Survey of Scottish Witchcraft Database

Pointers for use

This form calls up information about people involved in witchcraft investigation and trial. These people are sometimes referred to as 'witch-hunters', although many of them were simply doing their job as justice officials or ministers. The information in this section was originally not standardised but with the help of a British Academy small research grant it has been possible to do this. If a name appeared more than once then the modern version was used, the spelling was left unchanged for a few individuals whose names were unique. Obvious duplicates were eliminated and other, less unequivocal duplicates, were indicated as possible matches. This means that you can generate a more accurate list of people involved in cases more easily. It is still possible to identify people involved using the search forms for accused witches, cases and trials.

If your search does not produce adequate results keep trying variant spellings. However this may not work as early modern spelling was highly irregular. You can also gather information about people involved in cases and trials via the search forms for accused witches, cases, or trials. The reports on accused witches generated through these forms contain information about all the people involved in their case and trial process. This allows you to discover how the name of a person involved in a case or trial was spelled, then you can come back to this search form and try again.