The Paisley witches are a sad example of the dark pages of history (9 photos + 1 video)

Four years after the events in Salem, Massachusetts, where nineteen innocent victims accused of witchcraft were executed, one of the last witch trials in Western Europe began in the town of Paisley, near Glasgow in Renfrewshire, central Scotland.





It all started when Christian Shaw, the eleven-year-old daughter of wealthy landowner John Shaw of Bargarran, accused Catherine Campbell of witchcraft. A few weeks earlier, Christian had caught Catherine, one of her family's maids, stealing milk. When Christian reported the incident to her mother and the maid was punished for the theft, Catherine became furious and cursed Christian, wishing that the devil would "drag her soul through hell."



Bargarran House - Christian Shaw's Home

Shocked by Catherine's words, the young God-fearing Christian actually became ill, suffering violent fits and convulsions similar to those described in the Salem Witch Trials a few years earlier. Contemporary accounts describe the fits as bizarre: "now blind, now deaf and dumb, several parts of her body sometimes violently distended, and sometimes as violently contracted."

After eight weeks of suffering, Christian was taken to the eminent Glasgow physician Matthew Brisbane, who was unable to find a cause for her symptoms. For a time, the symptoms eased and she seemed to recover, but ten days later, "the fits returned with greater violence. She became as motionless as a corpse. She was unable to move ... able to move. She was unable to move. She was able to move. She was unable to move. She was able to move. She was





It became clear to the doctor and the local parish priest that the child was possessed, a common affliction in Europe at the time. Tens of thousands of people, mostly women, were executed for witchcraft in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries; 4,000 in Scotland alone. There was a time when the fear and hatred of magic and its practices reached such a pitch that hundreds of men and women were hunted down and subjected to terrible torture for alleged crimes related to witchcraft. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the skies above many Scottish towns were often darkened by smoke from the pyres that sent these people to their deaths.



Gallow Green is where the witches were hanged. All that remains is the well.

During the interrogation, Christian began to name her tormentors. At first she named only Katherine Campbell and Agnes Naismith, but over time she began to name others, and eventually 35 people were charged. Of these, seven were summoned to appear before the commission in Paisley. Despite their protests, all seven were found guilty of witchcraft and sentenced to death. One of the condemned, James Reid, committed suicide by hanging himself in his prison cell with a handkerchief attached to a nail in the wall. The other six were hanged and then burned on Gallow Green in Paisley on 10 June 1697. It was the last mass execution for witchcraft in Western Europe.



The execution itself was gruesome. One account says that some of the condemned were still alive when their bodies were burned, and that the executioners borrowed a cane from a spectator to push their victims' wriggling limbs back into the fire. The owner of the walking stick refused to take it back after it came into contact with witches.



Sealed with a horseshoe...

One of them, Agnes Naismith, is said to have placed a dying curse on all the townspeople present and their descendants. To keep her curse from spreading, the witches' mass grave was sealed with a horseshoe, and a legend arose in the town that Paisley would suffer if the horseshoe was ever disturbed.



Paisley Witch Hunt Reenactment Becomes Annual Event

However, Agnes' curse was blamed for all the accidents and tragedies that befell Paisley, including a fire in 1810 that killed eighty-five people. In the 1960s, the horseshoe was uprooted during roadworks, and Paisley went into economic decline immediately afterwards.

Shortly after the trial in 1697, the former Secretary of State for Scotland, James Johnston, noted that "the Parliaments of France and other magistrates, being convinced of the existence of witches, never try them now, because they have found by experience that it is impossible to distinguish possession from nature in disorder."

By this time, witch trials had already begun to decline. The last execution took place in 1706, the last trial in 1727, and was of dubious legality. In 1736, the British Parliament repealed the Witchcraft Act of 1563, making it impossible to prosecute witches legally. However, basic magical beliefs persisted, especially in the Highlands and Islands.



And what happened to the accuser, Christian Shaw? She recovered and became a successful businesswoman in the milling business. After her husband's death, she and her mother toured the Netherlands to observe the Dutch spinning technique. Christian made drawings of the process she saw, and is said to have smuggled some of the machines back to Scotland in her luggage.



Poor people receive flowers

With their help, she developed new manufacturing methods that produced a stronger white thread, and on her return, Shaw set up a small company in Johnstone. Her signature thread, "Bargarran", became a mark of quality, and others in the area began to imitate her methods, starting an industry in which Paisley once dominated the world and which has shaped the town's history. The last known documented evidence of Shaw's life is her marriage in February 1737 to William Livingstone, a successful Edinburgh businessman.