Unmasking the Witches of Aberdeen: Contagious Accusations and Persecution With Dee Lawlor

Michelle: Hi everyone, and welcome back to haunted history chronicles. First of all, thank you for taking a listen to this episode. Before we begin, I just want to throw a few ways you can get involved and help support the show. We have a patreon page as well as an amazon link, so hopefully if you're interested in supporting, you can find a way that best suits you. All of the links for those can either be found in the show notes or over on the website. Of course, just continuing to help spread the word of the show on social media, leaving reviews and sharing with friends and family is also a huge help. So thank you for all that you do. And now let's get started by introducing today's podcast or guest. Joining me today is Dee lawler, a professional writer and editor based in Aberdeen in Scotland. Dee has a special interest in history, superstition and local myths and legends. Contagious Enemies firsthand accounts from the Aberdeen witch trials is her second book. It recounts the witch trials in Aberdeen that ran from 1596 until 1597, taking the original court records, transcribing and translating them for the modern reader. Firsthand accounts of the words spoken on those dreadful days. So get comfortable and let's meet our guest. Hi there, Dee. Thank you so much for joining with me tonight.

Dee Lawlor: Hi, thank you so much for having me.

Michelle: Do you want to just start by telling us a little bit about your background?

Dee Lawlor: Yeah, so I work as a professional writer and an editor. I'm a freelancer. My background is actually in science, so I did zoology for my degree and then I did microscopy for my master's. And it was actually science communication was actually how I came to writing in the first place. I did my first book in gosh, I can't remember the year now. I think it was 2017 on microscopy. So the science of microscopes. So after I did the book on microscopy yourself, once you've done something the first time, the second time always seems really easy. So after I had done that first book, which was kind of a professional book, I then had decided that I wanted to do something that was just out of my own interest, which was how I did contagious enemies, which is.

Michelle: Completely different from that first book that you were mentioning. I mean, you can't get polar opposite in terms of topics. Really.

Dee Lawlor: Slightly different.

Michelle: Yeah, it's very different. We're talking science to history and looking at court transcripts of witchcraft trials. So, yes, very different.

Dee Lawlor: Yeah. But that's one of the really wonderful things about writing. And I think it's probably why I just naturally came to writing is I suppose I have bad concentration with things. Because I think, again, this lends to being in science, it lends to being in writing, it lends to being in history. And to lots of things is this constant interest in what the next thing is. What's this new information? What's this new topic, this new subject? And that's one of the things I really love about writing is you're always moving on to the next mean. At the time when I wrote the book on microscopy, I had a career in microscopy. So it was everything that was me at that time. But then when I moved to Scotland and when I moved to Scotland from Dublin was when I became a full time writer. Because to be honest, I couldn't get a job in microscopy here. They just didn't was like I said again, it was just the next thing. What's next? So I put down microscopy and I just picked up writing and yeah, so I've been a science writer, science communicator. And then you just get to pick up a topic that you find interesting and you get to go with it.

Michelle: Were you kind of inspired by that move to Scotland in terms of obviously living there, being immersed in the culture in the city? Was that something that kind of helped to inspire writing the book and to do the research, or was it just something that really did just come out of this desire to do something completely different from what you'd just done?

Dee Lawlor: Well, of course, it's always inspiring when you go somewhere new. I had actually done my degree in aberdeen, so I knew aberdeen well enough, but I had gone back to Dublin, and then my other half is from aberdeen, which is how I ended up back here. But I've always loved history, and I particularly love local history. So like the little stories that you never really hear about, we all hear about big political things and wars and monarchies and all that kind of stuff. But to me, it's the local story that mary down the road tells everybody is the thing that I really love. But Scotland and know, we're very similar countries, we're both traditionally very know. We both have a pretty strong pagan background. So something like the witch trials, I think just innately appeals to scottish and Irish people.

Michelle: And I think what you said just a moment ago really does resonate it's, this kind of history at local level, because what you're really able to see is an event that was very much about the person who could be your neighbor, the person down the street. It could be you. And so when you're looking at something like the persecution of people as witches, when you're looking at those types of trials and those types of transcripts, you can't help but see your community, the people around you, your neighbors, your family members in some of these individuals. It's something that you can very much kind of see yourself and your community in, if that makes sense.

Dee Lawlor: Yeah, absolutely. There's a really lovely memorial somewhere here in Scotland. Just off the top of my head, I can't remember where it is, but the inscription on the memorial says just people, and that exactly captures it so well. They were just people. We know now that witchcraft isn't real. We know that these people weren't mystical. They weren't casting spells. There was nothing going on here other than a movement in society, and they were just people. And when you read the stories of these people, and again, this is the part of history that I really love, is just that kind of everyday element. Who were you? Who was your neighbor? What did the average day look like? And when you read the stories of these people, yeah, it could be you, it could be me. It could be anybody that you know. And I think that was one of the scariest things about the witch trials, is that it could be anybody. And when we look kind of at a cross section of who the victims were, they were kind of the people who were, yeah, the outcasts, but they were the kind of the people in society who maybe are a little bit louder, maybe are a little bit more pushy, maybe are a little bit more selfish. They were kind of the annoying neighbor. They were the widow down the road who had lots of land, who wouldn't sell it, things like this. They were the mentally ill people. Yeah, it could be anybody. But I suppose from their point of view, that was what was extra scary about witches as well, is that it could be anybody. Anybody could be a witch. You don't know. It could be the person next door.

Michelle: And I think the kind of the dark element to it is also the fact that in itself, it's this heinous movement, but to also then have this other kind of element weaving into it, which is that it was something that could be used for particular gain. There were people making accusations for their own purposes. And this is where you can see how then people who were maybe on the fringes of society, who were just a little bit different, could be easy targets for whatever reason, whether it was because, like you mentioned, someone wanted their bit of land and they weren't selling it, could be anything. That could be the reason why someone could be caught up into this. And that's the kind of unknown element that makes it, like you mentioned, just that little bit scarier, the fact that you had so little control in it. Really.

Dee Lawlor: Yeah. A lot of people I don't know if it's really the correct term, but a lot of people would say that the witch trials were almost like an ethnic cleansing. And again, when you go through the court records, when you see kind of the elements of the people that are coming through. So the first court record, for example, so the first woman tried in aberdeen for being a witch was a woman called Janet wishert. And when you read through the records and you read through the quote unquote evidence against her. She just comes across as a bulchy woman. She comes across as someone who's a bit argumentative, somebody who maybe pushes extra hard to get a discount on something. None of the things that are a crime, but just maybe somebody who wasn't everybody's favorite neighbor.

Michelle: Again, just that little bit of something that made them a bit different and unpopular again.

Dee Lawlor: Yeah, exactly. But also people who made society kind of uncomfortable. Again, you think at the time, things like being a woman on your own was I don't think it was quite illegal, but let's say frowned upon a woman who, again, maybe owned a house, owned land, maybe who worked. And it's funny because this all links in with our perceptions of, say, like negative terms to do with women. So spinster, for example, we say that spinster is a negative term. We associate it with bad things. Spinsters were people who could spin, so people who could make wool, which is a commodity. It's a business. And traditionally, spinsters were women. So it was women who could work for themselves and support themselves. But in those days, you didn't want women to be independent. You didn't want women to work for themselves and to be able to make their own money. So we made minster a negative thing. But also, if we look at the phrase like crazy cat lady, crazy cat lady is we always associate cats with single women. What's wrong with having a cat? But we've kind of, over time, associated having a cat with being a single woman, with being a bad thing. And then the term crazy cat lady is born.

Michelle: It's looking at history. It's examining history and just looking at things like the origins of these words and how they've come about and how they've had this particular meaning attached to them. I think it's something that we should be doing. I think it's important that we look at history, our local history, and seeing what we really can learn from it, what it tells us about who we are today and ourselves as people. Really? Yeah.

Dee Lawlor: And again, a lot of words that we associate with women tend to be negative. So again, like a witch witches and stories are always evil, aren't they? Whereas men are men are wizards, they're sorcerers, they're druids, and wizards are usually good. So again, it's just this natural association, oh, she's a witch. And we just naturally assume that's a bad thing.

Michelle: And isn't it really disheartening, though, that hundreds of years later, still, these same negative connotations are still here in our society? We still have words like spinster being used in this negative way. And like you were just mentioning the difference between how you picture and conjure a wizard compared to what you picture and the narrative that gets put out about witches. I mean, you only have to see it and kind of look at children's television programs and books that are written predominantly how that discourse is put across to our young children. It's still there. It's still something that's perpetuated even today.

Dee Lawlor: Yeah. And you look at the image of a wizard, wizards are usually wise old men, they're friendly, they're caring. And then you look at what a picture of a witch is, and it's all green and pointy hat and ugly and scary and wanting to hurt you and lives in a hovel in the woods and yeah, it's so funny when we look at the origin of these things. And the funny thing is, a lot of the time the origin of these words is actually something positive, but because over time, we've kind of just decided, oh, no, that's not to be positive, that's to be negative. And then yeah, it just sticks.

Michelle: So in terms of kind of coming back and thinking about the witch trials in Scotland, I mean, something that I've mentioned on podcasts previously know, when we think of witchcraft trials, I think everybody knows about the witch trials of Salem. It gets a lot of attention. I think people are aware of the witch trials of Europe. And when we look at and we examine the number of witch trials that have taken place in Scotland, I mean, I remember looking at a map just a couple of years ago where they were looking at the number of witchcraft trials. Her kind of the demographic, the people living in a particular area. And Scotland comes out so incredibly high compared to these very large countries where people think this is where most of the persecution was taking place. Scotland had a huge number of trials and accusations. I mean, it's something that I think people are not aware of and just kind of think it's important to kind of come back to looking at how it started, what was the kind of the origins in Scotland to understand how you could get to the kinds of numbers that Scotland saw. So do you want to just kind of give us a little bit about that historical context in terms of what started this off in Scotland, what really helped to drive the witchcraft craze, if you like, in persecuting people the way that you saw over those centuries?

Dee Lawlor: Yeah. So the history of it is actually really interesting. Everybody tends to go to James VI first, but you actually well, to me, you actually have to go back a step, and to me, it actually really starts with Mary, Queen of Scots. So kind of around the twelveTH century, or rather up until the end of the twelveTH century, witchcraft and being a witch wasn't actually illegal, so it wasn't a civil issue. It was something that was kind of more dealt with on a religious aspect. And it was actually France that had the first law, civil law, against being a witch. And I think that was, I want to say 1390 anyway. So, yeah, the first place to make witchcraft illegal was France. And you have to remember, then, Mary, Queen of Scots, grew up in France, so when she was growing up in France, witchcraft as a thing and witchcraft as a crime would have been well established. So as in well established in society, in knowledge. So when Mary came from France, back to Scotland, she would have taken that with her. Now, Mary herself, I don't think she was massively into the whole witch trial thing. We know James was, but I really feel it did start with Mary. Now, of course, Mary was Queen of Scotland and Elizabeth was Queen of England, and you did have separate witchcraft acts in Scotland and in England, and we know that the Scottish one was a lot harsher than the English one. And then, of course, you ask, why was the English one not as harsh? If we look at Elizabeth I Elizabeth I's mother was Anne Boleyn. Anne Boleyn, of course, being the second wife of Henry VI, who was executed. And one of the crimes that she was executed for was, you know, is the reason that Elizabeth wasn't so harsh on witches, because of her mother. I love making connections like that. Sorry, I'm going off on a bit of a tangent.

Michelle: No, but I think it's a really relevant connection to make. It's something I've often thought about myself, because you can see that some of the things that she did and the decisions that she did make, I think probably were influenced by what happened to her mother. Even just thinking about Mary Queen of Scots, I think the fact that she really didn't want to execute her, I think, was testimony to the fact that obviously her own mother, sadly, had met that end and lost her life based on her father wanting a yeah, yeah.

Dee Lawlor: But the interesting thing with Mary, Queen of Scots is that we do know that she believed in witchcraft, because there's a story of when she was in labour with James, her ladies used witchcraft to try and alleviate her pain. So if we look at Mary, Mary believed in witches, she believed in witchcraft, but she was using it or she was supporting it, or she was said to have used it and supported rather, the church in general was kind of ignored witchcraft as long as it was good. If you're off healing, if you're helping people, that's fine, off you go. It was really with the Scottish Reformation that they really kind of started to nail things down. So the Scottish Reformation was end of the, I think, middle 16th century, and I think that was the Scottish Presbyterians were kind of coming into power there and they had really strict laws and really strict rules to a lot of things. And one of the things they were really against was superstition. And again, this leads back to Scotland and Ireland are traditionally very superstitious countries, so it makes sense if you're trying to introduce a new religion. If you're trying to reform things in a country that you know loves its superstition, of course you're going to make a big law saying, no superstition, it's a bad thing. And you're going to be punished really hard if you are kind of holding on to any of these old things, these pagan ways.

Michelle: It's about controlling the masses, isn't it? And it's about bringing them into the fold. And you don't want people to be doing things separate from what you're kind of trying to bring through. And so, again, it's always looking for that otherness, isn't it? And like you mentioned, they didn't particularly like people holding on to old ways.

Dee Lawlor: Yeah. And again, I think in Scotland and Ireland, which I keep grouping together because they're such similar countries, we kind of have this almost hybrid of organized religion and superstitions. And I mean, I'm not sure if you would have seen it in your grandparents, but I know in my grandparents, they were totally Catholic, they were 100% Catholic. But then they'd still bring in like, oh, the fairy this, oh, the banshee that. And it's the same in Scotland. You still have a lot of belief about fairies and kelpies and things like that. So you can go in as hard as you want and you can make the law and the punishment as hard as you want, but you can't police everybody. And especially in the more rural areas where there isn't going to be that kind of that level of watching, let's say people are still going to hold on to their old traditions, but they came down really hard on any kind of superstitions, and one of those was witchcraft. And that was when they actually made witchcraft a crime. So again, it stopped being a religious thing. It was now a civil matter. And because it was now a civil matter, they could take you to court, they could arrest you, they could execute you.

Michelle: And again, just coming back to what I said earlier on, there were an awful lot of numbers of trials and accusations in Scotland. I mean, we're talking, you know, Aberdeen alone had a lot over the course of a relatively short period of time. And again, I think it's that kind of element of history that maybe people aren't aware of. They look at Salem, again, mentioning that kind of place and that witchcraft trial, because it's one that I think everybody is familiar with. You look at the numbers involved in that trial and people are aghast because they think it's terrible. There are so many, and of course it is. But when you then look at numbers reported in places all across Scotland, seeing numbers like that and higher, considerably higher, it's something that should be known. The fact that it doesn't have that same kind of attention and knowledge in the way that somewhere like Salem does is a disparity that I don't think should be there. Really?

Dee Lawlor: Yeah. So actually more people were executed in Scotland than in Salem. I think in the book I said between one and 2000. That was kind of the depending on my resources, I was trying to be conservative, so I said between one and 2000. But there are some places that say 3000 and then there's other sources that say 4000. And the thing is, we'll never really know because if we're looking at data that was officially recorded in official trials by officials, we can go with that. But the truth is there would have been a lot of people in especially rural areas, a lot of people where people were taking matters into their own hands or where there were trials held that were unofficial and like what's the term I'm looking for? Not like citizens arrest.

Michelle: No. But I think that sense that it was being done without that kind of pomp and ceremony, it was just being done by the local community. It was less documented, it was kind of in house, if you like.

Dee Lawlor: Yeah, exactly. So in Scotland, the trials were actually held by the local councils down in England, they were actually held in, I don't say Parliament, but the trials in England were actually held by judges. So they were held by people who really knew the law and who really knew how to have a trial, how to give a sentence, who really knew the system. Whereas in Scotland, a lot of the trials were held by local council who were kind of know it wasn't really their normal gig to do. But also when, you know, James VI, he was really into catching you know, he sends out these decrees to all these towns around know it makes sense if you want the king to think you're doing a great job, you're going to try witches, you're going to find witches, you're going to kill witches. That's what the king wants you to do. And that's a really good way for you to get attention and for you to move forward, isn't it?

Michelle: Absolutely. And again, I think it's something that you can see in the records just how seriously some people took that decree from the king in terms of recording and meticulously recording what was happening in some locations. And I know Aberdeen is one place in particular where the record keeping is better than other places. And when you look at some of the evidence that survives and kind of shows the connection with the ordinary person in terms of what they were doing and their contribution and that connection with the king like you were. Mentioning. I think it's really revealing the fact that there's records of payments being made to the local blacksmith who's making the iron chains that are being used to obviously imprison the person on trial to incarcerate them as part of their torture. The fact that there's so much written documentation, again, of materials purchased, what's being spent by councils in terms of the equipment, the resources use to tar and burn women. There is a lot of things recorded as part of precisely what you were just describing almost this transactionary type dealings of what they were doing for the service of the King, what he was asking them to do. And it really does reveal an awful lot.

Dee Lawlor: Catching witches was good business. And you see some of the records where people were trying to remember there was somebody who had rented a stable or something similar for keeping witches in because they so they didn't want witches or let's say witch accused. They didn't want them to be put into jail or into prison with, let's say, normal prisoners, because one thing that they were really afraid of was witches converting people. And there was a lot of curiosity around the witches and kind of just like you said with the record keeping, when you actually look at the records over time, at the very beginning of the witch trials here, everything is recorded in really good detail. The record is really long, every word is written down, every response is written down. But then over time, almost like as the novelty wears off, over time, the records get more sparse and they get shorter and things aren't recorded in as much detail. I don't want to say the novelty wore off, but you know what I mean. It was less of a thing in the news, let's say.

Michelle: I think it's actually a startling bit to realize, though, because I think it shows that it became more of their everyday thing. It was now just part of what they were doing. So it was something that they felt that they had to do less and less of because it was just part of their job, the routine. It was kind of mundane in a way that it shouldn't be, if that makes sense. And I think that's what's kind of horrifying when you realize they stopped recording as much as they used to when they're talking about trials and punishments of this nature and the numbers of people that had affected and the number of accusations that might be involved. The fact that they were kind of maybe not crossing every t and dotting every I in terms of recording exactly what they were doing, is quite horrifying.

Dee Lawlor: Part of it is just normalizing. When we hear something in the news for the first time, we're all shocked and everybody wants to know what's going on. But then over time, it all kind of fades away a bit because we lose interest and we want to know what the next thing in the news is. But also when you look at the pattern of witch trials and as they kind of come up and fade away and come up and fade away, it's hysterias. Something happens that sets off this hysteria. And we know from kind of studying populations across the globe that in times of, say, political upheaval, natural disaster, really big dramatic things that impact us that we have no control over. We do see a rise in people getting into superstition, getting into religion, in times of crisis. We look for an answer. It doesn't have to be a good answer, but it's an answer. And when we look at kind of Europe around that time, around the 15th, 16th century, there was a lot going on. There was famines, there was plagues, there was war, there was religious wars, there was a lot going on. Now, people who kind of lived in the middle of nowhere, you're kind of buffered from the outside world a lot. But people who lived in cities and who lived in towns, they would have seen things like the price of food going up or certain things not being available, like the way we see now. But again, yeah, it's just people responding to not having control over the world or people feeling insecure and just looking for answers. They're looking for something to grab onto. They're looking for someone to blame.

Michelle: So as you were doing your research and kind of looking at a lot of the records that you did, what was it like to see kind of words written from men? What was it like seeing these and analyzing these documents in terms of what it revealed to you and how it made you feel? Really?

Dee Lawlor: Oh, that's a really good question. On the one side, you're just kind of reading it objectively and it's just like reading any book. But when you actually stop and you think about it, this was someone's life, this was someone who there was none of this innocent until proven guilty kind of thing. It was essentially guilty until proven innocent or you're guilty, we've already decided. And that's it. You see, the phrase this you cannot deny in a lot of the records. So they'll go through all the charges and they're detailing all the charges, and witnesses come forward and they give their evidence too. But there's never really any suggestion that the person who's been accused had an opportunity to speak. Or rather, all you really see is maybe a side note saying the accused denied this. So you get these really lengthy records of everything that they're being accused of doing, but then there's no defense. Yeah.

Michelle: And I think it's something that you see replicated in so many witchcraft trials and werewolf trials and similar persecutions like this in any country, really, where it's very much a one sided affair. And there's very little effort afforded to those being accused to have the right to say anything, to be honest, to put up their own defense. They're kind of ambushed, they're silenced, and they don't have those same opportunities to really stand up for themselves and defend themselves, because nothing that they really can do is going to, in many cases, change the outcome. It's a damn deal.

Dee Lawlor: There's nothing you. Can say because so many people have come forward to give evidence or to say that they saw something. And it's more just incredibly sad because you just think this person is standing there going, I didn't do any of this. Okay, maybe I argued with a neighbor, maybe I stole something, but I certainly didn't do what you're saying I did. But they had no comeback. They had nothing to stand on. And there's only two of the records show having a defense counsel. And if I remember correctly, those two people did. I think they did get off, but yeah, it was just this repeated phrase of and this you cannot deny, like they don't even give you a chance.

Michelle: Which makes it all the more harrowing, I think. And I think it's words and phrases like that that you don't forget. It stands out because you can't help but kind of feel the weight of those words, if that makes sense. You understand the impact of those words because we have the benefit of hindsight with history of knowing just how powerful those words ended up being and how many people had impacted and affected. And I suppose something else that I'd like to ask is were there any other words, similar things, again, whilst you were doing that research that had that kind of impact, that when you saw them written down, when you saw them on the page just jumped out at you as standing out as something that had that impact really resonated in terms of making you stop and pause and really think about what it was and the impact of what those statements kind of were saying to you.

Dee Lawlor: I don't think there was any other particular word or phrase, but there was one case that really stood out to me, and it was a man actually called Andrew Mann, which I think is Andrew in Modern. So one of the differences between Scottish law and English law at the time was that in Scotland, you had to have a confession to take the person to court. Now, how do you get a confession? A lot of the time a confession was tortured out of the person, but this individual, Andrew, gave this really extensive confession about how he had been having an affair with Satan's wife, and his friends had also had an affair with Satan's wife, and essentially he was like pimping out fairies to people. You're reading his testimony and it's quite clear well, I feel it's quite clear that he was mentally unwell. And you think to yourself, this is some well, I'm going to guess old man, he's possibly senile, he possibly dementia, the mental illnesses that today, when we find somebody with it, we take care of them and we do everything to help them. And you just think, well, back then they found this guy, he was possibly, again, older, maybe not well, and they're like, okay, great, we're going to take this confession. You're telling us that you're involved with Satan, you're naming a bunch of other people who are witches. Brilliant. You're going to die, by the way. But cool. Thanks for the help, thanks for the confession. And it was just, yeah, you're reading some of these things and you're just thinking, how can you believe what you're saying? How can you even believe what you're accusing this person of? I mean, obviously a different time, different mindset, different beliefs, I get that. But some of the stuff that people are accused of, like, you're sitting there going, really? Really? And yeah, Andrew really stood out to me as somebody who just clearly was not of a sound mind and unfortunately became a victim of the witchcraws because of it.

Michelle: And sadly, sounds like his own words were used to incriminate him and others. It's that weaponizing of someone and his statements when, like you mentioned, clearly wasn't, well, it's that lacking of human empathy and other things that you would hope and you would expect to see just missing. And when you see someone vulnerable, it's, I think, all the more impactful, isn't it, when you really can recognize someone like that elderly, frail person. And yet they didn't it was used against him. It was almost part of the thing that was used to target him, in a way, if that makes sense.

Dee Lawlor: Yeah, you kind of get the feeling that he was an easy target for them, but also they loved getting witch accused to indict other people because you're kind of getting more bang for your buck. Let's say if you got a group of witches as opposed to just one of them, and you see in a lot of the trials, people were tried together. There's groups of, like, five and six being tried together because you're in cahoots. And again, you'll see examples where they say, oh, somebody who is a known witch named you, and to them, that's proof, that's acceptable proof that, oh, well, we burnt this person and they said that you're a witch, too, so your turn. Again, very little evidence, very little real evidence of any kind. But, yeah, they loved getting people to name drop other people, but then how did they do that? Well, how do you think they did it? They tortured it out of you. Well, hey, do you know what? Name your friends and we'll stop. So you can see the manipulation throughout the court records as you're reading them, and it's interesting, but it's so upsetting at the same time. So do you want to just take.

Michelle: Us through what this would have been like for someone to face from, say, the moment they're accused through to the trial in the aftermath? What kinds of things would you expect along that way to happen in terms of the procedure and things that they might experience and so on?

Dee Lawlor: From the records and from kind of general research, what I gather, the kind of procedure was is essentially somebody in the community has been either identified, recognized, suggested for whatever, they get arrested and then they had these tests to test if you were actually a witch. Now again, when you read about these tests you're kind of going what are you thinking? So there was this one thing called pricking, which is so again, from my understanding of what I've read is they would strip you naked and they would essentially prod you all over your body with a pin. And if there was any part of your body where you didn't feel pain, that was considered a sign of you being a witch. So you didn't feel pain. So it was like a witch's mark kind of thing. Witch's marks were also things like birthmarks or if you had a scar, anything on your body, essentially anything on your body that made you unique could be identified as a witch's mark. Now, when we talk about something like pricking, pricking was considered really solid proof at the time. But again, if we talk about crimes against women, we have to think about that process. So firstly, you are stripped naked. For a woman to be stripped naked in front of a bunch of men in a prison situation, like straight away, not great, let's say, but even more so at a time when nudity wasn't a thing you had to keep covered up. So you're stripped naked, somebody prods you all over with a pin. If you don't react, then that's guilty. But did you even know if they were poking you? Maybe they didn't stab you and they were like oh, I just stabbed you there and you didn't react. Clearly you're guilty. But we do see in some of the records that a lot of these witches marks. So again, it could have been a birthmark, could have been a scar. A lot of these birthmarks, not birthmarks, a lot of these witch marks were found in the pubic hair or around the breasts. So again, it's kind of this humiliation.

Michelle: It's debasing.

Dee Lawlor: Yeah, exactly. And again, kind of more so because you are a woman. And this of course happens behind closed doors, in a toll booth, in a jail, in a prison. God knows what else happened.

Michelle: And when we think about the people that this could be in terms of age, it could be the older grandmother type figure who is being stripped naked in front of this group of men. Someone frail and firm, it could be someone young who's never had those kinds of experiences of bearing their body to anyone, let alone to that number of men. And like you mentioned, this was at a time when that was something that you just didn't do. Women weren't just covered up, they were under layers and layers of clothing. Even the poor would have more than one layer of clothing in terms of what they were wearing as an outfit with underskirts. And then things over the top. And so this was totally debasing. It was totally to humiliate, to kind of set up a dynamic of power, of very much humiliating and being out of control and being in the control of someone else.

Dee Lawlor: Yeah, but it's all part of torture, isn't it? When we think of torture at that time, we think of things like the rack, we think of the really big dramatic things. But one of the most common methods of torture to get confessions at this time was actually sleep deprivation. So somebody would be in the cell, they've probably been harassed all day. As soon as they start to fall asleep, someone's waking you up all the time. And we know from research that when you don't get sleep, it's actually really damaging to your brain, but to the point where you can start to hallucinate. So if you've been awake long enough, if you're being tortured long enough, you're being humiliated long enough, you're going to say anything. You're going to say anything to get it to stop, and you're going to say anything to get these people to go away. And several of the court records, they talk about, you admitted this in confession. It's like, well, under those conditions, wouldn't you confess? Wouldn't you say, do you know what? Yeah, I did it. Okay, that's me, I'm a witch. Sure, I'll sign it. It's horrendous when you think about and.

Michelle: Again, these could be anybody.

Dee Lawlor: This could be your neighbor, your aunt, your friend. These are just normal people. And these people knew they hadn't done anything. But again, you put anybody under enough duress, if you wear anybody down enough, do you know what, yeah, sure, I'll confess. I did it.

Michelle: And again, this is what is quite harrowing about this, because then again, once they have their confession, it's very hard to then do anything to take that back. I mean, any kind of denial is going to be something that is ignored. Even saying this is what they did to me would have been ignored. And so you signed your own death warrant by confessing. You put your seal on something, but it's something inevitable. How could you expect most people to not crumble, like you were mentioning, put them under enough duress? What do you expect? What other outcome is there going to be for the majority of people? They're not going to be able to stand up against that forever. And this was about trying to strip them down to their basic kind of level of existing, to put them in their most vulnerable state, to precisely extract from them what they needed to extract from them to get the job done.

Dee Lawlor: Yes, exactly. It's horrendous of things that people would have gone through.

Michelle: And then we know that obviously, being inside the courtroom, they weren't given the voice, they weren't given that opportunity to offer any kind of defense. And so, again, it's just part of this kind of domino effect, isn't it of, well, this is their experience pretrial, then they have no recourse, really, during the trial itself. And it's so swift, it happens so quickly. And then the aftermath of that is obviously, sadly, if they're found guilty, them losing their life.

Dee Lawlor: Yeah. So what I can tell from the records, once you got into court, from what I can tell, that was kind of it. It was really just more of a show so that everybody can hear what you've done. Again, there's a couple of notes, like little side notes on the court records where they say, this was denied and that's really it. That's all you ever really hear from the accused person, is that they denied it. You never hear their side of the story from the records. Also, it looks like that you went straight from your trial to execution. And again, just imagine that feeling. You've been in jail for God knows how long, and jail or toll booth or prison or whatever you want to call it back then would have been super miserable. Not that jail today is a picnic, but poor conditions, poor food. So the witches in Aberdeen were actually kept in the steeple of St Nicholas's Church. And churches aren't buildings that are designed to be lived in, so it's not like they would have had a nice fireplace to keep them warm. They were exposed to the elements. So you're being kept under really harsh conditions and you've been there for days, maybe weeks. You go straight into the courtroom where you're just read a list of total lies that you know is lies, and then you're told, well, sorry, you're going to be executed, and then you just get taken straight to the execution point and that's it. Did they ever get the chance to say goodbye to their families? Was there a day or two of reprieve? No, just straight in, you're gone. It's so inhumane, all of it. But even things like they wouldn't have been buried afterwards. I mean, once they were burnt. And again, you see this several times in the records for the phrase burnt to ashes. So you think to yourself, I'm going to be burned to ashes and then I'm probably just going to be left there as rubbish as scrap, maybe Swiss into a bin or something. These people didn't get to have burials. Families didn't get to have somewhere where they could go and remember their loved ones and remember these people were loved ones. This was your mother, this was your sister, this was your uncle or your brother. These people hadn't done anything to you, you know, they were innocent, but there's nothing you can do about it.

Michelle: I think kind of the forgotten element of it is the impact that it had on communities when, like you said, this was someone at the heart of your family, this was maybe someone integral to your family. If they were bringing in a wage, so many things that it could mean that it had this impact going forward on the survivors of your family, the community that you're from, and then the kind of the impact that it has on a community. If it's other people that have accused that person and you're still living with them, you as the surviving family members, are living with those who have accused your loved one. And they've ended up being burnt, executed, and like you mentioned, just resulted into this discarded element. All that's left of them is something that is ash. There's nothing that you can kind of go to to grieve. There's no place that you can go and mourn them. They've just been taken away. And yet you have the face of the accusers still around you. And that must have been so hard. That must have been so difficult. I mean, an unbearable thought, really, to think about. But it was people's reality, I think.

Dee Lawlor: Yeah, and there's so many follow ups to that comment. So first of all, the cost of life was so much lower back then. People always say, oh, the average life expectancy was so much lower. The data on that is actually skewed. The reason that we think people didn't live as long is because there was such a high rate of death in infants. But you could still expect to live into your 60s or your seventy s at that time. But people did die so regularly and you were exposed to death a lot more. So these days, death is very sanitized. We don't see people dying like, you know, of your neighbor dying, but you weren't there, you didn't see it. Whereas years ago, if your neighbor was dying, you might go and care for them, you might tend to them, you might wash their body and prepare their body afterwards. It was much more not an everyday thing, but it was much more of a reality back then. So death in general, I think, was not an easier thing to accept, but it wasn't as again, sanitized as it is today. But then we also have to look the religious aspect of it. People would have been very religious back then. And to think that somebody that you loved was never going to be buried in consecrated ground. It was bad enough that their soul was going to hell for witchcraft, which you knew wasn't true, but now their remains are never going to be buried in a consecrated ground with a blessing of any kind. What hope did their soul have?

Michelle: And for many, that was incredibly difficult to kind of face, to believe that they weren't going to be reunited with their loved ones because they were being told that that was simply not going to happen because they hadn't had that consecrated burial, they weren't going to have that place in heaven. And so it was a way of punishing them in death as much as they had in life. It was an accusation that carried through in a type of punishment by denying them burial, that then punished the family as well as that individual in death. And it's kind of following it all the way through to that final thread, which, again, I think really does highlight what it was that they were trying to do psychologically, emotionally, financially, on every kind of level, that this is what they were trying to do to these individuals, to punish them in every way that they could.

Dee Lawlor: There's a real hypocrisy to it as well, because the reason that you were burnt, as opposed to any other method of execution, burning has historically always been seen as a cleansing act. And traditionally throughout history, especially with organized religion, the only people who were ever really burnt were heretics because a heretic's soul was unclean. And the only way to get into heaven was if your soul was pure and they were purifying you by burning you. And this kind of concept that your suffering would purify your soul so that you could redeem yourself and maybe go to heaven. So on the one side, you have this, well, we're going to burn you because through your suffering and through burning, we're purifying your soul that's been tainted by Satan. But then once you're actually dead, we're not going to respect your remains, we're not going to give you a blessing. They probably did get last rites, I'm not sure, but again, you're not going to be buried in consecrated ground. So, yeah, there's just this real yeah, I think hypocrisy is really the only word for it, but also just what you said about the families that were left behind. So there's one family that we do know in the records called the Leias family. And the Leias family's mother, Janet Wishard, she was the first woman tried for witchcraft in Aberdeen. Now, she did die and then her son Thomas was also tried and he was executed too, which left the father and three daughters pined. Now, the father and the three daughters were actually banished from Aberdeen because of their association with having witches in the family. And we don't know where they ended up, but we do know that at 1.1 of the daughters had to write to one of the priests in Aberdeen to get a reference so that she could get married in another parish. Because wherever she did end up, they kind of knew that there was something connected to her, but they didn't quite know what the story was. So essentially there was this other parish wanting to find out had she been a witch, what had she been accused of, what was the result of the trial? And the priest in Aberdeen very kindly writes back to know. She was accused by association, but she herself was not a witch, so she's okay to live in your parish and it's okay for her to get married. And this is a really rare glimpse into again, that kind of everyday history, what actually happened in people's lives. Of course, families would have been devastated by things like this. And like you said, if it was the breadwinner, let's say, of the family who had been accused and who was gone, what do they do now? You didn't have that kind of support in society that we do today, so, yeah, I'm sure there was lots of families that were ruined by things like this.

Michelle: One of the things that, again, that I think is the kind of the harrowing element of this is really just the long lasting effects that it could have. And that's where we can see something like if the breadwinner is removed from the family, the consequences then for the rest of the family, what happens to them? Do they survive? Do they thrive or do they not? Where does that mean that they end up? The fact that you could have family members being forced out of the area that they've grown up in, having to go somewhere else, but yet still having this kind of association with this event following them and the impact that that could have, what does it have then on them? Marrying, finding work? It's all of these things that maybe aren't known or thought about in terms of the byproducts of this, but it's still very much caught up in the everyday aspect of the people living it, experiencing it. The impact and the shadow that it could kind of leave, the stain that it could leave on people going forward even after the trial is concluded, what it could mean going forward after that, really.

Dee Lawlor: But you can only imagine the psychological effect it must have had on families. So, again, if we look at the Leia's family, those three daughters, their father, they watched their mother be burned, they watched their brother be burned, and then they're all brought up to court, too. You can't even imagine how afraid they must have been. The trauma of that happening to your mother and your brother, and then, okay, you're being let go, but you have to leave. And then the long term impact on your mental health on that, I'm not so sure. Mental health was much of a consideration back then, but people still felt, people still loved, people still cared. Again, yeah, the psychological impact of something like that can't even be measured. But again, you look at the records and these families, they just kind of disappear. And maybe they changed their name. They probably came up with a story as to why they left the place they're from. And again, this is years ago. The world was a very small place. So you went from Aberdeen to maybe, let's say, Inverness. People are going to get to know you. People are going to want to know why you left. You kind of, I suppose, spend the rest of your life in hiding, hoping that nobody else finds out what happened and having to keep quiet about it as well. There was no counseling or no therapy for things like this years ago.

Michelle: Who could you talk to? I mean, you couldn't really talk to anybody, I don't think, could you? And I think that's what's quite isolating about it. It wouldn't have been something you necessarily would have been able to talk to, with friends, with other family members, because of the impact that that could bring. And again, it's the trauma that comes with that. I think that, again, we don't necessarily analyze and think about and look at, because when you look at witchcraft trials, it's very easy to just look at them and be desensitized to it, to read it. But to read it and think about the impact for the community, for the family, to really see how it could have played out, is when the experience of that, I think, comes to life and the trauma that can come with that. And the long lasting effects that it could have had on a community and a family were, I think, as we've mentioned, probably quite profound.

Dee Lawlor: Yeah. So you have that stigma firstly of being associated with having a witch in your family, but then you couldn't speak out in favor of witches. So for example, if you said, oh, I don't believe any of this is true, you're pretty much putting yourself in a really precarious position. I'm sure there were lots of people at the time who didn't believe in witches and didn't believe that witchcraft was real, but if you spoke out in favor of a witch, you're just condemning yourself as well. So you might be on their side, let's say, but you're going to say nothing. You're just going to be quiet because, again, you could end up being executed too.

Michelle: I think it's something that when you look at it and you strip it back to that, it's something that I think isolated so many people from each other because you couldn't necessarily speak out in the way that you wanted to. It makes you powerless. Whether you are the accused or you are someone who knows the accused and want to do something, you have no power in that situation. And again, it's what makes this type of persecution particularly difficult, I think, because it really does kind of show that difference between those in the position of authority and the people at ground level experiencing this and the total difference in status and control and any sense of feeling like that they could change what was going to happen. Just wasn't there. Whether you were the victim or whether you knew the victim, you could do so little to change the course of what was coming.

Dee Lawlor: Well, I think a large part of that is just human nature. We are herd animals. We do want to belong, but also just to want to be safe in society. There's a great saying all that's required for evil to exist is when good people do nothing. And I think that's a really poignant quote for the witch trials because again, I'm sure there was lots of people who didn't think that this was true, but if you stood up for this person who was being accused, you were putting your own head on the block too. So just this apathy, this I'm just going to say nothing. I'm either going to say nothing or I'm just going to go with the flow. I'm going to jump on the bandwagon. And this was a crime of society. We love to blame the church, we love to blame kings and queens and all this kind of stuff, but society did this, we did this. People like you and me did this. And you might say, oh, I would never do something like that. But think about like you see things in the news where someone is being attacked in the street and nobody goes to help them because they're afraid that they're going to get hurt too. And it's not a bad thing. It's just human nature. We want to protect ourselves and unfortunately, to protect ourselves. Sometimes it's at the cost of somebody else.

Michelle: Absolutely. It's again, I think when we make those connections and we can see something like that reflected in society today, that I think gives us pause and should give us pause to think about things and our own actions and how we conduct ourselves and what we can learn, if we can learn anything at all. I mean, I hope we would, but it's a difficult quandary because I'm not sure I'm not sure we ever I.

Dee Lawlor: Don'T think we ever really change that much. We always talk about movements in society and there's always kind of something that's the topic that we're all really passionate about, but that fades away and something else takes its place. But I think when you look at human history as a whole, we just do the same thing over and over again. We never really learn.

Michelle: We think we're more enlightened, but we repeat the same things just in a different format.

Dee Lawlor: Exactly. People are still being tried for witchcraft today. It hasn't gone away. And witches have existed in some capacity for all of human history. There's cave drawings of people summoning spirits and using herbs for healing and things like this. In the 15th, 16th century, that was their version of a witch. Today we'll have a different version of a witch, but there'll always be a witch. There'll always be a witch trial of some kind. Might not always be called a witch trial, but we as a society and we as a species, we're always looking for the ones who don't belong and we're always looking for the ones who are threatening the status quo. And unfortunately, we always go after them.

Michelle: Absolutely. We are about to celebrate hitting our 100th episode of Haunted History Chronicles on the last Friday of April 2023. To say thank you for the months of May, June and July, there are going to be daily paranormal podcasts available to enjoy on all tiers over on Patreon, as well as the usual additional items available over there. Signing up now will gain you access to these, as well as all previous archived content. For as little as one pound, you could be getting hundreds of podcasts to enjoy and more and know that you're contributing and helping the podcast to put out another 100 episodes. You can find the link in the episode Description Notes as well as on the Haunted History Chronicles website, along with other simple and great ways to support the podcast directly. It's all truly very much appreciated. And now let's head back to the podcast. So, in terms of the witch trials, I mean, one of the things that I found interesting, looking at, looking into it in more detail, is that there seemed to be this point system allocated where when they were in the court, they would have their ditty read out, which was their list of offenses, wasn't it? And then they were given a number, which basically was this point system showing how guilty they were and what level of witch they were, which I don't think I've seen in any other witch trial transcripts or records other than in Scotland. And it's just one of those interesting little kind of differences about how the court system operated in Scotland than any other that I've seen thus far in any research that I've carried out, looking at witchcraft trials across Europe, across America, across England. And again, I don't know if there's any more that you would say or elaborate on that in terms of what that meant or what that could mean if I've missed anything on that, but it's certainly something that I spotted as a difference and found quite interesting because it's not something I'd seen before, really.

Dee Lawlor: So, again, we kind of have to look at the practicality, let's say, of actually having a know, again, one of the differences between Scotland and England was that in Scotland, these trials were being held by your local council. They weren't actually being held by judges and lawyers, whereas in England, they were being held by proper, qualified judges. Judges know the law. They know how to apply the law. So if you think that you're thrown into this situation where you're given this thing that you have to do, you're going to figure out a way to do it right. So a point system made sense to me. I don't think it really mattered how guilty you were. You were just guilty, and again, guilty.

Michelle: Until proven innocent, I was just going to say. And that's kind of where I thought it was something that was interesting and kind of baffled me, because in terms of the point system, there didn't seem to be any relevance to it in the sense that however low or however high it was, the outcome was the same. So it was a strange kind of thing to add in. What was the point? They're a witch. All it seemed to show was kind of how bad of a witch they were in terms of the records or their judgment compared to others. But it didn't seem to kind of make any difference in terms of what they did. It was just another element, another layer, which was interesting and like you said, just was a bit baffling because it was so different to what I've seen. But it kind of makes sense when if it's done outside of a magistrate, a court system, that they've kind of had to kind of find their own system, their own way of doing it, I suppose. And that does make sense. You just do something that works and you think is what needs to happen, really, I suppose, when you're just trying to muddle through and figure it out. Yeah.

Dee Lawlor: And at the time, Aberdeen would have been one of the larger cities. So think about smaller towns where again, it's your local county councillor holding this trial, so they need something to work with. They haven't really held these trials before, they've certainly never had a witch trial before. So here's your instruction sheet. Here's how you do it. Tick this box. Do they tick this box? Yeah. They're a witch.

Michelle: It made me think of and I hate to kind of make this reference because it is something so tragic, but I don't know if you've followed the case of the daybells and what happened to their children and the kind of the belief system they had where they were basically giving numbers of how light or how dark someone was in terms of whether they were good or whether they were bad and whether something should happen to them. And it just kind of made me think of that, where they're allocating this point system to judge people and to kind of help come to those judgments and those conclusions. And it had that kind of connection when I was looking at it and thinking about it and researching it. So it's just something that stood out for me and interested me because it was so different to again, just things that I've the subtle differences are sometimes the things you notice. Because in so many cases, even though we're talking about different countries, different geographies, different landscapes and people. You see the same thing happening time and time and time again the same it rolling out and playing out in exactly the same way. The same hysteria, the same things coming through that result in this happening. And so sometimes these subtle differences are the things that you notice because it's that's so different to anything that I've I've understood about other systems and how it's played out. So as I say, it was just something that stood out for me because of that subtle difference.

Dee Lawlor: I mean, it's a human nature thing. I'm not excusing it, but it's human nature to have an us and them approach on things. But if you're going to have us and if you're going to have them, you need ways of clearly identifying the two. Hey, it makes sense to have a list. Does the person meet this following criteria? Well, if they do, then they're an us. If they don't, they're them. So I don't know. Part of it, I suppose, is just being practical. But you see so many examples of this throughout history where we pick really benign things and we use them against a group of people. And the example that you've given, which I actually haven't heard about before, but it sounds interesting. But the worst example of it is when we look at World War II and we look at the concentration camps where they're, like, measuring people's facial features and things like this. Or even something like phrenology, where we're using the shape of someone's skull to define whether they're a criminal or not. I think it is just human nature to want to categorize each other. Unfortunately, we often use that categorizing for evil. But, yeah, I suppose, again, when you're trying to identify us and them, how else are you going to do it? You need a list.

Michelle: And sometimes it's the arbitrary ways that they can do it and the ways that they can find it and the things that they apply it to. Like you said, how it can get used for terrible things is, again, just what does that say about us? Again?

Dee Lawlor: But you're almost looking for a way to kind of standardize bigotry. It's like, okay, this group are the enemy. This is how you will recognize this group. And I'll make my checklist and I'll send it out to everybody, and then everybody can use the same checklist to identify the enemy. It's insane. Of course it's insane, but unfortunately, it's a repeating pattern in our behavior. Yeah, like we said, we never learn, do we?

Michelle: No, sadly we don't, unfortunately. So in terms of kind of your research, I mean, thinking about the different trials that you read about and the accusations and the people involved, I mean, Aberdeen obviously had some cases that I think are more well known than others and stand out because of how notorious they were and the number of people involved and so on. Other than the individual that you mentioned earlier, the older man, was there a particular trial or record of a trial or an accusation where it stood out for you in terms of the significance of what that kind of meant for the community or the number that involved or something of that nature?

Dee Lawlor: Yeah, so there was one I can't remember what her name was. There was one where in the court records they described that this woman had been arrested and she was en route to being taken to the toll booth and her son tried to bribe one of the guards sorry, one of the police, let's say, to let her go. And they actually used this as evidence against her, saying, well, if you were innocent, you wouldn't have been afraid to come to court. If you were innocent, why were you bribing him to let you go? Surely that's a sign that you're guilty. And again, it just comes back to this human nature thing that was someone's mother. Of course they're going to try and get her free. Of course they're going to try and help her. Her son trying to bribe your man to let her go. Wouldn't you do that? If your mum was being taken away for a crime you knew she didn't commit that was probably going to cost her life? Of course you would. I'd do it. And this really simple action, again, that any of us would have done was considered proof of her guilt. And it was just this constant can't win. It didn't matter what you said, it didn't matter what you did. You couldn't win. Once you were arrested, you were already guilty. You were already going down.

Michelle: You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't, really, aren't you? And in this case, if you have people defending you, that's a bad thing. And trying to do things, that's a bad thing. If you don't have people on your side, that's a bad thing. You just cannot win. You just can't win.

Dee Lawlor: Yeah. And I think that was one of the saddest things about it was that feeling of desperation. Like you're reading these accounts of things that people have done, of interactions that they've had, and you're thinking to yourself, yeah, okay, maybe again, maybe they're just the balchy neighbor. Maybe they drove a hard deal on a trading sheep or something, but things that any of us would have done, but because maybe you were disliked or maybe you made a comment to somebody about something, and then that same day, something bad happened to them and then they connected it to you. Again, things that happen in everyday life, but again, oh, well, that's enough. Clearly you're a witch. Clearly you did that. It's just this desperate sadness about the cases, because, again, things that we all do every day were being used as evidence. Things like coming home late or leaving your house very early in the morning. Clearly you're off to meet Satan, looking.

Michelle: At somebody in the wrong way, saying the wrong thing, being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I mean, it was for any arbitrary thing. That was the thing. It was for anything at all, however small, however big you could find yourself in that position. And the arbitrary nature of it is the thing that makes it even scarier.

Dee Lawlor: Yeah. And one of the things that comes up over and over again is saying that when you passed somebody in the street, you didn't say, God, bless you. So, like the way you pass someone in the street and you say hi. So it was believed that witches couldn't invoke the name of God, they couldn't say the name of God, they couldn't say a prayer. So this idea of you passed someone in the street, you didn't say God bless you, and therefore you're a witch. And you're thinking to yourself, well, hang on a second. Maybe they just didn't see that person. Maybe they weren't paying attention. Maybe their mind was somewhere else. Maybe they just don't like that person and don't want to say hi to them. Again, things that you and I would do on a daily basis, I walk past lots of people in the street and I don't say hi.

Michelle: Yeah, depending on I've had my cup of coffee. Absolutely.

Dee Lawlor: Yeah, exactly.

Michelle: Can you imagine?

Dee Lawlor: But again, like these really arbitrary, pointless things. Oh, you didn't say God bless you. It's like, oh, well, clearly that's evidence that I'm buddies with Satan couldn't be anything other than that.

Michelle: It's kind of realizing this and realizing how serious it was, the dark elements to it, the sadness to it, but how human it is as well. You know, in terms of people perceptions of other people, how easily it is sometimes that someone can be targeted. The kind of biases that people have. You can see how so many elements played into persecutions and witch trials and the stain that it leaves. And I think Aberdeen and other places in Scotland, when you look at places and you look at local history, and the same is true here in England and in other places in Europe and around the world where you see these kinds of events play out. Often it's the element of history that does get whitewashed. We don't know these names, and so many names are lost to history because they were just the everyday person. But we have buildings, we have locations around us on our doorstep that have these connections, that are rooted in these events. And they are kind of a remaining monument, reminder of what's happened. And so knowing about our local history, knowing about these buildings, how they've been used, is a way to not forget this element of history, to not forget the names of even those names that we don't know. And you mentioned earlier on that Aberdeen, one of the places where witches were kept, was in this particular church. And again, that's not something you see in many other countries. But here you have this location that's now used, having once been used for very different purposes. And it's knowing that, it's realizing that it's remembering things like that. It's having that knowledge of those little details like that that I think are very important. And Scotland's had this big movement in the last couple of years, in 2020, with the petition to have the apology, to have legal pardons given to those that were persecuted. And obviously that's something that did come into effect and was passed, there was that apology given. So there's been this huge shift, and I suppose I was wondering what you think that means. What you think are the next steps, if anything at all. If you think that's enough or we should be doing anything else. Where you think or what you would like to be happening going forward, having already got to the point that Scotland is at in terms of what they've managed to achieve and the acknowledgement that they've had and the change that's come about with those pardons being given. Really?

Dee Lawlor: So there's a group up this direction called Raws, so remembering the accused witches, Scotland, and that's exactly what they're working on. So they're working on getting memorials around Scotland so that people can remember what happened and that people can remember the names of the accused. They were one of the groups as well that was working on getting those apologies, and they've been successful in getting a few of them so far. Do I think that's valuable? To a point, yes. We should acknowledge the things that we've done wrong. We should acknowledge them and we should accept responsibility for them. Of course, everybody alive today. We didn't do it, I wasn't the one who accused, et cetera, et cetera, but to make that symbolic apology and to forgive these people for what we said they did, we shouldn't excuse ourselves as a society for what we did, but we should pardon the people who are the victims of what was done. I'm all on board for memorials. We should absolutely have memorials everywhere to remind people of the things that we've done in the past, to hopefully learn something for the future. As we've already said, as a species, we're not the best at learning things, and we're very good at repeating mistakes. Whether apologies and memorials will stop things like this happening again, I don't think so. But like I said, I do think we should as a society, take responsibility for our role in something like that. Because it was society who did this. Again, everybody jumps on board of wanting to blame the church and the king and the queen, but you can't do something like a witch trial without society's participation. And it was society who was finding these witches. It was people going out, accusing their neighbors, accusing their mother in laws, things like this.

Michelle: To acknowledge is something, it's an important step. And I think what's the alternative? Again? The alternative is to not acknowledge it, to not talk about it, to know nothing about it, to keep everything silenced, those names what's happened, to keep it as kind of a dirty secret, how is that beneficial? What does that do? It doesn't do anything. At least with memorials in place, at least with having open, frank discussions, having some kind of an acknowledgment, an apology, those are meaningful, they are important. Even if it doesn't bring about radical change in the way that we would all like, in the way that we all hope. The alternative is bleaker. And I think to still be in that position where it is shrouded in kind of sadness and shrouded in shadow and kind of kept in the back room, if you like, hidden away, that's something darker and shouldn't happen. So the fact that there are these memorials being built, that they are being put in place, those are huge, big steps from what the alternative used to be. And I just wish it was something that was in some small way replicated in different places and local history can be so easily lost. And in many cases, this was local history, this was happening in small villages, in small towns, whether it was in Scotland, whether it was in England, in France, in Germany, it wasn't just in big cities, it was in small places. And that local history, that local event can be lost, those names can be lost. And so in many ways, these memorials are a wake of acknowledging all of those people, if that makes sense. So again, I just think it's something that is huge, it says something, it does something, because the alternative is for me is sadder, it's bleaker.

Dee Lawlor: Yeah. But I think on an individual level, we all think that we're not capable of doing something like that. And then as a society we think, oh no, we'd never do something like that again, don't be silly, that belongs to the past. But when you have something like a memorial, when you have a person's name, when you can identify the person and identify with the person, maybe, I think it shows us the harsh reality that you don't have to be the person putting the torch to the wood, but just by doing nothing, you are contributing. And again, when we look at society as a whole, we love ignoring things. Oh, that war, that's happening somewhere else, even like climate change, oh, that's somebody else doing that. We don't want to admit that we're the wrong ones, that we've done the wrong thing. And I think when you bring in something like memorials, like pardons, like apologies, it's just a reminder to everybody you are capable of doing a bad thing, you are capable of contributing to evil and you can contribute to that by doing nothing, if that makes sense.

Michelle: Absolutely. And I think this is where coming back to the book that you researched and you put together, it's acknowledging that. And I think when you look at the title Contagious Enemies, this is something that can so easily spread like a wildfire. We are all capable of getting wrapped up and involved in something like this, like you were mentioning just now. It's something that could easily be us. It's something that easily we could participate in in a different format. We think we are morally superior and we have learnt and we are better but actually we do bad things. We are capable of doing bad things. Even if we're good people and we think we're good people, we can find ourselves in these types of situations. And so coming back to your book, it's one that I very much highly recommend. People picking up, having a look at whether it's in the library, getting hold of a copy, having it at home. Because there's nothing better than kind of understanding something than really looking at it in terms of the very real evidence, the very real kind of words, information, and what that can kind of tell us and contribute to our understanding. And you've put something together that enables people to understand these documents. You've transcribed them, you've made it something that people will be able to read and read easily so that they can have this understanding of these events and take from it what they will take from it what they're going to need to take from it in terms of understanding what happened, us as human beings, how we behave, how we interact with other people and go from there. Really, I think it's an important lesson that we should at least explore. And the fact that you've put something together that allows us to do that, I think is important. And well done, you because that's not an easy bit of research to do. I imagine you waded through a lot of information.

Dee Lawlor: Because it was all written.

Michelle: In old Scott, a lot of head scratches.

Dee Lawlor: At first it was absolutely impossible. You're translated one word at a time and the number of times where you're just thinking to yourself, what am I doing? But like any language, as you go, it gets easier. But just your point about kind of what people take from the book, the minimum that I would like someone to take from it is just an interest and just to read it and go, wow, this was real and these were real people. And at best, what I would kind of love for people to take from it is kind of just that power of one person. Because you look at the trials and you listen to the things that neighbors are saying about each other and if just that one person hadn't given that testimony, if that one person hadn't named somebody, that accused might never have ended up where they were. So the action of one person or the action of a small number of people can have such a huge impact, positively and negatively. And just like what we were saying about the memorials, if nothing else, just we need to learn accountability and the role that each of us has in each other's lives and in societies and inaction can be as powerful as action. So again, think of all the people who didn't step forward. Think of all the people who didn't say, well, actually, no, that's not what happened. The difference that could have made if a couple of people had just been brave enough to do it. But again, like I said earlier, we think of these situations where you see someone getting attacked in the street. How many of us are brave enough to step in and stop it?

Michelle: Absolutely.

Dee Lawlor: So there's so much to be learned from the witch trials just as a time in history and just as an action of society, because I just think it's just such a strong example of how we as people, it's not even looking for answers anymore. It's just looking for someone to blame. Something's gone wrong. You want somebody to blame, and then what can happen because of that and because of not wanting to accept responsibility? There was one case sorry, I shouldn't laugh. There was one case where the pieces of evidence against a woman was a man who came forward to say that he cheated on his wife because this woman put a spell on him. Really? That's the best you can come up with? You're cheating on your wife? Oh, it was a witch. A witch made me cheat on my wife. And again, I'm laughing at it because it's just so ridiculous.

Michelle: But it was used to excuse his behavior. It had to be someone else doing something to him, bewitching him, putting him under a spell for him to act poorly, to do something against his marriage, to break that covenant. And it is laughable. We can sit here and we can laugh about it, but it was these types of things that could see someone in that position for very arbitrary things. And again, like you said, it's that power of one. All it takes is one person sometimes to change not just that person's life, but their family's life. All these things that we've mentioned, the knock on effects that it had, it's the generations, it's the generational impact that it's had. And that's powerful when we realize that. And so therefore, that power of one is important. What can we do in our society? How can we behave? We have that choice. Sometimes it means doing difficult things and making hard decisions and doing things that maybe go against what the majority believe and are behaving like.

Dee Lawlor: But the alternative, it's human nature. Unfortunately, it is just human nature. And a lot of people try to blame things like this on ignorance and on lack of education. And it's actually quite the opposite, because when we look at the timing of the witch trials so by the time the witch trials kind of were starting here, we already had the printing press. So literacy actually was increasing. At that time, everybody wasn't literate, but we were getting better at it. But books were actually a huge weapon against these people. So you had maluscaram. I'm probably saying that wrong. This was a book written by the monk in Germany, and it was essentially like a manual on how to identify witches and what to do with them and what the law was. And this book was hugely popular. It went through 29 editions. It was that popular. But it spread like wildfire throughout Europe. Because, again, if you think about the time, who were the most literate people? They were the people who were kind of higher up in society. They were your priests, your I don't know if politicians is the right word for the time, but your monarchy. But books and being able to print books like this and spread them throughout Europe, it was spreading this information so quickly and it really got out of hand. And at first I think it was Pope Benedict XIII, I think. Anyway, at the time, the Pope at first condoned this book and kind of was like on board with this book. And then after a while, they saw what impact it was having and they flipped and they actually condemned the book. But by then it was too bad because the book was out there in such huge numbers and so many people were reading it and it was causing so much know you had pamphlets at the time as well. Pamphlets were hugely popular. They were like the newspaper of the time. And again, they were anyone who watches Bridgerton will know a pamphlet. It was a lady whistle down. But pamphlets, they could be printed in huge numbers really quickly. So again, if you heard of, say, someone being accused of a witch in Edinburgh, someone would print a pamphlet. That pamphlet could make it to Aberdeen in a day or two. So people are getting the news from other places of what's going on. And then, of course, James jumped on board and he wrote Demonology, which was his version of kind of how to deal with superstitious creatures. Let's say he covered witches, but I think he also covered werewolves and vampires and stuff. But Demonology is still in publication today. It's been translated into modern you know, you have these books, you have this information that's been printed en masse and sent all around Europe. And it's just condemning thousands, thousands of people, because this information is moving faster than anyone can keep up with. So literacy and book and knowledge were actually a huge weapon in the witch trials. This wasn't about ignorance.

Michelle: And I think it filtered into kind of so many different elements, into art, into folklore, into stories. I mean, if we think about things like tales of Little Red Riding Hood and the werewolf, if we think about stories like Hansel and Gretel with the children going into the wood and the witch in the cottage, these are stories.

Dee Lawlor: That there's always an evil.

Michelle: These stories were created based on werewolf trials, on witchcraft trials. It was the stories at ground level being told and then spread and spread and spread and spread that exist today that we tell our children. But they are remnants of this period of history. This is the propaganda of. This period of history, the persecutions of individuals that came through in everyday stories, in folktales that still exist, that we still tell, we still hear about that. Again, that might be part of our community's history, but we don't know the connection that it has with that particular trial that it's referencing. And we continue to tell these stories, but don't necessarily know the thread of truth that they hang on to. And again, for me personally, it's about making those connections with the past, with that local history that's so important, I think, in thinking, really understanding what's happened and why it is still with us today, why it's still part of our community and what we still continue to say and to share today is important to know about.

Dee Lawlor: Yeah, and I think propaganda is probably the perfect know, a lot of it was propaganda and what was his name? Heinrich Kramer, who wrote the Malleus Malafiqarum, by all accounts, was an absolute woman. You know, it was propaganda against women. And we know there was a guy called James Carmichael who was involved in writing pamphlets about witches. And James Carmichael then went on to be an advisor to James VI when James was writing demonology. So you almost see this thread of people who are dedicated to tracking down witches. It's their riddle know, they're out to get them. And the funny thing about James is, at the beginning of his reign, people considered him to be very logical and very intelligent, a king. And kind of by the end of it, he just seemed to be absolutely obsessed with witches. And he wrote demonology, but he also had the King James Bible. And in the King James Bible, we know now that there was several translations that were translated slightly incorrectly to make it more biased against witches. I can't remember the exact word for it, but it's something like it should have said, you won't abide a spirit. And instead he wrote, you won't abide a witch. There was something like that. I quoted that wrong, but essentially, yeah, the amount of propaganda and the amount of bias, and again, you have to look at who is sending out this information. It's your king. Your king is telling you this. The leader of your country is telling.

Michelle: You that this is true.

Dee Lawlor: And all the heads of the church who at the time would have been some of the most educated people in society, they're also telling you it's true. Now, you're a farmer from rural Scotland. Are you really going to question it that much? Are you going to go and do your own research? Can you even afford to go and buy books to learn enough to question what they're telling you? No, of course you can't. But it's the same again today with well, I was about to say we listen to politicians, but I'm not sure that's a very good example. But you know what I mean. There are certain people in society that when they speak, we listen, that when they speak, we believe them and we don't question it.

Michelle: Well, they're in charge of the narrative. And I think that's the difficulty. There are people in positions of power where they are in charge of the narrative, but it is up to us to challenge that narrative sometimes. And it's sometimes that, again, like we were talking about, can be difficult, but that power of our own selves sometimes is something as powerful. We can affect change in some way, I think. I hope please, can we? Yes. Hopefully. It's that kind of desire, isn't it, to do better? And I think that's all we can do. We can only hope that we would do better. And I think we can only really possibly be more self aware by reflecting on how we've behaved as societies, as people in our past. I think it's through lack of total, any kind of awareness that means that we can be totally oblivious to our own actions. And I think the more aware we are, the more observant of our past, how we behave. Hopefully, fingers crossed, that means we make better choices. I think the best that we can possibly achieve, I think, at this point, is my perspective.

Dee Lawlor: I think your keyword there was hope. We always hope that we'll do better. We hope it's going to change, we hope it's going to get fixed. And hope is great and everything, but sometimes you need action and sometimes you need to actually go and do hoping is lovely and everything, but hope doesn't really change anything.

Michelle: So in terms of looking at the research and the transcripts and the evidence that you were looking at, were there particular reasons as to why certain elements of society were targeted, like women, in terms of their status in society or anything of that nature?

Dee Lawlor: So we know from looking at the kind of general statistics, anywhere between kind of 75 and 85% of victims of the witch trials were women. So it is considered essentially a mass genocide of women at the time. Why women were always the victims, there's a couple of reasons. First of all, kind of an easy target at the time, women couldn't own property. You really weren't supposed to be working for yourself or things like that. So if there's any widows with a nice bit of land, or if there's any women who happen to be a bit too independent, it's a really easy way to kind of put people back in their place. It's like, oh, you're being very independent there. That's a little bit witch like. If you put fear into people, people kind of quiet down. So traditionally in society, women were the healers and women were the midwives, obviously, because childbearing and all that would always happen between women. So Mary next door is having her baby, so your mother might go and assist her. And in every little town there was the local midwife. And there's actually a really strong connection throughout history with midwives and witches. So we do see stories in the court records of women being assisted in childbirth and the woman who assisted her being accused of being a witch. And there were a couple of occasions where the child survived, which unfortunately was a very common thing back then, but that being blamed on the midwife, and then the midwife being then accused of being a witch. The child died because she cast a spell. The child died because she did a certain action or said a certain thing. And again, it's just people wanting answers. But there's a really strong connection between seeing the formalization of medicine as a career and women being attacked as witches. So in 1511 was the statute to prevent unqualified practitioners. So the law actually now stated that you couldn't be a doctor and you couldn't practice medicine unless you had a license. So conveniently, the licenses were given by the church. So your local bishop was the person who would give you the license to practice medicine. And then, of course, we know the church's stance on witches, so it was kind of a double barrel attack. So you had the law saying you can't be a healer, you can't be a midwife, and then you have also the church saying, we don't condone you doing this. So it's kind of like a double barrel attack on these women who traditionally were just helping. And again, you have to think about rural towns. Aberdeen was a big city at the time. It probably had lots of doctors, lots of resources, but little rural towns where they're never going to see a city again. It was Mary down the road who knew how to heal your infection or whatever it was. And unfortunately, again, these are the people being targeted. And I think, like you said, it's anyone who's kind of pushing the status quo, they don't like that. So again, you're a witch.

Michelle: It's kind of challenging, I think womanhood in a sense that I think we tend to think of women as being caring, gentle, the ones that are going to take care of others. And when we look historically at that, that was the case. Women looked after people bringing children into the world. They were often the people there, tending to those at the end of their life, caring for them in their final moments, but then also looking after the dead in terms of their bodies, laying them out and so on, you can kind of see women kind of taking on those roles in communities throughout life, really, can't you? And so to turn that around and make it into something very negative as a means of control and again, just putting them into their box because you don't want them to challenge the status quo. You don't want them to kind of push beyond a certain ceiling level, if you like, and challenge these people in authority, the men, the wealthy men, the intelligence, the elite. It's quite a damning kind of thing, I think. What does that again say about human nature? And certainly paints a very it paints the picture that I think we're all very familiar with in terms of how societies used to be and the differences in gender and how things played out amongst our society. But here you have it playing out, I think as part of witchcraft trials, gender being a factor in it is significant. And it's again, something not to overlook, I think.

Dee Lawlor: Yeah, there's this real hypocrisy as well with it. So they said that the reason women are more likely to become witches. Sorry, one of the reasons is that women are easier to corrupt. So it was easier for Satan to turn us evil, but then they also say that women are evil and that we corrupt good men. So they're kind of saying, well, women are weak and women are also really strong. And both of those are the reason that you become witches. It's like, okay, which is it?

Michelle: Make up your mind. You're so weak that you are going to be so easily influenced, but then you're capable of doing the influencing. It doesn't make sense, does it?

Dee Lawlor: Yes, poor innocent men, they can't defend themselves against us, but then we're too weak and we can't defend ourselves against Satan. That makes no sense. But then also actually one thing that was interesting was and we'll treat this one tentatively one thing that was interesting was whenever they talked about women consorting with the devil and they really pushed this agenda of women being sexual with the devil and taking part in orgies and the phrase kiss his arse. And the old spots. Word is actually arse shows up several times. And it's this kind of degrading sexuality between you and Satan that the women all took part in. But the men who were involved, they'd often talk about having these dances and that all the witches were dancing and that Satan was playing music for them. And the women would all take part in an orgy with Satan, but the men would take part in an orgy.

Michelle: With.

Dee Lawlor: So like, you know, it was one thing to be a concubine to the devil, but to be gay, that was too mean. Obviously you have to look at it at the attitudes of the time, but I just thought it was funny in a terrible way where women would be sexual with Satan, but men would be sexual with Satan's wife.

Michelle: Yeah, they could go so far in terms of this is how terrible I thought they'd like to have. But that's just like pushing the envelope, do you know what I mean? It's that kind of yeah, it's like, whatever.

Dee Lawlor: Getting along with Satan, being homosexual with Satan, that's just like no one can even imagine that.

Michelle: No, again, I think it says something about gender, doesn't it? And again, belief systems and so many other things. But it's a fascinating kind of thing to recognize, really, that difference in attitudes towards sex and gender and all of those things. It's just, again, you see it played out so clearly, I think, in attitudes of the day. And it's kind of inevitable then, that it kind of comes through in witchcraft trials, however subtly, or not subtly in some cases.

Dee Lawlor: But you do see this kind of almost like grasping. It's like they're grasping for everything that they can possibly find that could possibly be wrong, and just throwing it all in. Actually. Now, I don't know if this is true, so again, don't quote me on this. There is a lot of rumor that actually James VI himself might have been gay, because at the beginning of his reign he spoke very vehemently against homosexuality. And as the king, it was kind of his job to be the most wholesome person, the most following of the rules. But a lot of actual contemporaries of James said it was a case that he was protesting too mean. James was known to keep a lot of male company. When you hear stuff like that, again, I don't know if it's true. So again, it's just that sadness. You just think about how many people couldn't just be themselves, couldn't just live their lives, because all these rules, all these religious rules being put down on everybody and just everything being weaponized against you. To suit people.

Michelle: Yeah, to suit the narrative of the day. And the problem was, it was so changing, it was so shifting, that things could be different from one moment to the next. And I think that's certainly something that you could see played out in England in terms of changes in religious authority, which kind of religion was more in favour, which monarch was in know, again, who was pushing the narrative. And so all you have are people caught up in all of this, and all they're trying to do is scrape by, raise their family, have enough food to put on the table to feed their children and have a good life, trying to kind of forge ahead in this world that's dominated by all of these other things, these rules, these religious doctrines, political squabbles, all of these different things that could impact on the Mary down the road and the elderly neighbour who maybe is older in age and maybe not quite as with it. The fact that these things could play out in your own lives with such terrible ramifications is, again, the sad part of it awful that it was so much part of everybody's day to day life, that it could have that power and that kind of impact the way that it did. But it did. It really did.

Dee Lawlor: Again, human rights didn't exist back then, so if you didn't like it, too bad.

Michelle: Yeah, you couldn't do much about it. No, sadly, anyway, I will say thank you so much for kind of coming and chatting tonight. Honestly, it's so fascinating. There's so many elements to this. It has philosophical questions, moral questions, there's the historical element to it. There's the personal, real life kind of connections that you can have with the accounts. I mean, there's so many kind of touching points when you start to really examine these, that for someone who is interested, picking up your book, other people's book, looking at research, finding things out can be the starting point of really kind of understanding. I think this very broad topic and hopefully thinking about some of the things that we've spoken about, if it's only the starting point of finding out more, if it becomes something bigger, of well, let's reflect on how we behave, great. Let's think about ourselves as individuals in society. Fabulous. But certainly starting with something like your book is a great starting point. It's one that I recommend and I'll make sure to put all of your details in the podcast, description notes and on the website so that people can easily find you, read what you've written, maybe make connections with others and go from there, hopefully to kind of find out more if they're so way inclined, really. So thank you so much for kind of talking so passionately and knowledgeably about this because I think it's important to hear from people who can share that with others, really. So thank you so much. Honestly, it's been so enjoyable. And I'll say goodbye to everybody listening. Bye everybody.