Flesh bones

Michael Alexander hears about the fate of an 18th Century Fife man tortured to death after being wrongly accused of ‘witchcraft’

W hen Fife witch historian Lenny Low wrote his 2006 book The Weem Witch, he painted a gruesome picture of Scotland’s infamous witch hunts when around 1,400 people accused of ‘witchcraft’ were tortured, tied to poles with tar barrels and burned at the stake.

It’s a sobering thought that between 1593 and 1705, the trials of 110 “witches” took place from the Kirkcaldy coastline to St Andrews alone, with Lenny’s book concentrating on five infamous Pittenweem witch trials and the 16 local people found “guilty” by fire.

But 13 years after his book was first published, the 52-year-old former filmset builder, from Largo, has revealed some recently discovered information which may explain the final resting place of an old man ‘witch’ who was tortured then died in Pittenweem’s Tollbooth.

“At the 1704/05 trials in Pittenweem involving nine arrested for witchcraft, the results of a year-long witch hunt had one old man Thomas Brown beaten and starved to death in the Tollbooth Tower rooms and another, Janet Cornfoot, murdered and mutilated by an angry mob,” he said.

“Both were given topsoil burials next to each other on the town’s Western Braes with the expectation that permission to terminate the other ‘witches’ in custody would leave the parish an easy job of pulling out the two dead bodies and adding them to the flames consuming the other witches when the time came.

“However, the permission the parish sought never came as parliament released the accused, to the fury of the

Pittenweem minister. What history tells us is that the elderly body of Thomas Brown was exhumed from his makeshift grave. His son-in-law, with several friends, took the body and interred it in secret, giving it a Christian burial.”

Lenny, a father-of-two, explained how this year, he got a call from Johnny Proven, a retired forester and custodian of the Balcaskie Estate, near Pittenweem, who had just read the book and had some “interesting news”.

“In 1967 a storm uprooted a huge 250-year-old ash tree on the estate boundaries,” said Lenny.

“It was the forester’s job to deal with the problem. The tree had sprouted from one of the far corners of the Abercrombie Church cemetery, which rests many a generation of the Anstruther family. What was discovered was a full human skeleton embedded into the ash trees roots. The bones were of an elderly man with back teeth worn very flat, as if constantly chewing down on a clay pipe. The body wasn’t very deep, and its position was never an official burial. The forester judged this could be the remains of the ‘witch’ Thomas Brown – buried hastily in consecrated ground. It all makes sense.”

Lenny said the remains were collected and reburied in a wooden box only known to the custodian – and now himself...

What history tells us is that the elderly body of Thomas Brown was exhumed from his makeshift grave

Kenny Smith, Getty and DCT. Clockwise from main image: author Lenny Low at the site of the church where it is believed ‘witch’ Thomas Brown was buried following his murder; Burning a witch effigy; Lenny Low; and exterior of Pittenweem Parish Church. Pictures: