Witch
The Lowestoft Witches
Pins, a burning toad, and a judge who believed it all.
Stand where it happened
- What's there
- Old High Street of the fishing town
- Legend from
- Restoration, 1660s
- Tone
- Dark history
Lowestoft: children vomiting pins, a toad that exploded in the fire, and two old widows sent to the gallows.
Two Lowestoft widows, Rose Cullender and Amy Duny, were accused by neighbours of bewitching children. Witnesses said the children fell into fits and vomited pins and nails, and that carts touching Cullender's house overturned. One witness told how a toad found in a child's blanket was thrown into the fire and exploded with a flash, after which Amy Duny was seen scorched. At Bury St Edmunds assizes, before the eminent judge Sir Matthew Hale, both women were found guilty and hanged. The case became an important precedent and was cited at the Salem witch trials in New England.