Devilish little old ladies

By the 1700s the frenzy for witchcraft trials had passed, along with the notorious tests involving ducking stools and so on. Fearing the growing influence of the Puritans, the Church of England has made clear its scepticism over the whole business. However, in the countryside a readiness among villagers to blame a defenceless neighbour for the natural disasters and hardships of day-to-day life lingered well into the Victorian period. The lack of a big, hairy husband to answer the front door made unprotected widows and elderly spinsters easy targets; cowardly attackers felt they faced less risk of any comeback. Mob-bullying obviously added an extra dimension of misery to an already tough existence for many women. In a superstitious age, this convenient way of scapegoating one person for a rural community's troubles allowed for hysterical assertions that Satan was abroad in the land, in the shape—by and large—of lonely little old ladies.

IN OXFORDSHIRE we are rather attached to the idea that the word "witch" is connected to the Anglo-Saxon Hwicce people of the Wychwood Forest, but sadly that idea is unsupported by any evidence. The name Hwicce more likely referred to Anglo-Saxon people working rushes and reeds to weave wicker baskets during the six hundreds through to the Norman Conquest. The origin of the word "witch" is still up for debate.

At Salford, near Chipping Norton, an old woman named Dolly Henderson was suspected of witchcraft. According to Jinny Biggerstaff of Salford, who claimed to know the parties concerned and related the story in 1897,¹ Dolly fell out with a fellow villager named Ann Hulver.² Ann promptly became ill and, having failed to find a cure, she visited a cunning man named Manning. Manning who, we note, was considered simply as "cunning" and absolutely not a master of dark arts, told Ann that on her way home she would meet the very woman who had caused her illness. He forbade her to speak to the woman, or to say anything to anyone about her. But having passed Dolly in the lane, of course Ann couldn't keep quiet; she blabbed to some men working in the fields, and so she became even more ill, until she was barely a skeleton. But, after passing Dolly in the lane, of course Ann couldn't keep quiet; she blabbed to some men working in the fields that her enemy Dolly had put a spell on her; then she continued to get even more ill, until she was barely a skeleton. 

Meanwhile, the brother of a local boy was also supposedly bewitched by old Dolly; the brother threw a thorn stick at the poor old woman. The thorns tore the skin on Dolly's arm which bled profusely. There was a belief that drawing the blood of a witch would break her spell was common, and sure enough, we are told, Ann Hulver and the boy were cured. Poor Dolly, on the other hand, dropped dead and Salford was rid of its witch.

Around the same time at Kirtlington, “Sarey” Bowers was said to be “the terror of all the children and young people”.³ She lived at the top end of the village where the hunt met, an area then known as Fox Town's End. A fox was often started from that point, but for some mysterious reason it was never caught. On the last meet of one particular season, the panicking fox headed for safety inside Sarey's cottage. The hounds were called off, and the huntsman went inside. There he found no fox, only Sarey herself, sitting calmly by the fire. Naturally from then on, it was believed that Sarey was the shape-shifting fox.  For seekers after the truth, a Sarah Bowers was indeed born in Kirtlington in 1840,⁴ but whether or not she was the subject of this tale, I do not know.

In the case of a blameless young wife of Deddington, the Oxford Journal gives us a few tips on the steps to take should we need to banish black magic. In 1869, the unnamed woman was visited by a local crone who travelled about selling tin goods. (It seems we are being invited to look to the gypsy community for the culprit.) From the day of the visit, the poor lady began raving, and between eight in the morning and four in the afternoon she would become convulsed. A plan was devised whereby a so-called "clever man" (again, not a witch) would dispose of the witch. Two straws were to be laid in the shape of a cross at the front door and the gypsy woman was to be lured into leaning her head over the threshold. At this point, the demon she had conjured up to torment the young woman was confidently expected to appear in the form of a cat, which would be shot on sight.

On the evening in question, a large crowd gathered to enjoy the show, many under the influence of alcohol. A little before ten o'clock there was a rattling of tables and chairs from inside the cottage and the afflicted woman went into convulsions. And then… nothing. No gypsy, no demon, and no dead cat. Having at least enjoyed the spectacle of what sounds very much like an epileptic fit, the onlookers drifted away. The newspaper report goes on to remind readers that on a previous occasion a similar situation had been resolved by dropping a saucepan and a brick down the chimney. Quite why this solution wasn't tried this time isn't clear.

As time went on, the idea of witchcraft began to lose its hold, and the intervention of God was increasingly invoked to explain any strange event. In August 1899, readers of the Oxford Journal learned of a case of instantaneous combustion in Adderbury.⁵ Returning home earlier that month, an Adderbury man was surprised to find his home locked up and no reply from his wife within. With the assistance of neighbours he broke in and discovered his wife lying dead. Her wounds were remarkable: she was neatly burned to ashes down one side, with the other side left intact. There had been no fire lit in the house that day. 

The woman was keeper of a small alehouse and she was known to be very free with “lewd speeches, sometimes oaths, and frequently curses”. The author does not name her, but the most likely candidate is Jane Crow of Cross Hill, 81, widow of wine merchant Frederick Crow.⁶ Apparently a few days before, she had been alone in the house when a neighbour came in to purchase a tot of spirits. Having taken twelvepence Jane returned no change, claiming that the woman already owed the balance from a previous occasion. The customer flatly denied this. Jane began to shout abuse, swearing: “God damn me and the Devil burn me if it be not so.” She then bundled the customer out of the door and locked it. 

The next time anyone saw Jane (though it couldn’t have been her husband Frederick Crow because he died in 1883), she was just a pile of ashes and bone on the floor – or, at least, half of her was, and the other half was blackened as if blasted by lightning. So make of that what you will, but for the Oxford Journal, Jane had at last suffered God’s wrath for her sins.

Attitudes to these vulnerable Victorian women exemplify that rather unpleasant human instinct to look within the community for somebody to blame for our problems, preferably somebody who's not powerful enough to hit back. It is a primitive human instinct that appears never to die out, so I hope that while we enjoy the jollier aspects of Halloween, we can give a thought to those poor unprotected women in the past who were deliberately marginalised in the towns and villages of Oxfordshire. And hopefully we can nowadays hold fast against the temptation to blame our failures and disappointments on any group less powerful than ourselves.

1  Percy Manning, 'Stray Notes on Oxfordshire Folklore' in Folklore, Vol. XIII, No. 3, September 29 1902, p.290 and also Manning MSS. Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS. Top.0xon.d.192. (p.76).

2  Parish records show a Biggerstaff family in the village, but no Dolly Henderson or Ann Hulver. However, the name "Holford" does appear; perhaps "Hulver" is a phonetic representation of the local pronunciation of "Holford".

3  Banbury Guardian, 09 August 1923.

4  Church of England Births and Baptisms 1913-1915, PAR157/1/R2/1, Kirtlington, Oxon, 2 Aug 1840

5  Oxford Journal, 26 August 1899

6  UK Census 1861, Adderbury, Oxfordshire, Class: Rg 9; Piece: 913; Folio: 16; Page: 25; GSU roll: 542720