On November 27, 1679, legal proceedings were initiated against Margaret Wood, a woman residing in the port town of Bo’ness within the shire of Linlithgow. Recorded under case file C/LA/3078, Margaret was brought before the local authorities during a period when the Scottish judiciary was actively investigating allegations of maleficium and diabolical pacts. The administrative record of her case marks a significant point in the legal history of the region, documenting the formalization of the charges brought against her in the closing decades of the seventeenth century.
Following the initial registration of the case, the judicial process moved toward trial under reference T/LA/1471. As a resident of Bo’ness—a community that frequently navigated the socio-economic pressures of the coal and shipping trades—Margaret found herself subject to the rigorous scrutiny of the Scottish courts. The documentation provided establishes her presence in the historical record as one of the many individuals caught within the complex intersection of ecclesiastical oversight and secular criminal law that defined the witch trials of the era.