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. He died after being beaten and thrown into a river by witch-hunters.
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, the 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 8 March 1864.
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