![]() The ‘pilnie-winks’ (thumb screws) and iron ‘caspie-claws’ (a form of leg irons heated over a brazier) usually got a confession from the supposed witch. Many unfortunate women were condemned on this sort of evidence and hanged after undergoing appalling torture. Any who were unfortunate enough to be ‘crone-like’, snaggle-toothed, sunken cheeked and having a hairy lip were assumed to possess the ‘Evil Eye’ ! If they also had a cat this was taken a proof, as witches always had a ‘familiar’, the cat being the most common. Most supposed witches were usually old women, and invariably poor. From 1484 until around 1750 some 200,000 witches were tortured, burnt or hanged in Western Europe. ![]() Witchcraft was not made a capital offence in Britain until 1563 although it was deemed heresy and was denounced as such by Pope Innocent VIII in 1484.
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