When we published Dastardly Deeds author Glynis Cooper’s account of the tale behind the 1914 witchcraft trial, one woman was especially interested. And no wonder - she is married to one of ‘witch’ Aimee Lake’s grandchildren. Here, Shirley Lake tells her side of the story - and hopes, finally, that the cloud that has hung over the Lake family for decades can be lifted I WAS delighted to read Glynis Cooper’s article concerning the trial resulting in what was probably Guernsey’s last prison sentence for fortune telling and witchcraft.
When I began researching the Lake family tree six years ago, I felt compelled to find out as much as I could about Aimee Henrietta Lake, nee Queripel, who, I felt, had been a victim of ignorance and superstition.
Newspaper reports of January 1914 and an article about five years ago gave the facts of the case as it was perceived at the time, but Glynis delved into the humanity and psychology of this strange episode concerning a fairly ordinary family living in Guernsey at a time of sometimes difficult and extraordinary happenings in the early part of the 20th century.
I hope what I and other family members have discovered may finally clear away the cloud that has hung over the Lake family for decades.
Aimee was born in the Forest on 7 January 1888, the daughter of Alfred and Harriet Queripel. We have traced the family back six generations to the late 1600s.
Aimee was a housekeeper in a boarding house in St Sampson’s when she met John Walter Lake. His parents and other family members lived nearby. John Walter was born in Jersey on 9 January 1872 before the family moved to Guernsey. His name appears on the 1881 Guernsey census at the age of nine, but he is missing 10 years later. We discovered he had joined the army and was serving with the Yorkshire Light Infantry. He was awarded service medals in the South African and Indian campaigns.
He must have left the army and returned to Guernsey, for he met and married Aimee on 5 November 1904 at Forest Methodist Church and at that time was recorded as a quarryman and stone-dresser. He was almost twice her age, but they seem to have had a stable relationship and had four children: Florence, Walter David, Amy and Edward John. John Walter also adopted Aimee’s two-year-old daughter, Henrietta Le Poidevin Queripel, which would indicate that he was a man of honour in that era of strict moral codes.
His work sometimes took him to Alderney and there are reports of him working on ships sailing from Guernsey. He and Aimee had three children by the end of 1912, a time when things were getting difficult in Guernsey and the UK. John Walter was one of many who responded to the invitation by the Canadian Government for fit, strong individuals to emigrate to this land of opportunity, with the offer of 160 acres of good farming land.
Adverts had appeared in UK papers as well as the Guernsey Star and John Walter, or Walter as he now called himself, left Guernsey in the autumn of 1913 to try to make a new life for his family. We do not know if Aimee was aware of his plans, but there would have been weeks, perhaps months before she would have any communication or money coming into the house and she was already carrying their fourth child.
She took up horoscope readings and counselling, for which present-day folk pay vast sums of money, gladly accepting whatever her clients were willing to give her. I think Mrs Houtin, who accused Aimee of casting ‘a spell of witchcraft’ on her, had previously made repeated visits to Aimee, which became a bit of a problem and Aimee gave her small tasks to complete to keep her busy and think less about her problems.
Digging holes around the farm and burying harmless home cooking ingredients would have been a practical exercise, as was the ‘metal box’ which Aimee sold her in which Mrs Houtin must put all her troubles, then shut the lid and forget about them. Mrs Houtin travelled a considerable distance from her farm in St Martin’s to visit Aimee, so perhaps her neighbours were also finding her a problem.
And so, on 29 January 1914, Aimee stood in court before Bailiff William Carey and Mr G. E. Kinnersley accused of ‘disorderly conduct and carrying on the trade of fortune-telling and witchcraft’. It is not surprising that she ‘fainted’ or ‘practically collapsed’ when the verdict was pronounced, given that she was 23 weeks pregnant and frantic for her children. But to prison she was sent, for eight days.
I have yet to discover where her children were for those days.
Walter must have found work near Halifax on the eastern seaboard while he waited for his farmland application to come through and he was still waiting when the First World War broke out. He signed up as a volunteer on 21 September 1914 in the 16th Battalion, Nova Scotia Highlanders, part of the Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force, and set sail on the HMTS Andonia on 14 October for the war in Europe, unaware that he had been awarded 160 acres of land in Alberta. His attestation papers give us a very good physical description, too detailed to include here, right down to a five-dot tattoo on his right arm.
However, three months later he was severely ill and hospitalised in Netheravon and eventually discharged from the army with the medical board’s opinion that ‘the extent of his inability to earn a full livelihood in the general labour market was total’. From September 1914 his army pay was sent to Aimee at St Sampson’s and later The Bordage, where she was housekeeping for a man and his elderly father. She continued to receive Walter’s meagre pension until 1916.
Walter did work again as a quarryman and stonemason despite his health, but relationships between him and Aimee soured as the family lurched from one crisis to another, he sometimes working in Alderney and apparently drinking heavily on occasions.
Aimee went to court again and in 1919 pleaded for a separation. We cannot discover what happened to him after that.
Aimee’s daughter Henrietta died aged 20 and Aimee herself four years later in 1927, aged 39. They are both buried in Candie Cemetery.
Her daughter, Florence, by then married with children of her own, took in her younger sister and two brothers, but the financial strain was too much and they were admitted to the Town Hospital - the orphanage.
Florence and her family moved to Jersey, followed later by Amy. David went to England where he married. Edward John married a local girl, Amanda Brehaut du Port, in 1935. Amanda’s family line has also been traced back six generations to the Queripel family. Edward John and Amanda had three children when the Second World War broke out and became part of the evacuated generation, with more family upheaval. John, as he was called, went into the British Army as a parachutist with the Second Battalion, one of his tasks being as a pathfinder at the Battle of Arnhem. Amanda and the family were moved around the UK as towns and cities were bombed, but they were all reunited in Guernsey in 1945.
I am married to Barry John, grandson of Aimee, and Edward John was my father-in-law. He died in 2002, leaving a great family legacy and a legendary army career about which he seldom spoke. He thought the world of his mother, was always puzzled about what happened to his father and I don’t think he ever knew that before his birth, he had spent eight days in jail with Aimee.
There are many branches of the Lake family in places such as New Zealand, USA, England, Wales, Ontario and other parts of Canada.
Article posted on 31st October, 2006 - 12.00am
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