History

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Helen Duncan was one of the last English people to be imprisoned under the witchcraft act of 1735. She was imprisoned in 1944, and arrested again for the same crime in 1956 (hexbear.net)

submitted 2 hours ago* (last edited 5 minutes ago) by Keld@hexbear.net to c/history@hexbear.net

8 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Subsequently to her first imprisonment the witchcraft act was repealed and replaced with a law making it illegal to claim to speak to the dead for the purpose of making money, unless you could actually speak to the dead (Or it was for entertainment purposes). This law change was spearheaded by a Labour politician named Thomas Brooks who was himself a spiritualist.

This law was then itself repealed and replaced by EU marketing regulations in 2008.

Edit: Incidentally while she was charged under the witchcraft act. The reason she was reported was not for being a medium, but for being a BAD medium. Her performance at seances was so awful, having misidentified two separate ghosts (Actually Duncan herself in a white costume twice) as two female members of the same audience member's family who both happened to be alive, that her audience went to the cops.

Edit 2: Rephrased the previous edit a bunch.

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[–] miz@hexbear.net 2 points 16 minutes ago (1 children)

entertajmment purposes

one of my favorite purposes

[–] Keld@hexbear.net 2 points 4 minutes ago* (last edited 1 minute ago)

First off. There was never this egregious a spelling mistake. You're imagining things.

Secondly. Why does autocorrect keep correcting real words and let me pump out total nonsense unchallenged.

[–] Johnny_Arson@hexbear.net 12 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

You could say she had... Medium difficulty.

[–] Keld@hexbear.net 5 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Honestly more of a small than a medium

[–] FunkyStuff@hexbear.net 5 points 1 hour ago

A small medium now at large.

[–] FunkyStuff@hexbear.net 7 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

unless you could actually speak to the dead

Has anyone successfully pleaded that they could in court?

And how do you even show that that's what someone was doing? Like, I can kinda imagine someone suing a Christian Church for talking with the dead, no? Praying to saints, or Jesus even (though this would require the court to formally deny the resurrection or whatever).

[–] Keld@hexbear.net 5 points 1 hour ago

I don't know, but those are great questions.

[–] SorosFootSoldier@hexbear.net 4 points 2 hours ago

So say it was for entertainment. Shit, we literally have medium shows on tv that make big bank off lying to grieving families.