Superstition in Great Britain

[5] According to the Andrew D. McCarthy, the finding and identification of more than 200 witch bottles reinforces the view that early modern Britain was a superstitious society, where evil could be fended off with a mixture of urine and hair.

He said in 1825 that these beliefs were "as old as England" and that, although being difficult to trace historically, superstitions are "as common to every memory as the seasons, and as familiar to children even as the rain and spring flowers."

He said:[6] Superstition lives longer than books; it is engrafted on the human mind till it becomes a part of its existence; and is carried from generation to generation on the stream of eternity, with the proudest of fames, untroubled with the insect encroachments of oblivion which books are infested with.Superstitions were documented in early modern Britain history.

Scholars, preachers, and educated ladies devoted their lives to collecting odd items from a way of life they thought was on the point of extinction.

[11] In Great Malvern, England, during the Victorian Era, it was considered bad luck to collect water from the springs on a half hour.

In Berkshire, England, there is a popular superstition that a ring formed from a piece of silver collected at Communion provides a cure for all convulsions and fits.