Pitchforks and Witchcraft in Nineteenth-Century Warwickshire March 1, 2023
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
In this month’s podcast we are looking at the last of the American witches. We also talked a good deal though about their British cousins and particularly witch killings. Here is an especially nasty nineteenth-century witch attack where an individual took it upon himself to do away with a neighbour because she had overlooked his pigs. This particular case offers some interesting insights into how we can measure the level of witch belief in a community. Incidentally, this is, also, a new candidate for the last British witch killing (previous record 1861). The date is September 1875 in Long Compton in rural Warwickshire.
A strange murder was investigated at Long Compton, about four miles from Chipping Norton, on Saturday, the victim being an old woman named Ann Tennant, aged 80 years, the wife of a small dealer residing in the village. The accused, James Hayward, a farm labourer, had been at work on Wednesday, and returned home in company with his father-in-law and a lad. On nearing home, he met the deceased returning from the village baker’s, with a loaf of bread for supper. He ran to her, and, with a pitchfork he was carrying, stabbed the poor creature several times in both legs, and afterwards hit her about the head with the handle of the fork.
Note that the father-in-law and the lad seemed not to have intervened. Were they fellow believers or were they sensible to Hayward’s potential for violence?
Mr. Taylor, a farmer living near, hearing the screams of the woman, ran to the spot and seized Hayward. The woman was picked up and carried to the house of her daughter, few yards distant, and medical aid was summoned, but such was the nature the injuries that death took place in a short time.
The forces of order turned up.
On being taken into custody the prisoner stated to the constable, ‘I hope she’s dead, she was an old witch; there are fifteen more in the village I’ll serve the same; I mean to kill them all. A few days ago I was three hours in bean-field, and could not work, as they had bewitched me.’
A coven then? Hayward later found himself in a cell at Shipston and summoned the superintendent to complain that the water [cup?] he had ‘was full of witches’.
So let’s write this off as a problem of mental illness? We have witch beliefs, we have hints at the belief of bleeding witches, belief in witch paralysis and belief in a coven: not really sure what to make of witches in the water, is this even a reference to urine retention?! But actually it is slightly more complicated. The following comes from a later report from December at sentencing. It begins in the same vein, but there are some curious addenda.
His statement [Hayward] to the police was that the deceased was one of a number of witches in the village who had tormented him for a long time. His conduct in the prison had been that of a weak minded man, and the medical testimony showed that his delusions on the subject of witchcraft were so strong that he was not accountable for his actions. The jury therefore acquitted him on the ground of insanity.
So far so good but…
The evidence given by various witnesses living in the neighbourhood of Long Compton was of an astounding character. The husband of the deceased stated that the prisoner’s father and mother shared his superstition, and frequently said: ‘they (the witches) are at the boy again; they won’t let him alone.’ Mr. Taylor, a farmer, went so far as to assert that one-third of the villagers believed in witchcraft, and he was in some measure corroborated by a local police officer.
Perhaps when dealing with these cases we need to think in terms of four categories of belief: (i) individual (possibly mentally ill); (ii) family (possibly folie a deux); (iii) minority of the community; (iv) majority of the community. At first glance this case is (i), whereas given the final testimony we might even be (ii) or (iii). Having said that the rest of Hayward’s family and neighbours would not presumably have set about a decrepit eighty-year old with a pitchfork…
Any other thoughts on this case: drbeachcombing AT gmail DOT com
