I latterly gave the impression at the BBC radio display Girl’s Hour to talk about my analysis on homicides dedicated by way of girls. Simply sooner than my phase, singer-songwriter Katherine Priddy spoke about her music Suits, impressed by way of the feminist word “women, not witches”. It reframes witch trials because the persecution of ladies relatively than the pursuit of the supernatural. One lyric lingered with me: “They weren’t burning witches; it was women on those fires.”
In England, Wales and their former North American colonies, that declare wishes nuance. There, girls weren’t burnt for witchcraft; they have been hanged. Witchcraft used to be a prison underneath English commonplace legislation, and felons have been carried out on the gallows. In other places, the tale used to be other. At the continent and in Scotland, witchcraft used to be heresy, and heretics have been burnt on the stake.
In England and its colonies, nobody used to be burnt on the stake all the way through witch hunts: now not at Pendle, now not at Salem and now not underneath the campaigns of the “witchfinder general”, Matthew Hopkins. The picture of the burning witch is strong, however on this context, it’s in large part a delusion. If we need to perceive why girls have been burnt in England and Wales, we want to glance in different places – in opposition to a special crime, and a special roughly worry.
Suits by way of Katherine Priddy.
In 1359 at York Fort, a lady named Alice of Tunstall used to be introduced sooner than the court docket. She used to be now not accused of witchcraft. There have been no whispers of spells or dealings with the satan. Alice stood charged with killing her husband. She used to be discovered in charge of petty treason and sentenced to be burned on the stake.
Petty treason carried out to these better halves and servants who “owed faith and obedience” to a social awesome. A spouse who killed her husband dedicated a rebel towards the social order itself; a husband who killed his spouse had now not. Husbands, or even male servants who killed their grasp, have been hanged; girls have been burnt.
The good judgment of the legislation used to be specific. Hearth destroyed the frame, denied burial and made the crime a public spectacle. It used to be punishment as each correction and caution. Petty treason made feminine disobedience visual, violent and unforgettable.
Centuries later, the legislation’s gendered good judgment continued. In 1789, Catherine Murphy and her husband have been convicted of the similar crime: making counterfeit cash – one of those top treason. He used to be hanged like different male offenders; she used to be burnt on the stake.
A Girl is Burned on the Stake, after Jan Luyken (1708).
Vintage Symbol/Alamy
At Newgate Jail, Catherine used to be led previous the striking frame of her husband. She used to be strangled till she used to be useless. Best then have been bundles of sticks piled and lit round her frame, following the post-1652 customized of making sure the condemned used to be not alive. Even on this changed execution, Murphy’s punishment used to be some distance harsher than that of the lads she had labored with, reflecting centuries of felony gender inequality.
The execution of Murphy helped advised reform. In 1790, the MP Sir Benjamin Hammet raised the problem within the Space of Commons, mentioning her demise as proof that burning girls – even when they have been useless – used to be a ugly and pointless punishment. The Treason Act of 1790 abolished burning as a technique of execution, substituting striking, which used to be the punishment for males. Even then, it used to be now not till 1828 {that a} spouse’s homicide of her husband used to be officially decreased to a prison.
From Alice of Tunstall to Catherine Murphy, those fires weren’t about magic – they have been about keep an eye on. They remind us that traditionally, underneath English legislation, feminine defiance of husbands or social hierarchy has been handled way more harshly than males’s crimes. The picture of the burning witch obscures this fact. In reality, it used to be gender, now not superstition, that lit the flames.
