While flicking through my old favourite local history tome, The History of Ilkeston by Edwin Trueman, I came across yet another fascinating snippet that had me intrigued enough to go looking for more. “A body was drowned in the canal near Ilkeston, the means taken to discover it was as follows: a loaf of bread, scooped …
From the middle of the 16th century, to be found guilty of witchcraft was officially a felony in England. Accordingly, if you were unlucky enough to be found guilty of carrying out a range of related practices, you could expect to find yourself facing punishment, from a relatively lenient stint in the pillory to facing …
Thou Shalt Not Suffer A Witch To Live: A Tour of England’s Witchcraft Legislation Read More »
It’s never easy to admit when you’re in the wrong. You might at first try to avoid the issue, then perhaps tell a small untruth in the hope to avoid detection. Then as time goes on and you continue the charade it’s harder and harder to come clean, and before you know it you’ve backed …
All That Glitters: James Price and the Death of Alchemy. Read More »
Over the summer I bought a small book of Derbyshire ghost stories. Whilst flicking through I came across a tale that caught my attention relating to Tupton Hall near Chesterfield. Today there is a school on the site where the old hall used to stand, but it was once an opulent country estate in the …
You would be forgiven for thinking that tales of people spontaneously igniting are better suited to an episode of The X-Files than a witchcraft blog. In the strange case of Grace Pett, the sixty year old wife of an Ipswich fisherman, however, the two are not so very far apart at all. On the evening …
The End of a Witch, or Spontaneous Combustion? The Tragic Fate of Grace Pett Read More »
Jane Wenham has been a favourite “witch” of mine since I first came across her case, and the last few weeks have been spent exhaustively researching her life and the trial that brought her such long-lasting notoriety. I’ve read every pamphlet, poured over parish registers in an attempt to trace every last family member until …
On Friday 28th October 1743, The Derby Mercurycontained a fascinating glimpse of life after the passing of the 1735 Witchcraft Act. Found under “Bristol” in the paper’s “Country News” section, readers are assured that: “Amongst all the uncommon Accidents Mankind have been amus’d with of late, none seems more to deserve the Attention of the …
Do as you Would be Done By: The Fate of the Bristol Cobbler Read More »
Although described by William Cobbet as “certainly the most villainous spot that God ever made,” my own memories of Hindhead in Surrey are somewhat fonder. As a young girl I spent a lot of time visiting my maternal grandmother there, wandering across the Common, with my mother sharing the tales she had been told as …
Murder at Hindhead: The Curse of the Sailor’s Stone Read More »
Often credited with being the last person convicted of Witchcraft in England, Jane Wenham fit the stereotypical image of a witch – old, living alone, with very little in the way of money or possessions. She had, by all accounts, lived in the village of Walkern for most of her life, but in 1712, events …
As a writer and a historian, I count the 18th Century among my historical “homes”. It was hardly surprising therefore to find my modern day novel with roots there, or that I would find myself happily exploring magic and witchcraft in that period. Witchcraft first entered the statue books in England as a felony in …
