Witch Bottles
History, Culture, Magic
 
 
Daniel Harms
 
 
 
 

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Witch Bottles: History, Culture, Magic
Copyright © Daniel Harms, 2020
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 Table of Contents
Unsettling the Contents A Foreword on Witch Bottles  by Alexander
Cummins
Introduction
The Witch in Belief, Folklore, and Medical Practice
What Are Witch Bottles?
Types of Evidence
Origins of the Witch Bottle
The Appearance of Witch Bottles
The Eighteenth Century
The Nineteenth Century
The Twentieth Century
Witch Bottles in Scandinavia
Witch Bottles in North America
Early Examples
Later Evidence
Today’s Witch Bottles
Witch Bottles in the Media
Discussion
Geography
Components
Ritual
Usage
Location
Conclusion
Works Consulted
 Acknowledgements
Thanks to Ben Fernee for requesting this book to begin with, and for
nurturing it into its first appearance. Thanks to Nick Crane for providing
access to a crucial report, and to Richard Powell and the interlibrary loan
staff at the State University of New York at Cortland for a continuing flow
of valuable information. Both Kresen Kernow and Dr. M. Chris Manning
gave much-appreciated permission to quote from their materials.  Others
who proved invaluable include the staff at the Folger Shakespeare Library,
the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic at Boscastle, the Pennsylvania
German Cultural Heritage Center, the Society of Antiquaries of London, the
Preston Park Museum, the Louth Museum, the Royal Institute of British
Architects Drawings and Archives Collections, and the Saffron Walden
Museum. Also, my thanks and apologies to all those who assisted but
whom I have forgotten.
 
 
 A Note on the Text
When writing this book, I chose to arrange the material chronologically.
This works well for material such as court cases, newspaper articles, and
other written sources, but it does tend to skew for archaeological sources
and others where dating is more questionable. I’ve tried to work in the latter
material in the places it seems best, but the chronology of these items is
often open to debate.
 
 Unsettling the Contents

A Foreword on Witch Bottles

by Alexander Cummins

The unearthed witch-bottle is something of a murky treasure. Sealed and

secreted, they encapsulate magical ideas and sorcerous strategies for
undoing the blights of bewitchment. Such strategies are a far cry from
ennobling cleansing or sanctifying purifications, instead launching counter-
offensive harm against the cursing witch through manipulation of the
patient’s urine: specifically, by boiling and/or burying it away with sharp
objects. Such ritual items invite consideration as tangible evidence not only
of spiritual concerns, anxieties, and ideals, but of spiritual actions – to
protect, to reverse, to remediate.
Perhaps unsurprisingly for a practice involving pins and thorns and such
‘stinking waters’, witch-bottling was considered morally dubious by its
critics: a species of resorting to witchcraft to deal with witchcraft. Even
those confident their witch-bottling was justified frequently deployed and
activated them specifically by concealing them in secret for their
unimpeded continual operation. As such, study of these ritual items and
their occasionally furtive uses is especially helpfully assisted by
methodologies of material history and archaeology, for with proper care
against talking over the evidence with speculation or flatlining distinct
practices and approaches, we may come to some considerable insights into
humans and their magics.
It might surprise even interested parties that definitive works on witch-
bottles are a little rare on the ground. The present work includes a helpful
bibliography of course; however this apparent scarcity is perhaps more
understandable once we grasp that witch-bottles are not static or fixed in
either their historical contexts or their occult conceptions. The term ‘witch-
bottle’ itself has been a debated – even contentious – one. Some find it an
overly broad label for each and every ritual act of secreting away
containers, inviting too many disparate practices to its homogenising feast.
To others it is an extinguishably narrow term that unhelpfully excludes all
but a tiny fraction of historical objects bounded to and by a specific region
and period.
Enter Daniel Harms’ present survey, carefully laying out the evidence
and arguments; not merely to point at controversies but to better elucidate
and illuminate the material and sharpen our very means of its analysis. The
crux of the present thesis – in its methodological execution and in its
valuable contribution to the field of study – is in explicitly approaching the
witch-bottle as ritual assemblage: specifically as the ritual assemblage of
container, sharp objects, and urine.
As any historian of early modern magic and humoural theory will tell
you, urine was considered a bodily ex-pression of the excreted dross of
gross blood and its corrupted humours. It has thus long been apprehended
as a medium to consider for signs of imbalance in popular medical
diagnostic techniques of uroscopy. In the experiments of the witch bottles, a
‘grieved’ victim’s urine is further employed as a means and material to
actually effect a return to health. In the marks of maleficia that might be
beheld in the chamber-pot could also be located a magical signature which
could be traced back to its malevolent sender.
Proper treatment must of course deal with the underlying cause of the
malady and suffering not simply its symptoms after all. In these
unbewitching treatments, the ultimate cause to be dealt with was generally
(the body of) the witch themselves. Such bottle operations seem to use urine
to reverse the magical link formed by the assault of the spiritual assailant.
Urine is weaponised to ‘spoil the witch’ as it is put in certain unwitching
cants. Ultimately this counter-offense-as-the-best-defense intends to restore
the victim’s balanced health by neutralising their attacker. Whether by high-
flame boil or earthy entombment, these bottles burn up and or seal away the
witch’s poisons lacing the patient’s waters by the pins of retaliation and the
conjurations of containment and expulsion.
 In exploring these very operations and operators, this present book has
much to recommend it to students, scholars, and practitioners. In the name
of brevity I will outline two main contributions: to the historical and
historiographical contexts for how to think about witch-bottles; and to the
conceptual and technical occult philosophy and magical practices of
thinking (and acting) with witch-bottles.
HISTORICAL CONTEXTS
This study firstly offers a historical survey of considerable aid in better
understanding these objects and their traditions. The author has collated
several distinct yet interrelated types of evidence: written instructions for
constructing and deploying witch-bottles; witch trial accounts of their
employment; and the customs and beliefs recorded by folklorists and
antiquarians concerning making and using these ritual objects. Each of
these types of sources offer their own insights and require their own
contexts and methodological considerations which the present work
communicates clearly and fairly.
Such careful historiographical analyses and interpretation which
accompanies the assessment of the historical record also assists in
acknowledging both the value of archaeological data and the occasional
limitations of archaeological means – especially to approach actions and
practices like ritual magic – in the face of the wrack and ruin of time’s
erosions upon the objects of our study. The present monograph is informed
by examination of the material history, and includes synopsis of such
pertinent details as: the trade and reception of bellarmine vessels; and the
appearance of iron witch-bottles in the nineteenth century, noting the deadly
damages – not to mention dramatic appeal – of their habit of exploding with
particularly destructive ferocity when heated.
An intellectual history of witch-bottle theory – addressing the accounts
and analysis of witch-bottling procedures by thinkers and doctors such as
Joseph Blagrave – is combined with a wealth of excerpted case reports of
stopping up urine, bewitchment, and counter-magic. This present survey
offers stories of the cunning of the gun-wielding white witch of Zennor,
Aunt Maggey, and of the unbewitching practices of Dr Bourn of Southwark,
Dr Hainks of Spitalfields, old Cunning Murrell, and of course the
formularies and experiments of the cunning galvanist William Dawson
Bellhouse, along with countless unnamed local folk magicians, wise
women, and conjuring doctors. In so doing, we trace the works of various
types of historical practitioners – from Paracelsian ‘Chymists’ to cunning-
folk and even charlatan quacks – through their engagement with the
experiments and effects of such bottles.
This present study also connects up expressions of witch-bottling from
England and the Germanic lands of central Europe with the customs and
cunning of Scandinavia. If the details of the prosecution and eventual
acquittal of Jørgen Larsen of Nørre Lyndelse parish discussed are anything
to go by, Danish sorcerers of the late nineteenth century certainly sealed and
buried personal concerns for rites of healing. A Norwegian operation from
1830 employing more modern equipment nevertheless confirms that even
when done primarily to heal there is still an evil to remove. Anti-witching
shades of hot compelling work remain, as it is said ‘the person who did the
evil will come and ask you to remove the kettle from the stove because it
burns him, but you must not remove it until he has made the diseased
person well again or given advice that you can use.’
Such global comparisons also span witch-bottling in the New World,
and this survey includes an account of the early modern transatlantic
cunning of Hannah Weacome of Boston, as well as incensed reports
condemning the practice by Increase Mather and minister of Salem Village
Deodat Lawson. Salem’s own witch trials also included mention of the
practice, and the confession of Martha Emerson is also considered. Finally,
analysis of North American witch-bottles in the modern age is collated
geographically, highlighting regional specificities and variations,
intersections with other folk magic traditions such as the powwow of the
Pennsylvania Dutch, as well as providing further data points for charting
lines of transmission of the practices.
MAGICAL CONCEPTS
The second set of contributions worth highlighting in this foreword
concern the conceptual and technical considerations that help us not only
think about but work with witch bottles. Wading into the mass of ideas
about what they are, how they work, and what counts (and what doesn’t
count) as a witch-bottle, this survey spends no time constructing or
defending a dogmatic thesis. Instead these careful assessments work to
refine analysis of the various similarities and differences between
conceptions and expressions of this particular species of apotropaic
container experiments we call “witch bottles”.
Study of what the author carefully frames as ‘variations on the elements
of witch bottles’ begin with comparative and contrasting examples of wider
global ward-burial practices: from Middle Eastern “demon bowls” to the
clay vessels found beneath thresholds in Germany and the Netherlands. The
present work notes evidences of various operations involving urine and pins
(or similar sharp metal objects) which provide wider context for magical
understandings of such implements and the practices employing them. As
such, this treatise accounts for both the Paracelsian ‘urinary experiments’ of
the seventeenth century and some older apotropaic operations against
witches, imps, and the malefic dead. Time and again, we see the interplay
of protocols and procedures employing closed containers and those using
open heating vessels (such as pans or pots) informing each other. This
survey also notes the limitations and lacunas of such evidences in
appropriately cautioning against unhelpfully eliding differing ideas and
actions. Through assessing these particularities of witch-bottling the present
work offers particular analysis of how more passive protective warding
functions intersect with the active counter-offense of reversal operations.
Variations of additional required materials are carefully noted: from the
various specifications concerning animal hearts, into which those pins,
needles, thorns, and nails are frequently stuck, to short written charms and
versicles; and from extra personal concerns, especially locks of hair and
nail parings, to inclusions of fabrics – sometimes themselves heart-shaped –
as well as diverse other ingredients such as sulphur, salt, (animal) blood,
(human) teeth, dragonsblood, and other ‘mysterious powders’. Its survey of
the sites of internment and exhumation of such bottles – covering burials
under churches, secreted away in corners of town halls, planted in graves,
up chimneys, at wayside crosses, and beneath parish boundary walls –
illuminates the variety of efficacious deployments for such objects.
We also learn that, despite prevalent logics of witch spoiling,
engagements with the attacker varied considerably: from accounts of
practitioners scrying the foam of the urine boiling over the fire in order to
see the very face of the assailing witch, to more medical-looking client-
focused procedures of neutralising a merely anonymous attacker. Certainly
the practices of boiling the urine and pins and so on in order to locate the
witch – forcing them to reveal themselves either by being physically drawn
to the work or simply by their screams of pain – highlight significant social
and interpersonal complexities of the intra-community tensions created by
witchcraft accusations made public through such counter-magical means.
Varying ideas about what and how exactly the witch is affected by the
bottle are also considered: from disempowerment of their curses to causing
the attacker bodily harm, dysfunction, and enfeeblement. Some accounts
claim their bottle stops the witch urinating, and that this itself could be fatal.
It was said by some that the pins in the bottle prick the witch’s heart.
Protracted or especially severe bottle workings are often thought to visit
maddening levels of pain and even outright death upon the witch.
This present study also notes a turn in the late nineteenth century to use
and adapt witch bottle technologies for spells of other specific works of
compulsion, such as the bottle operation advised to Deborah Wood by
Adelina Westernoff in 1888 to force the absent father of her child to return.
Another reported operation, from Brierley and dated to 1894 – in which a
jilted lover attempted to compel her wandering boyfriend back to her –
seems to confirm an underlying logic whereby the (usually counter-
offensive) damage of the witch-bottles’ pins was employed for typical
erotic malefic ends: to torture the literal target of the operator’s affections to
not rest or enjoy anything until they come crawling back. The bottle of
unbewitching even seems to haunt a Cornish operation of curing warts by
touching pins to them before they are bottled, sealed, and buried. That this
bottle is to be buried at a crossroads or new grave further highlights the
variety of engagements with the potent loci of these spiritual ecologies that
such operations may require beyond attending to the thresholds of home
and the heart of the hearth.
Cases involving animals are also included in the present study, with
careful attention paid to their regimens’ adherences to and departures from
the standards, procedures, and customs of treating human victims of
witchcraft. It seems horses were especially prone to being targeted, perhaps
unsurprisingly given their value and importance in pre-modern life.
The operative necessity of ritual silence is also noted several times in
witch-bottling accounts. There seem various key moments in the processes
reported – typically when seething the waters and especially when
quenching red hot iron into it – at which even ‘a single word mars the
whole charm’. Beyond silence itself as a ritual protocol (never mind a
sensible act of self-preservation when doing magic) these instructions
further highlight that such operations were sometimes considered to require
delicacy, care, and great attention.
VOLATILE VESSELS
In apprehending these contexts and concepts we may come to better
consider beliefs, customs, and understandings of the magics and the
meanings of witch-bottles from the early modern period to the present day.
Through the encapsulating lens of the witch-bottle this work offers
reflections upon broader and deeper shifting legal definitions of magic,
poison, and harm; as well as the changing economic, cultural, and
intellectual circumstances of communities and attendant historical turns and
responses in social mores, tensions, expectations, and practices. We also
observe a range of continuities of practice in these eddying shifts in
emphasis and circumstance swirling in this particular looking-glass.
In getting to the bottom of the witch-bottle this study traces pertinent
influences informing variegated dynamic expressions of such ritual objects
and diagnoses how these ideas and actions vie and intertwine throughout
not only the constellated historical record of evidences, but in the working-
books curated and the ritual acts of conjuration performed by the
practitioners who made experiment of them.
Alexander Cummins
New England, 2021
 Introduction
This book was initially published as part of a slipcased set by the
Society of Esoteric Endeavour, accompanying a reproduction of the
notebook of the nineteenth-century Liverpool cunning man William
Dawson Bellhouse. Publisher Ben Fernee asked me to write two small
books covering two sets of magical operations in Bellhouse’s grimoire. At
the urging of readers unable to obtain the set, I decided to update and re-
release the witch bottle notebook.
In recent years, more people have become aware of the existence and
significance of witch bottles, leading to more discoveries and creations.
Tracking down many of these accounts is taxing for the casual reader and
takes considerable effort for even specialists. Thus, my goal here is to be
comprehensive, giving enough details that scholars might track down many
cases of interest, while providing sufficient anecdotes and examples of
incantations and the like for those seeking such things.
My own background is a librarian and a student of texts on ritual magic,
who had some slight training in archaeology from years ago. Experts are
sure to disagree with some of my interpretations. I would encourage readers
to seek out the works in the bibliography to balance my own perspectives.
Throughout this book, I make heavy and perhaps careless use of words
such as ‘magic,’ ‘magician,’ and ‘supernatural.’ This might reflect modern
sensibilities more than those of the people who utilized these items in past
circumstances. Indeed, no contemporary documentation accompanies most
discovered bottles, and we have few hints as to the philosophies that
underlay the practice. From what accounts survive, however, they seem
based in the belief that one person may affect another person, creature, or
object through non-physical and invisible means, and that manipulation of
physical items, possibly including ritual statements and actions, might lead
to its reverse. Such ideas might be placed under different labels in different
periods, and we should be cognizant that these labels did and do have
considerable weight upon people’s lives.
  
Daniel Harms
2021
 
 The Witch in Belief, Folklore, and Medical
Practice
Throughout history, people encountered a variety of misfortunes: illness,
accidents, failed crops, sick animals, poor weather, fires, thefts, and many
others. Today, many of us have access to government and charitable
programs, police, fire departments, health care systems for both humans and
animals, and insurance. All of these were rudimentary at best in past eras,
leaving many people living a precarious existence in which any one
problem could cascade to destroy a household.
What would cause these misfortunes? Some disasters would affect an
entire community, but others just one household, leaving the rest untouched.
Sometimes the cause was clearly manifest – a hailstorm, an invading army
– but others had no perceptible cause. Different societies attribute such
troubles to gods and spirits, but others blame witches, dangerous
individuals secretly using supernatural powers to inflict injury on those who
displeased them.
Readers might have different reactions to this word; indeed, some might
self-identify themselves as witches and feel uncomfortable with the
negative associations that attach to it. Such associations are hard to avoid,
given the term’s lengthy connection to negative behaviours which are
entwined around the traditional milieu of the “witch bottle.” Thus, my use
of “witch” in this book will be largely based on this definition, simply for
the sake of clarity, not as a dismissal of other definitions of the term.
If the accounts of European witch trials are any indication, many of
those accused of being witches did not attempt supernatural harm.
Nonetheless, if a society believes that witches exist, some people will
exploit those beliefs to gain power and concessions from those around
them. Given the effect of mind and belief on the body, such efforts might
result in actual harm in some circumstances. This is not to justify witchcraft
accusations or the consequences thereof, yet the willingness of some
individuals to play the role of witches has played a part in the continuation
of such beliefs.
In societies that believe in witches, people often seek protection and
remedy against their powers. Although the witch trials were horrific, they
only flared up sporadically, often when and where broader social stressors
were already in play. People suspecting witchcraft usually relied on less
formal ways to help themselves, sometimes working with neighbours, local
clerics, or specialists in supernatural remedies.
People seeking to drive off witchcraft might draw on an array of
supernatural solutions. For example, “bleeding” a witch – often by striking
them on the face in such a way as to draw blood – was seen as a means of
causing the reversal of a spell. Secular authorities discouraged such
violence, so less confrontational practices were more common. Those who
feared witchcraft could wear amulets, or seek the blessing of their homes
and property, or perform other charms, including hanging up herbs or
horseshoes, inserting red-hot objects into cursed butter churns, or filling an
animal heart with pins. In a small portion of northwest Europe, the creation
of witch bottles served the same purpose.
WHAT ARE WITCH BOTTLES?
The term “witch bottle” appeared in a catalogue for the Saffron Walden
Museum in Essex, in 1845, referring briefly to an item on display[1]. After
so many years, no one knows what exactly that item was. 
For our purposes, I will refer to a “witch bottle” as a ritual assemblage,
usually intended to fight off maleficent magic, that employs at least two of
the following three ingredients: a bottle, urine, and sharp objects, which
may include needles, pins, or thorns. The “ritual” component here should be
taken to mean a purpose with a non-material component. For example, a jar
a carpenter uses to hold their nails would not qualify. Urine and sharp
objects need not be all that is included, and many assemblages may have
components beyond these. If some ambiguity exists about the presence of
these items due to preservation, the presence of two, or the positioning of
the bottle, might be factors to be considered.
Another common definition of the witch bottle incorporates the location
in which it was discovered, usually indicating that it was hidden somewhere
around a household. Without either of the other two physical elements,
however, a discovered bottle embroils us in questions about how we can
determine whether a bottle was deliberately concealed, or the purpose of the
concealment based upon context, condition, and association with other
objects. For some examples, see Reeves, “Mundane or Spiritual?”. I have
most omitted such discoveries, and I’m sure some readers will disagree.
Nonetheless, I feel that maintaining a focus on less debatable examples is
more valuable – and these are in no short supply.
Folklore and magical practice also refer to bottles that hold a spirit or
witch. Reports of these objects date considerably earlier and over a greater
geographic range, so these will only be noted in the few instances when
they seem to overlap with the definition above. Interested readers should
consult Iafrate, The Long Life of Magical Objects, 60–79.
Once assembled, the bottle’s creator either places it into a fire or
disposes of it by burying it or throwing it into water. This is only the
beginning of our understanding, as the nature, usage, contents, placement,
and other aspects of these bottles differ considerably among the accounts
and surviving artefacts.
TYPES OF EVIDENCE
Although witch bottles had been reported for hundreds of years, no
serious attempt to examine them seems to have been made until Ralph
Merrifield’s work in the Fifties. The evidence assembled since then can be
placed into four categories, each with its strengths and challenges.
The first category consists of written prescriptions for the creation of
these bottles. These recipes provide details on the creation of the bottles not
present in other sources. Nonetheless, we might ask how often these
specific prescriptions were used, or if they were recorded for practice or
simply for curiosity. It is likely that these few written fragments are only
part of a broader tradition that was either unwritten or lost.
Accounts of witch trials fall into the second category. Notably, those
conducting the trials rarely prosecuted people for the creation of these
bottles. The use of witch bottles was a frowned-upon but often efficacious
means by which people could attempt to protect themselves from
witchcraft. On the other hand, we have few actual trial records describing
them. The gap is filled with authors writing sensationalist pamphlets about
the trials, who might not have cared much for accuracy.
Third, we have the accounts of folklorists describing witch bottle beliefs
and objects. Such collectors, mostly working in the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, had their own interests, emphases, and biases. One key
concern is the likelihood that some folklorists, catering to their readers’
sensibilities, omitted references to urine as an ingredient or referred to it as
“water” or other euphemisms, as this ingredient does not turn up often in
such works.
Finally, we have the surviving witch bottles uncovered at sites on two
continents, mostly over the last century. Although these artefacts are some
of our best indicators of actual practice, they themselves do not constitute a
complete record of the practices. Placing a bottle in a fire to burst would
have left little remaining evidence that could be distinguished from ordinary
broken stoneware or glassware. Some ritual aspects – verbal charms, ritual
timing, or silence, for instance – reported solely in the written record would
leave no archaeological trace. The first response of most people when
finding an intriguing antique bottle is to pick it up and pour out the
contents, a reaction to which even archaeologists are prone[2]. The first
formal laboratory analysis of such a bottle was conducted in 2009, opening
the door to further investigation of these artefacts and their creation[3].
Still, some substances included in the bottle might not be detectable due to
the material not surviving or the lack of tests for detection.
 
 Origins of the Witch Bottle
Around the year 300 BC, two or more individuals in Athens undertook a
magical ceremony. They purchased a miniature stew pot, of a type often
used for funerary offerings. After painting a red ochre wreath pattern
around the middle, they etched dozens of personal names – men and
women, local and foreign - into the sides of the pot. Inside they placed the
head and feet of a chicken, the parts of the bird with the least amount of
meat. A doornail transfixed the pot, puncturing the base, and a coin, later
corroded beyond recognition, was placed over the pot’s mouth. Our
mysterious creators then buried the whole item beneath the floor of a
sculptor’s studio near the Agora.[4]
Would this be considered a witch bottle? I would argue against this.
Even if we set aside its distance in space and time from the other examples,
the many names etched into the ceramics suggest that this is a spell
intended for judicial or political purposes, likely against those working in
the building under which it was buried. This is very much unlike the witch
bottles, which were usually interpreted as reversing hostile magic, not
perpetuating it. Our Greek grouping includes many items similar to those
used for funeral rituals, and its main parallels from the period are the
“saucer pyres,” buried protective assemblages consisting of tiny ceramics
and burned items, commonly employed at the time. The example should
encourage us to look beyond our initial impressions to find the differences
and nuances in the material.
There has been some recent debate as to whether the term “witch
bottles” is accurate, and whether it is more helpful to refer to it as a “urinary
experiment,” arising from late seventeenth-century Paracelsian procedures
that later became incorporated into procedures against hostile magic. The
previous century, however, provides us with a wide variety of anti-
witchcraft rituals using a mixture of our three components, often in contexts
where they would not be obvious to archaeological discovery.[5]
 At least one scholar has drawn parallels with practices from Germany
and the Netherlands in which people buried clay pots and jugs below the
thresholds of their houses. Often placed upside down, these ceramics might
be empty or contain eggshells, coins, bones, ash, or other items. These
items might reflect early practices involving foundation sacrifices, either
being placed to trap evil spirits or to hold the good fortune of the household.
The placement of a vessel is interesting, but the sharp objects and liquid are
not reported as present.[6]
Another precursor to the witch bottle charms could be a procedure in
which urine and iron objects are boiled in a pot or pan. One such charm
appears in Folger Manuscript V.b.26, dating to the last decades of the
sixteenth century. The author wrote the instructions for the charm in a
simple cipher, which can be rendered as follows:
Take the urine of the party that is bewitched and seethe it
in a pot, close covered. Then take a pigeon heart, and stick
five needles in it, and set with the urine till the urine be
consumed, saying as is above written.[7]
The magician is to recite from the Gospel of St. John (likely the first
chapter, which was often used in magical procedures) three times, and then
say:
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,
that even as this water and urine doth now waste, consume,
and burn, so may his or hers [or] their witchcrafts,
enchantments, sorcery, or charms which did or hath
bewitched this person N., may presently by and by return and
lighten upon themselves again, and to this I do charge you,
by these names of God our Lord Jesus Christ, Tetragramaton,
Alpha et Omega, Messias, Sother, Emanuell, Adonay,
Algramay, Diagramay, Agla, Joth, Tetragram, Saday, by
these names and by all other names, and by all other names
of our Lord Jesus Christ, do I con[jure] you, that you do
cause that even as this urine doth, &c.[8]
One intriguing aspect of this charm is the inclusion of an animal heart,
which is absent or replaced with a cloth heart in many later accounts.
 A manuscript compilation of alchemical and medical experiments
includes a seventeenth-century charm to overcome witchcraft in a similar
vein:
Take the party’s water grieved, and set it on the fire, and
put into it a little sulfur. Then read the Gospel of St. John for
Christmas Day three times, and when the urine doth begin to
boil, have in a readiness three needles, and in putting them
into the urine one after another, you must say in putting in the
first, you must say [sic], “One in God’s name,” in putting in
the second, say, “Two in God’s name,” and so for the third,
say, “Three in God’s name.” Then say, “In the name of the
Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. Even as this
urine doth waste, consume, and burn, so may his, her, or
their witchcrafts, enchantments, or sorceries, or any other
which hath bewitched N., may return and light upon
themselves again, and that by the most virtuous names of
God, Tetragrammaton, Alpha et Omega, Messias, Sother,
Emanuel, Unigenitus, Vita, Via, Jesus Christus, Amen. By
these holy names of God, I drive and curse thee, and swear
you from your office and dignity. I do drive you by the virtue
of them into the nether pit of hellfire, there to remain and
burn with unquenchable fire, till the day of judgment, and
precept that you do cause that, even as this urine doth waste,
consume, and burn, so may his, her, or their witchcraft that
hath bewitched N. thy servant return this three times over,”
and at every time say our Lord’s Prayer. And at the same
hour and time that the prayer is said, an alteration shall be in
the party bewitched, and so by God’s grace it shall mend
afterwards.[9]
A contemporary account appears in Reverend George Gifford’s A
Dialogue concerning Witches, from 1593. The Reverend describes one
technique common to a “cunning man,” or local magical practitioner, as
follows:
the cunning man biddeth set on a posnet [10] or some pan
with nails, and seethe them, and the witch shall come in while
they be in seething, and within a few dates after, her face will
 be all bescratched with the nails. And I have heard that some
old woman coming in, her face hath indeed been as it were
scratched within a few days after, for the shingles or such like
break forth.[11]
We have one archaeological find that might pertain to this practice: an
iron bowl containing bent pins found in a stream near Northampton. The
item could date to any time between the sixteenth and the eighteenth
centuries, however, and no other material in witch bottles has turned up
inside – although given the circumstances in which it was found, this is
hardly surprising.[12]
Such charms were not confined to this place and time. We have one
example from Germany in 1562, in which a clergyman sought to stop
witchcraft by boiling a patient’s nails and urine in a pan.[13] On February 16,
1654, Ann Greene was accused of witchcraft at York. She responded that
she was a healer specializing in a few techniques. One of these was to take
the urine and a lock of hair from a headache sufferer, to boil them, and
finally to burn them in a fire. She made no mention of witches being
responsible for the headache, however.[14]
A similar charm was recorded in the notebook of the eighteenth-century
Yorkshire cunning man Timothy Crowther:
Take hair of each quarter, some of each hoof and horn,
sew it up in a cloth, and in the form of a ball; prick it full of
pins and put in 3 needles. Boil it in the afflicted water till the
pan be like to burn, then throw it into the fire and say (three
times) — “Witch, witch, witch, thus shalt thou burn in hell.”
Take care that no body come in the house all the time you are
in doing of it; it must be done three times at the change, full,
and quarter.[15]
In 1843, Charlotte Horn of Plymstock was deeply concerned about the
health of her mother, Ann. Agnes Hill of Plymouth offered to help her with
many amulets and charms. In addition, Charlotte was to obtain “fasting
water,” a rooster, and ash wood from three different parishes. Once
Charlotte brought these to Plymouth, a bloody rite began:
 Hill then said, we must kill the cock, and desired her
mother to cut its throat, which she did with a razor. The cock
was held over the new earthen pan, holding the fasting water
and the blood, which was mingled together, and then put over
the fire to boil. Hill then cut open the cock and took out its
heart, and told her mother to stick seven new pins into it,
likewise seven new needles, and nine blackthorn prickles. The
ash wood was put on the fire under the pan, the heart was
hung up to roast before the fire, and it was afterwards thrown
into the fire, pins, needles, and all.
Although witchcraft is never mentioned by name, it seems this was the
cause. Hill’s other remedies went so far as burning every piece of the
mother’s furniture. The court in Plymouth fined her, and Hill had to flee the
court due to angry locals.[16]
One Norfolk clergyman related a cure for any illness attributed to
bewitchment. Two people must meet at midnight, with one person directing
the other in complete silence. Nine nails, each one from a different
horseshoe, must be combined with urine from the victim and boiled over
the fire. This must continue until three, five, or seven nails – the more that
move, the more difficult the case – move within the liquid, and the victim
cries out. With that, the spirit will depart. On one occasion, a boy
accompanying the rite was silent until the end, when he cried out when he
saw something black exiting the room through a keyhole. The bewitched
child did not recover.[17]
If we take these accounts as a model for later witch bottles, the use of a
pot or pan that is not broken or buried might account for the lack of
evidence of witch bottles before this time. In fact, a nineteenth-century
charm discussed later may be pursued with either a pot and a bottle.
One final variation on the elements of a witch bottle appears in De
Cerebri Morbis [Of the Diseases of the Brain], written by Jason Pratensis in
1549. Shortly before composing the book, a priest visited Pratensis with a
curious problem. A woman appeared to visit him in the night, sitting on his
chest so he could barely breathe. Seeking a solution, he went to an old
woman, who advised him to urinate in his chamber pot at twilight and stop
it up with the hose from his right leg. The witch responsible would visit him
before the day was out. All this occurred as the woman had told him. Even
though the witch’s bladder could find no release, she nonetheless refused to
free the priest from his torment. Eventually the doctor was able to convince
him to pursue medical treatment, and he was cured.[18]
Notably, Pratensis was a physician living in Zierikzee, Holland, which
means that this was a cure from across the Channel similar to the witch
bottle. All it lacked to meet my requirements would be the sharp objects.
Reginald Scot himself noted this case in his Discoverie of Witchcraft
(1584), so learned individuals in England would have been aware of it.[19]
THE APPEARANCE OF WITCH BOTTLES
The first artefacts claimed to be witch bottles appear in the United
Kingdom circa 1500. A lead stopper in the mouth of a stoneware container,
found at a site in Kingston Lisle, bears the imprint of an Austro-Burgundian
jeton, or a counter placed on a board to keep track of accounts, from 1482-
1555.[20] A similar seal with the imprint of a jeton from Tournai dates to the
late fifteenth century.[21] It is uncertain, based on the data presented on these
items, why these are considered witch bottles.
The most compelling evidence of witch bottles themselves appears
during the seventeenth century. We might begin with the famous account in
Joseph Glanvil’s Saducismus Triumphatus (1681), as told to William
Brearly of Christ’s College, Cambridge. He had been staying in Suffolk
around 1640, when he learned of his landlady’s brush with witchcraft.
For an Old Man that Travelled up and down the Country,
and had some acquaintance at that house, calling in and
asking the Man of the house how he did and his Wife; He told
him that himself was well, but his Wife had been a long time
in a languishing condition, and that she was haunted with a
thing in the shape of a Bird, that would flurr [flutter] near to
her face, and that she could not enjoy her natural rest well.
The Old Man bid him and his Wife be of good courage. It was
but a dead Spright, he said, and he would put him in a course
to rid his Wife of this languishment and trouble. He therefore
advised him to take a Bottle, and put his Wives Urine into it,
together with Pins and Needles and Nails, and Cork them up,
and set the Bottle to the fire, but be sure the Cork be fast in it,
that it fly not out. The Man followed the prescription, and set
the Bottle to the fire well corkt, which when it had felt a while
the heat of the fire began to move and joggle a little, but he
for sureness took the Fireshovel off, which he still quickly put
on again, but at last at one shoving the Cork bounced out,
and the Urine, Pins, Nails and needles all flew up, and gave
a report like a Pistol, and his Wife continued in the same
trouble and languishment still.
 Not long after, the Old Man came to the house again, and
inquired of the Man of the house how his Wife did. Who
answered as ill as ever, if not worse. He askt him if he had
followed his direction. Yes, says he, and told him the event as
is abovesaid. Ha, quoth he, it seems it was too nimble for
you. But now I will put you in a way, that will make the
business sure. Take your Wive’s Urine as before, and Cork it
in a Bottle with Nails, Pins and Needles, and bury it in the
Earth; and that will do the feat. The Man did accordingly.
And his Wife began to mend sensibly, and in a competent time
was finely well recovered. But there came a Woman from a
Town some miles off to their house, with a lamentable Out-
cry, that they had killed her Husband. They askt her what she
meant and thought her distracted, telling her they knew
neither her nor her husband. Yes, saith she, you have killed
my husband, he told me so on his Death-bed. But at last they
understood by her, that her Husband was a
 Wizzard, and had bewitched this Mans Wife, and that this
Counter-practice, prescribed by the Old Man, which saved
the Mans Wife from languishment, was the death of that
Wizzard that had bewitcht her. [22]
Glanvil’s account is not only quite detailed, it also presents both boiling
and burying of witch bottles occurring in the same situation.
William Drage’s Daimonomageia (1665) presents the following
remedies for dealing with a witch:
Punish the thing bewitched; putting red hot Iron in the
Churrn, when Butter would not come, hath burned her in the
Guts; burning the Excrements of one bewitched, hath made
her Anus sore; tying the Fat or Cauldron of Drink hard with
Cords, that hath boiled over when scarce any Fire was under,
hath made the Witch be sore girt and pained; stopping up
Bottles of that Drink that hath been bewitched, hath made the
Witch able neither to urine or deject, until they were
opened…[23]
Through the archaeological record, we have many examples of witch
bottles made out of stoneware jugs with round bodies and thin necks, the
latter of which was often decorated with a bearded man’s face. Such jugs,
usually used to transport beer, have since been dubbed “bellarmines,” in
mockery of the unpopular Catholic theologian Robert Bellarmine (1542-
1621). These jugs were thought at one time to be similar to the face of
Bellarmine, or even modelled after it. Today, this hypothesis is usually
rejected, and terms such as “greybeard” and “Bartmann” are more accepted.
[24]
The earliest examples came from Cologne and the Rhine Valley; the
Netherlands and England itself were turning out similar vessels by the mid-
seventeenth century.[25]
Bellarmines were likely in circulation in England for seventy years
before they began to be used as witch bottles. It might be that the faces
appearing on the bellarmines inspired their usage for anti-witchcraft spells.
Still, the need for a bellarmine is not mentioned in the recipes or other
accounts that have come down to us, raising the question as to how
necessary they might have been to the procedure. It could be that the
bellarmines were used because they were a ubiquitous container appropriate
to the purpose. Other vessels might have also been used, with different rates
of survival.[26] Another possibility might be that the witch bottle had its
roots in the Rhine Valley, where so many bellarmines were produced.[27]
Also, the switch from animal hearts to cloth hearts might have occurred to
facilitate their placement in a bottle.
 

Bellarmine Bottle

No matter their source, numerous bellarmine witch bottles have been

found dating from the late seventeenth century. Several examples have been
found in London, usually buried or tossed into the Thames. Even more have
been found in East Anglia, particularly in Suffolk, although these usually
have turned up the threshold or hearth of buildings from the period. In
either case, these usually contain pins, with less common additions being a
felt heart, hair, thorns, and nail clippings.[28] A particularly striking example
from Suffolk includes the usual ingredients, along with shards of glass,
brass studs, a fork, and spills (wooden pieces used to make matches).[29]
 Further Examples of Bellarmines

 
The practice of creating such bottles travelled as far as Dublin, where a
bellarmine dug up at a construction site was found with iron nails inside.[30]
Until recently, limitations on preservation and funding prevented any
formal analysis of the contents of these witch bottles. In 2009, laboratories
at Liverpool University, Leicester Royal Infirmary, and the British
Geological Survey examined material inside a bellarmine found buried and
inverted in Greenwich in 2004, with a later study appearing from Alan
Massey of Loughborough University. The contents included urine (with
trace amounts of cotinine, indicating a smoker), brass pins, fingernails, hair,
iron needles (bent into hook shapes), sulfur, lint, and a possibly heart-
shaped piece of leather.[31]
 Drawing of an X-Ray showing the content of the Greenwich Bottle

 
The late seventeenth century also saw the first publication of the witch
bottle procedure intended as a recipe. Joseph Blagrave, a gentleman and
astrologer of Reading, Berkshire, published the following description of
such a bottle in the Astrological Practice of Physick in 1671. This is
preceded with an adaptation of the charm involving a pan:
Another way is to get two new horseshoes, heat one of
them red hot, and quench him in the patients urine, then
immediately nail him on the inside of the threshold of the
door with three nailes, the heel being upwards: then having
the patients urine set it over the fire, and set a trivet over it,
put into it three horse nails, and a little white salt: Then heat
the other horshooe red hot, and quench him several times in
the urine, and so let it boil and waste until all be consumed;
do

this three times and let it be near the change, full, or quarters
of the Moon; or let the Moon be in Square or Opposition unto
the Witches Significator
Immediately following this is the commonly-cited witch bottle charm:
Another way is to stop the urine of the Patient, close up in
a bottle, and put into it three nails, pins, or needles, with a
 little white Salt, keeping the urine alwayes warm: If you let it
remain long in the bottle, it will endanger the witches life: for
I have found by experience, that they will be grievously
tormented making their water with great difficulty, if any at
all, and the more if the Moon be in Scorpio in Square or
Opposition to his Significator, when its done.[32]
Blagrave also notes similar ceremonies that might be performed using
the patient’s blood or thatch from their house. He notes that the blood is
considered more vital, and charms involving it are more effective. Boiling
blood and urine is effective, he claims, because ‘such is the subtlety of the
Devil, that he will not suffer the Witch to infuse any poysonous matter into
the body of man or beast, without some of the Witches blood mingled with
it.’ The afflicted witch must either bear the torment – as some are capable –
or arrive at the place where the substance is heated to smell it and thereby
gain release. Through allowing this link, Satan prepares his witches for their
horrible ends, knowing that such a charm may lead them to great pain that
foreshadows the torments of hell.[33]
Blagrave’s text provided wide dissemination for the charm. When St.
Merryn resident Thomasine Leverton was undergoing a difficult pregnancy,
she consulted a cunning person. In September 1701, that individual wrote
out a description of a procedure very close to Blagrave’s model, that her
client might overcome the ill wishes of her enemies.[34] The charm is as
follows:
For Thomson Leverton on Saturday next, being the 17th of
this instant September any time that day take about a pint of
your own urine and make it almost scalding hot, then empty
it into a stone jug with a narrow mouth, then put into it so
much white salt as you can take up with the thumb and two
forefingers of your left hand, and three new nails with their
points downward, their points being first made very sharp.
Then stop the mouth of the jug very close with a piece of
tough clay and bind a piece of leather firm over the stop, then
put the jug into warm embers and keep him there nine or ten
days and nights following, so that it go not stark cold all that
meantime, day nor night, and your private enemies will never
 after have any power upon you, either in body or goods. So
be it.[35]
This compares favourably with the previous rite, especially regarding
the usage of salt and three sharp nails.
Another seventeenth-century witch bottle formula can be found in a
collection of anti-witchcraft techniques in British Library Sloane 3846. This
procedure is attributed to Roger Bacon, who is the son of the likely-
mythical wizard and friar William Bacon, and may be used to address the
bewitchment of men, women, children, cattle, bread, butter – a great range
of misfortunes of the family farm.
For this particular formula, a person’s urine must be bottled with oil of
populeon, a substance in which black poplar is the primary ingredient. This
should be set on the fire, in the planetary hours attributed to Mars or Saturn,
until it is about to boil over. Then the magician heats tongs to red hot and
places them within, saying:
I conjure thee [A], witch or witches or wicked spirit, by
the living God, the true God, and the holy God, and by the
birth of Jesus Christ, his godly doctrine and wonders worked
that he did upon the earth, and by his burial, resurrection,
and ascension, and by all powers that are created and
contained under the throne of God, and by all the powers
propounded by me, I command and conjure thee [A], or you
witches or wicked spirits, by all other powers that you are
subject to, that you presently do depart from this N. in peace
and unity and never to vex or trouble him or her any more, by
any kind of diabolical powers earthly or ghostly, upon pain of
everlasting condemnation, and for thy wicked deeds to be
tormented with the fiery darts of hell, signed with a mark
upon thy body or bodies, whereby thou mayest repent and be
mended thy evil life. Fiat, fiat, fiat. Amen.[36]
As with other bottles being created, it was possible that the witch would
visit the magician to ask for an item. The manuscript tells the creator of the
bottle to send this person away, saying,
Depart from my house and from my ground, thou wicked
person, in the name of the Father, of the Son, and Holy
 Ghost. The cross of Jesus between thee and me from this time
forth for evermore.[37]
Using such a bottle was not necessarily safe, according to the tale of one
woman tormented by evil spirits for three years. A relative seems to have
placed the “Evil Spirit” “into a Stone Bottle that hung over the Fire” – most
likely a witch bottle procedure. He was surprised when he heard a roaring
noise, followed by a loud bang and the room filling with smoke. Next, he
was knocked down by an invisible force. The bottle shot up the chimney
and was dropped back down, exuding smoke yet somehow unbroken. The
woman was finally cured.[38]
Other experimenters, such as those whose activities are described in a
ballad published in 1670, are reported to have had less perilous results. An
unnamed girl living near the Blue Boar Inn, Holburn, was deeply harmed
by witchcraft, and her friends despaired of her life. They sought out a
“Chymist,” or practitioner of Paracelsian magic:
This Girls own Urine then he bid them take,

And with some other things a mixture make:

Which being put into a bottle then,

He ordered them the manner, place, and when.

They should this Bottle in in [sic] a Dung hill put,

Which he believ’d the witches Charms would cut

This thing they then were all resolv’d to try,

Hoping to find some help immediately.

After they did so, the accused witch appeared and asked for the bottle.
She was denied it, and later grew sick and died, with the girl making a full
recovery.[39]
One account of witch bottles turns up in a record of the Norfolk assizes
from Lent, 1671, describing an event in the 1650s in which a Great
Yarmouth man believed himself to be bewitched. An unknown person
suggested that he combine old “nails, pins, and needles” with a red cloth
heart and an unspecified liquid in a bottle, placed over the fire. It seemed to
cause discomfort to the suspected witch.[40]
 Witch bottles featured prominently in two witch trials in 1682. In

March, Southwark resident Joan Buts was accused of striking Mary Farmer

ill. Dr. Bourn, apparently a local cunning man, advised the girl’s parents to

stop up her urine in a bottle and bury it while burning her clothes to compel

the witch to appear. Ms. Buts appeared with a hideous expression on her

face and fell to writhing on the ground, making horrible sounds. Sadly, the

[41]
charm seems to have been ineffective, as Mary soon passed away.

In June, a similar case appeared at the court of Oyer and Terminer in

London, with Jane Kent being accused of killing five-year-old Elizabeth
Chamblet. When her mother was also attacked, her father sought the advice
of a Doctor Hainks of Spitalfields. Under the doctor’s instructions, the elder
Chamblet boiled a pipkin containing a quart of Elizabeth’s urine, hair, nail
parings, and other items. He claimed he could hear the witch screaming
outside the house, although he refused to open the door to see if she were
there, and the next day she appeared swollen. Both Joan Buts and Jane Kent
were acquitted at trial.[42]
Not all witch bottle usage became the subject of trials. Author and
antiquary John Aubrey relates how a local man owned a horse that became
uncontrollable due to witchcraft. He buried a bottle of urine from the horse,
and the man believed to be responsible eventually died of an inability to
urinate. When dug up, the bottle was mostly empty; locals believed that a
witch who survived until the vessel was empty could regain his or her
health.[43]
This was not the only case in which a witch bottle was created for a
horse, as Thomas Tryon indicated:
 ‘Tis said, That a Horse being Bewitched, they filled a
Bottle with the Horses Urine, stop’d it well with a Cork, and
bound it fast in, and then Buried it under Ground, and the
party fell ill that was suspected to be the Witch, and could not
make Water, of which she died.[44]
Our final witch bottle from this period, in a bellarmine made in the last
two decades of the seventeenth century, was found in a hearth at Hellington,
Norfolk, in 1976. In addition to eight hawthorn thorns and a string with
three reef knots, it also contained fragments of a printed French prayer
book, part of which was tied up in hair and pierced with a brass pin. The
text remains indecipherable.[45]
Whatever their history before, witch bottles had become popular and
accepted in many parts of England. Further, although we know little about
the identities of those who recommended such procedures, it seems that a
wide range of people, ranging from practitioners of Paracelsian magic to
cunning folk to those with little medical knowledge, believed the
experiment to be useful in alleviating illness.[46]
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
The beginning of the eighteenth century saw no cessation in the use of
witch bottles. One controversial account from Northampton tells of two
women, Mary Phillips and Elinor Shaw, being accused of attacking twelve-
year-old Charles Ireland in 1705. His mother buried a bottle of pins,
needles, and his urine in the hearth, causing both suspects to come to the
house and promise to free the boy of their enchantments.[47] On February 17,
1712, servant girl Anne Thorn was exceedingly ill, supposedly due to one
Jane Wenham’s enchantment. On that evening, others placed a bottle of
Anne’s urine over the fire and sent observers to the supposed witch’s house.
Wenham was afflicted with crying and horrible pain until the cork flew out
of the bottle with a loud noise.[48]
Wenham was sentenced to death, but later pardoned. This turned out to
be the last conviction under the 1604 Witchcraft Act, and an impetus for the
passage of another in 1736. The new law officially transformed the
government’s views of the dangers of witchcraft from murder and
destruction to fraud and fortune-telling. This did little to dissuade most
people from believing in witchcraft, or seeking magical solutions thereto.[49]
Indeed, the lack of official recourse would have made believers turn to
witch bottles and other remedies.
In 1717, a group of women at Leicester believed themselves to be
tormented by witches. To fight them off, they followed a cunning man’s
advice to place a bewitched person’s urine in a bottle by the fire. Their
account is notable for their experimentation with the procedure, and the
circumstances surrounding it:
…which they frequently did and corkd it well and ty’d
down the cork wth 20 rounds of packthread, notwithstanding
which the water wd. allways give a crack like a gun, & the
cork fly out leaving the bottle and pack thread as it was,
while the water was in the bottle the afflicted parties had
ease but upon its bursting out their pains & illness return’d.
The good women who gave information depos’d, that for
experiment sake they used to stew their own water so, but
 their’s would never crack or fiz or fly away like the other, but
would symmer as quietly when it was heated as any spring
water.
When the patients urine was set to stew by the fire some
one of the witches was allways observed to come into the
room sometimes in the shape of a cat & sometimes a dog…
these dogs and cats would come in tho: the doors and
windows were shut and all passages except keyholes &
chimneys stopt & could never be catchd but would grin
furiously, and approaching near the bewitch’d persons give
them great pain and so vanish.[50]
In 1762, the two daughters of Richard Giles at Lawford’s Gate, Bristol
became the victims of mysterious spiritual assaults; stabbings with pins and
spectral fingernails, poltergeist activity intense enough to move heavy
wagons, an apparition of an old woman, and a presence that scratched out
responses to requests made in English, Latin, and Greek. The situation
became dire enough that Mr. Giles himself died of fever, believed to have
been due to the stress under which the spirit placed him. In the end, his
widow petitioned a cunning woman at Bedminster, who told her to place
her children’s urine in a pipkin over a fire. If she saw colours like a rainbow
in the liquid as it boiled, the girls could be cured. The widow did so, and the
manifestations stopped.[51]
A manuscript from the collection of the antiquary Francis Douce, now at
the Bodleian Library, includes an item copied from the Morning Post from
May 29, 1792, the printed version of which does not seem to have survived.
An Uxbridge farmer was having trouble with one horse, then another, of a
mysterious nature. Placing a bottle with horse urine and crooked pins into
the fire, the farmer watched it explode, and the horses recovered.[52]
As with the seventeenth century, the presence of buried witch bottles
takes us beyond recorded records. One glass bottle, found in a grave in All
Saints Church, Loughton, bore a cork studded with copper pins and is
believed to date circa 1700.[53] Another, deposited after 1720 at Reigate, is
one of the few that has been subjected to chemical analysis, albeit years
after originally being opened. Nine bent and corroded bronze pins were
found, along with high amounts of nitrate which may indicate the presence
of urine. Other ingredients included plant matter, animal and human hairs,
dyed cotton fibre, wool, linen, silica, and other substances. It is unclear as
to whether these were deliberately included in the bottle when originally
sealed.[54] At some point between 1700 and 1740, the inhabitants of one
dwelling in Shoreditch filled a late seventeenth-century bellarmine with
bent pins and placed it beneath their floors.[55]
On the north side of the churchyard of All Saints Church in Loughton,
Buckinghamshire, archaeologists found a bottle with copper pins both
inside and stuck into the cork, buried with the body of an individual around
twenty years of age and of indeterminate sex. A parallel might be found
below, with a witch bottle found buried in a Bodmin cemetery.[56]
Stockton-on-Tees provides us with a handsome example of a potential
witch bottle, a green glass item with a long neck and silver stopper. It
appears to have been placed in the cupola of the town hall during its
construction around 1735, later being rediscovered during renovation in the
1840s. If so, it is an unusual case of a bottle being placed both at the top of
a building, and in a municipal structure instead of a home or public house.
The original contents of the bottle, now in the collection of the Preston Park
Museum, are unknown.[57]
Another notable eighteenth-century example is a tiny bottle found near
the chimney of a house in Debenham, Suffolk. The specimen was fitted
with a modern cork when found in the Seventies, but it contained hair and
most likely urine as well.[58] A mid-century bottle found beneath a parish
boundary wall in Dorset included animal fat among its ingredients, possibly
to ward off injuries to the parish cattle.[59] In an article on the dating of
glass, Fowler reports on two glass phials found beneath churches in south
Leicestershire. He believed that both were more recent in character, and that
they may have been examples of witch bottles, due to their upside-down
positioning.[60]
In addition to the St. Merryn recipe noted above, we have one other
example of a witch bottle recipe from this century. Dating to about 1730, it
appears in a set of documents auctioned in 2020 by the Dominic Winter
firm, which was good enough to post a facsimile on their website. The wife
of a household should fast and put their water into a quart-sized stone bottle
in the morning, along with a lock of hair from one’s crown, two nails, and a
finger (hopefully meaning the fingernail), along with nails and pins that
should be crooked and rusty and some small bent pieces of iron. One should
add personal items of one’s husband and finally spit into the bottle just
before corking it after he comes home. The couple should sit up all night,
boiling the bottle in water, and then hang it in the chimney in the morning.
Hanging St. John’s wort about the house is also suggested as a helpful
addition.[61]
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
By the early nineteenth century, multiple generations of British citizens
had never witnessed trials for witchcraft, yet the belief in the existence and
impact of witches was still strong in many areas. The mid-century rise in
professional policing ramped up prosecutions of the cunning folk who made
witch bottles under the Witchcraft or Vagrancy Acts, yet it also worked
against vigilante justice against suspected witches, potentially making the
usage of counter-magic more popular.[62]
William Bottrell, the Cornish folklorist and raconteur, told a tale of a
Cornish witch bottle rite from approximately 1800. Captain Matthew
Thomas of Treen, near Zennor, loved panning for tin and smuggling with
his crew. He let his estate run down until the fences broke and his cattle
wandered into the fields of his neighbours. Soon his livestock became sick,
and he sought out An Maggey, the cross-dressing, pistol-wielding white
witch of Zennor, in her hut by the ocean. Maggey, after admonishing the
captain for his lax attitude toward his property, corked a bottle of the sick
animals’ urine, and Thomas hid it in the pile of tin behind his house.
Gossips soon broadcast the operation throughout the parish. As
unpopular as Captain Thomas was, dozens of locals felt themselves under
the influence of the witch bottle, their psychosomatic pains enhanced by
ongoing comparison with those of their fellows. One night, they decided to
band together to attack the smugglers in the house of their tinworks, in the
hope of relief. The smugglers saw them coming and discharged their
firearms, driving them off. The fleeing Zennor residents ran into the parson
of nearby Gulval, who was hunting with some gentlemen. He brokered a
peace deal, and the captain broke open the bottle in front of the assemblage.
[63]

The nineteenth century brought many technological innovations, with

iron witch bottles among the most surprising. While promising relief from
supernatural harm, they brought with them mundane dangers, as this
account shows:
In the month of May 1804, a Bradford weaver, named
Sutcliffe, began to imagine that his house was haunted by an
 evil spirit. Desirous of abating its mischievous influence he
resorted to a notorious local wizard, who readily promised
his assistance in doing so. Having poured a quantity of
human blood mixed with hair into a large iron bottle, the
designing knave corked it tightly and placed it on the fire
where it soon exploded with a terrific report, killing the
weaver on the spot.[64]
In 1808, Isaac Nicholson, reverend of the parish of Great Paxton, found
that one of his parishioners was a suspected victim of witchcraft. Her
brother had heard a cure from a man in Bedfordshire, with an unusual take
on the bottle as a divination device:
He filled a bottle with a particular kind of a fluid, stuffed
the cork both top and bottom, with pins, set it carefully in an
oven of a moderate heat, and then observed with a profound
silence. In a few minutes the charm succeeded; for he saw a
variety of forms flitting before his eyes, and amongst the rest
the perfect resemblance of an old woman who lived in the
same parish… he was now satisfied who it was that had
injured him, and that her reign would soon be over.[65]
During his research on Somerset cunning folk and witchcraft beliefs,
Owen Davies came across several notable cases involving witch bottles. A
Wells cunning man gave one of his clients the following incantation to
recite:
In the name of Christ I put these pins, thorns, & c. into
this bottle, and I wish them not so much to be there as in the
heart of the person that has done me this mischief.
In this instance, a vial of urine was to be filled with seven each of white
thorns, black thorns, pins, and headless nails, to be stoppered and hidden
beneath the hearth at a quarter to twelve – whether before noon or midnight
is not stated.[66] If an anti-witchcraft ritual observed in East Anglia is any
indication, midnight seems more likely:
…the most effectual remedy, or mode of exorcism, is to
take a quantity of the patient’s urine, and boil it with nine
nails from as many old horseshoes. The process is to begin
exactly at midnight. The conductress of it is to have an
 assistant to obey orders, but is to touch nothing herself… A
single word mars the whole charm. At a certain critical point
in the process, when three, five, or seven of the nails have
been put in motion at once… (for some cases are more
difficult than others), the spirit is cast out…[67]
The author goes on to describe an assistant who spoke upon seeing the
spirit escaping, with dire consequences to the patient.
One of the most well-known nineteenth-century advocates of the witch
bottle was James ‘Cunning’ Murrell (1785-1860) of Hadleigh, Essex.
Arthur Morrison, writing a profile for The Strand nearly fifty years later,
mentioned Murrell’s use of
the iron witch-bottles made for Murrell by Choppen the
smith, in which were placed blood, water, finger-nails, hair,
and pins; which bottles, when screwed up air-tight, were set
on the fire by way of process against witches, and frequently
burst with great success and devastation, thus signalizing the
destruction of the diabolical influence.’[68]
Choppen’s first efforts at creating such a bottle apparently met with
failure, until Murrell said a charm over the forge. The smith is believed to
have left a small hole in one end of the bottles, to lower the risk of
detonation. Local legend has it that a boy, kept in the dark as to the bottle’s
purpose, was convinced to drink beer out of it, dying of fear after being told
what it was.[69] Even after this supposed tragedy, these creations were used
to great effect, according to a Mrs. Watson, when a local girl was driven
mad after turning out a Romany woman from her barn:
Murrell was called in. He placed in the fire a bottle
containing hair and nail-clippings from the victim. He told
everyone to keep absolutely silent while they awaited the
arrival of the witch. Presently there came a hammering on
the door, and a woman’s voice begged him to stop ‘the test,’
as the fire was causing her agony. The bottle burst. On the
following morning, an old woman was found burned to death
outside the Woodcutters’ Arms, three miles away. It was the
gypsy. The girl recovered.[70]
 These did not always have successful results for the patient, as an 1849
story in Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper relates. Although Murrell is not named
in the story, it occurs within a few miles of his home. The iron bottle blew
up and destroyed the grate to which it had been padlocked.[71]
Ironically, another charmer from Rayleigh would claim that Murrell’s
death was due to his own use of a witch bottle. According to his story, upon
finding that a donkey was ill, the Rayleigh cunning man placed both his nail
parings and the donkey’s hair inside a bottle. He placed it on the fire and
ignored the insistent knocking at his door until it burst. The following day,
he learned that Murrell had passed.[72]
Murrell’s practice passed to his son Buck, who decided to keep up his
reputation by using one of the surviving containers. Unfortunately, his
client disregarded his instruction to remain silent, and the bottle exploded,
taking out a substantial part of the chimney and nearly one side of his house
with it[73].
Nineteenth-century witch bottles need not have been iron, and were
employed in the city as well as the country. William Dawson Bellhouse
(1814-1870) was a galvanist and cunning man living in Leeds and
Liverpool, with a clientele eager to experience electricity, astrology, and
charms. His own magical notebook, dated 1852, includes a rite with an
impressive list of ingredients:
To hurt or destroy a witch
Cut a little hair of the nap[e] of the neck of the afflicted
person or party bewitched and with parings of finger and toe
nails and some of his blood, and three quarts of his water a
chain of seven links, the middle link to turn down, and the
heart of a fowl fresh, and three new needles, and three new
pins. Take them and stick them in the heart a few rusty nails
and cards teeth[74]. Then take three pennyworth of aqua fortis,
th[r]ee pennyworth of vitriol, three pennyworth of french flies
[cantharides], three pennyworth of brims[t]on[e], three
pennyworth of devil’s dung [asafoetida], 3c pennyworth of
dragon’s blood, and in smaller bottles, put three drams of
each. Those most be all put in a strong bottle that
withstand[s] fire, or a pan, and boil them on a slow fire until
 all is consumed. The chain must be half red hot before it is
put in. Stir it with a red hot poker five or six times, and say,
turning the poker, these words: “Witch, witch, witch, I thee
burn (or I thee kill) in hellfire if thou does not leave this
person, and evil turn to thyself, thou shall feel the wrath of
God for evermore. Amen.” After this read the 70th Psalm. If a
pan is used, scrape all well out, and bring it at the north side
of the house, and this will finish it.[75]
This charm has some fascinating aspects. It is versatile enough to be
used with a pan or a bottle, and in fact the appearance of both possibilities
suggests that the one evolved into another. Further, it incorporates the
heated chain, which draws parallels with anti-witchcraft rites to scald a
witch by inserting a hot object into milk. Some of the ingredients are not
found elsewhere – were these Bellhouse’s innovations?
Later in the same work, Bellhouse offers a simpler version, which seems
to be an elaboration on Blagrave’s formula:
To Kill a Witch
Take a new stone bottle, and put into it two quarts of the
person’s water that be afflicted. Get three new needles and
crooked pins. Get the heart of the fowl, and stick the needles
and pins in the heart, also the parings of all the fingers and
toe nails, and a little hair from the neck hole, and a little of
his blood, some salt and soot. Boil all over a slow fire,
stopped or corked up, until all is consumed.[76]
A variety of mid-nineteenth century bottles have also been discovered.
Perhaps the most elaborate came out of Ram Mark Pond near Yeovil in
1854. Inside a pickle jar was a piece of lead carved with magical symbols
and three figurines, partially made of gutta-percha latex, filled with black
pins. The front of each bore the astrological symbol of Saturn, while the
backs were inscribed with the names of two local constables and one of
their wives, along with the statement that they would undergo “sudden
destruction, legal and moral.” One of the constables had been ill, but he
recovered after the bottle was found. The perpetrator was never caught.[77]
A curious yellow stone bottle of indeterminate date was found in a
Wharfedale farmer’s garden in 1845. The contents included human hair,
brimstone, needles, pins, and fingernail clippings. No liquid contents are
described.[78]
During roadworks at Holywood, Stockport, workers found two bottles
of purplish fluid buried six inches deep beneath long grass. Analysis found
that the contents were dragon’s blood, urine, and pins. When reporters
asked around the area, they found that such practices were commonly
known in the area. One practitioner claimed that dumping these items in the
cesspool or garden would lead to the destruction of nearby crops. Only by
breaking the bottle over running water and casting the pieces in afterward
would break the spell.[79]
One prominent witch bottle in the news was found in a chimney of the
former Star and Garter Inn in Watford, Northamptonshire. The bottle, of a
type used since the 1830s to contain carbonated soda, included an
unspecified liquid, fishhooks, and human teeth. In 1761, Angeline Tubbs
was born at the inn; she later emigrated to New York state and became
known as the “Witch of Saratoga.” Of course, she had left England well
before the witch bottle’s creation. The current owner seems to have returned
the bottle to another hiding place in the structure.[80]

Drawing based on the bottle from the Star and Garter Inn, Watford

The Bottesford author and antiquarian Edward Peacock found several

witch bottles, reporting on the first two in 1856. One was buried in
proximity to an ox or horse in a man’s garden in Yaddlethorpe, while
another close to his hometown contained the heart of a small animal.[81] This
was not Peacock’s only discovery; by 1880, his demolishing cottages on his
estates had turned up at least a dozen such objects beneath the buildings’
foundations.[82] He also noted that witchcraft could be countered if one
buried a bottle containing urine, pins, and hair under the eaves.[83]
A doll’s head accompanied a witch bottle was discovered recently in a
wooded area near Oswestry, Shropshire. The bottle itself, dated between
1860 and the end of the century, was sealed with wax and cork, and
contained liquid, hair and a tooth. It is unclear whether the doll head and the
witch bottle were buried at the same time. Chris Langston, the metal
detectorist who found the bottle, returned it to the ground nearby.[84]
The latter part of the century also features several accounts of witch
bottle usage, often related by clients of the cunning folk who instructed
them in their use. The first was a woman who consulted a cunning woman
near Guildford regarding her daughter’s epilepsy. The remedy was to fill a
quart bottle with pins, which were then placed on the fireplace until the pins
“would prick the heart of the witch” who had laid the charm. The second
describes a bottle hidden under the hearthstone of a Pulborough house
during renovations. Unfortunately, the ritual to create it was dismissed by
the teller as “ludicrous, but unfit for him to relate”[85].
In 1855, a man in Langford believed that his landlord’s wife was
responsible for a chronic illness for which doctors could find no cause. He
spoke with a local wise man, who performed a ritual for the price of a
sovereign. Beginning with a “game of cards” – it’s not clear whether this
was part of the ritual or not – several bottles of pins and “stuff” were placed
in the fire. Following this, the cunning man recited the 37th Psalm three
times in reverse. A bottle with a “heart” filled with pins, along with “stuff,”
was capped with a pin-filled cork and buried under the floor. The landlord’s
wife fell victim to a mysterious illness, as if being pricked with pins, and
the condition only lifted once the bottle was removed.[86]
One J. B., a farmer in Hockham, Norfolk, believed his wife had been
bewitched. A cunning woman advised them to combine horseshoe nails,
nail parings, hair from the wife’s neck, and “some particular liquid” in a
bottle. When the bottle was placed in the fire and exploded, the witch would
appear – apparently not so dangerous a charm to the witch as others, it
seems. The woman appeared, and the farmer asked the local magistrate if
she might be cast into water to see if she would float. The magistrate
declined to “swim the witch,” to the farmer’s disappointment.[87]
Frederick Culliford of Crewkerne was put on trial in 1876 for obtaining
money under false pretenses. At the local market he met Emma Foot, who
sought a remedy for her sick mother. Culliford recommended that she place
thorns and a piece of paper in a bottle of the mother’s urine, to be buried in
the garden. She did so, later digging it up and breaking it when her mother’s
condition did not improve. The paper held a surprising statement:
 
As long as this paper remains in this bottle of water of
mine I hope that Satan, that angel of darkness, will pour out
his wrath upon the person that has been privately injuring of
me… and as this water is fomented and troubled with these
thorn prickles so shall the flesh on their body be also
fomented… and they shall not live for more than 90 days
from this day and no longer, and then go to hell everlasting…
Culliford was placed in jail for a year, and Emma’s mother eventually
improved.[88]
That same year, a concerned shopkeeper on High-Street, Barnstaple,
wrote the North Devon Journal to report an odd occurrence. A customer
asked for a new cork and bottle – specifically, one that had never had water
inside. She was going to fill it with needles and pins and stopper it, after
which the witch afflicting her would feel the steel points in her heart and
come to her. This remedy had already worked for her once before.[89]
The following decade, witch bottles became part of love spells. In 1888,
Adelina Westernoff appeared before the mayor in Chesterfield to answer a
charge of fraud. Another local woman, Deborah Wood, had had a child
before she was married, but the father was gone, and Wood wanted more
money. Westernoff advised her to write her name on a heart-shaped piece of
paper, which was inserted, along with three pins of different lengths and a
mysterious powder, into a bottle. After this bottle was carefully corked and
tied with string, to prevent explosion, Wood was to keep it in her bosom for
nine days, at the end of which the man would reappear. The mayor
sentenced Westernoff to two months of hard labour.[90]
 Another witch bottle for love turned up in Brierley in 1894. Lilian
Haynes was upset when her boyfriend took up with another woman in the
same house. She appealed to two women, Mary Ann Smith and Mary Jane
Pritchard, who charged her for a solution. They provided her with a bottle
containing red liquid, and she dropped pins into it while reciting, “I wish
that Ted Highway would depart from Louisa Jones and return to me, Lilly
Haynes; may he not rest, asleep or awake, until he has done so.” She was to
continue inserting pins and making wishes; by the time the case reached the
magistrates, the bottle contained thirteen pins. The two women were fined;
Ted and Louisa remained happily together.[91]
In 1895, a jar of contemporary manufacture, with several pin and thorns
within, was found in the churchyard of Bradworthy, North Devon. The
discoverer was told that such a charm should be buried in three different
churchyards to be effective.[92] Another Devonshire charm from that period
is as follows: “To free oneself from a witch, bury three stoneware jars, each
bearing a toad’s heart transfixed with thorns and a frog’s liver filled with
pins, under different paths in a churchyard, while reciting the Lord’s Prayer
backwards”.[93] Another bottle, buried bottom up and filled with nine bent
pins and what appeared to be dark water, appeared when a farmhouse floor
in Leekfrith, Staffordshire was excavated.[94]
The witch bottle practice expanded in this time to three geographic areas
in which it had rarely been seen before. The first of these was Scotland. The
demolition of a cottage in north Scotland in 1858 turned up five or six
examples of witch bottles, including ones containing needles and human
hair.[95] Campbell provides an example from turn of the century Scotland, to
be used when a cow does not give milk. Boiling the animal’s urine in a
bottle prevents the witch from excreting until the witch is released. A
similar procedure involves inserting pins into the creature’s dung or milk,
then boiling them until the cow is free of enchantment.[96]
A lengthier account comes from New Deer in Aberdeenshire. A local
witch cursed a neighbour’s cow, and it ceased to yield milk. A cunning
woman suggested that a fire be lit on a hill, the cow led around it
widdershins three times, and its urine corked up in a bottle which would be
watched during the night. The witch showed up at the appointed hour,
complaining of dreams that compelled her to appear. Eventually she was
given access and agreed to free the cow from the spell.[97] We still only have
few examples from Scotland, so it is uncertain how common the practice
might have been there.
Second, although Glanvil’s method of creating witch bottles was known
in Wales from the early eighteenth century, the first known example from
the country appears at this time. In 1871, while digging at Penrhos Bradwen
farm in Holyhead, a labourer turned up a pot made in Buckley. Inside, pins
pierced the remains of a frog, while a slate on top bore the name “Nanny
Roberts.” This seems to have been a common practice in the region at the
time.[98]
The third locale, and the one in which it became most prominent, was
Cornwall. Although we have the examples above of a formula from St.
Merryn in 1701 and Bottrell’s story from Zennor, it does not seem to have
become a common procedure until this period. Around 1880, a hiker near
Tintagel was told that an old stone cross – likely that at Bossiney – had
fallen over, with several bottles with water and pins being found beneath.
At Boscastle, he was informed that such items, if buried at wayside crosses,
would reverse the ill wishes of others.[99] The discovery and destruction of
several bottles filled with pins and water in 1892 led to a Camborne woman
recovering from a lengthy illness. This might be seen as an inversion of the
usual formula – or perhaps it reflects the woman’s belief that she possessed
powers that were turned against her.[100]
The Cornish folklorist Robert Hunt provides a case in which a local man
buried a bottle of “waater” in order to free a piglet of a witch’s spell.[101] He
also records a Cornish charm in which a person touches each wart with a
separate pin. The pins are placed in a bottle then buried at a crossroads or a
new grave. One such bottle was placed in a grave at Bodmin, where the
vicar found it.[102] Bottles buried beneath or placed inside houses have been
found at Helston, Sennen, Tresmeer, and Padstow. One unusual bottle,
found at Trevone near Padstow in the Thirties, includes several miniature
Instruments of the Passion, including a cross, a ladder, axes, pincers, and
stakes.[103]
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
By the early twentieth century, the practices of the cunning folk, who
had done so much to advocate the continued use of witch bottles, were
falling into abeyance. Trains, automobiles, and publications brought Britain
closer together, and both belief in witches and the small-farm agriculture, in
which they played an important role, had fallen into abeyance. Thus, we
only find a few examples of witch bottles that seem to arise from traditional
practice.
A sexton at Monkleigh Parish in Devon turned up a mysterious bottle in
1900 filled with dark liquid and several pins inserted into the cork at the
top. After it attracted the attention of some passers-by, the sexton reburied
it. The vicar of the parish believed it was of recent vintage.[104] Three years
later, a barbershop patron in Bishops Stortford, Essex, asked the barber for
hair from the nape of his neck. It was to be placed in a bottle with nail
clippings and water on the fire at midnight to revenge a wrong done to him.
[105]
A similar tradition could be found at Horseheath, Cambridgeshire. A
bottle containing hair from the nape of the neck, water, shoe nails, nail
parings, and pins, should be placed in a fire at midnight in complete silence.
[106]

St. Augustine’s Church in Wembley was built in 1908 and demolished

in 1973. Beneath a concrete floor, a glass wine bottle was found, containing
an unknown liquid and a small ceramic figurine of a hunched-over old
woman with an arm missing. Its present whereabouts are unknown.[107]
According to one oral account, a farm in North Devon had seen a series
of misfortunes around 1910. The locals called upon a “white witch” from
Exeter, who recommended that “water” be placed into a jar near the
chimney until someone showed up to ask for it. This led to animosity
between the two families for decades.[108]
A Sussex woman in 1919 suspected a man of bewitching her garden.
She often shut up the house and boiled pins in urine to bring him to her and,
presumably, lift the curse, an act she had yet to bring about with her
procedure.[109]
 In one case, the bottle seems to have been employed to cast a curse

rather than reverse one. A Dorset farmer in 1912, faced with ill health and a

failing orchard, found a curious wax-sealed bottle, containing vipers and a

centipede in spirits of wine, under one of his apple trees. Showing it to a

local cunning woman, she advised him to bury it far away, break it, and

[110]
cover it up, after which he had no trouble.

The town of Canewdon in Essex has become famous for its witch lore,
most notably that surrounding George Pickingill, the supposed “King of the
Witches”. When researching its folklore, Eric Maple learned that a witch
whose charm had been reversed would acquire a circular brand on her face.
One informant recalled a bottle being used in her childhood, with the witch
scratching on the door of the house until someone spoke accidentally and
neutralized the charm. A ‘white witch’ living in Canewdon, who had known
Pickingill as a girl, still created witch bottles to help her clients.[111]
 
 Witch Bottles in Scandinavia
Witch bottles are not necessarily a phenomenon exclusive to Britain and
its colonies. In his article “On the Process of Decay in Glass,” James
Fowler mentions that Professor George Stephens of Copenhagen had found
many examples of such bottles from the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries in Denmark, buried in “out-of-the-way places.” No further reports
of bottles from that land and period have turned up, and I have yet to find
any trace of either the letter Stephens sent to Fowler or the bottles
themselves in Stephens’ collection.[112] Nonetheless, the following
examples, both from the nineteenth century, show that this practice had
made its way from England to Scandinavia by that time.
In 1872, the court for the Danish hundreds of Bjerge and Aasum
prosecuted Jørgen Larsen of Nørre Lyndelse parish for using charms for
healing. One part of his rituals involved the creation of what would be an
unambiguous witch bottle if found in England. First, his fingernails and
toenails should be cut in an order – right hand, left foot, left, hand, right
foot – as to create a cross shape. After that, the parings, the patient’s hair,
and a quantity of urine should be combined in a bottle, which is then buried
in the churchyard in the most recent grave. Larsen was eventually acquitted
because he had faith in his own charms and was not defrauding his
customers[113].
We also have one written formula, collected in the Fron municipality of
Gudbrandsdalen, Norway, circa 1830:
If a person has been fördjord[114], put his urine in a bottle
with new, unused needles or pins, numbering 21, 24, or 51,
all the same size. Cork it, bind a piece of hide or cloth over it,
and put it in a secret place. On a Thursday eve, put a kettle
on the stove and hang the bottle from a stick over it. The
bottle may not touch the sides or the bottom of the kettle. Boil
the water as violently as possible, keep all doors well-shut,
and be still and silent. The person who did the evil will come
and ask you to remove the kettle from the stove because it
 burns him, but you must not remove it until he has made the
diseased person well again or given advice that you can use.
When this is done, remove the kettle from the stove so he may
be at ease and leave. Do as he instructed that evening or
early next morning, when all is still and you are alone.[115]
It may be that further exploration of the literature and folklore of this
region will yield us more examples.
 
 Witch Bottles in North America
EARLY EXAMPLES
Evidence for witch bottles in North America is sparser than that from
England, and none of the traditional bellarmine witch bottles have been
found in New World excavations. Nonetheless, the practice did cross the
Atlantic from England.
The earliest report comes from Boston in 1681. A Michael Smith
believed that his landlady, a local healer named Mary Hale, had put him
under a spell. He went to stay at the house of another cunning woman,
Hannah Weacome, seeking a remedy. Weacome placed his urine in a bottle
and then locked it in a cabinet. After she did so, Mary Hale showed up at
the house and walked about outside it for about an hour, until other women
at the house convinced Weacome to unlock the cabinet and to open the
bottle. [116]
The Boston minister Increase Mather stated “how persons that shall
unbewitch others by putting Urin into a Bottle, or by casting Excrements…
can wholly cure themselves from being white Witches, I am not able to
understand”[117]. Nine years later, he became more strident in condemning
similar practices:
… there have been ways of trying Witches long used in
many Nations… [but these] were invented by the Devil, that
so innocent Persons might be condemned, and some
notorious Witches escape: Yea, many Superstitious and
Magical experiments have been used to try Witches by: Of
this sort is
 that of scratching the Witch, or seething the Urine of the
bewitched Person, or making a Witch-cake with that Urine…
[118]

His son Cotton also brought up this remedy for witchcraft, along with
some thoughts on the symbolism of the nails:
We shall add a Second Instance, wherein I shall Relate
something that I do not Approve; and that is, The Urinary
Experiment. I suppose the Urine must be bottled with Nails
and Pins, and such Instruments in it as carry a shew of
Torture with them, if it attain its End. For I have been told,
That the bare Bottling of Urine with Filings of Steel in it,
which can be better (tho’ scarce well) accounted for, has
been found insignificant. Now to use a Charm against a
Charm… who can with a good Conscience try?[119]
Mather goes on to describe a man afflicted with witchcraft from
Northampton. He had rebuked a servant, who reported the matter to his
wife. This woman used her supernatural abilities to cause illness and the
appearance of mysterious animals in the master’s household. An attempt
was made to create a witch bottle for him, but the man’s penis had a hole in
it that prevented him from filling the bottle, and he died.
Undoubtedly both Mathers, who were intimately involved in the trials at
Salem, felt their own brand of witch discovery to be preferable to the bottle
charm. Deodat Lawson, a former minister of Salem-Village, agreed. In a
sermon said to have been given in the town on March 24, 1692, he warned
against such anti-witchcraft measures as “Burning the Afflicted Persons
hair; parings of Nails, [or] stopping up and boyling the Urine.”[120]
Witch bottles did come into the proceedings at Salem. One of the
accused, Martha Emerson, was cross-examined on July 23, 1692, accused
of attending the sabbat and afflicting young girls with magical torment.
Bizarrely, she was also tried for putting a person’s urine in a bottle or glass
that was placed in an oven to ward off witchcraft. Her father, who had
passed away in prison, had told the judges that she had killed a witch in this
manner. Ms. Emerson confessed that she had indeed kept the woman’s urine
in a glass. (If this was for the purpose of the procedure, this might be our
first confirmed glass witch bottle.) In the end, her life was spared.[121]
Six years later, in Great Island, New Hampshire, the family of one
George Walton was beset by mysterious falls of stones. Today’s readers on
the supernatural would attribute this to poltergeists, but witchcraft was
suspected at the time. On August 1, the family placed crooked pins and
urine in a clay pot over a fire to compel whatever witch was responsible to
desist. They performed this operation in a house with stones whizzing
through the air, so we can guess the outcome.[122]
LATER EVIDENCE
Given that the geographic expanse of the continent and its relatively
rapid settlement, historically speaking, an examination of North American
witch bottles is probably best done in terms of space rather than time. Thus,
the next part of our exploration will proceed from north to south through the
eastern states, after which we will move to points west.
In the fishing villages of Newfoundland, “putting up a bottle” has
remained a common remedy for misfortune. Barbara Rieti tells one
particularly dramatic story. A local man had two auto tires go flat, and both
his wife’s wedding ring and his wedding photo split in half, all within a
single hour. He placed a bottle in the oven to heat; a few hours later, a
woman from the other side of the island had to be airlifted to the hospital
due to a urinary blockage.[123] Another man held such a bottle over his head
as part of a ceremony, thereby killing his sister-in-law.[124] A unique aspect
of this tradition is that the witch should be named at the time the bottle is
created.[125] Further south, the demolishing of the hobs in a Halifax fireplace
turned up a bottle filled with nails, the hair of a cow, parings from a hoof,
and Bible passages.[126]
The most northerly tale in the States is set in Warren, New Hampshire,
shortly after the American Revolution. A prominent citizen and constable of
the town, Simeon Smith, was believed to have magical powers. Smith was
feuding with Stevens Merrill, who Smith had compelled to pay taxes to
support the American cause. One day Merrill’s boy Caleb started to act
strangely, sometimes writhing in pain, at other times climbing to the roof of
the house or barn. Merrill’s neighbours convinced him to place a bottle with
Caleb’s urine under the hearth. Twice, Smith developed a nosebleed which
seemed to last until the cork popped out of the bottle. The third time,
Merrill replaced the urine with blood and placed a sword in the cork. This
led to the death of Smith, and the alleviation of Caleb’s illness.[127]
The staff at the Raitt Homestead Farm Museum in Eliot, Maine reported
finding an empty bottle with a pentagram on the cork beneath the house’s
eaves. The house itself was built in 1896, and the presence of the pentagram
suggests this is a more recent production. No further evidence on this item
has been forthcoming.[128]
An early nineteenth-century bottle containing fingernail parings was
found near an African-American slave burial ground in Colonie, New York.
The Schuyler family, once prominent in New York state politics, once
owned this land. Other bottles have been found hidden in Hudson Valley
houses, but none have been noted as containing nails or pins, and
archaeologists have not analyzed their contents.[129]
Another glass phial, dating to the late eighteenth or early nineteenth
centuries, has turned up in an excavation at the Cove Lands near
Providence, Rhode Island. Little has been revealed about this bottle, save
that it is a clear bottle likely used for medicine, and that six straight pins
were inside.[130]
A glass bottle, holding six brass pins and found near a potsherd and a
bone (likely that of a bird), was found at Essington, Pennsylvania, at
Governor Printz State Park. The bottle dates to approximately 1748, and the
Taylors, a Quaker family dwelling near the find’s location in the eighteenth
century, are believed to have deposited the bottle.[131]
The extent to which the practice had seeped into the country’s culture
might be demonstrated through its appearance in “powwowing.” Despite its
name, the practice has little to do with Native American spirituality and
medicine, instead being a German-American magical and devotional
practice primarily associated with Pennsylvania.
The first powwowing work to discuss witch bottles was Der Lange
Verborgene Freund (The Long-Lost Friend), a book of charms and remedies
compiled by John George Hohman, an immigrant from Alsace, in 1820. He
provides it as a “remedy to be applied when any one is sick.” This might
not be a reference to mundane maladies, as he often included anti-
witchcraft charms in his works under vague labels.
Let the sick person, without having conversed with any
one, make water in a bottle before sun-rise, close it up tight,
and put it immediately in some box or chest, lock it and stop
up the key-hole; the key must be carried in one of the pockets
 for three days, as nobody dare have it except the person who
puts the bottle with urine in the chest or box.[132]
Hohman provides no source for the charm. It might have originated in
English sources that became assimilated into the Pennsylvania German
community. On the other hand, Hohman’s previous homeland was along the
Rhine valley, a major site of bellarmine production, so it might be a
technique from there that Hohman brought to the States.
Another nineteenth-century Pennsylvania German manual of remedies,
Doctor Helfenstein’s Secrets of Sympathy, provides a variant on Hohman’s.
This one extends the period of keeping the bottle locked to nine days, and
the person is not to lend or to give anything to anyone, and each day, they
must say this charm three times a day:
Just as Paul was bound, so be thou defeated. In Jesus’
name, thou shalt burn, in the name of Peter thou shalt burst.
Make good what thou hast harmed, or else the bonds of hell
will rest upon thee. Thine heart shall burn in thy body, thy
blood shall run away like water. Thou shalt grow lame and
crooked, deaf, and dumb. Thy bladder shall burst. In the air
thou shalt be scorched, in the name of the Holy Spirit, and
the Holy Guardian Angels.[133]
We see a final printed Pennsylvania variant, also involving a locked
container, in The Guide to Health, or Household Instructor, published by
“Ossman and Steel” in the small town of Wiconisco, Pennsylvania, in 1894.
It is a curious hybrid mix of various procedures used “when one is sick and
wasting away in flesh”:
Let the patient without having conversed with anyone,
urinate in a new bottle before sunrise in the morning. Then
put nine new needles and nine new pins in the bottle, and
close as tight as you possibly can and immediately lock the
bottle with its contents in a tight box or chest, after which the
keyhole must be well closed with bread or putty.
The key, however, must be carried with the person who
locked the box or chest shut. Some one will come to loan, but
be careful so as not to loan anything from the house,
premises, or person within nine days, or this remedy will be
 in vain. Care must also be taken that nothing is stolen from
either of these places.[134]
A charm very similar to this turns last one up over a century later, in the
account of Aunt Sophia Bailer, a powwower from Tremont, Pennsylvania.
A woman living nearby had the sensation that a figure sat on her chest at
night, crushing out her breath. Her husband came to Bailer to ask for a
healing. The healer told him to acquire a bottle and fill it with urine before
sunrise, followed by nine new needles and nine new pins with their points
up. After this, the bottle should be placed in a box, which is then locked, the
lock filled with putty, and the key kept on his person. After that, nothing
should be loaned to or from the house, and nothing should stand in or out of
the house. Not even the laundry should be hanging outside at night. The
witch later revealed herself to the couple, asking them to open the box for
her. The ending of the story is unclear, but apparently the man later moved
to Allentown. The witch seems to have been lucky, as Bailer claimed that,
in another case, the use of such a bottle led to the woman’s death.[135]
On the other end of Pennsylvania, on Market Street in Pittsburgh, a
witch bottle was deposited in a garbage pit shortly after 1824. The glass
bottle is unusual for including not only a felt heart studded with pins, but
also two insoles from a person’s shoes. The owners of the property seem to
have been English in origin, though some of them had contact with the
German Harmonist community. It is also possible that a non-resident left
the bottle in the location.[136]
In 1792, Joseph Doddridge became an Episcopal minister, preaching at
several congregations around what is today the Northern Panhandle of West
Virginia. Taking up medical training as well, he was a keen observer of the
medicinal practices of settlers of the region. He mentions in his memoirs
that placing a bottle of a child’s urine in a chimney was a common anti-
witchcraft technique on the frontier at his time.[137]
Another early eighteenth-century bottle excavated at the Dutch fort near
Lewes, Delaware, is believed to have contained pins, but its significance
was not recognized before it was lost.[138]
Both artefacts and practices involving witch bottles have been found in
Maryland. Four seventeenth-century bottles, intact and inverted when
placed in the ground near the threshold of a home, were excavated at a site
near Solomons, Maryland. In a practice referred to as ‘plantin’ bottles fur
‘em,’ a magician would put the hair, fingernail, or clothing of the intended
victim in a bottle. The bottle would be left where the person might step over
it. If the bottle were uncovered and placed in running water, however, it
could be turned back on the caster.[139]
Witch bottles also became part of conjure or hoodoo, a tradition of
alternative medicine that was primarily an African-American practice.
Although much of its magic came from Africa, some of the charms and
magical procedures used within were reinterpreted from European magical
traditions.[140] Within this tradition, items like witch bottles seem to have
been used to both harm and heal. One possible such item is the neck of a
wine bottle, its stopper filled with pins bent and straight, that archaeologists
uncovered at a site in Dorchester County, Maryland, that might at one point
have served as a slave quarter.[141]
In the nineteenth century, present-day Accomac, Virginia, was once the
home of Zippy Tull, a conjure doctor. A young man approached her,
believing himself to be cursed. She performed a divination with cards,
telling him that a woman was working magic against him and had poisoned
his dog. She instructed him to take five or six items, including his “water,”
new pins and needles, and perhaps some shot, to place them in a bottle, and
to hide them in a hole in the fireplace. Within a week, the accused woman
showed up at the house, promising to never curse anyone ever again. She
died shortly thereafter.[142]
During the Civil War, the Confederacy ordered to be built a set of
fortifications, Redoubt 9, between Williamsville and Newport News,
Virginia. Later in the conflict, Union troops from Pennsylvania occupied the
same structure. Near a hearth in the structure, archaeologists found a blue
bottle, from the Charles Grove Company in Columbia, Pennsylvania, filled
with nails and with its neck broken. If this is a witch bottle, it could be the
work of soldiers on either side, or of slaves who built the fortifications.[143]
A volunteer at an archaeological excavation near Virginia Beach turned
up a green phial for medicine dating to the first half of the eighteenth
century, containing approximately two dozen brass pins and three iron nails.
Circumstantial evidence suggests the bottle might be linked to the activities
of Grace Sherwood, the eighteenth-century Witch of Pungo, who was
imprisoned for witchcraft for nine years.[144]
While in Richmond, Virginia, the teacher and minister David Webster
Davis composed a piece on the dangers of alternative medical practitioners
working with the African-American community. He presents a hypothetical
consultation with a “doctor,” who promises to free his client from
bewitchment. To do so, the “doctor” must visit their home at midnight,
sacrificing a chicken, and then digging up the bewitching bottle, displaying:
an ordinary bottle partly covered in the dirt: inside of it is
usually found a heterogeneous [sic] mixture of dissimilar
articles: - a piece of a knife-blade, pins, curiously bent,
broken and rusty needles, pieces of red flannel, red pepper,
perhaps a small snake, and whatever the ingenuity of the
“doctor” may suggest to mystify and awe the ignorant
uninitiated.[145]
Davis presents this as an object that a charlatan has planted while
pretending to dig it up, yet it does possess some of the qualities of an anti-
witchcraft item, including the “curiously bent” pins. It is uncertain whether
this is a local innovation, or instead represents a misunderstanding on the
part of the author.
An anonymous individual from Richmond reported another, more
traditional use of the witch bottle, to the clergyman Harry Middleton Hyatt.
Hyatt travelled through the Southeast from 1936 to 1940, collecting conjure
and hoodoo charms, resulting in his massive five-volume compilation
Hoodoo – Conjuration – Witchcraft – Rootwork. The formula from our
Richmond informant required the user to tie together nine pins, four with
points up and five down, with a thread. After placing the pin in the bottle
with the urine, the creator should go to an abandoned house, hide the bottle
behind a brick in the fireplace, speak the phrase, “Bad luck go away, good
luck follah,” and leave without looking back. The person responsible for the
hostile magic will see their designs foiled in nine days.[146]             
Another of Hyatt’s informants from Wilmington, North Carolina,
described how she had corresponded with a man in Washington, DC for
several months. He stopped writing after a while, claiming that he was
suddenly losing his vision. Upon consulting a conjure doctor, he found that
a rival for love was attacking him with magic over jealousy for a previous
relationship. The doctor advised him to fill a bottle with his urine just
before sunup and place it under the attacker’s front step each morning.
Having done so for six weeks, he found himself cured, and he eventually
married the Wilmington woman.[147]
A woman living near Brushy Fork, North Carolina, circa 1880, was
afraid of a potential witch named “Old Henry.” Her bed was in the loft of
the house, and her parents hung a bottle, stopped tightly, on a string nearby.
Keeping the bottle closed was essential to her health. The collector, Dr.
Frank C. Brown, did not note what, if anything, the bottle contained.[148]
One nineteenth-century South Carolina client of a conjure doctor
became convinced that witches were leaving dangerous material on his
property to injure him. Digging up some knotted horsehair and a coffin-
shaped piece of wood, he placed these in a bottle to capture the witch. The
authorities were called in when he called upon his followers to patrol his
property with guns as another anti-witchcraft measure. Although the man
was clearly unstable, his practice echoes those from centuries before.[149]
In 1877, a folklore collector visited the Proctor family, living near
Savannah, Georgia. The family had buried iron nails in a black bottle under
their doorstep, to ward off witches.[150]
Ray Browne collected witch bottle traditions during his work in
Alabama. If a person knew who was casting evil magic at them, they might
put urine and pins in a bottle, which was then put into a chimney to reverse
it. Another charm involved the person reciting the names of potential
witches while dismantling the bricks in a fireplace. A bottle of water would
be buried in ashes, and the first person who visited was the witch.[151]
Archaeologists working at the Armstrong Farmstead in Fayette County,
Kentucky, uncovered a corked glass bottle with four pins within, near an
early nineteenth-century structure. It might be another example of a witch
bottle, but it is difficult to be certain.[152]
Early settlers in Union County, Illinois, brought their beliefs in witches
with them to their new homes. Those who suspected witchcraft was
afflicting someone could reverse the spell by bottling the person’s urine and
hanging it in the chimney. The witch became afflicted with strangury,
alleviated only if the witch could borrow something from the household, or
if someone removed the bottle.[153]
Hyatt began his folklore collection work in Adams County, Illinois –
although the following story he was told took place in Iowa. Mr. W., a
conjure doctor, called upon a woman because she was so ill she couldn’t
walk. Mr. W. located a ball of rags and a small bottle of liquid under the
woman’s porch. When he poured liquid from his own magic bottle into the
other, it exploded, revealing a small number of needles. Fortunately, he still
had the ball of rags, which he filled with the needles and tossed in the fire.
Shortly thereafter, the sick woman walked out to ask him what he wanted.
[154]

Witch bottles even made it to the west coast. During a recent

archaeological excavation to rebuild the Cypress Expressway in West
Oakland after the earthquake of 2005, a bottle with a needle-studded cork
and yet-to-be-determined contents turned up at the home of a German
family.[155]
We have a few examples from the Caribbean as well. This item,
collected in the Bahamas in the early years of the twentieth century, is
worth quoting at length:
If you think you are hagged[156], get quickly some of your
water into a bottle (there are differences as to the proper size,
form, and color; the majority advocate a wide-mouthed black
bottle); don't spill one drop; put in also some guinea pepper,
several new needles and pins - not more than six of each -
and cork it tight; this will give you power over the hag, and
keep her from making water. The first person you will see in
the morning will be your hag, who will beg of you bread, or
something else, just to make you talk; if you do talk, you will
loosen her, and she will be free; otherwise, if you keep your
mouth shut, and wish to make her suffer, she will be obliged
to come to you, until you speak to her and free her from the
spell. If you mean to kill her, never speak a word to her, and
after a while her bladder will burst, and she will die. If you
 prefer to kill her in another way, throw the corked bottle into
the sea, and she will go and drown herself.[157]
This was inverted in other cases, when a magician seeking to harm a
person buried a bottle with urine, unspecified herbs, and needles near their
dwelling.[158]
Sir Henry Hesketh Joudou Bell, who would later become the first
governor of Uganda, spent his early administrative career in the West
Indies. He describes the following example from his time there, most likely
taken from Grenada. To prevent the theft of plantains from a field, a local
practitioner placed bottles hanging in trees nearby.
Going to one of the trees, he untied one of the mysterious
bottles and opened it. ‘Just look! this vial contains nothing
but sea-water, with a little laundry blue in it, and, as you can
see, a dead cockroach floating on the top. They nearly all
contain almost the same things, some may have besides the
cockroach, a few rusty nails and a bit of red flannel or
suchlike rubbish. …the unfortunate thief would inevitably
come to a bad end, very shortly; in fact, ‘swell up and bust’…
[159]

During excavations at the Juan de Bolas plantation on Jamaica in 2002-

4, archaeologist Matthew Reeves and his chief assistant Linton Rhule found
two upright wine bottles in the yard. Rhule commented that similarly-
placed bottles served as “duppy bottles” buried as part of Obeah practice.
Such a bottle could include nail parings for binding that person’s soul to a
nearby cotton tree, or their hair to ensure destruction, although other
combinations could have beneficial effects. Such items could be buried in
the yard, near a corner, or in proximity to a gate.[160]
The clergyman Charles Kingsley spent the winter of 1869-70 in the
West Indies. During his trip, he attended the trial of a local Obeah
practitioner. The man had offered a servant to bury “a bottle containing
toad, spider, rusty nails, dirty water, and other terrible jumbiferous articles”
near the house of the warden in order to afflict him, only to have the servant
turn him in.[161]
 
 Today’s Witch Bottles
Those peering into the cases at the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford might
see a small bottle of silvered glass, stoppered with cork and wax. It was first
seen in possession of an old woman in Hove, Sussex, in 1915, who is
quoted as saying, 'They do say there be a witch in it, and if you let him out
there'll be a peck o' trouble.' This could be a witch bottle, or an item
intended to catch a spirit – frankly, no one seems to be willing to flout the
woman’s prohibition. In either case, the bottle was donated to the museum
in 1926 by Margaret Murray, whose works, The Witch-Cult in Western
Europe and The God of the Witches did much to inspire Gerald Gardner’s
creation of Wicca and, from there, the rise of modern Paganism.[162]

Bottle in the Pitt Rivers Collection

If the Pitt Rivers object is a witch bottle, it would certainly represent the
next stage of the bottle tradition: its transmission from primarily lower-class
and artisan Christian village practitioners serving their communities, to a
more middle-class group seeking magical techniques they could practice in
private as part of the reconstruction of a Pagan faith. The first group was
more likely to learn their craft from the transmission of books and oral
teachings, while the second are active participants in a market for both
knowledge and spiritual goods. I acknowledge that some individuals or
groups might not adhere strictly to either of these two categories, but I think
these rough categories convey a fundamental change in how witch bottles
were perceived and utilized.
It is not clear how knowledge of witch bottles was transferred. Given the
overlap between their devotees and those interested in folklore, it is likely
that the practice could easily have been gleaned from the journals of the
time. This should not rule out the possibility that the techniques were
passed on orally in some instances. No matter the exact line of
transmission, witch bottles have been revived and become part of the
conjuring toolkit of today’s witches, pagans, and others interested in the
magical arts.
It might be appropriate here to comment on the witch bottle collection
collected by Cecil Williamson (1909-1999), which became part of the
Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, now in Boscastle, Cornwall. The
museum has an array of such items, ranging from the era of bellarmine use
to creations of modern witches, and some that include unusual elements
such as chicken wing feathers and coloured threads. The latter suggests
what Nigel Pennick has referred to as the “Cambridgeshire witch bottle,”
green or bluish-green bottles filled with threads, often red, and placed over
a house’s door. None of the museum’s bottles are precisely dated, so it is
hoped that archaeologists will examine them soon.[163]
Williamson also was a keen collector of local folkloric practice, and
Gemma Gary relays a rite he witnessed that was intended to change an
individual’s behaviour. After the entrances and windows are taped shut, a
pot of water and a variety of plants (in one case, including cabbage,
dandelion, groundsel, and verbena) is boiled. Next, a bottle of urine is cast
into the pot, boiling until it explodes. This causes stomach pains in the
person, who calls upon a local “white witch” who explains that the situation
might be a result of the person’s behaviour.[164]
Many different varieties of charms are found in contemporary hoodoo,
with nine pins, nine needles, and nine coffin nails becoming the key
ingredients instead of urine, along with graveyard dirt, faeces, menstrual
blood, “hot foot powder,” semen, or various minerals and plants associated
with evil power. The bottle charm has lost most of its protective and
countermagical significance, now being used to inflict injury and weakness
upon a victim.[165]
Witch bottles have also become part of the traditions of Wicca in
America, through the works of Scott Cunningham and David Harrington.
The two authors ask their readers to fill a bottle with rosemary and red wine
in addition to sharp objects, while reciting:
Pins, needles, rosemary and wine.

In this Witch’s Bottle of mine;

Guard against harm and enmity;

This is my will, so mote it be![166]

Charms with these ingredients have seen a wide dissemination through
Pagan sites on the internet and contemporary books on the topic, even
though the inclusion of rosemary and wine has not been noted in any
sources before this time.[167] Other recent charms, bringing together such
ingredients with other herbs, coins, and shiny objects, are used to provide
protection and prosperity to a household, or to stop bullying.[168] Many of
these are quite different from the bottles we have seen previously. The most
faithful to the original, including a dark-coloured bottle, sharp objects, and
urine, appears in an anti-hexing work, but even this is buried at the edge of
the property and not a more traditional location.[169]
On a trip years ago to Salem, I purchased a witch bottle from a local
shop. The creators had discarded most of the traditional aspects of the
practice. The small bottle does contain one nail and salt, but it also
incorporates Salem dirt, clove, and – of course – rosemary, along with a
“Domus Defendio” charm. Those with this bottle may be able to keep
“Hearth & Home safe from the Destructive Forces of Evil & Malicious
Spirits,” although the label also warns that it “makes no claims of
preventing Sickness or Misfortune.” I purchased mine for $8.95.
We have at least one case of a witch bottle of more questionable origins.
In June of 2009, an inspector and two constables of the Ontario Provincial
Police were evicting a young man from a campsite. Among his effects was
a plastic bottle, with sharp screws protruding from the cap, which he said
was filled with razor blades and urine to protect him from “bad people.”[170]
 
 Witch Bottles in the Media
As witch bottles grow in popularity, they have also seeped into popular
media. I have done little examination of their roles in literary fiction, so I
will leave this to others.
The first appearance of a witch bottle in visual media might have been
September 17, 1975, in “The Witch’s Bottle,” the third episode of the
Thames Television series Shadows. The episode, written by the Wiccan
high priest and author Stewart Farrar, does include a bottle, but as a
container for the energy of a witch, similar to the Pitt Rivers Museum
bottle.[171]
The first movie, to my knowledge, to feature a witch bottle was The
Love Witch (2016). In one scene, the witch Elaine (Samantha Robinson)
creates a witch bottle. She puts in the traditional ingredients of nails and
urine, as well as the rosemary typical of modern witch bottles and a used
tampon. She then leaves this on top of the grave of her murdered lover for
reasons that remain unclear.[172]
A short film, entitled Tales of Churel: Dead Water, appeared in 2017
with the alternate title “Witch Bottle.” It follows a girl working on a farm,
played by Rinya Cyrus, who finds a mysterious sealed bottle next to her
house. She accidentally breaks it, thereafter seeing visions of a mysterious
figure. She researches witch bottle folklore to reveal the source of the
shocking visions appearing around her:
Witch bottle: Protection against a witch’s curse. They
were used to trap spells cast by witches. They were over
pieced together in glass bottles or vials containing charms.
Other elements in the bottle consisted of rusty nails, glass or
mirror fragments, and even the urine or menstrual blood of
the victim. Witch bottles were often placed in the structure of
the building or buried beneath the house. It was believed that
the bottle would capture and impale evil on the sharp objects
 found inside. Witch bottles were supposedly active until the
bottle was broken.[173]
This is surprisingly accurate – the only element that does not seem to be
present in other sources is the mirror, and the use of the sharp objects to
“capture and impale evil” is plausible.
 
 Discussion
The witch bottle is one of a wide range of traditional anti-witchcraft
charms, including the heating of milk to overcome witchcraft against cattle,
the baking of cakes involving the person’s urine, or the insertion of pins
into a heart which is then injured or placed in the chimney. Witch bottles
were quite popular; the ingredients were cheap and readily available, it was
said to provide immediate relief from whatever condition was necessary,
and, unlike other anti-witchcraft charms such as bleeding, it usually did not
require the user to know the name of the suspected witch or to contact the
person.
GEOGRAPHY
New documentation or discoveries might extend our knowledge of the
range of witch bottles. From the earliest period, witch bottles seem to have
been a phenomenon of eastern England, with bellarmines being the most
common receptacles used. The largest number of these come from Norfolk,
though whether this reflects the prevalence of the custom or issues relating
to discovery or reporting is unknown[174]. Many bottles are found in Sussex,
London, and Essex. Oddly enough, few examples of bottles from later
periods are found in London proper.
Over time, the use of witch bottles slowly spread outward. By the
nineteenth century, the practice had travelled north to Yorkshire. We have
few reports from the western counties of England, suggesting that the
practice never became widespread there. The exception is Cornwall, in
which we see a spate of discoveries of bottles from the nineteenth century,
with usage dropping off by the twentieth. More distant areas seem to have
seen little use of the practice. We have reports from Wales, Ireland, and
Scotland, though these are hardly enough to establish a pattern.
We cannot know all the factors that led to the dissemination of the
practice. Cunning folk, the practitioners of magic often consulted for cases
of illness, theft, or love, seem to be crucial individuals in passing on such
information.[175] Although other medical and magical practitioners of various
social groups did disseminate the technique, cunning folk are referred to
repeatedly in the witch trial accounts and the folklore as the purveyors of
the rite to those in need. We might also consider popular literature as
another factor. Blagrave’s recipe seems to be the only explicit set of
instructions published, but many people could have become aware of the
basics of the technique through the printed narratives of witchcraft
prosecutions. Nonetheless, there is much we do not know about the
transmission of this knowledge, especially when it comes to the bottles
buried beneath houses.
COMPONENTS
The first item of significance for a bottle is the container itself. In the
earliest reports, this might have simply been a pot or pan in which the other
substances could be placed to be boiled. By the seventeenth century,
bellarmines became more common, whether due to their ubiquity or the
striking face rendered on their necks. Within our surviving corpus, as
examined by Brian Hoggard, over half of the bottles found and identified
have been bellarmines. They appear almost entirely or near ports on the
river or sea, areas that would have seen such bottles imported in high
numbers. In the eighteenth century, bellarmines were less used in general,
and various glass phials and bottles came into use, with the type chosen
usually being one of the cheaper vessels available. Still, Bellhouse’s work
shows that, even in the nineteenth century, a pan could still be used for this
purpose. Such rites, or those similar, continued to be practiced into the
twentieth century.[176]
The next key ingredient is often urine, though we have some uncertainty
as to how often it appears. First, many of the folklore collectors of the
nineteenth century do not mention it explicitly, possibly due to inhibitions
about reporting elements seen as vulgar. Second, urine has proved to be a
difficult compound to test for, in the rare cases in which the liquid from the
discovered bottles survived and was kept preserved for testing. As such,
archaeologists have been cautious about pronouncing the liquid in these
bottles to be urine. A 2009 laboratory analysis confirmed its presence in a
seventeenth-century bottle, laying the ground for more examinations.[177]
Lest it appear that archaeologists have been overcautious on declaring the
contents to be urine, the example from William Drage indicates that a
similar procedure might have been used against bewitchment of other
liquids.
Along the same principles of contagious magic, other portions of the
body of the bewitched might also be added. Among these might be hair
(often from the nape of the neck), blood, and nail parings, or possibly hair
and hoof parings if livestock were concerned.
 The third major ingredients were sharp metal objects – pins, needles, or
nails, with thorns being substituted at times. These could be placed free in
the bottle, stuck through another object, or inserted into the cork or stopper
itself. These serve as a key indicator of discovered witch bottles, as these
are usually one of the few ingredients to survive or leave traces. Whereas
liquid is rarely found in a bottle, as of 2004 iron had been found in 90% of
the reported bottles, and in almost every bottle with contents noted.[178]
The number of pins in a bottle often varies considerably, and many of
them seem to be bent or curved deliberately before placement within.
Hoggard notes that, despite the lack of any instructions to bend the pins,
such items are found in almost all archaeological examples. He suggests
that the pins are present because the witch is fooled into believing the
person’s heart is inside, injuring themselves on the pins in the process[179].
This does not explain those examples in which the bottle is heated, or other
sources drawing analogies with the bladder. It might also be due to the
power over the supernatural traditionally ascribed to iron. Pins have several
links to witches, whether as a means for them to do harm, or to uncover or
cease their magical activities.[180] We can assume that the pins being bent is
a ritual element, as bending them would make their placement within the
bottle more difficult. In the nineteenth century, bent pins were often
associated with magic; we have one charm in which a bent pin was cast into
a fire, as well as multiple holy wells into which crooked pins were cast.[181]
Thwaite suggests that crooked pins were generally viewed as negative, but
gained a positive association when symbolically removed from the body –
whether into a well or a bottle.[182]
Less common, but still notable, are hearts, whether taken from an
animal or made of cloth. One-tenth of the bottles reported by 2004 included
a cloth heart, with no indication of how many others might have had either
sort of heart before it decayed.[183] If the sixteenth-century examples are any
indication, animal hearts were the original ingredients, with the cloth hearts
being substituted later, possibly due to ease of insertion. In either case, these
substances are unlikely to survive for centuries in these bottles, so finding
evidence of them in the discovered witch bottles has been difficult.
 Other less-common ingredients include salt, plant matter, linen cloth,
bird bones, animal bones, pottery, forks, glass, wooden spills or carved
objects, brass studs, lint, gunpowder, shoe soles, effigies, and the curious
concoction of acids and herbs mentioned in Bellhouse’s notebook.
In addition to the type of items, the number added might have special
significance. Auge notes that, when multiple discrete items are included in a
recipe, they often appear in groups of three or multiples thereof.[184] As we
have seen above, odd numbers, especially nine, often turn up in the
instructions.
Dr. Manning recently developed an overall typology for American witch
bottles based on their contents. Some of the bottles described herein might
not fit perfectly into each category, but it provides a convenient summary of
much of the data.[185]
 
Type Container Contents Special Treatment
A-1 Ceramic jug    
A-2 Glass wine / case bottle Urine
A-3 Glass vial / steeple bottle
B-1 Ceramic jug    
B-2 Glass wine/case bottle Pins, needles, nails
(usually with urine)
B-3 Glass vial
B-4 Pot, pan, or other open vessel Pins, needles, nails Boiled over fire
(usually with urine)
C Ceramic or glass jug, bottle, or vial Cloth or leather heart  
pierced with pins/nails
D Ceramic or glass jug, bottle, or vial Any combination of Pins and needles stuck
urine, pins, needles, into the cork
and nails
E Ceramic or glass jug, bottle, or vial Contents other than  
urine, pins, needles,
and nails
F Ceramic or glass jug, bottle, or vial Empty or containing Concealed in a
only water structure
 
Manning’s Typology of American Witch Bottles
RITUAL
Several accounts portray the rituals that surrounded the creation of the
witch bottle. Some of these relate to bottles to be placed in the fire, and they
often include lengthy verbal charms not given in the other material. The
versions in Blagrave’s account and Sloane 3846 are particularly noteworthy,
as they suggest an astrological timing to the ritual that does not appear
elsewhere.
One element turning up in several accounts is the use of silence as part
of the ritual. The practitioner must place the bottle in the fire in silence and
resist the witch's distractions, lest the charm be lost. This reflects the
severing of the connections of language and physical proximity that bring
us together in society, symbolically casting the suspected person out of
social networks and their power.
Still, it bears noting that most accounts include no mention of any
incantation, and certainly no trace could be found with any archaeological
finds. Does this mean that some commentators omitted these, either because
they knew none, or because they thought it inappropriate? Were the words
not passed on because they were said too quietly to be heard? Or were the
ritual components and actions considered sufficient? It is likely that all
these possibilities have some degree of truth, although we might never
know the exact proportions of each.
USAGE
In most cases, witch bottles are used in two ways: placed in a fire to
cause pain to the witch, or buried beneath the ground. The two usages,
Glanvil’s case aside, seem to be mutually exclusive, as few signs of heat
have been noticed on the buried bottles.
One question that remains unresolved is whether the buried bottles
might have had a different purpose than fighting witches. Much of the
literature has suggested they were used for a more general protective
purpose, but Thwaite observes that little contemporary literature connects
these items with such purposes.[186] Still, other apotropaic processes, such as
the deposition of cats and shoes in walls, have little literature surrounding
them. Further, the deposition of the bottles from East Anglia beneath the
house before it was constructed, or when substantial alterations would need
to be made, indicates they were unlikely to be intended for a specific case
of witchcraft.[187] Then again, the examples from conjure practice might
make us wonder if the owner of the house was always the one who made
the deposit. We can hope that further study will help to illuminate this
feature.
Hoggard provides two possible explanations for the symbolism of the
bottles. First, the bottle could be seen a symbolic bladder, with the contents
depicting the injuries desired to be inflicted on the witch. (On the other
hand, Davies and Easton find that nineteenth-century sources often give the
heart of the witch as the target.) Second, the bottles might have been used as
spirit traps in some examples, capturing the spiritual force of the hostile
magician and subjecting it to torture.[188]
Some individual accounts also include other details in the practice not
seen above. Out of the examples above, we might add observing the
movement of the pins in hope of viewing the identity of the witch, or
establishing its efficacy by a certain number of needles moving or the
appearance of a rainbow of colours. All of these may be later innovations,
after the opaque bellarmine bottles had been replaced with clear glass. If the
burial of a bottle with the livestock in Yaddlethorpe is no coincidence, the
internment might be a means of revenge instead of reflecting a charm.
 Some of the evidence from later times indicates that bottles might also
be used to place a curse, as the examples above from Dorset, Maryland, and
Iowa indicate. These are less common, likely due to the conception behind
the magic. The traditional witch bottle assumes that the magic it fights
against has already established a connection between the magician and the
victim, a connection that the witch bottle can follow back to the point of
origination. Thus, a similar spell used as a means of magical attack must
have an additional component linking it to the victim, such as being hidden
on the victim’s property or path.
Finally, we might briefly note the Cornish examples of witch bottles
being used as anti-wart charms. As the bottles were not elsewhere
associated with warts, it raises the question as to whether this arose from
the belief that the warts were caused by hostile magic.
LOCATION
For those bottles not placed in a fire, the creators often deposited them
in various areas. The vast majority have been located within the home. Half
the discovered witch bottles have been discovered under hearths, and that
number rises to four-fifths when we include those found under walls,
doorways, or floors.[189] Others, especially the seventeenth-century examples
from London, were placed in marginal areas, such as ditches, rivers, and
parish boundaries. We have a few other anomalies, such as the two finds in
graves mentioned above, and the Pennsylvania German recipes in which the
bottle is locked in a chest.
The hearth is an interesting area for the deposit of an item. As the source
of heating for cooking and warmth, it served as the centre of the household.
Yet the fire that occupied it was also a source of danger, as an unwatched
pot or stray spark could destroy a family’s home and possessions. Further,
the chimney could not be closed, leaving it as a possible point of ingress for
intruders – including witches and their servants.[190] If we emphasize this
final aspect, then it seems witch bottles were deposited in liminal areas of
the household that the inhabitants considered boundaries with the less
predictable world outside.
A frequent assumption in archaeological literature is that the owners of
the property placed the buried witch bottles. Although we should be
cautious about connecting data centuries and oceans apart, the accounts
collected by Hyatt have similar objects being placed at the home of one’s
enemy, or in a deserted house.
One common element that appears in most accounts is the burying of
the bottle bottom up. This is common enough that finding an intact bottle
buried in this position is seen as a prime indication that it might have been a
witch bottle. Inversion of conventional orientations and procedures is a
common element of many magical procedures, signifying that the actions
stand outside of everyday life.
 
 Conclusion
With the growing interest in, awareness of, and desire to create witch
bottles, it is inevitable that this book will be out of date even before it is
published. Even in the brief time between these two editions, more bottles
have been found and scholars have done much important scholarly work, a
trend likely to continue.
One encouraging development has been “Witch Bottles Concealed and
Revealed,” a collaboration among the Museum of London Archaeology, the
University of Hertfordshire, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council,
that will extend into 2022. The project is dedicated to collecting, analyzing,
and publishing evidence regarding seventeenth-century witch bottles. The
project suggests that any witch bottles discovered be reported to the local
county museum. Ideally any such item should also be left where it is found,
without touching or opening it – although data on moved or opened items is
still of interest.[191]
Even for those not in the United Kingdom, I think these are excellent
suggestions. Witch bottles are rapidly becoming part of the heritage, not just
of one person, but of the world, and granting them to our public institutions
and museums will do much to help us to unlock their meaning, to the
people of both the past and present.

 
 
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www.avaloniabooks.com
 Endnotes
[1]
An Abridged Catalogue of the Saffron Walden Museum, 99. Personal communication, Jenny Oxley to author, February 1, 2021
[2]
Kelly, “Witch Bottles.”

[3] Massey, “Field Note.” Pitts, “Urine to Navel Fluff.”

[4]
Lamont, “The Curious Case of the Cursed Chicken.”
[5]
Thwaite, “What Is a ‘Witch Bottle’?.”
[6]
Hänselmann, “Die Vergrabenen und Eingemauerten Thongeschirre des Mittelalters”; Merrifield, “Witch Bottles and Magical
Jugs.” The tradition bears similarities to the incantation bowls of the Middle East, in which inverted bowls were placed
beneath the foundations of houses. For a summary of the research, see Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic, 183–93. Given the lack
of a clear chronological or geographical connection between the practices, however, we should be cautious about linking the
two.
[7]
Folger MS. V.b.26, 223. The spelling here and in other manuscript sources has been modernized. This particular piece was
copied by Frederick Hockley into his Occult Spells notebook dated to 1829. Hockley and Manus, Occult Spells, 50.
[8]
Ibid. See parallels in Additional MS. 36,674, 145.
[9]
Sloane 3706, 23r.
[10]
Posnet: A metal pot with three feet and a handle.
[11]
Gifford et al., A Dialogue Concerning Witches and Witchcraft, f. G2 v., G3 r. Spelling has been modernized.
[12]
Brindle, “Record ID: NARC-0ACAB1 - POST MEDIEVAL Witch Bottle.”
[13]
De Waardt, “From Cunning Man to Natural Healer.”
[14]
Raine, Depositions from the Castle of York, 64–65.
[15]
Dawson, History of Skipton   : (W.R. Yorks.), 394.
[16]
“Extraordinary Superstition at Plymouth.”
[17]
Glyde, Norfolk Garland, 51–52.
[18]
Pratensis, De Cerebri Morbis, 408–9.
[19]
Pestronk, “The First Neurology Book”; Scot, The Discouerie of Witchcraft, 83–84.
[20]
Hinds, “Record ID: WILT-71DA46 - POST MEDIEVAL Stopper.”
[21]
Hinds, “Record ID: WILT-F46577 - MEDIEVAL Stopper.”
[22]
Glanvil, Saducismus Triumphatus, 205–7. For more background on Brearly, see Merrifield, “Witch Bottles and Magical Jugs,”
198–9.
[23]
Drage, Daimonomageia, 21. A similar charm appears in a fifteenth-century Dutch magical miscellany, aimed at harming
someone who has stolen milk or beer. Braekman, Magische Experimenten, 11.
[24]
Orser, “Rethinking ‘Bellarmine’ Contexts in 17th-Century England.,” 89.
[25]
Holmes, “The So-Called ‘Bellarmine’ Mask on Imported Rhenish Stoneware”; Haselgrove, “Imported Pottery in the 'Book of
Rates,” 326.
[26]
Merrifield, “The Use of Bellarmines as Witch-Bottles.” One possible example, a green glass bottle, turned up in a chimney in
Holburn though any contents were absent. Sumnall, “Record ID: LON-B416A6 - POST MEDIEVAL Bottle.”
[27]
Thwaite, “Magic and the Material Culture of Healing,” 212.
[28]
Merrifield, “The Use of Bellarmines as Witch-Bottles”; Merrifield, The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic, 163–9; Peacock,
“The Folklore of Lincolnshire.” 176; Tilley, “A Witch-bottle from Gravesend.”; Powell, “The Holywell Witch Bottle.”
[29]
Merrifield and Smedley, “Two Witch-bottles from Suffolk.”
[30]
Mulvihill, “Dublin’s Weird ‘Witch’ Bottle.” Not much information is available on this particular bottle at this time.
[31]
Pitts, “Urine to Navel Fluff”; Hoggard, Magical House Protection.
[32]
Blagrave, Blagraves Astrological Practice of Physick, 154.
[33]
Ibid., 155.
[34]
Semmens, “The Usage of Witch-bottles and Apotropaic Charms in Cornwall,” 26.
[35]
Thanks to Kresen Kernow for allowing me to publish X268/83 from their collection.
[36]
British Library Sloane 3846, 96r.
[37]
Ibid.
[38]
Anonymous, Strange and Wonderful Nevvs, 5–7.
[39]
Anonymous, A Miraculous Cure for VVitchcraft.
[40]
National Archives at Kew, ASSI 16/21/3, quoted in Gaskill, “The Fear and Loathing of Witches,” 131.
[41]
Anonymous, An Account of the Tryal and Examination of Joan Buts, 3–4.
[42]
Great Britain Court of Oyer and Terminer and Gaol Delivery (London and Middlesex), A Full and True Account..., 3–4;
Anonymous, True Narrative of the Proceedings, 3.
[43]
Aubrey, Miscellanies ..., 112.
[44]
Tryon, The Way to Save Wealth, 50.
[45]
Walker, “A Witch Bottle from Hellington.”
[46]
Thwaite, “What Is a ‘Witch Bottle’?,” 242–48.
[47]
Davis, “An Account of the Tryals, Examination and Condemnation, of Elinor Shaw, and Mary Phillip’s,” 4–5.
[48]
Bragge, A Full and Impartial Account of the Discovery of Sorcery and Witchcraft, 20.
[49]
Davies, “Decriminalising the Witch.”
[50]
Ewen, Great Britain Courts of Assize and Nisi Prius, Witch Hunting and Witch Trials, 314–5.
[51]
Durbin, A Narrative of Some Extraordinary Things. The account bears many striking resemblances to the supposed Bell Witch
case of Tennessee, save for being more bizarre.
[52]
Douce 116, xvi. Printed edition in Harms and Aldarnay, The Book of Four Wizards.
[53]
Hoggard, “The Archaeology of Counter-Witchcraft and Popular Magic,” 174.
[54]
Massey and Edmonds, “The Reigate Witch Bottle.”
[55]
Lewis, “From Prehistoric to Urban Shoreditch,” 253–54.
[56]
Buckinghamshire County Museum Archaeological Service, Archaeological Investigations at All Saints Church, Loughton,
Milton Keynes, [4-5].
[57]
White, “Witch Bottle with a Halloween Link Is Object of the Week.”
[58]
King and Massey, “A Miniature Witch Bottle?”.
[59]
Massey, Smith, and Smith, “A Witch Bottle from Dorset.”
[60]
Fowler, “On the Process of Decay in Glass,” 132–3.
[61]
Dominic Winter Auctioneers, “Lot 242.”
[62]
Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture; Waters, Cursed Britain, 9-37.
[63]
Bottrell, Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall, vol. 1. 83-6. Bottrell was known to embroider tales, as was the
custom with a storyteller of his time.
[64]
Sydney, The Early Days of the Nineteenth Century in England, 1800-1820, vol. 2. 73.
[65]
Nicholson, A Sermon against Witchcraft, iii.
[66]
Davies, A People Bewitched.
[67]
Forby, The Vocabulary of East Anglia, vol. 2. 394.
[68]
Morrison and Maple, Marsh Wizards, Witches and Cunning Men, 11.
[69]
Maple, The Dark World of Witches, 168.
[70]
Ibid., 43–44.
[71]
“Provincial Intelligence.”
[72]
Adshead, “Canewdon and Its Witches.”
[73]
Morrison and Maple, Marsh Wizards, Witches and Cunning Men, 15–17.
[74]
These refer to the teeth on a wool card or comb.
[75]
Bellhouse, “A Complete System of Magic.” 28-29.
[76]
Bellhouse, “A Complete System of Magic.” 29
[77]
Davies, A People Bewitched.
[78]
Bogg, Lower Wharfeland, 346.
[79]
“Witchcraft in Stockport.”
[80]
British Broadcasting Corporation, “Ancient Anti-Witchcraft Potion Found at Old Northamptonshire Pub.”
[81]
Peacock, “Replies: Easter Sunday Superstitions.”
[82]
Fowler, “On the Process of Decay in Glass,” 133.
[83]
Peacock, A Glossary of Words Used in the Wapentakes of Manley and Corringham, Lincolnshire, 193.
[84]
Wheeler and Coussins, “Man Spooked.”
[85]
Latham, “Some West Sussex Superstitions Lingering in 1868,” 25–26.
[86]
“Superstition in Langport.”
[87]
E., “Witchcraft in the Present Day: To the Editor of the Times.”
[88]
Davies, A People Bewitched.
[89]
P., “Witchcraft in North Devon.”
[90]
“‘Witchcraft’ at Chesterfield.”
[91]
“‘Bewitching’ a Young Man,” 3.
[92]
Wellacott, “A Churchyard Charm.”
[93]
Hewett, Nummits and Crummits, 74.
[94]
Beresford, “Notes on a Portion of the Northern Borders of Staffordshire,” 101.
[95]
Longman and Loch, Pins and Pincushions, 38.
[96]
Campbell, Witchcraft & Second Sight in the Highlands & Islands of Scotland, 14. A similar charm involving milk has been
recorded in a Nova Scotia fishing community. Rose, “Canadian Folklore,” 125.
[97]
Gregor, “Stories of Fairies from Scotland,” 57–58.
[98] th
P., Cas Gan Gythraul, 115. Gruffydd, “Buckley Pot Used in Witchcraft.” The National Museum of Wales claims an 18
century example was found at Allt-y-Rhiw Farm, near Llansilin, but the only mentioned content was lead. National Museum
of Wales, “Witch-bottles and Healing Charms.”
[99]
Whitley, “Cornish Folklore”; Semmens, “The Usage of Witch-bottles and Apotropaic Charms in Cornwall,” 27, 28
[100]
Semmens, “The Usage of Witch-Bottles and Apotropaic Charms in Cornwall,” 28.
[101]
Hunt, Popular Romances of the West of England, 319.
[102]
Hunt, Popular Romances of the West of England, Ser. 2, 210.
[103]
Semmens, “The Usage of Witch-bottles and Apotropaic Charms in Cornwall,” 28; Merrifield, “Witch Bottles and Magical
Jugs,” 196–97.
[104]
Amery, “A Witch’s Bottle.”
[105]
Kelway, Memorials of Old Essex, 251.
[106]
Parsons, “Notes on Cambridgeshire Witchcraft,” 42–3.
[107]
Merrifield, The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic, 182.
[108]
Hoggard, Magical House Protection.
[109]
Anonymous, “Witchcraft in Sussex.”
[110]
Rawlence, “Sundry Folk-lore Reminiscences Relating to Man and Beast in Dorset and the Neighbouring Counties,” 59–60.
[111]
Morrison and Maple, Marsh Wizards, Witches and Cunning Men, 56–7; Howard, East Anglian Witches and Wizards, 115.
[112]
Fowler, “On the Process of Decay in Glass,” 133.
[113]
Boberg, Danske Folketro Samlet Af Jens Kamp, 191–92; Henningsen, “Witchcraft Persecution after the Era of the Witch
Trials,” 146.
[114]
Fördjord: Bewitched.
[115]
Original: Bang, Norske Hexeformularer og magiske Opskrifter ..., vol. I, 344–5.Translation: Gårdbäck, Trolldom, 266.
[116]
Godbeer, The Devil’s Dominion, 45–46; Tannenbaum, The Healer’s Calling, 126.
[117]
Mather, An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences, 269.
[118]
Mather, A Further Account of the Tryals of the New-England Witches, Part 2, 29.
[119]
Mather and Baxter, Late Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions, 59–60.
[120]
Lawson, Christ’s Fidelity, 64.
[121]
“Martha Emerson.”
[122]
C[hamberline], Lithobolia, Or, The Stone-Throwing Devil...
[123]
Rieti, Making Witches, 30–1.
[124]
Ibid., 143.
[125]
Ibid., 34, 98.
[126]
Wilkinson, “Local Folk Lore,” 6–7.
[127]
Little, The History of Warren, 437–38.
[128]
Manning, “The Material Culture of Ritual Concealments in the United States,” 58.
[129]
Wheeler, “Magical Dwelling,” 387.
[130]
Becker, “An Update on Colonial Witch Bottles,” 18.
[131]
Becker, “An American Witch-bottle”; Becker, “An Eighteenth Century Witch Bottle in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.”
[132]
Hohman and Harms, The Long-Lost Friend, 48.
[133]
Donmoyer, Powwowing in Pennsylvania: Braucherei and the Ritual of Everyday Life, 300.
[134]
Ossman and Steel, The Guide to Health or Household Instructor, 61; Donmoyer, Powwowing in Pennsylvania: Braucherei
and the Ritual of Everyday Life, 191.
[135]
Bailer, “Witches... I Have Known,” 8.
[136]
Alexandrowicz, “The Market Street Witch Bottle”; Becker, “An Update on Colonial Witch Bottles.”
[137]
Doddridge, Notes on the Settlement, 180.
[138]
Becker, “An Update on Colonial Witch Bottles,” 17.
[139]
King, “The Patuxent Point Site,” 27–9. Whitney and Bullock, Folk-Lore from Maryland, 82–83.
[140]
Anderson, Conjure in African American society. 54-56.
[141]
Morehouse, “Curator’s Choice: Witch Bottle.”
[142]
Hyatt, Hoodoo--Conjuration--Witchcraft--Rootwork; Beliefs Accepted by Many Negroes and White Persons, These Being
Orally Recorded among Blacks and Whites, vols. 1, 923–5.
[143]
Berard, “Civil War-Era Bottle”; Hall, “The Tale of The Civil War Hoodoo Spell Bottle.”
[144]
Painter, “An Early 18th Century Witch Bottle.”
[145]
Davis, “Folk-Lore and Ethnology: Conjuration,” 252.
[146]
Hyatt, Hoodoo--Conjuration--Witchcraft--Rootwork, vol. 1, 507-8.
[147]
Ibid., vol. 1, 508.fff
[148]
Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore. et al., The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore,
646.
[149]
Babcock, “Communicated Insanity,” 519–520.
[150]
Ruby Andrews Moore, “Superstitions in Georgia.”
[151]
Browne, Popular Beliefs and Practices from Alabama., 195, 198.
[152]
Manning, “Homemade Magic,” 114–15.
[153]
Perrin, History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois, 281.
[154]
Hyatt, Folk-Lore from Adams County, Illinois, 798.
[155]
Gibson, “Crosses and Witch Bottles.”
[156]
Bewitched.
[157]
Clavel, “Items of Folk-Lore from Bahama Negroes,” 36–37.
[158]
Wilkie, “Secret and Sacred: Contextualizing the Artifacts of African-American Magic and Religion,” 88.
[159]
Bell, Obeah, 4–5.
[160]
Reeves, “Mundane or Spiritual?,” 185–86.
[161]
Kingsley, At Last, 236.
[162]
MJD and Pitt Rivers Museum, “1926.6.1: Glass Flask Reputed to Contain a Witch.”
[163]
Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, “14 - Witch Bottle: Bellarmine Jar”; Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, “221 - Witch
Bottle: Bellarmine Jar”; Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, “1438 - Witch Bottle”; Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, “1830 -
Spirit Bottle: Witch Bottle”; Pennick, Skulls, Cats, and Witch Bottles, 18.
[164]
Gary, Wisht Waters, 101–2.
[165]
Puckett, “Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro,” 299; Yronwode, “Witch’s Bottle (Malevolent, Not Protective)”; Yronwode,
“Witch Bottles: Hoodoo and British.”
[166]
Cunningham and Harrington, The Magical Household, 107.
[167]
e.g. Canard, Defences Against the Witches’ Craft, 65–66; TipToeChick, “How to Make a Witch Bottle.”; Furie, Supermarket
Sabbats, 55–56, 77–78, 116–18, 135–36, 221–22, 262.
[168]
Weinstein, Earth Magic, 131-3; TipToeChick, “How to Make a Witch Bottle.”

[169] Chauran, Have You Been Hexed?, 152–3.

[170]
Andrews, “Bottles and Blades.”
[171]
Hughes, “Shadows.”
[172]
Biller, The Love Witch.
[173]
Golding, Witch Bottle.
[174]
Hoggard, “The Archaeology of Folk Magic.”
[175]
Davies, Cunning-folk.
[176]
Hoggard, “Witch Bottles: Their Contents, Contexts and Uses,” 98–99; Thwaite, “Magic and the Material Culture of Healing,”
228; “Fulbourn Man’s Superstition.’”
[177]
Pitts, “Urine to Navel Fluff.”
[178]
Hoggard, “Witch Bottles: Their Contents, Contexts and Uses,” 100; Hoggard, “The Archaeology of Counter-Witchcraft and
Popular Magic,” 172.
[179]
Hoggard, 100; Hoggard, “The Archaeology of Folk Magic.” He also suggests that these bent items may be “killed” to
become “ghost pins,” a possibility not documented in the accounts above.
[180]
Longman and Loch, Pins and Pincushions. 30-39.
[181]
Cuming, “Pin-Lore and the Waxen Image.” 163-64; Hope, Holy Wells of England, 22, 72, 103, 109, 199.
[182]
Thwaite, “Magic and the Material Culture of Healing,” 139, 154.
[183]
Hoggard, “The Archaeology of Counter-Witchcraft and Popular Magic,” 172.
[184]
Auge, “Silent Sentinels,” 115–16.
[185]
Manning, “Homemade Magic: Concealed Deposits in Architectural Contexts in the Eastern United States,” 123. Thanks to
Dr. Manning for allowing this to be republished.
[186]
Thwaite, “What Is a ‘Witch Bottle’?,” 232.
[187]
Merrifield, The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic, 182.
[188]
Davies and Easton, “Cunning-Folk and the Production of Magical Artefacts,” 211; Hoggard, “Witch Bottles: Their Contents,
Contexts and Uses,” 103–4.
[189]
Hoggard, “The Archaeology of Counter-Witchcraft and Popular Magic,” 173.
[190]
Easton, “Four Spiritual Middens in Mid Suffolk, England,” 10–11.
[191]
Jeffries, “What Should You Do If You Find a 17th-Century ‘Witch Bottle’?”