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| Kitty Jay's grave |
High on the ridges of Dartmoor there is a lonely grave. It is at a crossroads where suicides were normally buried. It is unconsecrated ground. There is a stake driven through the heart of the young woman inside which prevents her spirit returning to haunt those still living. Such was the eighteenth century treatment of those unfortunate souls who took their lives when circumstances became too difficult. It is the story of Kitty Jay.
Kitty was abandoned while a baby near Newton Abbot in Devon in the late 1700s. Believed to be the child of a prostitute she was taken into care and later sent to work on a nearby farm. Her name of Jay trumpeted her background because in those harsh days it was a slang term for a “working girl”. So it was no surprise that she was considered fair game by the farmer’s son who flatly denied any involvement when Kitty became pregnant. Her disgrace was such that in those unsympathetic times her only option to a life of further grinding destitution was suicide. She hanged herself in one of the barns.
But then perhaps it was redemption of a sort which visited her. Since that awful day of her burial, she has had a ghostly visitor who can still be seen on some moonlit nights kneeling beside her grave with head bowed. This mourner is always dressed in black and it is said that it is the farmer’s son whose punishment is to attend a timeless vigil over Kitty and their unborn child. Also, there is a further mystery which seems to beg comfort for Kitty. She appears to have found favour in the afterlife because there are always flowers, whatever the season or weather, placed neatly on her grave. It is whispered that the wild spirits of Dartmoor have taken responsibility for her grave in perpetuity as nobody has ever seen these flowers being delivered.
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| John Galsworthy |
And now to more modern times. One of our greatest authors and social commentator of his times, John Galsworthy of The Forsyte Saga who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1932, wrote a short story in 1916 called “The Apple Tree”. It is generally accepted that the apple is a biblical symbol of the fall from virtue and most critics agree that his story was inspired by Kitty Jay.
Kitty was most unfortunate in life, but her memory lives on. Perhaps this is justice of a sort. If you ever visit her grave, spare a thought for her earthly misery, and the cruel times in which she lived.
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