Today in Salem: Rev Parris uses a quill to scratch out a letter to his cousin in Boston. I should have done this sooner, he thinks. His daughter Betty is only 9, and it’s final: he needs to send her as far away, as quickly as possible, from the witchcraft hysteria. Perhaps his cousin will take her in.
Little Betty has been suffering from fits and seizures for weeks, cried and shook her way through the hearings for Tituba and the twoSarahs, and was again tormented two nights ago. And today, more of the same. Several ministers have spent all day at the parsonage, fasting and praying. Every time one of the ministers said “Amen,” Betty and her cousin Abigail twisted and jerked, barely under control. The girls know that the word “Amen” means “truth.” Obviously the devil knows it, too.
Rev Parris drips hot wax on the note and presses his seal into it. God’s will be done, he thinks, and hopes he’s doing the right thing. But he’d rather not see his daughter at all, than see her at home in so much distress.
Today in Salem: The gale-force wind continues, blustering north through the streets of Boston, out of the town, over the roiling water, and through the marshes into Salem Village. Heavy clouds hang over naked trees that moan and sway in the gusts, carrying the vengeful specters of the beggar Sarah Good and the sickly Sarah Osborne. The women are locked in the Boston jail, 20 miles away from Salem Village. But their specters are here, bent on revenge, twisting and choking the girls who dared to testify against them.
The meeting house is in disrepair, and now a board is pried loose in the wind, sailing into the air and smashing against the wall of the parsonage. Inside, little Betty jumps at the sound and nearly faints, then bursts into tears before bending backward and twisting hard toward the fireplace.
11-year-old tomboy Abigail Williams isn’t much better, grasping the table, sobbing and choking at the same time. Across the village at the Putnam home, the 12-year-old Ann is flailing her arms and yelling at the specters that she will not, will not follow them. And, at the home of Dr. Griggs, his 17-year-old servant Elizabeth Hubbard is staring at the hearth fire, wide-eyed and seemingly in a trance, unmoving, even when the wood snaps and an ember flies toward her.
LEARN MORE: Were the afflicted girls really having “fits,” or were they faking it?
Probably both, sometimes maliciously, but also because of stress, past trauma, fear, boredom, and perhaps mass hysteria.
Of the ten main accusers, at least two and probably more were traumatized refugees from the Indian Wars in Maine. These were teenage girls and young women who’d watched as their homes and towns were burned and their family members murdered brutally. The attacks were not small or isolated. In one campaign, 60 miles of Maine coastland were destroyed in five weeks, with not one English settlement left.
Today we would say these girls had PTSD. But the Puritan Church of the time believed that dreams and nightmares carried messages and prophesies. One can only imagine what kind of dreams or even hallucinations these girls were having, and what they were told they meant.
Consider, too, that at least four of the girls – some of them refugees – were orphans who’d lost their parents, and therefore their financial and emotional support, dowries, and social connections. Puritan culture required each person to be “attached” to a family unit. So the orphan was taken in, frequently by extended family, and treated as a servant. Overnight these girls had lost their prospects. They’d never be married, never have children, and never have status in the church. They would be servants forever. Some of these hopeless girls had nothing else to lose, and may have been vengeful or uncaring.
On a larger level, the entire community was suffering tremendous anxiety. They were at war with the Indians, believed that Satan was active and intent on destroying them, and had just endured a brutally cold winter. Even the youngest accuser, age 9, would have picked up on that level of turmoil.
Still, despite any compassionate context, it’s true that some fakery was at play, with staged injuries, dramatic acting, and obvious teamwork. One accuser eventually confessed that she’d lied, and two of them joked that they just wanted to have fun. It was complicated, but not, and leaves us with questions we’ll never be able to answer fully.
Today in Salem: The three accused witches are finally behind bars, and 9-year-old little Betty, the tomboy Abigail Williams, and the 17-year-old servant Elizabeth Hubbard are feeling somewhat better.
Ann Putnam is still tormented, though, this time by the specters of a woman and a little girl. Ann doesn’t know who the woman is, but she recognizes the girl: It’s the beggar Sarah Good’s 4-year-old daughter, Dorcas. Sarah has her baby in jail with her, but has left Dorcas behind in the care of her hapless father.
Can it be? Is it possible for a small child to be a witch? If any child could be, it would be Dorcas. In the best of times Dorcas is a wild child, dirty, disheveled, and often hungry. Now, though, with her mother gone, the little girl is frightened and furious, and her specter bites, pinches, and chokes Ann in revenge.
Meanwhile the magistrates are interviewing the three imprisoned witches at the jail. It doesn’t matter that the two Sarahs have denied being in league with the Devil. The magistrates know they’re guilty, and they must confess.
The beggar Sarah Good has been brought back to Salem, and now she’s twisted at an awkward angle, nursing her baby in one arm. The other is bruised and swollen from leaping off the constable’s horse, and she holds it close, as if it’s in an imaginary sling. In another corner of the jail cell, the sickly Sarah Osborne is sleeping in dirty straw, breathing shallowly. The cruel magistrate John Hathorne prods her with his foot until she rolls over to look at him.
“What promise have you made to the Devil?” He looks back and forth to each of them. None, they both say at the same time. “Have you signed his book? Tell the truth!” The beggar just laughs and holds her baby closer. The sickly Sarah Osborne sighs. No, they say.
As for the slave Tituba, she’s been pacing in a small circle all day. She’s already confessed, but to prove her worth, she adds a new detail: when the previous minister’s wife and child died, it was because of witchcraft.
LEARN MORE: What was the jail in Salem like?
The Salem “Gaol” was only eight years old when the witchcraft trials began. The floor was dirt, and the windows had iron bars. But we don’t know much more about the building, except that it was described as “thirteen feet stud, and twenty feet square, accommodated with a yard.” It’s hard to translate that into today’s measurements. Was the facade of the building 20 square feet? Or did that refer to the length and width? Did it have two stories? What was the distance between studs? Was it built of stone or wood? We know it had a yard, but was it secured to the exterior of the building, or was it a central courtyard?
The most important thing we know is that the conditions were appalling. It was hot in the summer and cold in the winter, and smelled of dung, vomit, dead vermin, and unwashed bodies year-round. It was miserably overcrowded, and prisoners were infested with fleas and lice thanks to vermin, which spread “jail fever” (typhus). An earlier prisoner said he was “almost poisoned with the stink of my own dung and the stink of the prison having never so much as a minute’s time to take the air since I came into this dolesome place.”
WHO was Dorcas Good? Dorcas was the 4-year-old daughter of the beggar Sarah Good. Dorcas was accused of witchcraft, like her mother, and confessed that her mother had given her a little snake that sucked on her finger. The magistrates took this to mean she had a “familiar” and was, therefore, guilty. Dorcas stayed in prison for eight months and was emotionally damaged for the rest of her life.
Today in Salem: the village has turned out in full force to goggle at the slave Tituba, sickly Sarah Osborne, and the beggar Sarah Good, clustered in the middle of the meeting house. The tavern owner’s wife has already examined the accused women for witch’s marks, but hasn’t found any. Now it’s the judges’ turn to look for evidence.
When they’re not staring at the accused witches, the crowd is gaping at the four afflicted girls. Little Betty Parris hides behind her tomboy cousin Abigail Williams, both of them breathing hard through tears. The girls’ leader Ann Putnam stands at the front of the group, gasping and wringing her hands. The servant Elizabeth Hubbard stands back, holding her neck with both hands and choking as if she’s being strangled.
The crowd quiets as the two magistrates intone the opening prayers. Then the Sheriff takes the slave Tituba and the sickly Sarah Osborne out, leaving the beggar Sarah Good behind, her baby in her arms, and her pipe clenched firmly between her teeth.
The aggressive magistrate John Hathorne attacks first. What evil spirit is Good familiar with? None! Have you made a contract with the Devil? No! Why do you hurt these children? I scorn it! The quieter magistrate Jonathan Corwin watches carefully as the girls insist that Sarah’s specter is lunging at them this very minute. But when her own husband tells the judges that she is an enemy to all good, it’s over. The magistrates send Sarah with her baby to stay with a relative, who is a constable and can keep her and her baby under lock and key.
When the sickly Sarah Osborne is ushered in she denies being a witch. But yes, she did have a nightmare once about a black Indian who grabbed her by the hair. And yes, she’d once heard a voice telling her not to go to church. The judges squint. Couldn’t the Devil be the nightmare Indian? And couldn’t the voice she was hearing actually be his? Unlike the beggar’s husband, Sarah Osborne’s husband testifies that she’s telling the truth. The judges aren’t sure, though, and releasing her is risky. So they send her to jail to wait for a trial.
The slave Tituba confronts the same questions and denies all evil-doing, but the judges’ eyes narrow when she pauses. Perhaps remembering yesterday’s beating, she changes course and spills out a partial confession. Actually she did see the Devil, she says in her exotic accent, and four witches, too. And yes, she admits that she agreed to join the witches, but then she changed her mind. And yes, she has hurt the children, but only because the Devil man threatened her.
Judge Hathorne leans in and begins rapid-firing questions. Who were the other witches? She doesn’t know two of them, but the other two are the beggar Sarah Good and the sickly Sarah Osborne. She pauses, and suddenly the details pour out. She’d seen them around a hog, a black dog, also a red cat and a black cat, plus a yellow bird, she says, with two imps warming themselves by the fire in the parsonage last night. She gives detailed accounts of the witches’ clothing and the Devil man’s appearance, and finally, in the face of the non-stop questions, closes her eyes and says she is suddenly blind, and then mute, and then chokes and gasps just like the afflicted girls. Then, recovering her voice, she says the specters of the two Sarahs are attacking her. Tituba has confessed, so the judges send her to jail to await trial and sentencing.
LEARN MORE: Is a magistrate the same thing as a judge? In a way, yes, but a magistrate is lower level, a lay judge who deals with minor offenses. They may also hold preliminary hearings for more serious offenses that will later go to trial.
In Salem, the magistrates were local politicians and/or respected merchants. They usually dealt with minor charges like drunkenness. For the Salem Witchcraft Trials, they held examinations, or hearings, for people accused of witchcraft to decide whether a more former trial should take place. If the magistrate decided there was enough evidence to suggest guilt, the accused person would go to jail until a grand jury could convene for a trial.
WHO was magistrate Jonathan Corwin? Jonathan Corwin — Age 51. Magistrate. Corwin was a wealthy merchant who was elected to the colonial assembly twice, and was an active magistrate of the local courts, hearing cases dealing with petty crimes and minor charges such as drunkenness and burglary. With his friend and fellow judge John hathore, he presided over many of the initial hearings for the witchcraft trials and was relentless in seeking confessions.
Corwin’s personal life was hardly peaceful. Four of his children had recently died when he called the first witchcraft hearing into order, and another had nearly drowned. One of his other children was said to have been afflicted by one of the accused women. Later his mother-in-law would be accused of witchcraft, though she was never arrested.
Corwin never expressed regret or remorse for his role in the trials, and died 26 years later a wealthy and respected man. His house is still standing and is known today as the Witch House. Case files: Jonathan Corwin
WHO was magistrate John Hathorne? Age 51. Magistrate. Hathorne began his business career as a bookkeeper, but quickly moved to land speculation. Eventually he acquired a ship, a wharf, and a liquor license, and made enough money to build a mansion in Salem Town, plus a warehouse near the wharf.
Hathorne had served the Salem community as a judge for about five years when the trials began. He was fierce in his questioning, always assuming the accused person was guilty and that the afflicted girls were truthful. It was a perfect example of “guilty until proven innocent.”
Hathorne was thought to be an aggressive and even cruel judge, and showed no introspection or remorse after the trials ended. Some of his descendants were ashamed of their connection to him, including his great-great-grandson Nathaniel Hawthorne, who added a W to his name before writing “House of the Seven Gables.” Case files: John Hathorne
Today in Salem: Rev Parris’s hands are red and swollen from beating his slave Tituba. Parris is done, done with waiting and praying. Little Betty and her cousin the tomboy Abigail are growing worse, not better, and now he’s beaten a confession out of Tituba. Yes. Yes, she’s a witch, she cries. Not just that, but so are the beggar Sarah Good and the sickly Saran Osborne, plus two other witches she doesn’t recognize.
Parris relays the confession to a church deacon, who enlists three other men to ride to town and file complaints against Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne. Warrants are immediately issued for their arrest, with orders to appear tomorrow morning for a hearing.
Tonight, according to the girls, the beggar Sarah Good’s specter torments the 17-year-old servant Elizabeth Hubbard. The specter of the sickly Sarah Osborne manifests as a human-headed bird and torments Betty, age 9, and Abigail, age 11. And the specters of Osborne and Tituba try to cut off 12-year-old Ann Putnam’s head.
LEARN MORE: How could Rev Parris beat his slave? Wasn’t slavery just during the Civil War?
No. The first enslaved Africans were brought to America more than 150 years before the witchcraft trials, and nearly 300 years before the U.S. Civil War.
The Massachusetts Body of Liberties of 1641 was the first legal code established in New England. It outlawed slavery but legalized the slave trade at the same time.
About 50 years before the trials, the Puritans outlawed slavery with two exceptions: prisoners of war (most often Native Americans), and strangers who were sold to them or sold themselves. So, ironically, the very law that outlawed slavery also legalized the slave trade between America, the West Indies, and Africa.
In Salem at the time, we know of at least five enslaved people: In the Parris household were Tituba and John Indian with their daughter Violet, who’s age and birthplace are unknown. Two other women, Mary Black and Candy, both named in the trials, were enslaved by other families.
While Rev Parris “owned” Tituba because of legal loopholes, beating her was immoral and outside the law. In fact, the Puritan minister Cotton Mather later promised that if owners mistreated their slaves, “the Sword of Justice” would sweep through the colony.
Today in Salem: Rev Parris thunders as if he’s behind the pulpit. Except he’s not behind the pulpit. He’s in his own kitchen, raging at Tituba, Betty, and Abigail and waving his fist in the air. You’ve opened the door to the Devil, he rages. You’ve used magic to counter-magic, and now God’s wrath will be unleashed!
Several other ministers are standing behind Rev Parris, holding their hats and looking first at Tituba, then at Betty and Abigail as the girls sob and contort their arms and legs into impossible positions. The girls have already choked out the story of the witch-cake, and now they gasp for breath, as if they’re being strangled. “It wasn’t us!” they cry. “It’s Tituba! She’s a witch!”
When Parris demands an explanation, Tituba looks at the floor and confesses to making the witch-cake. “But I am not a witch,” she says. Her owner in Barbados was a witch, she says. That’s where she’d learned how to use counter-magic. “But I am not the cause of evil. I am no witch.”
After yesterday’s visit from the doctor, Rev Parris had invited other ministers to see the girls for themselves and render their opinion. Now they’ve seen the full unraveling, and they step outside with Parris. They agree that the hand of Satan is on the children, but they still aren’t sure if it’s a witch that’s involved. “Be careful,” they say. “Don’t do anything. Just wait and see.”
LEARN MORE: What is counter-magic? Was it good or bad?
The Book of Magical Charms is a handwritten book from the 17th century. It contains charms for things like healing a toothache, recovering a lost voice, and talking to spirits.
Counter-magic can be thought of as “good magic,” or superstitious behavior that prevents or protects against evil. People today practice counter-magic without even realizing it. When you hang a dreamcatcher, throw salt over your shoulder, burn sage, or whisper to a child “sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite” — you’re keeping evil forces at bay with counter-magic.
In the 17th century, any kind of magic was demonic. That’s what the Puritan ministers believed anyway. Lay people weren’t so sure. In the 20 years before the trials in Salem, witchcraft cases were usually dismissed by the courts for lack of evidence. This left people feeling defenseless against people they knew were witches. Something had to be done, even if it was just to protect themselves. Witch bottles were filled with urine, nails, wine, or other objects and hidden under hearths. Poppets were tucked under floorboards. Horseshoes were nailed to walls.
Those objects are sometimes uncovered in today’s archaeological digs, and can be surprisingly similar to the objects we use today – more than 300 years later.
Today in Salem: Betty and Abigail are huddling in a corner in a wild panic, gasping and wheezing and unable to speak. The stinking gum has joined the long list of herbs, seeds, roots, and all manner of strange substances that have made no difference whatsoever in the girls’ condition. Even prayer, constant prayer, hasn’t helped.
Rev Parris and his wife are at their wits’ end, and summon the only village doctor. He’s 78, and his horse walks almost as gingerly as he does. His great-niece Elizabeth Hubbard follows on her own horse and carries her uncle’s box, as far behind as is acceptable. She’s 17 and has been living with him as a servant for quite some time. He and his wife are amiable enough, and they treat Elizabeth well, but she’s a teenage girl after all, and always hungry to socialize with other girls.
The parsonage is cold, but the doctor and Elizabeth hardly notice as they turn in circles of their own, watching the spinning and convulsing girls. He grabs their arms and stumbles a little, looking into their eyes as much as he can until he proclaims what the neighbors have been whispering for weeks: The girls are under an evil hand. But why?
LEARN MORE: What were Puritan doctors like?
The Puritans believed that all things were from God: good things like bountiful crops and summer rain, and bad things like disease and affliction. When bad things happened, it wasn’t because the person was sick. It was because they’d sinned and God was displeased. So, while a doctor tried to diagnose illness, he was also asked to find and explain the sin behind the affliction.
This put doctors almost on par with ministers, and their opinions were greatly respected. In fact, sometimes they were the ministers. This could explain why doctors were so poorly trained in medical practices. There were no medical schools or programs in America. Instead, doctors practiced what they knew from British medicine, which was usually passed down through the decades and had become obsolete years before.
That said, it’s likely that the doctor in Salem had at least some medical training, because he was actually called “doctor” — a title used only for the educated — and used “feseke” (phisic, or medicine). If a person’s illness exhausted all of a doctor’s knowledge, as it did with Betty and Abigail, the sick person was sometimes said to be afflicted by an evil source.
WHO was Elizabeth Hubbard?
Elizabeth Hubbard’s mark
Elizabeth lived as a servant with her great-uncle, Dr. William Griggs. She had a reputation for lying, having a strong imagination, and sometimes denied the Sabbath day.
Like many of the other young women who were servants, Elizabeth’s prospects were uncertain at best, or even non-existent. She was probably an orphan, with no physical or emotional support from direct family members. And she was a servant, with no dowry or connections.
By the end of the trial Elizabeth had testified against 32 people, 17 of whom were arrested, 13 of them hanged, and 2 who died in jail.
History isn’t clear about what happened to Elizabeth after the trials. Records exists for a woman named Elizabeth Hibbert, who married a John Bennett and had four children. But it isn’t known whether this was the same Elizabeth Hubbard. Case files: Elizabeth Hubbard
Today in Salem: Rev Samuel Parris’s wife is also wrinkling her nose and breathing shallowly, trying not to inhale the stench of stinking gum. She’s tried remedy after remedy for 2 months now, trying to help her 9-year-old daughter Betty, but nothing is working. And it’s not just Betty: It’s also her 11-year-old niece Abigail Williams, who’s been living with the family since she’d lost her own parents. The girls were practically sisters.
Betty wails in the next room, and a thud quickly follows. Her crying barely stops, though, and now Abigail joins in. For weeks they’ve been sobbing, moaning, throwing things, crouching under chairs, fainting, and gasping. At times they panic so severely that they cannot breathe, and Abigail has complained constantly of a severe headache. No amount of prayer has helped, though. In fact, praying only seems to make it worse. Could it be something evil?
Today Mrs. Parris has reached the end of her list, and is mixing wine with stinking gum. Betty and Abigail’s eyes water as they drink the foul-smelling concoction, which is supposed to be as powerful as it is obnoxious. But the stench makes them choke until they gasp and fall on the floor as if they are dying.
LEARN MORE: What medicinal herbs were used as remedies for witchcraft?
Like other women of the time, Mrs. Parris would have had a “kitchen garden” that included medicinal herbs, plants, and roots. But the commonly known remedies against evil were more exotic than she would have had at hand. History doesn’t tell us what remedies she tried: only that she’d used several, and none had worked.
Asafetida soaked in wine, as described here, would have been easy to find, and was also known to counteract the “foul vapors of the uterus.” Folklore also recommended soot or blood mixed with hartshorn (the ground up antler from a deer), blood from a male cat’s ear, dewdrops refined into dust, and amber soaked in castor oil.
Parsnip seeds soaked in wine were also thought to be among the most powerful elixirs, but Mrs. Parris would have had a great deal of trouble finding them. Parsnips were easily acquired, but to produce seed they needed to stay in the ground, unharvested for a full season. Food was too precious to let it go to seed, so it’s unlikely she tried them.
WHO was Betty Parris?
Betty was the 9-year-old daughter of Reverend Samuel Parris. She and her cousin Abigail Williams, who lived with the Parris family, were the first girls to suffer from strange fits and afflictions. Betty was the youngest of the afflicted girls and among those who accused the first three suspects. As the trials began to pick up steam, Reverend Parris grew alarmed and sent her to live with his cousin in Boston.
Betty suffered occasional fits at her new home, but was cared for and went on to lead a healthy and happy childhood. She married and had four children, two of whom she named after her siblings, and lived to the old age of 77. Case files: Betty Parris
WHO was Abigail Williams?
Abigail Williams’ mark
Abigail was 11 and lived with her uncle, the Reverend Samuel Parris. History doesn’t tell us, though, who her parents were or how she came to live with the Parris family.
Abigail and her cousin Betty Parris were the first girls to suffer afflictions. Ultimately Abigail testified in 7 cases and was involved in up to 17 of the capital cases.
Abigail’s later life is also a mystery, as she disappears from the records once the trials were over. Case files: Abigail Williams
