- One winter's night in 1804, a vigilante fired a gun at
a blood-curdling spectre he believed to be the "Hammersmith Ghost"
that had terrorised the neighbourhood.
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- But the visitation turned out to be an innocent bricklayer,
walking home in his white overalls, and Francis Smith's bungled shooting
triggered one of the most curious legal wrangles in British criminal history.
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- Today, 200 years later, up to 50 lawyers and followers
of the paranormal will meet outside The Black Lion Pub, in Hammersmith,
west London, where the bricklayer's body was taken, to celebrate the case.
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- The Ghost Club, the country's oldest paranormal organisation,
was co-founded in 1862 by Charles Dickens, and had the poets WB Yeats and
Siegfried Sassoon as members.
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- Alan Murdie, a barrister and the chairman of The Ghost
Club, said that the case was so fascinating because it "bristles with
legal and supernatural interest".
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- Mr Murdie said that during the Christmas and New Year
period of 1804, there were a series of reports of a frightening phantom
haunting Hammersmith churchyard. The apparition, in white with horns and
glass eyes, had reportedly attacked passers-by and left some seriously
ill from shock.
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- Smith, 29, a customs officer, had been drinking at a
nearby inn on 3 January when he heard the chilling tale and launched an
armed patrol in Black Lion Lane.
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- "At around 11pm, Smith was rewarded by a figure
in white appearing in the lane. Challenging the apparition, he demanded
to know its identity. When the figure moved towards him, Smith discharged
his gun," said Mr Murdie.
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- But on examination, the vision was James Milwood, 29,
whom he had shot in his left jaw.
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- During his trial for "wilful murder", Smith
raised the question of whether someone could be held liable for their actions
if they used force as a result of an unreasonable but mistaken belief.
The jury returned a verdict of manslaughter, apparently accepting Smith's
assertion that he thought he was shooting a ghost, but it was changed to
murder under the guidance of the judge. Smith was condemned to death but
the penalty was later commuted to one year's hard labour.
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- "The trial and conviction of Francis Smith for murdering
a man he mistook for a ghost illustrates a legal problem not settled for
180 years and one which still generates argument. It has played a part
in shaping the modern law of self-defence," said Mr Murdie.
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- The point of law was finally settled by a Court of Appeal
decision in 1984.
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- The Black Lion's landlord, Kevin Sheehy, said the legacy
of the ghost lived on in the pub. "The chef who lives upstairs has
been woken up in the night by someone calling his name, computers get switched
on by themselves and you can sometimes hear the floorboards creaking when
the pub's empty and names being whispered. The incidents have happened
over the past seven or eight months so the spirit must know that the anniversary
is coming up," he said.
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- The pub displays a plaque marking the ghostly incident.
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- © 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/story.jsp?story=477648
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