January 22, 2025 • 43 mins
Between 1542 and 1735, British courts convicted over 3,000 people under witchcraft legislation. Now, author Charlotte Meredith is leading a campaign to secure their pardons. We first met Charlotte at this fall's Witchcraft and Human Rights Conference in Lancaster, where advocates gathered to address both historical and modern witch hunts. Her work is so compelling that we knew we needed to bring this conversation to our listeners. Her "Justice for Witches" campaign gathered over 13,000 signatures, pushing for official recognition of one of Britain's most profound miscarriages of justice. Charlotte details the stark regional differences in witch persecution, explaining why Scotland's execution count was five times that of England, and illuminates how these historical injustices echo in modern witch hunts around the world. Through her careful research and advocacy, Charlotte makes a compelling case for why these historical pardons matter in contemporary society, revealing how patterns of persecution persist from past to present. Join us for a conversation that bridges centuries and shows how historical recognition can help address ongoing human rights violations.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Witch Hunt. I'm Josh Hutchinson.
I'm Sarah Jack. Today we're speaking with
Charlotte Meredith, who's leading a campaign to secure
pardons for over 3000 people convicted under British
witchcraft legislation between 1542 and 1735.
Charlotte is working to acknowledge 1 of history's great
(00:20):
miscarriages of justice. Her campaign, Justice for
Witches gathered over 13,000 signatures on Auk government
petition. We met Charlotte at the
Witchcraft and Human Rights Conference in Lancaster,
England, this fall, where advocates from around the world
gathered to discuss both historical witch trials and the
ongoing persecution of people accused of witchcraft today.
(00:44):
In this episode, Charlotte explains how witch trials differ
across Britain, reveals why Scotland executed five times
more supposed witches than England, and discusses why these
historical pardons matter in today's world.
She also connects the history ofwitch trials to modern day
persecution and shares powerful insights about justice,
(01:06):
recognition, and healing historical wounds.
Let's welcome Charlotte Meredithto witch hunt.
Welcome to Witch Hunt, CharlotteMeredith.
We met at the Witchcraft and Human Rights Conference in
Lancaster, England this fall andquickly knew our work had a lot
(01:28):
in common. Tell us about what you do.
Thanks ever so much for invitingme.
It's lovely to speak to you again, but is it even better to
meet you in person? Of course.
So what I do is so I have my dayjob, I work in the publishing
industry, I am a writer, but I'malso a campaigner.
And it's for this reason you're talking to me specifically.
(01:50):
I am campaigning for justice, for which it's Saturday with my
campaign. And what I'm trying to do is to
get a pardon or pardons for all of the people you were convicted
on the unjust witchcraft legislation in Britain between
1542 and 1735. That's in a nutshell mission.
(02:13):
Thank you so much. It's so lovely to have you here
today and we really love what you're doing.
You know, we're completely behind exonerations and pardons,
but what are your motivations for supporting pardons?
No. Yeah, the good question,
(02:36):
important question. And if I say spoiler alert,
there were no witching, right? And I shouldn't really have to
say that in 2024, but that's part of the reason I thank you
because you're quite often find nowadays, many people's hair
still say all no smoke without bio when it comes to talking
(03:00):
about the British witch that they don't get that we we have
the innocent people. Some people actually think, oh,
or maybe these we're actually committing friends.
We're actually witches. And I want to make sure that we
stopped playing this novel. They were innocent people.
They were the victims of a gracemiscarriage of justice.
(03:23):
And we need to be replaying the narrative change how we talk
about the victims of our countryand that are now I've been
ridiculed in a lot of ways or dismissed.
What happened to them doesn't really matter.
And it does matter for many reasons, which I'm sure we'll
provide to. But yeah, that's what we're
(03:43):
trying to do. My I really got interested in
pardoning side of the in my writing.
I've read a book which came out last year about the most
infamous trial in England, and that was the 1612 Pengal
Witcher, or the Lanwich Witcher,where 10 people were executed,
(04:04):
witches would say 9, and one wasthere in Britain for a year.
And when I started to do research, the more I did, the
more I just felt so sorry for these people and so passionate.
I just really wanted to tell their story in a way that hadn't
(04:24):
been done before. A lot of what I'd read in the
past there was also said, let the reader decide whether they
were actually guilty or not. When I thought, I don't
understand, it's just an ethicalof course they weren't guilty
and I wanted to write a book that demonstrated war.
(04:44):
That obviously wasn't the case and that's where I really
started from that I was invited to talk about my book and about
the book, end of which is the Witch's revival.
She was an event held in Lancaster next year, my first
castle last year, and I met somepeople that were really keen on
(05:06):
the idea of buying witches whichto put forward.
And so they banded together to help me to start with a decision
to the government to do so. Can you?
Tell us a little. Bit about the witch trials, How
many people were convicted and what were the typical charges
(05:27):
and evidence used against them? Yeah, that's a good question.
I think it's probably important to say by what I mean by which.
So I'm definitely not talking about people who were martyrs
for a pre Christian religion. I don't hold with that
conceptual goal. What I'm talking about is
(05:50):
innocent people who were prosecuted in secular court, and
they were people who were prosecuted for very specific
crime, and the crime was Maleficent.
And that was the idea that you weren't using demonic magic to
cause harm. That was usually either to an
individual or to an individual school.
(06:12):
It's quite often people were found myself in court charged
with using charms to bewitch a cow, things like that.
So it's people's possessions andgoods that was the the typical
charge. Quite often people found
themselves accused of murder. So that may have been typically
it was a murdering a neighbour, someone who could have died
(06:33):
maybe 20 years before they couldthen 20 years later find
themselves accused. And it was also people had a
fear that people were using maleficium to call on children
as well. So those are the most typical
crimes that found themselves actually in court.
It's interesting when you look at the first witchcraft after
(06:55):
1542, which once started on the reign of the 8.
When you break that down what hewas interested in, we don't know
for sure why you thought it necessary first of all to start
to witchcraft perhaps, but he quite amusing it.
You see the show, I've had the idea that people were using
magic to find lost group and treasure.
(07:19):
And that was the incident reallyon his mind.
If so, people were you could seemagic, whatever that means
magical mean to find treasure. And I know there was some
theories that some people used to bury their treasure.
Anything about you, I'd say, especially if that what if
you've got 17th century metal detector coming out to get
(07:41):
sigmatic? I'd lost one, and I think that
King Henry was most appealed that people might be really not
told. That should be in his book.
So that's quite an amusing bit of the witch child.
That was the priority in every man.
But that's not the type of reason that people found
themselves in court. But that was something you could
(08:01):
be accused of under the Witcher Barrett.
But it was this idea of malefic what problems were for all us.
There was absolutely no evidencethat a crime had taken place.
How do you prove that someone had used in magic magic to pull
(08:21):
us out or to return to pull us out.
And that's why I always say thatthe main reason why in which
trials were in what? Kind of evidence did would they
have used? We know in the American colonies
there was the concept of spectral evidence that was used
at sometimes and not at other times, but LED to a lot of
(08:45):
trouble in Salem. Was that a factor in UK witch
trials? We have sure just to actually
you said ask me before as well how many people were talking
about. So we were talking about 3000 in
total that we have a record. So that's people convicted the
witch there. We have 2500 down in Scotland
(09:07):
and we have around 500 in England and then round 8IN way
and of those people, yeah, that's the thing they were
accused of. So when we were looking at
everything factual evidence was the fact that interestingly,
when magistrates were looking how to prosecute, they didn't
(09:28):
always know what to do exactly how exactly to go about proving
which happened taking place. So if you look at the witchcraft
that there's not really much in there in terms of guidance for
what they should be looking for.And so magistrates had a couple
of choices and that was to look at the immunological literature,
(09:50):
just the the inquisitive, you know, just have been saying
about what was state classed as evidence of witchcraft.
And so they could do that. And then another thing which was
really influential in England and Scotland and was the book
Demonology written by King James, the Scotland and Mr.
England that was written in around 1597.
(10:12):
Wrote Publish. Then by King James himself,
that's written in the full of a dialogue between somebody who
doesn't believe at all in reality witchcraft, and someone
who's going to convince them whythey're wrong.
And what how he did that was he came up with what he calls
sufficient fruit for witchcraft that this was evidence that
(10:35):
could be used in a quartered boxto prove that.
And with King James, he came up with nothing original really.
Again, he took from the previousdemonological literature so
things like the interest MalliasMalagara and he he was big on
the idea of a familiar spirit. But that was the idea that
(10:57):
proving that an alleged rich hadbeen involved with some kind of
being demonic being in the form of an animal, maybe a person.
So if it that could be cruel, then that was deciding that they
were witch and obviously guilty of the crime.
That was one another thing because King James realized that
(11:22):
this issue that not really having any physical proof of the
crap. What the sticking point when it
came to actually convicted. There were another thing he said
judges and Magistrates Court take into account when
prosperity witches was they could hear the testimony of
witnesses who wouldn't usually be allowed to give evidence
(11:45):
because they weren't deemed credible there in any other case
and that came down to people. We were already convicted
criminal now do well and also children be children weren't
allowed to give testimony because it was at the time
(12:06):
decided in the 17th century thatthey weren't able to reason for
that reason. They weren't seen as credible
witnesses, however, because there were no real credible
witnesses at the time working toproving witchcraft.
King James admission for children to be used as witnesses
(12:29):
in court and I know that that factor played into Salem witch
so that that really had an influence there.
So what happened eventually was that you've got magistrates you
have chained on prosecuting witches going ahead.
This sufficient. And then King James the cell
(12:51):
himself got involved looking at some of the trials and some of
the testimony and he even interviewed some of the people
who were witnesses in thought. And then he often interviewed
the both who then the Ned dwellsthe gone with filminals and
children. And he often bound that the
(13:13):
children had been lying. Surprise, surprise.
There was, for example, in 1634 came in Pendle again, where the
young boy named Evan Robinson, he actually came down late one
night and had a curious excuse for them to talk to his father
(13:34):
and that was like he'd been taken by witches to a local
sabot. That accusation led to the
rounding of around 22 people. Now when the Glory was actually
interviewed whilst these people were awaiting trial by King
Charles, this time it was found that he was lying.
(13:55):
And so it became very clear thatthe sufficient proof went total
months. And part of this is the reason
why which child got because it became impossible to prosecute a
witch essentially because there was no evidence.
(14:16):
Ghost isn't evidence. If it is just saying I saw
somebody in a dream commit a crime making up the witchcraft,
that isn't physical proof that acrime had happened.
So eventually the people involved in prosecuting witches
or rich witches did start to saythere was no justification for
(14:38):
prosecuting witches because there was no evidence that a
crime had taken place. It was a total nonsense.
It was an impossible crime, but that's what happened really.
But it took fortunately many, many years for that to happen.
But by 1735, Parliament were actually willing to change the
(15:01):
law, repeal the Witchcraft Act, for this very reason,
acknowledging that witchcraft wasn't a reality, that that
instead it was a fragile crime. So your campaign is covering
more than one country. How did the trials look
different across those countries?
(15:23):
So it's a punishment but different in terms of how you
displace the body, if you like. So in England and Wales the
punishment was to be handled andup in Scotland the convicted
which was goroted and then theirbody was burned.
(15:43):
And now there's quite a few theories as to why that happened
in Scotland. And some people see it as the
gorotic book or strangulation asan act of mercy.
But recently I heard a historiansay he thought it was more about
practical reason behind that because they be in his theory.
(16:05):
And he thought that people were concerned that somebody might be
able to share from the burning fire themselves, be on fire and
be a fire hazard. The quick step fire through the
building. I think that's actually probably
quite a good theory as to why the struggle of the person
before putting them on the fire.Because, yeah, to why would you
(16:29):
be merciful? It doesn't really make sense
with it. There's nothing merciful about
telling somebody he's a witch. Continuing in that vein, why do
you think there were so many more executions in Scotland than
in England, and especially Waleswith only eight?
(16:50):
Yeah, there's some theories about whales I'm going to have
to remember because I don't haveall the record so well that we
can be sure that there were morethat we knew of.
But I knew it's some people likepressing a little button think
that I post a theme that in Wales people were more likely to
blame fairy for things that wentwrong there any form of
(17:13):
adversity rather than which is and I've also heard some people
once people that language may have played a part in it.
So I don't know if there was like a specific translation of
which exactly in Wales. So I think that can be it and
that you get that thing being higher in the north Scotland as
(17:34):
well. But OK, why it all went to be
crazy in Scotland is because of King James.
And what happened was he obviously believed in witchcraft
and he specifically believed in what we call the elaborated
theory of witchcraft. So that was the theme that came
over from continental Europe, which was that a newly formed
(17:59):
female led the tranic devil worship being bunch of women
were out to kill king and prison.
He believed in that and that really wasn't a popular theory
in England or Scotland at the time.
But he popularized that more in Scotland around around fifty
(18:20):
90s, where his wife from Denmarkcame over with that theory.
And before she came over she he was ship was stuck by various
templates and the theories put out like King James that it had
been witches who would start touched her neighbour and we're
trying to kill her on him. So it was all that reason
(18:45):
there'd be this awful storm thatpeople started being rounded up
into Scotland and why it all went a little bit crazy.
They were doing so like on the Kings will if they like in
England. We until, I'd say until like
several times they were around the continental idea that
elaborated theory of witchcraft wasn't particularly popular.
(19:09):
The idea was that the witch was working with Dean.
Dean, which like beings or the devil, but not necessarily that
thing we'd have with the devil, which was part of the elaborate
theory. So there was a little bit more
of a reluctance to you. I was thankful for everything in
(19:29):
England. And also you have to look at the
court system was slightly different too.
I think you had it just a slightly different system.
We had the size in England and so where if somebody was using
more, for example, it would go and await a trial at the
Lancaster Castle at the asylum. But it's slightly different in
(19:51):
Scotland. So you've gotten more localized
ports if you like and I think itwas a little bit, there's a less
work, but the magistrates do we visit this.
Topic week after week. But digging into the details
like this again, it's just such a reminder of this enormous
(20:16):
injustice that happened and continues to happen.
Legal action can be taken to clear the names of those accused
of witchcraft in the UK. Yeah, fortunately, I would love
for all of the people to be exonerated, to do similar to
what you lovely people have doneand exonerated the innocent
(20:37):
people in ethiquette. Fortunately, that's probably not
going to happen here. That would have to go through
the courts. And to go through the courts,
you've got to come up with the evidence of new evidence of why
the crime never took place, which is in itself with
nonsense, right? Because you try and tell me,
(20:58):
prove to me that a crime took place in the 1st place.
So, yeah, unfortunately, we wouldn't be able to clear the
names that way, as far as I'm aware at this point, for those
things to change. So the next best thing is to get
a posthumous part of them. And we can do that to serve as a
formal acknowledgement of the gross miscarriage of justice
(21:21):
that took place. That's what I'm trying to do.
We can clear their names as muchas possible today by doing that.
And probably for that to happen when I was speaking with people
involved in the government decision making and was probably
likely have to have one lower garden for which is the victim,
(21:45):
which is to cover England and Wales and another two cover
Scotland because there were different which but that what
we'll achieve. Yeah, quickly seen we'll go.
But yes, so that but the that plan and that's what I'm going
(22:05):
to be reaching out to policymakers to help me to do
that in the early. Next year, I'm so glad that
you've brought up the witchcraftacts because it's just we don't
have that type of aspect when we're looking at the American
colony timeline of witch hunt. So it's really adds great
perspective to that contrast. Yeah, there's so many points
(22:30):
that you've made that I've wanted to jump right in on.
And one thing that you said thatmade sense to me, and pardon me
for backtracking a moment here, I just wanted to you were
talking about why there were more prosecutions in Scotland.
And part of it was this theory that there's basically this
(22:54):
grand conspiracy to take down both the state and the state's
religion. And that reminded me of in in
Massachusetts during the Salem witch trials, that the minister,
Cotton Mather really put forwardthe theory that the devil was
(23:14):
coming after Massachusetts through the witches to do just
that, to bring down. They wanted to pull down Christ
Church in New England and establish the devil's church in
its place. So they really had this kind of
existential fear that their veryway of life was going to be
(23:34):
utterly destroyed. You can take it to like the
Maleus Malek farm, that type of demolish protect.
Heinrich Kramer was a big fan ofthat theory.
It took quite a few years for that theory to put together into
the the final version of this Italian factor Saudi group of
(23:56):
devil worshippers who were etcetera and destroying.
But yet it's really the the crazy nonsense and those
demonological texts that then got printed on the idea to get
out eventually. So it just helped to build
hysteria. It's strange because it but
Christianity goes through phasesand then I do believe it was
(24:20):
very much good working evil. So any day now the devil could
come in knocking the door and people were genuinely fearful of
devil. And I always think that one of
the reasons, part of what part of the reason why the witch
trials ended, I think it's because Christianity and
basically that good and good versus evil version, I think it
(24:45):
started to lose its breath for the population and the people
became less fearful of the devil, even started to question
whether the devil was real. I was saying finally, all very
interesting, but it's such a dangerous idea, this belief in
demon that can cause your home and the home that that belief
(25:08):
causes. Back to the campaign, what
strategies are working to gathersupport from the community?
Yeah. So I touched on earliest though
the way I started the campaign was with a petition.
So from that petition we I had no budget.
(25:30):
I did that with no budget, no contact and I got the little
petition going with a hike them out.
I can some people, as I touched on buying with it me, which is
revival. I made some concert there.
You helped me to promote the petition and within a few weeks
I'd booked some budget, but I could do some advertising to let
(25:53):
people know that they're petitioning about that.
And I managed to get 30,157 people by our petition to say
that they wanted real justice for witches.
Now I started the petition on the official UK government
website. And the reason I did that, if
(26:14):
you actually study that site, itwill say that any petition
launched on any other site, for example, change that rule.
No matter how many signatures that petition get, the UK
Parliament don't have, they're not legally obliged to look at
it, do anything worse to create it.
But I started it on the officialchannel.
(26:36):
They only give you 6 months to get as many people by as
possible. Need 10,000 people to get a
comment from the government and we smashed that.
That was brilliant. We earlier this year, so in
March we had a response around the former government.
We just had a change around and the government agreed with my
(26:58):
argument. So they agreed that in 17 bids,
right, the witchcraft acts were appealed because they were
unjust because which happened into reality.
So that was great. They also acknowledged that
people were wrongfully accused under the Witchcraft Act, which
(27:18):
which is great, but I wasn't happy to agree with that wording
because it's still to me implying that perhaps some
people were correctly accused and with a witch tracker, they
wasn't totally confident or that.
But they ended where the as yet there are no clients to pardon
(27:39):
mostly accused. And now that was a great place
to start. And we never expected to get
their rain people in vocals and we did everything really
fortunate. It just shows how many people
there are out there. We're really passionate about
what we're doing and we could reach more with more support,
more funding. So now we have a new government
(28:01):
and I am now going to be reaching out to them directly to
try and get the law pastor the worst discussing area to get to
garden for the Scottish alleged witches and for the Welsh in
English. So that's the next step.
And so to help me do that, I've started on my website a survey
(28:22):
now giving everybody the opportunity who wants to do you
have their say? So let our government know why
they want to them to pardon British wicket.
We've had some interesting comments.
Reason was like I can tell people why I think riches should
be pardoned, so-called riches should be pardoned.
(28:44):
But the campaign, I'm aware it resonates with so many people
with so many different reasons. And we're not going to challenge
that what people believe. I'm just happy that it's
meaningful to people. But I do find that a lot of
people, let's say they see the links between the past and the
present in terms of the misogynythat still exists in the UK,
(29:07):
still exists in the world. I don't know if you know, but
our new UK government, the Labour government, they have an
initiative to follow violence against women and children
within the next 10 years. But should that really be an
initiative in 2024? Should our government have to be
doing that? Why are we still doing this to
(29:29):
all women and girls? What is wrong?
There's no disconnect between the misogyny that was behind the
witch child and the misogyny that exists in security today.
And a lot of people are seeing that.
They're recognizing, yeah, the witch child's were a great
mischarge of justice. But they're also seeing that
(29:52):
women have been fighting for quality for centuries and we
still don't have it. And we still live in a society
where misogyny is doing that. And it's not.
And we're really bad enough because we are not riches.
We're women. And so the on the wide range, we
have people who are back in the campaign for that reason.
(30:13):
And then we also have people whoare back in the campaign because
they see that rich child. Oh, not a thing.
So it's happening around the world, Africa, India, after New
Guinea, many countries also happening in the USA.
And it's also happening in the UK in forms of which first to
(30:35):
where people are being labeled as witches and they are being
immune because of that. The trials in one form or
another are still. And there's many people out
there who want to see that in 01.
I believe that what we never start which is working that
help. Just saw a post yesterday by
Doctor Leo Ingue in Nigeria of the advocacy for alleged
(31:00):
witches. Just stating just that fact,
that hardening witches or exonerating accused persons
accused of witchcraft in the UK,what they did in Spain, what
we're working on here in the States, that it actually sends a
message to the world. Absolutely, of course it does.
(31:24):
I can't see anything negative tocome out about bargaining or
righting me wrong, and I don't understand why anyone would
think there's no value in doing so.
We can achieve so much. I heard any chesting it just
like aside, but I heard a reallyinteresting interview if you go
(31:45):
with a former judge and criminalJustice League, right?
And in an industry we said that it's up to paraphrase and it's
everyone's duty to heal the willand whatever form that may take.
And for me, this is what we are doing right or attempting to do.
(32:07):
We work on exoneration because people say why does pardoning
witches matter now when we're inclimate crisis?
Well, why is that happening? Because we're responsible.
We're to blame. Humanity is to blame because
they've got to keep doing. We are not taking care of the
planet. We're not taking care of each
other. We're so busy doing what we used
(32:29):
to do 5 something years ago, blaming real and blaming
everyone else. But I received Miss Fortune.
And if the planet's going to go forward, if you plan it, it's
going to go forward. That's all that stop.
Or is that stop? Take a look at who we are, how
we're living, how we used to live.
I really strive to change and bebetter.
(32:49):
And that's part of what the campaign is hoping to achieve
and what we've done it in many ways and many different ways.
Pardon or the exonerations that you're doing just have nothing
but positive, not going to affect the people.
But for those people out there now, it will be labeled as
witches. They are living in the witch
camp. They cannot go home.
(33:12):
Who are suffering, who are beingabused, what grades are symbol
of hope that they have and to hear that countries have stood
up and said what we are doing, what we did is wrong and this
can't go on anymore. Just thinking I'm like with Leo
totally on this. They're pardoning the people
(33:33):
from the past will just have great things to do for our
relatives today who are out there working to help the people
they were being labeled. And we met a couple months ago
at a global gathering in Lancaster of Advocates WHO.
(33:54):
Are. In different phases of ending
witch hunts and protecting victims or seeking justice for
them, it greatly impacted me. Is there anything from that
conference that you'd like to talk about today?
Yeah, one thing that really kicks in to me was basically the
(34:18):
people who have albinism and they're suffering the violent
they are. On the one hand we have the
actual attacks that are going on.
So taking body parts of people without them is now because
bonkers believes that giving side of using those in in
founding ritual muddy can have some positive effect
(34:40):
practitioner. Well, the person paying the
practitioner and on the other hand, those people have been
ordered just like the so-called witches of the past where then
they are discriminated again. That really has stayed with me
hearing the accounts of those people, the suffering that
(35:02):
they're going to now and the fact that it's not being talked
about greatly is done and we need to to really be doing more
like you up your protester. I heard the music when you did
Jay the early on. I need to be doing more to get
that out there, the messages outthere.
So that's one thing that really stuck me and I if I can use my
(35:26):
campaign to help people with albinism.
Wow, do that. Sure.
The other thing that's that's strictly was when we're showing
some photographs of people beingpersecuted as widget really
harmony photographs of people basically being they know how to
(35:48):
say it, but their bodies being machete until they're investing
wet because people think they are responsible for some kind of
adversity rather ill health, crop failure, things that the
innocent men and women were accused of in your 500 years
ago. There's still a noise
(36:10):
accusations are still being madenow in Africa and to see that
that really staved me and I justthink so we still one image of
young man yielding machetes again and they must not worry.
And I just think to me it how can I get the message out there
(36:31):
that why do you fear the old woman and not the men wielding
the machete? And I think we need to change
perception just to get people tothink critically about the
reasoning why they are othering people blaming or using the
mistake or any kind of misfortune.
(36:55):
And again, what way do you do acceleration and help people are
advocating to see your change inthis area.
Yeah, I'm all for it. I'm not looking everything, I
can you help about things. I wanted to ask because we've
talked about a lot of the reasons why we believe that
(37:17):
pardons and exonerations are right and why they should be
passed. Are you receiving any feedback
counter to that? Are people saying that the
accused persons should not be pardoned for any reason?
And what reasons are you hearing?
(37:38):
Yeah, I haven't had anything directly come to me, but I have
seen some comments on social media and I think it was in
2022, a member of the Scottish Parliament turned out to
consultation asking people whether they wanted pardons to
happen for the people prosecutedunder the Scottish that.
(38:02):
And so I'm putting that see whatreasons people were giving for
20 minutes to go ahead. And the reasons were were
basically some people still believe that some of them
wouldn't have been innocent. That's an educational problem.
(38:23):
From my perspective. We need to show you to how much
education we need to do. Other people just don't think
it's relevant because they're bad, which have been about
people who were dead. Well, that depends on your your
metaphysics. So we say whether you believe in
an happy life or anything like that.
But also we're just saying, OK, if you do believe, OK, when
(38:45):
you're dead, you're dead, fine. But the ideas that led to the
witch trial, that led to the pursuit of an expedition after
you benefit people still very much alive and well, and they
are growing. That's not, in my mind, a reason
not to do anything because like we've just been talking about,
(39:08):
it is an ongoing issue. People tend to think, which
shows that everything is a fast.They're not.
Right on. Anything else that you would
like to be able to speak to for listeners today before we close?
Yeah. I'd just like to take the
opportunity to invite people to to complete the study by if
(39:29):
that's OK, so they can guaranteeto my website and have their
say. So tell again, just tell
politician why you want them to part in our historic circle
widget. The more data I get, the better
because the stronger argument I can be able to present to the
LSE maker. So yeah, that's a long thing I'd
(39:51):
like to say. And if anyone has any other
ideas or probably like to help me, yeah, if you can get in
touch that's worried I have it, I'd contact all on my website.
I'm happy to have a chat and seeif that I'm looking forward to
see what comes over. Your website
ischarlottemeredith.co.uk. That's it, Yeah.
(40:12):
And you can go on the just go forward slash the hyphen
campaign and that was linked to Justice for Richard.
Excellent. Thank you so much.
And we'll have links to that in the show notes as well.
So people, can you click right away from the description of the
episode. So, yeah, thank you so much for
(40:34):
joining us today. This has been really great to
talk to you again and hear from you on your wonderful campaign.
Thank you so much and thank you for everything you are doing to
help the the gold witches in your country.
And I hope that you go ahead andget the EUR but the right
honour. Thank you.
(40:55):
Thank you. And now Sarah has End witch
Hunts news. End witch hunts News on Maryland
and Massachusetts taking historic steps toward witch
trial. Acknowledgement In a significant
development for historical justice, Maryland legislators
are considering House Joint Resolution 2, which would
(41:18):
exonerate colonial Arab victims of witch trials in the state.
The resolution highlights 2 notable cases.
Rebecca Fowler, who was executedfor alleged witchcraft, and Maul
Dyer, a real woman celebrated widely in Maryland folklore who
actually died in exile after facing false accusations.
Additionally, Massachusetts legislators will be considering
(41:39):
an exoneration for those hangingfor alleged witchcraft in
colonial Boston with HD 3054. These innocent women were
Margaret Jones, Elizabeth Kendall, Alice Lake, Ann
Hibbens, and Goody Glover. This legislative action comes on
the heels of Connecticut's groundbreaking 2023 resolution
that acknowledged 33 witch trialvictims.
(42:01):
The Connecticut measures saw remarkable bipartisan support,
passing with a decisive 121 to 30 House vote and near unanimous
Senate approval. These resolutions align with
recent United Nations initiatives addressing global
witch hunt persecution, positioning the states alongside
international efforts to protectvulnerable populations.
(42:23):
Maryland Delegate Heather Bagnell and Massachusetts
Representative Steven Owens are leading parallel efforts in
their states to address colonialwitch trial and Justices.
Maryland's HJ 2 and Massachusetts HD 3054 both
demonstrate how states can take meaningful action with minimal
resources to right historical wrongs.
These bills both await General Assembly Committee consideration
(42:46):
in order to move on for votes inthe House.
Do you want to support these resolutions?
Please sign the petitions. The Massachusetts petition is
change.org/witch trials and the Maryland petition is
change.org/MD witch Trials. It's not too late to RSVP to our
(43:07):
Hartford Witch Trial Remembranceevent February 1st at
Connecticut's Old State House. Get your reservation in today on
eventbrite.com. The link is found in the show
notes. Thank you, Sarah.
You're welcome. And thank you for joining us on
Witch Hunt. Spend time with us again next
week. Have a great today and a
(43:29):
beautiful tomorrow.
Welcome to Witch Hunt. I'm Josh Hutchinson.
I'm Sarah Jack. Today we're speaking with
Charlotte Meredith, who's leading a campaign to secure
pardons for over 3000 people convicted under British
witchcraft legislation between 1542 and 1735.
Charlotte is working to acknowledge 1 of history's great
(00:20):
miscarriages of justice. Her campaign, Justice for
Witches gathered over 13,000 signatures on Auk government
petition. We met Charlotte at the
Witchcraft and Human Rights Conference in Lancaster,
England, this fall, where advocates from around the world
gathered to discuss both historical witch trials and the
ongoing persecution of people accused of witchcraft today.
(00:44):
In this episode, Charlotte explains how witch trials differ
across Britain, reveals why Scotland executed five times
more supposed witches than England, and discusses why these
historical pardons matter in today's world.
She also connects the history ofwitch trials to modern day
persecution and shares powerful insights about justice,
(01:06):
recognition, and healing historical wounds.
Let's welcome Charlotte Meredithto witch hunt.
Welcome to Witch Hunt, CharlotteMeredith.
We met at the Witchcraft and Human Rights Conference in
Lancaster, England this fall andquickly knew our work had a lot
(01:28):
in common. Tell us about what you do.
Thanks ever so much for invitingme.
It's lovely to speak to you again, but is it even better to
meet you in person? Of course.
So what I do is so I have my dayjob, I work in the publishing
industry, I am a writer, but I'malso a campaigner.
And it's for this reason you're talking to me specifically.
(01:50):
I am campaigning for justice, for which it's Saturday with my
campaign. And what I'm trying to do is to
get a pardon or pardons for all of the people you were convicted
on the unjust witchcraft legislation in Britain between
1542 and 1735. That's in a nutshell mission.
(02:13):
Thank you so much. It's so lovely to have you here
today and we really love what you're doing.
You know, we're completely behind exonerations and pardons,
but what are your motivations for supporting pardons?
No. Yeah, the good question,
(02:36):
important question. And if I say spoiler alert,
there were no witching, right? And I shouldn't really have to
say that in 2024, but that's part of the reason I thank you
because you're quite often find nowadays, many people's hair
still say all no smoke without bio when it comes to talking
(03:00):
about the British witch that they don't get that we we have
the innocent people. Some people actually think, oh,
or maybe these we're actually committing friends.
We're actually witches. And I want to make sure that we
stopped playing this novel. They were innocent people.
They were the victims of a gracemiscarriage of justice.
(03:23):
And we need to be replaying the narrative change how we talk
about the victims of our countryand that are now I've been
ridiculed in a lot of ways or dismissed.
What happened to them doesn't really matter.
And it does matter for many reasons, which I'm sure we'll
provide to. But yeah, that's what we're
(03:43):
trying to do. My I really got interested in
pardoning side of the in my writing.
I've read a book which came out last year about the most
infamous trial in England, and that was the 1612 Pengal
Witcher, or the Lanwich Witcher,where 10 people were executed,
(04:04):
witches would say 9, and one wasthere in Britain for a year.
And when I started to do research, the more I did, the
more I just felt so sorry for these people and so passionate.
I just really wanted to tell their story in a way that hadn't
(04:24):
been done before. A lot of what I'd read in the
past there was also said, let the reader decide whether they
were actually guilty or not. When I thought, I don't
understand, it's just an ethicalof course they weren't guilty
and I wanted to write a book that demonstrated war.
(04:44):
That obviously wasn't the case and that's where I really
started from that I was invited to talk about my book and about
the book, end of which is the Witch's revival.
She was an event held in Lancaster next year, my first
castle last year, and I met somepeople that were really keen on
(05:06):
the idea of buying witches whichto put forward.
And so they banded together to help me to start with a decision
to the government to do so. Can you?
Tell us a little. Bit about the witch trials, How
many people were convicted and what were the typical charges
(05:27):
and evidence used against them? Yeah, that's a good question.
I think it's probably important to say by what I mean by which.
So I'm definitely not talking about people who were martyrs
for a pre Christian religion. I don't hold with that
conceptual goal. What I'm talking about is
(05:50):
innocent people who were prosecuted in secular court, and
they were people who were prosecuted for very specific
crime, and the crime was Maleficent.
And that was the idea that you weren't using demonic magic to
cause harm. That was usually either to an
individual or to an individual school.
(06:12):
It's quite often people were found myself in court charged
with using charms to bewitch a cow, things like that.
So it's people's possessions andgoods that was the the typical
charge. Quite often people found
themselves accused of murder. So that may have been typically
it was a murdering a neighbour, someone who could have died
(06:33):
maybe 20 years before they couldthen 20 years later find
themselves accused. And it was also people had a
fear that people were using maleficium to call on children
as well. So those are the most typical
crimes that found themselves actually in court.
It's interesting when you look at the first witchcraft after
(06:55):
1542, which once started on the reign of the 8.
When you break that down what hewas interested in, we don't know
for sure why you thought it necessary first of all to start
to witchcraft perhaps, but he quite amusing it.
You see the show, I've had the idea that people were using
magic to find lost group and treasure.
(07:19):
And that was the incident reallyon his mind.
If so, people were you could seemagic, whatever that means
magical mean to find treasure. And I know there was some
theories that some people used to bury their treasure.
Anything about you, I'd say, especially if that what if
you've got 17th century metal detector coming out to get
(07:41):
sigmatic? I'd lost one, and I think that
King Henry was most appealed that people might be really not
told. That should be in his book.
So that's quite an amusing bit of the witch child.
That was the priority in every man.
But that's not the type of reason that people found
themselves in court. But that was something you could
(08:01):
be accused of under the Witcher Barrett.
But it was this idea of malefic what problems were for all us.
There was absolutely no evidencethat a crime had taken place.
How do you prove that someone had used in magic magic to pull
(08:21):
us out or to return to pull us out.
And that's why I always say thatthe main reason why in which
trials were in what? Kind of evidence did would they
have used? We know in the American colonies
there was the concept of spectral evidence that was used
at sometimes and not at other times, but LED to a lot of
(08:45):
trouble in Salem. Was that a factor in UK witch
trials? We have sure just to actually
you said ask me before as well how many people were talking
about. So we were talking about 3000 in
total that we have a record. So that's people convicted the
witch there. We have 2500 down in Scotland
(09:07):
and we have around 500 in England and then round 8IN way
and of those people, yeah, that's the thing they were
accused of. So when we were looking at
everything factual evidence was the fact that interestingly,
when magistrates were looking how to prosecute, they didn't
(09:28):
always know what to do exactly how exactly to go about proving
which happened taking place. So if you look at the witchcraft
that there's not really much in there in terms of guidance for
what they should be looking for.And so magistrates had a couple
of choices and that was to look at the immunological literature,
(09:50):
just the the inquisitive, you know, just have been saying
about what was state classed as evidence of witchcraft.
And so they could do that. And then another thing which was
really influential in England and Scotland and was the book
Demonology written by King James, the Scotland and Mr.
England that was written in around 1597.
(10:12):
Wrote Publish. Then by King James himself,
that's written in the full of a dialogue between somebody who
doesn't believe at all in reality witchcraft, and someone
who's going to convince them whythey're wrong.
And what how he did that was he came up with what he calls
sufficient fruit for witchcraft that this was evidence that
(10:35):
could be used in a quartered boxto prove that.
And with King James, he came up with nothing original really.
Again, he took from the previousdemonological literature so
things like the interest MalliasMalagara and he he was big on
the idea of a familiar spirit. But that was the idea that
(10:57):
proving that an alleged rich hadbeen involved with some kind of
being demonic being in the form of an animal, maybe a person.
So if it that could be cruel, then that was deciding that they
were witch and obviously guilty of the crime.
That was one another thing because King James realized that
(11:22):
this issue that not really having any physical proof of the
crap. What the sticking point when it
came to actually convicted. There were another thing he said
judges and Magistrates Court take into account when
prosperity witches was they could hear the testimony of
witnesses who wouldn't usually be allowed to give evidence
(11:45):
because they weren't deemed credible there in any other case
and that came down to people. We were already convicted
criminal now do well and also children be children weren't
allowed to give testimony because it was at the time
(12:06):
decided in the 17th century thatthey weren't able to reason for
that reason. They weren't seen as credible
witnesses, however, because there were no real credible
witnesses at the time working toproving witchcraft.
King James admission for children to be used as witnesses
(12:29):
in court and I know that that factor played into Salem witch
so that that really had an influence there.
So what happened eventually was that you've got magistrates you
have chained on prosecuting witches going ahead.
This sufficient. And then King James the cell
(12:51):
himself got involved looking at some of the trials and some of
the testimony and he even interviewed some of the people
who were witnesses in thought. And then he often interviewed
the both who then the Ned dwellsthe gone with filminals and
children. And he often bound that the
(13:13):
children had been lying. Surprise, surprise.
There was, for example, in 1634 came in Pendle again, where the
young boy named Evan Robinson, he actually came down late one
night and had a curious excuse for them to talk to his father
(13:34):
and that was like he'd been taken by witches to a local
sabot. That accusation led to the
rounding of around 22 people. Now when the Glory was actually
interviewed whilst these people were awaiting trial by King
Charles, this time it was found that he was lying.
(13:55):
And so it became very clear thatthe sufficient proof went total
months. And part of this is the reason
why which child got because it became impossible to prosecute a
witch essentially because there was no evidence.
(14:16):
Ghost isn't evidence. If it is just saying I saw
somebody in a dream commit a crime making up the witchcraft,
that isn't physical proof that acrime had happened.
So eventually the people involved in prosecuting witches
or rich witches did start to saythere was no justification for
(14:38):
prosecuting witches because there was no evidence that a
crime had taken place. It was a total nonsense.
It was an impossible crime, but that's what happened really.
But it took fortunately many, many years for that to happen.
But by 1735, Parliament were actually willing to change the
(15:01):
law, repeal the Witchcraft Act, for this very reason,
acknowledging that witchcraft wasn't a reality, that that
instead it was a fragile crime. So your campaign is covering
more than one country. How did the trials look
different across those countries?
(15:23):
So it's a punishment but different in terms of how you
displace the body, if you like. So in England and Wales the
punishment was to be handled andup in Scotland the convicted
which was goroted and then theirbody was burned.
(15:43):
And now there's quite a few theories as to why that happened
in Scotland. And some people see it as the
gorotic book or strangulation asan act of mercy.
But recently I heard a historiansay he thought it was more about
practical reason behind that because they be in his theory.
(16:05):
And he thought that people were concerned that somebody might be
able to share from the burning fire themselves, be on fire and
be a fire hazard. The quick step fire through the
building. I think that's actually probably
quite a good theory as to why the struggle of the person
before putting them on the fire.Because, yeah, to why would you
(16:29):
be merciful? It doesn't really make sense
with it. There's nothing merciful about
telling somebody he's a witch. Continuing in that vein, why do
you think there were so many more executions in Scotland than
in England, and especially Waleswith only eight?
(16:50):
Yeah, there's some theories about whales I'm going to have
to remember because I don't haveall the record so well that we
can be sure that there were morethat we knew of.
But I knew it's some people likepressing a little button think
that I post a theme that in Wales people were more likely to
blame fairy for things that wentwrong there any form of
(17:13):
adversity rather than which is and I've also heard some people
once people that language may have played a part in it.
So I don't know if there was like a specific translation of
which exactly in Wales. So I think that can be it and
that you get that thing being higher in the north Scotland as
(17:34):
well. But OK, why it all went to be
crazy in Scotland is because of King James.
And what happened was he obviously believed in witchcraft
and he specifically believed in what we call the elaborated
theory of witchcraft. So that was the theme that came
over from continental Europe, which was that a newly formed
(17:59):
female led the tranic devil worship being bunch of women
were out to kill king and prison.
He believed in that and that really wasn't a popular theory
in England or Scotland at the time.
But he popularized that more in Scotland around around fifty
(18:20):
90s, where his wife from Denmarkcame over with that theory.
And before she came over she he was ship was stuck by various
templates and the theories put out like King James that it had
been witches who would start touched her neighbour and we're
trying to kill her on him. So it was all that reason
(18:45):
there'd be this awful storm thatpeople started being rounded up
into Scotland and why it all went a little bit crazy.
They were doing so like on the Kings will if they like in
England. We until, I'd say until like
several times they were around the continental idea that
elaborated theory of witchcraft wasn't particularly popular.
(19:09):
The idea was that the witch was working with Dean.
Dean, which like beings or the devil, but not necessarily that
thing we'd have with the devil, which was part of the elaborate
theory. So there was a little bit more
of a reluctance to you. I was thankful for everything in
(19:29):
England. And also you have to look at the
court system was slightly different too.
I think you had it just a slightly different system.
We had the size in England and so where if somebody was using
more, for example, it would go and await a trial at the
Lancaster Castle at the asylum. But it's slightly different in
(19:51):
Scotland. So you've gotten more localized
ports if you like and I think itwas a little bit, there's a less
work, but the magistrates do we visit this.
Topic week after week. But digging into the details
like this again, it's just such a reminder of this enormous
(20:16):
injustice that happened and continues to happen.
Legal action can be taken to clear the names of those accused
of witchcraft in the UK. Yeah, fortunately, I would love
for all of the people to be exonerated, to do similar to
what you lovely people have doneand exonerated the innocent
(20:37):
people in ethiquette. Fortunately, that's probably not
going to happen here. That would have to go through
the courts. And to go through the courts,
you've got to come up with the evidence of new evidence of why
the crime never took place, which is in itself with
nonsense, right? Because you try and tell me,
(20:58):
prove to me that a crime took place in the 1st place.
So, yeah, unfortunately, we wouldn't be able to clear the
names that way, as far as I'm aware at this point, for those
things to change. So the next best thing is to get
a posthumous part of them. And we can do that to serve as a
formal acknowledgement of the gross miscarriage of justice
(21:21):
that took place. That's what I'm trying to do.
We can clear their names as muchas possible today by doing that.
And probably for that to happen when I was speaking with people
involved in the government decision making and was probably
likely have to have one lower garden for which is the victim,
(21:45):
which is to cover England and Wales and another two cover
Scotland because there were different which but that what
we'll achieve. Yeah, quickly seen we'll go.
But yes, so that but the that plan and that's what I'm going
(22:05):
to be reaching out to policymakers to help me to do
that in the early. Next year, I'm so glad that
you've brought up the witchcraftacts because it's just we don't
have that type of aspect when we're looking at the American
colony timeline of witch hunt. So it's really adds great
perspective to that contrast. Yeah, there's so many points
(22:30):
that you've made that I've wanted to jump right in on.
And one thing that you said thatmade sense to me, and pardon me
for backtracking a moment here, I just wanted to you were
talking about why there were more prosecutions in Scotland.
And part of it was this theory that there's basically this
(22:54):
grand conspiracy to take down both the state and the state's
religion. And that reminded me of in in
Massachusetts during the Salem witch trials, that the minister,
Cotton Mather really put forwardthe theory that the devil was
(23:14):
coming after Massachusetts through the witches to do just
that, to bring down. They wanted to pull down Christ
Church in New England and establish the devil's church in
its place. So they really had this kind of
existential fear that their veryway of life was going to be
(23:34):
utterly destroyed. You can take it to like the
Maleus Malek farm, that type of demolish protect.
Heinrich Kramer was a big fan ofthat theory.
It took quite a few years for that theory to put together into
the the final version of this Italian factor Saudi group of
(23:56):
devil worshippers who were etcetera and destroying.
But yet it's really the the crazy nonsense and those
demonological texts that then got printed on the idea to get
out eventually. So it just helped to build
hysteria. It's strange because it but
Christianity goes through phasesand then I do believe it was
(24:20):
very much good working evil. So any day now the devil could
come in knocking the door and people were genuinely fearful of
devil. And I always think that one of
the reasons, part of what part of the reason why the witch
trials ended, I think it's because Christianity and
basically that good and good versus evil version, I think it
(24:45):
started to lose its breath for the population and the people
became less fearful of the devil, even started to question
whether the devil was real. I was saying finally, all very
interesting, but it's such a dangerous idea, this belief in
demon that can cause your home and the home that that belief
(25:08):
causes. Back to the campaign, what
strategies are working to gathersupport from the community?
Yeah. So I touched on earliest though
the way I started the campaign was with a petition.
So from that petition we I had no budget.
(25:30):
I did that with no budget, no contact and I got the little
petition going with a hike them out.
I can some people, as I touched on buying with it me, which is
revival. I made some concert there.
You helped me to promote the petition and within a few weeks
I'd booked some budget, but I could do some advertising to let
(25:53):
people know that they're petitioning about that.
And I managed to get 30,157 people by our petition to say
that they wanted real justice for witches.
Now I started the petition on the official UK government
website. And the reason I did that, if
(26:14):
you actually study that site, itwill say that any petition
launched on any other site, for example, change that rule.
No matter how many signatures that petition get, the UK
Parliament don't have, they're not legally obliged to look at
it, do anything worse to create it.
But I started it on the officialchannel.
(26:36):
They only give you 6 months to get as many people by as
possible. Need 10,000 people to get a
comment from the government and we smashed that.
That was brilliant. We earlier this year, so in
March we had a response around the former government.
We just had a change around and the government agreed with my
(26:58):
argument. So they agreed that in 17 bids,
right, the witchcraft acts were appealed because they were
unjust because which happened into reality.
So that was great. They also acknowledged that
people were wrongfully accused under the Witchcraft Act, which
(27:18):
which is great, but I wasn't happy to agree with that wording
because it's still to me implying that perhaps some
people were correctly accused and with a witch tracker, they
wasn't totally confident or that.
But they ended where the as yet there are no clients to pardon
(27:39):
mostly accused. And now that was a great place
to start. And we never expected to get
their rain people in vocals and we did everything really
fortunate. It just shows how many people
there are out there. We're really passionate about
what we're doing and we could reach more with more support,
more funding. So now we have a new government
(28:01):
and I am now going to be reaching out to them directly to
try and get the law pastor the worst discussing area to get to
garden for the Scottish alleged witches and for the Welsh in
English. So that's the next step.
And so to help me do that, I've started on my website a survey
(28:22):
now giving everybody the opportunity who wants to do you
have their say? So let our government know why
they want to them to pardon British wicket.
We've had some interesting comments.
Reason was like I can tell people why I think riches should
be pardoned, so-called riches should be pardoned.
(28:44):
But the campaign, I'm aware it resonates with so many people
with so many different reasons. And we're not going to challenge
that what people believe. I'm just happy that it's
meaningful to people. But I do find that a lot of
people, let's say they see the links between the past and the
present in terms of the misogynythat still exists in the UK,
(29:07):
still exists in the world. I don't know if you know, but
our new UK government, the Labour government, they have an
initiative to follow violence against women and children
within the next 10 years. But should that really be an
initiative in 2024? Should our government have to be
doing that? Why are we still doing this to
(29:29):
all women and girls? What is wrong?
There's no disconnect between the misogyny that was behind the
witch child and the misogyny that exists in security today.
And a lot of people are seeing that.
They're recognizing, yeah, the witch child's were a great
mischarge of justice. But they're also seeing that
(29:52):
women have been fighting for quality for centuries and we
still don't have it. And we still live in a society
where misogyny is doing that. And it's not.
And we're really bad enough because we are not riches.
We're women. And so the on the wide range, we
have people who are back in the campaign for that reason.
(30:13):
And then we also have people whoare back in the campaign because
they see that rich child. Oh, not a thing.
So it's happening around the world, Africa, India, after New
Guinea, many countries also happening in the USA.
And it's also happening in the UK in forms of which first to
(30:35):
where people are being labeled as witches and they are being
immune because of that. The trials in one form or
another are still. And there's many people out
there who want to see that in 01.
I believe that what we never start which is working that
help. Just saw a post yesterday by
Doctor Leo Ingue in Nigeria of the advocacy for alleged
(31:00):
witches. Just stating just that fact,
that hardening witches or exonerating accused persons
accused of witchcraft in the UK,what they did in Spain, what
we're working on here in the States, that it actually sends a
message to the world. Absolutely, of course it does.
(31:24):
I can't see anything negative tocome out about bargaining or
righting me wrong, and I don't understand why anyone would
think there's no value in doing so.
We can achieve so much. I heard any chesting it just
like aside, but I heard a reallyinteresting interview if you go
(31:45):
with a former judge and criminalJustice League, right?
And in an industry we said that it's up to paraphrase and it's
everyone's duty to heal the willand whatever form that may take.
And for me, this is what we are doing right or attempting to do.
(32:07):
We work on exoneration because people say why does pardoning
witches matter now when we're inclimate crisis?
Well, why is that happening? Because we're responsible.
We're to blame. Humanity is to blame because
they've got to keep doing. We are not taking care of the
planet. We're not taking care of each
other. We're so busy doing what we used
(32:29):
to do 5 something years ago, blaming real and blaming
everyone else. But I received Miss Fortune.
And if the planet's going to go forward, if you plan it, it's
going to go forward. That's all that stop.
Or is that stop? Take a look at who we are, how
we're living, how we used to live.
I really strive to change and bebetter.
(32:49):
And that's part of what the campaign is hoping to achieve
and what we've done it in many ways and many different ways.
Pardon or the exonerations that you're doing just have nothing
but positive, not going to affect the people.
But for those people out there now, it will be labeled as
witches. They are living in the witch
camp. They cannot go home.
(33:12):
Who are suffering, who are beingabused, what grades are symbol
of hope that they have and to hear that countries have stood
up and said what we are doing, what we did is wrong and this
can't go on anymore. Just thinking I'm like with Leo
totally on this. They're pardoning the people
(33:33):
from the past will just have great things to do for our
relatives today who are out there working to help the people
they were being labeled. And we met a couple months ago
at a global gathering in Lancaster of Advocates WHO.
(33:54):
Are. In different phases of ending
witch hunts and protecting victims or seeking justice for
them, it greatly impacted me. Is there anything from that
conference that you'd like to talk about today?
Yeah, one thing that really kicks in to me was basically the
(34:18):
people who have albinism and they're suffering the violent
they are. On the one hand we have the
actual attacks that are going on.
So taking body parts of people without them is now because
bonkers believes that giving side of using those in in
founding ritual muddy can have some positive effect
(34:40):
practitioner. Well, the person paying the
practitioner and on the other hand, those people have been
ordered just like the so-called witches of the past where then
they are discriminated again. That really has stayed with me
hearing the accounts of those people, the suffering that
(35:02):
they're going to now and the fact that it's not being talked
about greatly is done and we need to to really be doing more
like you up your protester. I heard the music when you did
Jay the early on. I need to be doing more to get
that out there, the messages outthere.
So that's one thing that really stuck me and I if I can use my
(35:26):
campaign to help people with albinism.
Wow, do that. Sure.
The other thing that's that's strictly was when we're showing
some photographs of people beingpersecuted as widget really
harmony photographs of people basically being they know how to
(35:48):
say it, but their bodies being machete until they're investing
wet because people think they are responsible for some kind of
adversity rather ill health, crop failure, things that the
innocent men and women were accused of in your 500 years
ago. There's still a noise
(36:10):
accusations are still being madenow in Africa and to see that
that really staved me and I justthink so we still one image of
young man yielding machetes again and they must not worry.
And I just think to me it how can I get the message out there
(36:31):
that why do you fear the old woman and not the men wielding
the machete? And I think we need to change
perception just to get people tothink critically about the
reasoning why they are othering people blaming or using the
mistake or any kind of misfortune.
(36:55):
And again, what way do you do acceleration and help people are
advocating to see your change inthis area.
Yeah, I'm all for it. I'm not looking everything, I
can you help about things. I wanted to ask because we've
talked about a lot of the reasons why we believe that
(37:17):
pardons and exonerations are right and why they should be
passed. Are you receiving any feedback
counter to that? Are people saying that the
accused persons should not be pardoned for any reason?
And what reasons are you hearing?
(37:38):
Yeah, I haven't had anything directly come to me, but I have
seen some comments on social media and I think it was in
2022, a member of the Scottish Parliament turned out to
consultation asking people whether they wanted pardons to
happen for the people prosecutedunder the Scottish that.
(38:02):
And so I'm putting that see whatreasons people were giving for
20 minutes to go ahead. And the reasons were were
basically some people still believe that some of them
wouldn't have been innocent. That's an educational problem.
(38:23):
From my perspective. We need to show you to how much
education we need to do. Other people just don't think
it's relevant because they're bad, which have been about
people who were dead. Well, that depends on your your
metaphysics. So we say whether you believe in
an happy life or anything like that.
But also we're just saying, OK, if you do believe, OK, when
(38:45):
you're dead, you're dead, fine. But the ideas that led to the
witch trial, that led to the pursuit of an expedition after
you benefit people still very much alive and well, and they
are growing. That's not, in my mind, a reason
not to do anything because like we've just been talking about,
(39:08):
it is an ongoing issue. People tend to think, which
shows that everything is a fast.They're not.
Right on. Anything else that you would
like to be able to speak to for listeners today before we close?
Yeah. I'd just like to take the
opportunity to invite people to to complete the study by if
(39:29):
that's OK, so they can guaranteeto my website and have their
say. So tell again, just tell
politician why you want them to part in our historic circle
widget. The more data I get, the better
because the stronger argument I can be able to present to the
LSE maker. So yeah, that's a long thing I'd
(39:51):
like to say. And if anyone has any other
ideas or probably like to help me, yeah, if you can get in
touch that's worried I have it, I'd contact all on my website.
I'm happy to have a chat and seeif that I'm looking forward to
see what comes over. Your website
ischarlottemeredith.co.uk. That's it, Yeah.
(40:12):
And you can go on the just go forward slash the hyphen
campaign and that was linked to Justice for Richard.
Excellent. Thank you so much.
And we'll have links to that in the show notes as well.
So people, can you click right away from the description of the
episode. So, yeah, thank you so much for
(40:34):
joining us today. This has been really great to
talk to you again and hear from you on your wonderful campaign.
Thank you so much and thank you for everything you are doing to
help the the gold witches in your country.
And I hope that you go ahead andget the EUR but the right
honour. Thank you.
(40:55):
Thank you. And now Sarah has End witch
Hunts news. End witch hunts News on Maryland
and Massachusetts taking historic steps toward witch
trial. Acknowledgement In a significant
development for historical justice, Maryland legislators
are considering House Joint Resolution 2, which would
(41:18):
exonerate colonial Arab victims of witch trials in the state.
The resolution highlights 2 notable cases.
Rebecca Fowler, who was executedfor alleged witchcraft, and Maul
Dyer, a real woman celebrated widely in Maryland folklore who
actually died in exile after facing false accusations.
Additionally, Massachusetts legislators will be considering
(41:39):
an exoneration for those hangingfor alleged witchcraft in
colonial Boston with HD 3054. These innocent women were
Margaret Jones, Elizabeth Kendall, Alice Lake, Ann
Hibbens, and Goody Glover. This legislative action comes on
the heels of Connecticut's groundbreaking 2023 resolution
that acknowledged 33 witch trialvictims.
(42:01):
The Connecticut measures saw remarkable bipartisan support,
passing with a decisive 121 to 30 House vote and near unanimous
Senate approval. These resolutions align with
recent United Nations initiatives addressing global
witch hunt persecution, positioning the states alongside
international efforts to protectvulnerable populations.
(42:23):
Maryland Delegate Heather Bagnell and Massachusetts
Representative Steven Owens are leading parallel efforts in
their states to address colonialwitch trial and Justices.
Maryland's HJ 2 and Massachusetts HD 3054 both
demonstrate how states can take meaningful action with minimal
resources to right historical wrongs.
These bills both await General Assembly Committee consideration
(42:46):
in order to move on for votes inthe House.
Do you want to support these resolutions?
Please sign the petitions. The Massachusetts petition is
change.org/witch trials and the Maryland petition is
change.org/MD witch Trials. It's not too late to RSVP to our
(43:07):
Hartford Witch Trial Remembranceevent February 1st at
Connecticut's Old State House. Get your reservation in today on
eventbrite.com. The link is found in the show
notes. Thank you, Sarah.
You're welcome. And thank you for joining us on
Witch Hunt. Spend time with us again next
week. Have a great today and a
(43:29):
beautiful tomorrow.
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