Look out for the fairies in Lamplugh!

BETWEEN 1658 and 1662, four of the residents of the village of Lamplugh near Cleator Moor were ‘frighted to death by fairies’. We are grateful to Whitehaven Record Office and Local Studies Library for preserving this ‘evidence’ in the form of a list of causes of death in Lamplugh during those years. Alongside those frightened to death by fairies, were three old women who met their deaths when they were “drownd upon trial of witchcraft”; seven were bewitched, one was led into a pond by a will o’ the wisp and two died from drinking Mrs Lamplugh’s cordial water!

The complete list is:-

On a five bar gate, stag hunters - 4
Two Duels, first fot with frying pan and pitchforks - 1
Second between a 3 footed stool and a brown jug - 1
Kild at Kelton fell raices - 3
Knocked on the head at Cockfight - 2
Crost in love - 1
Broke his neck robbing a hen roost -1
took cold sleeping at Church -11
hanged for clipping and coyning - 7
of a sprain in his shouldr by saving his dog at bul bate -1
Mrs Lamplugh’s cordial water - 2
Knocked on ye head with a quart bottle -1
Frighted to Death by faries - 4
Of strong October at the hall - 14
Bewitched - 7
Broke a vein in bawling for a knight of ye shire -1
Old women drowned upon trial for witchcraft -3
Climbing a crows nest - 1
Led into a horse pond by a will of the whisp - 1
Over eat himself at a house warming - 1
Died of a fright in an Excersise of ye traind bands - 1
By the Parsons bull - 2
Vagrant beggars worried by Esqr Lamplughs housedog - 2
Choked with eating barley - 4
Old age - 57

The foolscap-size document is undoubtedly old, and browned with age, but one suspects that the list was actually created about a 100 years later as a joke .