The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1914-12-26
THE TOWER Of LONDON
ADDITIONAL PARTS OPENED TO
THE PURLIC-GHOSTLY APPARl.
. TlONS-THE DUNGEONS THE
TORTURE cHAMRER-FATHER
GERARD'S EscAPE-A HISTORIC
SPOT.


SPOT.
written for The Catholic Bulletin by
Cecil UnderWood.)
At times, some will tell you, when
a wind whistles about the turrets and
barred gates of the Tower of London
and out of break in storm-clouds the
moon peers down, searching with a
silvery' light the baileys and sally.
ports and prisoners walks guarded by
these high walls, the dark shadow OF
an axe steals across the blood-soaked
plot of ground on Tower-green, and
stands gaunt and erect. silhouetted
against the Norman keep. The tide
tapping the river wharves, unseen
though but few yards distant, the
occasional stir of the shipping, and
the inexplicable sounds of a great city
add to the mysteries of the night
This should be racking place fol-
nerves. Eight centuries of England's
story are isolated within the Towers
encircling walls. If any substance
there be in the belief that distracted
ghosts revisit the scenes of their great
sorrows, assuredly upon no spot on
the earth do they congregate more
thickly than here.
Sir Walter Raleigh's phantom is
said to have been seen fitting noise
lessly about the cells and passages oil
his long captivity. Suddenly the white
figure of a woman has appeared upon
the execution ground, and as suddenly
vanished-assigned to one of Henry
Wits queens. A sentry, watchful and
alert, has fancied that he has heard
proceeding from the dungeons of the
White Tower, muffied by the immense
thickness of the walls, the agonized
cries of Guy Fawkes, stretched in tor
ture upon the rack. In all such sto
ries necessarily there must be large
element of imagination. Indeed, con
sidering its crowded past, the ghosts
of the Tower Of London are remark
ably few.
The Dungeons.
These and like mysteries, lying for
gotten, were revived in the writer's
announcement recently made by the
authorities that additional parts of the
Tower of London are shortly to be
thrown open to public inspection. And
chief among them are the dungeons!
Ghosts and dread happenings-the
sitting air and damp soil reek of such
things. What tales these merciless
walls, built fifteen feet thick in solid
masonry, might tell of doomed men
immured here. One thinks of the cold
river flowing by, and water oozing ur
through a spongy floor, and darkness
that may be felt. In such places men
have fought for life against fearful
odds in cruel days-and the Tower OF
London has known cruelties that
shame humanity. But it's dungeons
are not as these. Nothing is likely sc
much to surprise the visitor-perhaps
a little disappointed in his surround
ings-when privileged for the first
time to pass through, as to find that
the dungeons are all above ground
Gundulf, Bishop of Rochester, who
built the White Tower as the cen.
trail stronghold of the fortress, made
no entrance from the ground. An en-.
0o I1f
beat his head Intellectually against
these sheer walls.
Another surprise. The dungeons of
the Tower are no cramped cells, but
are immense chambers. One is nine
ty-one feet by thirty-five feet, internal
area; the second, forty-seven feet in
length by fifteen feet in breadth A
mere hole in the wall, shut by a heavy
door, will attract attention. 1t is the
dreaded Little Ease" wherein Guy
Fawkes is believed to have passed his
last days on earth-a place so small
that the prisoner could neither stand
upright nor lie at full length, but was
forced to keep always in cramped
position.
The Place of Torture.
Little is to be told about the dun
geons. They were prisons, but chiefly
in the earliest days were not so used,
for the smaller towers about the fort
ress afforded all the accommodation
required for the victims of Tudor and
Stuart cruelty. Heart-rending expert
ences have been lived through in
these depths of the keep, when even
the little light that now steals into
the place was shut out. Jews were
flung into the dungeons at the medi-