45 Facts About George Pickingill

George Pickingill's wife died in 1887, and in later life he attracted limited press attention for his claim to be one of the oldest men in England.

George Pickingill was brought to wider public attention in the early 1960s by the folklorist Eric Maple.

Liddell claimed that George Pickingill reformed the established English witch-cult by introducing new concepts from French and Danish witchcraft and from Classical sources, and that in doing so, George Pickingill created the structure from which Gardnerian Wicca emerged in the 1950s.

George Pickingill was the son of Charles Pickingill, a labourer and blacksmith, and Susannah Cudner, a woman who went by the name of Hannah Cudmore; the couple had married on 17 September 1813.

At some point in the coming four years, the Pickingill family moved to Canewdon, where another son, George, was born in 1876.

The couple and their four children were then recorded in the 1871 census, where George Pickingill was again listed as working as an agricultural labourer.

George Pickingill was sentenced to six months imprisonment with hard labour.

On 13 September 1887 George Pickingill's wife died at the age of 63 in Canewdon; her death was attributed to a disease of the liver by the certifying doctor.

The journalist subsequently wrote an article about the alleged centegenerian, in which he claimed that his name was "Frederick Pickingale"; it is possible that George Pickingill gave the false name so that no one would be able to look up the parish records and discover his real age.

George Pickingill noted that he had worked as a farm labourer and that he was a widower with two sons.

The first printed account of George Pickingill that described him as a cunning man appeared fifty years after his death.

George Pickingill had begun his enquiries by meeting with a number of elderly local residents at the home of the schoolmistress, from whom he gained a variety of tales pertaining to magical practices in the village.

George Pickingill subsequently produced a sensationalist popular history of witchcraft, The Dark World of Witches, in which he repeated many of the claims regarding Pickingill.

Maple wrote that George Pickingill was known to use cursing and malevolent magic on occasion, something that the folklorist contrasted with the activities of other contemporary cunning folk that he had studied, such as James Murrell.

At harvest time, Maple recorded, George Pickingill was known to wander around the field threatening to bewitch farm machinery, with many farmers thus offering him beer so that he would leave them alone.

George Pickingill was recorded as coercing local people to obtain water for him from the village pump by threatening to set upon them white mice, a rodent which in local folklore was associated with misfortune.

George Pickingill was known for his purported ability to control animals, namely horses, and it was believed that when he struck a hedgerow with his stick, game animals would run out that could then be caught, killed and eaten.

George Pickingill came over and told us to put down the reins and not to interfere with the pony at all.

George Pickingill found an informant that Maple had not encountered, an old man named Jack Taylor, then living in a retirement home.

On this occasion, she recalled George Pickingill being photographed with the first car to arrive in the village, and gave Howard the original copy of a photograph of him that was in her possession.

However, claims have since been made that George Pickingill was not a cunning man or involved in folk magic at all.

Similarly, Richard Ward argued that the contemporary obituaries and interviews conducted with George Pickingill had shown no evidence of any magical activities, when such might have been expected.

Hutton responded critically to Ward's claims, highlighting his own investigations into the local folklore and his interview with Taylor to express the view that there "seems little doubt" that George Pickingill was a cunning man, although "there are still questions over what sort of one he was".

George Pickingill's body was buried in the church's graveyard, whilst his abandoned house gradually became dilapidated before falling down.

George Pickingill was buried at Canewdon's St Nicholas Church on 14 April; although his stated age of 103 was recorded, the vicar added a note asserting that this was erroneous, for in reality Pickingill was "born at Hockley 1816 [and] was only in his 93rd year".

George Pickingill added that circa 1960 he had moved to Auckland, New Zealand, before later relocating to Australia, from where he wrote his articles.

The articles were republished in one single volume in 1994 as The George Pickingill Papers, edited by Liddell and Howard.

George Pickingill claimed that most of the information that he was publishing came from "Elders", or older members, involved in the first two of these traditions, and that as such he could not vouch for its accuracy, going so far as to state that he doubted the veracity of much of it.

George Pickingill stated that these various Elders had chosen him to disseminate the information because he had been involved in both hereditary witchcraft and Gardnerian Wicca and because he was based in New Zealand, thereby making it hard for anyone to trace their identities.

Old George Pickingill was acknowledged as the world's greatest living authority on witchcraft, Satanism and black magic.

George Pickingill was consulted by occultists of every hue and tradition who came from all over Europe, England and even America.

Liddell claimed that the George Pickingill family had many links to the travelling Romani population, and that George Pickingill spent many of his early years in a Romani caravan.

Liddell claimed that George Pickingill faced persecution as a result, and that he "set out to terrify" the locals of Canewdon in retaliation.

Liddell claimed that George Pickingill despised Christianity and wanted to see it overthrown; to this end he collaborated with Satanists and included Satanic elements within his ritual practices, something which horrified other members of the East Anglian witch-cult.

Liddell asserted that George Pickingill spent time in France, where he was initiated into a local form of the witch-cult.

Liddell added that George Pickingill proceeded to introduce many new innovations into the English witch-cult by applying concepts borrowed from the Danish and French witch-cults, namely the idea that the coven should be led by a woman.

Liddell asserted that George Pickingill then established nine covens in England, spread out in Essex, Norfolk, Hertfordshire, Sussex, and Hampshire; he further added that two of those covens, based in Hertfordshire and Norfolk, survived into at least the 1970s.

In Liddell's account, George Pickingill travelled widely and joined a variety of cunning lodges, gaining access to their grimoires and libraries.

Hughan, became pupils of George Pickingill, who aided them in producing a Rosicrucian Manifesto that was used in the formation of the Societas Rosicruciana in 1865.

Liddell asserted that George Pickingill was influenced by a coven that had been founded in the early nineteenth century by a group of Cambridge University academics led by Francis Barrett and whose rituals were based largely on Classical sources.

George Pickingill asserted that Gardner later joined another of the Pickingill covens, based in Hertfordshire, through which he received "the Second Rite of the Hereditary Craft".

George Pickingill furthermore claimed that Gardner received the "Third Rite" from an East Anglian coven, with this three-degree system of initiation influencing that in Gardnerian Wicca.

George Pickingill believed that such tales had been fabricated by someone who had used his own book, The Dark World of Witches, as a basis.

George Pickingill received a Christian burial and the idea that he was a pagan priest would probably make him turn in his grave.

George Pickingill noted that Liddell's claim that Crowley wrote Gardner's Book of Shadows "cannot possibly be true" because Crowley died before the Book was written.