The book of witches

by Oliver Madox Hueffer

Yet another of her predictions—perhaps the most famous, indeed—may have been verified already in the days of Marlborough, Nelson, or any of several eminent commanders, or may be still in process of fulfilment. It runs as follows:

The time shall come when seas of blood
Shall mingle with a greater flood;
Great noise shall then be heard;
Great shouts and cries
And seas shall thunder louder than the skies;
Then shall three lions fight with three, and bring
Joy to a people, honour to a king.
That fiery year as soon as o'er
Peace shall then be as before;
Plenty shall everywhere be found,
And men with swords shall plough the ground.

The vagueness of this and other prophecies by Mother Shipton, however much they may exasperate the stickler for exactitude, bear witness to her direct descent from the ancient sibyls and pythons, few, if any, of whom ever vouchsafed anything more definite.

Passing by Young Nixon, the dwarf, who, although a prophet scarcely less inferior in fame to Mother Shipton, scarcely falls within the limit of this volume—though it may be noted that one of his best-known prophecies, that he would starve to death, did actually come true—we may next consider the life-history of a witch less legendary than Mother Shipton—the Mother Redcap referred to above as having provided a sign for a Camden Town public house. Her career is detailed with such care in Palmer's "St. Pancras and its History," and at the same time provides so vivid a sketch of the probable career of many another witch, that I may be excused for quoting the extract at length:—

"This singular character, known as Mother Damnable, is also called Mother Redcap and sometimes the Shrew of Kentish Town. Her father's name was Jacob Bingham, by trade a brickmaker, in the neighbourhood of Kentish Town. He enlisted in the army, and went with it to Scotland, where he married a Scotch pedlar's daughter. They had one daughter, this Mother Damnable. This daughter they named Jinney. Her father, on leaving the army, took again to his old trade of brick-making, occasionally travelling with his wife and child as a pedlar. When the girl had reached her sixteenth year, she had a child by one Coulter, who was better known as Gipsy George. This man lived no one knew how, but he was a great trouble to the magistrates. Jinney and Coulter after this lived together, but being brought into trouble for stealing sheep from some lands near Holloway, Coulter was sent to Newgate, tried at the Old Bailey, and hung at Tyburn. Jinney then associated with one Darby, but this union produced a cat and dog life, for Darby was constantly drunk; so Jinney and her mother consulted together; Darby was suddenly missed, and no one knew whither he went. About this time, her parents were carried before the justices for practising the black art, and therewith causing the death of a maiden, for which they were both hung. Jinney then associated herself with one Pitcher, though who or what he was never was known; but after a time his body was found crouched up in the oven, burnt to a cinder. Jinney was tried for the murder, but acquitted because one of her associates proved he had 'often got into the oven to hide himself from her tongue.' Jinney was now a lone woman, for her former companions were afraid of her. She was scarcely ever seen, or if she were it was at nightfall, under the hedges or in the lane; but how she subsisted was a miracle to her neighbours. It happened during the troubles of the Commonwealth that a man, sorely pressed by his pursuers, got into her house by the back-door, and begged on his knees for a night's lodging. He was haggard in his countenance and full of trouble. He offered Jinney money, of which he had plenty, and she gave him a lodging. This man, it is said, lived with her many years, during which time she wanted for nothing, though hard words and sometimes blows were heard from her cottage. The man at length died, and an inquest was held on the body, but, though everyone thought him poisoned, no proof could be found, and so she again escaped harmless. After this Jinney never wanted money, as the cottage she lived in was her own, built on waste land by her father. Years thus passed, Jinney using her foul tongue against everyone, and the rabble in return baiting her as if she were a wild beast. The occasion of this arose principally from Jinney being reputed a practiser of the black art—a very witch. She was resorted to by numbers, as a fortune-teller and healer of strange diseases; and when any mishap occurred, then the old crone was set upon by the mob, and hooted without mercy. The old, ill-favoured creature would at such times lean out of her hatch door, with a grotesque red cap on her head. She had a large broad nose, heavy shaggy eyebrows, sunken eyes, and lank and leathern cheeks; her forehead wrinkled, her mouth wide, and her look sullen and unmoved. On her shoulders was thrown a dark grey striped frieze with black patches, which looked at a distance like flying bats. Suddenly she would let her huge black cat jump upon the hatch by her side, when the mob instantly retreated from a superstitious dread of the double foe."

The extraordinary death of this singular character is given in an old pamphlet. "Hundreds of men, women, and children were witnesses of the devil entering her house, in his very appearance and state, and that although his return was narrowly watched for, he was not seen again; and that Mother Damnable was found dead on the following morning, sitting before the fireplace holding a crutch over it with a teapot full of herbs, drugs, and liquid, part of which being given to the cat, the hair fell off in two hours and the cat soon after died; that the body was stiff when found and that the undertaker was obliged to break her limbs before he could place them in the coffin, and that the justices have put men in possession of the house to examine its contents."

"Such is the history of this strange being whose name will ever be associated with Camden Town, and whose reminiscence will ever be revived by the old wayside house which, built on the site of the old beldame's cottage, wears her head as the sign of the tavern."

Mother Redcap who, to judge from the above account, would have had little cause of complaint had she suffered at the hands of the executioner instead of those of the devil, was more fortunate than many other London witches. Wapping, nowadays, is a sufficiently prosaic spot. In the seventeenth century it was the abode of one Joan Peterson, widely famous as the witch of Wapping. She was hanged at Tyburn in 1652 on evidence such as it must be confessed would nowadays scarcely satisfy even a country J.P. trying a poacher. A black cat had alarmed a woman by entering a house near Joan's abode. The woman consulted a local baker, who replied that "on his conscience he thought it was old Mother Peterson, for he had met her going towards the island a little while before." He clenched the matter when giving evidence at the trial by declaring that although he had never before been frightened by a cat, the sight of this one had terrified him exceedingly. After which no reasonable jury could entertain a doubt of Mother Peterson's guilt. Fifty years before, as recorded in Sinclair's "Satan's Invisible World Displayed," another notorious witch, Mother Jackson by name, was hanged for having bewitched Mary Glover, of Thames Street, and similar cases are common enough to show that the seventeenth-century Londoner was as open to this form of the devil's assaults as he now is to others more subtle. It is true that some professed victims of the black art were proved to be impostors. Thus in 1574, as we learn from Stow, Rachel Pinder and Agnes Briggs did penance at Paul's Cross for having pretended to be diabolically possessed, vomiting pins and so forth, much, no doubt, to the relief of the witch accused of besetting them.

The earliest English witch to attain any individual immortality was she of Berkeley, who differed from most of her successors by being extremely well off. Possibly because of this—for even in the ninth century money had its value—she was accorded Christian burial, and the prayers of the church thereafter. They were not, however, sufficient to ensure her salvation, for under the very nose of the priest the devil carried her body away from where it lay at the foot of the high altar. Although sufficiently historical to have inspired one of Southey's ballads, the Witch of Berkeley is a shadowy figure enough. Another who, seeing that she was acquitted, does not perhaps deserve to be here considered was Gideon, accused of sorcery by Agnes, wife of the merchant Odo, in the tenth year of King John's reign. Although less popular as a legendary figure, Gideon has a definite claim to regard in that her trial is the first to be found in English legal records—the "Abbrevatio Placitorum," quoted by Thomas Wright in his narrative of sorcery and magic. It is satisfactory to know that Gideon, having passed through the ordeal by red-hot iron, was acquitted in due course.