Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hathaway, Richard
HATHAWAY, RICHARD (fl. 1702), impostor, was a blacksmith's apprentice of Southwark. In February 1700 he gave out that he was bewitched by an old woman named Sarah Morduck, the wife of a waterman, and that, as an effect of her sorcery, he vomited nails and pins, was unable to eat, speak, or open his eyes, and was otherwise strangely affected. His only remedy was to scratch Morduck until she bled, when he recovered for a time. He prepared a narrative of his case, but the printer to whom he took the copy refused to have anything to do with it. Morduck, the reputed witch, was brutally ill-used. She left Southwark, but Hathaway, accompanied by a mob, followed her to her new lodgings in the city of London in the spring of 1701, and created an uproar. He was carried before an alderman, who credited his story, committed Morduck to prison, and subjected her to gross personal indignities. She was tried for witchcraft at Guildhall assizes in July and acquitted, whereupon Hathaway was ordered to take his trial as a cheat and a rioter. Popular sympathy was in his favour. Bills were put up in several churches to pray for him against his trial, and subscriptions were started for his support. He was tried before Chief-justice Holt on two indictments for imposture, riot, and assault, found guilty on all charges, and on 8 May 1702 was fined two hundred marks, and sentenced to stand in the pillory at Southwark, Cornhill, and Temple Bar on three different days (Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 172), after which he was to be well flogged and kept to hard labour for six months. Nothing further is known of him.
[Cobbett and Howell's State Trials, xiv. 639–696.]