William Perigo opened the packets at last. He had let the sickness, his wife’s burial, and several turns of the seasons pass before laying hands upon that which he had been forbidden to inspect. Tucked within the folds of the bedding ought to have lain the bank notes and coin surrendered to the power of a lady from Scarborough. What he drew forth possessed no such value. Waste paper without money, worthless counters: the promises had remained stitched up, but the substance was gone.
Let us imagine him seated upon the edge of the bed, one packet torn open across his knees. He might yet take up another, seek out some error, or set aside what his eyes have just met so as not to conclude too swiftly. The chamber is the very one wherein Rebecca suffered. He does not discover merely a loss of money; he discovers how long he persisted in believing after having lost her. The time is October 1808, near Leeds, and the final bolt of Mary Bateman’s contrivance has just given way.
The Lady Who Answered from Afar
It had all begun in 1806. Rebecca Perigo, in Bramley, was seized by an affliction that a consulted practitioner attributed to an evil wish directed against her person. We need not, from this distance, assign a definitive medical name to that disorder. What matters is the path opened to deliver her from it: if the mischief proceeded from a hidden power, someone versed in the means of countering it was required. A kinswoman recommended Mary Bateman.
Mary resided in Leeds. She had worked at seamstressing and made herself known through divination, charms, and succour proffered against witchcraft. She possessed the art of receiving an anxiety and giving it a shape precise enough that one would consent to pay. To the Perigos, however, she did not present herself as the ultimate authority. She knew a lady, a certain Miss Blythe, established at Scarborough, whose directions she would convey. The intermediary could thus remain near at hand and serviceable; the power itself waited at a distance, sheltered from immediate scrutiny.
A garment worn by Rebecca was dispatched. A reply arrived, or at least Mary produced a letter she declared to have come from Miss Blythe. It was directed that bank notes be placed in packets sewn into the bed, and that the charm be suffered to work for eighteen months. Other notes of equal value were to be delivered into Mary’s hands. This contrivance bore the semblance of an exchange: the Perigos surrendered nothing, since an equivalent treasure lay resting beside them. They were merely forbidden to look upon it.
The contrivance was ingenious. An ordinary thief must carry off the chattel or conceal it. Here, Mary left the victims in possession of what they believed to be their own, while rendering verification a perilous transgression. The greater the sum grew, the graver seemed the imaginary peril of breaking the charm. The bed, which ought to have afforded repose, henceforth kept silent guard against the curiosity of its own occupants.
The House Being Emptied
Letter followed letter. Miss Blythe had need of goods, linen, provisions, and tableware; the requests passed through Mary and were attended by precautions whose minute precision lent the falsehood the air of serious business. This must be done in such a fashion; that must be carried to such a place, and the paper burned thereafter. An absurd instruction readily assumes the likeness of competence when it becomes exacting enough to engross the entire attention of the one who obeys.
We may picture Rebecca making up a bundle while William counts once more what must be bought. The spoon is now missing from the drawer; a piece of linen is laid by; an expense must wait. No one speaks of the house being stripped bare. They are preparing the return of health, and then the return of the money. Each sacrifice appears provisional, and it would be cruel, they think, to dispute the price of a relief so sorely needed by the other.
Nearly seventy pounds were thus drawn from the couple, to say nothing of their goods. A demand for a bed and bedding carried the deception so far as to have another place of rest purchased for the mysterious benefactress, while that of the Perigos remained under the surveillance of the stitched packets. Miss Blythe explained that she could not employ her own articles in the present state of the influences surrounding Rebecca. She must therefore be helped to help them. The pretext rendered almost generous what was, in truth, bare spoliation.
It is easy to mock the victims once the packets are opened. Old chronicles seldom deny themselves that cheap indulgence. But the Perigos lived the tale in reverse: they did not know the end, and they had already surrendered so much that to doubt was to imperil their hope, their savings, and their own reason alike. Mary did not merely sell them a physic. She sustained for them a future wherein the sacrifices endured must at last be proved reasonable.
The Predicted Sickness
In the spring of 1807, a letter warned the couple that they were to fall sick. This foretelling was accompanied by directions concerning preparations to be eaten, and honey into which Mary was to mix a substance. The sickness itself thus became a foreseen stage, and the appearance of symptoms would confirm, in the eyes of the sufferers, the foreknowledge of the woman who had announced them.
For the first few days, the Perigos followed the directions. Then one preparation tasted insupportable to them. They ate but little of it, yet were seized with violent vomiting. Rebecca had recourse to the honey, presented to her as an antidote. The worsening that ensued did not instantly shatter her trust: the letters had expressly foretold a trial from which they were to emerge alive. They strictly forbade calling in a physician, sharing the prescribed victuals, or breaking the order of the operations.
In that chamber we recall, William would fain find some useful act. The potion waits, strength ebbs away, and every decision turns upon an alternative that Mary had framed beforehand: obey, or bear the guilt of the disaster. Summoning aid might, they had been led to believe, destroy the very thing that was to save them. The poison was at work within the body; the prohibition stood guard at the door.
Rebecca died on the 24th of May, 1807. William survived, slowly, and consulted the surgeon Mr Chorley, whose examination of the symptoms and circumstances led him to suspect poison. Yet death did not bring about Mary’s immediate arrest. The husband continued to receive letters. They laid the catastrophe to the charge of disobedience, and still threatened the survivor. Rebecca’s supposed fault was made to shield the person whose prescriptions had brought her to the grave.
Mary thus maintained her sway beyond the tomb. William was still to wait. A man may suspect he has been duped without yet bringing himself to undo all that such an admission requires of him. He would have to acknowledge that the precautions had not protected his wife, that the money would not return of its own accord, and that the compassionate intermediary held, perhaps, the answer to his bereavement. Months elapsed before he unstitched the bed.
An Address for the Promises
In October 1808, the discovery of what the packets contained rendered further waiting impossible. William went to demand an account. Mary still maintained that he had opened them too soon. According to the testimony preserved in the old account, he replied that it was too late. The record gives to the widower that retort, which marks the turning of his mind. The day of reckoning no longer belonged to Miss Blythe. It belonged to the man who would consent to wait no longer.
An appointment was fixed. The authorities intervened, and Mary was apprehended. At her dwelling, the articles sent to the distant lady were recognized. Suspicious substances were likewise seized. The invisible world narrowed to an address, a hand of write, and goods which the owners had bought with their own coin. Miss Blythe did not appear to defend her go-between. The prosecution identified the letters as the work of Mary Bateman herself.
The trial took place at York in March 1809. It did not suffice to establish the fraud to prove the murder. That distinction, insisted upon in the proceedings, theoretically prevented the reputation of a cheat from performing the whole work of the prosecution. It was necessary to link Rebecca’s death to poison, and its administration to Mary’s conduct. The symptoms, the preserved preparations, and the depositions were laid before the court. The Crown saw in the poisoning the means to avert the discovery of the embezzlements.
The jury found Mary guilty. She was sentenced to death. In the days that followed, she acknowledged her frauds, but denied any intent to kill the Perigos. The denial did not alter the judgment. On the 20th of March, 1809, she was hanged at York. She who had been styled the Yorkshire Witch had been tried for a crime compassed by human means, not for the reality of the powers she claimed to impart.
William was left with the recovered chattels and those that would never return. Justice might put a name to the deceit; it could not restore the hours spent by Rebecca’s pillow, fearing to summon the very aid that ought to have been called. The opening of a packet had made an end of the lie. It had not closed again that chamber wherein the lie had determined who might enter.