| Intro | First person killed in Britain by a tiger |
| From | United Kingdom |
| Gender | female |
Hannah Twynnoy (1669/70-1703) is the first person to have been killed by a tiger in Britain, as attested to by a formal contemporary source.
Twynnoy, by repute and according to a memorial plaque now lost, was an early 18th-century barmaid working in The White Lion public house in the centre of the English market town of Malmesbury in Wiltshire.
All that remains from the time, to corroborate the narrative of her death, is her gravestone, in a corner of the churchyard of Malmesbury Abbey.
Unsolved aspects of the death
Wealth or pity?
Poetic epitaphs on gravestones were popular at the turn of the 18th century, but generally only for the wealthy and celebrated. A gravestone and a plot in the churchyard of Malmesbury Abbey for any woman, who could not have been a priest or a priest’s wife, would have been costly, even without engaging the services of a poet. The identity of the patron who paid for her tombstone and plot remains a mystery, although they may have been donated by the church and vestry.
Family
Her connection with the village of Hullavington, which kept family records at this time, seems anomalous. Her sole connection comes from a later local historian giving the wording and location of a plaque.
Equally, however, parish registers and Bishops transcripts for Malmesbury contain no entry, between 1635 and 1700, for anyone named Twynnoy.
Enduring legacy
In 1993 a new residential road in Malmesbury was named ‘Twynnoy Close’.
In 2003, on the 300th anniversary of the death, a simple ceremony was carried out at the grave when every schoolgirl in the town, younger than 11 and named Hannah, placed a flower on the grave.