I recently appeared on the BBC radio show Woman’s Hour to discuss my research on homicides committed by women. Just before my segment, singer-songwriter Katherine Priddy spoke about her song Matches, inspired by the feminist phrase “women, not witches”. It reframes witch trials as the persecution of women rather than the pursuit of the supernatural. One lyric lingered with me: “They weren’t burning witches; it was women on those fires.”
In England, Wales and their former North American colonies, that claim needs nuance. There, women were not burnt for witchcraft; they were hanged. Witchcraft was a felony under English common law, and felons were executed at the gallows. Elsewhere, the story was different. On the continent and in Scotland, witchcraft was heresy, and heretics were burnt at the stake.
In England and its colonies, no one was burnt at the stake during witch hunts: not at Pendle, not at Salem and not under the campaigns of the “witchfinder general”, Matthew Hopkins. The image of the burning witch is powerful, but in this context, it is largely a myth. If we want to understand why women were burnt in England and Wales, we need to look elsewhere – towards a different crime, and a different kind of fear.
