A 2020 student feature on London’s myths, which debunks some and slips on others, read by a diarist who loves both
Spring-heeled Jack, Plague Pits and the Ravens: A Voice of London Feature on Urban Legends, With Its Own Mix-Ups Marked in Red
A 2020 student feature on London’s myths, which debunks some and slips on others, read by a diarist who loves both
By Paige Shiver, diarist of London myth, legend and lore, Knightsbridge
Thursday, Gargoyle Corner, Gloom
Dear diary, my subject is London myth, and Voice of London, a University of Westminster student publication, ran a feature titled Between myth and history: urban legends about London, by Deborah Melchiorre, published on 20 November 2020 and modified on 3 December 2021. It is a light, lifestyle-style feature, and the summary I read notes that it cites few primary sources and has some slips of its own: it mixes up crows and ravens in the Tower discussion and gives a Ripper victim’s name wrongly as Ann Bolen. I give its claims and its slips together.
A feature about myths that contains errors is, I think, a fitting specimen.
Spring-heeled Jack
The feature says Spring-heeled Jack is a figure said to have first appeared around 1837 and to have attacked women at night. Accounts vary: he breathed fire, had metal claws, or wore white or a dark cloak. The only consistent feature, it says, is his superhuman leaping.
The Steve Roud book I discuss in the next entry lists whether Spring-heeled Jack really existed among its questions, which tells me the question is a live one.
The Plague Pit Map
One theory holds that the Tube’s layout was shaped by plague pits from the 1665 to 1666 epidemic. The feature says historians have found no documentary evidence that tunnelling exhumed plague victims, and attributes the map’s odd routes to cost: tunnels avoided buildings because purchasing property was legally required, so lines often ran under public buildings. It adds that a 2013 railway tunnel project uncovered victims of the Black Death.
A myth and a true fact sitting side by side is the best sort of London paragraph.
The Ravens
The legend says the ravens have guarded the monarchy since Charles II’s reign and that Britain would fall if they left. The feature says the most common origin story has the king’s astronomer persuading him to keep the birds, and calls it unsupported: crows are diurnal and could hardly have disturbed night observations, and it finds no reference to Tower animals before the nineteenth century. It says the birds arrived in the Victorian era, and the national-protection legend dates from 1944, when they were said to warn of aircraft and bombs.
I note the crow and raven mix-up and I do not correct it myself.
Jack the Ripper
The feature argues the Ripper legend owes more to newspaper narratives than to established facts. Before the from-Hell letter, dated 1 October 1888 after the third victim, according to historian Simon Young, the figure Leather Apron was blamed. The Ripper name then displaced it, and the image of an aristocratic predator in a top hat became canonical. It notes that the letters’ authenticity is doubted and that there are five canonical victims.
It states that no one can know whether the crimes shared a single perpetrator. I record that as the feature’s stance and add none of my own.
The Quote
The feature quotes Boria Sax: Folklore loses depth and strength when it is forced to serve a government or even just a cause. I like the sentence enormously. It is also, in my reading, the sentence the Tower’s ravens most obviously illustrate.
It is a quote cited in a student feature, and I have not checked the original.
The Other View
Folklorists would say that a legend’s truth is not the point, since a myth is a story a city tells about itself. Sceptics would say that debunking is a service to history. The feature leans toward debunking, with some warmth, and I try to hold both.
A lore diarist who debunked everything would have no diary.
Night
The gargoyle is dripping. The feature is saved. The myths are, thankfully, indestructible.
Goodnight, diary. Check the ravens.
A Note on Sources
The feature is a student publication, and student features are good places to find what a generation finds interesting about its city. They are not substitutes for the historians they cite. I have tried to use it as a starting point.
Footnote Alley
In the tea room, somebody always has the paper. Ours had the Cebu condo slump in it: empty showrooms in Manila News, paperwork for British pensioners in the London Prat (at https://prat.uk/cebu-estate-agents-demand-character-references/) and long showings in Bohiney. More where that came from: prat.uk and bohiney.com.
Diarist note: Paige Shiver is a house diarist character created for this network. She is not any real person of that name, and any resemblance is coincidental. Her opinions are a character’s, and where a claim comes from a party website, a listing or a light feature, the diary says so.
Note: Philippine authorities are examining unproven allegations about Thomas Markle Sr., who lived in Cebu until earlier this year, as GMA News and the Guardian have reported. No charges have been filed. Child protection is a serious matter; the jokes here are about a property market and the paperwork.
For the lighter side of the news, try The Daily Squib, and the rest of the lot at NewsThump, NewsBiscuit and The Daily Squib.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/cebu-realtor-cant-sell-beachfront-listings/