Calls for UK government to pardon women executed for witchcraft

[Mr K]

On 30 July 1652, seven women were hanged on Penenden Heath in Maidstone, Kent. Witch trials and executions were far from unusual at the time, in the town or elsewhere, but rarely were so many convicted at once.

The women – Anne Ashby, Mary Brown, Anne Martyn, Mildred Wright, Susan Pickenden, Anne Wilson and Mary Reade – had been accused by their neighbours of terrible acts including “bewitching to death” a 10-day-old baby, the child’s mother, and a three-year-old. Several were claimed to have “carnally known” the devil in exchange for their monstrous powers.

In the centuries since, the names of the seven women, like those of the many hundreds of others executed for the same crime in England and Scotland, have slipped from popular memory. Now, however, the town in which they were sentenced wants to right a 373-year-old wrong.

The leader of Maidstone borough council has written to the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, calling for new laws to pardon the Penenden Heath women and all others historically convicted of witchcraft. “These historic acts of murder cannot be undone but those women could be granted a general pardon,” wrote Stuart Jeffrey, the leader of the Lib Dem-Green co-led council. The Home Office is yet to respond.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...for-witchcraft

The ladies concerned have a good case for appeal. But seeing as they were hung in 1652 it's a bit late now.

However there's a few round these parts I'm not sure about. Too many black cats in the neighbourhood and I bought some addled eggs from Lidl the other day. That's all I'm saying....

God bless our local councillors, always on the lookout for a soft headline to promote tourism to their borough. I’d have got a front page splash out of that back in my local rag days. And I’d have come into the office a week later raging that one of the nationals stole the story and lifted my quotes without so much as a fiver bunged my way.

[pip08456]

.Just goes to prove Councillors have nothing better to do.

[jem]

Originally Posted by pip08456

.Just goes to prove Councillors have nothing better to do.

Indeed, does it matter?

Look from our perspective, it is screamingly obvious that these women* were badly treated. But by the (wrong from our perspective) standards of the time, they were judged guilty and punished accordingly.

Tell me, if their ‘convictions'; be quashed, what would it achive? They have been dead for almost 400 years.

maybe keep well alone and use it as an example of how things were seen differently in the past.




* not entirely women, there were some men, but the majority were women - we might consider the paternalistic bias of the time. But it was what it was. I’d like to think things are different now.

Originally Posted by jem

* not entirely women, there were some men, but the majority were women - we might consider the paternalistic bias of the time. But it was what it was. I’d like to think things are different now.

Women are still persecuted for failing to submit to orthodoxy - it’s just the orthodoxy that’s different.

See: Darlington Nurses, Sandie Peggie, Maya Forstater, etc etc etc

SIIIIGGGGHHHH... what's the point? Some folk seem to have too much time on their hands.��

[Carth]

It's a shame that there is a shortage of building materials, we could certainly do with a few* more loony bins in this country.





*about 50 should cover it

LOL, sounds like someone has been bewitched.