On July 15, 1669, the legal records of Aberdeen formalised the case against Margaret Dury, a married woman of middling socioeconomic status residing in the locale of Fuitte. Margaret was embedded within the local economy through her husband, who was noted in the contemporary documentation as a white fish seller. This professional detail situates her within the modest, trade-oriented landscape of seventeenth-century coastal life, where the livelihoods of families were often tied to the rhythms of the North Sea trade and the daily commerce of the burgh.
The judicial process initiated against her—catalogued as C/EGD/1730—marked the beginning of a formal investigation that would eventually move toward the trial recorded under the reference T/JO/643. While the extant documentation provides the administrative framework of these proceedings, the specific evidence or testimonies brought against Margaret remain absent from the surviving historical record. Consequently, the trial notes offer no further details regarding the nature of the accusations she faced, leaving her experience within the Scottish witch trials as a stark archival entry amidst the broader socio-legal tensions of the period.