Paisley witches

The Paisley witches, also known as the Bargarran witches or the Renfrewshire witches, were tried in Paisley, Renfrewshire, central Scotland, in 1697. Eleven-year-old Christian Shaw, daughter of the Laird of Bargarran, complained of being tormented by some local witches; they included one of her family's servants, Catherine Campbell, whom she had reported to her mother after witnessing her steal a drink of milk.

Seven people – Margaret Lang, John Lindsay, James Lindsay, John Reid, Catherine Campbell, Margaret Fulton, and Agnes Naismith – were found guilty of having bewitched Shaw and were condemned to death. One subsequently committed suicide by hanging himself in his prison cell, and it is believed that Naismith may have died while imprisoned. The other five were hanged and then burned on the Gallow Green in Paisley on 10 June 1697, the last mass execution for witchcraft in western Europe.

Agnes Naismith cursed everyone present at her trial and their descendants, and for many years afterwards every tragedy in Paisley was blamed on her curse. Christian Shaw went on to become a successful businesswoman and manufacturer of thread.

On 17 August 1696, 11-year-old Christian Shaw, the daughter of a local landowner, John Shaw of Bargarran, saw one of her family's servants, Catherine Campbell, steal a drink of milk. Shaw reported the theft to her mother, whereupon Campbell cursed her, wishing that the Devil would "haul her soul through Hell". Four days later Shaw encountered Agnes Naismith, an old woman reputed to be a witch. The following day, 22 August, Shaw became violently ill with fits, similar to the symptoms reported a few years earlier in the American Salem witch trials of 1693. After eight weeks Shaw's parents took her to see the eminent Glasgow physician Matthew Brisbane, who could find no cause for her symptoms. For eight days after her visit Shaw seemed to have recovered, but then "the fits returned with increased violence. She would become as stiff as a corpse and be senseless and motionless".

Shaw's parents took her back to Dr Brisbane, and by the time they arrived back in Glasgow she had begun to pull out of her mouth balls of hair she claimed had been put there by those who were afflicting her. Soon she began to pull other "trash" out of her mouth, including straw, coal, gravel, chicken feathers, and cinders. During her fits she was sometimes heard to be talking to the invisible Catherine Campbell, pleading for a return to their former friendship.

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