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Connecticut Witch Trial Victims Still Wait for PardonAlse Young immigrated from England and settled in Windsor, Connecticut, in the 1630s. In 1647 she became the first woman in Connecticut to be hanged for witchcraft, and possibly the first in the American colonies. She wasn't the last; by 1663 a total of 11 people, nine of them women, were executed for witchcraft in Connecticut, long before the Salem witch trials. Nine generations later, Young's namesake Alse C. Freeman has joined other descendants of those accused of witchcraft in Connecticut to demand that these 11 be completely exonerated. They united under the name of the Connecticut Witch Trial Exoneration Project. The states of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Virginia have all pardoned or acquitted those convicted during witch trials. The city of Windsor pardoned the two from that village who were executed, Alse Young and Lydia Gilbert, in 2017. There have been several pushes to get the Connecticut victims exonerated over the past decade, but nothing has happened. Why can't Connecticut clear their names? It appears to be a bureaucratic problem. When you take a close look at the law, "the governor of Connecticut lacks the power to pardon and the State Board of Pardons and Paroles does not have a posthumous waiver process." In order to pardon anyone for a wrongful conviction based on unjust laws of the past, the powers of the state government will need to be changed by law. Read about this roadblock and the efforts to exonerate America's first witch trial victims.(Image credit: CT WITCH Memorial) #witch #witchtrial #Connecticut #history

Victims of Scotland's Witch Trials May Be PardonedOur popular conception of witches in the 21st century is like of the villain in The Wizard of Oz, little more than a Halloween costume, a fun legend used to tell stories of magic. But up until 300 years ago, the accusation of being a witch was serious- deadly serious. In Scotland, 3,837 people were accused of witchcraft under the Witchcraft Act, and two-thirds of them were ultimately executed. Their trials involved torture until they confessed, carried out by keeping them awake until they hallucinated and pricking their skin with pins all over their bodies. In sheer numbers, Scotland was an outlier in pursuing and killing people for witchcraft over incidences that usually amounted to nothing. A group called the Witches of Scotland is seeking justice for those executed of witchcraft between 1563 and 1736. That would include a a legal pardon, an apology and national monument. They don't want to erase the history of the trials, quite the contrary, but acknowledgement that they were done wrong. Claire Mitchell and Zoe Venditozzi, the founders of the Witches of Scotland, explain who these victims were, what they endured, and why Scotland needs to own up to its past at Atlas Obscura.#witch #witchtrial #Scotland

The Witches of PaisleyThe town of Paisley in Scotland is now known for its weaving industry, and for giving us the word "paisley" for the Kashmiri teardrop-shaped textile pattern. But long before that, it was the site of the last mass execution of witches in Western Europe. A few years after the Salem witch trials in the American colonies, an 11-year-old girl named Christian Shaw started a witch hunt in Paisley. It all began when Christian told her mother that their servant Catherine Campbell had taken a sip of milk. Accused of theft, Campbell cursed the child in a blasphemous manner. Christian began to suffer fits and seizures, and eventually displayed symptoms that would remind us of the demon-possessed child Regan in The Exorcist, at least according to contemporary accounts. Christian named Campbell and 34 others as the witches who were to blame. After seven of them went to trial in 1697, one committed suicide and six were hanged and then burned. But before her death, one of the "witches" put a curse on the town itself, which had dire implications for Paisley's future, and is memorialized to this day. Read the story of the Paisley witches at Amusing Planet. #witch #witchtrial #Paisley #textile