The Western Times of 8th February 1845 published a letter from a correspondent living in the village of Bow, eight miles west of Crediton of which this is an extract:
"A small farmer of Morchard Bishop has a son who for two years has been subject to fits, and having consulted many medical men in Exeter, without receiving any benefit, was advised a short time ago to go to the "white witch" the cognomen of a person who lives in Exeter.
This swindling vagabond told the poor man to procure fifteen sixpences from females living in three adjoining parishes, and to bring them to him in Exeter on a certain day, when he would let him have a silver ring for his son to wear on his finger, which he pretended would completely cure him.
"One day last week I met the silly dupe in this parish, collecting the sixpences which he intended to carry to Exeter the next day, and which no doubt ere this the Doctor has pocketed. On my questioning the man, he told me that the "white witch" or high priest of his order, has a very extensive practice among men of his class, that in fact it is his only business, and that he lives in a very good house in Exeter.
"I should like to see this impudent imposter punished, a very fit subject for lynch's law. If he were ducked in your river once or twice, I have no doubt 'twould cure him."
This newspaper correspondence is regettably all hearsay and does not identify the full-time white-witch nor does it inform us where in Exeter he lived. But it is surely remarkable, if true, that an impudent imposter could find enough gullible Devonians on whom to practice white-witchcraft and thereby to maintain a very good house.
The method of the imposture rings true; only sixpences would serve,; there had to be fifteen of them, no more, no fewer, and they had to come from females and they had to come from three different parishes and be delivered by a certain date. You can imagine a poor bumpkin struggling with all the crazy conditions anxious that if he made a mistake the charm would miscarry.
This story made me remember a great man called Edzard Ernst, a professor who lost his job, and of his team whose critical evaluation of alternative medicine at Exeter University was aborted in 1993 largely because of our present king's faith in an impudent imposture called homeopathy - still, you can't duck a king in the River Exe, not even once!
Lynch's law is fun for lynch-law. Everyone seems to agree that it was in Virginia, USA and in 1780 that lynching was launched. A Charles Lynch competes with a William Lynch for the honour. My 1895 Lloyd's Encyclopaedic Dictionary has: lynch, v.t. said to be derived from the name of a Virginia farmer, who took the law into his own hands by tying a thief to a tree and then flogging him. I'm for the unidentified farmer and for it being an earlier usage.
