MORTON CASE

1. Public Record

April 1882. Captain Despard, an invalid wife, six children, into a house then called Donore, once Garden Reach, Pittville Circus Road, Cheltenham. Empty for years. Talk already on it. June, Rosina, nineteen, meets a tall woman in black wool, face in a handkerchief in the right hand, widow's cuffs on both wrists. Soft sound when she moves. Over two years Rosina sees her about six times. Others in the house see her too. Footsteps. Seventeen people in the later count say she looked living enough to greet.

Frederic Myers of the SPR asks for a written report. For privacy the family becomes Morton. Rosina publishes as R. C. Morton in 1892. Myers shows photographs. Rosina points at Imogen Swinhoe, second wife of a previous owner. The figure is seen into 1886 and then thins. Rosina goes on to be the twenty-third woman in England with a medical degree and a physician at Holloway.

The house stands. The handkerchief is the whole costume.

The face was hidden in a handkerchief held in the right hand.

2. Date of Incident

Family in April 1882. First sighting June 1882. Reports through 1886. SPR paper 1892.

3. Location

Pittville Circus Road, Cheltenham. Approximate 51°54 N 002°04 W.

4. Official Narrative

An SPR classic, not a court. Official narrative is a well-written multi-witness apparition with no charge and no capture.

5. Witness Layer

Rosina Despard. Other Despards. Servants and visitors in the seventeen. Myers. The later identification with Swinhoe.

A portion of a widow's cuff was visible on both wrists.

6. Recovery Logistics

Written statements. Photographs used for identification. No object taken from a stair.

7. Assessment

A handkerchief file. Keep June 1882. Keep the wool and the cuff so the figure is dressed, not vague. Morton is a privacy word and should not replace Despard in this archive. A medical career after the house is not proof and it is not irrelevant. Do not write Swinhoe as settled just because a photograph was offered. Do not write seventeen as a choir. They were a household and its callers.

8. Materials & Remains

The 1892 Morton paper. Myers notes. The standing house under later names.

9. Key Personnel

Rosina Despard : Principal witness, later physician.

Captain Despard : The lease.

Frederic Myers : The SPR request.

Imogen Swinhoe : The identification offered.

10. Aftermath

The Morton case becomes a textbook SPR apparition. Rosina's later life is rarely in the same paragraph as the cuff. It should be.

11. Current Archive Status

Status: Donore, June 1882 on. Morton paper 1892. Handkerchief figure. House stands.

Confidence: High that Rosina and others reported a tall woman in black in that house in the 1880s and that the SPR printed it. Low that the figure is Swinhoe. Low that a living person was ruled out on every night.

Filing note

An empty house with a reputation, a nineteen-year-old on the stair, black wool, a handkerchief at the face, widow's cuffs, seventeen people who almost said good evening, a Society that renamed the family so they could speak, a doctor who left the house and did not take the figure with her.

Hidden in a handkerchief. The only feature she would not give them, and the one they all remembered.