A plea has been made for a memorial to honour nine innocent women strangled and burnt at the stake as witches in Dumfries more than 360 years ago.
Dumfriesshire poet Hugh McMillan, who describes himself as a student of Scotland’s “strange and undervalued history”, believes it is time there was a monument at the Whitesands or at least a plaque bearing their names.
He said: “Now that the Church of Scotland has formally apologised for the historical persecution and murder of so called ‘witches’, isn’t it time that Dumfries acknowledged the memory of the nine women strangled and burned in 1659 on the Whitesands?”
“Dumfries is a place that makes much of its history, and it would be educational for people – and sobering, perhaps – to realise what atrocities were committed against these innocent women by our ancestors in the name of orthodoxy and in the name of religion.”
Scotland’s Witchcraft Act was passed in 1563, making witchcraft and consulting with witches a capital crime.
Conviction meant being strangled and then burnt at the stake, before the Witchcraft Act was repealed in 1736.
In the Great Scottish Witch Hunts between 1590 and 1662 it is estimated that up to 6,000 people – mostly women – had to stand accused of the crime before church elders.
The church-run courts captured and interrogated accused witches before passing them to the criminal courts for trial.
Records show that Judge Mosley and Judge Lawrence, from April 2 to 5 in 1659, presided over a witch trial in Dumfries of 10 women.
The jury found the case against Helen Tait “not clearly proven” but Agnes Comenes, Janet McGowane, Jean Tomson, Margaret Clerk, Janet McKendrig, Agnes Clerk, Janet Corsane, Helen Moorhead and Janet Callon were found guilty.
The public execution of the nine women was carried out on Wednesday, April 13, 1659.
A motion agreed at the Church of Scotland’s General Assembly last month acknowledged and “regretted” the “terrible harm caused” to those accused. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon issued a similar apology on behalf of the Scottish Government in March.
