Most people have heard of the Salem witch trials. Far fewer realise that one of England’s largest witch trials ended in a mass execution here in the North East, while fear and accusations of witchcraft also reached communities around the Derwent Valley.
On 21 August 1650, a crowd gathered on Newcastle’s Town Moor to witness one of the darkest events in the region’s history.
A group of people convicted of witchcraft, nearly all of them women, were publicly executed by hanging. The precise number remains uncertain because the surviving historical records do not entirely agree. Ralph Gardiner’s contemporary account names 15 victims, while a separate document preserved in the Durham archives appears to add Jane or Janet Martin, bringing the possible total to 16, consisting of 15 women and one man.
Whatever the final number, this was one of the largest mass executions for witchcraft recorded in England.
A Region Living Through Fear
Newcastle in the middle of the 17th century was a troubled place. The population had endured outbreaks of plague, the disruption of the English Civil War, religious division, poverty and political upheaval.
In times when illness, the death of livestock or the failure of a harvest could not easily be explained, suspicion often fell upon an unpopular neighbour or somebody considered different.
The law also encouraged this climate of fear. Parliament had made certain forms of witchcraft punishable by death, with further legislation introduced during the reign of James I in 1604. Accusations that might once have remained village gossip could therefore become matters for the criminal courts.
In 1649, Newcastle’s authorities sent for a professional witch-pricker from Scotland. He is left unnamed in several older accounts, although more recent historical research identifies him as John Kincaid.
A town crier walked through Newcastle calling upon residents to report women they believed to be witches. Around 30 people were subsequently accused and imprisoned.
The witch-pricker was reportedly promised 20 shillings for every person he identified as a witch. This meant that the man responsible for testing the accused had a direct financial interest in finding them guilty.
Tried by the Pricking of a Pin
The accused were searched for moles, blemishes and other natural marks that could be declared a so-called witch’s mark.
They were stripped and pierced with a bodkin or large pin. It was claimed that a mark which did not bleed or cause pain proved that the person had entered into an agreement with the Devil.
Gardiner’s account records one occasion when Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Hobson challenged the witch-pricker’s finding. A woman who had apparently failed to bleed was tested again in the same place. This time, blood appeared and she was cleared.
The incident exposed how unreliable and open to manipulation the entire process was. Later accounts have suggested that retractable pins may have been used to create the appearance that the skin had been pierced when it had not.
Those accused were held in appalling prison conditions. Many were confined in Newcastle’s Newgate prison, while Jane Martin, who came from Northumberland, is believed to have been held at Newcastle Castle.
They faced a system in which ordinary marks on the body, local disagreements and unsupported allegations could be presented as evidence of a crime punishable by death.
The Women Who Tried to Save Them
This story was not only one of persecution. It was also one of resistance.
A woman named Elinor Loumsdale organised practical help for the prisoners and led a remarkable campaign by local women to secure their release. They petitioned officials, distributed material and confronted some of Newcastle’s most powerful men.
Their efforts appear to have helped some of those convicted escape execution. Elinor was eventually threatened with a witchcraft accusation herself and forced to leave Newcastle.
Her courage deserves to be remembered alongside the people she tried to save.
The Connection to County Durham
Consett had not yet developed into the town we know today, but the villages, farms and communities of the surrounding Derwent countryside were already well established.
The fear of witchcraft was not confined to Newcastle.
Records connected with Edmundbyers tell of the Derwent witches trial, held at the Newcastle Assizes on 3 April 1673. Ann Armstrong of Edmundbyers was accused of attending a meeting of witches and named several other local people. Among the extraordinary allegations was a claim that a woman had transformed herself into a swallow and caused the death of a neighbour’s horse.
At St Edmund’s Church in Edmundbyers, a memorial stone remembers Elizabeth Lee, who died in 1792 and became known in local tradition as the last witch of the village.
The word “reputedly” is important. Local folklore is not evidence that Elizabeth possessed supernatural powers, nor does it necessarily mean that she was formally convicted. It shows how accusations and reputations could follow people long after the major witch trials had ended.
These stories give the subject a genuine connection to Consett and the wider Derwent area. They show that the atmosphere of suspicion extended from the streets of Newcastle into the rural communities of County Durham and Northumberland.
Remembering the Victims
In 2025, historians, writers and campaigners marked the 375th anniversary of the Town Moor executions. Discussions at Newcastle’s Lit & Phil considered how the victims from Tyneside, Northumberland and Durham should be remembered.
Those involved have been working towards the creation of a permanent memorial to the people who were persecuted and killed.
Such a memorial would not celebrate witchcraft. It would recognise the human beings who suffered because fear, prejudice and financial self-interest were permitted to take the place of evidence and justice.
The people executed on the Town Moor were not frightening figures from a ghost story. They were real people with names, families and communities. Their treatment reminds us how easily vulnerable or unpopular individuals can become targets when rumours are accepted as truth.
Their story belongs not only to Newcastle, but to the whole North East.
More than 375 years later, remembering them is one small way of restoring the humanity that was taken from them.
