The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-01-03

many hours; but as the COW continued as dry |
as ever they returned to the house. Finding
doors and windows closed, and observing a
strange silence everywhere, they forced an
entrance, and saw within the house the tailor's
wife, her son, and an old woman, oil lying
dead, together with Mary Buffers in a very
exhausted state. In this case there is reason
to believe that the witch, or fortune-teller,
was to certain degree sincere in her
witchery; she had shut herself up in the
house with the three othef persons, had closed
every crevice, and put pot on the fire con-
tanning pins, needles, crooked nails little
milk, and Gt is supposedly q little sulphur.
The fumes had suffocated her wretched COM
panions, and had nearly made an end of her
self too.
An inquiry that came before the Bethnal-
green Police Court, in 1856, exhibited the
metropolis in nearly as unfavorable O light
as the country districts. The wife of
coppersmith, suffering under illness and
anxiety, was told by some of her neighbors
that she had "spell" upon her, and was
recommended to go to ''wise woman
named Sarah M'Donald; seeing that a
medical man had failed to cure her. The
wise woman told her that ''some person was
doing her an injury, and that the remedy
would be the burning of ten powders. The
dupe purchased the powders, at sixpence
each, of M MDonald, who threw them into the
fire, where they 'cracked, and burned, and
blazed, and bounced" The wise woman
muttered some words, which were supposed
to be part of a charm or ineantation. The
silly wife repeated these visits seven or
eight times always unknown to her hus-
band. 1t came out in the course of the in
vestigation that the magic powder was only
common salt; that, even then the dupes Qor
the womafls daughter had also fallen into
the snare) believed that the wise woman
could remove the spell" if she chose: in
deed, the complaint before the magistrate
was, not that she had done wrong, but that
she n0ltld not do what she could. The Gre
dulity was rendered the more strange by
the fact that the tradesmans wife belonged
to good family, moving in a circle of
society where the witch theory is not usually
countenanced.
In 1926 curious proof was afforded of the
popular belief in ''sink-or-swim" method of
detecting wizard. At Wickham Keith, in
Suffolk, there dwelt one Isaac Stebbing, a
small, spare, elderly man; he was huckster,
or dealer in small cheap wares. Near him
dwelt thatcher, whose wife became more
and more silly as she advanced in years;
while another neighbor, farmer, also showed
signs of mental weakness. The gossips of
the village deeming it strange that there
should be two silly persons among them,
took refuge in the theory of witchcraft or
necromancy, and sought about for some one
who had done the mischief. The poor huck-
ster was fixed upon. One cottager asserted
that while using the frying pan one
evening, Isaac Stebbing was seen to dance up
to the door. This, it seems, is one of the
tests of wizard tactics; but Stebbing stoutly
denied having done anything of the kind.
Thereupon rose charge that he had once
| called upon a neighbor with mackerel for
| sale, at o'clock in the morning, before the
family were up-another proof of black magic;
he admitted having called at the hour named,
but only as a dealer, and denied all compli-
city with wizards. Not yet satisfied, the vii
layers ascertained from cobbler that one
day his wax would neither melt nor work pro-
perly, and that Isaac Stebbing passed his
| door at the very instant when this occurred, a
| sure proof (in the cobblers estimation) that
| the huckster had bewitched the wax The
| villagers, having their minds preoccupied with
the belief that Stebbing was wizard, did not
| like to be bafhed, and proposed that the
sink-or-swim test should be applied. The
| poor fellow consented. There was large
| pond called the Grunner, on Wickham-green,
and around this pond, on a certain day. a
strong muster of villagers assembled. Four
men were appointed to walk into the water
| with Isaac, and the parish constable attended
| to keeping the peace Stebbing, wearing
| only his coat and breeches, walked into the
pond, attended by the four men, and when
they had waded about breast high, they lifted
him up and laid him fiat on his back on the
surface of the water. Now it is known to
bathers that when the lungs are moderately
inflated, the human body weighs little less
than an equal bulk of water; and that person
can at such time float on the surface, pro-
vided he keeps perfectly still. Whether the
huckster was aware of this is not recorded;
but he did foat-rather to the disappoint-
ment of the wizard hunters. They called
out, "Give him another" and again did he
remain so quiet as to float when placed on
they cried out, ''Try him again; dip him
under the water :" and under he went, head
down and heels up; but speedily recovering
himself, he foated as before. The old man
was more dead than alive when he had borne
these repeated duckings for three quarters OF
an hour, and he hoped that his neighbors
would be satisfied with the result. But they
were not; they wish their wizard theory to
be justified, even if the poor fellows life had
been sacrificed as a consequence. 1t was
gravely proposed that ''another man of his
age and size ought to be made to swim
with him." What this meant, we are not
told; but they had probably begun to suspect
the nature of his floating power. One Ton
Widen, of Hacton parish, was selected as the
second man; and on the next following Satur
day, nearly all the inhabitants of both villages
assembled around the pond. BY this time
however, the clergyman and church-wardens
had heard of the affair, and forbade tn,
further prosecution of the monstrous ordeal.
Do the last two or three years afford an,
indication that these degrading displays o
ignorance have vanished from among us A
| -. ~