Ghost Stories for Christmas- The Bone Coach of Lady Mary Howard

Merry Christmas Everybody! This season is a time of tradition, and we here at Skullduggery in the Smoke uphold that most Victorian of holiday pageantry: Ghost Stories for Christmas. As in years past, we examine the fanciful and dolorous haunting of the British Isles for adventures ideas suitable for your holly-and-ivy-trimmed gaming table. All our haunting are selected from Peter Underwood’s “Gazetteer of British, Scottish, & Irish Ghosts”. So bring a torch Jeannette Isabella, we’re telling Ghost Stories for Christmas!

In the lovely Devon countryside, a grisly phantom coach travels by night on the sixteen miles of road connecting the mine and market town of Tavistock to the ravaged ruin of Okehampton Castle. The walls, wheels, the entire coach is made from the skeletons of four men; their skulls ornament the coachroof’s corners. A headless driver spurs his equally headless horses onward with a whip smelling of death. A horrible red-eyed black dog runs along the road. Inside the coach, a ghostly woman in white with the face of a skull patiently awaits her journey’s end. This specter is identified by the local superstition as the ghost Lady Mary Howard.

Mary was born in 1596 to the wealthy Fitze family. Her infamous father, John Fitze committed suicide, falsely believing conspirators were closing in on him for a murder he’d committed, when Mary was nine, leaving the girl an heiress. Eager to add her riches to his own, the Earl of Northumberland married the now twelve-year-old girl to his brother, Sir Alan Percy. Percy died from a fever a few months after. Mary found safety from fortune hunters in the arms of Thomas Darcy. Sadly, he too died only a few months after their elopement. Her next marriage to Sir Charles Howard (Earl of Suffolk) was substantially longer but more combative. They fought over her fortune until Howard’s death in 1622, ten years later. Sir Richard Grenville (the grandson of the Sir Richard Grenville discussed in this post) married the three-time widow in 1628. This bitter marriage ended three years later with a divorce. Mary then lived as a recluse in her father’s manor, Fitzeford House, just a mile west of Tavistock until her death in 1671.

Accounts during her lifetime depict Lady Mary as a smart, beautiful, and capable woman who couldn’t be bullied.  After her death, suspicion over the deaths of her spouses and rumors of unnatural cruelty to her children lead to stories of her soul suffering restless penance for eternity in a coach made of her husbands’ bones.

Upon the ghastly coach’s’ arrival at Okehampton, the horrible hound gently and meticulously plucks a single blade of grass out from the ground with his savage teeth. What the dog does next varies in the telling.
Some say it lays the grass on a stone slab after their return to Fitzeford house, or the dog returns to the coach and gives it to the ghost of Lady Mary who clutches the grass to her breast and closes it in a book. She’s doomed to repeat this ceremony every night until the dog has plucked all the grass of Okehampton.

Adventure Ideas

Certain legends about Lady Mary make her into a grim reaper figure. If her coach stops in front of a house one of the occupants is soon to die or if her coach stops near a pedestrian, the coach door opens and Lady Mary invites inside the soon to be departed. As a collector of souls doomed to eternal nightly penance, Lady Mary could make a great spectral assassin for hire. In exchange for 100 blades of grass from Okehampton Castle, she cuts a life short. The victim sees her coach in the street or hears her dog growling a few times before she stops at their house and beckons them for a ride in her coach. If they try to run, the headless horses follow them wherever they go.

The later stories and suspicions of murder probably formed from her father’s reputation and a mistaken identity with Lady Francis Howard, a notorious poisoner contemporaneous to Lady Mary’s life.  How was innocent Lady Mary doomed to the ghastly punishment earned by two wicked souls? Did her father really commit suicide or does he have a larger more immortal goal in mind?

As incredible and bizarre as the bone-coach is, Lady Mary’s ghost has also reportedly appeared as a calf, a greyhound, and a sack filled with eyeballs rolling along the road. Giving a ghost a strange alternate manifestation lends their hauntings more variety, a richer folklore, a new monstrous apparition from which to run.

Ghost Stories for Christmas- William Wallace and the “Devils” of Ardrossan Castle

Merry Christmas Everybody! This season is a time of tradition, and we here at Skullduggery in the Smoke uphold that most Victorian of holiday pageantry: Ghost Stories for Christmas. As in years past, we examine the fanciful and dolorous haunting of the British Isles for adventures ideas suitable for your holly-and-ivy-trimmed gaming table. All our haunting are selected from Peter Underwood’s “Gazetteer of British, Scottish, & Irish Ghosts”. So bring a torch Jeannette Isabella, we’re telling Ghost Stories for Christmas!

In the southwest of Scotland, a tall craggy hill juts up 300 yards from the sandy beach of South Bay. The bleak medieval ruins of Ardrossan castle crown the hill. Only fragments of the keep, part of a tower, and the south range remain. Cellars, tunnels, and a well descend into the hillside throughout the decrepit masonry.

Simon de Morville built the castle in the mid-1100s, at which time it was known as Castle Crags for the rocky hill beneath it. In the 1200s, the castle passed to the Barclay de Ardrossan family and gained their name. Clan Montgomery rebuilt and enlarged the castle after they inherited the castle through marriage in the 1380s. Finally, Oliver Cromwell’s troops destroyed the castle in 1648. They used it’s rubble to build Ayr Citadel, leaving what little remains of Castle Ardrossan. The castle is a disused ruin to this day.

During the First War of Scottish Independence, a garrison of English soldiers guarded Ardrossan castle. The rebellious Scottish knight, William Wallace, lured the soldiers out of the castle by torching a nearby house. The soldiers left their keep and Wallace and his men slaughtered them all on their return. Wallace won the castle and piled the bodies of the dead soldiers in the dungeon to rot. For this reason, the castle’s dungeon is known as “Wallace’s Larder”. The giant figure of Wallace’s ghost stalks the ruins on stormy nights illuminated by flashes of lighting.

Strangely there are two infamous inhabitants of the castle each known as “the Devil of Ardrossan”, both with curious and sketchily recorded histories. One is Sir Fergus Barclay. Sir Barclay lived for horseracing, and no one matched his skill at riding. The secret to his accomplishments was a magical bridle given to Barclay by the devil in exchange for his soul. Barclay somehow tricked the Devil into giving his soul back. Furious he’d been fooled, the devil angrily struck at the castle, leaving a single hoof print in stone. Despite this happy turn, Barclay lost his magic bridle to a racing rival. Sir Fergus Barclay was buried in a churchyard near the castle. Legends state tossing a piece of his tombstone or a handful of his grave dirt into the sea causes devastating storms to beat the Scottish shores. 

The other “Devil of Ardrossan” is named Michael Scott and his story is even more bizarre than Barclay’s! Scott’s father was a fisherman and his mother a mermaid. She gave young Scott a book of dark magic from which he learned to summon and command the devil. Seeing the people of Scotland were forced to pay an unjust tax, Scott commanded the devil to become a horse and take him to confront the Pope in Rome. The devil horse made the journey with a single mighty leap which left hoof prints in the stones of Ardrossan Castle.  Scott gave the Pope an ultimatum, release the people of Scotland from the tax or his horse will nay three times. The horse nayed twice causing the entire city to shake, and the pope agreed before Scot’s horse could open its mouth again.

Adventure Ideas

Everybody loves a murderous ghost. William Wallace died a grisly death at the hand of English executioners.

If his tall wrathful specter returned to his site of victorious slaughter, he might search the castle for more English souls to add to his “larder”.

Having two “Devils of Ardrossan” with so much overlap in their stories is too much of a coincidence. Perhaps it’s a title endowed on a sorcerer in possession of a particular book of magic, and the hoof prints in the stone are a side effect of a final test to prove their worth. Maybe a particularly powerful conjured being leaves footprints in solid stone.

A Petrosomatoglyph is the supposed imprint of human or animal anatomy in rock. Much like the diabolic hoof prints, a ghostly physical feature in stone could be a very creepy focal point for a haunting. Everyone knows the story about how it got there and it’s a constant reminder of a supernatural happening. A Petrosomatoglyph could show up in other surfaces, following a victim where ever they go and eventually show up in their skin.

Ghost Stories for Christmas- The Secret Room of Chambercombe Manor

Merry Christmas Everybody! This season is a time of tradition, and we here at Skullduggery in the Smoke uphold that most Victorian of holiday pageantry: Ghost Stories for Christmas. As in years past, we examine the fanciful and dolorous haunting of the British Isles for adventures ideas suitable for your holly-and-ivy-trimmed gaming table. All our haunting are selected from Peter Underwood’s “Gazetteer of British, Scottish, & Irish Ghosts”. So bring a torch Jeannette Isabella, we’re telling Ghost Stories for Christmas!

Just east of the seaside holiday town of Ilfracombe on Devon’s coast, a cozy country manor hides a grisly secret. Chambercombe (shortened from the house’s true name, Champernowne Combe) is a large white-washed gabled farmhouse surrounded by pleasant elm trees and thick walls. Its current inhabitants are farmers providing nearby villages’ with fresh vegetables and milk, but Chambercombe was the manor house of the Champernowne family since before the 1160s. When that family line ended, Chambercombe passed through several owners until it landed in the hands of Duke Henry of Suffolk. After he and his daughter, the famous Lady Jane Grey who was the queen of England for nine days, were executed for treason, the house became the property of the crown.

With the stain from being the home of infamous traitors, the fortunes of Chambercombe quietly fell through the years to the farmhouse it is today. Little of interest occurred in the house until either 1738 or 1865 when its owner repaired the roof. While deciding which window gave the most advantageous access to his roof, he discovered a window corresponding to none of the known rooms of his home. The owner calculated the interior walls outlining the mysterious gap and knocked a hole through one.

Inside he found black Elizabethan furniture, moldy tapestries, voluminous cobwebs, and laying on a curtained four-poster bed the skeleton of a young lady. Since that day strange sounds and moans emanating from the discovered chamber, and the shadowy figure of a young woman in a white dress standing near the pond startles many visitors. 

Nobody knows the skeleton’s identity with absolute certainty, but the most commonly muttered story is that a young woman named Kate left Chambercombe to marry her lover without her family’s blessing. Their parting was bitter, but she promised to visit. After many years, a ship wrecked on the Devon shore and the woman’s father helped search the coast for survivors. He found a lady lying unconscious and badly maimed on the beach. He took her home and treated her wounds in the comfort of the chamber, but she died. The man discovered gold and jewels on the deceased’s body, sealed her body in the chamber to cover their theft, and used the wealth to purchase his home from his landlord. Next morning, he discovered the only unaccounted passenger of the wrecked ship was his lost daughter Kate.

Adventure ideas

The discovery and exploration of this secret room is something player characters should get to do. If they discover an unknown window or a crack in a wall, a skeleton is the best thing they can find.

Nobody knows exactly who the skeleton was, but court intrigue and royal murder are a part of this house’s past. Could the room hold a centuries’ old secret vital to the empire’s governance? Does the skeleton lead to a secret about the Royal succession from the reign of Bloody Mary?

Another rumor says forbidden spirits of a different sort haunt Chambercombe. Smugglers used a tunnel running under the house to Hele beach a mile away. The secret chamber was simply a secret compartment for illicit scotch and brandy built from an old priest’s hole used to hide from religious persecution. It might also have been used for storage by “wreckers”, criminals who shine bright lights on the coast to lure ships passing through dangerous waters into crashing into rocks so they can murder the crew and rob their cargo.

Chambercombe’s fall from a manor for a noble family down to a farmhouse makes a great angle for a haunting. In many cases, a ghost story is about a secret from a location’s past disturbing the peace of the present. All houses have a history and the strange background of a house long separated from its current use could fill in the gaps of a haunting very easily. 

Ghost Stories for Christmas- Buckland Abbey and the Ghost of Sir Francis Drake

Merry Christmas Everybody! This season is a time of tradition, and we here at Skullduggery in the Smoke uphold that most Victorian of holiday pageantry: Ghost Stories for Christmas. As in years past, we examine the fanciful and dolorous haunting of the British Isles for adventures ideas suitable for your holly-and-ivy-trimmed gaming table. All our haunting are selected from Peter Underwood’s “Gazetteer of British, Scottish, & Irish Ghosts”. So bring a torch Jeannette Isabella, we’re telling Ghost Stories for Christmas!

The Countess of Devon built Buckland Abbey near Yelverton for the Cistercian order of monks in 1278. Monks of the order remained at Buckland until their expulsion by King Henry VIII in the 1540s. The king sold Buckland Abbey to Sir Richard Grenville in 1541. The estate passed to his grandson also named Richard Grenville, an explorer, and privateer. Grenville renovated the abbey’s church into a country home by dividing the large open interior into three floors of rooms. The church’s bell tower remains, though it has been made into a pigeon house. He demolished most of the abbey’s outlying buildings but kept the massive stonework barn intact. Around the grounds, carefully selected and grown plants fill beautiful gardens originally cultivated by the Cistercian monks.

Strangely, Grenville sold Buckland Abbey in 1581, only four years after completing his renovations. After the sale, he discovered the two men purchasing Buckland Abbey were agents of his rival Sir Francis Drake! Grenville had previously planned to undertake a circumnavigation of the world which was preempted by Drake’s historic journey. Despite owning many estates throughout Devon, Drake made Buckland Abby his primary residence between raids, excursions, and cruises. Drake’s stature as a national hero preserved the home from alterations through the years. The Drake family still owns Buckland Abbey.

Even after his death, legends of Drake linger over the house. His sword, Bible, and other possessions remain in the abbey, but the most famous relic of Buckland is Drake’s Drum. Drake carried a drum marked with his family’s crest during his famous circumnavigation of the world. As he lay dying of dysentery in 1596, Drake ordered the drum sent to Buckland Abbey instructing that if England ever needed him again, he would return to save it after hearing the beating of his drum.

Additionally, Drake’s specter supposedly rides across the countryside leading ghostly hounds whose howling is so terribly, the sound instantly kills any living dog hearing it. At night Drake’s ghost leaves Buckland driving a black coach for the port town of Plymouth. Four headless horses pull the coach and stranger still, twelve stunted goblin-like creatures with fiery eyes and smoking nostrils run before it!

Adventure Ideas

There are a few legends saying Sir Francis Drake, not Sir Richard Grenville, remodeled the abbey and it only took three nights of work with the help of the Devil in exchange for Drake’s soul. The legend further posits, Drake’s ghost flees the horrible hounds of hell searching for unbaptized souls. So in summary, Drake’s coach pulled by headless horses pursues strange goblin-things and is pursued by hellhounds trying to claim his soul.  What are the goblins? Do they have his soul or the key to getting his soul back?

Buckland Abbey must have a dark secret history to justify all the peculiar facts in its past. For example, the Church excommunicated the first Cistercian monks inhabiting the abbey shortly after they started their residence. After taking it from the church, the king sold the abbey to Sir Grenville who passed it down to a grandson sharing his name. This grandson sells the abbey to a hated rival coincidentally born only a few miles away. There is something about that house that invites conspiracy. Any house with that past has to be haunted.

Drake’s drum could be a very sinister necromantic object. He may have been tricked by a vengeful necromancer into tying his soul into his drum in an attempt to gain immortality. The drum traveled all the way around the world, Drake was buried at sea, and his body was never recovered so his undead revenant could pop up anywhere the drum is beat to serve his new master.

Ghost Stories for Christmas- The Black Bird of St. Martin’s Church

Merry Christmas Everybody! This season is a time of tradition, and we here at Skullduggery in the Smoke uphold that most Victorian of holiday pageantry: Ghost Stories for Christmas. As in years past, we examine the fanciful and dolorous haunting of the British Isles for adventures ideas suitable for your holly-and-ivy-trimmed gaming table. All our haunting are selected from Peter Underwood’s “Gazetteer of British, Scottish, & Irish Ghosts”. So bring a torch Jeannette Isabella, we’re telling Ghost Stories for Christmas!

The small farming town of West Drayton sits only 16 miles from London. A section of the Great Western Railway connects the idyllic village of only 900 people to the great metropolis. The river Colne transports wheat, oats, and fruit grown in West Drayton’s fields and orchards into the heart of London. Even as industry and modern transportation pull West Drayton into greater modernity, stories of a strange 100-year-old haunting still cause congregants of St. Martin’s church to glance nervously about their place of worship and listen for flapping wings.

St. Martins is a very old wonderfully medieval church. The majority of the exterior made of flint rubble dates to the 1400s, although some section may have been built as long ago as the 1200s. A single tower rises from the church on the west end capped by a cupola.  Roughly twenty marble plaques commemorating important figures in the village’s history line the walls at the end of the pews and high-arched ceilings loom over the congregation. For a century, the specter of a giant black bird disturbed the sanctity of St. Martin’s church. The majority of the encounters with the black bird date back to the late 1700s. The spirit manifests in a number of ways.

Three parishioners heard knocking echoing up from the vaults below the church containing the noble dead of the Paget and De Burgh families. When they peeked into the vault through the grate, they all saw a monstrous bird single-mindedly pecking at a coffin. The bird’s knocking became a regular disturbance on Friday evenings. The parish clerk, his wife, and daughter all repeatedly saw or heard the bird in the church, as did the sexton, a practical man without fear of the unnatural. Most bizarre of all, a group of bell ringers arrived at the church to practice and saw the black bird flying through the chancel. They chased the ghostly bird, shouting and pelting it with stones until a lucky throw smashed a wing and brought it down. When the bell ringers approached to smash it with clubs, the big black bird vanished! After that encounter, the bird often appeared perched on the communion rail or fluttering through the vaults.

The only explanation brought forth for the ghostly bird’s origin is the belief that it’s the soul of a murderer who killed himself and was buried in the churchyard instead of at a crossroads with a stake through its body as was customary.

Adventure Ideas

Although the majority of the Black Bird sightings occurred in the late 1700s, the interior of St. Martins was restored in 1850. All sorts of holy and historical furnishings were added, moved, removed or destroyed. Nothing stirs up a ghost like the refurbishing of its haunt.

One great thing about this haunting is that the black bird manifests audibly (heard fluttering, knocking, and squawking), visually (seen perched or flying through the church), and physically (can be fought and harmed). Giving another sensation to a ghost beside a spooky appearance can give the haunting extra tension. Having the player characters hear the ghost (or worse feeling the ghost) before they see it should add some menace.

The physicality of this ghost is very strange. If it can be harmed it probably isn’t a ghost. For example, it could be undead birds sent by a necromancer that instantly decays when wounded or a bird-like imp that returns to their infernal realm after being defeated, or harpies who sneak back to their lives in West Drayton when their plans are foiled again.

In an interesting historical footnote, an unnamed vicar of St. Martin’s church was excommunicated in 1373. Another record identifies an excommunication at the tame time for a Nicholas of Drayton for publishing heresies. It could be two different men or two accounts of the same man with extra details in each. If a vicar of St. Martin’s church published heretical texts, might that be connected to the black bird? Is it his sacrilegious coffin wrongfully placed in the vault getting pecked?

Whiskers and Wire Cages- Rat Coursing

The rat catcher’s trade provides him with a surplus of live rats. Fortunately, Victorian blood sports, such as rat bating, required a never-ending supply of prey animals few would miss or pity.  The other sport which has made a commodity of captured rats is coursing.

Coursing tests the competing dogs’ raw speed, agility, and ability to catch animals on the run. Because Victorian cities lack privacy and open ground, coursing matches exclusively occur in the country.  To ensure the fleeing animal cannot hide, the dogs all have an equal chance to win, and the spectators can see every moment of sport, coursing contests are held in open terrain with no cover such as a meadow or field.

At the beginning, the sporting gentlemen select two dogs to compete, then the spectators place bets on whether or not the dogs catch the animal, how long the chase lasts, or which dog catches the animal. Then the officials release the “prey” to be pursued onto open ground before loosing the already eager dogs after an agreed up lead time for the animal. Favored dogs might be handicapped by waiting a few extra seconds before their release. The dogs vigorously pursue their quarry until it escapes or the dogs either catch or kill the animal dependent on the stakes. In the case of a tie, the officials decide a winner.

Coursing requires dogs with keen eyesight, tremendous endurance, and most importantly speed. Purebred greyhounds earn the most attention at coursing contests for the upper crust and dependable lurchers (a crossbreed of sighthounds often kept by poachers) are competitive coursers at lower class events. The prey animals used for coursing could be rabbits, foxes, deer or most commonly rats.

Rat catchers hold a position of honor at coursing weekends in the country. As the supplier of the all-important rats, catchers are amply compensated for their time and the death of their rats by money, good food, spirits, and a stay in a fine hotel away from the city. Additionally, if his rats are bought by an aristocratic coursing club, the rat catcher has the company of a better class of gentlemen and upwardly mobile social contacts which could lead to work in the future. Occasionally, the sporting gentlemen even want to take part in procuring their rats as well. They hire the rat-catcher to lead them and their dogs on rat hunts along streams and fields in the morning before an afternoon of coursing. Well-organized rat-catchers could sell about 100 to 150 rats a week in the country to face death in rat-coursing. The rats must, of course, be in good health and able to run.

Having no stake in what dog wins, rat-catchers often serve as a judge in case the winner at coursing is not immediately clear. This can be a dangerous position for the rat-catcher. Coursing draws large crowds, especially in coal villages, and in a crowd of 500 working men wagering their earnings on a rat coursing match, not everyone will agree with the rat-catchers rulings.

Adventure Ideas

Between the dogs, the rats, the terrain, and the officials, there are a lot of pieces to a fair and just rat coursing. Any number of factors could be juggled or shoved into place to ensure a risky wager becomes a “sure thing”.

After a few months of examining two of the grimmest and dirtiest of Victorian jobs, it’s time for the hope and joy of a Dickensian Christmas! Next week, is the beginning of our annual holiday tradition ghost Stories for Christmas!

Whiskers and Wire Cages- Rat Baiting

Rat-catchers perform a necessary if brutal service for human civilization, however their vocation also made possible spectacles of slaughter entertaining to Victorians of all societal circles. Despite the Cruelty to Animals Act of 1835, such sport continues without penalty because of mankind’s hatred of rats, although a dog’s participation in these sports is distasteful to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. 

At its core rat-baiting tests a dog’s ability to quickly kill rats. Pubs and gambling dens often host nights of rat-baiting, but other establishments are dedicated solely to the sport with only meager refreshments for their clientele. The love of rat-baiting breaks through social barriers. Men and women from all classes pay the shilling entry fee to show off their dog’s pedigree and to enjoy the display of skillful violence. Rat-baiting dogs tend to be terriers, bulls, or a crossbreed of one or the other.

The sport is confined to the rat pit, a circular enclosure on the floor or a hole below it about 6-10 feet in diameter surrounded by wooden walls four feet high. The pit must be round to prevent rats from defensively cowering in corners, and to keep both dog and rats constantly in motion. Dog owners, dog fanciers, and dog sellers purchase a number of rats, usually 5 or 10, from the establishment’s rat handlers. Once the rats are all in, the sporting dog is loosed in the rat pit eager to kill. Dog owners can go into the pit to encourage and direct their dog, but they cannot purposefully touch the rats.

High-stake matches with well-known ratters owned by established trainers are the highlight of the evening with much wagering with the house bookie. These dogs face many more rats, usually in multiples of 50, and compete to kill the most rats in the shortest amount of time.  A timekeeper and referee enforce the rules. The referee also judges which rats are “dead”. They gather any rat mortally wounded but still breathing after the allotted time in a circle drawn on a on table or floor. Any rat able to crawl out of the circle after the referee swatted its tail three times did not count towards the dog’s total of dead rats. One rat killed for every five seconds the dog spent in the pit is respectable, one rat every 3 seconds is extraordinary. Winning dogs are awarded silver collars, a purse of winnings, and a host of fanciers interested in purchasing of their offspring.

Occasionally, rat pits feature spectacles of a more novel sort, such as dog or cock fights, dog- baiting, and other monstrous sport. Strangest of all, a depraved or desperate man frequents rat-baiting matches in London and wagers with spectators that he can catch and kill more rats with his teeth than the last dog in the pit. He wins a great deal of money.

Adventure Ideas

After a night of rat-baiting, the hosting establishment collects the rat carcasses and places them outside to be picked by up rubbish collectors in the morning. The last few nights, something or someone has been hungrily helping themselves to the dead rats.

Rat pits consistently host displays of violence, aggression, and death confined to the same location week after week. Any sources of dark magic nearby could feed on such potent destruction, although these dark energies would undoubtedly reflect back on the dogs, twisting their forms and instincts in subtle malicious ways.

A pretty gruesome setting detail, if I say so myself. Rats may be rats, but that’s very cruel. Sadly, this isn’t the only blood sport to which the Victorians subjected rats. Next week we’ll look at rat-coursing.

Whiskers and Wire Cages- Ferrets and Ratting Dogs

Rat-catchers almost never work alone. Many hire apprentices or partners to help cover more ground or to minimize the risk of injury during dangerous nocturnal work. Most commonly, rat-catchers use trained (if not tamed) animals to more efficiently track and corner unwelcome infestations.

Rats are terrified of ferrets with good reason. Their long lean bodies slide through tunnels and holes inaccessible to rat-catchers, and their sharp teeth kill rats with a single bite to the neck. The strong scent of their natural predator is often enough to scare rats into blindly running to safety.  Ferreting should always be undertaken during the day when the ferrets are alert and the rats snug in their dens. 

Careful breeding over hundreds of years makes game dogs, such as terriers, bull and terriers, schnauzers, pinchers, and old English bulldogs, perfect rat hunters.  A dog’s smell finds unseen rats and follows their underground tunnels from above. Hunting dogs chase down rats too fast for the rat-catcher’s net or crafty enough to escape it. Small gutsy dogs, especially terriers, follow rats into their burrows. Rat’s “lucky” enough to survive a dog’s first bite, die soon after from a neck broken by vigorous shaking held in the dog's teeth. All dogs used by a rat-catcher must have a license.

Aided by these natural abilities and instincts, the stratagems of rat-catchers reaches new levels of cunning, ferocity, and brutality:

Hosts of sewer rats climb up into homes through damaged drains or by eating through the clay used to cover the joining of two differently-sized pipes. Hunting ferrets released into the walls and foundation scares the majority back through the water closets or drains through which they entered. The drains and pipes should then be repaired and a few nights trapping catches any remaining rats.

When hunting rats in rooms full of hiding places some rat-catchers spend a week feeding the rats with oats or bread until they discover all the trails leading to their holes in the walls and floor. On their first night of trapping, they bring along two terriers. First the rat-catcher stuff rags into the rat holes trapping the rats foraging in the room. Then the rat-catcher releases one dog to hunt through the room startling uncovered rats into running for safety. The remaining terrier intercepts the fleeing rats until all the vermin are dead or caught.

When ferreting in a large building with many floors, rat-catchers tackle the job one floor at a time beginning at the top. The rat-catcher removes a floorboard at one end of the room and covers the entire hole with a trapping net. On the other side of the room, they pull up another floorboard and let the ferret through. The rats, terrified of the ferret, dash through the opposite hole into the net. Any rats remaining trapped under the floor can be scooped up by hand, or with a net mounted on a pole. A professional, well equipped rat-catcher can clear two floors a day using this methodology. Cayenne pepper or some other scent repellent to rats liberally sprinkled prevents rats from migrating back to floors already serviced.

When clearing a barn or warehouse without an internal water source, rat catchers search for the trail to water on which the rats habitually travel. After dark, they cut off the rat’s escape by hanging a long net around the side or all of the building. While the rats drink, the rat-catcher unleashes his dogs at near the water sending the rats scurrying directly into his nets. The dogs catch any remaining rats, and further rats on premises can be cleared by a couple of nights trapping.

Adventure ideas

The ferret’s love of stealing small items can lead to trouble. When a rat-catcher returned his animals to their cages after a day of ferreting he found one ferret clenching a strange bauble in its teeth. No one in the house claims it.

As if this was not gruesome enough, we have even more distressing misuses of animals next week. We’ll look at rat killing in Victorian sport next week.

Whiskers and Wire Cages- How to Catch a Rat

Obviously, the simplest method to catch a rat is with a rat trap. Most amateurs make the same mistake of planting the same trap in the same place with the same bait. A rat’s feral cunning learns from the deaths of its fellows. After one or two night’s good work the trap lays untouched, however, rat-catchers know how to make the most effective use of their resources.

At first, any traps set across a rat’s tunnels or tracks do not need bait. Once the rats grow wary of the traps, a small pile of sawdust mixed with oats camouflages the trap’s workings and lures the rats to their capture. Soot, tissue paper mixed with hayseeds, or aniseed works once the rats grow fearful of piles of sawdust. Never use a solid chunk of food, or the rat will simply pick up the food to eat later in its den. To prevent the traps smelling of man they should be handled as little as possible.

Tinkers, toy-makers, and rat-catchers manufacture a stunning variety of traps such as the simple wire basket with an opening at the top and no way to climb out, the wire cage with a mechanism to close door immediately after the rat’s entry, or the more gruesome steel-jawed traps designed to close as a paw rests a rat's weight on the pressure plate. Most professionals avoid setting lethal traps unless the infesting rats are sewer rats or worse.

A professional rat-catcher could plant 10-50 traps depending on the size of the building and the number of traps he owns. They quietly wait and watch, patrolling their traps in case of a catch. Once a rat is caught or killed they reset their trap and continue their vigil until a little after midnight when the rats become less active, however a rat-catcher should always put in an appearance bright and early the next morning both to collect his traps and to grab any rats captured later that night before they can escape by gnawing off a limb. Any rat that escapes from a trap in this way won’t be fooled by traps again. Rat-catchers try to eliminate infestations during January or February before the rats begin breeding with greater rapidity in the spring. This serves both to eliminate future generations and to avoid the hassle trying to catch young rats small enough to squeeze into any nook or cranny.

Despite selling their own lethal concoctions to rat-beleaguered families, very few rat-catchers professionally use rat poison in the city. You can’t be certain of an immediately lethal dose, leaving most rats enough longevity  to crawl back under the floor to die, leaving a multitude of hard-to-remove decomposing rat carcasses. The owners of the premises invariably blame the rat-catcher for the horrific smell, demand he removes the bodies, and never ask for his services again.

Adventure Ideas

The thieves carefully planned their heist and tonight’s the night! After breaking in they find small mounds of sawdust and oats in the hall and waist-high nets strung through doorways. They hear muffled yips and scuffles in the walls. Can they complete their robbery with the extra complication of a rat-catcher working on the premises?

All rat-catchers know the stories of Boksby the uncatchable three-legged sewer rat. Whenever traps activate by themselves, the rats avoid the bait, or a nasty old rat gets away on three paws, rat-catchers claim Boksby has returned for revenge. One tavern popular with rat-catchers even has a bounty for Boksby’s carcass.

Now that we all know how to catch rats, we can look at the essential animal allies of the rat-catcher. Next week, we’ll examine the many morally troublesome uses of ferrets and rat dogs.

Whiskers and Wire Cages- The Work of a Rat-Catcher

In Victorian England, hordes of rats invade every building to eat, proliferate, and destroy. As architecture and engineering advanced, rats found new ways to invade and new delicacies to eat and destroy. Skilled rat-catchers devised their own tricks to outwit nature’s perfect scavenger.

Some businesses prone to rat invasion (such as tobacco shops, woodworkers, or granaries) contract a rat-catcher by the month or year to handle infestations as necessary. The cost per year to retain a rat-catcher’s services ranges from 1 guinea (one pound and one shilling) to 5 pounds per year depending on the size of the building. For short-term jobs, rat-catchers charge by the night, 2-8 shillings.  All rat-catchers are self-employed, and these high-sounding prices cover the costs of traps, trap repairs, dogs, dog licenses, nets, net repairs, cages, and ferrets. While a simple bag is fine for collecting rats while checking traps, rats should be transferred into strong wire cages for transport and to avoid escape or harm.

Enterprising rat-catchers know a live healthy rat is worth more than a dead rat. Rats can be bred for distinct colorations as pets and curiosities, but most of the rats caught by rat-catchers are bought by purveyors of sport, such as Rat-Baiting or Rat-Coursing, for 3 pence a rat. At harvest time, rat-catchers leave the city behind to catch rats scavenging threshed corn and grain. Even a mediocre rat-catcher could collect 50 or more healthy rats a day with little trouble just by laying traps around fields and barns.

 Although lucrative, rat-catching is not pleasant work. Much of the rat-catchers work happens at night when rats are most active. A strange man prowling around a closed business at night with a directional lantern looks very suspicious, so most rat-catchers inform local constabularies before undertaking a night’s work. Rat-catchers spend long nights in cold, damp, and often unsanitary places, plunging arms into walls to pull out struggling rats, closing broken sewer drains, watching traps, and disturbing rat nests in high rafters. Most dreadful of all, are the inevitable rat bites which rat-catchers must accept as an inevitable hazard of their profession. In fact, you can recognize a rat-catcher by the multitude of scars covering his hands and face. Rats have strong jaws and long teeth which often bite down to the bone. Heavy leather breeches protect rat-catchers legs and ropes tied around their ankles prevent rats climbing up their pant legs, but most rat-catchers avoid wearing thick gloves so they can feel their work in the dark. Infected rat bites lead to swelling, throbbing, and putrefaction. Rat-catchers pragmatically treat their wounds by lancing open the infected area, cleaning it of pus, and applying a homemade ointment. Horrible fevers bringing rat-catchers to death’s door for a few weeks is all part of the job.

Adventure Ideas

All rat-catchers agree the worst job in London is the Guildhouse. As the home of the Worshipful Company of Hermeticists, the Guildhouse is full of thaumaturgical equipment, dangerous enchantments, and grumpy careless magicians. The building’s halls and rooms don’t follow the laws of nature very well, and nobody thinks to warn rat-catchers about the magical spells protecting certain corridors from prying eyes. Worst of all, the rats don’t behave the way rats should. Sometimes they breathe fire, sometimes they fly, and sometimes they talk.

Now that we have the basics covered, we can move onto the clever, cruel, and creative methods rat-catchers used to catch rats.

Whiskers and Wire Cages: The Rats of England

In the Victorian world divided by class, race, and nationality, the horror of rats unites all. Their fanged, disease-carrying bodies cause less fear than the damage and ruination brought by their ravenous appetites. Armed with experience, courage, the proper tools of the job, and strong stomachs, Victorian rat-Catchers labored to protect their clients, homes, business and property from infestations. We’re examining the work of rat-catchers and how they could be brought to the gaming table, but first we must first familiarize ourselves with their prey.

Broadly, there are two species of rats in the British Isles: black rats and brown rats. Black rats arrived in England with the Romans and are now found all through the countryside, scavenging in barns, fields, and along river banks. Brown rats, or wharf rats are a foreign species introduced to the British Isles sometime in the early 1700s. Brown rats are larger than black rats and will eat practically anything, two traits which help them thrive in cities, pushing the smaller species out to the country.

Professional rat-catchers further divide rats by habitat, health, and disposition:

-Barn Rats or Burrow Rats are always black rats caught in the countryside, and are cleaner and healthier than rats caught in the city. Their bites tend to heal cleanly with little danger of disease because of their diet of corn and feed. 

-Sewer Rats and Drain Rats are universally brown rats. Their horrific diet of scavenging in the sewer gives their bites a high chance of infection and blood poisoning. Even their fur carries disease, leading some rat-catchers to believe they are poisonous.

-Red Rats feed daily on flesh, such as discarded fat outside a tannery or scraps stolen from the dead horses fed to dogs kept in kennels. Their diet gives them a boldness and ferocity greater than other rats. If a variety of rats inhabit a cage for a night, only the red rats will remain alive in the morning,

- Some rat-catchers tell stories about “Blood Rats”, large vicious rats with hairless heads and long fangs, giving them a “snake-like head”.  These strange creatures supposedly steal into children’s rooms at night and gnaw at their extremities.

As sewers grow more efficient, fetid food sources flow out before they can be eaten, bringing sewer rats up to the surface. They crawl up drains and chew through lead pipes to scavenge in homes and warehouses. Rats nibble fine fabric and soft woods to wear down their teeth, ruining fine furniture, clothes, and furnishings. In farms, feeds stores, warehouses, grocers, and kitchens rats eat harvested goods, steal extra to take back to their nest, and spoil a great quantity more. Rats even kill poultry and steal eggs by rolling them to their nest, making the vermin a true bane to any chicken farm.

They thrive in the city, thanks to their terrific cunning and adaptability. Wherever one rat is spotted, dozens more lie in hiding. Rats breed quickly with litters of up to 20 pups and can become pregnant immediately after birth.  Some naturalists decry their extermination, believing a healthy population of rats in the sewers helps mankind by reducing the amount of decaying waste from which waft “sickening vapors” carrying plagues up from the drains, but when small piles of scat sprout up in the pantry, everyone calls the rat-catcher.

Adventure Idea

Each morning a certain anatomist finds that the books, tools, and chemicals in his dissection room have been moved during the night. He has taken more precautions to secure the room each day, such as locking the door, baring the windows and requesting constables to check his home’s exterior during their rounds. The only openings left are a few pipes the rats chewed open, but they couldn’t be possibly the culprits.

According to legend, basilisks and cockatrices are born when a toad or snake sits on a yokeless egg. What happens when a rat accidentally sits on a stolen chicken egg just before it hatches? A Ratalisk? A Cockatrat?

Next week we get down to business, by looking at the work of the Rat-Catcher.

Nourish and Extinguish- Salamanders in Victoriana

Victoriana is as much fantasy as it is rooted in 1850s history, so as I wrote about chimney sweeps my mind wandered into more fantastic waters. Fire elementals and medieval bestiaries kept popping up, but I didn’t have room for them in my previous posts. So now, here are some ideas and rules for Salamanders in Victoriana.

While many cold-blooded creatures thrive in heat, the salamander is truly Pyrophillious.  Unlike the amphibian of the same name, salamanders rest in blazing flames without burning or bother. Fire warms their blood, cleans their skin, and serves as a sanctuary for eggs about to hatch. Should a fire grow too hot for the salamander’s tastes, glands in its skin sweat a milky flame-quenching liquid, a teaspoon of which dripped into a fireplace quickly extinguishes all flames leaving only lukewarm ash and smoke. Salamanders wander into camps and homes in search of unattended hearths or open flames. Modern industry attracted salamanders out of marshes and forests into the cities of Europe and Asia in search of a nice warm fire.

A fully grown salamander spans 2-4 feet from their blunt nose to their thick tail and weighs between 30 to 70 pounds. Their four legs terminate with curiously human-like hands. Moist pitch-black skin mottled with bright yellow stripes or spots covers their long chubby bodies. Strangely, the temperature of the fire surrounding their egg when they hatch drastically affects their coloration and demeanor. If their fire grows too warm, orange or even red hues creep into the yellow patches and their ferocity grows to the point of attacking with little provocation. If the fire dies before they hatch, their pigmentation dulls to a dark brown and they have a more docile temperament.

A deadly poison covers a salamander’s skin, causing irritation, hair loss, and convulsions upon contact.  Prolonged exposure or ingestion brings death in minutes. Some medieval legends describe predatory salamanders killing a full grown man by leaping on his head, and rubbing their belly on his face. Paradoxically, the salamander’s excretions and skin save countless lives every year. Tanned salamander hide loses little of its inherent flame-retardant qualities. Salamander skin gloves protect engineers and craftsman attached to prestigious firms and the most successful chimney sweeps wear full suits of salamander skin when battling chimney fires, although many only claim to own a salamander suit in order to raise their credibility.  Salamander farms collect their excretions for fighting fires and a host of industrial applications.

Salamanders are not native to the British Isles. The nearest native population of Salamanders slither in the French countryside across the channel, despite the efforts of local hunters to rid their home of such a dangerous creature.

Salamander

Initiative: 8

Physical: 8

Mental: 3

Health Pips: 4

Special Traits:

Pyrophillious- Salamander’s bodies are adapted to heat and possess Armor Value 8 against any fire damage. A salamander may spend an action to extinguish flames touching its body.

Regeneration x3- (See page 294 in Victoriana 3rd Edition Rulebook) In addition to quickly regaining hit points, Salamanders can regrow lost legs or a lost tail a few days after their loss. A Salamander’s body loses its regenerative abilities at death.

Poisonous Skin- Any character touching a salamander with their bare skin must pass a Fortitude test against the poison’s potency of 8. Whether they pass or fail, the character’s skin exposed to the poison turns bright red and stings causing -1 to the character’s Dexterity.

On a failure, the character suffers -2 health per round and an additional -1 to their Dexterity. These effects continue until the character passes a Fortitude test (5 black dice), another character passes a Medicine test with 5 black dice, or the character’s death.  

Damage: Bite (2)

It was pretty nice to just come up with a monster this week after wallowing in horrid squalor, however we will return to the worst jobs of Victorian England next week with a look at Rat-Catchers. I hope you enjoy.

Bristles and Brushes- Luck and Divination

After plunging ourselves into all the disease, danger, and despair in the life of a chimney sweep, let’s consider some of the charming and strange lore connected to their profession.

The Luck of the Sweep

European superstition clings to a belief seemingly ridiculous to anyone familiar with the hard cruelty of the chimney’s sweeps life: Chimney Sweeps are Lucky!  Back in the 1700s, King George II rode in a royal procession until his horse began savagely bucking.  The king held on for dear life until a lowly chimney sweep ran forward and calmed the horse. The sweep left before the king could bestow a royal reward on his savior. Recognizing the sweeps profession by his soot-covered clothes, the king declared all sweeps to be lucky. Or in a strikingly similar story, a chimney sweep rescued King William the Conqueror from an out of control horse and cart, and that grateful king made the proclamation of luck. Of course, it could just be that the sight of a chimney sweep reminds everyone how lucky they are to not be members of that profession.

Practically any encounter with a chimney sweep (save for their visits to clean a chimney) imparts luck to those around them. If a sweep kisses a bride on her wedding day or if a sweep attends the wedding, the marriage will be happy. Passing a sweep on the street or shaking hands with a sweep transfers luck. Finally and most lucky of all is meeting a sweep on the street on New Year’s Day. Some sweeps make extra money attending weddings and selling handshakes to superstitious or desperate people. This belief opens doors that would remain shut to an ordinary member of the working-class covered from head to toe in filth.

Tephromancy and Capnomancy

In addition to cleaning and clearing a stopped up flue, chimney sweeps with a foot in the spirit world might perform oracular services. All over the world, civilizations current and ancient searched cinders, soot, ash, and smoke for clues about their future. Even Victorian Englishmen performed the rite of “Riddling the Ashes”. They spread ash over the hearth on certain holy days such as St. Mark’s Eve or Halloween and checked it the next morning for the footprints of any person in the household to die in the coming year (or the footprint of a future husband, or the footprint of a future child).

Reading the remains of a fire is called Tephramancy. Most traditions hold only the ashes of a sacrificial fire hold any meaning, but family life revolves around the hearth. A fireplace might have some very personal prognostications if someone took the time to look for them. Similarly to Tephromancy, Capnomancy divines the future through the movement of smoke. Chimney sweeps know how smoke should behave as a part of their profession. They would be the first to notice when it flows in a way it shouldn’t, gathers strangely, or turns the wrong color.

Adventure Ideas

A certain gambling den has been plagued by a string of incredible lucky streaks. Every night the house loses far too much money from bets on rat-baiting. The only connection between the lucky winners is the small dirty kid that pets the rat-terriers before they start.

No matter what precautions they take, the chimney sweeps make a mess whenever they clean out the chimney in Mrs. Swale’s boarding house. It’s odd how the soot only clings to items belonging to that mysterious tenant.

Next week, we’ll finish up by looking at a semi-mythological creature with interesting connections to the work of the chimney sweep: the Salamander.

Bristles and Brushes- The Health of the Chimney Sweep

As we look into the unpleasant facts of a chimney sweep’s life, it’s as dark and dirty as the flues they cleaned. Sweeps, some as young as four, lived short unloved lives performing dangerous work in deplorable conditions. The older a sweep ages, the more his profession takes.

In exchange for meager room and board, climbing boys risked their lives and lost their health. Horrific sores opened on their elbows and legs, rubbed raw from climbing and bracing up countless flues. Some master sweeps toughened their apprentice's young sensitive skin by brushing in brine (water mixed with salt) as they stood close to a warm fire. Working in a confined space with no air flow while purposefully stirring up contaminants in the air does no good for the bodies of growing children. A nasty fall from high up a flue crippled many sweeps for life, and some grew up deformed from the rigors of their work before their bones stopped growing. Disturbed soot particulates spread through the air, causing tears in inflamed eyes, and range of respiratory problems if frequently breathed in. If a sweep stuck and suffocated to death halfway up a flue, the bricks of the chimney had to be torn out to remove the body.

Outside of work, frequent beatings from the master sweep, malnutrition, and filthy living conditions destroyed an apprentice’s health further. By law, master sweeps must provide their apprentices with a bath once a week, but many went dirty for longer than a month. Particularly nasty sweeps never provided their charges with bedding, so many climbing boys slept in the bags they used to collect soot.

The constant accumulation of carcinogenic soot had little chance of being washed away. Years of exposure cursed most sweeps with large dark scrotal warts, known as “soot warts”. Soot warts often developed into cancer which spread fatally into the abdomen. More chimney sweeps contracted cancer than any other profession in London due to their daily exposure to soot. Percival Potts famously connected the sweep’s cancer to their occupational exposure in 1775, making public the easily avoided danger. The sweeps of continental Europe adopted tight-fitting, hooded body suits and daily baths, but English sweeps clung to their methodologies.

Adventure Ideas

Recently a number of child sweeps died in the chimneys of houses in the same community as a crusader against child labor. Boys looking remarkably similar to the dead sweeps have recently enrolled in a boys school.

Thaumaturgists, sigil scribes and petty mages often use fire as a key component to their spellcasting preparation. The sweeps hired to clean a magician’s chimney would contract more otherworldly ailments from soot sprinkled with magical particulates.

The nasty brine mixture rubbed into the apprentice’s skin could have a more supernatural quality. Civilizations all across the world use salt circles and salt water to keep fairies, evil spirits, ghosts, and other horrors at bay.  Is there something in the chimneys of London that would harm sweeps if not for the presence of salt water in the skin?

Enough of that. Next week, we move back into the fantastical side as we look at odd folklore and superstitions connected with sweeps.