The Paisley Witch Trials

Introduction

The Paisley witches, or better known as the Bargarran or Renfrewshire witches, were tried in Paisley, Renfrewshire, central Scotland in 1697, after eleven-year-old Christian Shaw, daughter of Laird of Bargarran, accused local witches of tormenting her.  One of the accused was a family servant, Catherine Campbell, when she told her mother after witnessing Catherine steal a drink of milk.

Seven people—Margaret Lang, John Lindsay, James Lindsay, John Reid, Catherine Campbel, Margaret Fulton, and Agnes Naismith—were found guilty of bewitching Shaw and condemned to death.  One of the accused committed suicide by hanging and Naismith possibly died while being imprisoned.  The other five were burned on Gallow Green in Paisley on June 10, 1697, the last mass execution for witchcraft in western Europe.

Agnes Naismith cursed everyone who was at her trial and their descendants, and every tragedy in Paisley that happened after was blamed on Naismith’s curse.  Christian Shaw grew up to become a successful businesswoman and thread manufacturer.

Events

On August 17, 1696, 11-year-old Christian Shaw, the daughter of local landowner, John Shaw of Bargarron, witnessed her family’s servant, Catherine Campbell, steal a drink of milk.  Campbell cursed Christian, and wished that the Devil would “haul her soul through Hell.”  Four days later Shaw ran into Agnes Naismith, who was reputed of being a witch.  On August 22, Shaw was found to be violent ill with fits that were similar to symptoms reported a few years earlier in the American Salem witch trials of 1693.  After eight weeks of these fits, Shaw’s parents took her to see Glasgow physician Matthew Brisbane, who didn’t see no cause for her symptoms.  Shaw seemed to recover from these fits after eight days, but they suddenly came back with heightened violence, making Shaw stiff as a corpse and be senseless and motionless.

Taking her back to Brisbane in Glasgow, Shaw pulled balls of hair from her mouth, accusing the seven people of afflicting her.  Shaw pulled other “trash” from her mouth—straw, coal, gravel, chicken feathers, and cinders.  During Shaw’s fits, she could be heard talking to an invisible Catherine Campbell, begging for forgiveness of their friendship.

When Dr. Brisbane could not come up with a rational explanation for Shaw’s condition, Shaw’s family and local parish minister concluded that Shaw must be possessed and tormented by witches—a common occurrence in England and Scotland, and the central element in the Salem witch trials that took place a few years earlier.  After setting up a weekly fast and prayer meeting at Bargarron House, Shaw’s father asked the authorities that those named by his daughter of tormenting her be arrested.  Initially name Catherine Campbell and Agnes Naismith, Shaw implicated 35 others of bewitching her.  Ten were male, twenty female, genders and identities of the remaining five unknown.

Investigation and Trial

The Presbytery of Paisley, the Scottish Privy Council, set up a commission to investigate.  Under Lord Blantyre’s chairmanship, the hearing began on February 5, 1697.  The commission’s task was to decide whether there was prima facie against those accused by Shaw before they could be committed to trial.

There were seven summoned to appear before a second commission in Paisley—Margaret Lang, John Lindsay, James Lindsay, John Reid, Catherine Campbell, Margaret Fulton and Agnes Naismith.  They were charged with murder and tormenting many people, including Shaw.  James Robertson, the prosecution, argued that the events surrounding the case could be explained by natural causes before a conviction could be secured.  Matthew Brisbane testified that he could not find any such cause for Shaw’s condition.  James Hutchinson, minister of Kilallan, 5 miles north of Paisley, delivered the sermon to the commission, a commonplace practice for a clergy member to preach in Scottish witch trials. But they were not infrequently instrumental for securing convictions.  Hutchison proved the presence of witches’ marks on the bodies of the accused casting doubt by some physicians, “And however doctors may say such things of a witches’ mark, we know not upon what ground,.  It may be that they have been budded and bribed to say such thing.”

Confronted by the prosecutor’s threat that they “would be accessory to blasphemies, apostacies, murders, tortures, and seductions, etc., whereof those enemies of heaven and earth shall hereafter be guilty when they get out,” the jury found all seven guilty.

Executions

One of the convicted, James Reid, committed suicide by hanging himself in his prison cell, using his handkerchief attached to a nail in the wall.  The other six were hanged and burned on the Gallow Green in Paisley on June 10, 1697, the last mass execution for witchcraft in western Europe.  Brothers, John and James Lindsay, from Formakin Mill, near Houston, aged 11 and 14, respectively, held hands as they were hanged together.  Catherine Campbell struggled as she was carried to the gallows, screaming “called down the wrath of God and the Devil on her accusers before being despatched.  Margaret Fulton, appearing to be insane, “spoke cheerfully about visits to Elfland and the Abode of the Fairies on the backs of magical horses.”  Margaret Lang, admitting to consorting with the Devil, said that she renounced sin and was reconciled with God.  Agnes Naismith made a “dying woman’s curse” on everyone present and their descendants—and for many years every tragedy that happened in Paisley was blamed on “the witches’ curse.”

An account of the executions says that some of those burned were still alive when the bodies were burned, and the executioner borrowed a walking cane from a witness to push the victims’ moving limbs back into the fire.  The owner of the cane, Mark Canavan, refused to take the cane after being in contact with the witches.

Modern Interpretation

The anxiety induced in Christian Shaw by Catherine Campbell’s curse may have been brought on by a conversion disorder in the girl referring to a term called hysteria.  This idea comes from Sigmund Freud’s idea that anxiety can converted into physical symptoms like seizures that Shaw displayed.

Michael Wasser suggests that witch trials occurred during times of crisis like that experiencing in Scotland in the late 1690’s.  The Glorious Revolution of 1688, despite restoring the “Presbyterian polity of the kirk,” left many “disappointed at the low moral tone and lack of religious enthusiasm of their compatriots.”  The Glencoe Massacre of 1692 “eroded the moral legitimacy of the government,” and the series of harvest failures from 1695 and after into a period of famine.  The threat of the French Invasion also occurred during the “Bargarron witches trial, as taxes and troops levied in the west to repel expected invaders.

In 1839, a small hole was found in Shaw’s bedroom at Bargarron House that became a local attraction through which an accomplice supposedly helped passed the items Shaw removed from her mouth.

Aftermath

After the 1697 trial, former Scottish Secretary of State James Johnstone asked parliaments of France and other judicatories who were persuaded others of being witches never try them due to Paisley experience because it’s impossible to distinguish from possession and natural disorder.

Shaw married Rev. John Millar, the parish minister of Kilmaurs, Ayrshire, in 1719.  He died two years later.  After her husband’s death, Shaw became a successful businesswoman in the manufacture of thread, small at first, but soon recognized on an large scale.  Her Bargarran trademark was a mark of quality with many emulating her techniques, which began an industy in Paisley that allowed Paisley to dominate and shape the town’s history.  Shaw later married prosperous businessman, William Livingstone in February 1737.

A memorial was built in May 2008 at Maxwellton Cross in Paisley marking the witches’ charred remains buried there.  It replaced the original horseshoe that marked the spot and it replacement later, the bronze tondo, with a stainless steel horseshoe embedded in it.  It includes the inscription, “Pain Inflicted, Suffering Endured, Injustice Done.”  This launched a campaign in 2008 petitioning the 

Scottish Parliament to pardon all 4000 men, women and children prosecuted under 16^th- and 17^th-century witchcraft laws.  Legislators argued that it was inappropriate to pardon those tried and convicted under laws of their time.