'An innocent Welshman, and not an American'
A practitioner in 1860s Wales tried to convince patients that their troubles were down to witchcraft.
A trial at Radnorshire Assizes in March 1867 ‘brought much amusement in court’ for its themes of witchcraft and ‘Yankee gullibility’ – but still ended in a prison sentence for the defendant.
He was a 66-year-old man going by the name of William David Harris, and you might remember me talking about him on the Haunted History Chronicles podcast last year. He was charged with using the title ‘Doctor’ without being registered and obtaining money by false pretences.
Two of the prosecutors were brothers Thomas and Edwin Jones, who moved to Wales from the United States in 1866. Thomas, then 24 years old, took lodgings in the village of Fron near Llandrindod Wells, and Edwin stayed with their uncle at Boughrood, a little further south.
Neither arrived in the best of health, so when a supposed ‘herbalist and medical doctor’ visited Fron, Thomas’s new neighbours suggested consulting him. The doctor’s handbills contained the reassuring proclamation: ‘Take notice, Dr Harris is no quack’, so Thomas – who suffered troubling respiratory symptoms – arranged to visit him at Llanidloes (about 18 miles away) a few days later. He showed the handbills to his brother, who went along with him.
After putting his ear to Thomas’s chest, Harris diagnosed ‘palpitation of the heart’ and offered to cure it in four weeks for the sum of £4. Edwin appeared to be in a worse state – the doctor declared that his lungs were very bad, one knee joint was not right, and some of his arm bones were out of place. Edwin then showed him a sore on his leg – Harris said that this was a cancer, but could be cured for £6.
The most unusual thing about this consultation is the ailments’ cause – Harris claimed that the men had been ‘witched’ by a woman in America and her spell must be broken if they were ever to get well. He said he could show them the woman’s face in a looking glass, and the brothers were keen to see her identity. Unfortunately, Harris happened not to have the magical glass with him at that time.
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The treatment was equally arcane. Harris wrote something on a piece of paper for each patient, sewed the paper up in a piece of cloth and told them to wear it. Should they drop it, the ‘witching would come in again’. He also gave them some medicine to take.
Although not entirely convinced about the witchcraft part of things, the brothers wanted to regain their health. They still believed Harris was a regular medical doctor, so paid their money. Thomas did suggest placing his second instalment of £2 with a responsible person, to be delivered to Harris once he was cured, but Harris persuaded him to hand it over.
Harris seems to have been already known to the authorities as ‘the man who for a long time has been duping the poor in Wales’ and he was arrested in early 1857. Sergeant John Jones of Rhayader police found the prisoner ‘so intoxicated when he apprehended him that it was with much difficulty that he could get him to undress himself for bed’.
One tiny detail from Harris’s advertising is particularly intriguing. His handbills – which don’t survive, but were referred to in court – claimed that he was ‘late of Cwrt-y-Cadno’, a small village in Carmarthenshire. This suggests that Harris sought to align himself with the renowned ‘Welsh wizards’ who lived at Cwrt-y-Cadno earlier in the 19th century.
Father and son John (c.1785-1839) and Henry Harries (c.1821-1849) both had orthodox training as surgeons but their practice combined this knowledge with astrology and reputed supernatural healing powers. They were widely respected as cunning-men or dynion hysbys, and people travelled from all over Wales for help with illness, recovering stolen property, undoing witchcraft, predicting the future and so on.
The similarity of William David Harris’s surname and his claim to have lived in Cwrt-y-Cadno could have been a way of gaining the trust of those familiar with the famed healers.
During Harris’s initial hearing at the Petty Sessions and subsequent trial at Radnorshire Lent Assizes, the Jones brothers and another man called Samuel Phillips stood as witnesses.
Mr Bowen, counsel for the prosecution, perhaps thought the judge would trust Phillips’ testimony more than that of the others because he was ‘an innocent Welshman, and not an American.’
Phillips, a carpenter, had suffered a leg injury and been told by the family doctor that only surgery could remove the damaged piece of bone. This would mean travelling to a London hospital and, faced with this daunting prospect, Phillips decided to get a second opinion from William Harris.
Harris told him a cancer was developing on the leg. This, too, resulted from witchcraft targeted at him by an old woman who lived next door. He gave Phillips a written charm to wear, and some medicine.
Phillips insisted in court ‘I did not believe in anything about the witching, and I did not pay on that account; I don’t believe in witching,’ but he did believe in Harris’s promise to cure him.
The medicine was supposed to create new blood, and Phillips drank six quarts of it over the next few weeks without getting any better. Having already spent 50 shillings, he declined to pay any more, to which Harris responded that ‘he would see me in hell before he would lose the money—also that he was master of hell and the devil.’
The words on the charm papers were read out in court, and went as follows:
The fourth is Maynom, one of the powers who hath the ability of superficient administration and protection, that is at one and the same time present with many. His presence must be sought by humility and prayer. The fifth good genius is Gaomum, an angel of celestial brightness, who hath the peculiar ability of rendering his pupil invisible to any evil spirit whatsoever…
This appears to have been copied from the work of 18th-century astrologer Ebenezer Sibly, with influence from the ‘Discourse on Devils and Spirits’ in the 1665 edition of Reginald Scot’s The Discoverie of Witchcraft.
Although the defence counsel insinuated that Thomas Jones had syphilis and that Harris’s use of the word ‘witched’ was just a euphemism for a woman transmitting the disease to him, the prisoner was found guilty.
When he heard the verdict, Harris introduced another twist to his story – he had gone blind while in prison on remand. The gaol surgeon suggested that the blindness was brought on by damp, but there were also reports that Harris had always been led about as if he were blind. Because of this, and his assertion that he had 16 children to provide for, the sentence of three months’ imprisonment without hard labour was lighter than it might otherwise have been.