Are you female, have one or more moles and are capable of expressing yourself? Perhaps you have a cat, are maybe single by design or circumstance, and given to bestowing well-meaning medical tips? Then you might as well get yourself a pointy hat and broomstick because turn back the clock a few centuries and you’d find yourself accused and convicted of witchcraft and in a burning bucket of tar surrounded by a braying mob faster than you can say ‘I only said they might want to get some ointment on that’. Claire Mitchell KC & Zoe Venditozzi know only too well the speed and ease with which thousands of innocent women - and a few men - were murdered in the witch hunts which raged across Scotland from the 16th to 18th centuries and they give it chapter and verse in their fascinating, fact-filled, funny, feminist and furious new book, How to Kill A Witch - A Guide for the Patriarchy, which they will be highlighting at Boswell Book Festival this week and other forthcoming events. Mitchell, a Scottish advocate specialising in appellate law, with a particular focus on constitutional issues, human rights, and sentencing, and Zoe Venditozzi, a writer and educator, were both spurred on by a sense of injustice to set up the Witches of Scotland campaign five years ago. Dedicated to seeking justice for the nearly 4,000 predominantly women, who were accused of witchcraft in Scotland between 1563 and 1736 - with an estimated 2,500 executed - the self-styled ‘quarrelsome dames’ have become podcasters, authors and now tartaneers in a bid to meet their campaign aims of a pardon, an apology and some form of memorial. In addition to bearing witness to the murdered women, they also want to highlight the inequalities that still exist from misogyny and violence to accusations of witchcraft in various parts of the world, and challenge damaging patriarchal norms to make sure that we learn from our past mistakes. “Along with the campaign we have a companion podcast, Witches of Scotland which was initially supposed to be six episodes, but we’re standing at 76 or so now,” says Mitchell, as she and Venditozzi tell me about the new book. It was standing in Edinburgh’s Princes Street Gardens with its multiple statues of men and animals that inspiration for the campaign first struck Mitchell. “I realised there were heehaw statues of named women and thought it was weird. As a lawyer who at that time had worked in the Appeal Court for more than 15 years I thought of the world through justice and miscarriages of justice. I thought not only are we not recording brilliant things women are doing but we’re not recording a really dark time in Scotland’s history where women were othered, persecuted and died in the most brutal and terrible miscarriage of justice, and it was on that point that I decided to do the campaign.” Teaming up with Venditozzi, who is passionate about uncovering and sharing the stories of those wrongfully accused during Scotland’s witch trials, the pair set up The Witches of Scotland campaign which has three aims: an apology, a pardon and a memorial. A state apology was issued by Nicola Sturgeon as First Minister on International Women’s Day in 2022, and the campaign is still working on a pardon while the memorialisation has focused around a new tartan and the book. “We dedicate the book to the women who were executed as witches and it tries to tell their story with some amazing written pieces from Zoe, the creative parts,” says Mitchell. “I’m a writer,” says Venditozzi, “so think in terms of that, but also we’ve created this amazing resource with the podcast and 76 episodes is pretty unwieldy so we thought it would be good to have a book too where we could distill the story. It’s one place that explains where the witch trials came from, how they functioned, who was involved, explained by experts and with fictional pen portraits of the people involved so you think about the individuals too.” The witch trials are a dark topic, but Mitchell and Venditozzi imbue the book with humour at times too. It’s stuffed with informative details, such as how long it takes to burn a body, why there is only one ‘witch’s’ grave in Scotland, and the reason so many witches were called Janet (a fact that made me clutch my black cat for comfort) - the name being the witchcraft equivalent of Jane Doe, since proper records were never kept. Venditozzi and Mitchell also speak to experts such as historians, forensic scientists and researchers and reference sources such as the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft database where the names of the accused are gathered. “The witch trials are very serious obviously,” says Venditozzi, “but we both have quite a dark sense of humour. I think doing this huge deep dive into it you have to have that. We’re not historians, we’re two middle aged women that have alighted on this as something that not only makes us angry about the past, but still angry because it’s not sorted. “We’re maybe not still setting women on fire, but we’re losing some of the gains we’ve made in the last half a century.” “It’s a call to action,” agrees Mitchell. To challenge misogyny and the norms where women are abused be it online or in person, and their hard won freedoms rolled back. “It’s for people to read and go ‘well I don’t want that to happen again and actually I can see parallels with now, so what can I do as a citizen, as a human, as an individual, to make sure that that doesn’t happen again?’ We still live in a patriarchy. There’s still a problem with women getting to the top and unequal pay. There’s still an unequal burden of caring responsibilities.” Read More - Rose McGowan #Me Too interview Now that the campaign has achieved an apology, what’s the approach with securing a pardon? “It’s a collective pardon,” says Mitchell, given that the records are incomplete or non-existent. “We can look at the two pardons that have already taken place. The first was in relation to men convicted of same sex sexual behaviour. People had to apply for it and you wouldn’t have to be a top lawyer to work out that nobody’s going to be applying for a pardon for women convicted of witchcraft because they can’t. “The next pardon was given to the miners pardoned en masse in relation to offences they were said to have committed during the Miners’ Strike. So in the same way we are asking for a pardon for those convicted under The Witchcraft Act 1563-1736. They weren’t guilty of the crime they were convicted of, witchcraft. They ought never to have been criminalised and what we got wrong is that women were in league with the devil, doing terrible things. Those people ought to have their name recorded properly in history as people who suffered a miscarriage of justice, not as witches.” Venditozzi is also keen to stress the ongoing impact of accusations of witchcraft and the legacy felt by entire families and descendants. Remember that in the 1600s the population of Scotland was only 900,000 so the chances are if you weren’t accused or an accuser of the 4,000, you knew someone who was. By comparison the 1692 Salem witch trials saw 200 accused, 19 killed, and a hasty recognition that it was a big mistake and miscarriage of justice. Whereas in Scotland the trials were led from the top with King James VI publishing Daemonolgie, his own guide for the patriarchy, in 1597, which set the tone and influenced everyone from ordinary citizens to Shakespeare who was inspired to write Macbeth. Read More - Nicole Cooper and Zinnie Harris take on tradition in Macbeth, interview The pair stress the gendered nature of the witch hunts, given that 85% of those murdered were women. “Anybody that argues there wasn’t a misogynistic, anti-women agenda is mental and clearly a man. Only someone in possession of a penis would look at those figures and go ‘it seems pretty fair to me’. I think it’s absolutely an attack on women.” Read More - Val McDermid on the real Queen Macbeth, interview Moving onto the third aim of the campaign, a memorial, Mitchell and Venditozzi wrestled with the idea of a statue. “A statue would take a lot more than the two of us, and a lot of money. We’ve seen what happened with the Elsie Inglis statue in Edinburgh and we’ve got zero interest in getting involved with some guy and his sculptural tools. Also where would it go? This happened all over Scotland. There’s an amazing witch trials memorial in Norway which is a beautiful piece of art by Louise Bourgeois. What I wouldn’t want is a lassie looking out sort of winsomely.” “Perhaps with her top slightly falling off the shoulders…” says Mitchell. “A nice bosom…” says Venditozzi. “Inexplicably too much detail in the bust…” agrees Mitchell and they laugh. With the statue discussion stalled Mitchell was inspired by the opening of the V&A in Dundee in 2018 and its inaugural exhibition, Tartan. Read More - Kengo Kuma’s V&A, Dundee, Interview “I saw all ethnicities and ages wearing tartans in different ways and talking about it, and thought how amazing would it be if we could get one made that embodies the stories of the women executed so we could wear it and remember our history. It’s not geographically fixed and tartan is universal so people could tell the story all over the world.” Witches of Scotland made contact with Clare Campbell of Prickly Thistle Scotland, who came up with the red, black and white design. “She said you couldn’t have done it with a better piece of cloth because tartan is the story of struggle, resistance, community,” says Mitchell. A kickstarter to raise funds to make the tartan met its £5,000 target on day one, totalled £140,000 within a week and now there’s a waiting list for the scarves and throws on the Witches of Scotland website. “The Witches of Scotland tartan is here to stay,” says Mitchell. “Zoe and I didn’t choose the tartan life, the tartan life chose us! We’re just trying to cope with our day jobs, podcast, book coming out and becoming accidental tartaneers.” The beauty of the tartan is that it’s universal and encapsulates Scotland’s past as well as future. “People now will understand a wee bit more about Scotland’s past and how that impacts on our present and future,” says Venditozzi. “I grew up in Fife and was taught nothing in school about it, so I feel we’re reaching people with an aspect of our own lost history.” Coming back to the present day the campaign looks at current inequalities and misogyny such as the epidemic of domestic violence and online hate towards women, and also looks forward in bid to make sure the same mistakes aren’t repeated. Read More - Caroline Criado Perez Interview “Our campaign is saying when people are othered and blamed for things they could not possibly have done that is a terrible miscarriage of justice and we have to deal with it. It’s for women to make their voice heard,” says Mitchell. Venditozzi agrees: “Whether it’s racism or misogyny, othering, or feminist issues, call it out. Don’t sit back. It’s really important we say I’m not going to put up with that. If we go quietly then the people that are trying to take away our rights get what they want, which is to silence us. We need to stand up and speak out.” “If you like the ideas you see in the book, the podcast, the tartan, if you like what we’re about,” says Mitchell, “put your elbows out and make space in the world and talk to other women and try and make that difference. Become quarrelsome dames.” How to Kill A Witch is published by Monoray, hardback £20, on 15 May. Claire Mitchell KC & Zoe Venditozzi will appear at Boswell Book Festival on Sunday, 11 May, 5pm www.boswellbookfestival.co.uk and Waterstones Edinburgh Princes Street on Saturday 17 May to talk about their new book How to Kill a Witch. Witches of Scotland podcast is on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. www.witchesofscotland.com