Who Was Ann Gregg? The Untold True Story of one of Cumberland’s most determined felons by David Cooper Holmes. P3 Publications. £10.

When David Cooper Holmes used to tell his grandmother in Seaton about all his adventures, she would give him a stern look and say: “You’ve got too much gypsy blood in you! You should settle down.”

Long after his grandmother died, David started digging into that family history, trying to unravel his ancestry. He followed the census details and parish records, and researched old newspapers and the county archives. All this eventually led him back to his five-times-great-grandmother Ann Gregg – also known as Ann Hutchinson, Ann Brown, Ann Hamilton, Isobel Hamilton, Ann Hambleton, Ann Carrick, Ann Millar, Ann Wilson, Elizabeth Smith, Elizabeth Gregs, Elizabeth Gregson, Ann Orton, Ann Ritchie and Ann Irvine.

She was baptised as Ann Gregg in St Bridget’s Church in Moresby on May 23, 1756. In 1777 Ann was arrested in Wigton for shoplifting. The report said that “Ann Gregg dropped from under her arm this purse containing from three to six Handerkerchiefs in a piece of silk Handerkerchief which had also been stolen out of the shop by the same Ann Gregg.”

She was sentenced to death but reprieved and joined 31 other prisoners in Carlisle Jail spending her days picking oakum.

After three years in prison, Ann seems to have adopted the identity of a Scottish woman and chose to live as the common law wife of a certain Henry Cunningham. She was variously known as Ann Hamilton or Ann Brown and was living with a gang of petty criminals.

In 1785, she appeared in court again, this time under the alias of Isabel Hamilton. Together with her ‘husband’, she was accused of “Breaking into the dwelling house of one John Smith of Stobba Lee, near Witton Gilbert... and cruelly beating the said John Smith and his wife, and stealing some money and goods thereout.”

Within a month, she was in court again, this time for shoplifting in Whitehaven. “Ann,” according to David, “was making major news as a leading character in a nationwide network of organised crime.” Thereafter, Ann was in and out of detention. In total she went to nine jails. She escaped four times, was sentenced to be transported in 1794 and again, 30 years later. David’s is a riveting story of “one of Cumberland’s most determined felons”.

Finally piecing the complicated family history together with the aid of DNA tests, David was able to show that Ann Gregg under her various guises was one and the same person.

She passed away on February 15, 1848, at the age of 81 and was then living as Ann Hutchinson. In fact, according to David, she was not 81, but 92. He tried to “find the burial plot where Ann lay, but unfortunately a fire in 2006 destroyed all records of burial plots. Ann had managed to elude me one last time.”

STEVE MATTHEWS
Bookends Carlisle and Keswick

  • Who Was Ann Greg? is available from Bookends, 19 Castle Street, Carlisle, and 66 Main Street, Keswick, and from www.bookscumbria.com.