When Queen Victoria bought Sandringham for her eldest son Albert, the Prince of Wales, it was intended to be a country house for him and wife Princess Alexandra.
Keen to make his mark on the estate, Albert demanded that “several wise women” were asked to leave the group of cottages where they had lived for most of their lives. The houses were taken down and replaced by modern homes for the Royal servants but one cottage on the Sandringham estate remained, along with its occupant.
It was said the Prince of Wales’s agent dared not remove this particular wise woman from her country seat because, as writer Walter H. Barrett put it: “…not only was she supposed to have the power of putting a curse on people, she was also reputed to have a vast knowledge of herbal cures when other remedies failed.
“She would wander miles in search of a certain herb she required. Lots of folk sought her aid when they needed a ‘starter’ or ‘stopper’ in times of distress.”
In 1880, the Prince was taken ill, and he was advised to use the herbal remedies of the old wise woman, who made him take mandrake wine for his cure. The woman’s name, is unrecorded; however, she was known as an herbal medic, an abortionist and a practitioner of the use of Rue Tea.
It is a pity that such important historical material remains unrecorded, but one thing it does show is that the cures and craft of the Old Wives were respected and used by the highest in the land, when nothing else would work.
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