No Longer Abused
For 185 years the skeleton of Joan Wytte “The Fighting Fairy Woman of Bodmin” was an object of derision, ridicule, and fascination.
In 2023 I was fortunate to spend a month writing a memoir in Boscastle, Cornwall UK. My room looked over the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic and I enjoyed my time researching my ancestors folklore in the archive. I would regularly walk through Minster Wood, pausing to pay my respects at the memorial (pictured) of Joan Wytte.
A year later, I have commenced a Masters of Museum Studies at the University of Queensland and when tasked with writing a ‘biography’ for an ‘object’ I heard Joan’s call down my Cornish bloodlines. Here is her story.
Cornish women working as healers and village wise women in the late 1700s and early 1800s were derided and persecuted as ‘witches’ (Paynter, 2016). It became common practice in Cornwall to name the village wise women ‘Joan’. (Jones, nd)
There is debate if a “Joan Wytte” ever lived and there is no evidence of her birth, death, incarceration or on a census headcount. This tiny woman did exist — there is a skeleton to prove it!
MWM records show Joan’s skeleton was forensically tested confirming it was “female, aged about 38…a small, short person, undernourished and slim…[with] a huge abscess cavity in the right wisdom tooth.”
Joan Wytte is believed to be a local North Cornish woman known as the ‘Fighting Fairy Woman of Bodmin’ — abused, persecuted as a ‘witch’ and in physical pain. Since her death, aged 38 in 1813 she has been in motion — stored in Bodmin Jail, used in a séance, examined, and ‘hung’ in a museum.
After her death the anatomist, William Clift, requested Joan’s body for scientific research, yet never bothered to collect her.
William Hicks, the governor of the Bodmin Asylum in the 1840s and 50s, used her bones as a prop in a ‘terrifying séance’ (Jones, nd.). Subsequently, Joan was derided as an item of ridicule and her bones were locked in storage until the prison closed in 1927.
During the 1930s and 1940s she was in the custody of a Cornish doctor. It seems Joan was neglected until a ‘showman’ acquired her at auction in the 1950s for his new business venutre — a Museum of Witchcraft and Magic.
The MWM is a folk museum that collects and displays artefacts and traditions of ordinary (in this case magical) people. Integrated into the dramatic coastal landscape of Boscastle, North Cornwall the MWM attracts practitioners of modern witchcraft and Paganism, historians, curious tourists, and the wider community of Cornwall.
As custodians of esoteric Cornish magical objects, with historical connections to the persecution of witches, the MWM today serves as a repository for donation by modern practitioners. It was founded in the 1960s by the magical impressario Cecil Williamson.
Occultism increased in popularity in the early twentieth century and Cecil Williamson developed a fetish for magic. With the repeal of the Witchcraft Act in 1950 Williamson believed his private collection would be popular with families. With a background in theatre and film his desire was to “showcase witchcraft to a wider audience” and not for the “benefit or pleasure” of living witches (Phillips, 2021,p.176). Joan appears in his earliest biography of the MWM and featured in a 1962 black and white promotional film.
Williamson was a storyteller and used shock and witch stereotypes for media attention. He was known to be ‘creative’ with the text on catalogue entries and made a claim that Joan’s spirit assisted him to ensure the MWM remained in Boscastle.
A popular, public exhibit since the 1960s Joan’s skeleton was the ‘grand finale’ in the museum’s cabinets of curiosities. Joan was displayed ‘person-like’, pinned, and hung on a hook. The hook reinforcing the historical persecution of witches explained in an adjacent display. I witnessed the display in 1995 and vividly recall the sense of pain and sadness in my own bones.
Although Joan is famous in North Cornish folklore as an example of a local village wise woman, she became feared and reviled. Children poked and teased her, and others feared her as demonic.
Contemporary practitioners of witchcraft believe that objects are alive in in an inspirited world (Cornish, 2022).
A shift in intent from the ‘carnivalesque’ occurred when the MWM was sold in 1996 to a new owner Graham King, an authority within the magical community. King, himself a witch, reorganised the collection and revised the displays. Demonstrating some respect, her skeleton was moved and displayed in repose in a wooden, velvet-lined coffin. Tales exist of poltergeist activity with the involuntary closing of the coffin lid serving to reinforce the ‘magic’ of the ‘object.’
King felt Joan’s skeleton on display was making folks feel uncomfortable and believed it was wrong to “continue persecution through her death” (Cornish, 2013,p.85).
In 1998 the MWM relinquished Joan back to the earth in nearby Minster Woods as “an act of respect and sympathy to a woman who had been subjected to ill-treatment during her lifetime, and careless disregard since her death” (Cornish, 2013,p.85). Prior to burial King kept Joan’s body “wrapped in blankets beside his bed” for six months and tells of having “many a fond chat” with her (Garner, 1998).
The MWM designed a simple and respectful funeral ritual in consultation with a practising local wise woman, Cassandra Latham-Jones. The secret ritual to repatriate Joan to the earth was held in late 1998. Prior to burial the wire fittings that connected her bones together were gently removed.
Although remains of ‘witches’ were rarely found or documented it is a Pagan burial practice to rest with favoured possessions (Hutton, 2013). Joan was laid to rest in a wool-lined wicker coffin surrounded by grave goods : tobacco, pipe and a small bottle of brandy. Her epitaph includes the tripartite waxing, full and waning moon — a signifier of modern witchcraft and Paganism. Three identical slate headstones were carved, one was buried with her remains with the epitaph:
JOAN WYTTE
BORN 1775
DIED 1813
IN BODMIN GAOL
BURIED 1998
NO LONGER ABUSED
The exact location of the grave remains a secret and a memorial, with a second headstone located on the hillside outside the Minster Church graveyard. The MWM today retains the third headstone in an explanatory exhibit and celebrate their annual meeting with a walk to the memorial.
Since the 1980s, the folkloric wise woman has been pivotal for establishing “ancestral links between contemporary witches and a magical past” (Cornish, 2013,p.81).
No longer ‘fighting’ or ‘abused’ Joan Wytte now rests and she is considered an “ancestor of the museum” itself (Cornish, 2024,p.129). Her spirit lives on in ancestral narratives and pilgrimage.
A pagan pilgrimage through the landscape demonstrates respect to the skeleton and spirit of Joan and also recognises the wider persecution, abuse and marginalisation of our ancestors.
The post-museum life of Joan provides ‘evidence’ for those, like me, on an ancestral quest and for visitors who choose to walk from the museum to the memorial stone. The tangible presence of Joan Wytte is now embedded with an afterlife in the beautiful, magical landscape of North Cornwall.
I will visit her every time I return. Respect.
REFERENCES
Cornish, H. (2013). The Life of the Death of ‘The Fighting Fairy Woman of Bodmin’: Storytelling around the Museum of Witchcraft. Anthropological Journal of European Cultures, 22(1), 79–97.
Cornish, H. (2022). Sensing Materiality in the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic. The Pomegranate (Corbett, Or.), 23(1–2). https://doi.org/10.1558/pome.18956
Cornish, H. (2024). Talking with the Land: Walking Magic, Storytelling, and the Imagination around the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic. Preternature, 13(1), 110–136. https://doi.org/10.5325/preternature.13.1.0110
Garner, C. (1998, 20 September). Witches finally lay old Joan to rest. The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/witches-finally-lay-old-joan-to-rest-1199653.html
Hutton, R. (2013). Pagan Britain. Yale University Press.
Jones, K. I. (No Date). Witchcraft, Spells, Charms, Cures and Superstitions (Vol. One). Oakmagic Publiciations
Paynter, W. H. (2016). Cornish Witchcraft: The Confessions of a Westcountry Witch-Finder. Liskeard Privately Printed
Phillips, J. (2021). The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic: Toward a New History of British Wicca. Magic, ritual, and witchcraft, 16(2), 173–200. https://doi.org/10.1353/mrw.2021.0028
Wallis, R. J., & Blain, J. (2003). Sites, sacredness, and stories: Interactions of archaeology and contemporary paganism. Folklore, 114(3), 307–321. https://doi.org/10.1080/0015587032000145351
Williamson, C. (1976). Witchcraft Museums — and What It Means to Own One. http://www.artcornwall.org/features/Cecil_Williamson_Witchcraft_Museums.htm
