THE LOWESTOFT WITCHES

ANN BALDINGE

Single Woman  Aged 17

(The trial report calls her Ann Baldwin, but the indictment identifies her as "Baldinge". In the Lowestoft parish records the names are as here, interchangeable).

The trial report gives scant and rather nebulous details of exactly who "betwitched" Ann Baldinge or how she was affected, except to infer somewhat obliquely that she was afflicted in the same way as Anne Durrant.  The single indictment simply states that she was bewitched by Rose Cullender on the 1st day of February 1662 and that she was "greatly wasted in her body".  The exact details of the circumstances of the bewitching are not presented as evidence in the report.

Just as little is known regarding the bewitching of Ann Baldinge so there are scant details of her life in Lowestoft.  She was baptised at Lowestoft on December 1st 1644 the daughter of John and Barbara Baldinge.  There is no record of the marriage of John and Barbara at Lowestoft, nor of his baptism there, but the family name of can be traced back to the late 1500s  but with no obvious connection to Ann.

Ann was the third child of that name to be born to John and Barbara.  The first named Ann was born in October 1632 (which incidentally is the first record of this particular family in Lowestoft) and died April 1636.  Next followed the second Ann she was born in May 1638 and died just nine months later. Only one other child is recorded, this being John who was born in January 1640.

Ann's father died in 1654 when she was 10 years old leaving her widowed mother to raise her and her 14 years old brother.  Three years later the brother died leaving Ann and her mother to fend for themselves.

There is nothing in the parish records to indicate how or where they lived and nothing is known of their fate. The last and only further reference to this family and probably to Ann herself is a rather cryptic entry in the Lowestoft parish register that records on July 22nd three years after the trial the burial of one Ann Baldin who was "shot to dead by Thomas Base">