Not all witch-hunts required witches | Letters

Mike Hine responds to a television review of Witches of Essex and draws readers’ attention to the Tolpuddle martyrsMaking the point that women have always been especially vulnerable to popular prejudice and state victimisation, Lucy Mangan writes “there have never been … mass trials of … impoverished men who can be accused of supernatural crimes and put to death without evidence” (Witches of Essex review, 14 October).Well, maybe not. But much more recently than the witchcraft trials, six agricultural labourers from Tolpuddle, who came together in 1833 to form a society to fight for better wages, were prosecuted on the evidence of two informers who had witnessed the men swearing a solemn oath of mutual solidarity to the Friendly Association of Agricultural Labourers while standing blindfolded before a crude representation of a skeleton. Continue reading...

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