Precious Bane - Facts

 

The novel is set in Shropshire. Shropshire is a ceremonial county in the West Midlands of England, on the border with Wales. It is bordered by Cheshire to the north-east, Staffordshire to the east, Worcestershire to the south-east, Herefordshire to the south.

Prue mentions Waterloo, which places the book in 1815. The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815, near Waterloo, marking the end of the Napoleonic Wars.

One custom that is dcentral in the book is bull baiting. Bull-baiting is a blood sport involving pitting a bull against dogs with the aim of subduing the bull by biting and holding onto its nose or neck, which often resulted in the death of the bull. The Cruelty to Animals Act 1835 effectively outlawed bull-baiting in Britain, although the practice persisted illegally in some rural areas for a time.

At the end of the book the characters all go against Prue and want to tie her to a ducking stool as they think she is a witch. Ducking stools were medieval punishment devices used in England for "scolds," gossips, and sometimes accused witches, involving dunking the person in water from a chair on a beam; while often linked to witch trials in popular culture, experts say they were mainly for social control, though the related "swimming test" (binding thumbs to toes) was a separate, brutal method to determine guilt, where floating meant you were a witch. The actual witch trials used harsher methods like sleep deprivation, but the ducking stool became a strong symbol of punishing women for perceived transgressions, including witchcraft.