CHRISTMAS GREETINGS FROM THE NAVIGATION INN 1917

Pat Nancollas/Malcolm Hough

Here's a small reminder of how Christmas cards looked  a hundred years ago. This card which was sent from the Navigation Inn in Middlewich  by Mrs Ida Malpass is tiny, measuring only 10cm by 7cm (approximately 4 inches by 2 1/2 inches), but its lack of size is made up for by the elaborate way it has been made.

Its sentimentality is, perhaps, partly explained by the fact that the Great War was in its penultimate year. Many postcards of the same era also carry similar messages showing a collective yearning for some sort of security after long years of war and the heartbreak of separation and loss.

A card such as this would have been very expensive to produce and to purchase and only the relatively well-to-do, or people 'in trade', such as Mrs Malpass, and her husband George (landlord of the Navigation from 1903-1928) would have been able to afford such extravagances.

We're grateful to Malcolm Hough, who runs the House Of  Feathers in Wych House Lane for passing these items (along with many others which will see the light of day in the Middlewich Diary in due course) to us.

Pat and her husband Derek are regular customers of the House Of Feathers and Pat, knowing of Malcolm's interest in the history of Middlewich, lent him the Christmas card and the photo of Ida, who was Pat's great-grandmother. 

According to Malcolm, Ida's husband George was also landlord of the nearby 
Talbot Hotel in Kinderton Street for a time.

We have looked at the Navigation Inn before in the Middlewich Diary, notably in this entry:


NAVIGATION INN circa 1894

The pub, which was in Mill Lane, off Kinderton Street, was, according to Ken Kingston ('Middlewich Hospitality', Middlewich U3A Local History Group 2014), at one time called The Coffee House, then the Canal Coffee House, the Canal Inn, the Bridgefoot and finally, from around 1816, the Navigation.

The Navigation Inn, on the corner of Kinderton Street and Mill Lane around 1894. Middlewich Town Bridge and the Trent & Mersey Canal are behind the building
Paul Hough Collection

Acknowledgments:

Malcolm Hough

Pat Nancollas

Ken Kingston

This was the first Middlewich Diary entry produced in Queen Street,
Christmas Eve 2015

First published Christmas Eve 2015
Revised and re-published 23rd December 2017, 12th December 2018, Christmas Eve 2019.

TANNERY ALLEY 1950s

by Dave Roberts

The name Tannery Alley probably won't mean very much to those who haven't been Middlewichians for very long, but when we substitute Southway and mention Tesco things may start to become a little clearer.
Tannery Alley is, or was, the public footpath which runs from St Ann's Road and joins Wheelock Street alongside the former Bargain Booze off-licence (now blessed with the not much more dignified name The Booze Centre). 
Tannery Alley was long ago re-christened Southway.
Slightly confusingly the row of shops behind Drinks & Bites at 35 is also called Southway, as is the pathway running from Wheelock Street and up the steps to the strange 'pagoda-like' structure which advertises the presence of Tesco's supermarket to people approaching from that direction.
As Malcolm Hough, who sent us this photo, reminds us the alley did,  at one time, have a third, unofficial, name. 
When the Alhambra was in business as a cinema the locals christened it 'Picture Alley', as it formed a short-cut to that popular establishment for those coming from St Ann's Road and 'Newtonia'.
Of course many who were young at the time will remember that the rear door of the Alhambra was (and still is) down a little alleyway off what became Southway, and it was a relatively easy job to sneak through this door behind the cinema's screen, risking the wrath of 'Torchy', who, we think, was named after Torchy The Battery Boy, a popular puppet TV star of the 1950s. Or did his nickname pre-date this early Granada star?
Malcolm suggests, rightly, that this photo is just begging for a 'Now & Then' comparison and we'll be doing this just as soon as we have time to take a shot of that 'pagoda' which is approximately where these houses once stood.
Unless one of our many photographer friends would like to oblige?
To make our modern day bearings even clearer, the much-admired Barclay House is out of shot to the left. The prospects for this lovely old building are looking brighter now that Tesco has decided to dispose of all the property it bought up for its aborted Middlewich mega-store plan.
We have seen the old buildings in the photo before, again courtesy of Malcolm Hough, when we published this picture:

We first published this picture  here in 2011 under the title 'Mystery Picture' as we weren't entirely sure of the location at that time, although the 'mystery' was soon solved. That's one end of the former Orchard Works to the right and Barclay House is immediately to the left of what is obviously the building in the picture above. We can now see that there appear to be three houses here - two cottages and a fairly substantial house, the main entrance to which was probably at the front facing Wheelock Street.
Were these, perhaps, a couple of workmen's houses and a 'manager's house', relating to the vanished tannery which gave the alley its original name?
The other obvious question is, where did the name 'Southway' originate?
Incidentally, the resemblance between this little section of Tannery Alley and
White Horse Alley is quite striking.

We'll be returning to the scene with some 'Now & Then' shots soon.

Note: We've dated this photo provisionally as '1950s' due to the quality of the photography, although we're open to argument and correction on this. Was that building still standing in the 1960s?

With thanks to Malcolm Hough

UPDATE (9th May 2019):
In the four years since this diary entry was written, there have been changes in the area, the principal one being that 'Big Tesco' has gone, to be replaced by Jack's and that little 'pagoda' now has a 'Jack's' logo on it. The Booze Centre which replaced Bargain Booze has also closed to be replaced by an 'International Food Store'. Various other changes have happened in Wheelock Street. Soon this area will be completely transformed as plans to redevelop the area between Southway and Daerlington Street go ahead. When that happens 'Tannery Alley' will be an even more distant memory.

LILYWHITE POSTCARDS OF MIDDLEWICH

by Malcolm Hough and Dave Roberts

A friend of mine, Maurice Weedall of King’s Crescent, recently brought me six post cards to look at, featuring scenes of Middlewich.
Some we have seen before, but two of them are new to me. 
What I find interesting is that five out of the six are from the well-known Lilywhite series and have the original copyright number on them. They appear to belong to the same set.
I was wondering if it might be possible to track down a full set of these cards? They are all top quality and enlarge well on the screen - Malcolm Hough

Editor's Note: Lilywhite Ltd of Brighouse were only one of many firms producing postcards of thousands of locations all over the world. Malcolm appears to be right in saying that these cards are part of a Middlewich series, as can be seen by the index numbers MDH 57/MDH 25 and so on on all but the last one, which seems to be from a different publisher. Internet searches bring up long lists of postcards from Lilywhite and other publishers, but little about the postcard manufacturers themselves. We'd be grateful for any information about this fascinating source of pictorial history. -Ed.

This postcard shows the Parish Church with the iron railings still in place*, and also showing railings over the river Croco (extreme left, abutting the Town Bridge parapet).
Maurice told me that in this photo, by the Church’s rear gate, one of the two gentlemen in waistcoats, is his grandfather (who died before 1944 when Maurice was born). He is probably the one pushing the trolley, or push chair. The child is Maurice’s elder brother Barry about 1940/41.
The graffiti 'artists' were also about in those days - see the town bridge wall.
Also visible in this photo are the corks on the overhead wires to stop birds flying into them, mainly the racing  pigeons which were, and still are, so popular in this and other parts of the north. Maurice thinks that the mounds in the Churchyard are freshly cut grass left to dry on a hot Summer day, possibly to supply horse feed with it being wartime. - Malcolm Hough

* which, obviously shows the photograph to have been taken  during the earliest days of the Second World War when, in common with similar railings from all over the country, they were removed to provide scrap metal for the war effort. In fact very little of the metal collected was ever used for the war effort and a lot of it, particularly in London, was quietly dumped at sea. The exercise was chiefly valuable as propaganda, making people think that they were making sacrifices to win victory. It's a pity the church's railings couldn't have been returned or replaced after the war. However, on a brighter note, Middlewich's beautifully ornate cemetery gates in Chester Road were spared and were recently restored to their former glory. (update (April 2019: Sadly, our beautiful cemetery gates were, almost unbelievably, wrecked once more by an out-of control car not long after this was written. At the time of writing - 26th April 2019 - they are yet to be repaired - Ed) To the right is Middlewich's long-vanished, and still much-missed, Victorian Town Hall -Ed.

This one is very well-known and crops up repeatedly in many a collection of Middlewich pictures. It was on sale in local newsagents right up until the early 1970s for those who had taken the novel step of holidaying in Middlewich and wanted to let the folks at home know of its glories. The picture itself appears to have been taken in the early to mid 1950s.
We're standing on the other side of the Town Hall shown in the previous picture, in The Bullring, and looking along the still very recognisable Wheelock Street, the main points of reference being the now beautifully restored White Bear Hotel on the right,and, in the middle distance, the distinctive facade of the Alhambra Cinema which, despite the vicissitudes of the years, still retains all that ornamental decoration and, almost miraculously, its name.
The building on the extreme right is now the site of the Vaults car park and the building visible between it and the White Bear is now home to two hairdressing establishments and the former home of the celebrated Sharon's Cafe.
The Vaults itself is set back from the road, and lurking between these two buildings waiting for the day, many years later, when it would emerge into the open to be the first building on that side of Wheelock Street.
Out of shot on the extreme right is the start of Pepper Street, meandering away from the town centre to join Webbs Lane and giving access to Henry Seddon's Pepper Street Salt Works along the way.
The buildings on the left have now disappeared to make way for what is now Tesco Express and the former Pineland Shop. - Dave Roberts

We have definitely seen this picture of King Street before, and it has featured in a previous Middlewich Diary entry, which you can see here. This is King Street, Middlewich, either during or just after the Second World War. The car looks to be of 1930s vintage but in those 'make do and mend' days may well have kept running throughout the war and beyond. The large tree, centre right, marks the spot where King Street curves to the right to cross over the railway line and then start its climb up Ravenscroft Hill. The huge poles along the left hand side of the street are part of the somewhat Heath-Robinson style electricity supply to King Street, in which the cables were strung along the street like telephone cables. The lower part of King Street even used to have wooden electricity poles which had street lights screwed to them, Part of this now antiquated system still survives.
We can date this photo as being from the 1940s by the two houses on the right, which were built by my Grandmother and my Mother's cousin Harry  in the late thirties and were the only houses on that side of this stretch of the road until building began again after the war. -Dave Roberts

Another rather familiar postcard view, this time pure 1920s suburbia as Nantwich Road makes its genteel way down to the aqueduct. The entrance to Mill Lane is to the right. Notice the elaborate telegraph pole - just one of millions which used to line nearly every road and railway line at one time - and the small road sign; all that was necessary to control traffic in the days before the world went motor-car crazy. We think this picture dates from the 1940s. Notice how spick and span everything seems. - Dave Roberts

I was looking at this postcard of Chester Road and noticed that  the name of the landlord on the Golden Lion pub sign is  F. A. Egerton. According to Middlewich Hospitality, the new book by Ken Kingston,  he (Frank Egerton) was the landlord from 1929 to 1944. So as with the St Michael's photo, this one was probably taken in  the early  years of the  war, which  may explain why all the roads are quiet. It would be nice to find a full set of these postcards.

The shop with the Gold Flake sign in the window was also a cafe in those days. I remember it being a shop in the 60’s but not a cafe. - Malcolm Hough

This photo is the 'odd one out' among Maurice's  postcards, as it is not  part of the Lilywhite Series. It does, though, appear to be one of a set of Middlewich cards as it bears the index number MDW4. It's titled 'King Street Schools' which dates it as pre-1920s when the 'deviation' from the original line of the road was developed and this section of King Street became 'New King Street'. The aerial view of the two roads below, which is taken from Google Earth, shows how New King Street aligns perfectly with the top part of King Street (as shown in the postcard above).Presumably the 'New' prefix was given to what is actually the old section of road so that there would not need to be a change of name as the new alignment met the old. Notice the lovely old gas lamps along the street. This scene has not altered very much over the years, although the building on the right, which was St Mary's Primary School, is now St Mary's Parish Hall. - Dave Roberts

The yellow line follows the route of New King Street from St Mary's Church to the foot of the railway bridge to show how it aligns with the 'top' section of King Street. Before the coming of the railway the road would have continued along the side of Harbutt's field and, probably, made its way along the riverbank before turning to bridge the river and resume its northerly course towards Northwich and Warrington. The green cross marks the position of St Mary's Church and the former school, and the red cross is the site of the houses in the 'King Street' postcard above

 

With many thanks to Malcolm Hough and Maurice Weedall.

First published 1st May 2015.
Up-dated and re-published 26th April 2019

THE COTTON HOUSES

The Cotton Houses. A very good artist's impression of what the houses looked like. This is a rear view of the properties originally painted from memory by Edward Lightfoot in 2003 under the instruction of Mrs Harriet Grainger, and supplied to me by Mrs Sheila Davies (Harriet's daughter).

by Malcolm Hough

The Cotton Houses were situated on the corner of Manor Lane and St, Ann’s Road, Middlewich. 
We lived at number 6  Manor Lane from 1953 until 1958 when they were condemned. 

I think they were owned at the time by the Smallwood family, relations of John Garner the local builder, who demolished them within a couple of years and also built the houses which are now on the same site.

There were six cottages in total, and I believe three of them were about four hundred years or more old at that time, ours being one of them, and one of the smallest. There were three rooms in total in our rented cottage, two downstairs and one up.
The ceiling height was only about six feet or so, and I can well remember  my Father banging his head on more than one occasion on the wooden beam that ran through the downstairs living room,

And he was only 5' 7" tall.

I think some years earlier the cottage that we lived in had been reduced in width to allow a hallway to be built in the already larger premises next door. This would then allow this corner house to have three doors. 

It already had a door onto Manor Lane and one onto St Ann's Road and  the new rear door, I assume, was to allow easy access to the new, then modern, outside toilets that were some way over to the far-side of the communal backyard.

I will always remember those dingy toilets with the proverbial nail in the wall. 
I am only assuming the hallway and the toilets were built at the same time.

The cottages' roofs were covered with slates, which were laid on top of the original thatched roof. I know this because the roof caught fire twice when we lived there, and I remember that on one of these occasions, a fireman shouting that it was the thatch that was on fire. It was caused by sparks coming through one of the chimney walls.
The walls of the three oldest cottages which ran along the Manor Lane boundary were made from wattle-and-daub.

The two cottages that were built on the boundary of St., Ann’s Rd., were later additions, after part of the original building must have been demolished.

I believe this image is of the front of the Cotton Houses, from the Manor Lane side. I am very grateful to Betty Williams of the Middlewich Heritage Society for finding this image in the Society's archives, where it was listed as 'unknown, but thought to be somewhere on St Ann's Road'.

When I first saw the above black and white image, I thought that it was of Derbyshire's (market gardeners) cottage which is still just across from the Manor Lane/St. Ann’s Road junction, but if it is a true image the garden would have been too large to have been Derbyshire’s, which is on the road side.

This image would also have had to have been prior to their conversion into six cottages, due to the lack of the extra chimneys on the right-hand side and the missing slate roof that was laid on top of the thatch.

The cottage that we lived in would have been the second door from the left. Everything looks right about it. It was one of the smallest of all the cottages and, as I mentioned before, the ceiling height was only about six feet or so.
That's why the door looks small compared to the newer cottage on the left-hand side of it, which I think had an eight foot ceiling, judging by the windows. The walls were flush with one and other, and not set back as it appears in the image. 

There was also a massive fireplace in our living room and a large chimney breast in the one and only bedroom.
It was definitely out of proportion to the size of the rooms. 
The fire place would have been in proportion, if it had once been one or two larger rooms either side of the chimney breast. I do remember that the bedroom window at the end of my parents bed being in the same place as shown in the image, the one below the chimney.
The bed was above the door and the downstairs window.

This image looks perfectly in proportion to how I remembered it in the late 1950’s.
I do not recall the bricks in the gable-end though.
I think it was painted white and there was a door in it, as shown in the image.
I can remember our next door neighbour Mr Hall, who was a joiner, making a new door for it. I can only imagine that the chimney was in the middle of the original building, so it would have had to have been longer on the left hand side. 
This probably would have been the original footprint of the Cotton’s work and poorhouse.
Allan Earl’s research also shows it was still a work and poorhouse in 1740. 
There may have been an extension built onto the right-hand end as well, as it seems to me to be one dwelling too short to have been six cottages.
When we lived there the end cottage that was on right-hand side also had an unattached brick wash-house with a big copper open topped coal fired boiler in it.
Can anyone else add anything to the above information?

UPDATE (10th October 2017):

Peter Atkin writes:

The old house in the story is actually the original Pear Tree Cottage in St Ann's Road, which belonged to my great grandfather Tom Turney. Here is a better copy from my family archive.

Pear Tree Cottage

Peter has been attempting to find out just where Pear Tree Cottage was in St Ann's Road. The name suggests that there might have been some connection with the extensive orchards which once occupied the area where the school grounds and  playing fields and the children's playground are now. Can anyone help? -Ed

©Malcolm Hough 2013

First published in the Middlewich Heritage Society Newsletter

UPDATE (2nd October 2017)

Illustration: Ann Birtwisle-Brown

When this diary entry was re-published at the end of September 2017, Ann Birtwisle-Brown got in touch to tell us that her great great grandparents, Isaac and Martha Sant had lived in  the Cotton Houses at the time of the 1871 census. Their daughter Mary Ann, then aged 12 was Ann's great grandmother (ATKIN(S)).

For clarity, here's a transcript of the census information, also provided by Ann:

Name: Isaac Sant

Age: 39

Estimated birth year: Abt 1832

Relation: Head

Spouse's Name: Martha Sant

Gender: Male

Where born: Middlewich, Cheshire, England

Civil Parish: Newton

Ecclesiastical Parish: Middlewich

Town: Middlewich

County/Island: Cheshire

Country: England

Registration District: Northwich

Sub-registration District: Middlewich

ED, institution, or vessel: 4

Household schedule number: 110

Piece: 3700

Folio: 65

Page Number: 18

Household Members:

Name/Age

Isaac Sant  39

Martha Sant  48

Mary A Sant  12

George Sant  8

We're grateful to Ann for supplying this information and for permission to use it. As she herself says it gives us an opportunity to learn something of one of the families living in the Cotton Houses all those years ago. -Ed.

First published in The Middlewich Diary 5th October 2013

   Re-published 30th September 2017
   Revised and re-published 2nd October 2017
   Updated 10th October 2017

MIDDLEWICH CHURCH circa 1906

by Malcolm Hough

Here is another post card of the church, which I have not seen before, and bought recently off eBay for £4.50. Worth every penny!

I don’t have a date for it , but it is likely to be the early 1900’s (see below - Ed).

The rear of the postcard  states that the postage cost is a Half-Penny for inland and One Penny for foreign destinations.

There is also a dividing line to separate the address from the communication and I believe this line came into use around 1905, according to a post card collectors site I was looking at a few years ago.

Bottom left you can  see where lines have been drawn, or scratched, to write the Middlewich name on the front of the card before printing.

I remember the very talented sign-writers doing something similar with chalk at Foden’s before the use of transfers.

I'm not exactly sure where the picture was taken from.

To me it does not look like it was taken at ground level. You can just about make out the Kings Arms pub sign; half way down left-hand side and you can also see the gap in the shadow where the entrance to Queen Street is. 

The trees are quite small as well.

Editor's Note:

I think Malcolm's estimate of the early 1900s as a date for this postcard is correct. Look at this view which was taken from the end of Lewin Street, looking towards the Church and Town Hall, and we know to date from 1906.

Hightown 1906. From Middlewich 1900-1950 by Allan Earl (Cheshire Country Publishing 1994)

The Church (or what we can see of it) and the old Town Hall to its left appear to look exactly the same in this photo as they do in  Malcolm's postcard, so I think 1906 is about right. Incidentally, on the photo from Allan Earl's book you can just see, behind the cluster of buildings around the churchyard, the top of one of the chimneys at the Pepper Street salt works belching out black smoke.

Returning, briefly, to Malcolm's postcard, it's also interesting to note that the entrance into the Churchyard seems to be a lot further away from the church than it is at present. Is this a trick of perspective? Or were there two entrances in this section of wall in those days? just below the Town Hall you can see what might be the present day entrance (these days minus its gate) in the form of a distinct 'V' shape in the wall. You'll also notice that the arrangement of the churchyard itself is also a lot different. Of course,we know that the current layout, with its pathways made from old headstones and gravestones only dates back to the early 1970s.

But take a close look at the Town Hall in both pictures. Here's an enlargement of part of Malcolm's postcard.

It's the old Town Hall all right - the one which was demolished in the early 1970s and stood on the ground next to the churchyard where the 'Roman Amphitheatre' is now, but it appears to have what's known as a colonnade - a row of pillars at the front of it.

Here's the Town Hall as we remember it...

...and from this we can see that the gaps between those arches appear to have been  filled in at a later date to form a door and two windows. Did this occur, perhaps, in the early 1930s when the rear part of the Hall was demolished for road-widening and the Urban District Council moved its offices to Victoria Building (now, somewhat ironically, itself re-christened 'Middlewich Town Hall'?) It would be interesting to get hold of a clearer picture from the early 20th century of the front of this venerable building to see just what the entrance really looked like before these alterations. - Dave Roberts

A MYSTERY WOOD MYSTERY by Malcolm Hough

Now that the nights are drawing in, and Christmas looms on the horizon, the season for  stories of weird experiences and inexplicable happenings is upon us.
Like every town in this ancient and haunted kingdom, Middlewich has its share of spooky places.
Hannah's Walk, for instance, on a frosty, foggy December afternoon when dusk is approaching can play fearful tricks on an over-excited imagination, and it's easy to let your mind wander and perhaps fancy you can just glimpse, out of the corner of your eye, the shade of poor Hannah rushing to her doom in the icy waters of the canal.
We've already mentioned Mill Lane and that restless and uneasy place where the little stone bridge passes over the old mill weir and an awful feeling of being watched can steal over one on the brightest of afternoons. Go there on a cold November day, with the frost on the ground and the first dustings of snow in the air, and the oppressive feeling that you're not alone is almost overwhelming. 
What malevolent force is lurking there in the deep and ceaselessly churning waters under your feet, waiting to drag you to your doom?
Not too far away, down Nantwich Road (or, if you prefer, down the River Wheelock and a short distance away from the aqueduct, the 'twin' of the one that takes Nantwich Road under the SUC Middlewich Branch) is 'Mystery Wood', between Nantwich Road and the old road to Middlewich Manor, and the new housing estates in what were once the Manor grounds.
It's the haunt of dog walkers and strollers, and children playing among its trees and pathways.
But does Mystery Wood also hold an ancient secret which might account for the strange experience which Malcolm Hough had there more than fifty years ago?
-Dave Roberts, Editor.

A MYSTERY WOOD MYSTERY
by Malcolm Hough

I was 13 years old, and it was late July or early August, and it was just about dusk. 

Myself and three friends were playing in the woods next to the main Nantwich road in Middlewich, by the aqueduct that carries the Shropshire Union Canal over it.

 The wood's local name is “Mystery Wood”

 I knew adults who would not go in there after dark.

 It was a long narrow wood with spooky iron railings at each end, and with a stream running through it. That particular night it was still and very quiet, and we were joking about it being a spooky atmosphere, when all of a sudden a Sycamore tree of about  six or seven inches in diameter fell over.

 It was a perfectly still summer evening. 

We ran the long way home for about a mile or more, and only stopping outside of the British Legion club in Lewin St,  all of us out of breath. 

We were scared stiff. 

We did not talk about it that night and we went our separate ways home.

I remember, I left the bedroom light on all night. 

When we met up the next morning at our pre-arranged time, my friends all talked about the highwayman in a tri-corn hat, that they had seen pointing a gun at us when they turned around to see what was happening.

I saw nothing, as I did not turn around, I just kept running. 

It must be remembered that, in those days, we had no telephones, so no way of discussing the matter.

One thing I do know, is that I definitely saw that tree fall, and we were not near it at the time.

The area has now been partly developed, but most of the wood still stands.

It’s now named “Misty Wood” by the developers of the site, so I have been told by someone whose garden backs onto it.

I wonder why? 

© Malcolm Hough 2013

Editor's note: Note that Malcolm says that the wood is now named Misty Wood 'by the developers of the site'. We're wondering if this could be an explanation for the fact that some people call it 'Mystery Wood' and some 'Misty Wood'?
Could it possibly be that some publicity person at the development company was casting around for a little bit of local colour to put in the brochure and was told the local name for the woods? Could he have misheard 'Mystery' as 'Misty'? And did the people who bought the houses then start to use the name 'Misty' because of what it said in the brochure? Maybe the developers just thought that 'Misty' somehow sounded better than 'Mystery'. Just a thought.
In any case, to an older generation, this was never 'Mystery Wood' or 'Misty Wood'. It was just 'the woods'. If we called it anything, we called it 'Manor Woods'.

UPDATE 21st April 2020: On the other hand, Chris Jones writes:
I grew up on Rolt Crescent and spent a lot of time playing in mystery/misty woods and on the cow field. I knew it by both names in the late '70s and always presumed it was laziness or slang that shortened mystery to misty.

So that appears to blow our theory out of the water. And yes, shortening 'Mystery' to 'Misty' out of laziness or slang sounds plausible.