Quote:
Originally Posted by Skipper
Incredible I can't believe the lady was convicted in the 20th century for withcraft!
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She wasn't.
The British authorities stopped taking witchcraft seriously nearly 300 years ago. The whole point of the 1735 Witchcraft Act was not to end witchcraft, but to end silly stories and phoney seances. The Act is like a forerunner to the Trade Descriptions Act; it made it illegal to con people into thinking you were performing magic.
Mrs Duncan was in effect convicted of fraud
Mrs Duncan already had a pre-war conviction, when during one of her seances a guest grabbed at the shape of a ghost emerging from the other side under her skirt, and found it was a knitted elastic undervest.
The petition with more than 200 signatures, demanding that she be given a full posthumous pardon was organised by Full Moon Investigations, a team of Scottish ghost-busters who claim to have paranormal gifts
