Witchcraft trial procedure and evidence in Scotland

Figure 1. Suspected witches from North Berwick appear before James VI and two Scottish magistrates, from the English pamphlet Newes from Scotland (1591) (Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Accused witches were tried in criminal courts. In the courtroom on the day of the trial, there was a judge who presided over the proceedings and made rulings on the law, a jury (fifteen property owning members of the local community) who decided on a verdict of innocent or guilty, and a clerk to keep records. There would also be a prosecutor to present the accusations. The accused person would be able to speak in their own defence. If the trial was held in the central Edinburgh court of justiciary, the court would also assign a defence lawyer to the person. If the jury convicted the accused person, the judge would pass sentence. In a witchcraft case the sentence was usually death by strangulation followed by burning. Convictions were common but not universal; some people were acquitted.

Gathering Evidence

Evidence against the accused person had to be gathered beforehand. This was often done by local church courts - kirk sessions or presbyteries. These bodies were not criminal courts, but they could summon people and interrogate them. Two main kinds of evidence were used against witchcraft suspects: neighbours' testimony, and the suspect's own confession. If the suspect was thought to have bewitched her or his neighbours, these neighbours could make statements about this, telling stories about quarrels and bewitchments that had followed. Or, if the suspect was thought to have made a pact with the Devil, the suspect herself or himself could be interrogated about this. Interrogations were often done coercively; usually little was written down about this, but the most common form of torture seems to have been sleep deprivation. This was used due to its effectiveness and was usually conducted by local authorities. Confession evidence tended to have much more about the suspect's dealings with the Devil. Confessions could also implicate other suspects, if a suspect was asked something like 'Who else was present when you met the Devil?'.

Figure 2. The Old Tolbooth, Edinburgh. An engraving based on an 18th century painting by Alexander Naysmith.Accused witches in Edinburgh would be taken there to be interrogated. (Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

A third kind of evidence was sometimes used: 'pricking' to discover the Devil's mark. The accused witch was stripped partially or completely naked, and their body was pricked with a pin to find an insensitive spot where the pin could be inserted. The idea was that the Devil placed an invisible mark on the witch's body at the time when they agreed to become a witch, in an echo or parody of Christian baptism; the pin would find this mark.

Witch Pricking

It is important to distinguish witch-pricking from 'torture'. Torture inflicted pain in order to make the suspect confess; the aim was to obtain a confession as evidence. This was not a punishment, but an attempt to secure evidence. Witch-pricking aimed to inflict no pain; the aim was to identify the Devil's mark as evidence. However, in practice the process probably did cause at least some pain. It was also coercive and humiliating for a person, especially a woman, to be stripped naked in the presence of a group of men. One side-effect of pricking could be to break down a suspect's resistance to interrogation; some suspects began to confess after they were told that a mark had been found

Figure 3. The Heart of Midlothian is a mosaic located outside St Giles' Cathedral in Edinburgh. It marks the location of the entrance to Edinburgh's Old Tolbooth which was demolished in 1817. Locals will often spit upon the heart as a sign of good luck. However, it was originally believed to be done as a sign of disdain for the executions which took place within the Old Tolbooth. (Kim Trayner, CC BY-SA 3.0)

Witch-prickers were all men; sometimes an ordinary interrogator (such as a parish elder or minister) would do the pricking, but during the major panics a handful of professional 'prickers' claimed special expertise in the technique, and travelled round pricking numerous suspects in return for modest fees. Most prickers seem to have believed in the genuineness of their own powers, though there was a notorious fraudulent episode in Peebles in 1649-50 in which the pricker George Cathie colluded with the accused witch Janet Coutts to get her to name other suspects whom he would then prick. Several dozen executions occurred before the fraud was detected. Another pricker, 'Mr Paterson', turned out to be a woman in disguise, named Christian Cadell

Swimming Test

It should be noted that Scottish courts hardly ever used the 'swimming test' or 'water ordeal' in which suspects were dropped in water; this was recorded in Scotland only in 1597. The swimming test was used from time to time in some other European countries, though it was never normal. (Today there is a belief that innocent suspects sank and were drowned; this is a myth. Nobody drowned; suspects had a rope tied to them and were pulled out.)

Decline of Interrogation Techniques

The use of these techniques in interrogations declined in Scotland towards the end of the 17th century. This is due to a growth in judicial scepticism, particularly surrounding the use of torture. Thus, the use of torture in interrogations of accused witches declined from the 1660s; yet we know that it still used in a couple of cases until 1708.