BP-2026.003.1
Busby Stoop Chair
- Claim
- 5 of 5
Irreversible harm to the body, to a life, or to its continuation. - Evidence
- 2 of 5
One retelling, publication or sale listing. - Provenance
- 1 of 3
Described and identifiable, but its history is unrecorded.
These three figures are kept separate and are never combined into a single score. How grave the claim is, what it rests on, and whether the object can be traced are different questions. How the register reads them.
Asserted
Accounts attributed to a source. The register does not adopt them.
That it caused a death in the household. Thomas Busby was hanged in 1702 for the murder of his father-in-law and business partner in a counterfeiting operation. He is said to have cursed his favourite chair on the way to the gallows, so that anyone who sits in it will die. Deaths attributed to the chair include airmen during the Second World War and, in the 1970s, several fatal road accidents.
- C20
accident or injury
- C27
death
- E2
a named individual attributed to it
index v0.8: Named individual attributed
- T8
begins on an act
- H9
subject of a ritual or curse
index v0.8: Subject of a ritual, curse or blessing
- H11
belonged to a named perpetrator
- H21
associated with a named legend or figure
- X14
bound to an act of the observer
reported by: since the 1940s, largely by people who cannot be identified
Recorded
Established by the register, or received with the object.
File
- Register number
- BP-2026.003.1
- Entry type
- Object entry
- Opened
- 2026-09-16
- Coded against
- Claim Index v0.8
Object
- Type
- oak armchair
- Materials
- oak
- Date
- c.1840
- Origin
- North Yorkshire, England
- Whereabouts
- held by an institution, Thirsk
Custody
No custody record has been entered.
On what grounds
The holding institution's own display record, and local tradition. Reported since the 1940s, largely by people who cannot be identified. Evidence is capped at 2: the object's date is incompatible with the claimed event.
Counter-indications
What weighs against the claim. These are never subtracted from a figure; the lowest applicable ceiling is applied instead.
- CI1
absent from the earliest sources
- CI13
the object's date is incompatible with the claimed event
- CI21
reporters cannot be traced
A furniture historian examined the chair and found machine-turned spindles, where an eighteenth-century chair would have been turned on a pole lathe. He dated it to around 1840 — one hundred and thirty-eight years after the execution.
Register findings
- MT18
physically restrained or immobilised
- MT22
access restricted
- MT26
exhibited publicly
- MT27
object of organised visitation
The chair was given to the museum in 1978 on the condition that no one sit in it. It hangs from the ceiling, out of reach of visitors and of cleaning staff.