I really ought to dedicate this essay to Professor Jeffrey B. Russell, whose book A History of Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics and Pagans (Thames & Hudson, London, 1980) inspired me to undertake the search I write of. In Chapter 9 of that book, Professor Russell describes how the followers of Gerald Gardner ‘tell the story that he was initiated into witchcraft in 1939 by Old Dorothy Clutterbuck, a witch of the New Forest’. He adds the remark, ‘In fact there is no evidence that Old Dorothy ever existed,’ the implication being that Gerald simply invented her, together with the rest of the alleged tradition of the Craft of the Wise.
Now, I was initiated as a witch by Gerald Gardner in 1953, and he often used to talk to me about Old Dorothy. By the way he spoke of her, she certainly sounded like a real person. I therefore found myself unable to agree with Professor Russell. But was there in fact any evidence of Old Dorothy’s existence? And if so, how could I prove it?
I set out to see what I could discover and, being a witch, I started around Hallowe’en, 1980. I knew that, however private a person may be, there are two marks that he or she has to make upon public records, namely a birth certificate and a death certificate. If I could secure these documents relating to Old Dorothy, they would constitute proof that at least she was not a figment of anyone’s imagination. So I called at the local Register Office and obtained the address of the Registrar for the New Forest Registration District, which proved to be at Lymington.
I sent off a hopeful letter asking if a death certificate could be traced. Gerald had never told me exactly where Old Dorothy lived or exactly when she died. However, I took my clue from the statement in his biography that he had not been allowed to write and publish anything about the survival of the witch cult ‘until Dorothy died’. (See Gerald Gardner: Witch, J.L. Bracelin, The Octagon Press, London, 1960). Even then, it was only presented in a fictional setting, in his novel High Magic’s Aid, which was published by Michael Houghton, London, in 1949. I therefore assumed that by 1949 Old Dorothy had passed on.
I realized that my request to the Registrar at Lymington was vague, so I decided also to try back numbers of Kelly’s Directory for the New Forest area, in an attempt to find out where she had actually lived. The Writers’ and Artists’ Year Book provided the address of the publishers of Kelly’s Directories and a hopeful letter was sent to them too.
On the actual night of Hallowe’en, 1980, three witches, of whom I was one, met in a wood in southern England. Hallowe’en is the old Celtic festival of Samhain, or summer’s end, one of the Great Sabbats of the witches’ year. It is the old festival of the dead, which the Christian Church adapted as the Eve of All Hallows or All Saints. To witches and pagans, it was and still is the time when the gates of the other world open and our friends and relatives who have passed through those gates into the Land of Faerie, the pagan paradise, can return if they wish and communicate with us. At this time, we always commemorate those who have gone before, both those who are known to us and our predecessors whose names are unknown but who may have been victims of the great witch-hunts of the past, or perhaps managed to live and die without their secret adherence to witchcraft ever being discovered. (There was a very good reason for Old Dorothy to fall into this final category. Witchcraft was actually still illegal in this country up until 1951. Moreover, social attitudes towards the study and practice of the occult in any form are very different today from what they were in the 1930s and 1940s. It may well have been Old Dorothy herself who pointed out to Gerald that ‘witchcraft doesn’t pay for broken windows,’ when he wanted to write about the surviving traditions.)
I had made up my mind to try to contact Old Dorothy on this night of Hallowe’en. The weather was cold and the night dark, with the moon waning in her last quarter. Most of our friends were having merry Sabbat gatherings within their homes. To pagans, the night of the dead is not a dismal occasion, but rather a happy reunion. I knew that the candles and the pumpkin lanterns were glowing, the naked dancers were treading the circle and the cakes and wine were being passed around. But I longed for the dark wood, with the autumn leaves beneath my feet and the stars peeping through the topmost branches of the trees.
I had two companions, whom I will call by their witch-names, Fiona and Dusio. Dusio and I had arrived at the wood as dusk was falling, in order to have enough light to gather fallen branches for a small bonfire. It was quite dark by the time our preparations were made. Then he saw a light approaching through the trees, and Fiona joined us.
We formed our circle and proceeded with our Hallowe’en rites of invoking the Old Gods. The bonfire blazed and mingled its scent of woodsmoke with the incense that burned in the censer. At the four quarters, east, south, west and north, stood lanterns containing candles which made the little clearing a place of glowing light within the surrounding darkness of the trees.
There was no question of working skyclad on this chill October night. We wore robes or hooded cloaks and stout footwear. After we had warmed our blood by dancing round the circle, I told the others what I wanted to do, namely to call upon Old Dorothy’s spirit. They agreed and I made a short invocation to her, asking her in particular to show me in some way if she wished me to succeed in my quest.
I hardly expected an immediate physical phenomenon, but we got one. Shortly after I had called upon Old Dorothy, the lantern which was standing at the south quarter suddenly turned right over with such force that it broke the glass.
I thought perhaps the edge of my cloak had caught it; but Fiona who was watching said this was not so, and neither Fiona nor Dusio was wearing a cloak long enough to have done it. Dusio advanced the suggestion that some small animal had run out of the wood and tipped the lantern over; but we saw no such animal. We were compelled to consider at least the strong possibility that this was a supernormal occurrence. I myself believe that it was, because I also heard a voice outside the circle, seeming to come from the southern quarter. It called my name, ‘Doreen!’ The others did not hear this; but I heard it plainly, and it sounded like Gerald Gardner’s voice.
Our friends who have gone before often manage to make their presence felt in some way on this ritual occasion. On a previous night of Hallowe’en, I was working somewhere in the Sussex countryside with Dusio when we saw a beautiful blue light, like a star, appear outside the circle. We both saw this clearly, and there was no natural explanation for it.
I was therefore heartened in my resolve to search for Old Dorothy, even though both my hopeful letters produced no results. The Registrar of Lymington could trace no death certificate and suggested I should try the central registry in London where the national records of births, marriages and deaths are kept. The parent company of Kelly’s Directories proved to be in the process of moving their archives from central London to Surrey, so these were temporarily unavailable for research. My only hope in this direction was some big library which had old copies in its stores.
But what big library? There were no big libraries in the New Forest area itself. But how about large neighbouring towns? Winchester? Bournemouth?
The only rough guide I had was the passages relating to Old Dorothy in Jack Bracelin’s biography previously referred to, Gerald Gardner: Witch. According to these, Gerald Gardner had been resident somewhere in the vicinity of Christchurch, Hampshire, when he discovered the Rosicrucian Theatre ‘on one of his long cycle rambles’ and became acquainted with the group that ran it. (See Plates 15 and 16.) It was through this group that he eventually met Old Dorothy. So there seemed a chance, just a guess, that, as Bournemouth was much closer to Christchurch than Winchester is it might be more productive of results.
I obtained from my local reference library the correct address of Bournemouth County Library (which is now in Dorset, though the county boundaries included it in Hampshire in old Gerald’s time). With no great optimism, I wrote to this library, explaining that I was trying to trace a Miss Dorothy Clutterbuck, resident somewhere in the general area of the New Forest in the 1930s and early 1940s. Could they help?
They could and they did. In fact, this excellent library provided me with my first real breakthrough. In the middle of January 1981, the Reference Librarian wrote to me as follows:
‘The Reference Library staff have searched the local directories for Miss Dorothy Clutterbuck and have found the following:
‘Street Directory of the Extended Borough of Christchurch, 1933.
‘Clutterbuck, Dorothy, Mill House, Lymington Road, Highcliffe.
‘Fordham, Rupert, Mill House.’
The letter went on to say that Kelly’s Directory of Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch showed Rupert Fordham at the Mill House in its issue for 1936, but no Clutterbuck. The same directory for 1940 showed Mrs Fordham at that address. So even if I had found the big volumes of Kelly’s, they would not have helped me. But that obscure little local directory had produced my first proof that at least a Dorothy Clutterbuck existed. Moreover, as I hastily looked up Highcliffe on the map, I saw that it was closely adjacent to Christchurch. It was in fact the place where I had first met Gerald Gardner, at the house of a friend back in 1952.
The librarian’s letter continued:
‘The Registrar of Electors at Christchurch Town Hall has through the Hampshire Record Office consulted the Electoral Lists and has found out that Miss Clutterbuck became Mrs Fordham in the 1937/38 list. Unfortunately during the war years the lists were not compiled and Mrs Fordham disappears afterwards. Whether or not this is the lady you are looking for, I cannot say.’
Neither could I for certain. But inwardly I felt sure. The place was right and so was the time. And how fortunate that Old Dorothy had an unusual name like Clutterbuck! If she had been Dorothy Smith or Dorothy Jones, my search would have been hopeless.
But now I had to prove it. I had to get something more substantial than a line in an old street directory. I now had the approximate date of a possible marriage, for which a public record would exist. So if I could find this, it would give her age at the time, which would be a guide to a search for a birth certificate. I wrote off another hopeful letter, this time to the Register Office at Bournemouth, asking for any record of such a marriage or for a record of a death certificate, under the name of either Miss Clutterbuck or Mrs Fordham.
In due course the Superintendent Registrar very kindly replied. His staff had searched the indexes extensively; but there was no record of either marriage or death. The search for a record of a marriage had been from the dates of 1936 to 1940 inclusive. The record of a death had been searched for from the dates of 1943 to 1948 inclusive. As before, he suggested that I make a visit to London and search the national index at the General Register Office.
This was an unexpected setback. However, perhaps Old Dorothy had got married somewhere else. Perhaps she had got married abroad. Perhaps she had even died abroad. Or perhaps her marriage had been a witch handfasting, rather than a legally recognized ceremony. Obviously, I would have to go to London to continue the search; but I had very little to go on, as I had no precise information about either birth, marriage or death. And there might be dozens of Dorothy Clutterbucks among the millions of names in those national indexes.
It sounded like a daunting task and it was. I decided, for luck, to go up to town on May Eve, 1981. I found that the records of births and marriages are held in St Catherine’s House, Kingsway, and the records of deaths are in Alexandra House nearby. They are contained in massive volumes, of which there are usually four to a year, covering each quarter. After heaving these on and off the shelves for several hours, one feels as if one has been heaving sacks of coal.
I tried the marriage records first, as being the nearest thing for which I had an approximate date. There was nothing. Then I went across to Alexandra House and made an even longer search for a death certificate. I knew that Old Dorothy had presided over the rites against Hitler in the New Forest, which had commenced at Lammas, 1940, so she was alive and well then. And Gerald had published High Magic’s Aid in 1949. That gave me the years 1941–8 inclusive. I went through them all. The only Dorothy Clutterbuck recorded during that period was a girl of fourteen who died in Manchester. The name of Fordham yielded no likely possibilities either.
A thought struck me. Had she ever changed her name by deed-poll? I gladly sought fresh air as I tramped round to the public Records Office. They were kind and helpful; but there was nothing there. There was nothing left to do but get the train home. I needed some vital detail and I had to keep looking for it.
The County Library at Bournemouth had been most helpful in sending me photocopies of the relevant entries from old directories. These had helped further by establishing that Gerald Gardner and his wife Donna had been living in Highcliffe at the time when his biography records that he was initiated by Old Dorothy, namely ‘a few days after the war had started’ in September 1939. According to Gerald Gardner: Witch, this initiation took place in Old Dorothy’s home, ‘a big house in the neighbourhood’. The same book describes Old Dorothy as ‘a lady of note in the district, “county” and very well-to-do. She invariably wore a pearl necklace, worth some £5,000 at the time.’ This book was published during Gerald’s lifetime, so these details must have been obtained from him.
The reference in it to the Rosicrucian Theatre checked out, too. This was at Somerford and was opened in June 1938. The ever-helpful Bournemouth Central Library provided me with photocopies of Press cuttings about it. As Gerald had said, Mrs Mabel Besant-Scott, the daughter of Annie Besant, lived nearby and was associated with the project. All very interesting; but it did not have a direct bearing on what I wanted to know.
For the time being, I was at a standstill and turned to other work, among which was collaborating with Janet and Stewart Farrar in the first part of this book. Hallowe’en came round again and was merrily celebrated, but indoors this time with a crowd of friends. I often thought about Old Dorothy and remembered that night in the wood the year before. Somehow I felt sure this was not going to be the end of the story.
However, I did not get another breakthrough until 1 March 1982. Then I was dusting some books in a bookcase and rearranging them, when down the back of these books I found a little pamphlet. It was entitled The Museum of Magic and Witchcraft: the Story of the Famous Witches’ Mill at Castletown, Isle of Man. It was written and published by Gerald Gardner to serve as a guide-book to his witchcraft museum. I thumbed through it, remembering the old days — and saw a paragraph in the book which seemed to leap at me out of the page!
‘Case No. 1. A large number of objects belonging to a witch who died in 1951, lent by her relatives, who wish to remain anonymous.’
A witch who died in 1951! Could this possibly be Old Dorothy? I knew that it was not the lady who had lent some other objects to the museum, because she was very much alive in 1951. Had the date I had been looking for been hidden in my bookcase all the time?
As soon as I could, I went up to London again to find out. This time, I found the record at Alexandra House almost immediately. In the first quarter of 1951, a Dorothy St Q. Fordham died in the Christchurch area, aged 70. I applied for a copy of the death certificate to be sent to me by post.
Then, elated by success at last, I decided to try for a birth certificate also. Doing a little sum with the figure given for Old Dorothy’s age at her passing, it seemed she must have been born about 1881. The indexes for 1880 and 1881 had no record of the birth of a Dorothy Clutterbuck; but the index for 1882 did. Had I really found what I was looking for? I ordered a copy of this certificate also and went off in triumph to celebrate with tea, buttered scones and jam at a nice little café nearby. Then I went home and settled down to wait for the copies of the certificates to arrive.
The death certificate arrived first and told me a great deal. Dorothy St Quintin Fordham had died at Highcliffe in the registration district of Christchurch on 12 January 1951. The gentleman who had supplied the particulars for the registration of her death (whom I later discovered from her will to have been her solicitor) described her as ‘Spinster of independent means, daughter of Thomas St Quintin Clutterbuck, Lieutenant-Colonel, Indian Army (deceased)’. The primary cause of death was given as cerebral thrombosis, or in other words a stroke. This was borne out by the death notice which I found in the local reference library’s microfilmed records of The Times newspaper, which said that she had died ‘after a short illness’.
However, when the copy of the birth certificate arrived a few days later, I only had to take one look at it to know that this was not the Dorothy Clutterbuck I was searching for. I had been rather suspicious of the district given in the index, namely Stow in Suffolk. I now saw that the father’s name was different also, Alexander Clutterbuck instead of Thomas St Quintin. I still had only half the answer. And I had searched those indexes laboriously in all senses of the word.
Had I come to another standstill? No, because I now had concrete fact to go on, however little: the particulars on the death certificate. I decided to look up Thomas St Quintin Clutterbuck in old Army Lists if I could find any. Fortunately, my local reference library actually had in its stores the Army List for 1881. I looked through its yellowed pages at the long lists of names. Here were the gallant soldiers of the Queen when Victoria was on the throne and the British Empire reigned pre-eminent and apparently immutable. In my imagination, I saw their scarlet uniforms splendid with gold braid and medals and heard the clatter of their well-groomed chargers’ hoofs and the clink of their spurs and swords. And there was Thomas St Q. Clutterbuck, listed as a Major in the Indian Local Forces, Bengal, as of 14 July 1880.
Now, this must have been around the time when Dorothy was born. Had she been born in India? It seemed a distinct possibility. But if so, would any record of such a birth be traceable?
Well, I would go up to town again and try. I had acquired a little book called Discovering Your Family Tree, by David Iredale (Shire Publications, Aylesbury, Bucks., 1977). This told me that the General Registry (formerly at Somerset House but now at St Catherine’s House) held returns relating to army families which went back to 1761. So there was some hope. In the meantime, it seemed probable that a lady of independent means such as Dorothy would have left a will. As I now had the correct particulars of her death, I wrote to Somerset House and set the formalities in motion to obtain a copy of the will.
It duly arrived. I had a strange sensation as I slit open the long manila envelope and realized that I was about to see the photocopy of Old Dorothy’s signature. It was an unusual signature, artistic but very clear; the most personal link that I had yet been able to find with her.
The will ran to several pages and made it abundantly clear that Old Dorothy had indeed been as Gerald described her, ‘a lady of note in the district’ and ‘very well-to-do’. The gross value of her estate had been well over £60,000, which was a lot of money in 1951. Moreover, she had owned some valuable pearls; these were mentioned in the will.
What, then, had I proved so far? A Dorothy Clutterbuck had certainly existed, and her age and background answered to Gerald’s description. She had lived at Highcliffe at the same time that Gerald did. She had died in 1951, the date given in Gerald’s little book. Also, the Rosicrucian Theatre had certainly existed, under the patronage of Mabel Besant-Scott and a group called the Rosicrucian Order, Crotona Fellowship. This group was headed by Dr G.A. Sullivan, who according to the Press cuttings had been a well-known Shakespearean actor under the stage name of Alex Mathews. He died in 1942.
What had misled me in the early part of my search had been my assumption that, by the time High Magic’s Aid was published, Old Dorothy had already passed on. I now knew that this was not so, and it cast a new light on the witchcraft rituals described in that book. They had been published in Old Dorothy’s lifetime, but under the guise of fiction. High Magic’s Aid is an historical novel and in my opinion a very good one. On carefully re-reading it, moreover, I found that its setting, called ‘St Clare-in-Walden’ in the book, corresponds quite well to Christchurch, the oldest town in that area (both Bournemouth and Highcliffe are comparatively modern developments). The action of the book takes place on the edge of a great forest, again corresponding with the location of Christchurch on the borders of the New Forest. Actual local place-names are mentioned: St Catherine’s Hill, the River Stour, ‘the mill at Walkford’.
We may recall what Gerald Gardner said in his later book, Witchcraft Today (Rider, London, 1954): ‘I’ met some people who claimed to have known me in a past life … I soon found myself in the circle and took the usual oaths of secrecy which bound me not to reveal any secrets of the cult. But, as it is a dying cult, I thought it was a pity that all the knowledge should be lost, so in the end I was permitted to write, as fiction, something of what a witch believes in the novel High Magic’s Aid.’
So the person who gave this permission would actually have been Old Dorothy herself. This seems good presumptive evidence for the authenticity of these rituals, although in later years, when Gerald was being bullied and abused by the sensational Press, he found it expedient to say that the book was merely fiction. And thanks mainly to Gerald Gardner, the Old Religion is no longer a dying cult but one that is alive not only in the British Isles but in the United States of America, Canada, Australia and Holland, all of these countries having their own witchcraft magazines and newsletters at the present time.
But what of Old Dorothy’s own origins? I still knew nothing of her mother’s family and only the discovery of her birth certificate would tell me. I took another trip to London, this time to enquire after the records of army families mentioned previously. Yes, St Catherine’s House did have them. I searched the indexes — 1879, 1880, 1881, 1882. Nothing. I searched the consular records of the births of British subjects abroad. Nothing. I even searched the records of births at sea. Nothing. In sheer desperation, I again searched those ponderous volumes of indexes for the ordinary registrations of births in England and Wales. Had I missed something? Apart from two entries which merely referred to ‘Clutterbuck, female’, I had not. Neither of the places looked likely, nor did I think that the daughter of Major Thomas St Quintin Clutterbuck would have been humbly registered as ‘Clutterbuck, female’.
Well, Old Dorothy had certainly lived and died; but apparently she had never been born! I asked one of the assistants for help. Were there any more army records that were not on display on the shelves? He made a house telephone call to some inner sanctum and put me in touch with the official who was in charge of it. This gentleman went to look and then returned to the telephone. He was very sorry but there was nothing there either.
Then I remembered something that Ginny, the Maiden of Janet and Stewart’s coven, had said in conversation when she had visited me recently and I told her about the possibility of Dorothy having been born in India. Something about a friend of hers who had been seeking her birth certificate and ‘the Indian authorities had been very helpful.’ Could the Indian authorities be helpful about a birth that had taken place back in the far-off days of the British Raj?
I suggested this to the gentleman on the telephone. He sounded doubtful; but I had to persist. (It was all I had left, unless Dorothy had been born in Scotland, in which case the records were in Edinburgh.) Yes, I could go to the Indian authorities. Where would I find them? At India House. Was that far? Oh no, just across the way.
India House proved to be a very splendid building, with beautiful paintings on the walls illustrating scenes of Hindu life. Two charming ladies in saris willingly offered assistance and directed me to the India Office Library in Blackfriars Road. I found a taxi and set off there forthwith. I had a feeling that this time I was on the right track.
The security officer in the hall gave me a pass to enter and directed me upstairs to the library itself. There a librarian explained to me that in the days I was enquiring about it had been the parents’ responsibility to record a child’s birth and there was no birth certificates as such. However, they had ecclesiastical records of marriages and baptisms carried out by Christian chaplains in India. The baptismal certificates usually also recorded the date of birth. He would find me the index of baptisms for the relevant years in Bengal.
Almost as soon as I opened the book, I saw the name ‘Clutterbuck, Dorothy’. I filled out the form for the larger book containing the actual ecclesiastical record. It proved to be an even more enormous volume than any I had handled yet, and all its entries were in beautiful copperplate handwriting. Dorothy Clutterbuck had been born on 19 January 1880 and baptized in St Paul’s Church, Umbala, on 21 February 1880. Her parents were Thomas St Q. Clutterbuck, Captain in the 14th Sikhs and Ellen Anne Clutterbuck. I had found her.
I sat back and looked around the hushed library, with its Venetian blinds drawn to protect the books and the readers from the bright spring sunshine. I could hardly believe that I had finally succeeded. I was sorry that the entry did not give the maiden name of Dorothy’s mother; but I had succeeded.
I went back to the librarian’s office to enquire about obtaining a copy of the record. Yes, I was told, this could be done and sent to me on payment of the usual fee. An assistant telephoned for the official in charge of this service, then told me, ‘I’m sorry about this, but he’s engaged at the moment. I’m afraid he might be about twenty minutes or so, if you don’t mind waiting.’
I said I would wait and went to look for somewhere to sit. And now ensued a curious incident. There were several chairs nearby for visitors, but they were all occupied. So I wandered into a further part of the library, just looking for somewhere to rest. I had had a long and tiring day. I found myself standing in front of a bookcase full of neat volumes of indexes entitled ‘Marriages. Bengal.’
Suppose Dorothy’s parents had been married in India? If I could find the entry, that would give me her mother’s maiden name. I took out a volume. It immediately fell open in my hands and I saw the name ‘Clutterbuck, Thomas St Q.’. I admit that I was both tired and excited; but I will swear that that book opened itself.
I returned to the desk and applied for another huge volume of ecclesiastical records. When it arrived in the reading room, I learned from it that Thomas St Quintin Clutterbuck had married Ellen Anne Morgan at Lahore in 1877. He had been 38 years of age and his bride 20.
Somehow I could picture it. The brilliant sunshine of India. An officer in full dress uniform. His young bride in a Victorian wedding dress, all frills and lace. The traditional regimental arch of swords held by his white-gloved brother officers for the couple to walk beneath. A smiling chaplain in his white surplice. A carriage drawn by magnificently groomed horses. Iced champagne in silver buckets. Big green palm trees waving above. Handfuls of money thrown to the natives. Was it really like that? I don’t know; but as I sat in that silent library, this is the picture that seemed to pass before me.
I brought my mind back to the present day and went to request a copy of this entry also. It interested me because Ellen Morgan was a Welsh name. So it would seem that Old Dorothy’s ancestry on her mother’s side was Welsh, that Celtic strain in our national blood which predates the Anglo-Saxon and often carries a psychic heritage with it.
Having ordered the copies of the certificates, I returned home to await their arrival. I expected them to take a few days; and as it worked out, they arrived on the most appropriate day possible. They dropped through my letterbox on the morning of 30 April 1982 — the Sabbat of Beltane. For the time being, my search was ended.