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A Yorkshire Almanac Comprising 365 Historical Extracts, Red-letter Days and Customs, and Astronomical and Meteorological Data

18 March 1650: Dorothy Rodes of Bowling (Bradford) blames witchcraft by Mary Sykes for the postpartum illness of her daughter

James Raine. 1861. Depositions from the Castle of York. London: Surtees Society. Get it:

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Excerpt

Dorothy Rodes, of Bolling, widow, saith, that, upon Sunday night was a sennight, she and Sara Rodes, her daughter, with a little child, lay all in bed together; and, after their first sleep, she hearing the said Sara quaking and holding her hands together, she asked her what she ailed, and she answered, “Ah, mother, Sykes’s wife came in at a hole at the bed-feet, and upon the bed, and took me by the throat, and would have put her fingers in my mouth, and would needs choke me.” And, this informant asking her why she did not speak, she answered she could not speak for that the said Mary Sykes fumbled about her throat and took her left side that she could not speak. And she further saith that the said Sara hath been taken several times since the said Sunday with pains and benumbedness, by six times of a day, in great extremity, the use of her joints being taken from her, her heart leaping, the use of her tongue being taken away, and her whole body near unto death. And those fits continued half an hour, and sometimes an hour, and when she was recovered, she continually said that the said Mary Sykes came and used her in that manner. And then Susan Beamont came to her. And the likeness of one Kellett wife appeared to her. Whereupon this informant told her that Kellett’s wife died about two years since. To which the said Sara answered, “Ah, mother, but she never rests, for she appeared to me the foulest fiend that ever I saw, with a pair of eyes like saucers, and stood up betwixt them, and gave me a box of the ear in the gap-stead [opening in a wall or hedge], which made the fire to flash out of my eyes.” [Postpartum stroke/psychosis?]

To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations

Comment

Comment

Raine:

The poor women deny all acquaintance with the crimes imputed to them. At the assizes the bill against Susan Beaumont was ignored, and Mary Sykes was acquitted.

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