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| March 12th | Moses Pitt, Anne Jefferies and the Faeries | ||||
| St. Teath – born Moses Pitt (1639–1697) who died on this day in 1697 was a bookseller and printer known for the production of his ‘Atlas of the World’, his volume ‘The Cry of the Oppressed’ (1691) describing the conditions in debtors’ prisons and for retelling the account of Anne Jefferies (also St. Teath born) of her supposed abduction by the faeries.
Intended to be a 12-volume work, Pitt’s Atlas eventually amounted to only four of which only one of each was ever produced due to the estimated cost of £1000 per volume. The Atlas project led to Pitt’s bankruptcy and he was confined to a debtors’ prison for seven years, resulting in his exposure of the prison’s conditions. Anne Jefferies was a servant in Pitt’s household and, in a letter, he recounted her tale of meeting the faeries when in the garden. Anne claimed that she heard some voice and some ‘little gentlemen’ but that she suddenly went blind and found herself flying through the air. ‘Faerie fair and faerie bright; |
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