Hello, I'm Frank Turner. Welcome to Tales from No Man's Land, a podcast that accompanies my album, No Man's Land. It's about 13 women from history who you probably haven't heard of, but definitely should have. Their stories are fascinating,

moving, funny and most importantly worth celebrating and sharing. If you're heading down to

Camden Town, be sure to raise a toast, to the patron saint of the Waste and Strays,

to Ginny Bingham's Ghost.

Welcome back to the podcast Tales from No Man's Land. As we've probably established by now,

I am a massive history nerd and I especially have a passion for learning about the history

of my adopted hometown, the city of London, where I live. I spend a lot of time wandering around the

city trying to learn about it, and in North London, I stumbled across the story of the woman that

we're going to learn about in this episode, who was called Ginny Bingham. Ginny lived in Camden

in Kentish Town in the 17th century. There's not masses about her on the record, but there are a few

clues here and there.

We know that she was a herbal healer, a brewer, and a landlady of a coaching house. We know that

she had a series of lovers who passed away in different ways, the third one of which was found

dead in her oven. She was a strong and independent woman, but as she got older, people turned against

her. She ended up reviled and accused of witch but as she got older, people turned against her.

She ended up reviled and accused of witchcraft.

When she died, it was said that her body was found with a cauldron still bubbling alongside her.

She became a myth, a local legend.

Quite a lot of what we know about Ginny Bingham actually comes from the writings of Bram Stoker,

who is the author of Dracula, but at other points in his writing career was a local historian in

North London. But more recently, the historian Carol Clancy has been researching Ginny's life.

And so I went to meet Carol outside one of my favourite Camden pubs, The World's End, which used to be

...