When a 9-Year-Old’s Words Became a Noose: Inside the 1612 Lancashire Witch Trials
Pendle Hill, a brooding rise in Lancashire, became, in 1612, a crucible where faith, fear, and factional politics ignited. In a county branded subversive, whispers of sorcery hardened into charges against twenty neighbors—mostly women—while officials fanned the panic they claimed to police. Center stage stood an octogenarian matriarch called Demdike, her blind rival, and a nine-year-old witness whose words could kill, as coerced confessions and courtroom theater turned suspicion into rope. Four centuries on, the Pendle witch trials read like an early trial by media: a cautionary tale of how propaganda, prejudice, and power can turn a landscape into a hunting ground - and ordinary lives into evidence.
