As a woman if you lived in Scotland in the 1500s there was a very good chance that you or
someone you knew would be tried as a witch. Witch hunts ripped through the country for over
150 years with at least 4 000 accused and with many women's fates sealed by a grizzly
execution of strangulation followed by burning. Inspired to correct this historic injustice
campaigners and writers Claire Mitchell KC and Zoe Venditozzi have delved deeply into just
why the trials exploded in Scotland to such a degree. In order to understand why it happened
they have broken down the entire horrifying process step-by-step from identification of
individuals to their accusation 'pricking' torture confessions execution and beyond.
With characteristically sharp wit and a sense of outrage they attempt to inhabit the minds of
the persecutors often men revealing the inner workings of exactly why the Patriarchy went to
such extraordinary lengths to silence women and how this legally sanctioned victimisation
proliferated in Scotland and around the world. With testimony from a small army of experts
pen portraits of the women accused trial transcripts witness accounts and the documents that
set the legal grounds for the hunts How to Kill A Witch builds to form a rich patchwork of
tragic stories helping us comprehend the underlying reasons for this terrible injustice and
raises the serious question - could it ever happen again?
