May 11th, 1685. The morning air is heavy and quiet. The women, one elderly, one young, are taken, under guard, from the Thieves Hole in Wigtown Tollbooth. They pass through the gathered townsfolk and wind their way past the church and down the slight incline to the waters of the Bladnoch river. It is spring.

The Bladnoch is a tidal river and when the tide turns, the incoming waters of the Solway surge and rapidly fill the river; the level can rise alarmingly fast. The river has now been re-routed, but to this day, the thick, oozing Bladnoch mud at low tide looks dark, predatory and treacherous.

Two women, Margaret McLachlan, in her sixties, and Margaret Wilson, just eighteen years old, are manhandled by soldiers and officials and roughly tied to wooden stakes fixed in the dank silt of the river. To the disbelief of the gathered townsfolk both are left there as the rushing Solway came in, the waves taking their lives, one at a time.

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