One thing that people find difficult to understand is randomness – blind chance. It is unsettling to imagine that at any moment, for no apparent reason your entire life might chance drastically for the worse. A sudden illness, a serious accident, a random act of violence, losing a job, or a financial downturn could change your life irrevocably. And if two, three or more such blows happened at the same time it might be difficult to attribute it all to chance.
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If something like that happens on a social level, it is easy to conceive of it being a conspiracy; on an individual level such events were often – perhaps usually – seen as witchcraft. Cursed Britain is different from most books on the history of witchcraft in that it tackles the topic from the viewpoint of the person feeling themselves ‘bewitched’ or ‘overlooked’, and the methods they might adopt to remedy that situation. It is a history of ‘anti-witchcraft’ that reveals its survival long after most modern readers have believed it had been consigned to the ‘dustbin of history’.
This book starts where most histories of witchcraft leave off, at the end of formal witchcraft trials, and the decline of witchcraft as a concern of the establishment – the judiciary, the legislators and by and large the Church. By the end if the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth witchcraft was assumed to have declined because of ‘Enlightenment’ ideas. As popular education spread to all classes through the nineteenth century, it was assumed that such ‘primitive’ ideas would be driven out of society.
However, as Thomas Waters ably shows, although the fear of the practice of witchcraft faded from official notice in that century, the belief still flourished amongst the general population, and not simply in the more ‘witchy’ rural areas like East Anglia and the West Country.
Nor was this continued belief confined to the rural peasantry. Waters describes a case from Monmouthshire in 1827. A local farmer accused 90-year-old Mary Nicholas of causing the death of some of his cattle. Along with a mob of 100 people he tied op the old woman and began cutting her with a length of briar thorn, supposedly ‘bleeding the witch’ to counteract her alleged magic. The mob then stripped her, shaved her head, cutting off a mark or growth which they though confirmed her status as a witch. It was only when crowd called for her to be ‘ducked’ that one bystander called for an end to her torment, and the farmer called the mob off.
The instigators of the outrage were eventually brought to trial, and eventually charged with the comparative minor charge of assault. A campaign started for the sentences to be commuted, and Waters notes that in the petition that accompanied it “the witch-mobbers’ supporters were absolutely not illiterate peasants. Among the signatories were three surgeons, three lawyers, a magistrate and a general”.
It seems that many local constables and magistrates were happy to go along with indirectly promoting popular beliefs in witchcraft and overlooking or even condoning such actions, as at a time of social and political revolt, they felt that a belief in witchcraft helped to reinforce religious practice and provide a bulwark against revolutionary secularism.
Dozens of similar cases were recorded from across Britain. Traditional beliefs in witchcraft, hexing and cursing was imported into the growing industrial cities during the massive movement of population fro the countryside to the growing industrial cities of the North and Midlands. In the new and unfamiliar city life there were even more random illnesses, accidents and misfortunes that could be inflicted on individuals and families. Reports of attacks on witches and sorcerers are found in newspaper files from the growing industrial centres throughout the early decades of the nineteenth century.
Sceptical voices were increasingly being raised against these ‘primitive’ practices, dismissing them as superstition, which would soon be defeated by the rise of science and education, and indeed as the century progressed the attacks on witches declined, at least as reported in newspapers and court proceedings. But it seems this was more more the result of the growth of a professional police force and a more centralised court system, which was far less likely to tolerate outbreaks of civil disorder than the previous rather amateur system of constables and local magistrates.
Although the signs of witchcraft belief became less outwardly visible, it was still a powerful force in many communities, and it was not just in remote rural areas where ‘cunning men’, and women, were employed both to lay on and remove curses, and in the late nineteenth century, and even later, newspapers reported cases of attacks on individuals believed to have cursed their neighbours.
A belief in ‘cursing’ may be a natural consequence of life, a way of rationalising what seems to be irrational. It was perhaps the fact that more and more of life was able to be explained scientifically, rather than the spread of scientific education as such, that led to the great decline of witchcraft allegations throughout the century. A mill whose grain seemed to be linked to local illnesses and deaths was claimed to have been cursed, until the water used in the process was found to be highly contaminated.
But there would still be the more personal fears, clinical depression, mental illness, which had a more hidden cause. These were the things which the cunning men and women were called upon to cure. Waters suggests that in effect they were performing the role of psychiatrists and therapists, easing the ‘victim’s’ suffering through the power of their own belief.
But as well as the ‘popular’ belief in witchcraft, curses and occult forces, the nineteenth century also saw a rise in academic and intellectual interest in magic. The growing reaction against conventional religion did not lead inevitably to a rational, scientific secularism, but also to a whole range of mystical and occult beliefs. Waters looks at the rise of mesmerism, which seemed to offer a scientific basis for earlier occult practices, as well as the more purely occult practices of fin de sciecle ‘occult revival’.
The growth of exploration, travel and trade meant that settlers, traders and colonial administrators came into contact with the magical and supernatural beliefs of the indigenous people of the lands they occupied. Many were fascinated by such beliefs and, even if they did not fully accept them, took the attitude that ‘there might be something in it’ - summarised in the old cliché “been out East and seen a thing or two”,
Elite and academic interest in the ‘popular survivals’ of magic was also responsible for the growth of the folklore movement, which led to the idea that many of the supposed magical practices of witches and cunning men, represented the remnants of an earlier, non-Christian, faith. In reality most such practices were historically based firmly in Christian teaching and theology.
Waters sees belief in witchcraft and counter magic as surviving well into the twentieth century, finding newspaper reports of individuals attacking ‘witches’ or even attempting to take them to court even in the 1920s. By now this had often reduced to beliefs that particular people were able to bring bad luck, a stigma particularly associated with Roma and Travellers, about the last groups of people seen to be living ‘outside society’; although often the same people would be able to give services such as good-luck charms, and the lifting of curses, and Waters provides examples of such practices well into the present century.
It was, and is, also prevalent in occupations which carried a great risk of random injury and death, such as fishing and mining.
The final chapter covers contemporary versions of witchcraft beliefs, including some of the horrific practices of exorcism by cults which have lead to appalling examples of child (and adult) abuse. There has also been a revival of exorcism in the more mainstream religious denominations including the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, and ‘Deliverance Ministry’ which lays great emphasis on the often violent driving out of evil spirits, and is prevalent amongst some African originated Pentecostal Churches.
Much of the interest in this book comes from amazing collection of newspaper reports, from the early nineteenth century, virtually until the date of publication, giving clear evidence that the belief in witchcraft, cursing and black magic is something that seems to be a permanent part of human society, and although less prevalent today, this is probably due more to a higher level of social and state control over such practices, rather than them being ‘educated out’ of society.
This is a deeply impressive book, showing great scholarship, huge depth of research, and yet very accessible to the general reader. A massive contribution to our understanding of a subject that historically has remained very much in the shadows. – John Rimmer.
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