30/07/2021
455 years ago today, Agnes Waterhouse from Hatfield Peveral in Essex became the first woman to be hanged for witchcraft. She was 63 and confessed to being a witch, probably because her daughter and sister had also been accused and her testimony sounded a lot like she was taking the blame so they’d be acquitted. Essex saw the largest percentage of executions of supposed witches, largely due to the proximity of ‘Witchfiner General’ Matthew Hopkins. While some men were also accused, these were mainly women. They were the old women, the wise women, the midwives and healers, the ones who knew what herbs to mix on their stoves to create a poultice for a neighbour’s infection, the ones who knew how to help bring another baby into the world, who may have had dementia, who were widows or spinsters suspiciously without the guidance of a man. Women who were outside the normal expectations of what a woman should be, or who had ‘too much’ influence in a community. There’s a memorial to the 53 Essex ‘witches’ at Colchester Castle, and it started with this one.
