Beware, Beware, a Gypsy’s Curse

In memory of Joshua Scamp

Who died April 1st 1801

May his brave deed be remembered

To his credit here and hereafter

Transient, mysterious and not always to be trusted, gypsies have always been met with suspicion wherever and whenever they turn up. But in many of the small, rural hamlets and villages of Wiltshire, back in the 18th and 19th centuries, gypsies were accepted and often welcomed. They travelled with the seasons, hawking (selling small handmade items like clothes pegs) or tinkering (repairing pots and pans). Gypsies often turned up to help with various seasonal agricultural jobs that were peppered throughout the year, the biggest being bringing in the harvest. They were very much part of rural life in England.

The story I will tell you today is that of a gypsy family, headed by Joshua Scamp, who travelled through the Wiltshire landscape as part of their nomadic lifestyle.

They came to the small farming village of Odstock in 1798 to help one of the farmers with spring chores: destroying the thistles, turnip-hoeing and pulling docks from the corn, before cutting and tying them. They shared a camp with another family, the Lees, just outside the village. Joshua was the head of the Scamp family and had one son and two daughters. One of his daughters had married a ‘Lee’ called Noah. (We will assume this is his name, although a letter sent to the Salisbury Journal in 1887 states his surname was Burford). He was a rogue and a thief, unlike his honest father-in-law. So roguish was he that he even stole tinware from Mother Lee, the head of the other tribe and almost certainly the Gypsy Queen.  

Despite many witnesses coming forward and swearing at his trial that he had been in the camp all night, it seems this evidence was ignored. No one believed Joshua was guilty, and although he fiercely proclaimed his innocence, he did not want to incriminate his son-in-law and leave his daughter without a husband. Noah Lee, meanwhile, kept quiet.

Given his lack of morals, even against his own people, it comes as no surprise to find out that Noah was the reason poor Joshua went on to lose his life at the end of the rope. It all started with Noah, who had told his wife he was heading to Southampton. He then stole Joshua’s velveteen coat, adorned with large brass buttons, and set off. However, Noah didn’t go to Southampton. He went instead to South Newton, a village a few miles from Salisbury, and stole a horse. At the scene of the crime, Noah left Joshua’s distinctive coat. The local police constables investigated the theft and identified the discarded coat as belonging to Joshua, the Odstock gypsy. And on that evidence, they charged him with theft and threw him into Fisherton Old Gaol in Salisbury.

He was tried at the Lent Assizes in the courtroom of the Guildhall in the Market Square and sentenced to death for the capital offence of horse theft before being returned to Fisherton Old Gaol. The 1st April 1800, was Joshua’s last day of life. Thousands were said to have turned up for his hanging at the traditional execution site in Salisbury, land which is now St Paul’s Roundabout. The area was swollen by crowds of gypsies who didn’t let this miscarriage of justice pass quietly. Yeomanry had to called to hold them back and there was fighting all the way down Fisherton Street.

Joshua calmly accepted his fate, nodding sagely at the sight of his coffin and he tried out the rope before placing it around his own neck. This simple act of his still keeping a shred of control over the end of his life was completed when he took off his cap politely to the crowd.   Before he died, according to the report compiled by the governor of the gaol, W Dowding, he turned to one of the many gypsies present and said, ‘You see what you have brought me to, live soberly and take care of your wife and your family.’

Everybody knew poor Joshua Scamp was innocent and for that reason, he was allowed to be laid to rest in the churchyard of St Mary’s Church, back in Odstock. Governor Dowding’s diary records that ‘tomorrow night Scamp’s family are coming to claim his body’. The burial entry in the Parish Register just states, ‘Joshua Scamp, a gypsy, hanged, supposed innocent.’

His family visited his grave, as did local folk, to leave flowers and cards. They were all deeply saddened by this miscarriage of justice.

He asserted his innocence to the last and behaved with undaunted courage, unmixed with indecent levity or stupid insensibility.

From County of Wiltshire: Fisherton Gaol. Statistics of Crime 1801 – 1850

Noah Lee, true to his dishonest ways, was soon caught stealing and tried at Winchester Lent Assizes for horse theft. Following his conviction and before he was executed he confessed he had set up his father-in-law. His motive was that he believed Joshua had saved up a lot of money but he would give Lee none following his marriage to his daughter. And so, his betrayal was an act of revenge or perhaps a plot to get his hands on the dowry he felt he was owed.

The Gypsy Queen’s Curses

From that year on, the gypsies would travel to Odstock on the anniversary of Joshua Scamp’s death to meet up at his grave and honour his memory. They had planted rose briars around the headstone, a thorn hedge around the grave and a yew tree at the base.

After visiting Joshua, the gypsies would head to the Yew Tree Inn, which was then more of a shop that sold beer and not an inn. The landlord, who may have been a Mr Bracher, would always have in plenty of beer and food. The gypsies often didn’t leave until everything was gone. As the years went by, the meet-ups continued and became more drunken and raucous. The clergy of the time decided this annual pilgrimage needed to end and they thought the best way to do this was to pull up all of the hedging, plants and the tree from the grave. Joshua’s son and daughter, on visiting the grave, were horrified.

Word spread around the camps and on the Sunday morning the Gypsy Queen, a thin middle-aged woman, almost certainly Mother Lee, headed to the church with a gang of Romanies where they raised merry hell. They then drank the Yew Tree Inn dry before returning to the church. There the mysterious and rage-filled Gypsy Queen removed her bonnet, placed a hand over her eyes and pronounced five curses.

For Hackett, the old sexton who had helped strip the grave she screamed, ‘You shall be found dead before twelve months more.’ One morning, Hackett was found dead on the side of the road from an attack of apoplexy on his way to work at Longford Park.

For Groves, the parson, she spat out, ‘You will not be preaching this time next year.’ He was soon stricken with a terrible throat condition. He developed a speech impediment and no one could understand him. He died soon after.

Hodding, the churchwarden (and a local farmer), was last in line. ‘Bad luck will follow you. No son will ever farm your land,’ shouted the Gypsy Queen.

During the first year of the curse, all Hodding’s dairy herd contracted anthrax and had to be slaughtered. The following year, his lambs died by the score. His wife bore him several sons, who all died young. Eventually, he sold up, a broken man, and moved to Australia.

These were the victims attributed to the Gypsy Queen’s initial curses, but the following day she placed a curse on the church itself and on two more victims.

 She realised she had left her shawl inside and returned to retrieve it but two special constables called to guard the building pushed her out of the church door and locked it behind her. She was furious. Turning to the pair, she shouted,

‘Any person who hereafter locks this door will die before the year is out.’

The two constables were well known to the villagers as a pair of bullies called the Batchelor Brothers and as well as guarding the church, they had joined in desecrating the grave.

At them she screamed, ‘You will die before the end of the year is out’

There’s a bit of a story behind why the Gypsy Queen threw her final curse at the brothers. They lived in Odstock, much disliked by the other villagers, but they were friendly with the gypsies and worked with them at harvest times. After falling out with the gypsies after cheating in a bare knuckle fight, the gypsies regarded them as traitors.

But the Gypsy Queen’s curse didn’t work in quite the way you might expect. There was no unforeseen accident or illness and it looked as if the brothers had escaped it. But gypsies have long memories. At the next harvest, the Batchelor Brothers teamed up with a group of five newcomers to bring in the harvest and the group set up camp on Shoulder of Mutton Down above the village. The brothers visited the men’s camp one evening after drinking with them at the Yew Tree. The Brothers were never seen again after that night. The gamekeeper discovered the abandoned camp, fire still smoking, the day after they disappeared. It appeared the five men had moved on in the night. Since the locals didn’t like the Batchelor Brothers much, no one was bothered that they didn’t return and they assumed they had left with the five strangers.

Some years later, in 1924, part of the Down above Odstock was being converted into what is now Salisbury Racecourse. Noticing a couple of uneven mounds, the workers dug there  and discovered two skeletons, both male and both the same size, 6ft 6ins tall, young and well-preserved. They were sent away for analysis, then returned and reburied in the same place they were found. Local folk were convinced these were the bones of the Batchelor Brothers, who did indeed die together, having not made it through the harvest.

Don’t Lock the Church Door

Following the curses being laid, the gypsies moved on from their camp. The Gypsy Queen told Hiram Witt, the village blacksmith, ‘My wishes will come true before I come here again.’ And that was exactly what happened.

The community of Odstock was a small and close-knit one. The story was kept alive and the villagers fully believed in the gypsy’s curse. Just look at the evidence! No one locked the church door. Well, until 1900, that is.

New gates and a door were to be made for the churchyard, and the sexton warned the carpenter about the curse. The man thought it was nonsense, and after fitting a new door, he did indeed lock it. Within a few weeks, the sexton and parson of St Mary’s visited the carpenter and found him very ill in bed. Despite going to the hospital and looking likely to be well-recovered enough to come home, the carpenter died suddenly — another victim of the curse.

Maybe it was after this unexplainable death that in 1905 the local clergy decided it was time to get together and form a circle in the centre of the locked church. They bravely asked for the door to be locked, then held hands and together prayed and asked for the curse to be ‘diluted’. There is not much information about this to be found. I presume, if they all met untimely deaths following their ‘séance’, we would have heard all about it! Whether the account is true or not, I have no evidence, but if it did occur, they can’t have been too convinced by their prayers because, even after the séance, the church door was left open again.

Fast forward to the 1930s, when the rector of Odstock had to go abroad for his health. A young locum was looking after the church. He rubbished the curse and locked the door. He died within a year. On his return to St Mary’s, the rector took the key and threw it into the River Ebble.

The last story of unexpected death associated with the church door is that of a young researcher. He had heard of the story of the curse and decided he wanted to look for ‘the key’. He spent a few days dredging the part of the River Ebble where he felt the key could have been thrown. It was the end of his time looking for the key and that last evening, on his way home, he had a terrible accident on his motorbike and died. No one knows if he had indeed found the key on that final day.

Enough Of This Nonsense!

In 1992, Odstock’s Parochial Church Council decided it was time to lay this malediction to rest. Gathering a group of clergy and local parishioners, the Bishop of Ramsbury, Rt Rev Peter Vaughnan, conducted a service of blessing and re-dedication. The group linked arms as the bishop locked the door for the first time in years with a new set of keys.

I found a comment from the vicar of Odstock, working at St Mary’s in 2015. He said that, following the lifting of the curse, the church was kept unlocked during the day but was locked up each night. Apparently, the bishop enjoyed a long and happy retirement after standing down in 1998 and only one of the congregation attending the curse-lifting service died within the year. Apparently, he had one foot in the grave anyway! 

I was hoping to find out whether the local Romanies still visit Joshua’s grave each year on the 1st April. I have yet to find out, so maybe I will make a little trip over there again next year.

It does seem the curse no longer hangs heavily over this peaceful little village church, with nobody still in fear of securing the church door. The local vicar and congregation seem to have mostly forgotten what happened in the past. That being said, the church was very much unlocked when I visited last week!

Notes on my research

As with all old stories, many versions exist and there are always many contradictions and mis-rememberings. Add to that just a general lack of information and trustworthy evidence, and of course no eyewitnesses, we have to choose the most likely outcome when faced with several versions of an event.

My thanks go to David Morgan for all his help, insights and advice with the research behind this article. It’s been invaluable! And to Stella Perrett at Radical Cartoons for her wonderful drawing of the Gypsy Queen.

I have used as much factual information as I can in this article. Here is a list of my sources:

• Memoirs of Odstock by the Rector Philip Miles. Published 1907.
• Account written or told by Hiriam Witt, the village blacksmith, 1870
• Letters sent to the Salisbury and Winchester Journal: 1887
• County of Wiltshire: Fisherton Gaol. Statistics of Crime 1801 – 1850 compiled by the governor of the Gaol, W Dowding
•  
• https://unusual-encounters.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-gypsy-curse-of-odstock.html
• https://salisburymuseum.wordpress.com/2017/03/07/an-intriguing-story-by-volunteer-alan-clarke/

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