In the autumn of 1649, Geillies Gilchrist, the wife of a quarrier residing in the port town of Leith, became the subject of legal proceedings concerning the crime of witchcraft. Her case, documented under reference C/EGD/2040, unfolded during a period of intense judicial scrutiny regarding supernatural offences in Scotland. As the wife of a labouring man, Geillies occupied a place within the lower strata of Leith’s social hierarchy, yet she found herself drawn into the formal mechanisms of the early modern Scottish legal system when she was brought before the authorities on the 10th of November.
The archival evidence confirms that the trial (T/LA/2068) proceeded to a point where a confession was formally recorded. While the specific nature of the accusations brought against her—or the precise contents of the admissions she made to her interrogators—remain preserved within the laconic entries of the judicial record, these documents serve as a stark testament to the finality of her encounter with the law. Through these records, Geillies remains a fixed figure in the history of the mid-seventeenth-century witch trials, illustrating the intersection of domestic life and state-sanctioned criminal prosecution in the burgh of Leith.