Ghost and trains
In a completely no morbid way, 2023 has seen a growing interest in ghost for me, often has the conversation been do I believe or not?
Truth be told I sit firmly on the fence and that is despite my own experiences of being out camping or from when I was younger and being told that our own house was in fact haunted and there was many a time when footsteps would heard coming up the stairs in the early hours, or the dog would sit and stair at the corner chairs in our room and shadows would be seen moving up the stairs.
This year I aim to sleep over in a spooky location or locations with my want to stop in a haunted bothy of some description in the UK (a bothy is a mountain hut free to stop in usually in the middle of now where), Mrs Beard is all to keen to get on this latest intrigue of mine as she is a firm believer in the otherworldly.
My first foray of the year saw me head to the very own New Street station now a grand open plan venues with numerous eateries and shops, I of course remember New Street before the change, dark, unwelcoming and always smelling of diesel fumes.
I have often been through New Street on my travels and enjoy it’s almost planed randomness with the many and varied characters that inhabit its walkways, New Street never existed as a main station until around 1848 when construction started to build a singular more central station which encompassed the four different junctions in that area.
It was here at this time of great construction that a Jewish cemetery was dug up to make way for the new station, unfortunately I can only find sparse details of this project via other peoples ‘haunted’ stories which tell of the station being doomed from the start due to the disturbance of the dead.
This little section of Birmingham was originally called The Froggery and is where the first Jewish groups settled in a particularly poor part of Birmingham and a synagogue was establish for the community here.
It is no wonder than the Victorians of the time chose to build here, heir ultimate aim if not openly talked about was to remove the reported crime ridden community and squalor from their self imposed gentlemanly realm, there is no real information on how many of the dead were moved and only scant information that they may have been re-interned at the near by Betholom Row Jewish Burial Ground located near to 5 Ways Island or to Witton which were both centres for Jewish cemeteries. I remember many moons ago going on a ghost walk around Birmingham and being told that spectral horse and carts could be heard rumbling along the streets from New Street towards what is know locally as pigeon park, perhaps the many bodies removed from New Street now play out a ghostly show in the small hours.
Another story from the infamous platform 4 is that of a man who took his own life there in 1936, Walter Hartles was reported to have been a retired engine driver from Gloucester and after a period of separation from his wife, took a revolver and shot himself in the chest, it was reported that he was found in the waiting room of PL4 alone and still slumped in the chair.
I did find a very brief mention of Walters name in a news paper article from a year previous when he gave evidence at the death of another driver which was put down to driver error and excess speed where the engine he was driving over turned crushing him, what part he played in this is not known and he was recorded as having been retired at that point. What is odd though in a follow up article a few days post his death, it was said that Walter was stopping in Birmingham and had made some plans to return home?
Walter is now said to be waiting on the platform for an onward journey that will never come and is sometimes seen standing on the platform waiting.
On the 19th October 1875 another death took place somewhere in New street station, noted as being the Midland platform, a man walking with his brother suddenly produced a pistol and shot himself in the heart. His brother reported that he had been unwell mentally for sometime and this was put down to mental illness.
Another ghost said to haunt this platform is that is that of ‘Claude’ now this was a name given to the supposed entity and there is very little information as to who this person is/was. They are said to wear Victorian style men’s clothing with a top hat and reports are said that he poisoned himself on the platform, I have looked through news archives but cannot find any such death taking place? An old tale told or maybe a spirit given a story to make sense of the presence however in 1894 a news paper reported the death of a man by the name of Henry Simmons who had been riding the train to Tamworth when he had taken an amount of Oxalic acid which is a form of Nitric acid, he was said to have been in dire circumstances in his life and so resided to taking his life and was found to be dead in his carriage at New Street station, could this be Claude?
In my search for stories and tales, I did happen upon the briefest of mentions of a lady in red seen to be gliding across the platform, what’s interesting here is that in 1901 there was a tragedy at the platform, where a train had pulled up and a great surge took place resulting in the death of a young woman crushed to death and a lady and her dog also being trampled in the crowd.
It seems that train journeys in the 1900s were wrought with risk as in 1921 there is tale of a great train accident at this very platform, ticket inspector William Barrington is said to have witness the terrible crash, when an express train entered New Street to be met by a stationary train at the platform, the trains collided to front to rear causing 6 deaths and injuring some 21 more, the disaster was put down to incompetent train drivers and bad communications.
