Alice Kyteler

Alice Kyteler (c.1260 – after 1324) was a wealthy Flemish merchant's daughter from Kilkenny who outlived four husbands — and in 1324 her own stepchildren accused her of poisoning each one with potions concocted at night using ingredients taken from their own nightgowns. The case, brought by Bishop Richard de Ledrede, was among the earliest formal witchcraft prosecutions anywhere in Europe, predating the continental witch panics by over a century.

Kyteler was further accused of holding nocturnal meetings with a demon familiar named Robin Artisson, who reportedly appeared to her as a black dog, a black cat, or a dark-skinned man, and to whom she made offerings of cockerels and peacock feathers in exchange for wealth and power. As the bishop closed in, Alice fled to England and was never seen again, escaping the fate that befell her household.

Her maidservant Petronilla de Meath was not so fortunate. Tortured until she confessed to sorcery and implicated her mistress, Petronilla was flogged six times and burned at the stake in Kilkenny on 3 November 1324 — the first recorded burning for witchcraft in Ireland, and one of the earliest in the British Isles. Kyteler's townhouse on St Kieran's Street survives today as Kyteler's Inn, still trading under her name seven centuries later.