Gateway Chronicle 2021

The Last Witch
We all know the popular image of witches and
witchcraft, dancing around the cauldron in a naked
frenzy of devil worship: but what were they really
like? If only voices from the likes of Jane Wenham
could return from the past. If she could speak
to us today, she might be able to speak with some
authority; she was apparently the last person in
England tried and found guilty of witchcraft. Hers
is a voice I would listen to, charged as she was with
turning in to a cat and conversing with the devil.
I’m not sure, examining her more closely, that
the stereotype of chanting in a group of thirteen
whilst mocking the bible and drinking the blood of
murdered infants really stands up to scrutiny any
more now, than it may have done then. The main
source for this essay is the narrative account of the
trial written by Charles Jones in the 1930s whose
purpose appears to point out the past’s peculiarities.
Perhaps re-examining Wenham’s case with the lens
of an historical anthropologist, we can truly shelve
the witchcraft image with the other clichés where
the truth goes to die.
By her trial date of 4 th March 1712, Wenham was
accused, among other things, of enchanting servants
of the local rector, being able to fly, call upon
her familiars (cats in this case) and force people to
do her ‘labours.’ She came from a tiny village in
Hertfordshire, Walkern, near Stevenage and we
know only she was poor, unmarried and had long
‘lain undern suspicion of being a witch.’ Interestingly
her trial took place when rational beliefs in
witchcraft were growing dormant and yet, belief in
the supernatural was still a hard habit to give up.
39
Hidden Voices
Jane Wenham was a spinster, with no one to defend
her against the accusations of her neighbours.
Thus, she was singled-out easily, living a highly
unusual existence, as fewer than one in twenty
women were unmarried and not ‘controlled’ by their
husbands at this time. The second-class status of
women is well-documented as they promised to
‘obey’ their husbands and forgave all their property
rights to him with their marriage vows. The
Aristotelian doctrines of science and cosmology,
popular at the time, also paid heed to her gender: in
short, women were impure and corruptible. This
was ‘proven’ by the notion that of the four liquids
(humours) in the body that controlled its nature,
the emotional, darker ones of black bile and phlegm
were more prevalent in women. Therefore, the loner
Jane Wenham was reasoned to fall more heavily
under the influence of Satan because there was no
one to help her resist his charms.
Wenham was desperately looking for work and
needed charity. Her trial reported her request for
a gift of straw from a labourer, Matthew Gilston,
who promptly said no. Not to have such cheap
and readily available materials for her bedding and
comfort demonstrates her deprivation. Gilston
then ran, ‘why he did not know, but “only he was
forc’d to it,”’ two miles to acquire some straw for
Jane. Did she make him feel guilty and his actions
were recompense? The same could be said for Anne
Thorn whom Jane asked for a bundle of firewood.
Thorn also found herself mysteriously on a hunt to
fulfil Jane’s request after she had initially given her
a curt refusal. It is highly likely they felt guilty for
their own response to such a poor helpless woman
and contrition for their own shortcomings led them
to try to reconcile with Wenham. Brigg’s suggests
people seek to ‘diabolize’ those who they feel embody
their own personal weakness and through
whom prevent their own desired personal morality,
such was the importance of following your faith by
good deeds. This simply led to the demonisation of
the vulnerable and the weak when one was not in a
position to be kind. It also helps explain festering
irritation towards Jane Wenham by the village.
Anne Thorn was young and newly employed as a
servant. Wenham was asking, in Thorn’s new master’s
house, to give away his wood. To keep her job,
Thorn rightly felt she should refuse Jane but also
feel sorry enough for her and her poverty to travel
far enough upon a recently dislocated knee to acquiesce
to her appeal of firewood. It is probable Thorn
also felt resentment, bridling at the impudence of
the request and the impossible position in which she
was being put. Furthermore, it is straightforward
to explain Jane’s reappearance that day, looking for
work as a washer when the mistress of the house
might have returned and could grant her a paid
job. However, the master of the house overlooked
this, claiming that when the ‘thing bewitched‘(i.e.
the sticks collected by Anne for Jane) were burnt it
would cause the reappearance of the bewitcher and
this was what had brought Wenham to his house.
Wenham’s fate was beginning to be sealed and this
was without the need for the other coincidences
such as her stroking a ‘nurse-child’ that later died