Witchcraft Murder in Modern London

Witchcraft Murder in Modern London: "Beachcombing has spent rather more time than is good for him over the last year looking at cases of, what are in legal terms, child abuse. Nineteenth-century Irish families who (to use an inadequate word) ‘punished’ children because they believed that they were fairies or ‘changelings’: the real child had, the families believed, been spirited away. Beach has been primarily interested in the folklore beliefs, but every so often the full horror of the situation seeps through and he recalls that these children were made of flesh and blood and often had to suffer horrendous treatment at the hands of those whom should have protected them."