Family vows to clear name of grandmother tried as witch

Published on Monday 30 October 2006 00:14

THE grand-daughter of the last person in Britain to be tried as a witch yesterday vowed she and her family would never give up the fight to clear her relative's name.

Helen Duncan, of Niddrie, Edinburgh, travelled the country performing seances at which she claimed to contact people killed during the Second World War.

In 1944, she was convicted under the 1735 Witchcraft Act of "pretending to raise the spirits of the dead" and sentenced to nine months in jail. She died 12 years later.

Her grand-daughter, Mary Martin, of Craigmillar, Edinburgh, applied in 1999 to the then-home secretary, Jack Straw, for a posthumous pardon, but it was refused.

Mrs Martin was a guest at a ceremony at the Prestoungrange Gothenburg pub, in Prestonpans, yesterday in remembrance of 81 people from the East Lothian town killed after 16th and 17th centuries witchcraft trials.

They were pardoned in 2004 by the Baron of Prestoungrange, who could not pardon Ms Duncan as she was tried in Portsmouth.

Mrs Martin said: "As long as I live, I will fight for this and when I die, another of my family will take over.

"This is a terrible thing to have hanging over our family. It was not witchcraft, it was spiritualism, and the charge should never have been made."