The New International Encyclopædia/Shipton, Mother

SHIPTON, Mother. A reputed English prophetess of the time of Henry VIII. The statements concerning her personal history are conflicting and of slight value. Very probably she is a purely fictitious person whose name was made the vehicle of many supposed prophecies. She is first heard of in 1641, when The Prophecie of Mother Shipton, an anonymous tract, was published in London. Her reputation extended over the kingdom, and chap-books and pamphlets purporting to be collections of her prophecies appeared frequently. The larger number of these were undoubtedly inventions. In 1862 one Charles Hindley reprinted an earlier so-called life of Mother Shipton, inserting some doggerel verses of his own, in which he described certain things that had happened and wound up with the declaration that the world would come to an end in 1881. Hindley in 1873 acknowledged that the verses were a hoax. Consult Harrison, Mother Shipton Investigated (London, 1881).