00:00:00.160Hi, 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 and we're bringing you this podcast
00:00:10.120because we want to tell you about the women who were accused, prosecuted, convicted
00:00:15.240and 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
00:00:22.780and 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.
00:00:33.120Secondly, 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.
00:00:56.300Hello and welcome to episode nine of the Witches of Scotland.
00:00:59.600podcast we're going to open up with some kind of reader's mail I suppose it is in a very social
00:01:04.700media way on the back of our episode Julian Goodyear where we talked about non-capital punishment and
00:01:10.780we weren't entirely sure quite what that meant and said that if anybody knew to get in touch well
00:01:15.480fantastically one of our listeners has been in touch so Charlie Ferguson who is doing her
00:01:21.560dissertation of the witch trials in Ayrshire she had been doing some research in the course of
00:01:26.400doing her dissertation and she found details of a woman called Agnes Hutchin from Ayr who was found
00:01:32.720quote half guilty and what that meant was that she was sentenced to public humiliation where she was
00:01:39.640to repent her sins and confess then she was stripped naked and brought to the markets and
00:01:44.760was forced to confess her crimes and she was then warned if she continued to quote abuse the people
00:01:50.340she would be executed as a witch and Charlie makes a really interesting observation here
00:01:55.860She thinks that this is a really great example, or a horrible example, of the humiliation and sex-related shame and embarrassment that women endured during the witch trials.
00:02:04.720Charlie also went on to give us some more fascinating stuff, which is that in Kilwinning, there's a small plaque that a female artist designed to commemorate the witches of North Ayrshire.
00:02:14.860Bessie Dunlop has a bench in Lynne Glen Del Rye, which is dedicated to her.
00:08:00.160It was the women because as I was researching,
00:08:03.800and this is ongoing research that I'm doing on this
00:08:06.580because I don't feel like I have the full story.
00:08:09.180I was researching these women because it is a women's story
00:08:12.720And I have almost my entire life been a feminist and been a person who has been breaking barriers that have held women back in history.
00:08:23.480And I find that in history in particular, women's stories have not been told.
00:08:27.800And when I read about these witches and discovered that there were over 4,000 people executed for witchcraft in Scotland, and they had never been exonerated or pardoned,
00:08:39.680I thought this film project would be a very good way to get their story told, to say their names, and to possibly somehow get them pardoned or exonerated.
00:08:51.560So one of the goals of my screenplay was to create a platform, one, to get the story told, to say their names, and to also petition the Scottish government for a formal pardon or exoneration of those people who have been wrongly accused of witchcraft.
00:09:08.020we absolutely hope that that's what comes to pass and we're really really delighted that from
00:09:14.120all the way across the pond you've taken the interest in the paisley witch trials and they
00:09:19.940have captured your imagination in such a way to create something to see their names as you see
00:09:25.500your researches weren't only based on paper though you've actually been across here yourself haven't
00:09:32.600Yes, I have. Well, while I was doing my research, I was trying to find specifically about the Paisley witches, the Renfrewshire Witch Hunt, and I found an organization in Paisley called the Renfrewshire Witch Hunt Trust of 1697.
00:09:47.100I reached out to them by email, and I connected with two women that lead this trust, who have been instrumental in my research. They are Liz Gardner and Annette Whitelaw, and they have been extremely helpful in all of my research, pointing me in directions, who else I could contact in Paisley and in Scotland, libraries to go to, where I could do more research.
00:10:13.260So I decided to make a trip across the pond to visit the locations, to meet these women who have been so helpful to me, and to visit the locations that I've already written in the screenplay, and to do more research.
00:10:26.920While I was researching, I made a discovery, and it might be quite controversial, but what I thought was going to be a screenplay about historical persecution of women via witch trials in Scotland became a much bigger story of Scotland's participation in the transatlantic slave trade.
00:10:46.620which was a complete surprise to me that this one story about this witch trial would have a
00:10:53.380connection to this other history of Scotland that hasn't gotten a lot of dialogue. I might
00:11:00.440be getting ahead of myself in the whole story of the witches. Let me start with the beginning with
00:11:07.000the little girl who started it all, Christian Shaw, 11-year-old girl from a wealthy family,
00:11:12.280the Shaw family, of the Begarin estate in Erskine. And at the time, in 1696, Paisley was
00:11:21.280plagued by a series of morbid events. There were mysterious drownings, there were murders,
00:11:28.480there were mutilations, there had been a famine for two years, there was a plague.
00:11:34.060Christian Shaw's own grandfather had disappeared while crossing a river on horseback,
00:11:40.160only to be found months later. His body had been moved. Nothing had been disturbed on his body.
00:11:46.320His clothes were intact. His purse was intact. So it wasn't a robbery, but his right hand and
00:11:52.660his genitals had been removed. And it was assumed that this was some sort of witchcraft or for some
00:11:59.480black mass. So Paisley was ripe for, you know, they were still had one foot steeped in superstition
00:12:08.480And it was just at the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment when scholars were embracing the concept of science.
00:12:16.880And the church played a very big role in keeping those superstitions alive.
00:12:22.080Really, the clergy reinforced the concept of witchcraft.
00:12:26.520You know, it was preached that you had to believe in the devil because he existed.
00:12:30.820And that was a reason why you had to listen to the priests and the clergy.
00:12:33.820But if the devil didn't exist, then there really wouldn't be any reason to have a clergy or a church.
00:12:39.480So the clergy was self-serving in that respect.
00:12:43.120So I think a lot of people still embraced the superstitions and the paganism.
00:12:48.740And as well, the whole concept of the devil and demonology was embraced by King James I.
00:12:57.920He was obsessed with demonology and wrote a book about it.
00:13:01.260And the church was still using this book as a guideline, if you will, when dealing with witches.
00:13:08.420You know, how do you determine someone is a witch and the tests that you can do on them?
00:13:13.520So I think just at this point in time, there were many factors contributing to what became this last witch hunt in Scotland and the last witch trial in Scotland.
00:13:24.780Perhaps not the last witch trial, but the last witch hunt in Scotland.
00:13:27.640And that in itself may be a reason why there was so much documentation on it, because it was the last witch hunt in Scotland.
00:13:35.940Yeah, because we know, don't we Zoe, from early times that for the first outbreak of witch trials, there was very, very little information at all.
00:13:46.100And Scotland just had so many witches, they were just bursting with witches over there.
00:13:50.880It seems like if you look at that interactive map that was created of the witch hunts and the witch trials, it's just like all over Scotland.
00:14:03.100So you started to tell us about the young girl who was at the heart of the witch trials.
00:14:09.300Can you tell us briefly the story of the last witch trial?
00:14:15.080Yes. Christian Shaw, from a wealthy family, the Shaw family, of the Begarin estate, an estate that had been in their family for 300 years, caught their housemaid, Catherine Campbell, a girl from the Highlands, stealing some milk for herself.
00:14:34.540And she told her mother, Christian told her mother, and Catherine was promptly fired.
00:14:40.540And when she was fired, she cursed Christian three times.0.97
00:14:44.960May the devil harl your soul through hell.
00:14:47.840And it was thought that curse and saying the devil's name three times may have summoned the devil.
00:14:53.560Shortly thereafter, Christian started exhibiting series of fits and convulsions and seizures,
00:15:00.420vomiting bones and feathers and straw and braids of hair and needles horrified her parents took her
00:15:10.020to every doctor in paisley and then also the best doctors in glasgow none of whom could find
00:15:18.460anything physically wrong with her it was after several months of doctors visits that the clergy
00:15:26.220stepped in. Reverend Brisbane was an authority and opponent of witchcraft, and he decided that
00:15:34.620there should be a witch hunt and a trial. So they convinced the Privy Council to issue a warrant
00:15:42.460for this witch hunt to give them, I guess, to authorize them. I don't really know how
00:15:48.500Scottish law works. But on 19th of January in 1697, a warrant from the Privy Council was issued
00:15:56.920to question, to witness, to record, and to transmit a report before the council,
00:16:07.380before March 10th of 1697. So during some of her fits, Christian started naming names,
00:16:15.420named about 30 people who she claimed were witches and were causing her torment.
00:16:22.120And most of the people that she named were people that she came into contact with.0.94
00:16:25.740Many of them were disenfranchised social outcasts, vagabond beggars. Of the 30,0.95
00:16:33.560there were eight in particular who, during the trial, were named as Christian's tormentors.
00:16:40.800So after Christian named the 30 people, they were arrested. They were tortured for months to compel their confessions. And then five of the people who had been arrested came forward and they were named as confessors and they named the Paisley Eight, eight people in particular, as Christian Shaw's tormentors and as witches.
00:17:02.820And these confessors, they were three children, three siblings, and two elderly sisters.
00:17:08.800Now, the torture that they experienced for months was sleep deprivation, starvation.
00:17:15.340They would put lighted candles in between their toes and burn them.
00:17:19.880They were a little more extreme than just the watching and waking, which was the sleep deprivation.
00:17:25.080And the witches had their heads shaved because it was thought that witches' hair, women's hair in particular,
00:17:30.740if they were witches, contained certain powers. So after months of this type of torture,
00:17:37.440of course, people would come forward and admit, yes, we were witches, and yes,
00:17:42.120but it wasn't us tormenting Christian. It was these eight people in particular who were doing it.
00:17:48.220And then they took the confession from Christian Shah herself. And once the witches were arrested,
00:17:53.000all of her symptoms stopped magically. So the trial was conducted at the Bogaran estate
00:18:01.320in the Shah's house. And there was the commissioners were made up of eight or nine
00:18:09.080men, all noblemen of the landed gentry. Many of them were relatives of the Shah family.
00:18:15.380and there was a jury of nine men, also noblemen and landed gentry. And it was, for most practical
00:18:23.900purposes, a kangaroo court. It was very biased in the favor of the shahs. And Christian testified.0.77
00:18:31.400She named Margaret Lang as her most aggrieved tormentor, Catherine Campbell, Agnes Naismith,
00:18:39.320Margaret Fulton, John Lindsay at Barlock, John Reed, John and James Lindsay, otherwise known as
00:18:47.200the Bishop and the Curate. And John and James Lindsay were brothers. They were adult brothers
00:18:53.180who were known to be practicing witches, which is why they were called the Bishop and the Curate.
00:18:58.480They were witches of some church. And I have read that some references say that they were
00:19:05.700children. There were a John and James Lindsay who were children, but these were not the John
00:19:10.780and James Lindsay who were executed. They were indeed adult men. The others, John Reed was a
00:19:18.800beggar. John Lindsay at Barlock, I think he may have been a tenant farmer on the Begarin estate.
00:19:28.260So Christian would have seen him. Margaret Hulton probably had dementia. She talked to the fairies
00:19:34.520regularly. She was just a town character. She was also a widow beggar. Agnes Naismith was a beggar0.85
00:19:42.300known to Christian Shaw. She regularly stopped by the Shaw's house to ask for alms and to beg for1.00
00:19:49.700food. And Catherine Campbell, as I said, was the housemaid in the Shaw residence. And Margaret
00:19:56.340Lang, who is the protagonist of my screenplay, was a midwife, too rich and poor. She was very pious.0.89
00:22:09.820The screenplay, it's been very well received.
00:22:12.960It's shortlisted on the blacklist, which is known to screenwriters.
00:22:17.180It's sort of a metric for screenwriters.
00:22:20.080It's sort of the golden seal of screenwriting, unproduced screenplays.
00:22:23.880It's been number one on the red list, which is another metric.
00:22:26.940It's been number one on the red list for the last year and has won a Stowe Story Lab selection, a Blacklist Lab selection, and has won 10 Best Screenplay Awards.
00:22:37.920As I said, I'm the writer and the producer.
00:25:07.200So I got this document, this very old leather bound document and the very fancy script.
00:25:14.260written and it was very difficult to read. And at the back of it, it had listed the confessions at
00:25:21.840the stake of Margaret Lang and several of the other witches. And I was, you know, having done
00:25:27.960several years of research on this and having written a screenplay about it with Margaret
00:25:32.920Lang as my protagonist, you can imagine my excitement at reading this. I had goosebumps.
00:25:39.000So I was, my hands were shaking. And as I finished reading it and I closed the manuscript, literally at the moment I closed the manuscript, half the ceiling lights went out. And I looked around and there were a few other people sitting in this section and nobody moved and nobody even noticed it. And I thought, oh my gosh, oh my goodness. It's a sign. It's a sign from the grave. It's Margaret Lang telling me to write the story. And I'm freaking out internally.
00:26:06.940And then after about five minutes, the librarian stood up and started walking towards me.
00:26:12.840And I thought, oh, she knows this has happened before.
00:26:14.960She knows, she knows she's going to come in and confirm it.
00:26:17.800And she walked behind me and then she started waving her arms up and down.
00:26:54.380Because I wanted to do some more research.
00:26:56.580I mentioned before that I discovered there was connection between this particular witch trial and Scotland's transatlantic slave trade.
00:27:04.980And the five confessants that came forward at the trial all claimed that they had been witches.
00:27:12.480They all claimed that they had met the devil and that the devil was a black man.
00:27:17.620Now, some people have said to me, well, that just means, you know, he had a swarthy complexion.0.99
00:27:23.380Now, as a woman who lives in a country, the United States, with her own slavery history, when someone says it's a black man, you have to believe them.0.90
00:27:32.580Because I think to deny that would reinforce the erasure of slavery history. And we as countries in the West have to own up to it and we have to recognize it and we have to admit to it.1.00
00:27:50.020So then that led me on another branch of research. At the time, I wasn't aware that Scotland was involved in slavery. That's when I discovered the denial. It Winnius, the book that was written about it, and that Scotland had plantations in the West Indies. The first plantation was Barbados in 1655.
00:28:12.340My research on this continues, and I've been following other people on Twitter, Sir Geoffrey Palmer. He's been doing a lot of research about the slavery history. So really, the screenplay is about the intersectionality of the persecution of women and the persecution of enslaved people in Scotland.
00:28:55.240Did that mean that there were people who were slaves who were brought over to Scotland then?
00:29:01.720Yes, there are other academics whose lectures I've listened to. There were between 70 and 90 enslaved Africans in Scotland in the 17th and 18th century.
00:29:15.460Even though slavery was not recognized in slavery, plantation owners were allowed to bring their enslaved Africans to Scotland for the purposes of apprenticing them in trades to increase their value.
00:29:31.920And then later on, it became a sort of status symbol to have an African or enslaved African as a servant in your household in Scotland.
00:29:42.360And as you know, Glasgow was a big shipping port. Many of the plantation owners lived there and the proceeds for many of the plantations built Glasgow University. And I think, I don't know about Edinburgh, but I know Glasgow University profited from the plantations.
00:30:01.520And there are streets in Glasgow named Cotton Street. So there is a whole history there that there isn't a national dialogue about. And I'm hoping that if this film gets made, it will open up a dialogue so that preparations, accountability, exonerations can begin.
00:30:20.780Well, what you've explained to me there has certainly broadened my understanding of things. And it's a really interesting perspective on Scotland's history when we're looking at the witch trials that I simply hadn't considered before. So that's definitely something that in the future we'll want to research in a big way.
00:30:40.100Julia, can I simply say I am so delighted that you came to speak to us today. The interest that you have in the Scottish witches is appreciated very much by us here over in Scotland and I'm absolutely delighted that your screenplay is getting all the plaudits that it no doubt deserves because that means hopefully one day in Scotland we will be able to have a premiere of your screenplay
00:31:08.320and I very, very much hope that we can all be there supporting you.
00:31:11.120Oh, thank you so much for having me on.
00:31:13.040I am determined to have this film made in Scotland.
00:32:36.280And that's why we're really hoping that we can continue to engage people Scotland wide in order to try and encourage people to join the campaign for a pardon.
00:32:47.060And we just want to thank you for highlighting it and thank you for seeing the women's names.
00:32:52.200It's been a great pleasure to speak to you today.
00:32:54.620Thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure to be here.
00:32:57.740And I have to say that I love your podcast.
00:33:00.720I just enjoy so much what everyone has to say on it.
00:33:03.880And, you know, as I said, one of the goals was to get all of the Scottish witches, 84% of whom were women, to get them officially pardoned because it matters.
00:33:14.720The truth matters so much and saying their names matters so much.
00:33:26.120Thanks so much for listening to episode nine of the Witches of Scotland podcast.
00:33:29.840as ever please remember to tell people about the podcast to rate us to share it with people because
00:33:36.460the more people that know about it the better a chance we have of being successful with the
00:33:40.360campaign thanks so much bye bye like a child