Drilling Out Demons in Nineteenth-Century France October 7, 2014
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
Folie a deux was once used by psychologists to describe shared madness. Not just one person, but two or three or many more experience the same unreasonable convictions. Strange History wants to offer a short series of cases of shared madness within households, i.e. people living together, typically families. It should be noted that for all modern psychology found a name for the phenomenon, psychologists have not really come close to explaning how it is that groups of people living together step outside the bounds of reason. This one comes from the end of 1886.
A terrible crime has just been committed in France. A miller woman, named Jallu, had four children, two sons and two daughters. The elder daughter, Esther Julia, ‘Was pretty, and conscious of the fact’. She had also some education, and was a great favourite in the village, where the other inmates of the mill were disliked and feared.
That ‘disliked and feared’ brings us straight to a problem with these cases. Are the inhabitants acting strangely because they are momentarily/permanently demented or are they acting strangely because they have a series of unpleasant embedded ideas, long confirmed in the confines of the home? If the second it would be necessary to understand where the brothers got the notion of drilling the demon out of Esther. This might be the cue for some readers to skip a a paragraph.
One day her family began to affirm that she was possessed of the demon of pride. There was an evil spirit in Esther’s body, and the brothers Jallu declared to everybody that they would in some way drive it out. After ruminating upon the matter for some time they barred the doors of the mill, and seizing their sister threw her on the floor. One of them held her down while the other bored holes her with an augur. The demon was to escape out of her body by these openings. While the screams of the tortured girl were half drowned by the noise of millstones turning rapidly, two women—the mother and the sister—were actually kneeling beside her praying for the success of the operation. Four holes were bored, one in the forehead, one in the body, and one in each leg.
The writer here is well aware of the moral ambiguities involved: was this really madness?
Whether these ignorant peasants really imagined that they could drive the demon of pride out of their sister, or whether they premeditated the murder they committed mattered very little for Esther, who, of course, died under the operation.
It is certainly striking that the family kept up their act: something found in other similar cases. Though note that the strict French authorities chose the mental asylum over the courts.
When the inhabitants of the surrounding country came to inquire after Esther, when she had not been seen for several days, the two brothers and the sister appeared at the door armed with hatchets, and threatened to strike any one who should dare to approach them. The gendarmes were at once informed of the occurrence, and the inmates of the mill having been seized, were sent to a madhouse
Other cases of folie a deux or better still explanations: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
26 Oct 2014 Chris from Haunted Ohio Books writes: In Lancashire Folk-Lore: by John Harland et al, there’s a gripping story of a family possessed: A bit of the drama (starting on page 92)
Towards the close of the sixteenth century, seven persons in Lancashire were alleged to be “ possessed by evil spirits.” According to the narrative of the Rev. John Darrell, himself a principal actor in the scene, there lived in 1594. at Cleworth (now called Clayworth), in the parish of Leigh, one Nicholas Starkie, who had only two children, John and Ann; the former ten and the latter nine years of age. These children, according to Mr. Darrell, became possessed with an evil spirit ; and John Hartlay, a reputed conjuror, was applied to, at the end of from two to three months, to give them relief, which he effected by various charms, and the use of a magical circle with four crosses, drawn near Mr. Starkie’s seat, at Huntroyd, in the parish of Whalley. Hartlay was conjuror enough to discover the difference between Mr. Starkie’s table and his own, and he contrived to fix himself as a constant inmate in his benefactor‘s family for two or three years. Being considered so essential to their peace, he advanced in his demands, till Mr. Starkie demurred, and a separation took place; but not till five other persons, three of them the female wards of Mr. Starkie, and two other females, had become “ possessed,” through the agency of Hartlay, “ and it was judged in the house that whomsoever he kissed, on them he breathed the devil.” According to the narrative, all the seven demoniacs sent forth a strange and supernatural voice of loud shouting. In this extremity Dr. Dee, the Warden of Manchester College, was applied to, to exorcise the evil spirits; but he refused to interfere, advising that they should call in some godly preachers, with whom he would, if they thought proper, consult concerning a public or private fast; at the same time he sharply reproved Hartlay for his fraudulent practices. Some remission of violence followed, but the evil spirits soon returned, and Mr. Starkie’s house became a perfect bedlam. John Starkie, the son, was “ as fierce as a madman, or a “mad dog ;” his sister Anne was little better; Margaret Hardman; a gay, sprightly girl, was also troubled, and aspired after all the splendid attire of fashionable life, calling for one gay thing after another, and repeatedly telling her “ lad,” as she called her unseen familiar, that she would be finer than him. Ellinor, her younger sister, and Ellen Holland, another of Starkie’s wards, were also “troubled ;” and Margaret Byrom, of Salford, a woman of thirty-three, who was on a visit at Cleworth, became giddy, and partook of the general malady. The young ladies fell down, as if dead, while they were dancing and singing, and “ playing the minstrel,” and talked at such a rate that nobody could be heard but themselves. The preachers being called in, according to the advice of Dr. Dee, they inquired how the demoniacs were handled. The “possessed” replied that an angel, like a dove, came from God, and said that they must follow him to heaven, which way soever he would lead them. Margaret Hardman then ran under a bed, and began to make a hole, as she said, that her “lad” (or familiar) might get through the wall to her; and, amongst other of her feats, she would have leaped out of the window. The others were equally extravagant their proceedings, but when they had the use-of their feet, the use of their tongues was taken away. The girls were so sagacious that they foretold when their fits would come on. When they were about any game or sport, they seemed quite happy; but any godly exercise was a trouble to them. Margaret Byrom was grievously troubled. She thought in her fits that something rolled in her inside like a calf, and lay ever on her left side; and when it rose up towards her heart, she thought the head and nose thereof had been full of nails, wherewith being pricked, she was compelled to shriek aloud, with very pain and fear; sometimes she barked and howled, and at others she so much quaked that her teeth chattered in her head.
There is more, much more of this kind of thing before Hartlay comes to a bad end on the scaffold and the Rev. Darrell is “condemned as a counterfeit” (he made a trade of exorcism and seems to have encouraged “demoniacs” in faking possession.) and deposed from the ministry. But no real explanations.
In these two narratives from Ohio [excerpted from The Headless Horror by Chris Woodyard], there is probably a reasonable medical explanation:
WITCHCRAFT SCARE.
SEVENTEEN FAMILIES AFFLICTED WITH A PECULIAR MALADY
SOME ON THE VERGE OF DEATH
THEY CANNOT SLEEP OR REST AT NIGHT AND KEEP PINING AWAY UNTIL THEY ARE MERE SKELETONS.
Toledo, Jan. 21. Richfield Center, a little village in this county, 17 miles south of here, is in the midst of a genuine witchcraft scare. The little community is composed principally of Germans and are thoroughly convinced that they are being made the victims of some witch or other agent of his satanic majesty. There are 17 families afflicted with the peculiar malady. The thing has been going on for nearly a month and some 30 persons are on the verge of death.
The peculiar malady seizes a whole family at a time from the youngest to the oldest. They cannot sleep or rest at night, and keep pining away until they become mere skeletons. The symptoms in all cases are similar. Several of those afflicted claim that they are being constantly pursued by black cats which make faces and snarl at them. Some of them also claim that certain rooms in their houses are infested with the strange evil spirit, while other rooms are free from its influence.
A.M. Miller came to the city and reported the matter. He is a victim of the strange disease, and had to be carried to and from the carriage which conveyed him, owing to weakness. His wife and four sons are down with the disease and are likely to die.
Richfield Center is located 10 miles from a railroad station. Mr. Miller says that the people firmly believe the whole thing is the work of some witch whom they cannot locate.
Some of the horses, cattle, sheep and swine are victims of the disease.
The people have burned their feather-beds and resorted to other ancient methods in the hope of getting rid of the spell, but they claim they cannot shake it off. Physicians cannot diagnose the malady, but assure the patients that it is due to natural causes, possibly resulting from an unsanitary condition of the village.
Piqua [OH] Daily Call 21 January 1897: p. 3 NOTE: This story suggests that the villagers were suffering from poisoning, perhaps ergot (a fungus infecting rye) or white snakeroot plant (which poisoned the milk of the cows who ate it and the people who drank that milk.) There is also the possibility of some neurological disease like mosquito-borne encephalitis. Richfield Center lay in the former Great Black Swamp, noted for its fevers and agues. Drainage of the swamp began in the 1840s, but was not completed until the 1890s. The burning of feather beds was done because witches might hide witch balls or feather crowns (circular formations of feathers) inside the beds, bewitching the persons who lay in them. See the stories at the end of this chapter for more on the cursed things found inside feather beds.
This article makes it even plainer that the cows were probably the source of the horror.
DEMON CAT
CAUSING ALL THE SICKNESS AND TROUBLE AT RICHFIELD CENTER, OHIO
Toledo, Ohio, January 21. The inclement weather here to-day has prevented any investigator from driving to the bewitched community of Richfield Center, 22 miles west of Toledo. A farmer named Henry Niemen came to this city, however, and fully corroborated the strange story told last night by Farmer Miller when he came to this city to ask for aid. Everything about the case sounds like a story from the days of Salem witchcraft, the sick now numbering the majority of individuals in 20 families. All claim to have been visited by a demon cat, after which they are simply wasted away by a disease that makes them indifferent to life itself. This cat, by the way, has been hunted with the belief that its death would kill the witch who is making the trouble. All other “witch signs” are said to be present. Many cattle have died, and some that are living give bloody milk, feather wreaths in pillows and beds, and one woman has burned 10 pounds of them which she claims had formed a wreath as hard as stone. The sick claim to be unable to stay in their beds and sleep in the kitchen and living rooms. One man took his entire family to his barn, but were chased back by the demon cat. Miller’s relatives, who went back with him to nurse the sick, first visited a priest, who is said to have given them directions for laying the evil spirit.
Cincinnati [OH] Enquirer 22 January 1897: p. 1
