In June 1630, Janet Richardson, a married woman of lower socioeconomic standing from the village of Cousland in the parish of Cranston, Edinburgh, became caught within the machinery of the Scottish judicial system. Her entry into the historical record is marked by her inclusion in a group of seven individuals facing accusations of witchcraft, a phenomenon that saw localized clusters of accusations often ripple through small communities during this period. The specific socioeconomic status assigned to Janet in the records is derived directly from the occupation of her husband, reflecting the common contemporary practice of documenting women’s standing through their familial and marital connections.
The formal proceedings against Janet, cataloged under case number C/EGD/1215 and trial record T/JO/337, provide little detail beyond the logistical framework of the prosecution. While her name appears alongside six others in the official documentation dated June 10, 1630, the extant records remain silent regarding the specific evidence brought against her or the eventual verdict of the court. As a result, Janet remains a figure defined by her presence within the administrative documentation of the early seventeenth-century Scottish legal process, representing one of the many individuals whose lives were intersected by the intense, communal scrutiny of the witch trials.