Today in Salem the heartbroken constable and his wife are holding their baby, who has just died from the fever and seizures that have been racking her tiny body for two days. Four days ago she was as hale and hearty as any baby could be. But the constable had muttered something against two of the accused witches, and now the worst has happened.
The constable’s brother is the powerful Thomas Putnam, and he and his wife have spent the afternoon trying to console the devastated parents. Their own baby girl had died mysteriously three years ago, left in the care of a farm hand, with their daughter Ann Putnam nearby. Ann was only 9 at the time, but as the oldest daughter she still dissolves into panic and tears whenever it comes up.
Now that same farm hand, John Willard, is a deputy. He’d visited the Putnams and offered to help when Ann was first afflicted, but they’d turned him away. How dare he cross their doorstep?
LEARN MORE: What was the infant mortality rate in colonial New England? How did the Puritans think of it?
In healthy Puritan communities like Andover (right next to Salem), about 10% of children died before their fifth birthday. In less healthy communities, like Boston, up to 30% of children died before they were five. Those were just the averages. The prominent minister Cotton Mather, who played such an important role in the Salem Witchcraft Trials, lost 8 of his 15 children before they were two years old.
The causes? Infants often died of bacterial stomach infections, intestinal worms, epidemic diseases like measles and smallpox, contaminated food and water, and neglect or carelessness.
Puritan views on infant death were complicated. On one hand was the natural affection of a parent toward a child. Cotton Mather called his children “little birds” and gave each of them a pet name. On the other, because childhood death was so common, parents were taught to keep some distance from their children, to see them as “on loan” from God.
Regardless, the death of a child was always met with grief, in the family and in the community, and their loss was often seen as God’s punishment toward the family or community for somehow going astray.
Tomorrow in Salem: NEW SPECTERS: Mary Warren and Bridget Bishop