BBC Radio Scotland FM

Witch Hunt

Factual: History

Exploring Scotland's war on witches and witchcraft with Susan Morrison and Louise Yeoman.

Witch Hunt: Abuses of Justice

Abuses of Justice

BBC Radio Scotland - Witch Hunt, Abuses of Justice

Whistleblowers and fake witch-hunters in Glasgow as the King’s war on Satan continues

Digging deeper into the shocking miscarriages of justice in Scotland's war on witches and witchcraft, with Susan Morrison and Louise Yeoman talking to a team of top historians.

The witchcraft trials were one of the biggest injustices in Scotland’s history, a massive miscarriage of justice, but even 16th century people sometimes thought they had gone too far. Our top-notch panel of Scottish historians are here to dig deep into them, along with our hosts Susan Morrison and Louise Yeoman. This week we look at some of the worst abuses of the witch-hunting period and King James VI is to blame again.

In 1597, matters became worse for innocent Scots accused of witchcraft. A woman called Margaret Aitken was arrested, but kept herself alive by falsely identifying others as witches. Dubbed 'The Great Witch of Balwearie’ she was carried about witch-hunting, pointing out suspects across Scotland.  And then there was that experiment with the English witch-detection method of swimming a witch…  When Margaret’s fraudulent witch-detecting was exposed in Glasgow, there was the most enormous scandal and cover-up that reached up to the King himself.
 
James went on to become King of England where he was very sceptical about some witch-cases - but not before he'd done a lot of harm.

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