The Yorkshire Witch

Book excerpt: “A fascinating tale of witchcraft and skulduggery in darkest Yorkshire in the early 19th century. . . . An extraordinary story, brilliantly told.” —Books Monthly On the morning of March 20, 1809, the woman who had earned herself the title of “The Yorkshire Witch” was hanged at York’s New Drop gallows before an estimated crowd of twenty thousand people—many of them victims of her hoaxes and extortion. A consummate con artist, Mary Bateman was adept at identifying the psychological weaknesses of the desperate and poor who populated the growing industrial metropolis of Leeds. Exploiting their fears and terror of witchcraft, Mary was well placed to rob them of their worldly goods, yet she did much more than cause misery and penury. Though tried and convicted of only one murder, the contemporary belief that she was a serial killer is doubtlessly accurate. A meticulously researched retelling of Mary Bateman’s life and death, and the macabre legacy of her mortal remains, The Yorkshire Witch is also a “wealth of social history . . . about the lives of servants; housing conditions . . . the rise in religious fervour . . . the prevalence of superstitious beliefs . . . accounts of early toxicology; how crimes were prosecuted; the treatment of female convicts; and public executions” (Crime Review).