Truro

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2 Responses

  1. jane buscombe says:

    Re: Truro
    i used to live at tregurra which is about 2/3 miles away from truro town and used to walk home through boscowan street and had my suspiscions that that and surrounding streets had a few ghosts and expect they stil remain to this day, i was born and raised in Newquay and Truro and am looking forward to moving back to truro very soon its such a great place especially for ghost hunting

  2. Ian Topham says:

    Re: Truro
    Samuel Foote’s Experience

    On 17 January 1741, Sir John Dineley Goodere, 2nd Baronet (born circa 1680) was murdered aboard his brother’s ship, the HMS Ruby. Sir John’s brother, Captain Samuel Goodere (Born 1687 – Died 15 April 1741) had ordered his crew to bring his older brother aboard and strangle him, for which he was found guilty and subsequently hanged after a trial in Bristol.

    The Goodere brothers had a nephew in Truro, Samuel Foote (Born January 1720 – Died 21 October 1777) who would become a famous actor, writer, comedian and theatre manager. The first pamphlet he wrote concerned the murder of his uncle and it was published not long after the event.

    In ‘The Haunted Homes and Family Traditions of Great Britain, (1897), John Ingram tells of a strange experience Foote had during the murder of Sir John Goodere. ‘Probably the last person one would imagine selected for a supernatural warning was Samuel Foote, the mimic and buffoon. And yet the so-called "English Aristophenes " not only dwelt in a haunted house, or at least believed so, but was closely connected with the chief characters of one of the most unnatural tragedies our judicial records have preserved. Foote’s maternal uncles were Sir John Goodere and Captain Goodere, a naval officer. In 1740 the two brothers dined at a friend’s house near Bristol; for a loner time they had been on bad terms owing to certain money transactions, but at the dinner table a reconciliation was, to all appearance, arrived at between them. On his return home, however, Sir John was waylaid by some men from his brother’s vessel, acting by his brother’s authority, carried on board, and deliberately strangled; Captain Goodere not only unconcernedly looking on, but actually furnishing the rope with which the crime was committed. For this atrocity the fratricidal officer and his confederates were tried at the Bristol assizes, found guilty, and executed.

    But, say the biographers of Foote, the strangest part of this terrible tale remains to be told. On the night the murder was perpetrated Foote arrived at his father’s house at Truro; he describes himself as having been kept awake for some time by the softest and sweetest strains of music he had ever heard. At first he tried to fancy it was a serenade got up by some of the family to welcome him home; but not being able to discover any trace of the musicians, he was compelled to come to the conclusion that the sounds were the mere offspring of his imagination.

    Some short time afterwards Foote learnt the particulars of his uncle’s terrible fate, and remarking that the murder had been consummated at the same hour of the same night that he had been haunted by the mysterious sounds, he arrived at the conclusion that it was a supernatural warning, and this impression he is said to have retained to the last moments of his existence.