What the heck is a lek?
Males great bustards perform spectacular courtship displays, gathering at a ‘lek’ or small display ground to try to impress the females.
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This bottle dating from the late 17th century, was found in Downton, Wiltshire. It was likely to have been used for beer and then repurposed as a cure for bewitchment. The bottle represented the witch’s bladder, and once filled with nails and pins the witch – it was believed – would contract a urine infection. To recover from this painful illness the witch would have to lift whatever curse they had placed.
Following the decline of the woollen cloth trade, life was tough for many of Salisbury’s citizens. Sanitation was appalling and the threat of disease cast a long shadow. In 1771 the first infirmary in the county was opened in Fisherton Street, its motto being ‘the sick and needy shall not always be forgotten’.
Crime was common and punishments were public and brutal – including hanging, transportation, whipping and exposure in the stocks or pillory. Public paranoia led to the hanging of two Salisbury women – Anne Bodenham and Widow Goody Orchard – for witchcraft.
Gradually attitudes to crime became more enlightened. The new improved County Gaol opened in 1822. By the end of the 1850s, the morbid spectacle of the pillory and the gallows were banished from Salisbury forever.
Anne Bodenham was about 80 years old when she was tried and executed in Salisbury for witchcraft, in 1653. Known in the city as a ‘cunning woman’, she healed with herbs and magical advice. Bodenham was framed by a household servant, Anne Styles. She was accused of transforming into a cat, ‘summoning spirits in the form of ragged boys’, and enticing Styles to sign a contract with the devil in blood.
Bottle charms have been in use for centuries. Cunning-folk would tailor their contents depending on the request or illness. Love charms, for example, used ‘dragon’s blood’, resin from the dragon tree (Dracaena). Bottle charms are still commonly used today for a range of different reasons, from spiritual protection to toothache.
Witch bottles like this one represent only one specific kind of bottle charm, most common in England and Wales during the second half of the 17th century. Some people made them pre-emptively and buried them under the hearth for protection in a new home. This bottle, however, was buried in a garden or open ground, suggesting that it might be to cure a specific curse rather than protect a house. The bank it was found in is also close to the River Avon. Perhaps the person who buried it might have felt that the river would enhance the magic and bring their loved one a quicker recovery?
Before becoming a witch bottle, this vessel was likely a bottle for an alcoholic beverage such as beer. Once empty it was then repurposed as a form of counter-magic against witchcraft. The presence of bent nails and pins suggests that whoever made this was following a standard recipe like those found in Blagrave’s Astrological Practice of Physick, from 1671.
‘Another way [to cure enchantment] is to stop the urine of the Patient, close up in a bottle, and put into it three nails, pins or needles, with a little white Salt, keeping the urine always warm: if you let it remain long in the bottle, it will endanger the witches life: for I have found by experience that they will be grievously tormented making their water with great difficulty, if any at all …’.
Blagrave’s Astrological Practice of Physick, 1671
Blagrave’s instructions provided a basic recipe – iron nails or pins and urine – for making a witch bottle. These key ingredients are found in most known examples of witch bottles. Other items like hair and fingernails are also common and presumably enhanced the personal connection with the victim. Ritual ‘killing’ of objects contained within the bottle was essential in activating them in the spirit world. For example, pins and nails are usually bent, rendering them ‘dead’ in the physical world.
This object was selected by the museum’s Inclusion Advisory Group. Alexandra and Bella Boyd selected it because: ‘It comes under how women were persecuted. Because even today it is not something that has gone away – it is still alive and relevant.’
The object was also selected by participants of the museum’s Young Producers Lab (an after-school club for young people aged 12-18):
‘It shows what people believed in.’ Lucy, Young Producers Lab
‘I picked the witch bottle because I find it interesting, as it is very different from nowadays. Witches don’t often come up in conversation like they did back then. People don’t really believe in witchcraft as passionately as they did. We don’t execute people because we think they are witches anymore.’ Jess, Young Producers Lab
‘It seems ironic that people thought that you could fight witches with what was essentially magic. This bottle is also quite rare.’ Connie, Young Producers Lab
Males great bustards perform spectacular courtship displays, gathering at a ‘lek’ or small display ground to try to impress the females.
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