Witch Hunting Tools and Techniques

When I think of Matthew Hopkins, self-styled “Witchfinder General,” I think about episodes in human history where we really went wrong. This image is from Hopkins’ 1647 book, _The Discovery of Witches_, and shows him overseeing the confessions of women naming their demonic familiars. Under Matthew Hopkins’ short career of three years, about 300 women were executed for the “crimen exceptum” of witchcraft. Because these people were thought to have consciously chosen to make a pact with the devil, the usual legal procedures were overridden.

Matthew and his posse – which included cooperative women – went round parts of England to extract confessions from alleged witches, using methods espoused by King James I in his book _Daemonologie_. Techniques included “pricking” the accused to find a “devil’s mark:” a place on the skin immune to pain, that did not bleed. Often these spots were merely moles, but sometimes the Prickers thought the devil had made the marks invisible. You can see in the second image a drawing of Prickers. The first two had retractable blades, meaning that the inquisitors could cheat and pretend the women were immune to bleeding, whereas the third instrument has a bend in the blade to prevent this.

An infamous technique used to make women confess their crime was tying them to chairs, throwing them into water, and seeing if they “swam,” or floated. The reasoning used was that witches obviously would have renounced their Christian baptism in water, so water should repel them.

Matthew Hopkins’ zeal and beliefs made their way to the New England colonies of North America, resulting in such occasions as the Salem Witchcraft Trials.

Faulty reasoning, scapegoating vulnerable populations, and the abuse of authority in religious affairs have a long tradition in human history, as the story of Matthew Hopkins demonstrates.