Disability and Witchcraft

 

Welcome to my latest blog post. Last week I discussed the idea of maternal impression and how women were blamed if their child was born with a deformity. This week I will be looking at something else women were blamed for, witchcraft. Specifically, I will try to see if there is a connection between disability and witches. It is a disability history blog after all!

Who Was Accused of Witchcraft?

I don’t know about you, but when I picture a witch in my head, I usually see an elderly woman that is ugly or perhaps deformed in some way. I therefore assumed that making a connection between disability and witches would be simple. However, this has not been the case. For starters, not everyone who was accused of witchcraft was a woman. Also, middle aged, rather than elderly women were the biggest demographic. Women past a childbearing age were a popular target.

When I typed disability and witches/ witchcraft into the search engine beginning with g and ending in oogle, I didn’t find what I wanted. Most results related to the 2020 movie, ‘The Witches’, which I will discuss later, but not much on actual witch trials and disability. All is not lost as there are small clues that link the two together. Historically, on the surface, accused witches and disabled people were similar (and I don’t mean they were both ugly!). Both groups were different from the rest of their community and were usually outcast as a result. Accused witches and in some cases, disabled people, were persecuted due to their differences.

Deformed Witches

The best example I can find connecting disability to witchcraft is from England, during the Lancashire Witch Trials of 1612. It turns out that one of the accused witches actually was deformed. One of the accused was a woman called Elizabeth Device. The court clerk Thomas Potts recorded the trials in a book called The vvonderfull discouerie of witches in the countie of Lancaster. A fascinating work if you ever get a chance to read it. It was published in 1613 though, so can sometimes be tricky to understand. Anyway. Where was I? Ah yes… the deformed witch! Sorry. I mean woman wrongfully accused of witchcraft. Potts describes Elizabeth’s appearance as follows:

    ‘This odious Witch was branded with a preposterous marke in Nature, euen from her birth, which was her left eye, standing lower then the other; the one loo∣king downe, the other looking vp, so strangely defor∣med, as the best that were present in that Honorable As∣sembly, and great Audience, did affirme, they had not often seene the like’.

This deformity may help to explain why she was accused of witchcraft. Witches were believed to be in cahoots with the Devil. The Devil would leave a mark on the witch which proved she worshipped him. Therefore, any unusual mark on the woman’s body could be used against her in the trial. Elizabeth’s deformity was a clear indication that she was involved with the Devil.

The fact that she had the deformity since birth may explain why some of the others were accused. You see, Elizabeth’s mother, Elizabeth Southern, alias “Old Demdike”, as well as two of Elizabeth’s children, Alison and James Device were also accused of witchcraft. I didn’t read this anywhere, but maybe the fact “Old Demdike” gave birth to a deformed child, who in turn had children, condemned them all. That is just my own theory though. Who needs concrete evidence anyway? I know people in charge of witch trials certainly didn’t!

 

Are All Disabled People Inherently Evil?

This is part of a much larger topic that I will cover at some point in the future. For now, let’s just focus on witches. Throughout history there has been a connection made between being evil and being disabled in some way. Thank goodness that is all in the past, right? RIGHT?? WRONG!!! The 2020 movie ‘The Witches’ has brought the topic back into the public’s imagination. In the film, the Grand High Witch has deformed hands and feet and is designed to be scary. This has rightfully annoyed people with limb differences as it is basically saying that they should be feared. This is the exact attitude that we should be moving away from, not putting in movies.

As you can see, some accused witches were disabled which most likely drew attention to them.

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Next time, I will move away from monsters to examine the court dwarf Jeffrey Hudson.

                                                            The Wheelchair Historian

Further Reading

Hardy, Tim, ‘The Discovery of the Lancashire Witches 1612’, https://www.invisibleworks.co.uk/the-discovery-of-the-lancashire-witches-1612/ Accessed: 19^th February 2021.

Howlett, Daniel, George Mason University, ‘"Being Something Hard of Hearing": Disability during the Salem Witch Trials’, Stevens C Prefunction (Hilton Chicago), Saturday, January 5, 2019 https://aha.confex.com/aha/2019/webprogram/Paper26924.html Accessed: 19^th February 2021.

Kranking, Emily, ‘The History Behind the Ableist Themes in 'The Witches'’, November 17, 2020 https://themighty.com/2020/11/the-witches-limb-differences-disability/ Accessed: 19^th February 2021.

Metzler, Irina, ‘Disability, Witches and the Middle Ages: Some Mythbusting’, Thursday 10 Oct 2013 https://irinametzler.wordpress.com/2013/10/10/disability-witches-and-the-middle-ages-some-mythbusting/ Accessed: 19^th February 2021.

Potts, Thomas, The vvonderfull discouerie of witches in the countie of Lancaster (London, 1613), http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18253/18253-h/18253-h.htm Accessed: 19^th February 2021.

Sparks, Doug, ‘5 Facts You Didn’t Know About The Salem Witch Trials’, Published October 30, 2017 https://www.mvmag.net/2017/10/30/salem-witch/ Accessed: 19^th February 2021.

Maternal Impression/imagination

 

Welcome to my latest blog post. Last week I discussed the idea of monstrous births, focusing on 16^th Century Europe. This week I will continue along the same line of thought. However, instead of looking at the disabled children, I will be discussing their mothers. You may remember from my post on Joseph Merrick, A.K.A. “The Elephant Man”, that his mother thought she knew what caused his deformities. She was frightened by an elephant while pregnant and concluded that this caused her unborn child to resemble an elephant. This belief which is the subject of this post was known as maternal impression/imagination.

It’s Always the Woman’s Fault

Let’s see… how do I discuss how babies are brought into this world without going into unnecessarily graphic detail? Em…. when a man and a woman love each other… long story short, the woman becomes pregnant. It is their job to carry the baby inside them until birth. For a long time, (even up to the end of the 19^th Century), it was believed that mothers were accountable for the birth defects of their children. It was thought that men had very little to do with the process and the baby was essentially a bun in an oven. That’s right! I just compared pregnant women to ovens. Anyway, to continue my bun in the oven metaphor, if something goes wrong with the oven, you’re not going to have perfectly formed buns!

It was believed that pregnant women had a strong emotional connection with their baby. As in, if the woman was happy, the baby would be happy, if the mother was sad, the baby would be sad. Most importantly, if the mother was traumatised, the baby was also traumatised. So much so, that the traumatic event would imprint itself on the unborn child’s body. An event could impact the child in various ways. Joseph Merrick is an extreme example as his mother was almost crushed by a stampeding elephant. However, there are also less severe examples. For instance, if a woman was eating strawberries when the shock occurred, a red strawberry shaped mark may be left on the child’s body. If the women brought their hand to their face in terror, the resulting mark might appear on the baby’s face. Basically, pregnant women were thought to be able to mould the shape of their baby through their actions and emotions.

Tale as Old as Time

While the idea of maternal impression reached its peak between the 16^th and 18^th centuries, the concept had been around for a very long time. The ancient Greek physician Galen (born 129 CE) was a believer of this theory. He thought that if a pregnant woman looked at an image of someone, the child may resemble that person. This did not only produce monsters, however. Women were encouraged to gaze at beautiful statues (such as the one above. I think it's beautiful anyway), so that they might produce beautiful children.

This did not always go to plan though. You see, maternal impression could strike at ANY moment from conception to birth. The ancient Greek novel, Aethiopica by Heliodorus of Emesa, contains a perfect example of this. The character Chariclea is revealed to have been born in Ethiopia. As Chariclea had white skin, her mother was afraid she would be accused of adultery and rejected her. We are then told that the mother had been staring at a painting of the white Andromeda in her bedroom and this resulted in the change of skin colour. In later periods similar stories also occurred. For instance, a woman might give birth to a bearded child if they spent too much time admiring an image of Jesus!

The concepts of monstrous births and maternal impressions fascinated physicians for centuries. A famous example of this is the work of the Frenchman, Ambroise Paré (born c. 1510). In On Monsters and Marvels, he tries to use a scientific approach to explain and categorise monsters and monstrous births. While it may seem strange to us now, he viewed monsters as being as real as any other illness. I find his work fascinating and may go into more depth on it in a separate post. 

A much later work on the concepts of monstrous births and maternal impression is by Scottish physician, John William Ballantyne. He wrote the suitably titled Teratogenesis: an inquiry into the causes of monstrosities. History of the theories of the past, in the 1890s. As you can probably tell from the title, he goes into great detail about how the ideas of the past were horribly wrong and modern science had all the answers. I had planned on focusing on his work this week, but then I remembered how long and sciency (that’s not a word) it is!

As you can see, up until fairly recently, women received most of the blame if their child was born with a deformity.

To keep up to date with my latest blog posts, you can like my Facebook page, or follow me on Twitter. You can find them by clicking the relevant icons in the sidebar.

Next time, I will continue my series on monsters by looking at the link between disability and witchcraft!

 

                                                          The Wheelchair Historian

 

Further Reading

Ballantyne, J. W. (John William), Teratogenesis An Inquiry Into The Causes Of Monstrosities (Edinburgh, 1897) https://archive.org/details/b21981000 Accessed: 12^th February 2021.

Lee, R. J. “Maternal Impressions.” The British Medical Journal, vol. 1, no. 736, 1875, pp. 167–169. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25240414. Accessed 2 Feb. 2021.

Snyder, Sharon L.. "Maternal imagination". Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/science/maternal-imagination Accessed 12 February 2021.

The Open University, ‘The theory of maternal impression’, https://www.open.edu/openlearn/ocw/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=65962&section=1.5 Accessed 12 February 2021.

Monsters and Monstrous Births

 

Welcome to my latest blog post. Last week I discussed beliefs held about disabled people in the Medieval Period. I did this by examining some of the work of Bede the Venerable. I know what you are thinking, the Medieval Period pretty much spanned a thousand years, how can you draw conclusions by looking at the work of one guy? The short answer is, you can’t. However, the Middle Ages were always a weak point of mine and there are areas I find more appealing. Speaking of which, welcome to the world of monsters! 

What is a Monster?

Okay. This post could go on for a while with all my ramblings, so I will try and get to the point quicker than usual…. or maybe not. When I think of monsters, I think of creatures that are both frightening and ugly. Well, I suppose they could also act in horrible ways, but that is not my immediate thought. The English word monster actually comes from the Latin “monstra” which means to show or demonstrate. Therefore, someone who was deemed to be a monster was an indication of something that was happening at that time or foretold an event in the future. If they were indications of a future event, they were known as prodigies. These beliefs were popular in the Middle Ages, but reached their peak in the 16th Century. Any child born with a deformity was viewed as a monster, due to the peculiarity of their appearance. Therefore, any incidence of that nature became known as a monstrous birth.

The Monster of Ravenna

Perhaps the best example on a monstrous birth comes from Italy in the early 1500’s. The dates and locations of the event tend to change, but the overall story stays the same. There was a child born that had so many deformities they were thought of as a monster. A pharmacist from Florence (ooh…. that rhymes), who saw an image of the child, described it as follows:

‘It had a horn on its head, straight up like a sword, and instead of arms it had two wings like a bat’s, and at the height of the breasts it had a fio [Y-shaped mark] on one side and a cross on the other, and lower down at the waist, two serpents. It was a hermaphrodite, and on the right knee it had an eye, and its left foot was like an eagle’s’.

As you can see there were several unusual aspects to this child. Some of them are very farfetched. Due to this account, which circulated quickly thanks to the recent development of mass printing, people believed the child was from Florence. As the story spread, the child’s origins and deformities changed. It was even rumoured that it was the offspring of a nun and a friar.

The child is commonly known as The Monster of Ravenna. This is because it has been suggested that the birth occurred in 1512 in the Italian city of Ravenna. This may just be an indication that the child was an omen of disaster to come. You see, just a few weeks after the reported birth of this ‘monster’, Ravenna was sacked by combined Papal, Spanish, and French forces. They must really not have liked that city! It is most likely that the time and location of the child’s birth were changed to account for the destruction of the city.

Could the Monster of Ravenna Have Been Real?

Okay, I know it may sound strange, but the Monster of Ravenna was more than likely a real child. Granted, certain aspects of its appearance were embellished as the story circulated, but they were based in fact. It has been suggested that the bat or bird wings could have been underdeveloped arms. Similarly, eagle feet may have been a description of missing toes as well as club foot. As for the fact that the child was a hermaphrodite, it is possible that its body was not fully formed, making it impossible to identify the gender. Many of these characteristics can be found in Roberts Syndrome. Unfortunately, Pope Julius II ordered for the child to be starved to death.

On that cheery note, I think it is time to end. I know it’s probably not the happiest of topics, but I’m always fascinated by how various cultures from different periods react to disability.

To keep up to date with my latest blog posts, you can like my Facebook page, or follow me on Twitter. You can find them by clicking the relevant icons in the sidebar.

Next time I hope to discuss the idea of maternal impression in greater detail.

                                                           The Wheelchair Historian

Further Reading

Bates, Alan W., Bates, Tony, ‘Emblematic Monsters: Unnatural Conceptions and Deformed Births in Early Modern Europe’, (Rodopi, 2005) Google Books.

CandyGuy, ‘THE MONSTER OF RAVENNA’ https://www.thehumanmarvels.com/the-monster-of-ravenna/ Accessed: 5^th February 2021.

Eamon, William, ‘The Monster of Ravenna’, April 11, 2011 https://williameamon.com/?p=707 Accessed: 5^th February 2021.

Walton MT, Fineman RM, Walton PJ. ‘Of monsters and prodigies: the interpretation of birth defects in the sixteenth century’. Am J Med Genet. 1993 Aug 1;47(1):7-13. doi: 10.1002/ajmg.1320470103. PMID: 8368257.