The idea that a person can be harmed through witchcraft existed in many countries. In local cultures, there were beliefs associated with otherworldly ways of influencing people. Cases of magical interference in the lives of citizens were considered in European courts until the end of the 19th century. In an article published in Midland History magazine, historian Thomas Waters explains why sinister legends of witches survived the dark times of the Middle Ages.
In the village of Long Compton, located on the border between Oxfordshire and Warwickshire, the farm laborer James Haywood attacked his neighbor, an elderly Anne Tennant, who died from the injuries inflicted on her. In his defense, Haywood stated that the old woman caused him illnesses and caused misfortune, because of which he could not work. As it turned out, other residents of the village also believed in Mrs. Tennant's abilities.
The Anne Tennant case turned out to be resonant, the newspapers wrote about it actively. Forensic reports have made an invaluable contribution to the study of local beliefs and forced experts to change their view of attitudes towards witchcraft in Victorian England.
They everywhere
During the Victorian era, Oxfordshire and Warwickshire newspapers frequently covered incidents and court hearings involving witchcraft. Most of them were devoted to what is happening in other regions of the country and abroad, but there were also local events.
So, in June 1863, in Warwick, the case of an elderly citizen Thomas Draper was considered, who attacked a woman and hit her on the forehead to bleed her, in the hope that in this way he would "remove the curse from himself." A similar incident took place in the village of Taiso, where a certain Sarah Dixon, "being weakened by the disease," believed that her neighbor Agnes Durham had brought her damage to her. Together with her friend, Dixon broke into Durham's house and severely scratched her hand in the hope of causing the "witch" to bleed and remove the curse.
Other incidents of this kind were also told. Many at that time were convinced that to remove the damage imposed by a sorcerer or witch, it was enough to bleed villainous blood. The same was the motivation of James Haywood, who killed Anne Tennant, - he just did not calculate the force with which he plunged the pitchfork into her.
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English Museum of Witchcraft and Magic Photo: Matt White / Flickr
From the testimony of the caretaker of a local insane asylum in the Haywood case, it becomes clear that these were not isolated cases: "In southern Warwickshire, the belief in witchcraft is extremely common." A local farmer who worked as a laborer said, "A third of Long Compton's residents believe in witches and wizards and name a few people they believe to be." This was also confirmed by Haywood's daughter, who stated that she "often heard the people talk about witches" (although, perhaps, she gave such testimony out of a sense of family solidarity). Moreover, it became known that the farm laborer often visited a "specialist" in witchcraft, who supposedly knew how to diagnose and remove spells.
Crazy or a drunkard?
As well as for the local press, Haywood's case was extraordinary for the court, because it was a matter of murder. During the hearing, the judge interviewed nine witnesses who testified about what the farm laborer believed. These people were asked if they themselves believed in witches and asked to rate Haywood's behavior. The court's interest in this information was not idle: on the basis of this, the actions of the defendant were assessed - whether he can be responsible for the death of Ann Tennant under the law, whether he is sane.
Historians often associate the tendency of the English courts to recognize the belief in witchcraft as a mental disorder with the intellectual tendencies of the 19th century, and especially with the development of psychiatry. Belief in witches already in the 18th century could have become a reason for declaring the defendant insane.
After the testimony of the caretaker of the insane asylum, Haywood was acquitted as insane. The court was finally convinced of this after the words of her husband Anne Tennant, who said that the defendant "had no oddities, except for constantly repeating about witches." However, another witness, farmer James Taylor, referred to such beliefs as "prevalent in the village" and stressed that the locals did not consider Haywood to be an eccentric.
Probably the clearest indication of the farm laborer's madness was that he did kill Tennant, because although the belief in witches was widespread, it was extremely rare to kill people suspected of witchcraft. At the same time, many witnesses testified that Haywood loved to drink and could commit a crime while intoxicated, but for some reason the court did not take this into account. Either way, his case was high-profile, well-documented in the press and left folklorists with a lot of material to think about.
The bible doesn't lie
Victorian journalists and historians considered the belief in witchcraft to be pagan, or "alternative" - in conflict with Protestantism. People drew their information about the supernatural from the King James Bible - a translation of the Holy Scriptures, performed under the patronage of the monarch.
Victorian London Image: Hulton Archive
Two witnesses in the Haywood case said that he was impressed with the way witchcraft was described in the biblical text. (This refers to Leviticus, the censure of witchcraft in the Book of Micah and the description of Simon Magus in the Acts of the Apostles.) The defendant actually took the King James Bible with him when he was sitting in his prison cell awaiting trial.
Autobiographical and folklore sources in the region confirm that the locals drew information about witchcraft primarily from the Holy Scriptures. Even the illiterate learned thematic passages from the Bible by heart. In one of the descriptions of the daily life of the counties, there is a phrase that a mother says to her daughter's question about witchcraft: “Of course there are witches. We read about them in the Scriptures. " That is, people who believed in witchcraft did not consider their views "alternative" or pagan: their religion clearly indicated to them that witches are a reality, that they are really doing what they are accused of.
Knowledgeable people
However, the knowledge of who is a witch and who is not, the locals received not from the Bible, but through rumors and gossip. They were usually produced by the so-called "knowledgeable people" who have studied the Scriptures thoroughly and, from the point of view of society, have the right to identify malicious sorcerers. They were the ones who told the villagers about how to deal with magic and its consequences.
In fact, these were ordinary charlatans. They helped not only to remove the "evil spell", but also to look for thieves, were engaged in astrology, predicting the future and herbalism. They advertised their services in newspapers and received a lot of money for them. "Knowledgeable people" went to the clients on call - basically their job was to hang the next "damned" straw crosses over the doors.
Haywood also visited one of these "knowledgeable people", Mr. Manning. Mr. Manning was a "water doctor", that is, a person who identifies diseases in a sufferer's urine. This is how he found out that the evil eye was to blame for the suffering of his patient, that is, the witch literally "looked badly" at him.
Long Compton Village, 1930s Photo: Warwickshire County Record Office
Together against the rest
It was believed among the villagers that witches were inclined to join forces. So, they believed that sixteen witches live in Long Compton, communicating with each other. Young girls were strictly forbidden to approach such old women so that they would not lure them into their witch's networks.
The practices that Haywood, on the advice of Mr. Manning, applied to Ann Tennant (with the exception of the attack on her) were directed against all the witches in the village. He told her husband that "they are all in his bottle." Haywood was referring to the so-called "witch's bottle", in which urine, nails and hair of the damned were collected and then fried over a fire. This, in theory, was supposed to cause unbearable pain to all the witches who enchanted him.
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Despite the fact that the incident that happened in the village was taken as an example, not only the villagers believed in witches. In the press of Warwickshire and Oxfordshire there are many references to attacks on alleged sorcerers in major cities. It seems that only in London, the British at that time did not blame evil old women who knew black magic for their troubles.
Long Compton residents continued to believe in witchcraft even into the 20th century, as evidenced by autobiographical material from the First World War. One of the villagers recalled: “In those days the people were very interested in witches. As soon as someone fell ill, the pot fell and broke or some other trouble happened, the sorcerers were blamed for everything.
Mikhail Karpov