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The Ostrich (Colnbrook, UK)

https://ostrichcolnbrook.co.uk/history.html https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1124367 https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101124367-the-ostrich-public-house-colnbrook-with-poyle https://historicengland.org.uk/education/schools-resources/educational-images/ostrich-inn-high-street-colnbrook-11673 https://mikedashhistory.com/2010/07/19/the-horrible-history-of-the-ostrich-inn/ https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-ostrich-inn

The Relay Inn / Relay House (Relay, Maryland, USA)

https://relaymaryland.com/about/ https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=103010 https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=8764 https://www.roads.maryland.gov/OPPEN/Maryland_Railroads_Statewide_Historic_Context_Complete.pdf (If you meant the Pennsylvania stagecoach stop often called “Relay Inn”): https://www.facebook.com/mifflincountyhistoricalsociety/posts/reportedly-haunted-the-relay-inn-built-in-1799-and-used-as-a-stage-coach-stop-le/1229519535871197/

The Bleeding Horse (Camden Street, Dublin)

https://bleedinghorse.ie/ https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/50110427/bleeding-horse-24-25-camden-street-upper-charlotte-way-dublin-2-dublin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bleeding_Horse https://www.visitdublin.com/the-bleeding-horse https://www.dublinbypub.ie/pubs/bleeding-horse/ https://comeheretome.com/2011/04/07/the-bleeding-horse/

Transcript Part 1 – Historical Inn Murders “Once a traveler leaves his home, he loses almost 100% of his ability to control his environment.” — Special Agent Dale Cooper Restaurant murders are nothing new. As long as there have been road trips, there have been inns. The European-style inn really started as a precursor of today’s Airbnb; people would rent out an extra bed (or even a space in the stables) and feed any traveler who needed to bunk and chow down for a night. These were unofficial, but really, they would evolve into today’s highway motels, hotels, and rest stops. They were important in enabling travelers not only to have a place to stay, but also as a way to avoid spending a night out along the trail where they might have to deal with highwaymen, local tribes, and wild animals. Now, with a clientele that was on the go as a rule, and with no way to communicate with the folks back home, it was not too unusual for an inn to be the final stop for travelers who checked in but never checked out. Thefts happened often, even at some reputable inns, but murders were not unheard of. There are three examples, of varying veracity, that show how dangerous an old-timey inn could be: one English, one French, and one American. The Ostrich Inn (Colnbrook, England) The Ostrich Inn may or may not be nearly a millennium old. It might also “only” be 500 years old. With a building that old, five hundred years may not make too much of a difference. Instead of razing and starting over with older structures, many new buyers would simply add on and remodel. Fix-and-flip was a thing even in the dim dark past. It’s certainly possible that there are elements of The Ostrich that date back to the 12th century. The story goes that it was originally called The Hospice, and while under that name it was visited by a couple of historically important folks. Of course, this could actually be a conflation with another building—possibly the hospital, or hospice, of the local abbey that might have stood on the site. There are myriad other possibilities, but those two are the most likely. All we know for sure is that the place still stands, not too far from Heathrow airport, and has a delightful menu today. In 1215, King John—aka Softsword, aka Lackland, aka the lion in Disney’s Robin Hood—was on his way to Runnymede to sign a treaty with rebellious Barons who were threatening war. The Archbishop of Canterbury drafted the original version of the Carta Libertatum, which was signed and settled some hash for a little bit. Of course, no one really took it to heart at first: there was a war between the crown and the Barons, then John died, his son used the Carta Libertatum as the basis for more laws, and they renamed the document Magna Carta. On the way, supposedly, King John stopped with his retinue and stayed at The Hospice. Whether this is true or not—or simply a story invented to draw tourists at some point in the past—is uncertain. It could be that his team stayed at The Hospice, or at the actual abbey hospice that might have stood on the spot. The building was certainly there in the early 18th century when Dick Turpin, arguably the most famous of highwaymen, stayed at the inn. The Ostrich is, and was, not the only inn to make the claim that Turpin and his gang stayed there. Looking at the areas where his alleged crimes took place, it’s possible he could have. The criminal lore of The Ostrich, though, comes from an older story. The inn was supposedly owned by the Jarmans, a couple who recognized two things: 1) since they were on the road out of London, their visitors might well be carrying goods and cash, and 2) those visitors were especially vulnerable. The tale goes that Mr. Jarman installed a bed placed on top of a trapdoor. At night, when the mark was asleep, he would pull a lever and the person on the bed would fall down a chute to the basement, where a giant pot full of boiling water would be waiting, boiling the unfortunate victim alive, while the Jarmans grabbed whatever was left behind in the room. Of course, there’s a lot in that story that makes it less than credible. The first is the claim of sixty victims—but even back then, people noticed when loved ones vanished. Also, if you’re dunked into a pot of boiling water, it takes a while to die, and it would be insanely hard to actually keep someone submerged long enough to kill them. The amount of flame needed to keep a human-sized boiler going would have made the room above stifling. The other problem is that there is no record of the story until the 17th century, in a novel called Jack of Newbury by Thomas Deloney. It is likely that Deloney’s tale, and the notoriety it gained from being attached to such a well-known inn, led to the story later being tied to Sweeney Todd. The Bleeding Horse Ireland’s long tradition of roadside inns has left more than food and lodging in memory. In Dublin, few taverns carry a reputation as grim as The Bleeding Horse, a public house dating back to the 17th century. Its name itself comes from legend—an injured horse stumbled in from a nearby skirmish, leaving the floor stained. When your business is named after a wounded animal, you’ve pretty much assured that it’s going to be a place for rough trade of varying kinds. Now, while The Bleeding Horse’s origins are fairly metal, the stories of the dangers that one could get themselves into at the inn are far harder to track down. By the 19th century, it had gained a reputation as a rough ’n tumble place. Camden Street was a crossroads for all types, travelers and locals alike. This has been a recipe for crime, as locals would sometimes try and take advantage of the travelers, and travelers could simply move on to the next inn if they committed crimes against locals. There were rumors that travelers would disappear from the inn as early as the late 18th century. That’s a possibility, but it also just might have been the fact that pub owners liked to advertise their pubs as rougher than they actually were. A town like Dublin, full of folks from all social strata, is exactly the kind of place where locals would drink wherever was close by, but the moneyed class would travel if there was a good time. And what rich person doesn’t enjoy a good night of slumming? Add to that the rumors of ghosts and you’ve managed to make The Bleeding Horse into a very attractive destination. James Joyce wrote of The Bleeding Horse in Ulysses, where Leopold Bloom visits the pub. The Bleeding Horse is one of those inns where there is no good evidence, but the reputation will always live with it, and the more fame it gains, the stronger the belief that once, it was a bully establishment. The Relay Inn Now we are in Pennsylvania and it’s the 19th century. The Relay Inn was built in 1799, and it’s a pretty standard stagecoach stop. Mifflin County wasn’t the roughest of areas; there are significant Amish communities in the county. Established in 1791, the Amish have more than thirty established groups within the county. Now, it’s not so much a crime that makes the Relay Inn an important part of the myth and mystery, but evidence of a crime—in this case, a bloodstain. At some point in the 19th century, a stain appeared on the floor. This stain was not huge, but it was evident and looked a lot like blood. Supposedly, there were attempts to clean it up, and they all ended up just making the stain more pronounced. The stain was on the floorboards in one of the bedrooms, and while many—including owners in the mid-20th century—said it was just darker portions of the wood, perhaps trying to tap into the potential for drawing visitors, the myth arose that a murder had taken place in the inn. There’s no record of anything in contemporary papers. But there have been reports of ghosts, of course, including in that very bedroom. Perhaps the stain is the ghost trying to draw attention, but more likely it was the owners trying to draw a few more customers. The building still stands today, but is a private residence. L’Auberge de Peyrebeille — “Auberge Rouge” (Ardèche, France) Now, while it’s more likely that the stories we mentioned earlier are not true, the story of L’Auberge de Peyrebeille in Ardèche, France, is certain. Once known as Auberge Rouge, it was an old inn by the 1830s and still going strong. The operators were Pierre and Marie Martin. They bought the inn around 1805 and operated it for more than twenty years. They were Ultra-Royalists, and they helped former nobles recover their confiscated lands. Pierre was a feared figure, since he was something of a henchman for local nobility. The inn prospered. Its position led many travelers to stop and stay. The going theory was they were worth about 30,000 gold francs—roughly six hundred thousand euros in today’s money. That was a lot of cash for innkeepers at the time, and there were whispers about how they’d made so much. In 1831, a horse dealer went missing: Jean-Antoine Enjolras. Horse dealers were important, and one going missing was bound to draw attention. The magistrate figured that Enjolras had been at the inn, but the trail went cold. A few days earlier, a body had turned up in the river near the inn. The head had been smashed in, and the knees crushed. This was no boating accident, and investigators identified the body as Enjolras. Quickly, they found a suspect: Jean Rochette. Pierre Martin was arrested slightly later, and Marie Martin after that, as local officials did not believe a woman could have committed such savagery. The trial was set, and it got a nickname: the Trial of the Four Monsters. The Martins’ nephew André was also charged. A beggar named Laurent Chaze testified that he’d been denied a bed at the inn, so he slept in one of the sheds on the property, which allowed him to witness the Martins and company killing Enjolras. This was as close to an open-and-shut case as you could have back in the 1830s—except it wasn’t all. The Napoleonic Code was the law of the land, and it allowed a lot more use of hearsay and conjecture as evidence. More than 100 people testified that they’d heard rumors over the years. They claimed that the Martins had been killing and cutting up visitors, taking their goods and making a living off the spoils. Others testified that Mrs. Martin had served human meat from the bodies they killed, that farmers had seen her boiling human hands, and that there were bedsheets covered in blood. That last is not uncommon in hotels even today. The defense claimed that Enjolras had gotten drunk and suffered a heart attack. Mrs. Martin had given him some herbal tea, after all. The crushed head and knees? Those came from being in the river. Rochette’s plea sealed their fate. He admitted the Martins murdered Enjolras but claimed he was not culpable because he was under Pierre Martin’s sway. This doomed all of them—except André, who was acquitted. The other three were found guilty of Enjolras’s murder, but not of any of the other crimes alleged. The judge was clearly partial to the prosecution. They were executed by guillotine, and death masks were made, as was common at the time. Were they guilty? Hard to say. Many modern researchers doubt it, but there’s the fact that they were richer than they should have been as simple innkeepers. Maybe Enjolras was drunk, got into a fight, or tripped and bashed his head, leading the Martins to dispose of the body. Who knows? At this distance, we’ll never have a clearer view.

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