00:00:00.200Hi, I'm Clare Mitchell, QC. Welcome to the Witches of Scotland podcast.
00:00:05.220I'm a lawyer who specialises in miscarriage of justice cases,
00:00:08.740and we're bringing you this podcast because we want to tell you about the women who were accused,
00:00:13.800prosecuted, convicted, and ultimately executed as witches in Scotland.
00:00:18.780I'm Zoe Vendetotsi, and I'm a writer who's always had an interest in the witches,
00:00:23.040and I feel that this dark mark against Scotland needs a reckoning.
00:00:26.500The campaign Witches of Scotland wants three things.
00:00:29.600Firstly, a pardon for all those convicted of witchcraft.
00:00:33.240Secondly, an apology for all those who were accused as witches.
00:00:37.420And finally, a national monument in recognition of all those who were affected by this terrible miscarriage of justice.
00:00:44.420Over the forthcoming weeks, we'll be talking to a whole host of experts about the history and the modern day connections to the witches of Scotland.
00:00:54.720Hello and welcome to the Witches of Scotland podcast episode 8.
00:00:59.420Today we're going to be talking broadly about pardons and statues.
00:01:03.940And what we're going to be talking about, first of all, are what we've been doing the last few weeks,
00:01:07.760looking at three different witches or groups of witches and talk about them a wee bit more detail.
00:01:13.040So we're going to start talking about our first case.
00:01:18.160We were contacted by St Brides in Dumfries via Twitter,
00:01:22.620and they gave us some information about something that's happened in that area.
00:01:26.080They told us that the minister of the church down there tried and executed 10 women with, quote, no lawful authority and that he may have had no commission.
00:01:37.020And six of the women were property owners. Do you think, first of all, maybe you could explain what it means by no lawful authority?
00:01:43.700Yes, I think by that what it means is that he didn't have a commission to try witches.
00:01:49.320what happened in the first wave of witchcraft trials is that a lot of local courts were able
00:01:55.980to prosecute witches without any supervision but the prosecuting under the witchcraft act got even
00:02:03.960as they thought it in their time out of control so the privy council decided that only people
00:02:09.880allowed by then and given a commission to conduct a witchcraft trial would be allowed to but there
00:02:16.040was a period of time in between these decisions being taken by the Privy Council when it wasn't0.59
00:02:21.820clear whether or not the local courts could still prosecute and convict these women or whether or
00:02:28.560not it had to have a commission. So there are certain arguments over this, whether or not they
00:02:34.000had lawful authority or not. They certainly thought that they had authority to carry out these things
00:02:39.380and therefore just did them and no it doesn't appear that any even although it appears that
00:02:46.580they may have had no commission or no lawful authority it doesn't seem that anything came of
00:02:51.960that it was just one of those things where they had tried people as witches but they didn't have
00:02:57.600a commission. I understand that on the date that we're talking about Zoe the 5th of April 1659
00:03:03.480there were 10 women some of them might be related is that right? Yeah that's right the list of
00:03:09.360names that we've got here are now apologies if i mispronounce any of these names we were talking
00:03:14.000about this earlier about how the names were written down and you thought that possibly they
00:03:18.560were just written down phonetically so some of these might not really be entirely accurate but
00:03:23.300i'll go for it anyway so the first one was agnes commons then we had janet mcgowans jean thompson
00:03:29.600margaret clark agnes clark so possibly they were related yes janet mckendrick janet corthane
00:03:38.480Helen Moorhead and Janet Cullen I think or Colin and these 10 women were the ones who were executed
00:03:48.500they were all unmarried and we've got here what would you call this Claire the legally what's the
00:03:55.160the piece of text we have I think what we have is a piece of a sentencing statement when the court
00:04:00.980pronounces the sentence on someone the clerk of court writes it down in a document and I think
00:04:07.440it's the words that we have are from part of the document that the clerk will have written down
00:04:11.480to explain to the woman who'd been convicted of acts of witchcraft and also to the general public
00:04:18.560what was going to happen to them. Right and shall I just read that out so that people can hear what
00:04:23.280it is? So it's to be taken upon Wednesday come eight days to the ordinary place of execution
00:04:28.940for the borough of Dumfries and there between two to four of the afternoon to be strangled at the0.74
00:04:34.700stakes till they be dead and thereafter their bodies to be burned to ashes. It's just really0.79
00:04:40.960shocking when you see it written there so sort of boldly that these women that we've listed
00:04:46.300that that was their fate. Absolutely one thing that really strikes me and I know this might
00:04:51.920sound funny but how the names sound so modern and common it really brings it home to you just that
00:04:58.740these, as the Orkney Memorial says, they were just folk. How ordinary and how terribly, terribly
00:05:05.020tragic. The second thing that strikes me about this particular case is it would appear from the
00:05:10.400sentencing statement they had to wait for a number of days before they were executed. So not only
00:05:16.140would they hear that they were going to be strangled and burnt at the stake, but they were
00:05:20.480going to have to wait a week until that happened. Yeah, I mean, what would be the reason for that?
00:05:26.640I don't know maybe that they would have to prepare it get things ready for it because1.00
00:05:32.880there were so many women 10 women were going to meet their fate on that day between two o'clock1.00
00:05:39.180and four o'clock in the afternoon so it may be that a lot of work had to be prepared
00:05:44.340maybe there were a number of pyres I don't know whatever it was the torture of having to wait
00:05:50.040that time knowing your fate and knowing as these people would have been at the time Christians
00:05:55.360Christians knowing they wouldn't get a Christian burial and the effect that that would have on them
00:06:00.360because as we have discussed Julian those people would have believed very much and had a very
00:06:06.800strong faith people of the time appeared to have that faith interwoven into every part of their
00:06:12.140lives to know what their fate was going to be and to know that they would not receive a Christian
00:06:17.160burial must have been terrible torture even before they met their fate. And it's something as well
00:06:22.880that I hadn't really contemplated all that much till just now. And I was thinking about that and
00:06:26.860reading that statement. What would the logistics be of being strangled? I mean, recently I've
00:06:32.920watched Wolf Hall. And so if you know Wolf Hall, there's obviously the execution scenes in that
00:06:38.080one. And that one, at least you can see the human side of planning out something horrific like that.
00:06:43.720You have to have somebody sort of laid down and different items that you'd need to do it.
00:06:48.020But to strangle somebody is so close contact.
00:07:45.620It just gives you the horror of that, I think, you know, and again, and I know we've said this several times, but growing up in Scotland, probably just growing up in Britain, you are aware of the witch trials, but you just don't think about the individuals.
00:07:57.260I know we keep saying this, but it is so important. And to think about the absolute horror and the lack of dignity and the end of their lives. It's too horrible.
00:08:06.180It is too horrible. And I think we'll perhaps move on to the next person. And the interesting thing, I think, about the next person is that we again have so little information on some of these women. And the difficulty is making the connection with their story when we have so little information of them involved. Who is the second?
00:08:28.520The next person was Jean Cock from Dalkeith, and she was executed, I presume on this date, the 11th of November, 1661.
00:08:38.920She was married, which in contrast to the last group, all the women were unmarried.
00:08:43.500So she was married. And all the information we have is that she was executed.
00:08:46.880There's nothing else about this woman at all.
00:08:49.200Yes. And it's that difficulty where if you don't know more about the story of these women, it's more difficult to connect to them.
00:08:57.440Because we have no further information in relation to Jean, it clearly doesn't make what happened to her any less real or any less visceral.
00:09:06.980But it just shows you that the lack of records that we have that were available for anybody at the time means that the stories of these women's lives have just fallen away.
00:09:17.200we won't know unless we're very lucky to find a record or two why the allegation came against Jean
00:09:23.900what her trial was about and why they found her guilty and executed her we do know a little bit
00:09:31.620more however about the third group that we're going to speak about today today we're going to
00:09:37.660take you to the witches of East Lothian East Lothian was a place where the greatest number
00:09:44.580of women were killed as witches. And today we're going to take you specifically to the area of
00:09:50.500Preston Pans, an area where 81 people were executed as witches. Today we're going to name 10 of them
00:09:58.820who were tried as witches. History does not record whether or not any or all of these women were in
00:10:06.340fact killed as witches, whether or not they were executed. But it is likely, statistically likely,
00:10:13.080that they were executed as witches given the number of people who went to trial and were
00:10:18.680executed. All of these women were unmarried and they all went to trial on the same day
00:10:24.880so that looks as if they were what we'd call in the modern day co-accused. They all went to trial
00:10:30.900together and the trial took place on the 3rd of July 1628. When we get groups of these people
00:10:40.420together, Zoe, it would probably be that an allegation was made against one of them. And
00:10:48.720I imagine what will have happened to either getting a false confession by torture has
00:10:54.400prompted one of them to name other names. And that's why we get these groups of women1.00
00:11:00.800being convicted as witches. That's at least my theory when I look at these in any event.0.98
00:11:06.380The names of these women, and again, they're just names that you would find in Scotland in the modern day, Margaret Young, Margaret Redpath, Janet Reid, Agnes Rankin, Marian Mitchell, Agnes Liddle, Margaret Oliver, Barbara Mathey, Bessie Riddle and Agnes Dempster.
00:11:30.100And there's an interesting story, Claire, isn't there, that relates to this case in particular?
00:11:34.560Yes, it relates to all of the Preston Pan witches, the 81 women executed as witches there, because these women did receive a legal pardon in a sense, although they clearly wouldn't be excluded from the pardon that we're asking for from our own Scottish government.
00:11:56.340But on this July the 27th, 2004, the Baron's Court for the local area granted what they described as an absolute pardon, quashing the original sentences to the 81 people put to death in Preston Pans for acts of witchcraft.
00:12:15.780Many of those people were also sentenced for treason against the person of King James VI.
00:12:24.200And the reason for that was, you will recall that King James VI was himself involved in a lot of cases down in East Lothian
00:12:34.160because he prosecuted some trials and was involved even in the matters of torture.
00:12:40.480When I say prosecuted, he was involved in the prosecution.
00:12:43.120and it was because they believed that women and men were casting spells on the weather
00:12:51.040and one of the weather spells interfered with the king's crossing between Denmark and Scotland
00:12:58.700and therefore the acts which some of these people were found guilty of were treasonable witchcraft
00:13:05.960because they were using their magic, so it was said, to try and kill the king.
00:13:11.740so what they could do in that local court was pardon for acts of witchcraft but they couldn't
00:13:19.980pardon for matters of treason because the offense of treason is something which is reserved for the
00:13:26.920monarchy obviously in light of our understanding of meteorology these people had absolutely nothing
00:13:32.760to do with the weathers or the crossings people interested in the barons court which i as a lawyer
00:13:39.460I'm very interested in. There's a great website called prestongrange.org and it gives you
00:13:47.500information about the baron courts of Preston Grange and Dolphinstone. They're able to find out
00:13:53.080that the baron court Preston Grange has existed since 1189 and in fact the court's judicial rule
00:14:00.920was finally abolished in November 2004 so its final session was held on the 28th of November
00:14:09.5802004 and that was the final session of any such borough court in Scotland so that brings a very
00:14:17.820interesting historical perspective on local courts which we simply no longer have in the modern day
00:14:25.080but the people who were pardoned by this court are really special because that's the only place
00:14:31.140that I can find that it's happened in the whole of Scotland and as I say when we're asking for a
00:14:36.940pardon we're not going to be excluding those people we want an acknowledgement for them as
00:14:41.160well what was done we want that acknowledgement that that was wrong but absolutely can I just
00:14:46.660clarify as well for the listeners because there's been a little bit of some some questions about
00:14:50.520this on twitter when we're asking for a pardon who are we asking for a pardon from we're asking
00:14:58.300for a pardon from the state that is the scottish government so not from the church not from any
00:15:03.880church but from no no i mean i would be absolutely delighted if any church would like to apologize
00:15:11.520but the prosecutions most notably the latter prosecutions were secular in nature they were
00:15:18.120done by the state and i think that is appropriate for the state to apologize to all of these women
00:15:25.560as i say i would absolutely welcome any churches that came forward to provide an apology but what
00:15:33.340we're looking for is a pardon a legal pardon from the state okay great so one of the reasons that
00:15:40.340we're talking about the press and pans case is that there's been quite a lot of interest on
00:15:45.180Twitter and on Facebook a lot of images shared
00:16:09.000a book open, you can't tell what the book
00:16:11.300is from the images, I mean I don't know
00:16:13.240if it's just a kind of a symbolic book
00:16:15.180I could impose a meaning on it of my own, like a ledger of all the wrongs that were done, maybe.
00:16:19.620But it's a statue of a woman, old fashioned clothing, not sure particularly what period.
00:16:24.580But she's standing with her back to a children's playground.
00:16:28.200It looks like it's in a housing development.
00:16:30.820Yes, the place where once Scotland opens up again, we can go and see this is at the Athena Grange housing estate in Dolphinstone Way, Preston Pans.
00:16:42.020where you can actually look for this is a great website called womanofscotland.org.uk
00:16:49.160and it maps memorials to women in Scotland so it very helpfully not only gives you the address
00:16:55.040a photograph of it but it also gives you a map so anyone looking for it can go to the
00:17:00.340womanofscotland.org.uk website and they'll be able to tell you it's interesting that you looked at
00:17:06.720the book and thought that it might be about a book listing the wrongs done to women and it's
00:17:12.800funny how we put our own views on these matters because I looked at it and thought it was a woman
00:17:18.680of learning it was somebody who challenged the norms by the fact that they were reading or that
00:17:25.140they had knowledge or that they had skills that's where I took that from but it would be interesting
00:17:30.960to know if there was a particular view taken of what the book should be about if anyone knows
00:17:36.760about that please do get in contact with us and let us know yeah it's tricky to see because there
00:17:41.080may be some wording on the book i just can't make it out from the photographs that have been shared
00:17:45.560hopefully somebody will know so it'd be great if you could get in touch with us via twitter or
00:17:49.300facebook to let us know if you do know about that that'd be great we should mention as well that the
00:17:53.300women of scotland project was developed by the glasgow women's library and women's history
00:17:58.040Scotland with support from Girl Guiding Scotland I think it's important to mention that they started
00:18:02.420that and it all sort of ties in with lots of the stuff that we've talked about and mentioned over
00:18:06.260the series so far yes absolutely I mean a great deal of work done in mapping the memorials to
00:18:12.020women in Scotland I think it's an absolutely excellent initiative and I'm so glad that that's
00:18:16.400there as a resource for people to use what's interesting about the women who are recorded
00:18:22.640here in Preston Pans when we look at that is that the person that they have chosen as the statue is
00:18:28.820a fully clothed person Zoe. Yes it's interesting that you mention that Claire because of course
00:18:34.580been a certain amount of I don't know how we describe it consternation about the statue that's
00:18:40.980gone up in London very recently in Newington Green in North London of Mary Wollstonecraft
00:18:47.220who i remember from when i did my degree 7 000 years ago where we had to read the book of
00:18:53.560vindication of the rights of women and it's very interesting because that book was published i
00:18:58.880think in 1792 and i think that this is the first statue to wollstonecraft i remember at the time
00:19:05.880that i was studying at university there was some stuff made about the fact that she had a child
00:19:09.380out of wedlock and that she tried to commit suicide and it became more about the story of
00:19:15.840things in her personal life than about the amazing thinking and writing that she did so apparently
00:19:21.500what's happened with this statue is that they've been fundraising a group's been fundraising
00:19:25.260over the last 10 years to have a statue made of her and the statue was the design that they went
00:19:31.780with was by the artist Maggie Hambling I'm sure everybody that's listening to this will have seen
00:19:36.240this but it's very easy to find loads of articles about it online it's a silver apparently 10 foot
00:19:42.200statue I think of a naked woman rising out of something I'm not entirely sure what it is
00:19:48.400supposed to be she's rising out of and she's got a fantastic by many people's sort of estimation
00:19:54.460quite a modern live body and she's naked I'm not sure why they decide to go for being naked and
00:20:02.520I'm not sure if it's another one of these sort of ideas of like an every woman I believe that0.92
00:20:07.520Maggie Hambling said that the body type is what we want to have we being women I think that's quite
00:20:13.200strange but um yeah that's the statue and there's been a lot of talk about it I'm not sure why she's
00:20:18.340naked really when I saw I had mixed feelings about it my first feeling of course was delight
00:20:23.540that someone had put up a statue and I'm also delighted even that in the consternation that
00:20:29.800has developed about the statue that people have heard more about her and what she did so almost
00:20:35.920the controversy that's been brought up by the fact that we're even talking about the statue itself
00:20:42.260is allowing us to spread her name and i think that's a good part of it when the statue itself
00:20:49.020is obviously not a statue of her and i think that's quite interesting because it's a memorial
00:20:56.220to her but it's not a statue of her and i wonder whether or not it would just have been
00:21:03.940simpler to have a statue of her to remember her and the work that she did rather than a memorial
00:21:14.740again representing women but not giving them their name yeah it's this weird idea about not letting
00:21:23.400women be individual women that women have always got to stand for all the women or lots of women
00:21:28.700And it's just really bloody irritating. There isn't a sort of generic to men of war statue, you know, you'd always get Churchill or whoever. It really frustrates me, I have to say.
00:21:39.520An interesting quote by Willstonecraft that I thought really related to our campaign, which was, it is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.
00:21:49.500And I thought that was quite interesting from the point of view of what we've been talking about, about looking for justice for the people, the women and the men that were executed as witches in Scotland.
00:21:59.780Absolutely. It's justice that we want, nothing less.
00:22:02.900well moving then on Zoe we have been in contact with someone else who is campaigning for justice
00:22:11.820in the way that we are yes now this is a very fascinating man isn't he he is and I'm going to
00:22:18.080apologize now for the pronunciation of his name Zoe did you do higher German if so you might
00:22:23.060actually somewhat shockingly if anybody's ever heard me attempt to do this I have actually got
00:22:29.600a B at higher for German. Well I will allow you to I'm going to completely ruin his name and I'm
00:22:36.020sorry to my German teacher who's since passed on since taught me but I'm sorry I'm going to get
00:22:41.060this wrong. So his name the man that we're going to talk about is Hartmut Haegler so I hope that's
00:22:46.720right and I'm really sorry to any German listeners if I've just mangled his name because what he does
00:22:51.200is really fascinating. So Claire do you want to tell us a bit about Mr Haegler? Yes Mr Haegler whom
00:22:56.820we've been in contact with and we would really love to have him on the show he sent us lots of
00:23:02.420information about the work that he has done in Germany and why he has been doing it so I've been
00:23:08.020looking through all the articles that he sent me and if we can we would really really love to speak
00:23:13.260to him and he is a retired pastor and he is also a former religious education teacher and he started
00:23:22.440his campaign in 2011 to try and get acknowledgement for the injustice done to the tens of thousands
00:23:31.640of people across Europe that were convicted as witches but in particular those people that were
00:23:39.400convicted as witches in Germany. Now apparently between the 15th and 18th century, a broader
00:23:47.100period of time than in scotland 25 000 people were executed as witches and apparently 20 to 30
00:24:00.300percent of those were men and children children yes apparently so wow i mean it's bad enough
00:24:10.720you know adults being you know executed for that but the thought that they think that children
00:24:15.240were doing such things and that it was appropriate to kill them is just mind-boggling.0.90
00:24:19.800Indeed. What Mr Hegler does is he goes round local boroughs, like we were talking about earlier in
00:24:27.640Prestonpan, he goes around local boroughs asking the local boroughs to memorialise these women
00:24:35.660and to grant them something in their memory. And he's had, apparently, a really great success
00:24:43.120in this. He's had as many as 50 different local boroughs acknowledge the deaths of these women.
00:24:52.220I think what he's doing is absolutely fantastic. We have a quote here for him. Hartmut said the
00:24:57.420memory of these women remained as relevant as ever today. And he also has spoken a great deal
00:25:03.440about witchcraft and people still being prosecuted for witchcraft in other areas of the world.
00:25:08.900so he's made the same connection with us Zoe
00:25:35.960because they might do all kinds of bad things
00:25:38.200But he's also drawn a comparison between the looking for scapegoats into the modern day issues that are going on in the world with immigration and those sorts of things.
00:25:51.000So the work that he has been doing has been noted throughout Germany.
00:25:55.420He's very well known, I think, in Germany for his work.
00:25:58.360And he continues to campaign to this day.
00:26:01.140He says, I want many more towns to work through the history and think about what injustice was perpetrated.
00:26:08.200i think that's again what we're trying to do just to get people to remember what happened to these
00:26:14.260people and to connect with the injustice that they suffered and he's been successful hasn't he
00:26:21.620he has his one man campaign trying to get authorities to exonerate those victims
00:26:28.560he sends emails he makes phone calls he does lectures around germany to raise awareness