The cause of death was not stated;
there was no inquest.
This, literally, is all that is _known_ about Lord Lyttelton's ghost.
It is variously described as: (1) "a young woman and a robin" (Horace
Walpole); (2) "a spirit" (Captain Ascough); (3) a bird in a dream,
"which changed into a woman in white" (Lord Westcote's narrative of
13th February, 1780, collected from Lord Lyttelton's guests and
servants); (4) "a bird turning into a woman" (Mrs. Delany, 9th
December, 1779); (5) a dream of a bird, followed by a woman, Mrs.
Amphlett, in white (Pitt Place archives after 1789); (6) "a fluttering
noise, as of a bird, followed by the apparition of a woman who had
committed suicide after being seduced by Lyttelton" (Lady Lyttelton,
1828); (7) a bird "which vanished when a female spirit in white
raiment presented herself" (Scots Magazine, November-December, 1779).
Out of seven versions, a bird, or a fluttering noise as of a bird (a
common feature in ghost stories), {130a} with a woman following or
accompanying, occurs in six. The phenomena are almost equally
ascribed to dreaming and to waking hallucination, but the common-sense
of the eighteenth century called all ghosts "dreams".
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