Name: The secret history of witches | BBC Ideas
Uploaded: 2025-07-21T18:02:56.000Z
Duration: 4 min 42 s
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The woman with magical powers and spells, in a pointy hat, with a broomstick, and a black cat?

But behind this stereotype is a long, dark history of torture and persecution.

Much of what we think we know comes from the 16th and 17th centuries, and especially the work of the witchfinder Matthew Hopkins.

It led to the deaths of around 100 people and still has echoes in our lives today.

In the 16th and 17th century, people in Europe were living in what historians call a magical universe, a realm where it was implicitly accepted that God and the devil were real.

People were often hungry, angry, and fearful.

Most people lived in small rural communities, and between 1530 and 1630, the population doubled.

There were plague outbreaks and a little ice age causing harvests to fail.

Everyday misfortunes could be interpreted as either a punishment from God, bad luck, or the act of a witch.

It was widely believed witches could raise storms, destroy livestock, drive people mad, or even kill them.

Witch trials followed legal process and acquittal rates were actually relatively high.

Only 22% of those tried in Southeast England were executed, while burning at the stake was common across Europe.

In the 1640s, during the chaos of the English Civil War, the witch hunter Matthew Hopkins appeared on the scene, along with his associate, John Stern.

Known as the Witchfinder General, Hopkins would ride into villages in East Anglia, often invited by concerned citizens, and listen to their suspicions.

With his assistance, he would search for the witch's mark, or teat, where familiars were thought to suck blood.

Familiars were thought to be a witch's companion, half animal, half demon.

He had suspected witches watched for days to see if their animal familiar would come to them.

In reality, this was sleep deprivation designed to break suspects into confessing.

A suspected witch's toes and thumbs were tied together, and they were submerged in water.

It was thought a witch would float, rejected by the pure water, but the innocent would sink.

Women were considered, at the time, to be more vulnerable to temptation from the devil.

Some women were particularly vulnerable to accusations due to a lack of protection in a patriarchal society.

And although most of the witches accused during the Hopkins witch hunt were women, in other parts of Europe, greater numbers of men were persecuted as witches, and men were caught up in the Hopkins witch hunt too.

The elderly clergyman, John Lowes, was accused of witchcraft in his town of Brandiston in Suffolk.

He was examined by Hopkins, who found two teats on his head and one beneath his tongue.

Under torture, he confessed to having six familiars, which he'd allegedly ordered to sink a ship, killing 14 men.

Although he later retracted this confession, on the 27th of August, 1645, he was hanged in Bury St.

Yet opposition to Hopkins witch hunt was growing.

His influence waned, and after an illness, he died at home in August, 1647.

Overall, around 250 people were investigated for witchcraft during the Hopkins witch hunt, and about 100 of these were ultimately condemned.

The Hopkins witch hunt was a brief and tragic period in the history of England.

Many people in the 16th and 17th centuries believed in the necessity of witch hunts to protect their communities, but these persecutions can also be seen as a case of blaming vulnerable people for the difficulties of the time.

We live in a very different world today, but has the witch hunt mentality gone away?

We still have a tendency to accept easy answers to complex problems.

Social media fuels both conspiracy theories and the public shaming of others.

Fear and uncertainty is still being used to scapegoat vulnerable sections of society.

So while the context may be different, witch hunts, it seems, are alive and well.