A district of East London, and the setting for two very different Victorian mysteries. From 1871, the Cook family home at 16 Bruce Villas, opposite London Fields, hosted the séances of Florence Cook. She never charged for a sitting. Then came 1895. St John's Gardens, the former churchyard of St John-at-Hackney, reopened as a public garden only a year before. Something was said to walk there, and crowds gathered to hunt it. An engraving of the midnight scene now belongs to the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Plumstead Ghost Riot of 1897 would later be set in the same tradition.
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