Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stephanie Brown, Lecturer in Criminology, University of Hull
I recently appeared on the BBC radio show Woman’s Hour to discuss my research on homicides committed by women. Just before my segment, singer-songwriter Katherine Priddy spoke about her song Matches, inspired by the feminist phrase “women, not witches”. It reframes witch trials as the persecution of women rather than the pursuit of the supernatural. One lyric lingered with me: “They weren’t burning witches; it was women on those fires.”
In England, Wales and their former North American colonies, that claim needs nuance. There, women were not burnt for witchcraft; they were hanged. Witchcraft was a felony under English common law, and felons were executed at the gallows. Elsewhere, the story was different. On the continent and in Scotland, witchcraft was heresy, and heretics were burnt at the stake.
In England and its colonies, no one was burnt at the stake during witch hunts: not at Pendle, not at Salem and not under the campaigns of the “witchfinder general”, Matthew Hopkins. The image of the burning witch is powerful, but in this context, it is largely a myth. If we want to understand why women were burnt in England and Wales, we need to look elsewhere – towards a different crime, and a different kind of fear.
In 1359 at York Castle, a woman named Alice of Tunstall was brought before the court. She was not accused of witchcraft. There were no whispers of spells or dealings with the devil. Alice stood charged with killing her husband. She was found guilty of petty treason and sentenced to be burned at the stake.
Petty treason applied to those wives and servants who “owed faith and obedience” to a social superior. A wife who killed her husband committed a rebellion against the social order itself; a husband who killed his wife had not. Husbands, and even male servants who killed their master, were hanged; women were burnt.
The logic of the law was explicit. Fire destroyed the body, denied burial and made the crime a public spectacle. It was punishment as both correction and warning. Petty treason made female disobedience visible, violent and unforgettable.
Centuries later, the law’s gendered logic persisted. In 1789, Catherine Murphy and her husband were convicted of the same crime: making counterfeit coins – a type of high treason. He was hanged like other male offenders; she was burnt at the stake.
At Newgate Prison, Catherine was led past the hanging body of her husband. She was strangled until she was dead. Only then were bundles of sticks piled and lit around her body, following the post-1652 custom of ensuring the condemned was no longer alive. Even in this modified execution, Murphy’s punishment was far harsher than that of the men she had worked with, reflecting centuries of legal gender inequality.
The execution of Murphy helped prompt reform. In 1790, the MP Sir Benjamin Hammet raised the issue in the House of Commons, citing her death as evidence that burning women – even after they were dead – was a grotesque and unnecessary punishment. The Treason Act of 1790 abolished burning as a method of execution, substituting hanging, which was the punishment for men. Even then, it was not until 1828 that a wife’s murder of her husband was formally reduced to a felony.
From Alice of Tunstall to Catherine Murphy, these fires were not about magic – they were about control. They remind us that historically, under English law, female defiance of husbands or social hierarchy has been treated far more harshly than men’s crimes. The image of the burning witch obscures this reality. In truth, it was gender, not superstition, that lit the flames.
Stephanie Brown does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
– ref. In England and its colonies, accused witches weren’t burnt – but wives who defied their husbands were – https://theconversation.com/in-england-and-its-colonies-accused-witches-werent-burnt-but-wives-who-defied-their-husbands-were-278612