Sixth Sense - Part 1 by Judy Mitchell

Friday 8 December 1854

The Gymnasium Hall, Ramsden Street, Huddersfield

Some thought it the most wicked sorcery they had ever witnessed. They were pleased to scurry home through the wet streets to bolt their doors, say their prayers and try to dispel the images of the piercing, demonic gaze of the man billed as a Lecturer in Mesmerism, Phrenology, Clairvoyance and Animal Magnetism. But these stubborn sceptics were in the minority. Most left the Hall that night believing they had seen acts of wonder and supernatural powers. They had watched volunteers being placed in a mesmeric sleep and then told to get into an imaginary rowing boat before being cast adrift on a stormy sea. As these entranced sailors held on to the sides of a boat only they could see, their bodies were flung from side to side on waves which washed only through their own imaginations.

Under the influence of the celebrated Captain Hudson, others were persuaded to assume the identity of a steam train, their shushing and squealing brakes and the sound of their shrill whistles filled the auditorium and mixed with the uncontrollable laughter and applause of the large audience.  Then there was the young volunteer who had sought a cure for his embarrassing stutter which miraculously disappeared when he later replied to Captain Hudson’s questions.  And each time those volunteers who had been persuaded to go up on stage emerged from their states of trance, they discovered an audience clapping wildly in front of them. They looked from one to the other with puzzled expressions, unaware that they had provided part of the evening’s entertainment.

Henry Hudson had toured the country espousing his new interest in mesmerism for four years after a career as a sea captain. His lined face still bore witness to a life enduring the oceans’ salty blasts and his voice, with its up-and-down Durham dialect, projected easily from the stage into the ears of the audience below.

‘Wasn’t this the man who was a keen supporter of the Temperance Movement?’ Some in the audience asked as they waited for the lights to dim. ‘Isn’t he the sea captain who only ever tolerated a crew of pledged abstainers?’

Many nodded their acknowledgement of Hudson’s commendable morals, eager to thwart any chance of the man being thought a charlatan or a pedlar of gimmickry. Some in the theatre that evening chose to remind others that this was the same man who had so generously donated the proceeds of an earlier lecture to Holmfirth’s flood relief charity following the disaster there only two years earlier.   

The shows continued for more than a week and on some evenings the audience was enthralled by the appearance of a young girl from Moldgreen, Mary Challand, an associate of the Mesmerist. She had been placed in a hypnotic trance by Hudson and had reached out to communicate with those who had passed into the other world.  Loud ‘Oohs’ and ‘Aahs’ came from the full room of people, eager to be impressed with the manifestations she conjured.

For several families from Marsden who had made the journey into town to see the Mesmerist, they returned home eager to declare to their friends and families that their belief in this art had not been shaken by the Lecturer. Quite the opposite.

‘Surely,’ they went on to argue, ‘There’s things beyond t’ wit o’ Marsden folk like us. ‘Sides, theerz them as is more prone tut secrets of nature.’

On one thing they were agreed. Their evening had been one of unexplained magic and mystery.

Thursday 14 December 1854

The Old Ram Inn, Marsden, West Riding of Yorkshire

Rain dripped from the drayman’s bulbous nose as he started to unload. The tarpaulin he had thrown to one side, flapped like a shiny, wet seal in the storm that circled the Old Ram Inn on Towngate that evening.  Deep voices shouted up from the cellar and in the snug, the storm blew like bellows in the sooty chimney. Window frames clacked loudly as barrels rumbled down below. Now and then, between the pauses of the thick hollas and whoas and the battering of the storm raging outside, the sound of girls’ voices rose sweetly into the cold air of an upstairs room as the landlord’s daughter and her friend rehearsed their parts for a Sunday School event to be held the following week.

Sarah Ann Lumb, fifteen years old, the innkeeper’s daughter and her friend, Hannah Haigh, practised their words until, at around 8 o’ clock and tired of the repetition of their pieces, Hannah rose to leave. Sarah confirmed her intention to walk part of the way with her before turning at Snail Horn Bridge to return home to her bed.

Outside the storm had gathered even more strength threatening to lift the two slight figures off their feet. With their hands clasped under their chins, they battled against the slanting rain and the howling gale which pulled at the shawls wrapped tightly around their heads. They passed the houses on Towngate and after 300 yards reached Snail Horn Bridge over the River Colne where they parted. Later, as Hannah reached her home on Waring Bottom, she was seen by Sarah’s brother, John, who too was returning home in the dark and stormy night.

As the inn door slammed behind him, John Lumb called out to his sister.

‘Just seen Hannah. She made it home OK. Wet through she was.’

He paused and listened for her reply but there was none.

His mother came from the scullery, wiping her hands on a cloth. ‘Have you seen our Sarah?’

Sarah Lumb did not return home that evening. By midnight, growing numbers of men with torches assembled outside the inn door. As they walked towards the bridge, the wind whipped their shouts of ‘Sarah’ up into the inky blackness of the sky before their cries tumbled down into the gush of the wild torrent running high under the bridge and up the soft muddy banks.

News of Sarah’s disappearance was broken to Hannah Haigh by her grandmother later that night.

                ‘Did Sarah say she was going straight home?’ ‘Did you hear anything as you reached the bridge, Hannah?’

She stared at her grandmother, her mind unable to understand where her friend might have gone or why. She heard men’s voices in the scullery, their clogs drumming on the stone floor. The door banged in the gale and then the stamp of feet outside marching by the window, faces lit by the flaring torches.    

Through the night, Sarah’s parents watched and waited as village folk searched along the swollen river, the men returning to the inn with despair etched on their faces. Mary Lumb, Sarah’s mother, feared drowning or that her daughter may have been attacked. The five other Lumb children gathered around her, silently watching and waiting as men with long poles came into the inn and shook their heads in front of the huddled shapes of the girl’s parents.

Friday 15 December 1854

Mr Samuel Dowse’s Damstakes in the River Colne

By dawn, the weather had abated slightly leaving flooding by the river and in the fields and a growing sense of helplessness and desperation which permeated the efforts of those who continued to walk the length of the river.

It was mid-morning when a cry went up and men were seen reaching to retrieve a sodden piece of flannel which trailed one edge into the dirty water with its other edges snagged like a piece on tenter hooks, across the bare branches of a hedge ripped from the embankment in the storm.   

Hurrying the quarter of a mile back to the inn, the skirt was passed to the girl’s mother. Her cries of anguish confirmed they had found Sarah’s skirt.    

Tuesday 19 December 1854

Messrs Sykes Damstakes in the River Colne

Four days passed with no further news. Samuel Whitehead, a local builder and the girl’s uncle, had posters printed offering a £5 reward to anyone who found his young niece. Plans for Christmas celebrations were reviewed and at the Sunday School there would be only a few readings and plays. When Sarah’s shawl was found later that day further along the river, it seemed it would only be a matter of hours before there would be a body.

Sunday 24 December 1854

The Old Ram Inn, Marsden

They found her flannel petticoat in the river on Christmas Eve. Turning it over in her rough hands, her mother thought it was a sign her daughter wanted to return to them at this special time of the year and so they sat in silence with the lamps burning low in the windows of the inn and with a strange sense of emptiness pervading the rooms.

Despite their vigil, Sarah did not return and over Christmas, men and women began to quietly discuss a proposal to seek a different sort of help to find the girl. Could the art of mesmerism be used to find Sarah?

To be continued next week.