A grim almanac of Hampshire

A Grim Almanac of Hampshire is a day-by-day catalogue of 366 ghastly tales from the county’s past, full of dreadful deeds, macabre deaths, grisly accidents and strange occurrences.

Among the gruesome tales included here are the sinking in 1545 of the Mary Rose, King Henry VIII’s flagship, in the Solent, with the loss of almost 700 men; the delivery of a foul-smelling basket to a servant in Winchester in 1825, which on investigation was found to contain the body of a stillborn baby; the story of Dame Alice Lisle, allegedly the victim of a miscarriage of justice when executed in 1685, and whose ghost is said to haunt the lanes around her home at Ringwood; Percy Brading, who killed himself on the day of his father’s funeral at Newport in 1935; and of the double murder of Lydia and Norma Leakey in the New Forest in 1956.

All these, plus tales of executions, disasters, suicides, explosions, and accidents by land, sea and air, and much more, are here — and if you have the stomach for it, then read on...