The Hammersmith ghost shooting

On the night of 3 January 1804 an excise officer in Hammersmith shot a man he took for the neighbourhood ghost.

Talk of a ghost walking at night had gone round Hammersmith for a long while, and armed local men patrolled to catch it. On the night of 3 January 1804, at about half past ten, an excise officer named Francis Smith told a watchman he was going to look for the ghost, with a shotgun in hand.

Smith later told the wine merchant John Locke that he had fired on a man he took to be the ghost. Locke followed him with others up to Black Lion Lane. There the man lay, apparently dead. He was Thomas Millwood, spelled Milwood in some sources, who is described as a bricklayer in some accounts and a plasterer in another. Smith was indicted for wilful murder and denied the charge. Sources differ by two days on the date of the Old Bailey trial.

One account says a boot and shoe maker named John Graham came forward within two days and admitted that he had been the Hammersmith ghost. He said that he had dressed up to scare his apprentices, whose ghost stories had been upsetting his children. The magistrates granted him bail while they sought guidance, and no further action against him is recorded.