Witch Advocates Burned Up
Oct. 31 2008, Published 1:20 p.m. ET
What better time than Halloween to exonerate hundreds of people who were put to death for witchcraft between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries?
That's what a new group has decided, and they've created pardonthewitches.com, a website designed to collect signatures for a petition.
"We were gobsmacked to discover that though the law was changed hundreds of years ago and society had moved on, the victims were never officially pardoned," Emma Angel, head of Angels, a large costume supplier in London.
According to the campaigners, roughly four hundred people had been executed in England and Scotland before the Witchcraft Act of 1735 abolished such trials.
The petition also suggests that Queen Elizabeth herself should issue the pardon. No doubt she will be gobsmacked by the request.