Two mass miscarriages of justice haunt the United Kingdom. The first is the roughly estimated 2555 people executed for alleged witchcraft from the 16th to the early 18th century. The second is the more recently scandal of 900 people prosecuted by the Post Office or in the case of Scotland, the legal authorities headed by the Scottish Crown Office.
In the latter, just less than 100 post-officer managers were prosecuted for an alleged fraud as a result of errors made by a badly designed computer program 'Horizon.' Two proposed pardons are supposed to be imminent where the Scottish parliament will exonerate both victims through bills. Unfortunately, the former bill has been postponed due to a technicality and the second bill has not even been formulated never mind passed. The victims of current injustice wait, wait, and wait.
Dunning is a village in Scotland where tourists don't pay it any attention. They casually drive through it to the more alluring tourist attractions. It seems another dull, drab and monotonous gray village you'd quickly pass through. But this would be a misleading impression. Look closer and you'll notice a striking monument where a thin column with a cross stands on huge bricks with the words daubed in white paint 'Maggie Walls, burnt as a witch, 1657.' Despite on-going attempts to erase this inscription, people continue to repaint the words again and again. It is as if they are saying, "Don't forget what happened!"
But who was Maggie Walls? There are no local written records of such a woman being burnt as a witch. This woman remains almost inscrutable. Some say no such person exists and the name refers to all witches. But when we turn to oral sources the stories suggest this woman had a real identity. In one of her stories, Jessie Smith claims that Maggie Walls was a gypsy folk healer who was savagely attacked and murdered by local villagers who deemed her a witch. Scottish travelers claim that she was a harmless woman who was a faith healer who helped people with medical problems. They even regard her as one of their guardian angels who comes to their tents to warn them of some impending danger such as a fire or an attack {see Jess Smith's “Sookin' Berries: Tale of Scottish Travelers,” Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2008}.
This case indicates how complex it is to write an exact account of the history of the Scottish witch-hunts. The historian's task is confounded by executions which sometimes went unrecorded, evidence which was either tampered with or erased as well as confusion about who and when an alleged witch was executed. For instance, take the case of Kate MacNiven who was executed as a witch. Some say she was executed in 1583, but others claim she was executed in 1615 and 1715. Old rumors, hearsay, speculation and embellished storytelling also do not help.
Confused records or not, it is impossible for the Scots to forget this tragic period of history. Those events have scarred the landscape. You often come across a spot in the landscape which tells a story of a witch or persecuted witch.
Milngavie, Scotland.
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Near the town of Milngavie on the outskirts of Glasgow, in Scotland, there is a small lake called 'the Pond of Drowning.' I was told that this was a pond used to drown accused witches. Further along there stand three stones supposed to have been thrown in a competition by three witches. The place is thought to have been a spot used by witches to perform ritual sacrifices. People avoid this spot like the plague.
Historians claim that as many as 4000 witches were prosecuted, and about 2555 executed between the 16th century and the early 18th century. More witches were executed in Scotland than anywhere in Europe save for Germany. Claire Mitchell, a lawyer who is spokesperson for the 'Witches of Scotland Campaign' states that –
“Per Capita, during the period between the 16th and 18th century, Scotland executed 5 times as many people as elsewhere in Europe, the vast majority of them women. We absolutely excelled at finding women to burn in Scotland. Those executed weren't guilty so they should be acquitted.”
The reasons behind the witch-hunts were first a deeply-rooted belief that witchcraft was responsible for many problems such as illness, disease, a bad harvest, settling old scores which had erupted in village, the rise of a new intolerant religion, the need for a convenient scapegoat, and very importantly, a dramatic change in European laws which tilted the balance between the accuser and the accused. Whereas previously it was very difficult for anyone to bring an accusation against someone else for witchcraft {they needed very solid evidence and if they failed to prove their case they could face stern punishment for false accusations…} now they could feel more emboldened. Without this last decisive change in the law the machinery for launching such cases en-mass would not be possible {see Norman Cohn's book 'Europe's Inner Demons, The Demonisation of Christians in Medieval Christendom, London: Pimlico, 1993}. But one of the main reasons for persecution of witches was undoubtedly misogynist.
A bill introduced to the Scottish parliament by the member Natalie Don aims to offer all witches a posthumous pardon. The bill will acquit all those women and men accused of witchcraft from the 16th to the 18th centuries. Although the former Minister for Scotland Nicola Sturgeon offered an apology to those persecuted for witchcraft, some Scots are seeking a full pardon. Unfortunately the bill was postponed last November for technical reasons when Natalie Don assumed another job.
But why now? Is this not a bit late? The grim events happened 500 years ago. Aren't there more urgent contemporary questions to be confronted?
Well it is not just history. Those questions raised by the bill are still real and relevant. We have to acknowledge the past as well as present cases of injustice. People continue to falsely prosecute and wrongfully accuse people of crimes they never committed.
Just look at the current Post Office scandal. As many as 900 post officers throughout the United Kingdom were prosecuted on the basis of evidence from a defective digital accounting system. In Scotland, as many as 100 were affected by those accusations. As Scotland has its own legal system separate from England, the accused were prosecuted by the Crown Office and procurator Fiscal Service. Those people who prosecuted those cases are still attempting to partially, if not wholly justify their actions. For instance, the Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain even told the Scottish parliament that "Not every case in which Horizon evidence present will represent a miscarriage of justice." She wonders why so many of the accused don't come forward when invited to review their cases. It does not occur to her that the accused deeply distrust her and do not wish to face another trauma. Given her statements before the Scottish parliament this fear might be well justified. It would be better to push through a bill to pardon all the accused than face further abuse of justice in the courts.
But it is crucial to grasp that one of the major reasons for those miscarriages of justice from 1999 to 2020 was a radical change in the law which allowed previously inadmissible evidence admissible. Before 1999 computer data would not be taken seriously as sufficient or convincing evidence. Without misplaced confidence in technology and programmers those cases would never have been prosecuted. It also starkly indicates a lack of critical thinking from legal circles or worse, a desire to shift the blame for problems on to innocent people. What the persecution of witches and post office workers indicate is that all it takes is one new drastic change in the law which unfairly tilts the blame on to the accused from the accusers to create mass miscarriages of justice. There also seems to be a lack of practical common sense among senior managers and judges.
A second reason for the relevance to this case is sexism is very widespread in Scotland and all over the World. It has not gone away and cannot be swept under the carpet. Survey after survey in Scotland indicates that sexism is endemic in Scottish schools and both female school students and teachers face humiliating mental as well as physical abuse on a daily basis. In fact, the scale of the problem has soared. We are living in a more angry and aggressive Scotland where the rhetoric of abuse has largely replaced open-minded discussion. Women whom men don't like are still told 'you are an old witch.'
A third reason is that Scotland could at least send a powerful message to other places in the World that persecution of people for witchcraft is highly questionable and unjust.
There are still many countries throughout the world which persecute people for witchcraft. Women and children are still a targeted by modern witch-hunts in Papua New Guinea, India, and African nations. In Ghana, a charity group called the Sisters of Mercy stated in their Global Sisters Report in 2020, that they had to offer refuge to women accused of witchcraft. They had to flee from local people seeking to kill them with machetes.
In Russia, I found out from my study of Russian Folklore that belief in witchcraft still exists among a substantial amount of people. In Jeremy Poolman's book “The Road of Bones,” a woman accused of witchcraft was badly beaten up by those who thought they had cast an evil spell on them. On the 23rd February 2003, two men by the names of Sergei Levodkin and his nephew, Sergei Gretuson, left their home of Trud to go to Lipna to take revenge on 'a witch' who they believed had bewitched them. They accused a woman, Tanya, of putting a spell on them where they could not sleep and were tormented by the spirits of beasts. The two men brutally assaulted Tanya, her sister and her children. Tragically, Tanya's sister died and four of five of their children were critically injured. Tanya was so badly injured she lost the power of speech {See Jeremy Poolman's brilliant book, “The Vladimirka Road: The Road of Bones, London: Simon and Schutcher, 2012}.
If you wander around Moscow you can even come across advertisements from witches who promise to protect or free you from the harm of evils spells called 'porcha' or spoiling. This amounts to a harmful spell, inflicted by a witch, to render their victim ill or sick. I encountered a woman who claimed to have been a victim of such spoiling on her wedding night. Her mother-in-law, who was against her son marrying her, cast a spell on her where her body was frozen from moving. The woman {whom I can't name} told me that her mother in law had even confessed to a priest that she had made her ex-husband fatally ill with magic, in order to take possession of his apartment.
There is even academic research where folklorists have visited regions of Russia where they interviewed and encountered victims of sorcerers who had been sent some kind of demon which entered and made a home in their body and took control of them. A sorcerer would create a demon, known as a 'poshibka,' make a spell, and blow it in the form of a piece of straw or insect, towards the intended victim or would offer the victim some food which contained this poshibka.
A rare insight into how those Russian sorcerers went about performing their spells was presented by the academic Olga Khristoforova, who from 1999 until 2005 undertook field work into villages in the Verkhokam, the upper Kama region of Russia. She interviewed people from the Aboriginal Komi Pemiaks, who had managed to preserve some of their archaic beliefs, customs, and culture. Khristoforova and other academics found that old ideas of demonic possession as well as inflicting harm on people still existed among local people {You can find an article by Olga Khristoforova in Russian called ‘How Do Ikota Look?’ in a work published by the Russian State Humanities University, Moscow, in a book titled “In Umbra : Demonology as a Semiotic System, 2012}.
And this lingering belief in witchcraft finds fertile soil. A recent survey indicates that Russians spend as much as an annual 2 billion rubles on paying for the services of magicians. This comes almost as close to the figure spent on food! {Personal Conversation with Anna Tsvetkova, of Plekhanov University, Department of Marketing, Moscow 2023}.
So the passing of those two pardons though the Scottish Parliament in the name of justice has a profound purpose and aim. This interest in not just out of historical curiosity or study of folklore. It is about protecting people from further injustice.
It is vital that those pardons be granted!