Witch Hunt presents “The Ultimate Introduction to the Salem Witch Trials,” the first episode of the Salem Witch-Hunt 101 series. This episode provides a comprehensive overview of the Salem Witch Trials, emphasizing the event’s extensive reach, the variety of people involved, and its unique characteristics compared to other witch hunts in history. We discuss the origins and progression of the witch hunt, debunking myths and shedding light on the social, legal, and political factors feeding the crisis. Also covered are some of the key accusers, victims, opposition, and lasting legacy of the trials, with an emphasis on the importance of remembrance and learning from this dark chapter in history.
Hosts Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack, descendants of people hanged for witchcraft in the Salem Witch-Hunt, welcome you to explore the witch-hunt in great detail in this episode and the rest of the series. Look for much more in-depth Salem coverage over the coming months and years.
Joined by John Azumah, an expert who sheds light on the origins and societal impacts of witchcraft accusations, we navigate the intricate landscape of family disputes, community fears, and the national efforts to combat this grave injustice. Our journey takes us into the heart of communities torn apart by fear and suspicion, where accusations of witchcraft have long led to banishment and the resulting formation of ‘witch camps.’ Azumah’s insights offer a profound look at the cultural and societal dynamics that perpetuate these practices, as well as the ongoing struggles to reintegrate victims into their communities amidst threats of re-accusation and violence. This episode is a deep dive into the efforts at various levels to address and hopefully eradicate the stigma and harm caused by these ancient accusations, highlighting the urgent need for reform and protective measures for those unjustly accused.
Paul Moyer delves into New England’s witch-hunt history this week on Witch Hunt. Drawing from his book, Detestable and Wicked Arts, Moyer discusses the origins of witchcraft beliefs, transatlantic connections, and infamous trials like Salem and Hartford. Learn about the societal pressures behind these hunts, from religious conflicts to political turmoil, and gain new insights into this haunting chapter of American history. How did heavy societal expectations on family and marriage bring out the hunting of diabolical duos, couples accused of being witches? Paul Moyer discusses his upcoming book about a gripping murder case set in antebellum America, an enthralling history with themes of social justice and defiance of gender norms.
Pulitzer-prize-winning author Stacy Schiff joins hosts Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack for a dive into the heart of the Salem Witch Trials on this week’s episode of Witch Hunt. Celebrated for her book, The Witches: Suspicion, Betrayal, and Hysteria in 1692 Salem, Stacy sheds light on the trials’ misunderstandings, explores their actual origins, and spotlights the pivotal individuals involved. Her insights and story telling make history accessible and engaging. Together, they reflect on the timely relevance of lessons learned from the Salem Witch Trials.
Stacy Schiff: [00:00:00] There had been witchcraft accusations before, there had been outbreaks of witchcraft before. Never before had there been this kind of prosecution where no one who walked into that courtroom exited innocent. Josh Hutchinson: Welcome to Witch Hunt. I'm Josh Hutchinson, but you can also call me excited. We get to talk about Salem today! Sarah Jack: And I'm Sarah Jack. In this episode, we are joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Stacy Schiff. Josh Hutchinson: Schiff is the author of six books, including The Witches: Suspicion, Betrayal, and Hysteria in 1692 Salem. Sarah Jack: In this exciting conversation, Stacy clears up some major misconceptions about the witch hunt. Josh Hutchinson: And reviews many of the theories [00:01:00] that have been proposed to explain what started the witch hunt. Sarah Jack: And you're about to hear the factors that really did shape the witch hunt. Josh Hutchinson: And we'll learn about many significant actors, including Tituba, in this conversation with discussion of the roles that they played. Sarah Jack: It was such a treat to get to hear about her research process and approach to making historical events so understandable. Josh Hutchinson: Together, we reflect on key lessons from the Salem witch hunt. Sarah Jack: Welcome Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning author known for her compelling narratives and deep research into historical events and figures. Her notable works include The Witches: Suspicion, Betrayal, and Hysteria in 1692 Salem. Sarah Jack: What are some major misconceptions people have about the Salem Witch Trials? Stacy Schiff: Oh, my goodness, it's such a, it's a long and distinguished list, isn't it? I think generally people tend to [00:02:00] assume that people burned, not hanged. So I think that's the first one. I think the general assumption is that all the victims were women, but as we know, five men were also victims that year. They were not universally poor women, they were not older women. They were, there was a 5-year-old accused as well. Stacy Schiff: Because I think we take a lot of what we understand to have been the history from Arthur Miller, I think we have assumed that voodoo and naked dancing in the forest were part of it, and that's taken from The Crucible, either the play or the movie, not from the actual events of 1692. And I think the word Salem is slightly misleading because 25 communities wind up being implicated, being involved in any case, not only the town of Salem. And I guess the biggest misconception is that there were witches, of which there were none. Josh Hutchinson: And what are some of the theories about how the Salem witch hunt happened? Stacy Schiff: I think that the epidemic that year, the panic that year, has been pretty much written down [00:03:00] to anything you can possibly think of, from regional hostilities, to class conflict, to tensions within the church, to food poisoning, to teenage hysteria, to fraud, to taxes, political instability, trauma due to the frontier with the Native Americans, the weather. You could go mad actually staring at the events and trying to pick a pattern. As with all things, if you're really looking for a pattern, you can almost always find one, which is something of a key to what happens that year. Stacy Schiff: So I think many of those things have been applied and then discarded. And I think we can get into this. One of the issues, of course, with that year is that so many forces come into play that it isn't predominantly actually one thing. There isn't a key. As much as we would like for there to be one, there isn't a key to the Salem witch epidemic of that year. Sarah Jack: And how did you manage to clarify the true causes behind the witch trials? You made them so easy to understand for the readers, despite the reputation for [00:04:00] the mystery and the complexity. Stacy Schiff: Thanks Sarah, that's a lovely, it's a lovely way to put it. I hope it's clear. I think what I did is that when I started the research, I read through all of the paper that survives, and it's about a thousand pages of, as the court papers are missing, but we have about a thousand pages of arrest documents or depositions or jailers' accountings. We have about a thousand pages of paper, and I read through all of that, and try to make that material really speak for itself in some way, because you can see the story mutating from beginning to end. What initially passes for witchcraft when the first girls are afflicted is not what will be discussed as witchcraft by late summer when this thing has really snowballed to just tremendous effect. So you can begin to tease out who's carrying the narrative and how the narrative twists and turns and what the sources of that are. Stacy Schiff: And I guess to that end, I would say 2 things. I would say. I went back and I read all [00:05:00] eight or nine, I can't remember any longer, volumes of the records and files of the quarterly courts of Essex County, which is not, it's to the years prior to 1692, but it is a complete record of all of the, these are very litigious people, these are all of the collisions in court that all of these families had over these years. And the same issues and the same names come up as you will later see in some of the witchcraft accusations. So that was almost like a template to both the sensibility and the history of these people. Stacy Schiff: It's interesting that about half of the women who hang had been accused previously of witchcraft. There's obviously some lingering resentment or some lingering questions here. And then the other, from a textual point of view, the other great guide was the writings of Cotton Mather, the minister who's at the center, the young minister who is at the center of the trials, and who had written a bestseller in which he had incorporated an account of the European witchcraft, Swedish witchcraft panic of years earlier, which [00:06:00] infiltrates the New England drinking water and which bears a mark on Salem. I think there's actually, I think, a great doctoral thesis to be written about this, because he imports elements from Sweden that had never before been seen in any kind of New England witchcraft testimony. Stacy Schiff: That's a long answer to your extremely good question, but that was how I began to decode it. You can see, I read all of the sermons that the girls would have heard that year, and you can see bits and pieces of that sermon in their testimony. You can see that they're recycling the imagery that they've heard on Sundays. Josh Hutchinson: And what were some of the factors which actually did lead to the Salem witch trials? Stacy Schiff: Guess the chief ones, this is an overdetermined event. It's very hard, as I said, to tease one thing or another thing out. I would say more than anything, the question that year becomes not what was afflicting these young women, but why was the court so intent on prosecution? Stacy Schiff: Because there had been witchcraft accusations before, there had been outbreaks of witchcraft before. Never before had there been this kind of [00:07:00] prosecution where no one who walked into that courtroom exited innocent. And for that, I would say that it was something of the political environment which makes that year stand apart. You have on this court a group of men who, for reasons of their own, given political instability of the previous few years, need to prove they are a law and order administration. And in particular, the Chief Justice of the Court, who has been something of a political, he's been very ambidextrous politically. He's played both sides repeatedly. needs to prove that he is solely in command and is not going to relax his hold. And he is the one who's pushing, it's very clear to us, he's the one who's pushing for convictions. So I think that the politics is something that we haven't necessarily paid enough attention to in the past. Stacy Schiff: I think, as I said, some of those earlier accusations, some of that sense of suspicion that had never really been dissipated before. And you really do have a community that's very much under fire. Salem Village, which is where the first girls begin to show [00:08:00] signs of some sort of affliction of some disorder, is a village that has had serious trouble with its ministers, and in different ways, all of those prior ministers will play a role in what happens this year, but the minister in whose household the witchcraft, so to speak, breaks out, is under siege with his, in his community. He's at war with his parishioners and he's very much driving these events forward in some ways. Sarah Jack: Were there any other primary actors who caused the witch trials to proceed as they did? And if you're interested in following that with what halted the witch trials? Stacy Schiff: So yeah, I think you could probably draw something of a schematic if you wanted to just take like the, how does this thing snowball? What are the bases it has to hit, to, to produce this storm of accusations? And I think household under siege, obviously, it's a hothouse environment. You have these girls living in a situation where they can see that their father and uncle is in disfavor with the community, [00:09:00] so there's a sense of an explosion within that household. One of the first people accused, as you know, was Tituba, the Indian slave in the household. And Tituba's testimony is so vivid and so kaleidoscopic and so convincing that once she, and moreover, she establishes, she's the one of the only one of the three first accused who says, yes, witchcraft was at work. Yes, I flew on a pole to Boston with my accomplices. And moreover, I saw these spectral cats. It's a crazy testimony. Once she has established in the eyes of the community that witchcraft has been at work, it's very hard for anybody to reverse course. So that's another sort of post on the way. And then one of the first girls who testifies, a teenager named Abigail Hobbs, who's the bad girl of Topsfield, she then spreads the accusations out beyond Salem Village, because she suddenly points a finger to, toward a former minister of the town, of the village, in fact. Stacy Schiff: And so there you begin [00:10:00] to see that the thing has tentacles, and it begins to spread beyond the immediate household. And then I guess the, I should add actually, Thomas Putnam, one of the villagers, who has had a run of terrible luck, and who will complain against, I think, 35 of the ultimate accused witches, and who will file the first charges, he does something as well to help this thing explode. And then from the other side, you have the head of the witchcraft court, Stoughton, and you have Cotton Mather, who's always in the background, trying very hard to help advise the court, but always in a way that seems to press them toward prosecution. As much as he's pretending to be even handed, he seems quite intent on somehow exorcising this ill and purifying the community. So you have these other forces that are both massaging the narrative and enforcing the prosecution. Josh Hutchinson: It's hard to say what single element shuts down the prosecution. A [00:11:00] number of things happen, and I think the timing is crucial, as well. The trials, the witchcraft breaks out in late January, early February. The trials take place largely over the summer. And by fall, the accusations have begun to spread in every direction. Stacy Schiff: We've got to the point where it is far easier to accuse someone else or to confess than it is to claim your innocence. And so obviously in that situation, the snowballing is out of control. It's also, however, the fall, which is traditionally the season when you wanted to make sure that you had plenty of stores in your cellar and you were ready for the winter, and so the interest in spending all day in witchcraft courtrooms tended to wane a little bit. So it may be that a healthy dose of skepticism begins to creep in for practical reasons. Stacy Schiff: It's also true that the newly appointed, newly installed Massachusetts governor is not a Puritan. He doesn't buy into these trials the way the other authorities had, and he reaches out late that year to the New York ministers to get their opinion on what's happening in [00:12:00] Salem. And that's the first attempt to go beyond the kind of monolith, which is the New England establishment. And their opinion is very different from what the judges in Massachusetts are hearing. So you get this outside opinion, as well. Stacy Schiff: And slowly but surely you get people in the community, and Thomas Brattle would be the best instance of this. He's a 35-year-old Boston merchant who doesn't have any relationship to any of the other well born justices, which is unusual, because they are a very inbred, familiar group one to the other, and who realizes that basically if someone gives testimony with her eyes closed, she's not observing what's happening, she's imagining something, and sees that a great miscarriage of justice is taking place and will be very hard to erase from history and very quietly, and in fact anonymously, he writes a small pamphlet about the court's proceedings, and he is one of two voices. Stacy Schiff: There's a Boston minister as well, also very quietly, who will begin to speak up against the trials, and it may be that at that point, the [00:13:00] accusations have just reached a very high level, and too many important people have been implicated. It may just be that it begins to stretch the imagination. At first, there had been 5 witches, and then there had been 10 witches, and suddenly there were 500 witches. Stacy Schiff: And it may be, it's as if suddenly everyone awoke from this great delirium is what it does begin to feel like. But even at that juncture, there are two things that are interesting. One is that Stoughton, the Chief Justice, is unwilling to shut down the court, and he has to be forced to shut down the court, because he's convinced still of his rectitude and of the court's probity in prosecuting. Stacy Schiff: And secondly, and this, I think, is something we tend to lose sight of. The belief in witchcraft will persist well after the trials. People believe that they themselves were innocent or that the accused that year were innocent, but they don't yet lose their faith in witchcraft. It's an interesting thing where the trials end, but there is still this lingering sense that there was something supernatural at work. Josh Hutchinson: And there's still a lot of supernatural [00:14:00] explanations for Salem. Sarah was talking to somebody the other day who was asking, did they have powers? Stacy Schiff: When you see, when you begin to read the testimony in court, I don't know if you all have household mysteries the way we do, but the kitchen scissors always goes missing. Who's got the kitchen scissors? You begin to realize how much can be explained by witchcraft. It's such an elastic and versatile definition, and especially in a world where you didn't have science, where you couldn't explain illness, where weather was not something you could understand, much less control, where things seem to happen in the night, where there was a lot of drinking, by the way, where the dark was very dark, where you had Native Americans or people with whom you were at, with whom you had conflicts at your doorstep, you can see how this would be the perfect cauldron in which to dissolve your questions. Sarah Jack: How should Tituba's station in life and experiences, especially in contrast to those of the Puritan [00:15:00] women, inform our understanding of her role in the witch trials? Stacy Schiff: Three women are initially accused, and they are the three most obvious women one would have chosen. One is a, one is a woman who's homeless, one is a woman who'd been at, who had sued multiple times and was in disfavor in the community, and the third was Tituba, who's who's the household slave. Stacy Schiff: And who would have had more, she's the only one of the three, as I said, who actually confesses that she is involved in something satanic, and would have had more reason, obviously, than either of the other two women, to give these men in authority what they were looking for. It's really clear when you look at the papers, how much these young women, in particular, how much all the youngsters really were cowed by these men in authority. These were the most eminent men in town. They lived in the most beautiful homes. They dressedwith the greatest of fashion. And their authority would've been something very difficult to resist for anyone but much less someone who was a slave. Stacy Schiff: Tituba [00:16:00] has every reason to cough up this extraordinary tale about yellow birds and flying cats and flying off to Boston on a pole. She makes it very clear that the devil has said that if she talked about this, he would slice off her head. So she sounds like she's terrified of something anyway and that testimony possibly was beaten out of her, but even if it wasn't beaten out of her, there's one hint that perhaps it may have been. Stacy Schiff: Those men knew what they were about to hear, because there were at least three people sitting in the room that day waiting for her to testify. So they knew that this was the goldmine, that she was going to be the witness who was going to make this thing real. It's very hard to believe she would have had any grounds with which to resist them given her station in life. Josh Hutchinson: Very true. And I have to fess up that my great grandfather, Joseph Hutchinson, was one who filed the complaint along with Thomas Putnam. Stacy Schiff: I love that. [00:17:00] Wait, are you related to Thomas Hutchinson, too? Josh Hutchinson: No there's the. Yeah, Salem Hutchinsons and Boston Hutchinsons, and so far, genetically, nobody's found a DNA connection between the two. Anyways, what key lessons should be learned from the Salem witch hunt and applied today? Stacy Schiff: I suppose we should avoid jumping to conclusions. This is what happens when fear paralyzes reason and when we overcorrect and sort of overanalyze and, I guess what the best that could be said for this real mishap, this tragedy, is that it should serve as a sort of vaccine for us all. We have this instance in our record. We should be looking at it and using it when we think we might be heading in this direction. So we don't end up with McCarthyism, basically. We've seen this, we've seen the dynamic so vividly so often. And it is so clearly where you end up going if you head down the road of conspiratorial thinking. This is the end of the road. Stacy Schiff: And, as early as [00:18:00] really Thomas Brattle's writings that year, people were very aware of the fact that this was something that was going to be a stain on history, and that was going to be there a blinking red light or a guardrail for future times, which is a, which is indeed how we should be looking at it. Stacy Schiff: It's always been interesting to me, it's very much in line with Richard Hofstadter's Paranoid Style in American Politics, but it doesn't figure in that book. But it really is the beginning of that this overheated rhetoric and the need, this tribal need to prosecute in some way and the inability to basically defer to reason when you realize that the reasonable is actually the right solution, somehow the complicated answer seems somehow like the more appealing answer often. Sarah Jack: I wanted to talk a little bit about how you brought out some really strong themes in your book, like the darkness or the tension between people's expectations and disappointments with each other. What, how did you [00:19:00] draw those out into the forefront of your book? Stacy Schiff: I don't know that I have an exact answer for you. I think what was important to me was to get beyond the theory. I wanted the reader to feel something of what it was like to be in New England in the 17th century, and that is why the darkness became such an obsession of mine, because so much of the testimony is based on a man trying to find his way home from the inn at night and being able to, unable to maneuver through the trees and, therefore, assuming the trees have moved, not that he might have had a few too many drinks earlier himself. But that the darkness is just constant and a sort of disability almost to everyone. So I wanted to bypass the theory at the early end of the book, leave all the explanations to the end, which may or may not have been successful, but just to plunge the reader immediately into what it felt like. Stacy Schiff: That's why the book begins with Ann Foster, who, and I think I read fairly early on of Ann Foster, who's this older, Andover [00:20:00] farm woman who testifies in court under oath to the fact that she flew through the air on a pole, and moreover, not only flew through the air on a pole, but crash landed. I wanted the reader to think what would possess a person to swear to that under oath? How could you be so certain that this had happened and even tell the authorities about the cheese and bread you had put in your pocket before your flight? So I just wanted to literally plunge right into that New England feel and into this, into where, how a person could wind up believing that of herself, or at least believing that if she swore to that, she was telling the truth. Josh Hutchinson: On the flying, you had mentioned the Swedish witch trials before, and is the flying, did that come from Sweden? Stacy Schiff: Oh, I'm so glad you asked because I should have mentioned that, Joshua. Yes, there had never, witches in New England had never flown before 1692. So there were two things that were new. Basically the whole, and I should have gone back to mention this, the whole question of what was a [00:21:00] witch? A witch was basically a devil's accomplice who's target wasn't your body, but your soul. She or he was there to do the devil's work with her little menagerie of helpers who were generally cats and dogs and toads and all the diabolical creatures we can imagine, but the idea of a pact with the devil was very much an Anglo-Saxon concept, while the idea of a witch being able to fly to do her business was not. That was a continental witch. Stacy Schiff: And continental witches tended to be much more exotic creatures. They engaged in all kinds of sexual acts. Puritan witches never engaged in sexual acts. And they did not have, Anglo-Saxon witches did not have a satanic Sabbath. That, too, was a continental idea. So both the flying and the satanic Sabbath came to New England, it seems to me, through the writings of Cotton Mather, who wrote about that Swedish outbreak of witchcraft, which almost completely parallels what happens in Salem down to the ages of [00:22:00] the first girls who are afflicted, first children who are afflicted, and with very similar results, in fact, in that innocents die. But those two concepts were something that were entirely foreign to previous, both the lore of witchcraft in New England, and to previous witchcraft testimony. Sarah Jack: Having written extensively on various historical figures and events, how does your latest project, The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, compare to your other works in terms of research challenges or thematic focus and the narrative approach you take? Stacy Schiff: That's a big question, Sarah. To start with the thematic piece, there's a funny footnote in a way to the, with the American Revolution in that Salem lives on. And that's an interesting thing with Salem generally is to see how it then gets recycled and used by different parts of the country. Stacy Schiff: Abolitionists will end up saying that basically slavery is on par with, essentially, hanging witches and pro slavery people in the South will basically point to New England and say abolition is on [00:23:00] par with, and they'll say the opposite. So both sides will end up going back to cite Salem witchcraft. Stacy Schiff: But in the run up to the Revolution, as Stamp Act protests and other protests take off, an extraordinary number of people compare the moment to the delusion of 1692. So you get this constant drumbeat of things that there has never been this much unrest. There has never been such delusion. People have never been so mad since the Bedlam of 1692. And it's just funny to see that there's a comparison between Stamp Act protests and trying witches in the court in Salem town. Stacy Schiff: From a research point of view, I was at a great loss, because although there are things missing from the Salem record, Samuel Adams' papers are very incomplete. He destroyed a lot of paper, because he needed to destroy his trail, because he's obviously fomenting revolution. So there is a no fingerprint school at work here, and I was working from a somewhat mutilated record for that reason. So that was a big challenge, and a challenge that I ended up filling by reading a [00:24:00] lot in the archives in London, which are essentially what his enemies were saying about him. So he would never claim credit, for example, for some misdeed, some street protest or street ambush. But you can be certain that the customs commissioners in Boston or the Lieutenant Governor in Boston was writing back to London saying, 'let me tell you what this rascal Samuel Adams is up to this week.' Stacy Schiff: So I ended up being able to fill in a certain amount of his whereabouts and his machinations from the other side, with a grain of salt, I should add. And there was a great deal. I think this is a big difference between the two. There's a great deal of Adams in the newspapers, because he's writing constantly for the Boston newspapers, and one of the reasons the Revolution takes off, as it does from Boston, is because there are so many newspapers and such a literate populace. Stacy Schiff: And that, in a funny way, is a fallout from something that was true in 1692. You didn't have newspapers in 1692, but you did have a highly literate populace, because in order to pray, you needed to know how to read. And it is, in [00:25:00] a funny way, that very erudition that fuels the Salem Witch epidemic, because people have bought into this library of books which Cotton Mather brings to the forefront and which these men are consulting. Stacy Schiff: And so they have these shelves of literature on witchcraft. What they don't have are the skeptical texts on witchcraft, because those had been banned from coming into Boston. So in a funny way, you have a case of too much erudition. But anyway, it's that very, it's that literate tradition which flows obviously from one book to the other. Josh Hutchinson: And Cotton Mather, ironically, spurred a lot of the activity on by writing about the other events. So you have the Swedish trials and the Goodwin case, and they're all feeding into the behaviors of these afflicted people. So Cotton was involved from the beginning, I suppose. Stacy Schiff: It's funny, the court appeals to him, I think, three times. I'm now forgetting, but I think it's three times. And [00:26:00] three times, he basically says, you need to go very carefully, you need to exercise exquisite caution. And then he adds, nevertheless, I would vote for a speedy and vigorous prosecution. And there's always that nevertheless attached to each of his statements. And after the trials, there is a document and I no longer remember if it's 1694 or if it's later, where he talks about how essentially the trials had done good, because they had filled the pews, and they had awakened a sluggish generation to its faith, and really nobody who mattered had been lost in the process. It's not a statement had been meant for public consumption, but it tells you something of how the establishment viewed both the victims and the prosecution. Josh Hutchinson: It's remarkable. Sarah Jack: How do you hope your books impact reader understanding of history and its relevance to the present? Stacy Schiff: I called the trials a kind of vaccine. I like to think this is something of which we don't lose sight, so that we do not repeat this kind of [00:27:00] demented behavior, but generally, on a sort of happier front, I'd like to think that there's something about biography that allows one to open the window to history from a more personal point of view. In other words, through the sensibility of the individual in question, so that if you can see something like the strains and the tensions in the family of someone like Samuel Adams, you can begin to understand why someone would feel so deeply wed to American rights and privileges and so deeply sensitive to British overreach, and therefore begin to publish the kind of supposedly seditious statements that he publishes, and really spearhead what becomes a revolution. Why this cause becomes so very vital to him. And you don't really understand that if you don't really understand sort of the personal history that goes behind it. And I think we lose that sometimes when we talk about history from a higher altitude. I think when you're seeing it through the sensibility of one person, whether that person is [00:28:00] Cleopatra or Samuel Adams, you begin to understand those forces better. Josh Hutchinson: And what subjects or events are you drawn to explore next? Is there anything that you can tell us about? Stacy Schiff: I am working on a new book. Interestingly or not, it's actually a return to a subject, something I've never done before, it's a book about, it's another book about Benjamin Franklin, and this time it's about, the previous time I had written about the almost nine years that Franklin spends in France soliciting aid and and guns and men for the revolution, and he comes home in 1785 from that stint and will die in 1790. So this is a book which is going to tell the story of his life through those last five Philadelphia years. So it's really sort of the finale. It's Franklin's last act in a way. Josh Hutchinson: I'm looking forward to that. Stacy Schiff: Thank you. So am I. I'm looking forward to having written it, to being on the other side of it. Sarah Jack: Thank you for your work in your book, but your work today too, [00:29:00] the getting this information out and dissecting it like this is just really key for the world. So I know it sounds dramatic, but Stacy Schiff: No, it's not. And the one thing we didn't talk about, and to your point, is the silence that comes, that descends after this wipe out, right? Because for a generation, nobody would talk about it. Exoneration was impossible, because people were unwilling even to admit that they were related to victims of the trials. Stacy Schiff: So you, even in those first, attempts So when you look at attempts at getting reparations for families in 1711, families avoiding the word witchcraft. It's basically, I lost my relative in the recent unpleasantness is essentially what they're saying. And that whole sort of cushion of shame and regret that falls, guilt that descends on the scene afterwards means that so much has been lost to us, so much of the history has been lost to us, so much of the record goes missing, because everyone just wanted to pretend this had [00:30:00] never happened. Stacy Schiff: And I guess that's why, when we're saying this is really crucial for us to bring back to the forefront, there's your reason. Stacy Schiff: And now, for Minute with Mary. Mary Louise Bingham: Let me update you about Female Gleason. We found that Susanna, wife of Thomas Gleason. All the records were found proving she lived at Cambridge in 1665, when she was supposed to have been accused for witchcraft. However, the author who listed a Female Gleason accused for witchcraft in their book did not cite their source. We have reached out to that author, who has yet to respond. However, our team didn't stop. Contact was made with both the Massachusetts State Archives and the Judicial Archives. These archivists exhausted all their resources and could not locate any document tying an accusation to any woman with the surname Gleason. Mary Louise Bingham: Therefore, until we [00:31:00] hear from this author, it can be declared as of this recording that no woman named Gleason was ever accused of witchcraft who lived at Cambridge, Massachusetts, or in any surrounding town. This is why looking at the original source or primary document is so important. Thank you. Sarah Jack: Thank you, Mary. Josh Hutchinson: Sarah has End Witch Hunts News. Sarah Jack: End Witch Hunts News. We want to extend our heartfelt gratitude to each and every one of you for your unwavering support for this growing nonprofit. Your monetary donations and the invaluable time you've dedicated as volunteers have been pivotal in fueling the growth of our vital projects. It's through your contributions of time and money that we're able to continue our mission, bringing to light critical lessons from history, and fostering a deeper acknowledgment of witch-hunting today. Sarah Jack: Your involvement not only aids in amplifying this history, but [00:32:00] also in ensuring that the lessons derived from it resonate far wide and clearly. Thank you for being an integral part of our journey and for your commitment to helping us make a meaningful impact worldwide. Your engagement is what makes all of this possible, and we're immensely grateful for the community we've built together. Sarah Jack: We're thrilled to announce the upcoming Salem 101 series on witch hunt podcasts. This original series is a comprehensive deep dive into the Salem witch trials written by Josh Hutchinson, also known as @salemwitchhunt on social media, each episode promises to peel back the layers of this unmatched account of community betrayal, guided by the records and writings that have propelled the story to this day. Join us, Salem Witch Trial Descendants, as we examine the year these events unfolded. Join us as we look closely at the fascinating individuals that many of us call ancestors. We will tackle the pressing questions that have intrigued the world, revealing insights that have led to the [00:33:00] current understanding of the Salem Witch Trials. For those eager to broaden their knowledge, we encourage you to explore our past catalog of episodes. These recordings offer an insightful introduction to the subject and cover witch trials that predate Salem, setting the stage for this monumental series. Josh Hutchinson: Thank you, Sarah. Sarah Jack: You're welcome. Josh Hutchinson: And thank you for listening to Witch Hunt. Sarah Jack: Join us again every week. Josh Hutchinson: Have a great today and a beautiful tomorrow.
In this week’s captivating episode, we are excited to welcome Dr. Katie Liddane, an expert in the History and Heritage of Witch Hunting in the North East of England. Katie takes us through her research and her dedicated efforts to illuminate the Newcastle Witch Trials. We delve into why the Newcastle Witch-Hunt remains less known compared to events like the Pendle Witch-Hunt and discuss Newcastle Castle’s creative approach to engaging the community with workshops on witch trial history. Katie also talks about her active role in creating a memorial for the victims of the Newcastle witch trials, stressing the importance of community involvement and historical fidelity. She sheds light on the necessity of merging historical accuracy with the pop-cultural fascination with witchcraft to fully honor and recognize the humanity of the accused. Join us as we explore an intricate blend of history, memory, and cultural engagement in remembering past witch hunts.
Josh Hutchinson: Welcome to Witch Hunt, where we unravel the complex global history of witch trials. I'm Josh Hutchinson. Sarah Jack: And I'm Sarah Jack. Today, we are excited to bring you a special discussion from Dr. Katie Liddane. Josh Hutchinson: Dr. Liddane takes us through the Newcastle Witch Hunt. Sarah Jack: And tells us about her witch trial history workshop at Newcastle Castle, attended by sixth-year students. Josh Hutchinson: We also explore why the Newcastle Witch Hunt has been overlooked by many, while the Pendle Witch Trials are much more widely known. Sarah Jack: This conversation is so engaging, you may catch yourself trying to join in with us. Josh Hutchinson: And we don't mind if you do. Sarah Jack: Yay! Josh Hutchinson: Dr. Liddane's work highlights the large absence [00:01:00] and sense of obscurity around neglected historical events like witch trials, especially when pitted against the more renowned historical events. Sarah Jack: Dr. Liddane emphasizes the importance of remembering our past and memorializing those accused of witchcraft. Josh Hutchinson: One of her outreach efforts has been to dress the part of a 17th century woman accused of witchcraft and lead castle tours. Sarah Jack: Be sure to check out her social media so you can see her in costume. It's awesome. Josh Hutchinson: It is. Sarah Jack: Welcome Dr. Katie Liddane. Her expertise spans witchcraft history, folklore, historical fiction, and the intriguing realm of gothic tourism. Her research and creative projects focus on 17th century northeast English witchcraft, and she obtained a PhD from Northumbria University. Sarah Jack: Could you please introduce yourself and share with the listeners your background, expertise, and professional journey? Katie Liddane: I'm Katie Liddane. I [00:02:00] recently graduated with my doctorate in December of last year in the History and Heritage of Witch-Hunting in the North East of England. Witch Persecution, I think is in the title. I've been at Northumbria for all three of my degrees and was fortunate enough to get scholarships for both postgraduate degrees. And I guess in the more heritage side of my studies and my experience, I started an internship while I was awaiting the start of my PhD that showed me how heavily influenced by industrial heritage and the Northeast as a center for working class communities and scientific innovation had really eclipsed a lot of the other historical events in Newcastle, including the witch trials. Katie Liddane: Because the first time I'd heard of the [00:03:00] Newcastle Witch Trials was through a local newspaper article that was from 2008 but had been republished in around 2016 or so. And it was a very brief article that did send me rolling my eyes a little bit, because the article was about the bones of those convicted of witchcraft being accidentally excavated, and the article describes some of the archaeologists or workmen there getting a rash from the bones and describing it as a curse. Josh Hutchinson: Wow. Katie Liddane: So Josh Hutchinson: Yeah. Katie Liddane: I found that obviously quite a problematic coverage, so I went in search for more to find out more about the Newcastle witches and then to understand how such a large absence and sense of obscurity had developed, especially in comparison with the Pendle Witches that are much more [00:04:00] famous in cultural memory. And I kind of had the idea and the curiosity and then found an opportunity that would fit to allow me to explore it for so long and write about it. Josh Hutchinson: What a strange thing to put in a newspaper article, getting a rash from handling accused person's bones. Katie Liddane: And it's not even entirely clear that it was the bones of those convicted of witchcraft. It was just in the general area that we think that the convicted were buried. And again, the article's around Halloween. So I think it was just a kind of spooky ending of the article. Katie Liddane: Josh Hutchinson: Oh, yeah. There's always those Halloween articles Josh Hutchinson: Every year. Katie Liddane: Yeah. And in terms of what I'd done before the PhD and before working at the North of England Institute for Mining [00:05:00] and Mechanical Engineers, there's an abbreviation for a reason, I had done a Master's of Research in the Heritage Management and History of Crossbones Graveyard in Southwark in London. Katie Liddane: Have you heard of Crossbones before? Josh Hutchinson: No, haven't heard before. Katie Liddane: It's hailed as I think the first sex worker heritage site. And that's because Southwark had a long history as an area for licensed sex work in the medieval period. And Crossbones was a pauper's graveyard for centuries, the kind of two histories had become conflated. And again, it was through the discovery of bones that interest in the site was reignited. I think it was during an Tube in the 1990s that they discovered a pauper's graveyard, and so that kind of gave me, [00:06:00] that masters gave me my foundation to explore the history of the site and the people associated with it, but also how that history morphs through heritage attractions and fiction and public history. So I can see quite a clear link between the two subjects, even though they're like quite different areas of history. Sarah Jack: Yeah. Is there any links there that you want to talk about? Katie Liddane: I guess just a shared background of subjects that are usually considered women's history or gendered history, sex work and witchcraft, and the histories, heritage attractions, and businesses sometimes built around the memorialization or lack thereof of marginalized people. But at that time, I'd like to say it was part of a grand scheme, but at that time I'd lived in Newcastle for at least three years and hadn't [00:07:00] heard of the Newcastle witches before. And a lot of people still haven't. So it's been very recently that people are starting to become aware that Newcastle had witch trials. Some people in the town don't even know that Newcastle has a castle. It's something that I've learned from working at Newcastle Castle. Josh Hutchinson: Some of the work that we've done in Connecticut around the witch trial history is really similar as far as the awareness isn't there in a lot of the community. I have really enjoyed that piece, just having the new learners getting to spread something that is interesting and important. As surprising as it can be when history is just unknown, it's exciting when it gets launched like this. Katie Liddane: Definitely has been very exciting and the opportunity to talk about it more on podcasts and heritage [00:08:00] attractions has been brilliant as well because that was the intention of my project, really, to explain and understand the obscurity of the Newcastle witches, but also use that to have a wider impact outside of academia. Because I don't think many people are going to read an 80,000 word academic thesis on the role of deindustrialization in the legacy of the Newcastle Witch Trials, but there are opportunities to talk about the Witch Trials and to often clear up a lot of misconceptions that happen a lot with originating in the sort of Halloween articles and popular media that really links the fairy tale or the folk healer witch with those convicted and executed in the 17th century. Katie Liddane: And I think Newcastle has been especially impacted by what I term in my thesis, but I don't think I coined [00:09:00] the term, 'witch kitsch' in the intervening centuries almost between the trials and their resurgence. Strangely, post 2008, 2008 seems to be a watershed moment for the afterlife of the Newcastle witches. There has been mounds and mounds of witchcraft media that has been drawn upon to a greater extent than the few sources we have of the Newcastle Witches. Josh Hutchinson: Why do you think that is since 2008? Why has that changed? Katie Liddane: 2008 was the year of the article about the bones, and it was during renovation work of St. Andrew's Churchyard that what may have been the bones of the convicted were unearthed. But that was also the year that Walking with Witches, which is a children's novel by Lynn Huggins Cooper, based on the Newcastle Witches, was released. And then when you go slightly [00:10:00] further back, I have family history journals that do include excerpts from the burial register with the title, 'Was Your Ancestress a Witch?' Then we get small articles and magazines in the 1970s and things like that, but I think post sort of 2008 is the time where you see the solidification of the Northeast as a post-industrial region and there's been a greater exploration of parts of the region's history beyond heavy industry. And it's enabled people to tap into wider witch kitsch with the regional example. Katie Liddane: That was already quite a mouthful, but there is like an 80,000 word explanation that starts literally with the witch trials, and then you see a snowballing effect of obscurity, and then a kind of redevelopment of interest. I've not been [00:11:00] able to pin down why specifically 2008, but you can tie it into wider witch literature, occult revivals, interest in the supernatural, and I guess there may have been examples of people finding out about the Newcastle Witches in the same way that I have, and then they've gone through and mined the few resources that there are out there, and we're starting to see more representation. Sarah Jack: I was just thinking, my journey has not led me to a new degree yet, but I was trying to mine resources about my ancestor who was on trial for witchcraft in the 17th century in Connecticut, and I didn't realize I needed to stick my nose in the academic writings, because I wasn't reading academic writings at that point. I was online looking for people talking about it, newspaper articles, that kind of thing. And it [00:12:00] was really similar the type of witch kitsch that we would find, that I would find, or just lack, other people saying, I don't know, what's out there, and can there be a memorial? Sarah Jack: And so it's interesting how these histories that do come back alive, the voices start to be heard. It's because there's inquiry, and there's a vacuum there. Katie Liddane: Definitely, and I think with a more obscure case like Newcastle, I think it's quite important that vacuum is filled in a way in a collaboration between historians and heritage professionals, because there is that danger of this rediscovery stopping with the witch kitsch, and I think especially in a situation such as Newcastle's where there is this kind of more grassroots reengagement with the city's [00:13:00] witch-hunting past. There is that danger that the information or lack thereof that we have about the Newcastle Witches becomes supplemented and our understanding of the Newcastle Witches is that of the hag stereotype or the almost fictional caricature, and that these efforts and these interests don't materialize into memorialization and recognition of victimhood. Josh Hutchinson: Now one way that you've worked on getting more recognition is through workshops you conducted. What can you tell us about those? Katie Liddane: I wrote a bespoke workshop at the time for a primary school in the west end of Newcastle called Bridgewater. And the workshop is called 'Familiars and Fear,' and it was written because the children in year six, so that's around 11 years old, [00:14:00] were reading Walking with Witches for their literacy class. And the novel touches on a lot of locations in Newcastle, like Newcastle Castle, and the Lit and Phil, which is the Literary and Philosophical Society. And the teachers wanted to have a school trip to actually visit these locations, and luckily at the time I was at placement at Newcastle Castle as part of my PhD studies, so I was able to write the workshop that tied in with what they're reading at school, but also the wider witchcraft history in the region. Eleven years old is quite young to explain some of these issues, so it requires a bit of simplification and talking about suspicion and rumour and issues like that, but also bringing in issues of gender and class. And we also have a game [00:15:00] towards the end, where one of the children plays a witchfinder. Katie Liddane: And it's quite similar to Wink Murder. I don't know if you're familiar with that. Sarah Jack: I believe I am. Is that a group game, and you don't wanna get winked at 'cause then you're dead.? Katie Liddane: Essentially, yeah, and one of the children, or one of the people playing the game is chosen to be a detective and to work out who is committing the murders. But, this time we have someone chosen to be a witchfinder. The child is taken out of the room and told, essentially the witchfinder was given the equivalent of 106 pounds in today's money per witch, that he would find guilty and do not think that might influence your decision a little bit. And the children in the main room are given cards that they are told will say whether they are a villager or a witch. And in reality, none of the cards say that the children, say that anyone is a witch, [00:16:00] and the kind of game escalates as the children start to accuse each other, the witchfinder decides if he's going to send them to trial, essentially, and then at the end we explain to the children that none of them were witches, and it's a really good opportunity to see the shock on their faces, but also to talk about how easily they started accusing one another. So I think it's a really good way to make the session interactive but also through that and through a more tangible and active lesson, get them the core messages across about what we can learn from witch hunting. Sarah Jack: The prickers and the finders were a strong part of the Newcastle witch trial history. Katie Liddane: Yes, so how the witch trials originated in Newcastle was through a petition that was submitted in March of [00:17:00] 1649, for a witchfinder to be invited to the town, and unfortunately, the petition doesn't survive, but we get the sense that the witch finder was chosen by name. He was a Scottish professional witch pricker, and unfortunately, we don't know his name today. But he had a reputation that crossed the border into Newcastle, and when he arrived into the town, thirty people, which would have been around 1 percent of the town's population, were brought forward to be tried by him, and he boasted that he could tell if someone was a witch by their looks alone, but his method in court as a sort of preliminary trial method was pricking with a bodkin, which was a long medicinal pin, and he would prick the devil's marks that he found on the [00:18:00] accused, and particularly in English witch hunting, this was a protuberance like a mole or an extra nipple or a skin tag or something like that that was understood to be the teat at which the familiar spirit would feed. And, out of the 30 people, the wich finder found 15 guilty and were passed on to trial, and then they were convicted at the assizes. Josh Hutchinson: And he was paid per witch that he found? Katie Liddane: Yeah, he was paid 20 shillings per witch, and later on, he allegedly admitted to being the death of over 220 people across England and Scotland. Josh Hutchinson: So he made pretty good money. Katie Liddane: Yeah, and he was actually discovered to be a fraud after his time in Newcastle, and according to the evidence that we have, he was pursued into Scotland and [00:19:00] executed, and it was on the gallows that he gave the figure of 220, but I've unfortunately not been able to verify that anywhere, so I do have some speculation that in the town's kind of constructing of the history of this event in the five years between the event and the first surviving piece of documentation, it certainly makes the town's officials appear better if they've managed to apprehend him but have not found anything to correlate that he was executed for his involvement at Newcastle. Sarah Jack: Were there also sociopolitical impacts in the Northeast that contributed to the witchcraft persecutions? Katie Liddane: The 17th century in Newcastle was a very turbulent period. You've got various sieges by the Scottish. There's [00:20:00] a plague outbreak that was proportionally more devastating than London's 1666 plague. There were pirates at the ports in Newcastle in 1649 to 1650, harvest crises, just decades of political upheaval. And whilst, because we don't have the surviving material of the accusations of the individuals, you can definitely see this escalation over the time period and the fact that witch trial accusations and a reputation for witchcraft took sometimes decades to develop, you can really see, again, like this gradual increase that reached a fever pitch in 1649. Josh Hutchinson: Oh, this sounds so familiar to what we've heard with other witch trial cases. There's this political uncertainty, maybe some [00:21:00] warfare going on, disease, crop issues. Yeah, these seem to be pretty typical contributors to at least the witch panics that happened. Katie Liddane: Definitely. And you do see this kind of spread outside of Newcastle in 1649 to 1650. There was a peak in Scottish witch hunting in the same time period, but you also see smaller clusters of accusations in Gateshead, which is just across the Tyne, and the Sheriff of Cumberland sent a letter to London to ask for assistance in a witch hunt, and he was told that essentially the legislation, we're not going to offer any more support. And in the case of Newcastle, they did seek that support from north of the border instead. Sarah Jack: In the Newcastle case, they were tried in Newcastle? Katie Liddane: [00:22:00] Yes They would have been tried at the Assizes Court in the Guild Hall, which is just on the quayside, and the witch that was likely held at Newcastle Castle, she was a resident of Northumberland, so she would have been tried at the Morpeth Assizes in Northumberland, but because at the time she was in a different jurisdiction, she would have been held at Newcastle Castle because that was acting as the jail for the county of Northumberland. But she was executed alongside the Newcastle Witches too. Sarah Jack: How many executions occurred? Katie Liddane: So there were 14 from the Newcastle Witch Trials, 13 women and one man. And then Jane Martin was the witch who was accused in Northumberland and convicted alongside the Newcastle Witches. But also on the same day, nine Moss Troopers were executed. Moss Troopers are a local name [00:23:00] for cattle rustlers and border thieves. They would essentially use the difference in legislation and jurisdiction to hop across the border whenever they'd committed a crime. The large number of executions taking place on the same day would have been a huge spectacle for people in the region and reinforced the idea of maintenance of law and order and show some stability in a bizarre way. During this period, the number of executions were so large that a special gallows was built. We have record of the construction of an extra large gallows, and this was what made it more surprising to me that the Newcastle Witches had been so little known for so long was that their hanging was the largest hanging for witchcraft in English history. There's, a group of 18 witches that were executed in Chelmsford in East Anglia under Matthew Hopkins, [00:24:00] but they were executed in different locations and at different dates. So it, at the start of my studies, it seemed even more strange that the Newcastle Witch Trials have faded into obscurity. Sarah Jack: Yeah, that really stands out differently. With Salem, we had 19 hanged, but there were several different dates. Katie Liddane: Yeah, and I think similarly with Salem, because in exploring this absence throughout my thesis, I wanted to do a lot of comparison to sites that do engage with their witchcraft history, for better or for worse, in different times throughout history. I think it's really important to follow the example of memorialising those that weren't executed as witches, but died earlier in jail, or died awaiting trial, [00:25:00] things like that, so really good to be able to have that comparison of this is how it's been done in another location, in perhaps the most famous place for witchcraft heritage in the world. So this is how Newcastle can learn from that and build upon that. Josh Hutchinson: What can you tell us about the memorial effort? Katie Liddane: We're in the early stages at the moment. It's a project at the moment between myself, the learning team at Newcastle Castle, and Newcastle's Council, the Heritage and Conservation Department. We're working on contacting people that we think would be interested stakeholders, organizations that I've worked with before. Katie Liddane: And as part of that, I'm quite keen to reach out to other heritage sites in the UK and elsewhere that have witchcraft memorials and to discuss the stories of how they came about [00:26:00] there and really learn from how other sites have engaged with their witch hunting past. Not just to, as I was in my thesis, to look at why Newcastle perhaps hasn't yet but to turn that into an action. Katie Liddane: We'll look at involving local artists. We've got Bridgewater Primary, the school that I mentioned earlier, involved as well. They did a writing exercise for one of their classes to write a letter requesting a memorial to their local MP. So we are trying to build a communal engagement rather than a sort of top down memorial that someone will read about in the newspaper, like I did the bone discovery. Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, Sarah and I are involved in an effort to get a memorial for the witch trial victims in Connecticut. So we're at a similar early stage building the community [00:27:00] and starting to conceptualize what it might look like. Katie Liddane: Yeah, we're also hoping, we're in the sort of blue sky thinking, shoot for the stars phase at the moment, but we'd love to do a community event each year as well, on the anniversary of the executions. So to keep the memorialization process and recognition alive again, rather than just placing a memorial and that being the end of it, but also, I don't know if you've had a similar thought process, but with it being so long that Newcastle has gone without any sort of recognition or memorialization, the aims are a bit higher. Part of our thinking is that we definitely want the names of each of the people convicted and or accused that might have died during the process that they awaited trial, but a [00:28:00] small plaque doesn't seem enough after so long. Envisioning what the design looks like is definitely being influenced, on my part anyway, by the amount of time that there's been nothing. Josh Hutchinson: Yeah. I'd say shoot for the stars. Definitely. Katie Liddane: I think looking at the centenaries of other witch hunts and the events around that has been really important in both my research process and in starting to put proposals together for the memorial as well. So the fourth centenary of the Pendle Witch Trials that happened in 2012 has been quite influential in the various events and different means of engaging with different parts of the community. In looking at Salem as well, when I visited Lancaster, it was quite interesting to see the coexistence of serious memorialization, such as the [00:29:00] turset weight markers that were put on the Pendle Witch Trail in 2012, in contrast to the local bus companies having a lady with a pointed hat and a broomstick on the side of their, on the side of their buses. Katie Liddane: So there's a really, like a really interesting mingling of what the early modern witch means to people and the different ways that regions with a strong witch hunting past engage with that. Katie Liddane: Josh Hutchinson: That sounds a lot like Salem. The city emblem is the witch on the broomstick with the pointy hat. So the police and the police cars have that emblem on them, but you do have, you know, multiple memorials to the victims there, where you go, and, they're peaceful, solemn places amidst all the witch kitsch going on all around it. So it's a [00:30:00] this interesting dichotomy. Katie Liddane: It's really interesting, and I'd say, apart from sites like Newcastle Castle and brief discussion of the trials at the Discovery Museum in the city, Newcastle's engagement is just the witch kitch elements elsewhere, so there are various ghost tours and there's an escape room that do talk about the Newcastle witches, but it is very much in the pointed hat broomstick way. Sarah Jack: Yeah, I've seen some local community events that embrace the history of a single witch trial victim from their town. And there's a lot of lore that has grown and then been embraced for communities. And then there's these fresher efforts of bringing their humanity to the forefront. But they're just, the lore is just envelopes [00:31:00] that woman. Sarah Jack: And so I'm learning that, they're forever intertwined, but the life can be spoken about more, and her humanity and the dignity has to be a constant part of the conversation to grow that piece of her story. And one of the recent memorial plaques that went up, it's very brief what it says about her, but you can tell they are recognizing her as a real woman who hanged, but they are also, there's this endearment of the folklore that's been around her that they identify with as the town. Katie Liddane: Definitely. I think it would be really hard to just engage directly with what we know from the 17th century records and not let any other awareness of what witchcraft and or witch hunting means to [00:32:00] us today to influence that. I think the, it's the coexistence of the pop cultural witch with the recognition of the humanity of those accused is most important. Katie Liddane: I saw a similar memorial in Forfar in Scotland. That memorial has, it's just a stone pillar with one indentation in the stone per victim and then beneath it just says, 'they were just people.' And I think the demystifying aspect is really important there to, like I say, recognize the humanity and to a certain extent the distinction between those accused in the 17th century and our more modern understandings of the witch figure, whether it be historical or fantasy. Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, it's so true. They [00:33:00] were just people. And I think what you're hoping to do with the annual event is so critical. Hopefully, we can do something like that too, because it's so important to give these victims their humanity and know about them outside of just the kitsch element, get a sense of who they are as real human people just like us. Katie Liddane: Yeah. And we do fortunately have some small glimpses of what the Newcastle Witches were like as people. So Matthew Boomer, the only male defendant. We know that he was a smith of some form, and he appears in the quarter session records in the years leading up to the Newcastle Witch Trials in petty disputes with his neighbors. Katie Liddane: We don't have much detail about much detail of what they were about [00:34:00] because the clerk didn't seem too interested by it so he didn't write much down, unfortunately. Men implicated in English witch trials are related to, or married to, female defendants, but we can't find that connection there with Matthew. And we also know a little bit more about Margaret Brown. Katie Liddane: And in the only account that we do have in depth on the Newcastle Witch Trials and the execution again, we can't really verify this but Margaret Brown is said to have asked for a sign from God for her innocence as she was about to drop, and her blood sprayed across the crowd to the amazement of onlookers. And often when I do public engagement work, I try to explain that amazement meant something different in the 17th century than it does today. But Margaret Brown has a further connection in that one of the [00:35:00] witnesses that gave their testimony to support this account of the witch hunts was her friend Eleanor Loomsdale, and Eleanor spent a year in jail for trying to deter people from giving evidence against Margaret and the co-accused. So we can see evidence of opposition to the witch hunting at the time, and Eleanor getting in contact with the writer of the account years later to give her version of events. Sarah Jack: Wow. And those that were executed, were they identified early on? How, I know we have the length of the event, but I wondered how quickly some of these people went from not being accused to finding themselves convicted. Katie Liddane: From the glimpses that we can get from the brief [00:36:00] discussion of the Newcastle Witch Hunt in a kind of full length book that is actually about Ralph Gardner's grievances with Newcastle's council. About four pages of the large book are about the witch hunt and this is essentially, apart from the burial register and financial records for how much it cost to jail the witches while they awaited trial, this four page account is all we have. Katie Liddane: And in Gardner's version of events there was bubbling unrest and informal accusations being made that caused the petition to be submitted. And the petition was submitted in March of 1649, as I said, but the witchfinder wasn't sought until 1650. So we do see a kind of reluctance, hesitance, for Newcastle's authorities to invite a [00:37:00] witchfinder, or to pay for a witchfinder, possibly. There is a suggestion that there was a sense of informal suspicion and reputation for those that were brought forward. But when the witchfinder did arrive, a bellman was sent out into the town to encourage accusations to be formalized. But I highly doubt that those accusations were generated when the witchfinder was riding through. I think it will have been years in the making for a lot of the people accused. Josh Hutchinson: Why do you think that it is that we only have that one four page account? Katie Liddane: The survival of the assizes records is very scarce for Newcastle in that time period. It's hard to trace when they disappear, but they were already gone by the 19th century, when criminal histories and folklore collections were beginning to be compiled of the [00:38:00] region. In terms of why there were few accounts aside from that, I think it was probably the exposure of the witchfinder as a fraud that meant that we don't see the same sort of pamphlets that were produced about Lancaster and the Pendle Witch Trials and things like that, because, and that sort of In the sense of constructing a narrative about a successful witch hunt and the kind of defeat of evil and the defeat of the devil's agents on earth, that witches were understood to be, the exposure of the witch finder as a fraud kind of undermined a lot of that, and it would have been quite severe that the town's authorities had been taken in by a charlatan, so you can see the sense of why they wouldn't have been happy with the trial being discussed. Katie Liddane: And we do have evidence of that with the four page account, actually, because the 200 [00:39:00] page, 200, 300 page book that it's contained within was actively suppressed by Newcastle's authorities, so we see a kind of censorship of the trial being committed to print, whether it's contained within Ralph Gardner's text against the town's authorities as a whole, or whether it's specifically about the witch trial. Katie Liddane: In the same year, a pamphlet called Wonderful News from the North Again, that's a term that I have to explain how language evolves over time. It wasn't considered wonderful news at the time in the way that we would talk about it now. But Wonderful News from the North details Jane Martin's accusations, and Jane was the witch held at Newcastle Castle, and the writer of that pamphlet chose to have it printed in London, even though there was a printer [00:40:00] working in Newcastle at the time. Just the brief detail like that gives us a sense that there was an attempt to spread this news outside of the immediate area, or perhaps a reluctance from Newcastle's printer to discuss witch hunting so close to their executions and the exposure of the fraud. Josh Hutchinson: Interesting. Is there a victim's story that you'd be interested in telling us? Katie Liddane: In the case of the core Newcastle Witch Trials, we have very, very little information. But I think Jane Martin's story would probably be quite interesting to go into. Like the Newcastle Witches, Jane never made a confession, but her sister did, on her behalf, Margaret White. And Jane and Margaret became involved with the [00:41:00] story presented in Wonderful News because they were named by a cunning man named John Hutton, who was himself being accused of possessing a nine to eleven year old child called Margaret Moore. Yeah, Margaret Muschamp, her mother was Mary Moore, sorry. Katie Liddane: And as I say, Jane didn't confess. But Margaret White, on her behalf, said that she had entertained the devil and that he knew her so well that that he nicknamed her Bessie, and that she had a black greyhound familiar. And the pamphlet itself was constructed over about four to five years and released to coincide with the Newcastle Witch Trials, quite interestingly. Katie Liddane: There's quite a long list of Jane's alleged crimes. She was accused of using telekinesis to launch a kiln of oats at a man's head and to kill him. John Hutton, as I say, was accused of shapeshifting into the [00:42:00] form of a dragon, a bear, a horse, and a cow, of causing shipwrecks. And again to go back to Jane, she was also accused of causing a man to have a sore leg. So going from like shapeshifting into a dragon and causing shipwrecks to a sore leg, we see quite a breadth of accusations and forms of magic being used at the time. Katie Liddane: And in the pamphlet we know that Jane was indicted, tried, and convicted, and taken to Newcastle to be executed. But, she seems to have been, in a bizarre way collateral damage of sorts. Because the mother, Mary Moore, who wrote the pamphlet, was pursuing Dorothy Swinnow, who was a wealthy widow of a colonel. And we know that she fled to Berwick, and the officials at Berwick wouldn't send her back down to Chatham for a trial, but because [00:43:00] Jane was only the wife of a miller, she gets swept up, and because a conviction can be put through with Jane, we see her executed. Katie Liddane: And I think her tie to Newcastle Castle and the fact that we do know so much more about Jane is why she was chosen to be a castle character, and the design of the castle character that I did in collaboration with the Master's students at Newcastle came after the original Familiars and Fear workshop, but it's been really good to be able to merge those two parts of interpretation together, and the kids engage really well seeing the 17th century costume, and again, with the understanding that these were real people rather than fairy tale villains. So I think that's been a really helpful method of interpretation. Josh Hutchinson: Is Jane who you portrayed in the costume last year? Katie Liddane: [00:44:00] Yeah. The castle characters are the illustrations that are commissioned. So there is an illustration of Jane, too, but the castle commissioned the costume to be made by a woman known as the Rogue Needlewoman that does a lot of the costumes for the castle and for local reenactment societies, but Jane Martin is the character that I was dressed as last year, yeah. Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, we love seeing people in a period costume presenting the information. Sarah Jack: Yeah. It really caught my eye too, because it was children's education. Katie Liddane: Yeah, I think it's a really important opportunity as well and to have such an interactive session where the children can directly ask me questions, and I can directly answer them rather than just having these methods of interpretation be released out there. And if people have questions, it's [00:45:00] much harder to ask those and to research to a certain extent, because a lot of people, especially teachers in school, aren't necessarily going to go to academic theses, but to have the opportunity to speak directly to people has been brilliant. Katie Liddane: The teachers are sometimes a bit reluctant to let the children ask me questions, because they prefer the classroom environment of putting their hand up and or they don't want the children to bother me sometimes, but I think it's brilliant like, I like to wait around at the end of the sessions and have children come and ask me 'what if witches weren't real, then why were people still saying that there were witches? Why did this happen?' And I think that one-on-one engagement is really important, as well. Josh Hutchinson: What lessons do the children draw from the engagement? Katie Liddane: Again, it is the breakdown of [00:46:00] kind of very complicated ideas about class and gender. So we discuss the fact that some people who, looked different, may have been accused, people who were ostracized by their communities in certain ways, so it breaks this sort of complex and very historically distant phenomenon of witch hunting into its basic themes to show what we can learn about acceptance and social justice in terms of what, what has happened to the most vulnerable members of society in the past. And through the game especially, the children gain a sense of empathy of what it would have felt like to be accused, or to recognise in themselves impulse to make accusations based on very little evidence. Katie Liddane: Katie Liddane: It's been really fun at the castle, especially, to directly [00:47:00] integrate my research and real examples from the region into these activities. I go through various cases and ask the children, ' do you think this person was a witch or what else might have been happening?' And in the game, as well, we see the children are handed curse cards that are real complaints that people made in their accusations about their cow's milk failing or crops failing and things like that and shipwrecks. So it's again been really good to be able to break down PhD level research, speak to children about it, and have them engage and understand. Sarah Jack: It's amazing. And I really see this long game impact that what you have done is creating, especially with the memorial developing [00:48:00] and the annual tribute that will be happening as these children are growing. It just strengthens that community acknowledgement of the heritage and making memorialization an important part of looking at the history. Sarah Jack: It's wonderful. Katie Liddane: Has been a really fulfilling project, and again, as I say, the intention when I started out with my thesis was community engagement and changing this absence rather than just observing it from academia to a certain extent is to be able to build on the memorialisation process, and as I say, recently we're hearing more and more interest from local schools and groups, so it is really nice to see the development and spread of sometimes very surface level awareness that witch trials did happen in Newcastle, and then to have people reach out to the castle and myself [00:49:00] to learn more. So it's a really exciting time for the kind of legacy of the Newcastle Witch Trials. Josh Hutchinson: As a way of paying tribute, would you be able to read the names of the victims? Katie Liddane: So the names of those executed in Newcastle on the 21st of August of 1650 were Isabel Brown, Margret Maddeson, Anne Watson, Eleanor Henderson, Elsabeth Dobson, Matthew Bulmer o r Bonner, Ellsabeth Anderson, Jane Huntor, Jane Koupling, Margret Brown, Margret Moffet, Katteren Welsh, alias Coulter, Aylles Hume, and Marie Pootes. Josh Hutchinson: Katie, I can't tell you how much I've learned from everything that you, I've really learned a lot from you. And I look at how you mentioned how you were looking at other memorials and what other communities have done with the history to [00:50:00] implement and look at what, how you can reach your goals in Newcastle, but I feel like what you've done is so historic and is such a case study in itself and something for other communities to model after. It's incredible. Katie Liddane: That's really nice to hear, thank you. I again, when I started the PhD, and with the blue sky thinking of the memorial project, I would really like to build a network or engage in a community of areas with witch hunting histories and to learn from each other, to a certain extent, and build an awareness of the witch hunts that fit into a wider understanding of the phenomenon and how you do find specific details that tie the cases to a region, but that also tap into a wider sense of communal memorialization and [00:51:00] its continuing relevance today. It would be great to be able to be further in touch with, with the people. Josh Hutchinson: Yeah we do know a few people in Salem and Danvers, Massachusetts that were involved in the memorials. Have you been able to talk to anyone there? Katie Liddane: We're still in the early stages of reaching out to that extent, but I did read a lot about the 2016 memorial determining the execution site, and that seems like it was a very intensive project with a lot of researchers and historians that are referenced in my thesis. Josh Hutchinson: So again, when we have a kind of firmer idea of where we're going with this project, would be brilliant to reach out to those people, too. I've already been in contact with people at Colchester Castle, where some of Matthew Hopkins' [00:52:00] accused were held and in discussion with Lancaster Castle, who were very helpful during my thesis, too. Sarah Jack: I don't know that I've paid attention enough or I just haven't heard it, but hearing those two terms together, the Witchcraft Heritage, just is like a wake up call for me on messaging and the community engagement piece. I'm so appreciative of that layer of your work. Katie Liddane: Thank you. It was really, a really interesting thing to be able to explore and to go back to what we were talking about earlier too. It's quite hard to articulate in my thesis of this, in a sense, dichotomy between witch kitsch and memorialization, but to articulate the idea that there is an interwoven relationship between the two. Katie Liddane: And as you said earlier, I don't think we're ever going to be able to separate them entirely, but I think [00:53:00] witchcraft heritage is a very nuanced topic, and a community to discuss that in is very valuable, especially with regards to sites that are only just moving towards memorialization or moving towards the more nuanced look at their region's witch hunting past. Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, one thing that I believe, and I think this especially about Salem, is that the witch kitsch draws people in, and then it gives the historians the opportunity to present the nuanced history to new learners, because there's always a supply of tourists coming in willing to learn. Katie Liddane: So the relationship is definitely much more complicated than witch kitsch tourism businesses and historians. And so far as we can know about what [00:54:00] happened in places like Salem and Lancaster and Pendle, the detailed documented evidence that we do have does, have to engage with witch kitsch in order for that message to be heard, in a way, so a lot of the way that people do learn about Newcastle Witch Trials in the first instance is through ghost tours, the escape room, and the article, but the important part is when they want to find out more where historians and heritage professionals can step in, so I definitely agree with the witch kitsch being a huge draw at Salem, the interpretation definitely doesn't stop there. Sarah Jack: I'm just I've just had this realization with Connecticut, one of the questions that we keep having to answer is how can we move forward with highlighting the history and memorials [00:55:00] without the sensationalizing happening? Of course, I'm also seeing this lore that is important to the local culture, but I know that what has the answer is we embrace and develop the heritage, just like we do the other heritage of the history, and we haven't been highlighting that in an articulated way, and I think that can be an answer for that question on gathering some support from stakeholders there. Katie Liddane: Definitely. I think the witch kitsch is always going to be there in some form, but being able to build something else from that and around that does recognize, again, the humanity of the accused and having a relationship with witch kitsch to a certain extent is very important in raising awareness and recognition of these people as [00:56:00] people. I had a particularly frustrating time in trying to track down one of the strangest misconceptions about the Newcastle Witches, and it was that Matthew Bulmer, the only male defendant, transformed into a black cat and led a load of children to fall down a well in Winleton or Winlayton, the a village in Gateshead. Katie Liddane: And I haven't been able to substantiate that at all, but the black cat figure is so prominent within witchcraft history that I can, not academically, but I can speculate as to where that came from. But I spent a lot of time emailing the different places that it pops up, and they all assumed that they'd picked it up from the other person. Katie Liddane: Trying to disentangle where folklore, myth, and witch kitsch becomes involved has been quite difficult, [00:57:00] but has really illustrated the kind of inextricable relationship between 17th century witchcraft history and pop cultural engagements with the witch as a figure in general. And unfortunately, I think the kind of black cat into a well story is more exciting for a lot of people than Matthew Bulmer being a blacksmith that had arguments with his neighbours. Sarah Jack: And now for a minute with Mary. Mary Louise Bingham: Rebecca Fox was distraught, because her daughter, Rebecca Jacobs, was arrested under false pretenses for the capital crime of witchcraft at Salem, Massachusetts Bay, British America, in 1692. Rebecca Jacobs languished in the Salem jail for six months when her mother drafted the second of two petitions on her daughter's behalf. This petition was addressed to the Governor's Council at Boston. Rebecca [00:58:00] Fox advised the magistrates that her daughter was, quote, 'crazed and distracted in her mind for the last 12 years,' end quote. Rebecca asked them to show leniency, because she feared her daughter's mental illness could not withstand the deplorable prison conditions. Rebecca's petitions remain unanswered. Mary Louise Bingham: Because these petitions have been preserved, we know today that Rebecca Fox's love and devotion for her daughter, Rebecca Jacobs, was unwavering. Here is a short quote by Rebecca Fox to the council, quote, 'Your petitioner, her tender mother, has many great sorrows and almost overcoming burdens on her mind upon my daughter's account. Your petitioner has no way for help but to make my afflicted daughter's condition known to you, end quote.' And she signed this document, 'your [00:59:00] sorrowful and distressed petitioner, Rebecca Fox.' Thank you. Sarah Jack: Thank you, Mary. Josh Hutchinson: Here's Sarah with End Witch Hunts News. End Witch Hunt, a non profit 501c3 organization, weekly news update. We warmly invite you to extend your support through a financial contribution. Every donation, no matter its size, plays a pivotal role in enriching the content you cherish. Conveniently make your contribution by visiting witchhuntshow. com, where you can choose an amount that aligns with your capacity to give. Your generosity is the lifeblood of our work. Additionally, If you enjoy staying connected with your favorite content creators on YouTube, consider visiting Witch Hunt's YouTube channel to subscribe. This simple act of clicking follow is a gift that significantly boosts our visibility. And for those who prefer streaming on Spotify, we encourage you to tune into our episodes through your Spotify app. Your efforts in engaging with your content on these platforms greatly assist in expanding our social media [01:00:00] presence. This is National Women's History Month. Women have been pivotal and influential across all facets of human history. In March, the United States pays tribute to the enduring legacy and contributions of women throughout its history. National Women's History Month celebrates U. S. women's achievements and struggles. Originating from an 1857 protest by garment workers in New York City against poor working conditions, it evolved into the nation's first Women's Day in 1909 after a significant march for labor rights and suffrage. Official recognition came in 1981 when Congress designated the second week of March as National Women's History Week, later expanding it to a month in 1987. The month is a reflection on women's progress. During Women's History Month, End Witch Hunts extends a heartfelt appreciation to the exceptional contributions and resilience of marginalized American women. Their narratives, deeply embedded in a diverse tapestry of rich cultural heritages, are essential to the fabric of our collective history. As [01:01:00] educators, these women have imparted wisdom and knowledge across generations, shaping the minds and spirits of future leaders. Their leadership in social and political arenas has been pivotal, driving forward movements of justice, equality, and transformative change with unwavering courage and vision. Who are our marginalized women? Marginalized women encompass a diverse array of identities and face unique challenges and barriers. These are women of color, indigenous women, LGBTQ women, those with disabilities, the elderly, the impoverished, immigrants and refugees, survivors of violence, single mothers, and those living in conflict zones. Their experiences, marked by intersectional forms of discrimination, underline the pressing need for inclusive support and advocacy. This list is not exhaustive and can intersect, leading to compounded forms of discrimination and marginalization. Despite marginalization, women have broken through barriers across the arts, sciences, and business, introducing bold perspectives [01:02:00] that challenge restrictive narratives and significantly enhance our collective insight. Their creativity and intelligence has been a beacon of innovation, redefining what it means to lead and excel in a myriad of fields. As entrepreneurs, they have fueled economic growth and community development, highlighting the strength that lies in diversity. Their achievements are monumental, not only in their communities, but in shaping the course of American history. As we celebrate American women, let us commit to recognizing their invaluable contributions, advocating for their rights, and ensuring that their voices are heard and celebrated. Read about their stories, write their stories, amplify their voices. Their voices, frequently sidelined in dominant narratives must play a pivotal role in leading future generations. Josh Hutchinson: Thank you, Sarah. Sarah Jack: You're welcome. Josh Hutchinson: And thank you for listening to Witch Hunt. Sarah Jack: Join us next week. Josh Hutchinson: Have a great today and a beautiful tomorrow. [01:03:00]
In this poignant episode of “Witch Hunt” we’re honored to welcome Dr. Samantha Spence back. Merging the commemorative spirits of International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month into a deep dive on the entwined paths of witch-hunting and women’s struggles worldwide, Dr. Spence brings to light the multifaceted adversities that ensnare women accused of witchcraft – from social ostracization to economic hardships, legal injustices, and educational blockades. These barriers not only underscore their marginalization but also underscore the urgency of a collective global response. Through our discussion, Dr. Spence underscores the pivotal role of international collaboration, enhanced data gathering, and rigorous research in crafting both national and global strategies to counteract these injustices comprehensively. A staunch advocate for gender equality, she points out the transformative power of education for all genders and the undeniable influence of female leadership in dispelling harmful myths, challenging age-old stereotypes, and uplifting communities. Furthermore, Dr. Spence passionately argues for the critical necessity of healthcare access, with a particular emphasis on sexual and reproductive health services, as a cornerstone in safeguarding women’s rights and well-being. Join us as we explore these essential themes with Dr. Spence, gaining insights into how solidarity, knowledge, and action can illuminate the darkest corners of witch hunts and pave the way for a just, equitable future that inspires inclusion.
In this episode of Witch Hunt, we dive into an enlightening conversation with Neelesh Singh, a champion for social inclusion and gender equality with India’s National Rural Livelihood Mission. Neelesh emphasizes the urgent imperative to confront and mitigate gender-based violence at every stage of life, highlighting the importance of comprehensive strategies that protect and empower individuals from infancy through to old age.From combating infanticide to empowering widow survivors of witchcraft allegations, Neelesh’s work spans a broad spectrum of initiatives aimed at fostering resilience, healing, and collective empowerment among women in rural India. Learn about therapeutic approaches including art therapy for expression and healing, the formation of women’s collectives to combat domestic violence, and the development of strategies for prevention, risk mitigation, and redressal of gender-based violence. Neelesh also discusses the importance of survivor networks in influencing policy and media, underscoring the critical role of the state in acknowledging and combating these practices. Join us for a profound discussion on the journey towards gender equity and the end of witch hunts for alleged witches in India.
Josh Hutchinson: Welcome to Witch Hunt, the podcast bringing you news about today's witch hunts. I'm Josh Hutchinson. Sarah Jack: And I'm Sarah Jack. I descend from multiple women accused of witchcraft in colonial New England. Josh Hutchinson: I also descend from several women who were accused before and during the Salem witch trials. Sarah Jack: Just as these women did many years ago, women today continue to proclaim their innocence. Josh Hutchinson: One person working to end these modern-day witch hunts is Neelesh Singh, who works for the National Rural Livelihood Mission in India, focusing on gender and social inclusion. His work involves various aspects of rural development, social audit, and addressing gender issues, with a [00:01:00] specific focus on preventing witch hunting. Sarah Jack: Neelesh highlights that gender-based violence impacts women and girls of all ages, from before birth to old age, with a range of violence for different age groups. Josh Hutchinson: Indeed, girls can be victims of infanticide, and older women, especially widows, are vulnerable to witchcraft allegations and the associated violence. Sarah Jack: Beyond witch hunting, Neelesh and his team are developing comprehensive strategies to address various forms of gender-based violence, including prevention, risk mitigation, and redressal mechanisms. Josh Hutchinson: An art therapy initiative was used to help women express their experiences through painting. As they grew in confidence, they began to transition from using old newspapers to using fresh drawing papers and a wider range of colors, symbolizing their journey of healing and empowerment. Sarah Jack: Organizing women into collectives and educating them about gender issues is crucial, [00:02:00] and it's essential to create platforms within women's collectives where members can discuss private matters like domestic violence, challenging the stigma and fear associated with speaking out. Josh Hutchinson: Neelesh emphasized the importance of building networks of witch hunt survivors, enabling them to influence policy and media coverage. He highlighted the need for the state to recognize its responsibility in addressing and preventing such practices. Sarah Jack: And he shares some touching stories with us today. We are pleased to welcome Neelesh Singh, expert social inclusion and gender integrator with India's National Mission Management Unit. He has spent decades working in India's social development sector. Sarah Jack: My name is Neelesh, and I'm working for agovernment scheme and centrally-sponsored scheme called National Rural Livelihood Mission. And I am in their gender and social inclusion vertical.This is a national level of scheme, and it is being implemented [00:03:00] in every states and union territories of India. Neelesh Singh: AndI passed my post graduation from,institute called Xavier Institute of Social Services in 2000. I did my specialization in rural development.I initiated with tribal empowerment and slowly into the natural resource management and then to the social audit and totend to gender aspects. Neelesh Singh: And it was like in 2016 that I got this opportunity to work on gender issues. So before that I didn't have much experience of working on gender issues, but, and, I was like, fortunate enough to initiate my work on gender issues with an issue which was burning there called witch-hunting. Neelesh Singh: Yes. And I, for me also, it was like first of time when I was hearing such kind of. That's how I started working intensively for the prevention of witch hunting. And I had my team and we had some strategy to [00:04:00] do that. And then government supported us. Because I was the part of that time with the state government, I was working under the same scheme and then the national government, they also supported us and lots of other NGOs also joined us, and we could do it in a scale, and then a special project was designed around it. Neelesh Singh: Continue to work on this and now we have designed to further, because different states has got different kind of gender issues. So we are now working on the entire gender-based violence, for the aspects of prevention and for the risk mitigation and forredressal mechanism and so everything we are trying to now work it and we are still growing. Neelesh Singh: Does gender-based violence affect all ages of women? Neelesh Singh: Yes. You know, there is a saying here 'from the womb to tomb.' It affects from when you are yet to born and it goes on until the tomb. We have got like [00:05:00] range of violence for different kind of age group, which runs across it. So yeah. For every age group. Sarah Jack: You mentioned thatthe gender violence is a little different in every state or it presents itself in its own way. That must be a great challenge to have so many different entry points to address the issue. Neelesh Singh: At the national level, we have got very different roles to play. The things comes from the bottom from the community itself. So every community, they prioritize their issues as per their need and as per they are affected by it and all. Neelesh Singh: Many of the places, the issues are likethe state where I belong to. They have got witch hunting asone of the priority issue and then human trafficking is there. Domestic violence is almost there in almost every state is reporting [00:06:00] against domestic violence. Neelesh Singh: Thenthe issues like child marriage. I can see wherever the incidence of poverty is high, you will find the incidence also of child marriages and such things are also high. Andthen we have got issues like dowry that here actually in India, we have this practice for the marriage. Neelesh Singh: The bride's side, they have to give some money for getting married to the bridegroom. We call it the dowry system. It is like quite high, quite prevalent in several parts of the country and it's just very high. There's a cost for every bridegroom. So suppose if a girl is there and she wants to marry a doctor. What happens, there's two sides of it. One is that this girl has always, right from her birth, she has been brought up very differently. Here in India,we brought up our girl very different from the way we bring up our boys.While, they are, the boys would have [00:07:00] different aspiration and we will all support them. Like he wants to become doctor or engineer or whatever he wants to become. Every family member would try to support him, the father, mother, everybody would try to support this person. Girls child are largely, they are brought up like for being a very good wife. So they are like nurtured for being wife of somebody, and she can have dream of her bridegroom. She cannot dream about her own careers. Her career will be like a housewife. Housewife only, but she can dream about her bride groom. Okay? So I would want to marry a doctor. I would want to marry engineer. She cannot dream of becoming a doctor, becoming engineer. I don't like that. And higher aspirations are, the greater would be the price of the dowry that you have to pay. While in order to grow a boy child, the father would save the money and invest the money in his education. Here, father would save the money so that he can pay for the dowry. So he would try to [00:08:00] invest least on the education of the girl, so girl will be nurtured and will be taught, will be trained, as a good wife. So for doing the household chores and all these activities, while boys will be encouraged to go to a school and go to school and have good education. Neelesh Singh: So this incidence of sometime it is though the parents and the child might have the dream of marrying a doctor, but their poverty, their economic status, that may not allow her and her parents to realize that dream. In the process, what happens that, and this is also based on the greed of the family, because this never ends, no? Neelesh Singh: Suppose you say that 50 lakh is the amount that you need to pay for marrying this person. And then, even if you have paid 50 lakh, it doesn't stop you that asking this money again to her father. I know that you have paid 50 lakhs but I would need 10 more lakhs because now I have [00:09:00] to give education to the child, now she is giving birth to a girl child, so we have to do something. So they keep on asking, and this often leads to exploitations and also violence and extortion and all those things. So sometimes, so it leads to dowry death also. Neelesh Singh: So you'll find lots of incidents. And all these incidents like human trafficking or domestic violence orwitch hunting ordowry or child marriage, all these things requires different kinds of strategies. It depends in which part of the country are you living and what kind of resources you have access to, and what kind of society do you, depending on what kind of culture do you have, what kind of accessibility you have. So all, depending upon all those things, you need to knit your strategy around it. Neelesh Singh: One thing that we have in common under NRLM is that we form women-based groups. We call self help groups here. So here, NRLM is like one of, this is one of the program, National Rural Livelihood Mission. [00:10:00] In short, I'm calling it NRLM. This program islargest network of women collectives. Neelesh Singh: Now, in the entire country, we have got more than 10 crew of now women who became part of our self help groups now. We try to keep this in our base that we need to build our strategy on these women collectives. So we promote women collectives to plan women collectives to take action against it, and we try to sensitize these women collectives against this, because, being, even though they, this is women collective, that doesn't mean that everybody will be very sensitive to the women issues. Neelesh Singh: Sometime because they are from the same society, it takes some time and it takes time to understand what kind of system is existing there.How are they driver of the patriarchy and all those things. And by understanding all those things, by assessing the kind of gender sensitivity that they have, we need to, we have to plan their sensitization, their awareness, and their capacity building and all those things. Neelesh Singh: And that's [00:11:00] how strategy is built upon. So there are several strategy. While we might have human trafficking there in most of the states, but our strategy might be very different in different part of the state, depending upon the different characteristics and resources that we have. Josh Hutchinson: In your messages with us before the interview, you talked about the importance of collective action by women's collectives. What kind of action do you mean by that? Neelesh Singh: Now let me give you the example ofincidents of witch-hunting and witch-branding. The foremost incident that I came across, there wasa member of our own women collective. She was, branded as witch by different people and eventually what happens, her own collective, her own self help groups, the people who have come together to help each other, they also started calling her witch. [00:12:00] And eventually what happened, her husband'sbig brother, elder brother, and his wife, both of them, they once decided to kill that lady, and they came with axe in her hand and then they try to attack her and she somehow she escaped from that house, but that didn't stop them to chase her and pull her down and all those things. But somehow she could save her life, but she couldn't save her house and her grains and all those things. Everything was put on fire.
Neelesh Singh: I raised this question to the collective that. While she was being branded, while she was being chased down by somebody, while somebody attempted to kill her, why is that, she was a member of your own group? Why didn't any of you came forward to help her? So they also said that because she's a witch, so killing a witch is, it's like saving everybody else. Otherwise she would have killed all of us. So it's like a good [00:13:00] thing.So that made us think again thatunless, until everyone is sensitized towards it, there's nothing we can do again becausepolice also couldn't take much action because nobody was ready to give any witness. No evidence was there. Neelesh Singh: And then villagers shared several incidents in whichseveral of the lady who have been killed in the name of witch, no one had came forward to say against that crime or that well and nobody even knew that this is a crime. Everyone think that this is a good thing and they have done it for the collective goodness of everybody else.What was important is that at that time, at the peak of this hour, nobody was there in support of her. Even if some people wanted to support her, they were also, would have been killed eventually, because it is very hard to go against the entire crowd. You won't have that much of voice and that much of courage also. They would kill that woman in front of everyone. Neelesh Singh: And I don't believe [00:14:00] that everyone would believe that this lady is a witch. I know there would be at least some supporter. Somebody would believe, her friend or maybe her daughter or her son, even her husband or maybe her parents, somebody would at least, would believe that this is not her. She has not killed that child. The child died because of fever and she was not around and she wouldn't have caused any fever to that child. Why are you saying that you have casted bad eyes? She, I don't think that she would have casted any bad eyes on that child and all those things. Neelesh Singh: You cannot intervene at the time and people have started taking out their weapon, want to kill that person. At that time, it's very difficult to intervene. You're going to start intervening right from the beginning. You can start recognizing who are the person who believe in rationality, who are the person who believe that this violence is against only women. It is not against any man also, because all the cases that we have, I think more [00:15:00] 95% were women only, and all those 5% male people who have been killed in the name of witch they were also, they were only supporter tothat lady. So this is a weapon which man folks are using against their women to take control of the women and all. We had to build up this and we wanted that this discussion should to start happening in our group. Because our self help groups was not limited only for helping each other during the economic crisis. These are also the things where they can discuss all those things in their groups. When we were going through their minute books and in the meeting minutes books, we realized that they never discussed any kind of violence within their self help groups, like nobody would discuss about any domestic violence, even though they wanted to discuss these things, but never believed on any of their member. They thought that if we will tell them about that my husband has beaten me yesterday [00:16:00] night, this incidents will reach out to her husband and again, and then she will get more bashing after that when she go back home. And while everybody in that group was suffering from domestic violence at some point of time or other, but nobody was ready to help each other. Nobody had any belief in each other, so just a note. What we wanted to do is we wanted to make this platform as a platform which has got a greater credibility in which members can discuss about these things, as well. This is a very private thing to talk about, but we wanted them to be that close where they can discuss about the kind of violence that is going through or the kind of stigma, the kind of embarrassing moment that they are living every day. Somebody might be sleeping very hungry, but she needs to tell that. Neelesh Singh: In India, I'm not sure about other part of the country, but in India, what happens that, if a lady gets beaten up by [00:17:00] the husband, she won't tell to anyone, she thinks that, that it is the honor of the family. So she, he has to take care of the honor of the family. So she will, if the husband's beats her in open, she will rush to the home, and she will close all the door, all the window. And then she will request her husband to keep his voice down, and then you can beat me, but keep your voice down. Nobody should listen to this. And then next day,she will try to remove all the strains from her face and everything, and then she'll go back to the work like that.I don't know why this burden is there on her. She's the victim, she's the survivor. We wanted them to believe that she is not the only savior of the honor and she. And there's some responsibility of males are also there in it, and she, it's okay if she shares her story, and it's okay that everyone tries collectively to stop each other's husband from doing it and seeking some legalservices if it requires so. There are like, [00:18:00] police are there,legal services are there, all these are meant for women also, and it's okay if they go and seek out this help. These poor,the only strength that they have, they don't have money, they don't have much resources with them, but the thing that they have is their collectiveness, their numbers, they're such a high number. And we are organizing them, making them organize is, I think, we are hoping that this will give strength to them against such a horrendous crime. Sarah Jack: So I'm hearing you say that just bringing them together is just the start. They also have to be educated and encouraged to make positive responses together as a collective. Neelesh Singh: We learn from different parts of the country because at the national level, we don't have any other geography to work on, but different states they work on, they have their own geography. So we learn [00:19:00] from different states. Neelesh Singh: So we have got a state called Kerala here, and they also, they are like much mature state in the sense, they have got very old women collectives, so they, now it is more than 20 years or 30 years, I'm not sure. But it is that long that women have been organized, and they are now working on the gender issues. One of the strategy that they have is they map the crimes in the villages. So every village. Women collectively, along with the district administration, along with the government officials, they map crime, what kind of crime happens in which corner of the village,this is where domestic violence happened, this is where, so likewise, they, they map the crime, and then they also map, then they also do safety audit, with different kinds of women folks and of different age group. What happens is that maybe a pregnant woman and a lactating mother or an elderly women and a person with disability. All those women, they will walk [00:20:00] in the night and also in the day in different parts of that village, and will tell that what kind of incidents happens here and who among all of us they are feel safe here, or feel unsafe here, and what kind of incidents does happen. Neelesh Singh: They can say that this road is not safe for pregnant women to walk on, or this road is not safe for, or this building is not safe fora person with disability to go into or take any services, or here people are not friendly about it. So, Likewise, they will map all the problems, and then they'll also come up with a solution. I think there is a CCTV, if you can put here, then it will serve some problem. If you can close down that liquor shop, I think that will also close down some issue. If you can just put some lights here, because there's so much of dark, and if you can put some light. So like this, they will also propose the solution. And that prevents so much of violence to happen. This comes into the village plan, village annual action plan of that village, which you can[00:21:00] follow up, which district admission can follow up with on a regular basis that this was the plan and this was what approved and how much of it has been really implemented and where is the gap? Sarah Jack: You'd mentioned you also wanted to talk about the healing and empowerment of witch hunt survivors. Neelesh Singh: During the initial period, what happened is thatwe had identified,we used to develop a theater team of rural women. We used to train them on theaters. So there was a person who was a professional theater person. So we hired his services for passing this skills on or training the women on theater.And then there, we also took the services of some of the organizations who were working on the legal issues for documenting the cases. So we made a group of10 people in each team. So there were several teams. So every team had 10 women who were trained on [00:22:00] theater and who were trained also on documenting the cases. Neelesh Singh: And we would put that team in a village for two days or so. So they used to stay there also in the night. So two days and two nights, they need to stay there, and they would play this theater there. and then eventually what would happen is that somebody in the village would relate her story with the story which they were showing in the theater. And because they were staying in the same village, so the women who were already been branded as witch. She would relate her story with the story which they were showing in the theater, and they would, and she could, she can also access them because they were staying in the same village. Neelesh Singh: So that's how they would identify the cases. They would identify the women who have been branded as witch.So becausethe experience has taught us that,first they will brand somebody as which, and after that only, maybe after some period of, after some years, after some months, or maybe after, some decades, they will kill them.[00:23:00] Neelesh Singh: So they cannot kill anybody before they brand her as witch. So first they need to brand her witch. Then they needs to convince everybody that she's witch and then only this killing will happen or public lynching will happen. So our strategy was to identify such women who have been branded as witch and then to call up a public hearing in which we used to calljudiciary, police, and different government officials and panchayat people. All those publicfigures, we used to call them because it was ultimately, it was their responsibility for the security and safety of every citizen of India. Neelesh Singh: So we'll call each of them and then we'll hand over this list to them,that, we are not making this list public, but we are handing over to you publicly,handing over this list to you personally so that you take care of the safety and security of this person. This person has been branded as witch, and we don't want this person to be get killed also. Soif that person is getting killed, then you should be [00:24:00] held accountable for that. So that's how they ensure the protection of that lady. Neelesh Singh: So we used to identify such.This theater group, they used to go village after village. They used to cover every village, and they used to identify. In the first round, we identified 65 of them. When we covered in one go, we covered 40 villages of one block before we called for public hearing. So 65 lady were identified as witch, who have been branded as witch and they were living a very pathetic life in their own village. And this was the first time we were interacting with such women. And we called off all these women to a place herein a city. And it was aluxurious hotel, and we kept this workshop for three days there. And we had called our several partner who were champion in working on the gender-based violence. And we also had several trainers along with us. Neelesh Singh: And when we were there in that hotel, and anything that we would ask them, we will ask, what is [00:25:00] their name? They would take so much of time to speak out their name. And their tears were not stopping, and they were just crying. And I think by the lunch, they said that this is the first time that after such a long period of, somebody was saying 10 years or 20 years, that somebody was interacting with them and that they are getting such a good food and so many people are giving respect to them. They're talking to her, all those things. And this was,we got moved by their gestures, by their tears and everything. That's where we got to know that just saving their life is not enough. They also need to live their life and they need to live their life very normally. You know, we need to normalize all those things, and they need to come out from that fear. And they, everybody, the kind of incidents that the ladies were sharing,one of them, Neelesh Singh: so [00:26:00] one of the lady, she said that her house is situated,at the end of the village, somewhere in the corner of the village. It was made oftwigs and straw and all those things, bushes and all those things. It was made of, it was like just one kick and the entire house will collapse. That kind of hut, it was a hut. Andshe was saying that every day, every night and in every night, somebody would come and will pass urine on the wall of the house. Some of the urine will also enter the house from there because it is anyway made of some thatches and some twigs and all those things, so the winds can pass on from that. So urine will also pass from that while, and it doesn't matter where she's sleeping or cooking or whatever she might be doing, but this person will pass urine and will say, 'look, my child is sick, and I know that you have casted bad eye, your bad [00:27:00] eyes.By morning, if my child is not okay, then I am going to kill you.' And this will happen to her almost every night. Somebody in the entire village would fall in. Somebody will lost something or maybe somebody will suffer from some pain, and she would become the cause for that. Everybody would believe that she's the cause for that. Neelesh Singh: And living a life like that for such a long period was like. I cannot even imagine such a horrendous life to be. what we thought is,and if you cannot, you need to bring her out from the kind of suffering that she is undergoing and the kind of state of mind that she's living in, and we are talking about so many people here. They might be very elderly, or they might be very at the end of their life, but still they deserve a good life to lead and whatever life is left for them. So that time, we thought that some counseling would be okay for them. [00:28:00] So we did organize for some counseling and butafter that we thought that there has to be some way in which we can continuously engage with them. So one thing which occurred to all of us was,let us give them training on theater and make them as part of our theater group. And they can go to different villages and aware people against witch-hunting and because they can share their own story and that will be real story and they can influence people like they can understand the pain they're going through. Neelesh Singh: And we have seen that just giving them like our, the trainer who used to give training on theater, when he saw the entire participants, all of them were like above the age of seventies. That was a challenge for him. He has never taught such elderly people on theater, but that was just like six training, six day residential training. Neelesh Singh: But that slowly he understood the [00:29:00] power that they had, and the six days when they were staying together and they were discussing about all those things, it gave them so much of space for sharing their story and learning from them and opening up and all those things. And when they became the part of the theater group, when they learn from different people and when they able to, saw that they are so many, they also can make friends, they are people who also support them. They are people who enjoy talking to them or being with them, who can share their food with them or they can eat from the same plate in which she is eating and they can sleep, they can sleep in the same room in which she is sleeping. So it was like, it was a moment for them. It was like giving their life back and theater had this power to heal all those things and to give them the voice. Neelesh Singh: We saw this power in theater. That's where,people said that theater and music. Everybody, everything, all these things has power of healing, also. They can heal the pain which is there inside you. They [00:30:00] can give you a voice. Neelesh Singh: There's a friend called Alina and she is an art therapist. So she told me that I practice art therapy. We never heard such thing called art therapy. We wanted to know what is this art therapy. So she said, 'art also has, fine arts, this also has the power of healing andfrom the art, the kind of art that you make, I can make out the kind of suffering that you are undergoing through and the kind of pain that you are feeling and all those things. And we will, I will try to heal all those thingsfrom the art only.' Neelesh Singh: So what happened, she was at that time, she was also suffering from cancer. And while she was undergoing through Neelesh Singh: this chemotherapy. And she couldn't have come to our place from Jharkhand, but she was living in Bangalore. So we had organized an online thing for her. We had organizeda big screen, mic, and speakers. And then she said, 'at one time I can maybe [00:31:00] start with eight or nine people.' So that was okay for us, because we also had the challenge of a bigger room anyway, so we had all those, whatever she said, if she wanted some brush and paints and newspapers and some drawing papers and all those things. So we had organized for her and she was, she used to speak in English, whereas our people, they used to understand Hindi. So we had one interpreter also with us. Neelesh Singh: And so we would call all those eight survivors in front of the big screen. And then she said, 'you can keep all the paints in front of them, all every color in front of them.' And she would just ask him, 'okay, paint it, whatever you want and choose whatever color that you want, choose whatever brush that you want. This is a newspaper is there in front of you. You have blank papers also, you have drawing papers also. Paint whatever.' To our surprise, almost every one of them chose dark color. And while they had the choice of several colors to select from, [00:32:00] they, everyone chose only one or two color. Neelesh Singh: We were not expert in that, but Alina, she said, 'this is studying them. This is studying the kind of that pain that they are undergoing through. This is a dark side that they have and all of them have selected only newspaper, used paper to, to draw on. So that also tells about their confidence. They didn't have the confidence to paint any blank papers or any drawing paper or wasting, so they would not take such chance.Slowly, she would interact with them. She would tell her about her own story and then try to listen to them and would try to make them open up about all those things. Neelesh Singh: And slowly, all of them, they shifted from newspaper to actual drawing paper, and then they started using more colors and all, and then, eventually, she asked them to paint a big wall and, it wascollectively they had to paint a wall, and she said, 'the larger is the picture, the louder the voice is about,' because they are communicating through their painting. [00:33:00] That's what they are doing. Neelesh Singh: It was our collective's office, our,the women collective's office, they offered her their wall, office wall to them that you can paint your picture here. So it was like collective, it was showing a collective support towards such women. Neelesh Singh: And then, eventually the police station of that block, they offered their entire wall, the boundary wall of the entire police station to them, that you can paint your picture here, and this wall is for you. So it was like entering into the police station and painting their walls and all those things which had never, and they had never been to police station before that. Neelesh Singh: I think that, that was like working for them. That was encouraged Other part of the districts, other part of the state also to came for who came forward who wanted you know this thing so Alinashe gave us, started giving us two days in a week for two other districts. Sarah Jack: So that's how we scaled it up, and [00:34:00] all those who got healed, who said that they are now healed. Then we had on a, in a residential mode. So we had this three, four days of workshop, drawing workshop train them on a special kind of painting called Sohrai painting and Kohvar painting. There were two kinds of regional painting, which was of Jharkhand. They would start training on them. So they were trained on these two kinds of painting. And then we got this chance to take this painting to the exhibition And there they selected this painting and we, when we had called a state level workshop to share our story, to share the story of our strategies with the rest of the world. So there we had this chance to givetheir painting as gift to the honorable guest of that workshop. And they were, they feel quite proud and accepting that as a gift. I'm really hearing today how pulling people together and then [00:35:00] finding a way to give somebody their humanity and then this collective, this coming alongside and then giving humanity back is like a start. Neelesh Singh: In one of the village, I think it was, around 60 year old lady, she was called as witch by other women of that village. And also male people of that village. And all of them, they stripped this woman naked in front of the village. And then they applied some black color on her face and made her parade around the village and all those things. It was in the full daylight, and her son, was such helpless, he wanted to help his mother butcouldn't do that. And his friend stopped him from doing such thing.And [00:36:00] we had this collective in every village and there is a federation called cluster level federation, which is like a federation of 20 or 25 villages, like after that it federates into a cluster level federation. So this cluster level federation had 21 village under that federation, and in one of the village, this thing happened.This collective of 21 village, they took the decision to felicitate that lady and to show their support towards that lady and they took out rally from each of their village and they brought the clothes and money and some food grains and some flour and everything, and then theyfelicitated that lady in front of every villager and they showered her with the food or and the clothes. Neelesh Singh: They said that since your clothes was stripped by these people, so every village is offering you these clothes now to you, and this is to honor you [00:37:00] and to support you and to give this message to all the villages here that nothing will ever happen to you, and nothing will happen to any of the persons here. We all, collectives are here to support everyone. From now on, if anyone tries to call anyone as witch, then we will take action against that person. We'll take that person behind the bar with the help of police and everyone, and this was almost for the first time that people were showing support to anybody called witch. Before that, they had never seen anyone supporting witch such openly in such an open forum. And here it was like people coming from every corner of the villages and rallying against that incident. And then it was reported in media, it was reported in TV and newspapers. And so everybody was talking about such support. Neelesh Singh: So [00:38:00] that gave a strength to them, and they wanted their chief minister, the head of the state to give this statement that he won't tolerate this malpractice of witch-branding and witch-hunting. And he vows to make the state free from witch-branding and witch-hunting. They wanted the chief minister to give out this statement. So that incident of one particular village sparked the other collective of living in different parts of that state for carrying out a signature campaign against this signature was taking the signature of every officials also, and then I think more than 50,000 signature was shared with the chief minister asking him to give this statement. And then he gave this statement and also asked the department to work against witch-hunting and witch-branding practices and make this a state free from this. Share with me the strategy that you have for this. So it was very [00:39:00] encouraging for our women. Josh Hutchinson: Neelesh Singh: One more thing which I would like to share is that while all these things,working with government, it's important, because what happens while we are working with NGOs, we, somehow, we can work in some pockets, we can work in smaller geography, but it is important that it's a responsibility of the state and the state must realize it is their work, finally, to make this country free from such a horrendous practice. So giving importance to such a thing is, I think, we have to create this agency of such survivor. We need to build this network of all those survivors of witch-hunting and make their agency so that they can talk, sit with the government, and make the policy for themselves. And talk with the media, sit in the media, and tell the media that this is a very [00:40:00] important issue and they must raise about this issue. While it's okay that you cover so many other things, but this is also an important issue. So please do cover that. So I think that's important for us to build an agency of such survivors. So while we have identified so many survivors, I think it's a long way to go to form their agency. Josh Hutchinson: And now for a minute with Mary. Mary-Louise Bingham: On behalf of End Witch Hunts, I am pleased to tell our listeners that I will be working with Neelesh Singh and his team as we help the survivors of witch hunts to tell their stories through music, art, and theater. As I hold a degree in music education with a background in piano and voice studies, I will work within the team to help the survivors find their voices through song. Mary-Louise Bingham: I am honored. I may be a small part of helping them find their voice, but the survivors and the more experienced team members will teach me so [00:41:00] much more beyond my current comprehension. I also have the full support of our board members, Sarah Jack, Joshua Hutchinson, Beth Caruso, and Jen Stevenson, who will do whatever they can to help in this endeavor. After all, whenever one of us reaches out to make a difference, we do so not only as individuals, but as a board of strong advocates who will help each other to actively make a difference. Sarah Jack: Thank you, Mary. Josh Hutchinson: Sarah has End Witch Hunts news. Sarah Jack: End Witch Hunts, a non profit 501c3 organization, Weekly News Update. Trial by ordeal is an ancient practice where the guilt or innocence of an accused person is determined through a physically or mentally challenging test. It has been a method of justice throughout history, reflecting deeply rooted beliefs in divine intervention and the supernatural. Sarah Jack: Trials by ordeal, which depend on supernatural beliefs and physical tests to [00:42:00] ascertain guilt or innocence, lack the procedural fairness and evidentiary standards we expect in modern legal systems. Despite this, even the more formal witch trials of history were not immune to these practices, incorporating superstitious beliefs and physical tests to determine guilt. This enduring fear of witchcraft, along with the intention to prove malicious acts, highlights a continuous thread in human history. When such practices emerge in today's society, they echo historical precedents, revealing an ongoing struggle to balance myth with the principles of justice. Sarah Jack: Guinea-Bissau is a country of Western Africa situated on the Atlantic coast. It is about 44.1 percent urban and 55.9 percent rural. As of 2022, male life expectancy was averaging 61.5 years and female life expectancy was 66 years. In 2022, their female population amounted to approximately 1.07 million, while the male population amounted to approximately [00:43:00] 1.04 million. Sarah Jack: The Advocacy for Alleged Witches, spearheaded by Leo Igwe, is sounding the alarm on an urgent human rights issue in this African country. There was an incident this month, February 2024, in the Culade region of Cacheu. Here, eight women were tragically killed and 20 other women hospitalized after being forced to consume a poisonous potion by a traditional priest to determine if they were guilty of witchcraft. These women were all over the age of 50. This incident is not isolated but indicative of a wider systemic problem that transcends time and local cultural practices and points to a global responsibility. The belief in witchcraft crimes and the barbaric practice of trial by ordeal reflect an ongoing societal failure to protect the vulnerable and uphold justice. Witch hunts, often targeting women, expose the gendered nature of this violence, revealing deep-seated misogyny and societal complicity in these acts. The call to [00:44:00] action by the Advocacy for Alleged Witches is not only a plea for the local government to intervene but a wake up call to the world. We are the world. Legal and administrative measures against those implicated in such abuses are necessary, but so is a broader societal shift to address the impunity that allows this violence to continue. The introduction of emergency helplines and targeted actions against perpetrators are steps in the right direction. However, these actions must be a part of a larger concerted effort to stop superstitious accusations with education, protect the rights of women and vulnerable populations, and fundamentally change how societies, how the world views and addresses harmful acts due to accusations of witchcraft. This incident is a stark reminder that the fight against gender-based violence and the persecution of alleged witches is not solely the responsibility of Guinea-Bissau or any single nation. It is a global challenge that demands a unified response from all corners of the world. Sarah Jack: Thank you for listening today. Thank you for your [00:45:00] financial gifts. Visit aboutwitchhunts.com/ to donate any amount you're comfortable with. Your generosity is the backbone of the podcast content you value. Let's commit to making a difference together. Josh Hutchinson: Thank you, Sarah. Sarah Jack: You're welcome. Josh Hutchinson: And thank you for listening to Witch Hunt. Sarah Jack: Keep the conversation going in your sphere until you join us next week. Josh Hutchinson: Have a great today and a beautiful tomorrow.
We expand our advocacy discussion on modern day witch hunts and human rights abuses associated with accusations related to witchcraft to Ghana. Guest Peter Mintir Amadu is the Executive Director of the Total Life Enhancement Center (TOLEC) Ghana, a non-profit organization dedicated to community mental health advocacy and support. Amadu discusses TOLEC’s immersive and strategic engagement with witch hunt survivors, including psychological assessments and group and individual therapies to address trauma. Despite the challenges of severly scarce resources and logistical difficulties, TOLEC aims to bolster specialized support in ongoing efforts.
This episode of ‘Witch Hunt’ underscores the necessity of increased intersectional cooperation, funding, and international awareness to tackle the global phenomenon of witch hunts.
Josh Hutchinson: Welcome to Witch Hunt, the podcast that brings you news from the front lines of the struggle against modern day witch hunts. I'm Josh Hutchinson. Sarah Jack: And I'm Sarah Jack. Modern day witch hunts, also known as Harmful Practices Related to Accusations of Witchcraft and Ritual Attacks, are human rights abuses perpetrated against those believed to be witches or sorcerers. Josh Hutchinson: These abuses include physical and emotional attacks leading to injury and even death. Sarah Jack: Survivors are frequently traumatized by the harrowing experience of being accused of witchcraft. Josh Hutchinson: In Ghana, witch hunt refugees flee to so called 'witch camps.' Sarah Jack: These camps are for people [00:01:00] banished from their communities following witchcraft accusations. Josh Hutchinson: Living conditions in the camps are deplorable, and the residents destitute. Sarah Jack: However, concern is developing among advocates and within sectors of the national government in regard to the conditions at the camps and the future of the witch hunt victims. Josh Hutchinson: One recent development has been onsite mental health intervention to address the victims' trauma. Sarah Jack: This effort involved physicians from the Total Life Enhancement Center, TOLEC,a mental health facility located in Northern Region capital Tamale and led by Executive Director Peter Mintir Amadu. Josh Hutchinson: We hung on every word in our engaging interview with Mr. Amadu, and we know that you will too. Sarah Jack: In this episode, you will learn about the challenges faced by the victims of witchcraft accusation-related violence. Josh Hutchinson: And about some different treatment methods being employed by TOLEC. Sarah Jack: We are [00:02:00] delighted to introduce Peter Mintir Amadu, Executive Director of the Total Life Enhancement Center in Ghana and a leading figure in mental health. A licensed clinical health psychologist and university lecturer, Peter is pivotal in advancing mental health services in Northern Ghana. Sarah Jack: He advocates for mental health across multiple platforms. He mentors youth, and his work focuses on youth and maternal mental health issues. As chairman of the Ghana Psychological Association's Northern Sector, Peter's Sarah Jack: commitment extends to providing consultation and training. Peter Mintir Amadu: My name is Peter Mintir Amadu. My background is clinical health psychologist. I'm a lecturer at the University for Development Studies. The University for Development Studies is the premier university in the north. The northern part of Ghana has about five regions, and it was the very first university in the north. Peter Mintir Amadu: I am affiliated to the Tamale Teaching Hospital, of which I do [00:03:00] a clinical health psychologist consulting at the internal medicine and virtually for the entire hospital. As it stands now,I'm just among two other psychologists that operate within the Tamale Teaching Hospital as a tertiary and a referral facility. Peter Mintir Amadu: Come to initiatives, what have I initiated as a person? You got me through an organization called Total Life Enhancement Center. That is my initiative. I just felt that a people, we didn't do so much regarding mental health. And in 2017, I established this organization with a lot of young ones around me. So I founded the organization and I lead it at the civil society space where we advocate for mental health in schools, radio, and in the communities. So Total Life Enhancement Center is a [00:04:00] psychology-focused organization and the first private psychology clinic in the entire northern Ghana. I've mentioned that Northern Ghana has five regions, administrative regions. Peter Mintir Amadu: My second initiative has been in the area of mental health advocacy. So in schools, radio, community, religious organization, and CSOs, health facilities and corporate organizations are places where my services and my skill and my passion have actually driven me to. Peter Mintir Amadu: What have I supported? I've tried to be a mentor to a lot of young ones in the mental health space who are seeking to appreciate what mental health is and understand. So basic, senior high school, and then the tertiary level. Peter Mintir Amadu: What are my research interest? I really have great interest in the area of youth and maternal mental health. That's my area of interest. And recently an article [00:05:00] entitled, 'Drug Abuse Among the Youth of Northern Region, The Realities of Our Time.' And that is really taking a lot of shape in the academic space. Peter Mintir Amadu: What's my passion? What has been driving me as a person over the period? I must admit, to make available mental health services to my people has been my passion. And also to make greatly available psychological services to our operational areas. I have played different roles as a person over the period of time in the north. I have been in the Ghana Health Service over two decades, and so I have worked as the chairman of the Ghana Psychological Association members in the Northern sector, psychologist to CSOs in the northern region of Ghana and a service provider to a lot of organizations. And so in brief, this is what I'll say who Peter Mintir [00:06:00] Amadu is. Josh Hutchinson: What more can you tell us about the Total Life Enhancement Center? Peter Mintir Amadu: Yes. Life Enhancement Center, Ghana. TOLEC is an organization with a primary focus in psychology, so the abbreviation is T O L E C G H, and we call it TOLEC. TOLEC is dedicated to the promotion and advocacy towards improving psychological well being. We say that Tolec is an organization that provides mental health and psychosocial support services. Peter Mintir Amadu: And our vision is to be a center that employs the biopsychosocial and the scientist practitioner approach to delivering comprehensive assessment and health promotion services. The vision of TOLEC is to be a center dedicated to advocating for and delivering holistic health solutions through both local and [00:07:00] external competent methods to our clients. This approach is aimed at enhancing psychological wellbeing, thereby fostering increased productivity and development. Peter Mintir Amadu: What's our mandate? Our mandate as an organization is to enhance the location of psychological resources to benefit society through our contribution. TOLEC operates in six thematic areas: mental health advocacy, psychological service provision, counseling services, emotional intelligence and management, livelihood empowerment of capacity building, and mental health research. TOLEC is currently located in the Northern Regional Capital, Tamale, in the Sanaribu Municipality. So this is a little I will say about TOLEC, and TOLEC as a psychology clinic and a service provider have been in the advocacy space [00:08:00] since 2018, and we have done advocacy in schools, radios, communities, and corporate organizations, and we currently stand as among one of the very best mental health service organizations in northern Ghana. Even when it comes to the issues of psychological services, we are the first in the entire northern part of Ghana to provide psychological services as an organization. Peter Mintir Amadu: So this is the bit I would say about Total Life Enhancement Center Ghana, TOLEC. Sarah Jack: I found your center online when I was doing some research around some alleged witchcraft violence, and I saw that you have an initiative to support women who have been in witch camps. Is that one of your outreaches at your facility? Peter Mintir Amadu: Yes please. It's one of the outreaches we have undertaken in [00:09:00] the recent past. We have been involved in giving some support to a number of women. In 2020, I was part of a group of organizations. TOLEC was part of a group of organizations that, roll out a number of activities. But the focus at that was with health workers in the districts that hosted this Alleged Witch Camps. Peter Mintir Amadu: Last year, we took this initiative, and this initiative was supported by the Commission of Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ). And they actually partnered us, basically supported almost every bit of the logistical bit of it to go provide, because they came to us. We have been to these women. We have done the normal physical examinations with them. We provided medication, but there's an aspect that has never been talked about. But the organization said to me, 'do you want to do [00:10:00] something with this?' I said, 'why not? It is an opportunity we have all been looking out for.' So they said, 'okay. Get out there and pack your bag and baggage and go to four districts in the north and perform these particular activities for us.' Peter Mintir Amadu: So I immediately have to put in place a group of psychologists, that was counseling psychologists, health psychologists, and clinical psychologists, and clinical health psychologists. They were the people I rallied behind to look back. Then, we took up this mantle, and we spent a little over two weeks engaging these women at the alleged witch camps. And so our intervention was the first of its kind in the area of mental health, because people are going in there, but not with assessment in the area of psychology. So we went in there doing psychological assessment. Peter Mintir Amadu: And what we basically did was to use a particular psychological tool we call DASS, Depression, Anxiety, and Stress [00:11:00] Skill. That is well, utilize and also, and trying to look at some level of distress, psychological distress among these women. So after administering these tools, we found data that was very interesting. Data that was very, at a point, if not for my background as a professional, very scary. Peter Mintir Amadu: Scary in the sense that a lot of them who have stayed in there years, decades, have nobody to look after them, no shelter, no food, no healthcare, and in most of the places they live in very deplorable states. I, I possibly would delve deeper into this, but let me say that our, that was quite revealing for us, because when it came to the issues of depression, we were quite interested and we realized that even though after administering the psychological [00:12:00] tools, which I must admit we went in there to do an assessment for just around 300 women. We ended up doing a little over 350 women, alleged witches. this was carried out in four districts in Ghana, and those four districts, three of them are found in the northern region. Then one is found in the northeast region of Ghana. And the three found in the northern region of Ghana are the Kpatinga Alleged Witch Camp, which is found in the Gushegu Municipal District. Then we had the Kukuo Witch Camp, which is found in the Nanumba South. And then we had a Gnani Alleged Witch Camp, which is found in the Yendi municipality. Yendi is, call it our [00:13:00] traditional capital. Yendi sits the overlord of our region, call it, I mean we call it, the, the overlord of Dagbon. And so the parliament chief of the northern region sit in Yendi, and in his district also is where, we find the Gnani Alleged Witch Camp. So these 3 are found in northern region. Then in the northeast region is found Gambaga Alleged, Witch Camp, and Gambaga is one administrative district, a colonial administrative district. In the colonial era, Gambaga was one of the, I mean renowned district that govern northern region. So in the colonial era, they had more of Gambaga than even Tamale, where, which is now well pronounced. Peter Mintir Amadu: So what did we find among the 335 women in terms of psychological distress? We had [00:14:00] 73% of our respondents, that's a little around 247 participants, who were assessed to have high level of psychological distress. Depression we assess among these groups as 61 percent of the participants. Anxiety was around 72%. And the issues of stress related was around 38%. So this was what we found at the alleged witch camps, where we were supported by the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice to do an assessment and provide intervention. Peter Mintir Amadu: So this was the assessment, what we found among them. Many people have come to know very well that when it comes to the issues of alleged witches or witchcraft accusations, a lot of organizations have often [00:15:00] put their energies around the physical bit of it. And two, three years ago, we had the experience of a woman, an old woman who was allegedly accused and beaten to death, and that actually triggered a lot of conversation in the Ghanaian media space regarding the issues of alleged witches. What can we do? And that actually initiated the legislation in the Ghanaian parliament, which is almost at the verge of completion, where accusation of alleged witchcraft will become criminal in the Ghanaian laws. Peter Mintir Amadu: And these have been terms that we have been finding as, from our research as a professional and leading this institution towards the provision of psychological assessment and intervention. I will take the intervention bit, but I'm sure you may want to ask a bit of questions regarding this. Sarah Jack: I'm amazed [00:16:00] at what you are tackling for your community. Peter Mintir Amadu: Thank you. Josh Hutchinson: At this point, do you have plans to return to do more intervention with these women? Peter Mintir Amadu: Yes. We have a lot of plans towards, engaging further with these women. But, one after our assessment, so the intervention, but what we did, we, after we collected this psychological assessment and found these, what we did was to put the women in group therapy. So we first of all put them in groups, and our psychologists engage them in at different levels, providing support. And then we also went further to then provide individual intervention, because in the group, lemme mention that in our country and,in the space of Sub-Saharan Africa, issues of mental health and, psychotherapy, not well appreciated. We [00:17:00] went on, people can be in the groups and may not talk, so after engaging them at a group level, we decided to also open an opportunity for a number of the women to go talk to the psychologist on one-on-one basis. Peter Mintir Amadu: And we basically spent, for logistical sakes, we spent two days in every community. We wish we did more. But the logistics were our challenge. So after providing that, we came back and we provided a report to the Commission of Human Rights and Administrative Justice. On our part, as an organization, what we have been thinking is we know psychological therapy will not yield results overnight, and if it will not yield results overnight, what else do we need to do? Peter Mintir Amadu: We began this year with some more planning as to what is it that we can go back to the community, but the numbers are huge. Sarah Jack: Yeah. Peter Mintir Amadu: The numbers are huge. Even when we got in there and the idea was to do 300, we ended up doing [00:18:00] 300 plus. And even doing 350, I mean35, was just because we were running out of the logistics that were being provided. If we had stayed in there, we would have seen closer to 500 people. And that tells us that the numbers are there. And the idea is to, from this year, to see how we can at least either every six months, if we have the resources, or every quarter to go back there, provide an intervention. But first of all, I often have said that the issues of mental health cannot be talked to people in, in, call it hungry stomachs. The belly is not full. They are not going to listen. So our idea has been, how can we then go back to them with a picnic style of therapy, where we are dining with them and providing therapy, letting them understand that, yes, you are here, the challenges are there, but don't give up. [00:19:00] Life still means a lot for you. Peter Mintir Amadu: So we are still mobilizing the resources and pushing at our own level to see how we can go back, provide 335 that we have already seen and extend that therapy beyond the individuals. And the idea has always been to also reach out to the communities, these four communities in which these alleged witch,camps are situated. They need support. They need mental health education, they need psychotherapy themself, and they need capacity building, because when they have it these women can be supported, because a number of the women listening to them said that any time at all we are troubled, those who are, who come to our help, our aid, are the chiefs, the community leaders, the assembly members, but these are people who are into a great, but barely doing minimal farming. So when they harvest, it becomes insufficient even for their own families. Let's talk of [00:20:00] supporting another family. So building their capacity, providing agri related support for them so that they can be able to till the land enough to also feed these women. Peter Mintir Amadu: We have been thinking of also partnering with other organizations, because a number of organizations are in the area of supporting women. A lot of them are shying away from the support for these vulnerable women who, just allegation, there is no substance in it. Culture, religion, superstition. Then they push them there. Because I keep asking the question, how come we don't have the very elite members of our society, their mothers in these alleged witch camps, but the poor woman that have nobody to defend, the poor woman that the woman that have nobody to talk for, are those who are always accused and put in there, and hunger, lack of shelter, water, [00:21:00] proper, mean sanitary condition becomes a challenge for these women. Sarah Jack: Yeah. Peter Mintir Amadu: So we really have intention of going back. But we hope we can go back there in another style where we can be able to dine and feast with them and provide therapy, stay there a bit longer than two, three days is the target we're hoping. Sarah Jack: Clearly, it was a significant event that your team was able to go and engage in these camps and collect this significant data and then I can see how it would also be a very big effort for you to use that data to get support to move forward in the program. Peter Mintir Amadu: Yeah. So we are currently trying to document a bit around this, and we have actually done a little around social media publication, working a bit to see how we can publish this in academic journal. So [00:22:00] that we can be able to tell the story. We are still hoping that the district assembly, the government, the region, and then well-meaning individuals will come our aid so that we can go back there and provide enough, but this data really is something I know we can use and to make an impact in society. Sarah Jack: Am I understanding that right now, the president has not signed the legislation on these witch camps? If he does close them, how does that impact these communities? Peter Mintir Amadu: Thank you. You are right. I think, currently the advocacy in the civil society space is to get the president's assent to this bill and make it law, and we're hoping that this will happen before his tenure of office, which is just in the 7th of January, come next year. If that so happens, we know that [00:23:00] will create another huge need for our people. Peter Mintir Amadu: But the refreshing part of it is that engaging these women, a good number of them are willing to go back to the communities. So reintegration should be the plan forward, so that in the event where these camps are closed down, where can they go back? Go back to their communities, go back to their families, and the communities need to be sensitized. Peter Mintir Amadu: The communities need to be engaged, and so it means advocacy needs to get to the community, to understand that these women are just like your mothers. These women are just like those women you have at home, who could be wives, sisters, aunties, Grandma. And all that we can give them at this moment is to say that you have been with us, and it is a difficult moment that probably you have nobody to support you the way you would have wished. Peter Mintir Amadu: But we are here as a community, and we are hoping that we can be able to provide you. [00:24:00] Because of the desire of a number of them to go back to their communities, if this law comes into force and these communities are,dissolved, what it means is that a good number of them will be more ready to go back, have people to accept them. Peter Mintir Amadu: The few that have no support, we can look for a reintegrative process where we can engage chiefs, leaders, assembly members to see how they can absorb them. Already, some of the camps have become like towns, have become like big communities. So the women are already very comfortable. A good number of them, they're into agri, into one, I mean small businesses, and they're already doing well. So those of them who don't wanna go back can be supported. Peter Mintir Amadu: So in the process of, if these things are dissolved, what we can do is to build their capacity to be well supported. So in terms of economics, in terms of their health care, [00:25:00] and in terms of their general well being, because once they have capital, they have resources, when they are not well, they will go to the hospitals. When they are not well, they'll go to health facilities and look for support. But some of their challenges have always been that, even when I'm not well, I have no money. Even though a good number of them, in Ghana we operate the health insurance system. A good number of them are active health insurance users, but sometimes the facilities are at a distance and they may need even transport to arrive there. So when they are dissolved, I think they can be some level of capacity building for the women, some level of support so that they can be sustaining. So income generating activities to sustain themselves. Peter Mintir Amadu: And I, that's what I can say if this ever, if it ever happens in the foreseeable future. Josh Hutchinson: You mentioned that you're hoping to work with other organizations that deal with women's [00:26:00] issues. When violence against women is considered in Ghana, is witchcraft based violence part of that conversation? Are these other groups already talking about the witchcraft allegations, or have they yet to get involved in that? Peter Mintir Amadu: I'm here to get deeper conversations with them. Yes,I have just seen an article about them. I really didn't have so much information. If there is a way, I mean, I'll go into the website and try to get more information, but if there's a way we can connect, you are able to connect us too, we can work greatly together towards supporting, because some other people may have what I call the logistical support. We have a technical support, psychologists, but if we are not able to carry them there, they may not be able to do this particular great service to our women. So I'm looking for that partnership. Peter Mintir Amadu: There is this other organization called Songtaba, and Songtaba is a women's [00:27:00] rights organization, and they have often engaged us very much when it comes to the issues of alleged witches, and they have, they were those that engaged me to work with them. Peter Mintir Amadu: We're also trying to talk to the health workers within the district that these camps are found, because a lot of them do receive them at the hospital level, and what support they can give them. So I've often served as a consultant for them in the area of helping the health workers. Now, going to the women, they were not part of it, and we are hoping that we can be able to draw them into the system. Peter Mintir Amadu: We're also trying to talk to the district assembly, talk to the municipal assemblies, the administrative district, to see. We have something we call the District Assembly Common Fund, and an aspect of it is supposed to be spent on the less vulnerable in society. How can this four districts make this a little token towards supporting mental health services of these women? It's a conversation I think we can begin to initiate. Josh Hutchinson: [00:28:00] Based on your experience with the women, do you know what kinds of things they're accused of actually doing with witchcraft? What does witchcraft belief look like in Ghana? Peter Mintir Amadu: Thank you very much. Yes, engaging and talking to a number of the women, what has brought them to the camps have been the fact that a brother's son woke up and said he saw me in his dream, and having seen me in his dream, I'm the one trying to stifle his progress in life. And that is the level of accusation. Sarah Jack: One of the very elderly woman told me Ghana is a very communal community, where I must admit we love each other and we share a lot of things. And this woman, all that she told me, what brought her to the camp was the fact that as an old lady, [00:29:00] that's how she called herself, 'I was eating food, and this small boy was around my environment, and you can see the boy was looking hungry. I basically served the boy food. And this was my crime, accused of witchcraft, and so they have to banish me to come to that community.' And when they banish them, what they say is that they go there to perform a sacrifice, and when you go there to perform the sacrifice, and you don't return, it means all the accusation is true, and some of them go there, and they realize that even before I left the community, they were following me with cutlasses, with clubs, as if I am a chief. And when they get in there, and the chief of the community receive them, give them accommodation, give them the comfort that they need, some of them may not go back, and so they conclude, yes, our allegation is true. Peter Mintir Amadu: Another woman said that her rival, in the Ghanaian space, we have a [00:30:00] number of women that are married to one man, so polygamy does exist in our environment. 'My rival, who is the second wife told my husband that she keeps seeing me in her dream and she realizes that her business is no longer going on as I mean it used to be. So I am the one responsible, and so the community come chasing me.' Do this woman find herself in the alleged witch camp? Peter Mintir Amadu: The pathetic story I heard at this place was the story of one of the women? And what was her story? Her story was that 'I was accused of killing my own son. How did that happen? The child went to school, got to the university, got a job, and started to visit the village, was involved in [00:31:00] an accident and died. And they said that it is the mother, because the mother doesn't want the child to progress. And this woman's pathetic story was, 'if I can bear this child in my womb for nine months, nurse him for five good years, to go past what we used to call childhood killer diseases, why will I hurt this child? This time that he can fetch water for me to drink. This was how painful it was for this woman. If I can take care of a child who was helpless, this is the time you can probably say, mama, I am sending you MoMo, buy a little fish, buy a little meat to cook. Why would I take such a life? Peter Mintir Amadu: These are the pathetic stories. And a number of them have been accused in ways that you just cannot imagine it. In our last activity we had, we also discovered [00:32:00] two men, or let me say a number of men, but two of them were willing to speak to us. So we have alleged wizards at some of the camps. And basically, their story didn't go far from that of the women. Because somebody see me as standing in the way of his progress. Was accusation because he's my uncle, and my uncle doesn't want my progress, and so my father will now put pressure and the community will put pressure and will banish this person from the community. Their stories are really pathetic. Peter Mintir Amadu: And the deep seated pain alone is so much to bear for some of the women, and sometimes I look at it, I see. If all the things that we do as a country, as a region, and as a district, if we could even dedicate a little [00:33:00] resource towards the mental wellbeing of these women, I'm sure a lot of them can live there and still fulfill their life, but unfortunately, the issues of mental health little talked about in our country, because when it comes to the issues of mental health, even among the general population in Ghana, mental health literacy is very low. Peter Mintir Amadu: And so access to mental health services become very low among our people. There is a document that was added in 2014 by a lot of researchers and, I mean pushed by the mental health authority. Our treatment gap currently in Ghana stands at 98%, and when they come to the issues of mental health resources, the professionals are really not available. Peter Mintir Amadu: As I speak to you now, within the northern part of Ghana, we don't have [00:34:00] more than 10 practicing psychologists, and the northern part of Ghana is put all together, it's almost close to 5 million population, and this population have no adequate mental health resources. Talk about psychologists. Sarah Jack: And so currently, a lot of us are occasionally under a bit of pressure because as I introduced myself, I teach at the university. I provide consultancy at the Tamale Teaching Hospital, but yet, because TOLEC is a passion for me, I see TOLEC as a passion I must drive to benefit my people, because at the end of the day, TOLEC most of the time doesn't put food on my table. The university puts food on my table. But TOLEC is a passion where I want to be able to reach out to many more people. So at TOLEC, we then bring a lot of young ones to advocate about mental health. And that has been what we have been doing and [00:35:00] leading us to support these women. Peter Mintir Amadu: And when it come to the issues of maternal mental health, I mentioned that a research interest area.a lot of our women, a research currently on my waiting publication, a little over 60% of mother are battling what we call postpartum depression. In my region, around 58% are battling postpartum anxiety. How can a traumatized woman be able to raise a very successful young man? So I keep telling people when I go to seminars, if we want a very healthy society, our women, our mothers, our aunties, whatever we want to call them, our grandmothers must be in the best of health. Peter Mintir Amadu: And that health must be in the dual form, mental health and physical health. Unfortunately, mental health is [00:36:00] underplayed, in my country and in my region, a reason why some of us are very passionate about this conversation that we're having. Josh Hutchinson: Thank you for this conversation.I'm so glad that you're doing what you do, because these women, they're as important as anybody else, and they deserve their dignity and comfort. Sarah Jack: We've learned a little bit from some of the other advocacy work that there needs to be this focus on the youth. And I'm hearing that element in your work, the mental health support into the youth, how that can trickle up into the community as they grow. That is a positive support for the future. How do you get to the point where banishment isn't an answer? Sarah Jack: I was thinking [00:37:00] about how the banishment really is this point at which, it's a solution, but it's also a problem. Sarah Jack: It's starting a problem. Peter Mintir Amadu: When you look at the banishment as we currently have it in our situation, this happens, and those women are banished from the community. They leave all their livelihood, they leave all their connection, they leave all their relationship, and they leave everything they have ever lived for to a land that they don't know anything about, but just because that land is accommodating. Peter Mintir Amadu: And so the issues of mental health plays a role in this banishment, because at the end of the day, if you think somebody else has a challenge, have you listened to this person? Have you engaged this person? Because in most of the banishment situation, they never, nobody ever listened to this one. There's never a listening ear. [00:38:00] What they call a listening ear, where the problem is sending you to a particular group of people who have already made up their mind anyway, so they just send you there for, okay, we have sent you to this place to verify, but they already know what they want to do. If the conversation around mental health can be enhanced, what we do have is that a lot of people will look at this with some other perspective. What other way could we have looked at this without banishing this woman, without asking this woman to leave her business in that village, to move to a village she knows nobody and she has no connection? Peter Mintir Amadu: That conversation can start. And, Maybe a reason why, when we started our organization, the idea was to see how we can engage the youth and our reason for engaging the youth was to say that catch them young and they will [00:39:00] understand mental health and will use mental health services, even in their old age. So if they start understanding mental health now, they will build what I call resilience. They will build what I call self esteem. They will build assertiveness skills. So they will be able to make conversations to fight for people within the community. Sometimes some of the women just need somebody to say that, please, I will challenge you, and the problem will drop that whole accusation, but there's nobody to challenge. And these old women virtually are left to their fate. Peter Mintir Amadu: Two years ago, I met a woman who told me her story. works in our national capital. A very responsible woman, but her mother stays in the village in the northern part of Ghana, and the children are well to do. A community member allegedly accused the woman, [00:40:00] and within 24 hours, six children of this woman arrived in the village. The best of cars that the village has never seen, arrived in the best of dressing the village, possibly have never seen, and that whole conversation died. Peter Mintir Amadu: So this is what it means for our women. Some of them just go through some of these things just because there's nobody to fight for them. And so if the youth of today are educated about mental health, and they're ready to assertively speak for people who are accused wrongly, I'm sure we can go somewhere. We will get a way towards finally minimizing this banishment from our communities. Peter Mintir Amadu: And that's why our activities as an organization have taken the youth dimension, where we want the young ones to lead. So we have a basic school mental health advocate. We have secondary, senior high school mental health advocate, and we have tertiary mental [00:41:00] health advocate, where we want the youth to lead the advocacy, youth leading change in the environment, so that they themselves can learn about mental health, educate their colleagues, and provide the resilience that they need, because I keep saying that in the area of our life, I have come to realize that, in my little study in the area of psychology, I have come to develop a statement that I say that we are what we think. And this is premised from Epictetus quote of, 'it is not what happens to you, but how you react to it,' Epictetus, the great philosopher. So I've come to believe that what we think as a community. What we think as a people is what we live with, because we come to think that once I don't make progress in life, somebody's behind that, my challenge. Somebody has not studied, somebody have not invested in his youthfulness, and he think the old lady in the village is the reason [00:42:00] why he's not in the best of motorbike, he's not using the best of cars, he's not in the best of building. But that is just because of the way the person is thinking. Peter Mintir Amadu: If we can engage our youth to begin to look at the way they think that will have a great influence in the behavior that will exhibit in their old age and all of that. So the reason why we, the youth have become a focus Sarah Jack: Peter Mintir Amadu: and we think that if we can do this and do this very much, I'm sure our next generation will be better in terms of mental health access and service provision. Peter Mintir Amadu: Let me divert a little bit to the area of women. The reason why we have also diverted to women as a focus. A traumatized woman, an battered woman, and a woman that is battling one challenge or the other cannot raise the best leader of the world. How can [00:43:00] that woman raise a a child, who has been accused of witchcraft? That woman is in pain. That woman is traumatized, and she cannot be in the best frame of mind to raise an adult who become that responsible in society. So we need to support our women and that is an area where we have, we taught, because the research in that area is quite scanty. And the work we have done, we have a number of data just waiting to publish this and let the people understand that we need to support women and the youth, if we want a better society. Josh Hutchinson: Are there ways that we and our listeners can support your efforts? Peter Mintir Amadu: We have often called for support from the international community. And I must admit we have been operating for the past, seven, eight years. We really don't have any funding, we [00:44:00] don't have any donor, and we don't have anybody who comes to, say, at the beginning of the year, 'what are your plans? Take this and begin to implement in the area of youth mental health or adolescent mental health and in the area of maternal mental health.' No, but we just do this outta passion. Sarah Jack: The invitation from you has been my fuel or my source of motivation. Because I keep telling people if goodwill was filling bank accounts, I'm sure I could compete with Bill Gates and his compatriots, because people tell me what you do is good, but that doesn't translate to money in my bank account. It doesn't translate to fuel in the vehicles that we use as an organization. Peter Mintir Amadu: But can we stop? Somebody must be ready to take this somewhere. So in the area of funding, I must admit, we have been challenged. And we will more open [00:45:00] and more ready to collaborate with international organization, local organization,even individuals who are passionate about the issues of alleged witchcraft and want to support. We are more ready to collaborate with them, especially to send our psychologists to these women every quarter or even every month. I cannot fund that now. Peter Mintir Amadu: So we can only call for support from the international community. But even before the international community come, I want to charge even my own people, the local community, our chiefs, our government functionaries, and the CSOs in Ghana, to see this as a priority, to see this as a need, because if a section of our population are suffering, we cannot claim to be complete. Peter Mintir Amadu: For us, I will say, if there are any international organizations that want to partner with us to make mental health [00:46:00] services readily available for these women, the immediate community, the health workers within this community, I must admit, we are, we will be grateful to collaborate and to assure you that your funds that you are donating, your funds that you are pushing through TOLEC will really reach these women in ways that will change their lives, because we will build their capacity. Peter Mintir Amadu: We will resource them, and they may not need to continue dependent on the occasional support that people can. People just come and they're coming with a handful of rice. How long will this woman take with this? Sustaining income? Income where they can depend on. So we are more open and we are ready and very willing to collaborate with international organizations to provide therapy, to provide infrastructure, to provide shelter, and to provide clothing [00:47:00] and food for these women, because these are their areas of need. Sarah Jack: And now for Minute with Mary. Mary-Louise Bingham: It was an honor to meet with advocate on gender-based violence in India, Neelesh Singh. Neelesh and his team help women who are wrongfully accused of practicing sorcery heal both physically and emotionally so they can find their voice and pay it forward. Education is key for the women who learn their legal rights for their unique circumstances. Mary-Louise Bingham: To heal the hearts of these wounded survivors, Neelesh and his team offer counseling, music, and art therapy. The art therapy will start small. The survivors will expand their art until they feel comfortable to create street art on walls donated by various law enforcement agencies. In other cases, women will be encouraged to write and direct their own street plays, telling the public of their stories to create [00:48:00] awareness and education. Mary-Louise Bingham: Stay tuned for an upcoming episode on this podcast where you will hear more details as to how Neelesh's team empower by helping the survivors gain confidence and find their inner strength so they can be heard. Thank you. Sarah Jack: Thank you, Mary. Josh Hutchinson: And here's Sarah with End Witch Hunts News. Sarah Jack: End Witch Hunts, a non profit, 501c3 organization, Weekly News Update. As we step into Women's History Month, starting Friday, March 1st, with International Women's Day on March 8th, embracing the theme, 'Inspire Inclusion,' I prompt you to reflect on the embodiment of the international woman. Who does she remind you of? A figure of historical significance, or perhaps someone enduring the trials of today's world? Sarah Jack: When pondering the enduring persecution and marginalization faced by women throughout history, your thoughts may gravitate towards the women in northern and northeast Ghana [00:49:00] relegated to witch camps due to accusations of witchcraft. These camps, a stark reality for many, symbolize not just the psychological and quality of life detriment stemming from such accusations, but also connect us to a broader narrative that spans centuries and continents. Sarah Jack: The prevalence of depression, influenced by factors like gender, marital status, and the absence of biological children among these women in witch camps, coupled with their almost universally low quality of life, underscores the critical mental health and well being issues they face. Sarah Jack: These women living on the fringes of society are the modern day echoes of the ancestors who faced execution in historical witch trials, embodying the perennial outcasts, the feared 'witch' within their communities. Sarah Jack: As International Women's Day urges us to inspire inclusion, let's remember that the international woman of history is also the woman in a Ghanaian witch camp today. She is the mother, sister, and daughter [00:50:00] ensnared in these circumstances. But she's also the advocate fighting for those trapped in the shadows of vulnerability. In the coming weeks, we invite you to join us in a conversation about women around the world who endure persecution and exclusion,branded as outcasts and feared as witches in their communities. Sarah Jack: This Women's History Month, we are called upon to partake in the collective action to impact history for women everywhere. How are you contributing to this chorus of voices, both past and present, forging a future where dialogue is not just powerful, but transformative, evolving into actions that construct a true realm of justice? Together, we can shift narratives and foster a world where inclusivity reigns supreme. Honoring those who have suffered and paving the way for a future where no woman stands alone in the face of injustice. Josh Hutchinson: Thank you, Sarah. Sarah Jack: You're welcome. Josh Hutchinson: And thank you for listening to Witch Hunt. Sarah Jack: Join us next week. Josh Hutchinson: Subscribe wherever you're [00:51:00] listening. Sarah Jack: Visit us at aboutwitchhunts.com/. Josh Hutchinson: And remember to tell your friends, families, acquaintances, neighbors, and anybody you meet about witch hunt. Sarah Jack: Support our efforts to end witch hunts. Visit endwitchhunts.org to learn more. Josh Hutchinson: Have a great today and a beautiful tomorrow.
This week on Witch Hunt, we delve into lesser-known witch trials and local lore with Dr. Tricia Peone, Project Director at the Congregational Library & Archives. Our engaging discussion highlights the stories of individuals like Eunice Cole and Jane Walford, bringing to light the history of witchcraft accusations in New Hampshire from the earliest case in 1648 to a significant incident in the 1790s. You will discover how the local community’s efforts to revitalize the reputation of Eunice immortalized her in the public consciousness of Hampton, NH. Dr. Peone provides deep local insights, revealing the complexities beneath the surface. After listening to today’s episode, you might find yourself inspired to explore Eunice Cole’s history firsthand.
Josh Hutchinson: Welcome to Witch Hunt, the leading podcast on the witch trials of the past and the continued witch hunts of today. I'm Josh Hutchinson.
Sarah Jack: And I'm Sarah Jack.
Josh Hutchinson: We're descendants of women accused of witchcraft.
Sarah Jack: And we're here to tell stories of people like them.
Josh Hutchinson: In this episode, we're talking to Dr. Tricia Peone about witchcraft accusations in New Hampshire.
Sarah Jack: In 1648, Jane Walford became the first New Hampshire woman to be accused of witchcraft. Learn what happened to her and the others who followed.
Josh Hutchinson: As in other witch hunts, socioeconomic and religious factors played a significant role in spurring witchcraft accusations in New Hampshire.
Sarah Jack: Spectral evidence was still in [00:01:00] use in a case from the 1790s, a full century after the Salem Witch-Hunt.
Josh Hutchinson: Dr. Peone tells us all about Eunice Cole's case and its unique historical significance.
Sarah Jack: We also discuss recent efforts to exonerate Eunice Cole.
Josh Hutchinson: And close with various commemorative efforts and public interest in Hampton.
Sarah Jack: We are honored to welcome Dr. Tricia Peone. Dr. Peone holds a PhD in history from the University of New Hampshire, specializing in the study of witchcraft and witch trials with a particular focus on New England.
Josh Hutchinson:
Josh Hutchinson: And I am a historian. I specialize in the history of magic and witchcraft in the 17th and 18th centuries. And my job is I work at the Congregational Library and Archives, which is in Boston. And I manage a project called the New England's Hidden Histories Project, which is looking at Congregational Church [00:02:00] records throughout New England and digitizing them and making them accessible by publishing them online. So I've been in that job for about a year, a little over a year, but before that I've worked as a researcher, I've taught classes on the history of witchcraft and public history, and I did a PhD at the University of New Hampshire, and I was focusing on the history of magic and witchcraft in New England.
Tricia Peone: So it is truly my favorite thing in the world to study. And I'm very lucky that right now I have a job whereI get to think about Puritans all day, which not everyone would enjoy, but it can be fun. We get a lot of Cotton Mather jokes at work,and occasionally we do get to do some programming about witchcraft.
Josh Hutchinson: That's excellent. And what drew you into this, the field to study witchcraft?
Tricia Peone: I have a distinct memory of being in the library at the elementary school I [00:03:00] attended and finding a book on the Salem Witch Trials, and I kept returning to that book. It was a really fun book to read, and I figured out later, I tried to figure out what, what,children's books about witchcraft were available in the 1980s to figure out what book it was that I'd been reading. And I think it was Shirley Jackson's History of the Salem Witch Trials. So I think that was the first book that caught my interest at a very young age. When I was in college, I think I was an art major for a while, and then art history, and then I switched over to history, and I wasn't sure what I wanted to do exactly, but I found out that you could, in fact, study the history of witchcraft and read some of the exciting books that had come out.
Tricia Peone: There was a huge flurry of publications in the 90s because of the anniversary of the Salem Witch Trials. So there's a lot of new research coming out about the history of witchcraft, and I, my interest was really piqued by that. And I did a master's in history, and I wrote about the Salem witch [00:04:00] trials, and then went on to do a PhD in history. It's not, like, maybe not the best career choice for anyone or for a historian to go into witchcraft studies, but it is probably the most interesting thing that you can study, in my opinion. You'll never be bored. There's talking cats, you got ghosts, you got haunted houses, what more could you want?
Sarah Jack: Today, we're going to talk about witch trials in New Hampshire. What background do we need to know about colonial New Hampshire?
Tricia Peone: New Hampshire is kind of an outlier in New England, although I think other New England states, I think Vermont and Maine and Rhode Island and Connecticut actually could also make that same case, but New Hampshire's a little bit different than what we think about when we think of New England, and you had a great episode with Emerson Baker a while back talking about the Devil of Great Island on his New Hampshire cases. Some of your listeners probably have heard from him how unique New Hampshire is, and it's kind of a weird place on the seacoast in that period, but there are at least four [00:05:00] cases where women face trial or some kind of court action for witchcraft in New Hampshire in the 17th century.
Tricia Peone: What I think is especially interesting about New Hampshire, though, is, particularly in this one case I want to tell you about, which is the case of Eunice Cole in Hampton, New Hampshire. She's charged with witchcraft a few times in the 17th century, but she has this, her story has this kind of a second life in the 20th century. Because this is the first time, it's in 1938, her community, Hampton, goes through basically the first community exoneration for someone accused of witchcraft.
Tricia Peone: And not a lot of people know that story, and it is really interesting. So that, I think that is one of New Hampshire's unique qualities, is that you have a community in the 1930s during the Depression that decides to revisit their past and think about what their responsibility is as a community to people who were accused of witchcraft.
Tricia Peone: So no one was executed in New Hampshire for witchcraft, but there are some formal court cases and there are[00:06:00] at least a dozen or so other pretty interesting accusations of witchcraft that happen. The last accusation that results in the community coming together to take some action is 100 years after Salem. It's in the 1790s. So it,New Hampshire also provides us with some clear evidence that witchcraft continued to be a concern for people, long after the Salem Witch Trials, even after the American Revolution.
Josh Hutchinson: That is a long history of witchcraft accusations. When was the first witchcraft case in New Hampshire?
Tricia Peone: Probably 1648. That's the first one we know of. And that's happening at the same time as the other early cases in New England, right? You've got 1647 and 1648 in Connecticut and Massachusetts with their first cases in court action. So 1648 in Portsmouth.
Sarah Jack: And what were primary factors that led to New Hampshire accusations?
Tricia Peone: The typical ones you'd expect, disagreements between [00:07:00] neighbors, old grudges. Jane Walford, who's the first woman accused of witchcraft in 1648, her neighbors accused her for several decades of being a witch. Someone said they'd overheard her husband call her an old witch, someone said they saw her turn into a cat, and, so those are the kinds of, typical accusations you might hear, but she was pretty interesting, because she took her accusers to court for slander, and she actually won, so that is one of the weird things about New Hampshire, is that at the same time as other New England coloniers are going through their sort of first attempts to formalize court actions against witches, you In Portsmouth, a woman accused of witchcraft is able to successfully defend her reputation. So there's a case where a physician from Boston calls her a witch, and he says he has proof and the court actually finds for her. So they order this physician to pay her five pounds for the damage to her reputation.
Josh Hutchinson: Wow.
Tricia Peone: Certainly [00:08:00] unusual.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah. You expect the slander cases to happen later. Owen Davies calls them the reverse witch trials. So yeah, that's interesting.
Tricia Peone: Yeah, the first, from the first case in 1648, her accusers ordered to publicly apologize to her.
Josh Hutchinson: Really that early?
Tricia Peone: Yep. But that doesn't stop her. The woman accuses her again later.
Josh Hutchinson: Doesn't learn a lesson.
Tricia Peone: Right.
Sarah Jack: Do you, so what would have a public apology been like there? Would have that happened at a church service?
Tricia Peone: I would imagine, typically, it would be at a church service, although Portsmouth is a little different in thatthere were Anglican and Congregational churches competing for a little bit for people's attention. And the court moved around, so quarterly courts moved around, so it's, I don't think it's clear where that public apology would have happened, but, yeah, probably either in a court or the meeting house.
Josh Hutchinson: And how did, [00:09:00] macro scale factors like social, economic, and religious elements, how did those factors play a role in spurring witchcraft accusations?
Tricia Peone: I think in New Hampshire, you can tell those are certainly important elements to accusations. Around 1679 and 1680, when New Hampshire is officially, becoming a royal colony and separating from Massachusetts, there's a little outbreak of witchcraft accusations that happens in Hampton, so you can possibly point to that as saying, there's some political uncertainty going on,they typically, they're these cases in New Hampshire are following similar trends in the 17th century.
Sarah Jack: In New Hampshire, what influenced the proceedings in those trials?
Tricia Peone: I think that the evidence in some of these cases shows that everyone believed in magic, that it's a pretty universal belief, and certainly that's true for 17th century New Hampshire. You get some interesting kind of [00:10:00] little glimpses of what people's magical beliefs were. Like you can tell in the case, The Devil of Great Island, Emerson Baker talks about practicing countermagic. They boil urine to try to break the curse. One of the cases in Hampton shows that this woman, Rachel Fuller, who's accused of witchcraft, it sounds like she, in 1680, she'd been trying to help a sick child, like she'd gone to visit their house. They said that she brought some herbs with her, that she was, like, rubbing her hands by the fire, she spread the herbs around, and she said, the child will be well, and then she told them they should plant sweet bay in front of their house to keep witches out, and then she's accused of witchcraft because the child dies.
Tricia Peone: So I think that it shows us that people certainly did believe in what we might call superstitions today, butyou can also see it as just part of their worldview. This is a way that people thought they could protect themselves, that you could plant some bay leaves by the door to keep witches out. That certain rituals and practices might help with illness. So I think the cases show both sides of that, [00:11:00] so they're accusing people of witchcraft when things go wrong, but if things went well, if that child had recovered, Rachel Fuller probably would not have been accused of witchcraft, if her alleged magic had worked.
Josh Hutchinson: It was just a part of daily life that magic could happen anywhere, anytime around you. And that continues to be the case for many people around the world today. So you've talked a bit about some of the notable cases. You had mentioned that Jane Walford, her accuser that she took to court in 1648, that accuser came back around again to complain about her?
Tricia Peone: Yeah, Jane Walford had, I think her reputation was tarnished in the community, she, I think she was a bit wealthier than her neighbors, but she was widowed. Some of the testimony against her is like[00:12:00] saying that they saw a cat.One woman testifies that her friend was being followed by a yellow cat, and they couldn't catch the cat. There's a lot of testimony about cats as being suspicious, and that's what some of this evidence against her is.
Tricia Peone: Her daughter was later accused of witchcraft, Hannah Jones, who was accused of witchcraft in that case with the Waltons at the Walton Tavern in Newcastle, so you do have that family connection, so I don't think Jane Walford's reputation ever was repaired, even though she was successful in court, which is interesting,even when the courts are reluctant to convict. in New Hampshire, we could maybe say was using a different standard of evidence than Massachusetts, but that still means there's still damage to the reputation and to the family'srole in the community, because her daughter was also accused of witchcraft, so even when she's wealthier, she has the power to take people to court, even taking a man to court for calling her a witch and winning, that's still not really winning in the community, right? That's not going to repair those relationships.
Sarah Jack:
Josh Hutchinson: I was wondering [00:13:00] what would the evidentiary standards have been in New Hampshire at that time.
Tricia Peone: They should have been following English law. They should have been using the same kinds of legal references and guidebooks as Massachusetts Bay would have been using. I have not seen any evidence from courts in New Hampshire of what they're referring to, other than referring to the law in England. So then hopefully what they want is, you always want the person to confess, that's usually the best evidence. If not, you want to have two people who could testify to seeing the same act of witchcraft, something that shows that they're involved in a pact with the devil, which I think is usually why they're talking about cats so much. One, because they're just suspicious of cats, but also if you can show that that cat is their animal familiar, if you can find the witch's mark on their body, which is something they do in the case of Eunice Cole, they do find a mark, then that's evidence of the pact with the [00:14:00] devil. So that's the kind of evidence they're looking for that's the best.
Josh Hutchinson: And who isn't suspicious of cats?
Tricia Peone: I love them, but who knows what they're really up to.
Josh Hutchinson: Exactly.
Tricia Peone: There's a lot of talking cats in the New Hampshire cases. You see it in Salem, too. There's a few, some of the people mentioned a cat talking to them. In one of the New Hampshire cases, a little girl testifies that this gray cat offered her fancy things if she would agree to become a witch. Sounds like a good deal to me.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah. Those fancy things also appeared at Salem in many of the descriptions of what the devil was offering people.
Tricia Peone: Yep. Yeah. You see cases like the devil offers to help you with your chores, to buy you a new dress, to buy, to give you fancy things. So these are humble requests I think of, to make of Satan.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah. We had one in Connecticut where he was sweeping the hearth.
Tricia Peone: You would think maybe a waste of his time, but I guess [00:15:00] not.
Josh Hutchinson: I know, right?
Sarah Jack: Are there any connections between New Hampshire trials and the Salem witch hunt as far as people or families?
Tricia Peone: Oh yeah, quite a few. So Susanna Martin, who was executed during the Salem Witch Trial, she lived briefly in New Hampshire. She lived in Stratham for a while. And one of the first accusations against her that comes up is, so we don't have evidence of it in New Hampshire, but it comes up that this is like, it happened in New Hampshire when she was living there. She's accused of infanticide and fornication and witchcraft. And this is when she was young. I think she was a servant in a house in New Hampshire and then ended up back inwhat's Amesbury, Massachusetts now.
Josh Hutchinson: And there were a few New Hampshire residents who were named during the Salem Witch Trials.
Tricia Peone: Yeah. And there's definitely family connections. There are people who moved from Massachusetts to New Hampshire afterwards.[00:16:00] So yeah, there's definitely quite a few New Hampshire connections.
Josh Hutchinson: What kind of spectral evidence comes up in the New Hampshire accusations?
Tricia Peone: There's actually spectral evidence in one of the later cases, the case in the 1790s that takes place in Campton, New Hampshire, which is up in the White Mountains. And it has some parallels to Salem. It's interesting because it's literally a hundred years after the Salem witch trials take place. And that's the case against a woman called Polly Wiley. And the only evidence we really have about her case is a letter. So it's just this one document. It's at the New Hampshire Historical Society. And it is written by the minister, Reverend Selden Church, and he's basically, he writes this letter, it's signed by a group of 14 other men in town.
Tricia Peone: So all we really have is this one document, I'm not entirely sure what [00:17:00] happens afterwards. So we just have this one document that shows us this one moment in time, and I haven't found any other evidence really about who she was, because there's a couple people in Campton and Thornton, a neighboring town, who might have been Polly Wiley , not 100 percent sure yet.
Tricia Peone: So all we really have, we take this document at face value. Basically it sounds like they're responding to an accusation of witchcraft that Polly Wiley makes against several other people in the community. The men who are writing the document and signing it are saying they're not really sure if she is bewitched, if she is possessed. They don't know if she has a medical illness, so they're not really sure what is happening, but what they describe is that she's got bite marks on her, she's seeing things, and from their perspective, these are the men, these are the propertied wealthy men in the town, and the minister, who's the arbiter of this dispute, and what their concern is, They say, it's not safe to be sure.
Tricia Peone: They're not sure if it's the devil or witchcraft or a medical illness, but their [00:18:00] concern is that people in town and people from other towns are starting to come to Polly Wiley to ask her to name the other witches in the neighborhood. Similar parallels to Salem, definitely. You have this, this, asking someone to name, name witches, people are coming to her and asking her, they're trying to test her, doing some of the traditional tests of witchcraft, to figure out what's going on, and so she's got these wounds and scratches all over her body, she is having these difficulties. She says she's seeing people that are invisible to everyone else in the room, but she can see them. So she's seeing these specters and people in town want her to say who they are. So that's all we know. That's all there is.
Tricia Peone: And then we have the 14 men who sign it and say, they're urging caution, basically. They're saying, let's not jump to conclusions, we're not entirely sure what's happening here. It's possible that this is witchcraft. It's possible that these are specters. And so we don't know what happened after that, but it's a weird little glimpse, a little window into what was [00:19:00] going on up in the White Mountains in the 1790s, so it's the period after the American Revolution, they're just founding this town, and there's clearly some kind of tension.
Tricia Peone: And clearly some kind of maybe unexplained illnesses, some other mysterious happenings, but you have a young woman who is essentially saying that she's seeing the specters of other witches and people want more information. But the town leaders are saying, let's try to maybe put a damper on this and take a breath and figure out what's happening. Sadly, we don't know what happens, but it is definitely a, an interesting case.
Josh Hutchinson: It's really telling that a hundred years after Salem, someone presenting the same symptoms as the afflicted of Salem they urge caution now in that new era.
Tricia Peone: And, so we can read it that way, and you're right, they're urging caution, which, but people at Salem urged caution, as well. They [00:20:00] just didn't follow it until it was too late. But we can also read it as this is a continuation of those beliefs, just because the formal trials and executions for witchcraft have stopped in New England by that point. It doesn't, it didn't necessarily stop people believing in witchcraft and believing that witches were responsible for their illness.
Sarah Jack: Yeah, it's interesting to me around that same time in Vermont, we have one secondary source reporting on a witch accusation, and we don't get that lens of the community saying, 'Hey, let's take caution,' but we do know that they, she went before a committee, that they wanted to test her. Was she a witch? They threw her in the river. So here you are, a hundred years later, this is two different states or colonies that it's coming up in the community and they're not exactly sure what to make of it still.
Tricia Peone: [00:21:00] It continues, and just because the courts aren't really interested doesn't mean people aren't interested in it, doesn't mean communities wouldn't take action in both these cases. And I don't know, in Vermont, I don't know if the church was involved or not in arbitrating that dispute, but they certainly were in Campton, in this case in the 1790s in New Hampshire. There's still this role that ministers are playing, because they are still ministers, Congregational ministers, anyway, still had to believe in witchcraft, and ghosts, part of the job.
Sarah Jack: Is there anything else about the Congregationalists really informative to witch trial history?
Tricia Peone: I think, when we think about the Puritans, a lot of the ideas we have about them are they're witch hunters, they'repuritanical, right? We still use that word today, but when we look at the history of witchcraft in New England, that there are people that were congregationalists, attending church regularly who believed in and sometimes practiced [00:22:00] magic.
Tricia Peone: And you see even ministers who are sometimes confused about exactly what's happening in their congregations. A lot of ministers, Cotton Mather, John Hale, they would write about they're parishioners using magic, using witchcraft to harm their neighbors. And they're not always positive what is the real cause when something unusual happens to you or happens in your community, someone's becomes unexpectedly ill, they're not always certain if it's the devil, if it's a medical illness, or if it's caused by witchcraft.
Tricia Peone: And so I think that uncertainty continues definitely in through the 18th century, even in the 19th century, and probably still today, right?
Josh Hutchinson: What are some of the primary sources or documents that have been crucial in your research?
Tricia Peone: Because New Hampshire was part of Massachusetts for much of the 17th century, a lot of the New Hampshire documents are in the Massachusetts State Archives.[00:23:00] So Eunice Cole, I think, is the case where we have the most documentation. They're the most records about her. Jane Walford, there's just a little bit and some of it secondhand, but Eunice Cole, I think we have the most.There's some of her indictments, the testimonies against her survive, and they're at the Mass State Archives. And then, of course, her case is,it's all over the newspapers in the 20th century, so there's a lot of really amazing illustrated newspapers and commentary about her case, where you have people in the 1930s looking back at what survived from the 17th century and reinterpreting the evidence, when they're trying to put forward this effort to exonerate her.
Sarah Jack: I was thinking about that community exoneration effort, and I believe they burned replicas of the court documents as a symbol of clearing her name, purifying what happened. How much additional lore has developed around her? Is she a figure of lore as well?
Tricia Peone: Yeah, so she definitely is. She's so [00:24:00] fascinating, because she was reviled by her community. They hated her in the 17th century. Three decades, she's being brought up on charges. She's kept in jail. They send her to jail in Boston. The town has to pay for her to be in jail. There's a lot of animosity towards this woman.
Tricia Peone: The evidence against her in her cases, which I think they start in her first witchcraft case, I , think is in 1656, but she had faced some other charges before then. She was accused ofslander. She was accused of stealing pigs. So she was known to the community to be somewhat disagreeable.
Tricia Peone: So her first formal kind of accusation of witchcraft is in 1656. Her neighbors offered a lot of testimony against her. She's brought again to court in 1673. And then the final one is in 1680. So you have these three, and evidence survives from these. So we can read the testimony and see what people were saying about her.
Tricia Peone: Her neighbors say things like, they saw her in church once with a mouse in her lap. All right. One of her, one of her neighbors says that she went to [00:25:00] visit a sick friend and Eunice Cole had been there the same day. She had just been there and then the friend comes over. And the man who is sick complains and says that he saw a gray cat near his bed and then he cried out, 'Lord, have mercy upon me. The cat hath killed me and broken my heart.' And it was implied that Eunice Cole was the cat. So she's causing illness. They did find some really great evidence against her, but the court continued to be hesitant to convict her, but they did send her to jail. So they said that, they were suspicious of her and that she should be in jail, but they were not ready to execute her. So they didn't.
Tricia Peone: But at one of her trials, she was sentenced to be whipped publicly and then sent to jail, which is, I think, interesting. And when she's whipped, they see that she has a witch's teat. So she has, they see a mark under her breast that looks like it's blue and they're not sure what it [00:26:00] is and they think that this is where her animal familiars, maybe the mouse, maybe the cats, are suckling from her in the night.
Tricia Peone: And then they go back to look at it again to examine the mark, and she's scratched it off. So she's accused of concealing some of this great evidence against her. She's accused of enchanting an oven. So there's a lot. People say that they heard voices coming out of her house when she was alone. So she's like allegedly having conversations with Satan. She was accused, a girl accused her, a young girl who's nine years old, Ann Smith, she said that she had tried to entice her, that Eunice Cole offered her plums to come and live with her, and the girl said no, and Eunice Cole pushed her and hit her with a rock. So Eunice Cole runs away, a cat appears in her place, this is when the cat offers the girl fine things if she will go and live with Eunice Cole, but she doesn't. There's tons, there's overwhelming evidence, but they found that she wasn't legally guilty, in spite of this testimony, but that there was just ground of vehement suspicion of [00:27:00] her for having had familiarity with the devil.
Tricia Peone: It's cyclical in the community. What's going on? Let's accuse Eunice Cole of witchcraft again. She's in and out of jail. She comes back to town. Her husband dies. She becomes a town charge.And when she dies, according to town legend, they found her in her shack, and they buried her body with a stake through her heart and then a horseshoe around the stake so that her spirit wouldn't be able to escape and haunt them.
Tricia Peone: However, the town folklore also says that her ghost still haunts and walks the streets of Hampton, and so people have said that they've seen her over the years, and to this day, allegedly, her ghost is unsettled and upset, and so that was part of the justification for exonerating her was to appease her ghost.
Tricia Peone: So her whole reputation goes through a rehabilitation, starting in the 19th century, because in the [00:28:00] 19th century you get more of the sort of romantic idea of Puritans and witchcraft. So she's in a John Greenleaf Whittier poem, he writes about her in a poem called "The Wreck of the Rivermouth." And in that poem she's kind of sympathetic. Like, yeah, she caused this shipwreck. But she felt bad about it, right? And it was because people were cruel to her. So in the 19th century, the stories you have about Eunice Cole are more that she wasmaybe a little rough around the edges, but that basically the community was mean to her and had wronged her.
Tricia Peone: It's such a fascinating case. So then what, by the time you get to the 20th century, the community decides, and I'm not totally sure where the motivation comes from in the community to do this rehabilitation and create this monument, but it comes up around the 300th anniversary of the town. So 1938 is the 300th anniversary of the English founding of Hampton. And so at town meeting that year, the citizens get together and they vote to exonerate her and they say they're going to create this memorial. It's not [00:29:00] totally clear like why they want to do this, but what they say, and take it with a grain of salt, is they say in a newspaper article from 1938, they say the reason for the exoneration was part of the current revolt against the Puritan tradition. So that's what some of the people involved were saying, that it's a rejection of the Puritan past, but why in 1938? That's one of the kind of unanswered questions. So they have town meeting in March of 1938. The residents vote on an article, and the article says, quote, 'We, the citizens of the town of Hampton, do hereby declare that we believe that Eunice Cole was unjustly accused of witchcraft and familiarity with the devil in the 17th century, and we do hereby restore her to her rightful place as a citizen of the town of Hampton.'
Tricia Peone: And then they resolved that they would celebrate her during the 300th anniversary that summer, that they would have these ceremonies, which, as you mentioned, it's when they decide to publicly burn the certified copies of the [00:30:00] documents from her various trials. And then they take the ashes from those documents, and they take some soil from where she had lived,some soil from the earth, and they mix them together and they put them in an urn, and then they said they were going to bury that on the town green, but it's actually in the Tuck Museum, so you can go see that and see some of these artifacts from her, from the case of Eunice Cole in Hampton.
Tricia Peone: But it sounds very ritualistic, right? Like they're doing, it sounds a little bit like sorcery to me, like burning these documents symbolically, mixing them with earth, burying them, but that's what they did. And then they declared August 25th of 1938 to be Goody Cole Day. They always call her Goody Cole like the Puritan address, Goodwife, so short for Goodwife, Goody Cole. They had a pageant, they reenacted some of her trials, okay, dramatizing the events, like someone wrote a play, and the town all comes and they listen to this reenactment of the events, there are speeches, [00:31:00] there's a big party, there's the Hampton Beach Bandstand, 3, 000 people attend the ceremony, it's covered in the national news. It got a fair amount of attention. Famous people were there, government officials, they created a commemorative coin and a doll that like, is supposed to look like Goody Cole. Again, slightly witchy, but yeah, and you can see those things also at the Tuck Museum. They have the urn, they have the doll, they have the coins. And there's pictures online if you want to see them. So this, these efforts are all being led by this group, and the group calls themselves the Society in Hampton for the Apprehension of those Falsely Accusing Goody Cole for Having Familiarity with the Devil, and they made membership cards to be in this society. Not like a catchy name, really, but that's what they went with. And so they're making the coin, they make the doll, they're rehabilitating her public image. And it's a moment in New Hampshire history where New Hampshire could have been the site of witchcraft tourism before Salem really [00:32:00] took that on. It could have been Hampton, New Hampshire, and apparently there was some witchcraft-based tourism in the 1930s and afterwards. People visitedone of the alleged sites where she had lived, and they come to see this huge event at the bandstand on the beach. Quite an amazing story. They promised to build a memorial in 1938. They actually didn't. They didn't leave anything permanent after that ceremony, but then in 1963, the town placed a boulder on the town green, and then they put the plaque there at the town's 375th anniversary, which was in 2013, so there is a marker on the town green that you can go and see, but compared to the other markers in New England, this one gets very little attention, right?
Tricia Peone: Literally hundreds of thousands of people will walk through the city of Salem and see the witchcraft memorials there, and very few people know about Eunice Cole or visit her marker.
Sarah Jack: And Eunice was not a confessor. She [00:33:00] didn't confess.
Tricia Peone: She did not confess, and she was not executed, and yet there is a marker, yeah.
Sarah Jack: And what about some of these other stories that we talked about today. Do they have markers or historical sites that are remembered today?
Tricia Peone: The only marker about witchcraft in New Hampshire is Eunice Cole's boulder on the town green in Hampton. There are other kind of, informal markers, there's Witch Creek, which runs through Portsmouth, and that appear that name appears on maps still, like USGS Maps today, and, it's most likely because of Jane Walford. That area where she lived is where the creek, runs through. So that's more informal, but yeah, the only monument to witchcraft in New Hampshire is Eunice Cole's boulder. Although, in the 1970s, there was a museum of witchcraft in New Hampshire, but that's a whole other story. It's not there anymore. It was only there for a few years. It was up at, up at Weir's Beach.[00:34:00]
Josh Hutchinson: And Goody Cole's memory has lived on, and there was an effort to exonerate her just last year.
Tricia Peone: Yeah, I didn't hear as much about the recent effort, but back before the pandemic, one of the state reps from Hampton, Renny Cushing,was, had started that effort. And I talked to him a little bit about it at the time, but then he's sadly, sadly died since then.
Tricia Peone: And I think the pandemic, too. So I hadn't, I actually haven't seen if what the state house actually decided to do in this case. So if you can, if you have an article you could send me, I'd actually love to read it. Cause I haven't seen if they, did they formally do anything? Cause it's a weird case because technically it was Massachusetts that convicted her.
Sarah Jack: It passed the House, but then in the Senate, it was voted down by party lines 14 to 10. And, yeah, but,there [00:35:00] is potential for legislation in Massachusetts that would clear her, so she's definitely not been forgotten.
Tricia Peone: I'll keep following it because it's, it's interesting to think about the fact that Hampton, before any other community, so before Massachusetts exonerated anyone or Connecticut, Hampton did it in 1938 and they did it through a town article. The town passed it. It wasn't the state, but they did it on a town level. Have you seen other towns that have taken action like that? Because I think it's mostly been on the state level, right?
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, Windsor, Connecticut has and Stratford, Connecticut did just last fall.
Tricia Peone: Interesting.
Sarah Jack: With Goody Bassett there. Yeah. I think these local community exonerations are so important to building that history at that local level. I think it's really important to see towns who have these connections to these [00:36:00] stories rehabilitating the reputations.
Tricia Peone: It is fascinating to me that New Hampshire did it first, right? It's bizarrethat's what happened. And the other, it was contentious, like not everyone in the community agreed in 1938 that's what they wanted to do. One of the descendants of someone who had accused Eunice Cole of witchcraft wrote to the town and was like, you can't overturn her conviction. You can't publicly say that she wasn't a witch because that disparages my ancestor. His ancestor had accused her of being a witch because she had cursed his cattle, he said, so he objected. And the town had to go through this PR process with him to get him to come to the ceremony. So he, this ancestor of one of her accusers did attend the ceremony, and agreed to like, not make a big fuss, but there were articles in the newspaper about it. Not everyone in the community agreed that they should exonerate someone accused multiple times by many people of witchcraft 300 years later.
Sarah Jack: But [00:37:00] isn't that such a great example of how, even though we fear, how does this hurt the accusers, their descendants or if we're looking at some kind of judgment from the state that just wasn't just, if we're going to make things right for the innocent, what are we, what is that saying about the authority? Or what does that do to the reputation of others? And I think that is an example in other communities that have come together through those questions that you can look at these hard histories, and everybody can come full circle and move forward with this acknowledgment of, hey, some things are not right here, but we want to make them right. And that's such a huge impact for others today.
Tricia Peone: Yeah, I think you're totally right, and I think that also shows the importance of [00:38:00] when a community or on the state level, local or state, like, when they're going through this process, to think about who all the stakeholders are, to think about, not just the descendants of the accused but the descendants of the accusers and having them be part of the process, cause I think, I think a lot of the people who have a genetic connection to the Salem Witch Trials might be on both sides, like you said, right? Josh, like you said, like you have both accusers and accused.
Josh Hutchinson: Right. I have accusers and accused, and I have ancestors who were obviously conflicted about the witch trials. My grandfather, Joseph Hutchinson, ninth great grandfather, he was one of the first accusers who signed the first complaint against Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne, but then later on, he signed the petition in defense of Rebecca Nurse, so he seems to have changed his [00:39:00] mind over the course of the trials, and I think there's a lot of stories like that, and, like you said, genetically, if you're related to one of the accused, because they're all it contributing to the same gene pool, the accused and the accuser families intermarried so much in the following generations that you're likely to have ancestors on both sides.
Sarah Jack: In Connecticut, there was an anonymous descendant who wanted to see exoneration for the accused who descended from accusers. So you have descendants of accusers who feel both ways. And you mentioned stakeholders. We are all stakeholders in this. I think that's why it keeps coming up, because we're the stakeholders of the dignity of humans.
Sarah Jack: And what do we know about it today? And what can we learn [00:40:00] from the bad things that happened in these courtrooms then? Let's look at them, let's look at these stories, the humanity there and have a different chapter ahead, not the same chapters, flipping through the stories that we're seeing on the news now that are too similar.
Tricia Peone: I would like to know more about your job. What can you tell us about New England's Hidden Histories?
Tricia Peone: So New England's Hidden Histories is a project that the Congregational Library and Archives has been working on for quite a while, and it's creating a digital archive to preserve and provide access to all early Congregational church records in New England. So if you go on the Congregational Library and Archives website, you can find New England's Hidden Histories, and currently there are records from more than a hundred churches, and as well as collections of personal papers, so we've got a lot of Cotton Mather's papers,and his father, some Increase Mather papers, as well.[00:41:00]
Tricia Peone: And the purpose is some of these records are, for one, they're really community records, right? Because, in Massachusetts, for example, the Congregational Church was the established church for a very long time. And sometimes a church record book, it's not just baptisms, marriages,it's not just the kind of genealogical information that's interesting for people looking for family members and their ancestry. It's also town meeting records. It's also tax records, like these, the church and state were very intertwined in the 17th and 18th century. And so these records tell a lot of really There are some fascinating stories. There are, you can find stories about, ministers who enslaved people. You can find about churches who purchased enslaved people to pay part of the salaries of their ministers. So there are stories of slavery.
Tricia Peone: There are stories of people confessing to all sorts of things. They would give public confessions in congregational churches, these relations of faith, to talk about their experiences. And you will often have people talking [00:42:00] about, whether it's like fornication or adultery, whatever sins they were committing. And those are some of the I think most interesting, from my perspective, records that you can read is these 18th century people confessing their sins to their entire community. But it also demonstrates again, like the things we see with the Salem Witch Trials of that importance of confession. So we, we talk about that for the Salem Witch Trials, that's what really what people wanted to hear. They wanted that confession of witchcraft and that it has not just this legal meaning, but also a social and a spiritual meaning. And so you can read people's confessions of all sorts of things, occasionally witchcraft, but other things, as well. So yeah, so it's a, it is a digital archive that is seeking to put together the records from congregational churches from all six New England states.
Josh Hutchinson: And what's the most recent date that is covered in that project?
Tricia Peone: We try to go up to about 1850, so we've got records from the 1620s, through about 1850.
Josh Hutchinson: Oh, That's excellent. [00:43:00] Yeah. Because my ancestors were all in the Congregational Church right down to my grandfather, who was a member of the First Congregational Church in Danvers.
Tricia Peone:
Tricia Peone: I think we have some Danvers and Salem church records.
Tricia Peone: It's really fun, it's always fun to see. It's not always a ton of information, but you might see oh, he was at this meeting and they elected him to be a church official or a deacon orjust seeing people's records of their marriage records. It's really, it's interesting to see it, to see the original, to see the actual 17th and 18th century hand of someone recording this information is always, I think it's always fun. It's a way of connecting with the past when you actually can look at these volumes.
Josh Hutchinson: Definitely. Yeah, I've seen the seating arrangements in those records before. Yeah, it gets pretty detailed about everything that went on in that community, especially around the church.
Tricia Peone: Yeah. [00:44:00] Congregationalists and New Englanders were amazing record keepers.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, thankfully for us.
Tricia Peone: So what survives isis really interesting. It's fun to think too about what didn't survive, right? We know that there are more records of witchcraft that were destroyed, and still,still new things turn up every once in a while. You'll find new documents,so we might not even know of all the New England witchcraft cases yet.
Josh Hutchinson: It's very true. Is there anything else that you wanted to discuss today?
Tricia Peone: I told you about Eunice Cole. I think that's really the most interesting New Hampshire story, is Eunice Cole. And then, yeah, I think the Polly Wiley case, too, of this kind of 100 years after Salem. It's a similar case, but goes in a different direction. The other interesting thing about New Hampshire, I think, is that in the 1970s, there was this museum of witchcraft, again, another opportunity for Hampton to be a witchy tourist destination that just didn't happen. So that's [00:45:00] a much more modern story, so probably not as interesting, but I do think this, the case in Hampton with this,the sort of the reinterpretation and the cleansing of Eunice Cole's reputation and how she changes in public memory over time, from being the most hated woman in the community to being a tragic romantic figure to beingalmost a local legend hero status, someone who was very defiant of authority, she bit a constable, she was, disagreeable, but plucky, right?
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, she had moxie.
Tricia Peone: Exactly.
Josh Hutchinson: Spirit. Yeah. And,it did, when you were describing the 1938 ceremony, it sounded like a ritual of atonement and maybe appeasement. I was wondering, in the 1930s, that's the Great Depression era, were they literally trying to appease and atone for what they did, [00:46:00] who knows?
Tricia Peone: Yeah, I think that's a great question. I want to find some more, see if there are any more records. I've seen the newspaper accounts talking about it, and I, but I wonder if there are any other personal accounts to find still, that kind of are people talking about why they felt this need, because that's, it's an outlier.
Tricia Peone: You have, the 1990s where everyone revisits the Salem Witch Trials. You have the 1880s, I think, is when they first started putting up some of the monuments to to Rebecca Nurse and John Proctor. And that's coming from families who are doing that in the 1880s, 1890s, and then there's this gap and then it's 1938, this community gets together in New Hampshire. And I think, yeah, I think, they're trying to absolve the town of guilt through their efforts, but at the same time, they're trying to make a profit, right? They're like, they're saying like, come to Hampton, come to the beach, buy a doll, get a commemorative coin, come give us your tourism dollars. It's the depression. We, we need it. I think there's a couple of different angles
Tricia Peone: to
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, that's good, it's a [00:47:00] good marketing strategy, whether that was the intent or not.
Tricia Peone: I'm fascinated too that they're saying in the newspaper that they're trying to reject this Puritan past, 300 years after the settlement of the town. I think Puritans are always being reassessed.
Sarah Jack: And now for a minute with Mary.
Mary-Louise Bingham: Sarah Parker was accused of the capital crime for which her mother, Mary, hanged in 1692 at Salem, Massachusetts, British America, witchcraft. However, Sarah was not legally condemned. Still, Sarah suffered the same environment as those who stood trial. After her arrest, she lived at the Salem jail for 17 weeks where she experienced the suffering and sickness of her neighbors.
Mary-Louise Bingham: It was here that Sarah was told of her mother's death, leaving her to grieve in isolation and fear her own fate. She was eventually released from [00:48:00] jail. In 1710, Sarah's brothers added her jail fees into their accounts when they filed a petition for restitution for their mother. Only Mary's fees were reimbursed. In 1712, Sarah filed a petition on her own behalf. She was denied. Sarah's trauma in 1692 was due in large part by the actions of the government. Today, the state of Massachusetts owes Sarah Parker and the Parker family a sincere apology.
Sarah Jack: Thank you, Mary.
Josh Hutchinson: Sarah has End Witch Hunts News.
Sarah Jack: End Witch Hunts, a nonprofit 501c3 organization, Weekly News Update. The Massachusetts Witch Hunt Justice Project is a project of End Witch Hunts. This project continues its vital mission building on previous legislative successes that acknowledge the convictions of the Salem Witch Trials. Yet, a significant number of Individuals, [00:49:00] notably five executed in Boston and others accused, still lack formal recognition from the Massachusetts General Court for the injustices they endured.
Sarah Jack: The Massachusetts Witch Trials occurred between 1638 and 1693. During this period of 55 years, At least 254 individuals were accused of witchcraft in Massachusetts. 209 of these were complained of, implicated in court, questioned, arrested, and or imprisoned. The other 45 were defamed, named socially, but not complained of legally or have been linked to witchcraft accusations by incomplete evidence. 37 people were indicted apart from Salem and 81 were indicted during the Salem witch hunt of 1692 to 1693.
Sarah Jack: To learn more day by day history on the 1692- 1693 Salem Witch Trials follow our social media channels and tune into the live Salem Witch Hunt Daily Report hosted by [00:50:00] Josh. In addition to the 24 individuals executed by Hanging and the one pressed to death in 1692, at least six others arrested for witchcraft perished while in jail, including the infant sister of Dorothy Good.
Sarah Jack: Also to date the eight convicted in Boston have not been acknowledged. No official apology by the Massachusetts General Court has ever been issued for the witch trials or to the victims. This justice has been delayed for over 300 years. To quote Dr. King, 'justice delayed is justice denied.' Our goal is to secure legislative recognition for all prosecuted under various colonial governments in Massachusetts.
Sarah Jack: Suggesting an amendment to the 1957 resolve could be a viable approach. This amendment would honor victims like Tituba and the accused child witch Dorothy Good, among others, who endured significant trauma and injustice. As highlighted today by Mary Louise Bingham's observations, Massachusetts [00:51:00] victims such as Sarah Parker sought exoneration from the Massachusetts General Court, the very institution we approach today. This historical body once presided over witchcraft prosecutions in the 17th century, and it failed to exonerate Sarah. Now we stand as her representatives, appealing to the current Massachusetts General Court, today ruled by the House and the Senate. To rectify these past wrongs, we invite you to join the Massachusetts Witch Hunt Justice Project by signing our petition, volunteering, or making a donation. Your involvement, whether by sharing our content, discussing these issues in your networks, or urging leaders to act, is invaluable. Together, we can nurture values of compassion, understanding, and justice in our world. Support our mission by becoming a financial donor. Visit aboutwitchhunts.com/ to donate any amount you're comfortable with. Your generosity is the backbone of the podcast content you value. Let's commit to making a difference together.
Josh Hutchinson: Thank you, Sarah.
Sarah Jack: You're welcome, [00:52:00] Josh.
Josh Hutchinson: And thank you for listening to Witch Hunt.
Sarah Jack: Please join us next week.
Josh Hutchinson: Subscribe wherever you get podcasts.
Sarah Jack: Visit us at aboutwitchhunts.com/.
Josh Hutchinson: And remember to tell all your friends.
Sarah Jack: Support our efforts to end witch hunts. Visit endwitchhunts.org to learn more.
Josh Hutchinson: Have a great today and a beautiful tomorrow.
What happens when an astrologer, a witch, and a poltergeist walk into a barn in colonial Massachusetts? In this third installment of Massachusetts Witch Trials 101 on Witch Hunt, we delve into the intricate narratives of various Massachusetts witch trials that span from 1657 to 1687. Several significant cases are broken down such as those involving Elizabeth Morse, Mary Webster, and John Godfrey.These cases illustrate the trials of the period and their lasting impact. The hosts Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack also touch on their ancestral connections to these trials and discuss their advocacy work to end present-day witch hunts through their organization.
Josh Hutchinson: Welcome to Witch Hunt, the podcast that investigates the mysteries of the witch trials. I'm Josh Hutchinson.
Sarah Jack: And I'm Sarah Jack. We are both descendants of persons accused of witchcraft in New England.
Josh Hutchinson: Heck, we're both descendants of people in this episode.
Sarah Jack: And we, in Mary Louise Bingham, are all cousins through our common ancestor, Mary Esty, who was executed for witchcraft in Salem in 1692.
Josh Hutchinson: In this episode, we are discussing Massachusetts witch trials before the Salem witch hunt. These cases originated in towns spread across the Massachusetts and Plymouth colonies, with witch trials held in places like Boston, Plymouth, [00:01:00] and York.
Sarah Jack: These cases are fascinating, so let's get right to it.
Josh Hutchinson: Do you want to kick things off, Sarah?
Sarah Jack: Sure, we're primarily covering witchcraft accusations made between 1657 and 1683.
Josh Hutchinson: But I want to point out that our first case actually overlaps with the timeline of the trials of Hugh and Mary Parsons of Springfield, which we covered in the previous edition of Massachusetts Witch Trials 101. But continues through the 1660s.
Sarah Jack: Jane James of Marblehead sued accusers for slander in 1650 and again in 1651 and 1667 for being called a witch. On one occasion, she was accused by Peter Pitford of cursing his garden. Another accuser claimed she had appeared at sea in the shape of a cat. Fortunately for Jane, she was never tried for witchcraft.
Josh Hutchinson: The next case involves my possible ancestor, William Browne of Gloucester, who in [00:02:00] 1657 was accused of bewitching Margaret Prince, whose child had been stillborn. Browne was not convicted of witchcraft. Instead, he was convicted of 'diverse miscarriages' and was ordered to spend one week in jail, pay a 20 mark fine, and pay Thomas Prince, husband of Margaret, unspecified costs.
Sarah Jack: Next, we have the long and allegedly magical career of John Godfrey of Essex County. John was in court on witchcraft related matters at least five times.
Josh Hutchinson: John came to New England as a teen in the 1630s and frequently moved around Essex County.
Sarah Jack: In March 1659, 11 people accused Godfrey of witchcraft. James Davis Sr., Jane and John Haseltine, Abraham Whitaker, Ephraim Davis, Benjamin Swett, Isabel Holdred, Job Tyler, Charles Brown, The Widow Ayers, and Goodman Proctor.
Josh Hutchinson: Thomas Hayne [00:03:00] testified about a spectral horse that scared Isabel Holdred. Nathan Gould testified about a spectral snake that scared Isabel Isabel Holdred herself testified about these shape shifting animals.
Sarah Jack: Goodwife and Charles Brown testified about John Godfrey talking about witches, saying they should be treated kindly, or there could be consequences. Charles also reported he once saw a teat under John Godfrey's tongue.
Josh Hutchinson: William Osgood testified that he once, back in 1640, accused Godfrey of making a deal with the devil, and that Godfrey admitted it.
Sarah Jack: On June 28, 1659, Godfrey won two pounds and twenty nine shillings in damages in a slander suit against William and Samuel Symonds.
Josh Hutchinson: Who happened to both be my ancestors. In a document dated March 25th, 1662, Thomas Chandler said that John Care had called [00:04:00] Godfrey a witching rogue.
Sarah Jack: In a document dated March 15, 1663, Essex County Court ordered Jonathan Singletary to appear at the next court, which would be held in Ipswich, to answer charges that he slandered Godfrey by calling him a witch, saying, 'is this witch on this side of Boston gallows yet?'
Josh Hutchinson: John Remington and Edward Youmans said that Jonathan Singletary had told them he'd been visited by spectral Godfrey while in jail. Singletary was ordered to make a public apology to Godfrey or pay 10 shillings. Jonathan Singletary testified that Godfrey indeed visited him in jail and Singletary tried to hit Godfrey with a stone, but Godfrey vanished.
Josh Hutchinson: On June 30th, 1663, the court found for the defendant in the Godfrey versus Singletary suit. Godfrey vowed to appeal.
Sarah Jack: On March 29th, 1664, the [00:05:00] court found for Godfrey and ordered Singletary to acknowledge wrongdoing or pay 10 shillings plus 2 pounds in court costs. In 1666, Job Tyler and John Remington complained about Godfrey.
Josh Hutchinson: On February 22nd, 1666, the court summonsed witnesses to testify about Godfrey's witchcraft. Matthias Button, Sarah Button, Edward Youmans, Goodwife Youmans, Abraham Whitaker, Elizabeth Whitaker, Robert Swan, Elizabeth Swan, Abigail Remington, John Remington Jr., Joseph Johnson, Goodwife Holdridge, Ephraim Davis, William Symonds, Samuel Symonds, my ancestors, Mary Neasse, Francis Dane, my ancestor, Nathan Parker.
Sarah Jack: March 5th, 1666, Francis Dane wrote that he was unable to attend court due to infirmity and rough weather.
Josh Hutchinson: Job, Mary Sr., Moses, and Mary Jr. Tyler [00:06:00] testified that one time when Godfrey came over, a bird appeared with him and then disappeared. Job asked Godfrey about the bird, and Godfrey said, 'it came to suck your wife,' meaning that Mary Tyler Sr. was a witch.
Sarah Jack: Nathan Parker claimed that John Godfrey had said to Job Tyler that he could afford to blow on Tyler and not leave him worth a groat, a coin of little value.
Josh Hutchinson: Joseph Johnson said that Godfrey said, 'if John Remington's son was a man as he was a boy, it had been worser for him.'
Sarah Jack: John Remington, Jr. said Godfrey said to John Remington, Sr. 'if he drive the cattle up the woods to winter, then my father should say and have cause to repent that he did drive them up.' That December, the young Remington was riding his horse when a mysterious crow appeared and harassed them. The horse fell. The bird pecked the dog. Remington got home but was laid up a while with an injured leg. [00:07:00] Then Godfrey came over and argued with the boy and his mother.
Josh Hutchinson: Abigail Remington repeated her son's testimony about what Godfrey said when he came over after the fall, saying Godfrey had bragged about unhorsing a boy the other day.
Sarah Jack: Matthias Button corroborated the Remington's testimony, as he had been there at the Remington house when Godfrey said those things he said.
Josh Hutchinson: Godfrey was found suspicious but not legally guilty on March 6, 1666.
Sarah Jack: John Godfrey passed away no later than 1675.
MarkerMarker
Josh Hutchinson: Elizabeth Bailey of York, now in Maine, made the mistake of letting a rando minister named John Thorp board in her house. Not only did he drink too much alcohol, he also used a ton of profanity, and Bailey wasn't having it. In fact, things got so bad that she ripped her boarder a new one, prompting him to move out. As far as Elizabeth was concerned, that settled that.[00:08:00]
Sarah Jack: Unfortunately, Thorp was a bitter man who couldn't let things go. In an apparent act of retaliation, he accused Bailey of witchcraft ,resulting in her trial by the county court. She must have been ecstatic when the verdict of not guilty was read.
Josh Hutchinson: At the same court that tried Elizabeth Bailey, the minister, John Thorp, was tried for abusive speech to a social superior, excessive drinking, scandalizing two ministers by saying they preached unsound doctrine, and for actually being the one preaching the unsound doctrine himself. He was convicted of all charges and ordered to pay fees.
Josh Hutchinson: In June 1659, Winifred Holman of Cambridge and her daughter Mary were accused of witchcraft by Rebecca Gibson Stearns, who had an affliction not unlike those suffered 33 years later in Salem. The Holmans were arrested. The Holmans were both indicted. Mary probably was tried and acquitted. Winifred may not have been tried [00:09:00] at all. And the Holmans sued John Gibson and Rebecca Stearns for defamation and slander in March, 1660.
Sarah Jack: Gibson had to pay a fine and apologize. Rebecca Stearns was let off the hook, because she was in an irrational state of mind when she made her accusations.
Sarah Jack: Which is interesting because if an accused person was in an irrational state of mind, the accusations had weight.
Josh Hutchinson: Yes, that's a good point, Sarah. Next up we have a rare case from Plymouth Colony. In 1661, William Holmes of Marshfield sued his neighbor, Dinah Silvester, for defaming his wife by publicly calling her a witch. In court, Silvester claimed she had seen Goodwife Holmes in the shape of a bear. The court did not find sufficient evidence that Holmes had contracted with Satan, so they sided with the plaintiff and ruled Silvester guilty of defamation. [00:10:00] She was sentenced to sign an admission of guilt.
Sarah Jack: In 1665, Goodwife Gleason of Cambridge was presented on witchcraft charges. Not much else is known about this case.
Josh Hutchinson: Edith Crawford, a resident of Salem, found herself embroiled in controversy when she was accused of employing witchcraft to burn a house from which she had been recently evicted due to a court decision. In a bold move to confront these allegations, Crawford took legal action in 1667, suing the individual who had leveled the accusations against her, the new homeowner of the property in question.
Sarah Jack: Susannah North Martin is a well-known victim of the Salem Witch Trials. A stretch of highway going through Amesbury commemorates her. She is less known for her 1669 witchcraft trial, which marked the beginning of a long career of notoriety as a witch.
Josh Hutchinson: Born in 1625 to [00:11:00] Richard North, Susannah lost her mother when she was a young girl. She migrated to New England with her father, stepmother, and two sisters in about 1639, when Richard North was one of the initial proprietors of Salisbury, Massachusetts. In 1646, Susannah married recently widowed George Martin, and the couple had nine children.
Sarah Jack: In April 1669, her husband, George Martin, posted a hundred pounds bond to keep Susannah out of jail while she awaited trial for witchcraft. The same day, George Martin filed a defamation suit against William Sargent for slandering Susannah.
Josh Hutchinson: At her first witchcraft trial, Susannah was accused of having her first son out of wedlock and attempting to kill him, and of having another son who wasn't human, but actually an imp. The court did convict William Sargent of slander for accusing Susannah of infanticide and fornication. However, the jury did not convict him for slandering [00:12:00] Susannah as a witch, and he was fined a mere eighth of a penny.
Sarah Jack: Records of Susannah's first trial do not survive, but she's presumably acquitted, as she was soon at liberty again.
Josh Hutchinson: Also in 1669, Robert Williams of Hadley was acquitted of witchcraft but convicted instead of lying.
Sarah Jack: Another witchcraft accusation in 1669 was when Goodmen Cross and Brabrook said that Thomas Wells said he could set spells and raise the devil. He offered himself to be an artist. No formal charges filed. Wells denied the accusation.
Josh Hutchinson: In 1671, an unknown woman of Groton was accused of witchcraft by Elizabeth Knapp, a supposedly possessed young woman serving in the household of minister Samuel Willard, who later earned fame for opposing the Salem Witch Trials. Willard did not trust the devilish voice coming from young Elizabeth, so he kept [00:13:00] secret the name of the woman Elizabeth accused of bewitching her.
Sarah Jack: Then in 1673, Anna Edmonds of Lynn was known as a doctor woman and was presented on charges of witchcraft.
Josh Hutchinson: Next we have the sole Plymouth Colony witchcraft trial, that of Mary Ingham of Scituate. Eagle-eared listeners may remember this case from our February 9th, 2023 episode titled 'Between God and Satan with Beth Caruso and Katherine Hermes.' Unfortunately, not much is available on this case.
Sarah Jack: We've previously covered the case of Alice Young, New England's first witch trial victim hanged in 1647. 30 years later, her daughter, Alice Jr., was accused of witchcraft in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1677,Her son sued the accuser for slander.
Josh Hutchinson: In an intriguing case in 1679 and 1680, my 10th great grandaunt, Elizabeth Morse of [00:14:00] Newbury, found herself accused of witchcraft, following a series of poltergeist like events in her home. The trouble began sometime after William and Elizabeth Morse took in their grandson, John Stiles. Much of this story will be familiar if you've listened to our episode on the Devil of Great Island.
Sarah Jack: First, William Morse said sticks and stones were thrown at his house. The Morses went outside to look and saw nobody, yet stones were still hurled at them, and they retreated inside and locked the door. Later that night, a hog appeared in the house, despite the door being locked.
Josh Hutchinson: The next day, some things hanging in the chimney crashed down into the fire, and an awl disappeared only to come down the chimney. William put the awl away in a cupboard and closed the door, but the awl kept coming down the chimney again and again, three or four times. Then the same thing happened with the basket.
Sarah Jack: Things just continued to disappear and then come [00:15:00] down the chimney.
Josh Hutchinson: Another hog appeared in the locked house.
Sarah Jack: More sticks and stones.
Josh Hutchinson: The pots hung over the fire danced and clanged against each other and had to be taken down.
Sarah Jack: William's ropemaking tools kept disappearing.
Josh Hutchinson: And the bedclothes flew off while Elizabeth was making the bed.
Sarah Jack: Caleb Powell, a seaman, visited often, and he said he would take the boy for a time and see what happened. He took the boy for a day, and nothing happened while the boy was away.
Josh Hutchinson: William Morse gave in a statement on December 3rd, 1679.
Sarah Jack: Thomas Rogers and George Hardy corroborated some of William Morse's testimony. John Richardson said a board flew against his chair.
Josh Hutchinson: William Morse's brother, and my ancestor, Anthony Morse, said he saw the board that hit Richardson while it was still tacked to the window.
Sarah Jack: John Dole said a pin, a stick, a stone, and a firebrand fell [00:16:00] down beside him.
Josh Hutchinson: John Tucker said that while these things were falling by John Dole, John Stiles was in a corner and didn't move.
Sarah Jack: Elizabeth Titcomb said Caleb Powell said if he had another scholar with him, he could find whoever was bewitching the Morse house.
Josh Hutchinson: Stephen Greenleaf and Edward Richardson affirmed seeing the strange motion.
Sarah Jack: John Tucker said Caleb Powell said John Stiles threw a shoe.
Josh Hutchinson: John Emerson said Caleb Powell had boasted about being trained in the black art by someone named Norwood.
Sarah Jack: William Morse also testified to a number of strange events on December 8th, 1679.
Josh Hutchinson: Bread turned over and struck him.
Sarah Jack: A chair bowed to him several times.
Josh Hutchinson: Door closed itself.
Sarah Jack: An iron wedge and a spade flew out of the chamber at Elizabeth without hitting her.
Josh Hutchinson: A drum rolled over.
Sarah Jack: The cellar door flew shut.[00:17:00]
Josh Hutchinson: Barn doors unpinned themselves, and the pin fell out of the sky.
Sarah Jack: Caleb Powell told the Morses that John Stiles had done the mysterious things around the house.
Josh Hutchinson: Powell claimed skill in astrology, astronomy, and the working of spirits.
Sarah Jack: The Morses loaned John styles to Powell. And nothing happened for a time.
Josh Hutchinson: When John Stiles returned to the home, a great noise was heard in the other room, but nothing was seen there.
Josh Hutchinson: And William Morse's cap almost came off his head.
Sarah Jack: There was a hit to William's head.
Sarah Jack: His chair was pulled back as if to topple him.
Josh Hutchinson: And a cat was thrown at his wife, Elizabeth.
Sarah Jack: The cat was thrown about several times.
Josh Hutchinson: Once the poor cat was thrown on the bed, wrapped in a red waistcoat.
Sarah Jack: The lamp tipped over and all the oil spilled out.
Josh Hutchinson: Another great noise, for a great while, described as being very dreadful.[00:18:00]
Sarah Jack: And a stone moved on its own.
Josh Hutchinson: Two spoons flew off the table and the table was knocked over.
Sarah Jack: The inkhorn was hidden, and the pen was taken.
Josh Hutchinson: William Morse's spectacles were thrown from the table.
Sarah Jack: And his account book thrown into the fire.
Josh Hutchinson: Boards came off a tub and stood upright.
Sarah Jack: John Badger said he was at Morse's house when Caleb Powell said he knew astrology and astronomy and could determine whether the diabolical means were used against the Morses.
Josh Hutchinson: Mary Tucker and Mary Richardson said Caleb Powell said he spied through the Morse's window and saw the boy play tricks.
Sarah Jack: Anthony Morse, brother of William Morse.
Josh Hutchinson: And Anthony being my ancestor and William my uncle.
Sarah Jack: Witnessed a brick disappear from his hands and fly down the chimney. Also, a hammer came down the chimney, and a piece of wood and a firebrand, which happened around November 28th. This [00:19:00] testimony was dated December 8th in 1679 by John Woodridge, the commissioner.
Josh Hutchinson: William Morse complained of Caleb Powell for working with the devil to disturb the Morses.
Sarah Jack: Caleb Powell appeared before John Woodridge on December 8th, and the magistrate agreed William Morse could prosecute the case at Ipswich County Court on the last Tuesday of March.
Josh Hutchinson: Sarah Hall and Joseph Mirick testified that John Moores, boatswain of the vessel where Caleb Powell was a mate, said that if there were any wizards, he was sure that Caleb Powell was a wizard. This testimony was dated February 27th, 1680.
Sarah Jack: The court dismissed the case, but declared Powell suspicious and ordered him to pay court costs.
Josh Hutchinson: Israel Webster said John Stiles said that he, John Stiles, was going to hell and could not read on Sundays because the devil didn't let him.
Sarah Jack: Thomas Titcomb said John Stiles, quote, 'used many foul words [00:20:00] on Sabbath day, and when asked if he was going to meeting, he said he was going to hell.'
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, this is so familiar with other afflicted children's stories. When they're asked to do work, suddenly they're afflicted and can't do it, or they're, they're held back by a witch or a devil and they can't do the things they're supposed to do, but they can do, strangely enough, the things that they want to do. Elizabeth Titcomb said there was a mysterious knocking at her door while she was sleeping. It knocked three times, but nobody responded when Elizabeth asked who was there. Lydia and Peniel Titcomb agreed.
Sarah Jack: Jonathan Woodman said seven years ago, he was going home when he saw a white cat, which did play at my legs. As he had no weapon, he only kicked the cat, which cried out and disappeared. He later learned that the Morses had called for a doctor that same night to tend Elizabeth's head.
Josh Hutchinson: Benjamin Richardson testified about something weird [00:21:00] happening at Morse's house.
Sarah Jack: David Wheeler talked about a heifer that came home with a chewed up back twice and got sick and started behaving strangely.
Josh Hutchinson: Joshua Richardson said he tried to stash his sheep in Morse's cow house one time when he was out working on getting the sheep across the river, but Elizabeth Morse chewed him out and he left. When he arrived at his destination, the sheep were all sick and foaming at the mouths.
Sarah Jack: Caleb Moody testified that he lost several livestock in an unusual manner over the 20 years he lived near the Morses.
Josh Hutchinson: And William Fanning described being attacked by a great white cat without a tail. Maybe just a lynx?
Sarah Jack: John Mighill testified that a calf's skin fell off, replaced by something red like a burn before the animal's eyes bulged out of his head, a cow pooped out of its side, and other animals met ill fates.
Josh Hutchinson: Robert Earle said that he visited Elizabeth Morse and heard a strange sucking [00:22:00] sound, like a whelp feeding.
Sarah Jack: On March 6th, 1680, the court ordered Constable Joseph Pike of Newbury to apprehend Elizabeth Morse and take her to the jail in Ipswich.
Josh Hutchinson: Esther Wilson testified that when her mother, Goodwife Chandler, was sick, she complained about Elizabeth Morse being a witch and nailed a horseshoe to the door to prevent witches from getting in. Morse would not come in while the horseshoe was on. Instead, she'd kneel by the door and talk with them from outside. William Moody came to the house of Goodwife Chandler and knocked the horseshoe off the door. Then Elizabeth Morse would come in until the horseshoe was nailed back up. Later, Moody knocked it off and took it away. Once again, Morse would enter the home. Goodwife Chandler began having visions of Elizabeth Morse and then experiencing fits. This testimony was dated May 17th, 1680 and read in court on [00:23:00] May 20th.
Sarah Jack: Elizabeth Titcomb said Susanna Tappan said Elizabeth Morse seized her by the wrist at court to ask what evidence Susanna would give in. That night, Susanna felt a cold, damp hand grab her wrist. She then became Ill, feeling itchiness and pricking throughout her body, her skin dry and scaly. Since then, she has not been out of her house.
Josh Hutchinson: And Elizabeth Titcomb said she told Goodwife Morse about the evidence against her and Morse was greatly affected and fell on weeping and said she was as innocent as herself or the child newborn, or as God in heaven.
Sarah Jack: Lydia Titcomb claimed she and her sibling saw an owl turn into a cat, then a dog. This mystery animal was sometimes completely black. At other times it had a white ring around its neck. Sometimes it had long ears. At other times it had virtually no ears at all. Sometimes it had an extremely long tail. At other [00:24:00] times it had virtually no tail at all.
Sarah Jack: This sounds like a riddle. The beast accompanied them home, scaring their socks off.
Josh Hutchinson: Susan Tappan did testify and said that Morse did indeed grab her by the wrist, but not in court. It was actually after a public meeting on a Sabbath day.
Sarah Jack: Thomas Knowlton said that when he was escorting her to jail, Elizabeth Morse said that she was as clear of the accusation as God in heaven.
Josh Hutchinson: John Chase, another possible relative of mine, said the day Caleb Powell had come to hear his testimony against Elizabeth Morse, he, John Chase, was taken with the bloody flux, which lingered until he spoke against Morse in court. Also, his wife had sore breasts that she have lost them both and one of them rotted away from her.
Sarah Jack: Jane Sewall said that William Morse told her a story about his wife not [00:25:00] being called for at first when Thomas Wells wife was in labor, due to some hesitancy by Thomas sister. The woman suffered a long labor until finally Morris was sent for, at which point the baby came.
Josh Hutchinson: John March said that sometime around 1674, he was awakened by several cats and rats at play together. He flung several things at them but could not strike them. The next morning, he heard Goodwife Wells call Elizabeth Morse a witch to her face. After Elizabeth left, Goodwife Wells told John March that Elizabeth had told her about the cats and rats, and Goodwife Wells wondered how Elizabeth could know they'd seen them, since nobody who saw them had left the house yet that morning.
Sarah Jack: According to John March, Goodwife Wells told him she'd often seen small creatures like mice or rats under Elizabeth Morse's coat. Daniel Thurston and Richard Woolsworth affirmed that they had also heard Goodwife Wells say such things.[00:26:00]
Josh Hutchinson: James Brown, another Josh ancestor, testified that Elizabeth Morse said George Wheeler's vessel would not return from its voyage and that she told him in the morning of his misdemeanors the previous night. He asked her how she knew what he had done, and she said everyone knew. He replied that everyone knew she was a witch. She said, 'our savior, Christ, was belied, and so is you and I.'
Sarah Jack: David Wheeler testified that he had seen Elizabeth Morse, his next door neighbor, do many strange things. And once, he was supposed to do an errand for her and neglected to do it for several days while he was busy hunting geese. He was unsuccessful at getting a bird. Then, Elizabeth Morse told him he wouldn't get any geese until after he finally performed the task. At last, he did what he had agreed to do, and then he was immediately successful hunting geese.
Josh Hutchinson: Margaret Mirick claimed that she had once concealed a private letter, and yet Elizabeth Morse came a few [00:27:00] days later and recited everything in the letter, though she'd most likely never seen it as it was in hiding.
Sarah Jack: A calf belonging to Zachariah Davis mysteriously danced and roared after Zachariah failed to bring Elizabeth Morse some wings.
Josh Hutchinson: Gotta bring those wings, man.
Sarah Jack: Elizabeth was tried in May 1680.
Josh Hutchinson: And indicted on May 20th.
Sarah Jack: On May 22nd, Secretary Edward Rawson wrote that the court decided it was okay to admit the testimony of a single witness to a single event, if at least one other witness brought in similar testimony about another event only they witnessed.
Josh Hutchinson: Governor Simon Bradstreet pronounced the death sentence for Elizabeth on May 27th.
Sarah Jack: However, the governor and assistants reprieved her on June 1st. On June 4th, her husband, William, petitioned for better treatment for her in jail, such as liberty to walk the yard during the day and [00:28:00] to sleep in the common jail rather than the dungeon.
Josh Hutchinson: On November 3rd, the deputies protested the court's decision not to execute Elizabeth.
Sarah Jack: According to John Hale, The governor and magistrates rejected the death sentence because they determined that seeing a specter of Elizabeth was not the same as actually seeing Elizabeth perform witchcraft.
Josh Hutchinson: They also determined that multiple witnesses to the same event were indeed necessary to admit the testimony as evidence.
Sarah Jack: In 1681, William wrote to the General Court on May 14th and again on May 18th, contesting the testimony against his wife and pleading her innocence. And we are writing to the same general court today, asking for these accused witches to receive an apology from the state.
Josh Hutchinson: William Morse won the release of Elizabeth into his custody, and she was placed under a sort of house arrest.
Josh Hutchinson:
Josh Hutchinson: In 1679, an unknown woman from Northampton, Massachusetts was accused of witchcraft. [00:29:00] Unfortunately, no other details are available in this case.
Josh Hutchinson: Moving forward, we get to the 1680 case of Margaret Gifford of Lynn, who frequently appeared in court as attorney for her husband and was accused of witchcraft in 1680. Her so-called unwomanly behavior in acting as attorney may have drawn suspicion.
Sarah Jack: Our next witchcraft suspect in 1680 is Bridget Oliver, better known as Bridget Bishop, the first execution victim of the Salem Witch Trials in 1692. But that wasn't her first run in with the law on suspicion of witchcraft. In 1680, she was acquitted of witchcraft, a year after her husband, Thomas Oliver, died. We will have much more on Bridget in our upcoming Salem Witch Hunt 101 series.
Josh Hutchinson: In the 1987 book, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman, author Carol Karlsen suggests that the Mary Hale who was accused of bewitching mariner Michael [00:30:00] Smith to death could be the mother of Winifred Benham of Wallingford, Connecticut, who was accused of witchcraft multiple times in the 1690s.
Sarah Jack: In 2007, authors Michael J. LeClerc and D. Brenton Simons used the most reliable sources to connect Mary Hale to Brothers and also to Winifred Benham in their article, The American Genealogist publication, 'Origin of Accused Witch Mary Williams King Hale of Boston and her brothers Hugh, John, and possibly Nathaniel Williams.'
Josh Hutchinson: The article establishes Mary's life since 1654 in Boston, highlighting her family ties and property dealings, and suggests she was married twice, with her first husband's surname possibly being King or Ling, and her second husband's surname being Hale. Established her connection to the Williams family with roots in London and Surrey, England.
Josh Hutchinson: Despite the serious witchcraft accusations in 1680 and 81, [00:31:00] Mary was acquitted. Her family, particularly her brothers Hugh and John Williams, were prominent figures in Boston and Block Island.
Sarah Jack: Her husbands have not been identified. The 1674 Boston tax list records her name as Widow Hale. Only one of her children has been identified, Winifred, but she's recognized as having multiple children.
Josh Hutchinson: She faced witchcraft accusations in February and March of 1680. Michael had lodged at her home and had courted the granddaughter, Joanna.
Sarah Jack: Mary was accused of supernaturally transporting him to a witch's sabbath in Dorchester.
Sarah Jack: During the trial, a form of evidence for witchcraft was presented, centering around a test with a bottle containing Michael Smith's urine. Observers noted that when the bottle was sealed, Mary began to pace restlessly, exhibiting an agitated behavior within her dwelling. Conversely, when the bottle was opened, her restless movement ceased entirely. This correlation between Mary's actions and the state of the [00:32:00] bottle was deemed to be indicative of witchcraft.
Josh Hutchinson: Accuser Margaret Ellis wanted to see Mary burned, which was never done to a witch in New England. But Mary was acquitted, and then no more is heard of her.
Sarah Jack: Mary Hale is my 10th great grandmother.
Sarah Jack: An unknown woman of Kittery was accused of witchcraft in 1682. Unfortunately, no further details are available for this case.
Josh Hutchinson: Mary Webster, wife of William Webster, was examined at county court on March 27, 1683, and the case was referred to the Court of Assistants in Boston.
Sarah Jack: Mary was indicted May 22nd, 1683 and acquitted June 1st, 1683.
Josh Hutchinson: According to witness testimony, she served the devil in the form of a black cat and suckled imps from teats in her secret parts.
Sarah Jack: According to Cotton Mather, Philip Smith was a saintly man who died at the hands of Mary Webster.
Josh Hutchinson: Smith became [00:33:00] unduly anxious about his health and had ischiatic pain in the lowest three bones of his pelvis.
Sarah Jack: Smith became delirious and loudly ranted in multiple languages, or so it was thought. Suffered sore pain from sharp pins pricking him.
Josh Hutchinson: He claimed to see Mary Webster and some others afflicting him.
Sarah Jack: He smelled a strange, musky scent.
Josh Hutchinson: Some of his attendants went and harassed poor Mary Webster, and he was well while they were at it.
Sarah Jack: A container of medicine emptied without spilling.
Josh Hutchinson: People heard a strange scratching sound.
Sarah Jack: There was a mysterious fire on the bed from time to time. It would quickly vanish. Something strange seemed to move in the bed away from Smith's body.
Josh Hutchinson: The night after he died, the bed moved on its own.
Sarah Jack: Two nights after he died, mysterious sounds like furniture being moved in the room where the corpse lay were heard.
Josh Hutchinson: And strange signs of [00:34:00] life in the body after Smith had presumably died.
Sarah Jack: According to lore, Mary Webster was brutally beaten in 1684 by a mob of zealous youth.
Josh Hutchinson: According to Thomas Hutchinson, who wrote much later, the people who went to harass Webster actually 'having dragged her out of her house, they hung her up until she was near dead, let her down, rolled her sometime in the snow, and at last buried her in it and there left her.'
Sarah Jack: In 1685, Mary Webster sued for slander.
Josh Hutchinson: The James Fuller case from Springfield is particularly interesting. Fuller was accused of seeking the devil's aid, a familiar charge.
Sarah Jack: Fuller's change of response to the accusations is especially notable. He initially admitted to the claims but then retracted, stating he had belied himself. This turn of events adds significant complexity, highlighting the [00:35:00] challenges in discerning guilt or innocence in these trials.
Josh Hutchinson: Fuller's case exemplifies the judicial severity of the period. Despite his retraction and claim of lying, the court sentenced him to whipping for wicked and pernicious, willful lying. Such harsh punitive measures were common and reflect the Puritan's strict approach to law and order.
Sarah Jack: The harsh sentence underscored the need for control and punishment of behaviors deemed deviant.
Josh Hutchinson: Cases such as Fuller's were instrumental in perpetuating the fear of witchcraft. Understanding these cases is crucial for comprehending the complexities and fears of early American society.
Sarah Jack: It's also telling that he, a man, was let off of the witchcraft charge and only punished for lying. We have seen this several times with men, but never with women.
Josh Hutchinson: It came up a few times in this episode. Must be a thing.
Josh Hutchinson: The period of 1657 to 1687 saw [00:36:00] no executions for witchcraft in Massachusetts and only one known conviction, that of Elizabeth Morse, who was placed under house arrest instead of being hanged.
Sarah Jack: In the next episode of Massachusetts Witch Trials 101, we will examine the 1688 case of Goody Glover of Boston and what may have led the judges to condemn her after more than 30 years without an execution.
Josh Hutchinson: And stay tuned after that episode for the beginning of our Salem Witch-Hunt 101 series.
Sarah Jack: And now for a Minute with Mary.
Mary-Louise Bingham: You may recall from last week's Minute with Mary that Female Gleason was indicted on the capital crime of witchcraft at Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, British America. This week, the Massachusetts Witch Hunt Justice Project is closing in on her identity. Project member and genealogist David Allen Lambert provided the team with marriage documentation for two women who married into the Gleason family. These two [00:37:00] women were alive and living in the area in the mid 1660s. I found evidence that a third woman married into the Gleason family, but her vital dates are unknown. Dr. Tricia Peone, another project member and researcher, provided a resource regarding the First Church of Cambridge records dating to the early 1660s. Diving into the list of members to locate the Gleason family has begun. We've also reached out to Beth Folsom of Cambridge History to help us locate Middlesex County court records for a possible court record regarding Female's indictment. Stay tuned, we are close to identifying Female Gleason's given name.
Sarah Jack: Thank you, Mary.
Josh Hutchinson: Here's Sarah with End Witch Hunts News.
Sarah Jack: End Witch Hunts, a non profit 501c3 organization, Weekly News Update. Remember, each case of sorcery accusation or witch-hunt represents real individuals, each with their own names, [00:38:00] families, dreams, and aspirations for peace. It's vital to actively oppose the targeting of vulnerable members within our communities.
Sarah Jack: Education and advocacy are key to ending witch hunts. This entails transforming perceptions regarding the equal worth of every individual, insisting on a moral code that upholds human dignity, and challenging mob behaviors through the enforcement of laws in place to protect victims. If you hold a position of influence, whether in your community, on social media, in educational settings, or within the government, it's your opportunity to advocate and to stand up for the vulnerable. Speak out, raise awareness, and help strengthen organizations fighting these harmful practices.
Sarah Jack: End Witch Hunts firmly advocates for universal human dignity, echoing the United Nations Charter's commitment to human rights, equality, and dignity. We condemn harmful practices related to witchcraft accusations and ritual attacks [00:39:00] as grave violations against human dignity.
Sarah Jack: We urge states and individuals alike to defend and uphold human dignity, protecting everyone from torture, mistreatment, and discrimination. You can join us by amplifying the stories of victims of witch hunts past and present. Engage with advocacy groups, learn through our resources, and voice your concerns to authorities. Your involvement, whether by sharing our content, discussing these issues in your network, or urging leaders to act, is invaluable. Together, we can nurture values of compassion, understanding, and justice in our world.
Sarah Jack: Support our mission by becoming a financial donor. Visit aboutwitchhunts.com/ to donate any amount you're comfortable with. Your generosity is the backbone of the podcast content you value. Let's commit to making a difference together.
Josh Hutchinson: Thank you, Sarah.
Sarah Jack: You're welcome.
Josh Hutchinson: And thank you for listening to Witch Hunt.
Sarah Jack: us next week when we learn about [00:40:00] the witch trials of several New Hampshire residents.
Josh Hutchinson: Visit aboutwitchhunts.com/ and sign up for our newsletter, Witch Hunt Wednesday.
Sarah Jack: Support our efforts to end witch hunts. Visit endwitchhunts.org to learn more.
Josh Hutchinson: Have a great today and a beautiful tomorrow.
This new episode of “Witch Hunt” features Dr. Tabitha Stanmore, discussing her research on service magic in 14th to 17th century Great Britain with Salem witch trial descendants Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack. She explains the concept of service magic, its practices, and the difference between service magicians and witches. Dr. Stanmore also touches on the impact of religious changes and laws on magic practices. Various aspects of magic, including healing methods, divination techniques, and the use of magic in daily life are delved into. Additionally, she shares about her soon to release book, “Cunning Folk: Life in the Era of Practical Magic” and her collaboration on the Seven County Witch Hunt Project, which looks at the Matthew Hopkins witch trials of the 1640s. The discussion concludes with a reflection on the legacy of witch hunts and their impact on families and communities. Anyone can submit written testimony for MA Bill H.1803. Simply write a short letter stating why this bill is important to: Judiciary Committee at 24 Beacon Street, Room 136, Boston, MA 02133 or by e-mail to michael.musto@mahouse.gov.
Josh Hutchinson: Welcome to Witch Hunt, the podcast that asks how and why we hunt witches and how we can stop. I'm Josh Hutchinson.
Sarah Jack: And I'm Sarah Jack.
Josh Hutchinson: I'm a descendant of several people accused of witchcraft during the Salem Witch Hunt.
Sarah Jack: And I have grandmothers who were tried for witchcraft in Salem, Boston, and Hartford.
Josh Hutchinson: On Witch Hunt, we talk about the witch trials of old and the epidemic of witch hunts today.
Sarah Jack: Witch hunts have occurred in all parts of the world, and they've never stopped.
Josh Hutchinson: Today, witch hunts continue to occur in all corners of the globe, resulting in banishment, torture, and even death.
Sarah Jack: In this episode, we're focusing [00:01:00] on the witchcraft of the past.
Josh Hutchinson: Specifically we're dialed into the service magic of 14th to 17th century Great Britain.
Sarah Jack: Our guest, Dr. Tabitha Stanmore, tells us about her upcoming book, Cunning Folk: Life in the Era of Practical Magic.
Josh Hutchinson: She explains what service magic is and how it was used in the past.
Sarah Jack: Listen on for a great discussion about what types of service magic were practiced and who practiced them.
Josh Hutchinson: Dr. Stanmore even explains the methods used.
Sarah Jack: And we hear about what she is working on next.
Josh Hutchinson: So sit back and enjoy another mind-expanding episode of Witch Hunt.
Sarah Jack: We welcome Dr. Tabitha Stanmore, author and social historian of magic, witchcraft, and researcher at the University of Exeter, working with Professor Marion Gibson on the Seven County Witch Hunt Project.
Tabitha Stanmore: My name is Dr. Tabitha Stanmore, [00:02:00] and I am a research fellow at the University of Exeter, currently researching the Matthew Hopkins Witch Trials of the 1640s. But my PhD research was in service magic or practical magic in the late medieval, early modern period stretching from 1350 to 1650, which is what my first academic book was about and what the book that I have coming out this year is also about.
Sarah Jack: Does your new book have a title?
Tabitha Stanmore: Yes, it's Cunning Folk: Life in the Era of Practical Magic.
Josh Hutchinson: So looking forward to that. That comes out in May?
Tabitha Stanmore: It comes out in May, May 2nd in the UK and May 28th in the US. and yeah, it should be very exciting. I hope it's going to be very exciting. I've seen the book covers and I'm going to get the actual, physical copies in my hand at some point next week, which is, I just can't believe it's real, actually, it's great.
Josh Hutchinson: Excellent. Yeah. I've pre ordered a [00:03:00] copy, and I'm just waiting and waiting.
Tabitha Stanmore: Oh, that's so kind.
Tabitha Stanmore: Thank you.
Sarah Jack: What do we need to know about the time period and location of your service magic research?
Tabitha Stanmore: So my research focuses on the 14th through 17th century. So that's roughly 1350 when more records start becoming available, and so it's much easier to trace the line of magic in society from that point. And I finish up in 1650 because that is the period where the world really starts changing again in a dramatic way, and after the end of the 17th century, or even middle of the 17th century, society has changed so much that it's not a very useful comparative point anymore, especially in the location that I look at, which is England. And, obviously, 1650, that is the end of the English Civil Wars, which saw the beheading of Charles I, and the, the beginning of the Commonwealth, or, the [00:04:00] Commonwealth, the brief point where England didn't have a monarchy.
Tabitha Stanmore: So I decided it was a good point to stop because at that point we get a real, massive change in society and a massive change in the way that people were living their lives and approaching things and this kind of rise of, I suppose science isn't quite the right word, but skepticism in a new way, which means that the idea of magic changes at that point.
Tabitha Stanmore: But also, 300 years is enough to be getting on with, so 1350 1650, is a, it's a really formative period, I think, for English society, but also a really key point for magical practice in England, and where it starts, it really features very strongly in how people live their day to day lives and try to incorporate both the supernatural and religion and, I suppose, rational skepticism in their daily lives, as well.
Josh Hutchinson: What exactly is service magic?
Tabitha Stanmore: Service [00:05:00] magic is a term that has, I suppose it's relatively new. It's only about 10 years or so that we've been using the term service magic. And it's basically magic, practical magic, that was sold to people in exchange for a fee. So it's literally what it sounds like actually. It's something that you buy and sell. It's a commodity, but it's a supernatural commodity. Basically it's the kind of thing that you use in order to solve everyday problems.
Tabitha Stanmore: Let's say you've had your favorite horse stolen and you don't know who's taken it and you don't know where it's gone. You might go to a magician or somebody who has very strong sort of magical or supernatural skills and ask them to perform a spell to locate either the horse or the person who stole it, so that you can then confront the supposed thief and demand your horse back. Or maybe you'll even ask a magician to perform a spell to force the horse to return, by whatever magical means necessary.
Tabitha Stanmore: It sounds quite [00:06:00] fantastical, but it was something which was incredibly common for people in the medieval and early modern periods, becauseinsurance hadn't really been, hadn't become a widespread thing at that point. A lot of people were living in a very sort of subsisting kind of way, which meant that if you lost something that was valuable, you needed to get it back, and there weren't many other ways of doing it, and you couldn't afford to just lose something. Turning to magic and having people who had the skills to use magic in this way were very, very highly prized.
Sarah Jack: How does service magic differ from witchcraft?
Tabitha Stanmore: That's a great question. If you asked a modern magical practitioner how they differed, I would probably expect them to say that there isn't very much difference at all, because I think with terms like cunning folk or magician or witch, they're almost synonymous in most people's minds nowadays. They are people who are wise, they're people who have supernatural powers that most people don't have access to, [00:07:00] they're people who embrace the supernatural powers that other people fear.
Tabitha Stanmore: But in the 17th century, 16th century, 15th century, the service magicians and witches would have been seen as very, very different people. And the reason for that is because in the medieval or early modern mind, there was an idea that there are two sources or maybe three sources of power that you can tap into if you deal with the supernatural. The first one is religious or divine power. And that's the kind of thing that priests are using on a daily basis, because they have this incredibly powerful supernatural entity, which ultimately that's what God is. He is literally above nature, can break the laws of nature at will. And that's something that religious people, priests especially, can tap into and use in order to change the world. Cunning folk would often say that they used the same kind of power.
Tabitha Stanmore: They'd [00:08:00] say that their spells were prayers. They're calling on the divine, or they're calling on saints to make things happen. They might also say that they were using fairies or pixies or some other kind of pseudonatural, but also supernatural entity to help them do whatever they were doing, especially if that was something like finding stolen goods. Going and asking the fairies was a very common way of finding out where your stolen spoon or your stolen horse had gone.
Tabitha Stanmore: So they're using very benign practices in order to do useful things,these cunning folk, and also priests. Witches, on the other hand, were seen as people who were using dark forces to do bad, negative things. So a witch was seen as somebody who had probably sold their soul to the devil, or at least was using demonic forces, and they were using these demonic forces to do harm in some way, whether that was killing people, destroying crops, in one case making somebody's mill fall down on a completely [00:09:00] still day when it shouldn't have happened at all, and all of a sudden the mill just collapses right in front of the miller. How does that happen? There is no logical explanation. It must be demonic, and it must be somebody bearing a grudge and using their demonic power to cause this harm.
Tabitha Stanmore: So there was a very clear separation in people's minds most of the time between a beneficent cunning person and a malevolent witch. That does all get very muddied when you start looking at theologians and particularly zealous priests and especially when you get into the Puritan movement of the late 16th and 17th centuries, where priests andvery, very godly people would argue that there is no in-between.
Tabitha Stanmore: Basically, you can't have somebody who's using supernatural powers that clearly aren't being brought by God, unless they are using demons, and people like George Gifford, who was a Puritan preacher living in the late 16th century, argued very strongly that nobody who claims to be able [00:10:00] to just heal by, I don't know,just saying some words over somebody could possibly be using God's divine intervention. So they must be using demons. And therefore you do get this mixing of cunning folk and witchcraft, but for most people they would be very, very separate things.
Sarah Jack: Thank you so much.
Josh Hutchinson: I like the period that you cover, because it's so dynamic. There's so much change in it, referenced a little, the change in attitudes toward the source of magical power that a service magician might get. And, in addition to the attitudes, the laws changed. When the Acts Against Conjuration or Witchcraft came in, how did that impact the service magic industry?
Tabitha Stanmore: That's a great question, and it's super interesting, because in some ways, not very much. The Acts Against Conjuration and Witchcraft, and you've absolutely, you're right to use those terms, because they're often called the [00:11:00] Witchcraft Acts, and actually, witchcraft only gets mentioned in the second half of all of these acts, and the first part is very much about conjurations and practical service magic.
Tabitha Stanmore: So some of the things that service magicians would commonly be asked to do was healing, finding lost goods, treasure hunting, making people fall in love. And three out of those four things are mentioned in the Acts Against Conjuration. Treasure hunting was seen as a massive no no, partly because officially any gold or silver found in the ground belonged to the crown. So using magic to be able to dig this stuff up was actually stealing from the crown, which is one of the reasons I think it got mentioned in these acts. So that was very, very heavily penalized in the first act against conjurations, brought in under Henry VIII. It was actually punishable by death,as well as provoking people to unlawful love, and finding lost goods and receiving money for finding lost goods through magical meansis, name checked as very, very bad things that people shouldn't be doing.
Tabitha Stanmore: From my own [00:12:00] research, it doesn't look like anybody actually stopped doing any of these things as a result of this legislation, partly I think because some of the law, the first law against conjurations say under Henry VIII, was so harsh that even magistrates weren't particularly keen on prosecuting this because nobody wants to be sentenced to death for, digging up a field, but also because these services were just so useful.If people don't have any other way of finding their stolen horse, then prosecuting that and stamping out that kind of service just isn't going to last very long. So yeah, it didn't really stop anything from happening in that sense, but there is still a growing sense of concern about what sorts of powers cunning folk might have, because they are lumped together in the Witchcraft and Conjurations Act with witches. And then there's that question of, oh, if you can do this kind of magic, then can you also do this negative kind of magic? So that sort of brings a cultural shift. But in terms of [00:13:00] how often magic was practiced, it probably didn't change it very much.
Tabitha Stanmore: What I will say is that one of the other massive changes that happens in this period between 1350 and 1650 is the Reformation, so the change of the state religion from Catholicism to Protestantism or Anglicanism, as it later becomes. And that does spark a big change in magic, basically because orthodox or acceptable Catholic practices all of a sudden become seen as superstition.Appealing to saints, using prayers to heal, that kind of thing, they all start being seen as quite suspicious under Protestant, doctrine. at that point you start seeing priests potentially who were doing perfectly orthodox things five years ago suddenly being seen as potential magicians who are using their nefarious, popish knowledge to form spells and possibly being in league with the devil as a result of that, because obviously there's a very heavy idea among different Protestant sects that the [00:14:00] Catholics are actually in league with the devil. So that's a really interesting way that the kind of religion suddenly becomes sacrilege and therefore possibly magic, at least in the eyes of some people.
Josh Hutchinson: I'm wondering if that change influenced the number of service magician, magician service practitioners out there, because before the Reformation in the Catholic Church, you can go to the priest for certain things to have objects blessed and your home blessed. And now you can't go to the priest for that anymore. He's not going to do some of the Catholic rituals. So you have to go to somebody still. So I'm just wondering, did that have an influence maybe on increasing the number of lay practitioners?
Tabitha Stanmore: It's a really interesting question. there's some really interesting research by Francis Young, about what happened to monks After the on both before and after the Reformation, because the monasteries are dissolved. All [00:15:00] of a sudden you have a lot of very highly trained religious people who have an ability to read Latin, they understand things like exorcism rituals, they understandall the rituals that, around essentially conjuring and appeasing God. And they are released into society. Some of them obviously go to the continent andjoin monastic institutions in Catholic countries.
Tabitha Stanmore: Other ones stay in England, at which point, you know what, what does happen to them? And it's very possible that some of them did, yeah, end up going out to become magicians for hire, essentially. Whether that's how they saw themselves is debatable. I mean, probably not. But it does mean that, yeah, you do have an alternative option to this kind of like orthodox I'm sure you're all familiar with the idea of Protestant priests, that people obviously turn to for religious help, but also potentially magical help as well.
Tabitha Stanmore: And you do also see a very strong competition going on both before and after the Reformation between cunning folk and priests, with priests going, ' please [00:16:00] can my parishioners stop visiting all of these cunning folk?' They're taking away my business. Because obviously one thing that priests often did wasadminister to the spiritual needs of their community, and that includes the things like blessing fields, helping people to be fertile again, possibly by blessing water and letting people drink it, which kind of borders on superstition even for the Catholicism, but if people are going off to a cunning person instead to get this help or to get healing or spells or prayers, then it is actually taking away from both the income and the use of the church, which was dealt with in two ways.
Tabitha Stanmore: One way was priests complaining and saying, no, this shouldn't be done. We should be stopping this. We should be trying to stamp out this kind of magic. Or priests leaning into it and just selling spells themselves. Which I just, I love. I think it's really wonderful. It's got the adaptability of people and the kind of the grey area between religion and magic. But really clearly shouldn't come through in those kind of examples.
Sarah Jack: What are some [00:17:00] other primary uses of service magic?
Tabitha Stanmore: Healing is definitely the most common, by a long way. And again, before we started recording, we mentioned that everybody on this call currently has a cold, and they don't seem to be going anywhere. and that's, that's obviously true of all of history, right? There's always been sickness. There's always been annoying illnesses that can't be shifted or life-threatening diseases. And especially before the advent of things like antibiotics or vaccines, there is a sort of an endemic sickness, among the population.
Tabitha Stanmore: So a medicine isn't particularly effective a lot of the time. It's very good at treating symptoms. It's not necessarily very good at treating disease. So turning to magic again, kind of makes a lot of sense in that situation, especially when you're using prayer spells. So you're very much appealing to a higher power to say, St. Justinian, for example, please, cure my toothache.It might be the only thing that works, frankly. [00:18:00] So healing was incredibly common. That was one of the things that cunning folk were asked to do the most. Another one was protection, protection in battle, protection for sailors when they are out at sea, to protect them from storms.And I think the most touching one is the amount that magic was used in love spell in. in situations about spells used for love, whether that's making people fall in love with each other or actually breaking people up, potentially, because you're so in love with somebody and they've gone and married somebody else. What are you going to do about that? It's probably a spell that you can use to break that couple up so that you can get that person. And, yeah, again, that's a very, very common use, which was very likely prosecuted a lot of the time, because a lot of the time love magic, it's about community cohesion. It's about keeping people together, especially the number of spells that are often, directed at making a husband and wife get along better, whether that's making the husband less cantankerous or making the wife fall in love with her husband again.[00:19:00] Those kinds of things, they were often available and very simple spells a lot of the time, which kind of, again, I think shows quite how common they must have been.
Tabitha Stanmore: There's one woman in the 15th century who apparently used to wash her husband's shirts in holy water because apparently that made him meek and pliable for the rest of the week. And she must have heard that spell from somewhere. She was also sharing it with her neighbors and passing on that knowledge, which I guess isn't so much service magic. But it is a very obvious use of magic that people needed, and I don't know how many people took up her advice, but she certainly seemed to think it would work, and had been doing it for years by the time she finally got reported to the authorities as potentially not using holy water in the way it was intended.
Josh Hutchinson: One of the uses you talk about is divination. What are some of the key methods used to divine?
Tabitha Stanmore: There are so many, and again, it's fascinating to see how much things [00:20:00] evolve and get adapted according to people's needs, and clearlythey're in trial and error with these spells. One of my favorite forms of divination, which sounds deeply impractical but I love, is the bread and knives method, and that's basically where you take a loaf of bread, and you stick two knives into the sides of the loaf in a cross shape, and then you put a peg in the top of the loaf, and then you, I think you turn it upside down, and then you hold the peg between your hands, and you ask a yes or no question, and basically the bread will spin one way for no and one way for yes. I've only found two instances of it being used. And I think, again, it's because it's so impractical. I did try it once to see if it would work. And you need some really stale bread, you need some very sharp knives, you need a very short hand, so you don't just drop it on your foot. But it's really interesting, because it's a method that is [00:21:00] replicated with different tools, but they all sort of work on the same principle, which is, you ask a binary question, as I say, a yes or no, or is my child going to be a boy or a girl, so one way for boy, one way for girl, or, I don't know. Am I going to get married soon? Yes or no? That kind of thing. And the cross shape I think is quite important, because it's again, it's drawing on that higher power and in this case, probably Jesus. And it's something which is simple, but only certain people, again, could possibly practice it, because you do need somebody who's got that sort of power within them, much like anybody could buy a pack of tarot cards today, but only some people are very good at reading them and have an affinity with them. You get the same kind of thing going on with divination methods. So as I say,the loaf and knives method fell out of popularity probably quite quickly. It appears in the 14th century, doesn't really appear in any other centuries, and mostly around the London area, as well, and doesn't seem to have spread very far after that.
Tabitha Stanmore: More common versions of the same [00:22:00] basic principle are the Sieve and Shears, which is, again, lots of different methods, but basically you take a pair of kind of sheep shearing shears or large scissors and put a sieve on top of those and then ask questions once the sieve is balanced on the top. And again, the sieve will tilt one way for yes, one way for no, and this is much more practical. You're not going to destroy a loaf of bread every time you attempt it. And you're also going to be able to, pretty much anybody will be able to use this method because everybody would probably own a pair of shears and everybody would own a sieve.
Tabitha Stanmore: The fancier version of this divination method is the book and key, and that is one that pretty much only priests used or people who had a very high level of education, because it would use either a Psalter or a Bible, and you'd place a big heavy key inside of the book. And you'd hold the book in between your two bald fists, and then you would ask your [00:23:00] question. And often if it was finding stolen goods that you were trying to find out with this method, then you would start by saying something like, 'by St. Peter and St. Paul, Tony's stolen my horse.' And if the key fell out, then that would be the right answer.But yeah, as I say, this is something that only some people will be able to do, because not everybody had access to printed works and especially not something as sacred as a Bible. And that's by St. Peter and St. Paul, you're definitely summoning divine intervention to make this work. Again, condemned by the church. Still used by the church . And again, a simpler method of that, is just taking a Bible and just opening it at a random page. And the first line from the gospel that you see is the answer to your question, which,some will call that just basic religion or just guesswork, but people would definitely see it as a very reliable form of divination, depending on the answer. So these are some of my favourite ones. I could go on about this forever as you can probably [00:24:00] tell, so let me know if you want any more.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, I'm so glad you explained the Sieve and Shears and the Book and Key. Those actually turn up in New England in the Salem Witch Trials. Both of those methods are said to be used.
Tabitha Stanmore: Yeah, it's definitely an import, that.
Josh Hutchinson: And what are some key methods of healing?
Tabitha Stanmore: One of my favourite methods, which probably wouldn't have worked very well at all, comes from the 14th century, and it's probably quite a lot older than that. And it's basically, again, very strongly religious, it involved saying a short phrase in Latin, something similar to, 'as Mary sufferedin the birth of Jesus, may this person's suffering end,' essentially, or something like that. And while saying that, you would put your fingers into the wound that somebody had sustained, and [00:25:00] make the sign of a cross. Which, given that a lot of these spells do actually have a very strong logic behind them, this one makes no sense to me, because you're just going to be opening up that wound. But I suppose the idea is that you are also inserting some sort of um, ,cleansing in it, because of the, the mercy that Christ showed, to humanity, and the idea of the cleansing of sins and that kind of thing. You might be trying to cleanse the wound by putting the power of the cross inside it.
Tabitha Stanmore: More effective methods, potentially, were ones that involved writing spells onto food, pieces of food, sometimes things like communion wafers, sometimes bread, sometimes cheese, and giving that to the sick person to eat.
Tabitha Stanmore: And I say it would be more effective partly because we all recognise that the placebo effect exists, and so that kind of, that knowledge that you are being cared for and that sort of hope that will be attached to that spell, might well be exactly what you [00:26:00] need, basically, to kind of power you through and overcome your illness.
Tabitha Stanmore: Again, it is something that not everybody could do, sometimes you need to know the right words, and some people just had a better understanding of healing and whether or not this was a lost cause, and often, spells would be combined with other healing methods as well. And that's something that you see with magical drinks, which were also given as a method of healing. Again, they would normally come with some kind of chant that you would do over the the potion.
Tabitha Stanmore: But the things that went into the potions were often things which would be very helpful for curing the disease in the first place. So things like honey, things like garlic, aqua vitae, which is a catch all term for all sorts of different sort of medical concoctions that involve a lot of different herbs. And and often these herbs would have either anesthetic effects or antibacterial effects, as well. So they could genuinely do good, even without the kind of the placebo effect or without the magic that's been [00:27:00] mixed into them.
Tabitha Stanmore: Often healing spells do combine belief, that kind of, the idea of divine power or some other kind of higher power, as well as very strong experience that the cunning person would possess and use as part of their healing. And again, you see that combination in diagnostic services. A lot of cunning healers would try to diagnose somebody's illness, especially if it was something which had come on very suddenly or was just not going away and there wasn't an obvious cause for it. They'd try to diagnose whether or not somebody had been touched by a fairy or whether they'd been bewitched by a malevolent witch. And they do this by taking the patient's belt or girdle and measuring it. And they basically measure it between their extended thumb and their elbow and see, they actually never explain exactly what they see when they're measuring this girdle.[00:28:00]
Tabitha Stanmore: But what I'm guessing is that they're seeing how much weight the person has lost,and if it has been a dramatic weight loss over a very short period of time, then often they would come to the conclusion that this person had been touched by a fairy and they had some kind of terrible wasting sickness. And in that case the cure would be to try to appease the fairies, it would be to try to drive out the curse that somebody had put on the person or try to somehow otherwise fortify the person so they could get through the illness, but they'd use this diagnostic tool to say what the illness is in the first place and also whether the person had any hope of survival.
Tabitha Stanmore: And cunning folk would choose their cases accordingly. If they didn't think this person had any chance of surviving, they would be honest about that. They'd say, 'look, I'm sorry, this person's too far gone, the fairies have got him, there's nothing I can do.' But if there was some hope that they, a person could be saved, and they suspected that it was [00:29:00] witchcraft especially, then one of the things that they would start by doing is potentially performing counter witchcraft.
Tabitha Stanmore: So a very common method for that would be to take a flask of the patient's urine, and this is from the 17th century onwards, it's not particularly common in the 16th century, but it's a continental European import into England. But yeah, you take a flask of the person's urine, you'd put pins and a piece of red fabric or potentially something in the shape of a heart into that flask and then you would stopper it up and you would boil it in the fire or bury it somewhere, and the idea is that that would cause so much pain to the person who would cast the spell in the first place that it would basically rebound and then the witch would be obliged to lift the curse, or at least you'd be able to identify who the witch was and then force them to lift the curse, either by scratching and drawing blood, because that removes some of their power, or by just [00:30:00] intimidating them until they lifted the curse.
Tabitha Stanmore: So there's lots and lots of different tools in a cunning person's arsenal.
Sarah Jack: Would somebody inquire for the services of a magic practitioner to do a curse or harm their neighbor or family or spouse?
Tabitha Stanmore: Yes, although it very much depends on the intention behind it, whether your community would condemn you as somebody who is trying to use witchcraft or not. Again, going back to the stolen goods example, it would be relatively common to say, 'oh, my horse has been stolen, I am going to go to a cunning person and get that cunning person to curse the thief until the horse comes back.' And that wasn't seen as witchcraft, because it's more like restoring justice than doing harm for no reason. And that's quite an important distinction in people's minds. Because again, if you're doing something, if you're causing harm for the right reason, then you [00:31:00] can potentially ask for God's intervention in that, you can potentially ask fairies or whatever. You don't need to be using devilish or malevolent powers to be able to do that.
Tabitha Stanmore: So yeah, so if you're using a cunning person to, even if you're causing, you want them to cause real serious harm or pain, so long as it's for a good reason, it's okay. If you're just doing it because you're just filled with spite, that's when it tips into witchcraft, which does take a little bit of moral arithmetic, but it kind of works.
Josh Hutchinson: I'm not gonna lie, when I started this research, I did not expect it to go in the direction it did. And I, it's really changed my perspective on, on the early modern period, on the witch trials, on witchcraft and people's belief systems and everything else, because it's so different to what I expected.
Tabitha Stanmore: And I didn't realize quite how much magic there was going on, until I started this.
Josh Hutchinson:
Josh Hutchinson: You talked earlier about some [00:32:00] of the healing. They would write things down on food or paper and swallow it. And what were some of the other ways that Christian scripture and teachings were used in magic?
Tabitha Stanmore: I suppose one of the most famous ways, when you think about it, is exorcism rituals, because one of the things that ritual magicians in particular, so very learned magicians who had knowledge of Latin and other sort of sacred languages, one of the things that they could do with their knowledge was repurpose Orthodox Christian knowledge,and, as I say, rituals.Exorcisms obviously are intended to conjure a demon out of a person or an item, but the same method and more or less exactly the same words can be used to conjure a demon into something, whether that is a person, [00:33:00] which doesn't happen too often, thank goodness, but much more commonly into a magic circle, for example.
Tabitha Stanmore: So, that use of scripture, again, often by priests or people who trained as priests and then left their training early so they didn't actually have to take orders or monks would use this power, in order to summon demons and bend them to their will. And the things that they use the demons for vary from incredibly noble to hilarious. For example, on the noble end there is the ability to understand the secrets of the universe and understand the nature of God. So think Dr. Faustus style. He's reached the end of human knowledge, now he wants to understand the secrets of the universe, so he summons a demon, makes a deal, and, well, he thinks that he's forced a demon to tell him all these things. And ritual magicians who were careful about their work [00:34:00] definitely thought that they hadsubjugated a demon to their will, in order to answer their questions aboutthe higher powers.
Tabitha Stanmore: On the funnier end of the spectrum was summoning a demon, or even an angel, in order to learn Latin really fast so that you could get out of your lessons quicker, or summon a demon into a magic ring to make you better at gambling. Or even, potentially, summon a demon, make them look like an incredibly beautiful woman so that you can sleep with them. Real spectrum of human interests there, all of which come down to using Christian scripture in ways that it probably wasn't designed for, but the point of this is that scripture, especially when it was written in Latin, was seen to have power in its own right.
Tabitha Stanmore: It's not almost not even just the divine power. It's the fact that these sounds, these syllables, this conjunction of words in itself is enough. You don't really need to understand it to be able to [00:35:00] use it, which actually is why in some medieval, late medieval, medical texts from the 13th and 14th centuries, you have instructions from the author saying, 'do not share this particular healing charm,' which is sometimes written down in a medical text. 'Don't share this with the wider population because they'll misuse it, because you don't have to understand it in order to make it work.' Bit gatekeepery, but in some cases you can understand why.
Josh Hutchinson: That reminds me of Harry Potter, you still have that, that Latin as magical language kind of thing in our society today. There's these magical words, abracadabra or avaracadabra, if you're a Harry Potter fan.
Josh Hutchinson: Absolutely. And I actually, that's something that always bothered me about the Harry Potter books. Like at no point do they actually learn the theory of magic. And I feel like that's a massive oversight, Yeah, they don't know how it works. They're just. They're cooking the [00:36:00] meal with the ingredients, but they don't know how it all comes together.
Tabitha Stanmore: Exactly. Yeah. It's rote learning and it's lazy, frankly.
Sarah Jack: Right now, I believe you're working on the Seven County Witch Hunt Project. Is that right?
Tabitha Stanmore: Yes, yeah it is. Yeah, so it's a three year, Leverhulme-funded research project with Professor Marion Gibson. I think it's really exciting. So we're looking at what we're calling England's mass witch hunt. So it was the largest witch hunt in England, as far as we know, and it took place during the English Civil War in the 1640s. And it's estimated that about 300 people were accused across seven counties, and of that, over 100 were executed. The thing that this project is trying to pin down is all of the details within that. We don't know exactly how many people were prosecuted, we don't know how many people were executed, we don't know the names of some of those people, and we certainly [00:37:00] don't know the backgrounds of those people either, or what kind of roles they played in their communities, or the kinds of psychological scars that the communities possibly ended up with as a result of these hunts.
Tabitha Stanmore: There's been an over focus, I think, on Matthew Hopkins, the so-called Witchfinder General, and his, co-searcher, John Stearne. And yeah, this project is trying to reorient our knowledge and our focus to look at the accused themselves and their families. So one thing I'm looking at within that, and I'd love to come back onto your podcast at some point and talk about this because I'm very excited about it, is, the children of suspected witches. Because as far as I know, we haven't, nobody's really looked into that in any detail. We do tend to look at the children of witches if they subsequently get accused of witchcraft. But, for example, we have 300 people who were accused, and almost all of those had children. [00:38:00] And we don't know the fates of those, what, did they stay within their communities? Did they end up going to prison alongside their parents? Did they carry a taint for the rest of their lives of being the children of witches? Or were they able to reinvent themselves? We just don't know. And I think that's a massive oversight and one that could tell us quite a lot about early modern witchcraft and the early modern capacity to forgive and forget, which at the moment is just a massive question mark,in our knowledge of the past.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah. We definitely want you to come back and talk to us about that and anything else you want to talk to us about. We looked a little into children of the Connecticut witch trial victims. It's very fascinating what ends up happening with the families, like Sarah and I have ancestors who were accused. And so we know a little bit about what happened with our ancestors' families. And it's like you said, that trauma [00:39:00] is there no matter what the result of the accusation is. There's an impact.
Tabitha Stanmore: Absolutely. Yeah. Sorry. I definitely should have been a bit clearer about that. Within England, we don't know very much about the fates, but yeah, it's really exciting to see how much we actually do know about some of the legacies. in, in the U. S. for sure. Yeah, it's absolutely fascinating and well done for being alive now.
Josh Hutchinson: Thank you. Yeah. Some of my ancestors and Sarah's, were acquitted and released and managed to recover and raise their families and everything. Others weren't as fortunate, but their children lived on and carried their names on.
Tabitha Stanmore: Honestly, the more I look into the early modern period, the more amazed I am that anybody survived it, really. um,
Josh Hutchinson: Just surviving to get born in the first place was so harrowing. Yeah.
Tabitha Stanmore: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. it's absolutely amazing. it's real testament to [00:40:00] human, I don't know, resourcefulness, hope, I'm not sure, but yeah, it's really amazing.
Sarah Jack:
Sarah Jack: And now for a Minute with Mary.
Mary-Louise Bingham: There was a woman living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, British America, indicted for the capital crime of witchcraft in 1665. She is only known to us today as Female Gleason. The reason we know of her existence at all is because her surname is mentioned in the book, Entertaining Satan, authored by John Putnam Demos.
Mary-Louise Bingham: I am sad that I have not yet found a court document stating her given name. I am also sad that her given name was not passed down through the generations. Her very being was almost erased from history. Today, I can assure you that the members of the Massachusetts Witch Hunt Justice Project are conducting the necessary research to discover Female Gleason's given name. It will be with great joy to speak her full name [00:41:00] when she is cleared for the crimes she did not commit.
Sarah Jack: Thank you, Mary.
Josh Hutchinson: Here's Sarah with End Witch Hunts News.
Sarah Jack: End Witch Hunt, a non profit 501c3 organization. Weekly News Update What impact can the United Nations Human Rights Council have? The United Nations Human Rights Council is an intergovernmental body within the United Nations system that strengthens the promotion and protection of human rights around the globe.
Sarah Jack: The work of the United Nations Human Rights Council includes promotion and protection of human rights, addressing violations and setting standards, encouraging compliance, and standards, promoting prevention, and continuing global dialogue. The preamble of the United Nations Charter states, 'We the peoples of the United Nations are determined to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights and the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women, and [00:42:00] of nations large and small.'
Sarah Jack: End Witch Hunts staunchly stands for the right of human dignity for all. We believe that this right, inerrant to every person, underpins all rights and freedoms. Harmful practices related to accusations of witchcraft and ritual attacks is a violation against human dignity. End Witch Hunts implores states and individuals to uphold and protect human dignity. We all must work to safeguard individuals from torture, degrading treatment, and discrimination. We are dedicated to these principles and advocate for their universal adoption and implementation.
Sarah Jack: Witch hunts are a harmful reality that persists, and as a part of our podcast community, you play a crucial role in the collective advocacy. Thank you for tuning in, sharing our episodes, continuing the conversation with your sphere of influence, and asking leaders to take action. We must continue to cultivate the societal values of compassion, understanding, and [00:43:00] justice. It is our collective responsibility as a world community to unite against the inhumane treatment of every individual anywhere in the world, including anyone accused of causing witchcraft harm. Spread awareness. Share this information with your friends, family, and on social media. Use your voice to let others know about the urgency of combating witchcraft accusations and persecution. Support advocacy groups. You can learn all about them on our website and in our advocacy podcast episodes. Contact authorities. Raise your voice by reaching out to relevant authorities and leadership. Urge them to take swift and decisive action to ensure justice for victims and accountability for all involved.
Sarah Jack: End Witch Hunts actively supports exoneration and memorial efforts that aim to honor victims and raise witch hunt awareness. Sign our petition at change.org/witchtrials to urge the state of Massachusetts to amend legislation [00:44:00] acknowledging all Salem Witch Trial victims. Bill H 1803, an act to exonerate all individuals accused of witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials, is currently being reviewed by the Joint Committee on the Judiciary in the Massachusetts General Court. They must choose to pass the bill onto the House by February 7th. Please consider submitting written testimony now as to why you support acknowledging all those who suffered in the Salem Witch Trials. This bill transcends the realm of mere legislation. It holds profound significance in the pursuit of human rights. Beyond the previously exonerated victims of the Salem Witch Trials, this bill sheds light on the vast scale of mass suffering that occurred. It represents a significant step toward rectifying this injustice and delivering more comprehensive justice. This legislation holds the power to provide more long overdue formal acknowledgement to overlooked victims.
Sarah Jack: Join the Massachusetts Witch Trial Justice Project and House [00:45:00] Representative Andres Vargas in advocating for this crucial piece of legislation. Anyone can submit written testimony. Simply write a short letter stating why this bill's important to this address, which will also be in the show notes: Judiciary Committee at 24 Beacon Street, room 1 36, Boston, Massachusetts 0 2 1 3 3 or by email to michael.musto@mahouse.gov. That's M I C H A E L dot M U S T O @ M A H O U S E dot G O V. Let's persist in elevating the voices of both historical and contemporary victims of witch hunts.
Sarah Jack: Our monthly donors are our super listeners. As a super listener, your monthly contributions make a significant impact. Visit aboutwitchhunts.com/ and easily sign up for any donation amount that suits you. Your generosity fuels the content you love.
Josh Hutchinson: Thank you, [00:46:00] Sarah.
Sarah Jack: You're welcome.
Josh Hutchinson: And thank you for listening to Witch Hunt.
Sarah Jack: Visit us at aboutwitchhunts.com/.
Josh Hutchinson: And remember to tell your friends about the show.
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Josh Hutchinson: Have a great today and a beautiful tomorrow.
Witch Hunt presents an eye-opening discussion with human rights lawyer Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni regarding her research and work in the field of law and caste-based discrimination in India. Exploring human experience realities like social untouchability, caste-based discrimination in education, the plight of manual scavengers, and the witchcraft accusation atrocities committed against multitudes of vulnerable women with inferior status.
This thoughtful exchange regarding the struggle for equality in India provides a clear lens for understanding the human rights violations of the caste system, the experience of “untouchables” in India, and the urgent need for effective societal transformation and accountability to extinguish these entrenched harmful practices.
Josh Hutchinson: welcome to Witch Hunt, the podcast that seeks to understand witch hunts and find ways to end them. I'm Josh Hutchinson.
Sarah Jack: And I'm Sarah Jack. My ancestors Rebecca Nurse, Mary Esty, Mary Hale, and Winifred Benham were victims of witch trials in Massachusetts and Connecticut.
Josh Hutchinson: And my ancestors, including Mary Esty, were involved in the Salem Witch Trials. My 10th great grandfather, Joseph Hutchinson, provided the land where the Salem Village Meeting House stood and later played a role in the trials, first as an accuser, but later as a defender of Rebecca Nurse.
Sarah Jack: Our family heritage started us on our quest to understand witch hunts.
Josh Hutchinson: Thank you for joining us on our journey.
Sarah Jack: Witch hunting dates back to ancient times.
Josh Hutchinson: And deadly witch hunts continue to occur in all corners of the globe today.
Sarah Jack: As historian Wolfgang [00:01:00] Behringer has stated, there have never been so many witch hunts as we see in today's world.
Josh Hutchinson: In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni, who discusses how India's caste system interacts with supernatural belief to trigger witchcraft allegations and violence against the country's most vulnerable people, the Dalits, or Untouchables.
Sarah Jack: Be aware, there are references to violence against women, including sexual violence.
Josh Hutchinson: While the journey through such topics is tough, it leads us to greater empathy and action. By confronting these issues, we can work towards meaningful change.
Sarah Jack: We welcome Dr. Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni, lecturer in law at University of Lincoln in the UK. Her expertise includes international human rights law, Indian constitutional law, and anti-discrimination laws.
Sarah Jack: What should we know about your professional background and work?
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: [00:02:00] I'm currently working as a lecturer in law at University of Lincoln in England, and I have done my PhD from Lancaster University pretty recently. My thesis was on untouchability with studies on manual scavenging and caste-based discrimination in higher educational institutions in India.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: And I've done my, LLM from University of Reading, also in the UK, and my B.A.LL.B. Honours, and I'm a gold medalist from National Law School of India University, Bangalore, which is, like really top university in India, a law university in India. And I've been working in this area of caste and untouchability for quite a few years now, particularly because it was a focus of my PhD thesis.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: And even when I was a student at National Law School of India, University of Bangalore, I did have an opportunity to, work with, some of the constitutional bodies in India, like the National Commission for Scheduled Castes, [00:03:00] which has been established to look after and protect the rights of the marginalized communities such as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, or what we call as Dalits and Adivasis in common parlance.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: When I was working there, I did an internship. I worked on the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act 1989, and I did propose amendments to the Act, as to how to make the Act more stringent and enforceable, so that it protects the rights of the most vulnerable and marginalized sections of the Indian population.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: And I did publish a lot on this area, as well. I'm a human rights lawyer. So most of my publications are in this area. And of course, here and there are a few about international law, and humanitarian law as well. And, one of the book chapters, which I wrote in 2020, it's about international health regulations. I co-authored the book chapter with Professor Susan Rowe, who was a dean at the University of [00:04:00] Victoria in Canada. It was on, as I said, international health regulations. That was one of the first books on COVID-19 law and policy context in Asia. It was published by Oxford University Press, New York.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: And that chapter has been listed by the WHO in, in their research database. And I've also presented joint oral statements before the United Nations. And several of my written statements have been, published in the United Nations website and my work has also been cited by the UN Committee on CRC Rights of the Children.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: Yeah, that's, that's pretty much about me.
Josh Hutchinson: Congratulations on all your successes. Many more to come, I'm sure. You mentioned the Dalits and the Adivasi, can you tell us who they are?
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: It actually goes back centuries. So in order to understand what they are, we need to understand [00:05:00] the institution of caste, which is one of the most exclusive features of the Indian society and particularly the Hindu social order. And it's perhaps one of the longest surviving social hierarchies in the whole world, and this hierarchy reflects complexity and stratification as it situates people in a very complex hierarchical order.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: So I would like to take the definition of caste, which is given by Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, who is the father of the Indian constitution, the chief architect of the Indian constitution and the first law minister of independent India. He defines caste in India as an artificial chopping off of the population into fixed and definite units, each one prevented from fusing into another through the custom of endogamy, that is marriage from within the community. So the conclusion is inevitable that endogamy is the only characteristic that is peculiar to caste. This is what he says. And he says that if [00:06:00] one succeeds in showing how endogamy is maintained, one can practically prove the genesis and mechanism of caste.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: In ancient times, with the Hindu social order, how it was, we had four varnas called the Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shudra. You have to go through the ancient texts like the Vedas to understand where this is stemming from. One of the earliest revolutions of this, you can find it in the Vedas of the Purusha Sukta of the Rig Veda, which is one of the ancient Hindu texts. Basically it divides the society into four categories and these four categories are never to be equal socially or with regard to their rights and privileges. They must always be based on a graded scale.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: The graded inequality was the essence, very essence of it. So there must be a division of occupation according to it. And right to education was available only to the top three varnas. The Shudra, the fourth varna, and women of all varnas were denied education. So the varna system was [00:07:00] set in stone by the Brahmans, who are the priestly class, who were on top of the varna system without any cracks or loopholes. Inequality exists in every society, but the inequality preached and practiced by Brahmins, the priestly class, is an official doctrine of Brahmanism.It was opposed to the very concept of equality, and its soul lays in graded inequality.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: Until untouchability came into being, the Shudras were the lowest of all. They were the lowest in terms of the Hindu social order. This was until untouchability came into being. But with the intermixture of varnas, so over time there has been, there have been very many sexual relations or intermarriages, even though it's prohibited in text, these things did happen, and these intermixtures gave rise to new castes, and castes such as Chandalas came to be known as untouchables, and they were the lowest of all. They were considered the lowest of all. Now, they were the outcastes. [00:08:00] They lived and suffered at the bottom of the Hindu caste hierarchy for centuries. They were segregated, discriminated against, and humiliated in the name of God and religion. The untouchables were forced to live in degrading environment. They were denied a life with dignity. Their values, culture, and traditions were suppressed. Having a decent education was a distant dream to these communities. They were economically deprived, socially excluded, and politically marginalized, and they were forced to live a life of surrender to the dominant caste. The untouchable women were forced to become prostitutes for dominant caste patrons and village priests as devadasis. So sexual abuse and other forms of violence against women were often used by landlords and police to crush any type of dissent.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: This untouchability you can see throughout the dark pages of Indian history, and it's been there through every [00:09:00] king's regime. And one of the harshest times were seen in the 18th century during the Peshwa regime. The Peshwas were called the Chitpavan Brahmins, the priestly class. During that time, untouchables were not allowed to use public streets lest a Hindu was coming along so that his shadow would pollute the Hindus.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: The untouchables had to identify themselves by wearing a black thread, either on their wrist or around their neck as a prevention so that Hindus do not get themselves polluted by touching them by mistake. So they had to also carry strung from their waist a broom to sweep away behind themselves the dust they trod on, lest a Hindu walking on the same dust should be polluted. So they were also required to carry an earthen pot hung around their neck wherever they went for holding their spit, lest the spit falling on the earth should pollute a Hindu who might unknowingly happen to tread on it. Such a system continued to exist [00:10:00] despite the change in the regime, and you can see how barbaric this is.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: So the untouchables later came to be called as Scheduled Castes under the Indian Constitution and Dalits in common parlance, and the tribal population came to be called as Scheduled Tribes under the Constitution and Adivasis in common parlance.
Sarah Jack: Thank you. You mentioned the Constitution and also your work on the law. What protections did the 1950 Constitution give them?
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: So there have been a lot of protections for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes under the Constitution. One of the important provisions which our Constitution proposes is the Doctrine of Equality, where it treats everybody as equal before the law. This is particularly important, because the Indian society has accepted inequality and discrimination as an accepted value.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: So the constitution was very radical in the sense [00:11:00] where it treated everybody as equal under the law. Because the Hindu system, Hindu religious texts, gave punishments to different people based on the caste they belong to. So for the same offense, punishment differed from person to person based on the caste he belonged to. But the constitution, in that sense, equalizes, saying that everybody is equal under law.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: And our constitution also provides for affirmative action, which I'm sure is present in some of the other constitutions such as the U. S. and South Africa, as well, where special provisions have been made for people belonging to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and other backward classes in terms of education and employment. And now there has been a new addition, as well for economic weaker sections who are actually people belonging to none of these communities, which means they are forward castes, but they're economically poor. There have been special provisions which have been made for their protection and betterment.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: And one of the [00:12:00] important provisions with regard to Indian constitution is abolition of untouchability. So what I mentioned earlier is the practice of untouchability, which has been prevalent in India for centuries. The constitution said that untouchability is abolished and its practice in any form is forbidden. The enforcement of any disability arising out of untouchability shall be an offense punishable in accordance with law.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: So the principles of equality and non-discrimination are woven through the very fabric of our Indian constitution and also many other international human rights conventions, as well, which basically prohibit discrimination based on birth, descent, and social origin, to which India is also a party to.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: The laws have been there, even the conventions have been there, but the problem is how it is enforced. The enforcement is totally discriminatory. That's why there is prevalence of discrimination. That's why there is prevalence of untouchability in various forms, which is still manifesting [00:13:00] in indifferency. In the past,untouchability was mostly confined to physically touching people or physically restricting the movement of the untouchables. Say, untouchables were not allowed inside the village, or they had to remove their shoes while walking inside the village, things like that. But now it's not so prevalent in the urban milieu. Of course, it is still there in some parts in some rural areas in India.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: But in urban India, types and forms of untouchability has changed with the changing times. So now it exists mostly in the minds of the people where people say for example, one of the areas where I've researched on was caste discrimination in higher educational institutions. So this happens in universities, in higher educational institutions, where students from these marginalized communities go to study and get access to education. Instead of welcoming these students who have [00:14:00] come from these really poor backgrounds and marginalized sections, these first generation learners, instead of welcoming them, these vested interests who are mostly dominant caste people, they build hurdles to these students accessing education and in such a way, and some of the cases are so brutal that the kind of mental torture and pressure which are put on these students are so immense that they even take drastic steps like quitting institutions and even in some cases student suicides, particularly of Dalit students committing suicides in India has been very, it has beenon a rising level in the past decades or so.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: So the forms of discrimination has changed over time, but yet it remains one of the most brutal forms of untouchability, which is still prevalent in independent India.
Josh Hutchinson: And how does someone get recognized as being a Dalit?
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: Ah, that's a very interesting [00:15:00] question, because it's not, caste is, caste is a state of mind. It's not like race, which is apparent. So there are different ways. One of the most obvious ways is surnames. So people do keep surnames of particular castes. There are surnames which denote the caste of a person. So if a person keeps that surname, it's very obvious that person belongs to a particular caste.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: And otherwise, it's not so uncommon in India to ask a caste of a person, so if you meet somebody and they ask, okay, first you exchange pleasantries and everything, and then you become friends and, in a school or a college setup, I'm saying, you go out and have fun, and then it ultimately comes down to that point where they ask, 'okay, which caste do you belong to?' And when it comes to that, it's very hard for somebody to hide it. So at most times, people do say that, 'okay, I belong to [00:16:00] such and such caste, which is considered as a scheduled caste.' And that's the point where the attitude of the other person changes.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: So caste is that complex phenomenon where the attitude of one person changes based on the caste of the other. So when, say, A says, I belong to this caste, B thinks, okay, where do I situate him? Is he above me or is he below me? So based on that, B gives respect to A. So it's always. It's, it's relatable, it's okay, how much respect should I give him? Is he above me or is he below me? So that kind of concept, and it's very difficult to hide somebody's caste, and when we fill applications and for jobs and foreducation, everything, we have to fill details as to which religion we belong to, which caste we belong to, and things like that. It's not so difficult to find out which caste a person belongs to.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: And then in the villages it's very, and that's the [00:17:00] city part which I told you about. In the villages, it's very apparent because Dalit households are on the outskirts of the villages, always in the outside periphery of the villages, and everybody in villages, everybody knows which caste the other person belongs to. They know, okay, should we touch them or should we not? Should we use their water or not? Should they remove their shoes and come in their particular way or not? So everything is, it's sort of predetermined, everyone has to follow these set norms.
Sarah Jack: And how does the population compare between the castes? How many Dalits are there?
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: 250 million. 250 million, that's 25 percent of the Indian population, so that's a huge, huge number of population. Yeah. 250 million, I'm sure it's, I don't know, it's, it might be even the size of some of the smaller countries, so it's a huge number of population, but it's a very, [00:18:00] very silent and marginalized population, which doesn't have much voice, because the provision of the constitution came, as you said, in 1950 and from then, the people started getting access to education. So it's the first generation or first or second generation learners are coming from the Dalit communities now.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: So it's a huge disparity, and we have to fight against centuries of oppression. You can see how difficult it is. And now we are able to articulate our views and our thoughts, but it has not been like this before now, like in the 21st century.
Josh Hutchinson: 250 million, I think the US has a population of 330 million. So that would be almost the entire country. So just to put that in a little perspective for [00:19:00] us over here, it's a really huge, yeah, a huge number of people to be suffering this kind of abuse and discrimination. You mentioned that there's affirmative action, there's some new opportunities, but what kind of work do the Dalit perform generally?
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: Historically, traditionally, as per the Hindu religious texts, the Dalits are supposed to perform the so-called menial and polluting tasks, such as cleaning dry latrines, open and closed sewers, gutters, carrying human corpses, carrying dead animals, tanning leather, things like that. Butover time, Dalits have tried to come out of these occupations, but it's not so easy.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: One of the classic examples which I always give is about manual scavengers who are almost Dalits, [00:20:00] always. Manual scavenging is a, is a most visible and surviving symbols of untouchability. So manual scavenging is Dalit women and men are manually cleaning dry latrines. So they are forced to carry out human excreta with bare hands, take them into a different location away from the scavenged toilets. So this has traditionally and historically been assigned to Dalits, this task.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: There have been laws which ban manual scavenging. There is a 93 act, and there's a new act in 2013, which also banned manual scavenging. But the example which I give is, say, a manual scavenging woman, she says that she wants to give up this task. There are provisions in the Act which help people to give up this thing. So there is a one time cash assistance of 40,000 rupees. That's about it. They give 40,000 rupees and they say you have to leave this job, which is not that easy to give up a job just for 40,000 rupees. And there is a scheme of [00:21:00] loan and some scholarship for the children of the manual scavengers and things like that in the Act. And say the woman, she says that I want to leave manual scavenging and I want to open a tea stall, and she puts up a tea stall. But how many people are going to buy tea from her? It's as simple as that. She puts a tea stall. How many are going to buy tea from her? First, she's a Dalit woman. And secondly, that too, she's a manual scavenger, so she will be crumbled and crushed under the shoes of our society. It's not that easy to give up these tasks.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: I'm not propagating it in any way. It has, they have to give it up. But what I'm saying is, there has to be means, in such a way that they give it up for good. It shouldn't be that they give it up for some time, and then they go back because they can't handle the pressures which come from the society. So the government has to evolve schemes in such a way that this is a banned occupation we are talking [00:22:00] about. It shouldn't be carried out at all in the first place. So stringent punishment should be given to those people who are employing these manual scavengers.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: And many manual scavengers who have gone down the drains have never come out alive. Few compensations have been paid, in few cases here and there. Butit's nothing huge, and a lot of cases have happened where these people who have gone down the drains have never come out alive, and nobody has been punished. No, these are human lives we are talking about. There's no punishment at all for, and people enjoy impunity. It's really sad and very disturbing. But that's the reality that's present at the moment, unfortunately.
Josh Hutchinson: How many manual scavengers are there estimated to be?
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: So the socioeconomic caste census of 2011 discloses that more than 180,657 households are being engaged in manual scavenging for their livelihood. And the [00:23:00] 2011 Census of India shows 794,000 cases of manual scavenging in India. And this number doesn't include septic tanks, sewers, and railway tracks, which are also cleaned by manual scavengers, which means the actual number is a lot higher than this.
Josh Hutchinson: And the Dalit, there are other abuses, including witch hunts, is that right?
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: Yeah, that's right. Yes, witch hunting is one of the very important ways in which Dalit women have been hunted down in the past so many centuries. While both Dalit men and women are subjected to various kinds of hardships and handicaps, Dalit women face a triple threat of caste, class, and gender. They are molested and raped by dominant caste men who, as I said, enjoy impunity. And witch hunting or witchcraft, because of these accusations of witchcraft, Dalit women are abused and humiliated and even murdered because of [00:24:00] this accusation. Now, witch hunting, as you know, is a very violent form of witchcraft belief. And women, Dalit women in particular, are hunted down onthe accusations of witchcraft. Now, the victims, they suffer physically, psychologically, and economically.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: Now, globally, when we speak about witchcraft or witch hunting, we say the patriarchal mindset is as one of the chief reasons for witch hunting. But in India, with patriarchy, there's a combination of caste and class, with caste often emerging as a dominant reason for the practice of witchcraft and witch hunting of Dalit women, and I have heard the activists claim that the accusations of witchcraft against Dalit women are often used as a common ways to kill them.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: And most of the victims of witchcraft have been old widows and single women. And common reasons for accusing a woman of witchcraft range from personal disputes [00:25:00] or enmities, even sexual desire and coveting properties. And historically, the bodies of Dalit women have always been used as a tool for suppression by the privileged caste.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: Our Indian history has witnessed how Dalit women had to pay tax to cover their breasts, which was often not affordable to them. So such was the cruel and inhuman treatment of Dalit women, which has very, very few parallels in Indian history. And coming to witchcraft, the women accused of witchcraft are often blamed for calamities, epidemics, and other misfortunes which befall the societies. And victims suffer mental and physical brutality in very shocking forms like lynching, parading naked, social ostracization, and even being burnt alive by mobs. And activists often claim that accusations of witchcraft have been made [00:26:00] only on Dalit women, and privileged caste women have not been victims of, such practice.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: And also vast majority of Dalit women in rural India, as I said earlier, they are poor and landless and they are daily wage laborers, and they lack access to basic amenities and entitlements. So they are subjected to patriarchal structures, both in the general community and within their own families. And, these women, they face multiple challenges, including lack of access to resources, lack of educational opportunities, land, essential services, and even justice. So in rural areas, a Dalit woman lives in terror and fear, because she knows that dominant caste people can target her anytime to seek revenge or just assert authority or just simply to suppress.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: There is an intersection of several factors here. There is caste, there is [00:27:00] class, there is gender, and there are also other issues like superstition, which we shouldn't overlook, because superstition and witchcraft goes hand in hand. And there are other things like illiteracy and poverty as well, and so these are all like these vicious factors. you know, it makes a vicious circle around Dalit women, and they are hunted down and they have been killed and so many hundreds of unreported incidents have happened, in every state in India, and, after being declared a witch, the woman is, they are tortured, harassed, they're ostracized and physically tortured, they're banished from the village, and even in some cases, they're forced to consume human excreta, and they're also subject to gang rape as a punishment for witchcraft. There are very few punishments for all this kind of crimes, which are, they are literally crimes, isn't it? There is gang [00:28:00] rape, there is murder, andjust discriminating against Dalits. It attracts so many provisions of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act, but they are not seen as such. And because the whole structure is such that the perpetrators, they enjoy impunity.
Josh Hutchinson: A Dalit woman who's aging and has lost her husband is extraordinarily vulnerable then to witchcraft allegations.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: She is, she most certainly is. And, as I said, historically, it has been seen as, the bodies of Dalit women have been seen as a tool for oppression. So if, see, there is this famous quote which a Dalit woman said, who is called as a devadasi. Devadasi is a girl who's dedicated to the temple to serve the god, and she gets exploited by the priests and the other village men, and she's basically a temple prostitute.[00:29:00]
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: So one of the devadasis famously said that Dalit men are not be touched, but Dalit women could be raped. So untouchability is where you do not touch Dalits, but the women could be raped. Such is the barbaric practice we are talking about, and Dalit women are very vulnerable, extremely vulnerable because it's very hard to, the kinds of struggle they have to fight is multifaceted. It's not just against caste or it's not just against class. There's so many struggles which she has to face and she's very vulnerable because A, she doesn't have education, B, she doesn't have anybody to support her. So it's somebody who has lost her husband or children, and if she has property in her hand, then it's very likely that somebody will accuse her of being a witch. Maybe somebody dies in the village and then the allegation directly goes to this Dalit woman who doesn't have a husband or a child and she's living alone, old [00:30:00] widow. The allegation is directly thrown to her saying that she is the reason why somebody has died in the village or some child is ill, things like that, and that she has casted an evil eye on the family, and she'll be banished from the village, even burnt alive and things like that.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: It's, it's very hard. And no matter how much we try to deny these things, these practices and these mindsets, the mindsets of the people are still rooted in these traditional beliefs. That people, even now in the cities also, people, it's easier to say that, okay, everyone's educated in the city. People do not believe in all these.These practices are confined to the villages, but people still go tie threads to the trees. They tie threads around their hands. They tie threads around their ankles as a protection from evil spirits. And who are these evil spirits we are talking about? These are the same people who are the vulnerable masses [00:31:00] whom the mainstream, the main civil, so-called civil society has targeted to be witches. These are the people, and they're the innocent, the segregated, the humiliated, the banished. These are the people against whom the so-called civil society is guarding.
Sarah Jack: Thinking about your example with the woman who would leave the scavenging and hope to sell tea, and I was thinking about the students that you mentioned. They go and there's these obstacles so much that they may not want to go on living, even with their education. So when a Dalit gets an opportunity that looks like, yes, there can be some mobility. I can get some education. I can have a choice here. What's it going to take to keep those doors open for them? Is there [00:32:00] somebody that has found a place to stand and get mobility that others can look to for hope?
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: Yeah, there is one and the most important success stories to use the word which you used, and that is Babasaheb Ambedkar, who is the father of the Indian constitution, the chief architect of the Indian constitution. He comes from an untouchable background. He was born as an untouchable, and he braved on against all these odds and he was discriminated, heavily, during his childhood. He suffered those kinds of discrimination, which are very difficult for us to talk about now. And he suffered all of that.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: And with the help of the then kings of his state, he is from the present state of Maharashtra, so with the help of the kings who gave him scholarship, he was able to go to U. S. and U. K. a hundred [00:33:00] years ago. And he studied law, economics, political science, and a lot of other disciplines. And he came back to India, and he championed the cause of Dalits, the untouchables then, and he became a very strong voice of the untouchables in the British government, and then in the Indian government, as well. And in the 1930s, when the Roundtable Conference took place in the UK in London, he was invited as a representative of the depressed classes, and he went to London, and he spoke for the depressed classes, and he advocated strongly for affirmative action and provisions equality and non-discrimination.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: So what we find in the Indian constitution, because he was the chief architect, he was the chairman of the drafting committee of the Indian constitution, because he was there, we can see his socio-political thoughts being converted into constitutional provisions which are binding on all [00:34:00] citizens today. So the abolition of untouchability, for example. So it's a huge milestone because Indian constitution has a very egalitarian spirit. And this is a constitution which was born in a soil which is essentially undemocratic. So this spirit comes from him. And of course, I have to give credits to the rest of the members of the Indian constitution, constituent assembly, who also agreed to what Babasaheb Ambedkar was propounding, and there werehuge debates which took place in the Constituent Assembly on various provisions of the Indian Constitution, particularly on these provisions of affirmative action and just basically trying to bring the marginalized sections into mainstream.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: So he is the beacon of light and beacon of hope for the untouchables, for the Dalits, and for the Adavasis, for the oppressed communities in India and across the world. His life and his message is, his life itself is a message. So [00:35:00] that, that's one of the huge success stories I would say.
Josh Hutchinson: The thing with untouchability in the practice of this inherited forms of discrimination is Babasaheb Ambedkar himself remarked that when a Hindu migrates outside India, Indian caste system and the problem of untouchability will acquire a global dimension. So it has already happened. Now the Hindus from India have migrated to various countries, and there also we find problems of untouchability. And recently in California, and in another state, they have passed anti-caste laws, which makes caste a prohibited marker, or what we call is a protected marker, against discrimination on par with race, so that if you discriminate somebody based on caste, that is an offense.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: Similarly, in England also, in the UK, there has been a longstanding debate and a fight to include caste as one of the protected markers alongside race in the Equality Act of 2010. It has not happened [00:36:00] yet, but there has been a longstanding demand to do so. And there has been obviously objection for this from the vested interests and dominant castes, saying it shouldn't be incorporated. I don't see why it shouldn't be incorporated. If it's incorporated, it is for victims of this discrimination to challenge it before the court. It is a protection for the victims. So what's the problem in incorporating a provision which protects the victims of discrimination? If you don't discriminate, well and good, but it's for those people who suffer discrimination, isn't it?
Josh Hutchinson: What else can the government do?
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: I think the basic thing we're talking about is ensuring the most basic right to life with dignity to all, and this is a cardinal principle of the Indian Constitution, and it's a cardinal principle of all these progressive human rights conventions which we're talking about. Discrimination against anyone based on birth, [00:37:00] descent, social origin, it's prohibited. And yet, we see it in India and in some other countries as well. And I think, to root it out, firstly,there are stringent laws. I'm not saying that there aren't, but the enforcement has to be made effective. One is that. Another is to mold the minds of the children right from the beginning, right from school, incorporate it into the curriculum that everybody is equal.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: A child grows up both with the conditioning at home as well as the school. At home, the child gets the conditioning from the parents, and if, it depends again from the family backgrounds, if they are belonging to a dominant caste, they get that conditioning. If they're belonging to a lower caste, they get that conditioning.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: But the school is, should be seen as an equalizer where students can be molded, into thinking that everybody is equal and putting that [00:38:00] principle of equality and non-discrimination into their heads right from the school time. And to do that, teachers first should be trained properly.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: And again, with the teachers, judges, lawyers, police officers, law enforcement officers, and all people in the government should be sensitized to the realities of Indian society, because caste is a reality in Indian society. It's not something which is in abstract. It's there, it's visible every day. It's present in every walk of life. They have to be sensitized adequately so that when, say, a case comes before, an issue of a Dalit atrocity comes before an upper caste judge, he's able to understand where it is coming from. And not just acquitting people just because of lack of evidence. They have to probe into why there is a lack of evidence. You have to see where these people are coming from, how difficult it is for them to actually get hold of evidence.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: And, because I'm saying this [00:39:00] particularly because the 93 act against manual scavenging, it saw zero convictions. Absolutely no convictions in that. It's an act against manual scavenging, and there have been no convictions at all, none to this daybecause there are laws, but then there is no enforcement. So most of them go because of lack of evidence and things like that. So I think judges have to be sensitized adequately to handle cases of this. It's a different magnitude, and I think people with sufficient depth will be able to understand where these cases are coming from, why these things are happening in the first place.
Sarah Jack: If convictions started occurring, would they, would it be like a mass conviction? Would it be like these individual cases?
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: No, I don't think it's going to be a mass conviction because it has not happened at all, and the atrocities against Dalits, be it rapes, murders, molestations, manual [00:40:00] scavenging are things which you find on a day to day basis on the streets, but rapes, gang rapes, and these are horrific crimes, which shock the collective conscience of this society. Even in those cases, there have been no convictions in a lot of cases. Here and there you will find one or two cases.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: And I'll give you an example where, where a dominant caste girl was gang raped, which is wrong, any rape is wrong for that matter. She died and then, against the rape, there was a huge protest,throughout the country. There were candlelight vigils and things like that. It became a huge issue in the country. Similarly, a Dalit girl was also gang raped and she also died. Even her body was not given to her family to conduct a dignified burial. Forget about candlelight vigils and no protest, nothing. If there are protests also, it's only by Dalit organizations who are protesting. But other people, the so called civil [00:41:00] society, it doesn't disturb them because it's seen as a normal thing. That is what I'm saying, because even when it comes to crimes such as gang rape and murders, which are, it is so intense and gruesome, even when it comes to crimes such as that, people still see the caste of the victim. If it is a dominant caste girl who is a victim, then it is fine, okay, let's go protest against this. But if it's a Dalit girl who is a victim, oh, she's a Dalit, so okay, maybe we shouldn't.
Josh Hutchinson: Wow.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: That's a selective kind of, fighting for justice.
Sarah Jack: And I have a question about all of this in light of when you speak of molding the children's minds and their understanding. Now, children are being raised within cultural traditions and religious traditions and then you have all of this embedded through that. What do you do with that?
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: It's so difficult, isn't it? That's what I'm saying. To have a parallel system of education, which is impartial, which is [00:42:00] secular, which gives that upbringing to the child, which is based on egalitarian values. There will be a conflict in the child's mind, which is very, very evident. It will be happening. And I think the child has to grow up with that conflict and then decide which one, which path to take, because if both the values are ingrained in its mind very clearly, then I think the child will be able to pick up the right one.
Josh Hutchinson: Do the Dalit children, do they have equal access to school?
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: They do. Because of our constitution, they do have equal access to education. They, we have free education until the age of 14 in government schools. So government schools are always in vernacular languages, depending on which state. In, for example, in my state of Karnataka, it's Kannada. In a neighboring state of Kerala, it is Malayalam. So in North Indian states, it is Hindi. It's vernacular, but again, Indian school system is very,I'm [00:43:00] assuming it's a subject for another time. It's a very complicated system. We have the state schools, then we have private schools. In private schools, we have mediums, English medium, and Hindi medium, Kannada medium, and things like that. Then we have these Cambridge syllabus, international schools, Oxford syllabus and things like that, ICSE and CBSE, central schools and there is a vast difference in the school system. And I feel the discrimination starts right from that time. So by the time this child comes to the higher educational institution, university, the child has already had a lot of baggage, because a child coming from a vernacular school will not be able to compete with a child coming from an international syllabus school. And then the race for the university entrance exam is the same. So there is no different exam for a child coming from vernacular school or a child coming from international [00:44:00] syllabus. It's the same thing. So who do you think will get into universities, top universities?
Josh Hutchinson: These, the four metropolitan cities, and there are top schools in these metropolitan cities. Students from those schools only end up in big universities in India.
Josh Hutchinson: Has there been enforcement of any laws against witchcraft accusations?
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: Internationally, there is UDHR, ICCPR, ICHS, GAN, ICRD, which speak about, roughly, about witch hunting, because they basically ban practices which are degrading human dignity. In India, at the national level, we have the Constitution of India and the Indian Penal Code, the Drugs and Magic Remedies Objectionable Advertisement Act of 1954, and the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act of 1989 and the Protection of Human Rights Act of 1993. And these all can be associated with witch-hunting [00:45:00] atrocities. Now while some states have specific local acts on preventing witch hunting and some other states are in the process of criminalizing the offense, one of the western states in India called the Maharashtra, it passed India's first anti-superstition law called the Prevention and Eradication of Human Sacrifice and Other Inhuman Evil and Aghori Practices and Black Magic Act of 2013. It actually saw a huge protest against this act because it was criminalizing some of the superstitions which people believed were not superstitions and things like that, but the prevention of witch hunting bill 2016 was framed, but it has still not become the law of the country, so there is nothing specifically on witchcraft which is binding on all the states.
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: So there are some states which have criminalized witchcraft and witch hunting as offenses. But again, [00:46:00] enforcement in those states also are huge issues. I think, if I'm not wrong, one of the northeastern states of Jharkhand has criminalized witchcraft, and I think the punishment for murder of, killing of a witch is something like three months, which is ridiculous to be honest, because it's a murder, and why is it not seen as a murder under the Indian Penal Code? It should be punished on equal grounds as 302, section 302 of IPC, which should be this exact same punishment, which should be awarded for somebody who kills a woman claiming her to be a witch. But no, it's just completely, I mean, three months, it's just absolutely ridiculous.
Sarah Jack: Does the constitution or any other doctrines state what would be humane treatment of women? What would be dignified treatment and equality?
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: I don't think human dignity is defined under the Indian Constitution, only it says that right to life [00:47:00] with dignity is a fundamental right which is non negotiable under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. It is like a basic structure of the Constitution. Fundamental rights are the basic structure of the Constitution. You can't negotiate them. They are ultimate. They are fundamental. It is inviolable. People can't take it out. Government can't take it away from people. So non-negotiable rights. I don't think anywhere it is defined as what human dignity means, but it is generally taken to understand how dignity is defined normally in common values.
Josh Hutchinson: Is there anything else that you want to be sure to share with us today?
Preethi Lolaksha Nagaveni: Thank you very much for having me. It was a lovely conversation, and, in terms of, witch hunting, because your podcast is primarily dealing with witch-hunting, I think it can be said that witch hunting is one of the most heinous forms of violence Dalit women are subjected to in India. And it has been [00:48:00] going on for centuries. But the media, civil society, legislature, and even judiciary have been mute spectators to this gross violation of human rights of a section of the most marginalized silent populace of the country. And unless and until stringent laws are enacted which show no mercy to the perpetrators of this harmful practice, which while it's a most basic right to life with dignity of Dalit women, unfortunately, I think this practice will continue to exist in modern industrialized India.
Josh Hutchinson: Thank you for learning with us. We must be aware of the oppression happening around us. We must no longer turn our backs.
Sarah Jack: Join us again next week.
Josh Hutchinson: Subscribe in your choice of podcast app.
Sarah Jack: Visit us at aboutwitchhunts.com/.
Josh Hutchinson: And remember to tell your friends and family all about Witch Hunt.
Sarah Jack: Support our efforts to [00:49:00] end witch hunts. Visit endwitchhunts.org to learn more.
Josh Hutchinson: Have a great today and a beautiful tomorrow.
Dr. Marion Gibson, highly esteemed historian returns to talk about her new book, ‘Witchcraft, A History in Thirteen Trials’. The importance of the book in bridging the gap between historical witchcraft trials and the concept of witch hunts existing today is emphasized. Learn how the stories of real victims presented in her book explore aspects of witchcraft from a 700-year period, touching on the evolution from being considered a magical crime to being a societal metaphor. Dr. Gibson also delves into the sexism inherent in witch trials, the impact of demonology on witch hunting, the impact of individual testimonies from witch trials and the enduring potency of witchcraft accusations in today’s society. Marion shares a glimpse of her future work around the Witchfinder General trials during the English Civil War.
Josh Hutchinson: Welcome to Witch Hunt, the podcast that explores the past, present, and future of witch hunting. I'm Josh Hutchinson.
Sarah Jack: And I'm Sarah Jack. Join us as we explore fascinating tales of witch hunts from the ancient to the modern day, delving into the societal, religious, and psychological factors that fueled them.
Josh Hutchinson: Our podcast features expert interviews, in depth analysis, and compelling storytelling that bring to life the complex narratives surrounding these trials.
Sarah Jack: In this episode, we will be covering both historic and contemporary witch trials.
Josh Hutchinson: That's right. Today, we have the privilege of being joined by scholar Marion Gibson to discuss her captivating new book, Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials.
Sarah Jack: Over the next hour, Gibson will be providing us with a fascinating overview of the evolution of witch hunting and persecution over 700 years, from the [00:01:00] earliest European witch trials in the late 15th century to contemporary cases today.
Josh Hutchinson: By closely examining 13 pivotal witchcraft trials throughout history, Gibson reveals how notions of magic and the stereotypical idea of the witch have been adapted to serve as a convenient enemy and outlet for broader societal fears and prejudices.
Sarah Jack: Gibson will explain how women who were seen as overly outspoken, sexually deviant, or simply unconventional were especially vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft across eras.
Josh Hutchinson: We'll learn how profoundly misogynistic witch hunting manuals helped spread dangerous ideas that enabled the targeting of women.
Sarah Jack: Our discussion will also cover how the myth of the witch disturbingly endures today, with continued cases of witchcraft-related violence globally, as well as powerful figures co-opting the term witch hunt for their own political motives.
Josh Hutchinson: You won't want to miss Gibson's insightful [00:02:00] commentary on the gendered and political dimensions of historic witch hunts and the unsettling parallels that can be drawn with present times. So get ready to journey through 700 years of fascinating witchcraft history.
Sarah Jack: Welcome to Witch Hunt, Marion Gibson, author and historical consultant on witchcraft and magic.
Josh Hutchinson: First of all, I just want to say thank you for writing this wonderful book, Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials. It fills a need that Sarah and I have talked about for something that bridges the gap between the historic witchcraft trials and the witch hunts going on today. So, thank you for doing that.
Marion Gibson: Oh, thank you. That's what I thought needed doing, really. I think you need to, when you've seen the horror of witch trials in the past, and you've read all the history books that you can read about those, it seems to me that it's time to consider how relevant this idea still is today. And one of the things we talked about when we [00:03:00] met last time time was actually, it's very relevant. People keep using the term witch hunts and we know that people are still literally being accused of witchcraft around the world today. So there seemed a need to me to bring the story of the historic witch trial right up to date.
Josh Hutchinson: And the cases you chose are just, they're so good at illustrating, not just individual cases, but the trends and grand themes that connect all of the history and the present together.
Marion Gibson: I'm glad that worked, yeah. Every now and again I find myself still in the process of selecting, if you know what I mean, because I took so long over it and agonized so much over, is this the right one? Is that the right one? Will this really fit? Will this carry the themes through the book? Is this too complicated for the reader because there are some twisty turny moments in the book where the definition of witchcraft shifts? So where it moves, for example, from being a [00:04:00] magical crime to being a crime imagined as one of fraud. And then again, in contemporary times, to being kind of metaphor for a whole bunch of other kinds of things that the society of the time deemed to be unacceptable. So I'm really glad. I'm really glad that I do seem to have pulled that off because it was one of the things that bothered me most writing the book.
Sarah Jack: You have pulled it off and it's going to expand minds and inform and so thank you and great job.
Marion Gibson: Good. Thank you. Oh, that's great. I just come here for validation, basically.
Sarah Jack: Good, good, good.
Josh Hutchinson: You sent the book to the right people.
Sarah Jack: Can you give us a brief overview of what Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials is?
Marion Gibson: Yeah, it is what it says on the tin, but that doesn't quite cover the scope of it, I think. It covers a 700 year period, which again was one of the things that I agonized and worried about writing the book, because [00:05:00] that's a very long period of time. Our first witch trial is in 1485. And our final witch trial is effectively still going on. It's the ongoing legal battle between Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels and the many adversaries who were embroiled in that legal battle. So that is our last witch trial. And it tries to tell the story of the idea of the witch and the ways that the idea of the witch has been put on trial, both in formal courts and more informally in society, over the course of those 700 years, to give people a sense of what witchcraft meant in the past, the era of the witch trials, if you like, but then how the idea of the witch is still current today and the era of the witch trials really hasn't finished. So it tries to bring everything up to date and get people to think about what witch means now, and what a witch trial means now.
Josh Hutchinson: I want to get to what a witch is, but you point out in the introduction, [00:06:00] you first need to understand what magic is. So can you explain how would you define magic?
Marion Gibson: It's even harder than defining witches, isn't it? I think magic is a force which cannot be explained by other factors such as science, rationality, observable, physical, or material changes of that kind. But it's more than that, really. It's what people choose to define as magic. So in some cases, some of the phenomena that people have thought were magical in the past or think to be magical today can actually be explained in other ways. But people choose not to because they want to see those things as being magical. And of course, magic can be a positive or a negative thing. So if you accuse your neighbor of being a witch and doing magic, obviously that's a terribly negative thing. But you might also see magic as a positive thing. And one of the ways the witch turns up in contemporary culture is a kind of positive magician, [00:07:00] somebody who's sparkly and glamorous and exciting and maybe even a role model. Magic accompanies the idea of the witch throughout history, really.
Sarah Jack: And what does that lead the witch to be? What is the witch?
Marion Gibson: The witch is a very movable thing, but often defined as an enemy. So one of the places that the witch fits into society, even over such a long historical period, is that they are a very useful enemy. And if they, if you don't think they exist already, you need to invent them because they fill that gap in society where scapegoats and those who challenge authority, people who are subversive, people who are seen to be problematic, certain racial, religious, cultural others. Those people fit. So The witch is is useful when you want to say, I do believe the world is full of magic. It's full of spirits. It's a highly religious world. And I think that because God has his good people on one [00:08:00] side, therefore, Satan must have his bad people on the other side. And those people must be witches and they must be able to do real magic.
Marion Gibson: So the witch is useful more than anything else, useful throughout history.
Josh Hutchinson: One of the things I love about this book is that you're telling the individual stories of victims of persecution. What is the impact? How does that impact our perception of the events to learn the individual stories?
Marion Gibson: I think it's really important. I think it would be quite easy to write a long history of witchcraft where you said all the things that I say about how it's still relevant, et cetera, and how it's now a metaphor for other things. You could say all of that without the individual stories, butI don't think it would really land with people in the same way. And I don't think it would be nearly as engrossing. I find those personal stories the most engrossing and interesting part of writing a history. And I think if you don't feel [00:09:00] history, we talked about this a little bit with my last book, The Witches of St. Osyth, when I came on to talk about that. If you don't feel history, then you don't learn from history. You don't get the sense that, you know what, persecution is a bad thing. We might want to try to do less of it and work towards a world which is more equitable and just and so on. So it's really an attempt to engage people in the story as much as possible by showing individual people who were victimized as witches or who continue to be, and getting people to think but that could have been me, that could have been me in that position, or my neighbor who I care about, or my partner who I care about. I want people to have that sense of emotional investment, and I want as far as possible to give a voice back to the people who were persecuted in the past, and who perhaps were not at the time able to speak for themselves or certainly can't now.
Marion Gibson: I want people to feel those stories and feel like they're on the side of the persecuted [00:10:00] people, and they want to do something to make their stories better known and hopefully stop those kind of stories recurring again. So it's quite a big aim really, but I think the personal is really important.
Sarah Jack: The stories are so engrossing. I really felt the vulnerability of many of the characters. And Tituba has been on my mind a lot lately and how people view her. And I really felt her vulnerability when reading about her. Why are some of these people vulnerable? Why are they easy marks?
Marion Gibson: A lot of it is to do with gender. So about 75 percent of the people who we know were accused of witchcraft across all the jurisdictions that historians have studied were women. So that's a really important thing that seems to make people vulnerable to the accusation of witchcraft. But in her case, there's also the racial factor to be considered, so she's a Native American woman, and she's [00:11:00] positioned as the enemy of the colonists, the people living around her. So there's that. There's also her position within society, so she's an enslaved person and a servant, somewhere on the continuum between those positions, this very disempowered woman sits, depending on whose jurisdiction she's having to live within and how she's being treated by the community around her. All of those things matter. And she's positioned in that way because she's been translocated from one place to another. So sometimes factors like migration matter. Sometimes it's a forced migration, as in her case. In other cases, it's somebody who's perceived to be out of place in some way. And obviously these are all things that we see in today's society as making people more likely to be persecuted and scapegoated.
Josh Hutchinson: In the book, you talk a lot about demonology. What is that? And how did that shape witch hunting?
Marion Gibson: It's really the theory of witch hunting. And it's not [00:12:00] just a theory. It's a practical manual, if you like, for the finding of witches. So theory and practice, and it's stated, and this is where the first chapter of the book kicks off, really. It's stated that witches were the devil's people and they should be hunted down in society. They were more likely to be women than men, some of the first demonologists asserted.
Marion Gibson: And we start off with Heinrich Kramer, or Kramer, one of the first demonologists, somebody who people might have heard of because he wrote the witch hunting manual, Malleus Maleficarum, The Hammer of Witches, which has become notorious since the 1480s when he wrote it for being not only Yeah, a manual for hatred and for hunting people, but particularly a very misogynistic manual.
Marion Gibson: So demonology didn't really have to go those ways. It didn't have to be as misogynistic as it was, but it seems inevitable in the context of a broadly patriarchal society that it would have gone that way. And people like [00:13:00] Heinrich Kramer make sure that it does. And the first witch trial in the book is his attempt to put into practice his demonology.
Marion Gibson: So he's thinking through these ideas, and he's presumably thinking about writing a manual for witch hunting, but he decides to put this into practice. And one of the trials that I talk about in chapter one is his attempt to do that. He finds a group of women and decides he's going to persecute them.
Marion Gibson: But demonology is really important. It underpins so many of the stories, particularly in part one of the book, which goes from the 1480s to the 1730s, really the period of the witch trials as people tend to think of it. And if it wasn't for demonology, those witch trials wouldn't be possible. So first of all, you need the theory and it's a conspiracy theory. It's about Satan's people in the world and how we must find them out. And here are the ways you identify them. And this is what you need to do to them. If it wasn't for that theory, the witch trials wouldn't have happened in quite the way that they did.
Sarah Jack: What do you attribute to [00:14:00] the level of misogyny that he was directed by writing that book?
Marion Gibson: It's hideous, isn't it? And it's really upsetting to contemplate just how misogynistic he was. It's partly perhaps to do with his position in society. He's a Dominican monk, so he's a celibate individual living in a basically patriarchal, closed, masculine community. But that didn't mean that he had to be misogynistic.Lots of people managed to live in those communities without being as misogynistic as he was. It makes you wonder about factors in his biography, which we don't know about, sadly. We know where he comes from, and we know some of his previous life.
Marion Gibson: He seems to be a deeply unpleasant individual. He was accused throughout his life of all sorts of nastiness, whether that was attacking academic colleagues, embezzlement, and his job was not a particularly attractive one. So he was responsible in part for the selling of indulgences, which is a way that rich people could [00:15:00] basically buy a piece of paper which bought them out of some time in purgatory, burning off their sins, as the theology of the time said that they would.
Marion Gibson: He just seems to have been a really quite unpleasant person, who was haunted by the idea that women were out to get men, and perhaps to get him specifically. But most certainly that he thought that they were ignorant, they were lustful, they were prone to believing the wrong things about God and Satan. They were malevolent and petty and strove to take out their frustrations on other people, primarily men. He identifies them as enemies in a whole variety of ways and it is inexplicable. You can always look at factors in people's life to say, 'that's why they hate that group or that's why they're just so unpleasant to everybody,' but at the end of the day, there is no real clue to why he was who he was. [00:16:00]
Marion Gibson: What is depressing is that a lot of people listened to him and credited what he was saying and thought of him as an expert. Some people questioned it, some people stood up against it, and I think one of the interesting things about that first chapter is that we look at the people who stood up against it, which include the people on trial, the women on trial, and things don't go quite the way that he might have hoped that they would have done, which I think is good because it gives the reader a nice surprise, a starting point for the book, which is not maybe quite what they'd expected.
Marion Gibson: But whilst people challenged him, a lot of people went along with what he said. And of course, that was one of the reasons why the witch trials take off. Sometimes all you need is one quite powerful individual to want to punch down on others. And unfortunately, the human imagination often goes along with that.
Marion Gibson: It was a book that made me think twice about whether I really thought people were at bottom good or bad. And the prevalence of that kind of hatred and the [00:17:00] way that it recurs throughout human history is a really depressing thing. And I think it's something that we really ought to think more about. There are always Heinrich Kramers.
Josh Hutchinson: And to your point that you needed demonology to have witch hunting, you had to have the science of how to do witch hunting, so you needed these books in order to do that. But specifically with the Malleus Maleficarum, if that book had never been written, do you think the European Witch Trials would have played out the same way?
Marion Gibson: That's a really interesting one. Scholars have argued a lot about whether that book is a really key one or not. I think it is. It's very difficult to get a clear sense of how books circulated in this period. We know that they did. And we know they circulated in manuscript and people translated them and passed them around.
Marion Gibson: And if you were a member of an academic community or a monastic community, you might make copies [00:18:00] of books, you might give them to your friends, you might give them as a gift to somebody, you might send them abroad to friends that you'd made through letter writing and things like that. So you can see the kind of network of circulation, but actually tracing the progress of an individual book is quite hard.
Marion Gibson: So scholars have said other demonologies are probably more important, particularly the less misogynistic, less radical ones, if you like. But nevertheless, the progress of the witch hunt suggests to me that all demonologies were important and that a very misogynistic demonology most certainly had a place in the spread of those ideas.
Marion Gibson: Look what the outcome was! Oh look, 75 percent of those who are accused are women. This cannot be really a coincidence. So I do think it was quite an important book and certainly the way it was rediscovered in the 20th century and translated into English for the first time, for example, makes me think that although it's long [00:19:00] pre history of publication and circulation, it's difficult to see the fact that people in the 20th century identified it as a key one and translated it and then talked about it a lot makes me think that actually it probably always was a key text and that we should pay quite a lot of attention to it. It's quite tempting to dismiss it as an outlier, but I'm not really sure that it was.
Josh Hutchinson: It's translated by one of your subjects in here, Montague Summers. Is his translation considered reliable? Is there any other academic translation of it?
Marion Gibson: Yeah, there is. His translation is not considered particularly reliable. He had his own biases and one of the reasons that he turns up in book is that he is fascinated by the idea of witchcraft and Satanism, and to some extent he's quite like Heinrich Kramer. He too is a Roman Catholic clergyman, or at least he presents himself as such. It's not entirely clear [00:20:00] exactly how he was ordained or how he went on that path. He regards himself as somebody who's quite a superior intellect and somebody who might know something about the spiritual world and might have some theories about things like ghosts and vampires and demons and so on.
Marion Gibson: I think he and Heinrich Kramer would have had some things to talk about had they met, but he's also very different, because he's gay and he's quite openly gay, which is a surprising thing for a clergyman and indeed any man in the England of his period. So he's really interesting. He sits on both sides of being, being a scapegoated witch, because he's accused of Satanism during the course of his life. Wow.
Marion Gibson: But on the other hand, being somebody who's very interested in persecuting other people and thus translating Kramer's book. So yeah, it's not a particularly reliable translation because of his own very complicated personal history and his own deep interest in these subjects, which I think [00:21:00] sometimes led him to over read or to propose a controversial interpretation of something Kramer had said.
Marion Gibson: If people want to look at Malleus Maleficarum, the best literal translation, that's one I talk about in the footnotes of the book, and it's by Christopher S. Mackay, and people should look for that one. He's also written a great book on Heinrich Kramer and the witch trial that I talk about in the first chapter. So if you want to know more about that and you feel like you want to read Malleus Maleficarum in a translation that gives you the best possible access to what Heinrich Kramer had to say, then I think it would probably be Mackay's book that I'd point you to.
Josh Hutchinson: Excellent. Yeah, I'm going to pick that up. I know it's going to be an infuriating experience.
Marion Gibson: It really is. Yeah. I get my students to look at it when I teach my module about witchcraft in history and literature, and every year, I go into the first class, it's the first class and I look at their faces and they're just like, what? [00:22:00] What? And sometimes people say to me, 'is this, you know, is this real? Did people really write?' Yeah, yeah, they really wrote this. Yes, they wrote it. They published it. This is what they had to say about the women of their period.
Marion Gibson: And their jaws really drop, especially students who quite often think, oh, well, you know, we've progressed such a long way since this time, I'm not really sure that we still need to be banging on about feminism and talking about the position of women in society. It is always quite satisfying to see those students think,' oh, wait, hang on a minute. No, people can say these kinds of things. And this kind of thing is still said in contemporary society from time to time. And shouldn't we talk about this in our classes?' So I always enjoy presenting it to people. And it will probably be quite a disturbing experience. Yeah. And it sort of should be, but no, I'm not recommending, I'm not recommending you get a mug of cocoa and sit down with your bedtime reading, because you won't enjoy it.[00:23:00]
Sarah Jack: Reading her trial and then thinking about him going on to write that, it really struck me. She couldn't pick up a pen and write her story and push it out into the world. And so here we are in 2023 fighting that story. The power of your pen, your writing is powerful. And it's going to be combating this mentality. So I feel excited about the era we are in, because women can write and express now, but then their words, what they were able to say, the limited power they had, and they got in trouble for it.
Marion Gibson: It's a powerful thing that, isn't it? Yeah. And again, it's quite deeply felt because particularly if you are a woman, you think about how you might have fared in that society. So Heinrich Kraemer, the [00:24:00] woman who is at the center of this Witch Trial in 1485 is a woman called Helena Scheuberin, and she's quite a wealthy woman probably, in a number of ways. She's a merchant's wife. She's had some education. She has some ideas about religion of her own, which is one of the reasons why she's able to stand up and fight back a bit against her persecutors, and she and her husband have access to sufficient money to, spoiler alert, hire a lawyer during the course of her trial.
Marion Gibson: So she's a really important prefigure, it seems to me, of the position of women in contemporary society. And I did find it powerful. And I did find myself thinking, 'you have to write this. You have to write this as a woman. You have to answer back. It may be too late for many of these people, but at least I can say something from my perspective and the perspective of other women. This wasn't right. You shouldn't have done this. This is what I think of you.' And I found that quite powerful. Looking back at my own female ancestors, I've been [00:25:00] going through some of the family records recently for other reasons. My great grandmother couldn't write. She couldn't write her own name. And that's incredibly recent. That's really very recent. And it makes you think about how important it is that women do have that voice and how important it is that we should try and use it to make sure that this kind of institutional misogyny that we see in the world around us doesn't continue to flourish.
Marion Gibson: So yeah, it felt like a powerful thing. It felt like an important book to write and it felt like I had to write it. It was important to try to set the record straight, even though, in many cases, it's many centuries too late. At least something was done, I guess.
Josh Hutchinson: It's definitely important to highlight that these were and still are male-dominated societies and who are they targeting with their witch trials, not usually men.
Marion Gibson: Not usually, [00:26:00] no. And when you look towards the end of the book, you see,in the African communities that I talk about, in the North American communities that I talk about at the end of the book, very often those who are accused are womenAnd they're persecuted, at least in part, for being women under the heading of being witches. So I think this is an argument that we absolutely still have not won. And we still do need feminism. We still do need women writers and male writers who are willing to tell those stories to keep telling them and to keep telling the story of the witch trial as a story of persecution of women specifically, as well as some men as well.
Josh Hutchinson: One thing I like to point out to people is that, in New England, at least 78 percent or so of the accused were women. And that you look at that and see, 22%, that's still a reasonable representation. There's [00:27:00] some men. Half of them were directly connected to a female suspect and they were accused after she was. It's even more misogynistic than when you first look at the 78%, I think.
Marion Gibson: Yes, I think so. That's very nicely put that the men who are drawn into the witch trials are very often drawn in because they're the husband or the son or an acquaintance in some way of a woman who is the primary accused. So yes, they are drawn in. Yes, it's a terrible fate for them, too. But one of the reasons that they are accused is because they're seen to be an associate and affiliates, somebody perhaps who is defending a woman who's been accused first.
Marion Gibson: I do think that is a really important point.
Josh Hutchinson: And then I was just thinking in there, A lot of the representations, the males, even though they're much more rare as suspects, they're given authority over the female witches.
Marion Gibson: Yes, they often [00:28:00] are, which is fascinating to see, isn't it? So even in the course of the accusations, you find that the essentially patriarchal assumptions of those who are doing the persecuting are replicated. It is quite fascinating, isn't it? Once you start to unpick and you look at the kind of qualitative experience behind the quantitative statistics, you find that it is even worse than it looks when you simply look at a table of figures. Absolutely.
Marion Gibson: That's why the individual stories are so important, I think, because you want to think about the experience of those people and why they were put in the positions that they were, and the stories that were told about them, and the stories that they managed to tell about themselves. So that it's not just the kind of hard data, if you like, of history that we're talking about. It's the lived experience of history, which often determines the outcome of events as we know.
Josh Hutchinson: We've talked about a little about why women are accused, but specifically you talk about how[00:29:00] women witches are seen as being unwomanly.
Marion Gibson: Yes, often they are. So women of all ages and classes get accused during the course of the book. So we have very poor women, who barely have enough to support themselves and their families. And we have relatively wealthy women, people like Helena, who we were talking about just now,and we even have noble women. So chapter two is about a Scottish witch trial. One of those who is accused and unfortunately ultimately condemned to death is a noble woman. So we've got all kinds of women, but one of the things that holds all those women's stories together is that they are thought of as insufficiently submissive or insufficiently modest or overly lustful or overly mouthy and difficult, women who fall out with people in their communities, women who are bad mothers or are thought to [00:30:00] be attacking other people's children and just are generally women who are, as you say, sufficiently unwomanly to have attracted the attention of their community. And that does come about in a whole variety of different ways. Maybe they are accused of having an affair with somebody else's husband, or maybe they have an illegitimate child, or maybe they've fallen out with a neighbor in a dispute over, it can be anything really, anything from child rearing to business practices. Maybe they're also notable in other ways.
Marion Gibson: So some of the women, there's a woman in one of the chapters about the English Civil War, who is a disabled woman, a woman who actually only has one leg. So maybe in her case, there's not only concern about her illegitimate child, she has a young daughter outside of marriage, but maybe also they're thinking about her appearance and the way that it's not a traditionally beautiful, attractive womanly appearance that is desirable to men. And therefore they [00:31:00] single her out for those reasons, as well.
Marion Gibson: So there's a whole variety of different ways that women can be thought by others to be unwomanly. And when you look at that again, you just see the unfairness of that stereotyping and the confinements of the image of the woman within these incredibly narrow boundaries to which they must conform or else they're going to find themselves in trouble.
Marion Gibson: And of course they could get into trouble in all sorts of different ways in the societies in which they live. But being accused of witchcraft seems to be quite a powerful tool alongside all the other accusations that might be made against them.
Sarah Jack: Women in leadership roles are labeled as witches by men.
Marion Gibson: Yes, they are. Yes, they are. Yeah. So again, that sort of sense that if you stick your head above the parapet, somebody's going to come along and want to knock it off then. That applies very much across the course of many of these stories. But again, we've got women who are incredibly [00:32:00] disempowered and women who are seen as leaders or who are seen as notable in their society in some way. So all of those kinds of people get accused. And because women are more likely to be leaders in modern society, really that idea has strengthened over time that a woman leader is fair game, can be accused of witchcraft. You know, that can be something as, it's as simple as drawing a cartoon of her or making a crass comment on social media, or it can be people literally believing that woman is a witch and deciding to attack her for those reasons.
Marion Gibson: Again, it's the idea that a woman is a witch is a very malleable kind of idea. You can twist it around any way you want to and make it apply to almost any woman. But if a woman stands out in society in some way, so much so that people consider her to be unwomanly, according to the definitions of their stereotype, then that does make her more likely to be accused.
Sarah Jack: Yeah. She's out of place [00:33:00] and it's because she's evil.
Marion Gibson: Yes, see, that must be it, mustn't it? There we go. There, that's all sorted now. Yeah, that's why women become eminent in their societies, isn't it? Because they're evil, obviously. And yes, it's funny, isn't it? Yeah, we find it laughable, but at the same time, we can see how all around us, that is unfortunately a really serious thing that many people think.
Marion Gibson: And really, I would so much rather that the book contributed to people questioning that. Every time a reader picks up a book, I do want them to think, 'hang on a minute, this actually is still the case, isn't it? I need to notice those instances a little bit more. I need to push back a little bit more against those and think a bit more about why that's that.'
Marion Gibson: Essentially fairly humorous thing might still be possible to be said. Why can we still make that joke? Why can we still make jokes about witches, which we should do because the idea of the witch is inherently laughable, but why can we still do it? And that's, [00:34:00] we can still do it because it still works in society. It still works in culture. We still know people do sometimes think these things.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, and now we see that powerful women get labeled as witches, powerful men take on the label of witch in that they're the victims of the witch hunt.
Marion Gibson: They do. This was a real gift, I have to say. But it was also one of the things that prompted me to shape the book the way I did. If you'd said to me in the early years of the 21st century, or the 1990s, when I first got interested in witches, if you said to me, people will be claiming in the society around you that they are the victims of a witch hunt, and they won't be the people that you expect. They will be powerful men in charge of the societies that they essentially run. I wouldn't have believed you. I would have thought that's nonsense, isn't it? Of course, they're not going to be doing that, but the fact that they are, this is something that's happened in Britain with Boris Johnson [00:35:00] claiming to be the victim of a witch hunt, just the same as with Donald Trump in the United States.
Marion Gibson: So this travels across cultures, it's not a uniquely American thing. We see this happening quite regularly now, and it was an absolute gift for structuring the book because it gave me the opportunity to demonstrate very, very clearly just how relevant the idea of the witch is, and to talk about that curious reversal whereby it's the wealthy, white male, powerful individuals who are doing the claiming to be the victims of a witch hunt, whereas in fact it's the people who stand against them who are much more likely to fit the traditional stereotype of the witch.
Sarah Jack: You talked about the malleability of the witch. How do we recognize and interrupt a witch hunt in progress?
Marion Gibson: I think I end the book with this, and I've put a checklist, really, at the end of the book so that people can think about this. I think if you are being [00:36:00] asked to persecute and scapegoat somebody and identify them as an enemy of society, and they are female, maybe of a different race to the majority of people in a particular society, maybe they're poorer than the majority of people in a particular society, maybe they stand out in some way and are regarded as being inherently subversive in some way, maybe they're disabled or set apart by their physicality in some way. You might want to consider whether what you're being asked to participate in is in fact a witch hunt.
Josh Hutchinson: So I think if you can look for some of those signs, they might be signs that actually that old human stereotype is reasserting itself.And you're involved with The International Network Against Accusations of Witchcraft and Associated Harmful Practices. What's important about being involved in that?
Marion Gibson: I think it's really important for historians to try and find ways that their work is relevant [00:37:00] today. That's the first thing and secondly, that network is important in trying to stop witchcraft accusations happening today. And there are of course other harmful practices that are involved as well. So for example, people being murdered in order to be used, their body parts, for example, to be used in magical processes. So really the network is about putting together not just a group of experts on witch trials, but also a group of experts on that earlier thing we talked about, magic and human belief in magic, which, there is nothing wrong with at all, but when it leads to harming other people to the extent of killing them even, then clearly that's something that we need to be challenging. So yeah, I'd recommend people have a look at the, the network and some of the people involved in it. People like Leo Igwe, for example, who is an activist against witchcraft persecution and the harmful practices associated with it and has personal experience of being scapegoated [00:38:00] in this way and trying to help people who have today been accused literally of witchcraft, of bewitching their neighbors and worshipping the devil and so on. So if people feel like they want to know more about the notion of witchcraft in contemporary society, want to try and do something about it, then I'd recommend looking at the Network and some of the people involved in it to find out more about that.
Sarah Jack: And you mentioned that Leo and others that are doing work like him are sometimes persecuted. They're misunderstood as being supporters of witchcraft, even. How does fear cloud perspectives on efforts to educate about witch hunting?
Marion Gibson: It's very easy, isn't it, to turn the word witch against somebody, which is one of the points of the book, really. Like I say, it can be used against more or less anybody. Of course, standing up for somebody who is accused of witchcraft can lead to you being accused of witchcraft too. And that's certainly something that we see in the [00:39:00] past, and it's something we see today with people like Leo.
Marion Gibson: And there are other examples that I talk about in the book, too. For example, two female professors who organized a conference at one of the campuses of the University of Nigeria were themselves accused of witchcraft, not ultimately to the extent of being tried, which is great. But they were still accused of witchcraft. And the academic conference about witchcraft persecution was represented by some of the religious spokespeople in the area as being a meeting of witches, a kind of witch's Sabbath, which made things very difficult for them. So that kind of misunderstanding and the harassment that arises from it is one of the things that the network is really keen to combat.
Josh Hutchinson: And we've also seen, in addition, you had that conference in Nigeria that was affected by this belief. We've seen in America, school classes, college courses be cancelled because they [00:40:00] had to do with witch trial history but were represented as teaching occult practices. And I've seen articles about there's a new course being offered by one of the universities in the UK, and they're coming under a little bit of fire, it seems like, for teaching witchcraft and occultism.
Marion Gibson: They are. That would be the university that I actually work at. Yes. The University of Exeter. That's absolutely right. and one of my colleagues has brought together this fascinating master of arts in Magic and Occult Science, I think something like that. And it's pretty obvious really, as soon as you look at the course description, this is about history. This is about the history of magic and she's also based within the Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies. So it's specifically about Eastern Occultism and the way that many of the kind of discussions of magic and the [00:41:00] occult in early Eastern societies led to the sort of Western esotericism that people see now and some people practice, but other people just find a fascinating cultural phenomenon. So yeah, absolutely. There's been quite a lot of pushback about the advertisements for this course in some quarters, as if it were an attempt to, to teach people how to do magic and witchcraft, which of course, as academics, it is not our business to do.
Marion Gibson: So yeah, absolutely. These are still very live terms, aren't they? And we do see all the time challenges to particular books in libraries or challenges to courses which examine the history of witchcraft and magic, because people don't always understand that this is, it's just about history.
Marion Gibson: So it's, exactly the same as examining, I don't know, the history of the industrial revolution or the history of 17th century Puritanism or whatever, you can look at anything through the historical lens and find something valuable in it, but people don't always see that.
Sarah Jack: Yeah, it [00:42:00] really speaks to how powerful and dangerous witchcraft is perceived by some who fear it, that even a look at the history is dangerous.
Marion Gibson: Yes. It's almost as if it's going to contaminate you, isn't it? The very word witch or the idea of witchcraft or magic is going to harm you just by your association with it, or by having noticed it. That's a theme that comes up over and over again in the book, actually, the idea that, that witchcraft spreads like a virus the second you engage with it. It will draw you in and either you yourself will become a witch, which is a terrible thing, or you will be the victim of witchcraft, which is also a terrible thing. So there is this sense that it is, it's like a bacteria or a virus or a germ or something like that. And once set loose in society, it can't be put back into the box, if you like.
Sarah Jack: Well, this [00:43:00] is out of the box now too, and it's going to spread. I'm really excited.
Marion Gibson: I'm glad you've enjoyed it so much. I loved writing the book. It was very hard because, hey, it's a 700 year history of some really complicated stuff. And I found it really, really difficult. But I also thought that it was something that needed doing. We need this big history of the idea of witchcraft, because it's something that just hasn't gone away, and to that extent, I suppose it's more relevant in some ways than some of the other histories I've talked about. They too have this long legacy, but we've seen the vitality of the idea of witchcraft. And it's something that surprised me that it's come back into culture with such force and that so many people are interested in it from so many different perspectives.
Marion Gibson: And people are still using the word witch as a weapon, by the self assertion or attack on other people. So I think when you've got something that appears to be part of history, that's just medieval superstition [00:44:00] unites the past, don't worry about that, but you realize that it's actually still very powerful within your society, then that's something that particularly needs the attention of historians, it seems to me. So that's what the book tries to do, show people where it's still relevant and get people to pay attention to it where they see it arise.
Josh Hutchinson: It reminds me of something Wolfgang Berenger said in a documentary video released this summer, Why Witch Hunts Are Not Just a Dark Chapter of the Past. He said, 'there have never been so many witch hunts as there are today.' And people just don't realize that, so I thank you for raising the awareness of that.
Marion Gibson: Yeah, I think that's very true, what he says, particularly if you look at places like Southern Africa, if you look at Indonesia, if you look at Papua New Guinea, some of the places where witch hunting has become most endemic, you can see that actually witch [00:45:00] hunting is more popular than it's ever been. And that's partly because of the spread of different kinds of media.
Marion Gibson: We talked about demonology spreading through textbooks in the middle ages right through to the sort of 18th century or so, but of course now today it's the internet, it's social media, it's podcasts, it's videos, it's in some ways ancient technologies now like video cassettes and audio cassettes and CDs and people think of witchcraft also spreading through cell phones, through private conversations as if it could run through the air and infect people.
Marion Gibson: So all the new technologies, which some people would have thought would have put an end to the idea of witchcraft belief, have in fact just been incorporated into it. And so witchcraft belief and witchcraft trials spread now through new media, just as once they spread through the printed word when that was a new media phenomenon.
Marion Gibson: So yeah, it's, there are more witch trials than there have ever been. He's absolutely right about [00:46:00] that.
Sarah Jack: And that demonology theory is just right there, propelling the fear through modern technologies.
Marion Gibson: Yes, it is. It hasn't really changed that much. It's one of the great human ideas, in this case, a very bad one, that really hasn't changed that much over time. And it's still just as powerful, even though we might've tried to tell ourselves that it really wasn't, and that this was part of history and part of the past, and we'd moved on now, surely, hadn't we, but we hadn't and we need to think about why that is.
Josh Hutchinson: How do things change?
Marion Gibson: How do things change? How do things get better? That's a really difficult question. And I thought about it throughout the course of the book and I, maybe it's just because I'm old and tired, I don't know, but it struck me that they wouldn't. And that seems to me to be a horrifying insight, really, I've always lived as quite a positive person and thought, ah, things are getting better, but I think one of the things we've seen in the [00:47:00] past 10 years, say, is things slipping backwards?
Marion Gibson: So maybe over time things will get better. Maybe we will move on from witchcraft belief. Maybe society will become more just and equal and all the things that we want it to be. But I'm beginning to think that we have to push harder to make that happen because I think we had got quite complacent, or I had anyway, and thought that naturally things were getting better, right? There would be progress. Everything wasn't perfect, everything could get better, but we were broadly moving in the right direction in society. And then a whole slew of things happened that made me think, actually, this wasn't the case. So I'm not sure that it will get better, but I think we have to try.
Marion Gibson: And it takes every person's effort and everybody can do something. Yes, I think so. I think the fact that the stories I tell are individual ones shows [00:48:00] that because sometimes a witch trial can turn on the intervention of a single individual, perhaps somebody you wouldn't even expect. And that can make a huge difference for good or ill. So if we can, yeah, if we can try to be that person, if we can try to be one of those people, then perhaps there is some hope that things will get better and that people will stop being persecuted as witches, both in reality and in metaphor. It would be so nice if we could move on, wouldn't it? I, as much as anybody else, I value the idea of the witch in popular culture and I enjoy consuming fictions about witches, but if only it could be confined to the fictional realm, wouldn't that be a marvelous thing?
Sarah Jack: Absolutely.
Josh Hutchinson: Witchcraft: a History in Thirteen Trials, when is it out in the States and how can people get it?
Marion Gibson: It will be out mid January, so it's out in the UK at the moment, but there will be a lovely American edition with a fabulous cover with a little fiery red cat on it, which I hope people very much enjoy [00:49:00] when they see it. And it's coming out with Scribner, so it should be available in all good bookshops, as they say.
Sarah Jack: What is next for you?
Marion Gibson: Oh, I do know already, which is good. And guess what? It's about witches. I'm going to write a book about the Witchfinder General trials of the English Civil War, which you've probably talked about. Matthew Hopkins, John Stearne, a group of, a merry band of witch hunters, unfortunately, once again, persecuting people from about 1645 to 1647, mostly in eastern England, but a trial that, although it's confined to quite a small locality, is as big as the Salem trial and involves 200 to 300 suspects, possibly as many as 200 people executed, which is absolutely astonishing.
Marion Gibson: I don't think we talk about it enough. People will probably know some of those names. They might know the name Witchfinder General. But for the first time, because of digitization of records, we're able to [00:50:00] explore the whole series of the trials. And they move across seven counties. They are across two years and increasingly records are turning up, which casts new light on some of the people involved.
Marion Gibson: So what I'm going to try and do is tell the stories of some of those individuals, just as I've done in this book, and try to give them back their histories, their voices, and also just talk about, really talk about the national context, and to some extent, the international context, the way that trials like the Witchfinder General trials influence trials in North America, so Salem in particular.
Marion Gibson: But also the way it makes us reflect on, what we think Englishness is, what we think Britishness is, what we think those kinds of identities that subsequently traveled all around the world were. Because it's so easy, I think, for us to present ourselves as this wonderful, enlightened people who value fairness and justice and all the rest of it. But again, recent events have suggested actually we might have a slightly darker history, and it might be quite [00:51:00] important to talk about that. So it will be a book about the biggest English witch hunts and its repercussions all around the world. And that's the Witchfinder General Trials of the 1640s.
Sarah Jack: Fantastic.
Josh Hutchinson: You do give people a taste of that in Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials. once you, everybody out there, once you've read Witchcraft: a History in Thirteen Trials, I know you'll just be salivating waiting for the next book to come out.
Marion Gibson: I can't wait to write it. Yeah. There's one of the chapters deals with parthenogenesis of that hunt and a particular individual who's accused. So yeah, if I can do for many of the other suspects what I've done for her, I should be very happy. Again, it's a very big project and it will take a little while, but I cannot wait to do this. I've already started on the research. In fact, I'm off to Essex, our Essex County here in England, next week to do some more work on it.
Sarah Jack: Wonderful.[00:52:00]
Josh Hutchinson: I want to recommend that everybody follow the project. You're on X as the Seven Counties Witch Project, right? Witch Trial Project.
Marion Gibson: That's right. Yeah. It's @witches7hunt, I think our address is.
Josh Hutchinson: And we'll have that link for everybody in the show description.
Marion Gibson: Please follow along. We do a regular blog, which explores our adventures in different archives.
Sarah Jack: And now, for a minute with Mary.
Mary-Louise Bingham: How do we know what we know? Historian Margo Burns has challenged her audiences many times with that question as part of her public presentations regarding the colonial New England witch trials. As I prepared to tell the story of the evening of the second arrest of Mary Esty for a past episode on this podcast, I contacted Margo. We spent two hours trying to figure out the route George Herrick rode the night of May 20th, [00:53:00] 1692, to apprehend Mary and bring her to Salem for her second examination. We pulled all the information from the best primary source, Records of the Salem Witch Hunt, of which Margo was the project manager with a top notch team who compiled and translated these documents over a 12 year period.
Mary-Louise Bingham: I would like to thank Margo for her time and expertise, and for challenging us lay historians to look to the primary sources so that our ancestor stories will be told with authority. Thank you.
Sarah Jack: Thank you, Mary.
Josh Hutchinson: Here's Sarah with End Witch Hunts News.
Sarah Jack: End Witch Hunts, a nonprofit 501(c)3, Weekly News Update. This podcast is a project of our nonprofit called End Witch Hunts. It is dedicated to the global collaboration to end witch hunting in all forms. We collaborate on and create projects that build awareness, [00:54:00] education, exoneration, justice, memorialization, and research of the phenomenon of witch hunting behavior. End Witch Hunts employs a three pronged approach to the problem, focusing on knowledge, memory, and advocacy through our various projects. Get involved. Visit endwitchhunts.org to learn about the projects.
Sarah Jack: Martin Luther King Jr. said, "whenever you are engaged in work that serves humanity and is for the building of humanity, it has dignity and it has worth."
Sarah Jack: Our mission is to actively enlighten the public on historical and contemporary dimensions of all witch trials. Today the issue of witch hunts represents a significant human rights crisis recognized by the United Nations Human Rights Council. This global concern calls upon nations and leaders to intensify their efforts in addressing harmful practices associated with witchcraft accusations. The United States can intensify their efforts, too. There are still witch trial victims here that need a formal apology and exoneration. [00:55:00]
Sarah Jack: Massachusetts Bill H 1803, an Act to Exonerate All Individuals Accused of Witchcraft During the Salem Witch Trials, is currently being reviewed by the Joint Committee on Judiciary in the Massachusetts General Court. They must choose to pass the bill onto the House by February 7th. Please consider submitting written testimony now as to why you support acknowledging all those who suffered in the Salem Witch Trials. This bill transcends the realm of mere legislation. It holds profound significance in the pursuit of human rights. Beyond the previously exonerated victims of the Salem Witch Trials, this bill sheds light on the vast scale of mass suffering that occurred. It represents a significant step towards rectifying this injustice and delivering more comprehensive justice. This legislation holds the power to provide more long-overdue formal acknowledgment to overlooked victims. It symbolizes a collective commitment to dismantling the historical and contemporary shackles of injustice and to find the way to a just and [00:56:00] humane world for all.
Sarah Jack: Join the Massachusetts Witch Hunt Justice Project and House Representative Andres Vargas in advocating for this crucial piece of legislation. Anyone can submit written testimony. Simply write a short letter stating why this bill is important. You can send it to this address, which will also be in the show notes.
Sarah Jack: Send to judiciary committee at 24 Beacon Street, room 136, Boston, Massachusetts 0 2 1 3 3 or by email to michael.musto@mahouse.gov. That's m i c h a e l dot m u s t o at m a h o u s e dot g o v.
Josh Hutchinson: Thank you, Sarah.
Sarah Jack: You're welcome.
Josh Hutchinson: Thank you for listening to Witch Hunt.
Sarah Jack: Join us again next week.
Josh Hutchinson: Subscribe wherever you get podcasts
Sarah Jack: Visit us at aboutwitchhunts.com/.
Josh Hutchinson: And remember to tell your friends and family about the show.[00:57:00]
Sarah Jack: Support our efforts to end witch hunts. Visit endwitchhunts.org to learn more.
Josh Hutchinson: Have a great today and a beautiful tomorrow.
In this profound interview, Ikponwosa Ero unpacks her work advocating for human rights of victims of witchcraft accusations and ritual attacks. As a lawyer and a former United Nations Independent Expert on the Rights of Persons with Albinism, she shares her professional journey and personal experience as an advocate with albinism. Through the interview, she provides extensive data on the nature and scale of the problem, explaining the global presence of harmful practices beyond Africa, in North and South America and Europe. She talks about her contribution at the United Nations, emphasizing the importance of human rights framework in combating these harmful practices. The conversation also covers the need for grassroots collaborations, the collection of reliable data, the importance of cross-movement partnerships, and the role of climate change in these harmful practices.
Josh Hutchinson: Welcome to Witch Hunt, the podcast that delves deep into the haunting world of historical and contemporary witch hunts. I'm Josh Hutchinson.
Sarah Jack: I'm Sarah Jack, And today we bring you a profoundly eye opening episode that ventures beyond the usual narratives.
Josh Hutchinson: Witch hunting dates back thousands of years.
Sarah Jack: And Witch Hunts have never stopped.
Josh Hutchinson: In this episode, we will learn about Harmful Practices Related to Accusations of Witchcraft and Ritual Attacks, which covers both witch hunting and violent assaults on persons with albinism.
Sarah Jack: We will be joined by Ikponwosa 'IK' Ero, former United Nations independent expert on the rights of persons with albinism,[00:01:00] who has been instrumental in elevating international advocacy against harmful practices.
Josh Hutchinson: IK's story is not just a narrative, it's a testament to resilience, advocacy, and the relentless pursuit of justice.
Sarah Jack: IK will walk us through the basics of the situation and share what has been accomplished so far.
Josh Hutchinson: We'll learn why she is optimistic about the future of anti-witch-hunt advocacy.
Sarah Jack: She will outline the next steps we can all take to further advance the issue and bring it towards resolution.
Josh Hutchinson: Stay tuned to learn how you can get involved.
Sarah Jack: We welcome IK ero, a legal professional who served as the inaugural United Nations Independent Expert on the Human Rights of Individuals with Albinism from 2015 to 2021. With over a decade of experience in international human rights research policy and practice, she has actively collaborated with various global organizations and governments. Her contributions include influencing over 20 resolutions at [00:02:00] both the African Union and the United Nations, addressing the human rights of individuals with albinism and combating harmful practices. Notably, IK played a pivotal role in shaping significant international initiatives, such as the African Union Plan of Action on Albinism in Africa and the Pan African Parliament's Guidelines on Eliminating Harmful Practices Related to Accusations of Witchcraft and Ritual Attacks.
IK Ero: My name IK Ero. My full name is Ikponwosa Ero, which is a Nigerian name, and most people struggle to say it, so they can say IK, which are the first two letters of this very long name. I am Nigerian by birth origin. I grew up there, immigrated to Canada as a teenager with my family, and have basically spent the rest of my life based in Canada while traveling around the world in various capacities.
IK Ero: I am a lawyer by training. I have spent the last 15 years or so doing human rights law and advocacy around [00:03:00] the situation of people impacted by albinism, and that's how I came across the issue of witchcraft accusation and ritual attacks, all of which collectively are known as harmful practices.
Sarah Jack: What is the nature and scale of the problem of harmful practices relating to accusations of witchcraft and ritual attacks?
IK Ero: We believe we're talking about tens of thousands of people impacted, and that's based on the data we have. We spent nearly five years gathering data from around the world, not just the continent of Africa but also South America and, to a lot of people's surprise, North America and Europe. Why these are important is that countries where practices, harmful practices like these are rampant, have immigrated and taken the problem with them, because ritual attacks and harmful practices related to accusations of witchcraft is a mentality, it's an issue of a [00:04:00] mentality and a system of belief. So that can easily be transported with a person. So across all these countries and even in the Pacific, Papua New Guinea, and the small island states in the same region, we were able to gather tens of thousands of data. It's monumental, because this is data that we pulled together using a small team and just looking through media-reported cases alone. That's the tip of the iceberg, we think.
Josh Hutchinson: Would you be able to tell us about your experiences with the United Nations?
IK Ero: Sure. In 2015, the United Nations Human Rights Council, which is the United Nations main office in Geneva, Switzerland, looked into the issue of attacks against people with albinism. So people with albinism or albinos, as they have been called in the past, are people who have a genetic condition that results in little or no coloring in their hair, skin, and eyes.
IK Ero: I [00:05:00] myself, I'm a Nigerian, so I'm an African woman, but I have albinism. So I have African features, but I have white skin, blonde hair, blue eyes. This type of appearance has been the subject of harmful practices. The United Nations was aware mostly of the situation in Africa, which definitely was the most egregious reported as of that time. So by 2015, there were well close to 200 cases of ritual attacks against people with albinism. These are people who were hunted down and they stand out in their colors, it's hard to hide. And being a rare condition, everyone knows where you live. I remember everyone knowing, oh, hey, that girl with albinism lives down there.
IK Ero: And so these people were easily hunted, easily found, and their body parts were hacked off, limbs, hair, and fingers. Many times the attacks were done by machetes, because there was the belief in witchcraft that if you take it from a live person, the witchcraft potions you make out of [00:06:00] those body parts will be more potent.
IK Ero: So this belief system led to several scores of people, mostly children, because they're easy to attack and hard for them to fend off several perpetrators, which most of those cases involved more than one attacker, and many of them bled to death from these attacks, known as ritual attacks. And sadly, a lot of the perpetrators were known to the victims, so there was a bit of grooming, or sometimes family members such as stepdads, uncles, were involved in some of these cases, all predicated on the beliefs that these are not human beings.
IK Ero: So in 2015, the United Nations, the Red Cross had described the situation as a small-scale genocide, and this is where the machinery of human rights kicked in, because human rights doesn't only look at large scale groups. It also looks at minorities, quantitatively speaking. So in 2015, they appointed somebody, they appointed a mandate to look into the issue and try to put a stop to it, or at [00:07:00] least try to bring the cases to light. And I was the first mandate-holder in that position in 2015. I served my two full terms until 2021, and it was in the capacity as a mandate holder for people with albinism that I worked on their rights as people with disabilities, on their rights as human beings, and then, of course, on their rights as people who should not be subject. No one, essentially, should be subject to harmful practices. So that was the first time that witchcraft as a harmful practice came to the fore.
IK Ero: Until this mandate, most people were scared to talk about it at the UN, because they were afraid of, yeah, of many things, right? How dare you talk about something that are some people's religion? Or how do you define this as witchcraft when it's just a crime? Or how can you talk about this when you're, like, from Europe, and so this is a colonial approach? So I came with several hats on. I came as an African, I came as also someone who understands the Western world as a naturalized citizen of Canada. I came as a woman, someone who'd experienced witchcraft in practice. I'd witnessed [00:08:00] it, who had experienced discrimination on the basis of harmful practices, and so when I brought it up, nobody, there was very little challenge anyone could bring back against me as to why I was bringing it up, because I seem to fit the mold of the kind of person who could bring it up.
IK Ero: And so I did, and I'm glad today that several resolutions have been passed. I'm glad today to see the first ever guidelines on this issue in, on the African continent, which I hope other continents will emulate. So we've come a long way and above all, we define the issue. We could define the issue in a way that everyone was happy with.
Josh Hutchinson: The United Nations passed a resolution in 2021, and then the Pan African Parliament issued guidelines. What is the significance of those two events?
IK Ero: The first significant aspect of those two initiatives was the conceptualization of the issue, right?Your podcast has a witch in it. So now what does that mean to someone who sees that? It conjures a lot of images, [00:09:00] right? So the first thing we had to do was if we're going to take this bull by the horns in a way that mattered across several countries, we had to come up with a concept that everyone could accept. So the major victory of those initiatives was a working definition. The first victory was a working definition. And the definition we came up with was not to define witchcraft, because this is where we're getting hung up.
IK Ero: We had several events at the UN and there would be arguments and counter arguments as to what witchcraft was. Some people were like, this is something that was a colonial label for something that was a cultural practice. Some people said, what you're calling witchcraft is actually criminal activity and shouldn't be confused. Some called it a religion. Some said it's a Eurocentric word that doesn't translate into other people's culture.
IK Ero: Then finally we said, 'look. One thing we all agree with is that no one should be harmed in the name of witchcraft. Whether you are a practitioner of witchcraft today as a religion, a culture, or you're an academic who thinks it's a Eurocentric [00:10:00] word or what have you, we all agree that nobody's body part should be cut off. Nobody should be subject to torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment and punishment in the name of anything. And sinceharmful practices have been linked to witchcraft, we all know that it's condemnable.' So we agreed on that. Okay.
IK Ero: The second thing we agreed on was what exactly is harmful practice? Let's make sure we know what that is. Like, if I discipline my child and say, 'go to your room,' is that a harmful practice? Versus someone who cuts off someone's hair to go use it in a practice of witchcraft for good luck. What is condemnable under human rights law, under criminal law?
IK Ero: So in the end, what we were fortunate about is the UN already had the definition of harmful practice because of female genital mutilation, early child marriages. These are practices that are very well known around the world, because they've been classified as harmful practice, because the United Nations had come up with a criteria for [00:11:00] determining harmful what, what exactly falls under this phrase, harmful practice that is condemnable and could be criminal. So they included criteria such as their practices and customs that are seen intractable or unchangeable in society and because several types of degradation or affront to human dignity. So it's very well laid out what this criteria was.
IK Ero: So what we did was we took that already established term and linked it to this not so established term, witchcraft, which has been appropriated in these crimes. So we said, harmful practices related to witchcraft. And instead of saying, let's have resolutions on witchcraft, we had, let's have resolutions and a guideline on harmful practices related to witchcraft. And then we expounded on the same harmful practices related to accusations of witchcraft. And then I fought to have and ritual attacks included, because ritual attacks is not necessarily witchcraft [00:12:00] practice, but in many cultures in Africa, it is linked. It is linked, because it's all about this supernatural use of power to allegedly cause harm to someone. So I fought to put ritual attacks under the umbrella, and that was the biggest accomplishment we have. Because once we got over this consensus of what we're talking about, then everything else was faster, even though it wasn't smooth sailing. So our biggest accomplishment was understanding what we're talking about, agreeing to condemn what we needed to condemn.
IK Ero: And then now we have guidelines that show on the African continent, as you said, the Pan-African Parliament developed this guidelines with my support, saying, 'okay, this is what governments can do to bring an end to the beliefs that enable these attacks, and this harmful practices.' And at the resolution level, there was more of a recognition at the United Nations of putting these harmful practices under the catalogue of the umbrella term of harmful practices. So now it's not only [00:13:00] female genital mutilation and early childhood marriage, it's now also accusation of witchcraft and ritual attacks.
Josh Hutchinson: In your talk recently for The International Network Against Accusations of Witchcraft and Associated Harmful Practices, you had spoken about applying a human rights framework to the concept of harmful practices. What is the significance of the human rights framework in this context?
IK Ero: The significance of using a human rights framework is that human rights, first of all, centers on the human, right? That's why they're called human rights. And human dignity is paramount, it's priority. For instance, I'll give you an example. So I've had arguments with, good arguments with colleagues who work in the scientific aspect of albinism research, and trying to work with them to understand the human rights frame, and to see if they could interface that in their work.
IK Ero: Because if you're [00:14:00] studying the genetics of albinism, the human being becomes an object of your study, doesn't matter what your study is doing to them, doesn't matter what impact your study will have on them. Of course, there's ethics and all that, but what I mean is, usually people have complained to me that, 'oh, this researcher came, interviewed us, and we had no idea what the research is being used for.' Now, the researcher is following his own research ethics, but he hasn't involved or engaged a person as a human. There's no centering of the person, so the person is an object of study, whereas in the human rights framework, you are obligated to do more than just research ethics. You have to consult the people who are the objects or subjects of your research, you have to help them to participate in it in a meaningful way, have to consult them in a meaningful way, and try to report back in a meaningful way. All of this in our understanding that their human dignity is equal to yours. And just because you are working at this level doesn't make them any more or less then you in dignity or more or less deserving of the information that you're working [00:15:00] with. So that's one of the important parts of bringing the human rights frame into this work.
IK Ero: But even more profound, I think, or even profound in another way, is the need to consider all the rights of people involved. So if I say this is witchcraft practice, yes and no. In many cases, you have to really tease it out. So for instance, I was in Tanzania, visiting as the independent expert on an official country mission. And I had a meeting with so called practitioners of witchcraft, and they said, look, we're actually practitioners of traditional medicine. Some of our members go off to do questionable things, and that's what you could call witchcraft. But we are not witches, we don't practice witchcraft, but we understand there's an overlap between what we do and what some of these other people do.
IK Ero: And so there's a lot of confusion. So the human rights approach allows you to say, okay, these are traditional medicine practitioners, we need to respect their rights. Or [00:16:00] these are witchcraft believers, they don't have any ritual practices that are harmful. They just like Wiccans or, neo pagans. They just have a religious belief. So we need to respect their rights to religious freedom. And then, classified next group, okay, these people practice these cultural things, like they kill a goat and use the blood on some of the children in the village, which I actually participated in as a child with my grandfather. Is that witchcraft? Some people would say yes, like some of the nowadays Christians would say yes, then some people say no. But I have a right, my grandfather had a freedom of religion, which is protected by his human rights. So the importance of this frame is to protect everyone in the discourse and the discussion, and to make sure that in trying to solve one issue, we're not creating another one, which tends to happen, right?
IK Ero: So human rights mitigates this risk. And that's why I believe that frame is important if we're going to ensure that when we're trying to resolve these issues, we are at the very least protecting other people's rights or acknowledging them. Because they [00:17:00] already exist, right? So this is why it's crucial to bring in this framework, even in other perspectives.
Sarah Jack: I heard you say earlier that human rights has started to protect not only grand scale groups. And sometimes these misunderstood and vulnerable people may fall into these less noticed categories. So this is very significant.
IK Ero: Exactly. And again, that's a good point, because this is also why the human rights framework is very useful, because it has a way of treating people who are minorities. All minorities according to the declaration on minorities, which has classification of what that means. People who belong to a peculiar ethnic group or peculiar culture, peculiar religious, or heritage. So there's that type of minority, and there's also the minority by numbers. Either way, they are protected under the law. And [00:18:00] bringing in the human rights framework gives you an added advantage because there are established standards on how to ensure that just because there are few doesn't mean they should be ignored.
IK Ero: I had to confront that all the time when I was on the mandate because I would visit a country and they would look at me like, okay, your colleague came last year, and she came to deal with violence against women, or she came to deal with women in law, and you're talking about nearly half the population, and then I show up, and I'm like, let's talk about people with albinism who are maybe less than 0.01 percent, like in a country like Tanzania, there could be like 30, 000 people with albinism out of like 55 million people. So in terms of government planning and budgeting processes, or like macro system, you're talking very little, but I had to show them that, well, that's exactly why you should do it, because it only takes one year of your focus or five years of your focus to transform their lives, because they're not many.
IK Ero: So I flipped it back for them, or I would remind them of their obligations to do more, because this [00:19:00] UN Sustainable Development Goals, which replace the Millennium Development Goals, has a pledge, a central pledge. That is 'leave no one behind, especially those furthest left behind.' So you as a country have made this pledge, according to the United Nations publications you have to make an effort, because the MDGs helped everyone in an aggregate, but the ones who were not reached, again, the smaller groups, minorities, those on the margins, so the SDGs is trying to correct that. So I brought up all these arguments through the human rights framework to make sure that faith and harmful practices were acknowledged and at least some responses put in place.
Josh Hutchinson: You spoke about human dignity. Is there a definition for that in international law?
IK Ero: That's a good question, Josh. I believe I saw something explaining what that was. I don't have the exact wording in my memory, but I can paraphrase that it said something about the worth [00:20:00] of it, of each person that was inherent to them by the nature of them being humans. So essentially it means once you are human, you have this inherent worth that nobody had a right to take away from you, and you have no right to take it away from anybody else. So, that's the simplest way I can put it, from memory.
Josh Hutchinson: Thank you. It came up yesterday. what dignity every human is worthy of. We needed a definition to help understand what every human should expect as a minimum in regards to how they're treated.
Josh Hutchinson: There were a couple of things that you spoke of in the video about the human rights framework and harmful practices concept. You said, 'culture and tradition can never be an excuse for practices that are harmful' and 'freedom of religion or belief does not extend to actions that inflict harm on others.'
Josh Hutchinson:
IK Ero: On the first [00:21:00] point about culture and customs do not justify any harmful practice. This is a principle of human rights. One of the principles of human rights is the universality of human rights, which means it transcends local contextual factors. Human rights is very much linked to human dignity and gives expression to human dignity. You are worth this, because you're a human being and everyone has the same worth in that regard.
IK Ero: And so now this right is going to express how you live out your dignity, and it's going to express how others live out their dignity. And you have a right to move, to be mobile. You have a right not to be discriminated against. All of these are linked back to your human dignity as to what the minimum, as you said, or there's minimum expectation from other people to have a life that is free, fulfilling, and without unnecessary hindrance. So essentially, the universality of human rights [00:22:00] explains what I just said, but also takes it further to ensure that when people object and say, this is how we've always done it, or this is what we've always believed, or this is our culture, human rights says that's all well and good, but the human dignity of the person you're harming takes precedent.
IK Ero: It takes precedent. So even though we respect your culture and you actually have a right to it, this person's life and their flourishing and their protection and their right to peace takes precedence, and that's why, even though there's always a controversy about a hierarchy of rights in human rights discourse, the truth is there is some degree, there's just no way, after all, the rights of life cannot be compared totally with your right to practice your faith or your right to life cannot be compared to say,the right to health, let's say, even though they are very much linked, right? So you can think about rights in that sense, that there is a hierarchy, and sometimes you have to struggle to make sure someone has [00:23:00] the right to life. They have to be protected, because without the right to life, they can't talk about right to employment. You wouldn't have, you wouldn't be alive, you wouldn't be alive to work. Because of that, even though people have a right to their culture, and their set of beliefs, they and most people do recognize that at the end of the day, making sure that you are not cutting off people's body parts takes precedent over those.
IK Ero: So that's one, one thing. And then the other thing you had said about, of religion and beliefs, that those are rights that do not extend to harm? Yes. So this is another tricky area. And thankfully, the UN has hashed this out, that they have a committee on civil and political rights that have written very useful comments on this. And what they said very clearly was everyone has a right to religion or belief or lack thereof, but in holding those beliefs or lack thereof, you have to be aware that those will stop the moment you start to create harm on other people, now, especially [00:24:00] harmful practices.
IK Ero: So this is why harmful practices also have to be defined, because what do you say if, somebody goes to, like a Pentecostal Christian goes to their pastor and says, 'my husband and I think he's possessed, right? Can you exorcise him?' And they start to exorcise in Pentecostal style. He falls on the floor, his head is being lambasted, and he looks like in a very bad state. Does that become a harmful practice? So this is why harmful practice was already defined, because in this situation, it may not, you may be able to argue that it's not.
IK Ero: And so, however, if you, someone else brings their child, and these are all based on real life stories, someone else brings their child who is autistic, and they don't understand it's and say, this child is bewitched, he doesn't speak, but when he does speak, what he says is unnaturally correct. Now the pastor says, oh, I got the spiritual vision that this is a supernatural child who's a witch. Now let's like put a nail through his head. [00:25:00] Or some really abhorrent act. Is that a harmful practice? Probably. So I think that religious practices, people are free to believe what they want, but they have to stop where it causes harm, and a lot of that is the use of their common sense, respect of their criminal law to know where harmful practices begin and also to follow like human rights criteria as to what is harmful practice. Not always easy, but this is the working definition and how to respect other people's human rights or balanced rights so that in a way everyone is protected while doing what they want to do.
Josh Hutchinson: We have this saying in the States that my right to swing my arm stops where your nose begins. And it sounds like applying the same thing to religious and spiritual practices, that it's great that you're practicing what you believe in up to the point where you start to harm someone else.
IK Ero: That's a good summary of the whole extrapolation I [00:26:00] made. But one thing I should say is that, that it remains challenging is what if the, because we know there are some conditions that tend to lead more to these types of harmful practices than others. So what if the condition is somebody's belief is in witchcraft? They don't necessarily do it, but they believe in it. For instance, someone might believe that a person with albinism's body parts can bring good luck in witchcraft potions, right? They haven't done it, but they hold the belief, right? There are some arguments. Some people think that when we try to mitigate this problem, we should go after these beliefs and, tell them it's not okay to hold it, even if they have a right to hold it.
IK Ero: Whereas there's another school of thought that says it doesn't matter, as long as they don't act on it, they can think whatever they want. But the former school of thought is like, if you let those thoughts flourish, one day it's going to burst out. So there's a lot of schools of thought as to how to react to these things without harming people's human rights.
IK Ero: There's some complications that we will sort out in practice going forward.[00:27:00]
Sarah Jack: Thank you for all your work. And in your recent keynote, you were able to express optimism about the efforts that you accomplished, what milestones they were. What good outcomes can we look for?
IK Ero: I believe that we now have a small movement, whereas before there really was not. There were reports of these harms in a scattered and ad hoc way. However, we now have a group of academics and advocates who have come together to do more in a strategic way to build on the work of the resolutions and of the guidelines.
IK Ero: I think we started off at minus five, and now we are on ground zero, or at least a few points ahead of that. Now that the foundation is made, I don't think we could ever go back to where we were, where we couldn't name these issues, and where we couldn't call on any types of concepts to protect people as easily.
IK Ero: So I am [00:28:00] optimistic, because now what seems to remain is good strategic work going forward, taking what has been done and making a buffet out of it, so that the changes become real to the people we're trying to protect. All we need now is not so much fighting about concepts, which is really huge and draining, but more about strategic movement building and making it into reality, things that already exists.
IK Ero: I'm afraid though that the movement is not like a well-funded, oily machine, but I do believe that those who are at the helm of it have the necessary passion, knowledge, and skill to do a lot with what they have. So this is where my optimism is coming from.
Josh Hutchinson: Yes. And you have outlined several next steps. One that you outlined was the ongoing popularization of the UN resolution. How important is that and how can that be done?
IK Ero: It's very important that people understand what has been achieved in [00:29:00] terms of the understanding of how the issue is, right? Now you still mention witchcraft practices to people and they're still thinking the lady on the broom with the Halloween hat. We've gone past that into the postmodern forms of witchcraft.
IK Ero: The same way as there's a huge literature on modern-day slavery, we need to get these issues about so-called accusation of witchcraft and ritual attacks into the modern parlance. People need to be aware that there's a modern form of what they think is more medieval, so we need to do some catch up.
IK Ero: And this can happen through a lot of social media engagement. Even small videos with little animated cartoons, or, AI, like feeding information into AI, since we're relying on that more. And then also you're having campaigns with campaign organizations like AVAS or AVAS, I don't know how to pronounce them. Were really interested in this issue at some point. And as we're negotiating with them, the resolution passed and it went moot because they were going to help us have a campaign to get the [00:30:00] resolution adopted. But I think it's worth revisiting, going back to them or Amnesty International, some kind of campaign organization or organizations working on elderly people, because this is a rising issue as the world slowly ages.
IK Ero: The issue of the elderly is gonna be more front and center, and organizations taking that on, such as Human Rights Watch, need to be brought into the fore to get them to have campaign messages in which we can insert things about accusation of witchcraft, ritual attacks, trying to get people to see it as part of the catalog of harmful practices.
IK Ero: So that even those doing early child marriages, female genital mutilation, can add that to their catalogue. This is all very much related, especially since women tend to be the majority of the victims of all of these harmful practices. So these are some of the ways we can carry out the campaign and to popularize the resolution and the guidelines.
Sarah Jack: You talked about replicating the Pan African Parliament guidelines in other locations. Could you explain the need for that and [00:31:00] how that might work?
IK Ero: So Africa is one that we focused on for several reasons, including the type of mandate I had. But when we had a few workshops, we realized that some other regions also had similar harmful practices, especially like in Papua New Guinea, which is like in the Pacific region, some parts of South America. So we believe, and even some parts of Europe who have taken in immigrants, right?
IK Ero: So we believe that some other continents, many of which have their own continent wide parliament, like the Pan African Parliament, because many of them have similar mandates to issue guidelines, could also have this as part of their work, their mandate, either to do it as a standalone or a part of a directive on immigration and how to deal withthe protection of minors or protection of people in vulnerable situations, who come in through immigration.
IK Ero: So we are hoping that if Africa did it, as they say, what's good for Africa is good for everywhere else, because Africa is uniquely, has [00:32:00] diversity in everything. And it's one thing people don't realize, like they talk about Africa as a monolith, but the most diverse of everything is there. If we're able to overcome those differences to agree on this, we believe that the foundation has been laid again.
IK Ero: And it's just a matter of taking those guidelines and adapting them to regions after consulting with the local activists, there's several activists at local level trying to prevent these crimes, working with them, consulting with them. And even if parliaments at the continental level cannot do it, then they have continent wide national human rights institutes that work continentally to drive practices in human rights and those can have issue guidelines like nothing is stopping them from issuing guidelines and it was a lot of work to get this work off the ground because we're conceptualizing as we're drafting. We've done all the hard work for them so there really is no reason for them to not have one at this point so we're hoping that it will get replicated and adapted to their own context.
Sarah Jack: In what [00:33:00] ways does continuing to gather data propel things forward?
IK Ero: Data is one of the things people cannot argue with, although nowadays that's changing a little bit with artificial intelligence and the incredible technology driven ability to alter data. However, for the most part, data can still be useful if it is something that comes, that is traceable, has traceability.
IK Ero: For instance, when I recorded cases of people attacked, people with albinism. I used to work at, I work at an organization called Under the Same Sun, where we have over a decade of attack data, each case is traceable, at least 90 percent of them, because we have down to the villages, and I learned that strategy from the international criminal court, because I worked there at a time.
IK Ero: And so as long as data is that good, they're real, they're traceable, they're protected, what available. People always believe it's hard to fight against [00:34:00] people who have data. And we try to replicate that with the witchcraft related data that we gathered with this new movement. And so I believe that convincing people, persuading them, as they say, when it comes to the C suite or the high levels of decision making bodies or authorities. At that point, communication, persuasiveness become very useful skills. And the only thing that can make that better is data. And I saw that happen with albinism, was one of the reasons we were able to get as far as we did, both on my mandate and even on this issue in particular, was to say, look, this is what's happening, this is the data, what are you going to, you can't argue with data, you really cannot. At the end of the day, it's an objective signal of what needs to be done, and I cannot underscore how important, how, it's, some places outside of Africa have very few data available because many people are not collecting them. I would say aside from data being necessary in general, some regions are behind in getting the data that we know exists. We just need more hands on deck, more researchers to [00:35:00] pull out more data from regions outside Africa as well to show that it's more of a global issue.
Josh Hutchinson: And you've spoken of the need to engage grassroots organizations in their efforts. What are the benefits of working with grassroots organizations?
IK Ero: Yeah, so this ties into the data issue, as well. If someone from Papua New Guinea is able to find data and report that data to, say, an authority at the UN, it's very powerful because she's on the ground, the official is not, and she can trace the case. And many times at the UN when cases are reported there, the person reporting them even gets the consent by signature of the victim or their family members if the victim is unable or deceased to sign the consent. So it's so raw. Like I got some forms where I could see the signature of a victim who was still in hospital saying, 'this is what happened to me.' So it's very important that people who are really on the ground be involved because they not only help with data, they also bring [00:36:00] some level of authenticity that cannot be replicated by just doing research on the computer and also bringing them into the forays of this.
IK Ero: So bringing grassroots people into the processes at the UN of how to report to this expert, how to report to this mandate or the Human Rights Council, this process is how to do it, then that really gives them a power that maybe they don't think they have. It also puts accountability on the government.
IK Ero: Because imagine Mrs. A reporting to the UN about a case in Papua New Guinea, now the government will be embarrassed at the UN and want to do something. So it's a way of getting accountability much quicker, bringing authenticity, bringing data, empowering the local activists, with other ways of getting things done.
Sarah Jack: So you spoke about bringing a test case before the United Nations. How would that work and what would be the benefit of doing that?
IK Ero: Essentially, the UN has some quasi-judicial bodies, [00:37:00] called committees, who function under what are often known as optional protocols to conventions. So there are conventions, and then optional protocol to that convention, which allows complaints to be brought before the committee.
IK Ero: So as an example, there's a committee on the rights of people with disabilities called the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, the CRPD. It's an international law that sets standards on how people with disabilities ought to be treated within human rights. So CRPD has a committee that checks compliance, yeah, so there's a committee of the CRPD. Now they have now an optional protocol to the CRPD, by which the committee assesses cases brought by individuals.
IK Ero: So now, what we had done as part of our advocacy strategy, working on the rights of people with albinism some years back, was we brought a test case before the committee governing the optional protocol. There was a woman who had been attacked, they cut off both of her arms, she bled so much they had to amputate both of them,so now she went from [00:38:00] a woman with albinism to someone who had now multiple disabilities, albinism being only one of them at this point, cannot feed her son who was less than 10 years old, her other kid, like completely caused havoc in her life, to put it lightly. So we took her case, among others that we actually combined all three of them. We got the support of a human rights clinic at a university in Africa called the University of Pretoria in South Africa. So this is another strategy. Lots of universities have this human rights clinics at faculty of laws where the students are just buzzing with energy to do something to make a difference. And this is an excellent opportunity for them to put their work into practice while benefiting those who were survivors or victims of these atrocities. So what we did with this case, cases, we combined the three of them, this woman being one of them, and we brought them before the optional protocol.
IK Ero: It took two years, because that's how long it takes. They don't have all the resources in the world to work faster. And, but at the end, the decision was so strong in favor of the victims, [00:39:00] like requested the country to bring remedies, legal remedies, social remedies, economic remedies, I mean, you can't compensate people like that, but you can do as much as you can to like provide some remedies.
IK Ero: So they asked the government to provide those remedies, and now we as advocates at that point, what we had to do was follow up with that. First, we went to the press and did like a press release and made a whole buffet of this thing. And we're like, the government has to do all this things to remediate.
IK Ero: We brought in the survivors to speak on their own behalf. They expressed contentment. Like their cases never went through the local courts, but it went through the optional protocol. In a way they got justice, so even if the government fails to provide remedies, they know that they were vindicated, even though evidently they were victims, but nonetheless, this is the power of those cases, is that you can make a huge buffet out of it and put fire under the feet of the government, and even though they only supported, to some extent, those remedies, or provided, what they did was the next time they were called to the UN to give accounts for their implementing other [00:40:00] human rights obligations, because almost every country has a report under each convention that they ratified how they were implementing it, they felt obligated always to provide an update. Oh, and the situation with people with albinism we're doing XYZ, because this case against them was public, was published, and there's a level of embarrassment. There's a lot of benefits that could come out of a test case. So if we bring a case of someone who, say, was burnt to death because of an accusation, whereas they were like 70 year old woman having early stages of dementia. That's an excellent case, I mean terrible. What an excellent opportunity to make those countries realize that we are watching you, we are watching you and we know this is happening in your country, you better do something about it. So so far I don't think there's been that type of case, from what I know, and so I think it could be really useful to try to do that.
Sarah Jack: How will partnerships with international organizations that are working on related issues be a key strategy?
IK Ero: It's a key strategy because [00:41:00] people are overwhelmed, eh, in activism. I'm sure you have an awareness of that there's a lot of issues in this world. At some point when I was going to places to give talks or presentations, you could see in people's faces, especially in people working in human rights and development, they're just like, 'okay, what else, what other craziness is happening in this world that I should add to my agenda? Or what other craziness is happening in this world that I really cannot take on because I'm up to here, right?'
IK Ero: So it is a strategy really to be realistic that the people who are working in the field of human rights are human as well. And there's only so much a human being can take. And if you want to help them to help you, you have to show how your work fits into their existing work, right?
IK Ero: So for instance, if you're working on, Sarah, you're working on climate change, right? And then I show up to your office and I start talking about attacks, ritual attacks against people with albinism. You might just be like, okay, that's sad, but I can't help you because I'm going to COP in Dubai, [00:42:00] and I'm like up to here in work. But if I come to you and then suddenly I only raise another aspect that overlaps with yours, then for instance, I could say,Sarah, there's a lot of people with albinism who are dying because of climate change. UV rays are rising in many countries. And because of that, many of them are not able to work outdoors or they're dying more rapidly from skin cancer. All of this is true, by the way. Suddenly you're like, 'oh, I could actually say that. I could put a line in my report or I could mention that'. So I'm just saying that if we want to help people who are working in this space who are mostly overwhelmed, we have to find a way to make it easier for them. And one of the ways to do that is to show them, hey, you, Josh, you're working on the issue of children, stuck in armed conflict. How about you also mention next time you're presenting to the big guns, children who are accused of witchcraft? Because in some of these camps where the refugees are staying, you have received reports of witchcraft accusations and harm has been done. And then Josh can include it without us driving him [00:43:00] crazy with adding more issues to his plate, right? So it's really a strategy I think that is more humane, more respectful of the reality of what our world is and of the stress levels that are rising among development workers.
Josh Hutchinson: Why is it important to participate in dialogue on climate change and climate justice?
IK Ero: Good. So this is related to the issue, one aspect about so-called witchcraft practices or accusations of witchcraft is that they tend to go up when there's like economic, socioeconomic pressures. So the literature is rife with data showing that when there was a drought, or a famine, or some kind of economic collapse, accusations of witchcraft went up, especially in rural areas. And this is not only Africa, we get some of the reports from the Pacific. So it's very important that when these socioeconomic shocks happen, there has to be a strategy to mitigate people suddenly finding their causes of this pandemics or disasters, right? Cause usually it's 'oh wait, let's go see the [00:44:00] witch doctor. Why do we suddenly have a famine? Why did all the crops die?' And then suddenly they're like, 'oh, is that old lady who lives alone down the street? It's just her and 10 cats. She doesn't even remember her name. She must be a witch, cause sometimes she gets up at night to dance alone or whatever.' And everyone goes there and then they do whatever to the poor woman.
IK Ero: So climate change is a source of a lot of disasters that impact people, not only in terms of their farming, but all their socioeconomic activities as a whole, because we know there's an ecosystem. So when something goes wrong, prices go up, something else goes down elsewhere. The idea is to try to bring in the issue of accusations of witchcraft and ritual attacks as harmful practices. People speaking about climate change should be aware that groups at risk, because they have a list of groups at risk in climate change, such as small island states who often have natural disasters. We need to add our indigenous communities. We need to [00:45:00] have in that list of groups at risk, where it says bringing maybe women, bringing people with disabilities, then it's up to us to go advocate to say, especially those who are vulnerable to being accused of witchcraft or vulnerable to ritual attacks, so people are aware in their work on climate change and groups at risk already that there could be this cultural issues popping up and it gives a certain level of awareness to say like a somebody manning a refugee camp in a drought -impacted country to be on the lookout and to do some sensitization like when they talk to people about hygiene. Then adding just a paragraph about, 'okay, if you have a belief system that somebody has done something wrong to you, you cannot harm them, you must come to me and report it,' so that there's a kind of, management of the situation.
IK Ero: So those are just tweaksthat could really make a huge difference in protecting vulnerable people. My point of bringing up climate change was just to advocate to those doing that work already, to bring their awareness that this could go up, these harmful [00:46:00] practices could go up with the pressures brought about by climate change.
Sarah Jack: The mutual realization of human rights goals can come from strategic cross movement approaches. Can you tell us about that?
IK Ero: It's related to what I said about how to bring the issue to people already working on other thematic areas. It's related to that. But I, this one maybe is even deeper and be more strategic is for instance, we saw in our data a very high number of women victims. There's a lot of men as well, but the women and children are more striking. So it could be beneficial to go work with the huge movement, feminist movement. They're huge, they're powerful, and they're representing half the world. So they have a huge platform. It could be beneficial to go into those spaces.
IK Ero: So when they have the large conferences on women, which they do in New York every April, or other similar events that bring in women from around the world. It could be [00:47:00] beneficial to join another organization to have a panel to talk about, let's say, another big issue like women, elderly women, right? Because to talk about a very small issue is very hard in such a big space,
IK Ero: For instance, we can go to the conference on women in New York in April and have an event, like it's what they call the side events, so these are the events around the main event, which many people attend, the side event with another prominent organization and say let's have an event on elderly women, this will interest everyone. Almost everyone will become an elderly woman who is already a woman. Have this event, and then say you, maybe Human Rights Watch, you already have a portfolio in the elderly, could you be one of the speakers and speak about your work? Then I will come and speak about women who have been accused of witchcraft and their vulnerability with economic shocks going on right now, generally, and with climate change, this event will attract people working in the area of women, elderly people, and they have such huge access, not only to resources, but also to the change making [00:48:00] halls, right? So imagine them listening to you talk about harmful practice, accusation of witchcraft, just adding one line of those things into their reports.
IK Ero: People don't realize, they think, oh, it's just writing. It makes a huge difference. We've had people receive protection in United States courts because of one line in a UN report, 'cause it gives credibility to a situation so it's less anecdotal and hearsay, and it also gives lawmakers and policies the grounding upon which to allocate resources to respond to these issues.
IK Ero: Doing that for women, for instance, and then doing the same on children. I got major inroads working with the Secretary General's Envoy on Violence Against Children. So I work with her a lot in respect of bringing the issue of accusation of witchcraft and ritual attacks on children into her mandate, because it's violence against children, and she has many important reports where she mentioned the issue now.
IK Ero: So this is another strategy, but I was asked, I was calling for a more ongoing one, where if they have a network of, feminist organization or women based organization that we can find a seat [00:49:00] on as a movement fighting these harmful types of harmful practices so that the issue is constant and becomes more normalized.
Josh Hutchinson: I do look forward to a time when we will also have a day, like an international day. I believe it's been celebrated informally, which is a good start already sometime in August. I hope that day becomes formal, or at least be more celebrated by people who are the grassroots level anyway, before it becomes concretized in a formal way, as a way of aggregating our solidarity and bringing more awareness to the issue, because one spark really can be the source of protection to someone in the future from these harmful practices.
Josh Hutchinson: And now for an End Witch Hunts special report. End Witch Hunts is a 501(c)3 dedicated to raising awareness of harmful practices related to accusations of witchcraft and ritual attacks. Mary, Sarah, and I are on the board along with Beth Caruso [00:50:00] and Jen Stevenson. Mary and Sarah join me now to discuss what we've just heard from IK and what it means for us as hosts and listeners. Now that we've heard what can be done, we can do it.
Josh Hutchinson: What are your general impressions from the interview?
Sarah Jack: One of the first things I took away from it was that purposeful action from the right person at the right place can make a huge difference. The work has begun. I think that we can be excited and have confidence that this train has left the station and it has a destination.
Mary-Louise Bingham: And I like how she says that the goal is not to achieve the end result quickly but carefully and methodically as part of a team effort through education, relying on data and human experience.
Josh Hutchinson: She brought up how in [00:51:00] addressing one problem, you can't create other problems. You have to respect everyone's human rights throughout the process. And how she talks about the absoluteness of human rights. They're not relative to traditions and cultures.
Sarah Jack: I think there's a takeaway here with teaching all ages about human rights and human dignity, but especially the young generations, despite the variance in religion, cultures, this absolute value of the dignity of humans is something that means no matter the environment or the curriculum or the framework of education, this can be there. It's a fundamental that needs to be [00:52:00] prioritized with children.
Sarah Jack: Sometimes we look at this young generation and we talk about how they don't see all the things, all the negative things that humans judge later in life. So if children are really starting out just seeing another child and then we educate them about human dignity, that's a really strong starting point.
Josh Hutchinson: Human dignity should basically be the foundation and guiding light for every decision that we make and everything we do interacting with other people should be in support of their dignity and our own dignity.
Josh Hutchinson: Use your voice and your platform, whatever that is, to raise awareness about the crisis. Read and share UN Resolution 47 8, Elimination of Harmful Practices Related to Accusations of Witchcraft and Ritual Attacks. The link is in the show notes.
Josh Hutchinson: If you have a [00:53:00] show, if you do a radio show, a TV show, if you make documentary films, if you're a journalist, if you have a podcast or a blog, or any way of spreading, communicating, maybe write a column for the newspaper or, something like that, Any way that you can spread the word, please reach out to us and we can put you in touch with these advocates, and you can share what the advocates say, the people who are on the ground doing this work, intervening, as has been said, to save lives.
Josh Hutchinson: If you work with a human rights organization, whatever the primary cause that you're devoted to, consider if there is overlap with harmful practices, and consider how you can include these practices in your messaging. Violence against witches is violence against [00:54:00] primarily women, children, senior citizens, persons with albinism, persons with disabilities, indigenous persons, persons of a lower caste or class status, and members of other disadvantaged and vulnerable communities. For example, if you're working against gender based violence, know that women are the primary targets of harmful practices.
Sarah Jack: Absolutely. And if there is this component in your writing, your social media, your speaking. If you're looking for a human rights effort to support, this is the one because it does have this intersection with violence against women and children.
Josh Hutchinson: Violence against other vulnerable people, people with albinism.
Mary-Louise Bingham: Elder abuse or people that have Alzheimer's disease or [00:55:00] anybody like, in the aged community, because we know now from our other friend and advocate, Dr. Leo Igwe, that those people are vulnerable and have been accused of, quote unquote, witchcraft, because their communities don't understand what is medically happening to them.
Josh Hutchinson: I encourage you to read the documents that we're talking about today, the United Nations resolution. There's a United Nations report that came out in March of 2023 that is very good on breaking down the current situation and what's happened over the last decade or so. And, I encourage everyone to read that, also to read the Pan African Parliament Guidelines and the Papua New Guinea Sorcery Accusation Related Violence National [00:56:00] Action Plan. Those will get you informed on what's being done and what kind of activities are needed in a little bit more detail. Use your voice and your platform to share the documents. Encourage the leaders of your nation and regional human rights apparatuses to adopt similar guidelines. Links to all of these documents are in the show notes.
Josh Hutchinson: And find a grassroots organization in your area that's working to prevent harmful practices, get involved that way. Links to those are in the show notes. We have links on endwitchhunts.org to other organizations that are involved.
Josh Hutchinson: So you can work on the ground where you are with local advocates, or you can work virtually the way that we do from afar. Wherever you are in the world, you can help. And wherever you are in the [00:57:00] world, you might start noticing harmful practices in your own area now that you're aware of what they are. So report on those and share those and tell us about those.
Josh Hutchinson: Thank you for listening to Witch Hunt.
Sarah Jack: Join us again next week.
Josh Hutchinson: Subscribe wherever you get podcasts.
Sarah Jack: Visit aboutwitchhunts.com/.
Josh Hutchinson: Remember to tell your friends about the show.
Sarah Jack: Join our efforts to end witch hunts. Visit endwitchhunts.org to learn more.
Josh Hutchinson: Have a great today and a beautiful tomorrow.