One Sunday in February, divine service was thrown into disarray by a rumour running through the pews: Sarah Morduck was whispered to be a witch. The Reverend Mr Martin had her conducted into the vestry, where she wept, protesting that she had given no occasion for such an accusation. Outside, the parishioners pressed about Richard Hathaway, a Southwark apprentice whom they believed to be under an evil spell. They declared him blind, dumb, and unable to take sustenance for weeks on end. In their eyes, Sarah was the sole author of his misery; they clamoured for Hathaway to scratch her and draw blood, persuaded that such an act alone would work his cure.
Mr Martin repaired to Hathaway’s lodging in company with the lad’s master, a blacksmith. The young man answered to the minister’s voice, took his hand, and seemed sensible of his prayer. His master explained that he had seen him mend after he had scratched Sarah on a former occasion. The clergyman refused to infer from this that she had bewitched him. On the morrow, he returned with Sarah and her brother. Hathaway suffered another woman to be brought into the chamber; taking her for Sarah, he scratched her and straightway recovered his sight. When his error was discovered to him, he fell into a faint. For Martin, this blunder was enough to awaken grave doubt; yet around them, many persisted in their belief in the prodigy.
The incident did not quell the populace. After the minister had departed, certain inhabitants dragged Sarah to the house where Hathaway was kept. This time he scratched her in earnest, whereupon he professed himself relieved, ate bread and cheese, and drank greedily. The innkeeper and the blacksmith took umbrage at Martin, alleging that by treating the affair as a fraud he had ruined their good name. Neighbours reviled the parson, accused him of having taken bribes, and maintained that he had stayed the hanging of a witch. For Sarah, the acquittal brought no end to peril; she was soon constrained to quit Southwark.
At the first trial, held at Guildford, Sarah Morduck was acquitted of the charge of witchcraft. Richard Hathaway had not yet been put upon his trial as an impostor. The scandal revived when he pursued Sarah to her new lodgings near Paul’s Wharf, accompanied by one Jones and a turbulent crowd. Hern, a witness, related that he saw her insulted and forced once more to submit to his scratching. A justice of the peace ordered her to be searched by Dr Hamilton, who discovered no unnatural mark upon her person. Sir Thomas Lane nevertheless committed her to prison and initially refused a bail of one hundred pounds. She was released only through the good offices of Martin. Yet the neighbours who credited the marvel remained at liberty to hunt her down in her new parish.
On 24 March 1703, at the Surrey Assizes, Hathaway was arraigned for imposture. The indictment no longer concerned Sarah’s supposed witchcraft, but his own pretension of having fasted for ten weeks, vomited pins, and obtained relief by drawing his neighbour’s blood. Sarah had already been cleared; the jury was now called upon to decide whether the prodigies upon which Hathaway traded were counterfeited.
The pins lay at the very heart of the demonstrations. William Bateman deposed that he had been warned Hathaway was about to vomit them. A basin was set before him; the youth writhed and feigned grievous agony, while pins appeared upon the floor. Bateman gathered up several: they were bone-dry, some being bent into links, and closely resembled those he had previously been shown. When he called for a clean basin and held it close to Hathaway’s lips, not a single pin fell therein. He presently searched the young man’s pockets and drew forth packets of crooked pins identical to those upon the boards. A printer added that Hathaway had brought him an account of these vomitings for the press, presenting a dish of pins by way of voucher.
The matter of the fast proved more difficult of proof. Hathaway’s partisans affirmed that they had watched by him for days together without seeing a morsel pass his lips. A nurse and diverse other witnesses declared that he appeared languishing and faint. Parishioners swore that he threw up rusty pins and never left his chamber save to attend church. A gentlewoman, Mrs Davenport, averred that she had caused him to be watched for seventeen days, having thoroughly searched his clothes and bedding. Her son, who had likewise kept watch, had gone to sea before the trial and could not be examined.
Against these narrations were set the testimonies of Mr Kensey, a surgeon, and his maidservant. Kensey deposed that he had harboured Hathaway in his house without open menace, whilst his maid conveyed food to the lad in secret. They had seen him eat on diverse occasions, at times with an eager appetite, only to resume his languid posture the moment visitors drew near. On one occasion, after drinking strong beer, he had danced and played with the fire-tongs; on another, he feigned inability to rise from his chair. Kensey further related that Hathaway attempted to escape, and upon being overtaken, struggled violently before sinking back upon the bed as though utterly spent.
Dr Hamilton lent no credit to the allegations of sorcery. He found nothing in Hathaway’s mouth or throat capable of explaining his condition. He deemed the pins easily concealed by sleight of hand, and questioned whether any man could survive so protracted an abstinence without meat or drink. Even Sir Thomas Lane, who had at first credited the tokens of possession and suffered Hathaway to scratch Sarah, admitted that the young man fell to eating after he had scratched a woman, and tossed off a full draught of liquor at one gulp. Lane had previously ordered Sarah to be stripped and searched, and had detained her in custody; he had not readily believed Martin when the clergyman first challenged the miracle.
Hathaway called his own witnesses. Several swore they had seen him blind, dumb, shaken by convulsions, or bereft of appetite. Their depositions depicted evident suffering, but could not establish what he might have eaten out of their sight. The prosecution met this with observations made in the course of daily domestic life and with the pins found upon his person. The judge reminded the jury that the question was whether Hathaway had deceived the community, not whether he had been credulous enough to believe in his own affliction. He enjoined them, moreover, to separate the miraculous pretences from the facts submitted to their judgment.
The jury did not find it necessary to withdraw. They returned a verdict finding Hathaway guilty of imposture. The trial could not undo the bitter ordeal of Sarah Morduck, who had been hounded by her neighbours and driven from her home; nor did it turn the credulous watchers into infallible observers. It laid bare, rather, the manner in which a rumour of witchcraft takes flesh: the blood drawn from the skin, the dry pins scattered upon the floor, the witnesses persuaded they had beheld a prodigy of fasting, and at last, the pockets yielding the reserve of pins. When the counterfeit wonder ceased to persuade, the prosecution shifted its mark. Hathaway was condemned as an impostor; yet Sarah had been forced into flight long before the law turned against the lad who had pointed the finger.