Posted on 05/26/2024 9:01:01 AM PDT by CheshireTheCat
The witchcraft trouble [in Bermuda in 1651-55] began in May 1651, when Goodwife Jeane Gardiner, the wife of Ralph Gardiner of Hamilton Tribe, was accused of bewitching a mulatto woman named Tomasin. Jeane Gardiner was heard to say “that she would crampe Tomasin” and reportedly “used many other threatenninge words tending to the hurt and injurie of the said mullatto woman.” Gardiner’s victim was then “very much tormented, and struck blind and dumb for the space of twoe houres or thereabouts.” Jeane Gardiner may have been known in her neighborhood as the wife of Ralph Gardiner, a laborer who had come to Bermuda in 1612. A contentious man, he twice accused neighbors of stealing his poultry and was himself found guilty of stealing a fish gig. The assize record mentions that Jeane Gardiner, in addition to practicing witchcraft on Tomasin, “at divers tymes in other places … did practice the said devilish craft of witchcraft on severall persons in the hurt and damage of their bodyes and goods.” A panel of 12 women, including the wives of several men who possessed black, Inian, or mulatto servants or slaves, found a witch mark, a suspicious “blewe spott” in Gardiner’s mouth. As a further test, Gardiner was “throwne twice in the sea” where she was found to “swyme like a corke and could not sinke” — according to the lore of witchcraft, a sure sign of guilt.
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
“It’s a fair cop.”
Well, she did float so obviously she was guilty!
Did she weigh as much as a duck?
Stop looking at the camera.
People are lucky we stopped executing witches. People like Rashida Tlaia, Ilhan Omar, the cast of The View, the people who watch The View, and on, and on, and on.
Yeah.
She turned me into a newt!
I got better...
Throw a bucket of water on her!
I kept hoping for a house in a tornado might have a meeting with her.
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