From fertility potions and love charms to evil spells designed to kill kings of England, certain types of magic became associated with royal women during the Middle Ages. Most supposed witches were usually old women and invariably poor. Any who were unfortunate enough to be ‘crone-like’, snaggle-toothed, sunken cheeked and having a hairy lip were assumed to possess the ‘Evil Eye’! If they also had a cat, this was taken as proof, as witches always had a ‘familiar’, the cat being the most common. Many unfortunate women were condemned on this sort of evidence and hanged after undergoing appalling torture. The ‘pilnie-winks’ (thumb screws) and iron ‘caspie-claws’ (a form of leg irons heated over a brazier) usually got a confession from the supposed witch.
