In the early 1920’s as a child my mother Amy found a piece of paper, which had been carefully kept in her father Harry’s desk, written in faded handwriting.  It was the story of a serial murderer, written in old English which she didn’t fully understand at the time but she knew it was the details of the grisly murders of a whole family and others.  The document was inherited by his father Joseph & 6 further generations back from 1671.

 

Forty years later Amy started delving into her family history and the 1671 document had been quite forgotten. The family name was Hunter & Amy experienced all the excitement & disappointment connected with this fascinating study. She came to a standstill with Joseph Hunter, her great, great grandfather born in 1756. Joseph had married Mary Braithwaite, whose family were firmly rooted in the hamlet of High Wray near Hawkshead in Lancashire (now Cumbria), surely one of the loveliest parts of England.  So she continued following Mary’s line, reaching Mary’s grandfather  William Braithwaite of High Wray, yeoman, who died in 1746. High Wray! Was that the place mentioned in the paper in her father’s desk? Her sister Reenie still lived in the family home & had the desk with all its contents.  She happily handed over the document to Amy.

 

Sure enough she discovered that the murdered Braithwaite family in High Wray were ancestors.  8 generations back to William & Annas Braithwaite and it was Annas brother John Braithwaite, Quaker,  that was murdered along with his four daughters.

 

Amy could hardly believe the horrific details, handwritten and copied from the court hearing and possibly the local newspaper of the time.

 

“1672, April 8. Thomas Lancaster who for poysonninge his owne family was adjudg’t att the Assizes att Lancaster to bee carried backe to his owne house att Hye-wrey where hee liv’d and was there 

hang’d before his owne door till he was dead, for that very facte.

Then was bought with a horse and a cart into the Colthouse meadows and forthwith hunge upp in iron Chaynes on a Gibbet which was sett for that very purpose on the south-syde of Sawrey Casey neare unto the Pooll-stang: and there continued until such tymes as he rotted everye bone from other…”

 

John Braithwaite was a farmer who owned many acres of farmland in High Wray. He had four daughters, Margaret, Agnes, Elizabeth, and Ruth. Margaret was engaged to be married at the end of January 1671 she was 24 and must have been blissfully happy living in a beautiful part of the Lake District, about to be married, with a home and fruitful business, her sisters would have been excited at becoming  bridesmaids. But their happiness was soon all to change. Thomas Lancaster of Threlkeld walked into their lives, he had evil thoughts of taking over the farm & land and soon convinced Margaret not to marry her fiancé but to marry him instead.  Lancaster managed to talk her father John into taking his eldest daughter’s hand in marriage. It was hinted in the document that John may have even accepted a bribe from Thomas – “ John Braithwaite conveyed all his real estate to 

Lancaster upon him giving security to pay several sums of money to himself and his daughters.”

 

On the 30^th January 1671 Thomas Lancaster married Margaret Braithwaite.  It was the very day or soon after that Margaret was due to have married her original fiancé.  Thomas didn’t wait long before he began his evil plan to murder all who stood in front of him in inheriting the farm, land and money.

About after one week of marriage, Thomas bought five penny worth of white arsenic claiming it was for killing rats.

Towards the end of March John became sick, he was vomiting continuously and was troubled with having a great thirst. He felt incredibly hot and just could not cool himself down and would run outside onto the grass in the orchard but he got no relief. He would fall over as he had no coordination in his feet.  A neighbour, Elizabeth Braithwaite visited John about three days before his death, and witnessed daughter Agnes bringing John some figs which she said her brother-in-law Thomas had bought from Kendal. John laying on a bed by the fireside said “there are more than I 

could possibly eat, give some to Elizabeth” Elizabeth took two of the figs and after eating one and 

part of the second fig she began to be sick. She felt incredibly hot and in pain. When her young daughter became distressed at the sight of her mother, Elizabeth gave a little of the fig to her to quieten her. But when her daughter also became sick Elizabeth realised it must have been the fruit. She said afterwards when interviewed that the figs looked slightly decayed and had no sweetness in them. Elizabeth was ill for a week afterwards but survived.

John Braithwaite died on 10^th April 1671. Thomas wanted to test the strength of the arsenic and must have been quite pleased with the results as everyone thought John’s death was due to the plague which was prevalent in the 16^th and 17^th century and was drawing close in Hawkshead. The years 1663 to 1673 were the last to show heavy death casualties.

 

Next he poisoned a servant boy, hoping to make the deaths look like casualties of the plague & not just his family members. William Becke died on the 8^th October 1671.

 

High Wray became notorious in 1672 because of the evil Thomas Lancaster who carried out a series of murders on a trusting, loving, family who went through hell because of his horrendous  greed. He plotted to marry a local girl from High Wray who was already betrothed to someone else, so he bribed her father to allow him to marry her instead. Shortly afterwards, Lancaster poisoned his wife, her father, her three sisters, her former fiancé, her aunt and a servant, and to make it look like a local epidemic, went on to poison some of his neighbours. At his trial he was found guilty and sentenced to death. He was hung from his own front door at High Wray Farm, and then taken by horse and cart to Poole Stang where his body was placed a gibbet to rot away.