Alice Nutter

What is it about a good witch? And make no mistake, by “good” I mean unapologetically wicked.

With The Lancashire Witches’ Alice Nutter, Victorian author William Harrison Ainsworth gives us a humdinger. Commanding? Check. Demon-conjuring? Check and check. Powerful? Through the roof.
  
What a letdown, then, when Alice capitulates and spends the drawn-out conclusion of this long, long novel praying and repenting her wickedness. Yawn.

I was vaguely aware when I read Ainsworth’s 1849 novel that the story had an historical basis—the 1612 Pendle witch trials in Lancashire, England. But I only recently learned how many characters were, in name at least, actual people. Turns out there was in fact an Alice Nutter among the nine hanged for witchcraft at Gallows Hill outside Lancaster. Unlike her fictional counterpart, however, the real Alice professed innocence. Meanwhile, Alizon Device, a tiresome goody-good in the book, in real life seems to have believed she truly was a witch.

Left, Alice Nutter statue (Photo: Graham Demaline). Right, Pendle Hill (Photo: Immanuel Giel).





  
With the help of Ainsworth’s novel (a blockbuster in its day), the Lancashire witch trials came to capture the English imagination much as the Salem trials have the American. In 2012, the 400th anniversary of the trials, a statue of Alice Nutter was erected in Roughlee Village, her home. That same year Lancashire County opened a 51-mile Witches Walk marking the presumed route of the accused as they were taken to Lancaster Castle to stand trial. And as with Salem, imposing Pendle Hill, in whose shadow the witch drama unfolded, today is a popular Halloween destination. Because who can resist a good witch story, especially on Halloween?

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