IF GLASGOW was a bishop's burgh before the Scottish Reformation of
1560, the picture which emerges after the Reformation is of a town which
is tightly ruled by a theocracy made up of the provost, bailies,
council, and ministers.
As might be expected, women are mentioned incidentally in the Burgh
Records as providers of services to the town. For example, payment was
made to the town-hall cleaners, ''the weemen quha dichts the
Tolboothe'', on May 5, 1655, and payments were made to those who
provided food and wine to the council on special occasions.
More often brawls between women were settled in the burgh court. A
typical misdemeanour was that of throwing urine over others, as Marian
Alderston did in April 1574. On May 18, 1574, Janet Dunlop was found
guilty of troubling Agnes Martin, by throwing dirt at her window and
spoiling her cheese, bread, and butter, whilst Agnes was also deemed
guilty of throwing urine over Janet. A similar brawl between Margaret
Kinloch and Florence Cunninghame took place in August 1574, when one
called the other ''a priest's whore''.
Sometimes, the arguments could be quite violent; on May 29, 1590,
Elspeth Clogy was accused of throwing stones at Christian Sauchie and
''biting her through the arm and letting the piece of flesh which she
bit, fall into the watter''.
Trespass and theft were also crimes common to women. In April 1574,
three women were found guilty of taking a shortcut through Duncan
Finlay's yard and destroying his grass. In May 1578 Bessie Douglas was
warned yet again about letting her cows stray through the kirkyard dyke
and grazing on the burial ground, and appropriate repairs were
undertaken.
In August 1589 special measures were taken to protect the doocots and
doves in the town, which had been under attack from men shooting and
slaying the stock. On November 11, 1595, Margaret Reid was banished from
the town because of a catalogue of theft.
Women were regularly found guilty of gossiping, quarrelling, or
''flyting'' and were punished in a very public way, chained up with a
metal cage over their heads which contained a mouthpiece to depress the
tongue and prevent speech. A typical example is the case of Janet
Foirside, found guilty of slandering Margaret Fleming in July, 1584, by
saying that she
had tane Duncan Leiche to ane chalmir and had layne with him and usit
her as he thocht guid . . . the bailies and counsell upon the said
Jonetis awin confessioun . . . ordanis hir upoun Monounday nixtocum to
be presentit to the govis and to the brankis to be put in her mowth, and
thair to stand and remane in her mowth during the said Margaret
Flemingis will, and upon the Sounday thaireftir to pas upe to the place
of repentance and thair in presens of the minister for the tyme confes
the foirsaid sclanderous wordis to be maist fals . . . and ask God
mercie thairfoir, the congregatioun and the said Margaret . . .
Church and state regularly combined in this way to keep women in
check, and it is evident from the records that the ''evil doers'' were
periodically successful in damaging or removing the branks. In December
1594, the Glasgow Kirk Session decreed that the branks should be set up
in a public place, and ordered a cart for the purpose of taking harlots
through the town, and a pulley to be made on the bridge whereby
adulterers could be ducked in the Clyde.
There was a complicated sliding scale of punishments and fines for
adultery and fornication which changed when the church thought fit. In
1586 the Kirk Session decreed that the punishment for adultery was ''to
satisfy 6 Sabbaths at the Pillar, bare foot and bare legged in
sackcloth: also to be carted through the town''. On August 16, 1587, the
same Kirk Session decreed the following:
That servant women for single fornication, pay 2obs for her relief
from Cross and Steeple. The man servant 3obs or else be put in prison 8
days on bread and water, thereafter to be put in the jugs. As for the
richer sorts of servants, to be exacted at the arbitriment of the Kirk.
This act not to extend to honest men's sons and daughters; but they to
be punished as the Kirk shall prescribe.
Glasgow Town Council in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
repeatedly prohibited single or ''orray'' women and beggars or vagabonds
of either sex from living alone or renting rooms or houses together. The
magistrates and Kirk Session frequently combined to search out and
legislate against such households. Women living on their own were
obviously considered to be out of control in a patriarchal society where
people's private lives were scrutinised and restricted to a degree which
is hard to imagine. When we consider this atmosphere of control,
repression, contempt and hatred of women, the circumstances of the
witch-hunts in Scotland, whereby women were persecuted, tortured, and
burned to death, with the full support of the church and state, became
easier to understand.
Historians usually seek explanations other than woman-hatred for the
European witch-hunt, or treat it as being some kind of temporary
aberration, unrelated to mainstream historical development. Without
first taking into consideration the oppression of women, some
interpretations often read like a defence of the indefensible.
Witch-hunting in Scotland was sanctioned by the Witchcraft Act of
1563, which made witchcraft a capital offence. The last witch was burned
in 1727 and the Act repealed in 1735, but not without opposition from
many in the church and universities, who thought this was a backward
step.
Because of the nature of the sources, it is impossible to determine
how many women died; whilst the number was thought to be in the region
of 4000, research by the late Christina Larner indicates a figure of
some 1337 executions, with a possible margin of error of about 300
either way. Numbers are in many respects immaterial; the atrocities
perpetrated and the smell of burning flesh are no less terrible for one
as they are for four.
The intensity of the early persecutions can be attributed to the
personal interest of King James VI in the subject. He wrote and
published a treatise on the subject called Daemonology in 1597, and
entertained no doubts as to why it was women who were mainly involved in
witchcraft:
that sex is frailer than man is, so it is easier to be entrapped in
those grosse snares of the divell, as was over-well proved to be trew,
by the serpent's deceiving of Eve at the beginning which makes him the
homelier with that sex sensine.
Working-class women were the main victims of the witch-hunts. A common
factor seems to have been their sharp tongues combined with an inability
to show due deference to authority when required. A quarrel between
neighbours after which one of the parties had sickness in her family or
among their livestock, could in some circumstances end in accusation of
witchcraft.
Women thus accused were arrested, questioned, and examined for the
devil's mark. Often a professional witch-pricker was called in, to test
for the devil's mark by thrusting pins into the body of the accused. If
a pin was thrust in without any sign of blood or pain, it was taken as
conclusive proof. A graphic account of the process survives for
Inverness in 1662:
There came then to Inverness one Mr Paterson, who had run over the
kingdom for the trial of witches, and was ordinarily called the Pricker,
because his way of trial was with a long brass pin. Stripping them
naked, he alleged that the spell spot was seen and discovered. After
rubbing over the whole body with his palms he slipt in the pin, and it
seems, with shame and fear being dashed, they felt it not, but he had
left
it in the flesh, deep to the head, and desired them to find and take
it out. It is sure some witches were discovered, but many honest men and
women were blotted and broke by the trick . . .
The terror of being stripped naked and abused in this way, in the
presence of the good men of the town who would be there to witness it,
was no doubt enough to anaesthetise the senses and thus aid the proof.
An additional important factor was the treatment of imprisoned
witches. They were kept awake, day and night, so that they would have no
further contact with Satan. Sleep deprivation is now widely recognised
as a commonplace tool in the torture kit of oppressive regimes, and it
was practised to perfection in seventeenth-century Scotland.
Confessions were wrung in this way, sometimes with the additional help
of the ''boot'' (for crushing the legs) or the thumbscrews. The
treatment of imprisoned witches was so bad that suicide was often taken
as a way out. After torture, confession, and trial, the sentence could
seem merciful.
Usually, the victims were either hanged or tied to a stake and
''wirreit'' (strangled), and their bodies were burned. Only in
exceptional cases were they burned ''quick'' (alive and conscious).
Burning was deemed necessary on scriptural grounds, taking the words of
Christ in John XV, 6: ''If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a
branch, and is withered; men gather them, and cast them into the fire
and they are burned.''
Sir George MacKenzie of Rosehaugh left behind an account of a woman
who was glad to confess:
I went when I was Justice-depute to examine some Women, who had
confest judicially, and one of them, who was a silly creature, told me
under secresie that she had not confest because she was guilty, but
being a poor creature, who wrought for her meat and being defam'd for a
Witch, she knew she would starve, for no person therafter would give her
meat or lodging, and that all men would beat her, and hound Dogs at her,
therefore she desired to be out of the World; whereupon she wept
bitterly, and upon her knees call'd God to witness all she said.
MOST recorded confessions involve standard details of a demonic pact,
the woman usually agreeing to renounce her baptism and give everything
''from the crown of the head to the soles of her feet'' to the Devil.
Sometimes the Devil appeared in human form, sometimes in animal form;
sexual intercourse took place and the Devil's marks were received.
In return for this, Satan made no great promises. Usually, it was
merely that the witch ''should never want'', a gift which probably
reflected the economic status of the woman. The first recorded
witchcraft cases in Glasgow date from 1597 and are described in
Spottiswoode's History of the Church of Scotland (1655).
Glasgow had only one witch place-name -- Witch Loan -- which survived
into modern times. This probably reflects the fact that there were fewer
prosecutions in the west of Scotland than in the country as a whole;
Dunfermline by contrast had a Witch Loan, Knowe, and Dub.
Glasgow's Witch Loan (later renamed Abercromby Street), was apparently
so named because it was the road along which cattle were driven to
lusher pastures beside the Clyde. Cattle on the high ground -- sick,
stunted, and lacking milk because of lack of feed -- were often
considered to be bewitched. Once past Witch Loan, they became better
again.
There were several epidemics of witch-hunting in Scotland during this
protracted war against women. Burnings were frequent in the 1590s, late
1620s, 1640s, and early 1660s. The sufferings of women in Glasgow were
less than those in parts of Fife and the Lothians, however, and as a
national preoccupation, the hunt is reckoned to have been at an end by
1662. It is therefore interesting to note that two notorious cases
happened in the Glasgow area long after the hunt ceased to be
fashionable elsewhere.
The first is the bewitching of Sir George Maxwell of Nether Pollok in
1677. Along with some neighbouring landowners, Maxwell had received a
commission to put on trial three women in Inverkip in January 1662, so
he was a firm believer in the superstition. When in 1676 he ''was
surprised at Glasgow, in the night-time, with a hot and fiery
distemper'', witchcraft was immediately suspected.
In the investigations which followed, six people were accused of
witchcraft, and five of them were strangled and burned. They were Janet
Mathie, her son John Stewart, Margaret Jackson, Bessie Weir, and Marjory
Craig. Annabel Stewart, daughter of Janet Mathie, was reprieved on
account of her age (she was only nine years old), but was ordered to be
kept in prison.
Sir John Maxwell, son and heir of Sir George, was involved in the
second case -- that of Christian Shaw, daughter of the Laird of
Bargarran -- which racked Renfrewshire in 1696-1700. Sir John Maxwell
had been a Member of Parliament for Renfrew and was Rector of Glasgow
University, but it was in his legal capacity, and on account of his
position as a Privy Councillor, that his neighbour, John Shaw of
Bargarran, turned to him when he believed his daughter was bewitched.
Sir John obtained the necessary commission to prosecute the case, and
was one of the nine commissioners appointed to the preliminary
investigation, which came up with a list of 26 people accused of
witchcraft.
He was also part of a second, smaller commission, which undertook
further investigations into the matter. He was one of the distinguished
Judges who condemned seven people to death for bewitching Christian
Shaw, and was present at the Gallow Green of Paisley on June 10, 1697,
when six of them were strangled and burnt.
This so-called case of the Paisley witches was horrific in its
duration, geographical spread, personal anguish, and cost in human
lives. It began on August 17, 1696, when Christian Shaw reported a
servant, Katherine Campbell, for stealing a drink of milk. Katherine
uttered a curse against the girl, and not long afterwards, Christian
began to suffer hysterical and demonic fits of a frightening nature.
During the course of them, many innocent people were accused of
witchcraft.
The jails were not big enough to hold them, and at one point the
prisoners were divided between the tolbooths of Paisley, Glasgow, and
Renfrew. Payments for the keeping of the witches in the Glasgow Tolbooth
are recorded four times in the Burgh Records between 1697 and 1699.
The sufferings of the accused, some of whom were reported to be
starving, can only be imagined. One, John Reid, who was a smith at
Inchinnan, made a confession and then committed suicide; it was said
that Satan had claimed him. Another, Annabel Reid (who may have been
related), was in prison with two small children and a baby at her
breast, and was let out on compassionate grounds in 1697. A surviving
dittay roll of May 1699 shows that she still stood indicted of
witchcraft, along with 26 others.
THE cream of the Scottish legal profession were involved in this black
episode. Their judgment was aided by a stirring sermon, delivered to
them beforehand by the Reverend James Hutchison, who took his text from
Exodus XI, 18: ''Thou shall not suffer a witch to live.'' Hutchison was
able to prove, amongst other things, that children could be guilty of
witchcraft (two of the accused were young boys), and that it was a crime
particular to poor people, who ''could get their malice and envy
satisfied'' through it.
The dittay roll of May 1699, which is kept in Register House in
Edinburgh, is a document which testifies to the strength of the belief
in witchcraft at this late date. The 26 accused were from Govan and
Glasgow as well as the Paisley area; the charges against them cover many
sheets of paper, pasted into a roll some 12 feet long.
The disgrace, humiliation, panic, and blind terror which these
indictments must have caused to many families over a large geographical
area, in the wake of the execution of six people, is beyond assessment.
Some who witnessed the executions passed on the horror of it to the next
generations.
The duration and infamy of the Bargarran case seemed for a time to
strengthen belief in witchcraft. Apart from the publications on the case
itself, there were others, such as Witchcraft Proven (1697) and the
Tryal of Witchcraft (1705), both of which were published in Glasgow.
In 1699 the Glasgow Synod thought it desirable to have ''those in
readiness at the Justiciar Court that has the skill to try the
insensible mark''. Professor George Sinclair's Satan's Invisible World
Discovered (Glasgow, 1685), which was to become a source-book on
witchcraft for succeeding generations, was also popular.
In recent years, there has been a revival of popular interest in the
Glasgow witches. The Fablevision theatre company devised a play on the
Bargarran case. Anne Downie's play, The Witches of Pollok, dealing with
the Maxwell case, was premiered at the Tron Theatre during 1990.
* Extracted from The Hidden History of Glasgow's Women: The Thenew
Factor by Elspeth King, to be published next week by Mainstream
(#14.99).
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