MARY KELYNACK, A VERY OLD FISHWIFE, WHO WALKED FROM PENZANCE TO LONDON 

 

Mary Kelynack was born in Madron in 1766. She earned money selling fish, carried in a wicker basket on her back.
She wore a beaver skin hat to keep the sun and rain off her head, and hard leather clogs on her feet. In 1851, she was 84 years old when she heard people talking about a Great Exhibition being held in London, where artistic and industrialwonders from Cornwall were being displayed alongside incredible marvels from foreign lands,
all in the beautiful Crystal Palace.

 

Mary, by all accounts, a determined and intelligent person, decided to see this
once-in-a-lifetime exhibition for herself. So she walked to London, along 300 miles of rough roads, in bad shoes, sleeping in hedges and begging for food. The journey took her a month and she made it to the Great Exhibition where, quite by chance, she met the young Queen Victoria. Journalists knew a good story when they saw one and newspaper reports of this unlikely meeting made Mary Kelynack an overnight celebrity. Five years after returning home, and as poor as ever, Mary died and was buried in an unmarked grave in St. Mary’s churchyard in Penzance.