Guilty until proven innocent: plaque backs verdict on Irish witches

THE last witches tried on the island of Ireland could indeed have been guilty of their crimes, a councillor has said.

Eight women and a man were convicted at the trial in Islandmagee, County Antrim, on March 31, 1711. They were put in stocks and jailed for a year.

Councillors in Larne, Northern Ireland,

discussed a plaque to be placed at the Gobbins Visitor Centre marking the trial. However, the words “The community recognises your innocence” were dropped after an intervention by Keith Turner, the Belfast Telegraph reported.

Mr Turner, an Ulster Unionist, asked if the accused were found innocent or guilty. He said he was “all for tourism” but questioned if Mid and East Antrim borough council had the power to “overturn” the verdicts.

“There is no such thing as witches,” said Robert Logan, an Alliance councillor. “How can you be accused of being a witch if there is no such thing as a witch?” Mr Turner said that there was such a thing as being tried for being a witch until 1821. The row is the latest in a long-running saga over the alleged 18th-century witches. The installation of the plaque was approved in 2015 but faced objections from Jack Mckee, a councillor for the hardline unionist TUV, who has since died.

Mr Mckee, a born-again Christian, feared the plaque was “anti-god” and could become a “shrine to paganism”. He said at the time that he “could not tell whether or not the women had been rightly or wrongly convicted as he did not have the facts and was not going to support devil worship”.

The trial was held after Mary Dunbar, 18, showed signs of demonic possession including throwing Bibles, having fits near priests and vomiting household items such as pins, nails and wool.

Dunbar accused eight women of being witches and said they had attacked her in spectral form. When they were arrested, a mob attacked them, with one accused losing an eye.

Janet Carson, Janet Latimer, Janet Main, Janet Millar, Janet Liston, Margaret Mitchell, Catherine Mccalmond, Elizabeth Sellor and William Sellor were found guilty. After being released they were ostracised by the community, despite years of church attendance.