{"id":793,"date":"2007-01-17T18:54:00","date_gmt":"2007-01-17T18:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=793"},"modified":"2007-01-17T18:54:00","modified_gmt":"2007-01-17T18:54:00","slug":"helen-duncans-family-tries-again-for-a-pardon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=793","title":{"rendered":"Helen Duncan’s Family Tries Again for a Pardon"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Helen<\/a>
Mary Martin was 11 years old when her father taught her to box. She would come home from school scratched and bruised, her ears ringing with abuse from the playground. Mary Martin had the unhappy distinction of being the granddaughter of Britain’s last convicted witch.<\/em><\/p>\n

Descendants of Helen Duncan<\/a>, the “last convicted witch,” are trying again for an official pardon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It was the Spiritualists who worked hardest to get the old Witchcraft Act repealed, but the Wiccans who took advantage of the change.<\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/em> article, in my opinion, is incorrect in this statement:<\/p>\n

Gerald Brousseau Gardner founded the modern Wicca movement in the 1940s, 11 years before the repeal of Britain’s witchcraft laws. Followers revere nature, worship a goddess and practice ritual magic. In the 2001 census, 7,000 people listed Wicca as their religion.<\/em><\/p>\n

On the contrary, during the 1940s Gardner was still checking out various esoteric groups and collecting initiations, which gives the lie to his statement about being initiated in 1939 at Dorothy Clutterbuck’s house and thus finding the spiritual path that he had always been seeking.<\/p>\n

It is much more likely that he and his associates were able to create Wicca in the early 1950s, after it was no longer illegal to call yourself a witch and after he and Cecil Williamson<\/a> had founded their witchcraft museum on the Isle of Man<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Boscastle Witch Museum<\/a> is its successor. And it has a blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

My earlier post on Helen Duncan is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mary Martin was 11 years old when her father taught her to box. She would come home from school scratched and bruised, her ears ringing with abuse from the playground. Mary Martin had the unhappy distinction of being the granddaughter of Britain’s last convicted witch. Descendants of Helen Duncan, the “last convicted witch,” are trying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,6],"class_list":["post-793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-england","tag-wicca"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-cN","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":375,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=375","url_meta":{"origin":793,"position":0},"title":"Helen Duncan, accidental godmother of Wicca","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 5, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"A movement is underway in Britain to clear the name of Helen Duncan, a Scottish Spiritualist medium sent to prison during World War II under the Witchcraft Act of 1735.She was convicted of faking mediumistic abilities, but as this reviewer says, some people thought she was a true medium at\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":342,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=342","url_meta":{"origin":793,"position":1},"title":"Joe's World More seasonal thoughts:\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 26, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Joe's World More seasonal thoughts: Consider the Holy Family as the prototype of the typical television sitcom where everybody is smarter than dumb ol' Dad. Let's call the show Joe's World Joe is this hardworking contractor. He drives a pickup truck with tool boxes and a ladder rack. He stops\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11638,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11638","url_meta":{"origin":793,"position":2},"title":"Paganism, Art, And Fashion: “Feminist Interpretation of Witches”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 5, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"In her artlcle for The Pomegranate, Katy Deepwell, editor of the feminist art journal n.paradoxa, discusses \"Feminist Interpretations of Witches and the Witch Craze in Contemporary Art by Women.\" (Free download at this time \u2014 and the illustrations are in color where possible.) In her abstract, she writes, This article\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"art\"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/sheela-na-gig.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":995,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=995","url_meta":{"origin":793,"position":3},"title":"Gallimaufry with Beheaded Statues","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 12, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 When monotheists turn violent (which is often): Mormon missionaries vandalize Catholic shrine in southern Colorado. Mormon higher-ups ask forgiveness of Blessed Mother. That was a joke. Actually, they apologized to the San Luis, Colo., town board: one quasi-theocracy to another. They also want to build a huge church in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12603,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12603","url_meta":{"origin":793,"position":4},"title":"Interview with Helen Berger, Leading Scholar of Paganism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 19, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"At his blog, now called On New and Alternative Religions, Ethan Doyle While interviews Helen Berger, one of the leading American scholars of contemporary Paganism. Since completing her PhD research on the early modern witch trials in the 1980s, Berger has devoted her career to the sociological analysis of modern-day\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/helen-berger.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10799,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10799","url_meta":{"origin":793,"position":5},"title":"A New Study of Solitary Pagans","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 19, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Solitary Pagans: Contemporary Witches, Wiccans, and Others Who Practice Alone is a new study from Helen A. Berger, a sociologist of religion who has been studying contemporary Paganism for decades. Her body of work is large enough now that future scholars will be returning to it again and again for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/solitary-pagans.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}