On the third of January, 1804, rumour of a ghost stalked the lanes of Hammersmith. Francis Smith resolved to stand watch and bring down the creature that had terrified the parish. Armed with a gun, he plunged into the darkened ways; a night-watchman, who had first to complete his beat, promised to join him. They settled upon a watchword by which to know one another. Before the watchman could arrive, Smith fired upon a white figure. It was no spectre, but Thomas Millwood, a bricklayer returning home in the habiliments of his trade.
Borrow’s account opens with the dread which the apparition had reportedly spread through the neighbourhood. He asserts that a pregnant woman died two days after catching sight of the figure near the churchyard, and that a wagoner abandoned his horses in terror. These incidents belong to the compiler’s dramatic embellishment; they were not established by the sworn testimony at the trial, which the text proceeds to transcribe. Yet rumour itself lies at the very core of the case: the inhabitants spoke of having seen something, though none could say who lurked beneath the white attire.
Smith, exasperated by these repeated frights, was bent upon surprising the impostor. William Girdler, the watchman, stated that Smith had spoken to him of his purpose to hunt the ghost. They agreed upon a countersign: “Who comes there?”—“A friend.”—“Advance, friend.” Girdler went about his rounds, intending to return as soon as he had called the hour. Approaching Black Lion Lane a short while later, he heard a shot, but thought little of it, being accustomed to the sound of night-firing in the lanes.
That night, Thomas Millwood had called upon his sister, Anne. He had gone in search of his wife, who was then at a Mr. Smith’s. His family urged him to wait half an hour; he remained until the watchman called eleven o’clock, and then set out for his own dwelling. His sister opened the door after him and watched him depart, standing upon some bricks outside. She then heard a voice demand who he was and what he was, followed by a threat to shoot if he did not answer. The shot came instantly. Anne called to her brother, but received no reply. She failed to persuade her parents that any mischance had occurred. When at last she went forth alone, she found Thomas dead.
The shot had struck him in the left jaw. Smith soon presented himself before several neighbours, admitting that he had shot a man whom he took to be the ghost. He told a Mr. Lock that he had twice challenged the figure before firing, receiving no answer. To Girdler he announced that he had hurt someone, perhaps mortally, and offered to give himself up. Lock, Stowe, and the watchman accompanied him back to the body. The shooter did not attempt to flee through the lanes; the question that remained was what he knew before his finger pressed the trigger.
The trial opened at the Old Bailey on the thirteenth of January. The defence did not dispute that Smith had gone forth armed to lie in wait for the ghost, nor that Millwood had fallen by his hand. Smith maintained that he had acted without malice, not knowing what he did when the fatal accident occurred, and protested that he had never intended to take human life. Witnesses, however, repeated the words uttered in the lane immediately before the discharge: who are you, what are you, I will shoot you if you do not speak. The victim’s sister had heard them distinctly from her doorway.
Her testimony stripped the costume to reveal the man. Millwood wore the ordinary garb of his calling, white because such was the custom of bricklayers. He was no apparition risen from the churchyard; he was returning from a visit to his parents’ house, where his sister lived, had waited for his wife, and had wished his sister good night. According to the deposition recorded, his family had let him go without any thought of danger. It was only as Anne opened the door to follow him with her eyes that she heard the challenge and the report of the gun.
The remaining witnesses spoke to the state of the body and the immediate aftermath, rather than the shot itself. Girdler heard the report but saw no weapon near the fallen man. Mr. Lock found Millwood lying dead, with a severe wound to the jaw. Smith appeared deeply shaken, yet freely acknowledged that he had fired. His prompt confession and the absence of any attempt at flight were noted by all who saw him; they could not, however, avert the fatal consequences of his mistake.
The defence then called witnesses who deposed to another occurrence. Mrs. Fullbrook, Millwood’s mother-in-law, stated that a few days before his death, two women and a man had taken Thomas for the ghost as he walked down a terrace. He had retorted that he was no ghost, asking the man whether he wanted a punch in the head. Fullbrook had then advised him to wear a greatcoat, lest he be mistaken for the apparition. Later, one Thomas Groom testified that one night in the churchyard, some unseen thing had seized him by the throat. His deposition attested to what he believed he had felt, not to the reality of any phantom.
The rumour did not dissipate within the courtroom; it became the context of the deed. Smith pleaded that he had sought only to confront a supposed apparition, and his counsel endeavoured to show that terror had seized the entire parish. Yet the indictment charged the death of a living man. The jury retired for over an hour and returned with a verdict of manslaughter. The judge informed them that in point of law, upon the facts they had found, their choice lay solely between murder and acquittal: even had Smith slain the very impostor he sought, the act would have amounted to murder. The court therefore declined to receive the intermediate verdict.
The jury withdrew once more and, after brief deliberation, returned a verdict of guilty of murder. The Lord Chief Baron announced that he would lay the case before the King without delay. Before seven o’clock that evening, a respite arrived at the Old Bailey; on the twenty-fifth of January, Smith received a conditional pardon, his sentence commuted to one year’s imprisonment. Borrow’s chronicle concludes with this punishment. It converts no idle rumour into supernatural proof: the dead man remains a bricklayer journeying homeward, and the verdict of murder answers the rash decision to fire upon a silent figure in the dark.