The story of Guy Smith's successor at the Rectory and perhaps more particularly of his rather strange young wife is in some ways a sad one. It is hardly to be wondered at that Mrs Marianne Foyster, widow of the Rev. Lionel Foyster, ended her days in North America, fearful of any further attention to herself in relation to the story of Borley Rectory.
Lionel Algernon Foyster, a cousin to the Bull family, was born in Hastings on January 7, 1878, the son of George Alfred Foyster, then the Rector of the local church of All Saints. Lionel was educated at Bilton Grange and at Haileybury, and was admitted to Pembroke College Cambridge in October 1897. He gained a BA in 1900 and his MA seven years later.
Like so many sons of churchmen in those days, Lionel followed his father into the priesthood just as other lads might follow their fathers to sea or down the mines. He was ordained as a deacon at Wakefield in 1903, and as a priest in 1904. It was in 1903 that he took up his first post as a cleric, when he became a curate at Heptonstall in Yorkshire, which position he held until 1905.
For the following five years he was a curate at Oughtrington in Cheshire. At the end of that period, he travelled to Canada and from 1910 until the end of the First World War Foyster was Rector of Hardwick in New Brunswick, prior to taking up general missionary work in the province until 1927, the year in which his relative Harry Bull died in Borley Rectory. In that year, Lionel Foyster became Rector of Sackville, Nova Scotia, and remained so for two years.
About the end of 1929 or early in 1930, he was persuaded to return home by members of the Bull family, and take up the living of Borley, where the huge, cold and lifeless Rectory had lain empty since the departure of the Smiths.
It was in October 1930 that Lionel and his wife Marianne actually arrived at Borley with their possessions and accompanied by a little adopted daughter, Adelaide Tower, of whom more later. Lionel Foyster was a rather slightly built, cultured and good-natured man, and like Harry Bull he became well liked in the district. Many years later, however, Marianne claimed that he wasn't popular. In fact, it is more likely that it was Marianne that the Borley folk didn't take to, for reasons that will be stated a little later.
One of the sad aspects of his time at Borley, especially when one considers that he was only 52, was that for much of the time he was stricken with illness, worst of all being rheumatic arthritis, the curse of a country with a wet climate, and indeed it was ill health as much as anything that forced him to quit the living in 1935.
At one time, he was crippled to the extent that he needed a wheelchair, but sometimes used only a walking stick, which aid seems to have incurred the displeasure of something in the Rectory, for on one occasion it was hurled across the room as he sat typing.
Lionel Foyster was absolutely committed to his young wife, in spite of her alleged wayward background, and she in turn by her own admission was also devoted to him. It comes as no surprise, therefore, to learn that Foyster would brook no criticism of his wife; so when Harry Price and members of his visiting party tried to explain that some of the phenomena seemed to originate with Marianne, the Rector was furious.
Comments by various people who knew and met Lionel Foyster all seem to indicate that he was utterly straight and honest, and most important, a man unlikely to be fooled or misled by fraudulent imitation of phenomena, either by his wife or anyone else.
The record of happenings at Borley that he kept for about a year and a half was the result of conscientious documenting of events that he viewed as genuine. The writer has already expressed the opinion that Foyster would not have compiled such a record with the deliberate intention of publishing it. He did circulate reports about Borley among his family, a very different, private matter, and who can criticise him for that?
One aspect of Foyster's time at Borley is that, like a number of people closely associated with the Rectory, especially those who lived within its walls, the place and its atmosphere seemed to seriously damage his health. His arthritis has already been mentioned, and during his last sermon at Borley he collapsed at the pulpit. When the Foysters moved to Ipswich, Marianne having 'married' a Mr Fisher though still Lionel's legal wife, he lay almost totally crippled and confined to bed in the same house, and was often mistaken for Marianne's father because of his appearance. Strangely enough, Marianne, though she also lived in the Rectory for almost five years, lived longer than most of the former tenants.
The Reverend Lionel Algernon Foyster died at Dairy Cottages, Rendlesham, Suffolk, on April 26, 1945, aged 67 years and was buried in the parish churchyard of Campsey Ashe, beneath a headstone simply inscribed 'Lionel Foyster, Priest, 1878-1945'.
We must now turn to the next player upon the strange stage of Borley Rectory.
To relate the story of Borley Rectory and its curiosities without telling something of Marianne Foyster would be like Conan Doyle writing Sherlock Holmes whilst forgetting Dr Watson. Harry Price was an integral part of the story of Borley Rectory and was inseparable from it! Much the same could be said of Marianne Foyster.
It is not easy to point to hard evidence to substantiate the accusations sometimes made that Marianne used Borley Rectory's reputation to fraudulently maintain its haunted background for her own ends. On the other hand, it could be fairly said, without any disrespect, that she was in many ways a curious woman who didn't quite fit into any established slot in society but rather seemed to have functioned in a fascinating world of her own.
This enigmatic lady was born on January 26, 1899, in Romiley, Cheshire, the daughter of William Shaw and Anne Woodyatt. Their little daughter was christened 'Emily Rebecca Marianne' but throughout the years she has simply been referred to as Marianne.
Even at the time, her later role as Lionel Foyster's wife was almost foretold, because the Foysters and the Shaws were even then acquainted, and it is said that Lionel as a young curate baptised Marianne. There was to be a curious sequel to this later.
Marianne began her rather curious married life at the age of 15, when she was wedded to an Irishman, H. G. Greenwood, giving her age as 17. That was to be the first of many occasions on which she lied about her age, something that is said to be a woman's privilege, though Marianne did rather exploit this. The couple had a child during 1915, later to travel to Canada with his mother, where Lionel Foyster paid for the child's education. By about 1920 this, her first marriage, seems to have 'dissolved into limbo', though there appears to be no record of a divorce or annulment, and she left England for Canada, the beginning of a long association with North America that she was to renew some years later. It was there in the town of Salmonhurst, New Brunswick, that she married Lionel Algernon Foyster on August 22, 1922.
Lionel is said to have boasted to the man who married them about having baptised Marianne as a child, and he is said to have been shocked when the other priest told him that the marriage was not right in the eyes of God, because Foyster was Marianne's spiritual father. The point is perhaps arguable.
Marianne's marriage to Greenwood was allegedly terminated at the whim of her parents by a legal separation, which considering that Marianne was only 15 when first she married is not impossible. Greenwood later died in Australia, but during their brief marriage the couple had a son named Ian. It is interesting to note, however, that Greenwood was apparently dead by the time Marianne married Lionel Foyster, and if that is so it invalidates at least one accusation of bigamy against Marianne.
Two years after their marriage, the Foysters came to Borley for a short holiday in 1924. It was during this time that Marianne became acquainted with Harry Bull and one does rather wonder what might have passed between them, given Marianne's tendency to waywardness with various men. She and Lionel returned to Canada and did not see Borley again for six years.
They lived in Canada until 1930 when in response to appeals by the Bull family Lionel came home to England with Marianne and their adopted daughter, Adelaide. Adelaide Barbara Alice Tower was born on March 20, 1928, her mother dying in childbirth and her father dying shortly afterwards as a result of fatal injuries suffered in a farming accident.
It was following this tragedy that she was adopted by Lionel and Marianne Foyster, but in 1940 she was put into an orphanage, the reason given by critics of Marianne was that she had grown tired of looking after the girl. It has to be said that the combination of her adopted father's ill health and her adopted mother's liking for relationships with other men was perhaps not a viable situation in which to bring up an orphan.
After 1940 there is little record of what became of Adelaide though it is believed she was reunited with Ian in the 1990s.
Much the same appears to have happened to Ivy Brackenbury after Harry Bull died. From 1927 onwards, there is almost no trace of her in the Borley annals.
Marianne's marriage to Lionel, whom she referred to as 'Lion', lasted in spite of her would-be marriage to a Mr Fisher, until Lionel Foyster died in 1945. Marianne's next and last husband was Mr O'Neil, with whom, not long after the Second World War, she returned to North America. She is said to have eventually divorced him because of his excessive drinking, but what is certain is that when he died Marianne resigned herself to a remaining life without a partner.
She remained in North America until her death, when in her nineties in 1992, but her true identity was unknown to most people around her, and apparently she was in terror of any fresh public interest in her links with Borley Rectory. It is obvious that she wished to be left in peace, and when one sees some of the results of publicity about her and her private life, one can hardly blame her.
Now, however, we must come to her time at Borley with Lionel Foyster. Much has been said about Marianne and her years at the Rectory, and it would be fair to say that she was a curious person, at least in the context of Borley. However, it would also be true to say that a lot of the criticism of her has arisen out of the attitudes of people who perhaps expected Marianne to be something she was not ... namely a very ordinary and conventional vicar's wife. That was something that really she would never be.
Numerous Borley folk, even today, refer to Marianne as 'that strange woman' and yet perhaps it is not entirely surprising that she might appear strange to a community made up of rather conservative and perhaps somewhat austere rural folk with old-fashioned ideas and morals. Marianne was of a rather different stamp, young and lively and fond of fun and bright lights and men. It is not at all unreasonable, in view of Marianne's origins, to suggest that maybe she found the Borley folk as odd as they thought her to be.
A number of points about Marianne seem quite plain. She had a rather inconsistent interest in children, having care of at least three whilst at Borley ... little Adelaide; young master Pearless who was Francois d'Arles' little son, brought to the Rectory as a playmate for Adelaide; and John Emery, a little baby who died only a short time after birth, and was buried in the churchyard at Borley. That death is known to have upset d'Arles and very likely Marianne as well. The book, The Ghosts of Borley, tells us that Borley folk could still remember d'Arles weeping at the grave. But to return to Marianne ...
She looked after her husband who was often ill with either arthritis or heart trouble, and for the most part they co-existed peaceably enough as far as the disturbances at the Rectory allowed.
There seems little doubt that Marianne found Borley Rectory depressing and isolated, but then so did Mabel Smith, who found it more difficult to come to terms with the Rectory and its strangeness. Marianne, however, seems to have found ways of alleviating this lack of fizz in her life by occasionally taking herself off to something more lively.
There has been much criticism of her for the various affairs in which she was involved while married to Lionel, and it is no secret that she enjoyed the company of various would-be suitors during those days. One correspondent described her to me as an 'adventuress of the first order' and others have referred to her as 'a little beast'.
It is admittedly all too easy to condemn her as such on first impressions. Remember that even Harry Price viewed her as a fraud at the beginning of his sometimes stormy and foreshortened relationship with the Foysters. But as so often happens, there were two sides to the story, and it is claimed that Lionel Foyster not only knew all about Marianne's men friends, but is said to have actually suggested that she should be looking to the future after his death. Foyster himself was well aware of his own failing health, and appeared to be liberal-minded enough to be concerned at the prospect of Marianne being left in lonely widowhood.
Against Foyster's apparent knowledge and acceptance of his wife's affairs, it should be mentioned that various people who knew the couple while they were at Borley have suggested that Lionel Foyster was infatuated with his much younger wife and, in his eyes, she could do no wrong. If that is the case, then one could suggest that as the couple remained man and wife for 23 years, the infatuation in this case was certainly positive.
Were it merely a passing dalliance, it would not have lasted beyond a few brief weeks. Other dalliances were also in play. For a time she ran a flower shop with d'Arles, in a London suburb. This was a business entitled 'Jonquille et Cie' in Worple Road, Wimbledon, and she only returned to Borley at weekends.
It has been stated that Marianne was responsible for the phenomena that occurred during her and Lionel's tenancy, fraudulently keeping things on the boil in order to give Lionel a reason to take her away from the place, which she supposedly hated. But regarding the truth of the matter consider the following sequence of events:
1. Things happened at the Rectory during their tenancy which Lionel Foyster, the person most directly associated with Marianne, and Richard Edwin Whitehouse were certain of being genuine. Assertions made in The Haunting of Borley Rectory that Dom Richard's evidence was not valid because he had been suffering from a nervous breakdown were subsequently rejected by the monk, who described the allegations as nonsense.
2. It will be remembered that even Harry Price, when he and his party made known their feelings about Marianne and the phenomena, incurred the extreme anger of the Rector. He had been told on this occasion that, regrettably, it seemed that some of the phenomena occurred only when his wife was not under controlled observation and that consequently she could be responsible for these phenomena. Mr Foyster would have none of it, and I believe that the Rector was an intelligent man who would not have been seriously misled by fake phenomena.
3. It has been more reasonably suggested by Harry Price among others, that Marianne could have been an unwitting channel for the disturbances, not by her own doing, but because she may have been a 'psychically tuned focus' through which disturbing energies already in being at the Rectory were reactivated and to some extent enhanced. It has been said more than once that Marianne came from a family with a psychic background, so it might have been a good idea for Price to have tested her as a medium. If she was a channel for disturbances at the Rectory, and assuming that such phenomena surrounding Marianne were peculiar to Borley alone and did not occur anywhere else where she resided, then surely such happenings are or were valid as exclusive Borley Rectory phenomena. The point about localisation of phenomena could be rather significant and will be gone into later.
4. The experience of previous and later occupants of the place would seem to indicate that Marianne was really rather irrelevant as far as the curious disturbances were concerned. Many of the Foyster phenomena had occurred before their tenancy, and continued after they had gone. The various assaults on inhabitants of the house give some examples of this point. The reader will recall the blow on the face received by Marianne, a similar attack on baby Adelaide and, reportedly, another on Francois d'Arles, who is said to have come down to breakfast one morning sporting a black eye. One should not forget also that during Henry Bull's time one daughter in bed had her face slapped and that a much later visitor was thrown face down in a pool of dirty water at the back of the Rectory yard.
5. The one thing peculiar to the Foyster tenancy was the wall writing, not seen or at least not reported previously. Incidentally, there is nothing to prove that it had not already occurred in earlier years, during the Bull tenancy for example. With so many people in the house in those days, a housemaid finding messages on any of the walls could well assume that one of the youngest Bull girls might have been responsible and thought no more about it. But in respect of the Foysters, did the writing occur anywhere else that Marianne lived? If not, then again they were valid Borley phenomena, Marianne being nothing more than an unconscious conductor for the energy that produced the scribblings. In other words, it seems feasible that Marianne could have been (and that remark is used with reservation) a channel through which the messages were created. However, one should at this point note that the wall writings also occurred in Marianne and Harry Price's absence. In The Ghosts of Borley, the authors tell of how little Adelaide was a 'terror for scribbling', but it was also pointed out that the child was not only too young to be able to write any real words as such but also had some learning difficulties and, incidentally, not tall enough to reach the level at which the messages were found. It seems, therefore, that there is no clear proof that Marianne was responsible for the wall writings. Consequently, can anyone be sure that she was responsible, even unconsciously, for any of the phenomena? It seems not, unless one takes a more detailed look at the occasions on which Marianne was herself sometimes suddenly taken ill and even on occasions collapsed.
6. As others have thought, it seems to make little sense for Marianne to have persisted for five years in perpetrating fake phenomena merely to get her husband to take her away from the place. When he did eventually quit the living, it was due to ill health. It would, however, be a fair comment that Marianne disliked the isolation of Borley Rectory (but then so did the Smiths) but when Marianne had a bout of being bored with the monotony of life at Borley, she dealt with it very simply, by taking herself off to London.
It would seen that the only real pointer to any unconscious or latent involvement in the production of phenomena by Marianne lies in those occasions when she collapsed in the Rectory and was seemingly rather unwell.
A rather interesting possibility is that Marianne collapsed not through illness, but as a result of exhaustion arising from excessive output of psychic energy, when the phenomena were at their most violent phase. It is to be hoped that experts in psycho-medicine will be able to confirm this idea, or at least provide an answer to the problem in the near future.
A curious twist to Marianne's story, like that of Mabel Smith, was that many years later, when interviewed in America by Eileen Garrett, Marianne dismissed Borley Rectory's reputation as nonsense, but this completely contradicts the testimony of people like Dom Richard Whitehouse and Mr G. P. L'Estrange, two of the many people who were adamant that the phenomena were genuine. Marianne will probably remain something of a curiosity in relation to Borley, for whatever her true feelings were about her time at Borley Rectory, it seems that they will remain her secret.
Whatever one might think of Marianne Foyster's lifestyle, who could fail to be intrigued by this enigmatic lady? One of the co-authors of The Haunting of Borley Rectory, T. H. Hall, accumulated a large dossier on Marianne and offered it to the Harry Price Library, but it was declined as being unsuitable for the collection, partly because it would not have been available for general inspection.
I cannot help feeling that details of such a private nature that this dossier might contain would best be left unpublished and the memory of the remarkable Mrs Marianne Foyster left in peace.
Marianne Foyster at Worple Road, Wimbledon, in the 1930s. Note the bottle - some things change little!
Nevertheless, in September 1979, the Journal for the Society for Psychical Research carried an article, in an abridged form, by Iris Owen and Pauline Mitchell, of the New Horizons Research Foundation, Toronto, Canada. It was based chiefly on various statements given by Marianne over the years since the First World War. Not least among these was her claim that there never was anything to the Borley story and the place was not haunted when she lived there.
Interestingly, more details of her biography have come to light in the Owen & Mitchell report, though as Marianne showed herself to be totally contrary and unreliable on the subject of her one-time home in Essex, one does wonder how much even of her own stated biography is totally accurate.
Peter Underwood, in a reply he gave in June 1980, to the Owen & Mitchell report, considered that Iris Owen and Pauline Mitchell had dropped into the trap of taking Marianne Foyster at face value, which is risky to say the least, where the subject of Borley Rectory is concerned. The results of doing so are graphically illustrated by the difficulties one encounters when trying to square pre-war and post-war statements by Mabel Smith, until one takes into account how a combination of unpleasant experiences and the passage of time distorts the ability of a witness to recall the truth of what happened. That is something that many critics of the Borley Rectory episode, and of Harry Price, may need to learn and accept.
Another of Marianne's curiously contrary statements was that Lionel Foyster's diary of events at the Rectory was fictional, and that everyone in the family knew that to be so. This claim conflicts with everybody else's testimony to a point that, as evidence one way or the other, it is completely unreliable.
Marianne also stated in the Owen & Mitchell report that all the keys to the Rectory had been lost, and that consequently anybody could get in or out of the Rectory at will. Her intended inference was that the phenomena were caused by local children getting into the Rectory and messing about.
This statement is as contrary as some of the others, because the next Rector after Foyster, the Rev. Alfred Clifford Henning, handed the keys to Price when the latter rented the Rectory in 1937. Furthermore, whereas Marianne claimed that local boys used the Rectory toilet after church, local people tended to give the Rectory a wide berth.
Marianne also claimed that she was well liked by the Bull sisters, whereas they and their brother Walter made it plain more than once, in front of witnesses, as Peter Underwood tells us, that they could never take to Marianne at all. The reader will recall that many Borley folk used to refer to her as 'that strange woman', though as was pointed out previously, there was no doubt a good deal of judging Marianne by their own standards.
According to Owen and Mitchell, Marianne also suggested that both Lionel and the tenants of the Rectory cottage, Mr and Mrs Arbon, cashed in on the hauntings and strung Price along over the occurrences. It is quite clear, however, from both Price's writings and files, and from both Hastings and Underwood's work on the subject, that Price did not consider the Foyster testimony essential to the story of Borley Rectory, whereas the happenings of the Smith period did, at least to Price, warrant more serious consideration. We do know that Price's view of the Foyster period did change in time and the intervening row with Foyster over Price's doubts about Marianne's veracity obstructed a clear assessment of the situation, until Sidney Glanville's work cleared the air.
The persistent suggestions that Harry Price was fooled by Marianne really cannot be accepted, especially in the light of the row, which resulted in Price being shown the door. In any case, this accusation suggests a level of gullibility on Price's part that seems out of character with the man. Marianne claimed that Price, after the row, turned up at the Rectory one night, uninvited, bringing with him a picnic hamper. Hastings tells us that he was in the area on one occasion after the split between him and the Rector, so it is possible that he might have tried to revisit the Rectory, but it is also recorded elsewhere that Price was not able to renew contact with the Rector until much later.
In the final analysis, having considered the Owen & Mitchell report together with that of the late Robert J. Hastings, and taken account of both Price's own views and those of Peter Underwood and the late Dr Paul Tabori in their respective books, I conclude that Marianne cannot be relied on for evidence and that consequently the case of the haunting can neither stand nor fall on her testimony.
Her husband's testimony, and that of people such as Dom Richard and very many others, is a different story altogether, and one finds that it is their testimony that is the more honest in many areas of the story.
Peter Underwood asked the question: 'What sort of priest was Foyster if he presented as fact an account of things that he knew to be bunkum?' No, upon the Foyster period at Borley Rectory, Marianne's claims just will not do. On the other hand, to describe her as the villainess in the Borley story will not do either. Contrary she may have been, but she was very much a part of this extraordinary episode whether she herself believed the place to be haunted, or not.
The other major published view of the Foyster phenomena, that of Messrs Dingwall, Goldney and Hall, The Haunting of Borley Rectory, can hardly be accepted as being completely accurate, having been shown by the report of Robert J. Hastings to be rather misleading in certain aspects.
The Owen & Mitchell report is more extensive and I can only present a small portion here of what the report and Peter Underwood's reply contain.
How does one sum up Marianne Foyster? She was contrary, curiously wayward and, to a degree, a female Walter Mitty character. In spite of all the many versions she gave of her life at Borley Rectory since the thirties, she seems to be one of those extraordinary, sometimes infuriating but always fascinating characters for whom one can hardly avoid feeling some sense of affection. She must surely be regarded as one of the many enigmas of Borley Rectory.
A strange story about her after she left Borley Rectory reached the public through a short documentary programme on BBC Television in October 1994. It was a story that seems to be very much in keeping with her reputation for waywardness, and her penchant for changing the details of her life with each telling. As the story doesn’t really have any bearing on the story of the Borley Rectory hauntings, it will suffice to say that through the persistence of a young man seeking his natural mother, Marianne's trail of assorted adoptive children finally led to a brother and sister long parted being reunited.
It will be remembered that Marianne married a Mr Fisher, though at the time she was still legally married to Lionel Foyster. When she married Fisher, Marianne presented two adopted children as being her own, whereas in fact they were not hers, and were to end up, like Adelaide Tower, in care.
Readers will also recall that after Lionel and Marianne moved to Ipswich, Lionel was often mistaken for Marianne's father, chiefly due to his age. What came to light in the documentary was that Marianne encouraged this state of affairs by actually claiming that Lionel was her father. And yet, when one remembers how she had changed or denied so many aspects of her story throughout her life, this episode serves simply to reinforce her curious and wayward character.
This episode does, however, touch upon the hauntings at Borley Rectory in one way. The writer has suggested that Marianne might have been acting as a psychic focus through which the disturbances at that time were being channelled. She has since apparently stated that she was not psychic, though as with so much else that she has related about herself, one wonders whether even that denial can be taken at face value! But could it be that the entities active at Borley Rectory, instead of appealing to her for help, as has been thought, were in fact creating their havoc in protest at her presence there?
Whatever the truth of the matter, and however wayward and deceiving she seems to have been during those momentous years of her extraordinary life, Marianne was with all her apparent faults, deserving of a permanent place in the annals of Borley Rectory and its strange history.
There is one more character from this extraordinary period in the Rectory's history that we must speak of, though what is known about him is little enough. A frequent occupant of the Rectory during the Foyster's time was Francois d'Arles, a curious character by all accounts. His name was assumed, for he was in fact born Frank Charles Pearless on November 10, 1894, in Bermondsey, South London, and on December 26, 1918 he married Ada Ewens at West Hackney.
For a time he lived in France, which is when he assumed the name Francois d'Arles, probably nothing more than a version of Francis of Arles, indicating perhaps that it was in that town that he lived. His marriage to Ada lasted until 1933, when in November of that year he was divorced. One cannot help but wonder whether this arose out of his association with Marianne, for between 1932 and 1934 he and Marianne ran the Wimbledon flower shop mentioned earlier, with Marianne only returning to Borley at weekends.
On August 8, 1934, he remarried, to Jessie Irene Dorothy Mitchell, at Wandsworth Registry Office. That marriage lasted until October 11, 1944, when he was again divorced. He was later married for the third time, to one Jessi Steed and in 1955 he departed for Australia from where he was to return in 1966, dying on October 10 of that year.
During the Foyster period, he lodged at the Rectory his small son, who acted as a playmate for little Adelaide Tower, and d'Arles also stayed there frequently himself. It is even suggested that for a time he dominated the Foyster household. Local people recall him weeping at the grave of the dead infant, John Emery, who died aged about five weeks, whilst in Marianne's care.
He also reported having been a victim of one of the periodic assaults on the residents of the Rectory, appearing for his breakfast one morning sporting a black eye and claiming that a ghost had struck him in the face in his room.
It is a pity that more is not known about this curious man, and indeed what is recorded about him here only came to light during the research for Peter Underwood and Paul Tabori's joint book, The Ghosts of Borley.