The Woburn Square ghost riots, Bloomsbury, London, 1867

Woburn Square was a genteel corner of Bloomsbury. Its terraces date from 1829, set around an enclosed garden on the boundary between the parishes of St Pancras and Holborn. Just to the south lay the St Giles rookery, one of London's poorest slums.

Late May 1867. A story spread. The spectre of a woman was to be seen floating around in the north east corner of the gardens. A reported "woman in white", draped in a sheet. Ten feet high, with "glaring eyes the size of soup plates, set in a monstrous donkey-like head." She lived, people said, in the churchyard of St Pancras Old Church, and crossed the Euston Road to haunt the genteel streets of the Bloomsbury Estate.

For a number of nights, crowds came to the railings. They drank, whooped, argued and scrapped. Some kicked at doors, hoping to provoke the ghost into an appearance. Residents sent strongly worded complaints.

Wednesday 29 May. PC James Hogan was on duty in the square. He spoke to a woman who was drunk and very disorderly. When she began to cry, a young carpenter's labourer named Frederic Horgan demanded the constable leave her alone. Other boys were shouting and hallooing. Hogan took Horgan into custody.

On Thursday night a large crowd gathered "to see the ghost", and the police found it necessary to clear the square altogether. When officers moved people on, rioters stood shoulder to shoulder. Constables were pushed and shoved, kicked from behind and pelted with mud and stones.

On Friday 31 May, nine defendants faced the magistrates Sir Thomas Henry and Mr Frederick Flowers at Bow Street Police Court. William Durham, 16, got a day in prison for slightly assaulting a constable. Frederic Cousins and Henry Jackson, both 17, were fined 7s each for kicking doors. The next day Samuel Ekens and Solomon Denekamp were each fined 10s or 7 days. Denekamp's mother said he had been taking a shortcut home from synagogue. Flowers said Ekens had gone not to see the ghost but to enjoy the mayhem.

The Lancet went to see for itself. Through the railings on the west side, it found only "a patch of light falling upon an arbour at the north-east corner of the enclosure." The source, it believed, was a gas lamp at the north end of the square, shining through a gap in the shrubs. Through the branches, the light took on something like a human figure. The journal suggested putting the lamp out until the fuss died down.

Others suspected a hoax. Fingers were pointed at medical students, said to be fiddling with a magic lantern in the attic of a nearby house. University College London was close by. Mr Vaughan thought "a good thrashing" would cure any practical joker in a white sheet. Nobody was named or charged.

No cause was firmly identified, and reports of the ghost faded. Strange History places Woburn Square first in its list of British ghost riots. From 1969 the southern half of the square was demolished for University of London buildings. A small part of the garden survives.