Reputed to have lived from 1584 to 1711; this version of the portrait was published in 1819 and is by T. Maddocks. Some sources claim that she was believed to be a witch; no wonder, if she lived that long (or claimed to have).
An earlier version of this image, on which Maddocks based this one, is also in the United Kingdom's National Portrait Gallery. The portrait by John Faber, Sr., includes text; it is subtitled "Age Hundred Twenty-Seven" and says that Jane Scrimshaw, the subject, was, at the time that the portrait was done in 1711, "a Live and Healthy," and that she had been born in 1584. The portrait was said to have been done at an almshouse.
The high pointed hat, which came to be associated in culture with witches as well as with the legendary figure Mother Goose, was common in the 17th century and into the 18th. Wenceslaus Hollar, who created a series of engravings of women's costume in the mid-17th century, depicted some of the women with wide-brimmed dark hats that did not come to a sharp point, but more of a truncated point: Women's Fashions of the 17th Century.
