If you've ever read any Charles Dickens novels, especially Great Expectations, then you'll have run into Newgate Prison. The hulking, notorious jail loomed large in London's history, before its demolition in 1902.

While accurate execution statistics are difficult to find, there's a suggestion that over 1000 people faced capital punishment at the prison between 1790 and 1902.

The old execution bell rests in a glass case in nearby St Sepulchre-without-Newgate, rung the night before an execution as a reminder to the condemned.

So how did this prison gain such a fearsome reputation? How has it survived well beyond its early 20th-century demolition? Let’s find out in this week's episode!

Find the images and references on the blog post: https://www.icysedgwick.com/newgate-prison/

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Bedlam, or Bethlem Royal Hospital to give it its full name, is actually the world's oldest psychiatric institution. It began life in 1247 in the Priory of St Mary of Bethlehem, which stood where we now find Liverpool Street Station.

Yet the hospital has inspired a range of books, films, and TV series, with its infamous reputation lasting well into the 21st century. The hospital has since become a valued institution for psychiatric treatment, yet the ghost of its former incarnations still linger.

After all, the word 'bedlam', meaning chaos, came from this very hospital. People shortened 'Hospital of Saint Mary of Bethlehem' to Bethlem, and then Bedlam, in around the 1660s. The word even went on to inspire the word 'Bedlamite', used to describe someone suffering from insanity, from the 1620s.

So how did this hospital gain such a fearsome reputation, and how has it survived well beyond the hospital's adoption of new practices? Let's find out in this week's episode!

Find the images and references on the blog post: https://www.icysedgwick.com/bedlam-reputation/

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Foxes appear in literature and legend across the world. Look at Brer Fox in the American South. In Rebel Folklore, I discussed the Jiuwei Hu of China, or nine-tailed fox, who drains men of their life force. Korea's kumiho is a similar spirit, while Japan has the supernatural fox spirit, the kitsune.

Scholar Al-Biruni, magician Cornelius Agrippa and astrologer William Lilly put the fox under Mercury's rulership. Mercury is the trickster of the Roman gods, and represents communication, cleverness, speed, and resourcefulness - all qualities traditionally associated with the fox. It probably explains why dreaming of foxes meant you should beware of treachery and thieves.

I have an exclusive article about foxes for Patrons on the lowest tier, but I've also made it available for sale if you'd like to read some additional fox folklore. As it is, it seems foxes also appear in folk tales and literature so I managed to write a whole new episode that didn't involve the lore from the article!

So let's explore the way foxes appear in folk tales and literature!

Find the images and references on the blog post: https://www.icysedgwick.com/foxes-folk-tales/

Foxes and Folklore article: https://www.patreon.com/posts/exclusive-foxes-106946093

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Natalie Lawrence is an author and illustrator who explores our relationship with the natural world, looking through multiple lenses - from the biological to the mythic and psychoanalytic. She completed a MSc and Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge, exploring the making and meanings of monstrous creatures in seventeenth century Europe.

She published her first book as a teenager, Feathers and Eggshells, inspired by Hampstead Heath and the birds she was entranced by as a child, and published Planta Sapiens with Paco Calvo in 2022. She has also given a TedX talk, appeared on BBC Radio, and worked with installation artists.

In this chat, we talk about humans' fascination for monsters, how the walrus was originally conceived of as being a monster, the Hydra of Hamburg, cryptids as contemporary monsters and the ways in which our understanding of what is real and what exists has changed over the centuries.

Buy Enchanted Creatures: Our Monsters and Their Meanings: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/12992/9781474619035

Find Natalie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/natalie.j.lawrence/

And her website: https://nataliejlawrence.com/

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Hedgehogs are one of the stranger mammals you might encounter. They're nocturnal, they hibernate, they're prone to rolling into a ball when frightened, and they're extremely vulnerable to habitat loss. While some of you will undoubtedly have first thought of Sonic, others might have thought of Mrs Tiggywinkle from the Beatrix Potter books.

Either way, those are quite positive associations. I've been feeding hedgehog visitors to my garden since June 2023, and I find them charming, adorable, and slightly idiosyncratic. Yet in the past, hedgehogs have had a much more sinister reputation that they certainly didn't deserve. People linked them with witches, the devil, and even fruit theft.

So let's explore the folklore surrounding hedgehogs!

Find the images and references on the blog post: https://www.icysedgwick.com/hedgehogs-folklore/

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Moles are fascinating creatures. They're phenomenal diggers and while they weigh around 120g, they can shift 540 times their body weight of earth.

Given they live entirely underground, they're a rarely seen mammal, and we only know they're there when we see their molehills. Surprisingly, there is more folklore about them than more commonly encountered animals, like badgers.

Used in folk medicine, they're also creatures connected with omens for both death and the weather. Their appearance as folk remedies is somewhat cruel, and reflects earlier times when humans had less regard for animal welfare.

So how do moles appear in folklore? Let's find out in this week's episode of Fabulous Folklore!

Find the images and references on the blog post: https://www.icysedgwick.com/moles-folklore/

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Otters are some of the most charming mammals you might encounter. Sometimes nicknamed the "water sausage" by the internet, otters are playful, intelligent, and capable of using tools.

They also appear in popular culture, most notably in Tarka the Otter and The Wind in the Willows.

Yet in reality, they're incredibly elusive. They might live in wetlands, along rivers, and at the coast, but seeing one isn't easy! They also enjoy woodland habitats, and even in towns, so they're a very interesting species.

In this post, I'll be talking about the European otter. They're listed as near threatened on the global IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. They also raise their cubs in holts, or underground burrows, and they mostly eat fish, amphibians, crustaceans, and aquatic birds.

I've seen one of the otters that lives at the Gosforth Park Nature Reserve, which was very exciting given how elusive they are! It's a woodland setting surrounding a lake, so I thought otters would make a good first stop on our Woodland Mammals tour.

But given how good they are at hiding from humans, is there much folklore about them?

Let's find out in this week's episode of Fabulous Folklore!

Find the images and references on the blog post: https://www.icysedgwick.com/otters-folklore/

Get your free guide to home protection the folklore way here: https://www.icysedgwick.com/fab-folklore/

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When we think about folklore, we often think about the characters involved: King Arthur, Queen Mab, Lady Godiva, and more. Yet folklore has an intrinsic link with place, too.

Even the most throwaway comment about a place can reveal stories linked with them. Such stories can reveal how we feel about places, especially when human activity moves away.

They’re also stories that get easily lost when people move on, so I asked the wonderful listeners of Fabulous Folklore if they wanted to share any stories they’d been told about places - and they did!

I wanted ghosts at a person's school, houses they ran past because someone in the neighbourhood said they were haunted, local legends of grey ladies, creepy back roads people avoided at night because of a local cryptid - that kind of thing!

I didn't want personal experiences this time around, which I've collected before, because I wanted the focus to be on the place, not someone's experience of it.

Let's see what people came up with in this week's episode of Fabulous Folklore!

Find the blog post with the images and the references here: https://www.icysedgwick.com/tales-of-space-and-place/

Get your free guide to home protection the folklore way here: https://www.icysedgwick.com/fab-folklore/

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