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In 1681, a mystery attacker who vanished instantly terrorized London [1]

['Ellsworth Toohey']

Date: 2026-07-02  

In 1681, women walking alone through the alleys around London's Fleet Street began getting attacked by a man who moved so fast, and vanished so completely, that people believed he had supernatural powers. He'd grab a woman, bend her over his knee, lift her skirt, and spank her before disappearing. Newspapers called him Whipping Tom.

One servant girl described a "tall black man standing up against the wall, as if he had been making water" before he "seized her, and in a trice, laying her across his knee, took up her linen, and laid so hard up-on her backside, as made her cry out most piteously for help." One pregnant victim wasn't even spanked — she was so frightened she miscarried and died a week later. Vigilante patrols failed to catch him; two suspects were eventually jailed, including a local haberdasher.

A second Whipping Tom terrorized the village of Hackney in 1712, beating roughly 70 women with a birch rod "that the blood ran down their tender bodies." A man named Thomas Wallis confessed, explaining that women "deserved ten times more than either whip or rod could possibly afford them." He was sentenced to be birched twice a week by two maids for a year, pilloried five times, and, on release, forced to run a gauntlet through 200 women.

Previously:

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