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Bloodthristy Greed: The Terrible Trail of the Witch of Yorkshire

William Perigo didn’t know what to do anymore. For over a year he and his wife Rebecca trusted Mary and Miss Blythe with their entire wellbeing, but things were not going to plan. Rebecca was still not well, and William could not ask Miss Blythe directly what was going on. After all, they had never met Miss Blythe, they only communicated with her through Mary, her messenger, who took great care to make sure all of Miss Blythe’s requirements were impeccably met. The Perigos followed every order but this was no doctor advising them. Miss Blythe was a psychic and reader “of the stars.”

Most recently Mary brought distressing news from the psychic, an illness was headed to William and Rebecca. But, they had nothing to fear. Mary brought them a solution, a special powder crafted by Miss Blythe that was to be eaten with puddings and special honey. They ate with confidence they were going to be safe. They were absolutely wrong.

Mary Bateman was born to a North Yorkshire family in the 1760s. She was fortunate to be born into a comfortable family, but that comfort did not keep her from developing some unfortunate habits. When Mary was very young she discovered a love of stealing and by the time she left home at the age of twelve to embark on a life as a domestic servant she had already developed some very sticky hands. But, her hobby was risky, and she often got caught. She was caught so many times that she eventually ran out of local clients, all more than aware of her reputation. With her list of potential employers running out she moved to Leeds where a friend of her mother arranged for her to get work as a seamstress. It was honest work, but Mary wanted more so she began her own side business, claiming she was a witch who could tell the future, remove curses, and concoct love potions.

Leeds could have been a fresh start for Mary but old habits die hard and she could not stop stealing any chance she got. When she married wheelwright John Bateman he probably did not envision the life he was in for, having to pack up and move on a regular basis to avoid his wife’s crimes being discovered. Perhaps looking back and seeing how much her life was uprooted by her stealing, or seeing how this was going to become more and more difficult with John and their children in tow, Mary changed gears and began working for Mrs. Moore, the “seventh child of a seventh child” who was capable of using supernatural means to avenge anyone who wronged her clients. It was after working with Mrs. Moore that Mary began working with the illusive and powerful Miss Blythe.

Building that housed a former home of Mary Bateman in Leeds. Image via Lajmmoore - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115947286

Working with Miss Blythe was very lucrative. People came to Mary’s home and paid her well for relaying their woes to the great and powerful Miss Blythe who would undoubtedly work her magic, consult the skies, create charms, and guide them to their best life. Miss Blythe revealed all. But one thing that Mary did not reveal was that Miss Blythe (and Mrs. Moore before her) were not real people. The sought-after psychic that Mary had a seemingly exclusive connection to was completely made up. What was entirely real was the money people willingly put into Mary’s hands, for access to Miss Blythe, again and again and again.

In 1803 Mary met three women from the Kitchin family, two Quaker sisters and their mother. The women owned a drapery shop in Leeds and they all became very friendly with Mary even helping them in their shop. Of course, before long the Kitchins began asking if they could hear their fortunes from Miss Blythe, and Mary was happy to oblige, after payment of course. At first things probably seemed fine to the members of the Kitchin family, but then they started getting sick.

First it was one sister who fell mysteriously ill. It seemed obvious to get Mary to ask the powerful Miss Blythe for help, and Mary obliged, bringing them powders and medicines from the psychic that they were assured would ease the illness. Totally unaware that there was no Miss Blythe, the sister took the “medicine”, but she died shortly after. Then, the next sister passed away, and they were both quickly followed by their mother. What caused this sudden awful loss of life? According to Mary the three women died of plague. It was a convenient answer, fear of infection kept everyone away from the women’s home while Mary stripped it bare of all of their belongings. Allegedly there was only one person who thought the entire ordeal was suspicious and brought up the possibility of poisoning. But the Kitchins had no family, so the accusation was never followed up on. Like so many times in her life, Mary quickly packed up and moved away, but this time the crimes she was running from were far more serious. This was not about the Kitchin’s stolen items, Mary had indeed poisoned them making Mary much more than a thief, she was now a cold-blooded killer.

Like every other crime committed by Mary, the deaths of the Kitchin family taught her no lessons, put zero weight onto her conscious, and she eventually fell back into her life of deception. By 1806 she had already left a trail of fraud convincing people to pay her money to resolve fabricated hardships and betrayals but now Mary came up with a new method, one that was far more inclusive and harder to disprove. Mary decided to enter into the business of apocalyptic prophecy and her assistant this time was not a non-existent psychic, it was her chickens.

According to Mary, her chickens were laying eggs inscribed with messages warning of the end of days and people flocked to her home to see it with their own eyes. Mary, who spoke openly about her “Prophet Chickens of Leeds”, would meet the people and present them with an egg clearly bearing the words “Crist is coming” on its shell. The visitors became frantic, what could they do if the apocalypse was coming? How lucky for them that Mary was well versed in magical protection and that she could guarantee their salvation…for a price. It was simple, pay Mary and her chickens a penny and she handed you a scrap of paper with “JC” written on it, a ticket to ensure passage to heaven. This latest ploy of Mary’s was comparatively short-lived. A doctor did not believe her claims and decided to spy on her to see what was really going on. His suspicions were correct, he personally witnessed Mary writing the words on the eggshells using vinegar which reacted with the shells and caused the words to “appear” on the egg. After writing the words on the shell she would take the egg and force it back into the body of her chickens to give the appearance of the prophetic eggs being freshly laid with the words already on them. The doctor exposed Mary’s fraudulent behavior but amazingly, she was never punished. She sold the chickens to a neighbor and continued with her life. It was a tragically missed opportunity. If punishment had finally come to her over her prophetic chickens, the Perigo family would have had a very different history.

Illustration of Mary Bateman and a prophetic egg. Image public domain.

In the same year as her failed apocalyptic chicken plot Mary was introduced to William and Rebecca Perigo. The couple lived in Bramley and Rebecca suffered from a “nervous” disorder that she was told was a result of an “evil wish” placed upon her. Wishing to be rid of this negativity the Perigos reached out to the familiar name of Mary Bateman who was happy to connect them with her old friend, the powerful, elusive, and completely fabricated Miss Blythe.

According to Mary the instructions from Miss Blythe were very specific and had to be followed exactly in order to remove the evil wish from Rebecca. The Perigos gave banknotes to Miss Blythe who then sewed them into silk bags, instructing them that these bags had to be sewn into the corners of Rebecca’s bed for eighteen months. This was only the start though, Rebecca’s condition was complex and Miss Blythe was going to need some time…and money…to get to the bottom of her supernatural affliction. The Perigos never once questioned Mary’s messages “from” Miss Blythe. They willingly handed over money again and again, being told by Mary that Miss Blythe needed the cash in order to purchase an exhaustive list of magical supplies that somehow grew to include silverware and a new bed. There was no proof of her demands. Mary said that Miss Blythe required every letter requesting payments to be burned so that evil spirits could not read the contents and know what she was doing for the Perigos. The pair might have thought things were going well but one day Mary’s message took a dark turn. According to Miss Blythe, an illness was headed for the Perigos “in the month of May next, either t'one or both, but I think both, but the works of God must have its course.” This was extremely distressing news, but not to worry, Miss Blythe had a cure.

William and Rebecca followed the instructions precisely as they were told. When they received the magical powder from Miss Blythe they sprinkled it on their puddings, ate them with the pot of special honey, and told no one. Only they were allowed to eat this food and no doctor could be called, involving anyone else would guarantee the illness would fall upon them with even more severity.

Illustration of Mary Bateman mixing the magical powders into food. Image public domain.

The reaction was swift. The couple fell horribly ill with William later describing that “a violent heat came out of his mouth, which was very sore, that his lips were black, and that he had a most violent pain in his head twenty times worse than a common head-ache, (and that) everything appeared green to him." He also suffered from a "violent complaint in his bowels." Depending on the point of view, he was lucky to have endured this, his wife did not. On May 24th 1807 Rebecca died after being poisoned by Mary Bateman.

Unbelievably, this huge red flag went unseen by William Perigo. Surely this was the illness predicted by the great and powerful Miss Blythe, and with Rebecca dead he needed guidance more than ever. For two years William continued to use Mary to connect to Miss Blythe, even when the psychic said she needed more money and all of his dead wife’s clothing. At some point William finally grew suspicious, why wasn’t anything going to plan? He went back to where it all started, with the silk bags in the corners of Rebecca’s bed. When he tore open the stitches he found none of the banknotes they had supplied to Miss Blythe. The bags were full of garbage. This, finally, was the last straw for William Perigo.

When William confronted Mary about the silk bags her response was simple and infuriating. Obviously the problem was that he opened the bags too early, that’s why they were full of trash and not the banknotes given to Miss Blythe. William’s response was that he was actually too late and he left Mary, returning to her the following day with Constable Driffield in tow. This encounter with Mary was markedly different from the previous day. Now, Mary confronted William loudly claiming that a bottle he gave her was full of poison and that he almost killed her and Mr. Bateman who was severely ill from it. At this accusation the Constable stepped forward and arrested Mary Bateman. A search of her house found it filled with everything Miss Blythe had demanded of the Perigos in order to save them from the “evil wish” placed on them.

On March 17th 1809 the trial of Mary Bateman began at York Castle with Mary as adamant as ever that she was totally and completely innocent of the accusations of murder. According to the newspaper Hull Packet, she appeared in court as “very plausible, of an appearance sedate and respectable and, as Shakespeare says of Richard, ‘with a tongue in her head that would weedle the devil.” Everything began to quickly unravel for Mary as more witnesses came forward and more information came to light. It was soon revealed that there was no Miss Blythe, or a Mrs. Moore before her, that the psychics were a complete fabrication that Mary used to commit her crimes for years. As it turned out, William and Rebecca were not the only people that Mary had recently attempted to sink her venomous claws into and her neighbors, the Snowden family, were subjected to a very similar scam. According to the Hull Packet, the wife of James Snowden had a premonition that one of their children would be drowned so Mary stepped in and offered the services of Miss Blythe to prevent the tragedy. Like the Perigos the Snowdens were instructed to give Miss Blythe money and also a watch that she would place in bags to be sewn into the corners of their bed. Then the family was told that to prevent their son from drowning and their daughter from being abandoned they had to pick up and move from Leeds to Bowling. The family was instructed in “taking the bed with the watch and money in it, with them, but leaving a considerable portion of their property in their house at Leeds, and giving Mary Bateman the key.” While they were away from home the family was sent “a dose” of magical powder from Miss Blythe that the family never ingested. Upon investigation the money and watch was gone from the bed and the Snowden home was looted. The trial lasted only eleven hours and a verdict came easily. Mary Bateman was found guilty and sentenced to death.

On March 20th 1809 Mary Bateman, “The Witch of Yorkshire” was marched up to the gallows at York Castle alongside two other prisoners. She had tried everything in her power to avoid this fate, clinging to her claims of innocence and even claiming she was pregnant and therefor could not be hanged. But nothing worked, her history of crime was too extensive, too definite, and a medical examination concluded that she was not pregnant meaning her sentence stood. The trial of Mary Bateman was a sensation and thousands of people attended the execution. Mary claimed her innocence until her last breath.

Modern day York Castle. Image via wikipedia.com

With Mary’s lifeless body cut down from the gallows the question now was what to do with her. There was no burial for the Witch of Yorkshire, her body was sent to the Leeds Infirmary where it was dissected and displayed in front of a paying audience over the course of three days. Tickets cost three pence each and the first day was reserved for medical students while day two and three were open first to the professional men of Leeds and then to women.

She was hanged, she was dissected as a public spectacle, and yet that was still not the end for Mary Bateman. After her dissection strips of her skin were removed, tanned into leather, and sold as magical charms to ward off evil. Other pieces of her skin were used to make purses. The governor of Ripon Prison became owner of the tip of her tongue. Two books were bound in her skin. And lastly, her skeleton was propped up and put on display for nearly two centuries, first residing at the Leeds Medical School before being moved to the Thackray Medical Museum until 2015.

The skeleton of Mary Bateman. Image via ExecutedToday.com

Currently, the skeleton of Mary Bateman is held at Leeds University, an iconic historical item and a grim reminder of the extent of fraud, deception, and cold-blooded murder carried out by The Witch of Yorkshire.

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Sources:

The Terrible Crimes and False Wonders of Mary Bateman, the Witch of Yorkshire by Catherine Curzon

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/577601/mary-bateman-witch-yorkshire-murder

Hull Packet “Witchcraft”

https://callisto.ggsrv.com/imgsrv/FastFetch/UBER2/WO1_HLPA_1808_11_01-0004?legacy=no&crop=1539+70+1601+5601&scale=0.5&format=jpeg

Mary Bateman: The Leeds Witch by Keith Spence

https://www.on-magazine.co.uk/yorkshire/stories/the-leeds-witch/

The Yorkshire Witch: The Life & Trial of Mary Bateman by Fiona Guy

https://www.crimetraveller.org/2017/04/the-yorkshire-witch-mary-bateman/

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