Listen to the track:
Elizabeth Wilmot
This song is based on a real Wembury inquest reported in the Royal Devonport Telegraph and Plymouth Chronicle on Saturday 17 March 1832. It tells the story of Elizabeth Wilmot, a young apprentice in service at Down Thomas, whose death from poison led to a coroner’s verdict of “temporary insanity.” The report states that she was found to be pregnant, about four or five months gone, and had become deeply distressed in the weeks before her death. Heard sobbing in her room before her final illness, she stands here as a tragic figure shaped by loneliness, shame, and the harsh social pressures faced by vulnerable young women in early nineteenth century rural Devon.
[Verse 1]
In Down Thomas in bitter March
Elizabeth bent low
A servant girl with child to bear
And nowhere left to go
They saw the change, they spoke her name
They sent her home in shame
Then brought her back to face the house
And nothing stayed the same
[Chorus]
Elizabeth, Elizabeth
Who held you when you cried
With your unborn child and the whole world hard
And no safe place to hide
Elizabeth, Elizabeth
Your room was small and bare
They wrote of poison, wrote of blame
But not of your despair
[Verse 2]
Her master’s hand, the sobbing room
The sickness through the day
A cup of tea, a silent bed
And then she slipped away
The surgeon came, the jury spoke
As cold men always can
But fear can drive a young heart down
Faster than any hand
[Chorus]
Elizabeth, Elizabeth
Who held you when you cried
With your unborn child and the whole world hard
And no safe place to hide
Elizabeth, Elizabeth
Your room was small and bare
They wrote of poison, wrote of blame
But not of your despair
[Outro]
So sing no cruel and tidy tale
No gossip dressed as truth
Just Down Thomas, a shut upstairs room
And the grief of a ruined youth