Tag Archives: Alice Parker

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Sep 22: HANGED: Alice Parker, Ann Pudeator, Margaret Scott, Martha Corey, Mary Esty, Mary Parker, Samuel Wardwell, Wilmot Redd

Today in Salem: Just as there can be too much of a good thing, the people of Salem are beginning to think there’s too much of a bad thing. Of the 16 people who’ve been condemned, 8 are now squeezed into an ox cart, packed so tightly that they can only stand, not sit.

8 people, 8 nooses, 8 ladders.

This is the fourth hanging the crowd has witnessed, and the people are restive and unsure. So when the pious Mary Esty says an affectionate goodbye to her husband and children, nearly everyone begins to cry. Most of her children are grown, but her 14-year-old son is there, looking manly, breathing heavily and standing tall next to his father.

Next to her, the fortuneteller Samuel Wardwell tries to say he’s innocent, but he chokes on the executioner’s pipe smoke before he can finish.

The know-it-all Gospel Woman Martha Corey, with her husband Giles pressed to death only 3 days ago, is suddenly pitiable as she pleads her innocence once more, then prays sincerely.

The others – the fainting shrew Alice Parker, the widow Mary Parker, the nurse Ann Pudeator, the ornery Wilmot Redd, and the elderly beggar Margaret Scott – have scarcely finished their last words when the executioner pushes the ladders out from each one, all 8, until they’ve stopped kicking and are swinging slowly, lifeless.

“What a sad thing it is,” says the minister, “to see eight firebrands of Hell hanging there.”

Tomorrow in Salem: A clearing in the sky

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Sep 10: An escape and a plea

Today in Salem: The jail keeper clenches his jaw and closes his eyes as the fire in the hearth gutters and flares. It’s nighttime, cool with an early autumn breeze, and while normally it would be a pleasant enough evening, the jail keeper is too distracted to notice.

Just yesterday, the 77-year-old Mary Bradbury was found guilty and condemned for witchcraft. But she is distinguished, and her husband’s family is connected to English royalty. Given her station, she was allowed to roam freely during the day, as long as she returned by night. Now it’s obvious she isn’t coming back. She’s escaped, disappeared, vanished like smoke from a fire.

Dorcas Hoar grasps at straws

In a basement cell, the fortuneteller and now shorn Dorcas Hoar cries and rubs her hand over her nearly shaved head. Lying is a terrible sin, and God will surely punish her for it. But confession is the only way she herself can escape the noose. So she asks to see the judges, and tells them that she does, indeed, practice witchcraft. What’s more, she can identify other witches. I can help you, she cries.

Her performance is less than convincing, though, and the judges leave her in her cell, condemned as before.

A list is finalized

In his rooms, Chief Justice Stoughton signs the death warrants for all six of the women tried this week: the gospel woman Martha Corey, the pious Mary Esty, the shrew Alice Parker, the nurse Ann Pudeator, the fortuneteller Dorcas Hoar, and the elderly and distinguished Mary Bradbury.

Tomorrow in Salem: The Gospel Woman is Excommunicated

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Sep 7: GUILTY: the shrew Alice Parker and the pious Mary Esty

Today in Salem: Trials have resumed for the accused witches, who stand with their lives in the balance as they face the judges. Despite the high stakes, the judges are proceeding through the trials more and more quickly. The defendants are beginning to blur together, with similar complaints from neighbors, the same accusations from the afflicted girls, and recognition from the handful of confessed witches.

One, two, three: real-world evil, spectral evil, and a confessed witch’s identification. Once those three types of evidence are presented, the judges are done.

Today’s docket includes two women who are so obviously guilty that the court needs only a morning and an afternoon to prove it.

On Trial: The Shrew Alice Parker

The judges begin with the shrew Alice Parker, who’s been nothing but trouble since the day eight months ago when she fainted dead away in the snow, only to sit up laughing at the men who rescued her. What kind of person is dead, then suddenly is alive and laughing at her rescuers? Then, when witnesses testify that Alice has predicted several deaths, the judges are satisfied that the first of the three types of evidence – real-world evil – is proven.

As for the second kind of evidence, spectral powers, it’s already been declared by the afflicted girls, who for months have never wavered in their accusations. The judges skip right to the third and final kind of evidence, identification by a confessed witch, in this case Mary Warren, who says she’s seen Alice Parker at the Devil’s Sacrament.

Alice’s guilt is without question. It isn’t even lunch time when the judges sentence her to death.

On Trial: The Pious Mary Esty

The pious Mary Esty appears before the judges in the afternoon. She is the sister of the beloved Rebecca Nurse, who was hanged two months ago. Like Rebecca, Mary’s piety doesn’t weigh much in her favor. Still, the judges are surprised when six witnesses don’t show up for the trial. One woman does appear, though. Three years ago she’d confided in Mary about an illness, and immediately felt much worse. That shows the judges that Mary has committed real-world evil, the first kind of evidence.

Next: spectral evil. The same woman claims that Mary’s specter had offered her rotten meat just this summer, while Mary was still in jail. Finally, several confessed witches have already identified her before the trial.

The judges pause for a moment to review two depositions in Mary’s favor, one from each jail keeper in two different prisons. Both say that, even being in chains for four months, Mary has been a well-behaved prisoner.

It’s not enough for the judges, though. She’s found guilty and will be hanged.

Tomorrow in Salem: Dangerous Stares

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May 12: CLOSING RANKS: the afflicted girls snare the shrew Alice Parker and the healer Ann Pudeator

red and white flowers

Today in Salem: 12yo Ann Putnam and 11yo Abigail Williams are rubbing the palms of their hands where yesterday pins had stabbed them and drawn blood. It was day two of George Jacobs Sr.’s examination, but it didn’t last long. The afflicted girls were convulsing as always, but when Ann and Abigail suddenly screamed and found bloody pins stuck in their hands, the judges quickly ended it and sent Jacobs to jail.

They’d spent the rest of yesterday questioning George Jacobs Sr.’s granddaughter, Margaret. She’d been afflicted for a time, then was “cured.” Now the other girls have accused her of witchcraft – just as they had two other girls. Confess, the judges had said. Confess and save your life. Did they mean her spiritual life, as some would say later? It didn’t matter. Out of pure terror, Margaret confessed. She also agreed with everything else the judges said, accusing her grandfather Jacobs and several others.

That was yesterday. Now, this morning, Ann and Abigail’s hands still itch and sting from the pins. But two more sudden arrests and examinations take up the day.

The shrew Alice Parker is known to scold her husband publicly, and to faint without warning. Now the judges hear testimony from the Proctor’s servant Mary Warren and George Jacobs’ granddaughter Margaret Jacobs. Alice denies the accusations, and says she wishes the earth would open up and swallow her if one word of it is true. The judges send her to jail instead.

The elderly healer Ann Pudeator is a well-to-do widow who’s suspiciously good at her trade. Now the servant Mary Warren accuses Ann’s specter of killing her two husbands, throwing a man from a cherry tree just by looking at him, and trying to bewitch the magistrates’ horses to prevent their reaching court in Salem Village. Ann is also sent immediately to jail.

Meanwhile, the constable can’t find former deputy John Willard anywhere. He’s been carrying Willard’s arrest warrant with him for two days now.

WHY is this important?

Right now there are two broad groups of people: those who are protesting against the witchcraft hysteria (citizens and family members), and those who are pushing back (judges and accusers). The harder one group pushes, the harder the other pushes back.

Everyone knew that George Jacobs Sr. had disrupted a town meeting and shouted that the girls were lying. Now, with him in court, the girls have pushed back. They’re not just fainting and wailing. They’re also being injured by mysteriously appearing objects like pins. Are the girls intentionally upping their game? Maybe not consciously. The girls who were stuck with pins were only 11 and 12.

The afflicted girls have also now closed ranks. Three of them have tried to leave, and each one has had the same experience:

1. She’s afflicted like the other girls.
2. She leaves the circle when she’s cured. Sometimes she says the other girls are lying.
3. Her former friends accuse her of witchcraft.
4. She confesses to witchcraft, then returns to the circle and is afflicted again.

All three girls are occupying a precarious middle ground, confessing to witchcraft and yet being afflicted at the same time. They are the Proctor’s servant Mary Warren, George Jacobs Sr.’s servant Sarah Churchill, and his granddaughter Margaret Jacobs.

Note that two of these girls were the main accusers in today’s examinations. Were they panicking?

WHO was Alice Parker?

Alice was about 60, forthright and even aggressive in her speech. She had no children of her own, though her husband had children from an earlier marriage.

Alice may have suffered from catalepsy, an ailment that causes sudden unconsciousness and rigid posture. One month before the first girls began suffering from unknown torments, Alice was found by neighbors, lying in the snow, seemingly dead. A group of men were there, but they were nervous about picking her up. One of the women assured them that Alice had lost consciousness several times before, but it still took a few minutes before one of them was brave enough to pick her up and hoist her over his shoulder. But she didn’t regain consciousness, not even when the man lost his hold and dropped her. At last they got her home and to bed, but while the men were taking off her shoes she suddenly sat up and laughed. Case files: Alice Parker

WHO was Ann Pudeator?

Ann was in her early seventies, a nurse and midwife, as well as a widow with property and means. But her neighbors were suspicious of exactly how she’d attained them. Years before the Trials, she was hired by a prosperous man to look after his wife in her last days. The wife was a drunkard, described as delirious and out-of-control. She died suddenly under what was thought to be mysterious circumstances, and both her husband and Ann were there. Could they have “helped” her die? The case went to court, but nothing came of it.

If that wasn’t enough, Ann then married the widowed husband, who was twenty years younger than she was. He died soon after they were married, and left everything to her — and it was quite a lot. Did she have something to do with his death as well? Case files: Ann Pudeator

Tomorrow in Salem: Summary: Act II Begins: the first death, pins and needles, mounting pressure