 Hi everyone, my name is Carolyn Sutton. First off, thanks to me and Ruby for putting this together and for being here as well. My name is Carolyn Sutton. I think I already said that. The title of my exhibition is, which is in word not deed, it's currently at the Edinburgh Central Library and George's Fourth Bridge. It'll be there through next week, Thursday. It's been there. Just in case people can't hear. Is that better? All right, so it's been there since the end of September. It's running through the 30th of November, which is next week, Thursday. And in his current iteration, there are 13 dresses, remembering 13 women that were accused of witchcraft under the witchcraft after 1563 here in Scotland. I've made the dresses as historically accurate as I can manage and imprinted on each of the dresses are words that were used against the women in some form. Words that condemn them. Different forms are confession, pardon the air quotes, but confessions, the details, the actual accusations themselves, folklore, folk tales. Some seven women, we have very little information. And so there's, you know, I've tried to kind of scrape together as much as I can. And so you'll see those on all the different dresses. They're also, they're worn by by empty forms. And really, with the hopes of trying to get across the idea of the loss of identity and the lives of women, which through which trials resulted. There are also booklets that contain all the texts, the original texts that are on the dresses, interpretation panels for each of the women and intro and an exit panel as well kind of talk about the project in general and some of the research and how the research is. And then there's also a remembrance book where I asked people to leave the thoughts or anything they would say about the women about the witch trials about what they thought of the exhibition. And really it's become sort of a movable memorial to the victims of the witch trials. So my background, and this was actually my major project for my MFA in heritage and exhibition design, but I also have MLIS, Library and Information Science and Archival Administration degree, and my background before that was mostly in arts, studio art and photography. I wanted to do something for years, but it really just took this sort of combination of skills and backgrounds, and it was just the right timing for something to come together like this. I think people sometimes ask me where my interest came from, it's a tough question to answer for me, but I think the best I can figure is that it might have come from my love of fairy tales and folklore, so all the stories we were told as kids. And then I was fascinated by all the characters, but then as adults you start to learn the actual history and you connect the dots and you think, wow, these are real people. And so, sort of in the hopes of looking at social justice and critical and difficult heritage and feminism as well, that was I think how this was formed. I was really thinking about how we can remember them and how to tell their true stories, and also talk a little bit about the bigger history, obviously that's a huge topic, and I can only do a little bit in this exhibition but I've done my best. I also kind of wanted to give them a little bit of their voice back as much as I could. So I tried to think about loss in a physical form, which was a difficult problem to try to navigate. But I wanted a way for people to be able to interact and connect with them and it needed there needed to be a presence of some sort. So, in order to remember them as people and bypass all those problematic representations that we come across so often and not dip into that dark tourism and that witch tourism stuff. I thought about something that was sort of mundane and every day, something every day in their everyday life and so the idea of clothing came to mind. So the justice are all really personalized they're all very different. And I considered things like where they lived when you know what they did, the timing periods they lived in, you know what their financial status was like just what their everyday lives might have been like and I tried to actually make something that they might have or or might have chosen to wear. So, for example, one of the women was a housemate so I've made her dress has detachable sleeves because I just imagined she might take those off when she was cleaning and wrote the sleeves or shift sort of thing was another woman who was accused of dancing with the devil. So she was out drinking with she was a widow middle aged widow she was out drinking and dancing with her friends, other widows. And so I made a dress that had this train that could be hiked up and attached just to meet her address to dance and that sort of thing so I just try to think about those things. So the process really started just looking at loads of resources, which is when I came across Julian's amazing work, and the survey, which is incredibly helpful. I was looking at specific areas different kinds of stories and what information was available on their cases. So I tried to choose a variety, you know, just sort of a cross section of all the different things. There's no way to do all the different things but various different walks of life, ways accusations came across, what happened after their specific situation so I just I tried to really tell as much of the bigger stories and stories, but it was really, really, really difficult. It might be the hardest part to choose. But once I did, I would do just to, you know, do that deep dive research so really looking at primary sources when I could spending lots of time in archives and libraries around Scotland and wherever I could find the records. I tried really hard to find original records that you know the Kirk session records and those sorts of things because there was something about being happy and having the record that you know people were writing as they were in the room that sealed their fate. It sort of helped me connect to them in a different way. But a lot of times there wasn't only that and we'd have to find secondary sources or just transcriptions. There are some amazing transcriptions that are out there that have been done through the years so that was really helpful too. So then, once I had the words that I decided that and I also tried to think about different different stories I can tell through the exhibit, you know, through the text, through the texts. So besides the ones I mentioned there's also, you know, propaganda pamphlet news from Scotland. So I thought that was important to show those propaganda there as well. The one is on that there's a report of their murders that were linked and there was this actual report of their murder. So I tried to have, again, a wide variety of things shows much as I could and a little space. So once I had all of that I would create one gigantic document with it so I would use it, I would use the words to fill up all of the fabric I would need for the dress. Typically it was about 54 inches wide and four to six meters long, sometimes longer, and I would transcribe all that text, put it into this document and lay it out on this one piece of fabric because I thought it was important to have that whole story from which to cut. So that, that was another thing I, you know, another part of that process that felt important to me. I would also research the style of the dress, which was really typical. So there's not a lot of information out there. There's much more information about what men want Scotland, especially during that time. And even the experts that I reached out to, they'd say, you know, we've seen a background character and a painting from that era. That's kind of the best information we have, you know, or I did find a couple of, there were a couple of companies who put out patterns or ideas for what clothing might have looked like in those areas. Kind of reproduction places. So I would start with those and then kind of alter them down to what I thought might work for that. Then I would have that whole piece of fabric laid out and put the pattern pieces on in a way that I thought relevant text would be especially visible. So, and again, there's a variety of ways that worked out. So I'm a bum that's, you know, you start on one side, so an aeroset, for example, starts on one side goes up and over. Other people, you know, when they're condemned to, you know, their execution, that's right, you know, right in the front. So I tried to really be aware of that. And then sewing, which was interestingly, usually the easiest part of the whole process, and it also make the shifts, the undergarments, capelets, others, you know, bits and pieces that I thought would work for that. And make the forms out of the really simple forms. I'd really love to update those at some point, but at least they're working for now, just out of chicken wire. So these are all new things that had to try to figure out how to do and support them. And there's a light inside them as well. And then I would make the panels, the interpretation panels. And that was really difficult, because sometimes there were loads of, you know, there were loads of resources from a chicken pole and try to gather stuff. Other times it was very little. So, again, trying to tell as much as I could about each woman and their backgrounds, what happened with them. Each of them has a wooden sign with their name, their place of residence, the birth and death dates if we have them, but then their fates if we have them. A lot of these, again, you don't, you don't. There are also embroidery hoops that have sort of themes throughout. And another one with a map with a red pen marking where they lived. There are other elements that aren't at the library that were in the major, well, in the degree show, which were some sound recordings that Rowan Morrison had done. She's part of the Scott of storytelling center and she's someone I've collaborated with a few times. And then I also have an interactive table with the prompt I'm her because I'm asking people to write on a scrap of the same linen cloth. These are some of the reasons why they think they might have fallen into the same situations as the woman whom they're accused. We talked a lot about social media and there's some really amazing conversations that came out of that. I've also done some public engagements and community engagement and I started a public consultation about the National Memorial. I'm going to get some future funding to tour around to have some more ideas of other things I'd like to do, plus I'd like to just tour the exhibition as much as I can. There is one last guided tour at the library. It's on Monday at six o'clock. It runs for about an hour and 15 minutes or so just depending on questions and how much time people want to take. The library, it'll be going to air at the Green Exchange to Inverness at Eden Court to Dunferman, the Carnegie library galleries, and then potentially at Inverclyde. I still haven't had a chance to reach out to people myself. So I've still got a lot of ideas about other places like I'd like to go. I'm also looking at what we are in the process of planning semi-bents with Rowan and a painter, Karen Strein, under the heading of creative coven. So there will be something for International Women's Day, something on the Fourth of June, which was the day that the Wichita Act went into effect. We'd like to try to get a national day of remembrance. So that's kind of hoping that'll get that ball rolling. And then in August, there's a World Day against Wichita and so we're hoping to have an event here. Some are probably in Edinburgh or maybe Northbaruch and it'd be an international event, having people from different countries, people talking about not only the histories but also the current events that are happening. Thank you. So it's me. I think we're going to have questions if I'm right to both of us after this. Yeah, I can get to give you a separate one. Just say, because if you're doing questions together later. So let's unmute that. Yes, okay. Yeah, so thanks to you for putting this together and thanks to Carolyn for being the star of the show and telling us about the dresses, which are also the star of the show. And thank you to all of you for coming into Grim and Topic, but something that we need to think about. And I thought I would just talk a little bit about the three of the accused witches in Karen's show and to partly to talk about them as individuals. I'm not an expert on every single one of her accused witches, but I thought it would pick those three, partly because I have got something to say about them. But also because between them, you know, they might sort of give us some kind of arc or some kind of pattern or a different view of how we see things. So I picked Gilles Duncan. And so Gilles Duncan, first of all, she was a servant of David Seaton, Bailey of Prulent, probably young, probably unmarried because most servants were. It's not, of course, that we don't know about these people as human beings. They just appear fittingly as a gift which is there in the spotlight for certain things, but probably young, probably unmarried best we can do. And she seems to have done some healing, magical healing, as some accused witches were known to have done. I don't think this is what's driving the entire witch hunt, but it doesn't help if you're known to have these magical powers. But David Seaton in Prulent and East Lothian really has got what we might say are issues with certain people, and he thinks people are out to get him, and he becomes convinced that witches are out to get him. And he interrogates Gilles Duncan in his own house under torture. Is that legal? Don't knock at work because he's got a confession, so it must have been okay. Yeah, so he interrogates her under torture in his own house, and she confesses to witchcraft and starts to name other people that he's got grudges against. And the story starts to look as if it's a conspiracy, and it starts to sort of spiral upwards into the idea that there might be a conspiracy, not just against David Seaton. And a lot of the early confessions are about the witches against David Seaton and his goods and stories of, yeah, anyway, of attacks against him, but it starts to be attacks against the king. And tie her up, people start to listen, and one thing leads to another. But Gilles, whether she's really the one that started it all, I don't know, she certainly started that aspect of it, or we should say David Seaton, you know, it's his voice that we're hearing sometimes in her confessions. You know, whose voice we're hearing when you get the record of an accused witch's confession, you know, she said this, you know, did in fact all she say was yes, in answer to a question, you know, did you do this, this, this, this, yes. It's very hard to talk about it in some sense, but these confessions are often a kind of negotiation between the interrogated person and the interrogator, but the interrogators are sincere, they want the truth. And they think that torture is at last revealing the truth that the suspect wants to hide. They know that torture can lead people to confess falsely, but if they get credible details, oh yeah, you see only a guilty person would know that. And so it starts to look credible. I'm afraid I don't regard it as credible, but you know, we have to try and understand why it looks credible at the time. You know, there are times when you think, yeah, maybe you should have just taken a step back and go just a minute. You know, am I going a bit too far here? I mean, so I'm not in the business of making excuses for these people, but as a historian, before you start condemning, you have to understand. Okay, if you condemn without understanding, then you are missing out on an important step. So let's try and understand. So that's just Duncan and she was eventually burnt at the stake, as were a number of the other people that she named. Margaret Barclay. This is the wife of a Burgess in urban small coastal town on the west of Scotland, the coastal trading town. We don't know much about her apart from the fact that she was married to, was it Archibald Dean, I think was her husband. But she had a furious row with her brother-in-law, John Dean. John Dean accused her of stealing some of his stuff. Now, the truth or otherwise of this, we'll never know. But he said she was still missing stuff. She said no, she was innocent. This was Wicked Slander. And the argument rumbled on. But at one point, John Dean was the skipper of a ship. And this ship was getting ready to sail off to France. And Margaret Barclay, because she was so furious with John Dean, came down to the quayside and everyone is around the ship, getting it ready to sail. And she calls him out publicly, tells him how Wicked he's been for slandering her. And then she goes down on her knees and prays to God in public. Now, this is Reicher's indignation as far as she's concerned. And she prays to God that neither the sea nor salt water should carry him and that the crabs should eat him at the bottom of the sea because of the slander that he has committed to her good life. And the ship then sails off to France, but they never got there. The ship was wrecked on the coast of Cornwall, six men including John Dean were trapped. When the survivors came back to Irvine, they didn't say, oh yeah, righteous indignation, yet clearly God will punish sinners such as John Dean, which is what Margaret Barclay thought. They thought it was her fault and they thought it was witchcraft. So what we see here is community witchcraft and the idea of witchcraft being constructed from quarrels, curses, denunciations. Margaret Barclay didn't think that she was a witch. She was the one who was in the right room. He was in the wrong. But it's her anyway, but that's what she seems to have thought. And she was invoking God and God's wrath, which could be considered to be a myth or a Christian idea. However, if you perceive that something bad is happening to you and you've had a quarrel with somebody, then you could think, yeah, it's that person's witchcraft. Particularly if it's all because people fear women's curses in the way that they don't fear men's curses. Okay, moving quickly on. And Janet Comfort also lived in a coastal town in Bittemeen, in Bifur. Across the first room from here. And she was much later. Oh, did I give the date for Margaret Barclay, 1617? And Jill Stunken, she was executed in 1591. Historians should give dates, shouldn't they? Yeah, but Janet Comfort, 1704. The Witchcraft Act is still in force. There are still some exceptions, but not very many. And there's definitely a decline. In 1704, there is a local panic over witchcraft in the small town of Bittemeen, when a 16-year-old blacksmith's apprentice, Patrick Morton, starts to behave oddly, starts to have what a described as fits, you know, what's going on here. It's not entirely clear, but there's some kind of psychosis that I'm not really prepared to diagnose retrospectively after 300 years. But the minister of the town, Patrick Cooper, who's a leading sort of veteran Presbyterian campaigner, thinks this is important. And he thinks that this is case of demonic possession. And so, you know, demons are causing him to behave oddly, and that the demons have been set by a witch or witch's pull. One of the things he does is that he reads to Patrick Morton a previously printed account that had been printed in 1698 of a previous bewitchment by demonic possession that describes the symptoms of demonic possession. So in effect, he's coaching Patrick Morton as to how to be a demoniac. Now, he probably doesn't think that he's setting the whole thing up. He's probably since he's, you know, but yeah, you know, even at the time, this was said to be a bit iffy. And this did lead to controversy and recommendations, as we'll see. But initially, you know, Patrick Morton does start naming various names of various people and half a dozen people are arrested in prison, including Janet Cornfield. Come back to her in a minute. She's not one of the ones who is in the spotlight. There are two or three others who are in the spotlight early on. And one of them is the man, Thomas Brown, who actually dies in prison allegedly of starvation. Perhaps we should remember that there are some men and actually, you know, dying in prison of starvation might not be much fun. But the interrogators, including the minister and the local civic administrators of the town, they think they've got a case against these, which is they get them to confess a certain amount of ill treatment, possibly torture. And certainly Janet Cornfield is said to have been beaten by the minister himself by his staff to get her to confess. And they then go to the central authorities in Edinburgh to try and get authority to have a criminal trial to prosecute them for ultra-craft. But doubts start to arise. There seems to be another faction in the town that is against this, and they get to the suspects in prison at some point. Details of this are a bit obscure, but they get them to retract their confessions. And by the time the story gets to Edinburgh, it's not simply a story of how this is a bit of bewitchment. We've got these confessions. It's all a cut and dried case. It's questionable behavior by this rather suspect 16-year-old guy and quite possible miscarriage of justice, maybe a bit of insanity going on, and this doesn't look like witchcraft. And the central authorities go, no, this will not fly. We're not having any criminal prosecutions. What happened after that? Details obscure, but Janet Confort escaped. Let's now bring the focus onto her. She escaped from prison and was later arrested elsewhere in Fife and brought back to the town. They probably don't intend to prosecute her, but what exactly is going on is not entirely clear. But she is already some kind of outcast. She tries to get lodgings with one of the other accused witches, but a crowd grabs her that day and they start to beat her up and they take her to the shore. They start to treat her. They tie her to a rope that's stretched between a ship and the shore, and they throw stones at her. They drag her up and down. And finally they lay her down, put a door on top of her and plow stones on top of it until she dies. And that method of killing plowing stones on top seems to me, it's sort of a symbolic, this is a group effort. Everyone can go away thinking, well, it might not have been my stone, but they're collectively killing her. So very unusually, what we've got is lynching by a crowd and it's the only one recorded in the entire Scottish witchcraft. Probably about 2,500 executions, they're all legal executions as a result of trials by formerly constituted criminal courts. But with Janet Confort, we see a crowd that wants to get the witch and they're fast that the authorities won't execute an allegation. There are recriminations afterwards, which I don't want to go into, but you can sort of see an arc that the central authorities first of all get more excited about witchcraft, more worried about witchcraft, more worried about the devil. And this then needs to, you know, various panics, prosecutions for several decades. In the 1704, people are starting to have doubts, it's more divisive, but some people at the grassroots still want to do this. I'm sure there's lots more I could say, but I think I'll stop there. And I'd be really pleased to have questions learned and I'm sure Carolyn, if you've got any questions about her. Well, you think of the questions. I'll just sort of mention sort of like Julian's books, Scottish Witch Hunt and Context is behind Ruby's head there. And just to highlight that, both of them highlighted the stories, the gruesome details and not everything is online. And part of what we're wanting to do is to make sure that people know these stories. And we're going to try and make sure that those 13 women are represented on Wikipedia by the end of the afternoon with brownies and millionaire shortcake and t-shirts and stickers and tote bags over there. And there's the array of witchy books, witchcraft related books on the shelf there as well. So that's coming up after these talks. And also, is that going to move on? Or is it to hide? This is what Wikipedia looked like about six years ago, September 2017. There's a template there called magic and witchcraft in the British Isles that had about three accused witches from Scotland on it. That was six years ago. Alison Balfour was one. Isabelle Gowdy, of course. She's probably one of the more famous accused witches in Scotland. And Alspeth Ryock, those were the only three in that template box six years ago. And it's now got, I don't know. I can't count that quickly, but it looks like another 20 or 30 in there. I wrote the page about Gilles Duncan. So if there's anything wrong or missing, it's my fault or incorrect, but you can fix it. And also we have the pronunciation. You start, you occasionally see it's about J E E L S. It's just a tricky name. Wikipedia doesn't usually have pronunciation. Sometimes it does. You could you could put it in if you want. Yeah, we can. We can do that. Anna's in the room as well. She's on our Edinburgh ward. She's recently wrote a page about John King K. It was a witch breaker from Trinette in East Lothian. That was just created just a few days ago. So there's little impactful things we can do to raise these stories in the public consciousness. So without more ado, do we have any questions for our speakers? I think we'll go to this lady first and then you. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I just have a question about, um, I was just thinking about the marital status of these women. Was there any level of protection that came with it? Like I was just thinking because you've mentioned, for example, how Margaret Markley was married to an archival. I was thinking was there, or not necessarily in that case this week, you set the story and how it ended. But just wondering about that. Yeah. Shall I take that one? Yeah. So usually if a married woman is accused, as far as we can tell, usually her husband rallies around to support her. I think in Margaret Markley's case, her husband doesn't try very hard. And there is the pamphlet account that we know most of her about, you know, has any rocking up to the court and she says you have been overweight and coming. But of course, you know, you have to think about his position because she's alleged to have killed his brother. So that may be unusual. Marital status more broadly. We don't know much about many of these people's marital status. It only gets recorded in the documents sporadically. I think they're more likely to write down the fact that a woman has a living husband. If she is unmarried, they're not necessarily going to say unmarried. And if she's a widow, they're not necessarily going to say, and she's a widow. Occasionally you do see it, but more often they're just, you know, it's just not interesting. It's not relevant. A living husband has to be written down because he's probably been knocking on the door, you know. So he appears in the narrative somehow or other. So the statistics and the database vastly overstate the number of who are married because they are not typically. But there is probably, and this is related to age widows tend to be older. So, you know, the widows probably, there are probably more widows executed for witchcraft than would be in the population as a whole. But, you know, the statistics are not very crunchy. Under the various witchcraft acts in Europe, something like 20% of the prosecutions and executions were warlocks. Is there any work being done on the matter of warlocks in this exercise? Yes, there has. Yeah, I tend to use the word witch both for men and for women. But you do sometimes see the men being called warlock as well as witch. You're right. I think the figures in Scotland are about 15% men, 20% in universe whole from what we can tell. Again, the figures are not very crunchable. And there has been some work about it. And I wrote a paper with some years ago called Men and the Witch Hunt in Scotland, which was published in a book edited by Alison Rollins. I think called something like witchcraft and masculinities in the modern era. So, yeah, just refer you to that book. I'm just brief summary that the men who tend to appear, they're less likely to just come up when people are saying, and who else was there when you met the devil? Women tend to name other women. And there seems to be an assumption that witches are likely to be female, but there's no rule that says they have to be. And you seem to have an overrepresentation either of people who are magical practitioners because they can be men as well as women. So they're quite, I'm never surprised when a male accused, which turns out to be doing some kind of magical practice, or they're kind of collateral damage. A woman is accused and then her husband or, you know, he's related to this previous woman who has been in the spotlight. So those are the main ways in which men can get into it. I'll have some questions for Karen. Were there any lesser offenses under the Witchcraft Act that didn't result in execution? No. The Witchcraft Act itself simply said witchcraft is a crime should be executed. It's only 200 words and staring closely at those words works only very much. But the court sessions and the church courts are interested in superstitious magic and what they sometimes call charming. That's not a capital offense. You know, you'll be made to do penance before the congregation for charming. And, you know, is this person a charm or is this person a witch? You can sometimes see people being constructed in one way or the other. So yes, there is a sort of pen number of other lesser religious offenses that are not secular criminal offenses. That's healthy. And did the redemption play any part? Oh yeah. The court session is interested in rehabilitation, penance and redemption. Yeah, that's what they want to do. I'm just saying from the lecture, so I was late, so I'm sorry if there's some of the comics that I'm missing. But in this time, like how well defined was the border between like sort of like both medicine and healing and things that would be perceived in that you just made the distinction between charming and witchcraft. Like how, like what defined a particular practice as witchcraft or as related to the devil or malicious in some way as distinct from like if I just have some herbs and I give them to you and you're sick. What makes that like a potion or so funny. Next question for Kerry. Okay. Yeah, the church is interested in whether this is superstitious and, you know, magical or what as one might say pretty natural or supernatural and, you know, if we got much longer I could unpack those terms further. But, you know, is there something spiritual involved at this? Or is this, is this natural or not natural? So the herbs probably okay. You know, that's that's probably natural. If it looks as though you invoke spirits in some way, then they will go, you know, is this good spirits or bad spirits and it's probably not good spirits because good spirits probably wouldn't do that. People who are sick. No, no. You know, it depends on, you know, on how the story gets told. You know, if this is simply a prayer, that's okay. You know, if this is invocation of fairies, I think fairies, you know, it's probably a demon, you know, you know, these educated people, they don't believe in fairies. They do believe in demons. So they're trying to draw a line as to whether supernatural demonic powers were invoked in your healing. And so much did you do good or bad? And the common folk are more interested in, did you do good or bad? Did you observe, you know, a sort of ethical code of practice? And if you did good, you know, that's fine. You know, even if you did invoke fairies or whatever. By the time it gets to the church courts and the elites, yeah, it's, you know, are there bad spirits involved? And where that interface, you know, there's a lot of research and historical discussion gets, goes on around, you know, how are they deciding, you know, what, you know, when you've got these people, the elders of the co-accession, how well educated are they? You know, are they also thinking about fairies? Anyway, yeah, I think that's, that's enough. But that's the line that they're trying sometimes rather desperately to draw. Yeah. I have a question to Karen. Just, so do you think personally, when talking about, for example, Margaret Brackley's story, do you think it would have gone differently if it was a man that said all those things? And just an example of, like, witches in general, like about, because you were mentioning about how, I mean, obviously it's like, we were talking here about witches, which is when the war logs, but what do you think that, like, so could have like just a man said these things exactly work toward in the same manner and got away with it? I wouldn't imagine so. I mean, it's, I think it's kind of, I'm not sure that I could predict that, I would be good at a person, but. Yes, it's my short answer. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, people don't fear men's curses. All right. So it was because she was a woman that made it more, you know. But then they would have said that it was, as you said, not that the man has put a curse on the ship, but it was, you know. Hey, wonderful exhibition. Thank you very much. Oh, thank you. You've got all the information sheets about them. This guy here and his accomplices have produced all these Wikipedia articles. Did you use Wikipedia when you were doing when you were putting together those sheets? I'll be honest and say I didn't. Yeah, I used, I used the survey as a really good sort of starting point, but I looked at, you know, Julian's published work and a lot of other things that have been published. There's, there's all sorts of stuff that was just sort of more and I go to. Yeah, it's that same, but probably Wikipedia sites some of these things. So we can, we might guide you towards these things. Yeah. But I think, I think the way that the database is laid out to it made it made it all so much more accessible and easy to see this friend. Of things and where people are just, it just worked better from that research. Okay. Where are there people who I think this is the question for either. You know, there are people who would use the fear that people had about which is like, in order to get rid of people who they just did not like. And there was no like basis like what you've described about actions that people did take. Do you know if there is anything like that? That one. Yeah. This is certainly not the main spring of what is driving the European or Scottish wishes. And, and, and, you know, the idea that somebody wakes up in the morning and thinks, aha, I do not like this person. I do not believe they are a witch. And perhaps I don't even believe in witchcraft, but I find it expedient to call them a witch and therefore that's what I'm going to do. You know, even in its own terms that only works if everybody else believes in witchcraft. So why would you yourself not believe in it? Nobody doesn't believe in witchcraft in this period. Everybody believes in it. There's a discussion about perhaps what it means. I would love to be a fly on the wall in an early modern nailhouse when people are talking about what witchcraft means. But, you know, people aren't, aren't thinking, you know, aha, you know, I am going to accuse someone false. It's very hard to get into the mind of someone like David Seton. And, but the best I can do is to say that when Gilles Duncan, if it was Gilles and not Miss Samson, when Gilles Dunkson named Ifumi Mikalian another of the Northeric witches, you know, a sort of light bulb went off in his head. Yeah, I hate that woman so much. So it's really credible that she would be a witch, even if he hadn't thought that before. And it's even possible that he fed Gilles the name. You know, could Ifumi Mikalian be a witch? Could she be a witch, right? You talk to her a bit more. Could she be a witch? But I doubt if he is saying to her himself, of course I know she's not a witch, but I'm going to get her accused anyway. You know, that's the kind of thing that wicked people that you hate would be. So, you know, there's a sort of feedback mechanism whereby the people that you hate would be witches. This is very tricky. I mean, you know, you know, Hollywood in Europe contains criminals. It contains dishonest people. And it is quite possible, you know, I can't disprove the idea that Seton can send himself. Of course, I know she's not a witch, but it seems me to accuse her. But, you know, I've never been able to find a case where you can really nail that. But I'm very grateful for your question because it's a question that puts a historian on the spot. I think we're going to have to sort of move on to the movie support. Has anyone got a question that they would be deeply hurt and upset if that they didn't ask before they went? Ish? Yes. So, yes and no one. Do you feel that by your work in the exhibition, the voices of those women are now drowning out some of the voices? Use them. I would love to think so, but I'm not sure that they are. Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to do what I can to give them just a moment, which is all I can really offer. I want to listen to David Seton's voice too. Not because I necessarily like him, but we need to understand him. It's a really short question. So, Ruby, do you want to get set up and put it like, so that you can ask him. My question is on, I don't remember the search, I think it's the surname of Janet who we're talking about. How she escaped from prison. Janet Comfort? Yes. So my question is, how do we know once she escaped from prison that that was actually her? I'm a bit stupid, but I'm just wondering how to say no, or what kind of records are there? There were three pamphlets published about the lynching. There were a few that were published within weeks or days, announcing this wicked act and describing it in detail and naming her. And, you know, she is in the documents beforehand. And then there was a further pamphlet published, almost certainly written by Patrick Cooper, the minister, trying to defend himself and everybody else. And when he doesn't actually try to justify the lynching, but he says, well, you know, it wasn't us, it was strangers, et cetera. He actually admits in that pamphlet that two of his servants were in the crowd. Left early, that's all right. Do I believe that? No, I don't. But, yeah, the fact that you've got pamphlets from different sides, you know, trying to argue the case and they all agree on the name. Yes, they know like it was her when they found her and like that's her. She escaped from prison. Yeah, I think they can recognize. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah, she was. Okay. Great. Thank you for both our speakers. So give her a round of applause. And then we'll move on to our final talk. Who's Ruby? Should we just move these chairs so that we can have a good look at Ruby's slides because she's been lovely. You can see them as well. Thank you. Hi, so I'm Ruby and I'm a student at the University of Edinburgh currently studying computer science. I've been doing an internship. I did all summer and now I'm now doing one day a week, which find a general data visualization. So I'm working on this project, the map of the case, which is in Scotland. So I'll just tell you a bit about the project. So Professor Julian Gooder and three other historians in the early 2000s created the survey of Scottish witchcraft, which we've heard about so far. And which is a database which collects all the information of all the accused witches in Scotland between the years 1563 and 1736. So it has information on over 3000 accused witches and it has so much information with over 300 fields across 30 databases. So it's a really valuable resource that so many people use like when you talk about anyone that kind of I just like put together exhibitions, and I've talked to people that have forecast, which is well, they all like they all use this resource so much. So it's so important. So then you're in work immediately and residents and students then data science and for site and they uploaded all this data on to working data, which is the sister project to Wikipedia and which is open links data which is machine readable. And so once this was all uploaded onto wiki data and makes it really easy to visualize with and it became apparent that like you make something and more kind of interactive and engaging way to present this data and by finding the coordinates of the locations where these witches resided. So this will be left out here. So that's the link at these ones. I don't know if you've ever tested before. And so it's an interactive app you can do then and then what kind of these witches appear and you can click on them with their more information about their names and where they lived and lots of other information. So. This project started in 2019. When I was a geography student at the Uni as well and worked on locating all the residents as the witches of which is and so obviously this was centuries ago so a lot of the place names have changed. So one of the different tasks of like looking at the place names and finding them she had to look through lots of historical maps place name records because it is and historical records to try and find where these places were and then find the coordinates and then she uploaded these to wiki data, which then allowed the data to be queries and then put on the map and the can see here. And this was supported by Richard Watson who basically created the website and he's supported all the interns since as well from June 2019 to October 2020 where he sadly passed away suddenly and but he really has been so such a huge part of this project in the website and was such just so generous of the time and supporting me and the other interns and have worked on this project. So yeah, Emma Carroll did the kind of main start by the work and finding all locations, which is the basis of the project within other interns including we have worked on it since so Maggie Lynn added a lot more information to wiki data and putting information about the trials and investigations as she worked along with Joseph and who was the open source and developer who embedded all her websites and made the website more usable and accessible as well and improved interface Then Claire panel and start this year worked one day per week and she created like a process for quality assuring the data. So as the data has been uploaded to wiki data, like Wikipedia wiki data can be edited by anyone. So this is really important because it doesn't mean that data can be updated and to like become more accurate but also means that it's going to change so clear and create the process of reading in the data on the survey and wiki data to compare as we can see where the changes have been made and check that they're historically accurate and Gillian helped with this also and as we've gone to this in regularly and her expertise. So I started to continue the quality assurance work but I've also been working on this new updated version of the website which So Maggie's visualizations aren't on the current version of the website yet. So I've been working on trying to get that ready so that all these new visualizations and features and can be released into version to the website and I think some of the features myself so I'll show you what kind of some of the new things on the website are so it has a new interface before the filters now on the side it's a bit more spaced out and and it's just kind of important how you did this up and then there's some new features as well so there's no timeline you can either select panic periods or non panic periods the preset time sets or you can customize yourself and it's kind of allows you to see how and the spread of the which like the accusations throughout the years and so it's a kind of new interesting way to explore the period and then and there's also a new page which is a history PDA timeline search where the accused which is appear in order of their travels and then you can click on these and then I can show you they like to serve people so the Wikipedia pages and Wikipedia pages are a good way to like share the individual stories and get more of the kind of details like it can just emphasize this kind of actually have or if I find lots of individual stories work and because we're looking at the math stuff you see in log like reading the individual stories as well from where like you kind of learn how her I think it was and then you can search by name as well filtered by gender age and then things like that as well. Then there is with the data that Maggie uploaded to Wikipedia as well you can now filter with this on the website as well before it was just gender occupation and social class now we have new ones case characteristics packed the devil property damage meeting places and meeting information. And so here's an example of the different parts of the devil but you can see all the different and learn a lot more about what these women and men were accused of. And then there's some all new features this was a trial mentions network graph and you can explore like who mentioned who in the trials and see how he spread through. And then there's a historic map here pictures that we can see it and present on the map which is closer to the time of the accusations and with more similar place names and in a contact form as well because obviously not all information right as the place name so we've had been contacted by quite a few people being like we actually think they lived here. And so this allows us to constantly improve the website but it's also get lots of positive feedback like the site's been visited by hundreds of thousands of people so it's nice hearing about the people that enjoy using it as well. And then also there's some new things we're going to currently have before women expression to like a map of memorials cause lots of local communities have kind of created things to try honour and remember the women that were killed. And so it's kind of a nice way to share what lots of communities have done and let people like know where the know was nearby to them because it's something that's a lot of interest to people right now. Well, that's me and has any questions on me. Can I just ask you so. Oh, sorry, sorry. Yeah. The map itself when you click on the like individual which is. Yeah, I guess. And then like. If you so far them some of them it has like more information about like the trials. Yeah. So if there's no more information doesn't mean that there is just no record. Yeah, when there's no more information it's like the records one. Yeah. Some of the which the piece which is like nothing was reported about them. So how do you know about them? And because there was so late the trials doing point. But the trials were recorded but just not mentioned about. Some of them their names weren't even before today was just like three women. So that's so impersonal. Do they see like three women from somewhere? Yeah. Yeah, just just to just add a little bit to that. Probably the largest single number of all those which is what we know about them is we've got a central record of an order to hold a trial. And so, so a trial should be held of this named person or sometimes you get a list of names. And there'll be a place and there'll be a date. Was that trial held? Probably, you know, we don't have a record of the actual trial. Were they convicted? Probably. But again, we're not sure. So there's a lot of stuff that we don't know. But the reason we can do that is because we've got that central register that gives us names, places, dates. But it's not always complete because if somebody says sometimes, you know, we just got three which is quite a lot of unknown number. Do you have some of the witches? Is there like no name? Yeah, there is like no name tags or something. Well, sometimes you just got a few tweets. You don't know how many there were. Oh, yeah. But so the overall statistics are, you know, imprecise. Yeah. We've added records to Hystropedia about all the unknown. Oh, yeah, yeah. Or sometimes there's like three witches. That's all that was recorded in the survey, three unknown witches. Or I think the play recently sort of was not very, they were sort of inspired because there was an entry in the survey. I think about that said sundry witches. Yeah. They were people. You know, the word sundry is, you know, not a fitting memorial to them in some way. So, yeah, we've tried to add the unnamed cases as well. But it's probably going to be quite a technical question. So you've got, you're pulling in data from lots of different sources. So wiki data. You said about the memorials. Is that in an existing data set or was it distinct data set? No, we're having to research. We're researching that currently and uploading it to wiki data. So we'll tell that from wiki data. You're using open street map as your face layer there. Are you getting any data from open street map on memorials? No, we're not using that currently. I'll email you afterwards. Yeah, so we're sort of reaching out to people as well. They've sort of been emailing me and DMing me on Twitter with images that they've taken off a local memorial to them. And there's, you know, more recent memorials coming up all the time, like one in Peebles and one in Mid-Colder recently as well. And we're just trying to sort of like make sure that we have a record of them and to make people aware of them. And so that we have a map of places to visit. I'm also liaising with Julian about a 23-stop walking tour of Edinburgh about places in Edinburgh that have connections with the accuser or the Lord Advocates or, you know, but also the accused themselves. I'll email you both. Yeah, we're trying to sort of like do justice in all these different ways. I just think it's amazing that all this work is coming together and it's great to see it. I was wondering about the exhibition, which I think is amazing, showing the detail of the words that are used and the challenging situations that these women found themselves in. And I just wondered how does that feeling of being accused and all these other things said about them or confessed to, how's that going to feed into this archive so that when the exhibitions tour round and round and hopefully gets a permanent home, that there's a link between the two. I don't know if that's one of the things that happened. But we're going to add like a further reading page. I would be nice also to kind of other things that people can go to the exhibitions. Honour and let me get on. I have a lot of questions actually. You were just also on the page itself and you were talking about there was like a panic period and non-panic period. What is that? The timeline of the number of accusations goes sort of like this. So you suddenly see huge jumps in numbers of accusations and that's when they're most intense. Nobody's ever really run the numbers and the numbers are not very crunchable. The five biggest panics may well have been more than half of all the witches and altogether they would only come to sort of five or six years out of the 170-odd that the witchcraft act was enforced. Yeah, those panic periods look very different from the non-panic periods. But those are sort of national panics who also sometimes get local panics that don't necessarily make such a blip on the national figures or you get panics that don't necessarily lead to any executions like the one in Fit and Ween that was executed. Somebody died in prison. There's still a local panic. Is there like a reason for these periods occurring? Like historical reasons or I don't know, some diseases, like scutting or something? Several of them you can link to the establishment of the new regime. But the trouble with witchcraft is that if you start producing one explanation it doesn't never fit all the... I'm not time to go into it yet. I was just wondering, so is there any kind of measure of quality of the data you will see? Like do you have like an individual kind of score for lower quality evidence, higher quality evidence or not? I mean, we're using the data from the survey. I think we are over time and I need to sort of like, I've got 10 minutes to sort of change into Wikipedia mode. So if anyone would like to ask any final questions that they are really, you know, it's going to burn a hole in them if they don't ask. Then we'll make this the last question and we'll just thank our guests as well. But if anyone, anyone got one final last question or thought? Yeah, Kayla? Yeah, thank you. I just wanted to have a question with a lot of speakers because I get to know that Black Switch Hunt is a background of climate change and some political conflictions, religious conflictions. So we do those sort of things to memory of that period. There's some advice on how to like, because nowadays there are many, there will be like a similar climate change from colder to warmer, like also some geopolitical conflictions to this like crisis lead to also events like which hunt team, so do you have any like advice or reflection from previous stories like to inform people nowadays to how to tackle with such. I mean, I mean, I'm not sure I understand your question, but it's either about is historical which hunting to historical climate change or is this something about present day climate change and human response to it? Yes. Which of those two? The previous which hunting lead to climate change and other like. Right. So this is the idea that which hunting in the past was linked to past climate change. Okay. On the whole, you ask different scholars, you'll get different answers. In particular, if you ask Wolfgang Beringer in Germany, he will tell you that past climate change was important. I don't think it's a general explanation for European which hunts. The idea for what it's worth the idea is that the early modern period and in particular the late 1630 17th century is what's called the little ice age is much colder than it is now. And there certainly are episodes with frost and storms that are alleged to be linked to riches. And that's demand for for punishments of the witches for destroying the great harvest in the Rhineland, for example, is what's arriving this. And yeah, it sort of works for some of the cases in the Rhineland. But as a general explanation for the which hunting in Europe, it's fairly far down my list of explanations. I'm afraid. So it can't entirely be ignored, but I can't really see it in Scotland. I can't I can't see the little ice age leading to anything specific that you can then say and this letter which comes out in conversations. Maybe more research could be done on this. There's a lot that we don't know about early modern Scottish climate. But that'll be another session, I think. So I think we'll have to draw time at that point. We can talk forever about this and I would love to organize a proper full day or half day symposium about Scottish accused witches next year where we probably launch our website once it's like finally ready to go, which shouldn't be too much longer. But there's lots of people we do want to achieve. So but I'm hoping we can organize something in the in 2024 and that would work with Caroline and Julian schedules and Ruben schedules as well and invite other speakers to have a real sort of deep delve. But this was just a little taster. So could we just thank all our guests. Thanks. You're more than welcome to stay. You're interested in Wikipedia editing. And I'm sure it's Caroline and Julian might be willing to sort of like take any final best questions personally. But yeah, thank you very much for coming.