This photo shows where we believe Christian Shaw was buried at Greyfriars Kirkyard in September 1737. As an adult, she was a successful business woman who is credited with founding the Renfrewshire thread industry, introducing the spinning of fine linen thread to Scotland and the development of her own “Bagarran Thread”. The Bargarran Thread was, by the 1720s, seen to be a mark of quality in thread, and was advertised as the product of “Lady Bargarran and her Daughters”.
Shaw married Rev John Miller, the minister of Kilmaurs in September 1718. After his death in 1721 she returned to the family thread business, travelling with her mother to Holland, where both women observed Dutch spinning techniques. Shaw sketched the thread production process that she saw, and is said to have smuggled some of the necessary machinery back to Scotland in her luggage. The new production methods she introduced to Scotland resulted in a more durable & whiter thread.
But the period of Christian’s life that makes her infamous today was when she was only 11 years old in 1697. Shaw accused over 20 people of witchcraft, 7 of whom were later hanged then burned. The executed included: Katherine Campbell, Agnes Naismith, Margaret Lang, Margaret Fulton, John Lindsay of Barloch (who was a tenant farmer of the Shaws), John Lindsay and his brother James Lindsay.
Accounts of the trials reported that Shaw had been “bewitched” by the suspects and was exhibiting behaviours including flying and “vomiting coal and bent pins”.
An alternative account suggests that Shaw had taken a dislike to a servant, Katherine Campbell, and intentionally pretended that Katherine had bewitched her and caused her to have seizures and pull balls of hair from her mouth. This, it is alleged, was just so the unfortunate servant would be prosecuted and executed for witchcraft. Christian Shaw’s testimony to the Court then grew wilder and wider, resulting in the torture and brutal execution of dozens of people, including 2 young boys.