Normal Women by Philippa Gregory

Author:Philippa Gregory
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-12-26T00:00:00+00:00

Crime and Punishment

Prosecutions of women for witchcraft declined with the reduction of superstition, especially among the middle and upper classes; but there were still flare-ups in villages and working-class communities, where suspicion of neighbours or eccentric women might sour into a ritualised lynching. In 1785, Sarah Bradshaw was accused by her neighbours and chose the traditional test of ‘swimming’ a witch to see if the devil helped her to float. Bradshaw sank beneath the water and was dragged out and proclaimed innocent.209 In 1792, an old lady of Stanningfield, Suffolk, let herself be swum before the community in a final attempt to clear her name of longstanding accusations of witchcraft. She also sank and although she was dragged out, she was ‘almost lifeless’.210

One woman, called ‘the Yorkshire witch’, claimed to cure curses.211 According to the Newgate Calendar, Mary Bateman – a deserted wife and small-time thief – set up as fortune teller and charmer at Marsh Lane, near Timble Bridge in Leeds. She had the good luck to be sent for by a terminally ill woman, Mrs Pirgo. Mary Bateman offered hope, saying that she could lift the curse. Mrs Pirgo gave Mary Bateman money: coins and notes, which she tied into silken purses to be sewed into the sick bed. Mrs Pirgo also paid for household goods and food for Mary, who cooked up puddings for her patient and gave her honey laced with mercury. This diet proved fatal for Mrs Pirgo, but her husband William continued to follow Bateman’s prescriptions and only called in the authorities when he found that the silk purses that had been sewn into his bed, which should have contained notes and guineas, held only cabbage leaves and coppers. The jury found Mary Bateman guilty of murder. She pleaded her belly, which would require examination by a committee of matrons or midwives. Her claim ‘created a general consternation among the ladies, who hastened to quit the court, to prevent the execution of so painful an office being imposed upon them. His lordship, in consequence, ordered the doors to be closed, and in about half-an-hour, twelve married women being empanelled, they were sworn in court, and charged to inquire “whether the prisoner was with quick child?” The jury of matrons then retired with the prisoner, and on their return into court delivered their verdict, which was that Mary Bateman ‘is not with quick child’. Mary Bateman was executed in 1809.212

From the mid-1700s the increasing belief that women had a nature – quite unlike men’s – that was ‘pure’ and ‘selfless’ and that they were weak and fragile made the judiciary more likely to blame a woman’s crimes on a bad husband. Between 1600 and 1800, women were charged with only 13 per cent of property offences in Sussex and 24 per cent in Surrey.213 Many women thieves and even murderers found themselves released because their husbands were regarded as the main criminal, according to the Newgate Calendar.

Charlotte Walker was repeatedly released by sympathetic juries because her youthful slight appearance made them doubt that she had robbed or assaulted grown men.

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