The Urban Legend of Minnie M. Skues

Despite taking some classes at the school below I never actually heard the Urban Legend of Minnie M. Skues. I did actually hear her referred to in jest by some people but never bothered to ask - today, seventeen or so years after last being at the school I stumbled upon the name on Wikipedia and dug deeper to find more.

The actual piece had vanished from Wikipedia because none of it is grounded in fact (that we know!) but Wikivisual seemed to have a ghost trace of the story. The real interesting aspect about this whole thing is that the "legend" obviously still exists and has passed down through countless generations of school children and the fact that Minnie M. Skues actually existed. If anyone has any other information I would love to know more!

Askean's young and old know about the mysteries of the belltower on the Lower Site. A certain Victorian girl, Minnie M Skues was supposedly raped by the old caretaker and upon discovering that she was to bear a bastard child to the grotesque and evil man, she hung herself to escape further tormentation.

It is said that the red walls are such because, while hanging, Minnie hit the wall and the blood that poured from her womb could not be scrubbed from the walls. Thus, the walls were painted their blood red colour to disguise the horrors of the past. The name, Minnie M Skues appears 7 times on the honours boards in the Jerningham site main hall, her earliest honour gained in 1896 and her last in 1907.

Surely if she had died, this would not be possible, and even if she had been alive, achieving seven honours as a nineteenth centuary woman would be incredibly difficult. It is said that, in an ettempt to wash away any memory of her sinfull and shocking death, that they invented a false life for her and part of this conspiracy was to put her name all over the school.

Entry to the belltower is strictly forbidden. You can see the bell tower for yourself from Jernigham Road. I'm sure that if you were to see it, you'd agree that it seems incredibly eerie. Is it an urban myth or are the sounds that are heard at the school when all is dark the sounds of her everlasting torment. Who knows? The caretakers dog seems to know. He will not enter the tower but only stare endlessly through the door, up at the chains that hang from the roof, the chains from which, over one hundred years ago, Minnie once hung.

Being a student of Haberdashers' Aske's Hatcham College - I feel it my informed duty to tweak the story above slightly. The rumour of Minnie M Skues being raped by the caretaker was an unfortunate manipulation of the traditional story. The caretaker version was invented in 2003 to make it more scandalous. The older version which has existed for many years longer (and the version which I believe to be the truth) is much less exhilarating: Minnie M Skues hung herself because of stress of exams.