Tracey Norman and Mark Norman, "Devon's Forgotten Witches: 1860–1910" (The History Press, 2025)

Summary

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Podcast Summary: “Devon's Forgotten Witches: 1860–1910”

Podcast: New Books Network
Episode Date: December 23, 2025
Host: Dr. Random Elcher
Guests: Mark Norman & Tracey Norman
Book Discussed: Devon's Forgotten Witches: 1860–1910 (The History Press, 2025)

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on the recently published Devon's Forgotten Witches: 1860–1910, authored by Mark Norman and Tracey Norman. The discussion explores the persistence of witchcraft beliefs and practices in Devon during a period often overlooked in witchcraft history, drawing stories primarily from the British newspaper archives. The hosts and authors delve into the historical, cultural, and social dynamics of late 19th and early 20th-century witchcraft accusations, healing practices, and community responses, revealing unexpected continuities and evolution in attitude toward witchcraft.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Introducing the Authors and Genesis of the Book

• Mark Norman is a public folklorist, creator of The Folklore Podcast, and founder of the Folklore Library and Archive in southwest UK.

  “A charity dedicated to collecting and preserving folklore materials in all formats, but...making those available through open access for the public.” — Mark Norman [02:14]

• Tracey Norman is an author, historian, and project manager at the Folklore Library and Archive, specializing in the study of witches and British witchcraft.
• The book arose from the success of a prior co-authored project (Dark Folklore), with a unique focus on 1860–1910, leveraging underexplored newspaper archives.

  “Nobody seems to have mined that for its resources until we came up with this book.” — Tracey Norman [04:35]

2. Why Devon? Why the Late Dates?

• The authors, based in Devon, realized that the county's archives were rich in witch-related cases, ignored in favor of earlier centuries by most historians.
• Cases from Devon often received national press coverage, hinting at broader, ongoing cultural fascinations.

3. Newspaper Research as Historical ‘Jigsaw’

• The nature of late Victorian newspaper syndication means stories are fragmented, regional, and sometimes elaborated or expanded by out-of-county reporters.

  “I always kind of describe it as doing a jigsaw puzzle where you don't know how many pieces you have, you don't know how many pieces you need, and there is no picture.” — Tracey Norman [05:44]

• Extra facts about cases often appear far from the original location, requiring creative synthesis by the researchers.

4. Is Devon Unusual?

• Devon isn’t unique in having witchcraft accusations: rural, “less enlightened” counties simply maintained such beliefs longer than cities, but similar cases appear across Britain and even abroad.

  “What we could say about counties like Devon is that they are considered...rural backwaters...which means belief...remains less enlightened for a longer period.” — Mark Norman [08:27]

• Healers and “charmers” continue practices remarkably similar to their early-modern predecessors.

5. Witchcraft and the Law (Vagrancy Act, Witchcraft Act)

• By 1860-1910, accusations were prosecuted under vagrancy and fraud laws, not for witchcraft per se. The focus was on “pretending to have powers” or deception for gain.
• Media and courts ridiculed all parties (“defendant or prosecutor or victim”), signaling such beliefs as outdated.

  “The way that they looked at it...was turning what used to be witchcraft in the courts into fraud and deception.” — Tracey Norman [11:42] “...the laughter in a court is recorded...They're trying to show that, you know, why do people believe in these enlightened times.” — Mark Norman [12:27]

6. Societal Attitudes and the Power of Mockery

• Press coverage was overwhelmingly negative, using language designed to shame, marginalize, and provoke laughter at “unbelievable superstition.”
• Only one case in all their research put a “witch” in a positive light, written posthumously by a landlord.
• Stories served dual purposes: warning against fraud, and dissuading belief in superstition.

7. White Witches and Folk Healers: The White Witch of Exeter

• The “White Witch of Exeter” was more a role or business than a single person—variously held by men (notably the Tuckett family) and, later, at least one woman.
• The role encompassed healing, charm-making, and sometimes astrology, with services marketed and remedies branded by familial reputation.

  “When we talk about the White Witch of Exeter, we're not talking about a person...We're talking about a role or a position.” — Mark Norman [22:07]

8. Boundaries of Witchcraft, Medicine, and Fraud

• Practices described in newspapers included a spectrum of magical, herbal, and divinatory techniques.
• The line between medicine, magic, and deception was often blurred for both practitioners and clients—even as courts saw it strictly as fraud.

9. The Press: Entertainment and Education

• Newspapers exploited witchcraft stories for entertainment, novelty, and to “educate” the public out of superstition.
• Sometimes cases included criminal acts or even murder, but the coverage remained sensational and mocking.

  “It was mostly for entertainment value in that way, wasn't it?” — Mark Norman [32:38] “Make sure you're not doing this, because otherwise we're going to laugh at you too.” — Tracey Norman [32:41]

10. Memorable Cases: “Ms. P and the Cocoa” (Story Time, 36:10–46:56)

• In 1908, a Miss P. was sued in Crediton’s debtor court for failing to pay her grocery bill. She claimed to have been bewitched by cocoa laced with a spell and elaborate incantation.
• The story echoed classic “charity refused” motifs but with a role reversal, and the case was ultimately dismissed as delusional and mocked in court.

  “Make them hot, make them swell, make them thin. Walk them away and work them away...” — (incantation recited by grocer’s daughter) [36:39–46:09]

• The strange inclusion of stirring the cocoa alluded to traditional magical rites (clockwise or anticlockwise).
• The debtors court, judge, and press treated Miss P’s claims as ridiculous; her memory and motives remain ambiguous, raising questions for both authors and listeners.

11. The Church and ‘Countermagic’

• Unlike in 16th/17th centuries, the church had largely retreated from direct involvement in witchcraft prosecution—but folklore, charm rituals, and magical thinking persisted in clerical and parish life.
• Notable anecdotes include the sexton burying bottles of ailments and vicars collecting anti-witch charms found in their churchyards.

  “He found himself quite surprised at the number of times he was being asked to bury bottles in the consecrated ground.” — Tracey Norman [48:07]

12. Continuities, Change, and Legacy

• At grassroots level, magical and healing beliefs changed little since the early modern period, despite legal and institutional derision.
• Similar dynamics—folk healing, community suspicion, ridicule, and belief in cunning folk—remain part of English rural life to the present day.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the research process:
  “It's a bit of a detective story in a way, because we're trying to...fit all of those bits together and come up with the whole, at the end of the day.” — Mark Norman [07:13]

• On the boundless ideological gap:
  “At grassroots level...that kind of set of beliefs really hadn't changed at all from what it was in the 1500s.” — Tracey Norman [31:01]

• On the church’s ambiguous role:
  “We were blessed here in the west country of having a whole range of what were termed conjuring persons...vicars who very much blurred that line between Christian working and more magical working.” — Mark Norman [51:32]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:14] — Authors’ introductions and background
• [04:35] — Rationale for project scope and period
• [07:13] — Newspaper ‘jigsaw’ methodology
• [08:27] — Discussion of Devon as a site of enduring belief
• [11:42] — Court attitudes & the legal framework post-1735
• [12:27] — Mockery and negativity in reporting
• [22:07] — Deep dive on the White Witch of Exeter
• [32:38] — Newspapers’ motivations and reportage style
• [36:10] — Story time: Ms. P and the Cocoa
• [47:41] — The Church’s changing role and countermagic stories
• [54:23] — Authors’ current and upcoming projects

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Closing & Upcoming Work

• Mark Norman is working on a pop culture folklore book about the paranormal in “The Simpsons” and a folklore encyclopedia.
• Tracey Norman is editing a book about a 1687 Dorset witchcraft case and researching ghost folklore in the British newspaper archives.

  "We've written two together and haven't murdered each other yet, so the History Press obviously thinks it's a good idea..." — Tracey Norman [55:32]

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Final Thoughts

This conversation reveals that the late 19th and early 20th centuries were not so rational or modern as one might suspect—beliefs in witchcraft, healing, and magic endured amidst mockery, legal redefinition, and social change. Devon's Forgotten Witches recovers these neglected stories, challenging simple narratives of progress and offering a rare glimpse into the persistence of folk belief at the dawn of the modern age.

Recommended for: historians, folklorists, cultural anthropologists, and anyone interested in the persistence of the supernatural in “enlightened” times.

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Transcript

[Tracey Norman]

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[Dr. Random Elcher]

Phew.

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[Tracey Norman]

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[Tracey Norman]

Tennessee Whiskey, 40% alcohol by volume. Volume.

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[Dr. Random Elcher]

Hello and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Random Elcher. And I'm very pleased because we get to go back in time today. Well, honestly, not as far back as you might think, which is part of what's interesting here, because we're going to be talking about a book titled Devin's Forgotten Witches, but we're not going back to the 1500s or the 1600s. In fact, the book is focusing on 1860 to 1910, which is much more recent than we might think, which of course is why the forgotten part of the title is there and makes for, I think, a very interesting conversation. Now, the book is published by the history press in 2025 and written by Mark Norman and Tracy Norman, both of whom join me here today to help us understand what they have figured out from digging through some pretty interesting sounding records. So, Mark and Tracey, thank you both for being here to tell us about the book.

[Tracey Norman]

Thank you very much for having us.

[Dr. Random Elcher]

Miranda, could you start us off by introducing yourselves each a little bit and tell us why did you decide to write the book and do it together?

[Mark Norman]

Yes, absolutely. So my name is Mark Norman. I'm a public folklorist and an author. Many people will probably know me as the creator and host of the Folklore Podcast, an Internet based show looking at folklore in all of its various facets. Because that's been going for 10 years plus now, because I am very old and so So a lot of people know me from that, but also perhaps as the founder and librarian and archivist now for a charity called the Folklore Library and Archive, also based where we are here in the southwest of the uk, and that's a charity dedicated to collecting and preserving folklore materials in all formats, but. But more crucially, making those available through open access for the public.

[Tracey Norman]

And I'm Tracey Norman. I'm an author and historian. I write fiction and nonfiction, primarily nonfiction and primarily about witches. They do seem to follow me around quite a lot. I tutor an unaccredited online course called Introduction to British Witchcraft Witches Again, which you can find through the education website Learn for Pleasure. And when I'm not doing that, I'm also the project manager for Mark's charity, the Folklore Library and Archive. And when I'm not doing that, I also narrate audiobooks.

[Dr. Random Elcher]

Well, that certainly sounds like some relevant pieces here. We've got folklore, we've got witches. Why this book, then?

[Mark Norman]

So we had previously written for the history press. I'd written a couple of books for the history press. One is individually looking at rural crafts and folklore and superstition relating to those. And then together we had written a book called Dark Folklore, which looked at a number of different aspects of the darker side of folklore, as the title suggests. So sleep paralysis and ghosts and dark tourism and urban legends and those sorts of things. So really, this book came about because Dark Folklore did quite well for the history press. And then they came back to us and said, we like that. Can you please do it again? And this is what we came up with, because you had an interest, didn't you, in this period of history and witchcraft because of unusual reasons?

[Tracey Norman]

Well, basically, the reason why we decided to cover such a late period is because it seems that nobody else has. So a lot of the cases. Well, all of the cases that we have used came from the British newspaper archives, and nobody seems to have mined that for its resources until we came up with this book.

[Dr. Random Elcher]

Well, let's talk a little bit more then about sort of scope. So I've already mentioned it's 1860 to 1910, of course, the title of the book, Devin's Forgotten Witches. So was it simply that Devon newspapers had a lot about witches in this time period, or is there more to understand in terms of why Devon and why the start and end dates?

[Tracey Norman]

Well, Devon. I mean, we obviously live in Devon, so we are on the doorstep of all of the stories that are in the book. So all of the stories originated here in the county, but they are covered in newspapers from across the country. So you might get a Plymouth case being commented on by a newspaper in York, for example. So there were a lot of different.

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[Tracey Norman]

When we were putting these stories together, I always kind of describe it as doing a jigsaw puzzle where you don't know how many pieces you have, you don't know how many pieces you need, and there is no picture. So it's an interesting challenge leeching all of the facts out of each of these stories and trying to put them together into a coherent narrative and a logical time sequence.

[Mark Norman]

Yeah, the thing with newspapers at that time, and in fact it still happens now, I guess with newspapers as well, is that they would. We would call it syndication perhaps now, but. But they would in many cases draw stories from. From other publications and then re report them even if they weren't relevant to that particular geographical area. But they would do that when the stories had interesting or unusual or bizarre facets about them. So that's what we see happening here. But the interesting thing with the news reports with these sorts of cases is that they're not just copying and pasting the same text from newspaper to newspaper necessarily. That does happen. But what also happens is that you get some reporters in other parts of the country who find a story particularly interesting and actually bother to look into it a bit more. So you get little extra pieces of that jigsaw that Tracy's referring to coming up in a newspaper in Manchester or a newspaper in Liverpool that relates to a case that happens down here. So it really is for us a bit of a detective story in a way, because we're trying to kind of fit all of those bits together and come up with. With the whole, at the end of the day.

[Tracey Norman]

And it's interesting how many new facts you can glean from newspapers from further up country where those facts do not appear in any of the local press as well, which we also found quite interesting.

[Dr. Random Elcher]

Yeah, yeah, that is really interesting. Thank you for telling us a bit about the sort of backstory of piecing all of this together, thinking then kind of not about just one case, but sort of broadly what you found across all of this puzzle piecing. Do we have a sense of. Is Devin an outlier compared to any of these other places? Or like the sorts of circumstances that we might see accusations of being a witch come up? Like what sorts of things might we see that word turn up? And is there something weird about Devon? Or if we're looking at kind of things that are reported in York or Manchester or Whatever. Like, when do we see accusations of being a witch turn up?

[Mark Norman]

There are lots of weird things about Devon, but this isn't one of them, I don't think particularly. It's not really an outlier as such. We find cases like this happening everywhere, really. What we could say, I guess, about counties like Devon is that they are considered by a lot of people to be rural backwaters historically, which means that belief in these kinds of areas, superstitious belief, belief in fairies, belief in the power of witches and so on, perhaps remains less enlightened for a longer period of time than it does in the cities and the towns and the urban areas. So it's not really an outlier in terms of being unusual, but in terms of the nature of belief, then perhaps it moves a little bit slower. But in terms of the accusations themselves, circumstances for those as many and various really, isn't there?

[Tracey Norman]

Yeah. And we do also include a couple from overseas, purely for comparison purposes. These were also things which appeared in the paper and because they provided a good example, usually of familial relationships souring for various reasons. So we do include a couple from overseas, but there's no real difference between a case from, say, you know, Yorkshire or a case from down here, or even a case from France. And one of the things which I found the most interesting was the cases of healers and charmers, particularly healers, because a case from 1880 is not that different to a case from 1680. They have the same component parts. If you take out all mention of money, which would link them to a particular time period, and just take the building blocks which make up each of these cases. For example, in the case of a healer, somebody falls ill. Conventional medicine is either not tried at all or fails to provide a cure. Somebody in that person's community, either a neighbour or a relative, usually a neighbour, says, thou hast been bewitched, and will then refer them to a white witch. The white witch comes in and it's their turn to try to effect their cure. And you see that in cases right across the centuries, it hasn't changed at all in that time.

[Dr. Random Elcher]

Hmm, okay. That's really interesting to understand that Devin is not necessarily an outlier in terms of place, but also these accusations aren't really an outlier in terms of time either. So helpful to get that clear as we continue our discussion, when we're thinking then about kind of what happens after that. So someone says, oh, you've been bewitched, or, oh, that person is a witch. How seriously was that taken? From that moment on, like, obviously it was serious enough that it went in the paper, but, like, would this sort of claim hold up in court the way it would have in the 1600s.

[Tracey Norman]

The way that they looked at it in this time period? Take the case of, say, a fortune teller, somebody who did a bit of scrying or divining. That was covered between 1860 and 1910 by the Vagrancy Act, 1824. So it was essentially, people were committing these offences and were therefore deemed rogues and vagabonds. So it was turning what used to be witchcraft in the courts into fraud and deception. So it was not specifically bringing them to court and telling them, you know, you have been charged with witchcraft, it was bringing them to court and charging them with having unlawfully deceived with intent to fraudulently obtain monies.

[Mark Norman]

Usually, as far as the newspaper reports are concerned, then those are usually written in a very specific way. And that is to teach people that these sorts of cases are ultimately ridiculous, isn't it? And we see this from the court transcripts as well. I guess Tracy makes a point in her talk on this subject of pointing out how many times the laughter in a court is recorded in the court transcript. So you will see court transcripts that have something that is said by the defendant or something that's said by the prosecutor, or the magistrate makes a facetious comment and the public gallery laughs. And that laughter is recorded in the court transcript. And it is then also recorded in the newspaper reports at the time as well, because they're trying to show that, you know, why do people believe in these enlightened times that these kinds of superstitious nonsense cases are taking place? So the. The reports are very carefully crafted in terms of the newspapers and almost always negative.

[Tracey Norman]

Yes, it's basically, they use cases like this to poke fun at at everybody who is involved in them, be they defendant or prosecutor or victim. And they use them in the newspapers as a way of signposting to the reading public how they are meant to view these people, these activities and this kind of case. So there is at least one sentence in all of these reports, which is something like a case of unbelievable superstition, appeared before Plymouth Magistrates Court on Monday and. And then it proceeds to write about them with very, very negative connotations, using things like the word confessed when in talking about this particular case is one that I talk about in detail in one of my talks. And this particular case involved a healer who was trying to help this old couple. The woman had lost the use of one side of her body and her husband was seeking a cure. And because the first healer, the one who he was taking to court for non patent or non refund of the money because her cure failed, he went to see somebody else. And the reporting of the fact that he admitted in court that he had gone to see somebody else after the first attempt at cure had failed was described as he confessed that he had done this. So it made it into something shameful, something he was meant to be embarrassed about, when in reality, this was a desperate old man who was nearly 70 years old seeking a cure for his wife because conventional medicine had failed. And he was prepared to do anything it took to try and find a cure for his wife. And he was ridiculed absolutely, in such an appalling manner for that by his.

[Mark Norman]

Own lawyer as well. Not just.

[Tracey Norman]

Well, it was her. It was her defence lawyer.

[Mark Norman]

Yeah. So across the board we saw this. And it's interesting, I think, to note as well, that out of all of the cases that we looked at to put this book together, and of course, there are a number of cases that we looked at that didn't make it as far as the final book as well, out of all of those cases, there is only one that reports on the witch in a positive light. Just the one. Everything else is a negative case. And that's the case of somebody in 1891 who it said, you know, is very well respected and keeps a good house and has a good appearance and, you know, despite having disabilities or aspects of her person that would set her about as being other. So she had an eye condition, for example, which would have meant that she looked unusual, she was somewhat stooped. And all of these things that you would say stereotypically, you would describe an old lady who was reported to be a witch. The coverage about her was. Was positive across the board, whereas all of the other cases really were not.

[Tracey Norman]

It was written by her landlord as well. So she rented a cottage from him and she had passed away. And that was why this piece of editorial actually appeared in the press.

[Dr. Random Elcher]

Okay, so this is really interesting because what I'm hearing is that the claim, you know, someone saying this person is a witch or something to that effect was taken seriously enough that it would be reported on and would go to court, but wasn't taken seriously enough that, like, people were supposed to, you know, kind of quote unquote, educated people were supposed to believe it. So when these accusations were brought up in court and reported on, what happened next, were they just kind of dismissed? Because it was about witches or was there a process of investigation or prosecution or. I mean, were there legal mechanisms for witchcraft at this point?

[Tracey Norman]

Point, it, it wasn't witchcraft. It was that the, the Witchcraft act was still in force, but it looked at people as fraudsters. So witchcraft had itself had become an impossible crime by the Witchcraft Act, 1735. So after that point, you weren't charged with being a witch and having powers, you were charged with pretending to have powers. So what we see across the board in these cases is those who come to court as plaintiff and defendant are ridiculed in the press, ridiculed by the court members. So, you know, even the plaintiff who has come to these people for help is ridiculed and made to be equally as ridiculous as the defendant who believes and practices these things. And because it was more about fraud, it kind of served two purposes in its teachings for the general public. It taught you that being a fraudster was bad. And it also gave you an opportunity to laugh at ridiculous superstition from, you know, stupid, uneducated people. So it was usual for the more serious cases to be given. I think it's three months imprisonment with hard labour. And sometimes it was a month.

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[Mark Norman]

But the cases certainly were investigated and prosecuted properly. They weren't just dismissed as being ridiculous. The manner that they were looked into was of more convention, you know what I mean?

[Tracey Norman]

And it's more that the cases were being looked at in two different ways. I think the magistrates and the educated reading public would look at them as cases of fraud. Those who were actually involved would be looking at them more from the folk medicine, the charming, the divining point of view. So there were two very different interpretations of. Of the one case.

[Dr. Random Elcher]

I would say, yeah, that's definitely helpful to understand what's happening in court. But actually, I think the place I'd like to go next is something. Tracey, you mentioned briefly a moment ago that there were not just bad witches that did bad things to you, there were also white witches, good witches. And in fact, one of them seems to have, like, quite a title, really. The White Witch of Exeter. Who is this person? Was it just one person? What sort of role did this position have in the community?

[Mark Norman]

When we talk about the White Witch of Exeter, we're not talking about a person as. As an individual. We're talking about a role or a position. There were a number of white witches described as such anyway, across the county. And. And when we see the term white witch or something like that, capitalized and used in that way in, in these newspaper reports, what it's referring to essentially is kind of the business side of witchcraft, the commercial side. You know, these. These are practitioners or professed practitioners, depending on the person who are offering a service in response for. In return for financial gain. So the White Witch of Exeter is the. The most commonly referred to and the most well known of these characters. And the White Witch of Exeter used to travel about, would do home visits, would have stalls at local markets and county fairs, and had their own premises based in the city of Exeter. There's a street for those that know Exeter called Bartholomew street, which runs behind one of the cinemas in the city. And Bartholomew street was kind of the home of the White Witch of Exeter, whoever the White witch may be, because most of the buildings in Bartholomew street at one time or another were the home of a White Witch of Exeter. The original, if we can call it that. The OG White Witch of Exeter was a gentleman called Robert Tuckett. Robert Tuckett was a healer, worked with plants and also treated cases of bewitching and investigated those. He passed the business on to his son James. James became probably the busiest of all the White Witches of Exeter. But the Tucketts were very well respected as a family. So they would have their name applied much later on, even after they stopped being the White Witch of Exeter because they were so well known and so well respected. So James Tuckett, he investigated more cases of bewitching than he did, offer plant based remedies and so on, although he did still use his father's recipes when he did that. And he was always intending to pass the business on to his son. But his son sadly died very early. James himself died when he was in his 40s. And then somebody else took up the role after that. And as I say, they then carried on with the same business. So that was a gentleman called George Thomas. He was an astrologer. He set up business in another building in Bartholomew street, but he offered the same services and the same remedies and branded the same remedies as being the ones that the Tucketts had used because their name was so well known. So all of the products that he had were called things like the Late Tucketts vegetable medicines, because everybody associated the name Tuckett with, with doing good work in this sort of area. So Dr. Tuckett's golden eye Ointment was a cure for inflammation of the eyes, for example. So that became Thomas Late Tuckett's Golden Eye Ointment and the name carried on in that way. And then eventually we get to the stage where we have two people operating at the same time, kind of vying for the position of the White Witch of Exeter. And it all kind of falls apart then at the end of the 19th century when there's a case brought against the White Witch at that time for essentially being a fraudster and that case goes to court and the White Witch is found guilty on very many counts. So the role almost dies away at that point, but not quite. The White Witch of Exeter had traditionally always been a male role. Not always, but usually. But we do find a case recorded in the North Devon Journal newspaper In the early 20th century, in 1907, which still refers to the White Witch of Exeter. So the, the role is still going on at that point, but the role is. Has been taken up by a woman instead of a man. Maybe she does a better job. I would not Be surprised to hear that she did. And she's recorded as treating a case on the north Devon coast in Ilfracombe where a farmer had had three horses die under unusual circumstances. And she goes to visit the farm. She confirms to the farmer that yes, he has been bewitched, which is why the horses have died. And then a treatment or something of that ilk is then offered to sort things out. And that's probably the last report that we have of the White Witch of Exeter in that kind of official commercialized capacity.

[Dr. Random Elcher]

Okay, that's very interesting to hear about this as like an established position that goes across more than one, one person. And it does kind of bring up these questions that we've sort of touched on a little bit already around kind of what exactly is witchcraft at this point versus medicine versus fraud? Like, does anyone have a clear idea of where those lines are drawn in this period?

[Mark Norman]

I don't think they do, do they?

[Tracey Norman]

No, that's a really good question. I mean, certainly what's been reported in the press is a mix of, I would say scrying, divining charms and herbal medicine.

[Mark Norman]

And some of those things have, have more proven efficacious qualities about them than others. Because when we look at folk medicine and we look at herbal remedies and things like that, if you go to any high street store that sells kind of not even alternative medicines, but more nature based folk type medicines, we, we see products now that contain ingredients that were being used in herbal remedies many, many years ago because they're proven to work. So you know, people used to use snails to treat deafness and things like that. And we see products related to ear conditions now that have gel extracted from snails in them because it's have, it has proven antibacterial properties or it works in that particular way. So that aspect of it is very much a skill which people who know plants and who know how these sorts of things work would have. And some of the other areas are perhaps less clear cut, aren't they?

[Tracey Norman]

Yeah, I mean, but there was, there was still, you know, people were still creating charms, people were still creating things like spellbottles, for example. And it seems like if you are a practitioner, you align yourself with a particular identity. So you style yourself, you know, a white witch or you style yourself a cunning woman. And that aspect of it I don't think has changed very much over the years at all. But as science and medicine and religion and magic, which all used to be kind of lumped together in a large sort of melange of everything. In the early modern period, as enlightenment, as education progressed, as research into medicine and science progressed, and all of these things started branching out into their own separate ways. That was the point at which belief in magic as a thing, which had been absolutely huge in the early modern period, by sort of 1735, when the witchcraft act was changed, so that magic became an impossible crime. But prior to that, you know, everybody believed implicitly that there were witches. Witches had power, witches could hurt you, witches were a threat to the country, to the community. And after 1735, it turned into this impossible crime that I mentioned before, and it was more the realm of the fraudster. So no matter what the person's intent, whether they were trying to help or trying to deceive, and we cover both in the book, you know, that as far as people in authority were concerned, their intent didn't matter. You know, if they were carrying out these practices, they were stupid, they were ridiculous, they were uneducated, they were not enlightened. And it shows, I think, that at grassroots level, the people who were carrying out these practices and the people who were seeking them out to help them, that kind of attitude, that kind of set of beliefs really hadn't changed at all from what it was in, say, the 1500s. So in some areas, those beliefs continue pretty much unchanged, I would say. They are part of everyday life for some people. And there is still a deep, you know, today there is still a deep belief in such things in certain areas.

[Dr. Random Elcher]

So why then are they being covered in newspapers? Is it simply newspapers cover kind of anything vaguely interesting that happens in a court? Is it because there's more of a sort of, I don't know, some sort of class divide going on in terms of, like, let's laugh at these people now that we, some of us don't agree with this? Like what. Why were newspapers kind of bothered about any of this?

[Mark Norman]

It was mostly for entertainment value in that way, wasn't it? Yes.

[Tracey Norman]

Yeah, some of it definitely was. It was a chance to educate people and to remind them, a, make sure you're not doing this, because otherwise we're going to laugh at you too. And B, you know, teachers, you need to do a better job. One of the articles we saw which talked about a particular case in Plymouth, most of the reports we saw from across the country used headlines like a witch in a police court or the Devonshire witches, even though there was actually only one, one witch in this particular case. But one reporter took a very different tack. He wrote about the same case, but he Used the headline the Schoolmaster in Devon. And he opened with, if the schoolmaster is abroad in Devonshire, it is to be feared that he does not make good use of his time. So that one was a scathing denouncement of the teaching profession. So it was a chance to have a bit of a jibe at teachers. It was a chance to have a bit of a jibe at people who believed in these things. It was a chance to remind the reading public that, you know, you needed to avoid these stupid, ridiculous superstitions and turn towards learning and enlightenment. So it was partly, and obviously the fact that the report reporters were being very meticulous in their recording of the word laughter. You know, anytime laughter broke out in the court, they were very careful to record it. And I think as far as they were concerned, you know, it was partly entertainment value and it was partly, in a way, I think, also novelty value. It was a bit like the drop the dead donkey thing, isn't it? You know, the sort of novelty news item.

[Mark Norman]

Yes, yeah. In many cases. But I think it's worth remembering as well that it really does depend on the nature of the crime that's being committed, because there are a whole range of different things that are covered in these sorts of cases. So we certainly see very mundane cases which are covered purely because the newspapers would report on the goings on of the local court. So, for example, there might be a couple of people up because they had a fight in a pub, because one of them called the other an ugly old witch or something like that. Nothing to do with witchcraft, but it draws on the stereotype and it just goes in as a small piece. There's another fairly major case which we cover in this book, which is a murder case, and therefore there's a whole lot of other things going on there which make that a lot more newsworthy. So it does depend on the nature of the crime, too.

[Dr. Random Elcher]

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. While we're talking about the range of cases, is there a particular case that you want to tell us about? I mean, story time? I suppose anything that massively caught your attention or was especially unusual, or if you want listeners to remember, kind of only one case is there one we.

[Tracey Norman]

Want to discuss, which one should we go for?

[Mark Norman]

Well, that's a good question, isn't it?

[Dr. Random Elcher]

Note that I'm not framing it as favorite case because that.

[Mark Norman]

I guess you have one, two cases that are your go to cases. I think. I think Ms. P is a good case because it's so unusual.

[Tracey Norman]

Yeah.

[Mark Norman]

Do you want to highlight that one.

[Tracey Norman]

Yeah. Yeah, I could. I could talk about that. I could talk about Mary Catherine Murray.

[Mark Norman]

Yeah.

[Tracey Norman]

Let's. Let's have a look at Miss P, shall we? Haven't talked about her for a while.

[Mark Norman]

Yeah, we. This case was of particular interest to us, I guess, in some respects, because it's very geographically close to where we live. Although that wasn't the reason that we chose to include it in the book. But it was. It was quite interesting in terms of poking around for little bits of detail that we could do more easily. But it's just. It's a case that has some really unusual aspects to it, I think.

[Tracey Norman]

Yeah, well, I think one of the most unusual things about it is that it. It's one of the latest cases that we look at in the book. It's from 1908. And it actually came to light in the debtors court in Crediton, of all places. Essentially, Ms. P. Had been taken to court by a grocer for not paying her grocery bill. Now, she had racked up quite a significant amount. Two pounds, seventeen shillings and half a pence, which is about £250 today, something like that. So she'd obviously been shopping at this. This particular grocery for quite some time and had continued to do so, it seems, even though she still owed them money. So she'd gone into the shop on this particular day in December 1907. Now, this case took some time to come before the court. So she'd been in the shop in December 1907, and the grocer's daughter brought her mother, who was serving behind the counter, a cup of cocoa. And the grocer's wife offered this cocoa to Ms. P. Said to drink it because it would warm her and do her good. Ms. P. Declined and said, oh, no, I'm fine, thank you very much. So the grocer's wife then set a few biscuits on the biscuit tin lid and placed that on the counter next to the cocoa and again entreated Ms. P. To partake of the cocoa. So she continued to decline for a little while and then eventually she agreed to drink the cocoa. And the grocer's wife told her to stir it up, stir it up. So she gave it a bit of a stir, had a drink. And then while this was going on, while she was stirring and having a drink, the daughter, who was a teenager at the time, said, make them hot, make them swell, make them thin. Walk them away and work them away. Put it in the arms and in the legs and in the Feet put it in the face, fill up with neuralgia, toothache and more. Put it inside to do good, and put it in in dry weather to do good. Her have drinked it. Her have drinked it very well and don't know what her have drinked and will go to her grave. Now, if I was drinking some cocoa in somebody's shop and one of the people behind the counter started saying that to me, I would have immediately stopped drinking the cocoa, demanded to know what was going on and then left in a hurry. But Miss P doesn't seem to have done that. That she apparently replied something rather bland like, it wouldn't do the grocer any good to indulge all the customers with a cup of cocoa. So some other odd things then happened. The grocer's wife then told Miss P that she wouldn't return home via her usual route and she would not talk with her neighbours and that she would soon be back at the grocery because there would be some little thing that she would want. Now, Miss P actually lived in a nearby village, which was about three miles away, so it would have taken, you know, it's quite some distance for her to walk to come to get her groceries. So Miss P told the grocer's wife that she wasn't going to be coming back to the grocery for two weeks, and the daughter then said, well, we ought not to have given it to her now if she's not coming back for a full fortnight. So at that point the grocer himself noticed that another customer was coming towards the door, and so he told his daughter that she might as well put away the cup. So Miss P decided to leave at this point and she caught part of the exchange between the gentleman that had walked in, who was a local baker, and the daughter, in response to something said to her, said that she had been doing good. So Miss P left the shop. She doesn't say to the court which direction she took home, whether she went via her usual route or an alternative. And that night she became ill and she managed to get back to the grocery about two or three days later and demanded of the grocer's wife what had been in the cocoa because it had made her ill. Interestingly, the grocer's wife at this point says, you did not have any cocoa, which is interesting. So Miss P persisted, wanting to know if she'd been poisoned. And at this point the two had some kind of altercation and the grocer's wife ordered her out of the shop and Both women said that they were going to report each other to the police. Now, it seems that Miss P did go to the police, but nothing appears to have come of that. She believed that she had suffered some serious harm at the grocery, that she was affected health wise, that she was becoming very thin and wasted. But the problem with all of this is it was coming out in a debtors court. And because Ms. P hadn't filed a counterclaim against the grocer and his family, the judge had no remit to look into any of this. So she's telling this incredibly convoluted story and the judge really has no power to deal with any of it. So when the grocer's family started taking the stand and giving their evidence, they basically discredited her completely. For example, the grocer's wife told the court that Miss P had made similar accusations about other people in the neighbourhood, saying, you know, people in her own village had put something in the butter and that she'd been bewitched by her own aunt, which Ms. P denied. So the judge, obviously completely bewildered, then actually asked Miss P in a court, in a debtors court in 1908, do you believe that they bewitched you? And she claimed that she didn't believe in any such thing. So although this one doesn't appear to be particularly witchy, if you have a look at something called the charity refused model of witchcraft cases, which features a lot in Keith Thomas's book Religion and the Decline of magic from 1971, it's kind of a sort of complex example of that. So basically, the charity refused model is where somebody comes to a householder asking for a favour of somebody kind to be lent something or to be given food. The person is then refused and turned away and they might utter a disgusted curse as they leave. The householder who has refused them, being a good Christian person, then suffers pangs of guilt for having treated a poor neighbour in this poor way. So what we have is it's kind of like the role reversal, isn't it? Because Ms. P is being taken to court by the family, she is the one who is doing the refusing. She's refusing to pay the money that she owes them. So usually it'd be the other way round. It would be the person uttering the curse who was the defendant. But here the roles have been reversed. So there's a lot of things that could be happening here. I mentioned earlier that the case, the incident took place in 1907, December 1907, it didn't actually come to court. Until 1908. So a long time had actually passed between the incident and Ms. P appearing in court to have her moment. Did she perhaps prepare her speech ahead of time? Did she write it down after the incident itself? We don't know. But what I would suggest is that, you know, maybe if she thinks people in her village are doing things to the butter, and if she was worried that she herself had been bewitched, there is a chance that certain things in that story did happen. But her memory made up parts of it to fill in the blanks, and it then became the story that was presented to the judge in court as to why this debt had arisen. Except, interestingly, we don't know precisely when the debt started because she was ordered out of the shop a few days later, at which point her debt was already in place. So, you know, this is. This has obviously been carried on for a long time, hadn't it? If we take her at her word. Why did Mrs. Why did the grocer's wife say that she hadn't had any cocoa? She admitted in court that Ms. P had indeed been given a cup of cocoa. Why, when Ms. P came into the shop, did she not say, no, the cocoa was fine. There was nothing wrong with it? It's a very interesting story, and I think because it is so late and because it is so odd, it's one of my favorites.

[Mark Norman]

I think it's the odd. The odd element of the cocoa that works for me in this particular one, you know, and we are talking about the start of the 20th century, and there's a lot of stuff to unpack there around ideas that are really a lot older in terms of potential for cursing and what exactly is going on? Who's feeding their clientele dodgy cups of cocoa?

[Tracey Norman]

Well, it's also the stirring thing, isn't it? You know, she was being urged to stir it. And normally when you interact with something in that way, it's to link you to it or to imbue it with some of your power. If you're trying to promote something good, you stir it clockwise. If you promote it. If you're trying to promote something negative, you stir it anticlockwise. So, you know, there is also that element of it.

[Mark Norman]

Yeah. So think on this like Miranda, when you're having your cup of cocoa before you go to bed.

[Dr. Random Elcher]

Thanks for that. No, it's a very odd story. It's really interesting to obviously read about lots of cases in the book and hear you tell us about that one here. So thank you for that. Moment of story time. Then I realise, though, that before I ask us to sort of wrap up our discussion, there is one other kind of key actor that none of us have mentioned so far, that if we were talking in the 1500s, definitely would have come up. So given how many times we've sort of made that temporal comparison, I do want to make sure we don't leave out the church in all of this. Were they around or were they not worried anymore at this point?

[Mark Norman]

They were certainly around, but they certainly didn't have the same role to play as they would have done in the early modern period. Things had moved on by then, so we don't see so much recorded about the interaction between the church and witchcraft. But that being said, there are some interesting dynamics between the two sometimes, aren't there?

[Tracey Norman]

I mean, usually in early modern periods, cases of witchcraft were dealt with by the ecclesiastical court. And when that was changed and they were placed into the remit of the secular courts, that was when we see the increase in accusations. But in our book, one of the things that. One of the things that we found, which was actually quite. Quite an amusing one really, a new sexton had been appointed in Plymouth, and after working in his new job for a little while, he found himself quite surprised at the number of times he was being asked to bury bottles in the consecrated ground. This was for a particular woman. She kept showing up with these bottles and saying, please, will you bury these? And the reason why she wanted them to be buried in consecrated ground was because the bottles contained the diseases and ailments which she had removed from her clients, and they were being buried in the consecrated ground to neutralize them. So the sexton refused to continue the arrangement that she'd had with the previous sexton. And so this woman said, you know, we better not disturb any of the things that have already been buried there, because if you break one of them, you know, all the diseases that they contain will affect you. And in the Western morning news, talking about this case, they describe it as moral plagues. They said it would be a public benefit if these moral plagues were ferreted out, exposed and punished by all who happened to discover their existence. But also there is the case of a vicar in Bradworthy in Devon, up in North Devon, who found a sort of slightly relatively modern glass jar which was brought to him by some workmen who'd uncovered it when they were doing some maintenance work on one of the paths in the churchyard. And he knew that from the position and depth where they had found this jar that it was part of a charm. It's part of a charm where you take three identical jars, you fill them with three sets of identical ingredients, including I think it's frog's hearts and toads livers, and then you have to bury them in the path of three different churchyards at a prescribed distance from the church porch and at a prescribed depth. It's protective charm, it keeps you safe from witches. And so the vicar of Bradworthy, who was surprised to find that such beliefs had not died out in his parish, invited other readers. He sent in a letter to the, to the newspaper and invited other readers to share any such discoveries that they themselves had made. And he said, is it true that in order to destroy the so called power over which it was deemed necessary to bury such a jar in three different churchyards? So this was, this was a vicar who also knew at least the rudiments of a very old anti witchcraft charm.

[Mark Norman]

It's certainly worth bearing in mind as well that there's a long standing relationship between the church and magic in lots and lots of different ways. So I wrote a book called, called Hallowed Ground, which is all about folklore relating to churches and churchyards and there's a lot in there about this sort of thing. And we were blessed here in the west country of having a whole range of what were termed conjuring persons. And these were the vicars who very much blurred that line between Christian working and more magical working. So they would cast astrology charts for their parishioners and things like that, and that some of them were professed to have occult libraries of books and be as clever in the dark arts as they were in the Christian world. So this of course is a very common folkloric trope. And there's obviously a lot to unpack in terms of how much of this is true and how much of it was not true. But it is certainly true that there were a number of parsons, a number of vicars across the west country who did interact with the more superstitious and the more magical side of, of church practice as well in that way. So, so views were different depending on the, the clergyman concerned, shall we say.

[Tracey Norman]

And I mean talking about the, the occult libraries, one of the stories which is ascribed to a number of these conjuring parsons is that they would be middle sermon in their church and suddenly rush from the building to go home because they sensed that one of their servants was about to read from one of their books. And if we watch the Brendan Fraser, the Mummy, we all know that no harm ever comes from reading a book. But there was also a bit of psychology involved, I think in these because there is also a story about a man who had a goose stolen and he went to the local past to ask for help. And the parson during the service on the Sunday said, I am aware of who has, who has stolen this goose. I know who you are. You all know my reputation. And I can see the man sitting in my congregation now and he's got a goose feather stuck to his nose. And of course the guilty party then raised his hand to his nose so it was obvious who it was.

[Dr. Random Elcher]

Fascinating to see again, continuities and changes over time. So thank you for helping us understand that key actor there. And obviously, as has come up throughout our discussion, right, this isn't kind of a one off investigation for the both of you. These are related to past work that you've done, current ongoing projects and things. So I don't know, has this prompted a next book for the both of you or do you have anything you're currently working on in addition to what you mentioned in your introductions that you want to share to leave us with a sneak preview.

[Mark Norman]

We are both working on many, many things. Let's, let's, let's be brief and all right, so I've got two, two key things that I'm working on at the moment. People who know my publication history will know that I wrote a book all about the folklore and myths and legends associated with Scooby Doo, which was my first kind of pop culture folklore crossover book. So it looks at the way that folklore and myth is represented in the show and how the show has had an influence in return on, on folklore and legend in the real world. So I'm just about to deliver a manuscript which I, I've co written with another guy, Murray Ferguson, who's a film critic looking at the paranormal and the way that that is represented in the Simpsons over the last many years of Simpsons shows. So that's a similar pop culture crossover. So I'm working on that and I'm also just also part way into working on quite a, a large and significant encyclopedia style book for a publisher which I can't really say much more about but will deliver in a couple of years time.

[Tracey Norman]

And at the moment I'm just getting ready to do some edits on a manuscript for a book which tells the story of the woman who inspired my play Witch Witchcraft Case from Dorset in 1687 and her story has never been told in one place. There's a bit in the National Archive, there's a bit in Dorchester and it's another very mundane case, a bit like the ones that we look at in Devon's Forgotten Witches. It doesn't feature, like, large confessions or familiars or any of the sort of normal witchy stereotypes. And that's the kind of case I really like. So I've told her story for the first time in its entirety and then linked into how I used it and how I honour her story and how it inspired me when I was writing the play. So I'm just about to crack on with the edits of that and then I have about four other things. I think we've got another joint one coming up. We've written two together and haven't murdered each other yet, so the History Press obviously thinks it's a good idea to keep us working together.

[Mark Norman]

But you are also going back into the British newspaper archives for another book for the History Press as well?

[Tracey Norman]

Yes, yes, I'm doing a similar thing using the British newspaper Archive as the primary source for a book about ghosts.

[Dr. Random Elcher]

Well, that all sounds very intriguing and very busy indeed on the both of your parts, so I thank you for those various things to look out for. And, of course, in the meantime, listeners can read the book we've been discussing titled Devin's Forgotten Witches 1860-1910, published by the History Press in 2025. Mark Tracey, thank you both so much for joining me on the podcast.

[Tracey Norman]

Thank you very much for having us, Miranda, it's been a pleasure.

[Mark Norman]

Thank you. Sa.