The boy did not survive long and rather than leave, Fanny stayed on to take care of William and the house. Her sister Frances-commonly known as Fanny-had during Elizabeth's pregnancy moved in with the couple and she stayed to care for the infant and its father. They were apparently very much in love, but their marriage was short-lived as within a month of the move Elizabeth died during childbirth. They moved to Stoke Ferry where Kent kept an inn and later, the local post office. In about 1756–57 William Kent, a usurer from Norfolk, married Elizabeth Lynes, the daughter of a grocer from Lyneham. Charles Dickens is one of several Victorian authors whose work alluded to the story and the pictorial satirist William Hogarth referenced the ghost in two of his prints. The Cock Lane ghost became a focus of controversy between the Methodist and Anglican churches and is referenced frequently in contemporary literature. Those responsible were prosecuted and found guilty Richard Parsons was pilloried and sentenced to two years in prison. Further investigations proved the scam was perpetrated by Elizabeth Parsons, under duress from her father. But a commission whose members included Samuel Johnson concluded that the supposed haunting was a fraud. The ghost appeared to claim that Fanny had been poisoned with arsenic and Kent was publicly suspected of being her murderer. Regular séances were held to determine "Scratching Fanny's" motives Cock Lane was often made impassable by the throngs of interested bystanders. Parsons claimed that Fanny's ghost haunted his property and later his daughter. Several accounts of strange knocking sounds and ghostly apparitions were reported, although for the most part they stopped after the couple moved out, but following Fanny's death from smallpox and Kent's successful legal action against Parsons over an outstanding debt, they resumed. Canon law prevented the couple from marrying, but they nevertheless moved to London and lodged at the property in Cock Lane, then owned by Parsons. The event centred on three people: William Kent, a usurer from Norfolk Richard Parsons, a parish clerk and Parsons' daughter Elizabeth.įollowing the death during childbirth of Kent's wife, Elizabeth Lynes, he became romantically involved with her sister, Fanny.
The location was a lodging in Cock Lane, a short road adjacent to London's Smithfield market and a few minutes' walk from St Paul's Cathedral. The Cock Lane ghost was a purported haunting that attracted mass public attention in 1762. The haunting took place in the three-storey building on the right. A 19th-century illustration of Cock Lane.
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