In the middle of Dundee, among its ancient streets and old buildings, the spirit of Grissel Jaffray continues to cast a long, dark shadow. in November 1669 she was tried, convicted, and executed for the supposed crime of witchcraft. Her death was one of the darkest moments in the city’s history, and her story—though all but erased from the records—has survived through legend, folklore, and a growing contemporary recognition of the injustice that was perpetrated upon her.
The Trial of Grissel Jaffray
It was on 11 November 1669 that the Privy Council of Scotland took a foreboding decision. It had been brought to their attention that Grissel Jaffray, a citizen of Dundee, was imprisoned in the Tolbooth—a grim, stone-built jail that stood at the corner of High Street and the Overgate. She had been accused of “the horrid crime of witchcraft,” a crime that in those days almost certainly meant a sentence of death.
The mandate of the Council, impersonal and detached, set the process for determining her fate. If it could be proved—without torture or coercion being used—that she had renounced her baptism, entered into a pact with the devil, or had caused harm through supernatural means, then and only then could the sentence of death be legally carried out.
That clause did little to save the accused from the machinery of terror and superstition that had taken hold of 17th-century Scotland. The witch persecutions, driven by religious hysteria, misogyny, and social scapegoating, killed thousands of women (and some men) as victims of torture and execution across the country. Dundee, for all its civic pride and prosperity, was no different.
Guilty and Condemned
We can only speculate as to what evidence was presented at Grissel Jaffray’s trial. Her supposed crimes, like those of so many accused witches, are lost to the ages—if they were ever really recorded in the first place. What is certain is that she was found guilty and sentenced to strangulation and burning at the stake.
Death by fire was the ultimate penalty for witchcraft, one not only designed to kill but also to purify the supposed evil through flame. In this, Grissel Jaffray joined countless unfortunate women across Europe for whom her suffering served as a warning, a spectacle of fear, and an example to others.
The sentence was carried out in the Seagate, a very old part of the city, close to the site of Horse Water Wynd, near the site of Dundee’s old Market Cross. The spot that had formerly rung with commerce and community was turned into a site of savage justice, its stones scorched by the fires of persecution.
The Ministers Behind the Sentence
There are three names that particularly stand out in the record of Grissel’s trial—Harry Scrymsour of St Mary’s, John Guthrie of the South Church, and William Rait of St Paul’s. These Dundee Presbytery ministers were instrumental in denouncing her. As much as one would like to paint them as villains, one must remember that during their era, witchcraft was not only commonplace belief but institutional. Ministers, magistrates, and citizens were similar in their fear of the supernatural and their belief in the devil’s role in everyday tragedies.
However, the legacy of these men remains a stark reminder of the destruction that religious zeal and unchecked power can wreak on innocent lives.
A Son’s Sorrow
One of the most touching legends connected with the story of Grissel Jaffray is that of her son, a sailor who had been away at sea during the period of her arrest and trial. On the morning of her execution, he is said to have sailed into Dundee, bringing his vessel into harbour. Seeing smoke rising over the Seagate, he asked the reason of the commotion, to be informed of the terrible fact—that it was his mother’s funeral pyre.
Devastated, the story goes, he sailed away without ever making landfall, and never returned to his hometown again.
Fact or hyperbole, the tale serves to humanise the woman behind the legend. Grissel Jaffray was not just an accused witch—she was a mother, maybe a wife, a neighbour, a human being caught in the gears of history’s injustice.
The Witches’ Stone and a Forgotten Legacy
A curious footnote in the history of Dundee is the Witches’ Stone, which stands in The Howff, Dundee’s old graveyard. In 1581, it was the location where an agreement was signed uniting the city’s Nine Incorporated Trades. The stone, one of the largest in the graveyard, is perhaps linked—some believe—with the memory of Dundee witches who were put to death.
There is a tradition that continues that the authorities at some point tried to erase the names of the women executed for witchcraft, perhaps even that of Grissel Jaffray herself. If so, it is a tribute to the overwhelming shame that later generations felt for the acts of horror committed in the name of justice.
Is the Witches’ Stone Grissel Jaffray’s monument? Does it stand over the grave of a woman burned by her neighbours, anonymous among the dead? We can never know. But people’s interest in discovering—and remembering the forgotten victims of witch trials—increases.
In memory of Grissel Jaffray
Grissel Jaffray is today a symbol of injustice, her name revived by those who wish to remember the women who were victims of fear, ignorance, and zealotry. Her memory is respected in public remembrance in Dundee, her story retold in books such as Haunted Dundee by A.H. Miller, and in whispered words on guided tours, in the silence of the Howff, and in the questions of those who wonder how such a fate could be inflicted on one of their own.
Long since quenched, the flames which consumed her body have caused her memory, Grissel Jaffray, to burn more brightly than ever—a macabre reminder that the pursuit of justice must ever be tempered by compassion, reason, and truth.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay