In the mid-seventeenth century, the Shetland Islands became the setting for the judicial proceedings brought against Helen Stewart. Recorded under case file C/JO/3056, Helen was caught within the complex legal and religious machinery of the period, which sought to identify and purge those suspected of engaging in witchcraft. While the specific nature of the accusations levelled against her remains absent from the surviving documentation, the gravity of the charges was underscored by the subsequent trial, T/JO/1423, which concluded with a verdict that proved fatal for the accused.
Following the judicial determination of her case, the sentence carried out against Helen was final and severe. In accordance with the penal practices applied to those convicted of witchcraft in early modern Scotland, she was executed by strangulation before her body was consigned to the flames. This grim sequence of events, documented in the records as "strangle and burn," represents the ultimate resolution of her legal encounter with the authorities of the time, marking the end of her life within the context of the Shetland witch trials.