Free Tyburn: London's Fatal Tree by Alan Brooke

witchcraft, especially after the Witchcraft Act of 1563. There then followed about a century during which this activity was widely prevalent. Middlesex and London did not have a Quarter Sessions and Assizes. Sessions of the Peace were held twice a year as well as Sessions of Inquiry. Hence those charged with witchcraft in Middlesex could be tried in the Session of Peace for Middlesex or Westminster, the Sessions of Gaol Delivery of prisoners from Newgate or the Old Bailey.
    Among those hanged at Tyburn for witchcraft were Margaret Hackett in 1585, Anne Kerke in 1599, Elizabeth Sawyer in 1621 and Joan Petersen in 1652. Margaret Hackett, from Stanmore, was the servant of William Goodwinne and her case is recorded in the contemporary pamphlet The Severall factes of Witch-crafte where she was described as ‘this ungodly woman … this witch’. She was a 60-year-old widow who had been accused of causing a series of incidents which were said to have brought misfortune on a number of her neighbours. Anne Kerke of Broken Wharf in the City was alleged to have used her skills in witchcraft to kill several children. When, in 1599, she attended the funeral of one Anne Taylor for whose mysterious death she had been blamed, she was offered no share in the traditional doles for the poor for which she was apparently ‘sorely vexed’ and in consequence is said to have directed her magic against a member of the family (Thomas 1971: 664). At her trial, in order to disprove the idea that a witch’s hair could not be cut, the justice took some hairs from her head. However, a ‘serjeant attempting to cut [the hairs] with a pair of scissors, they turned round in his hand, and the edges were so battered, turned and spoiled, that they would not cut anything’. When this was followed by an attempt to burn the hair, it was said that the fire flew away from it (Purkiss 1996: 126).
    Elizabeth Sawyer was the subject of the play The Witch of Edmonton , first performed in 1621 at the Cockpit in Drury Lane. Her case is interesting because it throws light on the attitude of the courts to cases of witchcraft and also shows how an accusation could become distorted and fictionalised through popular ballads that were sold at the execution. Elizabeth was accused of causing the death of a neighbour by witchcraft. Curiously, the court seemed unsure how to proceed until a local magistrate, Arthur Robinson, intervened and told them that Elizabeth had a mark on her body which would confirm the suspicion that she was indeed a witch. The justices then ordered officers of the court to bring three women to conduct a body search of Elizabeth. The women reported that they had found a teat longer than a finger and this was considered to be sufficient evidence on which to find her guilty and condemn her to death. Elizabeth was visited by the Revd Henry Goodcole, the part-time Ordinary of Newgate, who not only wanted her to confess in order to shrive her soul but obviously hoped to pick up some juicy information which would sell well when Elizabeth’s ‘last dying confession’ was put onto a broadsheet and touted round the crowd at Tyburn. Elizabeth cared little for co-operating with Goodcole, who had to admit that her confession was extracted with great labour. In fact it was said that she was constantly swearing, cursing and blaspheming, something which would only have confirmed in the minds of many that she was most certainly a witch. Her fame or notoriety went before her and assured a large turnout at Tyburn where several different versions of her last dying confession were circulating among the crowd. Henry Goodcole was seriously put out by the appearance of these alternative accounts and he compared his own account with ‘the most base and false ballads, which were sung at the time of our returning from the witch’s execution’ (Purkiss 1996: 233).
    In April 1652, Joan Petersen, the ‘Wapping Witch’, was hanged at Tyburn. Joan had been asked to provide an