Ruth Osborne

On 22 April 1751, Ruth Osborne , a 69-year-old English woman who was accused of being a witch, was drowned in a pond in Long Marston, Hertfordshire when she was subject to an unofficial witch swimming alongside her husband, the 56-year-old labourer John Osborne, who survived. The murder made her the last alleged witch to be killed in England.

The Osbornes, living in Gubblecote near Tring, were on poor relief. Ruth Osborne had in 1745 asked farmer John Butterfield for buttermilk; Butterfield refused and later blamed the death of his calves and his own fits on alleged witchcraft by Ruth Osborne and her husband. These accusations were repeated about the local area, and from 14 April 1751 town criers were paid in Hemel Hempstead, Winslow and Leighton Buzzard, to summon a crowd to Tring for 22 April to have the couple swum as accused witches. Initially being protected at Tring's workhouse, the Osbornes were quietly moved to the vestry of Tring church in the morning of 22 April.

A crowd of thousands gathered outside the workhouse that day; they rioted, bringing down part of the workhouse before forcing its master John Tomkins to take them to the Osbornes in the church. The pair were found and were stripped before being taken to the village pond at Long Marston. They were tied up, brought out into the middle of the pond, and put into the water, with chimney sweep Thomas Colley playing a significant role in holding Ruth Osborne underwater. Though it was determined that she had floated, she died minutes after being brought back to the bank of the body of water. John Osborne survived.

Though the crowd surrounding the murder numbered in the thousands and the incident was carried out by several ringleaders, only Colley was tried for Ruth Osborne's murder. At the Hertfordshire assizes that began on 29 July 1751, Colley was sentenced to death for the murder. Following a procession from Hertford County Gaol, he was hanged and then gibbeted at Gubblecote Cross on 24 August 1751. 19th-century folklore purported that the gibbet was haunted by a phantom black dog.

Background

Belief in witchcraft in England was in decline before the 18th century, though this decline continued through the 19th century. The final English official executions for witchcraft occurred in 1684, with the last indictment for the act taking place in 1717. However, killings still occurred due to suspected witchcraft such as in St Albans in 1700 and in Frome in 1731. The Witchcraft Act was repealed in 1736, some fifteen years prior to Ruth Osborne's murder. Witch swimming, a popular form of trial in which a person would be thrown into the water and then judged guilty of witchcraft if they floated or innocent if they sank, was one practice which continued after the 1736 repeal.

Ruth Osborne asked for buttermilk at the farm of John Butterfield in 1745, though Butterfield refused this and told her to leave, stating that "he had not enough for his hogs". She responded negatively, stating that "the pretender would have him and his hogs too". Later, Butterfield blamed the deaths of some of his calves on Osborne bewitching them; he would later be forced to stop farming altogether, instead taking up the operation of an alehouse at Gubblecote Cross named the Black Horse from 1751. He suffered from repeated fits and continued to blame these on Osborne; use of a cunning woman was recommended to him by several of his customers including a Thomas Colley. which had begun on 29 July, Colley was tried for murder. He further noted that it "looked more like a fiend than a dog".

Present murder site The exact site of Ruth Osborne's murder in Long Marston is no longer known, as the pond in which she was drowned dried up and dissipated long ago. Papers relating to the murder were kept in the Rare Documents section at Stanford University.