Dummy, the Witch of Sible Hedingham
Dummy, the Witch of Sible Hedingham (c. 1788 – 4 September 1863) was the pseudonym of an unidentified elderly man who was one of the last people to be accused of witchcraft in England in the 19th century.
A longtime resident of Sible Hedingham, Essex, a small farming village in the English countryside, he was a deaf-mute who earned a living as a local fortune teller. In September 1863, Dummy was accused by Emma Smith of ‘cursing’ her with a disease in Ridgewell and dragged from The Swan tavern by a drunken mob. He was ordered to ‘lift the curse’. When Dummy didn’t, he was thrown into a nearby brook as an "ordeal by water", he was also severely beaten with sticks before eventually being taken to a workhouse in Halstead where he died of pneumonia. Following an investigation by authorities, Emma Smith, a woman who said Dummy ‘cursed’ her with a condition known as Lyme disease, and Samuel Stammers, who was a master carpenter and also friends with Smith, were charged with his death and tried at the Chelmsford Assizes, where they were sentenced to six months hard labour on the 8 March 1864.
See also
References
- Lockwood, Martin (June 21, 2005). "The Sible Hedingham Witchcraft Case". Young People – History Notebooks (Issue No.10).
- Foxearth & District Local History Society – The Hedingham Witchcraft Case
Further reading
- Gordon Ridgewell, "Swimming a Witch, 1863", Folklore Society News 25 (1997): 15–16.
- Davies, Owen. Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 1736–1951. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-7190-5656-X
- Hutton, Ronald. The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-19-285449-6
- Pickering, David. Cassell's Dictionary of Witchcraft. New York: Sterling Publishing Company, 2002. ISBN 0-304-36562-9
- Summers, Montague. Geography of Witchcraft. Kessinger Publishing, 2003. ISBN 0-7661-4536-0