Elizabeth Woodcock and her Drunken Misfortune
Hello listeners and readers!
In our 4th Mini Stranger episode I tell the unlikely tale of Elizabeth Woodcock of Impington village, who in 1799 fell asleep under a hawthorn hedge after a few brandies too many, and awoke the next morning buried deep in a drift of snow. If you haven’t listened yet, quick, do it now! For this blog post contains spoilers aplenty about Elizabeth’s fate.
Have you listened? Excellent. Then we can proceed.
After spending an astonishing eight days and nights trapped in her little white cave, Elizabeth was finally rescued and taken home to recuperate. Her survival story captivated the country and her portrait was reproduced in a variety of newspapers and pamphlets.
Other, more creative depictions of Elizabeth were also published. Look here, at this one! I think it is fair to call it a somewhat fanciful rendering of the snowy crevice and a romanticised portrayal of Elizabeth herself. The nutcrackers, red hankerchief, and in particular flagon of brandy are notable by their absence. This is not the face of a boozehound - you would never guess from this innocent visage that a few drinks too many played a large role in her unfortunate escapade and subsequent untimely death.
Both images are part of the Library of the Wellcome Collection in London.
Goodbye for now, come back soon for another Mini Stranger. Until then, keep out of snowdrifts and, if you can, for goodness sake avoid gangrenous necrosis of the extremities!
Local artist Joshua Kirby Baldrey caught an early whiff of the media attention and moved quickly, requesting an audience with Elizabeth as she recovered from her ordeal. He subsequently transformed his sketches of her sick bed into an engraving to be sold to all interested parties. In the episode we speculate that Elizabeth may have eaten a few paltry nuts in her snowy chamber; however, Baldrey’s text on this engraving describes her surviving ‘without sustenance.’ I trust the Museum of Cambridge when they tell us she had a pair of nutcrackers on her person during her entrapment, so it seems only the presence of the nuts themselves is in doubt. To survive without food for a week and a day is certainly a more captivating news story; perhaps this is what drove Baldrey’s account.