Witches' Ladder: the hidden history

1911.32.7 Witches ladder found in Wellington, Somerset

When a string of feathers was found in a Somerset attic alongside four brooms, suspicions of witchcraft began to fly. This hint of rural magic and superstition captured the imagination of the Victorian folk-lore community, however not everyone was convinced.

Hanging in the "Magic and Witchcraft" case in the court of the Pitt Rivers Museum is a strange object from Wellington in Somerset. [Pitt Rivers Museum number: 1911.32.7] It is a one and a half meter long string with a loop at one end through which feathers have been inserted along its length. The label declares it to be a:

"Witches ladder made with cock's feathers. Said to have been used for getting away the milk from neighbour's cows and for causing people's deaths. From an attic in the house of an old woman (a witch?) who died in Wellington."

This information is based on a note sent to the museum with the object in 1911 when it was donated by Anna Tylor, the wife of the famous anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor. This stated:

"The "witches' ladder" came from here (Wellington). An old woman, said to be a witch, died, this was found in an attic, & sent to my Husband. It was described as made of "stag's" (cock's) feathers, & was thought to be used for getting away the milk from the neighbours' cows - nothing was said about flying or climbing up. There is a novel called "The Witch Ladder" by E. Tyler in which the ladder is coiled up in the roof to cause some one's death."

This brief explanation is a highly summarized, and largely inaccurate version of the sequence of events that surround the discovery of this curious object. Even based on this description however, the label has embroidered the facts by suggesting that the ladder may have been used for causing deaths, when Anna Tylor's note only suggests that the plot of novel used it in this way. The history of this object seems to point to the ways in which the stories about an object may grow, allowing folk-lore itself to become folk-lorised.

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This article extract is from England: The Other Within - Analysing the English Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum project website.

Chris Wingfield - Researcher

Slug on a Thorn

Oxfordshire. Black slug [sic] impaled on a thorn, a cure for warts. Donated by Thomas James Carter 1898.71.1

In the depths of the south east corner of the Court of the Pitt Rivers Museum, a large glass topped case contains a curious mix of objects on the theme of Sympathetic Magic. Prominent in the case is a glass specimen jar filled with alcohol and containing a slug impaled on a thorn (1898.71.1). Originally black, but now bleached white by years of being immersed in formaldehyde or a similar solution of alcohol, the slug represents one in a long line of cures for warts. It was purchased by the Museum in July 1898 from Thomas James Carter of Oxford and is the Oxfordshire version of a cure used in several parts of the UK.

Cures for warts through the ages fall into several groups, with the slug example being considered a transference method. As the label on the jar in the Pitt Rivers says:

Charm for Warts, Oxfordshire. Go out alone & find a large black slug. Secretly rub the underside on the warts and impale the slug on the thorn. As the slug dies the warts will go. 

In other parts of the UK such as Berwickshire, Northumberland and Lancashire, the slug is replaced by a snail:

"Take a black snail, rub the warts with it, and then suspend it upon a thorn; as the snail melts away, so will the warts. This must be done nine nights successively, at the end of which time the wart will completely disappear. For, as the snails exposed to such cruel treatment, will gradually wither away, so it is believe the wart, being impregnated with its matter will slowly do the same" (Sternberg)

Other charms for warts using molluscs include piercing the mollusc with a pin as many times as your number of warts, rubbing the wart with the mollusc and killing the mollusc, and impaling a mollusc and blowing across the hand while pointing at a new moon.

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This article extract is from England: The Other Within - Analysing the English Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum project website.

Heather Richardson, Conservation Department