Towns > Dundee > 1822 - Dundee delineated; or, A history and description of that town, its institutions, manufactures and commerce

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<jf Scotland, which could easily be named, remain memo*
rials of the ignorance, the bigotry, the cruelty, and the total
want of any principle of humanity, in those horrible mur-
ders under legal sanction and public approbation.
The progress of knowledge put a stop to these legal
Wturdersj and the first step, though trifling, was, that
every parish denouncing a witch, should produce, prosecute,
and execute her at its own expence. The witches vanished.
Before this auspicious time, the unfortunate object al-
luded to in this work, fell under the old charge pf age, in-
firmity, and superior sagacity, and suffered burning at the
stake from the infatuation, the malignity, and assuredly
false accusations of a grossly ignorant community. In the
whole place no exceptions can be made.
When Mr Hume was searching the records of the Coun-
cil and Guildry, he discovered the whole of the documents
relative to the burning of GrizzelJeffrey, which in the pre-
sent time would otherwise have been thought fabulous.
This poor woman lived in a house at the head of Trior*.
ter-row,and her husband's name was Ramsay. It is proba-
ble she was a widow at the time of her falling under this
malignant and unfortunate accusation. She was condemned,
and committed to the flames in the Seagate, in the midst of
a numerous, and very probably the greater part of them
an applauding concourse. An old gentlewoman, who died
iiot many years ago, remembered her husband telling that
he heard his father relate the story of being carried in the
arms of one of the servants of his father, a brewer, (for aU
the Seagate was full pf brewers at that time) to see the
burning ; and that he remembered the starting of the wo-
man when the flames rose on her body, and the very ap-
pearance of the force of them on her skin.
There is another tradition, that this Mrs Ramsay had a
son, a captain of a vessel, who on the very day of the fatal
execution, had arrived in the river Tay, and upon inquir-
ing about the unusual state of the town that day, and being
told of the distressing circumstance, turned his vessel, and
was never again heajd of: He had changed his name, and