"An extraordinary instance of superstition credulity and cunning knavery came to the attention of the Magistrates at Newton Abbot, on Tuesday.
"A young woman of Denbury, having been taken ill, her friends gravely came to the opinion that she had been 'witched' and took her to a man named Thomas of Teignmouth, by trade a shoemaker, but by profession a 'white witch,' or witch fender.
"This imposter confirmed their fears, and insinuated that the mischief had been done by a poor woman, their neighbour, at Denbury.
"One of the means, which he directed to counteract the evil, was to take the girl into a field and exercise her violently for two hours by running tound it, taking care to jump her and shake her about well at the four corners. This the poor creature performed with such zeal that in a few hours after the girl died.
"The feeling now aroused in the village against the poor old woman, falsely accused, was such that she was obliged to apply to the Magistrates for protection. They issued a warrant for the immediate apprehension of Thomas....
"....Evidence having been heard, the witch fender, with the fear of the treadmill before his eyes, .... with the coolest effrontery acknowledged that all his pretended charms were impositions - much to the surprise, and we hope to the edification, of his former patients. some of whom were present, and clamorously demanded restitution of money paid in the purchase of them.
"The case ended in the man's dismissal."
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It amazes us , perhaps, that belief in malign witchcraft and white-witches who can fend it off persisted, in Devon, so far into the nineteenth century but this story, from The Western Times of 4th May, 1842, bade me recall how, in 2011, a wave of superstition, flowing from St. James's Palace washed away from our city the world's first Professor of Alternative Medicine and his researchers but not before they had done sterling work. Superstition, credulity and cunning knavery are always with us!
The term witch fender would seem to have had common currency in 1842, Today the word fender seems to be restricted to boats, cars and fireplaces. The word's meaning is subtly not the same as that of defender, from which it derives, but has clearly the sense of warding off.
The court did well not to send Thomas to gaol; his treatments sound healthy enough and his former patients were perhaps wrong to want their money back. Had they not heard of the placebo effect? And, goodness me!; what if, in our own time, all the surviving patients of cunning homeopaths were to clamour for their money back?
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