Witches of Scotland - EPISODE 48 PROFESSOR NICOLA RING - NURSES AND MIDWIVES

00:00:00.160 Hi, I'm Clare Mitchell QC. Welcome to the Witches of Scotland podcast.

00:00:05.240 I'm a lawyer who specialises in miscarriage of justice cases and we're bringing you this podcast

00:00:10.120 because we want to tell you about the women who were accused, prosecuted, convicted

00:00:15.240 and ultimately executed as witches in Scotland.

00:00:18.780 I'm Zoe Vendetotsi and I'm a writer who's always had an interest in the witches

00:00:22.780 and I feel that this dark mark against Scotland needs a reckoning.

00:00:26.500 The campaign Witches of Scotland wants three things.

00:00:29.600 Firstly, a pardon for all those convicted of witchcraft.

00:00:33.240 Secondly, an apology for all those who were accused as witches.

00:00:37.420 And finally, a national monument in recognition of all those who were affected by this terrible miscarriage of justice.

00:00:44.420 Over the forthcoming weeks, we'll be talking to a whole host of experts about the history and the modern day connections to the witches of Scotland.

00:00:53.780 Hello and welcome to the Witches of Scotland podcast.

00:00:56.600 we are on a very small numbered episode 48 today i mean we're just we're barely barely starting out

00:01:04.260 in the world ridiculous 48 claire i know only 48 and we've only got about i don't know what 48 to

00:01:12.120 go 50 at least at least who would have thought though that there would be so many interesting

00:01:17.400 people to talk to about this particular topic literally neither you or i so we know we really

00:01:23.400 didn't it's quite it's quite remarkable there are so many people working away in different areas

00:01:27.640 about this and may i say the thing is as well that some of the people that we have spoken to

00:01:32.500 and particularly i'm thinking of our friend of the show judith langland scott who has spoken about

00:01:39.800 witches of warfare she's now gone away and done so much extra research we need to get her back on

00:01:45.220 soon well we definitely do yeah she's fascinating and she's going to be on the telly soon as well

00:01:50.280 so we need to make sure we we do speak to exciting stuff so so claire how's your week been oh that

00:01:58.080 was i knew that you threw me yeah i'm doing i'm doing a double bluff just go with it how's your

00:02:02.660 week been yeah it's been it's been great i've been working and i'm just sort of waiting for the next

00:02:10.300 question in the course of your week i just wondered if you'd come across any news about

00:02:14.400 witches that you would like to share can i say ladies and gentlemen while she was doing that

00:02:18.640 she was just sort of shrugging her shoulders 0.97

00:02:20.680 Shrugging, casually

00:02:22.060 Very cool, yeah

00:02:24.300 Are you asking me Zoe

00:02:26.560 what's in the news?

00:02:28.520 The news, yes

00:02:30.240 So you remember that we spoke

00:02:32.960 to Heel and Harrow Zoe

00:02:34.600 that was episode 19 0.87

00:02:36.260 only a few episodes back there

00:02:38.080 and they have put together the stories

00:02:41.220 of women accused of witchcraft

00:02:43.280 and also some of the stories

00:02:44.960 of the allegations that were made

00:02:47.420 Written by Mary Kidd

00:02:48.980 Yeah, written by Mary Kidd into music and written word

00:02:53.940 And they have contacted us recently

00:02:56.120 Zoe, they've contacted us to say that they have remembered their promise in episode 19

00:03:00.000 We've been put on the guest list, Zoe

00:03:01.860 Oh, how exciting

00:03:03.100 I love a guestie, love a guestie

00:03:06.180 And their tour kicks off in 2022 on the 21st of January

00:03:10.640 At Celtic Connections Festival in the Mitchell Theatre in Glasgow

00:03:14.940 And that's the one we've been invited to, Zoe

00:03:17.340 how nice that's good I don't think I'm doing anything then so that's great

00:03:21.740 my life is a is a sea of nothingness

00:03:24.580 don't make it seem like you have nothing else to do Zoe

00:03:31.040 no I mean more like it's it's like a shining beacon of something to look forward to

00:03:35.700 good good well we want to tell you about the rest of the tour so that those listeners might be able

00:03:42.580 to go and watch it. On the 9th of February, they're at Eden Court and Inverness, 11th February at the

00:03:48.720 Tollbooth in Stirling, 12th February at the Sage Gates Head, 13th February at the Liverpool

00:03:55.280 Philharmonic in Liverpool, 14th February at the National Centre for Early Music in York,

00:04:03.000 15th February at the North Wall in Oxford, 17th February at King's Palace London,

00:04:09.660 18th February at the Howard Assembly Rooms in Leeds

00:04:14.000 and 19th February at Eastgate Theatre and Arts in Peoples

00:04:18.580 I mean they're really going up and down the country

00:04:21.880 Yeah I'm really heartened to hear that

00:04:24.620 that it's not just in Scotland

00:04:25.960 that it's right down to the bottom of England too

00:04:28.040 that's very exciting

00:04:28.860 Yeah

00:04:29.640 That's great

00:04:30.580 We'll keep you updated and let you know how that goes

00:04:33.500 The other in the news item that I wanted to bring up

00:04:37.480 was that we were asked by the petitions committee that we put the petition into about getting a

00:04:44.340 pardon, an apology and a national memorial. They asked us to write back by the 6th of December

00:04:50.580 explaining what we thought was the correct process for seeking an application for a pardon.

00:04:57.400 So you might remember that the committee had said that they were interested in looking into

00:05:02.020 ways they might raise the issue by a pardon and were wondering whether or not the Scottish

00:05:06.700 Criminal Cases Review Commission was the right way to go and we explained that we didn't think

00:05:11.580 that that was the right way to go and pointed out that in recent times the way that the Scottish

00:05:16.580 Parliament has dealt with these things is a legislative pardon and they've pointed them in

00:05:21.240 the direction of the pardon given to people who are involved in same-sex sexual acts who have

00:05:27.580 been pardoned and also at the moment going through Parliament there is a bill which is seeking to

00:05:34.440 pardon minors for various offences where they would have been involved in protesting what was

00:05:40.400 happening during the minor strikes so we have given them that response we look forward to a

00:05:45.820 future date when they're going to consider it and we'll keep you updated about that so that's all my

00:05:51.560 news Zoe but I'm just wondering do you have any news? Well I've got some news and it's actually

00:05:58.140 it's quite interesting. We had a tweet directed to us, is that the right word to use, by another

00:06:03.920 person who tweets on Twitter, obviously, who's very interesting. And I mean, it's one of these

00:06:09.860 funny things about Twitter. You don't, you obviously don't know who anybody is, but we have

00:06:13.640 a lot of interaction with another person who's really on it with lots of matters about history

00:06:18.420 and so on. And they got in touch with us to say, well, they tagged us in to an article that had

00:06:23.620 been in the BBC on the BBC website like less than a week ago about the women is entitled the women

00:06:29.740 publicly tortured after being accused of sorcery and it really just it's a really interesting

00:06:34.700 article but it just really highlights the fact that this is a current issue it's not a thing

00:06:39.520 that is relegated to hundreds of years ago this particular story we've talked before about Leo

00:06:44.120 Igwe on the continent of Africa this story is about Papua New Guinea where there is an issue

00:06:49.040 And it tells the story of a woman called Monica Paulus, who, when her father died, was seemingly just, you know, of natural causes of a heart attack.

00:06:57.380 Her brother accused her of killing him using sorcery.

00:07:00.360 She was threatened with being tortured to death.

00:07:02.400 And she ended up having to flee and go and live in a different province of Papua New Guinea, which, as you'll know, is an island country away, away in the southwestern Pacific.

00:07:11.340 Unfortunately, though, it says in the article that this is a unique position and that sorcery accusation related violence is rife in Papua New Guinea.

00:07:19.600 It says that although there's no reliable data available to know how frequently it happens, government figures say there have been about, and this is mind blowing, 6,000 incidents in the past 20 years.

00:07:30.820 And that's in Papua New Guinea, which is not obviously an enormous place.

00:07:34.240 There is a suggestion that the figures are higher. It's usually women and girls that are accused of this.

00:07:39.340 they're often subjected to brutal and sexualized violence it's just really horrific so the

00:07:45.020 interview stephanie mcclennan from the human rights watch who says that it's we are talking

00:07:49.880 about extreme levels of violence some of the worst i've ever seen they are very vicious mob attacks

00:07:55.100 and victims are held captive tortured burned with iron rods their clothes are stripped and they are

00:07:59.940 often killed so there's there's some really really honestly mind-blowing for me is the right

00:08:05.840 description because you cannot believe that this still happens in this day and age it's really

00:08:10.340 terrible so the original woman that's talked about Monica Paulus there's a suggestion there that the

00:08:14.820 reason that her brother accused her was because her brother once he made an accusation of sorcery

00:08:20.400 against her could then solely inherit their family home so and we know that that echoes cases that

00:08:26.200 we've looked at in our campaign very historically that some women were accused and I guess some of

00:08:32.120 men too were accused so that family members could inherit their land or their money or for some sort

00:08:38.080 of financial reward so it's just really crazy and as as Claire and I've mentioned various times in

00:08:42.880 the past the COVID-19 pandemic has really made things much worse because it's there's kind of

00:08:49.100 for some people it's inexplicable what's happened I mean we know with a with a science approach

00:08:54.620 you know that it is explicable but there's a huge amount apparently of COVID denial and vaccine

00:09:01.040 hesitancy in Papua New Guinea which means that people are some people are accusing deaths related

00:09:06.640 to Covid of actually being caused by sorcery so it's a pretty pretty scary story really and it 0.87

00:09:12.480 just really shows the fact that it's so important that we recognize that this is a method of social

00:09:18.040 control of people and that it's still relevant so when people say to us well what's the point

00:09:22.620 it was hundreds of years ago this is part of the point which is that we need to stand with other

00:09:27.220 other nations that say like this is not acceptable you can't accuse people of that to to suit your

00:09:32.920 own your own needs so that article is on the bbc website and is obviously still available for you

00:09:38.900 to read it makes some really pretty scary reading though it's horrible so that's that's my news

00:09:43.480 horrifying as it is yeah well said zoe and i think that's all our news roundup so once again

00:09:50.680 let's both shuffle papers

00:09:52.100 clear do you have a list of people this week that were accused of witchcraft

00:10:06.380 we do and once again one of our listeners have gotten contact this time it is holly gibb and

00:10:14.460 she has researched into her local area she actually says that she just discovered the

00:10:20.540 campaign on the 29th of October and has binge listened to the entire catalogue in three weeks

00:10:26.900 which is some good going Zoe. What she said is that having listened to us she would love if we

00:10:32.560 could give a shout out to the local Pennycook woman in one of the podcasts and I think for that

00:10:37.940 degree of dedication of listening to all our podcasts within three weeks it's the very very

00:10:41.700 least we could do. So Holly Gibb has set out for us the list of women in her local area in Pennycook

00:10:49.000 that were accused of witchcraft. And obviously, as I remind people, if they want to go and research

00:10:55.280 these further, they can go and look at the Witches Interactive map and or the Survey of

00:11:00.360 Scottish Witchcraft, where they can see some of this information. But Holly has very kindly set

00:11:05.620 out for us the story of some of the women in the Pennycook area. And I'm just going to read that

00:11:11.160 out. So Isabel Drybra, Margaret Smaller Smeal and Christian Thomson were all executed in September

00:11:20.880 1629 in Pennycook. Janet Pennycook, Janet Bishop and Margaret Cuthbertson were all executed in

00:11:30.300 December 1629 in Pennycook. So 1629 appeared to be a very relevant time for witchcraft accusations

00:11:39.380 in Pennycook. She advises that there is an Anne Purcell in October 1629 mentioned in the records

00:11:46.680 but there is no information about her and also Christian Simpson in January 1662. What she says

00:11:54.260 about her is that she sounds as if she was hunted out, called demonic and confessed. This was

00:12:01.520 witnessed by 10 commissioners, one of whom was Mr Thomas Henderson, advocate of Ochen Dinny,

00:12:09.240 I hope I'm pronouncing that right, of the few of Ochen Dinny, 1653 to 1664. Lastly, she ends on a

00:12:18.540 high note, she explains to us that there was a good outcome for three women who were accused of

00:12:24.060 witchcraft, the women being Christian Purdy, Agnes Elphinstone and Marion Twiddy, who were accused in

00:12:31.260 December 1661 by

00:12:33.420 a neighbour, John Lowry.

00:12:36.080 Now, listen to this for a non-sequitur

00:12:37.760 Zoe. He claimed that he saw

00:12:39.520 the three women dancing round a fire

00:12:41.680 waving handkerchiefs.

00:12:43.920 Right? So, you know,

00:12:45.720 dancing round a fire, waving handkerchiefs.

00:12:48.140 Morris dancing.

00:12:49.400 Yes. Perhaps not in Penicook,

00:12:51.500 but he saw that happening and lo and

00:12:53.460 behold, a few days later, his horse

00:12:55.300 died. Now... What?

00:12:57.580 Exactly.

00:12:59.360 I mean...

00:13:01.260 there's no logic there's no logic to this this is just uh-huh this is just it's something and

00:13:07.480 in fact it's something that I spend quite a lot of time trying to talk to people about

00:13:11.740 is correlation does not equal causation I was trying very hard in the conversation yesterday

00:13:20.280 to remember that phrase and I couldn't remember it and I tried to explain it and all I could

00:13:26.220 think of was that meme of the cat on the collapsed roof yeah that you I know that you've shared

00:13:32.820 before the picture and I need to remember that so folks what Zoe is referencing is a picture

00:13:39.840 of a corrugated iron roof which is bent in and it's obviously bent in through some force of

00:13:46.500 nature or something falling on it but right at the bit where it's bent in a cat has decided to sit

00:13:52.840 and when you look at the picture it looks as if the weight of the cat has forced the roof in and

00:13:59.420 it's beveled to the weight of the cat but the fact that that roof has beveled in and the fact that

00:14:04.520 that cat is sitting there does not mean the cat caused that so the correlation of the cat sitting

00:14:11.280 there and the roof being bent doesn't mean that it's caused it. Similarly if I saw three women 0.97

00:14:17.740 dancing around a bonfire waving hankies and then my horse died a few days later that mean that's

00:14:24.840 even less obvious link isn't it that's just it's just oh it just shows you how there was literally 0.94

00:14:32.480 no way you could try and get around these accusations because they were so ridiculous

00:14:38.200 even if my two friends were around and we decided to have a jig around a fire let's just even say 0.73

00:14:46.960 that happen yeah yeah i could see that happening not the hankies but yeah who in their time has

00:14:53.620 not had a jig around a fire you haven't lived if you haven't exactly so you're having a jig

00:14:58.900 around a fire there's not much to do there's not netflix people are maybe out dancing around a fire 0.99

00:15:05.100 and lo and behold someone's horse died and you're a witch ridiculous completely ridiculous yeah but 0.98

00:15:12.080 I'm delighted to see, as Holly has reported to us, that in this particular case, the women took themselves to the commissioners, the commissioners that were interrogating them, and they demanded to be tried. 0.99

00:15:25.540 They demanded to have their day in court, as it were.

00:15:30.000 They were pricked, so they had to suffer the humiliation and embarrassment of being stripped and their body searched for devil's marks.

00:15:37.840 and they were investigated and they were acquitted.

00:15:43.300 Wow.

00:15:43.660 They then had him arrested for slander.

00:15:48.400 Wow.

00:15:49.160 Yeah.

00:15:49.720 He was, in fact, put to trial in Dalkeith in January 1662.

00:15:55.140 And Holly says, I'd call that a win for the women of Pennycook.

00:15:59.680 And indeed, I think...

00:16:00.900 Absolutely.

00:16:02.440 That's fantastic.

00:16:03.520 Thanks so much for getting in touch.

00:16:04.800 we love it when listeners get in touch and share stories about their own local areas it's so

00:16:08.320 fascinating we do thank you very much Holly for that and it's really really good of you for doing

00:16:14.140 so we really appreciate it and shout out to those in Pennycook if anyone has researched their own

00:16:20.060 area like Holly and wants us in particular to do a focus on those please like Holly do get in

00:16:27.880 contact with us because we'd love to read out the names of the women in the local area so that's

00:16:32.040 really great excellent cool well shall we lead on now to our guest for today who is very interesting

00:16:40.460 and is doing a really interesting project so our guest today is professor nicola ring who works and

00:16:48.300 teaches and researches out of napier university she's a qualified nurse and health visitor and

00:16:55.300 she worked in these areas then moved into health care management and has worked at governance

00:17:00.860 levels for local and national levels within the health service she has done loads of really

00:17:06.980 interesting stuff and she's passionate about the social history of nursing and has expert knowledge

00:17:12.000 of the topic she strongly believes that understanding the profession's past including

00:17:16.120 issues of gender power race and ethnicity helps nurses better understand contemporary issues

00:17:21.640 affecting health care practice and policy so the reason that we are talking to her is because of

00:17:26.380 a particular project that she has been involved with lately, which is Witches Stories, Persecuted

00:17:32.620 for Helping Others, Documentary Analysis of Early Midwives and Nurses as Reported Within

00:17:37.700 the Scottish Witchcraft Survey Database. So without any further ado, please welcome Professor Nicola

00:17:43.720 Ring to the podcast. We are absolutely delighted to introduce today's guest, who is Professor

00:17:59.820 Nicola Ring, who's going to be talking to us about one of her current projects, which

00:18:05.200 I will let her explain in more detail. So without any further ado, Professor Nicola

00:18:10.740 ring welcome to our podcast well thank you Claire and Zoe I'm really pleased to be here

00:18:17.600 it's actually quite surreal because I blame Claire entirely for this project

00:18:24.220 because Claire actually was what kick-started this whole process because in lockdown I remember

00:18:33.600 reading about the witches of Scotland campaign in one of the Sunday papers and at the time thinking

00:18:39.540 oh this is really exciting because some of these boat healers and midwives that were accused of

00:18:47.220 witchcraft some of them were early nurses and midwives so I read the article in the paper I

00:18:51.740 thought that's very nice I really should email this woman did nothing obviously and then a few

00:18:56.600 weeks later was out and about walking at lunchtime and I heard Claire on the radio and then I thought

00:19:03.100 something's going on here the universe is telling me you need to contact this woman so I emailed

00:19:10.600 Claire and she very kindly got back and then we had a chat while she was walking her dog

00:19:16.080 and she was telling me where she was getting all her information from about these people accused

00:19:24.180 of witchcraft and as a nurse I had no idea these records because they were illegal or church ones

00:19:31.100 I didn't know they existed and so when I was talking to Claire I suddenly thought this is a

00:19:38.920 project I know what we need to do I also knew who potentially could fund it so I better give a shout

00:19:44.420 out to my funder the RCN foundation because we got an award for that so after my chat with Claire

00:19:50.300 I very quickly found out yes the funders potentially could fund it but I needed to

00:19:56.740 apply and the deadline was something like two weeks away so with a bit of magic and a bit of

00:20:02.420 fraught and a bit of pressure we managed to get the application in and we were successful and we

00:20:07.240 got the money and we did the project and we've now finished the project is we worked from Julian

00:20:13.480 Goodair's excellent freely available survey of Scottish witchcraft database and I'm sure that

00:20:21.060 or most of the people listening to this podcast they will know about this online resource but

00:20:27.300 to my shame I didn't know about it so what we did was we did a secondary analysis

00:20:35.420 of just those accused witches who had a witchcraft accusation characterized as folk healing

00:20:44.740 or midwifery so it was just that specific group and for people who've been on

00:20:49.780 the survey of scottish witchcraft on the ssw they will know what we mean by a witchcraft

00:20:57.240 accusation characterization but you know for people new to the site they can go on and they'll see

00:21:03.340 what we mean and where we found these people and so basically we just looked at 142

00:21:09.860 folk healers and midwives with witchcraft accusations relating to their curing and

00:21:16.220 practices so there are other folk healers and midwives on the SSW but we didn't look at them

00:21:23.440 because they didn't have witchcraft accusations characterized as that and we also found other

00:21:30.700 healers and midwives that were practicing at the time who were not accused of witchcraft so

00:21:37.180 we're only looking at one group so basically we looked at them we looked at who they were

00:21:44.720 why they were accused what happened to them and although that was really interesting to us

00:21:51.760 to help to tell their stories what we were really looking for was what they did in terms of their

00:21:59.940 healing and midwifery practices and I should say at this point who we are because I should name

00:22:05.880 check my two colleagues so my colleagues on this project were Nessa McHugh who is a midwifery

00:22:13.480 lecturer at Edinburgh Napier with me as well. My other colleague who was involved in the project

00:22:20.260 from the start is Rachel Davidson Welsh and Rachel is a child health nursing tutor. So there was three

00:22:28.860 of us from the beginning and although we were all remote working when we submitted the application

00:22:34.940 I knew we all had an interest in the history of nursing and midwifery, gender issues, and also we really love just history generally.

00:22:48.580 But also Rachel's first degree was in history, and she had studied aspects of witchcraft as part of that.

00:22:56.040 and although I had forgotten I had also studied social history for a year at university and I

00:23:02.640 did actually when I was doing the project realise some of the books that I was reading for this I

00:23:08.120 had actually read many moons ago as a student so there was the three of us from the beginning

00:23:13.520 but towards the end or the middle we had a student a law student final year law student

00:23:21.240 who volunteered with us on the project that was bethany reed and then we were fortunate 0.87

00:23:27.220 in the last few stages of the project that we could employ her for a few months as a research

00:23:33.380 associate so she joined the team initially as a volunteer but then we were able to pay her so

00:23:40.380 that's the team gave us from the beginning and then a temporary help to midway through

00:23:44.940 so when is this information that you've got together when is it being put together and

00:23:51.620 when will it be available for people to see what's happening is a very full report that we wrote

00:23:58.000 that has gone to the funders but currently it's embargoed and that's simply because the research

00:24:04.940 team are submitting manuscripts of our papers for journal publication and so uh we hope to get the

00:24:13.540 first paper off to journal before Christmas and then one in the new year but meantime we are

00:24:20.480 presenting the results at the Royal College of Nursing annual lecture on the 17th of November

00:24:27.020 and that's currently it's free but it's on the event right if anybody would like to come

00:24:32.280 and so we'll talk more then about who we found but also what they were doing because as I say

00:24:38.740 we were particularly looking at their curing and caring practices so in terms of what we found

00:24:45.440 I think the first thing to say is that most people when you say which have a stereotype in mind of a

00:24:54.340 an old poor uneducated woman who was healing was acting as a midwife but that they had learned

00:25:03.840 from their mothers and they did simples or folk charms and rituals and most of the people most

00:25:13.000 of the 142 we looked at did meet that stereotype but we had a smaller but significant number

00:25:21.960 that didn't meet that stereotype and for us as nurses and midwives the smaller number who didn't

00:25:29.520 match the stereotype are for us hugely significant so for example three of the oldest people that we

00:25:36.840 looked at were men having said that because there's so little information about these people on the

00:25:42.680 records you know only about a quarter had their age provided but nonetheless three of the oldest

00:25:49.140 we looked at were men we also found that some women learned their healing practices from men

00:25:56.620 sometimes their fathers or another male relative but also that some women and men you could say

00:26:06.460 that their healing practices were actually kind of conventional health care practices for that

00:26:13.300 time that could actually be considered best practice at the time and some of what they were

00:26:18.380 doing was what doctors were doing too so for us one of our key findings is that yes a lot of people

00:26:28.840 did meet that stereotype but actually in terms of the history of nursing and midwifery

00:26:35.440 the smaller number that we found maybe 10 to 15 i mean it's hard to tell because of the records

00:26:41.580 But we think that a smaller number, the ones that didn't match that stereotype for us are really important.

00:26:50.660 And so we're in the process of applying for a little bit more money to try and do a bit more investigation on some of those people.

00:27:00.160 So that was one of our findings.

00:27:02.980 Were there any key findings that surprised you, Nicola?

00:27:06.480 I think the fact that we had some women who learned from men, and that their practices did suggest they were educated. But also, we know that the origins of hospital nursing lies within the religious houses, the monastic houses. And for us, the healers that were most significant were those accused of witchcraft in the early periods from the late 1590s into the early 1600s.

00:27:34.780 So we think that potentially some of those who were accused were accused perhaps less because what they were doing stood out, but the way in which they were doing it, which is that they were using words or charms that tended to reflect pre-Reformation religious beliefs or pagan beliefs.

00:27:58.580 so there's loads more to be said about this but not for today it's like another discussion and

00:28:04.660 we need to do more digging yet so that was a surprise and I think also for us the fact that

00:28:12.280 quite a few of their practices and the way they practiced do resonate with nursing midwifery

00:28:18.980 practices today or more recently. That's so interesting could you give us an example

00:28:25.200 of a practice from then that resonates with today?

00:28:29.680 Well, because obviously I have this Eventbrite event coming up,

00:28:33.200 I have to keep some surprises for then.

00:28:35.100 But what I would say is that people wouldn't be surprised

00:28:38.320 by knowing that obviously some of them were using herbalism.

00:28:43.920 So some of the items like ginger or fennel, chamomile,

00:28:48.560 these are still in use today.

00:28:50.240 and I've been really fortunate that as part of the East Lillian book week program I did a podcast

00:28:58.000 with Wendy Kelly who's a herbalist when she and I were speaking it was so fascinating to hear

00:29:03.800 the sort of rationale about why people might have been using particularly specific herbal products

00:29:11.240 for example it's also the ways in which they worked so for example quite a lot of times

00:29:16.700 people were washing things there's a lot of people washing shirts and south running water

00:29:24.360 or loft water or something and sometimes they were washing people and you know in the history

00:29:31.100 of nursing if you're asked to think of nursing and you think of Florence Nightingale all you

00:29:36.120 can think of is that you know she advised nurses to wash everything so things like that that perhaps

00:29:42.620 i think have been overlooked i mean yes they may have been doing them for ritual reasons but

00:29:50.660 actually across the history of nursing midwifery washing people washing things is hugely important

00:29:57.480 and even today for all of us if somebody's unwell whether it's ourselves if we've been really sick

00:30:03.960 at home um or somebody in family's sick then one of the first things you'll want to do is to wash

00:30:09.540 their hands and face as soon as you can you want them in fresh pajamas fresh bedsheets and so while

00:30:15.900 I think there's a perception that everything that these folk healers did including the more ritual

00:30:21.540 practices had no meaning that we would say as nurses and midwives but actually they did have

00:30:28.680 meaning and they still have meaning so for us I think that was a nice finding I think okay perhaps

00:30:36.200 we're not going to a south running well water but nonetheless for us as practitioners you know

00:30:42.620 we could still really see why cleaning patients or cleaning clothes was seen as really important

00:30:49.880 and you know maybe that sounds quite simple but I think it has been overlooked by perhaps other

00:30:56.600 people who've looked at these healers before as you know they were just washing things in

00:31:01.800 well water but I think all of us have that belief still that if you wash you know if you've been

00:31:08.760 sick or something your family's been sick that if you wash their bed clothes or their pajamas

00:31:13.200 that they will feel better so for us that connected what we do to what these people were doing

00:31:22.700 so maybe a small finding but for us it was nice to see that I think yeah no I can definitely

00:31:32.360 imagine that you know that people might have been ascribing a different reason to why people got

00:31:37.840 better if they were washed or why people felt better because they were being washed of course

00:31:44.100 that we understand in the modern day that might be assisting with hygiene and that might be

00:31:49.860 assisting with keeping people's temperature down but they were ascribing perhaps a different

00:31:55.280 meaning to why it worked but the same outcome which is that people were feeling better by their

00:32:00.900 interventions. Yeah that's exactly it and I think often too we found that when you read more recent

00:32:08.000 documents about these trials perhaps documents from 1800 then often the tone of the writing was

00:32:14.600 quite dismissive and I think perhaps by that point that nursing was seen as women's work

00:32:20.680 thing that were work that was done in the home also by that point by the early 1800s nursing

00:32:25.720 did have a poor image and organized hospital nursing had fallen by the wayside after the

00:32:31.020 reformation so there is this perception that everything they were doing was dismissed and

00:32:36.540 pointless but actually it seems that when you look at the language of some of these reports

00:32:41.760 from the 1800s that actually they downgraded what these people were doing so was it once again

00:32:49.040 the men come in and take over a profession that women were doing well there's two things i would

00:32:55.700 say they're clear so there are examples of where some of the men did later come in doctors and

00:33:03.720 some of these folk practices were adopted by them so for example the use of digitalists which is a

00:33:09.680 box club in healthcare and prescribing but the other thing and you mentioned earlier about

00:33:14.720 surprising findings well we always knew that there were men who were healers and midwives that were

00:33:21.620 accused of witchcraft so we always knew that but i think it's really important for us to recognize

00:33:28.680 that yes there were gender issues around about that disproportionately most of those accused

00:33:33.700 were women but also i think it's really important that we recognize the gender issues around about

00:33:39.660 the men that were accused and so there were 17 of those we looked at were men and that's much higher

00:33:47.740 than the number of men in nursing and midwifery and when i say it's much higher in nursing midwifery

00:33:54.300 i mean in midwifery i think the number of men in midwifery practice is very very small sadly

00:34:01.020 ness is not here to tell me so there were more men i think it's really important that the gender

00:34:06.220 issues arise but the male healers are not forgotten about and we also think there's some gender bias

00:34:12.380 in the recording about what the men were doing so when we looked at some of them in depth to look at

00:34:18.860 what they were doing going we went beyond for some people we went beyond the survey of scottish

00:34:24.540 witchcraft we went to look at original sources and we feel that sometimes what was recorded and

00:34:31.420 been written about the men in terms of their healing there's even less detail around about that

00:34:36.000 talking about men though we could only follow up people where there were records that existed

00:34:42.560 so for example there was a man called Thomas Ego in 1597 in Aberdeen and there's nothing on

00:34:50.200 him and his wife who was also accused because they were declared fugitives but we would have

00:34:56.140 love to have been able to investigate more of him because he was described as a folk healer and a

00:35:02.420 midwife and one of the things he was doing was he was charming both women and animals during labor

00:35:08.980 so he was working as a midwife and so sometimes although there's no information about people

00:35:15.340 like thomas eagle you still feel that from a professional perspective that we want to name

00:35:21.740 them and say look you know here was a man that was supporting women and cattle during childbirth

00:35:29.940 and was regarded as a midwife but there's no more information to be had on him is that i mean i don't

00:35:36.660 know if this is just pure guesswork but is that because it was seen as not being an appropriate

00:35:41.980 profession for a man do you think at that time because remember medicine wasn't a profession

00:35:48.660 at that point so the name medicine wasn't protected and also remember the first professor

00:35:53.480 of midwifery was a man but I don't know as much about the history of medicine that that's not my

00:35:58.860 area of expertise but I don't think at that time it was an issue because I think one of the things

00:36:04.940 we noticed was that some of the healers did work on animals and humans so I think there was a much

00:36:10.960 more fluidity around about roles and who did what and that would make sense because in very small

00:36:17.400 communities and he lived in a hamlet then you would need people that could help deliver like

00:36:23.520 sheep and deliver babies so no i don't think there would have been anything around about

00:36:30.160 how that work was perceived i think it's more the fact that there's no records for him was because

00:36:36.580 he and his wife obviously left the area as soon as they could fugitives because they've been accused

00:36:43.600 of being witches and they'd taken to the road yeah you know how often people who were accused

00:36:49.340 of witchcraft often they had a long reputation for that and they'd often been accused before

00:36:54.740 so you know there were quite a few people that we looked at that had been fugitives sometimes

00:37:01.340 they were then caught and then still tried and then were maybe executed but yeah thomas eagle

00:37:08.920 listed folk healer and midwife but sadly we could find no more about him and it's a shame because

00:37:15.040 we would love to have another thing that surprised us was that it's really important to not be

00:37:21.100 gender blind about the men that we were looking at i think there were gender issues going on

00:37:28.240 in more than just the obvious women being accused by men for example or being tried by men

00:37:34.480 Was there anything that you found personally when you were doing your research?

00:37:39.480 There was probably two things that struck the three of us.

00:37:42.500 The fact that so many of these people, particularly women, were accused or they had witchcraft accusations characterised as neighbourly disputes.

00:37:51.140 So it sounded as if when you read the stories that sometimes these were assertive women and maybe standing up for themselves or for their families.

00:38:01.440 and so you know in in the 2020s and before you know women are encouraged to be assertive

00:38:09.260 and so for us that made you feel even more that actually this could have been our fate myself

00:38:18.200 Nessa and Rachel's you know three women that were healers or midwives and were quite assertive and

00:38:25.140 also didn't conform necessarily to the social norm so that was one and then the other issue too

00:38:33.960 is that the more I was looking at the online survey for lots of different things it's very

00:38:41.120 easy to go down rabbit holes when you're on that site to pull up all kinds of things and so these

00:38:45.860 were not people that we looked at within our study but I suspect that two maybe three of the

00:38:53.960 women accused I think probably are my family ancestors so that was a surprise for me I mean

00:39:02.740 I don't think I'll ever know because it was so far back but I suspect based on location

00:39:08.620 and surname especially for one that had an unusual surname I think that yeah these are

00:39:14.900 some of my ancestors. That's amazing the map is so good using the survey of Scottish witchcraft

00:39:23.360 and also using the interactive map can allow people to search for areas and search for names.

00:39:29.880 Is that how you did it?

00:39:31.180 That sounds very systematic.

00:39:32.580 So I should actually say yes, Claire.

00:39:34.080 That was how I was doing it as a researcher.

00:39:36.140 But no, it was completely chanced.

00:39:39.000 There's also a list of names.

00:39:41.060 There's old names and then the modern equivalent.

00:39:43.440 So one of the times I noticed the unusual name in the modern equivalent.

00:39:46.960 So I think if somebody has got a long tradition of their family

00:39:52.260 or part of their family living in Scotland then I think they should look on the online survey

00:39:57.440 and I think it also helps if you've got a knowledge of your family history like my family

00:40:03.340 lived there say in the 1700s so you do need a bit of a knowledge about your family history so

00:40:09.860 that was a bit of a surprise. There are some surnames that people have today and I'm not

00:40:15.860 going to name any of them but there are some surnames that do name which and you know I'm

00:40:21.500 thinking that again it makes you think that actually the impact i think on these families

00:40:29.080 of those who were accused that's a story that we will never understand and never know about

00:40:36.300 and i think because as nurses and i was a health visitor so you know i understand a lot about

00:40:41.480 families and community but i think for me that's probably the sadness about this is there's a

00:40:48.940 sadness clearly about what happened to these people that were executed but for their families

00:40:54.180 because often the families had to pay for the execution costs or the prison costs for these

00:41:00.100 those that were accused but some of these involved had young families or they had younger adult

00:41:08.720 children that were accused who would have families so what happened to these people what happened to

00:41:14.100 them and you know when you think that there are some at least one surname that does mean which

00:41:19.200 and you're thinking you know that name must have been given to somebody to the surviving relatives

00:41:25.380 or a woman that was banished or whatever and so I think I know it happened a long it happened a

00:41:32.820 long long time ago but the more you delve into this you don't feel disconnected from those people

00:41:39.040 and it must have been the impact on the families left behind must have been absolutely horrific

00:41:46.880 not just the finances but loss of parent or parents if it had to forfeit assets it could

00:41:53.520 have meant that they all ended up in poverty so that's a sadness really absolutely if you really

00:41:59.820 become involved in this research at all that's really what becomes apparent so quickly that you

00:42:06.020 just look at these people's lives and imagine yourself in those circumstances and think how

00:42:12.220 did these people cope with what happened to them and what was the effect on their ancestors and

00:42:17.320 we spoke before to Leanne about historical trauma that goes through this and she suggested Leanne

00:42:25.180 Maitland suggested in an earlier podcast that there is intergenerational transgenerational trauma

00:42:31.140 that might still reverberate in the country today.

00:42:34.480 People who perhaps would have been now rich and wealthy landowners

00:42:38.460 who were dispossessed of it at that time

00:42:40.300 and now know nothing of that part of their history.

00:42:44.120 But it's so interesting that you yourself have made

00:42:48.220 that possible real connection with people that were involved

00:42:52.700 and it might spur on our listeners to perhaps try and do that themselves.

00:42:58.020 Obviously, I know that the emphasis for this project

00:43:00.820 came from your legal campaign and i know that the records have been complete but nonetheless

00:43:06.320 it's clear that there were many different types of miscarriages of justice not just things like

00:43:15.420 you know the forced confessions but also people who were frightened that others were after their

00:43:22.660 assets um or and there was um also i think janet cock from delkeith and she was acquitted at first

00:43:30.400 trial and somebody wanted her guilty because they tried her again and made one change I think and

00:43:37.360 that swung the outcome against her so you know often you knew that it was going to be quite

00:43:44.860 distressing because you knew that there was torture and at least sleep deprivation and

00:43:50.180 witch picking etc all going on but sometimes when you read these smaller not smaller cases but

00:43:56.020 like Janet's example you think gosh actually there must be so many more examples like that

00:44:01.840 that are just not recorded so that was interesting to read as well and I should say that we did

00:44:08.620 follow some people up in depth because either what they did as healers or midwives stood out

00:44:14.100 or their story stood out so one of them that we investigated was Alison Balfour and for myself

00:44:20.240 and Rachel as two child health nurses the role of her young children in the forcing of her confession

00:44:27.180 made us feel that we had to try and find out more about what she was doing as a healer we didn't

00:44:35.040 find very much but we felt compelled to find out as much as we could about that woman because at

00:44:42.240 the moment mainly what exists is about what happened to her and to her family and we wanted

00:44:50.460 to try and see if we could at least find out a little bit more about what she was doing as a

00:44:56.980 healer and midwife because we felt we owed it really to her and her children so we could be

00:45:03.860 criticized for why we decided to try and find out more about her but we just felt we felt compelled

00:45:09.720 for us it really does fill little gaps in our professional histories you know to be able to

00:45:16.940 give the names of midwives that were working in the late 1500s and a little bit of insight into

00:45:21.840 what they do I mean that's just phenomenal because we thought that we would never ever know anything

00:45:27.240 about these people and so from that point of view you know usually history is about the history of

00:45:33.700 white privileged men that were educated and and it's really it's been lovely to be actually to

00:45:40.600 say look these were regular people in their communities that had a key role in helping

00:45:46.440 others so it's really lovely to be able to name them and I think it's nice to name them in a way

00:45:52.740 that's positive so rather than them just being known for their witchcraft accusation I think

00:45:58.460 it's really nice to say actually they're known because of what they were doing and particularly

00:46:04.160 those that were practicing in a way that you know resonates with today well professor ring we are

00:46:11.000 truly grateful for the time that you've given up to speak to us today and we thank you so much

00:46:16.820 right well thank you too thank you

00:46:28.460 thanks for listening today it's been absolutely fascinating again as usual please get in touch

00:46:34.560 with us on our socials i can't believe i'm saying socials like what do i think i am like an influencer

00:46:40.260 or a teenager it's ridiculous please get in touch with us on social media so you can get in touch

00:46:45.560 this on facebook that's just a page but also people message us claire have you done more tiktoks

00:46:51.300 i have not done more tiktoks i mean come on so we do have what one tiktok we've got a youtube

00:47:00.500 channel which has got content on it that's things that you know like our symposium i think the stuff

00:47:06.020 from there on there and various other things and also on twitter which is my preferred method of

00:47:11.840 delivery of social media because we can actually just chat to people and that's been a really great

00:47:16.040 way to meet tons and tons of people may i give a shout out for instagram oh yes instagram yeah

00:47:22.420 a really really big number of followers on instagram people yeah people like the visuals

00:47:27.720 as well and actually i have quite a lot of interactions people there as well but

00:47:32.720 and one time we're talking about all these socials and stuff like that is it time zoe

00:47:38.020 for you to drop the c word oh yes i suppose so because it's like clearly december now and it

00:47:48.820 must be like something like the 12th or the 11th or something like that today i'm not really sure

00:47:53.700 what day is it's uh yes okay it can be christmas now i don't feel very christmassy though i don't

00:48:01.080 i yeah i'm gonna go and get my um my booster jab today so maybe maybe i should wear a christmas

00:48:07.240 jumper while doing that wear a christmas jumper and a set of reindeer ears no i'm not doing that

00:48:14.040 might i say though to spread christmas cheer might be asked that you consider buying our

00:48:21.460 sound engineer david's a festive cup of coffee oh that's nice because then he can he can buy

00:48:28.140 himself some reindeer ears if he so desires i presume he's not really into stuff like that

00:48:35.820 So, yes, that would be great.

00:48:37.620 Please do, because he does such a sterling job

00:48:39.700 of taking our, shall we say, raw output

00:48:43.720 and turning it into a silk purse, a satin purse.

00:48:50.260 We're like a very kind of scat jazz version of that.

00:48:54.240 And David takes all those disparate bits of chat

00:48:57.860 and he tries to draw them into some kind of musical sound.

00:49:02.080 Poor David. That's a wee shame.

00:49:03.940 So if you feel like buying him a coffee,

00:49:05.520 I think he's definitely he earns it I would say and also the same with our merch if you are looking

00:49:10.920 to buy Christmas presents you could think about that maybe because all the money from that goes

00:49:17.720 to David we are we are totally not a for-profit organization in any way whatsoever we're not a

00:49:23.160 charity we're less even than that there's just there's just the two of us doing this for free

00:49:27.840 and David very much working for free so if you do feel like supporting David through those things

00:49:33.940 that'd be amazeballs

00:49:35.080 it would indeed

00:49:36.680 thank you very much for that

00:49:38.340 yes

00:49:38.740 okay

00:49:39.420 amazeballs

00:49:40.260 okay

00:49:41.540 right

00:49:42.240 well it's been lovely talking to you

00:49:43.960 and we look forward to you listening to us again

00:49:47.000 next episode

00:49:48.100 bye

00:49:49.360 bye

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Witches of Scotland - December 13, 2021

EPISODE 48 PROFESSOR NICOLA RING - NURSES AND MIDWIVES

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