Loremen Podcast - Loremen S6Ep10 - Witches of Essex with Joel Morris

Episode Date: April 3, 2025

The Loremen welcome comedy writer and connoisseur of the supernatural Joel Morris (Philomena Cunk, A Touch of Cloth). Joel's hit podcast Broken Veil has seen him and Will Maclean venturing into the spookiest parts of his native Essex. And in this episode, the boys join Joel on a proverbial witch hunt. We find witches, wizards, a cat called Sathan and let's not forget... Old Picky. This episode was edited by Joseph Burrows - Audio Editor Join the Lorefolk at patreon.com/loremenpod ko-fi.com/loremen Check the sweet, sweet merch here... https://www.teepublic.com/stores/loremen-podcast?ref_id=24631 @loremenpod youtube.com/loremenpodcast www.instagram.com/loremenpod www.facebook.com/loremenpod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With the Fizz loyalty program, you get rewarded just for having a mobile plan. You know, for texting and stuff. And if you're not getting rewards like extra data and dollars off with your mobile plan, you're not with Fizz. Switch today. Conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. This episode is brought to you by FX's Dying for Sex on Disney+. Based on the podcast of the same name, Dying for Sex tells the story of Molly, who is diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer. Determined to feel everything she can before she can't feel anything, she decides to leave her unhappy marriage to explore her sexuality with some encouragement from her best friend

Nicky. FX's Dying for Sex, streaming April 4th only on Disney+. Sign up now at DisneyPlus.com. Welcome to Lawmen, a podcast about local legends and obscure curiosities from days of yore. With me, James Shake Shaft. And me, Alistair Beckett King. Alistair, it is a guest deputy law person this week. It's John Morris from Everything. Co-creator of not only Philomena Kunk, but creepy podcast Broken Veil. We are discussing his home county of Essex and we've got a whole bevy of witches. A smorgasbord of witches.

I was going to say grab hag, but then that's not very nice. That's unflattering. Yeah, a grab bag of drab hags, but they're not, they're not drab, they're not hags. I think that detracts from the seriousness of the historical events in question. It's Witches of Essex with Joel Morris. Psst, Alastair. Yes, James? Psst, Alastair. Yes James.

I'm doing the whisper because we've got a guest deputy law person. I'm thrilled to hear that James. Shall I pull the imaginary curtain back on the very real zoom call? Whisk it open immediately. By the way, quick sidebar, just copyright in this for like future. I do want to develop a small attachment to a laptop screen that is a pair of curtains that you can just pull and should. So you can for privacy? Yeah, or just to give some pizzazz to the start of the workday. Anyway, I didn't bring a special

guest deputy law person here. I don't know why you keep sharing these million dollar ideas in public, James. I'm just a generous guy. Basically, I want all these things to be open source. But no, that's not why I'm here. My charity is not why I brought in a special guest deputy law person. It's Joel Morris. Hello, Joel.

Hello. I was nice behind those curtains. It was very cozy. Yeah, those are patented though, Joel. So any enjoyment you've had out of them, that belongs to us, the lawmen. A small amount of that enjoyment is available to the others. A small amount of it is ours. Joel, thank you so much for joining us on Lawmen.

Here's your deputy lawman gun and badge. They will be taken from you at the end when you are off the case. I don't need those stinky badges. Don't need those stinky badges. I don't need those stinky badges. Oh, do you do things your own way, not by the book? Whoa, is he some kind of maverick? Yeah, I think so. Luckily, I'm retiring soon. So, uh, Well, this is just one last case. I don't say it being very eventful. So,

Joel, I first discovered you on the Rule of Three podcast, which you did with Jason Haisley, only to then discover that together the two of you had written pretty much every television program I had watched in the preceding decades. I was trying to list them, and there isn't time, but you know, like loads of stuff, things that every comedy nerd went, oh yeah, that. You know, like the Peter Serafinowicz show and the Paddington Lady Bird books for grownups. And I believe you co-created Philomena Kunk. Am I correct about this? Yes. I mainly work with redheads, which is why I'm here. But yeah, it's a thing. Yeah,

it's good, isn't it? I'm very generous. No, just lots and lots of stuff. I've been doing it for a long time. And the other great thing about being a writer is that no one knows who you are. I don't want to underline your obscurity. That's not the part I'm trying to make. But I do keep seeing memes of Philomena Kunk, obviously the actor, Diane Morgan, where there's a funny quote that it's credited to Philomena Kunk as if it just came into existence and nobody wrote the line. And I kind of think in a way that's flattering because it's like when you see a Groucho Marx quote attributed to Groucho Marx, but actually it's a line from Duck Soup or something. But it doesn't matter. Some writer, some schmuck in an office

wrote that. It's kind of cool that the character has taken on their own existence. Will Barron If you're not a performer, and obviously you are a performer, if you're not a performer, the idea was you accepted those terms when you came in. I don't want to be fussed by people. As a kid, I just wanted to be Schultz. I wanted to be a name everyone knew on a thing they liked, but no one would ever bother you. A bit much than complain that you don't get papped. Yeah, the idea is to be a behind the scenes kind of person. That's the plan. But you have stepped, not in front of the camera, but in front of the microphone many times. Am I right in thinking you've got two podcasts on the go? You've got Comfort Blanket and unfortunately not titled Discomfort Blanket.

Oh, that's coming. Don't worry. That's coming. Discomfort Blanket is coming. Oh, I'm so excited. It's the obvious tie-in, but yeah, it's probably going to come off the back of Broken Veil. So you have a podcast for making people feel nice and warm and fuzzy and a podcast for unsettling people.

Now our listeners, I think, are probably familiar with Broken Veil. I've certainly been plugging it in the Lorefolk Discord, but please give us the sales pitch because it is exactly up my street and it's exactly where James and I live on the street. Well, we camped outside your house and then we decided to do something. Now, it's me and Will McLean and Will and I know each other really well. He's another writer. He's a comedy writer. He worked on all the shows I've worked on as well. And he is a really old friend and he writes horror stuff. Him and I are really big horror and classic ghost fans, but he's a real boffin for it. He wrote a terrific, terrific, hauntology ghost story called The Apparition

Phase, which came out as a novel during lockdown, which is a great scary book. Absolutely amazing. So he and I've been talking for ages. We made a short ghost film years ago. We're really into this stuff. I wanted to do something with Will. And so we decided to make a podcast in that theme. You can tell you know your stuff as well. Like it's really good. It hits all the right scare points on the spine.

Is that a thing? Is that a new thing that I'm just patenting? Yeah. I think that you've invented sort of spooky chiropractic there, James. Yeah, so it's basically we're supposed to the idea was we were both as everyone is at the moment, certainly the we even talk about it in the podcast, the industry is in a real spasm at the moment, and people aren't taking risks on stuff. And it's quite hard to get stuff away. And we said, well, okay, well, if we're not if we're going to constantly have meetings with people, why don't we

have something we've made as well? Because it must be possible. And we had that stupid thing about, it must be possible to make something. And we said, in about two weeks that you can just put it out there and no one can stop you. Because who cares? Because it's punk. And it took like six months. But it took a year with a six month break in the middle where we went, this is terrible. We're never going to release this. So we had like sort of the standard thing where you work on it for a couple of months, then go, we've had a terrible idea because you're doing it on your own and it's for free. The idea was to get something out that had cost us nothing and we had done ourselves our own way.

And every single bit of it we made music and borrowed favours from friends and things and just made it like a short film where you just get your mates in to help out. And at the end of it, we'd have a really scary thing. And what we really wanted was it to be a serial for it to be six parts that went out once a week. So it was like a, like quite a mass or something. What we really wanted was it to be a serial, for it to be six parts that went out once a week. It was like a quatermass or something. We thought, well, what we'll do is we'll put it out. We know who likes this sort of thing. Who likes Nigel Neal and MR James and Robert Aitman, those kind of people. Six of them will turn up and we'll have a wonderful time listening to a really spooky investigation into weird goings on. Then we put it out and within a week it was the number one

fiction podcast, I think on the planet Earth, and beating the archers. At the moment, it went past the archers and Sherlock Holmes. And I thought, they've got a 200-year head start on us combined, the pair of them. And we had like one episode out. It was mad. And you don't even have opening door sound effects in yours. No. Though we do go into fields a lot and then sigh. We sigh in fields. So we do that. But it was the sheer fun of saying, look, just make something, don't ask. And for the budget to be literally zero. I mean, I think on the last day we bought ourselves a burger in a country pub. So we're currently

12 quid in the hole. It's the number one podcast on earth has made six pound 23. So basically, we're balancing up. We will eventually get the money back. But it was just an idea of what can you do in the same way as you might make a short film. And then we'd made short films before and then you take them around film festivals and everyone goes, well done on making a short film. The great thing about short films is that they're an astonishing demonstration for actors and for directors and they are terrible showcases of writer.

Because everyone goes, good, you can write 10 minutes, which is the last thing anyone wants. They want you to be able to write an hour and a half. So the idea that we've now show run a spooky, terrifying Blair Witch style, scary story, I am more happy about and I can possibly tell you. I think it's Ghostwatch for the Danny Robbins generation. And so the last episode would have come out this week at the time that this comes out, the finale, which James and I have not heard, because we are not privy to secrets.

So if it's rubbish, we will not put this out. I can't believe Mr. Blobby was behind the whole thing. What a twist. You could hear, if you turn up the volume a lot, you can hear the Blobby Blobby Blobby all the time. Me and Matt Highton put it together. It's a really big thing. You can feel the cold dead hand of Edmonds on the whole project. If you're looking for a satanic presence that goes through British folklore, then Edmonds is about as good as any. Wait a minute. If you lay this map of crinkly bottom over the top of this map of Essex, what?

But Joel, we want to talk about witches, specifically witches in Essex. And I've done a little bit of digging. I've visited Friend of the Show, Reader's Digest, Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain. I'm sure you know this book. Beautiful book. I'm going to get it because I need to read from it. Yeah, classic. You can't get them for less than 50 quid these days. Although we just heard about a law folk who picked one up for two pounds in a charity

shop which is stealing. You have stolen from the charity. Go back and pay the right amount. Give them the balance. Why do you hate the British Heart Foundation so much? I actually don't know which listener it was who did that, but I am judging you. Breaking news, it's still got the quiz in the back. There was evidently a quiz at some point, which they sent me a picture of, but I am judging you. Breaking news, it's still got the quiz in the back. Ooh.

There was evidently a quiz at some point, which they sent me a picture of, which I will forward on. Reader's Digest, Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain starts off, it's got its own special page, Witchcraft. Specifically, Witchcraft at Chelmsford. And it starts off with the harrowing line. Essex has the melancholy distinction of having hanged more witches than any other English county. And a lot of comedians have died on stage in golf clubs and rugby

clubs across the county. Or maybe it's just me. Very, very tough county for me, Essex. Is this, this is, is this your area, Joel? Is that where you... It's my manor. It's my manor. My, I grew up there.

I actually grew up in, in Chelmsford. When I was very small, a little village just outside Chelmsford. And then I moved to Chelmsford when I was a little bit older, when I was about to first senior school. What happened is that another Joel was born in the village, so I had to leave. If you weren't called Dean or Lee, you had to leave if there were two of you. So yeah, I left Wayne and Gavin and the guys behind and went to the big city. So I went to Chelmsford, which is the county town of Essex. And the thing about Chelmsford, Charles Dickens went there, stayed in the now unnameable inn, which I won't even say on the podcast because it's just too racist. And the racist named inn in Chelmsford and stayed there.

And legendarily, everyone said, oh, Charles Dickens stayed here. And he said it was the dullest place on God's own earth. That was the quote I found out. Daniel Defoe stopped there and said it was the most boring place he'd ever been. So I grew up thinking this is really boring. And I found out about the Chelmsford witch connection about five or six years ago, having grown up there. And as a huge heavy metal goth loving teenager, if someone had told me, I would have stayed. There's a thriving witch community there.

And I chat to them. They're really lovely. They're really into the history and trying to reclaim it. They're trying to get a museum started there because more witches were hanged there than Salem. I mean, by a factor of about 10. Any American city would have a gift shop and a Harry Potter wand store and chances are, no it didn't happen, but it's a big place. It's big witch central. I would love to see you now traveling back in time to try and convince your moody teen self that, hey, you know, actually, Essex is cool. You might not think that, but actually there's more to it than meets the eye. I know you think it's good there's a nightclub with a neon sign that says

Perry's that reads as penis when it lights up, but that's not the best thing about it. It was a boring commuter town. A boring commuter town. But As with all bits of British history, if a town is old and Chelmsford's Roman, it's really old, there will be interesting stuff there. But they kind of covered it up in the 60s by putting shopping centres in it. So you go, I'm really bored. But I go back there now. What's great now is that the Montessori Car Park, the single what used to be the ugliest building in Chelmsford, where I used to go and buy my bootlegs and hot dogs from and coats and things and secondhand guitars now has a witch cafe in there run by local wiccans. And they've reclaimed the place.

And they said, we're doing this deliberately to sort of say it's a safe place for witches now, which I think is one of the sweetest things ever. And they're really nice. They're just lovely. Whenever I go back to go and see my parents, I pop in and see them and buy a mug or something and chat to them. And they've been picking up witch history and I've been picking up stuff and we swap it. It's a nice thing somewhere that's, they found some history and I thought my town was so boring. And the answer is it isn't. No, it's thick with witches. In fact, it was the first English trial for witches, or the first major English trial for witches happened in Chelmsford in 1566. And I've got some facts from folklore of Essex by

Sylvia Kent. Oh, bit of a county rivalry there. Yeah. She's just doing it to dis Essex. She's just saying, I tell you what, over the water, over the estuary there, do you know what they do? Awful stuff. So yeah, the trial started off being run by a local vicar, Reverend Thomas Cole and Sir John Fortescue, which I looked up how to pronounce that because it's spelt like one of them names. It isn't pronounced how it's written, but it is, we're safe, it is Fortescue, who was the keeper of the Royal wardrobe, which was a job role.

Oh, is that to do with poo? Cause usually when there's a slightly euphemistic title, it means that you, you it's a very great job, but you are going to be handling the King's logs. That's obviously groom of the stool is the role. That's the one I'm thinking of, which sounds like a hair thing. I'd be arriving with combs and brushes and they'd be like, you are not going to need that. So the origin of the polish it heard thing, if you're the groom of the stool, that surely that's your job. It sounds like a hair thing. I'd be arriving with combs and brushes and they'd be like, you are not going to need those. Is it the origin of the polish-a-turd thing?

If you're the groom of the stool, surely that's your job. But no, the Royal Wardrobe, looking it up very, very briefly is basically, you know the way that you talk about the King's chamber and the chamber came to refer to a bunch of people who were the closest people to the King. That's because they got to go in his room. The wardrobe were the people that looked after his stuff that was in his wardrobe, basically. Oh, so it's like, is it synecdoche or metonymy? It's one of those. Yeah, that's the one. Synecdoche, isn't it? Yeah.

Well, my way of remembering it, and I'm not sure if this is correct, is the phrase, your ass is grass, is both synecdoche and metonymy. So your ass is a synecdoche for you, because it's a part of you, meaning to represent the whole. And grass is a metonym for death, because it's associated with soil, earth, death, or flesh is grass. Or the other way around. That's the problem with the way of remembering it. I can't remember which is which. Well, I think Synecdoche is saying the crown and meaning the king. So a part of them becomes, so the crown, we're going to service the crown, means the monarchy, a bigger thing, represented by a small thing. So yeah, I think, I forgot what we're talking about. Wardrobes, that was it. Yes. So those guys, John Fortescue, the Keep keeper of the Royal Wardrobe, basically ended up being the

chancellor that role. And then it was kind of folded into chancellor type stuff. But he was replaced by the attorney general, Sir Gilbert Gerrard and the judge of the Queen's bench, which again, that sounds like, I hope that's a euphemism. That's synecdoche. Not just being like, yep, four legs. That's fine. Good. Some padding. Next one. Bring padding. Next one. Good. Bring in the next one.

Passes. Yeah. They took over the trial and there were three women from a place that sounds like a person. Hatfield Peverell. Oh, lovely Hatfield Peverell. Out in the countryside. Have you been to it? Is it me?

What's its vibe? I like most Essex villages. Essex is really weird because Essex is concrete commuter towns and Harlow and Basildon and all that sort of stuff from which Essex man is meant to come. But most of Essex is rural, it's an agricultural thing. So most of it is a bit suffocate. It's not like what Kent is sort of apple farms and things. Essex is basically big arable things and lots of space, little tiny country churches. It is very, very pretty. One of the reasons we did Broken Val and Set It in Essex was I knew it growing up, so I had lots of lore and myths to hand that I'd learned growing up.

But also because it's really pretty and empty and weird. So yeah, it's half of a pebble is just a quiet little sort of half within a town. It's a big village. Well, back then it was thick with witch, because there's a trial of three women from there. Agnes Waterhouse, her daughter Joan, and Elizabeth Francis. Now, Agnes seems to have been a most unpopular person. She argued and made enemies all over her village. And in fact, while she was awaiting trial, she simply confessed to being a witch. She said that she had commanded her neighbor's cat.

Now here it's written Satan, like Nathan, but with an S. But in other versions it's simply Satan. So I don't know whether it's some sort of very bad way of hiding his true identity or it is just, I'm going to call him Satham. Or Saith for short. Yes, Saiths. What, Saith? She commanded the cat initially to go to the neighbour's house and spoil the butter.

And he did it in the format of a cat with an ape's head. With an ape's head? With an ape's head, horns, and wearing a silver whistle, which is a lovely touch. And then it escalated quickly. Sathan was instructed to kill pigs and cause illness and death. He was apparently instrumental in killing several animals belonging to neighbors who'd have disagreements with Agnes, which it sounds like was almost everyone. So basically any animal that died, Agnes and Sathan took the credit.

And she even said that nine years earlier, having become tired of her husband, she commanded Sathan to kill him. So this is a pretty deadly cat. Do you know how these confessions were extracted? How forthcoming was she? Are we talking about really nasty stuff here or did she just come in like, it's a fair cop? You've got me, officer. According to folklore of Essex, it seems to be that she just offered up these confessions, while she was sat idly awaiting trial.

Now, I can give you some data here. I can give you some hard data here. And this obviously is from one of my witch friends in Chelmsford. And we were standing in the, where, where the, cause the reason that all the witches were tried in Chelmsford, the assizes were there and it's the middle of the space. It's quite a big expensive thing to do trial witch because there's lots of paperwork and it's, it's a governmental thing. It's dealing with the drains or something. Very expensive. And they do it at the county town cause the facilities are there and they bring them in from wherever they were, the villages, Hatfield, Peverell or whatever. And they bring them in and they put them in

what's called the cage. And the cage in a lot of places was the prison. But the cage sometimes was just a cage. And that's the marketplace. And they just sit them in the cage until it was time for the trial. Now, very often there was this, certainly in the civil war, when you get the Matthew Hopkins ones, the traveling magistrate doesn't arrive for like two months. So by the time they're confessing, they've been outdoors having tomatoes thrown at them for about two months. And a slightly mentally unstable old woman is definitely going to go, yeah, yeah, well, I'm obviously I'm here because I'm a witch. So I didn't know that. I didn't know as they were, they were open to sort of mockery and things. Some of them, at least that's what

one of my modern witches said, oh, that was, that was the thing. So I don't know what the history is around that, but I imagine it's quite a big gap between being pulled in and tried and who knows what Guantanamo stuff's happened between one and the other. Good data. Anyway, thanks witchy. And then the 18 year old daughter Joan was also cross-examined and she admitted that when she was alone, she would try and command Satan to do similar stuff to what her mother had done. She wanted the dog to punish a neighbor who'd been unkind to her. And shortly afterwards, the neighbor saw an evil favored doggy with horns on his head. I've read a direct quote there. It's dog spelled D-O-G-G-E, which is why I figure it might be doggy.

And was that an Essex accent you were doing there, James? Is that the Hadfield-Peverell? Hadfield-Peverell, of course. Vernacular. Welcome to Havefield-Peverell. An evil, evil spell, E-V-Y-L-L. Evil. An evil.

Evil. An evil dog. Or a vilk, favoured doggy with horns on his head. She died, basically. She died shortly afterwards and Joan was charged with causing death by witchcraft. Come on, James. She saw a dog and then shortly afterwards she died. It's an open and shut case. Oh no, actually, sorry, I've read that wrong there. No, the mum was charged and found guilty of causing death by witchcraft and was hanged. The daughter was found not guilty.

Oh, well good. Because let's be honest, none of these people are guilty. So that is some small mercy. The third woman on trial was Elizabeth Francis and she was the original owner of Satan. So she vouched for the efficacy of Sathan's powers. She'd used it to murder a man who'd refused to marry her and then a man that had married her. She's implicated in causing the death of her husband, but it seemed like she

was just using it to injure her husband. But as with all things in this area, things got out of hand. So in order to injure the husband, it turned into a toad and jumped into one of his shoes. But he basically, he became injured and then died. Toad shoe. He died of toad complications related to toad. If only it had been a pair of open toad sandals. Would have been able to slip right out. Would have just slipped right out. Although Croc's even more deadly.

So she was found guilty and despite having committed these murders, committed, you can hear my quote marks around that, she was only sentenced to one year's imprisonment. However, 13 years later, she was involved in witchcraft once more, and this time sent to the gallows. She went back to her old ways. Yeah. And 13 years later. The oldie ways.

Should have said it in a Peverell accent. The old ways. The old ways. But yeah, they often do that. And it's just basically, she goes back, does a year in prison, goes back and becomes weirdly still a weird old woman in the village who no one likes. So it's going to happen again. Mason. You would have thought that they would have knocked that out of her in prison,

being a well-dealed lady, but it didn't happen. Jason. Yeah, but it's a very strange thing. Interesting, the gallows as well, which is worth knowing which fuss comes down, comes in from Europe and comes down from Scotland to England. And we hang... James the First has a lot. James the First slash Sixth has a lot to answer for. Malleus Maleficorum and stuff, yeah, all that stuff. All this stuff, this witch panic, we don't, the English don't burn witches, they hang them. That's a worth... It's a bit too French. That's a... No no thank you. Maybe in France you would burn a witch. Rather roast them. It's still their love of cookery. They do it with rosemary, they throw it on the fire. Looking really nice. Why too much garlic on this witch?

I think it's the association with Joan of Arc. We always think of them being burned and they're not. Well, yeah. So those are the original witches from the biggest original witch trial in England and certainly the first in Essex. You've got some local-ish witches, I believe, Joel. St. Osseth. This is really good. I like this because it's kind of, I'm not a big believer, but I'm fascinated by folklore. I love it. What I love is what it tells you about humans and people rather than what it tells you about ghosts and demons and things. This one was just, being interested in stuff, that feeling of it all being attracted to me. As in like, I went, oh, I've gone off to St. Otheth. And suddenly for the next about a few months,

everything to do with witches sort of clustered around. I kept seeing things, making connections. I love that idea of coincidence and bumping stuff. Anyway, so I was out, I said to my wife, we were in lockdown and I was recording a record with my band and I want someone to go quiet and think and do some vocals and things. And I said, find me a place within an hour and a bit of drive where we are, because it's locked down, I don't want to go too far. That I will be away from everybody else, not anyone's way, I can quietly end. She found me a cottage that was above, above all, which is below the waterline on the Essex coast. So basically the tide would come in like the woman in black and I had to stay there. And it was just amazing. I was on my own. It was really scary. It was great, but really good for inspirations. It was just big sky and birds and nothing, big estuary thing that came

in trapped you in this place. So I was working there. On the second day, I went to go and get some bread, milk from the local village, which was St. Osseth, just up the road. And I went in there and I went and thought, this is really interesting. I want all kind of vibe I can pick up for ideas. And I was just standing outside the Londis or whatever. I looked up and there was a blue plaque and it said, here in this cage was imprisoned Ursula Kemp, the witch of St. Opheth. And I went, oh my God, this is brilliant. I had no idea. So I went- In the Londis? Above the Londis. I think she was in the freezer section, I think it was down by the vapes.

She was in there. Anyway, so I thought this is great. So I went back to the cottage and immediately googled her and found all this astonishingly wonderful arcane history. But it was a really little known case. There was almost nothing about it. But she was. The brilliant thing about her story, which is why I went, oh my God, I'm alone at a cottage like the woman in black. I can't leave. I'm trying to write some songs and some stories and things. And I'm on my own and it's dark and the winds come up and I was reading about it. And what it was they'd found beneath that cage, which was the local prison. She had been tried in Chelmsford. Really big case, but since lost to history. But during the

civil, no, maybe that's a civil war one. No, it's not. It's late 1500s. So it's Elizabethan, about 1580 something. And she was tried there and she came back and she died, but they'd found a skeleton buried in the 1920s underneath where the cage was. She was buried in St. Otis or nearby. And it was buried with nails through the elbows and knees to stop her flying up out of her grave. And I went, that is dynamite. I'm not going to sleep tonight. Scares me. I was super charmed. It was brilliant. It was very good. So I got really into this and thought this is really, really interesting. And then I left and thought this is great. And I told a couple of friends about this. It was really weird. I bumped into this thing. I'm really interested in folklore. And it turned out we were bang. I went somewhere really

boring and it turned out to be full of lovely old folklore. It sort of probably triggered my interest in looking into the witch stuff around my area. And then I was taking my mum to hospital that Christmas, she fell ill. I was taking her up to Cambridge to the specialist up at Patworth. And I walked past, well, after I dropped her off the Cambridge University bookshop, and the window was just full of a book called, Doesn't Osset the Witches, which I went in and bought, it was an academic book for 35 quid. I thought, I've got to buy that. It's amazing. So I had an afternoon to kill and I sat in a pub and read it. And they said, no one's written about this before this case. No one's ever studied it. Suddenly, within a few months, there was this

massive book, which said brilliantly that that body that was in the thing was not her at all. Someone had done it. Someone had done the hoax and nailed, they found a body and they'd gone, oh, this will be her. They found a real body and created a hoax witch corpse. That's even more revolting than the real thing. But it's the 1920s, it's that time of Cottingley fairies, it's that idea of sort of Harry Price and the idea that not only is there real folklore, there's the Ballyhoo around it and there's the sort of, that people want a story so you'll fill it in, so you'll do that. So this, I mean, look it up, if you look up Ursula Kemp or Ursula Kemp and her body, that image of her with the

nails through the elbows and knees is just beautifully gothic and brilliant. But it was supposedly, I imagine, created around the time when it was dug up. So basically the idea being with folklore and things, the stories get garbled because people want to believe in horrible stuff. And what was a real story of misogyny and appalling treatment of possibly mentally ill people becomes Scooby-Doo really, really quickly. But I love the idea that she was a victim of a slander hundreds and hundreds of years later, which is a guy with some nails. Yeah. She's incredible. I've never heard that. Her story is great. The book, the St. Osith

Witch's book is great. The lovely thing about the St. Osith Witches book is written by a feminist historian. The best thing about it is she refuses to give the men, the dukes of, I think it's the guy from Tolerant Darcy, it's the Darcy family actually, who probably wouldn't be the Darcy's from Pride and Prejudice. The Darcy family are involved in trying the witches from St. Osith, but she refuses to give them their surname or their title. She refers to Ursula Kemp and Alice, her friend, as by their first names and the men by their first names. She said, I want to be clear that it's a guy called Brian who's being mean to this woman. And that's really good. That is excellent. You go, oh, right. It's just a really nasty little incel misogynist bastard. And it's

like reading about Andrew Tate or something. It's what makes it really modern. You remove their status. Who cares if they were the groom of the stool? Yeah. It's just a mean old man. It's a very, very good book. I hope by now it's probably out in paperback because you won't have to pay 35 quid for it. But it's a very, very good well-written book. But it's lovely to read now. There's so much more feminist history about the witches. It's being reclaimed and the story is basically just of institutionalised misogyny and the idea of a witch hunt, which is why it's so bad when witch hunt gets picked up with people like Trump and stuff.

A witch hunt is where you try people who have not done the thing you're trying them for. That's different. Crucially. If you have done it, when everyone went for Boris Johnson for having those parties, that was not a witch hunt. That was a thing that was called consequences. It's a different thing. But yeah, it's fascinating to have this stuff where there are a lot of very, very good feminist historians doing it now. And it reads completely differently when you say, that's someone's auntie, that's someone's nan,

usually a childless woman or a woman who's lost children, who's been ostracized, because she has no any vertical function in the village. Cause usually they're healers. And if they've healed someone that's gone wrong, they immediately get the blame and then they go, well, you're no use. If you're not healing people, then it's usually cause they offered to help. That's the really gruesome thing. Sometimes they're just mad people and not very nice and antisocial. Sometimes they're people who offered to help and it went wrong.

Yeah. I think specifically with Kemp, with Ursula Kemp as well, it was, she appeared to have been quite knowledgeable about healing properties of plants and stuff. And she were, that's where this reputation came from. Oh great. Yeah, as you say, things. It's like anti-vax, especially the ignorant people were, well it didn't work. And you go, what else have you got? You've been really reliant on these people.

What about all the other vaccinations you've had? But yeah, it doesn't work once. And they go, well, do your own research. They said, do your own research. I think that the fun thing about reading about this stuff now is the amount of, what I really like about the witch thing, especially because it's Essex, it's where I grew up. There's a very sort of nonconformist thing in Essex. It was one of the big sources of the Peasants' Revolt, one of the big sources of rebellion during the Civil War. And it's just full of people who go, ah, no, no, prove it, mate. That's why Essex man was the person to win over in elections. And I love the fact that that gets corrupted all the time. People go, well, I'll tell you whose fault it is.

Is that old one up there? Ah, right. Cause they keep that from us. There's a real, I think the echoes in that kind of independent thinking that goes toxic are definitely readable today in the witch trials. Listeners are advised not to think for themselves, but to have our opinions in future. Well, actually, I've got a couple of cases that are of male witches. And there's a little key difference between these cases. And if you listen carefully, see if you can spot the difference. Okay. Very exciting.

Okay. So first of all, we've got Cunning Murrell, who lived from 1812 to 1860 in Hadley. He was thought to be one of the last and most famous male witches in Essex. He was the seventh son of a seventh son. Excellent. He had knowledge of plant remedies and stuff. He would use his magic mirror to find lost valuables. So he's a white witch in essence, you know, a cunning man. People would go to him for this sort of stuff. With Ursula Kemp as well, people would go,

she was meant to be very good at healing children and she could. Well, but Cunning Meryl had a magic mirror. He also had a special telescope, which could see through walls. And at the moment, this is all stuff that you could get out of the back of a comet from the 60s and 70s. Yeah. Do they have a propeller cap? He didn't get sand kicked in his face. Could he see ladies bras through their clothes?

That's also the meant thing you could do. Maybe we should arrest this guy. He is sounding more and more threatening. He had a copper charm, which could decide whether the person before him was honest or not, and he would boast that he was the devil's master and he could exercise spirits and overcome witchcraft. And then this line, I don't think this sentence needs to be in here, Morrell was known to be a secretive man with some odd habits.

Oh right, yeah. Well, yeah, you've got to wonder what that is referring to considering we know about all the rest of it, that the telescope can look through walls. He never went anywhere without his old umbrella, whatever the weather, which is, that's a Batman buddy at the minute. That's the penguin. So there's a story of him, a girl was brought to him who was barking like a dog after she'd been cursed by another girl. And what Murrell would do, he had lots of witch bottles and these little iron bottles and he put some fluids in there, bodily fluids.

And like if a client was bewitched, he put some like blood or wee or something like that in there. And then he could heat it up and that would affect the witch. It's that sympathetic magic that we've talked about before. And this particular bottle, he heated up and it exploded. And the next day they found the charred body of a woman in a nearby country lane. So coincidence. He's exploding witches. He exploded a witch. Wow. So he's exploding witches. He exploded a witch. Yeah. That reminds me of something that is a really lovely quote from Urshila Kemp when she was defending herself originally with the accuser.

Because she did the same thing. She removed curses. She healed people. She was very, very white witchy. And she said, don't accuse me of witchcraft. I can't un-witch, but not witch. I love that phrase that basically your job is to deal with the threat of there are some bad witches out there. You need to

call, I'm a ghost buster. I love the idea of someone whose job is to blow up witches. But yeah, she said, I only, my thing is to deal with when other people have cursed you, I lift the curses. And it's a, it's a very white witch thing. They still talk about today's yeah. I can't unwitch, but not witch. And I love the verb to unwitch. So according to friend of the friend of the podcast, Betty Puttyk, in the book Ghosts of Essex, Murrell himself died on the day he prophesied, 16th of December, 1860, and buried in the church. His reputation was so powerful that for years after his death, people would say they saw a familiar small figure in an old blue frock coat and a hard glazed black hat like sailors used to wear was sometimes seen as

the light was fading, gathering herbs from the hedgerows and putting them in a frail basket hanging from the handle of a gingham umbrella. Until you got to the hat, I thought you were going to say he was doing a hard stare. And I was like, this is Paddington. Smelt of marmalade. The modern ferryman. Yes. I've got one more male witch. There's George Pickingill, who is known as old Picky, who was from Coneedon. C-A-N-E-W-D-O-N. Oh, don't even know that.

Cannodon. That's definitely not, I've not pronounced that right once there. No, if you, if you were John Betjeman, you'd call it Cn. Here I am in the village of Cn. Here I am in Mun. So there's a local tradition that the tower of the church, as long as it stood, there'd be six witches in the village, three in silk and three in cotton and they'd be on the leadership of the master of witches. And Peking Hill was the, perhaps again, perhaps the last and greatest of the Essex wizards. I think I've seen that band.

He had the power of the evil eye, hairs ate from his hand. He'd wander around fields threatening to bewitch the farm machinery. So is this quite modern? Are we talking like tractors? He died in 1909. There's a photo of him. He looks a bit like Spike Milligan. Although everyone did in those days. Yes. As he lay dying in 1909, he made a promise to those gathered around his bedside that he would finally prove his extraordinary power. And as the funeral hearse drew up to the churchyard, the horse walked away from the shafts and

galloped off down the road, much to the amazement of the mourners. There's a little bonus witch, by the way, there. A headless witch occasionally materialises near the church and drifts down to the river. Anyone who meets her is whirled into the air and deposited into a ditch. So just beware when... I've spotted the connection with the men. They die in bed and they're fine. Yes. No one strings them up.

That's the slightly sad. Also, they went around saying, I am a witch and I'm doing evil. And everyone was like, what a character. David Blaine or Derren Brown. It's fine. Debbie McGee kept it very quiet in case she got dunked. The Debbie's McGee. Don't forget the urban legend that there are two Debbie McGees. She is twins. One top half and one bottom half for when she gets the one in half. Is that the idea?

Yes, exactly. Well, those are my tales, Alistair. Mine and Joel's tales, in fact. Some marvelous Essex witches. Are you ready to score? First category, I think, will go with naming. Oh, just the word unwitch. Just the idea of unwitching. I mean, that's a verb more than a name. So that doesn't count at all towards this category. I've just realized as I was speaking, grammatically, that's not unacceptable. It's one of the best things I've heard all day and it counts for nothing towards this category. So you're going to have to work hard. Okay. How about the bumbling aristocrat, Hatfield

Peverell? Yes. Oh, and he drinks, but it's very amusing. Yeah. Hatfield Peverell, brilliant place name. We had old Picky. Quite a good nickname. Yeah. Which was, is named after his surname, not his eating habits. Coney Morrill. Yeah. They do sound like dreadful magicians, every single one of these. Mother Kemp.

Ursula Kemp. Yeah. And there was an Agnes. A classic witch name, Agnes. Yeah. Agnes Waterhouse, Joan Waterhouse, Elizabeth Francis. Those are reasonably standard names. The keeper of the Royal wardrobe. And now I'm visualising like a goalkeeper. You know, gloves.

Like the king tries to get one of those fluffy hats with a feather and he's trying to, he dives the wrong way! The king gets the hat. Yeah. King has baldest socks, he's trying to throw them in. Yeah, I forgot about the keeper of the royal... It's sent off. I forgot about that. I don't know anything about football. That should be obvious. Yes. I forgot about the keeper of the royal wardrobe,

correct name. And we did mention the groom of the stool, turd polisher to the king. Yeah, I think it's a four out of five. I think it's a solid four. If only un-witch were a noun. Down it. Okay. Fair enough. Okay then. So second category, contentious in these cases of witchcraft, it is supernatural. Yeah. So as a progressive and liberal minded person, I want to say that none of the supernatural stuff happened. But then a dog with an evil doggy was seen. Will Barron Evil doggy. There was a cat with an

ape's head. Will Barron A cat with the head of an ape, yeah. That ruined butter. I don't know, you don't really need an ape's head for that. Will Barron Do you remember a horse run away? Will Barron Ah, I forgot. Oh, I'm sorry. And here I was thinking that there was a natural explanation for these cases. Will Barron Horses can't do that. That's that. Horses, as we all know, ski everywhere.

A horse that can run or slither around on their bellies like snakes. But yeah, a running horse. Yeah. I don't know. Normally they just move like a sort of lozenge torpedo with no recourse to legs. But on this occasion, the horse actually ran. Headless witch chucks you in the ditch. Not just because it rhymes.

She would do that. She would do that anyway. Yeah. No, yes. And that's sort of a ghost apparition. That one's good and is definitely supernatural. I don't believe any of the accused people were really witches. And I don't believe the men were witches, but I do think that they were annoying. They were the most annoying. I don't know if I made it clear. The guy that went around threatening machinery, he was basically only could be bought off by being given beer and then he'd go away. So you can see the scan. Yes. I mean, this is harassment more than it is witchcraft.

Could he come around and have a go at my printer? I mean, there are certain machines I'd like as your man to have a go at a machine near me. That'd be really good. Just no! Give him a can of Guinness. Yes, you're on the same network. You're on the same network. That man. He'd be good. Your only function is to wirelessly print. How can you not do it? It is a black and white document. How does the lack of yellow affect this? Just print it using black. Even my mum knows to how to use Wi-Fi. It's ridiculous. Sorry.

Oh, apparently it only works from my phone. Apparently from my phone, not my laptop. The bigger thing. No. You've got to do it through your phone. I think it's a two because I think these, I'm sorry to be controversial, I think these women were innocent of the charges. Yeah. All right then. All right.

What is your next category? They call him the witch-Forgiver General. Oh. And there is a comma in there as well. It's Witch-Forgiver General. It's not a military role. Not a specialist. Okay, third category is

Local Characters. A little bit of local colour. There was a lot of local... and Joel, because you're from Essex, you brought a lot of good local details. There was a lot of local, Joel, because you're from Essex, you brought a lot of good local details. That's fantastic. And the, it's got local characters in both senses of, you know, local details, local character, and also a really annoying guy who lives where you live. The other kind of local character, someone who's just two people who are essentially, I don't know, reverse busking, just being very annoying until they're paid to leave.

So what do you, what are we thinking? I, this has got to be strong, right? Oh, it's, it's a five out of five for local characters. We, we have, we will never see the like again. I'm a final category, Alistair. It, there might be some overlap here. It's hail Nathan. Because I feel the Satan, it could be a misspeak of Satan.

It could be a misspeak of Nathan. And there's nothing more Essex than the name Nathan. Yeah, Nathan. I mean, it's not a central pillar of the story. It was hardly a tent bowl, but it is a very funny sentence. So I'm... Do you remember Joel's loft? I'm favorably disposed.

Oh, do you think... With this, which I presume to be the statue of Satan. Yes, Satan the Cat. Of course! I forgot about... It was there right at the start. You seeded it. With its odd-y eyes.

Purely for narrative reasons then. Got to be a five out of five for Hail Saithan. Ching, ching. Or, sorry, do you say Hail Nathan? It was Hail Nathan, but whatever gets me five points, frankly. It's got to be a five out of five for Hail Nathan. Yes. Well, thank you very much for joining us, Joel. That was wonderful.

Cheers, Joel. I'm sure the listeners are already listening to Broken Veil. If you haven't, the finale is out and I don't know what happens in it yet because I'm in the past. Yes, me too. But don't listen when it comes. No, but do listen. It's really good. Really scary. I listen on one earbud whilst riding a bike down a dirt old railway track. And I listened to the one where you do, there's the, what's it called, electronic voice EVP. Oh, it gave me the willies. I cycled home extra fast after that.

It was really good, really spooky. A bit of Constantino Roldevi, whose name I had to learn to pronounce just in case the man who invented EVP. Constantino Roldevi. Is that the to learn to pronounce just in case the man who invented EVP. Constantino Roldivi. Is that the Peverell accent you're saying that in? Yeah, it's actually his name was Connor. Give us a rundown of some of the things to catch up with. Comfort Blanket is back. I've been concentrating on Broken Veil at the moment because it's really hard to do.

Comfort Blanket is coming back, got some lovely people interviewed for that. Guys, I'm editing at the moment, I'm editing Jeff McGiven, the original Hitchhiker's Guide for the Prefect, talking about the third man and trying to get Jeff to stay on topic rather than tell me a million great Hollywood anecdotes, which is Jeff's favourite thing. That's really nice. So I've got a few of those to come up. I'm just recording some more of those soon. So that's good. Doing some more writing with probably not meant to say I'm doing some more writing for the television at the moment. For Secret televisions. Yes. Yeah. For Secret. Because you find you sign NDAs for everything now. It's like being in the computer games industry. You can't say what on earth you're doing. So I'm doing that. But there will be more podcasts. There

will be something there will be a follow up to Broken Veil as well, which we're working on at the moment. Possibly in a similar vein, because both Will and I love doing spooky stuff so much. So yeah, there'll be something else on the way. And there'll be a paperback, it will be funny or die at some point, because I'm grabbing it from the ashes of my collapsing publisher. Well, thank you so much for coming on, Joe. Please hand in your gun and badge. You are now a private citizen once again. That was a lot of fun. That was brilliant. Thank you very much for coming on Joel. And do check out all of Joel's podcasts that we mentioned and his general other work. Just basically watch almost

any comedy recently and you'll be supporting his work. And I do hope Broken Veil finished as it looked like it was going to because we're still recording this before hearing it. James and I are in ignorance of how it ends. Thank you very much for listening and please join us on patreon.com forward slash lawmen pod for bonuses and access to the Lawfolk Discord. Thank you very much, Joe, for editing this. Thanks, Joe. Thanks, Joel, for coming on. And thanks again, the listener for listening. Trying to do the Broken Veil music. I think you should leave that in and leave me scolding you in. We can have it as an extra.