An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present - Doreen Valiente 2018

Persecution of Witches

The law making witchcraft a capital offence in England was repealed in 1735. For some years previously, enlightened judges had been thwarting any attempt to have wretched old creatures hanged as witches, in spite of popular outcry against them. The more educated people of the nation had become sickened at the superstition and imposture connected with trials for witchcraft. The pendulum had swung completely the other way, so that many now completely disbelieved in witchcraft at all.

PERSECUTION OF WITCHES. Woodcut showing the ’swimming’ of witches from the pamphlet, “Witches Apprehended, Examined and Executed” published in London in 1613 (reproduced by courtesy of the Bodleian Library, Oxford).

This attitude, however, was by no means shared by the less educated classes. They still vehemently believed in witchcraft, both black and white, and moreover believed that witches who worked harm should die, or at any rate suffer severely. So when the law of the land was relaxed, lynch law sometimes took over.

The self-styled ’wise woman’ or ’cunning man’ often played a very sinister part in these proceedings. At that time (as now) there were many clever and greedy impostors, who made a good living out of public credulity. One of their specialities was pointing out dangerous witches, with profit to themselves, and sometimes a tragic and fatal result to some unfortunate old man or woman whom they picked on.

A sensational case of this kind occurred at Tring, in Hertfordshire, in 1751, when a poor old couple, John and Ruth Osborne, were attacked by a mob, and Ruth Osborne died as a result.

They may well not have been witches at all; but a man called Butter-field had got it into his head that they were, on account of some ill-health and misfortune he had encountered, after quarrelling with Mrs Osborne.

He accordingly sent as far as Northamptonshire, for a renowned wise woman to come and help him. She confirmed that he was be-witched, but her services proved both expensive and without result, so far as improvement in Butterfield’s affairs was concerned. However, curiosity and excitement had by now been aroused in the neighbouring countryside; and someone caused the public criers of three adjoining towns, Hemel Hempstead, Leighton Buzzard, and Winslow, to make this announcement: “This is to give notice, that on Monday next, a man and woman are to be publicly ducked at Tring, in this county, for their wicked crimes”.

When the parish overseer of Tring learned that the Osbornes were the people referred to, he lodged them for their own safety in the work-house. They were again moved from there to the vestry of the parish church, late on the Sunday night.

On the Monday morning, a mob, estimated at over 5,000 persons, many of them on horseback, assailed the workhouse, demanding the Osbornes. When the workhouse master told them the couple were not there, the mob rushed in and searched the building. Baulked of their victims they then turned on the wretched workhouse master, and threatened him with death if he did not reveal where the Osbornes were.

Having discovered by this means that the supposed witches were hidden in the church, the mob broke open the church doors, seized John and Ruth Osborne, and dragged them to a pond at Long Marston.

Here they were both stripped naked and wrapped each in a sheet. Their thumbs and great toes were tied together, and a cord was put round each one’s body, precisely as witches had been ’swum’ in Matthew Hopkins’ time. Each suspect was then separately thrown into the pond. When Ruth Osborne seemed to float somewhat, a man named Thomas Colley pushed her down with a stick. This treatment was three times repeated in each case, and one account says that the prisoners were then laid naked on the shore, where they were kicked and beaten until Ruth Osborne was dead and her husband nearly so. Thomas Colley then “went among the spectators and collected money for the pains he had taken in showing them sport”; so the account of his subsequent trial tells us.

Neither the local clergy nor the magistrates had raised a finger to save the Osbornes. However, a riot of such proportions, and its fatal consequence, could not be hidden; and many people were indignant and horrified. A coroner’s inquest was held upon the death of Ruth Osborne; and twelve of the principal gentlemen of Hertfordshire were summoned to form the jury, because at an inquest held in a similar case a short time before, at Frome in Somersetshire, the jury had refused to bring in an obviously justified verdict of murder.

The result was that Thomas Colley was in due course tried for the murder of Ruth Osborne at the County Assizes. John Osborne had recovered, but did not appear to give evidence. Nevertheless Colley was found guilty, and sentenced to be hanged. On the scaffold, a solemn declaration of Colley’s faith relating to witchcraft was read for him by the minister of Tring. A strong military escort accompanied him to the scaffold, on account of the public sympathy for him, and a good deal of grumbling among the people “that it was a hard case to hang a man for destroying an old wicked woman that had done so much mischief by her witchcraft.”

This was the most notorious case of mob violence against alleged witches in England; but by no means the only one. There are many recorded instances of people attacking those they accused as witches, and trying to ’swim’ them or ’draw blood upon them’. The latter is another very old belief, that if you can strike a witch so as to draw blood, these lose their power over you. It has been responsible for a number of deaths, notably those of Nanny Morgan in Shropshire in 1857, and Ann Turner in Warwickshire in 1875.

Both these women were killed by men who believed themselves bewitched by them. Nanny Morgan, who lived at Westwood Common, near Wenlock, belonged to a witch family. The old country saying was applied to her kinsfolk, “that they could see further through a barn door than most”. The method of her death dated back to Anglo-Saxon times, when it was called pricca, meaning staking down the suspected witch with a sharp weapon, so that the blood flowed. Nanny Morgan was found in her cottage, pinned down with an eel spear through her throat.

That she did actually practise witchcraft was proved by the fact that a number of letters were found in her cottage, some from people of eminent local position, asking for her services. There was also a box of gold sovereigns, which she had apparently accumulated by the practice of occult arts. Witches today believe that it is wrong to practise witchcraft for money, and that it ultimately brings retribution upon the person who does so.

The young man who killed her had been a lodger in her house. He had wanted to leave, but was too afraid of her to break away. In the end he committed this desperate act.

Ann Turner was killed in the village of Long Compton, near the Rollright Stones; a village which, like Canewdon in Essex, has a strong local tradition of witchcraft. A young man, who believed she had bewitched him, attacked her with a hayfork. He may only have meant to draw blood upon her; but she was an elderly woman, and she died of her injuries.

A contemporary account has come down to us, of a similar case in Wiveliscombe, Somerset, in 1823, which fortunately did not end in murder, but came very near to doing so. This case is notable, for the way in which it illustrates the part that a ’cunning man’ often played in these matters. This supposed protector against black witchcraft was one Old Baker, known as the Somerset Wizard.

Three women named Bryant, a mother and her two daughters, had consulted him because one of the girls was thought to be bewitched. He, of course, confirmed that this was so, and sold the mother some pills and potions for the girl to take, and also a mysterious packet of herbs. The actual prescription, in Old Baker’s illiterate hand, read as follows: “The paper of arbs [herbs] is to be burnt, a small bit at a time, on a few coals, with a little hay and rosemary, and while it is burning, read the two first verses of the 68th Salm, and say the Lord’s Prayer after”.

After Old Baker’s instructions had been carried out, the daughter had no further fits of supposed possession. But one thing remained to do; blood must be drawn upon the witch, to break her spell for ever. Mrs. Bryant told a neighbour “that old Mrs. Burges was the witch, and that she was going to get blood from her.”

In the meantime, old Mrs. Burges had heard what she was being accused of, and went to Mrs. Bryant’s house to confront her and deny the charge. Fortunately for her, she took a woman friend with her, whose exertions saved her life. The three Bryant women fell upon the old lady, and two of them held her down, while the third, the allegedly bewitched daughter, attacked her. They cried out for a knife, but none being handy, they used the nearest weapon, a large nail, with which they lacerated her arms.

The woman who had accompanied Mrs. Burges cried “Murder!” A mob soon assembled round the door of the house; but they did nothing to stop the ’blooding’, saying that the old woman was a witch. By the time her friend had dragged her away from her attackers, Mrs. Burges had sustained fifteen or sixteen wounds, and was bleeding severely. She was taken to a surgeon, who dressed her injuries; and as a result of the affray, the Bryants found themselves summoned before a judge at Taunton Assizes.

Here the whole story came out, including the part played in it by Old Baker; of whom the judge observed, “I wish we had the fellow here. Tell him, if he does not leave off his conjuring, he will be caught, and charmed in a manner he will not like.”

All three of the accused were found guilty, and sentenced to four months’ imprisonment.

The belief in drawing blood on a witch was still lively in Devonshire 100 years later. In 1924 a Devonshire farmer was prosecuted for assaulting a woman neighbour, whom he accused of afflicting him by witchcraft. He had scratched her on the arm with a pin, and threatened to shoot her. The man insisted in court that the woman had ill-wished him and bewitched his pig. This was why he had tried to draw blood on her. He wanted the police to raid the woman’s house and take possession of a crystal ball, which he said she used in her spells. Nothing the magistrates said would make him change his belief; and he was sentenced to one month’s imprisonment.

It might be supposed that the flourishing technological society of modern Germany, after two World Wars, would have changed to such an extent that the days of witch persecutions would be quite forgotten. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the 1950s German newspapers carried frequent reports of the activities of ’witch-exorcists’—activities which sometimes ended in the death of the person they accused of being a witch.

In 1951 Johann Kruse founded in Hamburg The Archives for the Investigation of Witchery in Modern Times. In the same year Herr Kruse published a startling book, entitled Witches among Us? Witchery and Magical Beliefs in Our Times (West Germany, 1951). This book revealed facts about the continuing belief in witchcraft in Germany, which amazed his contemporaries.

The West German newspaper in 1952 reported no less than sixty-five cases involving witchcraft. Many of them were so horrible that it seems incredible they were printed in the columns of a modern newspaper, and not in some centuries-old black-lettered book.

For instance, there was the case of a young woman who was admitted to hospital at Haltern, three weeks after her wedding. She was dying; but before she expired she was able to tell how she came by her injuries. It appeared that just after her marriage an outbreak of some cattle disease had occurred on the farm of her husband’s parents. A woman from Gelsenkirchen, who was a so-called soothsayer, had declared that the new bride was a witch, and responsible for the disease among the cattle. At the soothsayer’s instigation, the family had imprisoned the poor girl in a dark room, where she was slowly done to death by starvation and beatings.

These self-styled ’soothsayers’ or ’witch-exorcists’, although professing to practise “white magic”, in fact recommended the most revolting cruelties against both humans and animals, in their war against witchcraft. The idea very often was (one hopes that the past tense is appropriate, though this is doubtful), that if they could not torture the witch, the ill-treatment of an animal would somehow be conveyed to her.

Thus, a remedy for headaches supposedly caused by witchcraft was to tear a live black cat in two and lay the bloody remains upon the patient’s head, where they must stay for three hours. The remedy for hens who were allegedly bewitched by the Evil Eye was to burn two hens alive in an oven. This was actually done, on the advice of a ’witch-exorcist’, and reported in a German newspaper in May 1952.

Another practice recommended by the ’de-witchers’ was the profanation of graves. Bones gathered from churchyards were sought for as a protection against bewitchment; and a prescription against fever (probably thought to be witch-induced) was: “Take human bones from three different graveyards, reduce them to charcoal, and give them, pounded to a powder, to the patient with brandy.”

Other ’de-witching remedies’ consisted of asafoetida—which is an evil-smelling gum-resin popularly known as ’Devil’s dung’—horse dung and urine; and even human urine, which one ’witch-exorcist’s’ patients were induced to drink—at three marks a bottle!

Sometimes, among all this welter of filth and horror, there appeared a glimpse of a real memory of the ancient witchcraft. In the province of Hamburg, for instance, a peasant who believed his house was bewitched got his family to strip themselves naked every night, and sweep the floors with brooms, to drive the evil influence away, Knowingly or not, he was in fact carrying out an old witch rite, of being in a state of ritual nudity, and symbolically sweeping away evil, one of the things that a witch’s broomstick is actually used for.

The authorities in Germany took notice of Herr Kruse’s revelations, and in subsequent years several of these modern witch-finders were brought to trial and punished for their crimes and their defamation of innocent people. A book often mentioned in the course of these trials is the so-called Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, or Moses’ Magical Art of Spirits, which was a favourite of the ’witch-exorcists’. As a result, the sale of this book was banned in Germany. However, I have a copy in my own magical collection. (English translations have appeared in U.S.A., often clandestinely, without date or publisher’s name). What it purports to be is the secret Words of Power which Moses used, and the signs and symbols which accompany them, which give the operator power over evil spirits. It is not a book of witchcraft, but derives from the darker side of ceremonial magic.

History shows us that the witch-finder expresses the loftiest motives; but at the same time his hand is always held out to receive money.