In 1665 Elizabeth Brooker, servant to Mrs. Hieron, of Honiton, in
Devonshire, waiting at table one Lord's day, suddenly felt a pricking as
of a pin in her thigh, and, on looking, found indeed a pin there, but
inside her skin, drawing no blood nor breaking the skin, and thrust in so
far that she could scarce feel the head of it with her finger. By Tuesday
it had worked so far inwards that she could no longer feel it at all; and
the day after she went to Mr. Anthony Smith, a surgeon of great repute,
who was obliged to have recourse to incisions and cataplasms, and all the
appliances of the surgery, in order to extract this obstinate and
malevolent pin. For it was a bewitched pin; and either Agnes Richardson,
who had been angry with Elizabeth "about miscarriage in an errand that she
sent her on," or an unknown woman who had lately been near her, was
suspected of the crime of sticking it into her. Mrs. Hieron was a widow,
and kept a draper's shop in Honiton, and Elizabeth Brooker, her servant,
sold small wares in a stall before her mistress's door. On market day,
which was Saturday, came a certain woman and asked Elizabeth for a pin.
She took one from her sleeve readily enough; but the woman was
dissatisfied, and demanded one of a bigger sort hung up in a paper to
sell. The maid said they were not hers to give; they were her mistress's:
if she would ask her mistress for one, and get her leave to have it, she,
Elizabeth, would then give her one willingly. This woman went away in a
great fume, saying "she should hear farther from her, and that she would
wish e'er long she had given the pin as desired." The next day a pin was
thrust into her thigh as she was waiting at table, and no Christian person
could doubt whence it came or why it was sent. Mr. Anthony Smith, the
"Chirurgeon of great Reputation," who could not extract a pin without a
fortnight's illness supervening, wrote a detailed account of the whole
matter; but whether the unknown woman was traced and found, or whether
Agnes Richardson got any mishandling for the suspicion cast on her, or
whether, again, the trick passed off without result, and no one was the
worse because a maid-servant chose to run a pin into her thigh, I can find
no record to inform me. As not much harm was done, perhaps the devil was
let off easy this time, and the hags, his mistresses, suffered to extend
their trade a little longer.