Friday Follies: Trick or Treat



Now, I have to be honest with you; trick-or-treating as we know it wasn’t practiced during the Regency era. But the elements that go into trick-or-treating have a rich and ancient history.

The custom of trick-or-treating combines two very old Celtic traditions: guising (wearing costumes and masks as a disguise) and souling (also spelled soaling), where the poor would knock on people’s doors to ask for ”soul cakes” (food) or money. In return, the supplicants would offer to pray for the souls of departed loved ones.

If “soul cakes” were the original “treat,” the “trick” in trick-or-treat has its origins in the pranks that were often played on Halloween night. There’s evidence that Halloween mischief-making goes back at least a couple of centuries. 

There’s a line about “fearful pranks” in Hallowe’en by Scottish poet John Mayne, a 1780 poem about Halloween celebrations that may have influenced Robert Burn’s poem (described in this post) on the same theme half a decade later.  

Throughout the years, pranks continued to be a popular feature of Halloween, and they took many forms. A lot of pranks focused on people’s homes and property, and anything left lying around was fair game for mischief. Belongings would be carted away, cows let loose, or wagons taken apart and reassembled elsewhere, like on a roof.



In more modern times, pranks have included egging houses, toilet-papering trees, ringing doorbells, soaping windows and even the rather disgusting practice of leaving a bag of dog excrement on someone’s doorstep, and setting the bag on fire before running away.  

As the 20th century progressed Halloween pranks began to take a darker turn; in fact, during the Great Depression of 1930s Halloween was often all trick and no treat. In some big cities around the country, kids, especially those from the poorer areas or  “the wrong side of the tracks” would use cork to darken their faces and parade through the streets, knocking over garbage cans, coating windows with candle grease, setting fires and causing other sorts of property damage.

By the end of the decade civic leaders, fearing for the safety of their citizens, sought to put an end to destructive Halloween pranks and misbehavior. And these leaders began to look for other ways kids could have fun on Halloween night. Trick-or-treating began to look like the answer.

Trick-or-treating had been invented by the 1930s; it just wasn’t widely practiced. In 1921 the town of Anoka, Minnesota held the first official civic Halloween celebration and is credited with introducing trick-or-treating as a holiday event. 

And the term “trick or treat” was used in print for the first time in the October 1939 issue of American Home Magazine. An article in the magazine described how a homeowner used treats to disarm pranksters who were intent on candle-greasing her windows.



But the whole business of Halloween pranks and trick-or-treating was put on hold when World War II broke out in the early 1940s. There was a lull in Halloween night disturbances during the war years; after all, who needed Halloween to make trouble when there was already so much terrible mischief going on in the world? 

But after the war ended, attention went back to preventing Halloween pranks. And trick-or-treating – emphasis on treat instead of trick – began to be promoted as an alternate activity for Halloween night.

It’s a classic bargain, Mafia-like in its simplicity: Give me something I like and I won’t harm you or your property. Boomer kids of the 1950s and 60s really got into trick-or-treating, and the demand for Halloween costumes, candy and decorations grew along with them. Today, Halloween is a multi-billion dollar industry and it shows no sign of slowing down.

This classic 1952 Disney Halloween cartoon featuring Huey, Dewey, and Louie helped make trick-or-treating a national phenomenon in the mid 20th-century. Watch how Donald Duck learns the hard way what can happen if you try to cheat trick-or-treaters on Halloween night:



Happy Halloween!



Images from Wikimedia Commons

Sources for this post include:
  • American Favorite Holidays, Candid Histories, by Bruce David Forbes, University of California Press, Oakland, California, 2015 
  • The Real Halloween, Ritual and Magic for Kids and Adults, by Sheena Morgan, Barron’s Educational Series, Hauppauge, New York, 2002 
  • Death Makes a Holiday, A Cultural History of Halloween, by David J. Skaal, Bloomsbury Publishing, New York, NY 2002

Madame Tussaud

Marie Tussaud late in her life, circa 1840


What do Benjamin Franklin, Marie-Antoinette and Grumpy Cat all have in common? The answer involves Madame Tussaud.

More than just a name on a wax museum, Madame Tussaud was a real historical figure whose long life not only encompassed the Regency era but was more colorful than anything the most imaginative fiction writer could invent. She barely survived the horrors of the French Revolution and lived on to devote her considerable artistic skills to bringing death to life - in wax.

She was born Anna Maria (“Marie”) Grosholtz in Strasbourg, France, in 1761 during the time of the monarchy or ancien régime. Her mother, widowed right before little Marie was born, supported herself and her daughter by working as a housekeeper for a Swiss physician, Philippe Curtius, who also happened to be an expert in anatomical wax modeling.

Curtius went to Paris in 1765 to establish a business making wax portraits. He worked on some famous figures, including a head of Madame du Barry, the last mistress of Louis XV who was famed for her beauty. After a few years, Mrs. Grosholtz took her daughter to Paris to join the doctor’s household as he continued to make a name for himself with his sculptures.

Madame du Barry by Francois-Hubert Drouais


Marie’s inner artist emerged as she grew older and Curtius, recognizing her talent, took her under his wing, teaching her the art of wax modeling and sculpting. In 1777, she made her first wax figure, a sculpture of Voltaire. Over the next decade she perfected her skills, making figures of famous people such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Benjamin Franklin (America’s first ambassador to France in 1778), celebrities of their time.

Things were going very well for Marie in Paris. Her artistic talent caught the attention of the king, Louis XVI, who hired her to come to his palace in Versailles and tutor his sister Élisabeth in drawing and modeling. 

Princess Élisabeth by Louise Vigee Le Brun circa 1782


Then in 1789 the old order in France was turned completely upside down by the French Revolution. Suddenly, having royal connections wasn’t such an advantage. The monarchy fell and Marie was arrested. Thrown into La Force prison, for a time Marie shared a cell with Joséphine de Beauharnais, the future Empress of France and wife of Napoleon.

Marie seemed destined to share the same fate as the king, the queen, her pupil  Élisabeth, Madame du Barry and the 40,000 or so others who lost their heads to the unforgiving blade of the guillotine. But just when her execution seemed certain – even her hair had been chopped off in preparation – she was unexpectedly released.

She was saved through the intercession of a French actor and revolutionary, Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois, who was a friend of Curtius. As a member of the Committee of Public Safety during the Reign of Terror, Collot was able to influence his fellow revolutionaries to spare Marie’s life. Despite the clemency he showed Marie, Collot was no hero; he condemned over 2,000 people to death in the city of Lyon during the Terror.

 Collot d'Herbois by François Bonneville, late 1700s 



In exchange for her release, Marie promised the Assembly she’d make death masks and sculpt wax models of the heads of famous victims, people like Jean-Paul Marat, a Revolutionary leader who was assassinated in his bathtub, as well as other notables who’d been guillotined, including Marie-Antoinette.

Relieved to be out of prison, Marie set about her grisly task. In her memoirs, she says she combed through the bodies of guillotine victims looking for famous heads, though that claim has never been verified.

In 1794 the Reign of Terror ended, and its chief architect, Maximilien de Robespierre, met the same bloody fate he’d imposed on thousands of others at the guillotine. Tussaud made a wax sculpture of the dead revolutionary’s severed head and added it to her collection. Her inventory of wax heads expanded further that same year when her mentor, Curtius, died and left her his collection.



Maximilien de Robespierre circa 1790  


The following year, 1795, Marie married a civil engineer, François Tussaud. Over the next few years, they had three children including two sons (François and Joseph) and a daughter who died at birth.

Then Marie’s life took another fateful turn in 1802 when she got an invitation to exhibit her work in London. The Treaty of Amiens had calmed relations between France and England, so she was able to go, taking her collection and her 4-year-old son Joseph with her. But when it was time to return to France, the Napoleonic Wars were raging and she couldn't travel back to the Continent. So Marie stayed in Britain and took her collection on tour throughout England and Ireland.

The tour was a big success. So much so that in 1822, her son François came to England to join her and become part of the family business. With her sons beside her, Madame Tussaud never went back to her husband in France.

After touring her work for decades, in 1835 Madame Tussaud created a permanent home for her wax figures in London on Baker Street. She also continued to sculpt, augmenting her collection with wax models of notorious English criminals and murderers. 

Portrait study of Marie by her great-grandson John 


Not everyone was a fan of Tussaud’s artwork. A writer for Punch Magazine referred to her exhibition as a “chamber of horrors” in 1845, but there's evidence that Marie had already used that phrase in her advertising a few years earlier. 

The Chamber of Horrors is a well-known feature of Madame Tussaud's wax museums, and it often contains not just wax renditions of guillotined heads but also nightmarish scenes of executions and other atrocities. However, the London museum’s Chamber of Horrors may have been too graphic for general consumption; it's been closed since April 2016 as a result of complaints from visitors, especially families with young children.

Tussaud spent the rest of her long life in England, where she died in her sleep at age 88 in 1850. Her grandsons opened a museum for her collection on Marylebone Road in London in 1884, and it’s been there ever since, despite being ravaged by fire and rebuilt in the 1920s.


Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum in London


The collection is kept current with the constant addition of wax figures of the newly famous, such as movie stars, musicians, celebrities, politicians and anyone else who’s managed to catch the public eye. Regency fans might like to know that a wax figure of Colin Firth greets visitors in the London museum, though sadly, he’s not dressed as Mr. Darcy.

Today, Madame Tussaud’s wax museum is a major tourist attraction in London, and also at its 17 other branches around the world. In the U.S. you can find Madame Tussaud museums in Hollywood, Las Vegas, New York City, Orlando, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.  

Now back to Grumpy Cat – here’s a short video of the famous feline getting measured for his body double by the staff of the San Francisco Madame Tussaud museum. Following the clip is another short take showing Grumpy’s reaction upon meeting his animatronic double.



And since Halloween is less than a week away, I’ve added another brief clip, showing a terrifying moment with Vincent Price in the 1953 horror classic, House of Wax. If nothing else, it’ll convince you to steer clear of wax museums at night, especially after hours. The special effects are little cheesy in this scene, but it’s still plenty scary, so be warned!




Resources for this post include:
  • Madame Tussaud’s London  museum website 
  • The History Channel (UK)
  • “Madame Tussaud” on NNDB (beta version)
Images from Wikimedia Commons


Friday Follies: Colcannon

My colcannon, with a few charms waiting to be stirred in


If we’re going to discuss Halloween fortune-telling games played in the British Isles, I can’t omit colcannon, a dish traditionally served in Ireland on Oíche Shamhna (Halloween).

It sounds like some kind of medieval weapon, but colcannon is actually a mixture of potatoes and cooked cabbage or kale. The name comes from the Irish word cál ceannann, or "white-headed cabbage.”

A recipe printed on a bag of potatoes


Colcannon is a popular dish in Ireland year-round, but on Halloween, fortune-telling charms are stirred into the dish. If you find a ring in your portion, you’ll be the next to marry. A doll indicates children are in your future. A thimble foretells spinsterhood for a woman, while a button means a man will remain a bachelor. Finding a coin is a sign that wealth is in your future.

Regardless of the charms, single girls would often wrap a leftover piece of colcannon in a stocking and put it under their pillow at night to dream of their future husbands.

There are many versions of this recipe, but the main ingredients are potatoes, cabbage (or kale) milk or cream, and lots of butter. You can find a traditional Irish version at Irish Central

Celebrity chef Alton Brown created a version using Irish whiskey. It’s not traditional, but who cares?

For my colcannon, I used a heart-friendly recipe from Great Food, Good Medicine by Dr. Miles Hassell and his sister Mea Hassell. It’s similar to the other recipes, except the onions are sautéed in olive oil instead of butter.

Colcannon is so well-known in Ireland there’s even a song about it. Here’s a lilting rendition of Colcannon by the Irish singer Mary Black and her family, with the lyrics below:


Did you ever eat Colcannon, made from lovely pickled cream?
With the greens and scallions mingled like a picture in a dream.
Did you ever make a hole on top to hold the melting flake
Of the creamy, flavoured butter that your mother used to make?

Chorus:
Yes you did, so you did, so did he and so did I.
And the more I think about it sure the nearer I'm to cry.
Oh, wasn't it the happy days when troubles we had not,
And our mothers made Colcannon in the little skillet pot.






Resources for this post include:

  • Halloween Symbols and Customs, Third Edition, edited by Sue Ellen Thompson, Omnigraphics, Inc., Detroit, MI  2003
  • Good Food, Great Medicine: Recipes & Ruminations from a Medical Practice, 2nd Edition, by Miles Hassel, M.D. and Mea Hassell, printed by Lithtex in Hillsboro, OR, 2014
  •  The Real Halloween, Ritual and Magic for Kids and Adults, by Sheena Morgan, Barrons Educational Press, Hauppauge, NY, 2002


Halloween fortune-telling games during the Regency and beyond



Forget Valentine’s Day. In centuries past, it was Halloween when romantic young people got their marital hopes up, especially in the British Isles.

On Halloween night, young folks of centuries past used nuts, apples, and mirrors to try to determine who and when they would wed. 

There were a few different types of popular fortune-telling or divination rituals that were played on Halloween. One way was to write the name of your sweetheart on a hazelnut and throw it in the fire. If it burned steadily your love was true. If it popped and jumped out of the fire, well, that was clearly a sign that your sweetie was unreliable.

If you were having your hard time picking between two suitors, you'd get three nuts to put on the fire grate – one for you, and the other two for the contenders. The nut that stayed beside you indicted who'd be your best bet.

And finally, if you’d already selected your nut, er, future spouse, you could put two nuts on the grate, one for each of you, and watch how they burn. If the nuts burned steadily side by side it meant a happy marriage was in the offing. If one of the nuts rolled away or burst open, you’d better rethink your choice.  

Snap-Apple Night, by Daniel Maclise, 1833. An early 19th century
Irish Halloween party,  showing young couples having fun dancing,
roasting nuts and bobbing for apples. 


A version of this game is described in the Scottish poet Robert Burns’ poem, Halloween. Written in 1785 and published the following year, the poem paints a picture of a fun-filled Halloween party, centering on a few ghostly scares and some light-hearted fortune-telling. 

More importantly, if Burns and his pals were playing these games in 1785, it’s very likely these same traditions were practiced during the Regency, especially in rural areas.

Here’s a bit of Halloween, translated from the Old Scottish dialect Burns used into modern English.

The old goodwife’s well-hoarded nuts,
Are round and round divided,
And many lads' and lasses' fates
Are there that night decided:
Some kindle cozily, side by side,
And burn together trimly;
Some start away, with saucy pride,
And jump out over the chimney

Apples, which like nuts were plentiful around harvest time, also played a role in Halloween fortune-telling games. There were many ways the humble apple was used to foretell marital fortunes.

Notice the S-shaped apple peel on the left.
I hope that's a Sam, Sidney or Sebastian
standing next to her!


For example, if a maiden peeled an apple in one continuous strip on Halloween night and tossed the long peel over her shoulder, the shape it landed in would be the shape of the first initial of her true love's name. I can well imagine that a determined lass would pare several apples if necessary to get the results she wanted.

Snap-Apple is another popular Halloween party game of years past. In this game, apples were hung from the ceiling with string or ribbon. Players would have their hands tied behind their backs and try to use their teeth to grab a suspended apple. The first player to bite an apple would also be the first to get married.

For those of bolder temperaments, there was another way to play this game. You’d get a stick and impale the apple on one side and affix an upright candle on the other. The stick would then be hung carefully from the ceiling, the apple and candle balancing each other on the ends.

Then the game gets more interesting. The candle is lit, the stick is spun. Players, still with their hands tied behind their back, try to bite the apple and avoid the flame. 

If you managed to bite the apple, good luck would be yours. But if you were scorched by the flame, you could expect some bad luck in the following year. Although I think getting burned at a party should be enough bad luck for anyone, at least a while.



And we cannot forget the Halloween classic game of bobbing for apples. One way this party activity was done in the past involved having the players write the names of their desired sweethearts on the apples before setting them afloat in the tub.

With their hands tied behind their backs (I’ve noticed that a lot of these games involve tying hands behind backs) players immerse their faces in the water, trying to grab an apple with their mouths. The sooner you sunk your teeth into the apple with your sweetheart’s name on it, the more successful your pursuit would be. If it took too long to bite the right piece of fruit, either the person you wanted was going to be too much trouble to go after or you weren’t meant for each other.

But mirrors may have been the most popular, and certainly the creepiest, way to look into the future on Halloween. There are many different variations of this method of fortune-telling, but in its simplest form, a young woman would look into a mirror at midnight in the hope of seeing a reflection of her future husband.




And it had to be right at midnight. One vintage card warns against looking into the mirror too early. An impatient maiden was apt to see a “clown or a loon” if she jumped the gun. And when you’re hoping to see a handsome suitor, a clown was a scary prospect even before evil clowns became a terrifying Halloween cliché (thanks to Stephen King's horror novel It). 

One elaborate version of this ritual requires a young woman to back down the cellar steps, in the dark, holding a candle in one hand and a mirror in the other. Imagine doing that in a long skirt! In addition to juggling the mirror and the candle, she had to have a mouthful of salt for the charm to work.

If it were me, I don’t think I’d be coordinated enough to pull this stunt off. But, if a young lady did manage to get down the stairs without any mishaps, when she got to the bottom (in my case, it’d be more like if I got to the bottom) she could look into her mirror and see her future husband gazing at her over her shoulder.

Again, if this were me and I made it that far, I’d probably scream at the supernatural vision and spit salt everywhere.

Careful - there's a pumpkin right behind you!


There’s no record of how many times these games accurately predicted the future, although I’m sure there was many a gullible young miss who claimed to see her soul mate in the mirror at midnight. As far as I’m concerned, if she was willing to walk backward down a rickety staircase in the dark carrying an open flame, and she made it without tripping or setting herself on fire, she could claim whatever she wanted.

There are many other rituals, good luck charms and fortune-telling games people have enjoyed at Halloween over the centuries. They all make our current customs of trick-or-treating or watching scary movies look pretty tame.

So, this October 31 grab a handful of nuts, an apple or two, and a mirror, and if you're lucky perhaps you’ll catch a glimpse of your future on Halloween night. Of course, when our ancestors played these fortune-telling games they ran the risk of getting burned by a hot nut, choking on an apple, or setting their clothes on fire.  

With all those potential hazards, I think their Halloween celebrations were a lot scarier than ours!

 




Resources for this post include:
  • Mythic ImaginationInstitute 
  • Halloween: Romantic Art and Customs of Yesteryear, Diane C. Arkins, Pelican Publishing Company. Gretna, LA 2000
Images from Wikimedia Commons

Friday Follies: Witches We Love to Hate


The Wicked Witch of the West
(MGM publicity photo)


Following my last post on real-life suspected witches, I thought it'd be fun to make a list of fictional witches we love to hate – the hags and crones that form popular notions of what a witch looks and acts like.

A comprehensive list of witches in literature, film and other forms of media would take multiple pages and lots of patience to read. So, for this special Friday the 13th edition of Friday Follies, here's my pick of a few classic witches, in chronological order:


1. The Weird Sisters in Macbeth (Shakespeare, 1603-1607)


Macbeth and Banquo see the witches for the first time, 
painted by Théodore Chassériau, 1854

“Double, double, toil and trouble/Fire burn and cauldron bubble . . .”

Perhaps the most famous literary depiction of witches is in William Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth, written in the early 17th century. The hideous hags are deliciously evil, gleefully leading Macbeth to his doom. Some critics think that Shakespeare’s witches are modeled on the three “Fates” of classical Greek mythology. In fact, in the play they are referred to as the “weird sisters” more often than “witches,” and “weird” may have been derived from “wyrd,” the old English word for fate. But no matter how they got their name these witches steal the show, and being cast as one of them is a great part to snag in any high school production of the play.


2. The Witch in Hansel and Gretel (German fairy tale recorded by the Brothers Grimm in 1812)


Illustration of the witch with Hansel and Gretel
by Arthur Rackham, 1909 


Now, this is a truly terrifying story to tell a child. A brother and sister are deliberately abandoned by their parents in the woods. There they encounter a witch, who has a habit of using candy to lure unsuspecting children into her house so she can stuff them in her oven and eat them. How scary is that? The witch, like most fictional witches and many of the women who suffered during the witch hunts, is an older woman who lives alone. Baking cookies and offering treats to the children, she's a twisted version of a kindly grandmother. We cheer when the clever children outwit this witch and kill her. But thanks to the stereotype in this fairy tale, I often think of this fictional witch when I'm in my kitchen baking a tasty treat for my own little granddaughter. She hasn't heard this story yet, and I'm in no hurry to read it to her.


3. The Evil Queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)


The Evil Queen and her alter ego from Disney's
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs



I think it’s the transformation of a beautiful (though cold-hearted) queen to an ugly, murderous witch that’s the scariest part of this story. My husband said that the witch in this movie terrified him when he was a child, and I'll bet he wasn't alone. My guess is that children during the 1930s enjoyed dressing up as this witch when they went to costume parties or out trick-or-treating on Halloween, at least until the next witch on my list came along two years later.


4. The Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz (1939 film adaptation of L. Frank Baum's book)

The Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton)
threatening Dorothy (Judy Garland) in MGM's  
The Wizard of Oz


What upped the fear factor for children who saw this witch in movie theaters is that she was a live person, not an animated cartoon. Everything about her was wicked, from her green skin, claw-like fingernails, crackly voice (especially when she calls Dorothy “my pretty”) and the cruel way she treated Dorothy and her friends, the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion. Though the witch is repulsive, I thought her Flying Monkeys were kind of cool. And I also think that when Dorothy inadvertently kills her nemesis with a bucket of water, it's one of the greatest witch death scenes in cinematic history. (How was Dorothy to know that water kills witches? The little girl from Kansas was only putting out a fire in the witch’s broom – or so she claims.) “I’m melting” may be the best line ever uttered by a witch in the movies.



5. The Sanderson Sisters in Hocus Pocus (Disney film, 1993)

Movie poster for Hocus Pocus 

Though this movie is more comedy than horror, the witches are still frightening. Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy play the Sanderson sisters, an evil trio living in the 17th century and convicted of killing a local girl to steal her youth so they could keep their own. Before the sisters are hanged they manage to cast a spell that will resurrect them in the future under the right conditions. Those conditions occur a couple of centuries later when a new kid in town explores their old house on Halloween night. Brought back to life, the witches relentlessly hunt the town’s trick-or-treating children. 

As in Hansel and Gretel, their evil plan is foiled by a pair of plucky young people (though these young people aren’t siblings, but rather potential boyfriend and girlfriend). This is a modern Halloween classic, safe enough for most kids to enjoy with plenty of thrills and chills.

Here’s a clip showing Bette Midler as Winifred Sanderson literally putting a spell on the town’s parents at a Halloween dance by singing “I Put a Spell on You” with her sister witches: 




Do you have any favorite fictional witches you love to hate? Let me know in the comments.

Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Regency witches



Along with jack o’ lanterns and black cats, witches are iconic images of our contemporary Halloween celebrations. But during the Regency, witches weren’t the comfortable and familiar holiday symbols that they are to us today. The history behind witches was too recent and too gruesome for that, and people living in England during the Regency would have been very aware of that history.

According to historian Suzannah Lipscomb, about 100,000 people across Europe were accused of witchcraft in the three centuries between 1482 and 1782, with an estimated 40,000 to 60,000 executed. Although the majority of the accused were women, they weren’t the only ones put to death for the crime of witchcraft - about a quarter of the victims were men.

In case you’re wondering, in America during the 1692-93 witch trials in the Salem, Massachusetts colony 20 suspected witches (14 of them women) were executed, all but one by hanging. (The unlucky exception was a man who was “pressed to death” by heavy planks and boulders.) Five other Salem suspects died in jail. And during the witch craze in America, there were victims in other areas, not just in Salem. 

The British Isles also had its share of witch trials during this period. A famous one took place in North Berwick, Scotland and involved the Scottish monarch, King James VI. (After England and Scotland unified in 1603 he became King James I of England and Ireland.)


The accused witches of North Berwick kneeling before King James,
illustration from Daemonologie

King James believed that a coven of witches had deliberately stirred up storms in the Firth of Forth as an assassination attempt on him and his wife, and also to disrupt shipping. One poor woman was tortured till she was confessed that she was in league with the devil and did indeed conspire against the king. She was garroted and burned in 1591.

As a result of his personal interest in witchcraft, in 1597 King James wrote Daemonologie, a text that Shakespeare used as a source when writing Macbeth.



King James VI and I,
attributed to John de Critz, circa 1605

Laws criminalizing witchcraft were passed and there were more incidents in Britain, many during the 17th century. In 1621 there was a sensational case in Lancashire centering on the members of two families living in Pendle who were accused of practicing witchcraft. Along with the “Pendle witches" another group known as the “Samlesbury witches” were also tried, though they later acquitted. 

Following the trials, two men and eight women were hanged in Lancaster. The victims probably would have been joined by another family member, an 80-year-old woman, if she hadn’t died in prison awaiting her trial.

And back in Scotland, in 1697 six people were hanged and burned on the word of an 11-year-old girl, ironically named Christian Shaw. There would have been seven executions resulting from her lies if one of the accused hadn’t committed suicide in jail.

Queen Anne, by Michael Dahl, 1705


This madness came to an official end in 1712 when Queen Anne pardoned Jane Wenham, the last woman in England convicted of witchcraft.  My favorite part of that trial was Judge John Powell’s response to a witness who claimed that one of the demonic powers of the accused was the ability to fly through the air.

The judge noted dryly that there was no law against flying. 

Jane was still convicted. But following the Queen’s pardon, she was able to peacefully live out the rest of her life, until her death in 1730.

So, people were no longer executed for witchcraft after Queen Anne's intercession, and the Parliamentary Acts regarding witchcraft were repealed in 1736.

However, that doesn’t mean everyone stopped believing in witches.

That’s something Ann Izzard, who lived in Cambridgeshire in 1808 in the village of Great Paxton, found out the hard way. Her fellow villagers began to suspect her of practicing witchcraft when things started to go wrong in their lives. The “evidence” included fits and bouts of depression among some local young women. And a man on his way home from the market claimed he saw his cart magically overturn.

Clearly, there was a witch at work, or so the villagers believed, and the bony finger of suspicion was pointed at Ann.

A 1579 illustration of an English witch feeding her animal "familiars"


On a Sunday evening in early May, a mob gathered outside the cottage where Ann and her husband lived. They broke into her house and dragged her outside, partially naked, where she was clubbed in her face and stomach. Other members of the mob scratched her hard to make her bleed, in an attempt to get the witchcraft out of her body.

But the abuse didn’t stop there. The next day, the villagers turned their attention to a neighbor, a widow accused of harboring Ann. Finally, when rumors began to surface that Ann was about to be “swum” to determine for sure if she was a witch,  Ann decided to get the heck out of town.

(“Swimming” was one of many tests used on suspected witches. Like similar tests, it was a lose-lose proposition for the unfortunate accused. The test involved tying up a suspected witch, hand-to-foot, and throwing him or her in the water. Sinking and drowning was proof of innocence. Floating was proof of guilt, in which case execution was the likely result. As you can see, there was no good outcome for the unwilling takers of this test.)

If you overlook the beating she took, Ann’s story doesn’t end too badly. Once she was away from her charming village, she brought charges against her persecutors. At the next assizes or local court session, nine villagers were prosecuted for what they did to her.

Now Ann’s story took place well after the so-called period of Enlightenment in Europe when rational ideas were supposed to replace superstitious beliefs. And yet the people in her village were just as convinced as their medieval ancestors that witches were real and powerful – and hence, it was okay to torture and /or kill them.

So this holiday, when you see cute paper cut-outs of witches or children wearing pointy black hats and carrying brooms, it’s important to remember that those are more than just fun symbols. They are reminders of a shameful time in history, when superstition, fear, and mob psychology made people do terrible things to innocent victims.

I wish the witchcraft hysteria of centuries past was a unique example of man’s inhumanity to man. But alas, it’s not even close to being the sole instance of institutionalized cruelty, nor is it likely to be the last.


And that’s a truly terrifying thought for Halloween, scarier than any ghost or goblin. 





Resources for this post include:

Images courtesy of Pixabay and Wikimedia Commons

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