James Murrell
In this capacity, he reportedly employed magical means to aid in healing both humans and animals, exorcising malevolent spirits, countering witches, and restoring lost or stolen property to its owner.
He had seventeen children with his wife, and the family later moved back to Essex, settling in Hadleigh, where Murrell gained work as a shoemaker.
Many educated figures criticised what they saw as his role in encouraging superstition among the local population; his death certificate recorded his profession as that of a "quack doctor".
Murrell's fame greatly increased after his death when he was made the subject, albeit in a highly fictionalised form, of a 1900 novel by Arthur Morrison.
During the 1950s, the folklorist Eric Maple conducted further research on Murrell, finding much local folklore still surrounding him in the Hadleigh area, including the allegation that he had the ability to fly and to instantaneously transport himself vast distances.
Murrell has continued to attract the attention of historians and folklorists studying English folk magic, and is referenced in works by scholars like Ronald Hutton, Owen Davies, and Ralph Merrifield.
[2] By the 1851 national census, he again specified his profession as that of a shoemaker, and recorded that he was living in Hadleigh with his children Edward, Eleanor, and Louisa, as well as with his grandson William Spendle.
[5] He was also noted for wearing a hard hat, bobbed tail coat, and iron goggles, while carrying a whalebone umbrella and a basket into which he placed the herbs that he collected.
[11] Within the cottage, Murrell had drying herbs hanging from his ceiling,[12] and his devices were reported to include a crystal, a mirror, and a bowl of water.
[11] Other items that Murrell used in his magical practices were a copper charm with which he would allegedly distinguish whether an individual was lying or not, and a "trick" telescope that supposedly enabled him "to see through brick walls".
[15] Murrell claimed that he could exorcise malevolent spirits, destroy witches, and restore lost or stolen property to its owner, as well as providing services as an astrologer, herbalist, and animal healer.
[17] He was reputed to cure sick animals by passing his hands over their affected area, muttering a prayer, and then hanging an amulet about their neck, and was requested to use these powers at farms in Essex, Suffolk, and northern Kent.
[22] Although many individuals, particularly among the poor, viewed him as a valuable member of the community, others – particularly among the wealthier strata of society – deemed him to be "a dangerous quack and disseminator of superstitious nonsense".
The other was Eliza Lodwick, a widow who took control of the 500 acre Lambourne Hall following the death of her husband in 1826; on two separate occasions labourers were convicted of stealing from her, while another died accidentally on her property.
According to claims made in the 1950s by the-then 94-year-old local man Arthur Downes, the Canewdon villagers believed that Murrell could force all of the witches to assemble and dance about the churchyard against their will by whistling.
[24] In April 1849, the Ipswich Express and Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper reported on a case in a village near to Rayleigh in which a girl had been afflicted with fits.
He commissioned the local blacksmith to create an iron witch bottle, into which he placed toe-nail clippings and locks of hair belonging to the putative victim.
When the police were unable to identify the culprit, Spearman turned to Murrell, who asserted that he would place a spell on the thief which would result in the return of the money.
[2] In September 1858, the Brazier family accused Mrs Mole, a labourer's wife who lived in East Thorpe, Essex, of bewitching their daughter and livestock.
[27] On 9 November 1858, the Bury and Norwich Post recorded that earlier that month, a waistcoat, silk handkerchief, and £3 in gold were stolen from a labourer, Richard Butcher, who lived in Stanford-le-Hope.
[30] His son later told Morrison that the cunning man had informed his own daughter of the exact time and date at which he would die prior to it actually happening.
[30] Another story reports that Murrell took to his death bed aware of his oncoming demise, informing his daughter to turn away the curate "For I be the devil's master as be well knowed.
[5] His son Edward later claimed that Murrell's landlord soon buried a wooden chest with the old man's papers in the garden of the cottage, deeming their associations with magic to be dangerous.
[40] Having studied the cunning man's legacy during the late 1950s, Maple believed that Murrell "succeeded in agitating the old fear of witchcraft into something like a mania" among the local community, and that "in doing so he unwittingly preserved the old traditions and folktales for a generation beyond their normal span, and in this respect folklorists are in his debt".
[44] Another story held that Murrell had been talking to a group of old men in Canvey Island before suddenly vanishing and reappearing in his own village, which was several miles away.
[45] One young boy reported having observed the ghost of Murrell collecting herbs at some point after this death; he passed this story on to his daughter, who told it to Maple.
[47] He noted in particular that Pickingill was accredited with the ability to command the witches of Canewdon to reveal themselves, a trait that Downes had previously attributed to Murrell.
Morrison found that Choppen was living in a small house on the outskirts of Hadleigh; the craftsman revealed that while he had none of the bottles left, he was in possession of Murrell's spectacles.
[51] Morrison subsequently met with Murrell's son Edward – "a short, sturdy old fellow, with a shock head of loose, white hair" – who was then living in Thundersley.
[18] At the turn of the century between the 19th and 20th, the Reverend King, an antiquarian who worked as the vicar of Leigh, began to examine Murrell's life, believing it to have had some significance, although never completed his research.
