Inside the U.K. movement to pardon women executed for witchcraft centuries ago

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Just extracurricular of London sits Maidstone, a quiescent state municipality successful a peaceful country of confederate England.

But astir 400 years ago, Maidstone was the country of witch hunts successful the literal consciousness of the phrase.

Records amusement that much than 20 women convicted of witchcraft were hanged successful Maidstone. Witch hunts reached their highest successful England successful the 1600s.

In full crossed England and Scotland, astir 5,000 women convicted of witchcraft were executed, immoderate by hanging and immoderate by burning.

"They were usually azygous women, spinsters, oregon widows, usually without a antheral to instrumentality up for them," Claire Kehily, a subordinate of the Maidstone Borough Council, told CBS News. "... They were easier to target."

Inside Maidstone's municipality hall, Kehily showed CBS News a situation cell, reconstructed from an earlier medieval gathering wherever accused witches were held earlier trial.

Now Kehily and her chap councilors are lobbying the U.K. authorities and readying to petition King Charles III for an authoritative pardon for each of Maidstone's convicted witches.

"It matters due to the fact that it was a miscarriage of justice," Kehily said. "The crimes they were accused of they couldn't person been blameworthy of. And they had nary mode of being recovered guiltless successful galore of the cases. This is 400 years ago. But determination are inactive miscarriages of justice. There are still, to these days, radical being scapegoated for things."

America's astir celebrated witch trials were successful the 1690s successful Salem, Massachusetts. Their representation was revived by Arthur Miller's play "The Crucible," an allegory for the governmental witch hunts led by Sen. Joseph McCarthy successful the 1950s.

All of the falsely accused witches successful Salem person since been pardoned. But successful the U.K., not a azygous convicted witch has been exonerated.

Samantha Harris, the collections manager astatine Maidstone Museum, showed CBS News the authoritative grounds of a witch proceedings successful the municipality successful 1652.

"There had to ever beryllium idiosyncratic to blame," Harris explained, saying that earthy disasters oregon illnesses were often blamed connected these women.

"Death of pigs, cattle," Harris said. "... We were scapegoating and blaming radical that were often rather vulnerable."

Harris said that for her, getting the women pardoned is personal.

"Being single, being independent, these are things that would person been seen arsenic threatening," Harris said. "I astir apt would've been targeted perfectly arsenic a witch astatine the clip … If we don't larn from the past, what's to accidental things won't beryllium recurring again successful the future? There's a batch to larn from history."

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