Witch craze saw 15 hanged in Newcastle
IT’S Halloween. If, in recent years, the day has become a celebration of Americanised commercialism, its roots long predate Scream masks and pumpkin pies.
The festival can be traced back to the time of the Druids - a Celtic culture which flourished in Ireland, Britain and northern Europe.
The Druid feast of Samhain, which fell annually on October 31, marked ‘summer’s end’ and was a time when the dead were remembered.
In the Christian tradition, Halloween, also known as All Hallows Eve, dates back to the first millennium.
It was the evening before All Saints Day when pagans were converted to Christianity which is celebrated on November 1.
In the 20th century, Halloween became synonymous with ‘apple ducking’, hollowed-out turnips with devilish features, and various diabolic creatures, including witches.
Characterised popularly as unpleasant, cackling ladies with pointy hats and big noses flying around on broomsticks, witches do in fact appear in the annals of Newcastle’s long, rich history.
In the chaotic aftermath of the English Civil War the town, as it was then, witnessed witch trials which resulted in the execution of 15 people.
In 1649, surrounded by its great walls and under a constant pall of coal smoke, Newcastle was breathing a sigh of relief that the Scottish Army that had occupied it since 1644 was gone.
But sweeping through the town - and across the country at large - was a witch craze, sparked by widespread paranoia and suspicion.
In Newcastle, the puritan Corporation called on the services of a Scottish witchfinder.
Ralph Gardiner in his 1655 book, ‘England’s grievance discovered, in relation to the coaltrade’ wrote: “Thirty women were brought into the town hall and stript [sic], and then openly had pins thrust into their bodies.”
If the unfortunate women did not bleed, it meant they were witches. Almost certainly using a retractable pin, ‘the witchpricker’ who was paid 20 shillings for each one he picked out - identified 28 witches.
Locked up in the old Newgate Prison (where the Gate leisure complex is today) and the Castle Keep, they awaited their fate although half were freed, including one who was deemed “too pretty” to be a witch.
For the rest, on August 21, 1650, the 14 women and a man - who was accused of being a wizard - were publicly executed on gallows erected on Newcastle’s Town Moor.
(Nine moss-troopers - a term for cattle rustlers - were also hanged that day).
It was the largest recorded mass execution for witchcraft in English history. The last one would take place in 1727.
For the 15 who were hanged on the Town Moor, their bodies are thought to be buried in unmarked graves in the graveyard of St Andrew’s Church in Newgate Street.