Hammersmith ghosts

There have been multiple reports of ghosts in Hammersmith. The Hammersmith Ghost of 1803-4 was especially notorious, causing a great sensation and resulting in a murder trial which established an significant legal precedent - that shooting a supposed ghost was still murder.
In 1803, a ghost was seen on multiple occasions which was said to be a man who had slit his own throat the previous year. It was an apparition clad in white which terrified people such as a pregnant woman and the passengers of a wagon. The area was patrolled by armed citizens and, on 3 January 1804, excise officer Francis Smith shot a white figure in Black Lion Lane. This turned out to be a plasterer, Thomas Millwood, who was just wearing the normal white clothing of his trade. Smith was tried and convicted for murder but the initial sentence of hanging and dissection was commuted to a year in prison. The outrage of the murder then caused the true culprit to be revealed - an old cobbler James Graham, who had been using a blanket to pretend to be a ghost in order to scare his apprentices who had been scaring his children with ghost stories.
Another ghost appeared in 1824, jumping out at women and scratching their faces. This proved to be a young Harrow farmer, John Benjamin, who was caught and imprisoned. In 1832, there was another ghost preying on women with claws that it could use to scale walls. In 1955, there was a report that one of these ghosts would reappear in the churchyard of . A large crowd gathered but saw nothing at midnight. But those who allowed for British Summer Time and stayed until 1 am, are said to have seen a white spectre.<ref namepbog/><ref nameLL/>

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