James Murrell

James Murrell (c.1785 – 16 December 1860) was an English cunning man, or professional folk magician, who spent most of his life in the Essex town of Hadleigh. Historian Ronald Hutton has characterised Murrell as the "most celebrated cunning man in the whole of nineteenth-century southern England".^[1]

Born in Rochdale, Essex, Murrell grew up in the area before moving to Southwark in London, where he was married in 1812. Having seventeen children with his wife, they later moved back to Essex, settling in Hadleigh, where Murrell gained work as a shoemaker. At some point he also began working as a cunning man, gaining fame for his work in this field on both sides of the Thames Estuary. On a number of occasions his magical activities gained the attention of the local press. His activities proved controversial in the local area, with many educated figures criticising what they saw as his role in encouraging superstition; his death certificate recorded his profession as that of a "quack doctor".

Murrell's fame greatly increased after his death when he was made the subject, albeit in a highly fictionalised form, of a 1900 novel by Arthur Morrison. Morrison also produced a more objective study of the cunning man, with further research later conducted by Essex folklorist Eric Maple. Murrell has continued to attract the attention of historians and folklorists studying English folk magic, and is referenced in works by scholars like Hutton, Owen Davies, and Ralph Merrifield.

Life and family

Murrell was baptised in St. Mary's Church, Hawkwell

James Murrell was born in Rochdale, Essex, and then baptised on 9 October 1785 in the St. Mary the Virgin Church in Hawkwell, Essex.^[2] His parents were named Edward Murrell and Hannah Murrell, née Dockrell.^[2] After completing school, Murrell entered into an apprenticeship with the surveyor G. Emans, who operated from Burnham, a town where Murrell's brother Edward had moved to.^[3] There is evidence that Murrell subsequently moved to London, where he worked as a stillman at a chemist's shop in the 1800s or early 1810s.^[3]

On 12 August 1812, Murrell married Elizabeth Francis Button at St. Olave's Church, Bermondsey in Southwark. Button was also from Essex, having been baptised in Hadleigh on 5 December 1790.^[2] Between 1814 and 1834, there are baptismal and burial records of the couple having seventeen children, many of whom did not survive infancy.^[2]

On 26 December 1820, Murrell returned to Essex to attend the wedding of his sister Hannah at Hawkwell's St. Mary the Virgin Church. She and her new husband Daniel Whitwell then proceeded to move to nearby Canewdon, with Murrell visiting them there on a regular basis thereafter.^[2] By the early 1840s, one of Murrell's daughters, Louisa, had moved in with the childless Daniel and Hannah.^[2] This being the case, it would have been likely that Murrell had at least heard of the Pickingill family who lived in the small Canewdon community; one of the Pickingill's children, George Pickingill, would also grow up to be a cunning man.^[2]

Elizabeth Murrell died in Hadleigh on 16 April 1839, aged forty-nine. The cause of death was cited as "inflammation of the chest", and her body was buried on 21 April in Hadleigh's St. James the Less Church.^[2] By the time of the 1841 national census, Murrell was documented as a shoemaker living in Hadleigh with four of his children (Eliza, Matilda, Edward, and Eleanor).^[2] However, in the June 1844 wedding documentation of Eliza, Murrell was listed as a labourer, and on the October 1844 marriage documentation of Matilda, he was listed as a herb doctor.^[2] By the 1851 national census, he again specified his profession as that of a shoemaker, and recorded that he was living in Hadleigh with his children Edward, Eleanor, and Louisa, as well as with his grandson William Spendle.^[2]

Cunning career

Murrell claimed that he could exorcise malevolent spirits, destroy witches, and restore lost or stolen property to its owner, as well as providing services as an astrologer, herbalist, and animal healer.^[4] He charged a halfpenny for curing warts, and two shillings and six pence for breaking a witch's spell.^[5] Murrell possessed a library of books, including works on astrology and astronomy, conjuration, and medical texts.^[6] He also wrote a number of personal notebooks, the last of which survived into at least the 1950s.^[7] He had many drying herbs hung from the ceiling in his cottage.^[4] He was reputed to cure sick animals by passing his hands over their affected area, muttering a prayer, and then hanging an amulet about their neck, and was requested to use these powers at farms in Essex, Suffolk, and northern Kent.^[4] During his lifetime, Murrell's fame was known on both sides of the Thames Estuary, although not apparently beyond that.^[8] In south-east Essex, Murrell was known as "The Devil's Master".^[4]

Murrell made use of witch bottles, such as that pictured

Murrell used witch bottles as part of his magical practices, and Maple encountered claims that Murrell was able to summon anyone he wished using them, including individuals who had gone overseas.^[9] Murrell experimented with the use of a witch bottle constructed out of iron; he had two such devices created by a local smith, and had the plus at the mouth soldered up before the bottle was placed in a fire as part of an anti-bewitchment spell. The idea behind this was that the bottle itself would not explode under the heat, and that thus it could be reused on other occasions.^[10] According to folklore collected by Maple, the smith's attempts were initially unsuccessful, and only succeeded after Murrell had recited a charm.^[4]

According to Maple's research, various accounts of Murrell's astrological activities continued to be told in the community after Murrell's death. One held that he was able to predict the death of a man to the "very day and hour" while another was that he also predicted the time of his own death to the very minute.^[4] It was claimed that on one occasion he was asked to provide the horoscope of a newborn child, but that he refused, stating that "Make the most of the child, you will not have it for long", after which the child soon died, while when an old lady asked him to predict the future for her, he refused to do so for more than nine years ahead, with her dying in the eighth.^[4]

Maple believed that Murrell "succeeded in agitating the old fear of witchcraft into something like a mania" among the local community, and that "in doing so he unwittingly preserved the old traditions and folktales for a generation beyond their normal span, and in this respect folklorists are in his debt."^[4]

Documented cases

In nearby Canewdon, rumours had spread that two prominent local women were malevolent witches. One of these individuals was Mary Ann Atkinson, the wife of the Reverend William Atkinson, the vicar of Atkinson. The other was Eliza Lodwick, a widow who took control of the 500 acre Lambourne Hall following the death of her husband in 1826; on two separate occasions labourers were convicted of stealing from her, while another died accidentally on her property.^[2] Locals concerned that these women were witches approached the vicar with their beliefs, but he dismissed them. They subsequently turned to Murrell, asking for his aid in exposing the witches. According to claims made in the 1950s by the-then 94-year-old local man Arthur Downes, the Canewdon villagers believed that Murrell could whistle and thus force all of the witches to assemble and dance about the churchyard against their will. However, the vicar intervened, with locals believing that he was doing so to protect his wife. The vicar himself died in March 1847.^[11]

In April 1849, the Ipswich Express and Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper reported on a case in a village near to Rayleigh in which a girl had been afflicted with fits. Her family believed that a witch was to blame, with Murrell being called in to free her of the perceived bewitchment. He commissioned the local blacksmith to create an iron witch bottle, into which he placed toe-nail clippings and locks of hair belonging to the victim. The bottle was then placed into the hearth and heated until it exploded, at which it was believed to have defeated the witch's machinations.^[2]

In February 1857 the Chelmsford Chronicle reported that £10 in silver had been stolen from Golding Spearman, keeper of the Tilbury Fort canteen. When the police were unable to identify the culprit, Spearman turned to Murrell, who asserted that he would place a spell on the thief which would result in the return of the money. Shortly after, a soldier discovered the stolen money and returned it to Spearman, who attributed its retrival to Murrell.^[2]

In September 1858, the Brazier family accused Mrs Mole, a labourer's wife who lived in East Thorpe, Essex, of bewitching their daughter and livestock. Hoping to have the bewitchment removed, they consulted a local cunning-man known as Burrell, who lived at nearby Copford. When Burrell was unable to help, they proceeded to consult Murrell, inviting him to come to East Thorpe to remove the curse.^[12] Murrell's planned visit generated much anticipation in East Thorpe's community, with the local rector attempting to calm the situation by requesting that the parish relieving officer move the allegedly bewitched girl to the union-house, where she could be examined by the parish surgeon. Nevertheless, the officer of the poor refused to comply, asserting that Murrell's arrival would correct the problem.^[13] Persisting, the rector applied to the local magistrate to ensure that police would be in the village on the day of Murrell's arrival, to ensure that the crowd would be controlled. On the day itself, a crowd of two hundred had gathered, and proceeded to Mrs Mole's house with the intention of carrying out folk justice; concerned by this illegal behaviour, the rector stood outside of her door and forbade the crowd entry, prior to police arriving and dispersing the mob.^[14]

On 9 November 1858, the Bury and Norwich Post recorded that earlier that month, a waistcoat, silk handkerchief, and 3l in gold were stolen from a labourer, Richard Butcher, who lived in Stanford-le-Hope. Butcher had gone to Murrell, asking him to use his skills to locate and retrieve his stolen property; when Murrell failed to do so, Butcher turned to the police to apprehend the culprit.^[2] Other accounts were passed down in local folk accounts; Maple interviewed an eighty-six-year old Mrs Petchey, who stated that "My mother lost a brooch, and Murrell told her who had stolen it. It was her own sister-in-law. He wouldn't tell her, though, unless she promised not to tell anyone. The brooch was back in its old place a few days later."^[9]

Death

Murrell was buried in the churchyard of St James the Less Church, Hadleigh

Local records indicate that Murrell died in Hadleigh on 16 December 1860; on his death certificate, his profession was listed as "Quack Doctor", and his cause of death was attributed to "natural causes".^[2] He was buried on 23 December in the churchyard of St James the Less Church.^[2]

Locally, a story spread that Murrell had been killed by a witch-bottle.^[15] Archaeologist Ralph Merrifield asserted that this tale was "probably entirely apocryphal".^[16]

Legacy

Three decades after Murrell's death, the writer Arthur Morrison visited Hadleigh on a holiday, and there met Murrell's son. Intrigued by the stories of the cunning man, he authored a fictitious account of Murrell's life known as Cunning Murrell, as well as a more objective account for The Strand magazine. ^[17] It was Morrison's novel that turned Murrell into a national figure and "inflated the name of the old Essex wizard above all others of his craft."^[8]

Richard Ward suggested that a number of the stories associated with Essex cunning-man George Pickingill (which were collected by the folklorist Eric Maple in Canewdon during winter 1959–60) were actually originally associated with Murrell, but that they had come to be transposed to Pickingill in folk belief.^[18] Hutton accepted this as a possibility yet lamented that it seemed to be "incapable of solid proof".^[19]

In 2011, local Hadleigh resident Robert Hallman suggested that the community should memorialise Murrell in some way, either by naming a local street after him or erecting a statue in the centre of the town.^[20]

References

Footnotes

Bibliography