On 25 January 1632, Katherine Tom, a widow residing in the parish of Inverkip, Renfrew, became the subject of legal proceedings under case reference C/LA/3267. As a widowed woman, Katherine existed in a precarious socio-economic position within the seventeenth-century Scottish landscape, where the death of a spouse often left women vulnerable to the scrutiny of both neighbors and ecclesiastical authorities. The formal documentation of her case highlights the bureaucratic rigor applied to such accusations during this period of heightened concern regarding witchcraft.
Following the initial entry of her case, Katherine was brought to trial under the reference T/LA/1893. The transition from a recorded case to a formal trial reflected the established judicial processes of the time, whereby local suspicions were elevated into a legal matter requiring adjudication. While the surviving records succinctly detail the chronology of her involvement with the court, they serve as a testament to the intersection of personal life and the punitive legal mechanisms that characterized the witch trials of early modern Scotland.