THE LOWESTOFT WITCHES



ALICE KITTREDGE
WIFE AND MOTHER

(NB: Although the published Trial Report records this witnesses name as "Leteridge" a manuscript version of the report in Doctors Williams Library, London, records it as "Kiteredge or Kittredge". As the former surname is not recorded in Lowestoft it seems certain that the surname in the munuscript is the correct one as there were a number of families with this name in 17th century Lowestoft).

Scant details are known regarding this witness although there was a woman of this name living in Lowestoft during the middle of the 17th century.

Alice Kittredge was the wife of a seaman named Thomas Kittredge who was born at Lowestoft in June 1625 the second son of  Thomas Kiteredge, a Cobbler, and his wife Mary. 

There is no record of the marriage of Thomas and Alice at Lowestoft, in all probability she was born and lived in a nearby parish and that is where the wedding took place.  The first record appears with the baptism at Lowestoft of a son John in July 1651.  At the time Alice's husband was 26 years old as this was the average age for a single man to marry at this time it is probable that Alice and Thomas had married the previous year.  Alice was  probably in her mid-twenties at the time.

Two other children are recorded; Mary, born in 1654 and and Thomas, born in July 1660.  It seems likely that Alice Kittredge and Jane Buxton were friends, both being around the same age and both with nursing infants and that is the reason they  had visited Amy Denny in the stocks together.

The next and last recorded child was born to Alice and Thomas in July 1668.  In December that same year Thomas died and was buried at Lowestoft.

Eight years later a widow named Alice Kittredge married a singleman, an Householder named John Foster in the adjoining parish of Oulton.  John died in 1689 but the fate of Alice is unknown . . .