What do you do when a man-sized monkey knocks on your door late at night ?

You probably shriek. You'd certainly shriek if, over its shoulder, the monkey was carrying a human body dripping blood.

It was all too much for the poor lass who opened the door of a dispensary in Darley Street in the 1830s. She did about the only sensible thing she could in the circumstances, and fell down in a dead faint.

Well, strange things happen when actors come to town. It happened like this:

Bradford got its first permanent theatre building in 1841, but for years before that it had provided a stopping-off place for strolling players - among them the troupe from 'Owd Jemmy Wild's Show'. James Wild was born about 1770, was originally a miner, then a rope-maker, and became a good clarinettist and leader of Cleckheaton Town Band.

When Kite and Morris's circus visited Cleckheaton, Jimmy joined it, became conductor of the orchestra and second husband to the widowed Mrs Kite. When she died, he became the sole owner, touring the north and giving open-air shows. There was no admission charge but spectators could buy raffle tickets.

This system was not - even in fairly lawless times - legal, and earned Jimmy three months in the nick after falling foul of the Constable of Wakefield.

When he got out, he decided to go legitimate and formed the Star Company. Their first performance was The Village Lawyer at Halifax in 1838. They toured the north with their tent and did pretty well, picking up performers here and there - including a man called Wallett, who joined 'Owd Jemmy' in Leeds.

One of Wallett's specialities was a drama called Jack Robinson and his Monkey, in which the actor dressed in a monkey skin. One of the special effects called for a gun to be fired and on the evening in question the property man, Jem Farrar, was loading a horse pistol when it went off, shattering his jaw.

Wallett, still in costume, threw Farrar over his shoulder and set off for Darley Street, where there was a dispensary and surgeons, though in truth Farrar didn't look to have much chance of survival. Surgery in those days was about 90 per cent amputation and ten per cent prayer, and if the shock didn't kill you, the infection probably would.

But Wallett was at least going to try, and that's why the dispensary servant girl opened the door late on that night to find a huge ape carrying what seemed to be a corpse. No wonder she fainted.

Wallett woke up the house surgeon. He sent for some colleagues who decided the case was hopeless.

There was, however, a second opinion and it came from one Dr Macturk. "Come boys, the man has pluck enough to live through anything. Off coats, boys, and let's do the best we can to save him," he implored. And they did.

Jemmy Wild died in Bradford in December 1838, but his widow and two of his sons, Sam and Tom, having decided Bradford was a profitable place for travelling players, decided to put down permanent roots. In 1841, they built a wooden theatre in Duke Street . They called it the Liver Theatre, but locals called it 't'Owd Wooden Box'.

It was a lively place - too much so sometimes. Sam Wild once employed a policeman at 18 shillings (90p) a week to keep a mob from White Abbey quiet.

Could the Earl's ghostly vision simply have been a dream?

Was Bolling Hall haunted by a ghost during the Siege of Bradford - or was it merely the Earl of Newcastle who was haunted?

The idea comes from Mary Tetlow, of Heaton, who heard the story while touring the hall in 1960. She recalls: "I vowed to do my best to discover whether it was indeed a ghost who had pleaded for Bradford, or a human. If a woman, who was she?

"It seemed to be a good idea to begin by studying the Earl himself.

"His second wife, Margaret Lucas, wrote his biography. He emerges as a charmer - of friends, foes, creditors, even of horses - and a devoted husband and father in each of his two marriages. Charles I most have held him in high regard, as the Earl was appointed tutor to Prince Charles.

"You could hardly see this man as the future butcher of Bradford, especially considering that the Restoration diarists Pepys and Evelyn wrote scornfully of his sentimental nature and his love of antiquity. He and his second wife must have lived in a world of their own, dressing in antique clothes and writing romantic plays...

"When he came to Bolling Hall, this devoted family man had been widowed only two months. His wife Elizabeth Bassett had died in April.

"It seems reasonable, even likely, that the ghost pleaded with the Earl in a dream, that his conscience had taken on the shape of his dead wife.

"Thirty years after coming to this conclusion, I was browsing in a bookshop in Forster Square when what should turn up but a new biography of Margaret Cavendish, nee Lucas, the Earl's second wife, by Kathleen Jones.

"This author relates that the Earl was widowed a second time, although Margaret was many years his junior. One of Newcastle's poems refers to a dream in which the 'she' of the poem seems to be in the room with him, though she was dead."

It's an interesting sidelight.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.