Malcolm Gaskill

A very good very short introduction. It hits the sweet spot of challenging the myths and preconceived notions of what witchcraft is in popular culture, hitting the historical reality, as well as discussing scholarly perspectives that have shifted through the years. It takes a generally skeptical look at the prevalence of witch trials (highest numbers were based on a singular fraudulent source), as well as the way witches has been used as a vehicle for trends in academia from feminist theory show more to the generalization of anthropological research in Africa to be applied backwards in time across cultural contexts to fit a European context.
There's really not room to formulate a definitive definition of witchcraft in response to these trends, beyond a sweeping 'bit of everything' view, but that's fine and often the case in VSI. show less

I do have some mixed feelings about this book. The author remarks that Sir Gerald Dodson, the judge who presided over the Old Bailey trial of Helen Duncan, could not hide his boredom when the defence brought a string of witnesses to describe Helen's achievements as a medium. And frankly, after some 400 pages, it is hard not to sympathise with Sir Gerald. Helen Duncan's life was a bit humdrum. She lived her life in the grey corners of society, a Scottish women of working class background. show more Someone who the more fortunate Britons looked down on, as uneducated, coarse, unattractive, unhealthy. Malcolm Gaskill's determined pursuit of detail reveals a rather dreary story.

Primarily, Helen Duncan was exposed to the glare of publicity because the prosecution at her 1944 trial chose to invoke the 1735 Witchcraft Act to condemn her for her activities as a "medium". That wasn't quite as eccentric as it sounds, as this act made it specifically illegal to pretend to conjure up the spirits of the dead, and that is exactly what Helen Duncan was doing. But it certainly made a poor impression on the public -- and on parts of the legal profession, as lawyers were aware that this 1735 Act left her with no options to defend herself. This crucial element aside, she was not a very interesting individual case, a small-time fraudster whose earnings gave her family a modestly comfortable life. The tricks she used during her seances were often crude. Gaskill fills pages and pages with speculation about them, incidentally, but with very little specific evidence to go on, and that is annoying.

What makes the book interesting is Gaskill's exploration of the role of spiritualism, mediums and seances in the 1940s. It was amazingly widespread and accepted. The armed services even accepted spiritualism as a religion: There were not that many adherents, but most were officers. Incidentally, I wish Gaskill had explored that a bit more, because one can only wonder about the consequences -- were seances held in the hold of His Majesty's Ships? On the other hand, I regret the meandering length of Gaskill's speculations in amateur psychology to explain the firm belief that many sitters at seances had in the things they thought to have seen, a belief that was often maintained in the full knowledge that fraud was commonplace. In this, Gaskill probably underestimates the importance of self-selection: The people who attended seances regularly were willing and eager to believe. The organisers of the seances tried to select their audience. Most skeptics regretted their wasted shillings, and did not come back.

It is nevertheless astonishing to find among the sitters both the Air Vice Marshalls Sir Hugh Dowding, leader of the Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain, and his nemesis and successor Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory. Leigh-Mallory has been dismissed as a pompous ass by many contemporaries and historians, but "Stuffy" Dowding was not one to suffer fools gladly or quietly, and he was very much a scientifically oriented officer. (His retirement after the Battle of Britain, incidentally, was simply because of his age. It had already been postponed.) Frankly, that an officer should publish a book filled with messages-from-the-other side from men who have died under his command, is only too easy to associate with mental illness, and dismiss. But remember that every Christmas, priests (probably knowingly) read to their congregation a biblical story that is riddled with historical implausibilities and errors in chronology, and the congregation is generally willing to overlook such things in search of a higher truth. So we shouldn't critique the spiritualists too hard for their willingness to overlook regurgitated "ectoplasm" and the occasional ghost in white sheet. Gaskill reminds us that in wartime, many were grieving and desperately seeking for answers.

In his conclusion, Gaskill's defends the somewhat equivocating tone of his book as necessary to convey the spirit of the times, despite his own personal disbelief. That's not unreasonable, as you certainly cannot pretend to understand people if you just laugh at them. But at times, it causes him to indulge in unnecessary obfuscation, which grates a bit. show less

A great deal of scholarship as a result not the most thrilling read. However it does a good job of describing some of the misery of life for the extremely poor in rural England around the time of the English civil war. The epilogue notes that there are still witch hunts in parts of India and various African and ends as follows:

All of which prompts the question: How different are we from our 17th century ancestors? A question that becomes more taxing if 17th century ancestors is replaced show more with "fellow human beings in Africe and India". The truth that many find unpalatable is that in ideas, instincts and emotions we are not very different at all. Without peace and prosperity, liberty and welfare and the political and economic atability that those things depend on the thinking of the next generation in the West might swerve off in an altogether more mystical and malevolent direction. The bloodletting in the developing World is too startlingly similar to that which occurred in England during the civil war for this not to be so. Then, as now, witch-hunts involved not just savage persecutors tormenting innocent scapegoats, but ordinary neighbours with a close affinity to one another who also happened to believe in witchcraft powerfully enough to act out their most violent fantasies. This was as true of people who believed themselves to
witches as it was of those who pointed the finger. As a consequence the seventeenth-century tragedy of the witchfinders is only partialy that of Matthew Hopkins, the flawed protagonist, and of the harrowing deaths of his victims. It is at least as much a tale about feeling anxious and vulnerable in an indifferent world - a sensation of
humanity?
I am rather more hopeful than the author was here since the author notes than within a generation Hopkins was being mocked and while fear of witches continued trials and executions disappeared almost entirely. show less

One of the best books on witch trials. Unlike most, which tend to resemble general surveys, this book offers a detailed analysis of one small town and certain of its inhabitants. As such, it gives the reader a finer insight into the real-world experiences of witch allegations. The work is presented objectively and makes clear that most claims of witchcraft were not sanctioned by the court system.

While enjoyable, there were times when the book read a bit more slowly than I would have show more preferred. Still, a worthwhile read. show less