The Biography of a Difficult to Bury Witch November 10, 2014
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
Here is a little bit of gossip from Cornwall 1880 and a dose of human misery.
An extraordinary but well authenticated instance of belief in witchcraft comes from St. Blazey, Cornwall. A woman named Keam, who died the other day, was believed by her neighbours to be a witch, and great difficulty was experienced in getting anyone to bear her to her last resting place. It was feared, in fact, that the funeral would have to be postponed; but at the last moment several bricklayers, who happened to be at work in the neighbourhood, were induced to lay down their tools and carry the coffin to church in their shirt sleeves. After the service a like difficulty was experienced in getting the coffin to the grave, and that duty had at length to be done in a very irregular way.
Unfortunately the author does not give details into exactly how they got the coffin into sanctified (?) ground.
The decease of the witch, it is said, had apparently lifted a weight from the minds of many weak persons, one cripple asserting that he shall now recover, and should never have been a cripple had she not ill-wished him.
The appearance of a witch record from Cornwall is always a cause for celebration for the simple reason that genealogical records from the country are so exceptionally well organised (thanks to the Cornwall Online Census Project). There a quick look through the records reveals that while Keam was a common name in the County there was only one Keam in St Blazey in the 1871 census: Ann Keam. She would have been eighty-two at her death and predictably enough lived alone, the absence of anyone else with the same surname not only makes her easy to find but hints at her isolation. She lived at Bodelva Moor and is described as ‘retired’. She was not a local. She was from Warbstow on the other side of Cornwall: Google maps tells Beach that it is a nine hour walk, shame they don’t give horse-riding times for historical reconstruction.
She came to St Blazey to marry and in 1861 was wife of one John Keam, who seems to have been a lower middle class farmer: certainly there was one servant and one lodger living in the house with them that says it all. He was twenty years older than Anna. No children, late marriage, a decade of widowhood. You can write a Thomas Hardy novel of sadness into this story. Beach is off to purge his sorry with a gelato.
Anything more on the Keams: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
29 Nov 2014: Willow Winsham writes in on twitter. ‘Very brief mention in Royal Cornwall Gazette 30 January 1880, tradesmen of the town vowing to carry any poor person to… their grave so a repeat of what happened with Keam, “the reputed witch” wouldn’t happen again.’ Thanks Willow!
