The History of Newcastle... Crime and Punishment

Witchcraft in Newcastle

Witchcraft in Newcastle March 26, WITCH TRIALS (Newcastle) Twenty-seven out of 30 suspected witches are found guilty of witchcraft at Newcastle. Fourteen are executed on the Town Moor. One man is executed for being a wizard. Newcastle Council had suggested all witches be brought to trial, so magistrates sent for a Scottish witch finder called Cuthbert Nicholson. The Newcastle bellman invited people to report suspected witches. Thirty women were brought to the Town Hall and stripped to their waist. Nicholson pushed a pin under their clothes to pierce their skin. If they did not bleed they were declared witches. Nicholson was later executed in Scotland for trickery. He confessed responsibility for the deaths of 220 women. He was paid 20 shillings for each witch captured.

YOUR TASK You are going to pretend to be Cuthbert Nicholson on the eve of his execution. You are writing to confess your misdemeanours and tell the story of your trickery... Begin in Newcastle when a magistrate invites you to identify all the witches in the city and offers you 20 shillings for each one you condemn to death ! L.O. - To retell an using the first person and historical research to support

Well how did I find myself here? Waiting for certain and painful death! Please let me tell you my shameful story: It all began when I boasted that I had developed a foolproof method to identify witches in Scotland! My prowess was widely known and not surprisingly, word spread to the city of Newcastle where a powerful magistrate named Thomas Sewell, sent two constables to come and fetch me; promising a payment of 20 shillings for each wretched creature that I condemned to death as a witch! Well, as you can imagine,that offer was irresistible to me so I naturally decided to go and take up this mission with great delight! I arrived in Newcastle, a thriving city, with no shortage of women,who perhaps had something different about them: a birthmark or perhaps two different coloured eyes! Sadly, there was a plethora of people who were more than prepared to point the finger of suspicion directly at these poor unfortunate individuals,blaming them for a variety of things which had gone wrong:from the milk going sour to the chickens not laying eggs!! Wanting as many witches condemned as possible,old Sewell even sent out his Bellman to encourage the towns folk of Newcastle to identify these pitiable women as guilty!As I've already mentioned,I was to be paid the princely sum of 20 shillings for each one I unearthed and therefore, the more the merrier was my philosophy! My method consisted of pricking these unhappy wretches with a pin and if they didn't appear to bleed then they were indeed a witch! Well it was relatively simple to ensure that blood was not drawn and therefore the majority were indeed hanged by the neck until dead! At that time, I was so popular that I was asked to return to Scotland to carry on my "good work" there!Marvellous news for me as I was to be paid £2 per witch-"I'm in the money" I thought to myself! However,all good things must come to an end and some intelligent magistrate decided to convict me for the trickster that I am! So here I sit,reflecting on all the wrong I have done moreover I openly admit that, in total, I have been responsible for the death of 220 innocent women! Justice will be done tomorrow when I face the dreaded hangman!It is after all what I truly deserve....I only hope that death is swift and God is forgiving! SIGNED Cuthbert Nicholson