A cunning prophetess
“Crist is coming.”
The spelling was off – or least outdated by a couple of centuries – but the message was clear. That it appeared to be handwritten on the eggshell didn’t lend the entire exercise much credibility. But thankfully, for the sake of Mary Bateman’s already tarnished reputation, this first miraculous event would not be the last.
The locals had plenty cause to doubt the word of the Yorkshire-born house servant. Even in the first decade of the 19th century, Bateman was unable to outrun her recidivist reputation. After multiple relocations for her husband’s military service, she’d managed to build quite the rap sheet: robberies, charity scams and at least one instance in which she levied a series of bribes to narrowly avoid prison.
But for once in her life, the part-time soothsayer was undeniable. There would be witnesses present the next time her hen delivered an egg emblazoned with a similarly earthshaking sentiment. Her association with local prophetess, Joanna Southcott, only served to raise her profile among the more religiously inclined. The prophetic eggs, too, lined up with several recent apocalyptic portents.
The Leeds Mercury handily noted,
This month the credulous of Leeds were much alarmed by a cunning prophetess, who displayed a hen’s egg, inscribed ‘Christ [sic] is Coming’ and their fear was still more awakened by George Hey, the Kirkstall prognosticator, who advertised in the most solemn manner that he was ‘commissioned by heaven to announce that on Whit-Monday, in the year 1806, the world would be destroyed by torrents of fire’.
There were plenty of the aforementioned “credulous” individuals keen to witness the coming end times emblazoned on the fresh eggs. Loiners lined up to witness the miracle in person. Among them was a doctor, who spied on Bateman’s early morning errands. His skepticism was vindicated when he witnessed the lifelong confidence woman scrawling her prophecies on the shells in concentrated vinegar. The concoction was strong enough to corrode the surface, without eating egg away entirely.
Authorities were alerted, and a raid on the grounds produced an even more damning spectacle. Once she had finished her inscriptions, Bateman would reinsert it inside the hen, allowing it to re-lay the egg in front of a captive audience. The discovery caused major scandal with consequences for Southcott, who was forced to renounce her follower.
Bateman, meanwhile, saw a bit more profit in the short-lived endeavor, selling the chicken to a neighbor who had not yet been alerted to the fraud. On discovering that it only produced plain white eggs, however, she swiftly dispatched and ate the hen.
Three years later, Bateman met her own grizzly end.
She had taken it upon herself to tend to a sick neighbor. The woman complained to her husband of sudden chest pain – the first serious malady she had experienced in 20 years of marriage. Rebecca Perigo was under a spell, Bateman informed the woman’s husband. Under Bateman’s care, the condition only worsened, culminating with her death at age 48, two years after her treatments had begun.
After an 11-hour trial, the court found Bateman guilty of murdering Perigo, having slipped poison into her and her husband’s puddings as part of the treatment. She had also, during that time, defrauded the couple of great sums of money, explaining that it would go toward finding a cure. Authorities discovered the vial of poison upon raiding Bateman’s home a final time.
“For crimes like yours, in this world, the gates of mercy are closed," the judge announced. “But the law, while it dooms you to death, has in its mercy afforded you time for repentance, and the assistance of pious and devout men, whose admonitions and prayers and counsels may assist to get you all the better prepared for another world, where even crimes, if sincerely repented of, may find mercy.”
With his next breath, the judge sentenced Bateman to be hanged. She had one more trick up her sleeve, however, claiming to be 22-weeks pregnant at the time of her scheduled execution. Her final bid for mercy was ultimately rejected after a panel of 12 woman examined Bateman and determined the whole thing had been one final ruse.
Following her death, the local teaching hospital charged visitors three pence a pop to view her body. The Yorkshire Witch’s skeleton is still on display at Leeds University.
Five years after the hanging, Southcott herself claimed to be pregnant at age 64. But unlike Bateman, she was carrying the messiah.
Continued in next week’s newsletter.
Sources:
Extraordinary life and character of Mary Bateman, the Yorkshire witch : traced from the earliest thefts of her infancy, through a most awful course of crimes and murders. Till her execution at the New Drop, near the Castle of York, on Monday the twentieth of March, 1809 by Edward Baines
Criminal Chronology of York Castle by William Knipe
The Yorkshire Witch The Life & Trial of Mary Bateman by Summer Strevens