{"id":669087,"date":"2026-10-29T18:18:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T18:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/669087\/"},"modified":"2026-10-29T18:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T18:18:09","slug":"dr-marie-cassidy-brings-a-deep-sense-of-justice-to-documentary-on-irelands-last-witch-trial-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/669087\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr Marie Cassidy brings a deep sense of justice to documentary on Ireland\u2019s Last Witch Trial \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The last time we saw former State Pathologist Dr Marie Cassidy<\/a> on our screens, it was as a game contestant on Dancing with the Stars<\/a>, where her years of medical expertise were of little use as she tried to master the paso doble. She is on firmer ground in her engaging new documentary, Dr Marie Cassidy Investigates Ireland\u2019s Last Witch Trial (RT\u00c9<\/a> One, 10.15pm), which chronicles a literal witch hunt in Presbyterian Antrim<\/a> in the early 18th century.<\/p>\n

This is both an Irish story and the very antithesis of an Irish story. The women dragged into the stocks in Carrickfergus<\/a> were part of the devout Presbyterian congregation of Islandmagee, whose forebears had come to Ireland from Scotland \u2013 and their views of witchcraft were very different from those of the natives.<\/p>\n

To Presbyterians at that time, witchcraft meant consorting with the Devil. But these were an \u201cimported set of beliefs\u201d, historian Gillian Kenny explains: in the rest of the country, attitudes to the supernatural seemed more relaxed.<\/p>\n

Irish witches were not malicious \u2013 typically the worst they got up to was \u201cstealing your butter\u201d, says Kenny. \u201cIrish people were afraid of the faeries and the evil eye,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Not so in Islandmagee, a peninsula close to Larne<\/a>, where the inhabitants were God-fearing brethren straight out of Arthur Miller\u2019s The Crucible. Here, people believed the devil walked among them, and when Mary Dunbar, an 18-year-old newcomer to the peninsula, began to experience fits and claimed a conspiracy of witches had cast a hex on her, townspeople were only too eager to believe her.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Marie Cassidy: \u2018It\u2019s the man in your bed you should be worried about, not the man under your bed\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Cassidy might not have set the dance floor alight, but as a television presenter she combines a sober style with a deeply felt sense of justice.<\/p>\n

She also brings her expertise as a pathologist to bear when she works with experts at UCD<\/a> to recreate the impact on the accused women of the punishment they suffered when they were locked in stocks and rocks and other objects were thrown at them. The ordeal went on for hours, and it is possible, she concludes, that they might have sustained life-changing brain injuries.<\/p>\n

To Cassidy, it all comes down to misogyny. \u201cThis was a case of prejudice\u2026 prejudice against women,\u201d she says, as she visits Islandmagee, where a memorial to the women stands under the grainy Ulster skies. \u201cThat\u2019s been my work. Dealing with women who suffered at the hands of prejudice \u2013 at the hands of men.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The last time we saw former State Pathologist Dr Marie Cassidy on our screens, it was as a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":669088,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[283350,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-669087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-dr-marie-cassidy-investigates-irelands-last-witch-trial","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=669087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/669088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}