The Spital Inn, Stanmore

In 1797, George Alderson kept the Spital Inn at Stanmore, where a gang of robbers tried to use a “Hand of Glory,” a severed hand said to send people into deep sleep, to rob the household. Disguised as an old woman, one of the thieves entered the inn and used the hand’s light to immobilise everyone except the maid, Bella, who pretended to be asleep. When the gang arrived, she threw milk over the hand and broke its spell. The family awoke, drove off the robbers, and kept the withered hand for sixteen years afterward.