Lore - Episode 169: Blood Money

Episode Date: April 26, 2021

We’ve all been told to beware things that seem too good to be true, and for good reason. But beyond the world of hucksters and frauds, one special group of people fooled an entire culture, at the cost of hundreds of lives. ———————— This episode of Lore was sponsored by: BetterHelp: Join over a million other people taking charge of their mental health with the help of an experienced BetterHelp counselor. Visit BetterHelp.com/LORE10 today and use offer code LORE10 for 10% off your first month. SimpliSafe: Secure your home with 24/7 professional monitoring for just $15 a month. No contracts, no salespeople, just simple and easy security. Visit SimpliSafe.com/Lore today, and you’ll get a FREE HD Camera. Casper: From bedding, bed frames, and even a dog bed, Casper has everything to build the dream bedroom—for every kind of sleeper. Visit Casper.com to get $100 off your mattresses order by using the offer code LORE100. Terms and conditions apply. ———————— Lore Resources:  Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com Access premium content!: https://www.lorepodcast.com/support See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

His was a rags to riches sort of story. Born in the 1650s, William didn't have the easiest start to life. His first job was working as an apprentice to a nail maker. Believe me, it was riveting work. But by the 1670s, he was so wealthy he owned a country estate of his own, outside Birmingham, and life was good for a very long time. There was, however, always that nagging feeling in the back of his mind. That fear that one day, he might get caught.

You see, William Chaloner didn't earn his fortune the honest way. No, he made his money, literally. His business was counterfeiting. So when the warden of the Royal Mint started tracking him down, he knew the jig was up. By 1699, he had been arrested, tried, and sentenced to death by hanging. Oh, and that warden of the Royal Mint, he was also a successful and legendary physicist. His name? Sir Isaac Newton.

Some things always seem too good to be true. You know the feeling, right? That parking spot that turns out to be reserved? The $20 bill in the bushes that ends up being just a scrap of cash? Or that promotion that bumps your pay a little, but doubles your workload? Sometimes the silver lining ain't so silver. But as long as it's not a matter of life or death, we usually learn to adapt and move on.

After all, life is full of surprises. But if you spend a bit of time studying history, you quickly learn that life is also full of darkness, darkness, and an irrefutable truth. Things that are too good to be true can sometimes turn out to be deadly. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore. To understand their problem, we first have to understand their politics. And for the English in the 1640s, that began with civil war. The reasons for those wars started decades earlier.

Now, remember, all through this era of English history, you have these opposing threads. There were those who thought that the monarchies were great and supported having a king. And they were called royalists. I think that name makes a lot of sense. And then there were the supporters of the English parliament, who thought that the people's representatives should have more say in government. And they were called parliamentarians. Yes, that word is a lot more weird, but it still carries its meaning well.

And during the late 1630s, these two sides were brushing against each other, creating all sorts of friction. Please hold tight. I'm going to explain why all of this is important in a moment. Just remember that history always makes better sense when you display it with the context, the other little details that help the larger picture be more clear. Think of historical contexts like 3D glasses in the movie theater. Without them, the picture seems confusing.

With them, though, it comes to life. During the English Civil War, King Charles I led his royalist forces in battle all over the place against the parliamentarians. But in the fall of 1648, he lost to a guy named Oliver Cromwell. King Charles was subsequently put on trial, found guilty of tyranny, and executed by beheading on January 30th of 1649. Now the conflict would continue. And after some back and forth, Charles's son, Charles II, would reclaim the throne.

But what's important for us to take note of is the King's execution. Think about it for a moment. The people of England had watched their divinely appointed ruler die by human hands. It caused people to question the two most powerful forces in their lives, God and government. It shattered so many worldviews. But then it got worse. The 1640s turned out to be one of the coldest decades on record in England. Most today know that it was part of a larger weather pattern called a little ice age.

But for the people living through it, it was just hell. Crops died. Food was scarce. Poverty spread like wildfire, as did disease. All of a sudden, even the things people used to have control over, their crops and their ability to provide for their families, was breaking down. And if you add it all up, the perceived failures of God and government, the famine and disease, even the weather itself turning against them, it's easy to see why everyone was in a constant

state of fear. And that's the world that was instantly hostile to anything resembling witchcraft. If you've ever wondered why people in England were able to believe in spirit familiars, or a witch's power to kill an infant without touching it, or even to blight their crops, this was why. Everyone was afraid, and they were looking for a reason they could fix and control. Now I could tell you all about the different witchcraft acts that were passed in England and Scotland.

I could tell you all about the legislation that was designed to enforce godliness, but the best way to see the public fear is through the lives of those who preyed upon it, namely the witch hunters. The most famous of them was a guy named Matthew Hopkins, and we've discussed him here in the past. He was the ultra-conservative son of a Puritan clergyman, and during his brief career he was responsible for hundreds of convictions, most of whom were then executed. But he was just one of a larger community of itinerant witchcraft experts, and their

work was devastating. I think the biggest reason why there were so many witch hunters is that it was such a lucrative occupation. Again, remember all that fear. Communities all over England were in a panic, and any time something even remotely unexplainable happened, accusations of witchcraft would be thrown around. And to that the common practice of using witchcraft as a tool to get rid of unwanted people, basically by making up accusations and letting the system remove them from your life, and I think it's

easy to see why these witch hunters were so busy. And all that business made them wealthy too, because towns would pay whatever was necessary to get rid of the evil in their midst. How did it work? Well, a desperate town would send a letter out to a witch hunter with a good reputation for results, and invite them to come help. After arriving, this individual would interview suspects, looking for leverage and a reason to go deeper.

And when they found it, they would have those suspects arrested, despite not having the legal authority to do so. Suspects would then be interrogated through mild types of torture. Some people wouldn't be allowed to sleep, others would be walked non-stop until their feet blistered and they were too tired to stand. All of which was designed to push them over the edge and force a confession. Most of the time, that's all it took, but a few put up more of a fight. Those suspects were tested in more bizarre ways.

We've all heard of the dunking method, where suspected witches were tied to a heavy object and tossed into a body of water. If they sunk, they were innocent and received burial on church grounds. If they floated, though, it could only be explained by witchcraft, and they were executed for it. But one other test was administered quite often, and it was called pricking. You see, witches were believed to have small marks on their body where their familiars fed from.

And it was commonly believed that these spots were absent of pain and rarely bled. So if you were to prick one with a sharp needle, a real witch wouldn't feel it, and the wound would show no blood. Now Matthew Hopkins was England's most famous hunter. But what most people don't realize is that the laws of the country prevented him from doing more damage than he actually did. But it makes you wonder, if the laws were less strict and the superstitions a lot stronger, how much damage could one person really do?

But for the answer to that, we need to travel to Scotland and explore the life of that country's most infamous witch-pricker of all, a man who offered services that almost seemed too good to be true. A man named John Kincaid. He was an international man of mystery. And by international, I mean that he sometimes crossed the border from Scotland into England. Because honestly, the money was just too good to ignore. But we don't know much about John Kincaid before he arrived on the scene in early summer

of 1649. Now there's a chance he came from Stirlingshire, which is about 30 miles west of Edinburgh. Our only proof that he lived there is his signature on a few legal documents. Actually they were arrest records, and his signature is just his initials, hinting at a life of crime and a lack of education, clues that might cast light on the rest of his days. But there I go, getting ahead of myself. To understand the man, maybe it's best we start with his early work. In June of 1649, he pops up on legal documents involving a woman named Marion Inglis.

The accusations involve the usual demonic activity you might expect from a witch trial. Marion was said to have caused illness and death, and had made a bargain with the devil. What is also clear from the court documents though, is that Marion's neighbor, a woman who accused her, had gotten into an argument with her over unpaid debts. She hated Marion, and putting her up for accusations of witchcraft was a way to stab her in the back. John Kincaid arrived in the middle of all of this, and then the town asked him to get to work.

His job was to prove the accusations were true, to use his tools to test her, and to get a confession. But it seems that his first performance was a bit of a bust. Not only did Marion Inglis refuse to confess, but when he used the needle to prick her witch marks, they bled. A month later though, he was back at it. This time he was summoned to a castle in Scotland near North Barrick, where two people were awaiting his tests.

But here's the crazy thing about this episode. It seems that the people who hired him weren't the town officials, but the victims themselves, a husband and wife pair. It turns out that they were certain his tests would prove them innocent, and honestly it probably didn't help that his botched testing of Marion Inglis ended up disproving her guilt. It seems that these two new victims felt it was then their best interest to hire somebody who was bad at his job. But in a dark twist of fate, his methods worked, and they were both found guilty of witchcraft.

They were executed a short while later. This time, word began to spread about his skill and success, and that newfound reputation led him to Newcastle upon Tyne, where a local Puritan council was stirring up a witch frenzy of their own. Their battle cry seems to have been a passage from the Old Testament book of Exodus that says, Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, and they were out for blood. They even paid a bell ringer to walk through the streets of town, shouting out what was

basically a marketing pitch designed to inspire fear. Come forward, he shouted, all ye who have an accusation of witchcraft. Devils, murderers, mad dogs, they be among us. The devil stalks us. His stench chokes our fair town, and his hordes practice their evil arts. The end days are upon us. Who are the witches and wizards? Show us.

They shall be brought to justice. They shall be tested by the witch-pricker. Heavy stuff, right? And this is the sort of community that John Kincaid arrived to find. This town was in search of escape goats, and soon enough everyone pointed their finger at the types of people we would expect them to. The poor, the elderly, local healers who served their neighbors with unusual methods. You know, the outsiders, the others.

And because John Kincaid was paid the modern equivalent of roughly $200 per prosecuted witch, he got busy bringing all of them in. When it was all said and done, he had pushed 30 people through the gauntlet of interrogation, witch-pricking, and trial. Satisfied with the results of his skilled investigation, 27 of the accused were found guilty, and at least 14 were hanged that August. But as John Kincaid left town, his pockets filled with generous amounts of coin, problems were beginning to brew.

You see, at least one of the accused, who was still awaiting execution, had requested a second opinion. She asked for a new person to test her witch marks, with a fresh bodkin, a sort of thick needle mounted in a wooden handle typically used for sewing. And that test caused pain and drew blood. It seems that not everything about John Kincaid was on the up and up, and as words spread, his growing fame was about to collide with an equal yet opposing force. Suspicion

The money just wouldn't stop rolling in. A few months after his time in Newcastle upon Tyne, Kincaid was called to Dunfermline, a town just across the bay from Edinburgh, and it was a healthy payday for him. His target there was a young woman named Bessie Morton, who he examined and found guilty of being a witch. For his services on that single day, he earned about as much money as one laborer could expect to earn in an entire year. And all he had to do was show up, use his bodkin to prove the suspects were a witch,

and then pocket the coins. In April of 1650, he was called to a tougher case. Catherine Walker had been accused of being a witch thanks to her unorthodox religious practices and all-around bad attitude. How bad? Well, it seems that she once kicked a man in the groin so hard that he died from the injury. Others believed that she had killed her own children and cursed others in town to great

suffering. Catherine was a tough suspect for John Kincaid. She refused to confess, and even after he applied a bit of torture, she still professed her innocence. So John pulled out his trusty bodkin, that thick metal needle mounted in a wooden handle resembling an antique screwdriver, and magically found the evidence he needed. Her witches' mark refused to bleed, and so she went to jail. And as far as I can tell, he did this for years, traveling wherever he was needed and

participating in that exchange of goods and services that made him so famous. He would provide proof and security, and they would provide gold and silver. He began to travel in the company of multiple servants, and his fees would often push community budgets to the breaking point. But that's okay, right? After all, how can you put a price on peace of mind? But there were also rumors chasing after him. Think about it for a moment.

The testing technique of dunking, for example, was incredibly public. Entire towns would gather to watch a suspect thrown into the water with a weight tied to them. It was hard to fake that sort of experience. But John Kincaid did all of his work behind closed doors, with that little tool that no one else could touch. It was suspicious enough to make people wonder, was he telling the truth? And then, in April of 1661, something happened.

All of those small, local flames of witchcraft that popped up every now and then suddenly exploded into a national terror. Over the 16 months that followed, historians estimate that upwards of 650 people were accused of being witches, and hundreds of them were executed. And right there, in the middle of it all, was John Kincaid. It was, after all, the grandest stage for all his skills and services. The big show, if you will. And if handled well, it could turn him into a legend and be the biggest payday of his

career. You know, the important stuff. So that July, he was called to help a town with a major problem. Not one suspected witch, but many. Among them were Catherine Hunter, Isabel Ferguson, Bessie Moffat, and Elspeth Graham. But it was elderly midwife Beatrix Leslie who drew the most attention. So that's where Kincaid focused his efforts. Beatrix was an 84-year-old woman who had been serving the town for decades as a skilled

and necessary midwife. But along the way, it seems that she made some enemies, too. When a coal mine collapsed and killed two young women, women who had recently been in an argument with Beatrix, she was suspected of causing the accident with satanic powers. Others claimed that she took the form of a cat and used odd rituals during the births she oversaw. And John did the job he was hired to do. He interrogated the elderly woman and found more than a few witch marks on her skin.

And not only did he test those marks with his trusty bodkin, but he also put her through another bit of forensic folklore called cruentation, where the suspect is instructed to touch the corpse of a murder victim. In her case, the corpse bled, clearly showing her to be the true killer. And together with the evidence from her interrogation, Beatrix and the others were executed in September of 1661, adding their names to a long and growing list of victims of the national firestorm that would come to be known later as the Great Scottish Witch Hunt. But it wouldn't last forever.

You see, that massive national panic provided a huge sample of new data. It was difficult to find flaws in testimony and evidence when there were only a handful of cases to examine. But when there were nearly 700 of them, all of a sudden the problems became apparent. And it seems that across the board, much of the evidence failed to hold up to scrutiny. So in the spring of 1662, Scotland's Privy Council ruled that it was no longer legal to arrest witchcraft suspects without an official warrant from their office. They also fired a shot directly at people like John Kincaid, making it illegal to torture

suspects or to engage in witch-pricking. And just like that, his career was brought to an end. And that seemed to open the floodgates for all those suspicions that people had about his work. Soon enough, stories were pouring in about his unusual level of cruel interrogation. They complained about his use of torture. But most of all, they expressed a suspicion that turned out to be fairly common among the communities he served, that his special witch-pricking bodkin was rigged.

It turns out that his needle was retractable, sort of like those fake knives you can buy at a local carnival. When pressed against the skin of a suspect, the needle simply moved deeper into the wooden handle rather than into the flesh. No needle, no blood, and that allowed him to earn money on suspects sent to trial. For his crimes, John Kincaid was arrested in the summer of 1662 and quickly imprisoned. He'd had a good run at it, cashing in all over Scotland and Northern England for over a decade.

But in the end, it seems his services were too good to be true. P.T. Barnum is famously credited with saying, there's a sucker born every minute. So whether or not that's actually something he said, it's a truth that hides a darker lesson. Behind every sucker is a fraud with something to sell. And the cost is often paid in human lives. It's that age-old advice that never seems to go out of style.

If something seems too good to be true, they say, then it probably is. I can't help but think of the hucksters of a century ago, the snake oil salesmen promising miracle cures from their secret tonic in a little glass bottle, or the Fiji mermaid that P.T. Barnum displayed in his American Museum in 1842. It takes a certain amount of courage to build lies that elaborate and fantastical. And while many dismissed them out of hand, just enough people fell for them that these frauds, in modern terms, went viral.

What's most disturbing about the story of John Kincaid, however, is the way in which he and others like him preyed on the fears and faith of 17th century Scottish citizens. The services of witch-prickers weren't meant to offer immediate peace. In fact, I think it could be argued that they were meant to increase the panic in town. Look, one of them would say, your fear of witchcraft was correct. That's one right there. Now pay up. We don't know how rich John Kincaid got off his scam, but we do know that he somehow

managed to get himself out of jail pretty quickly, thanks to his ability to pay the massive bail amount that was set for him. After that, he sort of slips into the shadows, never to be heard from again. But while it seems that he himself escaped the consequences of his crimes, there is a bright ray of goodness at the end of his story. Because thanks to Kincaid's abuse of witchcraft laws and the fears of those communities, Scotland tightened up how witches were treated from that moment on. The occupation of witch-pricker vanished overnight.

People stopped fanning the flames of satanic fear, and the age of frauds selling fake services to fearful people was brought to a screeching halt. And that, from where we sit today, looks like the happiest ending we could ever hope for. John Kincaid offers us a glimpse into the dark and twisted world of individuals who exploited fear to build a career. But he wasn't the only one. In fact, there's another individual I'd like you to meet, whose tale is absolutely filled with lies.

Stick around after this brief sponsor break, and I'll tell you all about it. Way too many people seem to have sidekicks. For Batman, there's Robin, Poo has Piglet, Jerry Seinfeld had George Costanza, and for John Kincaid, there was John Dick. It makes a lot of sense when you remember that John Kincaid was busy for over a decade, and the more in-demand his services became, the more he must have needed a bit of help. That's where John Dick came into the picture. But when Kincaid was thrown into prison and witch-pricking was outlawed, his assistant

moved on to build a brand new solo career. One of the jobs we know about was way up in the north of Scotland. In March of 1662, a local magistrate up there hired John Dick to be an ongoing member of law enforcement. The task was simple, specialize in identifying witch marks on suspected witches. The pay? Six times the average daily wage. I imagine it was impossible to say no.

After that, it was a job farther north in the highlands of Scotland. And everywhere John Dick went, it seems that the fiery reputation of John Kincaid was given a run for its money. I'm not really sure how, given that we know about the changes to the way Scotland approached witch trials that summer, but John the assistant managed to become infamous for brutal torture and extreme interrogation techniques. But the apprentice followed a bit too closely to the master's training. During a job in the northern parish of Tain, John Dick encountered a tough suspect named

John Hay. And yeah, that's another John, and I know that's confusing, but I'll do my best to keep everything clear and understandable. I promise. It seems that John Hay had gotten into an argument with an acquaintance who had lashed out by accusing Hay of witchcraft. By now I'm sure you understand why. It was still an incredibly easy way to cause your enemies a lot of grief.

But John Hay turned out to be a lot tougher than most accused witches. You see, Hay was a court messenger, which meant that he was very well connected to a lot of people in power. They knew him. They trusted him. So when the accusations were brought against him, and John Dick was brought to town to interrogate him, John Hay leaned on those powerful friends to help him out. As a result, his charges were tossed, and an arrest warrant was issued for John Dick,

who quickly skipped town without pay to escape the authorities. But there's no rest for the weary, and soon enough another community was calling for help. This time in the Strathglass Valley region, it seems they had a witchcraft problem of their own. When John Dick arrived there, the community was in chaos. Now, the situation was complex, but it falls into a pattern that I think most of you will recognize. Basically, a local landowner was tired of leasing his land to a family named the Macleons.

But he was bound by a legal agreement that he couldn't get out of. So he decided to accuse the Macleons of witchcraft. As a result, at least 15 members of the clan were arrested and brought to the local church for examination. And that's where John Dick stepped in. Each of the accused were stripped naked, and their heads were shaved to make it easier to find witch marks. According to one contemporary account, the accused were then subjected to testing with

a brass needle. In other words, the now illegal practice of witch-pricking. And all of them were found guilty. But that's not all. To force a confession from them, John Dick engaged in a brutal series of torture methods. Some were forced to walk on burning coals, while others were hung up by their thumbs. Many were dragged behind horses, too. And all of it was productive, in the sense that these Macleons offered up the confessions

that the authorities were looking for. But that's when a powerful member of the Maclean clan from out of town arrived to stop it all. Sir Rory Maclean had been petitioned by one of the locals to come and help. And help he did. And he was quick to point out that the charges of witchcraft were clearly being used by the accuser to simply steal back the land. As a result, the trials fell apart, and the landowner was forced to drop his charges.

And John Dick? Well, Sir Rory Maclean learned that witch-pricking had been used, and he had John Dick arrested and transported south to Edinburgh for trial. And that's where the story took its most amazing and shocking turn. Suddenly, the person in the interrogation chair was John Dick, and others were asking questions and demanding confessions. And the first confession was a doozy. John Dick, it seems, wasn't really John Dick at all, but Christian Caddell, a woman.

It seems that she had been pretending to be a man for years because women weren't allowed to do the work of witch-hunting. To fight against the patriarchy, she had created a new persona and worked alongside John Kincaid. And then, after Kincaid's arrest, carried on without him. Her passion and hatred for witches was simply too great to let society tell her what role she was allowed to play. The confession and revelation didn't help her, though. In the spring of 1663, she was found guilty of her crimes and sentenced to indentured

servanthood. Her bond was purchased by a man named Morris Trent, and then she was put on a ship with a dozen other convicts, all taken to Barbados to work on his plantation. She was never heard from. Again. This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Menke, with research by Ali Steed and music by Chad Lawson. Lore is much more than just a podcast, though.

There's a book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video. Check them both out if you want more lore in your life. I also make and executive produce a whole slate of other podcasts, all of which I think you'd enjoy. My production company, Grim and Mild, specializes in shows that sit at the intersection of the dark and the historical. You can learn more about all of those shows and everything else going on over in one

central place, grimandmild.com. And you can also follow this show on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Just search for Lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. When you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.