Witches of Scotland - EPISODE 78 HOPE REESE ⧸ STEVEN VEERAPEN

00:00:00.960 I am Clare Mitchell, Doctor of Laws and King's Council.

00:00:04.080 And I am Zoe Vendetotsi, Doctor of Laws, Teacher and Writer.

00:00:07.840 On the 8th of March 2020, International Women's Day, we launched the Feminist Witches of Scotland

00:00:13.200 campaign. The Witchcraft Act, enforced between 1563 and 1736, saw thousands of people, mostly

00:00:21.360 women, accused and executed as witches in Scotland in the country's biggest and most brutal miscarriage

00:00:27.840 of justice. Our campaign had three aims, to get a formal state apology for those accused of witchcraft,

00:00:34.720 to obtain a pardon for all those convicted and to get a national memorial to remember those

00:00:39.840 involved in the Witchcraft Act. On International Women's Day 2022, the first of our aims was

00:00:45.840 realised when First Minister Nicola Sturgeon issued a formal state apology to those accused

00:00:50.480 as witches. The first formal state apology ever. We are currently working with politicians to

00:00:55.360 ensure there's legislation passed to pardon those accused as witches to change their status from

00:01:00.240 convicted witches to those who ought never to have been prosecuted we continue our work to

00:01:05.360 obtain a national monument so those who suffered will never be forgotten join us as we speak to

00:01:10.240 the experts on the witchcraft trials both here in scotland and further abroad as we explore the

00:01:15.200 history of women in scotland and continue the cultural conversation of what it means to be a

00:01:20.800 a woman well hello hello i'm starting off with high energy i'm gonna try and build on this

00:01:29.960 because at this point in the year i feel slightly like a wet noodle i feel like when you've cooked

00:01:34.820 spaghetti and you've tipped everything else out into the colander and there's like two strands

00:01:39.720 of spaghetti that are stuck inside the pan when you have to scrape them off the spaghetti when

00:01:45.760 they've dried and they've just me i am that spaghetti that's been left behind i'm the

00:01:52.140 neglecty spaghetti just tell the people what number of episodes this is so this is episode

00:02:00.160 78 can you believe it of i can i can 78 of six holy moly who would have also thought that we

00:02:09.560 got back into our groove again with podcasts yes because we released one very recently and here

00:02:15.320 we are doing another one again try not to sound so smug and let me tell you audience we have got

00:02:22.140 a great one tonight where we've got a combination of um one writer talking about her book about

00:02:29.380 women more recently in history who were accused of being witches and partially for the crimes

00:02:35.320 that they did but which really looks into something which i personally ponder quite a lot

00:02:39.920 which is i'm perplexed by the fact that women don't murder more than they do so this kind of

00:02:46.060 looks at what happens when women just go over the edge have you seen that meme that says i've cooked 0.53

00:02:53.900 meals for men that i should have poisoned oh i don't think we should encourage that no no especially

00:03:01.840 if i started off the podcast episode talking about spaghetti definitely wouldn't try and hide

00:03:06.620 anything in like a nice strong spicy spicy sauce can I just say Zoe you can't take spice anyway 0.95

00:03:13.540 I can't I can't but that's how that's what I do you see Claire right if I was going to poison

00:03:18.660 somebody I would like do it I would do it really spicy and then I'd be like oh I can't eat it

00:03:23.460 because I've put too much chili in survive I'd survive I I am kind of freaked out now because

00:03:31.700 every time we go out you point out you can't have chili and everything and I'm just

00:03:35.420 i'm not coming to your house for dinner god i'll be playing some incredibly long con if that's what

00:03:40.720 i've been doing since a tiny little girl of not eating any spice because of building up to some

00:03:45.620 point murdering somebody with an arabiata that's a really long long con and i'd like to just point

00:03:53.300 out for the record i'm not actually italian in the slightest that's just my lingering married name 0.56

00:03:59.420 that i'm not going to get rid of because i've got three z's so no i'm not going to do an italian

00:04:04.680 cuisine murder no yeah and for the avoidance of doubt please don't poison anyone i would never do

00:04:09.620 that that's a horrible way to kill somebody it is oh don't say any more because that's straying into

00:04:15.180 wait for the first part of the episode and then the second part of the episode

00:04:21.240 is um is with somebody who is based in scotland and who is a fantastic expert on king james

00:04:29.960 because we thought let's look a bit more about james because whenever we mention him

00:04:34.360 um people are women generally are quite kind of like oh king james and are quite angry with him

00:04:40.480 and i've mellowed a bit towards king james for sure i have yeah our author um should i say his

00:04:49.000 name is it a secret oh yeah it's not a secret we're not doing a reveal sorry i'm being accused

00:04:52.820 the time anyone clicks on this it says his name so the first the first expert is hope reese that's

00:04:59.060 talking about her latest book and then we've got stephen v rapin don't we yes he's talking about

00:05:03.860 james we did an event with him and he is lovely he is super knowledgeable and he does a really

00:05:11.640 really great job of humanizing james yes yeah and talking about the circumstances that he was in

00:05:19.160 i think today's a really good blend so we've got these two people that are on together but before

00:05:24.380 we get on to having our two lovely um experts today who've been very patient by the way because

00:05:30.200 we recorded them back in the summer don't worry we didn't record them in our house and then keep

00:05:34.560 them in a room until we we'd released the podcast that would be that would be kidnapping i think

00:05:39.440 but they they have waited patiently and we're terribly terribly sorry it's taken us so long

00:05:44.340 to get our acts together on this one but claire it's been pretty crazy the last few months has it

00:05:50.000 not it has been very very crazy and we apologize profusely but though we got some good news didn't

00:05:57.420 we this week the other day wait a second are you straying into a new topic without first of all

00:06:03.360 having a proper introduction in the type honored fashion zone do you know it's because it's news

00:06:09.520 about us so i didn't want to be like like tooting my own horn so i'll let you toot the horn claire

00:06:15.320 what's happening in the news news never gets old does it never never gets old uh so the news

00:06:27.260 about us particularly and we're not going to wang on about this but something very nice which is

00:06:32.380 that um that we won something didn't we claire yes we won the goodreads reader's choice history

00:06:41.020 and biography so that is that is um for the usa i think goodreads is just international i think

00:06:50.420 anybody can yeah i think yeah because there's been some reviews that i've seen in there that

00:06:54.180 i've been in uh non-english languages so i think anybody can can review on there i mean i think

00:06:59.400 it's largely american but it's it's absolutely huge and what they did was took certain categories

00:07:05.600 and ours we won history and biography and it was super exciting and we found ourselves

00:07:12.540 in people magazine yes there was a roundup in people magazine about the different winners and

00:07:18.180 That was pretty strange and mysterious.

00:07:20.460 That was good.

00:07:21.120 Yeah, that was.

00:07:22.180 And the other thing, much closer to home and equally as delightful,

00:07:27.480 is that we won Blackwell's Scottish Book of the Year.

00:07:32.240 Yeah, Blackwell's are lovely.

00:07:33.980 They're so nice.

00:07:34.580 We went into sign stock yesterday.

00:07:36.620 So there's some sign stock on, what's the name of that bridge, Claire?

00:07:41.480 Southbridge.

00:07:42.160 Southbridge in Edinburgh.

00:07:43.460 So we were in Edinburgh yesterday and it was very atmospheric,

00:07:45.960 all the Christmas lights.

00:07:46.940 and there was a piper and it was cold and it rained so we got the full edinburgh experience

00:07:52.820 and we went and got we sought shelter in blackwells and signed um lots and lots of books

00:07:58.560 there so there's some books they've got a really nice display in the window very nice we did and

00:08:04.040 the staff were so lovely too shout out to blackwells we really yeah they were lovely so

00:08:09.560 that was really gratifying so we would just ask if you wouldn't mind if you haven't already could

00:08:15.220 you please review the book somewhere like wherever if it's like the bookshop you bought it from or

00:08:20.440 if it's on goodreads or something like that we'd really really appreciate it because we've got

00:08:25.140 really really nice reviews and people write often very thoughtful things i mean okay there's been

00:08:31.100 the odd odd negative reaction maybe somebody didn't like our scottish accents on forget so

00:08:38.640 on the uh on the audiobook and also we have had a few men who think that actually things are great

00:08:45.860 for women now and that we need to stop hitting them over the head with how things are difficult

00:08:50.540 for women we did have somebody say they were disappointed that we didn't suggest any ways

00:08:56.280 in which the accused could have got out of being found guilty as witches and they was also people

00:09:01.640 thought the book was a bit depressing in places Zoe I in retrospect we forgot to put in the stories

00:09:10.280 where all the women successfully got out of being accused of witchcraft I still I still think that

00:09:19.240 maybe sometimes people review when they've not really read the book properly and that's not it's

00:09:24.860 not fine actually as an English teacher that's it's cheating but I do think that you you if you

00:09:29.820 read the book and it's not for you then that's completely fine that's yeah but it's not going

00:09:35.740 to be for everybody i think some men have been a wee bit defensive i would say in the reviews

00:09:40.520 and have not really understood the book and you get the odd person who doesn't find us funny

00:09:45.140 that's okay you're allowed an opinion even if it's wrong even if it's wrong but that's fine

00:09:52.180 you know different strokes and all that not find us there there are people plenty of people don't

00:09:58.460 find us worry as you well know Claire and I know that from my entire life experience so I know not

00:10:05.540 everybody is a great fan of me and that's okay that's fine that's absolutely fine that's that's

00:10:10.920 a good thing to come to but if you have enjoyed the book we would be very very grateful if you

00:10:17.220 would please put it's not pen to paper anymore it's finger to button finger to button that doesn't

00:10:24.200 sound right at all i don't think i like that phrase very much let's move on should we talk

00:10:29.500 about some serious world news yeah let's talk about about stuff okay i think first thing clear

00:10:36.060 if we refer back to our last podcast which was episode 77 where we spoke to claire thomas and

00:10:42.300 professor john azuma in ghana do you want to just mention something to do with that yeah um just

00:10:48.260 about the same time and accident accidentally completely accidentally at the same time amnesty

00:10:54.160 ran uh um a bit about uh the ghana highlighting ghana yeah yeah and um the lady from wicked

00:11:04.540 i can't remember her name oh no i guess i've not i don't this might people might be shocked by this

00:11:11.260 but i don't really like um films about witches particularly and i've not watched wicked i know

00:11:15.760 who the lady is cynthia arrivo is it cynthia arrivo yes that's really she's really good in

00:11:22.720 that film about harriet tubman so i think she's great in that i showed that in school and it was

00:11:27.360 really affecting it was brilliant but i'm not familiar with her wicked well she she highlighted

00:11:32.760 and did a shout out for people that were accused of witchcraft in ghana and i thought that was

00:11:36.900 a really really nice way of tying in modern ideas about how people enjoy the stories of witches

00:11:43.640 with actually the reality of what can happen to folk um but um what claire thomas has done

00:11:51.100 is as we heard in the last podcast is she has set up uh go fund me to get beds for women who are in

00:11:58.440 these witch camps in ghana and as a result of amnesty um and reuters publishing our pictures

00:12:05.500 and as a result of us and as a result of people um who are involved in witches of scotland giving

00:12:13.620 donations she has reached almost two-thirds i think of the seven thousand pounds that she needs

00:12:19.660 yeah you're watching if you're listening to this just now and you think seeing the days of the

00:12:25.000 witchcraft trials if i could have done anything to help women i would i would do it i would do

00:12:30.660 something for them can i ask you to go to claire thomas's um just giving page and all you have to

00:12:39.640 type in is Claire Thomas um witches or witchcraft and you'll be able to find it yeah yeah um and

00:12:45.640 the thing is that that if you I appreciate a lot of people at this particularly this time

00:12:50.280 you don't have money but any little helps yeah and I think I think it'd be great because Claire

00:12:56.340 pointed out to me yesterday there'd been something like 7 000 people had liked the article that Al

00:13:00.780 Jazeera had shared about Claire's fundraiser and if everybody just given like a quid that would be

00:13:06.040 it done so i think it'd be really great and um and i just think if you look at claire's photographs

00:13:10.960 i don't think you can you couldn't be moved by it because they're just they're they're amazing

00:13:15.880 photographs said this before it's really difficult because they're beautiful photographs but they're

00:13:19.240 really upsetting at the same time you just think about what these poor women are going through

00:13:23.100 okay next thing um the sunday national which is a scottish newspaper has done a new report saying

00:13:32.740 that the crisis pregnancy services linked to anti-abortion organizations have been promoted

00:13:38.900 through this scheme that google runs that's like a charity advert scheme and their concern is that

00:13:45.340 there's a lack of transparency particularly when we're talking about health care information

00:13:49.380 so you might know that crisis pregnancy services are where if you're pregnant and then sometimes

00:13:56.180 i've seen leaflets in the doctors and i've gone and handed the leaflets interception said to them

00:14:00.440 do you realize what this is actually doing because what actually happens is and i i think

00:14:06.180 this is awful because they trade on um a lack of transparency so they look like you're getting a

00:14:12.860 leaflet to go and now it'll be obviously websites but you're you're looking at a place where they're

00:14:17.300 going to help you to probably access an abortion certainly access some neutral information and

00:14:24.300 advice but actually what it does is they tend to be very like hardcore um christian organizations

00:14:31.480 that are very much anti-abortion and it's the sort of thing where then you can be shown really

00:14:36.600 upsetting imagery and there's a lot of pressure and they talk about counseling but really what

00:14:41.320 it is is it's religious propaganda and i just think that at this time we need to be really

00:14:46.400 really clear about stuff like that we've talked about this a lot at events recently but we need

00:14:50.640 to just watch about where we're going obviously in the states the roe versus wade and we've talked

00:14:54.840 about that and the tie-in with matthew hale being referenced in that leaked report but i just think

00:15:00.440 we need to be so careful because we're losing our rights where we keep talking about the handmaid's

00:15:06.280 tale is like it's not meant to be a blueprint but we're seeing this happening again and again 0.96

00:15:11.040 i think it's worth mentioning it's 50 years ago this year that women got the right to what was

00:15:16.600 it clear that they got the right to have their own credit there's oh a credit card yeah yeah it's

00:15:22.300 something insanely recent like that and i'm 50 i turned 50 this year and it's crazy to think that

00:15:27.580 within our own lifetime some of these laws have changed it's much more recently than that about

00:15:33.980 marital rape isn't it clear yeah what i keep telling people and much more recently about

00:15:38.980 marital rape what i keep telling people is that women's rights have existed in less than a fraction

00:15:45.060 of a blink of an eye in terms of world history and the idea that we cannot roll back is

00:15:53.040 ludicrous because it's happening time and time again and it's happening in countries you everyone

00:15:59.120 seen the photographs of was it iran in the 1960s and 1970s women look at afghanistan 0.97

00:16:05.260 afghanistan it started off with the women aren't allowed to work then women have to stay in the 1.00

00:16:11.200 kitchen then the windows have to be covered so people can't see in then the women have to be 1.00

00:16:16.880 covered then women shouldn't be communicating with one another and women shouldn't be laughing 0.98

00:16:22.140 i mean how scared are people of women zoe yeah i mean we can we can see it happening like claire

00:16:27.880 and i were talking before we started recording earlier about these recent things with pastors

00:16:32.060 in the states saying that they think that politically we should move to a system where

00:16:36.320 it's in the states they should move to a system where it's the family gets a vote and it's the

00:16:41.680 man of the house that gets the vote and that you know everybody should discuss it but it's the man

00:16:45.100 that cast the vote i mean that's cheesy people that is scary that's really scary and do we have

00:16:50.920 another piece of news that we were going to talk about claire um the other piece of news we're

00:16:55.920 going to talk about is she said professionally flicking about her pieces oh i've got i've got

00:17:00.840 one that i've just remembered it's that the new international coalition that was launched at the

00:17:05.560 beginning of december from the uk that's to work on ending violence to get women against women and

00:17:11.120 girls globally so there's this new thing called all in so that coalition is part of the 16 days

00:17:17.460 of global activism so it'll be interesting to see where that goes and what what actually is

00:17:23.700 involved with i might do a bit more research into that for like a next episode to see what sort of

00:17:28.520 things they're actually planning on doing because at the moment it's it's just it's been um launched

00:17:34.120 with the ford foundation and the wellspring philanthropic fund who are going to bring

00:17:39.240 together international leaders experts and influential personalities to tackle the issue

00:17:44.080 worldwide so they're going to put together this thing and they're going to be looking at different

00:17:49.200 countries and what they can do about it um just some scary stats that they've got here which is

00:17:54.540 that globally one in three women and girls will experience physical or sexual violence in their

00:17:58.540 lifetime with 140 women and girls killed every day by a partner or a close relative which is

00:18:04.400 more than 50 000 a year in the uk one in eight women experienced domestic abuse stalking or 1.00

00:18:09.480 sexual assault last year with rape at record highs i think that's it's something that we need to keep

00:18:14.480 talking about and i think we need to be really real about it and i think we need to be coming

00:18:18.720 back to the fact again and again this isn't stranger danger this isn't people arriving in

00:18:24.420 boats this isn't people who you don't know these are people that we choose to have intimacy with

00:18:30.140 or people that are part of our family and i think we need to keep coming back to that again and

00:18:34.620 again i don't exactly know what the answer is but i do know i do know we need to talk about it 0.98

00:18:39.360 i have at least a proposal once again sadly the most dangerous place for a woman is home yeah

00:18:46.900 and can i tell you i have got a possibility of what can be done and i think it's really

00:18:54.100 really important i think women need to build community and that's that's why i'm really

00:18:59.060 really about trying to build links with people trying to build community and i took a quote from

00:19:03.880 andrea dworkin who um uh who said well gossip among women is universally ridiculed as low and

00:19:10.600 trivial gossip among men especially if it's about women it's called theory idea or fact and what i

00:19:16.880 think is that women should keep talking to one another if they have to rejoice in their aim

00:19:21.460 gossip rejoice in being quarrelsome dames but form community because that's the only way we 0.78

00:19:26.620 will survive this now we come to the portion of the podcast where we remember people that were

00:19:31.960 accused during the witch trials so we've got one woman here and she is in the parish of forgan in

00:19:39.000 the presbytery of st andrews which is in the county of fife so that's northeast fife which is near

00:19:44.500 where i live so st andrews is about i don't know about an hour's drive north of edinburgh just so

00:19:49.000 people can locate where it is and her case date started on the 7th of May 1662 and we've got a

00:19:58.440 whole bunch of commissioners names so there's lots of men's names here James Rollo, Lawrence Oliphant,

00:20:04.960 David Drummond, Harry Drummond, Lawrence Rollo, William Moncrief, Walter Bonner, Francis Hay,

00:20:10.560 James Marshall, William Oliphant but then we don't really know anything else about what happened to

00:20:16.280 her all the different parts the database say you know nothing no information so all we know is that

00:20:22.960 her case date was on the 7th of may 1662 um and that she was accused and we would just presume

00:20:31.380 that she was executed but we know there was lots of different people that were involved in that

00:20:36.400 but that's all we're at so we've got all the men's names but we don't have any further information

00:20:41.140 about what happened to the woman Elizabeth Clough just where it happened and the date of her case

00:20:46.580 7th of the 5th 1662. So without any further ado we'd like to introduce to our show episode 78

00:20:54.940 our two guests for today. Hello and I'm absolutely delighted to say today's guest is a perfect fit

00:21:02.320 I think for our podcast listeners and our writer today is called Hope Rees. Hello Hope welcome to

00:21:09.440 the podcast. Hi Zoe and hi Claire thank you so much for having me. Now Hope why is it do you

00:21:17.040 think this is hopefully isn't a surprise why is it that you think we've invited you to come on

00:21:21.760 podcast today? Well this topic seems like it's the perfect fit for your listeners. You are all

00:21:31.120 about witches and this book has the idea of witch at the core of the story. These women 1.00

00:21:40.060 were called witches by people in the press, by their enemies, by their friends. They were 1.00

00:21:49.860 labeled witches and there was also a history of witchcraft or labeling witches in the country

00:21:57.260 beforehand um it's an interesting look at what happens when why women are called witches and

00:22:04.540 uh how that label um starts to put them in a in a kind of box perfect I think that's exactly what

00:22:13.500 I was thinking I was reading it so for the benefit of all those listeners that are going to run out

00:22:17.620 and buy your book immediately when they finish the podcast but you know let's listen to the 0.97

00:22:21.060 podcast first what is the full title of your book the book is called the women are not fine

00:22:28.880 the dark history of a poisonous sisterhood now first of all already there as a as a modern title

00:22:36.880 the women are not fine has there ever been a point in history where women have been fine

00:22:41.740 the women are still not fine but this can you give us a kind of an overview of what the book's about

00:22:47.400 because I immediately I read the I read the blurb and I was just thinking to myself oh yes this

00:22:52.440 sounds fantastic but it's a true story and is as a as a journalist it's very very meticulously

00:22:58.480 researched but it's incredibly grabby so what what is the book about? Yeah so this is a book that

00:23:06.700 is about a group of women in history a group of women in Hungary who essentially mass murdered

00:23:15.860 their husbands. This happened 100 years ago, and it's a completely true story,

00:23:23.020 but it has repercussions for today. As you just said, the women were not fine at that time. This

00:23:31.360 was really a core reason, motivation for many of them to become killers, but we can see threads

00:23:40.340 throughout history of some of the same problems that they were suffering from at the time.

00:23:45.860 and this this group of women did they how did this function did they get together and say right

00:23:53.220 we're going to do a kind of a strangers on a train except it's in our village and we all know each 0.53

00:23:57.160 other and then kill each other's husbands or was it a domino effect or you know was this something

00:24:02.980 that's happened in the past there how do you go from being normal well I say normal you know how

00:24:08.420 do you go from not being a murderer is maybe a better way to put it to being a murderer

00:24:11.520 Right. So when I put it like that, it sounds as if this was some big calculated plot where

00:24:19.780 everybody got together and just went for it. But the truth is a lot more complicated.

00:24:26.800 The means of poisoning was arsenic, which was common at the time. These women were not the 0.99

00:24:33.580 first by far to use that method of poisoning. It's been happening for centuries. It was happening 0.99

00:24:42.040 in Italy, Aqua Tofana in the 1600s, a similar case also involving women who were abused by

00:24:49.460 their husbands. That's another one to look into. But in Hungary as well, a decade earlier, also

00:24:56.640 at the helm of a midwife, with a midwife at the helm, women were encouraged to use this poison

00:25:06.180 to quote unquote, take care of a problem. This was not a single woman, nor was it one huge group,

00:25:16.040 but it was really a network. So if you take the midwife, her name was Auntie Zhuzhi,

00:25:21.960 she was the village midwife she was the most important character in the story in this true

00:25:29.280 story came to a village called nigerive in the early 1900s and had a lot of responsibility there

00:25:37.820 she was the de facto doctor she was taking care of people she was also listening that was really

00:25:46.340 the main characteristic that drove the story. She had an inside intimate look at what was going on

00:25:57.420 behind closed doors. You know, she heard women talking about mainly their husbands and she heard 0.62

00:26:05.240 a lot of stories that repeated, a lot of people sharing stories of abuse, a lot of people who

00:26:14.640 were really struggling with their situation and had no way to get out. She would listen to them

00:26:23.780 and she would say, why do you bother? And that question was really significant. It changed the

00:26:31.780 game. It allowed these women to think of an alternate way to live. So I just want to quickly 1.00

00:26:40.120 back up. Divorce was legal at the time, which I was really surprised by. I thought, okay, well,

00:26:46.200 why aren't they divorcing then if that could be a way out? But practically speaking, it was really

00:26:52.500 difficult. It was hard to get to the nearby city of Solnok. A lot of them would have to go on foot.

00:26:58.360 It could be a whole day's journey. It was expensive to divorce. And women who initiated

00:27:05.240 divorce had a lot to lose. They might lose their land, their money, but also their children. 0.94

00:27:13.520 So it was taking a big risk if a woman wanted to do that. There was no fault divorce. So even, 1.00

00:27:21.040 I'm going to put in quotes, beating, like even beating was a quote unquote, like a light beating

00:27:28.340 was acceptable in the eyes of the law that did not qualify for divorce. So it was an uphill battle.

00:27:37.620 The other, the biggest part of this is that once someone divorced, they were seen differently in

00:27:44.940 the eyes of society. They were viewed as an outcast, you know, a whore, a slut, a witch. 1.00

00:27:52.460 uh they were seen in all these ways and had a hard time coming out of it so in this society 0.99

00:28:00.240 it was also a very religious society um being seen as a widow was preferable to being seen as

00:28:08.300 a divorcee it was crazy i've i've i've thought and listened to lots of true crime stuff about

00:28:15.920 pastors that decide to get rid of their inconvenient wives to because they've already

00:28:22.520 got someone else who they want to bring in and be the new pastor's wife and the the mental

00:28:29.500 gymnastics and justification that go on in respect of well I can't really get divorced

00:28:36.120 because that would be wrong or society would see it wrongly and then they take another option now

00:28:43.620 what what I really want to know about it was did the women start to know that other women had been

00:28:50.440 doing this like although it like it it didn't start obviously as a town hall meeting where

00:28:56.180 they all got together and the auntie said right okay I've got this idea but how how did it evolve

00:29:02.500 did women start to think hang on there there are now a suspicious number of husbands dying in our

00:29:07.680 village right this is uh the key to the story so you had asked earlier about how this spread

00:29:14.800 the poisoning spread throughout the village throughout the years i need to say that it

00:29:19.420 took place over two decades that's a very long time so again it wasn't just uh sorry just to

00:29:25.920 interrupt this is the 20th century we're talking about just in case people haven't picked up on

00:29:30.120 that so we're talking about is it just after the first world war so it's actually just before the

00:29:36.040 first world war yeah first world war only 110 years ago with my terrible math something like

00:29:43.540 that so definitely definitely within a time because sometimes when we're talking about the

00:29:47.720 witch trials in scotland you you could sort of go wow so long ago they're nothing like us we argue

00:29:53.440 that they absolutely were like us but you really can't do that in the same way when something's

00:29:57.840 within the 20th century i don't think because you they're they're almost you can almost reach back

00:30:03.960 them you know and there could it wouldn't be that long ago that there might have been some people

00:30:08.120 that were children at the time that would have died so that's it's really within close reach

00:30:12.520 and with a more I think a more modern mindset but where you're where you're researching with

00:30:18.560 the story is it seemed to be like very old-fashioned where they were the way that the

00:30:24.760 women lived it was much you know from what you're saying as well just now it seemed much

00:30:29.120 more old-fashioned right so um yes the way that this whole network took off and and why it became

00:30:39.140 so um how it kind of spiraled out of control from a few poisonings in the village into something

00:30:46.220 that almost everyone was involved with or complicit in some way um had to do with uh

00:30:54.180 several factors one of them was really this traditional traditional nature of um of village

00:31:02.120 life uh the confines what did it mean to be a woman this was something i found super interesting

00:31:08.380 in the research that even what you wore was very uh regulated you up to a certain age or

00:31:16.400 a young wife was allowed to wear a certain color and then once she had a baby she could wear a

00:31:24.760 different color and then once she became a little bit more middle-aged she wore a different color 0.67

00:31:29.480 it gradually became darker and it was reflective of a woman's fertility and this is kind of how

00:31:36.160 they were defined in this way you know brighter colors for the younger women to show that they

00:31:42.080 were available and in some way women as they got older had a bit more status because they were

00:31:50.700 taken out of that whole uh paradigm you know they were not they were more invisible but also a bit

00:31:57.700 more um they had a little bit more authority people actually did listen to them in the village

00:32:03.360 but back to um the traditional nature this had a lot to do with it the there was no real government

00:32:10.960 structure in the village. The main rule of law was the church. It was a Calvinist pastor.

00:32:19.260 It was not Catholic. And this pastor would intervene in marital disputes. But as you can

00:32:28.440 imagine, it was mainly on the side of the husbands, as I can gather from the court documents. 0.93

00:32:34.240 uh it was often to keep together a union uh even when this wasn't working out well for the women

00:32:42.120 yeah and it's obviously the word calvinist there just makes me think about the more

00:32:47.480 strict side of scottish society i often you know we use the word calvinist here quite a lot i think

00:32:53.360 to describe when when things are very strict to very religious and very joyless yes which wasn't

00:32:59.700 quite what the religion was when the witch trials were happening but definitely something going

00:33:03.140 towards that of that kind of clamping down on on anything really that wasn't absolutely agreed by

00:33:09.040 the church the idea of wearing clothes to signal to other people what stage you're at in your

00:33:14.900 usefulness in society it's horrifying i mean it immediately made me think of the handmaid's tale

00:33:20.840 and that's presumably things like this is where we'd got the idea for that from to signal what

00:33:25.480 your status is you know and that obviously slightly class driven well very class driven

00:33:29.260 in the handmaid's tale but it's it's that idea of you're not an individual you're a you're a

00:33:34.580 breeder you know and if right you're a breeder you're signaling that straight away yeah can I

00:33:40.460 ask you a question this is a very me on brand question isn't an arsenic death like really

00:33:46.180 horrible and painful and gruesome exactly right very horrible painful gruesome drawn out

00:33:54.100 yeah depending on the uh the quantity depending on um so to back up they would take fly paper

00:34:02.160 they could buy the local general store and make this at home boil it in a vat of water or oil

00:34:08.860 and distill it um to droplets and depending on how many milliliters they dropped into the brandy or

00:34:17.720 the sorry that's the palinka or the porridge or stew um that uh a death could happen

00:34:27.220 more quickly within a day or two or it was known to last uh up to two weeks because sometimes they

00:34:35.500 would take um you know unfortunately a man might be targeted if he was already sick if he was

00:34:42.440 already injured and it looked less suspicious so trying to kill somebody that way would make it

00:34:50.360 look a bit more natural so it would be drawn out sometimes over the course of weeks and yes a lot

00:34:56.740 of vomiting stomach issues convulsions really a kind of awful death but were people I mean was

00:35:05.900 that not fairly quickly obvious or were they able to hide it because I guess I'm just thinking

00:35:12.140 working this out as i'm speaking that women would be attending to the ill and they'd be they'd be

00:35:17.800 attendant on the matters of death so other men wouldn't wouldn't witness maybe what was happening

00:35:22.500 to a victim right so there are a few reasons they could get away with this for as long as they did

00:35:30.060 uh the main reason is that there was no doctor in the village the doctor would come once a week

00:35:37.080 once every two weeks the midwife was the doctor you know so she had that important role and when

00:35:45.220 the doctor would come it was tricky to for him to ascertain what had happened when he had been gone

00:35:53.300 so um they would sometimes time it out so that the poisoning would happen you know not immediately

00:36:01.680 when he was about to come in to do his calls, but a bit earlier. And the deaths were not really

00:36:09.580 witnessed exactly. They happened at home. They happened behind closed doors. The other part is

00:36:17.080 that although they were gruesome, they could be called other things. Sometimes it was called

00:36:23.860 you know, a heart attack or epileptic fit, or, you know, or it would be put on the fact that

00:36:31.380 a husband or a man already had a previous injury. And so therefore he died from that.

00:36:38.380 It could be very tricky to ascertain the exact cause of death. So there's another reason as well

00:36:45.500 why um this was hard to catch the women was that uh the coroner was married to none other than the

00:36:54.880 midwife's daughter so his mother-in-law was the main woman in town he was terrified of her right

00:37:04.480 and his wife was also a midwife and also a poisoner and so for sure he was not impartial

00:37:13.000 so he knew he knew or at least suspected what he was up to he knew and we know that from the

00:37:20.500 records he actually said on the record that he was afraid of them and ended up leaving his wife

00:37:26.460 out of fear so uh he was well aware he didn't even want to come home and eat his dinner because

00:37:33.180 he was not sure what would be in it and this is uh this is um really an interesting part of this

00:37:40.460 whole story is that it was an open secret every everyone knew in nigerive the men knew the women

00:37:47.640 knew the older people knew the men the men knew the midwife was pretty open about her exploits

00:37:58.440 she actually would she stepped out of the role of what what women could do in that village she wore 1.00

00:38:05.280 what she wanted she looked the way she wanted she would smoke a cigar she could go into the 0.99

00:38:11.860 the pub and drink and she was almost bragging a bit about her um her business i mean in many ways

00:38:21.580 like you know in many ways exactly she was a marketer i know she was okay but life is complex

00:38:31.880 and i think i i know it's wrong to murder i wouldn't do a murder i don't think but um

00:38:38.000 but a relief for us all well i'll never say never let's just see what happens but i i do think you

00:38:43.980 can you can see if it's such restrictive society and life is brutal and we we know this from the

00:38:50.620 from the scottish witch trials it doesn't really seem that different even though it was the early

00:38:55.000 20th century because the women's lives were difficult weren't they you know they lived in

00:38:59.540 one room they were subservient to the men there wasn't much money that you know as time went on

00:39:04.120 some of these husbands came back war wounded or psychologically right wounded and life was really

00:39:10.240 brutal like you're saying it was okay for them to get beaten so the fact that the midwife kind of 0.98

00:39:15.340 just went i'm imagining if i was writing her she'd have a kind of a fuck it moment where she just 0.98

00:39:21.400 thought you know what i'm going to use my power for evil and at least on on this earthly plane 1.00

00:39:26.900 release some of these women from the horror that they're experiencing like I love the idea of her 1.00

00:39:31.900 smoking her cigar and going to the pub and dressing the way she wants to dress it's just a 0.98

00:39:36.400 pay thing exactly people for that it's a shame well it gets this idea Claire you mentioned earlier

00:39:45.460 and I wanted to mention that I I like this way you put it about the mental gymnastics and this

00:39:51.000 goes to a core of part of the story which is that um not only did the women do this and not only did

00:39:59.700 it really spiral out of control and their friends would do it um but they also they they convinced

00:40:07.760 themselves that it was okay so how did they do that the midwife was the main character who would

00:40:14.700 give them the solution. She would assist them, bring her own solution for them, tell them how

00:40:21.400 to do it. Sometimes she would sell it to them. Sometimes she would barter and she would even be

00:40:27.640 known to give it away for free. And that tells me that it was a bit more personal to her as well.

00:40:36.380 She did care about what was going on and she was close friends with some of these women.

00:40:41.600 And she spent a lot of time hearing about what was happening.

00:40:45.000 But none of these women did this alone.

00:40:48.460 So they were always listening to a friend. 0.99

00:40:53.460 They were always listening to a neighbor.

00:40:56.220 This is kind of essential because the idea of influence, you know, once you see your

00:41:02.420 neighbor or your friend doing it, you tell yourself, this is okay.

00:41:08.300 This is a way I can handle this.

00:41:10.000 This is what we do here.

00:41:11.600 they kind of made that calculation yeah it's a bit like the witch trials you know like we can

00:41:17.160 see now from 2025 well i think i would have more recently i would have i would have said this with

00:41:23.960 absolute you know strength now i'm i'm actually a little bit concerned about the state of our

00:41:28.620 society just now but you look at things now and you would hopefully go that's dehumanizing i

00:41:34.080 wouldn't do that there's a moral code there but i think one society sort of swings towards going

00:41:39.580 well you know there may be not as much of a human as i am in some way it's much easier to do what

00:41:46.620 we would you know in our right minds think of as terrible things and i think if they sort of

00:41:51.340 together deliberately or sort of subconsciously banded together thinking well these men have

00:41:57.200 forfeited the right to be treated you know fully as humans that have the right to life they've

00:42:03.080 crossed the line therefore i'm just doing what i have to do to survive i can i can see how that

00:42:08.840 would happen but what what was it that eventually led to them being caught then if everybody knew

00:42:14.980 and the coroner knew and like who eventually kind of went like right guys you've had your fun

00:42:19.660 we need to stop right unless that's a huge spoiler hope oh yeah you don't need to give anything away

00:42:25.580 if you don't want to no i'll get to that but actually this one just quick thing to add is that

00:42:31.920 uh the desensitization to violence so not only what they were going through but what they witnessed

00:42:37.880 I didn't talk about this earlier, but it was very it was a part of a very commonplace for women to have abortions.

00:42:47.800 This is something that the midwife helped with. It was something that was illegal, but it was widely accepted by everyone, by the men as well.

00:42:58.180 And sometimes also infanticide was common then in the countryside.

00:43:04.020 side. This all adds up to the fact that men and women were witnessing violence regularly. And

00:43:13.260 as a result, they, you know, it became kind of a part of life in a way that's hard for us to

00:43:19.760 quite understand. And of course, veterans who returned from war and domestic abuse was really

00:43:28.100 on the rise and that's another common uh connection you know when we have people who've

00:43:35.300 been through traumatic violent um scenarios they often uh reenact that at home so okay that just

00:43:44.880 to say and then you asked about how did how did this get found out is that the next so it took a

00:43:58.100 It was hard to get it, to get the police to actually act on it.

00:44:03.680 So it took multiple anonymous letters.

00:44:07.280 People wrote them anonymously because they were afraid of getting caught.

00:44:10.780 And in some cases, they would actually, they would take, you know, they would take it out on people who they found out had written these anonymous letters.

00:44:22.560 So people were afraid of the women.

00:44:26.320 And they were also a bit, you know, not so trusting of law enforcement.

00:44:33.380 And I've seen this as well.

00:44:35.460 We could fast forward 100 years in small towns.

00:44:38.900 Not everyone thinks that the police will actually help them, especially in domestic situations.

00:44:44.900 Right.

00:44:47.180 Exactly.

00:44:51.160 So a reluctance to get the authorities involved.

00:44:56.320 It took many letters. It took many years.

00:44:59.040 It took a doctor being suspicious about one of these murders as well to weigh in and finally launched a big investigation.

00:45:09.620 The nearby city of Solanog, the police came in.

00:45:12.640 They did a huge raid and took women in groups and interrogated them really by any means necessary.

00:45:21.740 They exhumed the bodies in a grave.

00:45:25.460 And so this was really the big giveaway. So actually, women did not think that the poison could be detected because arsenic is a clear and odorless solution. It was very easy to get away with it, putting it into the food, and they were under the impression that they wouldn't be found out. 0.97

00:45:46.520 However, the technology by 1929, the summer of 1929, they were able to send the corpses off to Budapest for testing in the National Laboratory and look and they actually they found arsenic in nearly all of them.

00:46:03.180 So it was really, as yeah, no pun intended, a dead giveaway that this, there was foul play. That couldn't exactly connect who did what and who was involved and was the midwife part of it or was somebody, you know, assisting or an accomplice or whose idea was it. But for sure, they could see that, you know, there was a lot of foul play going on.

00:46:31.140 yeah now i don't want i don't want you to tell us what the ending was i don't want you to tell us

00:46:36.540 what the outcome was but what's really been interesting me as i've been thinking about this

00:46:40.620 is something in the law which is very very gendered against women i think and it's the use of

00:46:49.100 the law provides not a defense but a mitigation in circumstances where a person and it is usually a

00:46:59.340 man has lost their mind that's really what what the idea is that that um and it's usually related

00:47:07.820 to circumstances where they come in and find their partner you know in bed with someone else

00:47:13.500 or something of the like that indelicto free grantee it is indeed doctor

00:47:17.740 free grantee is something different yeah but they lose their mind they have that abandonment of

00:47:27.180 reason for that second and they go in and if they kill either of the people well but at least

00:47:34.960 the person who is the offender who's having sex with their partner then the law says we'll take

00:47:41.520 that murder away and we'll put it down to culpable homicide because for that instant you'd lost your 0.87

00:47:47.740 reason but what it doesn't do and this is why I think it's gendered is it doesn't allow for women

00:47:56.460 who've gone through 30 years of abuse suddenly one day put down whatever they're carrying pick

00:48:05.220 up something else frying pan and and kill their partner and i think that that's very very interesting

00:48:12.980 signaling that the law identifies one kind of losing your mind instantaneously and says yes 0.95

00:48:24.980 you're right about that that can happen we understand that and it's mitigation it's not a

00:48:29.020 defense but if you were to do that um if you were to do that after a long period of abuse

00:48:36.580 and then you do something the law doesn't recognize it in the same way you would have to prove that

00:48:41.600 you were suffering from what was called diminished responsibility and that's a huge high hurdle to go

00:48:46.840 over so it's right it just strikes me as very very interesting that the law provides for people

00:48:53.920 who are suddenly provoked into violence usually the man against another man um who's having sex

00:49:01.620 with their partner but the law doesn't recognize the way that sometimes women deal with things

00:49:07.140 which is they put up with things for a very very long time and then they take a they take a decision

00:49:12.260 that they can't take it anymore this is such a good observation it's really what drove me in many

00:49:19.620 ways to explore these issues um i read a book called in control by jane monckton smith and she

00:49:28.320 i loved it yeah she looks at uh why um she looked at men uh mostly men who killed their female

00:49:40.540 partner men who were incarcerated and tried to find patterns and what she did was take that

00:49:47.660 that uh rationale that that defense which was used in the uk for so long up until very recently

00:49:56.360 as a valid defense which only was used um in the case of defending men uh this whole

00:50:05.940 in cold blood idea that that it was okay somehow and often men could get off the hook

00:50:12.780 for using that defense which is just incredible uh because somehow it's seen as this masculine

00:50:19.380 thing that it's okay for them to do um she actually in scotland sorry i'm just pleased

00:50:26.060 to say in scotland it wasn't a full defense because we have a different criminal system

00:50:30.040 so it was only it would only make the crime lesser however it might mean the difference

00:50:35.380 between spending the rest of your life in jail and getting a sentence of five years i mean it

00:50:40.080 was a huge difference but it was only mitigation I'm not sure right like was different right in

00:50:45.780 England but anyway sorry carry on just for our listeners no thank you for telling me it's uh I

00:50:51.380 know in England it was an actual defense up until a decade ago or something like that which is just

00:50:58.720 really incredible and uh but the point is it's actually not even true so it's a complete myth

00:51:05.140 We have this idea of the cold-blooded killer. And what she found out, as you may know, is that no, these were calculated murders. It was all about being in control and wanting to control your female partner.

00:51:19.920 And looking at cases of women killing men, it really never seemed to be about controlling them. It seemed to be about escaping. This is a really broad generalization, but it was about preserving yourself, self-integrity, freedom, escape, like survival. 0.98

00:51:46.020 So these were really different.

00:51:47.740 We know that it's a lot more dangerous to be the woman in a relationship statistically.

00:51:56.180 And many more women and girls are killed by intimate partners.

00:52:00.720 The balance is completely off.

00:52:03.500 When women do kill, it is often out of self-defense.

00:52:08.220 There's only been really recent research in the U.S. looking at women who are incarcerated.

00:52:13.740 and it shows that domestic abuse is really an underlying theme in almost all the cases which

00:52:22.580 um you might expect but it really it really illustrates how gendered this situation is

00:52:31.020 and how many constraints women have against them and that's why the book i think is so fascinating

00:52:36.880 i think this whole idea that women don't have a lot of choices left you know and i know that now

00:52:41.900 we feel we're so much further on but I don't really feel in some ways we are you know and

00:52:46.540 I'm what I'm going to do is I'm going to say guys you need to go and get Hope's book it's so

00:52:51.620 brilliant it's so interesting meticulously researched and we're just delighted to have

00:52:56.660 had you on the show we'll put up links for people to buy your book as well and hopefully they'll

00:53:01.820 maybe be able to get to see an event or something at some point as well but thank you so much for

00:53:06.620 joining us today it's been absolutely fascinating thank you both was it okay i know i spoke a bit

00:53:13.860 that's perfect don't worry we'll just we'll just chop it off that wee bit at the end there no

00:53:18.340 that's great i'm just really conscious that we're going to run out of time in one minute

00:53:21.720 yeah yeah okay that was fascinating and i cannot brilliant book and i just really appreciate it

00:53:28.940 it's in the boot of my car because you gave it to me already yeah yeah it's so good so good i love

00:53:34.920 the photos as well we're going to get kicked off so i'm right okay thank you i'll be in touch

00:53:42.860 when it's coming out sounds great bye-bye bye hope thank you bye hello and we're delighted to have

00:53:50.900 you on the show today steven um i was wondering if you could first of all just kick us off by

00:53:56.320 telling our listeners why it is that we have asked you in particular to come on today

00:54:00.480 sure thank you very much for having me i'm here today to talk about a new book that i have written

00:54:06.680 which is a kind of follow-up to my biography of james the sixth and first this one is titled

00:54:11.800 which is a king's obsession which as you can probably get from the title is a kind of deep

00:54:18.340 dive into james's influence on which trials on which panics on which purges and his legacy so

00:54:26.380 goes into even after his death there were things that he had written as you know from demonology

00:54:31.460 things that he had claimed that just kept coming back generation after generation he's a really

00:54:37.420 interesting character i mean we've said this repeatedly you are a historian we're not historians

00:54:42.640 so one of the things that we really enjoy is that we're learning stuff as we're going along

00:54:46.960 all the time and i think it's really interesting having written a book where we've spoken to lots

00:54:51.020 of different historians then you speak to another historian they say well here's here's part of my

00:54:55.640 research and you're like oh here's an extra thing that we didn't know about i think that's really

00:54:59.920 endlessly fascinating so you're obviously you really know about james that's yes you're gonna

00:55:07.080 hope so that you definitely well i mean no i mean but you obviously having written two books about

00:55:14.520 him you really really know your james stuff why did you focus on him like why is he of interest

00:55:20.480 to you oh that's a really good question i was asked a lot after writing the book specifically

00:55:25.700 about james who said why did you write about this horrible guy and i thought well i thought he was

00:55:30.400 horrible as well until i wrote the book on him and then at the end of it i thought actually it's

00:55:34.980 quite endearing and very complex i feel sorry for him i i feel very childhood yeah i do right so my

00:55:43.100 my job my like my normal job is i'm a teacher i'm a secondary teacher i'll often have kids with

00:55:48.480 trauma there's a lot of trauma about as we know in Scotland and I just think looking at his story

00:55:53.200 even though he was a king and you know he was he was born into money and you know had a had

00:55:57.600 obviously everything catered for him that's a horrible start to your life and then the people

00:56:02.380 that brought him up so I do feel sorry for him so did you find find that quite quickly or did it

00:56:08.420 take a bit of digging to get to the kind of humanity of him I found him quite easy to

00:56:15.220 understand and in fact this came up i was at a conference um a month ago the understanding king

00:56:20.780 james conference and there were a few of us on the panel there was a panel of biographers

00:56:24.540 and one of the questions was how easily did you find this guy how did you understand him and two

00:56:33.060 of the other people i think it was said oh we found him quite elusive it was it was difficult

00:56:37.380 to kind of understand and I said I actually kind of brought him fairly easily because it starts

00:56:46.280 with the childhood for me I know this is kind of called psychology a little bit but a lot of his

00:56:52.580 obsessions other than witches were family related I mean he was really really invested in the idea

00:56:59.300 of family constructing a family his various lovers his male lovers he adopted into his family and he

00:57:06.740 used familial language in his politics he constantly likened the state to a family so

00:57:13.520 it was everywhere he was obsessed with it and that's what he didn't have as a child

00:57:17.040 that's so interesting because like in my sorry claire in my teaching work i think of the school

00:57:23.840 as a construct as a family like i i do think about it in those terms and i think that that's

00:57:29.480 a really clear like bit of trauma stuff myself and like you think about those things and i think

00:57:34.700 he's he's motherless you know and was raised by men wasn't he i mean is that true or is that uh

00:57:40.360 is that like an idea that we have in society but isn't actually true well he was educated

00:57:46.040 by men of course in this time period there is a bit of historical debate about whether he had a

00:57:52.260 figure in um his governess at the time the countess of mar to what extent was she a mother

00:57:59.660 I think not I think she wasn't I think that because of his rank at the time he was raised

00:58:07.420 on the one hand by particularly Presbyterian minded people that thought no you're not anything

00:58:12.860 special so that was influencing him in a way they didn't expect and the Countess of Mar was very

00:58:20.140 much of a he's the Lord's anointed viewpoint he's up on a pedestal so I don't think she was able to

00:58:25.620 take on that mother role how interesting and how what do you get a sense of what he was like if

00:58:33.000 you're able to at all what he was like as a child sad and a bit of a brat as well um and a bit of a

00:58:43.120 prig with a g prig with a g you've got to be careful about accents even i know i've been tripped up on

00:58:51.960 that before um he would make fun of people's poor french pronunciation for example older people when

00:58:59.480 he was a child um he could i think have a very cutting sense of humor and he retained that

00:59:07.660 throughout his life on the other hand he was a child of trauma i mean there are stories of him

00:59:13.120 being beaten there are stories that's by george buchanan his his one of his tutors um so yeah

00:59:20.220 a very difficult and unhappy childhood i think i read somewhere that um he would he would visibly

00:59:30.420 shake when his most severe tutor um or men that looked like him came yes a story from later in

00:59:38.500 life when he uh supposedly turned white as a sheet when a courtier came in and said you reminded me

00:59:44.200 of my old master george buchanan so and that was a real visceral reaction yeah and although

00:59:50.740 sorry sorry claire sorry what i can't understand is the duality that you've already identified

00:59:57.580 of the the king as a boy and the ability of people to um treat him the way that they did

01:00:08.040 Now, I know that in their minds, they were educating them to become a king. But it seems to me odd. How did they piece those things together? You know, like the Duchess of Mar? Is it Duchess of Mar?

01:00:22.120 Prentice.

01:00:22.560 Prentice of Mar. Like, he was God's anointed. So, you know, she was very much deferential to him. Why were the people that were in charge of him much less deferential? How were they able to keep him in that way?

01:00:34.980 Well, this comes down, I think, to different ideologies at the time. So George Buchanan was very much a classical Republican, and he wanted to not just make James King, but make him this ideal Protestant king, who was not going to be head of the church or the Kirk, who was going to be a member of it like anyone else, as later generations of Protestants claimed.

01:00:56.160 and that was kind of rubbing up against older ideas of the king being the lord's anointed being

01:01:02.400 so up on a pedestal and james unsurprisingly i think very much favored the lord's anointed

01:01:09.800 point of view that's the one he inclined towards who was not up for that to be honest

01:01:14.720 in fairness especially he liked the deference he didn't like the beatings

01:01:19.060 what you're describing him though is one of those one of those people as a child as a teen that are

01:01:24.100 quite difficult to like you know because they're constantly doing that stay away from me you know

01:01:29.740 sort of edge with them because they think they're going to get attacked so i think that that would

01:01:33.700 make sense to have like a sort of a weird like extreme arrogance to to kind of like mask himself

01:01:42.000 but then he was obviously very developed to be a very paranoid person and maybe that's that's to

01:01:47.640 be expected if you're if you're living like that but do you think that the the whole idea of

01:01:52.420 focusing on people being witches was just a really ideal sort of route for his route am i american 0.53

01:01:58.920 a route you are american i'm really sorry everybody i'm such a traitor um a route to him 0.59

01:02:05.540 sort of expressing that pain you know because i've sort of said before and again total cod

01:02:10.740 psychology that the accusation of people being witches and obviously them being particularly

01:02:15.700 women for various reasons um is almost like i'm kind of dealing with his mother sort of like you

01:02:21.820 know he's he's killing his mother again again i'm a i'm a novelist though not historian so that's

01:02:27.300 that's why i'm going down that route but i think that's quite interesting so do you think that the

01:02:31.160 witchcraft thing was really heightened by his background well that's interesting because

01:02:36.920 there's no evidence of a strong interest in witchcraft or witchcraft accusations in his youth

01:02:42.980 right i mean we can pinpoint when it's born as you know born 1590 the north beric witch childs

01:02:49.280 all of that sort of stuff that's when it starts right but prior to that he is being taught

01:02:54.740 misogynistic ideas so he wrote poetry as a teenager in which he condemns women as as vain

01:03:01.940 and all of this sort of stuff um he'd got that from george buchanan again he's a bachelor i

01:03:07.760 should point out never married but opinions about women an incel an incel the original incel and

01:03:15.340 he'd also have heard James of all the stories. I mean, Mary Queen of Scots was accused of being

01:03:22.400 a bloody poisoning witch. Ofwell, her final husband, was accused of seducing her with witchcraft. 0.54

01:03:29.620 Darnley apparently had used enchanted rings to seduce her. He was a witch. Everyone was being

01:03:35.260 accused of witchcraft in political circles at various times. But James had no particular

01:03:41.340 interest in it that i found until that north beric episode was there was there he would have known

01:03:50.280 about his mum's history or some form of that because it would be through the lens of people

01:03:56.660 that really didn't like her that were in charge of him right so presumably they would have spoken

01:04:01.420 badly of her or you know preached against her and her catholic community or whatever um

01:04:10.060 And I suppose it's possible that they spoke of witchcraft accusations against her to him.

01:04:16.180 It's very possible.

01:04:17.920 James seems to have been fascinated by his mother.

01:04:21.560 And there's, I think, a quite endearing story, actually, of when rumours come out of Denmark of Bothwell's confession.

01:04:30.980 And historians are still divided on whether this was real or not.

01:04:34.220 But James eagerly grasped this, apparently, because his mother was innocent.

01:04:39.420 Explain Bothwell's confession in relation to Mary for those that don't know the story.

01:04:45.900 Yes, so Mary Queen of Scots's downfall really came about as a result of her marriage to the Earl of Bothwell,

01:04:54.020 who was accused of having murdered Darnley, and she was then accused of being complicit in that murder.

01:05:00.020 And then years later, Bothwell wound up in Denmark, imprisoned,

01:05:04.320 and he supposedly wrote this confession in which Mary was completely absolved.

01:05:08.280 she was innocent it had all been him he confessed she had nothing to do with it um so this was news

01:05:13.880 to james because james had been brought up by people literally telling him your mother's a 1.00

01:05:18.100 murderer a murderess and she's a witch and she's evil and she's a catholic whore all of this 0.99

01:05:24.100 horrible stuff and he apparently eagerly grasped this confession and thought she's innocent and he 0.99

01:05:31.380 was delighted about this funny is this while his mom was still alive this was when this was in the

01:05:39.280 1580s yeah okay so she was executed in 1587 so it's okay it's quite a strange turnaround for him

01:05:46.920 isn't it and like what do you do you think that because he was on his way to get married do you

01:05:53.780 think that there is like a sexual angle to what happened because we've talked about this a lot

01:05:59.680 that a lot of the a lot of the witch um confessions are very sexual there's always a there's always 0.96

01:06:07.160 not always but often a kind of a sexual angle to it a debasement yeah and the idea that women

01:06:13.440 women were kind of they were they were sort of charmed charmed into sexually going away with

01:06:19.640 the devil and how much is that to do do you think with with just what scotland was like as a country

01:06:25.020 and like his attitude i say that as if that's like in the past about being sexually repressed

01:06:29.440 and how much of it do you think is because james was sort of of age to get married and

01:06:34.020 was all to do with that that's a good question um when he got married i mean he'd been having

01:06:41.040 relationships of various kinds with young men and one older man at the time and he seems to have

01:06:47.200 ended that when he got married so he cleaned cleared out his bed chamber of these young men

01:06:52.440 in anticipation of marrying a young woman yeah i love it oh sorry i know that feeds into the

01:07:01.300 witchcraft accusations i mean he did write in demonology the usual stuff you would expect

01:07:05.020 women are more likely to be suggest by the devil um it's a weird thing for us to get our head

01:07:10.360 around i think in this period it was women that were predominantly viewed as sexually immoral 0.62

01:07:17.200 lustful society's gone the other way now and we kind of think well it's men that are more

01:07:21.240 interested in sex um that's the kind of stereotype now but the stereotype was the opposite at the

01:07:26.620 time it was women are incontinent sexually yeah but still i think the power dynamic hasn't changed

01:07:33.500 it was like women were like i like the use of the word incontinent that women like couldn't help

01:07:39.260 being sort of whole bags but now it's like you know men are men are in they're in charge of it

01:07:44.700 like the more much more modern narrative is that men drive that and women are still just sexual

01:07:49.220 objects you know and that yeah and that some of them the ones that we don't marry and that we pay

01:07:53.400 for or that we we you know have dalliance as if but we don't take them seriously they are those 0.97

01:07:58.500 kind of sexually incontinent women so we've still got that kind of an idea but it's true it had such 0.80

01:08:04.100 a sexual angle to it though i mean i don't want to sound like some sort of pervert that's fixated 0.67

01:08:08.320 on this but the whole the whole idea though that women were stripped like that really sticks with

01:08:14.540 me the idea of looking for the witch's mark involving it was always somewhere private i mean

01:08:19.700 you can tell from the torturers and the witch pickers and broaders and all of that it's very

01:08:25.820 obvious that they had a kind of prudient sexual interest in what they were doing i mean it's got 0.79

01:08:31.120 to be right i mean and i get like the the bananas logic of it that the the devil's not going to mark

01:08:36.940 you somewhere like obvious i suppose like your face or your hands but they were covered up you

01:08:41.340 know neck to foot weren't they so that you wouldn't have you wouldn't have really seen

01:08:45.740 their bodies much anyway so it wouldn't need to be in their groin for example you know it could

01:08:51.300 just be anywhere on their trunk or whatever or their legs or arms it is it feels very you know 0.96

01:08:57.760 sexual assaulty like the whole fact that so much of it is sex with the devil yeah but that i think 0.95

01:09:04.920 is the giveaway i mean it's not just i signed a contract or anything the way boosters might do 0.92

01:09:09.240 it's not i just got myself as sex with the devil and it keeps coming up because they don't get they

01:09:15.520 don't get any like magical powers do they the women like and this is another thing that i've

01:09:19.900 always struggled with like why would you sign yourself over to the devil and then not have

01:09:24.980 like the faustus pact like you know to be then you know i don't know able to turn something into

01:09:29.560 gold or to be to be extremely beautiful or to be able to fly or whatever they but it was mostly

01:09:35.240 that they were they just had a had a you know a time in the woods and then nothing good really

01:09:40.760 seemed to come out of their their deal no but the narrative was that there would be something good

01:09:46.140 that's what the devil promised he promised for the rich he promised revenge on their enemies

01:09:52.260 and for the poor he promised riches but they never they never got rich no that's because

01:09:58.020 it was all made up all right i think the big debate that james entered into with gusto was

01:10:08.040 to what extent do these people these women predominantly um actually gain powers and to

01:10:14.780 what extent are they just deluded so that's what you see people debating about in the literature

01:10:18.900 of the period some people saying it's all nonsense yeah they might think they are witches they might

01:10:23.760 think they have been given powers but they haven't whereas others like James would

01:10:27.780 muddy the waters somewhat and yes they are being given powers but it's the devil that's ultimately

01:10:35.380 in control of those powers so again there's still an element of delusion they won't actually get

01:10:41.400 maybe what they personally want but they will be the devil will give them something that allows

01:10:46.100 them to feel powerful to the crimes he's he's still whether he comes good on it they're james

01:10:55.480 called them these detestable slaves of the devil they're doing the devil's work they just think

01:11:00.140 it's they might think it's their own work but it's the devil's work and what what do you think to 0.75

01:11:05.260 people that look back on that time now and say that these were that there were witches that

01:11:10.940 they're and that they're it's terrible that they've they've gotten such bad kind of press

01:11:15.620 because we're always saying to people but they were christian they didn't view themselves as

01:11:19.840 witches well i think um firstly there's the that argument from the 1930s the margaret murray

01:11:26.620 argument it was an underground cult that survived into the present day is not true i mean there's

01:11:31.320 nothing nothing yeah um but i do think it's very likely that there were some people and i think you

01:11:37.120 can identify some of them that actually did think that they had powers and try and trade on it a

01:11:43.240 little bit so the ones that i think were examples are the the pendle witches some of the pendle

01:11:48.960 witches not all of them in lancashire they do seem to have kind of traded on a generational

01:11:55.160 reputation for being able to sell powers being able to sell in a devilish way in a devilish way 0.62

01:12:03.340 or in a what now would be called i know they didn't do it then but like a white witch way

01:12:08.320 a charmer yes about charmer there was a lot of complaints you know in scotland for charmers

01:12:13.520 being let off the law should have been harder on charmers um what to what extent did they actually

01:12:20.060 think they were being devil worshippers um i don't know it's it's impossible to say i think

01:12:26.540 some of them probably i mean if i were alive in that time period and let's say that i was being

01:12:32.460 sucked into beliefs about um predestination and all of that sort of thing if i felt that i was

01:12:38.160 damned anyway um and satan was going to be my master in the afterlife no matter what i did i

01:12:44.580 might worship him whenever i just don't know so maybe some people did um but the crucial point 0.99

01:12:50.520 there is they were still victims even if they did think that they were um making a deal with

01:12:55.380 the devil even if they did delude themselves into thinking they had powers they didn't because those

01:12:59.880 powers don't exist so um okay what was what was james's relationship like with his wife

01:13:06.660 i mean good um so yeah it was a good relationship this is one of the things that in the book about

01:13:12.240 james and in the witches again because it's kind of follows his biography for part i really like

01:13:17.020 this you know i i that's when i started to warm to him he liked his wife he liked his wife yeah 0.99

01:13:23.420 there's a historical kind of narrative in some of the older biographies that um she was stupid 0.97

01:13:30.760 i mean if you look at the victorian stuff about anne of denmark it's vicious i mean it's she's 0.99

01:13:36.840 she was an airhead she couldn't meet him in intellectual debates i think well it was the

01:13:41.440 16th century he didn't want his wife to meet him in intellectual debates and be discussing

01:13:46.260 theology over the dinner table i mean she did seem fit for him and she might not have been

01:13:53.440 intellectual but she was politically very astute from an early age well i think she actually was

01:13:58.760 fairly intellectual in ways that we appreciate now but they wouldn't then so for example english

01:14:03.260 literature is something you can study at university now and we i teach um early modern

01:14:09.380 literature shakespeare's plays all of that sort of stuff ben johnson that's the stuff that she

01:14:14.560 liked and understood and was really active and she was patronizing the best of the english

01:14:21.140 authors of the early modern period and as an english teacher sorry can i ask a geeky english

01:14:27.100 question so do you think that anne had anything to do with the shakespeare dynamic do you think

01:14:32.400 she drove his patronage of the arts a bit or of james james james yeah um i think she did i think

01:14:41.920 worked as a team and i think part of their sales pitch when they were in england was because they

01:14:47.680 were both foreign i mean she was doubly foreign she was a danish queen of scots who had now become

01:14:52.400 queen of england um so she became this great patroness of the arts so did james this was them

01:14:58.640 carving out a niche for themselves at the absolute forefront of english letters and english literature

01:15:04.300 that um really they did more than for example elizabeth everyone thinks of elizabeth the first

01:15:10.300 the golden age of shakespeare and everything some of his best stuff was in the early 16th

01:15:16.320 i'm claiming that i'm claiming that for james

01:15:19.100 he really developed shakespeare's talents it wasn't wasn't anybody else and another question

01:15:27.680 i saw somebody tweeted about this uh because i still use twitter i know i'm not supposed to

01:15:32.260 but um somebody tweeted about um and of course as we as we know there are no witches in macbeth 1.00

01:15:40.100 they're fairies and i was like are they i've been teaching that wrongly because they're always

01:15:46.000 described as the three witches but i know where this myth comes from um there's a book and it's

01:15:52.020 a fantastic book um james shapiro's 1606 if you've read it and he says in that that they are never

01:15:58.920 referred to as witches in the play but they are it's just in that weird way it's a roy the witch

01:16:05.100 you the witch yeah the witch everyone relax oh my god and they are in this we know in the stage

01:16:12.600 directions but that comes from later on it was printed first folio why are people saying that

01:16:19.660 they were referred to as fairies and nims this comes from the right the writer he was a bit of

01:16:26.320 a writer but he was the kind of quack doctor simon foreman who left notes of the plays that

01:16:32.140 he went to see and he talks in it about nymphs or fairies after he went to see Macbeth in 1610 I

01:16:38.700 think it was um that's that's where I opened the book actually no I know I yeah because that's why

01:16:43.940 I'm referring to it because I was like oh good you've actually fortuitously already written about

01:16:47.980 this when there's a random tweet that's occurred like genuinely this week and it's a historian

01:16:52.800 um who was like he was a bit kind of dismissive and he was a bit like well I mean they aren't

01:16:58.060 witches and I was like I'm sure I'm sure they're witches why is it only that one line in the play

01:17:03.380 though it's just that one line I roint thee witch and that's one of the witches referring to herself

01:17:08.640 as a witch but using uh a wife that she claims said this to her ah so she's being referred to

01:17:16.360 as a witch yes so she refers to herself using someone else's words as a witch so maybe that's

01:17:24.100 where the dubiety comes from but um yes that's why i'm very curious i think i see the start

01:17:31.180 rarely described as witches yeah i mean i mean you know they were they were the way he describes

01:17:39.880 them the fact that they were they had a cauldron they were putting stuff in it they were casting

01:17:46.060 spells i mean you know there's there's quite a lot of what we've got circumstantial things there

01:17:51.320 you have to be when you're when you're writing essays about english though you have to have the

01:17:55.940 evidence from the text or you you know you've got to yeah you have to have every witch is the

01:18:00.640 evidence yeah that's good i feel fully armed to go back into that twitter fight let's do it so you

01:18:06.140 fight so i i have come on a journey as well with james and i started off we heard about the north

01:18:12.700 berwick witch trials we heard about him as a kid but the more i've heard about him the more i come

01:18:18.780 to understand that he was a man of his time however i want to ask you about um some of his

01:18:24.680 earlier views which did seem to shift over time but some of his earlier views have been described

01:18:30.360 as that in a time of misogyny he was already a notable misogynist is that do you think that that

01:18:38.220 bears weight no um and this is not just me defending him because i i find him quite endearing

01:18:46.260 he is typical of his time and that he has very standard views about women they are weaker they

01:18:52.620 are i mean read his his books about household government which he talks about household

01:18:57.600 governance um and a lot of the things he says in the famous poem which i quote in the book about 0.93

01:19:02.300 him it's yeah lists all these negative traits about women i should point out most of them apply

01:19:07.140 to james um he was vain he was arrogant he loved gossip all of this applies to him more than it

01:19:13.080 does every accusation and admission oh yes well the tell me tell me about his court gossip about 0.92

01:19:21.800 witches his court gossip about witches um well he liked body jokes about witches for example

01:19:28.640 and one of the court wits this is in england his early years in england one of the court wits

01:19:34.240 who had been um a courtier under elizabeth elizabeth godson john harrington supposedly

01:19:40.020 asked him about his his views on witchcraft and why it was predominantly women and James of course

01:19:46.120 had the academic answer he wrote demonology about um how women were weaker and everything and

01:19:50.840 Harrington's joke about it was about older women being witches and he said the devil does walk in

01:19:58.660 dry places and James apparently actually didn't giggle at this he usually giggled at body jokes

01:20:06.220 but um became very um quiet on that so we have this isn't useful though it's evidence that

01:20:16.580 everyone around him absolutely knew about this obsession with witchcraft and would engage him

01:20:22.160 in conversation about it and um again early in the 17th century just after he's become king of

01:20:30.060 England as well people know about this and they are appealing to him as an authority on it but

01:20:36.620 the famous case is the Ann Gunter case where she was a young woman who had along with her father

01:20:43.640 accused several local women of bewitching her so this was the big thing in England it was about

01:20:49.680 bewitchment it was about um which is not just um curdling your milk or or killing your swine or

01:20:57.700 anything i mean they could do that supposedly but actually bewitching people putting devils

01:21:03.060 into you and things like that so ann gunter had supposedly um contorted herself in weird positions 0.56

01:21:11.840 she was spitting up feathers and needles and bits of hay and all of this sort of stuff

01:21:16.880 um and the local justices had thrown this out i mean they said these three women that they'd

01:21:23.960 Anne and her father had accused their innocence isn't real so what did Anne and her father do

01:21:31.140 well her father took her to the king I mean they went to the top and James was in his element I

01:21:37.740 mean he was interested in this and he launched an investigation had her watched and it was very

01:21:45.400 quickly determined after she was put into the custody of the Archbishop of Canterbury

01:21:49.880 that she was faking it and James was able to say no read my demonology I set out what is

01:21:56.400 gold standard evidence for bewitchment she should be speaking in foreign tongues she's not doing 1.00

01:22:02.680 that she should be um showing inordinate physical strength she's not doing that she's tossing

01:22:08.360 herself about um and it was revealed that she and her father and I think it was mostly the father

01:22:13.740 because he was apparently giving her potions to drink that would make her sick like um

01:22:17.860 purgatives um it was all faked so james was able to get these women i mean they'd already been

01:22:29.500 legally acquitted but able to get them queered and he made the interventions like this several

01:22:34.000 times in england this has led people i think to say well he suddenly became more skeptical

01:22:38.340 when he went south and some of the older biographies actually explicitly you know he

01:22:45.680 became more civilized when he went to england that's what happens when you're scottish and go

01:22:49.400 that's so interesting that's do you know something at we at the start of this we understood from us

01:22:56.880 not having been taught it in school and not knowing about it at all i had the impression

01:23:01.160 i don't know about you so that james was some eejit um that um was very coarse and uneducated

01:23:10.940 and dribbled had physical oh yeah the physical stuff annoys me all that all that sort of um

01:23:18.420 this physical dribbling and you're like when where did this come from the you know the man

01:23:23.000 brought us the king james bible he wrote about the pressing issues of the day witches and also

01:23:29.340 smoking which i started reading this morning and now can't stop his counterblast his counterblast

01:23:36.660 to tobacco is it that all of the stuff all of the negative stuff that's that's lasted um annoys me

01:23:43.120 because we can trace a lot of it to a single source which really broke into the mainstream

01:23:49.000 in the civil wars after james's death this was a text that's ascribed to anthony weldon although

01:23:54.620 we don't know if he actually wrote it called the court and character of king james and it's got

01:23:59.740 everything you thought you knew about king james in it it's fiddled with his codpiece all the time

01:24:04.280 dribbled when he spoke his tongue was too big for his mouth all of this stuff and it's made up

01:24:09.400 it's made up for that it's just propaganda but it's everywhere i mean it's whenever james appears

01:24:16.420 in fiction he's fiddling with his codpiece or or dribbling that is genuinely all i knew about

01:24:22.680 james before we started this campaign five and a half years ago we weren't taught anything at all

01:24:27.660 the school i went to school in st andrews and um the comprehensive not the private girls school

01:24:32.320 and we were taught nothing really about scottish history at all with like the industrial revolution

01:24:38.460 and that's all i was taught yes yeah the first world war and i i took history in sixth year i

01:24:45.380 did what was called sixth year studies at that point but i opted for american history so i could

01:24:49.320 tell you a lot about the american civil war and about the transatlantic slave trade which was

01:24:53.620 what i was really interested in but i knew nothing about my own country and the only thing i knew

01:24:57.620 about james was that was that james and i now know this isn't true so that james dribbled like

01:25:02.640 that's literally all i knew i didn't understand that james was the one that had brought the

01:25:07.300 different nations together you know like i didn't know anything about which it's the dribbling and

01:25:13.220 it just shows how stuff like that how pervasive it is yeah so there's a story again from harrington

01:25:20.120 john harrington elizabeth's godson about um elizabeth in her later years supposedly wandering

01:25:26.000 about mad in her palaces stabbing rusty daggers into arises because she was terrified of assassins

01:25:31.600 um completely exaggerated but that image hasn't taken over like our understanding in pop culture

01:25:39.380 elizabeth the first whereas with james this bizarre little pen portrait from anthony wildin

01:25:46.220 yeah has absolutely dominated it's just taken over because he was scottish it could be she said

01:25:52.680 in that chippy scottish manner well again they're always taking a guinness a lot of the older

01:25:58.200 biographies really quite old ones will cover his reign in life in scotland in one chapter

01:26:03.400 and it's the real story began when he became when he moved down south to london yeah that's when he

01:26:10.360 started matting looking at the youth and the reign in scotland now yeah can i just ask you as a final

01:26:18.980 question if there is there anything that you would like readers to just take away from their

01:26:24.920 understanding of James from having read your book is there something one thing that you'd like them

01:26:29.140 to know yes um I think the absolute main thing it has to do with his education and it's to do with

01:26:35.560 witchcraft as well um what I've found is that people seem to think and you've probably found

01:26:40.660 this yourselves is that witchcraft is it was like backwards thinking it was a kind of medieval

01:26:46.200 throwback or something like that and it just wasn't it was cutting-edge progressive thinking

01:26:53.140 at the time as horrible as that sounds this was what the academics and the lecture halls and

01:26:57.820 everything we're talking about we're debating we're discussing so James was at the forefront

01:27:02.240 of this I mean people had criticized Elizabeth I in England for not doing enough about this problem

01:27:09.400 of witches James was kind of marketing himself as someone that is in control that is doing this

01:27:16.540 yeah the thing I want people to take away is that I mean history as much as we would like to think

01:27:23.460 it's just always a kind of progressive line of things getting better and more educated and more

01:27:27.900 enlightened sometimes what people are being enlightened about is wrong and what they're

01:27:32.700 being taught is wrong there are history is not just a straight line it takes these weird diversions

01:27:37.880 it goes sideways all of that oh Stephen it's been totally brilliant having you on today I feel like

01:27:43.420 we could have talked for hours and hours listen I've still got hundreds of questions and I wonder

01:27:48.060 if we could have a further conversation somewhere else down the line yeah yeah much more about some

01:27:55.080 of the stuff in your book yes I would love to that would be great well thank you Stephen um and we

01:28:01.460 will be sharing links to your book as well so people can go and follow up with that after the

01:28:06.700 event thank you very much okay then we're about to get kicked off zoom because you've only got

01:28:12.060 the cheap version that's why that's why i brought it in there but we're going to be doing our event

01:28:16.340 with you i write though so we'll see we'll see you in november i'll see you then november yeah

01:28:20.980 amazing really look forward to it steven and we'll let you know when it's coming on

01:28:25.020 and send us your bio send us your bio i'll do i'll do that just now actually amazing yeah thank

01:28:30.440 you so much i really enjoyed it and i do want to ask you a lot more questions

01:28:33.580 brilliant thank you so much see you later well that was fascinating i think it's really

01:28:42.020 interesting to keep thinking about these different things and that's one of the really great things

01:28:46.580 about having this podcast is that we can just ask on anybody that we think is interesting that we

01:28:51.040 want to talk to yeah it's very self-serving it doesn't but i have something to raise with you

01:28:57.300 zoe and it is in fact some news raccoon news oh i knew you were going to bring this up

01:29:06.440 go on zoe very recently a raccoon broke into a store got itself absolutely rat-arsed drunk

01:29:17.440 or raccoon-arsed drunk and was found splayed out like a pancake in a lavvy now my understanding

01:29:25.600 okay is that he's been having some personal issues yes and you know all of us are entitled

01:29:34.300 to misstep now and then you know he just thought i'll just have a little drink to take the edge off

01:29:39.700 and unfortunately he'd also taken some antihistamines earlier because he's got a

01:29:44.180 allergy at the moment and these things together cause some problems for him he's he's getting his

01:29:49.780 life back on track leave him alone okay we've been on the phone he's trying absolutely not

01:29:56.220 now you have all people you have all people judge not lest ye be judged who in their time cannot say

01:30:05.660 that they haven't broke into a local convenience store just went straight for the drink and then

01:30:11.200 found themselves face down in the lavvy waiting for the people to come in and collect them next

01:30:15.540 morning zoe well well my honorable colleague you may present the case in that manner i would not

01:30:22.020 present it in that manner i think that's a very damning short-sighted and not trauma-informed

01:30:27.660 approach which i'm quite disappointed by and we'll be discussing this in a sidebar thank you very

01:30:33.760 much sidebar objection by far so um so raccoons aside um what's happening claire that else that

01:30:43.180 we should talk about before we go what's happening one thing um which we were really calling on your

01:30:48.400 help for is that is an absolute proliferance of rubbish fakes that's not a word what's that word

01:30:57.340 proliferation proliferation is that not a word proliferance i think you said proliferance 0.81

01:31:05.480 first didn't you there has been a proliferance i don't know listen listen we're getting right

01:31:13.100 listen whatever sorry that's the point the point is there is a lot of fake tat out there and people

01:31:21.380 have actually been contacting us one one gentleman contacted us i would like to tell you that isn't

01:31:26.700 this tartan isn't as it's described it's only printed on one side and we're like look that's

01:31:31.760 not our tartan our tartan is like woven in the highlands so we say to you this please if you

01:31:37.760 see witches of scotland tartan any kind of artifacts can you just report them because

01:31:43.520 the only place you can get witches of scotland tartan the only place is online at witches of

01:31:49.280 scotland.com like directly not in a shop not from another website no we are not selling at all

01:31:56.120 through any shops and the reason for that is because you have to pre-order so the whole point

01:32:02.380 of what we're doing here is that we're doing zero waste we're recognizing that this is a traditional

01:32:07.160 method that takes time and it takes up to six months so everybody that knows that's bought

01:32:12.720 tartan from us or that's pre-ordered tartan from us you have to tick a box saying you understand

01:32:18.020 it's going to take up to six months okay that's how long it takes so you certainly cannot just 0.98

01:32:23.540 put in your basket you know a shawl that looks awful by the way it's such shit quality oh there's 0.97

01:32:31.520 there's one woman who has ordered something and she's so upset about it we're going to be talking 0.98

01:32:36.460 to her more in the new year about it and we've been on believe us we have phoned we've emailed

01:32:42.040 I phoned up one of these dodgy dealers and I said to them hello I'd like to order I like how you put

01:32:48.080 on a telephone voice I am my mother's daughter I phoned and I said hello I'd like to have some

01:32:54.420 witches of Scotland tartan and the guy said yes no problem and I said oh can you can you do me a

01:32:59.600 kilt and he said yes and I said great and I said now I know that you have to have permission from

01:33:05.520 the people that make it that designed it to get that made do you have permission oh yes we absolutely

01:33:11.100 do and i said and whereabouts is it you're getting made is it in scotland oh yes it is and i went

01:33:16.860 lies lies i am one of the co-owners of that company and you do not have permission for us 0.85

01:33:23.420 and i know for a fact that you're making this absolute rubbish in pakistan that guy so they're 0.92

01:33:29.420 making them on these on the i don't even know what they're making them on it looks like it's out of a 0.95

01:33:33.260 flipping bloody printer it looks like they're just printing it off like it like the printer i've got

01:33:38.440 hidden under my bed that never connects to the wi-fi it looks so crap so it's not in any way the 0.87

01:33:44.200 standard that we would be wanting to be associated with it's just it's not tartan no and at the

01:33:48.660 moment all we do is the scarves and we do the three different types of kilts that's it we're

01:33:54.440 going to expand that a little bit in the future but it's still going to be the pre-order and we

01:33:58.700 can't get it into shops because we can't keep up with the orders that people are making to buy it

01:34:03.840 directly because we're not prepared to go down like a mass industrialization route we're not

01:34:09.000 prepared to have children working in our mills and we are we're keeping it nice yeah

01:34:15.400 enough enough keeping it nice that's my that's my new hashtag which the scotland keeping it nice

01:34:25.340 keeping it nice since 2020 that's not really accurate though is it no not sometimes we don't

01:34:32.280 keep it nice soy anyway i've got to go because i'm meeting one of my friends at the offy i've 0.98

01:34:36.980 got some stuff to organize yeah if you're meeting one of them damn raccoons then please don't tell 0.98

01:34:44.180 us about it keep my animals names out of your mouth i will speak to you later good day to you 0.99

01:34:50.400 madam and all who are listening we will be back soon okay so if you listen to this in like real

01:34:56.480 time we will be back round about the christmas time we'll tell you no more at this moment

01:35:02.040 nice good day quarrelsome dames and associated associates goodbye goodbye

01:35:09.300 if you'd like to learn more about the witches of scotland please subscribe wherever you get

01:35:23.360 your podcasts sign up for our mailing list at www.witchesofscotland.com to keep updated with

01:35:31.480 the campaign on that site you'll be able to find how to link with us on twitter facebook and instagram

01:35:39.300 We'll be right back.

Witches of Scotland - December 24, 2025

EPISODE 78 HOPE REESE ⧸ STEVEN VEERAPEN

Episode Stats

Transcript