The Last Witches of England by John Callow

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In telling the story of Temperance Lloyd, Susanna Edwards, and Mary Trembles – the last three people to be hanged as Witches in England – John Callow gives these women their dignity and humanity back. We encounter them as rounded personalities, marginalised but not entirely without agency.

Callow also explores the complexity of the belief in the power of Witches – the case of the Bideford Witches sits right on the tipping point after which the “respectable” educated elite would not, at least not publicly, subscribe to the superstitions which conspired with fatal consequences for these women.

While we now, generally, see the idea of Witches having temporal power as erroneous part of the insight Callow offers is the way in which the belief was supported by nascent scientific method. In some of the cases it was doctors that “diagnosed” witch-craft as the cause of aliments – perhaps a catch all for times when they had no other explanation at hand (like our contemporary visits to the GP when we are diagnosed with “probably a virus” which is code for “I have no idea”?). As we moved into the eighteenth century the enlightenment and disenchantment of the world advanced rapidly.

But while the legal system turned its back on the idea of Witches the forces that marginalised poor women, especially as they aged, remained – indeed largely remain to this day – the multifaceted stigma of being poor, old, and female is still toxic, at times fatal, even without the courtroom drama the Bideford women faced.

The fact that the accusers were mostly themselves women does not diminish the gendered nature of the situation - “respectable” women policing the division between themselves and the, literally, unwashed is absolutely an instrument of patriarchy.