George Pickingill

Photograph of Pickingill taken in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century.

George Pickingill (c.1816-1909) was an Englishman, believed a cunning man and farm labourer who lived and worked in the Essex village of Canewdon. He first came to notoriety when he was made the subject of a study by the folklorist Eric Maple during the 1960s, and later when the contemporary witch Bill Liddell published the claim that Pickingill had not only been a cunning man, but had also been a practicing Luciferian or pagan member of the Witch-Cult who had founded nine covens across England, something which has been criticised as being implausible by historians.

His surname also appears in a number of variants, "Pickengale" and "Pitengale" among others.

Biography

Early life

George Pickingill's age is given variously at different census's but it seems clear that he was baptised in 1816 in the Essex village of Hockley. (He would move to Canewdon with wife and young children some time between 1864 and 1868.) He was the eldest son of Charles Pickingill originally of Canewdon, variously described as an agricultural labourer and a blacksmith, and Susannah or Hannah. George Pickingill had a younger brother and three younger sisters who survived infancy. His year of death is supposed to be 1909 on the basis that he is to be identified with a "George Pettingale" buried in that year, (an identification that Bill Liddell has challenged on the basis that "George Pettingale" received a Christian burial which Pickingill's hostile relationship with the church would have precluded). In 1856 a George Pickingill married a Sarah Ann Bateman from Tillingham; this appears to be our cunning man and his wife who is however always thereafter called Mary Ann. She died some time between 1881 and 1891. They had daughters Martha Ann in 1858 and Mary Ann in 1863, and sons Charles Frederick (born approximately 1862) and George (born approximately 1868). George the younger appears to have been serving a term of imprisonment in 1891 and to have died in 1903. While the sons apparently died without issue the daughters each married and had several children.

Maple described Pickingill as "a tall, unkempt man, solitary and uncommunicative. He had very long finger-nails, and kept his money in a purse of sacking". He also noted that he worked as a farm labourer and that he was a widower with two sons.

Magical career

In his role as a cunning man, the folklorist Eric Maple noted that Pickingill unusually did not charge for his services, but did receive some money from visitors, and his recorded roles included restoring lost property and curing minor ailments, both of which were common practices amongst British cunning folk. Maple also noted that Pickingill was known to use cursing and malevolent magic on occasion, something that he contrasted with the activities of other contemporary cunning folk that he had studied, such as James Murrell. Pickingill was also known for his ability to control animals, namely horses, and it was believed that when he struck a hedgerow with his stick, game animals would run out that could then be caught, killed and eaten. It was also rumoured that he could do things faster than ordinary human beings, and that he could do an hour's job in only a few minutes, with some believing that he got his imps - which were his familiar spirits - to do the job for him. Maple also noted that "Those whom he permitted to visit his cottage said that the ornaments could be seen through the window rising and falling, one after the other, in a kind of dance", something he believed had its origins in a Dutch folkloric tradition that may have been imported to Essex when many Dutch migrants settled there in the seventeenth century.

Pickingill was sufficiently well known in Essex as an accomplished cunning man that people came to visit him from outside the village of Canewdon in search of magical aid, sometimes "from great distances", including men from the Essex village of Dengie, who sought his advice in a dispute that they were having over wages. Meanwhile, as Maple noted, the agricultural village of Canewdon had developed a reputation associating it with witchcraft and magic by the end of the nineteenth century, when it was often thought of as "The Witch Country". This was possibly due to its relative isolation from neighbouring settlements, as it was surrounded by marshland, and the insular nature of its community. Maple recorded that in this period there was a rumour that there were either six or nine elderly women living in Canewdon who were malevolent witches who used their magic to harm others. It was believed that whilst they were not known to one another, they all owed their allegiance to a singular wizard or master of witches, and there was a rumour in the local community that Pickingill himself was this figure.

Death

In the last weeks of his life, when he had become very ill, the local people moved Pickingill to the infirmary against his will, where he declared that at his funeral there would be one more demonstration of his magical powers. Many locals interpreted this as coming true, when as the hearse carrying his coffin drew up to the churchyard, the horses stepped out of their shafts. He was subsequently buried in the church's graveyard, whilst his house fell into dilapidation before falling down.

Bill Liddell's claims

More recently he has been claimed by a faction of modern pagan witchcraft centring around Australian-based Bill Liddell to have been a source of modern Wicca and to have played a major part in 19th century esoteric circles. In particular Pickingill is claimed to have been a major influence on the Societas Rosicruciana and the Golden Dawn, although they eventually broke with him over his increasing reputation for Satanism and black magic. By this account Pickingill was a modernizing hereditary witch who reformed the craft, founding nine covens, and introduced the novelty in the English context of female leadership. Further to this account, it was Gerald Gardner's contact with some of these covens which enabled him to found modern Wicca. The famous magician Aleister Crowley was supposed to have been a Pickingill initiate. Bill Liddell claims to be passing on information derived from his own family traditions and from various unidentified "craft elders".

Historian Ronald Hutton has concluded that Liddell's claims are unlikely to be true but cannot be conclusively disproven. The gist of Hutton's argument is that the world of nineteenth century English magicians is well documented and one would have expected such an influential figure as Pickingill is presented as being to have left some trace on the records. Hutton's own field research confirms Pickingill's local reputation as a "traditional cunning man". Liddell's claims, or the claims transmitted by him, are not widely accepted among Wiccans, see History of Wicca. By his own account Liddell's sources are disparate and his claims do not necessarily all stand or all fall together. By his own account Liddell is a descendant of one of George Pickingill's male cousins, and it is possible that research into the Pickingill family tree will eventually throw light on the Liddell material.

References

Notes

Footnotes

Bibliography

• Maple, Eric (December 1960). "The Witches of Canewdon". Folklore Vol 71, No 4. 
• Maple, Eric (1962). The Dark World of Witches. Pan Books. 
• Hutton, Ronald (1999). The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198207441. 

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