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INTRODUCTION
After Anne Bodenham became suspected of witchcraft in 1653, a panel of women was appointed to search her body.1 At her trial these women testified that the 80-year-old defendant 'had ... the marks of an absolute Witch, having a Teat about the length and bignesse of the Nipple of a womans breast, and hollow and soft as a Nipple, with a hole on the top of it, on her left shoulder, and another likewise was found in her secret places, like the former on her shoulder'. A pamphlet describing the case commented on this evidence: 'for which she was arraigned and condemned to be hang'd'.2
The search for such bodily marks relied on a mixture of popular and learned theological ideas, and was typical in English witchcraft cases. The women who examined the body of Anne Bodenham were looking for 'the devil's marks'. These were bodily marks allegedly imprinted by the devil on the bodies of his human accomplices. The belief was that the devil branded the bodies of witches with symbolic yet concrete corporeal malformations such as marks and growths. Such a mark was tangible, ostensible and also, according to contemporary theory, insensitive to pain.3 These traits made the mark subject to search and to pricking, two common proof techniques related to the mark and employed in the quest for physical evidence of witchcraft.
The devil's marks were considered to be an example of physical evidence that could help to 'discover witches', as the contemporary expression put it. These marks, conceivably the early modern forensic equivalent to today's fingerprints or DNA, were seemingly straightforward, non-problematic physical traces that directly proved the suspect's guilt, and that did not depend on possibly untruthful witnesses.
Three consecutive acts of Parliament made witchcraft a secular criminal offence in England between the years 1542 and 1736.4 These laws defined various instances of behaviour as witchcraft, but did not specify how to prove what was considered one of the most serious of crimes. Due to the secretive nature of the crime of witchcraft and the scarcity of physical evidence, it was extremely hard to 'discover' witches. Finding proof of witchcraft posed a legal and practical challenge which...