The Brigantii Moot

Campaigners have submitted a petition to the Scottish Parliament calling for the last woman convicted under the Witchcraft Act to be pardoned. Helen Duncan spent nine months in Holloway prison after being found guilty at a trial in 1944.

Mrs Duncan told a séance a warship had sunk before the news was officially announced. A second petition organised by a paranormal group, Full Moon Investigations, calls for all those convicted under Witchcraft legislation in Scotland to be pardoned. A petition to the Westminster government last year failed to secure a pardon for Mrs Duncan, and the new document calls on the Scottish Government to urge the Home Secretary to reconsider the case.

Mrs Duncan held a séance at which the spirit of a dead sailor was said to have revealed the loss of the battleship HMS Barham with most of her crew. The sinking had been kept secret by the authorities to maintain wartime morale. Although not convicted for being a witch, Mrs Duncan was jailed for pretending to use witchcraft.

Campaigners say that about 4,000 people were convicted under the Witchcraft legislation in force between 1563 and 1736, 85 per cent of them women.