Could have been the drunken near death experience involving Grandad and Great Aunt Nell…? …Or most likely was the midnight encounter with a ghastly, disembodied face that poked itself through my bedroom wall, laughed maniacally, incredibly loud, just inches from my own… then screamed a high pitch wail which set me running from the room in terror..? I was ten years old at the time.. Neither the parents nor the sister elsewhere in the house heard anything and reassured me I was dreaming but the incident scarred me mentally for those invaluable development years, either ruining my childhood or diverting me towards the route I eventually followed..? I was a pupil at a typical Victorian School Board building at the time which was most probably haunted and I did have one definite spirit walk in there which left me in a state one winter afternoon… whilst sat cross legged on the floor of the assembly hall watching the rehearsal for the school play.. ‘Joan of Arc’, …another incident emblazoned onto my memory! Of course teaching methods were a lot different in those days.. the following story derives from a school project our form Master decreed to send us on as a homework project … expecting us primary school pupils to wander amongst some of the oldest graves in our little market town, on our own… recording the details of people long gone…. Or were they? This would have been around the time I had my ghostly night intruder… whilst writing the blog of my involvement with John Kane it suddenly dawned on me…. since he was the dominant character of the graveyard… and he liked a laugh.. Did he come to me for one that night…..??
An old grave revisited… if only in hindsight…
Here Lies John Kane… a touring Irish actor of considerable distinction, renowned for comedy, who dined on Hemlock sauce with his roast beef instead of horse radish… no laughing matter at all at the time… that time being December 1799; unfortunately as a result of that gastronomic calamity he died an agonised death, and sadly not one of the stage variety!
I first came across John Kane when I was a small boy at Hardwick Square primary school and we were sent to Buxton’s oldest church to ‘adopt’ and ‘research’ a grave for some local history project or other… We were given the run of the archaic burial plots and I don’t remember being told there was anything unusual with his grave at the time, I may have considered it odd that the word ‘comedian’ was on the head stone… and I may have thought it slightly iffy that it was out of line with all the other graves, {I was a peculiar child}. That said, even after digesting all that macabre interest… I went and chose a nice ladies grave in the middle of the church yard somewhere to adopt….. was most put out when the rest of the class had plumped for John Kane’s!!
Turned out his grave was a listed monument… due to the fact that John Kane had been such a stalwart of the Georgian stage… (the head stone was erected long after his death by some Victorian era ‘Comedians Appreciation Society’ in respect of his contribution to that art)… And they do reckon that his grave is turned face about to all the other graves so that in death as in life he could face his adoring public again… not sure what his captive audience of Buxton deceased reckoned to that?
But is that absurdly romantic reason too fanciful? Is he buried widdershins because the authorities of the time believe he had most likely ingested the deadly hemlock in some form of artful self destruction? His character doesn’t suggest suicidal tendencies. He was said to have just finished a successful performance at the Buxton Theatre House and was reputed to have had a hearty appetite, his habitual routine was to round the night off with his usual robust supper of roast beef and Horseradish sauce.. on this occasion though, shortly after consuming his repast he collapsed into agonising cramps, a prognosis of his impending demise… any assistance he sought was in vain.. and he succumbed to inner corruption from what was identified as Conium maculatum ...
Investigation suggested that the poisonous dish had been served up by a careless novice cook who had innocently gathered and served him the deadly hemlock in error. They had just mistaken it for Horseradish root.. that was the more favourable outcome… There could possibly have been a nagging doubt that Irish John, tired of his life of constant theatrical touring, tired of the smell of the crowd and the roar of the greasepaint, could have improbably taken the showbiz superstar suicide route out? Had the Hemlock prepared by a cunning one to dish up as his own plate of doom?
He was a celebrity of the day. Did the towns authority edge their bets by giving him a suicides burial whilst providing a semi respectable resting place to attract hoards of morbidly curious fans?
Buxton was just going through a phase of building at the time.. {The Crescent and thermal baths had only been standing twenty years and the Duke of Devonshire’s Stables will have just been completed.. later to be domed and used as a hospital}, and the town was geared up to health tourism.. due to the propensity of gout and rheumatics.. though the accommodation was rudimentary.. A lady writing home in 1798 states that “Buxton was a shocking place but the blessing of health is worth a state of trial and goes on to write…“ We are blessed with one Garret (it deserves no other name) with three extremely dirty beds in it, a broken table, one glass, and four chairs. Surely this lady was not staying at the richly built Crescent.. the entertainment was noted to be lacklustre as well mainly due to the arthritic condition of the majority of visitors, a Colonel John Byng, (inveterate travel critic), described one ball held in The Crescent Assembly Rooms in 1790 as “having a crippled appearance..! “
When I visited St Anne’s old grave yard a good while back but long after junior school days I found the headstone deteriorated badly… but being a bit more open to the influence of historic drama than I had been in my puberty I hovered over his flag stoned bed with a pendulum and dowsing rod and formulated a curious scenario in my mind.. from any miasma emanating from that earthen tomb…? Maybe… just maybe…
John had a rival.. a jealous fellow actor.. maybe there was passionate infatuation for a young actress.. or dare I think principle boy involved in the mix..? Their adoration for Kane thwarting the rivals romantic ambitions? Kane’s prowess of stage presence further frustrating his professional progress.? Was that enough to ferment a murderous obsession that led to an attempt which paid off? Of course there is no evidence for that. Just something that popped into my vivid imagination..? Nothing remains categorically of the true character of Kane, just his grave furniture, donated by Victorian Comedian’s.
There is a ghost story connected to this sad history.. The Opera House on Water Street is said to be haunted by a solitary, cloaked, shadowy man, who has been seen wandering the dress circle… enjoying rehearsal’s like any good theatre ghost should do.. his appearance of course, is supposed to herald a good positive run of any show moving in… .his lingering aromatic pipe smoke has been smelt mysteriously outside one of the theatre boxes and he tends to play with light switches, there is a natural spring in the orchestra pit and he has been blamed for turning the electric pump off as well… sadly the opera house was built in 1900 to the designs of Frank Matcham…. so could this even be John Kane’s shade, as rumour has had it? Was the 1790s Buxton Theatre even on this site? Frustratingly no one seems to know..it was possibly further up on the Market Place.. of course we know the vagaries of the Paranormal… maybe his phantom self had to seek out the nearest place of entertainment.. maybe Matcham utilised fabrics from the old Theatre in his new build?
I hope it is Kane… still maintaining links with the Theatre industry.. if only ghostly ones… Or could that dark shade be the anonymous ‘murderer ‘of Kane… forever doomed to watch the success of others in purgatory?
The inscription reads;
This stone is placed here in memory of
John Kane Comedian
Who departed this life
December The 10th (?) 1799 aged 53 yrs
The grave is at St Anne’s, Fountain Street Buxton….
Hubert Hobux 