Tolbooth

Before the Tolbooth was an entertainment venue, it was a prison, holding offenders before they were tried. Accused witches like Bessie Stevenson and Mary Mitchell were held prisoner here and forced through torture to give a confession.

From University of Edinburgh's witch survey: "Typically if a suspect was interrogated they would be expected to confess to making a pact with the Devil and to harming their neighbours by maleficent witchcraft, though one or other of these was often omitted: Neighbours' testimony. Statements by neighbours usually ignored the Devil. They usually described quarrels with the suspect followed by misfortune they had suffered. Other witches' testimony. When witches were interrogated they were sometimes asked about their accomplices. The people they named could then be arrested and interrogated. This was an effective way of increasing the numbers of suspects; it seems mainly to have happened during short periods of intense witch-hunting. The Devil's mark. The Devil was believed to mark his followers at the time when they made a pact with him, as a parody of Christian baptism. A physical search of the suspect's body could find this mark—either a visible bodily blemish or an insensitive spot. The insensitive spot was discovered by pricking with pins, sometimes by the interrogators themselves and sometimes by itinerant professional witch-prickers (of whom about 10 are known to have acted in Scotland)."