Mary Martin is 72 now, but still remembers the pain of being labelled "witch-spawn" and "evil eye" by classmates because her grandmother was one of the last people jailed in Britain over witchcraft charges.
At the height of the Second World War, medium Helen Duncan was convicted under an 18th century anti-witchcraft law and jailed for nine months by authorities who accused her of compromising Britain's safety.
Now, more than 50 years after Duncan's death, Martin is campaigning to secure her a pardon.
"I was only 11 years old when the name-calling started," said Martin, who lives near Edinburgh, Scotland. "People said, `Your grandmother was a witch.' "
"But she was simply a woman with a gift and she never endangered anybody."
In the 1940s, Duncan was a well-known medium and her clients reportedly included Winston Churchill and King George VI.
But she ran into trouble after reportedly having told the parents of a missing sailor that their son had gone down on the HMS Barham, a ship whose 1941 loss had not been reported immediately to the public in hopes of keeping morale high.
Though it was much later, military authorities grew jittery as the war went on, particularly fearing that plans for the D-Day landings of Allied forces in northern France could be compromised. They accused Duncan of endangering public safety.
Modern types who shake their head in disgusted amazement that anyone could believe somebody was a witch aren’t asking the right question, which is how could anyone believe she was a witch. But let us allow that the British High Command’s worry that Ms. Duncan was learning war secrets from the dead was absurd. Shouldn’t her pardon for witchcraft be replaced by a conviction for fraud?
11 comments:
Notice that the defense is not that she was innocent.
David:
Just as with the Scopes Monkey trial.
What's wrong with a defense that attempts to make the point that, in this case anyway, the law is an ass?
Peter:
As for the fraud thing, that is an interesting question.
Once upon a not very long ago, in the US there were a fair number of
infomercials touting the powers of various fortune tellers.
Some got prosecuted for fraud, which came as a complete surprise to the fortune tellers.
Making the cases one of the few where the evidence was self provided.
Since the informercials are no more, I suspect the cases were successful.
But let us allow that the British High Command’s worry that Ms. Duncan was learning war secrets from the dead was absurd.
No, I will not allow that, although as you say, the question is whether she was learning war secrets from the dead.
But "statistically unlikely" is not the same as "impossible", a concept which is demonstrated over and over for those who care to see. For instance, rogue waves, long held to be a sea-farers' myth - "many marine scientists clung to statistical models stating monstrous deviations from the normal sea state occur once every 1,000 years" - now proven to be quite common.
Has anyone broken the news to OJ?
Yes.
If someone believes he is Napoleon, should he be locked up on Elba?
How is she any different from a Priest, a Vicar, a Rabbi or an Imam, if we assume that at most only one of them is speaking the truth?
*says Brit, casting his line into the stream...*
Yes Brit. Respectable Christian ministers never claim that they can predict future events.
I just love the Internet!
Anyone claiming to predict future events should be held accountable for how they arrived at their conclusion and whether or not their conclusion was correct or not. "Test the spirits" Paul says in one of his New Testament letters.
As it happens, the mother of one of my college buddies is Louise Huebner, The Official Witch of Los Angeles County.
(And his dad was an accomplished artist)
Anyway, she sure didn't seem like someone who needed burning, or even prosecution for fraud.
So, if someone claims she is a witch, should she bear the consequences of people believing her?
Not until we do the same for advertising claims.
The government can no more legislate against stupidity than it can legislate morality.
She was probably a scientific non-theist witch.
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