Devon's Forgotten Witches - Tracey Norman - E-Book

Devon's Forgotten Witches E-Book

Tracey Norman

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Beschreibung

Witchcraft and witches throughout history have long captured the imagination, yet hidden away in archives are records of long forgotten cases. Many of these are tragic, some are unusual – perhaps even inexplicable – but all are fascinating in their own right. Devon's Forgotten Witches 1860–1910 takes a deep dive through these records, bringing to the surface accusations of witchcraft in the county that have languished, unacknowledged, in the British Newspaper Archive for decades. These are the stories of ordinary people whose lives were touched in some way by witchcraft. Tracey Norman and Mark Norman examine these cases within their historical context, pulling together details from various news reports to explore what might really have happened. This work provides an intriguing snapshot of press coverage in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, showing how the public were urged to view those who still put their faith in 'incredible superstition'. Most importantly, the retelling of these stories gives a new voice to those whom the historical record has silenced.

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For Susan, with love

 

 

First published 2025

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

Text © Tracey Norman and Mark Norman, 2025

Cover illustration © P.J. Richards, 2025

The right of Tracey Norman and Mark Norman to be identified as the Authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 80399 422 2

Typesetting and origination by The History Press.

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books, Padstow, Cornwall.

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CONTENTS

Notes on Newspaper Sources

Foreword

Introduction

A Note on Attitudes of the Time

1     Violence, Bewitching and Family Feuds

2     Money, Fraud and Fortune-Telling

3     A Family Legacy: The White Witch of Exeter

4     A ‘White Witch’ and a Dying Woman

5     Case Study: Miss Edith Patten

6     Two Healers

7     Case Study: Izet Williams

8     Lost and Found

9     The Church

Conclusion

Bibliography

PRAISE FOR DEVON'S FORGOTTEN WITCHES 1860–1910

‘This is a very useful addition to the growing body of data on witchcraft belief in Victorian and Edwardian England, and a further testimony to the great value of newspaper reports as a source for the subject.’

– Professor Ronald Hutton, historian and author.

‘Tracey and Mark have written an incredible guide to the rich history of witchcraft in Devon ... history enthusiasts will delight in a captivating exploration of the magical beliefs of yesteryear.’

– Blake Malliway, author of A Witch’s Guide to Fetch Work.

NOTES ONNEWSPAPER SOURCES

The following historic newspapers were used as sources for the material in this book. Many of these have long since ceased publication, although some are still in existence as daily or weekly titles. They are cited in the text as the following:

Barnstaple Times and North Devon News

Cornish and Devon Post

East & South Devon Advertiser

Exeter and Plymouth Gazette

Exeter and Plymouth Gazette Daily Telegrams

Exeter Flying Post

Express & Echo

Frome Times

Gloucestershire Chronicle

Heywood Advertiser

Illustrated Weekly News

Leeds Times

Liverpool Daily Post

Liverpool Mercury

Manchester Courier

Newcastle Daily Chronicle

North Devon Advertiser

North Devon Gazette

North Devon Herald

North Devon Journal

Sheffield Independent

Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette

Taunton Courier and Western Advertiser

Tiverton Gazette

Western Morning News

Western Somerset Free Press

Western Times

Wicklow News-letter and County Advertiser

York Herald

Note: Spellings of names can be inconsistent from one newspaper source to another and digitised newspapers are sometimes of poor quality. We have used spellings from the original sources, and where these have been unclear, we have interpreted to the best of our ability.

FOREWORD

Does history stand still, leaving our perception of it to constantly evolve? I am driven to understand how changes in our lives alter how we view the past. War, natural disasters and technology are some of our own most potent drivers of change which we try to place in perspective. However, historians also play a key role in altering the past, and this study brings out a facet that society has long overlooked, one which will be welcomed by many.

The belief in, and fear of, magic has been part of English society for many generations. We can question the role played by class and gender, but religious belief, mortality, power imbalances, naivety and opportunism are also useful lenses through which we can understand this hitherto shadowy history.

Whether we decide which, if any, of these men and women were unfortunate victims, cunning charlatans or well-intentioned healers, their histories help us understand not just the past but ourselves. With this study, Devon’s history has become yet more fascinating. I warmly recommend this book.

Dr Todd Gray MBE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

DEVON’S MOST FAMOUS WITCH case took place in Bideford in the north of the county in 1682. Three women were found guilty of a variety of offences and were hanged in Exeter. Ever since, ‘witchcraft’ in Devon has become almost synonymous with Bideford, particularly as the three accused – Temperance Lloyd, Susannah Edwards and Mary Trembles – are equally well known for supposedly being the last women in England to be hanged for witchcraft.

Yet, beyond the pages of the pamphlets that recounted the Bideford story in salacious detail, there were countless other Devon women down the centuries accused of witchcraft or claiming to be witches, being attacked as witches or offering cures or fortune-telling. Some of these stories made their way into the press, much as the Bideford case attracted the pamphleteers. Some are stories of violent attacks on innocent women. Some tell of predatory fraudsters, conning hapless victims out of substantial sums of money. Some arise from family feuds. Some are just plain weird.

No matter their differences, they all have one thing in common – you are unlikely to have heard of any of them.

This book is not intended to be an exhaustive study of every single witchcraft story in Devon. Professor Mark Stoyle’s excellent Witchcraft in Exeter 1558–1660 (Mint Press, 2017) provides an overview of the city’s Tudor witch cases, and there are numerous books that cover the Bideford case in detail. This book focuses on stories that appeared in the press between 1860 and 1910, providing a snapshot of the persistence of witchcraft beliefs in the county into the twentieth century, and the attitudes of those in authority towards such beliefs.

While we were carrying out our initial research, reading through dozens and dozens of cases of alleged witchcraft, accusations of supernatural abilities and family arguments, it became apparent that the material that lay behind the majority of such stories fell into certain categories. At the same time, there was a natural ebb and flow of such material, with common themes lying across different cases. Therefore, we have divided the text into sections of varying length, each of which focuses on a particular subject.

Please also note that the sources and records within this book recount instances of suicide, violence and murder, which may be upsetting to some readers.

A NOTE ON ATTITUDESOF THE TIME

THE WESTERN MORNING NEWS carried a book review in the pages of its Saturday edition on 23 February 1867 for a new title by William Henderson. The book was called Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders, and it would go on to become a useful reference work, capturing the stories of the period. The review itself, however, is especially valuable for us because it succinctly captures a microcosm of the attitudes of the time towards superstition, stories of magic and the supernatural, and other such tales.

Folklore has always been at the mercy of its collectors in terms of the interpretation given to it. These days we are, hopefully, generally much better at presenting stories as recorded without giving them personal contextualisation. But it was not always like this. English collectors went across the border into Wales to collect stories, for example, and then presented them with a definite English flavour, removing any sense of national identity to them in a manner no less dignified or pleasant than the colonial British attitudes to some of the practices of those in foreign countries.

Class and social status were tarred with an equally broad brush. Much of the collection and reporting of the kinds of stories that we are examining in this book was undertaken by affluent or relatively wealthy white males from the middle and upper classes, often clergymen or antiquaries, who considered themselves to be enlightened thinkers. These urban dwellers would look upon the common folk living in rural backwaters as uneducated, superstitious and distant from the society that could teach them better. The book review in question sums the attitude up with the flowery prose so often used by reporters of the period, who liked to present themselves in a similar way to these other men:

Only in a few nooks and corners of England – nooks and corners as yet unsullied by the smoke of manufactories, and as yet uninvaded by the rattle of the locomotives – a few traces of the beliefs once so dominant amongst her people still remain. That this is altogether a matter for congratulation may be open to doubt. […]

The beliefs may be childish and absurd, but their fathers and their grandfathers have held them; and though they themselves may refuse to lend implicit credence to them, yet they cherish their memory and retain a feeble half-faith in some of the wildest of them.

(Western Morning News, 23 February 1867)

Henderson naturally catalogued many of the ‘wilder’ stories, the more legendary tales that had no basis in actual events but were more symbolic in nature – tales that taught lessons, reflected identities and values or subverted the power of the elite.

In terms of witchcraft, for example, which the author of the review, by his own admission, notes are the most interesting superstitions in the book, Henderson catalogues many variants of the classic trope of an alleged witch who turns into a hare. She is chased and injured by dogs, or a hunter, and through the wounds sustained in her animal form then showing on her human body in the same place, her true nature is revealed. Such stories might easily have drawn the scorn of those collecting them for their perceived outrageous nature. But these are not the stories with which this book is concerned.

This book presents a social history of those who are accused of being witches, those calling upon witches for help or sometimes just using the term as a means of abuse. As such, we are focussed very much on the human stories, the voices that have been lost over time and the attitudes towards them. The stories themselves might not appear to be over the top in the same way as shapeshifting, perhaps, but sometimes the way the accused were treated by those in authority beggared just as much belief.

We begin by looking at some examples of this sort of abuse, between everyday folk.

1

VIOLENCE, BEWITCHINGAND FAMILY FEUDS

The late Mr Henry Howe, son of the well-known actor of the same name, and himself for many years on the staff of the Morning Advertiser, informed me that during a visit he paid to Branscombe in 1853 he saw an old woman, reputed to be a witch, who was followed by a number of boys pelting stones at her. On speaking to one of the inhabitants about it, he was informed, ‘Oh, she’s a witch’. She had a blind husband.

This brief extract, drawn from the very first volume of Devon and Cornwall Notes and Queries local history journal in 1900, is a classic example of the sort of casual violence, accusation or ‘othering’ that led to so many women (as well as some men) being termed as witches. Sometimes, the ‘crime’ could be as simple as being elderly, being somehow different or being strong-willed. The woman in the example above is noted as having a blind husband. Maybe the implication is supposed to be drawn that she caused this somehow.

Newspapers of the time are full of accounts of squabbles between neighbours, friends and family members, often over money. They were fuelled by the superstitious beliefs of the time, the encouragement of others and sometimes even mob mentality.

Rosetta Scoins found herself up before the Barnstaple Petty Sessions in 1893 on a charge of assault against Elizabeth Passmore. Elizabeth believed that she had been bewitched by Rosetta because her husband was living away and wasn’t sending her any money. Rosetta told the bench that she was the mother of an illegitimate child with Mr Passmore. The case was dismissed by the bench, who evidently believed that the fathering of the child lay behind it.

A brief extract from the Appledore Petty Sessions (North Devon Journal, 29 November 1871) recorded that a woman named Mary Ann Thomas complained that Ann Jenkins had spat in her face, slapped her and called her a ‘b****y little witch’. The two women were sisters-in-law, and the latter had apparently often been up before the bench for misdemeanours. She was fined 15s, with an alternative of seven days in prison if the fine was not paid.

While this was not an accusation of witchcraft, it shows how the stereotype of being a witch could be employed as an insult. For example, a short entry appeared anonymously in the personal notices in the Western Morning News for 10 March 1894: ‘Petty Monstrosity. Full of sarcasm and low. Cunning as a witch. Hateful as poison.’

As unpleasant and damaging as they are, in some respects, disagreements such as these were relatively minor compared to what could be found on the Continent, for example. Devon newspapers often recorded stories from outside the area, and indeed the country, and some of these, contemporaneous with those just discussed, provide a useful comparison to how much worse accusations and punishments could be elsewhere.

The North Devon Journal yields a couple for comparison. One of these is a case that the newspaper situates in ‘Réka’, probably referring to Řeka in the Moravian-Silesian region of the Czech Republic. Once again, it involved a disagreement between family members.

A farmer in the area accused his daughter-in-law of being a witch, blaming her for the lack of rain in recent time. As evidence for this, he declared that the girl had not needed to eat or drink for several months because she had been drawing moisture from the clouds. The daughter-in-law was subjected to an examination by two midwives, who discovered a ‘witch’s mark’ on her body – skin tags, moles or other blemishes were often taken to be a ‘teat’ from which the Devil or a familiar would suckle from the alleged witch. She was given two choices: either she would have to allow the mark to be cauterised or she would be burned atop a pile of thorns. Not much of a choice, when it came down to it.

The girl’s aunt performed the cauterising, using both a silver coin and a church key. It turned out that after this was done, the weather did change, and it rained. However, following this, the rain turned to hail, which caused those present to decide that the procedure had not been completely successful.

A similarly unpleasant case from Blois, France, in 1886 shows how easy and common it could be for family members to turn on each other, particularly when money was involved. The victim here was a widow named Madame Lebon, aged over 70 and, according to the words of the report, having ‘fallen into her dotage’ (Western Morning News, 24 November 1886). The woman had accumulated a small amount of money in savings, around 800 francs or so, from her time working in service. For reasons which are not clear, Madame Lebon had a reputation in the local area for being a witch of some ill repute.

The tragic widow was murdered, and died by burning, but it seems that her reputation as a witch was not the direct cause for this crime, which took place at the hands of her own family, who had designs on her meagre savings. Both of her sons, her daughter and her son-in-law, M. Thomas, were the guilty parties.

It was Thomas who approached the police, with a story about the family discovering Madame Lebon’s body, virtually burned to ashes, in the fire at the family home. However, as the case was investigated and more evidence came to light, it became apparent that this story was a complete fabrication. The woman’s granddaughter, aged just 8, gave evidence that her grandmother had been doused in petrol and then held in the fire until she died.

The family were apparently very religious, and this fact certainly helped to convict them. Both of the victim’s two sons, Alexander and Alexis, went to see their priest immediately after the event in order to confess what they had done. Circumstantial evidence also came to show that the day before the crime, all the members of the family had sent for the priest in order that he could hear Madame Lebon’s own confession and provide her with absolution. The crime, it seems, was premeditated but their sense of religious belief meant that they needed to ensure that this step happened first.

So, how did the stories of alleged witchcraft feed into this affair? It appears, or at least the story was told this way by the defence, that the family believed that their mother had cast a spell on them to make sure that they would always remain in poverty. The family believed that the spell could be broken if Madame Lebon was burned alive.

This was, of course, no defence at all. The court sentenced the two sons to penal servitude for the crime. The others received a death sentence.

In the same year, 1886, the case of Western vs Western was heard in the North Devon town of Barnstaple. The roles are slightly different here, but the case still shows the family dynamics that could arise when finances clashed with beliefs in witchcraft.

When Thomas Western died, he did so with property that was worth approximately £700, a figure which in 2024 equates to somewhere in the region of £77,000. At this time, the will was made out in favour of Western’s widow, who was stepmother to his children, although there had been several previous versions.

At one time, the relations between Thomas Western, his second wife and his children had been very good, but gradually they had deteriorated. The children had stopped speaking to their stepmother and a land dispute was being held in Chancery between one of the sons and his father.

It seems likely that the reason for the change in attitude among family members – and probably therefore for changes to the will also – were because of Thomas Western’s belief in the power of witchcraft and the subsequent involvement of the famous White Witch of Exeter, whose history we will explore in a later section.

At some point during his life, Thomas Western had developed the skin condition eczema, and he became convinced that some of his children had ‘overlooked’ him (bewitched him with the ‘evil eye’) and caused it. The strength of his conviction was such that he sent a message to the White Witch to ask for assistance.

The White Witch responded, confirming that the condition was indeed caused by overlooking and that two people were responsible for causing this. Western had, apparently, been overlooked, first by a woman who lived near him, and secondly by a member of his own family. One was described by the White Witch as a ‘crab’. The other, he said, would come running three times to Western’s house.

The way that Thomas Western interpreted this description is interesting and seems remarkably similar to the way that some people who receive messages from fortune-tellers or psychics choose an interpretation to fit their own ideas. He named one of his daughters, Ellen, as the ‘crab’ because she had a physical disability, although it is not clear what this was. The second person he named as another daughter, Maria.

It seems curious that he should name both daughters in this way, because the message from the White Witch specifically said that one party was a member of his own family. The implication is that the other was not – only Thomas Western chose not to see it that way.

All of these events resulted in the contesting of Thomas Western’s will. In the end, a judge drew up a compromise arrangement for all parties involved.

Not all violence in cases of alleged bewitching comes at the hands of either strangers or family members. In some unfortunate cases, the victim can end up self-harming. The reasons behind this could sometimes be very difficult to fathom, leading to some quite complex court cases. An example of this was reported in the South Devon town of Paignton at the turn of the century in 1899.

Under the headline ‘Sensational Suicide at Paignton’, with a subtitle alluding to the bewitching, the Western Morning News (1 April 1899) reported in detail on the inquiry being held into the death of Sarah Hurman, wife of Thomas. He reported that his wife had generally been in good health, aside from being troubled on occasion by neuralgia (intense nerve pain), but she had, in recent times, not been sleeping well.

When Thomas left for work in Torquay on the Thursday morning in question, his wife was complaining of a headache. By the time he returned home at around 5.35 p.m., she was dead. Hurman was stopped outside his house by someone who told him that a murder had been committed. On entering and ascending the stairs to the bedroom, it certainly seemed that could be the case. Sarah Hurman was partially dressed and lying in a pool of blood.

That the scene was not one of murder was evidenced by the discovery of a note, written in Sarah’s own hand, which was left on the dressing table. It read:

Private. My dear husband, Tom. Forgive me for everything. I am most unhappy. My poor brain is dreadful. Let Susie [her sister] come and look after Nena [her daughter]. Do not blame me for anything. A wicked woman has done all this. She said she would bewitch my poor brain, but do not say her name. I am so miserable. Look after your dear mother all her life, and may Nena and you forgive your poor, miserable, unhappy wife. You have been a good husband in many ways. Your loving wife, Annie [sic]. PS Your going to work at Torquay has been such a worry to me.

(Western Morning News, 1 April 1899)

The coroner, Mr Hacker, questioned Thomas about the contents of the letter. The man confirmed that his wife had never mentioned to him any concerns about him going to work in Torquay. Nor, he said, had she ever made any mention of having been bewitched. Hurman did confirm to the coroner that his wife had been quite superstitious, but he believed that the contents of the note had been brought on by delusion.

The movements of the deceased on the day were corroborated by the general servant who worked for the couple, Louie Meyer. Sarah Hurman had gone downstairs at around ten in the morning, which was approximately half an hour after her husband had left for work. However, she ate only a crust of dry bread and complained about the pains in her head preventing her from being able to do anything else. Sarah returned to bed, spending most of the day there, but going back downstairs several times. On one occasion, the groans from the bedroom were bad enough that they caused Meyer to go up and check on her.

Things seem to have taken a strange and sinister turn not long before Thomas Hurman was stopped in the street on his return from work. Sarah descended the stairs for the final time, still wearing her dressing gown, at around 5.30 p.m. Her behaviour at this time was described as ‘strange’. About five minutes later, just after Sarah had gone back upstairs again, her daughter Nena went upstairs with the intention of showing her mother some sponge cakes that she had for tea. Instead, she found her in a pool of blood.

Mrs Rodway, the wife of the local vicar, testified that Sarah had believed herself to be bewitched. The Rodways were neighbours to the Hurmans. Mrs Rodway stated that it had been some weeks previously that Sarah had confided in her that she believed herself to have been bewitched. The Reverend Rodway had been present at the time and, as a man of the cloth, had done his best to try and persuade Sarah otherwise, but this had been to no avail.

The coroner enquired as to whether Sarah Hurman had considered that she had ‘an evil eye’ put on her, and Mrs Rodway confirmed that this was her belief. Sarah had declared that she had found it difficult to retain servants and that this was due to the curse put on her.

When it came to finally needing to pronounce on the case, the coroner called Dr C.H. Cozens for his medical opinion on the cause of death. He stated that Sarah Hurman’s throat had been cut from one ear to the other, and it was such a severe wound that it would have taken a lot of determination to undertake. For this reason, death would have been very quick.

In the view of the jury, the death was ‘suicide whilst temporarily of unsound mind’.

This certainly wasn’t an isolated case. There are numerous examples of people taking their own lives due to the strength of their belief that they had been bewitched. Almost twenty years earlier, in 1880, Newton Tracey resident John Pope did the same thing while incarcerated in Exeter Gaol (North Devon Journal, 25 November 1880).

Pope, who was 54 at the time of his death, had previously served as coachman to several wealthy Devon families, but was accused of stealing a pony, and his subsequent trial at the Assizes had led to him being given a sentence of seven years. At this time, he was already serving a twelve-month jail term for the theft of some bullocks.

Prison warders on their rounds found Pope hanging by the neck from the gas pipe that ran through his cell. Following procedure, an inquest was held to investigate the death. This was undertaken by the Deputy District Coroner at the time, F. Burrow.

After hearing from the prison governor and warders about the mechanics of the suicide and the subsequent removal of the body, the questioning turned to the deceased himself and what had led to the death. A search of the cell had turned up a slate, which was found under the cupboard in the room, and a small piece of brown paper with two hymns written on it. Pope had been given a pen and ink after the governor granted permission, in order that he could prepare a statement for his trial for the second crime of stealing the pony, which went to the Assizes shortly after his incarceration for the theft of the bullocks.

The statement was written on the slate and was submitted to the inquest. It read:

Good dear relations and friends, I wish you well. If I had had justice I should have seen you again in July. Young Turner swore false as ever a man swore true about the pony’s nose. Crook the police-boy swore false about the letter. Parsons swore false about the price of the pony. Friend my solicitor did not half instruct my council, he ought to have cross-examined Friend the landlord about our conversation, it was about his brother’s horse. Friend the landlord did not tell any lies.

I am not guilty of stealing that pony, how was I to know living 12 miles if he was coming home at two o’clock in the morning there was four hours from the time I left Dolton before Turner came home. I might have bought it of the man that stole it. There was plenty of time for the pony to have changed hands a time or two but it was agreed thing with Friend the lawyer and they Turners, if I had defended myself I should have got off. Parsons is a trator [sic], he to greedy after money to honest [sic] that the members of his club knows.

I believe I was witched by Symons the blacksmith when I first went to live at Newton Tracey. I suppose I am accused of a lot and I wonder they did not accuse me for enbazeling [sic] the money from Newton club. Mr Dene accused me for stealing the donkey. I make no wonder at it as he only gave me half the value of it. I don’t like to leave the ever faithful, Christ have mercy upon me. He has promise to forgive me all my sins and will receive my soul in his everlasting habitation, the lord will set a mark on Turner as he did on Cain.

(North Devon Journal, 25 November 1880)

It became apparent, as the proceedings continued, that Pope had previously attempted to kill himself in the same manner after being jailed for the theft of the bullocks.