A petition calling for a posthumous pardon for women and men who were executed as British witches will be presented to the government today.

Campaigners hope evidence of eight grave “miscarriages of justice” will persuade Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, to take action. A copy will also be sent to Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish Justice Secretary, as a large majority of hangings took place north of the border.

More than 400 people were put to death in England for alleged witchcraft, and more than 2,000 executed in Scotland, before the 1735 Witchcraft Act put an end to the trials, they said.

The petitioners' bid to get justice for the victims follows an official pardon granted earlier this year by the Swiss government to Anna Goeldi, beheaded in 1782 and regarded as the last person executed as a witch in Europe.

Times Archive, 1857: Witchcraft in the present day

'My father found his pigs bewitched. They was barking and jumping all over the stye'

• The witch on trial at Bridgewater, 1811

• The Worcester witch, 1840

• A wealthy witch, 1849

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The family behind the costume firm, Angels, came up with the idea and asked historian Dr John Callow to collect some of the victims’ stories. Dr Callow, editor of Witchcraft and Magic in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Europe, said it was time to recognise the witch trials as “most dangerous and tragic” fabrications.

“Today we are well aware that these individuals were neither capable of harmful magic nor in league with the devil,” he said.

“At the time, poverty was endemic - charity was breaking down and aggressive begging, accompanied by threats or curses, was common.

“Crops failed, butter failed to churn or cattle sickened and the blame was often settled on witches.

“Against such a background, judiciaries across the British Isles were compelled to act.

“The results were perjury and delusion on a grand scale, resulting in nothing less than legalised murder.”

Notorious cases mentioned in the petition include that of Agnes Sampson, executed in East Lothian, Scotland, in 1591.

Considered a healer, she acted as midwife to the community of Nether Keith but, following a near shipwreck involving King James VI of Scotland, became one of many Scottish women accused of witchcraft.

Although she initially resisted torture, even before James VI himself at Holyrood House, she finally confessed and was burned at the stake.

In another case, clergyman John Lowes, 80, was forced to conduct his own funeral service before he was hanged in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, in 1645.

He was seen as being too attached to the Catholic religion in a strongly Reformed area, and was forced to walk for days and nights by the witch-hunter Matthew Hopkins until confessing.

Emma Angel, head of Angels Fancy Dress, said: “We were gobsmacked to discover that though the law was changed hundreds of years ago and society had moved on, the victims were never officially pardoned.

“The Swiss have led the way on this one, and I really hope that we can encourage our government to follow suit.”

The campaign aims to make people realise that witches never really existed, and the fears of the past - such as criticism of Halloween as a sinister celebration of the occult - deserve no place in the present. The petition can be seen at www.pardonthewitches.com/content/witches.

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