A 300-year-old gravestone commemorating a woman who was mauled to death by a tiger has been restored.
Hannah Twynnoy was living in Malmesbury in the 18th Century when the animal, thought to have been part of a travelling menagerie housed in a pub yard, escaped and attacked her.
Her gruesome death, aged just 33, has attracted visitors to her grave in the grounds of Malmesbury Abbey ever since.
The inscription on her headstone had become so illegible that, prompted by a local campaign, masonry restorers were brought in to spruce it up.
Hannah Twynnoy was working as a servant in the White Lion Inn when she died on 23 October 1703.
Believed to be the first person to be killed by a tiger in England, the exact nature of her death is unknown as nothing was written about it until about 100 years later.
However, according to local history, the pub accommodated wild beasts for exhibition, one of which was a tiger.
Despite being told regularly not to tease the animals, it is believed that Hannah taunted the tiger, which lunged at her, pulled its fixing from the wall and “tore her to pieces”.
I gotta squint at this last part. Did this explanation come from management? “No, you don’t understand, it was really the woman’s fault that the caged wild animal we kept in a pub attacked. We’re actually good and normal for doing this.”
Definitely take this with a grain of salt, yeah. Of course the pub that decided to keep wild animals in their courtyard 300 years ago would say that.
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