According to Boar & Blundell (“World’s Greatest Ghosts” 1983 – not the world’s greatest source, I know!) a Lord Lyttleton published his account of a night spent at 50 Berkley Square in 1879 in “Notes and Queries” (also mentioned in Hippisley Coxe’s 1973 “Haunted Britain”, though without the year), along with some background info he had uncovered during his investigations into the haunting. Boar & Blundell devote 2 pages to the house, and date the death of the sailor discussed in the posts above at 1887. The Lord Lyttleton bit is the only mention of a source though.
In “Ghosts of London”, J.A. Brooks (1982) reprints part of an 1879 “Mayfair” article on the haunting of No. 50, in which it is speculated that the happenings there might have “inspired the late Lord Lytton with the mystery of ‘The House and the Brain’”. The Mayfair article also relates the story of how “a lady of high position” had recently called to the house to “make inquiries” and was greeted “after some delay … by an old woman, who, holding the door in such a manner as to prevent any possibility of entrance, answered enquiries to this effect.” Basically she told the “lady” that her and her husband had been renting the property and living there for 6 years and that the landlord called once every 6 months, locked them in a downstairs room and proceeded to an “upper room” which was kept locked all year round and only accessed by him. After doing whatever he did in there he would let them out. The Mayfair article then makes a plea for more information on the property and reported goings-on there, and according to Brooks the topic was kept live for a further two issues of the magazine - but without any info being attained.
Brooks gives some info on Lord Lytton’s “The House and the Brain” as having being published in Blackwood’s magazine in 1859 and also mentions Lord Lyttleton and other stories about the house. No other sources are given though, except for Harper’s “Haunted Houses”, wherein it was claimed that a “Mr Du Pre, of Wilton Park” owned the house and let it out, but at the same time using “one of the attics” to keep “his lunatic brother a prisoner”.
In my 1994 Senate reprint of Harper’s 1907 book he attributes the Du Pre to a “Mr Stuart Wortley”, and tells of how Mr Du Pre “shot his lunatic brother in one of the attics” (italics mine). Brooks dates Harper’s book at 1931 so I think it’s most likely that the 1931 edition cited by Brooks must have been corrected to read “shut” rather than “shot”, as the story continues with a description of the unfortunate’s captivity and Hippisley Coxe (1973) also mentions the Du Pre story, without a shooting. Anyway, Harper reports that in 1907 the house was “no longer haunted, nor even empty” and that “there are those who declare it was never haunted, and that the story was, indeed, invented by a more or less popular novelist of years ago.” He also mentions the house having been mentioned in “the staid pages of Notes and Queries”.
In “Our Haunted Kingdom” Green (1973) reports recent ghostly goings-on (presumably in the 60s) at No. 50 – the one-off sighting by a local “Mrs Balfour” of a “man wearing a white satin coat and wig, with lace ruffles at his neck and wrists” looking out a first floor window at night. Green claims that “other reports of his sightings have been made by office workers in the area”.
I can't find anything in the Unexplained, though I only have volumes 1-9 and no index :hmph: Anyone know if it is in 1-9 anywhere? Flicking through the pages isn't the most rigorous way of finding info!
