Joe Brown the church watcher

In Yorkshire a watcher at the church door at midnight on St Mark’s Eve, Old Style, was said to see the souls of all who would be buried there within the year go into the church in the order they would die, those to drown coming in splashing and struggling. Hone’s correspondent remembered Joe Brown, a hare-lipped man of his home town on the Ouse, who let it be known he watched the church and was feared when his forecasts of death came true. Joe later turned robber, and was hanged at York in 1809 for poisoning an old woman.