HEDY MAG ISSUE 1

work, begging, and cunningwork
or “white” witchcraft.
This mostly consisted of herbal
medicine and spells to ward
off evil or attract good things,
such as love, prosperity, fertility.
However, such cunning
folk were often feared as much
as respected and with the rise
of Protestantism the official
church turned against them
even more fiercely than before,
on a mission to weed out
superstition. And there is no
doubt that the Chattox and
Demdike clans were not very
popular in Pendle Forest, even
if needed at times. Misogyny,
fear of their supposed powers,
FICTION
Most fictional treatments of the case
seem to get hideous reviews – just do a
quick search for The Daylight Gate to get a
taste – but two works that seem to stand
up to scrutiny are the novella Malkin Child
by Livi Michael and the novel Daughters
of the Witching Hill by Mary Sharratt. In
fact, they are on my reading list, now. For
a proper, long-winded classic from a writer
once thought to be on par with Charles
Dickens, try The Lancashire Witches
by William Harrison Ainsworth.
and changing times all partly
account for why those two families
were so readily condemned
by their communities. But
there is more to it yet, and that
is shown in the belligerent and
malicious ways in which they
accused one another – family
against family, brother against
sister, daughter against mother.
Some of the accounts are
certainly dismissable, despite
being made freely, as being
made by feeble-minded witnesses:
Alizon Device’s brother
James was mentally disabled
by today’s standards, Anne
Whittle and Elizabeth Southern
would probably count as suffering
from dementia. Jennet
Device, whose evidence was
crucial in sending her family
to the gallows, was only 9 years
old. And still – Alizon at least
believed in her confession, and
she seems to have deliberately
brought others down with her.
The accusations and counteraccusations
of the families
soon led to the arrest to be put
on trial for Alizon Device herself,
her grandmother Elizabeth
Southerns, as well as Anne
Whittle and her daughter Elizabeth
Redferne – all of which
now stood accused of causing
death by witchcraft, a crime
punishable by hanging. At
this point something caught
JP Nowell’s interest that was to
transform a local tragedy sparked
off by a pedlar suffering a
stroke at just the wrong moment
into the witch trial which
alone accounts for 2 percent
of all executions for witchcraft
in England: On Good Friday
1612 the Demdike family
hosted a supper for a group of
family and supporters at their
family home called Malkin
Tower. Well, at least it has been
claimed that they did, and that
James Device stole a sheep for
it (sheep-rustling would have
been enough to condemn him
HEDY 17