November 2009 Blog Posts (61)

In the 1890s, an eccentric but well-intentioned character of distinction named Danby Gifford cut a well-known figure on the streets of Liverpool. An incurable insomniac, Danby, or "Dashing Dan" as he was known, would leave the 380-roomed North Western Hotel on Lime Street each night, and patrol the midnight streets, armed with a silver gilt-handled malacca sword stick and .22-calibre two-shot Derringer, said to be the very same pistol that Wilkes shot Lincoln with, won from a riverboat…

I had long known about an alleged vampire being at large in Liverpool in 1680, when a blood-sucking farmer decided to kill himself after he had murdered his wife and drunk her blood. The authorities had his body buried face down at the cross roads of Rupert Lane, Breck Road (formerly Breck Lane), Heyworth Street and Everton Road. A huge wooden stake was driven through the corpse to ‘prevent him rising’. The staked skeleton still lays there today. The chronicle of Lancashire vampires mentions…

For thousands of years, the belief has persisted that certain people and objects can bring misfortune. In 1830, a British banker and gemstone collector named Henry Thomas Hope bought a large blue diamond which became known as the Hope Diamond. The origins of the oversized diamond are not known with any certainty, but it is thought that the gem was cut from an even larger diamond in the Golconda mines of India, and there is a brief reference to the Hope Diamond being in the possession of King…