Joan Wytte

Joan Wytte (1775–1813), known in her day as the fighting fairy woman of Bodmin, was an alleged witch born in Bodmin, Cornwall in 1775. She was known locally as a clairvoyant and healer, whose practices included taking strips of cloth from a sick person and tying them to a tree or holy well. A form of sympathetic magicBasis of all magic according to the anthropologist and folklorist Sir James George Frazer, founded on the idea that things act on each other because they are linked by invisible and secret bonds., it was believed that the disease would dissipate as the cloth rotted.^[1]

But Joan became very bad-tempered and aggressive towards the end of her life, perhaps as the result of an untreated dental abscess, and was often involved in fights. The remarkable strength she exhibited in those encounters led to the belief that she must be possessed by the Devil.^[1]

Joan was eventually incarcerated in Bodmin JailCornish prison built in 1779 and closed in 1927, now a tourist attraction and hotel., not for witchcraft but for public brawling.^[a]The Witchcraft Act of 1735Sometimes dated 1736, an Act of Parliament that repealed the statutes concerning witchcraft throughout Great Britain, including Scotland. had declared witchcraft to be an impossible crime, and switched the emphasis towards the pretence of using witchcraft.^[2] Following her death in prison of bronchial pneumonia at the age of 38,^[1] the flesh was removed from her body – perhaps for the purposes of medical research – and her skeleton locked away in the jail, which closed in 1927. It reemerged after its acquisition by the folk magician and founder of the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, Clive Williamson,^[3] either from a doctor or a North Cornwall antique dealer, accounts vary.^[4]

Display and burial

What was claimed to be Joan’s skeleton was on public display at the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle, Cornwall for more than thirty years. A number of “poltergeist phenomena” prompted the then curator to call in Cassandra Latham-Jones, Britain’s first full-time witch. After she claimed to have contacted Joan at a Hallowe’en ritual in 1997, it was decided that Joan’s remains should be buried in a secret site in the nearby Minster Woods,^[5] which they were in 1998.^[1] Three versions of her headstone were produced by the stonemason Rory te Tigo; one was buried with her skeleton; another was erected as a memorial just outside the Minster Church, Boscastle; and the third is on display in the museum.^[6]

Modern interpretation

Everything that is known about Joan Wytte comes from Clive Williamson’s account.^[3] The absence of any official record of Joan’s life, arrest or death, make it seem likely that the story is an invention by him and embellished by later folk writers.^[7]

See also

• Jinny Bingham17th-century woman also known as Mother Red Cap and the Shrew of Kentish Town, suspected of being a witch, a murderer and poisoner.
• Mary HicksPamphlet purporting to tell the story of Mary Hicks, executed for witchcraft in 1716.
• Mother HaggyWitch of St. Albans, best-known for her salve to restore the hymen.