Title: 17th January, 2008
Author: Sean Mulligan

Klaits Chapter Four – The Beggar and the Midwife
January, 2008

Reading for Today:

Klaits, Chapter4
	“Classic Witches:  The Beggar and the Midwife”

Normal and Acceptable:
•	Demographic changes fed the flames of the witch craze.
•	Increase in percentage of single women from about 5% to 15-20%, later marriages and general tendency for women to live longer than men, and to have a better survival rate during plague times.
•	Single women were seen as abnormal since they didn’t have “the firm guiding hand of a husband”. (CP p.94L)

Other ‘Abnormal’ Women:
•	Midwives.
•	Poor and dependent widows and beggars.
•	Village scolds.
•	Gossips.

Being a Midwife was Dangerous:
•	“Giving birth in the 16^th C. entailed a high risk for mother and child, surrounded by magical incantations and blessings.  The midwife was always under suspicion if something went wrong, and from the mid-15^th C. on, some authorities made midwives swear on oath never to murder a new born child or to disguise the mother’s maternity.

Being Poor was Dangerous:
•	“Poor beggar women or widows were usually dependent upon the community, and if they had been refused charity were thought to lay a curse upon households and livestock.  These women, including the scold and the gossip, stood out from those women who conformed to the passive role assigned to them and therefore were ready targets for witchcraft persecutions.” (Cp p.94R)

Life in the 16^thC and 17^th C:
•	Clashes of religious confessions during the Reformation
•	Warfare of unprecedented scale and intensity
•	Doubling of Europe’s population
•	Five fold increase in prices
•	Persistence of plague and other epidemic diseases
•	Changes in behaviour imposed by reforming elites 

Top Down / Bottom Up:
•	“Almost a century ago, rationalist historians assumed that the clerical establishment was the sole active agent, imposing trials on a passive and inert population.  Now there is a tendency once again to neglect the popular sources of agitation for witch trials.  No doubt the predispositions of the elites, together with their control of the judicial apparatus, were necessary conditions for large-scale witch hunting.  But there is also much evidence of popular pressure to initiate witch prosecutions.” (Kp86)

Upstairs, Downstairs:
•	Witchcraft trial was one of the few outlets for stress acceptable to both the authorities and the populace.
•	Such a pervasive phenomenon as a widespread witch hunt answered needs of more than one social level.
•	“Whether seen as malefice by the villager or construed as devil worship by the elites, witchcraft was a reality to early modern Europeans of all backgrounds.” (Kp86)

Psychology and Causation:
•	Both the elites and the hoi polloi  personalized causation.
•	Impersonal causes like nature or coincidence are common today.
•	In ‘pre-scientific’ Europe, even the learned had trouble accepting that view.

Divine Providence:  Kp88
•	Universally held world view was that God was operating on every level of life., everywhere, at every moment.
•	If things were going well it was God’s will.
•	If things were going badly it was God’s way of punishing sinners or tempting the faithful.
•	Alternatively, misfortune could be ascribed to the devil or his servant, the witch.

Understanding Misfortune:
•	Either way, the cause of personal events was particular and specific, not abstract or general.
•	The problem at the time was to explain the inevitable misfortunes that accompanied everyday life.

Sad Realities:
•	“Most peasants lived at the very margin of subsistence, chronically underfed and subject to deadly infections that spread quickly in malnourished populations.
•	A 16^th C. Englishman who lived for 60 years would experience, on the average, one or two severe mortality crises in his lifetime, caused by plague or other diseases.
•	If he had lived in a large town, where infection was rife, he might witness three or four such calamites.” (Kp89)

No Direct Correlation:
•	Mortality crises do not seem to coincide with increased witchcraft accusations in individual communities or districts.
•	(Note: neither did the period of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation).
•	But harvest failure and epidemics were the sad environmental backdrop to the age of witch hunts.

Trajectory of Accusation:
•	Combine the tendency to accuse women, with accusing the poor, and you vilify the one of the most helpless segments of the population.
•	Worse would be accusing the sick – and that happened too.

Bad Neighbours:
•	Common origin of accusations stemmed from “ordinary village quarrels” (Kp86)
•	Especially common in overwhelmingly peasant economy to explain household misfortune.
•	E.g. cows not giving milk, child illness…

“A Plague on Both Your Houses!”
•	“A curse was a very serious matter in the eyes of Europeans in this religious age.  It was seen as the way a wronged but helpless individual might invoke God’s aid against a powerful oppressor.  Curses abound in Shakespeare’s plays, and they invariably work.” (Kp87)

Home Economics:
•	“Thus, it is striking to find that many victims of witchcraft accusations were poor beggar women who were said by their neighbours to have laid a curse – not God’s, but the devil’s – on a household in which something had gone wrong.  They were said to practice what might be termed “economic voodoo.”  (Kp87)

Thomas and Macfarlane:
•	Research interest shows that a pattern of accusations were made against those who were refused charity.
•	In England, the ‘absence of torture’ [scare quotes mine] helped keep witch-panics in check, common charges of being Satan’s sexual partner were muted.
•	English charges had more to do with simple malice.

Focus on Malefice:
•	Keith Thomas and Alan Macfarlane:
•	Please refer to cited passage in Klaits p.87

Psychology of the Accuser: Kp89
•	“Thomas and Macfarlane have argued that the psychology of the accuser was the crucial element in the charging of beggars with witchcraft.  Why should the accuser have connected his act of charity-refusal with the subsequent misfortune?  Saying no to a request for neighbourly charity may have inspired a considerable sense of guilt.”
•	The old medieval ideal of communal responsibility could still provoke guilt feelings over refusal.” (Kp89)
•	This was the era of the emerging ethic of individualism.

Local Cases: Jura
•	Jura region, along the French-Swiss Frontier.
•	Most witch trials originated in charges against an impoverished and quarrelsome neighbour who had repeatedly cursed the accuser.

Local Cases: Ostrobothnia
•	Ostrobothnia, province of Finland
•	More than half of the witchcraft cases stemmed from disputes about begging or other village quarrels.

Local Cases: Scotland
•	Different from England in methods, but similarities in origins of charges.
•	Most suspects were accused by their neighbours of cursing their victims after being refused some favour.

Refusing Charity:
•	“Viewed in this light, an accusation of witchcraft was almost a psychological imperative.  Instead of blaming himself, the householder could project his guilt onto the charity-seeker:  she was the wrongdoer who, with the devil’s assistance, had caused damage to the household.  He need feel no guilt, for his refusal of charity was altogether appropriate.
•	Who, after all, would want to give alms to the devil’s servant, the sower of community destruction.” (Kp90)

Reaction to Poverty: Charity?
•	“It is fair to say that poverty and the social reactions to it were fundamental to the dynamics of witch trials everywhere.” (Kp88)
•	Christian precept that charity (giving alms to the poor) is a great virtue.
•	Societies relied on mechanisms of charity to ensure cohesion, and offer comfort to citizens.

Charity Models:
•	Medieval Era:
–	Organized by church, by local lords on feudal model
•	Renaissance Era:
–	Organized by guilds, Religious Service Clubs (see Koenigsberger)
•	Early Modern Era:
–	Increasingly capitalized individualism
–	State run, depersonalized support for poor

Capital:
•	Change in economic order.
•	Exchange of goods and services for goods and services augmented and facilitated by exchange of currency for goods and services.
•	Exchange can be conducted on individual basis with greater ease.

Capitalism and the Individual:
•	This meant that more power for economic self-determination could be centered in the hands of individual people
•	Wealth could be accumulated through effort and endeavor.
•	Accumulation could be used as a more meaningful standard of classing individuals into groups.

Economic Threshold of Society:
•	Having a minimum standard of accumulated wealth came to be viewed as the threshold between being a productive part of society, and being parasitic upon it.
•	The beggar was not a part of the society in the same way that a producer was.
•	Cursing someone’s home or means of sustenance REALLY WAS “economic voodoo”

Max Weber and Capitalism:
•	“This new system held that the individual, not the community, was the primary societal unit.  The rise of capitalism in early modern Europe thus can be portrayed as the cause (or, alternatively, the result) of an enhanced stress on the values of individual assertiveness and acquisitiveness.
•	As for the poor, in this capitalistic world they were losers, to whom winners need no longer feel any special obligation.” (Kp91)

Thomas and Macfarlane:
•	Religious change as a result of the Reformation helped produce witchcraft accusations in England.
•	Protestantism had removed priestly exorcisms and benedictions, protective rituals, holy water, chism (sacred oils).
•	“Protestants dogmatically maintained that no cleric could speak for God or mediate between man and the deity.  At the same time, the Protestants did not reestablish the Catholic welfare institutions and, thus, seemed to lend support to an ethic of capitalistic individualism.” (Kp92)

Bottom Line Thinking:
•	The accuser in this kind of witch trial was nearly always more prosperous than the accused. (Kp90)
•	The implications of a mature capitalistic ethic:
•	“God helps those who help themselves.”
•	-Benjamin Franklin, “Poor Richard’s Adage”

Old Women:
•	France, England and Switzerland show an average age between 55 and 65 for accused witches.
•	Elderly females were represented among the dependent poor in disproportionately high numbers because old women were the least likely to be self-supporting.

Empowerment:
•	“In the psychology of witchcraft accusations, the old, impoverished woman was a stock suspect because she seemed entirely helpless, lacking even the physical strength a man might use to avenge himself on his enemies.
•	“It appeared plausible that she would resort to supernatural assistance as her only source of power. (Kp94)

Attacking the Weak:
•	Widows or spinsters were more likely to fall into poverty and therefore fit the witch stereotype.
•	Proportion of single women growing at time
•	Women lived longer than men
•	2 to 3 times as many widows as widowers

Apparent Contradiction:
•	Combine the helplessness of the individual with the supposed accessibility of demonic power.
•	“Social bases of popular suspicions about old, poor, unattached females, when combined with the misogynistic prejudices of the elites created the  image of the witch as an apparently helpless individual who was nevertheless supremely dangerous.(Kp95)

Dangerous Occupations:
•	Midwives
•	Prostitutes
•	Procurers
•	Tavern Keepers
•	Barber-Surgeons
•	Tax-Collectors, Factors
•	Executioners

Family Values:
•	“When we find prostitutes, procurers, and tavern keepers identified as witches, we can see a reflection of the threats to family and community stability that were most feared in early modern Europe.”
•	(Klaits, p95)

Midwives Especially Vulnerable:
•	Those charged with malefice:
–	Women
–	Old
–	Poor
–	Unattached to a man
•	“Because they had no other means of earning their bread, they eked out a meager livelihood by assisting at childbirths.” (Kp95)

Why Were Midwives Tolerated?
•	“Scorned by academic physicians because of their lack of formal training in medical theory, the usually illiterate midwives were nevertheless in demand.
•	“Their rough-and-ready practical experience was the only kind of professional assistance available to most childbearing women.”
•	(Klaits, p95)

The Medical Men:
•	Little attention paid to gynecology and obstetrics in medical manuals at time.
•	Most male practitioners considered assisting at a birth to be undignified or degrading.
•	Woman’s desire to avoid embarrassment may also have contributed to exclusion of males from obstetric practice.

A Gendered Issue:
•	“Accusations of witchcraft lodged against midwives are a possible indication of male discomfiture with the competent female.” (Kp96).
•	Childbirth was one of the only aspects of life given over entirely to women’s control.
•	May have been a source of unsettling emotions for men accustomed  to supervising every aspect of women’s lives.

Maternal Mortality:
•	Childbirth was, and in many places still is, exceedingly dangerous.
•	No knowledge of antiseptics and the dynamics of infection.
•	Maternal death was commonplace, indications are about 1 in every 10 died.
•	That rate is about one hundred times higher than in “advanced countries” today.

Infant Mortality:
•	In a typical Elizabethan parish, out of 100 live births:
•	70 made it to first birthday
•	48 made it to fifth birthday
•	27-30 made it to fifteenth

Infant Mortality:
•	Elizabethan Infant death rate of 3 in 10
•	Today worldwide: 1 in 10 dies in infancy
•	In most developed nations:  1 in 1000

Feelings of Responsibility:
•	Shouldn’t underestimate the kind of trauma that comes with the death of a child, in spite of how common it was.
•	“Divine providence could explain infant death, but only at the risk of inducing a heavy burden of parental guilt.  For, if God had withheld from a family the universally acknowledged blessing of children, then the parents, and especially the mother, could hardly escape a feeling of responsibility.” (Kp96)

Assuaging Guilt: 
•	Parents of lost children experienced remorse, obviously, but also GUILT.

•	Midwife is a plausible target for projecting guilt and anger.
•	Given that she was probably poor as well, she was doubly damnable, although her skills were required and solicited.

Authorities Take Notice:
•	Authorities connected the supposedly murderous midwife with the devil-worshipping servant of Satan.
•	1499, Fernando de Rojas’ La Celestina featured a witch who had been a midwife for 16yrs.

Case Study:  Cologne
•	Prosecutors familiar with the ideas of the Malleus turned infant mortality into cases of murder.
•	1630, two midwives charged with laying curses on babies at baptism.
•	1627-1630, of twelve accused witches whose occupations were known, 7 were midwives.
•	(Kp97)

Case Study:  New England
•	1630s
•	Midwife and early feminist Anne Hutchinson
•	Assisted in the birth of a deformed child whose ‘monstrosity’ bothered the locals.
•	She was expelled from Massachusetts Bay Colony

Case Study:  New England
•	1630s
•	Chief midwife Jane Hawkins
•	Forbidden to practice medicine because of her “notorious…familiarity with the devil.”

Case Study: West Virginia
•	1648
•	Margaret Jones, practicing midwife in Charleston
•	Became one of the first persons executed for witchcraft in the American Colonies.

Illegitimacy was Dangerous
•	Elite preoccupations with popular illegitimacy and infanticide.
•	An illegitimate birth might lead to punishment in the courts for illicit sex, women thus naturally tried to hide this evidence.
•	Birth control was practically unknown, abortions were dangerous, infanticide would have been the only “available technique” (Kp98)

Case Study:  Rouen
•	Charges on the docket for the Parlement of Rouen relating to infanticide
•	1576	accounted for 1.4%
•	1606	accounted for 8.4%

Not the Hippocratic Oath:
•	By mid-15^th C midwives had to swear oaths before God
–	Never to murder the new-born
–	Never to disguise maternity
–	Never to engage in witchcraft
–	Never to keep the placenta or umbilicus
•	Sometimes a security check was required to ensure she had never been suspected of witchcraft or heresy.

Case Study:  Dillingen
•	1587
•	Midwife Walpurga Hausmannin, widow of three decades executed.
•	Neighbours brought 43 separate charges:
•	Causing stillbirth, deaths of newborns, loss of children to accident and disease, inducing miscarriages to cause disunion in couples.

END.