happier, healthier or more productive lives.
Spectral beasts and hounds of hell: a spooky history of Britain's ghost dogs
From infernal black dogs attacking churches to ravening, red-eyed brutes on remote roads, Britain has long been haunted by fearsome canine phantoms. Karen R Jones explores what these stories can tell us about societies past
On the morning of 4 August 1577, the good Christian folk of Bungay assembled in St Mary’s Church for their regular Sunday service. But more sinister forces were also gathering in the Suffolk town. Dark clouds massed above, then “there fell from heaven an exceeding great and terrible tempest… not simply of raine but also of lightening and thunder”. This storm was only the prelude to a “straunge and terrible Wunder” described by Abraham Fleming in a pamphlet published soon after the event. For the church was plunged into darkness and a “black dog, or the divel in such a likenesse” burst in. It wrung the necks of two worshippers then “passing by an other man of the congregation… gave him such a gripe on the back, that therewith all he was presently drawen togither and shrunk up, as it were a peece of lether scorched in a hot fire”. The story of the Black Dog of Bungay is extraordinary, but far from unique in the region – East Anglia is the primary hunting ground of the spectral beast named Black Shuck – and, indeed, across the country. Britain is, famously, a nation of animal lovers, with 36 per cent of households having at least one dog. The UK canine consumer market is worth around £10bn a year, while millions of us tune in to watch dog-centric television programmes. These animals have become our trusted aides and loyal companions since domesticated dogs arrived on this island with the first human migrants during the Stone Age. It’s not surprising, then, that Britain’s population of paranormal pups is more diverse and widespread than anywhere else in the world, according to Mark Norman, a folklorist specialising in black dog apparitions. Such creatures reputedly stalk villages and lonely roads from Aberdeen to Penzance, and the British landscape echoes with their chilling howls. Hellhound is round the corner Dogs and humans have lived and travelled together in Britain since the Mesolithic age. Archaeological surveys place dogs at the UK’s oldest excavated house – at Star Carr, Yorkshire, dating from around 9000 BC – and at the oldest site of journeying, a camp at Blick Mead near Stonehenge. Dogs accompanied pastoralists rounding up sheep in grasslands and joined hunters tracking deer in forests, before settling down to snooze in front of the communal fire. No wonder they also populated ghostly tales. In story and song, from whispered yarn to local gazetteer, ghost dogs bound across the folkloric and literary record, with perhaps the most famous fictional example being the Hound of the Baskervilles investigated by Sherlock Holmes. In many reported cases, a factual explanation remains deliciously elusive. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-1137155402-CMYKWeb-Ready-56e37c4.jpg" width="2501" height="1667" alt="A black poster showing a large wolf with his mouth open. In front of his face, the words "The Hound of the Baskervilles" are written in red" title="A poster for the 1959 Sherlock Holmes film The Hound of the Baskervilles. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was inspired by tales of ghostly dogs on Dartmoor (Image by Getty Images)" /> All manner of spirit dogs have been reported. Some are devoted pets pining for lost masters and mistresses, padding eternally along the walks they took in life, carrying with them the textured reportage of hearsay, tradition and family fortunes. Some are seen as portents of doom, some relate particular cultural coordinates of injustice, wrongdoing or violent ends, and others just are. Some people who are convinced by such tales claim that these are beasts appearing to us from ancient days – messengers demonstrating the existence of a time-slip or a ‘thin place’. The unconvinced retort airily that we like to tell tales – Booker Prize-winning author Graham Swift called humans “storytelling animals” – and that of course those yarns frequently invoke our long-standing companions of homestead and hearthside. Most of Britain’s ghost dogs are connected to specific sites of historical significance where long-standing relationships between humans and canines have been written repeatedly into the material and imagined environment. They haunt village streets, ancient camps, burial mounds and graveyards, historic houses and castles. Read more | From the headless 'Blemmae' to a flesh-eating wolf: a 500-year history of monsters Road ragers Ancient trackways, roads and paths seem to attract a special breed of spectral beast – black dogs that leap out at unsuspecting travellers on dark, lonely nights. These are the most prolific canine apparitions, accounting for about a third of British sightings. Most of them are large and sport flaming eyes; some clank chains, while others can talk. All are fearsome. One of the most striking highway hauntings was reported on the road between Tavistock and Okehampton on Dartmoor. Here, on dark nights, the ghost of Lady Howard rode out from her home at Fitzford House in a grisly coach made from the bones of her dead husbands, heading to Okehampton Castle. Running ahead was a hellhound with blazing eyes and a demonic disposition. Sometimes she offered a lift to lost travellers: accept at your peril. Also on Dartmoor, you might encounter the Wisht Hounds kennelled by the devil in Wistman’s Wood. And at the East Dart Hotel, a former coaching inn near Postbridge, a ghostly bloodhound appears each night at 3am to snuffle eagerly at the road outside, hoping to lap up the remnants of discarded booze poured into the gutter by the guilt-ridden landlord, John Webb, over a century ago. The dipsomaniac dog follows the road down the hill to a clapper bridge, eternally searching for the long-discarded grog in the early hours. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-1911350831-CMYKWeb-Ready-23adf67.jpg" width="2967" height="1978" alt="A black and white illustration of a large, naked man, standing and holding onto a chain that is around the neck of a three headed dogs" title="A 16th-century engraving shows Hercules dragging the three-headed dog Cerberus from the gates of Hades (Image by Getty Images)" /> Dartmoor epitomises the kind of place where ghost dogs congregate: bleak, lonesome spots where the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. Dark copses. Craggy peaks. Desolate moors. These are environments that inspire awe and even fear. No wonder they host such beastly apparitions as the Gytrash – a massive dog-spirit frequenting the remote highways of the West Riding of Yorkshire – and the Barghest, a demonic hound with huge teeth and claws roving the darker stretches of the Yorkshire Dales. One Barghest near Whitby sometimes dragged chains behind it, and could vanish into thin air by walking backwards. All were best avoided, auguring bad fortune or death – though they reputedly could not cross rivers. In Wales, the Cŵn Annwn, or ‘hounds of the underworld’, were often seen or heard before a funeral, baying mournfully. Typically, they sported glowing red eyes but their appearance otherwise varied depending on where they were seen: they might be huge and white, small and liver-coloured, or even red-coated, dripping with blood. They might rove lonely roads in a pack but sometimes travelled singly, often accompanied by Arawn, Lord of the Underworld and leader of the ‘wild hunt’. They were particularly associated with crossroads, enjoyed haunting graves, and often frequented mountains. Read more | The child-eating Christmas Yule Cat: what are the origins of this Icelandic folklore? These examples reveal much about our complex relationship with wild spaces. Sure, today we seek out these places for forest bathing, wild camping and an escape from modernity. And yet the vestigial unease they inspire in some people is a psychological throwback to our ancient past, when wolves and bears dwelt in uncharted spaces, and when wilderness connoted chaos, a descent into feral madness and devilry. They are places where Canis familiaris might revert to its lupine ancestor, Canis lupus, transforming from strong and trusty aide into a savage, malevolent assailant. Not all ghost hounds are out for blood, though. Though most tales about Black Shuck portray his appearance as an omen auguring imminent death or ill fortune, on occasion he struck fenland folk as friendly, and even had a penchant for helping women travellers. And the Gurt Dog of Somerset’s Quantock Hills was an entirely affable apparition: a shaggy Samaritan that appeared from the fog to guide lost children safely to their homes. Good or bad omens? Inhabited places, too, harbour their share of spectral hounds. Not one but two black dogs are said to wander the grounds of Leeds Castle, Kent (coincidentally home to the world’s largest collection of dog collars). One, a portent of doom, first appeared in the 1440s, after Eleanor Cobham, Henry VI’s aunt, was tried for witchcraft and incarcerated in the castle. The second, a more benign spectre, is said to bring good luck, and once reputedly saved a visitor from falling out of a window, having attracted their attention by barking. Both are curly coated retriever types, so anyone encountering such a spectre here might struggle to determine whether it is a good or bad omen. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/J4X3AR-CMYKWeb-Ready-826fb01.jpg" width="2952" height="1968" alt="An illustration showing a large black dog standing on its hind legs, with snakes on its head. To the right, there is a man in jacket and tall hat is holding the dog's muzzle" title="A woodcut of the phantom Black Dog of Newgate. The canine apparition reportedly haunted the precincts of the notorious London prison, attacking inmates who’d killed and eaten a new arrival (Image by Alamy)" /> The story of the Black Dog of Newgate was popularised in a sensational 1596 pamphlet describing a canine phantom that stalked the notorious prison. During the reign of Henry III, the yarn goes, inmates of the prison were so hungry that they killed a new arrival, a scholar, and devoured his body. His ghost then wandered the confines of the prison – as did the spectre of a huge black dog. Some prisoners died of fright upon seeing the beast. Others were ripped to pieces by its fearsome jaws in retribution. Even those who escaped the prison were pursued by the avenging animal. Friend or foe? Why are dogs the creatures most commonly cited in accounts of animal apparitions? Partly, it’s because of their long relationship with and proximity to humans. The dog’s alter ego, the wolf, also adds that sense of the fearsome wild into the psychological scare-scape. There is also a biological factor at play: an awareness that dogs are gifted with extraordinary sensory powers. A dog’s nose is equipped with about 300 million olfactory receptors – far more than a human’s paltry 5–6 million. Their hearing, too, is vastly superior to our own. These endow them with almost ‘supernatural’ abilities, reflected in their roles in the beliefs and legends of various cultures worldwide. The Aztecs believed that their Xoloitzcuintli dogs could ‘smell’ ghosts, and thus protect their owners from spirits. In Norse mythology, Freya, a god linked with death, rode a chariot pulled by huge cats – thus a household dog might alert the residents to her approach by howling and barking, potentially averting a fatal incident. And in ancient Greek legend, the three-headed hound Cerberus guarded the entrance to Hades, suggesting that dogs were equipped to patrol the boundary between the living and the dead. Such beliefs in the extrasensory abilities of animals persist: in a 2019 survey for the Blue Cross animal charity, 63 per cent of owners said they believed that their pet had seen (or had the capacity to see) a ghost or other supernatural presence. Indeed, perhaps the most intriguing part of spectral dog stories is the fact that in many places they are still thriving today. Ghost dogs are seen through the windscreens of cars, stalking major roads just as happily as they did ancient trackways. Take that infernal assailant in Bungay in 1577. Black Shuck became – and still is – a widespread legend across East Anglia, written into regional folklore by Reverend ES Taylor in a 1850 issue of Notes and Queries, describing “Shuck the Dog-fiend… this phantom I have heard many persons in east Norfolk, and even Cambridgeshire, describe as having seen as a black shaggy dog, with fiery eyes and of immense size, and who visits churchyards at midnight”. Read more | When a Victorian ghost hunter investigated Britain’s most haunted house, this is what he found Paranormal investigators documenting reports of Shuck sightings found that the majority of alleged encounters occurred after 1900 – so, in fact, his presence in the regional psyche appears to have burgeoned rather than receded in the modern age. Reflecting the continuing salience of this legend, and a broader revival of interest in all matters folkloric, in 2022 a Black Shuck Festival was launched in Bungay to celebrate the town’s famous fiendish beast. Perhaps these tales of Shuck and his phantom canine kin have even more relevance in our polarised and fractured society today. They speak of the importance of roots, of the storied pasts that bind humans to other species. And in a time when anthropogenic change threatens us in far-reaching and fundamental ways, they speak of the importance of acknowledging the limits of what we, as humans, can know and control in the natural (or supernatural) world. Karen R Jones is professor of environmental and cultural history at the University of Kent. Her latest book, Beastly Britain: An Animal History, was published in May by Yale University Press This article was first published in the November 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Are these Britain's MOST HAUNTED places?
HistoryExtra's Lauren Good explores the history behind five of the most haunted places in Britain – from the location that inspired Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' to a Welsh museum with many stories to tell
From Whitby Abbey to Inveraray Castle, here's a rundown of five locations in Britain you probably wouldn't want to venture to unaccompanied at night! Lauren Good explores the spooky legends that haunt these spots, and the real history that inspires them. View Green Video on the source website
Ellie Cawthorne visits Farleigh Hungerford castle in southwest England to hear more about the stories that lurk in the site’s long history
Cared for by English Heritage, Farleigh Hungerford castle in southwest England is the perfect place for a picnic and a stroll. But behind the ruins lie many fascinating, dark tales. HistoryExtra’s Ellie Cawthorne visits the castle – home to the Hungerford family for over 300 years – to hear more from site manager Frances Russell about the stories that lurk in the site’s long history. She also gets closer to Britain's best collection of human-shaped lead coffins, artefacts which drew many Victorian visitors with a taste for the macabre. With stories ranging from foul deeds to bloodthirsty goblins, Ellie asks: is this a contender for the English castle with the most gruesome history? View Green Video on the source website
Might Jesus and his 12 apostles have something to do with it? Discover the medieval history behind triskaidekaphobia – the fear of the number 13 – and why it is considered an unlucky number
Forget the Ides of March and Halloween – for some, a Friday that also happens to be the 13th of the month is scariest and unluckiest day of the year. The fear of Friday 13th is very real. It's even been given a scientific name, paraskevidekatriaphobia, from the Greek words Paraskeví, meaning Friday, and dekatreís, meaning 13. But what is it about this day and date combo that has given millions the heebie jeebies. Here's what we know of we know about Friday 13th's hazy history. When did people start believing Friday 13th was unlucky? It's believed that this superstition began in the Middle Ages. Some think it's related to the Last Supper, when 13 people were present at the meal before Jesus's crucifixion on Good Friday. Others think it's related to the Knights Templar, who were arrested for heresy on Friday 13 October 1307. But fear of 13 predates Christianity. The number 13 has been considered unlucky for millenia, and by many different cultures around the world. Why is the 13th unlucky? The ancient Romans believed that the number 13 was a bad omen, foretelling ill-fortune and death. The Vikings also hated 13, because in Norse mythology a banquet was held for 12 of the Norse gods during which the trickster god, Loki, appeared uninvited, like the wicked fairy in Sleeping Beauty, and as a result the beloved god Balder died. The Mayans thought that the 13th 'baktun' (a period equivalent to almost 400 years) would spell the end of the world – however, this came and went in 2012. For centuries, hosts avoided having 13 people seated around a dining table, convinced that the first person to leave would die within the year. Indeed, 16th-century witch-hunters often tried to claim there had been 13 people at a gathering – proof that the accused were witches in league with the devil. Why is Friday the 13th unlucky? Why Friday the 13th is considered especially unlucky isn't entirely clear. The first written record we have of the number 13 and Friday being unlucky in conjunction only dates to the 19th century, in a biography of Italian composer Gioachino Rossini: "He was surrounded to the last by admiring friends; and if it be true that, like so many Italians, he regarded Fridays as an unlucky day and thirteen as an unlucky number, it is remarkable that on Friday 13th of November he passed away." Friday the 13th remains one of the most prevalent historical superstitions that we carry on today (alongside that of kissing under the mistletoe). Many people still choose to stay in bed to reduce the likelihood of accidents, and it's estimated that in the US, as much as $900 million is lost in business each time as a result.
Give away your worries, like an ancient Mesopotamian
What can we learn about managing worrying from the people of ancient Assyria and Babylonia? Dr Selena Wisnom offers some Near Eastern wisdom to Dave Musgrove
Do you worry about things? Do you wake up in the middle of the night, sweating about what might happen to you, to your family, to the world in general? I do. If you do too, rest assured you’re not alone. It’s a natural human trait, and it’s something people have been doing for millennia. In evolutionary terms, I imagine it’s something to do with forcing our minds to think about the things we ought to be doing next to keep ourselves alive, and keep us out of dangerous situations. It’s counterproductive, of course, to worry yourself into a state of paralysis – that’s when worrying goes wrong. Are there any lessons we can take from history that can help us worry productively? I went to the Assyria Galleries in the British Museum late one Friday afternoon to reflect on this. They are well worth a visit, whether you’re a worrier or not. Turn left at the main entrance and you’re straight into them. I wanted to go there because Dr Selena Wisnom, an expert on the history and heritage of ancient Mesopotamia and author of the excellent new book The Library of Ancient Wisdom (Penguin, 2025), had told me these people were worriers of renown: “They worry so much that they invent an entire branch of scholarship devoted to it. This is worrying on a kind of national cosmic scale.” This organised worrying was called ‘lamentation’. It wasn’t just a private matter – it was ritualised, institutionalised and shared across the whole society. We know they worried and lamented because they wrote about it. I wanted to get up close and personal with some ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform script. There is a lot of cuneiform script on display in the British Museum. I can’t read it – and there aren’t many people who can – but I figured it would be instructive just to look at it, and think a bit about the people who carved it. Hands and minds of the Mesopotamians Cuneiform is the writing system that they used in Mesopotamia. It was invented in the mid-fourth millennium BC and used for millennia afterwards, although it evolved on the way. It was basically a system of signs inscribed on clay tablets, produced by pressing a wedge into a piece of clay to make a three-dimensional impression. So when you’re looking at a cuneiform inscription, you’re looking at the hands and minds of the people who made them. By studying those cuneiform writings, Assyriologists like Wisnom have been able to understand a great deal about life in ancient Mesopotamia, and research how these people saw their world. It was a world, as Wisnom explained to me, that was full of worry and worriers. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/Alamy-2F61XHP-Astronomical-calendar--5c0dfc4.jpg" width="761" height="558" alt="A photograph of a beige-coloured stone tablet. On the left of the scene are three small figures with their hands aloft; on the right is a large seated figure on a throne. There are several lines of cuneiform writing towards the top of the scene" title="Ancient Astronomical Calendar" /> Let’s take a moment for a quick recap on where and when we’re talking about. Mesopotamia is a geographical term – it means between the rivers, and the rivers in question are the Tigris and Euphrates, so broadly where modern Iraq, north-east Syria and part of south-east Turkey are today. Mesopotamia was a focus for ancient civilisations from the fourth millennium BC onwards and Assyria and Babylonia were two of those civilisations, Assyria to the north and Babylonia to the south. Relations between these two kingdoms in the first millennium BC were, in Wisnom’s words, “tense”. Her book focuses on the time of the last great Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal, who reigned in the mid-seventh century BC from his splendid capital at Nineveh. His brother was king of Babylon, and as is so often the way, the siblings fell out and went to war. The upshot was an Assyrian victory over Babylon. However, a few decades after Ashurbanipal’s death, revenge was served when the Babylonians and their allies descended on Nineveh and reduced this mighty city to rubble in 612 BC. Its remains are now to be found on the outskirts of Mosul. Read more | Your guide to the ancient city of Babylon Why burning a library was good news for historians The destruction of Nineveh included the burning of the great library of Ashurbanipal – the library of ancient wisdom in Wisnom’s book title. You might imagine that a raging fire in a great library would be a Very Bad Thing for later historians. However, because the ancient Mesopotamians used clay tablets, the conflagration acted like a giant kiln and fired the tablets, making them more likely to survive for posterity. Crushed and forgotten though these tablets were, their subsequent rediscovery in the 19th century provides a huge source of material for us to understand how these people saw the world around them. Quite a lot of the writings in Ashurbanipal’s library have found their way to the British Museum, along with reliefs, sculptures and statues as well. And that’s how we know what the Babylonians and the Assyrians worried about, and how they coped with these worries. To understand the central role of worry in ancient Mesopotamia, you’ve got to appreciate the scale and sophistication of these civilisations. Assyria was one of the great powers of the ancient world, known for its military strength, monumental architecture and extensive bureaucracy. The Babylonians were renowned for their scholarship and cosmopolitan culture. Babylon became a centre of religious ritual, law and intellectual life. Assyrian and Babylonian fortunes rose and fell turn-by-turn over the centuries. As Wisnom notes in her book, “Assyrian culture owes so much to the Babylonians that the two can be difficult to disentangle.” She likes to use the term Mesopotamian to refer to aspects of their culture that are shared, as well as relating to earlier Sumerian texts. “They were guardians of knowledge stretching back a thousand years before them,” she says, inheriting and preserving earlier Sumerian and Akkadian traditions. Flood, fire, famine and fear This long historical memory brought with it an equally enduring awareness of the risk of natural disaster. Flood, fire and famine were things they knew and feared. They also knew that the way to avoid catastrophe was to keep their gods happy. They had a pantheon of gods who were active in daily life. Mesopotamian gods, says Wisnom, “behave much like human beings do… they have strong personalities, they can be persuaded, they can be tricked. They do things, they care, they intervene, and people are really trying to get their attention and call them over to their side.” “They had ways to address it,” says Wisnom. “They had prayers. They had rituals. They might go to the exorcist to help them go through a very elaborate procedure where they give voice to all of that and express it.” In a society where fear of the gods was interwoven with daily life, ritualised expressions of worry were not eccentric – they were essential. I don’t want to give you the impression that these people were superstitious bumpkins though. These were advanced societies – pioneers of writing, architecture, mathematics, and astronomy – but their cultural sophistication did not free them from fear. Quite the opposite. WATCH | Dr Selena Wisnom on ancient anxiety View Green Video on the source website Lament, and let the Gods know you’re there They believed the world was sustained by divine order, and that disorder – famine, floods, illness, invasion – meant that something had gone wrong in the human relationship with the gods. Misfortune wasn’t random: it was a message. And so they acted, regularly and ritually, to express their anxieties and try to restore divine favour. “They lament to the gods in the temples every single day,” says Wisnom. “They have people whose job it is to sing in front of the gods four times a day, these very, very long litanies, bewailing all of the potential things that could go wrong to the city.” These professional lamenters were essentially state-appointed national worriers. Their job was to imagine worst-case scenarios in elaborate poetic form, and recite them in public ceremonies, even when no immediate crisis was at hand. “If you make it clear to the gods that you know they could do all these terrible things to you,” says Wisnom, “then they won’t feel the need to do it.” It was an act of pre-emptive humility – ritualised worrying in the hope of divine mercy. In order to know what you need the gods to do on your behalf in the future, you need to know what’s coming your way. One of the ways the Assyrians and Babylonians dealt with their worries about the future was by attempting to predict it. They developed highly sophisticated systems of divination, which were treated not as superstition but as a vital form of scholarship. Their premise was simple but profound: if misfortune is a message from the gods, it must be possible to read the signs in advance. This approach took many forms. Celestial omens were especially important. The movement of stars and planets, eclipses, and unusual celestial events were meticulously recorded and interpreted. The Assyrians and Babylonians were very proficient at studying the stars. Wisnom notes that Mesopotamian astronomers could “predict the movements of any star or planet to an accuracy of four minutes on any day, past or future,” using only naked-eye observations and mathematical ingenuity. The wisdom of sheep entrails But divination didn’t stop at the sky. The Assyrians also practised extispicy – the reading of entrails – as a means of answering specific questions posed to the gods. “It was one of the most important ways for kings to receive divine guidance,” says Wisnom. Priests would sacrifice a sheep, examine its liver and other organs, and interpret the shape, texture, and marks according to detailed manuals. The process was collaborative, peer-reviewed and surprisingly scientific in its approach. Other forms of divination included dream interpretation, reading smoke patterns, and interpreting odd occurrences in the natural world – like a pig dancing in a town square or a goat giving birth to a two-headed kid. Any anomaly might hold a message. I’m reading this as a response to uncertainty. I’ve locked in my mortgage rate because I didn’t know if the interest rate was going to spiral upwards, so I’ve listened to the predictions of financial experts and acted accordingly. That means I don’t need to worry about it because I actually can’t do anything about it. If you believe that you can get divine guidance from the stars or a sheep’s liver, then you too can get certainty about the future, and I guess, reduce anxiety. Managed risk it’s called, I think. Read more | Ashurbanipal 'the Great', the Lion of Assyria The people in Nineveh and other cities across the Mesopotamian world had a lot to worry about. Their world was full of unseen dangers. They had demons, witches and ghosts to contend with. Malevolent forces could afflict individuals or communities, and their symptoms – physical, mental or social – had to be interpreted and treated. Demons were blamed for sleeplessness and depression. Others, like Lamashtu, threatened pregnant women and infants. Even King Ashurbanipal’s grandfather Sennacherib was said to have been afflicted by a demon that left him “so miserable his advisors were afraid to speak to him”. Witchcraft, too, was taken seriously. If someone suffered from unexplained weight loss, dizziness, or persistent anxiety, a diagnosis of witchcraft might follow. “Witchcraft is actually a diagnosable disease like anything else,” says Dr Wisnom. Treatment came through rituals. Figurines were made and destroyed; incantations were recited; offerings were made to the gods. Exorcists – far from being theatrical performers – were highly trained specialists who used a combination of ritual, medical knowledge and divine petition to help patients. “The exorcist is more like a lawyer than a magician,” Wisnom explains. “He pleads with the gods to change their verdict.” Putting worries in a pot I suppose the point is that these people didn’t worry in silence. They worried very publicly, loudly and regularly. Anxiety was given a voice, a schedule and, often, a proxy. “They assigned worrying to professionals and fixed times of day,” Wisnom notes. “It’s not actually that different from what the NHS suggests that we do.” The NHS’s Every Mind Matters platform offers guidance on how to manage persistent worry using self-help CBT techniques. These include identifying whether a worry is hypothetical or practical, writing worries down to gain distance from them, and allocating a set time each day to process them – techniques that echo the Assyrian practice of ritualising anxiety through structured lamentation. As the NHS explains, “If you find that you’re constantly worrying, it can help to give yourself a set time to do it – and then let those worries go the rest of the day.” I’m thinking that the ancient Mesopotamians would likely have approved. There was also no shame in acknowledging emotional distress. Letters from royal scholars, priests and even kings include candid confessions of despair, hopelessness and guilt. Ashurbanipal himself once wrote: “I did absolutely everything right… and yet still I’m constantly depressed.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/Alamy-RK4BW4-King-1d84e3c.jpg" width="866" height="1190" alt="An Assyrian statue of Ashurbanipal from his royal palace in Nineveh. He once wrote: “I did absolutely everything right… and yet still I’m constantly depressed.” (Image by Alamy)" title="London, England / United Kingdom - 2019/01/28: Ancient Assyria statue of king Ashurbanipal from his royal palace in Nineveh at the archeologic exposit" /> Not so distant, not so weird If the scale and solemnity of Mesopotamian lamentation sounds distant and weird, hang on for a second to consider how we’ve reacted to disaster and threat in Britain in recent times. I’m reminded of an article that Professor Natalie Mears, a historian of early modern Britain, wrote for BBC History Magazine a few years ago about national days of prayer in Britain (if you’re a HistoryExtra member, you can read it in full here now). She notes that since 1535, there have been more than 500 such occasions in England and Wales alone. These were not mere religious observances – they were formal, state-sanctioned rituals in response to national anxiety. “There seem to have been two principal motivations for the country to come together in prayer: to seek God’s help in secular affairs, and to offer thanks for his intervention,” says Mears. So Charles II, in 1666, ordered a “day of solemn fasting and humiliation” after the Great Fire devastated the capital. But there were also days of thanksgiving when the nation had been delivered from disaster, such as after Trafalgar and Waterloo in the early 19th century. More recently, in May 1940, just days after becoming prime minister, Winston Churchill approved a national day of prayer in response to the crisis unfolding in France. “People throughout Britain flocked to their local churches and chapels,” Mears writes. When news broke of the Dunkirk evacuation’s success five days later, many saw it as divine deliverance. How different is this national prayer for deliverance, and humiliation before God, from ancient Mesopotamian lamentation? Seems pretty similar to me. Would it even be going too far to suggest that the banging of pots and pans outside during Covid was the latest iteration of lamentation and thanksgiving in a more secular Britain? Were we trying to hammer away our worries about the pandemic, as much as say thanks to the NHS and first responders? Gods, demons and algorithms The Assyrian and Babylonian response to anxiety was, in many ways, deeply pragmatic. It acknowledged fear as part of life, and sought to engage with it openly and communally. There were specialists to diagnose it, rituals to manage it, and no expectation that individuals should bear it alone. Read more | A history of happiness: 5 life lessons from the past Their world may have been filled with gods and demons rather than algorithms and economic graphs, but the emotional terrain is familiar. They show us that naming our fears, expressing them in structured ways, and seeking support from others are timeless strategies for resilience. As Wisnom reflects: “Even the king of Assyria was admitting to feeling rubbish. Something we can all relate to.” The problem with this is in the practical application today. I’m not the king of Assyria, and nor are you, so we can’t instruct a temple of professional lamenters to take our worries off our shoulders. But maybe there is something basic here, in terms of personal delegation of worrying. “I do like the concept of delegating your worrying to somebody else or something else,” says Wisnom. “that’s something that I have in fact inadvertently tried myself. One night I was very worried about something. It was late at night. Nobody was awake so I called a friend in America because they are awake in America. He said to me ‘Don’t worry. I will hold your worries until morning,’ and it actually worked. I got back to sleep.” So if perhaps the method of delegation is a little alien when we compare ourselves to the ancient Mesopotamians, the underlying concept works. Delegate your worries to someone else, or something else, and you might find the demon within more manageable. This article is part of HistoryExtra's new Life Lessons from History Substack newsletter. 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Don’t fear the fairies – but do allow a little enchantment into your life
In an age in which we are no longer mortally afraid of the supernatural, there's space to enjoy freely magic and ritual, Professor Ronald Hutton tells David Musgrove
Most of us, these days, do not believe in fairies. But maybe we should allow a little more enchantment into our lives – that is the Life Lesson from History that Professor Ronald Hutton would have us consider. In late December every year, on the winter solstice, I like to make a mini-pilgrimage to Avebury at dawn. Avebury is, of course, one of Britain’s most impressive prehistoric megalithic monuments – a huge Neolithic stone circle, surrounded by a massive bank and ditch, with two smaller stone circles inside. It’s so big, in fact, that inside the stone circle is an entire village and a pub (which are obviously substantially later in date than the megaliths). I’m not alone in heading to this huge henge for the solstice – many are drawn to it, and there is something of a carnival vibe. I get up at about 4am and generally make some of my friends get up as well (they thank me not for this). We drive for an hour in the dark and then go for a jog for a few miles from the stone circle, past the enormous and abundantly enigmatic Silbury Hill, up to the West Kennet Long Barrow, and then back along the avenue of standing stones that leads into the henge and circle. I try to plan it to arrive back in Avebury as dawn breaks, but I never get the timing right, and it’s invariably overcast anyway, so I’ve never witnessed an impressive spiritual sunrise moment. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/05/HEPKG2avebury-846ee37.jpg" width="5100" height="3400" alt="A large rock takes up half the image. In the background a long line of people gather together under the purple sky" title="Avebury in Wiltshire is home to Britain’s largest stone circle, which is so big that inside are an entire village and a pub (built much later) (Image by Alamy)" /> I thought about Avebury after I’d chatted to Professor Hutton, one of the leading experts on the history of belief, ritual and the supernatural. I invited him to talk about his life lessons from history and I was delighted when he promptly replied, with the following message: “Perhaps I could offer some thought on the conveniences of living in a modern disenchanted world, in which we no longer feel generally menaced by fairies, ghosts, demons or spirits, and people who do feel the presence of a spirit world or the divine can interact with it as a private matter and without being called to account for it by authorities.” I was keen to understand what he meant by the ‘modern disenchanted world’, and he explained that it was in essence a place where fairies are not at large to cause mischief, witches won’t make your children ill, and lettuce leaves are unlikely to harbour demons (I’ll come back to that last point). “ I hear a lot these days about the world having lost that thrilling sense of the supernatural: a real belief in dragons, fairies, witches and wizards, and a general sense of wonder in the world. And I understand that feeling, having spent quite a lot of my professional life studying beliefs in exactly these things, but my basic argument is it’s actually a real asset living in a disenchanted world,” Professor Hutton says. “First, because you don’t have to be afraid of the supernatural. And second, because most people don’t have to be afraid of the supernatural in you.” Back at Avebury, I’m guessing that quite a lot of the people turning up there on the winter solstice have not lost that sense of the supernatural. There are always crowds of people flowing around the stones, and more people stood crowning the top of the henge bank. It’s a busy place on the winter solstice. Among the stones, you’ll find people dressed in garb that you might describe as druidic, actively celebrating and communing, banging drums, singing, chanting, blowing horns and things that look suspiciously like didgeridoos. They appear to be practising what I imagine are pagan rites. I’ve never asked these celebrants what they’re doing, and I’ve never felt any need to either join in or intervene. I assume they are looking for something that isn’t readily available in the 21st century. I also guess that there are a lot of people who are spectators, looking in from the disenchanted world, sitting on the sidelines and hoping for entertainment over enlightenment. As far as I can tell, there is no sense of antagonism between these groups, and no obvious sign of anyone being challenged for their actions or beliefs, even if they might be somewhat unorthodox. This, says Hutton, is something we should celebrate, and use to our advantage. “People can actually be what they wish – express themselves – without their neighbours beating them up, dragging them into court, or in modern times, breaking their windows or posting horrid things through their letter boxes.” If we wish, we are afforded the best of both worlds. We can bewitch ourselves with ritual, legend, spirituality – but we don’t have to live in fear of being accused of sorcery. “It’s only safe to be a witch in a society that doesn’t believe you’re a witch,” points out Hutton. Read more | A medieval mystery: the green-coloured children found in an English village Policing the unknown Ronald Hutton has spent his academic life exploring these fears – what they meant, how they manifested, and crucially, how they were policed. “There was the constant nagging fear of orthodoxy needing to be policed, to get rid of heretics,” he explains. Such fears included “a real belief that if your child falls sick and the local doctor, if there is one, can’t work out what’s wrong with them – they’ve actually been bewitched by a neighbour.” Obviously it would be ridiculous to suggest that we don’t still live with fears today, but says Professor Hutton, they are of a different magnitude to what people had to contend with in the past. “Today we face all sorts of dangers in daily life – car crashes, muggers, drunken revellers, nutcases, hustlers.” But these, he says, are nothing compared to the terrifying reach of the unseen that haunted our ancestors. “If you went out at night in the countryside, you were in danger of being blighted by fairies or led astray by goblins. And there was also the issue of people being afraid of what you might do or believe in supernatural terms.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/05/2AHX04Edemons-ea8e85e.jpg" width="4724" height="3188" alt="A woodcut depicts gremlins, dragons and goblins. In the centre a warlock or wizard sits at a table" title="An early woodcut showing gremlins, dragons and goblins, summoned by a wizard or warlock. Magical creatures were once a source of fear in society (Image by Alamy)" /> And sometimes the fear went further still: not just suspicion of others, but fear of the world itself. “The lurking presence of demons in the air all around you. There’s an anecdote about a 14th-century nun who forgot to make the sign of the cross over a lettuce leaf in a salad. As a result, she swallowed a demon that was sitting invisibly upon it and was inflicted with all sorts of terrible digestive problems until she was exorcised.” That might sound a little absurd, I know, but that’s because we are today so far removed from the world view that these people had. I’m reminded of a HistoryExtra podcast conversation I had with the social historian Patrick Joyce, regarding his book about the vanished world of European peasants, Remembering Peasants: A Personal History of a Vanished World (Penguin, 2024). In his mind, that is a place most of us simply don’t understand at all. “Their world was full of spirits, but then the world was a kind of a thing in itself, a natural thing, in which they didn’t invoke spirits necessarily,” Professor Joyce told me. “If you behaved to the world as you felt the world should be behaved to, ie you respected the soil and the way in which it should be worked, you showed a solidarity with nature, and if you showed solidarity with nature, nature would show solidarity.” Joyce’s argument is that the rapid decline of peasantry in the 20th century has been overlooked and understudied. So it leaves us with an inability to understand properly how they saw things, and I guess what they were afraid of. A sense of control Back to Professor Hutton: “People in charge of society all over Europe began to lose their fear of these things from about 1660 onwards, but ordinary people, especially in the countryside, were burdened by them right up to the early 20th century.” So how did this change? What led us away from that weird world of magic and menace? According to Ronald Hutton, it’s a matter of pragmatism. Let’s take witches for instance. “One very good reason why witch-hunting came to an end in Europe is that Europeans realised there were no benefits. Communities that had witch hunts and put to death their neighbours as witches did not have healthier children, better weather, or better working farm equipment. On the contrary, they tended to be decimated, divided, and traumatised. It just wasn’t profitable.” If these fears didn’t produce positive results, the obvious question is why did they persist? What human need did they serve? Ronald Hutton is clear: they gave people a sense of agency. “You have someone to blame. The world seems a bit more manageable, because you can take action: hunt a witch; carry out an exorcism; hang up a rowan wood cross over your door to keep out bad luck.” And more deeply, they offered explanations for the inexplicable. “All over the world, people have wanted to blame somebody for things going remorselessly wrong. There are three entities on the hit list, and if you believe in one of these, you don’t tend to believe in the others. So societies dotted around worldwide tend to divide up between them.” First to blame, says Hutton, are angry or evil land spirits, fairies, demons. Secondly, “the human dead who’ve taken a dislike to you, vengeful ghosts, offended ancestors”. And the third, he explains, are evil human beings who’ve been working magic, in other words, witches. “But the point about all these three are there are remedies to all of them. So people feel less vulnerable and more empowered in the midst of what traditionally is an overwhelmingly powerful natural world, which nobody really understands.” Where it gets a little sobering though, is that the fear wasn’t just psychological – it could be fatal. Hutton recounts studies from American doctors in the 1940s, trying to understand why soldiers fighting in the Pacific were dying of minor wounds, apparently under the misapprehension that they had been seriously injured. These American medics looked at interwar medical records from doctors working in colonial possessions of imperial powers. They carried out autopsies on indigenous people in these colonies who believed they’d been fatally cursed, and observed why that might have happened. “Your system is bombarded by a constant tidal wave of adrenaline, which suppresses the immune system,” said Hutton, “and if you have a latent defect in a vital organ, the body breaks that open and people die.” So yes, it seems that believing in the supernatural could kill, under those circumstances. This is why, Hutton says, it’s such a gift that we no longer have to believe. “It’s so nice to have got rid of all that stuff.” A time for enchantment On the flip side of that though, if you do want a little magic in your life, that’s not a bad thing, according to the professor. “People often stabilise their lives in all sorts of societies by having what scholars slightly patronisingly call a ‘myth to live by’. A religion. A personal guardian spirit. A belief in certain aspects of the preternatural. These are not just comforting – they’re beneficial. They give confidence. They build character. They enable people to explore the world profitably in all sorts of ways. They work extremely well. I would be the last person to suggest that none of these entities actually exist. I’d never suggest that these belief systems are necessarily false. It’s just they’re not proven so we can take or leave them.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/05/GettyImages-2188133124chirstianity-478107c.jpg" width="3896" height="5564" alt="A drawn illustration shows the Virgin Mary, dressed in blue robes and holding baby Jesus. They are surrounded by a pink rose frame" title="The Virgin Mary and Child, surrounded by a pink rose, are depicted in this illustrated Vita Christi (Life of Christ) from the 15th century (Image by Getty Images)" /> Over recent decades people have been leaving, rather than taking, Christianity in the UK. Church of England attendance has been on the decline, though a recent survey does suggest a revival of late. But this is where the lesson from history comes in because now, maybe more than most other times in history, you can – if you wish – DIY your own religion. You can look to whatever spiritual or magical force you choose, and engage with it however you wish. There’s one time and place, where we might draw a parallel though: Roman London. If you travelled back in time to there, Hutton says, “you’d find yourself surrounded by an enormous range of deities, philosophies, and belief systems … with no formal structure to decide which are best. “And we’re simply reverting to that, with the tremendous multiculturalism and multi-ethnicity now – which Roman Britain had.” Read more | Prehistoric religion: a pagan riddle we will never solve? That might sound chaotic – but for Professor Hutton, it’s full of possibility. “Given that diversity and multiculturalism – whether people like it or not – has actually happened, people will get more used to it. And, with that wonderful adaptability of our species, find ways of turning it to their advantage. “I also take an immense comfort from the fact that I get complete radio silence from the supernatural with so much else to worry about in my professional and personal life. It’s great to be able to dispense with that. It’s great to be able to – if I am alone – go to bed alone in a particular room and not worry about anything else being there.” Ronald Hutton, I think, seems to be quite optimistic about the possibilities open to us if we do allow a little bit of room for the unknown in our disenchanted environment. “We can have the best of both worlds. The excitement of belief and possible encounters with supernatural worlds – without needing to be terrified of them as people often were in the past. And without needing to fear that our neighbours or the authorities will arrest us or beat us up because they think we have the wrong attitude to these things.” DIYing my beliefs I’ve never met a spirit, or a fairy, goblin or anything else out of the ordinary in the night. But I do love a good ghost story – Danny Robins’s Uncanny podcasts are my go-to when I’m not checking over HistoryExtra episodes. And I do love visiting prehistoric monuments, particularly at times of the year when I think people in the past have identified a certain liminal looseness in the boundary with the supernatural world. Having chatted to Ronald Hutton, I suspect this is all driven by an unmet need for that thrilling sense of the supernatural. So maybe next solstice, I shouldn’t run past, but rather stop and ask those folks celebrating around the stones at Avebury what they are actually doing. The beauty of being alive today, in Britain at least, is that they are at liberty to do whatever it is they think makes sense, and this quote from Hutton’s excellent book Pagan Britain (Yale University Press, 2013) sums it up nicely: “The relics of Britain’s pagan past offer a powerful challenge and stimulus to the modern imagination. They also have in common … an ability to defy full understanding and confident interpretation … One logical response to this trait is to encourage a multiplicity of interpretations, in which different people, and groups of them, reconstruct the pagan past subjectively, according to their own instincts and desires, within the limits of the available evidence.” Read more | Scotland's season of the witch Obviously I couldn’t finish my chat with Professor Hutton without asking him the question that I’m sure he gets asked any time anyone interviews him: what does he actually believe in? “If I have met a spirit, I haven’t been aware of the fact, so I have no personal experience of the divine or the supernatural. I have met an awful lot of people who have had these experiences, or at least believe they have them, and they sound pretty convincing to me. “So I have no overall frame of interpretation as to the nature of the cosmos. I find beliefs very exciting. I find some more attractive than others. Those that are more liberal and permissive and less prescriptive and repressive. But that’s a reflection of my personal politics. If you come down to the question: do I have religion? What do I believe in? I always in the end give the same answer, which is that, I never say.” This article is part of HistoryExtra's new Life Lessons from History Substack newsletter. Subscribe to the newsletter for more articles and podcasts exploring the ways in which history can help us live better, happier, healthier or more productive lives.
Rich men, reckless affairs and ruined reputations: the scandalous lives of London's 18th-century courtesans
In the 18th century, some sex workers elevated their status to that of a courtesan, servicing an upper-class clientele and becoming celebrities of their day. Historian Julie Peakman examines the lives of four of these women
Sexy, flirtatious, witty and beautiful, the best-known female courtesans in the 18th century made a name for themselves by having numerous affairs with wealthy or titled men. Unlike their sisters selling sex on the streets or in common brothels, these women often lived in luxurious apartments with maids and liveried servants. They were the pin-ups of their day and set many fashionable tends around London. Many courtesans became famous as a result of a new cult of celebrity in the 18th century. Changes in technology allowed for mass printing and the circulation of news about these social butterflies, leading the public to clamour for information on courtesans’ love affairs and their scandalous behaviour. Famous painters such as George Romney and Sir Joshua Reynolds even made portraits of celebrated courtesans, which became available in cheap prints. But who, among all the courtesans of 18th century London, was the most famous? Read more | The real Harlots: Hallie Rubenhold on Covent Garden's courtesans Kitty Fisher: London’s golden girl Her shocking escapades drew the attention of elite men around Europe – including Cassanova himself <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/04/GettyImages-77944601-9bcdfa2.jpg" width="855" height="1024" alt="A portrait of Kitty Fisher by Sir Joshua Reynolds, painted between 1723 and 1792 is pictured at Sothebys auction house, in London, 16 November 2007. The painting is expected to fetch between 2,000,000 and 3,000,000 pounds (2,793,496.24 and 4,190,362.13 Euros). AFP PHOTO / CARL DE SOUZA (Photo credit should read CARL DE SOUZA/AFP via Getty Images)" title="A portrait of Kitty Fisher by Sir Joshua" /> Sought after by some of the wealthiest men in Europe, the courtesan Kitty Fisher was at the top of her game. Such was her fame that poems were written about her (such as Kitty’s Stream and A Sketch of the Present Times); satirical prints were made of her (like The Merry Accident, which depicted her fall from a horse displaying her bare legs); and a mezzotint of her face based on a painting by Joshua Reynolds was available in print shops all over London. Born in Soho, London around 1741, Fisher’s full name was Catherine Maria Fischer. According to The Uncommon Adventures of Miss Kitty F****r (1759), she came from a poor background and lived in Paddington with her younger brother and two sisters. She rose to notoriety while working in a milliner’s shop (an outlet frequently connected to prostitution) before she was allegedly seduced – and subsequently deserted – by a military officer, Ensign Anthony George Martin. Others claim it was Captain Augustus Keppel who first debauched Fisher, whereas the 18th-century satirical poet, Edward Thompson, suggested that there were too many men from which to choose in his work The Meretriciad. For five years from 1758, Fisher was one of the most toasted women in London. She had liaisons with politicians and noblemen, among them Baron Anson of Soberton, Baron Montfort, the Earl of Sandwich and Earl of Harrington. The second Earl Poulett was rumoured to have wanted to marry her, as did Henry Herbert – earl of Pembroke – who provided Fisher with £1,000 per year, and £1,000 for ‘present decorations’. Even the infamous Italian adventurer and ladies’ man Giacomo Casanova is thought to have met Fisher while he was in London. He recounted in his memoirs; “Mrs Walls [a famous bawd] told us that one day this Fisher swallowed a thousand pound bank-note on a slice of bread-and-butter. The note had just been given her by Atkins, brother of the beautiful Mrs. Pitt.” It was also alleged that Prince Edward was told he was no longer welcome at Kitty’s house in New Norfolk Street after leaving her ‘only £50’ after being admitted for tea. Fisher ultimately married John Norris – the MP for Rye – at Trinity church in Haddington, Scotland in 1766. While still only in her late twenties, she became ill with consumption and died at the Three Tuns in Stall Street, Bath, in March 1767, though there is contention about the place and date of her death. Listen on the podcast | Casanova: more than a serial seducer Sally Salisbury: the criminal courtesan The fiery temptress rose to fame and fortune – but fell from grace when she stabbed her lover with a bread knife Like Kitty Fisher, Sally Salisbury was a courtesan who worked her way up from a lowly background in 18th century London. At first, she worked as a prostitute for the well-known bawd, Mother Wisebourne. By the time she left Wisebourne’s establishment, Salisbury’s status had risen and her finances were good enough for her to establish herself in a select house where she employed a full entourage of servants, including a cook, a chambermaid and a housemaid. The Original Weekly Journal reported in 1719, “We hear that Salisbury Sally, a noted Lady of Pleasure, is setting up a Chariot and has hired a Coachman and two Footmen.” As a fully-fledged courtesan, she was now able to entertain rich noblemen. Salisbury became so famous that a flurry of pamphlets was issued to celebrate her life story. Her followers could read about her in The Genuine History of Mrs. Sarah Prydden, which was sold at pamphlet shops during 1723 for a shilling a copy, and Authentick Memoirs of the Life and Adventures of the Celebrated Sally Salisbury, which sold for 2s 6d. She even had songs named after her, such as ‘Sally in our Alley’ and ‘four new songs’ printed in Sally Slisbury’s [sic] Garland. You might also like | From murder bottles to arsenic wallpaper: 5 hidden killers in Victorian Britain Salisbury’s downfall came at the peak of her career when, in a fit of fury she stabbed one of her lovers – John Finch, third son of the 2nd Earl of Nottingham – with a bread knife at a tavern in Covent Garden. Though Finch desperately tried to have the charges against her dropped, Salisbury was indicted in February 1723 for assaulting and wounding with intent to murder. She was sent to Newgate prison, where she caught jail fever – likely typhus – and died. The London Journal for 15 February 1724 described Salisbury’s rise and fall as being “like a Comet, her Blaze was bright but of no consequence; Scarce had she appear’d like the Sun, before she disappears like a Meteor.” Harriet Mellon: from rags to riches The young actress enchanted an elderly banker – and became one of the wealthiest women in London <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/04/2RAA3A9-867d797.jpg" width="4326" height="4893" alt="Though from a poor background, Harriet Mellon came into great wealth and a title through her marriage to Thomas Coutts. (Photo by Alamy)" title="Though from a poor background, Harriet Mellon came into great wealth and a title through her marriage to Thomas Coutts. (Photo by Alamy)" /> Though from a poor background, Harriet Mellon came into great wealth and a title, making her one of the most fortunate 18th-century courtesans. Born to a dresser and wardrobe mistress in the theatre in 1777, Mellon began her career as a child actress in a theatre barn in Ulverstone, Cumbria. She later joined Stanton’s theatre company in the Midlands, where she was spotted by the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan. He engaged Mellon for his production of The Rivals on 31 January 1795 at the Drury Lane Theatre in London, where she played Lydia Languish. In 1805 she caught the eye of the elderly married banker Thomas Coutts (1735–1822), who quickly fell in love with her. Mellon’s affair with Coutts lasted ten years, during which time she continued to perform a wide variety of roles. While Mellon never gained great accolades in the acting world, she was competent enough and was praised for how she looked; her figure was said to surpass even that of the renowned actress ‘Mrs Jordan’ (stage name of Dorothy Bland). With Coutts, Mellon felt secure enough to give up acting, and her final performance was on 7 February 1815 as Audrey in As You Like It. After his first wife died, Coutts married Mellon at St Pancras church on 12 April 1815. He was now 79 years old, while Mellon was 37. The marriage was a fairly short one, and after almost seven years together, Coutts died on 24 February 1822, leaving his whole fortune to his wife, including his partnership in Coutts Bank. You might also like | 'Arib al-Ma’muniyya: the enslaved medieval woman who sang her way to wealth Mellon was now a very wealthy woman and attracted other suitors while throwing luxurious parties at her town house in the Kings Road in Brighton – but proved herself an astute businesswoman with an ability to make wise investments. She was generous to Coutts’s three daughters, and provided them with £10,000 a year each. At 49, Mellon married the Duke of St Albans, a man 23 years her junior. She died on 6 August 1837 at her home in London, leaving most of her vast fortune to Coutts’ granddaughter, Angela, thereby giving another young woman her freedom and independence. Nancy Dawson – the prince’s favourite? The London dancer was a celebrity of her day – captivating actors, soldiers, and even royalty <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/04/2E37D74-28e5514.jpg" width="3178" height="4404" alt="London dancer Nancy Dawson edged her way up in life as an actress and courtesan, only to later fall back on hard times. (Photo by Alamy)" title="London dancer Nancy Dawson edged her way up in life as an actress and courtesan, only to later fall back on hard times. (Photo by Alamy)" /> Nancy Dawson’s life oscillated between poverty and riches. She edged her way up in life as an actress and courtesan, only to later fall back on hard times. Her lovers included captains, soldiers, peers of the realm and royalty, supposedly among them Prince Henry, Duke of Cumberland and Strathearn. Music was composed for her; songs were sung about her; even rude poems were made up about her, such as: “Nancy Dawson was a whore/And in the town was many more/And when the sailors went on shore/Law, they ask’d for Nancy Dawson!” A scurrilous memoir slated her reputation in The Genuine Memoirs of the Celebrated Miss Nancy Dawson, published in 1760. You might also like | Singer, dancer, Nazi-fighter: how Josephine Baker became a WW2 heroine The daughter of a staymaker (corset maker), Nancy Dawson was baptised as Ann Newton in 1728. At some point she married a mariner, James Dawson, who soon disappeared from her life. She later evoked a scandal with her affair with comic actor Edward Shuter. Though she spent seven years dancing in London theatres, Dawson was never offered a role as leading lady. She came to public attention when she danced the hornpipe in the John Gay’s The Beggars Opera in 1759, and was forever after associated with that dance, her name puffed up in bills “as sure bait to fill the house”. She played pantomime in The Rites of Hecate during December 1763 but retired soon after. Little is known about her from then until her death on 9 June 1767 in Hampstead, Middlesex except that she was buried in a Bloomsbury’s St George the Martyr graveyard. Julie Peakman is an author and historian in 18th-century culture and history of sexuality