Witches Part 3 of 3: The Pardon

They buried Lilias beneath a stone to keep the devil out.

Lilias Adie was 64 years old when she died in a cell in 1704, accused of witchcraft.
She was unusually old for an accused “witch” in Scotland. Most were between 40 and 60, but Lilias was poor, widowed, socially isolated — and expendable.

She was tortured and brutalised into confessing that she’d had sex with the Devil. It’s believed she took her own life, which at least spared her the flames.

They buried Lilias under a heavy slab by the shore in Fife to stop the devil from raising her from her grave. In the 1850s, her bones were taken for “study” by local academics. Her skull was later displayed at the 1938 Empire Exhibition in Glasgow, before vanishing from the record. The rest were lost.

A forensic artist reconstructed Lilias Adie’s face, from photographs of her skull, taken before it went missing in 1938.

Between the 16th and 18th centuries, witch hunts swept across Europe and New England, in search of people thought to be in league with the Devil. In Scotland, almost 4,000 were accused under the Witchcraft Act — and 2,500 executed. Mostly women. Mostly forgotten.

Three hundred years later, the Scottish government said sorry.

In 2022, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon issued a formal apology to those accused and executed between 1563 and 1736. She called it “an historic injustice.” She was right.

Scotland’s execution rate for witchcraft was far higher per capita than most other European countries — up to five times higher than England, and higher even than Germany (the Holy Roman Empire), where some believe up to 50,000 people were executed over the same period.

These were state killings. Legal. Documented. Many followed brutal interrogations — sleep deprivation, torture, the whole theatre of forced confession. And that doesn’t count the pitchfork mobs who murdered neighbours without trial.

The apology was profound. But too late for Lilias to hear it.

This tartan was designed to honour those persecuted under Scotland’s Witchcraft Act (1563–1736). It will be used to create products as part of a ‘living memorial’. The black and grey symbolise the darkness of that era and the ashes of those who were burned. More on this.

We might not know Lilias’s name if not for Claire Mitchell KC and the Witches of Scotland campaign. They refused to let her — and the thousands like her — be buried by history. They demanded more than a footnote. They wanted the state to name what it had done. To say the truth: these weren’t witches. They were women — crushed by fear, patriarchy, and state power.

And so, the government apologised. Put the pardon is yet to come.

In 2022, Member of Scottish Parliament Natalie Don argued that failing to deliver posthumous justice to those persecuted as witches in post-Reformation Scotland — most of them women — only prolongs misogyny. Speaking at the launch of a Holyrood bill to pardon those tortured and executed as witches.

“The only way we can move forward in terms of where we are with misogyny and prejudice in society is by fixing these injustices of our past.”

She also expressed hope that the bill would raise awareness of the many parts of the world where women and girls still face such accusations — and the violence that follows.

A petition to pardon those who were accused and convicted of witchcraft in Scotland was submitted to the Scottish Parliament in 2024.

But a pardon is a strange thing. It suggests wrongdoing — a pardon can be considered an act of forgiveness. And Lilias Adie did nothing wrong. Nor did the women drowned in rivers, burned in town squares before crowds, or left to rot in cells. What Lilias deserves is exoneration.

Still, it matters. The past was named. The violence acknowledged. And the apology wasn’t just for historians or ghost tour guides — it was a warning.

Because the same structures that branded Lilias a threat still exist.
They just have new targets now: Refugees, people who use drugs, pro-Palestinian activists, the non-compliant. The too loud.

Scotland’s apology was too late for Lilias.

But hopefully it’s not too late for us.