Remembering the Accused Project
- Raven Bishop
- Mar 10
- 5 min read
Updated: Mar 14
In 1635, the Maryland Assembly adopted England’s Witchcraft Act, making its practice punishable by death. In 2025, Maryland Delegate Heather Bagnall (D. Anne Arundel) introduced HJ002: Criminal Law -Witchcraft - Exoneration, which seeks to exonerate several of the colonial-era accused.
Despite pushback, Delegate Bagnall's legislation moves on. There is currently no marker or monument to all the women accused of witchcraft in colonial Maryland. I believe there should be. So, until those formal acknowledgements exist, I have turned to my artistic practice to honor these women in my own way. I am researching and writing. I am visiting sites throughout the state that are tied to their stories. I am engaging in ceremony and prayer for their experience. As is my practice, I am documenting this ceremonialist work and expressing it through digital collage.
Engaging with the historic realities of witchcraft accusations can be a powerful and, I would argue, necessary step in examining the present-day lived experiences of women in Maryland, the United States, and the world. This is an ongoing work and the list of the accused is likely incomplete.
I am engaging in the process of creating these artworks because the dispositions underlying colonial witchcraft accusations resonate with the lived experience of women today.
Process
Sites of Memory Visits
French historian Pierre Nora coined the term Lieux de Memoire; "Sites of Memory" in the late 1980s. It is a term so perfect to articulate the deep connection between place and memory. In an 2013 article in the Why Do Old Places Matter series from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Tom Mayes notes "People writing about memory have described the mechanisms that drive the connection between place and memory. Places serve as mnemonic aids--they remind us of our memories, both individual...and collective...but they also spur people to investigate broader societal memories they don't yet fully know" [1].
As I work on this series, I am noting places that I encounter in the historical record that might have been familiar to the accused and attempting to visit those places or others that have a geographic, symbolic or historic connection to each woman's story. I am doing this as an exercise in memory; to honor the memory of the women whose lives were impacted by accusation, to create my own memory of their stories through embodied mnemonicis, and to create collective memory of their stories by weaving photographs and storytelling of these places into the artworks in this series.
Ceremonialist Practice
Visiting these sites of memory is a ritual unto itself, but when possible I am leaning into my ceremonialist artistic practice as a way to further engage in memory- and meaning-making. These rituals are simple: lighting three battery-powered LED candles for a moment; saying out loud "[Woman's Name] you are remembered", walking through the spaces slowly with simple gestures like uncovering my eyes or raising my arms as an act of gentle protest against the patriarchial systems of oppression inextricably tied to each woman's plight, leaving offerings of rose petals and dried tobacco (which was often currency to pay fines issued by the Maryland Assembly at the time of the accusations), and collecting water from the site (where available) to use in sketches and paintings connected to this series.
Digital Collage
I am documenting my sites of memory visits and my ceremonialist practice through photography and combining them through digital collage. Each artwork is dedicated to an accused woman and composed of images related to her story. A singular self-portrait is incorporated into each artwork, superimposed over the composition. It symbolizes my bearing witness to these women's stories and acknowledges the ways in which their stories resonate today; my face in these works represents all women and the notion that these accused women could be any woman throughout history and in the present day.
Reflective Response
I am sharing these artworks as a series of blog posts which point audiences to historic records connected to each accused woman; as well as scholarly, journalistic, flokloric and creative commentary that helps audiences contextualize each woman's story through a contemporary lens. I am engaging in the process of creating these artworks because the dispositions underlying colonial witchcraft accusations resonate with the lived experience of women today. My goal is to put the finest of points on the fact that these women's stories seem familiar because they are.
A Benediction
Let us remember these women.
Their memory and their stories are not so far from our own. Let us remember these women.
The places where they lived their lives are not so far from our own.
Let us remember these women,
The systems that failed them
are not so far from our own.
Let us remember these women,
Let their memory and their stories
break the spell of injustice.
So that 300 years from now,
When our daughters
do their remembering,
these memories will seem far from their own. Let us remember these women. What is remembered lives. Memory of the Accused [Poem] | Copyright © 2026 | Raven Bishop
Art inspiring Art
In 2021 I participated in The Medicine Spoon Memorial, artist Caren Thompson's international collaborative art memorial honoring women persecuted during the witch hunts in the United Kingdom. As a participant in this collective artwork, I received a beautifully prepared package containing a spoon printed on a piece of upcycled fabric, instructions and the name of a woman whose life was impacted by a witchcraft accusation. The name I received was Dorothy Lee. Dorothy Lee was hanged in 1646 in King's Lynn, England under the persecution of the murderous "Witchfinder General" Matthew Hopkins. She was an innocent woman and her name, like her unjust accusation, trial and murder, is just a small note in the historic record. The symbol under Dorothy's name in the spoon I created for her is the symbol of the "Witch's Heart" in King's Lynn. In 1590, over 50 years before Dorothy was murdered, another woman, Margaret Reed, was accused and burned at the stake for the crime of witchcraft. According to local legend, Margaret's heart burst from her body and hit the wall of a nearby building, leaving a stain that is marked to this day with this symbol. Margaret's story would have been living memory when Dorothy was alive. Perhaps her family had even known Margaret. Dorothy would have lived in the shadow of that mark, would have known what it meant. She would have known that a woman could be accused and horrifically murdered for a claim of witchcraft. Perhaps this caused Dorothy fear. Perhaps she felt safer knowing that a "witch" was purged from her community, never thinking she might find herself in the same position.
It was researching Dorothy's story that led me to another Lee woman, Mary Lee, who we can argue was Maryland's first witch "trial", though she was murdered aboard the ship carrying her to Maryland and never made it to our shores. Mary's name turned up when I was researching Dorothy's story. Two Lee witches tied together by an internet search. My historical imagination wonders if these two Lee women were related to one another? It's hard to know, but I suppose in a symbolic way they are, at least as their stories intersect as throughlines in these artistic endeavors.
The Medicine Spoon Memorial is important, sacred, healing work. I deeply respect and admire what Caren Thompson has done with this project and I feel honored to have participated in this project and that my contribution joins the many, many beautiful, lovingly created spoons contributed by others all over the world.
Dorothy and Mary's stories have never left my heart. It is incredible how researching a woman who was killed centuries ago and an ocean away would lead me to a woman who met the same fate in my own state, and send a journey to honor other accused women here in Maryland.
Above: An interview with Thompson during an installation of The Medicine Spoon Memorial at Pendle Heritage Centre in 2022.
