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SO YOU THOUGHT THE LAW IS ALL DULL
AND DRY -
HERE'S A STORY FOR YOU WHO BURN THE
MIDNITE OIL TO SEND THE SHIVERS UP
YOUR SPINE THIS THURSDAY NITE FROM
THE VAULT OF FREDDY KRUGER'S SCARY
LAW TALES
Strange Cases:-The Witchcraft Trials in Salem: A Commentary by Douglas Linder
From June through September of 1692, nineteen men and women, all having been convicted of witchcraft, were carted to Gallows Hill, a barren slope near Salem Village, for hanging. Another man of over eighty years was pressed to death under heavy stones for refusing to submit to a trial on witchcraft charges. Hundreds of others faced accusations of witchcraft. Dozens languished in jail for months without trials. Then, almost as soon as it had begun, the hysteria that swept through Puritan Massachusetts ended.
Why did this travesty of justice occur? Why did it occur in Salem? Nothing about this tragedy was inevitable. Only an unfortunate combination of an ongoing frontier war, economic conditions, congregational strife, teenage boredom, and personal jealousies can account for the spiraling accusations, trials, and executions that occurred in the spring and summer of 1692.
In 1688, John Putnam, one of the most influential elders of Salem Village, invited Samuel Parris, formerly a marginally successful planter and merchant in Barbados, to preach in the Village church. A year later, after negotiations over salary, inflation adjustments, and free firewood, Parris accepted the job as Village minister. He moved to Salem Village with his wife Elizabeth, his six-year-old daughter Betty, niece Abagail Williams, and his Indian slave Tituba, acquired by Parris in Barbados.
The Salem that became the new home of Parris was in the midst of change: a mercantile elite was beginning to develop, prominent people were becoming less willing to assume positions as town leaders, two clans (the Putnams and the Porters) were competing for control of the village and its pulpit, and a debate was raging over how independent Salem Village, tied more to the interior agricultural regions, should be from Salem, a center of sea trade.
Sometime during February of the exceptionally cold winter of 1692, young Betty Parris became strangely ill. She dashed about, dove under furniture, contorted in pain, and complained of fever. The cause of her symptoms may have been some combination of stress, asthma, guilt, boredom, child abuse, epilepsy, and delusional psychosis. The symptoms also could have been caused, as Linda Caporael argued in a 1976 article in Science magazine, by a disease called "convulsive ergotism" brought on by injesting rye--eaten as a cereal and as a common ingredient of bread--infected with ergot. (Ergot is caused by a fungus which invades developing kernels of rye grain, especially under warm and damp conditions such as existed at the time of the previous rye harvest in Salem. Convulsive ergotism causes violent fits, a crawling sensation on the skin, vomiting, choking, and--most interestingly--hallucinations. The hallucinogenic drug LSD is a dervivative of ergot.) Many of the symptoms or convulsive ergotism seem to match those attributed to Betty Parris, but there is no way of knowing with any certainty if she in fact suffered from the disease--and the theory would not explain the afflictions suffered by others in Salem later in the year.
At the time, however, there was another theory to explain the girls' symptoms. Cotton Mather had recently published a popular book, "Memorable Providences," describing the suspected witchcraft of an Irish washerwoman in Boston, and Betty's behavior in some ways mirrored that of the afflicted person described in Mather's widely read and discussed book. It was easy to believe in 1692 in Salem, with an Indian war raging less than seventy miles away (and many refugees from the war in the area) that the devil was close at hand. Sudden and violent death occupied minds.
Talk of witchcraft increased when other playmates of Betty, including eleven-year-old Ann Putnam, seventeen-year-old Mercy Lewis, and Mary Walcott, began to exhibit similar unusual behavior. When his own nostrums failed to effect a cure, William Griggs, a doctor called to examine the girls, suggested that the girls' problems might have a supernatural origin. The widespread belief that witches targeted children made the doctor's diagnosis seem increasing likely.
A neighbor, Mary Sibley, proposed a form of counter magic. She told Tituba to bake a rye cake with the urine of the afflicted victim and feed the cake to a dog. ( Dogs were believed to be used by witches as agents to carry out their devilish commands.) By this time, suspicion had already begun to focus on Tituba, who had been known to tell the girls tales of omens, voodoo, and witchcraft from her native folklore. Her participation in the urine cake episode made her an even more obvious scapegoat for the inexplicable.
Meanwhile, the number of girls afflicted continued to grow, rising to seven with the addition of Ann Putnam, Elizabeth Hubbard, Susannah Sheldon, and Mary Warren. According to historian Peter Hoffer, the girls "turned themselves from a circle of friends into a gang of juvenile delinquents." ( Many people of the period complained that young people lacked the piety and sense of purpose of the founders' generation.) The girls contorted into grotesque poses, fell down into frozen postures, and complained of biting and pinching sensations. In a village where everyone believed that the devil was real, close at hand, and acted in the real world, the suspected affliction of the girls became an obsession.
Sometime after February 25, when Tituba baked the witch cake, and February 29, when arrest warrants were issued against Tituba and two other women, Betty Parris and Abigail Williams named their afflictors and the witchhunt began. The consistency of the two girls' accusations suggests strongly that the girls worked out their stories together. Soon Ann Putnam and Mercy Lewis were also reporting seeing "witches flying through the winter mist." The prominent Putnam family supported the girls' accusations, putting considerable impetus behind the prosecutions.
The first three to be accused of witchcraft were Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborn. Tituba was an obvious choice. Good was a beggar and social misfit who lived wherever someone would house her and Osborn was old, quarrelsome, and had not attended church for over a year. The Putnams brought their complaint against the three women to county magistrates Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne, who scheduled examinations for the suspected witches for March 1, 1692 in Ingersoll's tavern. When hundreds showed up, the examinations were moved to the meeting house. At the examinations, the girls described attacks by the specters of the three women, and fell into their by then perfected pattern of contortions when in the presence of one of the suspects. Other villagers came forward to offer stories of cheese and butter mysteriously gone bad or animals born with deformities after visits by one of the suspects.The magistrates, in the common practice of the time, asked the same questions of each suspect over and over: Were they witches? Had they seen Satan? How, if they are were not witches, did they explain the contortions seemingly caused by their presence? The style and form of the questions indicates that the magistrates thought the women guilty.
The matter might have ended with admonishments were it not for Tituba. After first adamantly denying any guilt, afraid perhaps of being made a scapegoat, Tituba claimed that she was approached by a tall man from Boston--obviously Satan--who sometimes appeared as a dog or a hog and who asked her to sign in his book and to do his work. Yes, Tituba declared, she was a witch, and moreover she and four other witches, including Good and Osborn, had flown through the air on their poles. She had tried to run to Reverend Parris for counsel, she said, but the devil had blocked her path. Tituba's confession succeeded in transforming her from a possible scapegoat to a central figure in the expanding prosecutions. Her confession also served to silence most skeptics, and Parris and other local ministers began witch hunting with zeal.
Soon, according to their own reports, the spectral forms of other women began attacking the afflicted girls. Martha Corey, Rebecca Nurse, Sarah Cloyce, and Mary Eastywere accused of witchcraft. During a March 20 church service, Ann Putnam suddenly shouted, "Look where Goodwife Cloyce sits on the beam suckling her yellow bird between her fingers!" Soon Ann's mother, Ann Putnam, Sr., would join the accusers. Dorcas Good, four-year-old daughter of Sarah Good, became the first child to be accused of witchcraft when three of the girls complained that they were bitten by the specter of Dorcas. (The four-year-old was arrested, kept in jail for eight months, watched her mother get carried off to the gallows, and would "cry her heart out, and go insane.") The girls accusations and their ever more polished performances, including the new act of being struck dumb, played to large and believing audiences.
Stuck in jail with the damning testimony of the afflicted girls widely accepted, suspects began to see confession as a way to avoid the gallows. Deliverance Hobbs became the second witch to confess, admitting to pinching three of the girls at the Devil's command and flying on a pole to attend a witches' Sabbath in an open field. Jails approached capacity and the colony "teetered on the brink of chaos" when Governor Phips returned from England. Fast action, he decided, was required.
Phips created a new court, the "court of oyer and terminer," to hear the witchcraft cases. Five judges, including three close friends of Cotton Mather, were appointed to the court. Chief Justice, and most influential member of the court, was a gung-ho witch hunter named William Stoughton. Mather urged Stoughton and the other judges to credit confessions and admit "spectral evidence" (testimony by afflicted persons that they had been visited by a suspect's specter). Ministers were looked to for guidance by the judges, who were generally without legal training, on matters pertaining to witchcraft. Mather's advice was heeded. the judges also decided to allow the so-called "touching test" (defendants were asked to touch afflicted persons to see if their touch, as was generally assumed of the touch of witches, would stop their contortions) and examination of the bodies of accused for evidence of "witches' marks" (moles or the like upon which a witch's familiar might suck). Evidence that would be excluded from modern courtrooms-- hearsay, gossip, stories, unsupported assertions, surmises-- was also generally admitted. Many protections that modern defendants take for granted were lacking in Salem: accused witches had no legal counsel, could not have witnesses testify under oath on their behalf, and had no formal avenues of appeal. Defendants could, however, speak for themselves, produce evidence, and cross-examine their accusers. The degree to which defendants in Salem were able to take advantage of their modest protections varied considerably, depending on their own acuteness and their influence in the community.
The first accused witch to be brought to trial was Bridget Bishop. Almost sixty years old, owner of a tavern where patrons could drink cider ale and play shuffleboard (even on the Sabbath), critical of her neighbors, and reluctant to pay her her bills, Bishop was a likely candidate for an accusation of witchcraft . The fact that Thomas Newton, special prosecutor, selected Bishop for his first prosecution suggests that he believed the stronger case could be made against her than any of the other suspect witches. At Bishop's trial on June 2, 1692, a field hand testified that he saw Bishop's image stealing eggs and then saw her transform herself into a cat. Deliverance Hobbs, by then probably insane, and Mary Warren, both confessed witches, testified that Bishop was one of them. A villager named Samuel Grey told the court that Bishop visited his bed at night and tormented him. A jury of matrons assigned to examine Bishop's body reported that they found an "excrescence of flesh." Several of the afflicted girls testified that Bishop's specter afflicted them. Numerous other villagers described why they thought Bishop was responsible for various bits of bad luck that had befallen them. There was even testimony that while being transported under guard past the Salem meeting house, she looked at the building and caused a part of it to fall to the ground. Bishop's jury returned a verdict of guilty . One of the judges, Nathaniel Saltonstall, aghast at the conduct of the trial, resigned from the court. Chief Justice Stoughton signed Bishop's death warrant, and on June 10, 1692, Bishop was carted to Gallows Hill and hanged.
As the summer of 1692 warmed, the pace of trials picked up. Not all defendants were as disreputable as Bridget Bishop. Rebecca Nurse was a pious, respected woman whose specter, according to Ann Putnam, Jr. and Abagail Williams, attacked them in mid March of 1692 Ann Putnam, Sr. added her complaint that Nurse demanded that she sign the Devil's book, then pinched her. Nurse was one of three Towne sisters , all identified as witches, who were members of a Topsfield family that had a long-standing quarrel with the Putnam family. Apart from the evidence of Putnam family members, the major piece of evidence against Nurse appeared to be testimony indicating that soon after Nurse lectured Benjamin Houlton for allowing his pig to root in her garden, Houlton died. The Nurse jury returned a verdict of not guilty, much to the displeasure of Chief Justice Stoughton, who told the jury to go back and consider again a statement of Nurse's that might be considered an admission of guilt (but more likely an indication of confusion about the question, as Nurse was old and nearly deaf). The jury reconvened, this time coming back with a verdict of guilty. On July 19, 1692, Nurse rode with four other convicted witches to Gallows Hill.
Persons who scoffed at accusations of witchcraft risked becoming targets of accusations themselves. One man who was openly critical of the trials paid for his skepticism with his life. John Proctor, a central figure in Arthur Miller's fictionalized account of the Salem witchhunt, The Crucible, was an opinionated tavern owner who openly denounced the witchhunt. Testifying against Proctor were Ann Putnam, Abagail Williams, Indian John (a slave of Samuel Parris who worked in a competing tavern), and eighteen-year-old Elizabeth Booth, who testified that ghosts had come to her and accused Proctor of serial murder. Proctor fought back, accusing confessed witches of lying, complaining of torture, and demanding that his trial be moved to Boston. The efforts proved futile. Proctor was hanged. His wife Elizabeth, who was also convicted of witchcraft, was spared execution because of her pregnancy (reprieved "for the belly").
No execution caused more unease in Salem than that of the village's ex-minister, George Burroughs. Burroughs, who was living in Maine in 1692, was identified by several of his accusers as the ringleader of the witches. Ann Putnam claimed that Burroughs bewitched soldiers during a failed military campaign against Wabanakis in 1688-89, the first of a string of military disasters that could be blamed on an Indian-Devil alliance. In her interesting book, In the Devil's Snare, historian Mary Beth Norton argues that the large number of accusations against Burroughs, and his linkage to the frontier war, is the key to understanding the Salem trials. Norton contends that the enthusiasm of the Salem court in prosecuting the witchcraft cases owed in no small measure to the judges' desire to shift the "blame for their own inadequate defense of the frontier." Many of the judges, Norton points out, played lead roles in a war effort that had been markedly unsuccessful.
Among the thirty accusers of Burroughs was nineteen-year-old Mercy Lewis, a refugee of the frontier wars. Lewis, the most imaginative and forceful of the young accusers, offered unusually vivid testimony against Burroughs. Lewis told the court that Burroughs flew her to the top of a mountain and, pointing toward the surrounding land, promised her all the kingdoms if only she would sign in his book (a story very similar to that found in Matthew 4:8). Lewis said, "I would not writ if he had throwed me down on one hundred pitchforks." At an execution, a defendant in the Puritan colonies was expected to confess, and thus to save his soul. When Burroughs on Gallows Hill continued to insist on his innocence and then recited the Lord's Prayer perfectly (something witches were thought incapable of doing), the crowd reportedly was "greatly moved." The agitation of the crowd caused Cotton Mather to intervene and remind the crowd that Burroughs had had his day in court and lost.
One victim of the Salem witchhunt was not hanged, but rather pressed under heavy stones until his death. Such was the fate of octogenarian Giles Corey who, after spending five months in chains in a Salem jail with his also accused wife, had nothing but contempt for the proceedings. Seeing the futility of a trial and hoping that by avoiding a conviction his farm, that would otherwise go the state, might go to his two sons-in-law, Corey refused to stand for trial. The penalty for such a refusal was peine et fort, or pressing. Three days after Corey's death, on September 22, 1692, eight more convicted witches, including Giles' wife Martha, were hanged. They were the last victims of the witchhunt.
By early autumn of 1692, Salem's lust for blood was ebbing. Doubts were developing as to how so many respectable people could be guilty. Reverend John Hale said, " It cannot be imagined that in a place of so much knowledge, so many in so small compass of land should abominably leap into the Devil's lap at once." The educated elite of the colony began efforts to end the witch-hunting hysteria that had enveloped Salem. Increase Mather, the father of Cotton, published what has been called "America's first tract on evidence," a work entitled Cases of Conscience, which argued that it "were better that ten suspected witches should escape than one innocent person should be condemned." Increase Mather urged the court to exclude spectral evidence. Samuel Willard, a highly regarded Boston minister, circulated Some Miscellany Observations, which suggested that the Devil might create the specter of an innocent person. Mather's and Willard's works were given to Governor Phips. The writings most likely influenced the decision of Phips to order the court to exclude spectral evidence and touching tests and to require proof of guilt by clear and convincing evidence. With spectral evidence not admitted, twenty-eight of the last thirty-three witchcraft trials ended in acquittals. The three convicted witches were later pardoned. In May of 1693, Phips released from prison all remaining accused or convicted witches.
By the time the witchhunt ended, nineteen convicted witches were executed, at least four accused witches had died in prison, and one man, Giles Corey, had been pressed to death. About one to two hundred other persons were arrested and imprisoned on witchcraft charges. Two dogs were executed as suspected accomplices of witches.
Scholars have noted potentially telling differences between the accused and the accusers in Salem. Most of the accused lived to the south of, and were generally better off financially, than most of the accusers. In a number of cases, accusing families stood to gain property from the convictions of accused witches. Also, the accused and the accusers generally took opposite sides in a congregational schism that had split the Salem community before the outbreak of hysteria. While many of the accused witches supported former minister George Burroughs, the families that included the accusers had--for the most part--played leading roles in forcing Burroughs to leave Salem. The conclusion that many scholars draw from these patterns is that property disputes and congregational feuds played a major role in determining who lived, and who died, in 1692.
A period of atonement began in the colony following the release of the surviving accused witches. Samuel Sewall, one of the judges, issued a public confession of guilt and an apology. Several jurors came forward to say that they were "sadly deluded and mistaken" in their judgments. Reverend Samuel Parris conceded errors of judgment, but mostly shifted blame to others. Parris was replaced as minister of Salem village by Thomas Green, who devoted his career to putting his torn congregation back together. Governor Phips blamed the entire affair on William Stoughton. Stoughton, clearly more to blame than anyone for the tragic episode, refused to apologize or explain himself. He criticized Phips for interfering just when he was about to "clear the land" of witches. Stoughton became the next governor of Massachusetts.
The witches disappeared, but witchhunting in America did not. Each generation must learn the lessons of history or risk repeating its mistakes. Salem should warn us to think hard about how to best safeguard and improve our system of justice.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Friday, June 22, 2007
THE DEVIL APPEARS IN COURT
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I recently watched a documentary on Discovery last Wednesday on witches being tried and burned on a stake in the Middle Ages. This made me recall the famous Mona Fandey case in Malaysia and another case in Tambunan which involved practices of the occult and the accused had caused the death of a woman who participated in a ‘religious ritual’ of some sort . Is it against the law to practice witchcraft and sorcery? Are there any penalties? With witchcraft on the rise worldwide and a revival in self styled practices should our law makers enact laws to prevent such unhealthy practices? Even the well known BEWITCHED TV series and movie starring Nicole Kidman and HARRY PORTER movies and books together with the popular CHARMED and BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER tv serials seems to promote witchcraft albeit in a very subtle, exciting and harmless manner. Has the Devil been ever sued in Court?
ANGEL
LEX BORNEO:
What a spine chilling request. I had to burn the midnight oil into the wee hours of the morning this week to search for cases involving the Devil or his agents in Court.
LONDON 1944
The last known case on witchcraft in England was in 1944. It was known as The Crown vs Duncan, Homer, Jones & Brown. There were 3 judges in the Court of Criminal Appeal. There were 4 lawyers appearing in the appeal, 2 for the Crown and 2 for the Appellants. In the lower court the 4 appellants were found guilty of a conspiracy to contravene the Witchcraft Act 1735 under the charge that they ‘Conspired together and with other persons unknown to pretend to exercise or use a kind of conjuration to wit that through the agency of the said Helen Duncan spirits of deceased persons should appear to be present in fact in such place as the said Helen Duncan then was and that the said spirits were communicating with living persons then and there present.’ The appellants appealed against their conviction.
‘SHINY ECTOPLASM FROM THE MOUTH’
The appellant Duncan was a professional medium, who was engaged at a substantial fee to give a series of seances in a registered church or temple, as it was called, at 30, Connor Road, Portsmouth, maintained by the appellant Homer over a chemist’s shop which he had kept for many years. The appellant Jones, known as Mrs Homer, lived with him and had done so for some 25 years. The appellant Brown assisted Duncan and acted as her booking agent. The evidence for the prosecution was concerned with dates in December 1943, and January 1944 and evidence was given for the prosecution of the happenings on these dates at the church, and of the parts played by the appellants. After certain preliminaries, Duncan dressed in black was seated in a chair behind a curtain in a corner of the room. Homer and Jones sat near the front. The light was dim, being confined to a single red lamp at the back of the room. Duncan produced her spirit guide, who was called Albert, and he would say that he had a message for a person in a particular chair. Then, when the person indicated called out, there would appear in the dim light what was said to be the form of someone who claimed to be a friend or relative of one of those present. In some cases the material form was said to be that of a bird or an animal, such as a parrot or cat.
The prosecution case was that the whole performance was an elaborate pretence, a fraudulent performance, a mere imposition on human credulity. This was sought to be established by evidence of
(a) messages going to the wrong seat owing to a change of occupant taking place by a mistake unknown to any of the appellants;
(b) to messages purporting to come from relatives who had never existed;
(c) to the attempted seizure by a witness of a substance said to be ectoplasm emanating from Duncan, but which felt like cheesecloth, and which did not return to her as ectoplasm, but was caught away by someone among the congregation. Ectoplasm is substance supposed to be exuded from the body of a spiritualistic medium during a trance. For examples watch some of the old GHOSTBUSTER movies;
(d) to the fact that on one important occasion Duncan was said not to be seated in the chair behind the curtain, but to be standing between the curtain pushing a piece of white cloth down her front to the ground, a cloth which appeared to be a very flimsy substance like “butter muslin”, a thin fine cotton cloth.
WAS IT FOR REAL OR JUST PRETENCE?
It was a long trial towards the end of World War 2. 45 witnesses gave evidence for the defence denying that there were any elements of pretence or deception. The evidence was given in great detail on all the matters alleged by the prosecution to be fraudulent or indeed suspicious. In addition to the witnesses called for the defence who were present at the sittings the defence called no less than 26 witnesses who were not present, but who gave evidence about Mrs Duncan’s performances as a medium over a long period of years, expressing their belief in her genuineness and informing the jury of the mysteries of the spirit world, the nature of ectoplasm, and a variety of matters of that kind.
CONJURING EVIL SPIRITS? OR WILL ANY SPIRITS DO?
In the appeal the convicted Appellants argued that there was no evidence of any acts by the appellants constituted an offence under the Witchcraft Act 1735, and that the judge in the lower court had wrongly concluded that a pretence to hold conversation with spirits of deceased persons constituted an offence under that Act. The argument was that the proper reasoning was that only a pretence to hold conversation with wicked and evil spirits was forbidden by s 4 of the Act of 1735. The conspiracy of which the appellants were found guilty was a conspiracy to contravene the Witchcraft Act 1735, s 4, and the material words in the charge were: ‘To pretend to exercise or use a kind of conjuration to wit that through the agency of the said Helen Duncan spirits of deceased persons should appear to be present in fact in such place as the said Helen Duncan then was in, and that the said spirits were communicating with living persons then and there present.’
THE MEANING OF ‘CONJURATION’ – DOES THE SPIRIT HAVE TO BE EVIL?
To “pretend to exercise or use any kind of... conjuration” were the words of the statute 9 of King George II, and it is important to look at the history of this matter. Statute 33 of King Henry VIII, used the words “conjuration of spirits” with no reference to evil spirits at all. That Act was replaced by the statute 5 of Queen Elizabeth I. This statute spoke of “the wicked offences of conjurations and invocations of evil spirits” which were made felonies by the statute of King Henry, but in fact the words “evil spirits” do not occur in the statute of King Henry VIII at all. That statute merely speaks of the practice of “invocations and conjurations of spirits.”
The next statute dealing with this matter was the statute 1 of King James I, which spoke of the “conjuration of any evil and wicked spirit.” The statute was a characteristic example of the attitude of James I to this practice. Finally, the statute 9 of King George II, speaks of “conjuration” without reference to spirits, or evil and wicked spirits, but simply “any kind of conjuration.”
TRAFFICKING IN ANY SPRITIS AND NOT JUST EVIL SPIRITS
The point submitted by counsel for the convicted Appellants is that the word “conjuration” in the statute of George II has only one meaning, and that meaning has been well defined and crystallised in law. He said it bears the meaning in the language of Cowell’s Interpreter (a publication of 1672) as contained in the following passage: “It is especially used for such as have personal conference with the Devil or Evil Spirits.”
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the word “conjuration” was commonly used with reference to traffic with spirits. In those centuries the minds of men were greatly concerned with the evils which they believed arose from such conference, and as a result of the teaching of the church, based possibly upon passages in the Bible, all such spirits were regarded as, and were apt to be described as, evil spirits. Conjuration of these evil spirits was an offence, it was said, against God and religion and was usually linked with witchcraft, enchantment, invocation and sorcery, the punishment for which, as for heresy, was burning in early times.
“Conjuration” was not a word which was to be taken to mean only “conjuration of evil and wicked spirits.” The Oxford English Dictionary had examples of its use in different ages right down to modern times. Another book known as the Coke’s Institutes associated the word “conjuration” of spirits with the word “invocation” of spirits and seem to suggest that the two words have the same meaning. The learned author quotes the case of King Saul from the First Book of Chronicles in the Bible: “So Saul died for his transgression and also for asking counsel of one that had a familiar spirit to inquire of it and inquired not of the Lord.” A “familiar spirit” does not have to be evil. The Court of Appeal found that the words “any kind of conjuration” in statute 9 of King George II, cannot be limited in its application. The offence described in the statute is the pretence to exercise or use “any kind of conjuration.” Secondly, it appeared plain to the Court of Appeal that with the abolition of the felonies of witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment or conjuration, the minds of men were making an advance (????). According to the Court of Appeal these things were no longer believed in (????) , but the statute of George II did not go the length of allowing anyone to make the pretence of engaging in converse with spirits, not being evil spirits. According to the Court such a distinction would raise an issue of fact incapable of determination and based on no intelligible principle of law or religion. The law part I can understand. The religious part???? What was aimed at, as shown by the language of the statute itself, was that ignorant persons should not be deluded or defrauded by the pretence to exercise or use any kind of conjuration. The reference to “evil spirits” was omitted, and the words “any kind of’ were added, and these words are wide enough to cover the conspiracy alleged, which the Lower Court had found to be proved in this case.
PRETENDING TO CONJURE IS AS BAD AS ACTUALLY CONJURING?
The only matter to be decided by the Court was whether there was a pretence or not. The prosecution did not have to prove that spirits of deceased persons could not be called forth or materialised or embodied in a particular form. Their task was much more limited and prosaic; it was to prove, if they could, that the appellants had been guilty of conspiring to pretend that they could do these things, and, therefore, of conspiring to pretend that they could exercise a kind of conjuration to do these things. The Court of Appeal found the appellants guilty of the conspiracy charged and all of their appeals were dismissed.
SINGAPORE 1986
Adrian Lim was 39 years old. He started regular working life with Rediffusion, a broadcasting company, and worked as a wireman for three years during which he acquired the knowledge required to use (as he later did) electricity for shock treatments. After that job, he became a bill collector in the same company for the next 11 years.. Towards the latter part of his working life as a bill collector he became progressively involved in black magic and occult practices. In 1973 he met a woman charlatan by the name of Susan. Through her Adrian Lim practised as a medium and exploited many dance hostesses and prostitutes for financial gain and sexual pleasures.
On 11 June 1977 Adrian Lim married Miss X. They continued to prey on the gullible with Adrian Lim practising as a medium in the course of which he sold charmed perfumes, amulets, dispensed demadon (Roche 30) capsules or applied electric shocks on their victims purportedly to drive away the devil from the victims. At the same time, Adrian Lim managed to deceive Miss X into accepting the ruse that because of his alleged heart ailment he needed to be rejuvenated by having sex with girls below his age. Miss X even brainwashed her own sister to sleep with him.
Miss Y also sought treatment from Adrian Lim. He feigned a trance and claimed that the spirits wanted her to be his ‘holy’ wife. Eventually, Miss Y succumbed to his trickery and lived with him. At that time, Miss Y was already married to Loh Ngak Hua. To get him out of the way, Adrian Lim managed to win the confidence of Loh Ngak Hua to submit himself to the electric shock treatment as Loh, suffering from headaches, had asked him to cure him. On 7 January 1980 whilst administering the electric shock treatment to both Miss Y and her husband he gave him a fatal voltage and killed him. Adrian Lim told Miss Y that her husband was killed by her stronger spirit which had left her and had entered Loh Ngak Hua.
In September 1980 Miss X came to know a beautician, one Lucy Lau, who sold her cosmetics and gave her facial treatment. Having learnt that Lucy Lau loved her deceased grandmother very much Adrian Lim, aided and abetted by Miss X, managed to deceive her into believing that if she wanted her grandmother’s spirit to reside in her she had to learn to chant some prayers and to sleep with Adrian Lim. On the first occasion, she was given a drink which she was told was ‘holy’ water but which in fact contained some Roche 30 pills. She became drowsy and Adrian Lim seduced her. Thereafter, she was seduced a few more times.
At about 3pm on 24 January 1981 Miss X lured a little girl Agnes Ng Siew Hock from a playground near a church in Toa Payoh Estate to the flat. The little girl was drugged with Roche tablets and was sexually abused by Adrian Lim. All three accused drowned her. Before they drowned her, Agnes Ng’s finger was pierced and all three sipped the blood. At about midnight they put her body in a travelling bag and left the dead body near a lift in a block of flats nearby.
After the killing of Agnes Ng Siew Hock, Adrian Lim instructed Miss Y to abduct a boy. At about 2pm on 6 February 1981 Miss Y lured Ghazali bin Marzuki from the Clementi Housing Estate to the flat where he was drugged, gagged and tied. They drowned him at about 8pm that night and dumped his body at a playfield near his flat at about 1am the following morning. Before killing the boy, Adrian Lim again went through the ritual of drawing blood from the boy by means of a syringe and drank it from a glass. Miss X and Miss Y scooped the blood from the glass and licked the blood.
….TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
I recently watched a documentary on Discovery last Wednesday on witches being tried and burned on a stake in the Middle Ages. This made me recall the famous Mona Fandey case in Malaysia and another case in Tambunan which involved practices of the occult and the accused had caused the death of a woman who participated in a ‘religious ritual’ of some sort . Is it against the law to practice witchcraft and sorcery? Are there any penalties? With witchcraft on the rise worldwide and a revival in self styled practices should our law makers enact laws to prevent such unhealthy practices? Even the well known BEWITCHED TV series and movie starring Nicole Kidman and HARRY PORTER movies and books together with the popular CHARMED and BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER tv serials seems to promote witchcraft albeit in a very subtle, exciting and harmless manner. Has the Devil been ever sued in Court?
ANGEL
LEX BORNEO:
What a spine chilling request. I had to burn the midnight oil into the wee hours of the morning this week to search for cases involving the Devil or his agents in Court.
LONDON 1944
The last known case on witchcraft in England was in 1944. It was known as The Crown vs Duncan, Homer, Jones & Brown. There were 3 judges in the Court of Criminal Appeal. There were 4 lawyers appearing in the appeal, 2 for the Crown and 2 for the Appellants. In the lower court the 4 appellants were found guilty of a conspiracy to contravene the Witchcraft Act 1735 under the charge that they ‘Conspired together and with other persons unknown to pretend to exercise or use a kind of conjuration to wit that through the agency of the said Helen Duncan spirits of deceased persons should appear to be present in fact in such place as the said Helen Duncan then was and that the said spirits were communicating with living persons then and there present.’ The appellants appealed against their conviction.
‘SHINY ECTOPLASM FROM THE MOUTH’
The appellant Duncan was a professional medium, who was engaged at a substantial fee to give a series of seances in a registered church or temple, as it was called, at 30, Connor Road, Portsmouth, maintained by the appellant Homer over a chemist’s shop which he had kept for many years. The appellant Jones, known as Mrs Homer, lived with him and had done so for some 25 years. The appellant Brown assisted Duncan and acted as her booking agent. The evidence for the prosecution was concerned with dates in December 1943, and January 1944 and evidence was given for the prosecution of the happenings on these dates at the church, and of the parts played by the appellants. After certain preliminaries, Duncan dressed in black was seated in a chair behind a curtain in a corner of the room. Homer and Jones sat near the front. The light was dim, being confined to a single red lamp at the back of the room. Duncan produced her spirit guide, who was called Albert, and he would say that he had a message for a person in a particular chair. Then, when the person indicated called out, there would appear in the dim light what was said to be the form of someone who claimed to be a friend or relative of one of those present. In some cases the material form was said to be that of a bird or an animal, such as a parrot or cat.
The prosecution case was that the whole performance was an elaborate pretence, a fraudulent performance, a mere imposition on human credulity. This was sought to be established by evidence of
(a) messages going to the wrong seat owing to a change of occupant taking place by a mistake unknown to any of the appellants;
(b) to messages purporting to come from relatives who had never existed;
(c) to the attempted seizure by a witness of a substance said to be ectoplasm emanating from Duncan, but which felt like cheesecloth, and which did not return to her as ectoplasm, but was caught away by someone among the congregation. Ectoplasm is substance supposed to be exuded from the body of a spiritualistic medium during a trance. For examples watch some of the old GHOSTBUSTER movies;
(d) to the fact that on one important occasion Duncan was said not to be seated in the chair behind the curtain, but to be standing between the curtain pushing a piece of white cloth down her front to the ground, a cloth which appeared to be a very flimsy substance like “butter muslin”, a thin fine cotton cloth.
WAS IT FOR REAL OR JUST PRETENCE?
It was a long trial towards the end of World War 2. 45 witnesses gave evidence for the defence denying that there were any elements of pretence or deception. The evidence was given in great detail on all the matters alleged by the prosecution to be fraudulent or indeed suspicious. In addition to the witnesses called for the defence who were present at the sittings the defence called no less than 26 witnesses who were not present, but who gave evidence about Mrs Duncan’s performances as a medium over a long period of years, expressing their belief in her genuineness and informing the jury of the mysteries of the spirit world, the nature of ectoplasm, and a variety of matters of that kind.
CONJURING EVIL SPIRITS? OR WILL ANY SPIRITS DO?
In the appeal the convicted Appellants argued that there was no evidence of any acts by the appellants constituted an offence under the Witchcraft Act 1735, and that the judge in the lower court had wrongly concluded that a pretence to hold conversation with spirits of deceased persons constituted an offence under that Act. The argument was that the proper reasoning was that only a pretence to hold conversation with wicked and evil spirits was forbidden by s 4 of the Act of 1735. The conspiracy of which the appellants were found guilty was a conspiracy to contravene the Witchcraft Act 1735, s 4, and the material words in the charge were: ‘To pretend to exercise or use a kind of conjuration to wit that through the agency of the said Helen Duncan spirits of deceased persons should appear to be present in fact in such place as the said Helen Duncan then was in, and that the said spirits were communicating with living persons then and there present.’
THE MEANING OF ‘CONJURATION’ – DOES THE SPIRIT HAVE TO BE EVIL?
To “pretend to exercise or use any kind of... conjuration” were the words of the statute 9 of King George II, and it is important to look at the history of this matter. Statute 33 of King Henry VIII, used the words “conjuration of spirits” with no reference to evil spirits at all. That Act was replaced by the statute 5 of Queen Elizabeth I. This statute spoke of “the wicked offences of conjurations and invocations of evil spirits” which were made felonies by the statute of King Henry, but in fact the words “evil spirits” do not occur in the statute of King Henry VIII at all. That statute merely speaks of the practice of “invocations and conjurations of spirits.”
The next statute dealing with this matter was the statute 1 of King James I, which spoke of the “conjuration of any evil and wicked spirit.” The statute was a characteristic example of the attitude of James I to this practice. Finally, the statute 9 of King George II, speaks of “conjuration” without reference to spirits, or evil and wicked spirits, but simply “any kind of conjuration.”
TRAFFICKING IN ANY SPRITIS AND NOT JUST EVIL SPIRITS
The point submitted by counsel for the convicted Appellants is that the word “conjuration” in the statute of George II has only one meaning, and that meaning has been well defined and crystallised in law. He said it bears the meaning in the language of Cowell’s Interpreter (a publication of 1672) as contained in the following passage: “It is especially used for such as have personal conference with the Devil or Evil Spirits.”
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the word “conjuration” was commonly used with reference to traffic with spirits. In those centuries the minds of men were greatly concerned with the evils which they believed arose from such conference, and as a result of the teaching of the church, based possibly upon passages in the Bible, all such spirits were regarded as, and were apt to be described as, evil spirits. Conjuration of these evil spirits was an offence, it was said, against God and religion and was usually linked with witchcraft, enchantment, invocation and sorcery, the punishment for which, as for heresy, was burning in early times.
“Conjuration” was not a word which was to be taken to mean only “conjuration of evil and wicked spirits.” The Oxford English Dictionary had examples of its use in different ages right down to modern times. Another book known as the Coke’s Institutes associated the word “conjuration” of spirits with the word “invocation” of spirits and seem to suggest that the two words have the same meaning. The learned author quotes the case of King Saul from the First Book of Chronicles in the Bible: “So Saul died for his transgression and also for asking counsel of one that had a familiar spirit to inquire of it and inquired not of the Lord.” A “familiar spirit” does not have to be evil. The Court of Appeal found that the words “any kind of conjuration” in statute 9 of King George II, cannot be limited in its application. The offence described in the statute is the pretence to exercise or use “any kind of conjuration.” Secondly, it appeared plain to the Court of Appeal that with the abolition of the felonies of witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment or conjuration, the minds of men were making an advance (????). According to the Court of Appeal these things were no longer believed in (????) , but the statute of George II did not go the length of allowing anyone to make the pretence of engaging in converse with spirits, not being evil spirits. According to the Court such a distinction would raise an issue of fact incapable of determination and based on no intelligible principle of law or religion. The law part I can understand. The religious part???? What was aimed at, as shown by the language of the statute itself, was that ignorant persons should not be deluded or defrauded by the pretence to exercise or use any kind of conjuration. The reference to “evil spirits” was omitted, and the words “any kind of’ were added, and these words are wide enough to cover the conspiracy alleged, which the Lower Court had found to be proved in this case.
PRETENDING TO CONJURE IS AS BAD AS ACTUALLY CONJURING?
The only matter to be decided by the Court was whether there was a pretence or not. The prosecution did not have to prove that spirits of deceased persons could not be called forth or materialised or embodied in a particular form. Their task was much more limited and prosaic; it was to prove, if they could, that the appellants had been guilty of conspiring to pretend that they could do these things, and, therefore, of conspiring to pretend that they could exercise a kind of conjuration to do these things. The Court of Appeal found the appellants guilty of the conspiracy charged and all of their appeals were dismissed.
SINGAPORE 1986
Adrian Lim was 39 years old. He started regular working life with Rediffusion, a broadcasting company, and worked as a wireman for three years during which he acquired the knowledge required to use (as he later did) electricity for shock treatments. After that job, he became a bill collector in the same company for the next 11 years.. Towards the latter part of his working life as a bill collector he became progressively involved in black magic and occult practices. In 1973 he met a woman charlatan by the name of Susan. Through her Adrian Lim practised as a medium and exploited many dance hostesses and prostitutes for financial gain and sexual pleasures.
On 11 June 1977 Adrian Lim married Miss X. They continued to prey on the gullible with Adrian Lim practising as a medium in the course of which he sold charmed perfumes, amulets, dispensed demadon (Roche 30) capsules or applied electric shocks on their victims purportedly to drive away the devil from the victims. At the same time, Adrian Lim managed to deceive Miss X into accepting the ruse that because of his alleged heart ailment he needed to be rejuvenated by having sex with girls below his age. Miss X even brainwashed her own sister to sleep with him.
Miss Y also sought treatment from Adrian Lim. He feigned a trance and claimed that the spirits wanted her to be his ‘holy’ wife. Eventually, Miss Y succumbed to his trickery and lived with him. At that time, Miss Y was already married to Loh Ngak Hua. To get him out of the way, Adrian Lim managed to win the confidence of Loh Ngak Hua to submit himself to the electric shock treatment as Loh, suffering from headaches, had asked him to cure him. On 7 January 1980 whilst administering the electric shock treatment to both Miss Y and her husband he gave him a fatal voltage and killed him. Adrian Lim told Miss Y that her husband was killed by her stronger spirit which had left her and had entered Loh Ngak Hua.
In September 1980 Miss X came to know a beautician, one Lucy Lau, who sold her cosmetics and gave her facial treatment. Having learnt that Lucy Lau loved her deceased grandmother very much Adrian Lim, aided and abetted by Miss X, managed to deceive her into believing that if she wanted her grandmother’s spirit to reside in her she had to learn to chant some prayers and to sleep with Adrian Lim. On the first occasion, she was given a drink which she was told was ‘holy’ water but which in fact contained some Roche 30 pills. She became drowsy and Adrian Lim seduced her. Thereafter, she was seduced a few more times.
At about 3pm on 24 January 1981 Miss X lured a little girl Agnes Ng Siew Hock from a playground near a church in Toa Payoh Estate to the flat. The little girl was drugged with Roche tablets and was sexually abused by Adrian Lim. All three accused drowned her. Before they drowned her, Agnes Ng’s finger was pierced and all three sipped the blood. At about midnight they put her body in a travelling bag and left the dead body near a lift in a block of flats nearby.
After the killing of Agnes Ng Siew Hock, Adrian Lim instructed Miss Y to abduct a boy. At about 2pm on 6 February 1981 Miss Y lured Ghazali bin Marzuki from the Clementi Housing Estate to the flat where he was drugged, gagged and tied. They drowned him at about 8pm that night and dumped his body at a playfield near his flat at about 1am the following morning. Before killing the boy, Adrian Lim again went through the ritual of drawing blood from the boy by means of a syringe and drank it from a glass. Miss X and Miss Y scooped the blood from the glass and licked the blood.
….TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
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