‍The wreck of the Dmitry that Stoker used to land Dracula on the shores of England

‍

‍ON A windswept afternoon on October 24, 1885, fishermen and families rushed to the shoreline in the Yorkshire coastal town of Whitby as a stricken Russian schooner came into view. Among them was local Victorian photographer Frank Meadow Sutcliffe.

‍

‍Its captain was at the wheel struggling to battle heavy seas as the twin-masted Dmitry with seven hands and a cargo of ballast and silver sand, was being swept towards the rocks. This dramatic scene was to become part of literary history … for Count Dracula had arrived in England.

‍

‍The Whitby Gazette reporter on the shore had never heard of Dracula. The book wasn’t published when he reported the scene which was true enough. 

‍

‍He wrote: “People rushed to the beach when they heard that a schooner was in trouble south of the harbour, outside the rocks. Her position was one of great danger in heavy seas; and there seemed nothing for it but to be driven among the huge breakers on the scar.

‍

‍“Her commander was apparently a man well acquainted with his profession, for with consummate skill he steered his trim little craft before the wind, crossing the rocks by what is known as the ‘sledway’ and bringing her in a good position for the harbour mouth.

‍

‍“The lifeboat ‘Harriot Forteath’ was got ready for use in case the craft should miss the entrance and be driven on shore. Then, a few hundred yards from the piers she was knocked about considerably by the heavy seas, but on crossing the bar the sea calmed a little and she sailed into smooth water. A cheer broke from the spectators when they saw her in safety.

‍

‍“But the captain, not realising the necessity of keeping on her steerage, allowed her to fall off and lowered sail, causing the vessel to swing towards the sand on the east side of the harbour.

‍

‍“On seeing this danger, the anchor was dropped, but it found no hold and she drifted into Collier’s Hope and struck the ground, finally resting high and dry — a broken and a complete wreck, firmly embedded in the beach.”

‍

‍The reporter didn’t know it but Count Dracula had arrived.

‍

‍The whole dramatic scene was captured on camera by photographer Frank, and the pictures were published in several publications, one of which came to the attention of writer Bram Stoker, an avid reader of newspapers and cuttings, who made a mental note to visit the town and see the wreck.

‍And so, at the end of July in 1890. Stoker arrived at Mrs Veazey’s guesthouse at 6 Royal Crescent, Whitby.

‍

‍As the business manager of actor Henry Irving, Stoker had just completed a gruelling theatrical tour of Scotland. Irving recommended Whitby, where he’d once run a circus, as a place to stay and it was a perfect opportunity for Stoker to view the shipwreck. At the time he was working on a new story, set in Styria in Austria, with a central character called Count Vampyr.

‍

‍Mrs Veazey liked to clean his room each morning, so he’d stroll from the genteel heights of Royal Crescent into the town. On the way, he took in the kind of views that had been exciting writers and artists for the past century.

‍Windswept headland, the dramatic abbey ruins, a church surrounded by swooping bats, along with the faded tombstones of the graveyard, gave a taste of thrilling gothic horrors.

‍

‍

‍One morning Stoker visited the Coffee House End of the Quay and went to the public library. He found a book published in 1820, recording the experiences of a British consul in Bucharest, William Wilkinson, in the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia.

‍

‍He mentioned a 15th-century prince called Vlad Tepes who was said to have impaled his enemies on wooden stakes. He was known as Dracula – the ‘son of the dragon’ and Stoker discovered that Dracula in the Wallachian language means Devil.

‍

‍And so, in his iconic horror tale, the ‘Dmitri’ became ‘The Demeter’ and the Whitby Gazette reporter’s words became the words of Stoker: “Leaping from wave to wave as it rushed at headlong speed, swept the strange schooner with all sails set, and gained the safety of the harbour. The search light followed her, and a shudder ran through all who saw her, for lashed to the helm was a corpse, with drooping head, which swung horribly to and fro at each motion of the ship.

‍

‍“No other form could be seen on deck at all. A great awe came on all as they realised that the ship, as if by a miracle, had found the harbour, unsteered save by the hand of a dead man!

‍

‍“The schooner rushed across the harbour and pitched herself on that accumulation of sand and gravel washed by many tides and many storms into the south-east corner of Tate Hill Pier.”

‍

‍Stoker goes on to tell of a large dog bounding from the wreck and running up the 199 steps to the church, and from that moment, things begin to go horribly wrong. Dracula was in town.

‍

‍HAUNTING LIPS OF A DEATH MASK

‍THIS IS L’Inconnue de la Seine, the death mask of a young suicide woman found drowned in the Seine in the 1880s. When her corpse was displayed in the Paris Morgue, as was the custom, one of the morticians was so taken with her beauty, that he fell in love with her and cast her death mask, which was reported in the press.

‍

‍The mask became so popular, it was duplicated and used as a fixture on the walls of many private homes. Hundreds were made. In 1955, a stage play made her even more famous. Thousands of young women in Europe copied her hairstyle which became a fashion trend.

‍

‍She was described in newspapers as having “a pleasant, attractive face, with the hint of a smile playing on her lips. Her eyes are closed but they look as if they might spring open at any moment.”

‍

‍Hers is the one mask that has no name. For years she was known simply as the ‘Inconnue’, the unknown woman of the Seine and her smile was compared to the Mona Lisa’s. Books, musicals and poems about her followed. But who she was is a mystery to this day.

‍

‍Her lips were put to good use when she was used as the head of the First Aid mannequins in Britain and Europe in the 1960s, which became crucial to CPR training across the world. And that’s how she finally became known as the woman with the most kissed lips in history.”

‍

‍If you’re one of the 300 million people who’s been trained in CPR, you may have had your lips pressed to the Inconnue’s.

‍

‍Stick me in a hole somewhere and have a drink

‍SUICIDE notes didn’t often make the pages of the Victorian Press, but I came across this one with its own little headline in the Manchester Guardian, of Saturday, March 15, 1856.

‍

‍EXTRAORDINARY SUICIDE

‍“Last week an inquest was held by the county coroner of Lancashire, on the body of Mr. John Hobler, aged 21, a young gentleman of highly respectable connections in London, who had been studying the profession of a machinist and toolmaker in Manchester.

‍

‍“The deceased absented himself from work in the month of January, leaving letters behind stating his intention to destroy himself. On Wednesday his dead body was discovered in a copse in Cheetham’s Close, Turton, near Bolton.

‍

‍“In his pocket was this letter: ‘If they make mine a case of temporary insanity, it will be so on the part of the jury. So, dearly beloved Cove or Coves, now that you have found my body do not be an idiot or idiots and get up an inquest to talk about what they know nothing about.

‍

‍‘Somewhere in my pockets you will find 6d, with which to get a gill [a drink]. After that stick my body in a hole somewhere.

‍

‍‘You need not read over in any service, as I read it myself before starting to die, and by selling my clothes you will be able to pay yourself for your trouble.

‍

‍‘After which go away, and above all things do not try to find out who I am, as you will not be able; but do as I say, and the Lord will reward you accordingly. I have destroyed myself to save others the trouble, yours truly.’ No name was written.”

‍

‍The police did find out who he was, and the verdict was the very one he predicated: “Temporary insanity.”

‍

‍When our boys in blue had the GI blues

‍Fascinating message from our old Express buddy Geoff Compton following my feature on the big spending Yanks getting all the gals in Blighty in the Second World War and poor old Tommy was, well, poor.

‍

‍Geoff writes: “As a wartime pilot my father was once forced to make an emergency landing at a US airbase in Blighty. He said it felt like a different planet. The canteens and PX stores were Aladdin’s caves of stuff he hadn’t seen since the war started: sirloin steaks, bananas, chocolate and — the seducer’s essential — nylons.

‍

‍“He felt aggrieved on behalf of his half-starved countrymen particularly because RAF aircrews dined largely on the rabbits they shot on the airfields.

‍

‍“Good news is he had the presence of mind to grab of a couple of bottles of excellent brandy to bring home.”

‍

‍Thanks Geoff.

‍

‍OLD NEWS IN BRIEF

‍

‍HOT FASHION KILLS POET’S WIFE

‍WHILE sitting at home one afternoon in 1861, poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s wife, Fanny caught fire when a match burned her dress. Her burns were so severe that she died the next day.

‍

‍Her new fashionable wide hoop skirt with flowing cotton and tulle were a hazard, unlike men’s tighter-fitting wool clothes.

‍

‍Fashion was riddled with dangers at that time. Socks made with aniline dyes inflamed men’s feet and gave garment workers sores and bladder cancer. Lead makeup damaged the nerves in women’s wrists so that they couldn’t raise their hands.

‍

‍Celluloid combs that women wore in their hair exploded if they got too hot and in Pittsburgh, the local newspaper reported that a man combing his beard with one blew his head off.

‍

‍THE WREATH OF DEATH

‍ON November 20, 1861, Matilda Scheurer, a 19-year-old artificial flower maker in central London died of “accidental” poisoning.

‍

‍She “fluffed” the artificial leaves on a wreath, dusting them with an attractive green powder that she inhaled with every breath and ate off her hands at each meal. The green pigment was arsenic.

‍

‍The press described her death in grisly detail. She vomited green waters; the whites of her eyes turned green and “everything she looked at was green.” In her final hours, she had convulsions every few minutes until she died, foaming at the mouth, nose and eyes.

‍

‍Punch Magazine reported under the headline: ‘Pretty Poison-Wreath’ two weeks later, that Matilda had been ill from the same cause four times within her last18 months.

‍

‍HEADLESS CHICKEN WAS A NEST EGG

‍On September 10, 1945, farmer Lloyd Olsen of Fruita, Colorado, chopped off the head of one of his chickens but accidentally left its brain stem and jugular vein intact, Life magazine reported.

‍

‍The chicken, nicknamed Mike, miraculously survived and ran around without a head for the next two years. So many people came to the farm to see him, that the farmer took him on a tour, earning $5,000 a month.

‍

‍A chicken’s brain is situated in the back of its head. Most of Mike’s skull was gone but the brain was left intact and a blood clot prevented him from bleeding to death. He was fed with grain and mash potato liquid squeezed into his oesophagus. Mike choked to death in 1947.

‍

‍TERRY MANNERS

‍6 July 2026