Six Women of Salem

by Marilynne K. Roach

Susanna Sheldon declared that Ireson tried to rip out her throat right there in court for refusing to sign the Devil’s book. Goody Ireson stared fixedly at nothing—perhaps in shock, perhaps trying not to look at any of the accusers directly and set off more convulsions. She was looking at the Devil, some of them cried, who was telling her not to confess. The justices and Goody Ireson’s own uncle Goodman Fuller “urged her to confess & breake the snare of the devill.” She replied that she did not know that she was in it and asked whether “she might be a witch & not know it.” The justices said no, she could not. At that she said, the scribe noted, “she could not confess till she had more light.”

  Goody Ireson was held for trial.

  Evidently other specters attacked Mary Warren and Susanna Sheldon that morning, for Gedney, Hathorne, and Corwin issued an arrest warrant for Mistress Ann Dolliver of Gloucester for tormenting them. Constable Peter Osgood brought her before the justices in short order, for the woman, deserted by her husband, was living in Salem with her father, Reverend John Higginson. Her brother John Jr. was a recently appointed magistrate, but he did not preside today.

  “[W]here be my accusers,” she demanded. “I am not willing to accuse my selfe.” Despite her status and local connections, Ann Dolliver was known to be, as her own father had said, “by overbearing melancholy crazed in her understanding.” She was at frequent loggerheads with her stepmother and known to ramble about alone over the countryside, staying away at night who knew where. The afflicted said she visited Goodwife Nurse at her home. Mrs. Dolliver explained that she had been there only once when she mistook her way, walking home the long way round from Beverly “becaus she would not goe over with the ferry man”—that “ugly fellow.”

  Asked if she had seen the Devil, she snapped if the Devil took the shape of a man as reported, “she knew not a spirit from a man in the night,” and this left the court to wonder what she did refer to. Mary Warren and some of the others allowed that the defendant was the same woman who had hurt them, for even though she was dressed differently, her face was the same. They also saw the ghost of a dead child form in the courtroom and heard it crying for vengeance because Dolliver, they said, had pressed the life from its body. Now the little victim accused her of its murder and accused her also of trying to kill her own father.

  Mrs. Dolliver denied trying to hurt anyone with witchcraft, while the afflicted said she kept “poppits in a secret place that she afflicted with.” Eventually she admitted that fourteen years before she had made one or two wax poppets “becaus she thought she was bewitched & she had read in a book that told her that tha[t] was the way to afflict them that had afflicted her.” (She, like Goody Sibley, had resorted to countermagic.)

  But Mrs. Dolliver would not confess.

  On the following day, Tuesday, June 7, Mary Warren witnessed against Job Tookey before Justices Gedney, Hathorne, and Corwin while merchant William Murray took notes.

  “Did you not say the other day that yow saw the Devil?” the justices asked.

  Tookey answered, “I knew not then what I said.”

  As before, according to the afflicted, the room crowded with the shifting forms of ghosts: three men, three women, and two children, all murdered by the defendant’s image magic. Gamaliel Hawkins, said Mary, died in Barbados when Tookey stabbed a pin through a poppet’s heart. Andrew Woodbury, Betty Hewes—the names of his murder victims came pouring out. As the ghost of John Trask’s dead child appeared under the magistrates’ table, wailing for vengeance, specters of Tookey and a Mr. John Busse attacked Mary. Busse had been reported before at the great witch meeting in Parris’s pasture. The real Busse was a sometime preacher and sometime physician who had worked in Wells and Oyster River before those towns were attacked. He had to remove to Boston and was, moreover, a son-in-law of Mary Bradbury, the Salisbury woman that Ann Putnam’s family so mistrusted.

  Mary Walcott, Susanna Sheldon, and Elizabeth Booth Jr. saw the ghosts as well, and all had to receive Tookey’s touch to recover from their convulsions.

  The ghosts’ testimony bore hard against him, so Tookey remained in jail.

  Elizabeth Booth Jr. was a new afflicted witness, called “junior” because, already with child and hastily married at sixteen to George Booth, she was younger than her eighteen-year-old sister-in-law Elizabeth Booth, “singlewoman.” She was also a sister of the afflicted Rebecca Wilkins and the late Daniel Wilkins.

  On the following day, June 8, Lieutenant Governor and Chief Justice William Stoughton signed the death warrant for Bridget Bishop and sent it on to Salem, where it would have arrived by the June 9 at the latest.

  Massachusetts laws would remain in force until the legislature rewrote them in accordance with British laws—or at least those not “repugnant” to British law, which would only attract more unwelcome attention and interference. Witchcraft was definitely illegal in England—a capital crime—and something had to be done about the overcrowded jails.

  Sheriff George Corwin and the town fathers, knowing there would be executions, would have decided on a site for the hangings. In the past all executions took place in Boston, as all capital crimes were tried there before the Governor’s Assistants in their capacity of an upper court. As the unprecedented number of witch suspects had made holding the trials in the Essex County seat of Salem more practical, the executions would take place there as well.

  The exact site is not specified in the remaining papers. Contemporary references place it at a distance from the jail and on a hill. The height outside the town center where the road bent north to Salem Village and skirted the hill to head for Boston became known as Gallows Hill. There, on town-owned common pasture, open and elevated enough to be seen from the main road as an example to would-be malefactors, the authorities either built a gallows or used an existing tree. An oak with strong horizontal branches would be ideal.

  ____________________

  Rebecca Nurse’s family persist on her behalf, visit her in the Salem jail, and seek neighbors willing to speak a good word about her character. The court never should have indicted her, Francis insists, not on that evidence. But an indictment is not proof, the family remind themselves, and it is certainly not a verdict.

  Two of Rebecca’s daughters, Goodwives Rebecca Preston and Mary Tarbell, are willing to explain their mother’s “Infirmity of body” that the women on the search committee thought was suspicious.

  Francis and their children know that Rebecca has more friends than does the Bishop woman—a better reputation and a better chance for the truth to be heard. When they visit her in the jail, so crowded now and so squalid in the summer heat, they offer hope—and avoid catching Bridget Bishop’s eye.

  ( 10 )

  June 10 to 30, 1692

  Bridget Bishop has passed the days after her trial in a fog of fear and fury. Then the official word arrived: tomorrow, they told her, tomorrow she would hang. The order had arrived from Boston, and everything was ready. If she wished to settle her soul, this was the time to do it.

  She does not sleep the night before during the long hours that yet pass more swiftly than she realizes.

  Just hearing the foreman’s verdict of guilty had made her dizzy, as though the courtroom suddenly became unreal. None of this had anything to do with her, yet she understood the words, knew what they meant, and what they would mean soon enough.

  All those neighbors and their stupid fears, so-called witnesses coming out of the woodwork, remembering old slights, magnifying their own unfounded suppositions. Bridget knows she is no witch, but she is helpless to prove it.

  Some of the other prisoners try to console her. Others act afraid to be near her, as if bad luck would rub off.

  The door opens and the guards come for her. Bridget straightens up, takes a last look at the wretched room and the other prisoners—all eyes on her once again—and walks toward the door.

  In the prison yard, out in the fresh air and a breeze from the sea, they unlock and remove her shackles. The unaccustomed
lightness feels wonderful, even if it means a step closer to the gallows. The men grasp her elbows and heft her up into a cart, facing her backward. The sheriff—too young for the job, she thinks—is mounted. Lesser officers on foot carry their black staffs of office. They try to look formal and official, but none of them has done this before and some of them look nervous. I am going to die, thinks Bridget, and they look nervous.

  Hands tied, she braces herself against the side of the cart, standing so the crowd can see her, can be sure she is gotten rid of. The gate swings open and there are people already swarming the street for a look at her, a glimpse of the witch they fear, staring. The horse starts forward and the cart creaks into motion as the little procession moves from the prison yard into the street. A man with a staff walks ahead to clear the way. Doesn’t anyone work, have anything better to do than loiter about to watch her misery? The walking guards, the sheriff on horseback, then onlookers falling in to make a growing tail of gawkers.

  Bridget scans the crowd for a friendly face, a sympathetic face, but she cannot find any. Her associates have been arrested also, but where is that husband of hers? She does not want her child to see her like this, but she longs for one last look at her daughter, her granddaughter. Will their kinship be held against them? What sort of future does the child face now, in the eyes of the neighbors as a witch’s brat?

  The line of march turns into the main street and proceeds slowly the length of the town, southwest down the peninsula, past the meeting house (still under repair but no crashing beams this time), past the town pump, past the homes of her judges Hathorne and Corwin—both men in Boston now with the legislature. Facing backward, she sees the town recede away from her. A familiar couple stand next to their house then join the following crowd. They look satisfied, pleased at what they at least consider justice done. Maule—that was the name—another family with a dead child they blame on her. What of her own dead children? Did they think they were the only family to suffer such a loss? She thinks of her granddaughter again and hopes the child will not see any of what is happening, what is about to happen.

  Now and then sharper shrieks pierce the jostle and murmur of the crowd—the afflicted girls are nearby. Naturally they would not miss the chance to see their handiwork.

  The cart lurches right (Bridget’s left) and begins to head downhill. How far are they taking me? she wonders. All the staring eyes, jeering mouths—she wishes it would end yet knows that her life will end first. The salt-and-sulfur reek of low tide grows stronger as they head toward the causeway over the bend in the North River, where a stream flowing down the steep hill before them cuts a thin channel of fresh water into the retreating salt tide and becomes lost in the river and the harbor and then the sea beyond. The causeway crosses the marshy swampy ground to midstream, then the cart rumbles over a plank bridge and the road rises again. They had taken her this way before for the hearing in the Village, but this time, with officers shouting orders and the cart horse straining, the procession turns up a path into the common pasture and onto a low ledge above the tidal inlet. The hangman waits there under a tree with his ropes.

  The men get her down from the cart and up onto the rungs of the ladder leaning against the tree. She struggles not to trip on her petticoats. From up those few steps she looks over the sea of faces, the shifting mass of the curious, the excited, the fearful, the vengeful. Beyond them, below the level of the ledge they stand on, the sun glitters on the falling tide, sparkles off the restless, scavenging crabs scouring the mud flats, reflects from the white wings of gulls diving for those crabs, highlights the roofs of the town beyond, and blazes down from the midday, midsummer sky.

  Someone steadies her on the ladder while one of the other men ties a cord around her legs, compressing her skirts close. Modesty, she thinks. No show here for the lecherous, but no kicking either.

  The sheriff is speaking, reading the death warrant that makes what he is about to order legal. The crowd quiets for that:

  Whereas Bridgett Bishop alias Oliver the wife of Edward Bishop of Salem . . . at a speciall Court of Oyer and Terminer . . . before William Stoughton Esqr. and his Associates Justices of the said Court was Indicted and arraigned upon five severall Indictments for using, practicing, and exercising . . certain acts of Witchcraft in and upon the bodies of Abigail Williams, Ann Putnam Jun., Mercy Lewis, Mary Walcott and Elizabeth Hubbard of Salem Village, singlewomen, whereby their bodies were hurt, afflicted pined, consumed, wasted and tormented . . .

  What utter nonsense, Bridget thinks. Those girls are here now and looking anything but wasted and consumed.

  “In the Name of their Majesties William and Mary now King & Queen over England,” the sheriff continues, reading through the order for him to proceed on this day, “between the hours of eight and twelve[ to] safely conduct the said Bridget Bishop . . . from their Majesties’ Gaol in Salem aforesaid to the place of Execution and there cause her to be hanged by the neck until she be dead.”

  Then someone else was talking, one of the ministers—Hale from Beverly, who had walked out with the crowd—praying for her soul. The ministers look like crows to her, the lot of them.

  A few of the other onlookers seem disgusted by the offered prayer. She recognizes Maule, the trouble-making Quaker, who blames her for his brat’s death. He smirks and rolls his eyes at the minister’s prayer. Is Shattuck here as well to gloat? Strangled shouts and shrieks punctuate the prayer from one side, where the so-called afflicted huddle together: two young women, the Putnam girl, and that Bibber woman, who is old enough to know better. As Bridget turns to see, one is on the ground rolling in the dust. “Jacobs!” she hears the girl yelp. It’s old Jacobs, clubbing her with one of his walking sticks. The Devil, the other afflicted explain, is present to support old Jacobs’s specter. It must be as arthritic as Jacobs’s body. Will they never quit their nonsense? she wonders. The prayer ends.

  And then something rough drags over her head—the noose. The hangman is on a ladder beside hers. He pulls the rope firmly through the knot and secures it snugly behind her neck. She feels a cold sweat that is more than the slight sea breeze and hears the blood sing in her ears as she tamps down rising panic—she will not give her persecutors the satisfaction. She will not plead or cry or act the fool. She looks out over the crowd toward the sea, hears the gulls cry as the people hush in anticipation, sees a flash of white wings as the distant birds wheel.

  And then the bag comes down over her face, blots out the world beyond, stifling her breath in the heat. Slight gleams of daylight glare through the rough weave of the sack, which stinks of a barn. A man’s voice barks an order, and before she can figure what he just said, her feet jerk out from under her and a terrible pressure slams into her throat and the base of her skull.

  And then there is no support, nothing to hold onto or stand on. She strains against the cords that hold her hands useless, tries to kick her feet to find purchase, but there is nothing. Her head feels as if it will explode, and the little light though the sack darkens as darkness rushes toward her, into her. She is vaguely aware she is soiling herself, but pain and desperation overmatches embarrassment or shame. No, she thinks, No. Her consciousness is one great shout of NO.

  And then, . . . and then . . .

  ____________________

  And beyond that is only speculation.

  Hangmen then still used a slipknot rather than the later, more elaborate “hangman’s knot.” A quick snap of the neck was rare, so death came by a slower strangulation.

  Below the gallows, meanwhile, Thomas Maule directed loud comments at Reverend John Hale, who had prayed for Bridget’s soul. Maule declared that if anyone had asked him to pray for Bishop, he certainly would not pray for her—not for a witch, a malefactor who had forsaken God to join the Devil and thus committed the unforgivable sin. That was the sin that scripture said we must not pray for. Besides, the woman had killed one of his children with her magic, and he could have testified to that if he had desired. (His w
ife had testified.) Most of the prisoners were witches as well, Maule continued. (To him, anyone not a Quaker was in the Devil’s pocket.)

  When the work was finished Deputy Sheriff George Herrick wrote an account at the end of the warrant that Sheriff Corwin then signed, ready to submit to the court:

  June 10th 1692

  According to the Within Written precept I have taken the body of the within named Bridget Bishop out of their Majesties’ Goale in Salem and Safely conveyed her to the place provided for her Execution and Caused the said Bridget to be hanged by the neck until she was dead and buried in the place all which was according to the time Within Required and So I make Return by me

  George Corwin Sheriff

  The crossed out phrase may indicate someone else claimed the body, although there is no written record of that. Or perhaps, as Herrick may have written more than the original order had described, he then omitted the part about burial to let the phrasing of the return match the phrasing of the warrant. The custom, after all, was to leave felons’ bodies hanging for a time as a warning and then bury them near the gallows they had died on. How long Bridget’s body was left hanging is not known.

  On June 13 word reached Boston that French and Indian forces had attacked Wells, Maine, Reverend Burroughs’s town, on June 10 (the day of Bridget’s execution). Governor Phips ordered a detachment of the Essex County regiment to march north and placed an embargo on all Massachusetts ports for as long as French ships prowled the coast. Physical as well as the spectral woes besieged New England.

  That the current methods of the witch trials might at least be aggravating the region’s trouble must have crossed some people’s minds—though presumably not Stoughton’s. Governor Phips had requested advice from the Boston-area ministers on how to deal with the spiritual world, and the answer, largely composed by Reverend Cotton Mather, was submitted Wednesday, June 15, the same day the legislature determined that while they were revising their code of Massachusetts laws all the old laws not in contradiction to the new charter or “repugnant” to the laws of England would remain in force.