Amelia Dexter was born at Barleythorpe around 1816 and married the stonemason Matthew Woodcock in 1842. By 1845 the family was living in City Yard, Wing, and it was there that she became known as the Wise Woman of Wing. She was good at treating small wounds and ailments, and word spread. By 1851 hundreds of sick people were coming to the quiet village, filling the pubs and cottages, and licensed vehicles ran from Manton railway station to take patients to her door.
The Stamford Mercury of 10 September 1852 printed two letters about her. The Oakham correspondent said that up to 200 people applied to her in a day, that respectable people and doctors' families were among them, and that "witchcraft has been imputed to her, but she is no more a witch" than her critics. The Uppingham correspondent called her patients ignorant and deluded, said she could neither read nor write, and reported a story that she had cured two cancer cases and refused a doctor's offer for the recipe. Both letters describe her medicine as herbal.
She was not above suspicion. The same chapter notes that some local people thought her either a charlatan or a witch. In February 1854 an inquest was held at Oakham on Oliver Epery, aged 20, a patient from Earith who died suddenly in her house; the jury found natural causes. Later she moved to a house at Mount Pleasant, Oakham, and she died there on 24 May 1863 aged 47. She and her husband are buried in Hambleton churchyard.
She belongs to the long tradition of cunning folk, whose work shaded into magic in the eyes of neighbours. The sources describe a herbalist, not anyone who claimed spells, so the witchcraft label here is the one her contemporaries threw at her.
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