In the autumn of 1678, Katherine Halyday, a married woman of middling socioeconomic status residing in the parish of Crichton, Edinburgh, became the subject of legal proceedings concerning witchcraft. As the wife of a couper—a skilled artisan responsible for the production of barrels and casks—Katherine occupied a respectable position within the local community. Her life, tied to the rhythms of her husband’s trade and the social landscape of Crichton, was abruptly altered on September 13, 1678, when the formal case (C/EGD/619) was opened against her.
The trajectory of this case moved from these initial investigations toward the formal judicial process, as evidenced by her subsequent appearance in the records for trial (T/LA/815). While the surviving documents provide only the structural framework of the legal action taken against her, they capture a significant moment in the late seventeenth-century Scottish legal landscape. Through these archival fragments, we see Katherine defined not by the quotidian details of her marriage or her husband’s craft, but by the gravity of the accusations that brought her before the authorities of the era.