The Lincolnshire Poacher
For decades, a shortwave station played a few bars of an English folk song, then a woman's voice read out numbers.
What was reported
From the 1970s until 2008, shortwave listeners could tune in to a station that opened with a few bars of the English folk song 'The Lincolnshire Poacher', played on an electronic instrument. Then a woman's voice, with an English accent, read out groups of five numbers, over and over.
It was one of the best-known 'numbers stations', strange broadcasts of spoken numbers heard around the world during and after the Cold War. Radio enthusiasts traced its signal to Cyprus.
Explanations offered
It is widely believed to have been run by British intelligence, sending coded messages to agents abroad, which could only be read with a matching one-time code. The British government has never confirmed this. The station stopped in 2008.
- When
- 1970s – 2008
- Where
- Broadcast from Cyprus
- Witnesses
- Shortwave radio listeners
- Status
- Mostly explained
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.