The Headless Ghost Of Griffintown
by Guff Jett
Then as now, “don’t go losing your head over a little sex,” still applies.
The story of Mary Gallagher has been kept alive for decades, and still haunts the southwest Montreal (Canada) town of Griffintown.
It’s said Gallagher haunts the streets every seven years looking for the head she lost in 1879.
Gallagher and her best friend, Susan Kennedy, were hookers. One newspaper of the time described them as “dissipated characters who are in the habit of having friends in to see them and of carrying on the most disgusting orgies.”
According to the story, the two women went to Place Jacques Cartier one Friday afternoon in June, 129 years ago, and drank two bottles of whisky together.
Gallagher then picked up a young man by the name of Michael Flanagan, and they all went back to Kennedy’s house at the corner of William and Murray Sts.
Image: Mary Gallagher - the headless prostitute
Sometime during the evening, after Flanagan had passed out, Kennedy became jealous of Gallagher’s success in picking up a trick and went berserk. In a fit of intoxicated rage, she took an axe, chopped off Gallagher’s head, and threw it into a water pail beside the stove.
Initially, both Kennedy and Flanagan were charged with the murder, but it soon became apparent that Kennedy was the only one who could have done it - there was no blood at all on Flanagan.
It was a sensational story. In Victorian times women were regarded as gentle, submissive creatures, and the press had a field day.
At Kennedy’s trial, a downstairs neighbour testified that at approximately 12:15am on June 26, she heard the noise of a body falling to the floor so heavily that some of the plaster fell from the ceiling. This was followed by a heavy chopping sound that went on for at least 10 minutes.
Kennedy was convicted and sentenced to be hanged on Dec. 5, 1879, but the sentence was commuted and Kennedy was released after spending 16 years in jail.
Copyright © 2008 Our Strange World
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