17th century witch chronicles published online: Manuscript documents trials of English women accused of sleeping with the devil
A 350-year-old notebook which documents the trials of women convicted of witchcraft in England during the 17th century has been published online.
The notebook written by Nehemiah Wallington, an English Puritan, recounts the fate of women accused of having relationships with the devil at a time when England was embroiled in a bitter civil war.
The document reveals the details of a witchcraft trial held in Chelmsford in July 1645, when more than a hundred suspected witches were serving time in Essex and Suffolk according to his account.
Wallington's diary mainly recounts the English Civil War, but you can search on witchcraft to get the relevant pages. The actual diary images are found at: The Rylands Collection at Manchester. The Manchester Centre for Heritage Imaging and Collection Care's blog gives information about the collection and other projects of the centre. According to the blog:
The John Rylands Image Collections holds some 55,000 images, from all across our collections. There are a number of different collections to browse too, such as the Genizah Collection, the Medieval Collection and the Papryi Collection...
I once was a work-study student on a project of converting all known Kentucky newspapers--some going back to the 18th century, into microfilm. It was a great undertaking, involving many man hours. I haven't been part of a digitisation project, but this has got to be a huge effort on the part of the centre, and I applaud the efforts of everyone involved in making these documents accessible beyond the confines of the library, as well as preserving the information and reducing wear and tear on the physical object by allowing people to study a digitised form.
No comments:
Post a Comment