Witchcraft and the Fourth Estate in Victorian Britain

Abstract

This dissertation contributes to our understanding of witchcraft studies by examining newspapers published between 1850 and 1899 in order to investigate popular beliefs and opinions about witches in Victorian Britain. The principal source is the British Newspaper Archive, a digital collection of more than 52 million scanned pages of predominantly provincial and local newspapers. The research methodology uses a Digital Humanities framework to ensure a thorough examination of the subject.
There are three key focus areas for the research. Firstly, to identify and analyse the disparate types of newspaper accounts concerning witches that were published during the Victorian period, which demonstrate a broad and at times, a contradictory narrative. Secondly, the research identifies and tracks the dispersal of newspaper reports about witchcraft-related crime, noting the types of incidents that appeared most frequently in the press. The third focus area examines the way in which newspapers featured witchcraft within the context of literature, theatre, education, community rituals, and the supernatural in Victorian Britain. This comprehensive review considers how language, history, and cultural memory shaped public opinion about witchcraft. This project complements the work of other researchers in the field of witchcraft studies for the period between the decriminalization of witchcraft in 1736 and the appearance of modern pagan witchcraft in the twentieth century.
The findings of the research demonstrate that representation of witchcraft in Victorian newspapers was based upon a broad mélange of beliefs and practices, as well as being a composite derived from a wide range of literary sources. This suggests that witches were chimera, having a recognisable shape but comprising several different parts that could reflect both negative and positive stereotypes as required in order to fit the narrative being presented.

Date of Award	20 Jun 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bristol
Supervisor	Will Pooley (Supervisor) & Ronald E Hutton (Supervisor)