Alice Samuel lived next door to a family called Throckmorton in Warbois, Huntingdonshire, in England. The Throckmortons had 5 daughters and Alice had a daughter called Agnes. In the late 1580s one of the Throckmortons’ daughters, Jane, aged 10, had a terrible fit. Nobody could do anything for her, she just thrashed about violently, shouting and trembling, until she was too exhausted when she went rigid and the fit stopped.
Jane had these fits often and sometimes more than one a day. She started to become the local curiosity and people would visit, just to see one of her fits. One day, Alice came to the Throckmorton’s place to visit. The moment she walked through the door, Jane interrupted her fit to point at Alice and shout ‘There she is-the witch, the witch. It is Mother Samuel who does this to me; it is she who has bewitched me. Take her away, I can’t bear to look at her’. Nobody really took notice for a while, but after a few weeks, the ‘disease’ had spread to two of Jane’s sisters. They started to have the same fits and accused Mother Samuel too. After a few more weeks all 5 of the Throckmorton girls (including 15 yr old Joan, the oldest) had started having the fits and were accusing Alice, They also said that Alice’s daughter Agnes was helping her.
The girls’ parents decided that they must do something. They had heard that you could find out if someone was a witch by getting their victim to scratch them. If the victim recovered immediately, then the accused was a witch. They invited Alice and Agnes to pay them a visit.
When the girls first saw Alice, their shrieking became worse than ever Alice was forced to hold her hand out to the girls and they scratched at it furiously, ripping the skin to shreds. Suddenly the screaming and twitching stopped for a moment there was quiet in the Throckmorton house… but not for long. Soon the girls started screaming again and carried on as before. Finally, the Throckmorton’s landlord (Lord Cromwell) sent his wife to see what was happening. They had heard about the ‘witch’ and believed it thoroughly. Time and time again, Lady Cromwell asked Alice to confess, but she insisted she was innocent. Eventually, Lady Cromwell became so angry that she ripped out some of Alice’s hair. She gave it to Mrs. Throckmorton and told her to burn it, saying she had heard that that was a charm against witchcraft. If the charm worked at all, it worked the wrong way round from the Throckmorton-Cromwell point of view. That night Lady Cromwell had horrific dreams and she soon began to experience the fits too. Just over a year later, she died. Everybody was convinced that Mother Samuel had bewitched her.
Things were already pretty bad for Alice Samuel, but now it became worse. The Throckmorton’s had discovered that the girls now seemed to be calmer when Alice was around (close enough to be scratched to be honest). They asked Alice to move into their house. Mr Samuel would not let her go at first (perhaps realising the danger), but eventually he relented and Alice went next door. The Throckmorton girls had no fits for a week. Then they came back. When asked by their parents what had happened, the girls replied that they were now being affected by Alice’s Daughter Agnes. Agnes refused to put herself into a situation where she would be scratched until she bled whenever the girls wanted, so she locked herself in the attic and Mr Throckmorton, who had come to get her, had to admit defeat. Then Mother Samuel, exhausted by her ordeal, begged to be allowed to return home. The family refused to let her, but finally agreed that they would, if she confessed.
It seemed easy. Alice decided that the Throckmortons were just trying to have that final word. To add insult to injury. If it meant she could go home, who cared? She said ‘I confess’. Instead of taking her home of course, the Throckmorton’s took her and Agnes to the local bishop who placed them in gaol. Mr Throckmorton, intent on carrying out his first plan, paid bail for Agnes and took her to his home. There, she suffered the same fate as her mother had, being scratched on the hands, arms and face until she bled. She lost all her spirit and just hung her head and let the Throckmortons do whatever they wanted to her. When the girls scratched her, their fits abated for a short while then they suffered more fits and scratched her again and again. The girls constantly accused her, her mother and her father of witchcraft.
Finally all three of the Samuels were tried as witches and all three were condemned to death. After they were hanged, the Throckmorton girls had no more fits.
Adapted from ‘Witches’ by Nancy Garden
