December 8, 2024 • 36 mins
Join us for an exciting collaboration as Witch Hunt meets Witches of Scotland in this special crossover episode. Hosts Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack sit down with Zoe Venditozzi and Claire Mitchell to explore the parallel paths of witch trial justice advocacy across the Atlantic. From Connecticut to Scotland, discover how these podcasters are working to right historical wrongs while preventing modern-day witch hunts. Key topics include contrasts between American and Scottish witch trial histories, the unique challenges of tracing witch trial ancestry in different cultures, Dorothy Good's heartbreaking story: imprisoned at age 4 in Salem, current advocacy efforts for exoneration and remembrance, and modern witch hunt phenomena and their global impact. The discussion also features Connecticut's witch trial history and recent exoneration efforts, Scotland's unique legal framework for addressing historical injustices, the challenges of creating memorials in both countries, modern-day witch hunts and their global prevalence, and the role of gender in historical and contemporary witch accusations.
## Resources Mentioned
- Petition to clear the names of those convicted of witchcraft in Massachusetts
- Connecticut Witch Hunt Exoneration Project
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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.
And I'm Sarah Jack. Today we're excited to bring you
something really special, a meeting of minds across the
Atlantic with our friends from the Witches of Scotland podcast.
As fellow advocates working to honor witch trial victims and
prevent modern day witch hunts, getting to talk with Claire
Mitchell and Zoe Ventotzi was incredible.
(00:22):
They've been such an inspirationto our work.
That's right. Well, we were working on
Connecticut's witch trial exonerations.
Seeing their campaign for justice in Scotland showed us
what was possible. Now we get to compare notes on
everything from historical research to current advocacy.
And for any Witches of Scotland listeners joining us for the
first time, welcome. We're thrilled to have you here.
(00:44):
You'll discover we share many ofthe same passions as Claire and
Zoe when it comes to writing historical wrongs and preventing
witch hunts today. So settle in for a fascinating
conversation that spanned centuries and continents as we
explore witch trial, history andjustice with our Scottish
counterparts. Hello and welcome to this
(01:05):
extremely special episode of it's a kind of it's a
collaboration between US and another podcast from the other
side of the pond. So for those of you that know
me, I'm Zoe Bed Totse from the Witches of Scotland podcast.
We are a podcast based inevitably in Scotland where we
talk about the witches that wereaccused here and then link that
(01:26):
to worldwide efforts, which is where our collab comes in
tonight. So hello to those of you that
know me through the Witches of Scotland podcast, and I'm going
to hand over to the other half of this.
Hello from Witch Hunt. I'm Josh Hutchinson and I'm here
with Sarah Jack, my Co host, andwe're in American podcasts that
(01:46):
covers witch trial history and also talks about modern day
witch hunts. This is it's so cool because we
know of each other obviously through Twitter and we've we've
listened to each other's podcastand it's really nice to I was
saying at the beginning to meet you.
Of course, we're we're not actually sadly in the same room.
We're all in different places inScotland and and in the States,
(02:06):
but it's nice to meet you. Hello.
Hello. It is so special to be here with
you. Thank you so much.
Oh, no, thank you. Because it's difficult finding
time and obviously the time difference in all the rest of
it. So I'm really glad that we could
make it work. Can you tell our listeners?
Your listeners will know this already, but can you tell our
listeners what the genesis of your project was and what the
(02:29):
form of it is these days? Our project began as a way to
promote the Connecticut Witch Trial Exoneration Project.
We were looking to clear the names of those who had been
accused of witchcraft in colonial Connecticut, and we
devised the podcast to spread the word about that.
(02:52):
But since then, it's evolved. We've expanded our coverage to
global witch hunts around the world at different periods in
time, and we've really been dialed in lately on what's
called harmful practices relatedto accusations of witchcraft and
ritual attacks, which are basically modern day attacks on
(03:14):
people accused of witchcraft. It's broad because you're a few
different things then, aren't you?
So you're like us, You're a campaign plus a podcast.
So what are your backgrounds? I'm a descendant of Rebecca
Nurse, who was hanged in Salem, and also her sister Mary Estie.
(03:35):
Their grandchildren married, andso I had that little
understanding of witch trials for a while.
And as I kept working on my family history research as a
hobby, I found that I descended from an accused witch in
Connecticut and I wanted to knowmore.
It was really hard to find information about the
(03:55):
Connecticut witch trials. I didn't have my nose in a book
like I should have, but I was just online checking out what
was there and there was no memorial.
So I started looking for the other people that were talking
about the American colony witch hunts and trying to understand
how does it fit in with what happened in Salem.
And so the Exoneration Project came out of a group of us coming
(04:18):
together trying to find out whatcan we do to move things forward
in Connecticut for an apology. And Josh has a long social media
history with witch trial work and he came on board and was a
huge help. And that is when the podcast was
launched. It's wild to me and to clear
(04:38):
that you're able to trace yourself back to the nurse story
because in Scotland we can't really do that.
There isn't the there isn't the chain of the way that you're so
much more organized. America, presumably because it
was quite a new thing. So people were recording
everything as they went. Whereas in Scotland it some
stuff exists, but it's very hardto prove.
So sometimes people will say, oh, I'm descended to such and
(05:01):
such and you're like, you might be like you've got the same name
and your family comes from the area.
But you can't prove it conclusively.
But we know that you can in the States, which is just mind
blowing to me. We often give talks where we'll
say to people who the chances are you, if your family are
generations way, way back in Scotland, you may very well be
related because there's only about a million people in
(05:22):
Scotland at that point. Or more likely, you're probably
related to somebody who was involved in accusing or
executing somebody that was accused in Scotland.
And I think that gives us pause for thought.
But it's hard to prove. So for you to have that direct
link to me is just like mind blowing and not to just one
accused, but then another as well in a different location.
(05:44):
That's it's mental to me. Josh has even more than I do.
Or Josh, please tell. OK.
My story with which Charles goesback to when I was in high
school, one summer, I did a tripwith my family to Massachusetts.
And my grandfather was from a town called Danvers, which used
(06:07):
to be Salem Village. So that was the epicenter.
And we went to the Rebecca Nursehomestead.
And there's a monument to peoplewho signed a petition in
defensive Rebecca and my ancestor Joseph Hutchinson is on
there. And the way that they wrote it
(06:27):
was Jos Apostrophe H So it practically said Josh.
And it always stuck with me. So I I got I.
Just got shippers down my back there, Joe.
Just genuinely that's so weird. It was such an experience, but I
later found out that I'm descended from Rebecca Nurse's
sister, Mary Estie, and also several dozen people who were
(06:52):
involved on either side. As you said, you're more likely
to be related to somebody who was an accuser because they
outnumbered the defendants usually.
Interestingly, I I I have a theory.
I don't know if this has any basis.
Let let me tell you. I've written a wild theory I
(07:13):
love. It well, I'll just but it's good
we've got these experts here just.
I have a theory. That one of the reasons that
people are remembered and that you've been able to go down the
generations is because it wasn'tthat long after people had been
accused that this chat about exoneration started and
therefore people had that recognition and agency.
(07:36):
So it was my family member was wrongly accused and convicted or
my family member. Unfortunately the the, the few
people who were executed and therefore that passes down the
generations as something that you recall happening in your
family. Whereas in Scotland there wasn't
that acceptance, there'd been a miscarriage of justice and there
(07:59):
wasn't that, as it were, almost public vindication.
Do you think that's maybe a reason why you guys do remember
your ancestors better than we do?
That is definitely a reason why we remember our Salem ancestors,
because 10 years after the trials, everybody submitted
petitions to have their attenders reversed and their
(08:25):
names cleared and to receive some sort of restitution
payments. The effort to get the
restitution took another decade.So it just kept perpetuating.
And then around the revolution, And he's not related to me, but
Governor Thomas Hutchinson in the 1760s wrote a history of
(08:45):
Massachusetts and had a very long chapter about Salem.
So it's just was passed down generation to generation.
It's really, it's just so different to Scotland.
And I think some of that is because Scotland, it was over a
couple of 100 years, the numberswere obviously much, much
bigger. And I think that there's, there
was a certain amount of stigma obviously for people that were
(09:06):
accused. Naturally you would expect that.
But then I think that there musthave been, there must have been
shame driving a lot of the people that were involved in the
accusations as well that just then want to just to forget
about it. But we have spoken to some
experts that have said that. So in some areas of Fife, which
is where I live, it's Fife is Fife to me is a big county.
To you, it'd be just like a neighbourhood.
(09:27):
You'd be like, you would drive there to go and pick up, take
out or something. Jeremy, you'd be like, it's
nothing. Distance is nothing in the
States. I know that because my family,
some of my family are American and I know that they'll drive 2
hours to go out for dinner. Whereas we'd be like, oh, you'd
need a hotel if you were going to go there.
That's quite serious. Never.
But Fife is to me quite big. So to you, if you'd look at the
(09:47):
map, you'd be like, that's nothing.
That's just a tiny little countyarea, but Fife has got lots of
little villages. And Fife was very involved in
witchcraft accusations and witchhunts.
And I, we talked to some expertsthat said that some of those
villages, but to have resigned families that have been there
for hundreds of years, there's still a fear in some parts of
(10:08):
the community. And I'm not talking necessarily
about the young ones now and obviously not people that have
moved in, but people that are many generations long families,
that there is maybe still an idea from some people, which I
mean, I don't know if that's true or if that just makes a
good kind of tourism story. But I think that there is
something where that they don't want to discuss it, that it's
been put to rest. And I do know that when they
(10:30):
were looking at doing a memorialdown in the bottom of Fife in a
place called Kuris and Torrey Byrne, that a lot of locals were
not keen from memorial. Apparently we were told by
campaigners because they were just kind of like leave the
past. That's, you know, that's that's
terrible. We don't want to talk about
that. But I think that you guys are
very much on the same page as us, which is you have to talk
(10:51):
about the bad stuff in history. You can't just pretend it didn't
happen. You need to bring it out into
the light. And that's no more obvious than
what the what the recent interviews that you've been
doing about what's happening in other countries.
So it's still obviously an issue, still a problem.
Have you been shocked to discover what's happening in the
modern day We. Were a bit shocked when we first
(11:14):
learned about it. After we had started witch hunt.
A gentleman named Dick Damon left from South Africa.
He runs a campaign against witchhunting and he contacted us and
that's when we first started to learn about it.
And very quickly we learned how large of a problem it is.
(11:37):
The United Nations put out a report that they have reports
from at least 60 nations and involving 10s of thousands of
individuals. So it's very epic in scope and
it was a surprise to learn just how widespread it is.
It's every continent has it. And do you find in Scotland it
(12:00):
was round about 8485% of the accused were women.
Is it similarly gendered with the people you've spoken to in
different countries? It's very gendered with most of
the people that we've spoken with.
There are some pockets, I believe in Papua New Guinea,
where men are considered to be sorcerers.
(12:23):
But as a rule, it's generally 80to 90%.
We talked to a gentleman from India who said 97% were women
and the 3% men were related to the women.
They were supporters of them andthat's how they got caught up in
it. Which is similar to what
happened in Scotland. Often the men were husbands or
(12:46):
sons or brothers or whatever, orfriends or neighbours.
They're just in the wrong place at the wrong time sort of thing.
It's wild that isn't it because we focused a lot on different
African countries because of LeoIgui, who obviously runs
advocacy for accused witches outout in Africa.
And we were talking to him the other night, he was, we did a
Zoom with him from Nigeria. And it doesn't seem to be
(13:07):
something that's abating, but just seems to be something that
that seems to be getting worse if anything.
You have multiple reasons for that.
There's climate change that's driving some accusations because
of all the weather events that are happening.
There's more droughts, there's more heavy storms that destroy
(13:27):
crops. And when people are desperate,
that's when they start pointing fingers at people for
witchcraft. So you have that.
You have things like the refugeecrisis and migration that are
carrying beliefs. Yeah.
(13:47):
And how do you find people in the states have taken to your
efforts around Connecticut? Have have people been interested
or do they think it should be left in the past or are people
quite engaged with it? I would say my experience with
Connecticut is they're timid about looking at that history.
(14:08):
I think about how the Salem executions were like really
towards the end, many of those who were executed probably
didn't expect to be. That's a real different history
than in Connecticut. It was a pretty high execution
rate and it was just. And I'm sorry to interrupt, but
can you tell us what happened inConnecticut?
(14:28):
Can you give us a potted historyjust in case people haven't
literally in your podcast yet? Right.
In Connecticut, the first hanging was in 1647.
A woman named Alice Young was executed, and she was the first
of anyone in the American colonies to be hanged for
(14:49):
witchcraft. And I emphasize hanged, not
burned. The colonies here did hangings,
but she was the 1st and then it within several years after that,
six more individuals were accused and they were 100%
convicted and executed. So Connecticut was 7 for seven
(15:09):
starting out at the gate. And then things kind of
moderated in the 1650s, but thenyou had a Hartford witch panic
in 1662 and 1663 where another 4individuals were hanged.
So you had 11 individuals total hanged in Connecticut in about a
(15:31):
16 year time period, where Massachusetts in that time
period only executed four people.
So it was worse to be in Connecticut.
And was Connecticut a very big population at that point?
I mean, surely there weren't that many people living there.
The towns at the time, the biggest towns might have had a
(15:54):
couple 1000 people, but most of the towns were just a couple 100
people. So it wasn't very big.
And Salem wasn't very big. Salem Village was 525 people or
so, but you know, 156 people endup being accused so.
(16:14):
Hang on, sorry, just to ask you to repeat that.
So there was about 525 people lived there and 100 odd people
were accused. Are you, do you mean in that
town? That.
Was like what? Sorry, the that's the total from
across the Salem, which covered dozens of towns.
OK. Yes.
(16:34):
I was like a much bigger story than I realized it was.
It was already OK. And what do you think both the
accusations at that point in Connecticut, what was going on
there that these accusations occurred?
There were epidemics that swept through periodically and women
would be blamed for causing those.
(16:55):
And there was fear of warfare with the Dutch, who were
neighbors, and with the Native Americans.
They were constantly in the state of fear.
And it was the Little Ice Age and the weather was terrible and
sometimes the crops didn't come out.
So there's a lot of finger pointing about livestock crimes
(17:18):
and crimes involving children were very big reasons for
witchcraft accusations. Now, do you mean crimes
involving children falling ill and dying, or children being
used to being witches? For the most part, it was
children who died in Connecticut.
I believe the youngest person involved was 13 who was accused,
(17:44):
and that's another relative of Sarah Winifred Benham Junior.
And but what? By the time you got to the Salem
witch panic, a four year old child was accused of witchcraft
and imprisoned in a dungeon. They made special shackles for
her to chain her to the wall forseven months and she hasn't
(18:06):
received any apology. She didn't get restitution.
There's been no real acknowledgement.
So we also have the Massachusetts Witch Hunt Justice
Project going, and we're trying to get an exoneration for
everyone who's convicted and apology to everybody who was
ever prosecuted. Your legal system is obviously
(18:29):
different to ours, so we can't get an exoneration.
Claire, you can maybe explain that because people often I
think have an American filmic idea of of what we can our, our
system is obviously different toyours.
A lot of the time when people are interacting or with us on
social media, Americans say, you're asking for the wrong
(18:50):
thing. You shouldn't get a pardon
because a pardon presupposes they've done something.
You're looking for an exoneration.
And I say, I wish that we could get that.
Our system doesn't allow that tothe best that we can get as a
pardon, a pardon that makes it clear that they accept the basis
for it was that they ought neverto have been convicted of
(19:11):
anything. I'm interested to work out why
it was that some people were pardoned, some people weren't.
For example, why was the four year old girl?
Why was she not pardoned? She was never convicted.
She was never pardoned. That makes sense.
Can't you of all the people you can't exonerate or people who
(19:32):
are never convicted? But you said she also never got
any money as well in compensation.
Is that again, because it's tiedto the conviction, OK.
Most of the individuals who received compensation were
convicted and jailed, and the ones who received exoneration
were the ones who were condemned.
(19:56):
OK. So she she was released the four
year old after seven months of being held.
I wonder, I'm a I'm a teacher and I work a lot with kids that
have that have had trauma and I just wonder what impact that had
on that wee girl like. How could you possibly move on
after being held for seven months and presumably, I'm
imagining, treated really badly?If they thought she was a witch,
(20:18):
I can't imagine they looked after her very carefully.
Because I know that in Scotland the theory was that once you had
come a witch that you weren't really a human anymore.
You were the devil's puppet kindof thing.
So they did. That was one of the ways, I
think, in which the people that did the accusing and the
executions were able to live with what it was they were doing
because they didn't view them asbeing real people anymore.
(20:39):
Was that similar in America? Yes, and Dorothy Good, the four
year old, was also imprisoned with her mother, Sarah Good.
And Sarah had an infant who was less than a year old who died in
the jail. And Sarah Good herself was
(21:00):
executed. So Dorothy grew up without a
mother. She had been through all this
trauma. She'd been there with her
mother, and then her mother's taken away.
So it was deeply traumatic. And her father filed a petition
later on saying that she was ungovernable, that because of
(21:21):
the trauma she couldn't basically take care of herself.
She she will have had the most tremendous PTSD that there's no
way that that age. Oh my goodness.
And have you ever had anybody get in touch with you?
That's descendants. There might be a descendant of
that little girl. There are descendants of Sarah
Good. There are good descendants, but
(21:43):
history on Dorothy is still being evaluated.
But there has been really interesting recent discoveries
on her possible we might know how things ended for her now.
Josh, do you want to talk about that?
We know that Dorothy did end up bearing two children, and we
(22:05):
don't know who the fathers are for those two children.
The children were taken away as infants and placed as indentured
servants until they grew of age.Dorothy lived without her
children. Her father wasn't very good to
her. She just had a pretty miserable
(22:26):
life and she ended up being warmed out of town and she would
move to another town and then they'd worn her out and she may
have died alone in a field in Connecticut.
Well, that's so awful. You can really, you know, it's
so many hundreds of years ago, but you can really feel that I
think is a connection to what they'd be like.
(22:47):
I've got children and just the thought of.
Losing a baby. If you were, first of all, being
in prison at all, being in prison with a baby in a four
year old and then losing your infant and then knowing that
you're going to die in that wee girl's going to be left on her
own. Just can't even get your head
around that. So I presume people can really
connect with stories like that and think, yeah, I can see the
reason why this needs to be brought out into the light and
(23:08):
we need to learn about things like this.
Can I circle back, Sarah, and ask, in light of what we've just
heard and how enraging that is and how outrageous, why is it
that people are timid in coming forward?
Why do you think there's this sort of resistance?
There's a lot of layers to that one.
(23:29):
One is there's a lot of male history there that they're proud
of. Secondly, there's the practices.
Of the podcast everyone just unlooked and all nodded just
that across. Yeah.
And then one of the things that really kept coming up with us
(23:50):
with the legislation that was getting voted on and moving
through the General Assembly wasthere was still a lot of
misunderstanding about what the conviction was for.
And there appeared to be a lot of fear around witchcraft.
Still, when testimony was given by descendants asking for the
(24:14):
politicians to vote yes to move this bill to the House, one of
them demanded that there be proof that the woman who was
convicted had not had a covenantwith the devil.
I remember that and I think Claire and I spoke about that on
our podcast and we're just kind of like, are you completely
(24:34):
bonkers? You know, like that's we're at a
stage now. What was that?
Was that 2022 maybe? Or is that 23 where we were kind
of like, we don't believe in witches in that way anymore?
That's insane. But I'm sorry to say this, and I
am saying this with full knowledge that our government is
absolutely appalling. OK, there, Westminster are just
(24:55):
dreadful, but we've got so many stories coming out of the states
where we're kind of like, and now these Americans have done
this crazy thought and this crazy thing's happening.
And I think part of it is because America is enormous
compared to us. And there's such a huge array of
things that go on there and it'sjust it's so complex.
But when that came out, we used to when I was a kid, you used to
(25:15):
get like bits on our news sayingthings.
It was called Only in America. And then there'd be this
completely bonkers story and you'd be like, and the Americans
did this. And it was one of those only in
American moments. We were like, are you mental?
You're a man in today, in the 21st century, saying, can you
prove she didn't have a covenantwith the devil?
I can't even get my head around that.
(25:36):
You might think it privately, but to go out in public as a
politician and say that with a straight face, it's really
actually scary. Like it's initially laughable,
but then you think, but there must be people that think like
he does that do believe that's happening.
And they also really believed that for these women to have
(25:57):
been accused of being witches, then they were for sure bad
people anyways. So why exonerate someone who was
a bad person? Oh my God, you can't convict
people just for being bad people.
They actually need to break laws.
Sorry. Well, I would be interested in.
I kind of remember he slightly rode back from that, didn't he?
(26:17):
He was like, oh, I didn't mean witches were real.
I mean there needed to be some. Evidence like, yeah, yeah,
whatever. You wanted proof, but there's a
rise in the US and I wondered ifyou'd considered this or will be
considering it in the in the future.
There's the rise of the pastors who are going viral for seeing
(26:39):
there's a witch in the community.
There's a witch amongst us. I don't know if you saw the
pastor who was talking about hiswife and they had a book club
and he was saying, my wife knowsthat he was speaking to her
friends in the book club. And there are newcomers to town.
We know who they are. They're witches.
It's like, Oh my God, this is just like a playbook of how to
(27:01):
find outsiders and start blamingthem for problems in your
community. Do you guys see the rise of
these pastors and is it a scary thing?
We're starting to collect data in general on the way we see
crimes happening, accusations happening in the country so that
(27:22):
there is something to look at because it's still very, it's
like slippery to people. They don't realise how prevalent
a lot of the stuff is in our country.
Yeah, and also I think it's tiedup with money as well, isn't it?
Because churches obviously don'tpay tax, so anybody can set up a
church and that's the way to getpeople in.
It's really grabby. Like it's a big story and the
(27:44):
supernatural is much more interesting than just
straightforward. Just be nice to your neighbour.
I I think it's much more grabby.Say evil is abroad and I'm the
person that can save you from it.
There's like a big hero thing going on as well there, I think.
Could we not start up another church this Does it need to be a
religious church? I'm just thinking we could start
up like a. And it's a religion.
(28:05):
In America that's not religious,isn't there?
There's one that's I can't remember.
It's quite mainstream. We don't have it in the UK as
far as I'm aware. And people get together and it's
like in church, but it's not really religious that and that's
so vague and you're both going, what are you on about?
I will research this. I'll get back because my
sister-in-law, that's the churchthat she attended growing up,
(28:26):
but it's not actually a religious church, but it's all
the good stuff about religion. It's quite strange.
Anyway, sorry, that's a completely another one of the
perfected crazy things. Now I'm aware we've only got
about 5 1/2 minutes left. Can you tell us And then we'll
tell you where are you up to with like your legal cases and
that side of things? With the Massachusetts Witch
(28:48):
Hunt Justice Project, they'd runa 2 year session in their
General Court. So we're waiting to for the 2025
asking people to sign a petitionat change.org/wood Trials, and
then we're also working on getting a memorial built in
Connecticut and we've been tentatively given some approval
(29:13):
to submit designs. Oh.
Wonderful. That's so cool.
And who will fund that? Is that the state or do you have
to fundraise for that? We'll need to do a mixture of
probably some state grants and maybe a bond issue and
individual donations. Because your system is quite
(29:36):
different for that. Isn't it clear?
Yeah, unfortunately. Can I also ask, can anyone sign
the petition? Can our listeners sign the
petition or do they have to be in the US?
Anyone in the world can sign it.Well, don't you share that then
with our listeners as well. Thank you, Bill, because we're
at the stage now where we had a politician in the Scottish
(29:59):
Parliament who was taking it forwards and we'd done a public,
we hadn't, they'd done a public consultation and then that MSP,
the Member of Scottish Parliament was then promoted to
the Cabinet. And are the rules here are that
if you're in the Cabinet, which is I suppose ostensibly but more
power, they're not allowed to dothat type of work anymore.
So it kind of fell to nobody. So we're in the process.
(30:22):
We've got a fantastic colleague who's beavering away trying to
get somebody else to take that up just now.
So she's looking into that and I've heard today clear that
she's been told that the public consultation is going to be made
available. It's going to be published
within the next month. So we should have news about
that, which we'll do. And as soon as we have it,
we'll. Yeah, it, it was going to be
(30:43):
published and we kept saying it's going to be published here,
it's going to be published. And then Nathalie Dawn MSP was
unable to do it anymore. So it basically just sat there
in abeyance. But thankfully it's kicked back
in and it's moving again now. Yeah.
And. You know what it's like with
politics? It's, it's hard to get people
involved in things that are happening right now.
(31:04):
People are, I don't know about with you guys, but in, in the UK
people pretty apathetic. So it's hard to get people
involved. So when you're talking about
something that happened hundredsof years ago, you've always
thought got even more of an issue with that.
But we're hoping that we will have an MSP that's going to pick
it up and that we'll progress our memorial plans.
We've got some ideas. But the problem that we have in
(31:24):
Scotland is that the government have said to us we're largely
supportive, but we're also completely poor and can't give
you any money for it. So that's more of a problem.
Was clear night 100% do not havetime to fundraise.
So that would have to be, I don't know how that would work
unless we just had a benefactor that went here's £1,000,000 and
then that would be. Any benefactors listening?
(31:45):
Any benefactors? Never know.
Multi million years. I mean, feel free.
Yeah. But that's the that's where
we're at there. But we still think it's
incredibly important to have a memorial, presumably for the
same reasons as you guys, but just so that it's marked, so
that people can learn about it without realizing that that even
happened necessarily, if they would just came across the
memorial and then learned about it through that.
(32:08):
But also just because women's history just isn't marked.
And sad to say, the witch hunts was mostly a story about women
being treated terribly, and there were obviously men too,
but mostly women. So that's how we think it's
important. But it's been really nice
talking to you and actually connecting like this.
That's what you too. Thank you so much.
(32:28):
Yeah. We've.
Been watching you Josh. I've been watching you on TikTok
whenever, but yeah, if whatever it comes across is always take a
leaf out of Josh's book. I'm not.
I'm not actually personally, although I joke I'm not actually
on personally on TikTok any muchanymore.
But if I occasionally switch on because I'd follow you, I think
(32:50):
you come up in the feeds and I listen to your TikTok.
So I'm a high school. Teacher and if I did tik toks it
would be just horrendous. It would be horrendous.
It starts up in my class. So people can follow you on
TikTok as well as what I'm saying as well as all.
So I'm going to say goodbye, butit's more like an adieu because
I think we should do this again.So if we realize after begin and
(33:14):
get even more of a story. So thank you so much.
Thank you. Thanks, guys.
Bye. Bye.
Before we go, I'd like to clarify something that I said
about Dorothy. Good, when we're talking to
Claire and Zoe, I said that Dorothy Good never received a
payout of compensation for her wrongful imprisonment, and that
(33:37):
is true. However, I do realize that her
father did petition for restitution and he was awarded
an amount for the death of SarahGoode, Dorothy's mother and his
wife. He had that money sent to
Benjamin Putnam, who was boarding Dorothy at the time, in
(34:02):
1712 when the restitution was awarded.
So Dorothy was living with this Benjamin Putnam and William
Goode signed over the restitution to Benjamin Putnam.
So presumably some of it was used for Dorothy's care.
But given that she was indigent her entire life and relied on
(34:27):
public support, I don't believe that she ever had any control
over any of this money. And it was paid for her mother's
suffering. There was not a payment
specifically for Dorothy's suffering.
If you look at the receipt written by the clerk of the
(34:50):
court, it refers specifically toSarah as being the awardee of
the money. For more on Dorothy Good's life,
listen to Witch Hunt episode titled Rachel Christone on the
Salem Witch Museum and the Life of Dorothy Good which originally
(35:10):
released July 20th, 2023. Please join us on February 1st,
2025 at Hartford CT's Old State House at 1:00 PM for a free
community history event remembering the innocent victims
of the Connecticut Witch Trials.It's a special 2 hour
commemoration of those who lost their lives in colonial
(35:32):
Connecticut's witch trials. award-winning performers Deborah
Walsh and Jenny Wolf will open with a dramatic reading of the
last night followed by insights from the Connecticut Witch Trial
Exoneration Project founders andrenowned historians.
We will honor the victims with aremembrance ceremony, joined by
State Representative Jane Garabe.
Connect with fellow community members and witch trial history
(35:55):
descendants afterward as we worktogether to build awareness for
this crucial chapter of our history.
Don't miss this powerful blend of performance, education and
commemoration that aligns with Connecticut's recent legislative
recognition of these historical injustices.
Thank you for listening to WitchHunt.
(36:15):
Join us next week. If you like what you've heard
today, please subscribe to WitchHunt wherever you get your
podcasts. Visit us@witchhuntshow.com.
For more great content. Have a great today and a
beautiful tomorrow.
Welcome to Witch Hunt. I'm Josh Hutchinson.
And I'm Sarah Jack. Today we're excited to bring you
something really special, a meeting of minds across the
Atlantic with our friends from the Witches of Scotland podcast.
As fellow advocates working to honor witch trial victims and
prevent modern day witch hunts, getting to talk with Claire
Mitchell and Zoe Ventotzi was incredible.
(00:22):
They've been such an inspirationto our work.
That's right. Well, we were working on
Connecticut's witch trial exonerations.
Seeing their campaign for justice in Scotland showed us
what was possible. Now we get to compare notes on
everything from historical research to current advocacy.
And for any Witches of Scotland listeners joining us for the
first time, welcome. We're thrilled to have you here.
(00:44):
You'll discover we share many ofthe same passions as Claire and
Zoe when it comes to writing historical wrongs and preventing
witch hunts today. So settle in for a fascinating
conversation that spanned centuries and continents as we
explore witch trial, history andjustice with our Scottish
counterparts. Hello and welcome to this
(01:05):
extremely special episode of it's a kind of it's a
collaboration between US and another podcast from the other
side of the pond. So for those of you that know
me, I'm Zoe Bed Totse from the Witches of Scotland podcast.
We are a podcast based inevitably in Scotland where we
talk about the witches that wereaccused here and then link that
(01:26):
to worldwide efforts, which is where our collab comes in
tonight. So hello to those of you that
know me through the Witches of Scotland podcast, and I'm going
to hand over to the other half of this.
Hello from Witch Hunt. I'm Josh Hutchinson and I'm here
with Sarah Jack, my Co host, andwe're in American podcasts that
(01:46):
covers witch trial history and also talks about modern day
witch hunts. This is it's so cool because we
know of each other obviously through Twitter and we've we've
listened to each other's podcastand it's really nice to I was
saying at the beginning to meet you.
Of course, we're we're not actually sadly in the same room.
We're all in different places inScotland and and in the States,
(02:06):
but it's nice to meet you. Hello.
Hello. It is so special to be here with
you. Thank you so much.
Oh, no, thank you. Because it's difficult finding
time and obviously the time difference in all the rest of
it. So I'm really glad that we could
make it work. Can you tell our listeners?
Your listeners will know this already, but can you tell our
listeners what the genesis of your project was and what the
(02:29):
form of it is these days? Our project began as a way to
promote the Connecticut Witch Trial Exoneration Project.
We were looking to clear the names of those who had been
accused of witchcraft in colonial Connecticut, and we
devised the podcast to spread the word about that.
(02:52):
But since then, it's evolved. We've expanded our coverage to
global witch hunts around the world at different periods in
time, and we've really been dialed in lately on what's
called harmful practices relatedto accusations of witchcraft and
ritual attacks, which are basically modern day attacks on
(03:14):
people accused of witchcraft. It's broad because you're a few
different things then, aren't you?
So you're like us, You're a campaign plus a podcast.
So what are your backgrounds? I'm a descendant of Rebecca
Nurse, who was hanged in Salem, and also her sister Mary Estie.
(03:35):
Their grandchildren married, andso I had that little
understanding of witch trials for a while.
And as I kept working on my family history research as a
hobby, I found that I descended from an accused witch in
Connecticut and I wanted to knowmore.
It was really hard to find information about the
(03:55):
Connecticut witch trials. I didn't have my nose in a book
like I should have, but I was just online checking out what
was there and there was no memorial.
So I started looking for the other people that were talking
about the American colony witch hunts and trying to understand
how does it fit in with what happened in Salem.
And so the Exoneration Project came out of a group of us coming
(04:18):
together trying to find out whatcan we do to move things forward
in Connecticut for an apology. And Josh has a long social media
history with witch trial work and he came on board and was a
huge help. And that is when the podcast was
launched. It's wild to me and to clear
(04:38):
that you're able to trace yourself back to the nurse story
because in Scotland we can't really do that.
There isn't the there isn't the chain of the way that you're so
much more organized. America, presumably because it
was quite a new thing. So people were recording
everything as they went. Whereas in Scotland it some
stuff exists, but it's very hardto prove.
So sometimes people will say, oh, I'm descended to such and
(05:01):
such and you're like, you might be like you've got the same name
and your family comes from the area.
But you can't prove it conclusively.
But we know that you can in the States, which is just mind
blowing to me. We often give talks where we'll
say to people who the chances are you, if your family are
generations way, way back in Scotland, you may very well be
related because there's only about a million people in
(05:22):
Scotland at that point. Or more likely, you're probably
related to somebody who was involved in accusing or
executing somebody that was accused in Scotland.
And I think that gives us pause for thought.
But it's hard to prove. So for you to have that direct
link to me is just like mind blowing and not to just one
accused, but then another as well in a different location.
(05:44):
That's it's mental to me. Josh has even more than I do.
Or Josh, please tell. OK.
My story with which Charles goesback to when I was in high
school, one summer, I did a tripwith my family to Massachusetts.
And my grandfather was from a town called Danvers, which used
(06:07):
to be Salem Village. So that was the epicenter.
And we went to the Rebecca Nursehomestead.
And there's a monument to peoplewho signed a petition in
defensive Rebecca and my ancestor Joseph Hutchinson is on
there. And the way that they wrote it
(06:27):
was Jos Apostrophe H So it practically said Josh.
And it always stuck with me. So I I got I.
Just got shippers down my back there, Joe.
Just genuinely that's so weird. It was such an experience, but I
later found out that I'm descended from Rebecca Nurse's
sister, Mary Estie, and also several dozen people who were
(06:52):
involved on either side. As you said, you're more likely
to be related to somebody who was an accuser because they
outnumbered the defendants usually.
Interestingly, I I I have a theory.
I don't know if this has any basis.
Let let me tell you. I've written a wild theory I
(07:13):
love. It well, I'll just but it's good
we've got these experts here just.
I have a theory. That one of the reasons that
people are remembered and that you've been able to go down the
generations is because it wasn'tthat long after people had been
accused that this chat about exoneration started and
therefore people had that recognition and agency.
(07:36):
So it was my family member was wrongly accused and convicted or
my family member. Unfortunately the the, the few
people who were executed and therefore that passes down the
generations as something that you recall happening in your
family. Whereas in Scotland there wasn't
that acceptance, there'd been a miscarriage of justice and there
(07:59):
wasn't that, as it were, almost public vindication.
Do you think that's maybe a reason why you guys do remember
your ancestors better than we do?
That is definitely a reason why we remember our Salem ancestors,
because 10 years after the trials, everybody submitted
petitions to have their attenders reversed and their
(08:25):
names cleared and to receive some sort of restitution
payments. The effort to get the
restitution took another decade.So it just kept perpetuating.
And then around the revolution, And he's not related to me, but
Governor Thomas Hutchinson in the 1760s wrote a history of
(08:45):
Massachusetts and had a very long chapter about Salem.
So it's just was passed down generation to generation.
It's really, it's just so different to Scotland.
And I think some of that is because Scotland, it was over a
couple of 100 years, the numberswere obviously much, much
bigger. And I think that there's, there
was a certain amount of stigma obviously for people that were
(09:06):
accused. Naturally you would expect that.
But then I think that there musthave been, there must have been
shame driving a lot of the people that were involved in the
accusations as well that just then want to just to forget
about it. But we have spoken to some
experts that have said that. So in some areas of Fife, which
is where I live, it's Fife is Fife to me is a big county.
To you, it'd be just like a neighbourhood.
(09:27):
You'd be like, you would drive there to go and pick up, take
out or something. Jeremy, you'd be like, it's
nothing. Distance is nothing in the
States. I know that because my family,
some of my family are American and I know that they'll drive 2
hours to go out for dinner. Whereas we'd be like, oh, you'd
need a hotel if you were going to go there.
That's quite serious. Never.
But Fife is to me quite big. So to you, if you'd look at the
(09:47):
map, you'd be like, that's nothing.
That's just a tiny little countyarea, but Fife has got lots of
little villages. And Fife was very involved in
witchcraft accusations and witchhunts.
And I, we talked to some expertsthat said that some of those
villages, but to have resigned families that have been there
for hundreds of years, there's still a fear in some parts of
(10:08):
the community. And I'm not talking necessarily
about the young ones now and obviously not people that have
moved in, but people that are many generations long families,
that there is maybe still an idea from some people, which I
mean, I don't know if that's true or if that just makes a
good kind of tourism story. But I think that there is
something where that they don't want to discuss it, that it's
been put to rest. And I do know that when they
(10:30):
were looking at doing a memorialdown in the bottom of Fife in a
place called Kuris and Torrey Byrne, that a lot of locals were
not keen from memorial. Apparently we were told by
campaigners because they were just kind of like leave the
past. That's, you know, that's that's
terrible. We don't want to talk about
that. But I think that you guys are
very much on the same page as us, which is you have to talk
(10:51):
about the bad stuff in history. You can't just pretend it didn't
happen. You need to bring it out into
the light. And that's no more obvious than
what the what the recent interviews that you've been
doing about what's happening in other countries.
So it's still obviously an issue, still a problem.
Have you been shocked to discover what's happening in the
modern day We. Were a bit shocked when we first
(11:14):
learned about it. After we had started witch hunt.
A gentleman named Dick Damon left from South Africa.
He runs a campaign against witchhunting and he contacted us and
that's when we first started to learn about it.
And very quickly we learned how large of a problem it is.
(11:37):
The United Nations put out a report that they have reports
from at least 60 nations and involving 10s of thousands of
individuals. So it's very epic in scope and
it was a surprise to learn just how widespread it is.
It's every continent has it. And do you find in Scotland it
(12:00):
was round about 8485% of the accused were women.
Is it similarly gendered with the people you've spoken to in
different countries? It's very gendered with most of
the people that we've spoken with.
There are some pockets, I believe in Papua New Guinea,
where men are considered to be sorcerers.
(12:23):
But as a rule, it's generally 80to 90%.
We talked to a gentleman from India who said 97% were women
and the 3% men were related to the women.
They were supporters of them andthat's how they got caught up in
it. Which is similar to what
happened in Scotland. Often the men were husbands or
(12:46):
sons or brothers or whatever, orfriends or neighbours.
They're just in the wrong place at the wrong time sort of thing.
It's wild that isn't it because we focused a lot on different
African countries because of LeoIgui, who obviously runs
advocacy for accused witches outout in Africa.
And we were talking to him the other night, he was, we did a
Zoom with him from Nigeria. And it doesn't seem to be
(13:07):
something that's abating, but just seems to be something that
that seems to be getting worse if anything.
You have multiple reasons for that.
There's climate change that's driving some accusations because
of all the weather events that are happening.
There's more droughts, there's more heavy storms that destroy
(13:27):
crops. And when people are desperate,
that's when they start pointing fingers at people for
witchcraft. So you have that.
You have things like the refugeecrisis and migration that are
carrying beliefs. Yeah.
(13:47):
And how do you find people in the states have taken to your
efforts around Connecticut? Have have people been interested
or do they think it should be left in the past or are people
quite engaged with it? I would say my experience with
Connecticut is they're timid about looking at that history.
(14:08):
I think about how the Salem executions were like really
towards the end, many of those who were executed probably
didn't expect to be. That's a real different history
than in Connecticut. It was a pretty high execution
rate and it was just. And I'm sorry to interrupt, but
can you tell us what happened inConnecticut?
(14:28):
Can you give us a potted historyjust in case people haven't
literally in your podcast yet? Right.
In Connecticut, the first hanging was in 1647.
A woman named Alice Young was executed, and she was the first
of anyone in the American colonies to be hanged for
(14:49):
witchcraft. And I emphasize hanged, not
burned. The colonies here did hangings,
but she was the 1st and then it within several years after that,
six more individuals were accused and they were 100%
convicted and executed. So Connecticut was 7 for seven
(15:09):
starting out at the gate. And then things kind of
moderated in the 1650s, but thenyou had a Hartford witch panic
in 1662 and 1663 where another 4individuals were hanged.
So you had 11 individuals total hanged in Connecticut in about a
(15:31):
16 year time period, where Massachusetts in that time
period only executed four people.
So it was worse to be in Connecticut.
And was Connecticut a very big population at that point?
I mean, surely there weren't that many people living there.
The towns at the time, the biggest towns might have had a
(15:54):
couple 1000 people, but most of the towns were just a couple 100
people. So it wasn't very big.
And Salem wasn't very big. Salem Village was 525 people or
so, but you know, 156 people endup being accused so.
(16:14):
Hang on, sorry, just to ask you to repeat that.
So there was about 525 people lived there and 100 odd people
were accused. Are you, do you mean in that
town? That.
Was like what? Sorry, the that's the total from
across the Salem, which covered dozens of towns.
OK. Yes.
(16:34):
I was like a much bigger story than I realized it was.
It was already OK. And what do you think both the
accusations at that point in Connecticut, what was going on
there that these accusations occurred?
There were epidemics that swept through periodically and women
would be blamed for causing those.
(16:55):
And there was fear of warfare with the Dutch, who were
neighbors, and with the Native Americans.
They were constantly in the state of fear.
And it was the Little Ice Age and the weather was terrible and
sometimes the crops didn't come out.
So there's a lot of finger pointing about livestock crimes
(17:18):
and crimes involving children were very big reasons for
witchcraft accusations. Now, do you mean crimes
involving children falling ill and dying, or children being
used to being witches? For the most part, it was
children who died in Connecticut.
I believe the youngest person involved was 13 who was accused,
(17:44):
and that's another relative of Sarah Winifred Benham Junior.
And but what? By the time you got to the Salem
witch panic, a four year old child was accused of witchcraft
and imprisoned in a dungeon. They made special shackles for
her to chain her to the wall forseven months and she hasn't
(18:06):
received any apology. She didn't get restitution.
There's been no real acknowledgement.
So we also have the Massachusetts Witch Hunt Justice
Project going, and we're trying to get an exoneration for
everyone who's convicted and apology to everybody who was
ever prosecuted. Your legal system is obviously
(18:29):
different to ours, so we can't get an exoneration.
Claire, you can maybe explain that because people often I
think have an American filmic idea of of what we can our, our
system is obviously different toyours.
A lot of the time when people are interacting or with us on
social media, Americans say, you're asking for the wrong
(18:50):
thing. You shouldn't get a pardon
because a pardon presupposes they've done something.
You're looking for an exoneration.
And I say, I wish that we could get that.
Our system doesn't allow that tothe best that we can get as a
pardon, a pardon that makes it clear that they accept the basis
for it was that they ought neverto have been convicted of
(19:11):
anything. I'm interested to work out why
it was that some people were pardoned, some people weren't.
For example, why was the four year old girl?
Why was she not pardoned? She was never convicted.
She was never pardoned. That makes sense.
Can't you of all the people you can't exonerate or people who
(19:32):
are never convicted? But you said she also never got
any money as well in compensation.
Is that again, because it's tiedto the conviction, OK.
Most of the individuals who received compensation were
convicted and jailed, and the ones who received exoneration
were the ones who were condemned.
(19:56):
OK. So she she was released the four
year old after seven months of being held.
I wonder, I'm a I'm a teacher and I work a lot with kids that
have that have had trauma and I just wonder what impact that had
on that wee girl like. How could you possibly move on
after being held for seven months and presumably, I'm
imagining, treated really badly?If they thought she was a witch,
(20:18):
I can't imagine they looked after her very carefully.
Because I know that in Scotland the theory was that once you had
come a witch that you weren't really a human anymore.
You were the devil's puppet kindof thing.
So they did. That was one of the ways, I
think, in which the people that did the accusing and the
executions were able to live with what it was they were doing
because they didn't view them asbeing real people anymore.
(20:39):
Was that similar in America? Yes, and Dorothy Good, the four
year old, was also imprisoned with her mother, Sarah Good.
And Sarah had an infant who was less than a year old who died in
the jail. And Sarah Good herself was
(21:00):
executed. So Dorothy grew up without a
mother. She had been through all this
trauma. She'd been there with her
mother, and then her mother's taken away.
So it was deeply traumatic. And her father filed a petition
later on saying that she was ungovernable, that because of
(21:21):
the trauma she couldn't basically take care of herself.
She she will have had the most tremendous PTSD that there's no
way that that age. Oh my goodness.
And have you ever had anybody get in touch with you?
That's descendants. There might be a descendant of
that little girl. There are descendants of Sarah
Good. There are good descendants, but
(21:43):
history on Dorothy is still being evaluated.
But there has been really interesting recent discoveries
on her possible we might know how things ended for her now.
Josh, do you want to talk about that?
We know that Dorothy did end up bearing two children, and we
(22:05):
don't know who the fathers are for those two children.
The children were taken away as infants and placed as indentured
servants until they grew of age.Dorothy lived without her
children. Her father wasn't very good to
her. She just had a pretty miserable
(22:26):
life and she ended up being warmed out of town and she would
move to another town and then they'd worn her out and she may
have died alone in a field in Connecticut.
Well, that's so awful. You can really, you know, it's
so many hundreds of years ago, but you can really feel that I
think is a connection to what they'd be like.
(22:47):
I've got children and just the thought of.
Losing a baby. If you were, first of all, being
in prison at all, being in prison with a baby in a four
year old and then losing your infant and then knowing that
you're going to die in that wee girl's going to be left on her
own. Just can't even get your head
around that. So I presume people can really
connect with stories like that and think, yeah, I can see the
reason why this needs to be brought out into the light and
(23:08):
we need to learn about things like this.
Can I circle back, Sarah, and ask, in light of what we've just
heard and how enraging that is and how outrageous, why is it
that people are timid in coming forward?
Why do you think there's this sort of resistance?
There's a lot of layers to that one.
(23:29):
One is there's a lot of male history there that they're proud
of. Secondly, there's the practices.
Of the podcast everyone just unlooked and all nodded just
that across. Yeah.
And then one of the things that really kept coming up with us
(23:50):
with the legislation that was getting voted on and moving
through the General Assembly wasthere was still a lot of
misunderstanding about what the conviction was for.
And there appeared to be a lot of fear around witchcraft.
Still, when testimony was given by descendants asking for the
(24:14):
politicians to vote yes to move this bill to the House, one of
them demanded that there be proof that the woman who was
convicted had not had a covenantwith the devil.
I remember that and I think Claire and I spoke about that on
our podcast and we're just kind of like, are you completely
(24:34):
bonkers? You know, like that's we're at a
stage now. What was that?
Was that 2022 maybe? Or is that 23 where we were kind
of like, we don't believe in witches in that way anymore?
That's insane. But I'm sorry to say this, and I
am saying this with full knowledge that our government is
absolutely appalling. OK, there, Westminster are just
(24:55):
dreadful, but we've got so many stories coming out of the states
where we're kind of like, and now these Americans have done
this crazy thought and this crazy thing's happening.
And I think part of it is because America is enormous
compared to us. And there's such a huge array of
things that go on there and it'sjust it's so complex.
But when that came out, we used to when I was a kid, you used to
(25:15):
get like bits on our news sayingthings.
It was called Only in America. And then there'd be this
completely bonkers story and you'd be like, and the Americans
did this. And it was one of those only in
American moments. We were like, are you mental?
You're a man in today, in the 21st century, saying, can you
prove she didn't have a covenantwith the devil?
I can't even get my head around that.
(25:36):
You might think it privately, but to go out in public as a
politician and say that with a straight face, it's really
actually scary. Like it's initially laughable,
but then you think, but there must be people that think like
he does that do believe that's happening.
And they also really believed that for these women to have
(25:57):
been accused of being witches, then they were for sure bad
people anyways. So why exonerate someone who was
a bad person? Oh my God, you can't convict
people just for being bad people.
They actually need to break laws.
Sorry. Well, I would be interested in.
I kind of remember he slightly rode back from that, didn't he?
(26:17):
He was like, oh, I didn't mean witches were real.
I mean there needed to be some. Evidence like, yeah, yeah,
whatever. You wanted proof, but there's a
rise in the US and I wondered ifyou'd considered this or will be
considering it in the in the future.
There's the rise of the pastors who are going viral for seeing
(26:39):
there's a witch in the community.
There's a witch amongst us. I don't know if you saw the
pastor who was talking about hiswife and they had a book club
and he was saying, my wife knowsthat he was speaking to her
friends in the book club. And there are newcomers to town.
We know who they are. They're witches.
It's like, Oh my God, this is just like a playbook of how to
(27:01):
find outsiders and start blamingthem for problems in your
community. Do you guys see the rise of
these pastors and is it a scary thing?
We're starting to collect data in general on the way we see
crimes happening, accusations happening in the country so that
(27:22):
there is something to look at because it's still very, it's
like slippery to people. They don't realise how prevalent
a lot of the stuff is in our country.
Yeah, and also I think it's tiedup with money as well, isn't it?
Because churches obviously don'tpay tax, so anybody can set up a
church and that's the way to getpeople in.
It's really grabby. Like it's a big story and the
(27:44):
supernatural is much more interesting than just
straightforward. Just be nice to your neighbour.
I I think it's much more grabby.Say evil is abroad and I'm the
person that can save you from it.
There's like a big hero thing going on as well there, I think.
Could we not start up another church this Does it need to be a
religious church? I'm just thinking we could start
up like a. And it's a religion.
(28:05):
In America that's not religious,isn't there?
There's one that's I can't remember.
It's quite mainstream. We don't have it in the UK as
far as I'm aware. And people get together and it's
like in church, but it's not really religious that and that's
so vague and you're both going, what are you on about?
I will research this. I'll get back because my
sister-in-law, that's the churchthat she attended growing up,
(28:26):
but it's not actually a religious church, but it's all
the good stuff about religion. It's quite strange.
Anyway, sorry, that's a completely another one of the
perfected crazy things. Now I'm aware we've only got
about 5 1/2 minutes left. Can you tell us And then we'll
tell you where are you up to with like your legal cases and
that side of things? With the Massachusetts Witch
(28:48):
Hunt Justice Project, they'd runa 2 year session in their
General Court. So we're waiting to for the 2025
asking people to sign a petitionat change.org/wood Trials, and
then we're also working on getting a memorial built in
Connecticut and we've been tentatively given some approval
(29:13):
to submit designs. Oh.
Wonderful. That's so cool.
And who will fund that? Is that the state or do you have
to fundraise for that? We'll need to do a mixture of
probably some state grants and maybe a bond issue and
individual donations. Because your system is quite
(29:36):
different for that. Isn't it clear?
Yeah, unfortunately. Can I also ask, can anyone sign
the petition? Can our listeners sign the
petition or do they have to be in the US?
Anyone in the world can sign it.Well, don't you share that then
with our listeners as well. Thank you, Bill, because we're
at the stage now where we had a politician in the Scottish
(29:59):
Parliament who was taking it forwards and we'd done a public,
we hadn't, they'd done a public consultation and then that MSP,
the Member of Scottish Parliament was then promoted to
the Cabinet. And are the rules here are that
if you're in the Cabinet, which is I suppose ostensibly but more
power, they're not allowed to dothat type of work anymore.
So it kind of fell to nobody. So we're in the process.
(30:22):
We've got a fantastic colleague who's beavering away trying to
get somebody else to take that up just now.
So she's looking into that and I've heard today clear that
she's been told that the public consultation is going to be made
available. It's going to be published
within the next month. So we should have news about
that, which we'll do. And as soon as we have it,
we'll. Yeah, it, it was going to be
(30:43):
published and we kept saying it's going to be published here,
it's going to be published. And then Nathalie Dawn MSP was
unable to do it anymore. So it basically just sat there
in abeyance. But thankfully it's kicked back
in and it's moving again now. Yeah.
And. You know what it's like with
politics? It's, it's hard to get people
involved in things that are happening right now.
(31:04):
People are, I don't know about with you guys, but in, in the UK
people pretty apathetic. So it's hard to get people
involved. So when you're talking about
something that happened hundredsof years ago, you've always
thought got even more of an issue with that.
But we're hoping that we will have an MSP that's going to pick
it up and that we'll progress our memorial plans.
We've got some ideas. But the problem that we have in
(31:24):
Scotland is that the government have said to us we're largely
supportive, but we're also completely poor and can't give
you any money for it. So that's more of a problem.
Was clear night 100% do not havetime to fundraise.
So that would have to be, I don't know how that would work
unless we just had a benefactor that went here's £1,000,000 and
then that would be. Any benefactors listening?
(31:45):
Any benefactors? Never know.
Multi million years. I mean, feel free.
Yeah. But that's the that's where
we're at there. But we still think it's
incredibly important to have a memorial, presumably for the
same reasons as you guys, but just so that it's marked, so
that people can learn about it without realizing that that even
happened necessarily, if they would just came across the
memorial and then learned about it through that.
(32:08):
But also just because women's history just isn't marked.
And sad to say, the witch hunts was mostly a story about women
being treated terribly, and there were obviously men too,
but mostly women. So that's how we think it's
important. But it's been really nice
talking to you and actually connecting like this.
That's what you too. Thank you so much.
(32:28):
Yeah. We've.
Been watching you Josh. I've been watching you on TikTok
whenever, but yeah, if whatever it comes across is always take a
leaf out of Josh's book. I'm not.
I'm not actually personally, although I joke I'm not actually
on personally on TikTok any muchanymore.
But if I occasionally switch on because I'd follow you, I think
(32:50):
you come up in the feeds and I listen to your TikTok.
So I'm a high school. Teacher and if I did tik toks it
would be just horrendous. It would be horrendous.
It starts up in my class. So people can follow you on
TikTok as well as what I'm saying as well as all.
So I'm going to say goodbye, butit's more like an adieu because
I think we should do this again.So if we realize after begin and
(33:14):
get even more of a story. So thank you so much.
Thank you. Thanks, guys.
Bye. Bye.
Before we go, I'd like to clarify something that I said
about Dorothy. Good, when we're talking to
Claire and Zoe, I said that Dorothy Good never received a
payout of compensation for her wrongful imprisonment, and that
(33:37):
is true. However, I do realize that her
father did petition for restitution and he was awarded
an amount for the death of SarahGoode, Dorothy's mother and his
wife. He had that money sent to
Benjamin Putnam, who was boarding Dorothy at the time, in
(34:02):
1712 when the restitution was awarded.
So Dorothy was living with this Benjamin Putnam and William
Goode signed over the restitution to Benjamin Putnam.
So presumably some of it was used for Dorothy's care.
But given that she was indigent her entire life and relied on
(34:27):
public support, I don't believe that she ever had any control
over any of this money. And it was paid for her mother's
suffering. There was not a payment
specifically for Dorothy's suffering.
If you look at the receipt written by the clerk of the
(34:50):
court, it refers specifically toSarah as being the awardee of
the money. For more on Dorothy Good's life,
listen to Witch Hunt episode titled Rachel Christone on the
Salem Witch Museum and the Life of Dorothy Good which originally
(35:10):
released July 20th, 2023. Please join us on February 1st,
2025 at Hartford CT's Old State House at 1:00 PM for a free
community history event remembering the innocent victims
of the Connecticut Witch Trials.It's a special 2 hour
commemoration of those who lost their lives in colonial
(35:32):
Connecticut's witch trials. award-winning performers Deborah
Walsh and Jenny Wolf will open with a dramatic reading of the
last night followed by insights from the Connecticut Witch Trial
Exoneration Project founders andrenowned historians.
We will honor the victims with aremembrance ceremony, joined by
State Representative Jane Garabe.
Connect with fellow community members and witch trial history
(35:55):
descendants afterward as we worktogether to build awareness for
this crucial chapter of our history.
Don't miss this powerful blend of performance, education and
commemoration that aligns with Connecticut's recent legislative
recognition of these historical injustices.
Thank you for listening to WitchHunt.
(36:15):
Join us next week. If you like what you've heard
today, please subscribe to WitchHunt wherever you get your
podcasts. Visit us@witchhuntshow.com.
For more great content. Have a great today and a
beautiful tomorrow.
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