In January 1662, Cristian Steidman, a married woman of middling socioeconomic status residing in the burgh of Kinross, found herself drawn into the judicial machinery of the Scottish witch trials. Her husband, identified in the records simply as an indweller of the town, occupied a social position typical of the period’s urban residents. Within the context of the intense wave of prosecutions that swept through the region during the winter of 1662, Cristian was brought before the authorities to answer for the grave charge of witchcraft.
On the 23rd of January, her legal proceedings were formalized under case file C/EGD/1445. Prior to this date, she had already provided a confession to the examiners, a procedural milestone frequently documented in such cases. While the subsequent trial records preserved under T/JO/853 remain sparse and lack specific details regarding the testimony or the eventual outcome of the proceedings, the existence of both a confession and a formal court record confirms that Cristian was a documented subject of the Kinross judicial system during this period of significant social and legal scrutiny.