Aged 72, Mary Martin is a great-grandmother, but she still remembers how her classmates labeled her "witch spawn" and "evil eye" -- because her grandmother was one of the last people jailed in Britain over witchcraft charges.
At the height of World War II, medium Helen Duncan was convicted under an 18th century anti-witchcraft law and jailed for nine months by authorities who accused her of compromising Britain's safety.
Now, more than 50 years after Duncan's death, Martin is campaigning to secure her a pardon.
"I was only 11 years old when the name-calling started," said Martin, who lives near Edinburgh, Scotland. "People said, `Your grandmother was a witch.'"
"But she was simply a woman with a gift and she never endangered anybody," she said.
Martin has written to the Home Office asking for a meeting with Home Secretary John Reid and has given interviews to the media to raise the campaign's profile. Several hundred people have signed a petition asking for a pardon.
The campaign has the support of experts on the 1692 witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, where 20 people, including a number of girls, were convicted of witchcraft and executed. A full pardon for all of them only came in 2001.
Alison D'Amario of the Salem Witch Museum said there were parallels between Duncan's case and that of the young women in Salem.
"[Duncan] was very much the victim of a witch hunt," D'Amario said.
In the 1940s, Duncan was a well-known medium and her clients reportedly included Winston Churchill and King George VI.
But she ran into trouble after reportedly having told the parents of a missing sailor that their son had gone down on the HMS Barham, a ship whose 1941 loss had not been reported immediately to the public in hopes of keeping morale high.
Though it was much later, military authorities grew jittery as the war went on, particularly fearing that plans for the D-Day landings of Allied forces in northern France could be compromised. They accused Duncan of endangering public safety.
In January 1944, police broke into a seance in Portsmouth, southern England, to arrest her and she was charged with "pretending to be a witch" under a 1735 law.
"At the time of D-Day, there was a lot of paranoia around, just like there was in the 17th century," D'Amario said.
Duncan was convicted and jailed for nine months in London's Holloway prison. In 1951, Churchill's government repealed the 1735 law, but her conviction remained.
Duncan died in 1956.
Her case won attention last year when a prominent art festival in the Scottish town of Prestonpans, which is near where Duncan lived, mounted an exhibit featuring Duncan by artist Andrew Crummy.
Festival organizers then got involved in helping Martin try to clear her grandmother's name.
"There was a lot of interest," Crummy said. "People were very sympathetic towards Duncan's cause."
In 2004, Gordon Prestoungrange, holder of Prestonpans' baronial title, used feudal laws still in effect to pardon 81 other "witches" convicted under laws that dated to 1604, when King James I made witchcraft a capital offense.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS