18th Century Idiot.

[Dawn o the Shed]

I've spoken occasionally here about a possible PL dream I had as a teenager, in which I was a young man who was murdered by a prostitute's accomplice. Recently I’ve found myself drawn back to these memories again and just lately I keep finding little details which seem to validate the dream…

Can't find my original post and I’d quite like to organise my thoughts and ask for yours in one thread if that’s OK…

So to summarize, it goes like this:

Judging by the clothes and buildings the year appears to be somewhere in the late 18th century, the only date which struck me was 1789, but I don’t know if that’s a birth date, death date or what. The setting is a small village, a fair is going on nearby and the village is bustling.

The dream begins with the memory of a bare knuckle fight at the fair. I *think* it was one of those deals where you go up against a prize fighter. I remember coming off worst and hurting my right wrist rather badly. It's getting dark; I'm angry, drunk, humiliated and stomping away from the fair towards an inn.

The main building of the little inn has an archway connecting it to what I thought was stables or coach-buildings. People are drinking in the street outside the inn and milling around underneath the arch. I go inside and up some stairs to a small, candlelit room, where a lady awaits me on a bed with an inviting look on her face

A certain amount of (ahem) shenanigans happen between the lady and I, before two men suddenly burst through the door, shouting and waving knives. One claims to be the woman's husband, he is threatening me while his friend eggs him on. I am semi-reclining on the bed; my coat and hat have gone but at least I still have my breeches on! I don't know if the 'husband' means to rob me or kill me but he begins to throw knives at me. They miss me but stick in the wall. I am aware that I am pretty defenceless as, even if I had access to a weapon, I am drunk, injured and half-dressed. For some reason I decide to just mock him. He becomes very angry and throws a knife which does hit me; it goes in under my ribs, pointing upwards.

The men run away, the woman has disappeared. I stagger down the stairs and out into the street, clutching my hands to the wound/knife and very aware of bright red blood soaking my fine white shirt sleeve. I fall onto the cobbles under the archway and people gather around and look down at me. I black out and come to again briefly. I see someone pouring something onto the wound, then black out again.

Finally I am aware of being above my body, looking down at the people crowding around it. I wake up.

I could feel the pain from the knife wound for 10 or 15 minutes after I woke up.

 

[Dawn o the Shed]

Anyway, to start with I had this dream aged about 16-17ish, give or take a year, around the time I lost my Dad. I began meditating and/or sleeping for long periods, actually trying and mostly failing to achieve astral projection rather than thinking about past lives. I welcomed vivid dreams, the wackier the better, but this one had a far different texture, it was very adult and very male, with a clear story to it. I didn’t know what being roaring drunk was like, or sex, or being stabbed. Course we didn’t have the internet in 1986/7 either, so I chalked it up as interesting, wrote it down and carried it around in my head for decades.


In 1999 I started looking for a house to buy, my Mum had passed away and my siblings and I inherited just enough each for a deposit on somewhere cheap. I wanted somewhere old, a doer-upper (doer-uppering is also something I inherited from my parents.). For months nothing felt right, until I came upon a wee old cottage for sale in a neighbouring town. Built in the 1750s, it had woodworm, dry rot and damp. It needed a new roof, doors and windows; inside it everything was covered in Artex (Spackle, for our American chums!) and the elderly couple who last owned it had both died in the house within months of each other, having lived there for donkey’s years. Perfecto! More to the point, huge deja-vu and a certainty this was ‘my house’ and needed saving. Just down the road is the town (village) centre, and therein, as I later discovered, stands a little old pub with an archway to one side of it.


For the first few years of living here I passed the pub regularly without becoming especially curious. One night I walked through the arch en route to the supermarket just as it was starting to get dark. I was stomping along, listening to music through ear buds, happened to look up at the pub and that dream popped up in my mind.


Lights were shining out onto the wet street; people were chattering under the arch and the warm smells of beer and tobacco wafted toward me.


There was the door with the window of a small room just above it, exactly as it was in the dream.


To date I’ve walked through that arch almost every week for 16 years and I still haven’t plucked up the nerve to go into the pub!

 

[Dawn o the Shed]

After a great deal of searching on the internet to try to establish a possible date and to find verification, I discovered a few interesting facts:


1. I was obviously taken in by a scam of some sort, but had no idea that what happened to me was standard practice for prostitutes at the time, who usually worked with one or more male accomplices. I recently discovered that the scenario I saw in the dream was a variant of something called “The Badger Game”, in which the victim is lured into a compromising position with the prostitute and then interrupted before actual intercourse by an outraged ‘husband’, who robs or blackmails the hapless victim... This became more common in the 19th century, but was certainly going on in the late 18th century too. I always had the impression that the men in the dream were connected to the fair, especially the knife thrower, although I don’t know if knife throwing acts were common. Maybe the three of them were a travelling outfit, robbing men in every town they stopped at.


http://nightstick1.azurewebsites.net/post/The-Badger-Game.aspx


2. In the dream there were oil lamps in the windows of the inn. These lamps only began to be used around 1750 in London so it can’t be any earlier than that. It probably took a while to catch on up here in Yorkshire too, perfectly possible that the inn would be lit by oil lamps and the upper rooms by candles in my theoretical 1789.


http://www.intriguing-history.com/lighting-london-streets-1750/


3. I haven’t yet managed to find out exactly when the pub was built, but have learned from local amateur historians that the archway did indeed connect the building to a stable block. It is known that soldiers stabled their horses there during the Luddite Rebellion, which verifies that the inn was already established by around 1811-12. Luddites protested against the industrialisation of skilled crafts like weaving, they vandalised mills and machinery.


http://www.spenvalleycivicsociety.org.uk/heritage/luddites


http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/politics/g3/


This part of the country was at the heart of the weaving district, so we learned about the Luddites at school, I sympathised greatly. My own ancestors included weavers who became wealthy clothiers and quite well to do, until the rise of the mills ruined them.

 

[Dawn o the Shed]

4. If I really do remember being a man who died in this town between 1750 and 1811 it’s quite likely that he was a hand weaver at a time when they were slowly being put out of business by the tide of industrialisation. I feel it’s possible that I am living in his former home. It’s even possible that he may have been born, raised, married, murdered and buried all in this town.


My house was sold as a ‘mill-worker’s cottage’ but I found out it was actually built years before the first mill was constructed here. It would have been a hand weaver’s cottage; my bedroom would have been the ‘loom chamber’. That wooden framed loom probably looked quite similar to the four-poster bed which now resides there. It feels right:


http://www.tulliehouse.co.uk/thecollection/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/images/objects/1981_141_view1.jpg?itok=_xRWzbsS


5. The soft white sleeve with the spreading stain of dandy crimson. That was a quality shirt; he wore it beneath a long coat and waistcoat of a plain, dark cloth, over lighter coloured breeches which had a flap at the front. Boots, not shoes, a hat, no wig. Boots began to be fashionable from about the 1780s onwards, largely replacing buckled shoes. Likewise plainer, darker colours and natural hair replaced bright colours frills and powdered wigs for men. He seemed neither particularly rich nor poor, but wealthy enough to have decent, clean clothes, and to spend his evening drinking, gambling, fighting and womanising, obviously wealthy-looking enough to become the mark of a thieving prostitute and her bullies. If he were a weaver then the mills would have already begun to eat away at his financial status in 1789, but he would still have been able to earn a better living from his craft than a weaver twenty years later at the time of the Luddites.

 

[SeaAndSky]

Hi Dawn,


It sounds to me like you are really onto something. It also sounds like you were of a class to actually merit a gravestone and possibly a note in the local church regarding your death. I'm no expert at such research in such a time and place, but it sounds like you could find out a lot by looking for tombstones in the right places and also checking the right records. (Are there ownership records for the house/property that go that far back?). I know you don't have a name, but I'm thinking that--as with the house--you may get a certain "feeling" when you come across certain artifacts/records.


Cordially,


S&S

 

[deborah]

Hi Dawn,


So nice to see you again. I love the way you have included links and visual elements to your memories. I think it really helps people understand your words, and how to validate experiences.


Sometimes it's the smallest thing - that leads you to the most evidence. As strange as that sounds.


Did you do a search for all posts started by you? Seems strange - I remember your posts being very strong, I don't think we would have cleaned up the forum deleting yours.

 

[Dawn o the Shed]

Hi Deborah, nice to be back


Thank you, I was doing it like that in a sort of digital journal on my laptop to organise my own research. I tend to get carried away with a theme when searching online and then lose track of my links, so I thought it was really useful to just stick the links in with each stop on my train of thought.


I did do a search but couldn't find a post where I explained the whole story, I referred to it in my comments on other people's threads but, oh well, doing this gets it nice and organised in my head!

 

[Dawn o the Shed]

Hi Dawn,
It sounds to me like you are really onto something. It also sounds like you were of a class to actually merit a gravestone and possibly a note in the local church regarding your death. I'm no expert at such research in such a time and place, but it sounds like you could find out a lot by looking for tombstones in the right places and also checking the right records. (Are there ownership records for the house/property that go that far back?). I know you don't have a name, but I'm thinking that--as with the house--you may get a certain "feeling" when you come across certain artifacts/records.


Cordially,


S&S

Oh yes, I'm with you on that! Ordinarily I'd be merrily trawling Ancestry.com or similar sites but I've had to cancel due to lack of funds. I'm trying to find as much as I can for free online, then there's the local library, but I haven't managed to find the time to go talk to them yet. I've also had a good look around the closest graveyard but can't find any graves older than about the 1850s.


I'm renovating the house, which has involved me discovering old door frames, beams, fireplaces etc. and each time I find something original and fix it up it feels right and sort of a little bit more 'alive'. I never really felt I had a deep connection to any town where I've lived in this life, but here that feeling is starting to take hold, it's a bit weird!

 

[Dawn o the Shed]

And this is the archway I was talking about...Hope the file attachments work, and if so apologies for the quality, but this is the archway.





/monthly_2016_01/Image013.jpg.7e8f1cb9e640e2c21df879db9d499953.jpg

/monthly_2016_01/Image014.jpg.e3c3f4e288f77dd6aeabc25c8baae325.jpg

 

[tanguerra]

... That was a quality shirt; he wore it beneath a long coat and waistcoat of a plain, dark cloth, over lighter coloured breeches which had a flap at the front. Boots, not shoes, a hat, no wig. .... If he were a weaver then the mills would have already begun to eat away at his financial status in 1789, but he would still have been able to earn a better living from his craft than a weaver twenty years later at the time of the Luddites.

These kinds of little details can speak so much, can't they?


Did you ever meet any of these people again this life?

 

[Dawn o the Shed]

These kinds of little details can speak so much, can't they?
Did you ever meet any of these people again this life?

It's really hard to say, I don't remember much about the lady and her cohorts, perhaps that will change if I meditate on it. I was rather drunk after all!wine**

 

[helz_belz]

Thank you for sharing your memories and your thorough research Dawn! Please keep us posted if anything further comes up, I for one would love to hear more love seeing the pictures of the pub archway, have always had a keen liking for old coaching inns with archways like that

Can't find my original post and I’d quite like to organise my thoughts and ask for yours in one thread if that’s OK

It you go to your user profile (click on your profile picture) and then click on 'Statistics' you will find a list of all your previous threads and posts.

 

[Dawn o the Shed]

Did you ever meet any of these people again this life?

There are a few of my friends with whom I feel a PL connection, but there is only one who I feel may be connected to this 18th century life, although I’m not sure why I think that. He’s not in the dream itself, at least I don't think so, it’s more a feeling that he was around in that life, was very dear to me and I left him behind.


We met through a mutual friend when I was about 19 and he was 17. He was tall (6’4”), solidly good looking and exuded an air of calm affability. I had that ‘I know you’ itch in the back of my head, but of course I developed an unrequited crush which lasted a couple of years before it wore off and he became my adopted Big Little Brother. We have worked together on occasion, been drinking buddies, confidantes and friends for not far off 30 years now.


By the way, if all this talk of pubs and drinking buddies makes me sound like a right old soak, we’re talking mostly about my twenties. Growing up, we only saw alcohol at Christmas! In my twenties I hung out at heavy metal pubs and clubs with my friends, these days I rarely go out. I do enjoy a tot of rum, though equally rarely. Generally, being drunk scares me and so do drunken people, but I’ve always liked the atmosphere of an old pub.


My friend lives about 15 minutes walk away from me. He’s lived in the same house his whole life and has no intention of leaving. He works in the town, has had a pension since school and although he’s travelled as far-afield as Japan he’s never happier than being home. And no woman has managed to prise him away from home - although there have been many of them. They think he’s lovely; he falls for them and then they try to change him and fail…


I guess my point is that it feels like he is rooted here, whatever his life plan was this time around it involved staying put, looking after his mother, working hard and having as much fun as possible. (His younger brother moved out, got married and had kids years ago.) For some reason that throws me back to the 18th century with a sort of lurch.


I've told him about the dream before, we've even joked about knowing each other in past lives, but nothing beyond that really.

 

[Dawn o the Shed]

On the subject of my friend... I was walking under the arch again the other night (off to the supermarket with my earplugs in again!) when someone called my name. My friend (call him N) was in the beer garden at the back of the pub and called me over for a chat through the railings. I hadn't seen him for a couple of months and I've never seen him drink there before. It freaked me out slightly, but it turns out his latest lady-friend works there as a barmaid.

I chatted for a couple of minutes and went on my way, but it really feels like something is falling into place, like I'm being pulled there and N is connected to the memory - I wonder if his girlfriend is too (she wasn't with him at the time so I've never met her). I have to stop making excuses and just go in there. Maybe N's girlfriend could tell me about the upstairs rooms, maybe even show me them. I don't know, there's a weird anticipation/trepidation building up!

 

[Dawn o the Shed]

Hello chums, loooong time no see! For some reason I started painting a bit of my dream, I don't know if this me or the guy who lured me into the pub, but he just appeared on the canvas looking so alive I feel like it's come from some deep recess of consciousness somewhere...

 

[Angie Brown]

View attachment 491 View attachment 485 Hello chums, loooong time no see! For some reason I started painting a bit of my dream, I don't know if this me or the guy who lured me into the pub, but he just appeared on the canvas looking so alive I feel like it's come from some deep recess of consciousness somewhere...

Seems like your spirit is slowly feeding you more as your mind adjusts to coping with it.

Odd thing. I'm not at all overly psychic, and obviously don't know you from Adam but - as I read your first post above I had a slight vision of you half sitting on the edge of the bed and hale reclining at an angle, propped on your right elbow. The head of the bed being to your right. I say you, I mean someone who looked quite similar to the man in the painting, green waistcoat and all but he wasn't wearing it on the bed, it was beside him to his left. He looked a bit thinner of face maybe, but then the slight vision was almost a full face profile. I think the room door was a few feet from the foot of the bed. When coming in the door the bed was to the right and there was a clear space between the foot of the bed and the wall the door was set in. Straight ahead maybe a quite narrow Georgian window with a shabby makeshift curtain hung about three quarters of the way across it from right to left. Odd that the window casement was against the wall on the left. The bed to the right of that. A smallish old two drawer oak chest somewhere in the room I think but i'm not sure as the 'vision' was so quick.
My imagination perhaps. It simply popped into where (if I have one) my third eye would be. I don't get a lot of visions though. The few i've had during my sixty odd years have usually been 'foreknowledge' and accurate as warnings though. Not ever about a pl of someone else. So it's a bit unusual for me which leaves me unsure. However, you will probably know if the description of the room is right or not. Btw, 'you' were wearing under the knee britches with white (mens) stockings and shoes with a buckle on the front? I think I saw that but it was all so fast.

 

[Angie Brown]

View attachment 491 View attachment 485 Hello chums, loooong time no see! For some reason I started painting a bit of my dream, I don't know if this me or the guy who lured me into the pub, but he just appeared on the canvas looking so alive I feel like it's come from some deep recess of consciousness somewhere...

P.S
'You weren't TOO worried when reclining and saw a broad stocky man in a worn brown quite loose weave (cheaply woven) dark tan straight jacket/coat begin to walk in. 'You' were more surprised and put out at that point. A bit worried but not too much. Maybe thought there was a mix up as to if the woman was available for him at that time, and that a few words would sort it out. It was a couple of minutes later 'you' realised the situation was dangerous, put you hat on and leant forward to get off the bed with your green waistcoat in your left hand. You were getting ready to leave rather than have trouble. You hadn't fully stood up when the 'vision' stopped. Again, maybe my imagination working overtime, but that in itself would be strange as it doesn't usually. I'm usually very down to earth. However, you won't offend me if you tell me to be quiet because i'm entirely wrong as I know that isn't what you described. For instance, I saw buckle shoes not boots, and dark not light britches. 'Your' face (if it was you) looked a little younger than in your painting. Lastly, there was semi light, maybe twilight coming through the part of the window that wasn't covered by the cloth, although the room was lit within too but I didn't notice where a candle was placed. So that too wasn't how you described.
I didn't notice whether or not there was a second man. So some important differences.
Perhaps it was an altercation at an earler date, or maybe a regular secret 'lover', or even a different woman. Perhaps you were a bit of a ladies man (no judgement). I'm sure it will come to you at some point if what I 'saw' was correct or not.

 

[Avolon]

This is amazing Dawn !
Its all so interesting
Di

 

[Graham76man]

If you are researching this life and you can't afford to pay for family history sites, some Library services actually offer the service for free if you are on the premises. You don't mention the location of these events, but it sounds like Yorkshire, is that correct? I know that Wakefield had lots of weavers around this time. The Find My Past website has more Yorkshire records than Ancestry and is a bit cheaper. Of course tracking someone down without a name is tough going. But there are newspapers from around that time, which will be found in the archives of the place that covers the town or place where this event happened. Murders do tend to be covered by newspapers because journalists are a bit idle and hang around courts for easy stories. Especially if the guilty party in caught. Then the trial and outcome and all the details are reported. FMP has also some of these Newspapers online too.