The Almshouse Spirits of the Geffrye Museum

The building now known as the Museum of the Home (formerly the Geffrye Museum) was originally constructed in 1714 as almshouses for the Ironmongers’ Company. For over 200 years, these elegant buildings housed London’s “deserving poor”—elderly workers from the ironmongery trade who had fallen on hard times. They lived here, often in poverty and poor health, until they died. In 1914, the buildings were converted into a museum of domestic interiors, but some of the former residents appear never to have left.

The almshouses were charitable but austere. Residents received a small room, a tiny pension, and basic necessities, but little else. Many were ill, lonely, and far from family. They died in these rooms by the dozens over two centuries, and the buildings absorbed their suffering. When the museum opened, staff immediately reported strange phenomena. The sound of coughing and labored breathing has been heard in empty galleries. Footsteps shuffle through corridors late at night when the building is locked and alarmed.

The most commonly reported ghost is an elderly woman in dark Victorian clothing, seen in what were once the individual residents’ rooms. She appears confused, looking around as if trying to understand where she is. Some witnesses report she seems upset that the rooms have been changed. Museum staff have also reported the smell of pipe tobacco and old medicine in areas where such smells shouldn’t exist. Objects in the period room displays occasionally move slightly—a chair pulled out, a book opened to a different page—as if invisible residents are still going about their daily routines. Night security guards have reported feeling watched, particularly in the chapel area where services were held for dying residents. The Museum of the Home tells the story of how Londoners lived; these ghosts remind us of how some of them died—forgotten, in charity housing, far from home.