Six Women of Salem

by Marilynne K. Roach

  Consequently, Goodwives Margaret Prince and Elizabeth Dicer were in Salem on Monday to face the magistrates and the throng of convulsing witnesses. These included Mary Warren, Elizabeth Hubbard (struck dumb as the Prince woman’s specter had foretold back in Gloucester), sisters Elizabeth and Alice Booth with their sister-in-law Elizabeth Booth (now four months gone with child two months after she had married their brother George), and several confessors from Andover, including Mary Lacey Jr., some of confessor Mary Bridges’s daughters, and Samuel Wardwell.

  Thirteen years earlier Elizabeth Dicer, when she lived in Salem, called Mary English’s mother “a black-mouthed witch and a thief” and been fined for the slander. Now she was the suspected witch. Thus, accusing one’s neighbor did not make one immune to other neighbors’ suspicions.

  When Goodwife Mary Taylor was arrested with other Reading women on the Sabbath, accused mainly by her neighbor, the widowed Mrs. Mary Marshall, Goody Taylor commented, “who ever lived to se it would finde Mrs Marshals cace like Mary Warins.” Evidently, Mary’s attempt to define her fits as distractions was fairly well known, the news being common knowledge in Reading, which was about twelve miles west of Salem. “There was a hott pott now,” Goody Taylor continued, “ & a hottr pott preparing for her here after.”

  Now, in court, Mary Warren fell at Goody Taylor’s glance and required the suspect’s touch to revive. Warren had to have heard the statement repeated and heard the defendant’s explanation that “by the hotter pott,” she meant “that if Mrs Marshall wronged her hell would be prepared for her”—another reminder of what happened to liars and false witnesses.

  Samuel Wardwell’s brother-in-law William Hooper had died August 8, not long after quarreling with Goody Taylor. Hooper’s house burned shortly afterward, with the body inside prior to the funeral. Wardwell blamed Taylor for causing both the death and the fire, badgering her in court as he stood among the afflicted witnesses—though he himself was not afflicted—and briefly assuming the role of hectoring magistrate. (British courtroom procedure at that time allowed more audience participation than would later be thought wise.) Goody Taylor, like so many from Andover, confessed.

  Wardwell was equally aggressive against two other Reading women accused of causing Hooper’s death: Goodwives Jane Lilly and Mary Coleson. According to Mary Warren, Goody Lilly sometimes visited the Procter’s house—fellow witches all—but Lilly “denyed that ever she had had any conferrance with Procter or his wife” or had anything to do with Hooper’s death. Despite the convulsing afflicted all about her, neighbors’ accusations, and Wardwell’s bullying, Jane Lilly declared that “if she confessed any thing of this she shoud deny the truth & wrong her own soul.” By now fewer of the accused had the fortitude to stand firm in their own innocence.

  Dorcas Hoar, a widow from Beverly whose family had pilfered from their neighbors, including Reverend Hale, for years, was tried and found guilty in Salem on Tuesday, September 6. The trial of Ann Pudeator, the grand jury having indicted her for afflicting Mary Warren during the July hearing, began the same day around noon—the witnesses were summoned for twelve o’clock—and continued into the following day.

  Alice Parker, already questioned at her May 12 hearing, was examined anew late on September 6. (The reason for this is not at all clear, as she had already been jailed. Perhaps, like Pudeator, she may have been released and arrested a second time, as Mary Esty certainly had been. Such a development would have stunned Mary Warren.)

  Parker’s specter was also reportedly active, for Annie Putnam would testify the following day that Parker’s specter hurt Mary Warren and the rest of the afflicted “last night in the Court.” Sarah Bibber, Mary Walcott, and Elizabeth Hubbard were present as well, choked and squeezed by that spirit. But Mary Warren was its particular victim, and Goody Bibber said that she saw Mary struggle as Parker’s vengeful specter “did choke sdd Warin the last night & griped her abo[u]t the waste.”

  Fellow confessors Sarah Churchill and Abigail Hobbs also said they witnessed this attack. Abigail added that “she has seen. Alice Parker afflict Mary Warin when sd Warin was at prison. [A]lso I have seen her afflict An Putnam by choking of them.”

  Thomas Putnam wrote a statement for himself and William Murray, who also took occasional notes for the court, that they had witnessed the torments of Mary Warren, Mary Walcott, and others on September 6 during Alice Parker’s examination and that the men believed that the defendant really did strike the afflicted with her glance and recover them by her touch on that occasion and “has often hurt the above said parsons by acts of wicthcraf.”

  When the grand jury indicted Alice Parker on September 7 for tormenting Mary Walcott and Mary Warren, the latest spectral attacks counted for more than the similar assaults in May, so the clerk adjusted the date on the documents from May 12 to September 6:

  The Juriors for our Sovr Lord and Lady the King and Queen doe p[re]sent That Allice Parker Wife of John Parker of Salem In the County of Essex aforsaid ffisherman, the Twelfth sixt day of May September . . . [has practiced] Certaine detestable Arts called Witchcraft and Sorceries Wickedly Mallitiously & felloniously . . . against one Mary Warren of Salem Aforesaid Single Woman by which said Wicked Acts the said Mary Warren . . . was and is Tortured Aflicted Consumed Wasted Pined and Tormented.

  In June, when the jury of matrons examined several of the accused women for witch-marks, they reported nothing unusual on Goody Parker. Now, three months later, several people had their suspicions about her. John Westgate had sworn a statement before John Hathorne on June 2 and swore to it again before the grand jury September 7. According to Westgate Goody Parker had stormed into Samuel Beadle’s tavern looking for her husband one evening eight years earlier.

  [she] scolded att and called her husband all to nought, whereupon I . . . tooke her husbands part telling of her itt was an unbeseeming thing for her to come after him to the taverne and raile after thatt rate wth thatt she came up to me and call’d me rogue and bid me mind my owne busines and told me I had better have said nothing.

  On his way home that night a fierce black hog pursued him, frightening even his dog, (yet never caught Westgate for all that he had to crawl along a fence-line to get his bearings). Because of his dog’s panicked reaction, the hog, he supposed, “was Either the Divell or some Evell thing not a Reall hog”—either Goody Parker in spectral disguise or some imp she had sent.

  John Bullock and Martha Dutch testified about the January incident, when Goody Parker was found unconscious, seemingly dead in the snow. She never responded while Bullock carried her home over his shoulder, not even when he dropped her, and not while the neighbors helped put her to bed. But afterward, said Bullock, “She rises up & laughs in o[u]r faces.” Moreover, this wasn’t the only time she was discovered in this condition. Even though such spells were known to have natural causes, hers now seemed all the more suspicious under the circumstances.

  Widow Martha Dutch remarked on Goody Parker’s gloomy foreknowledge of who would or would not survive sea voyages. Two years previously, as they had watched a returning vessel tack into Salem Harbor, Goody Dutch had remarked, “[Wha]t a great mercy itt was for to see Them Come home well and Through mercy . . . my husband had gone & Came home well many Times & I . . . did hope he would Come whome This voyage well alls[o].”

  To which Goody Parker answered, “[N]o Never more in This world.”

  And that was exactly what happened, Goody Dutch testified, “for he died abroad as I sertinly heare.”

  Quaker Samuel Shattuck, who had already testified against Bridget Bishop for bewitching his son, blamed Alice Parker for worsening the boy’s condition back in 1684:

  [Young Sam, already] Supposed to have bin under an ill hand for Severall years before was taken in a Strange & unuceall [i.e., unusual] maner as if his vitalls would have broak out his breast boane drawn up to gather to the uper part of his brest his neck & Eys drawne Soe much aside as if they would never Come to right againe he lay in So Stran
ge a maner tht the Docter & others did beleive he was bewitched.

  This happened shortly after Goody Parker had visited, feigning concern.

  Shattuck had already tried folk magic against Bridget Bishop—with no reproach from the magistrates that this was imprudent—and he did so again against Alice Parker. Actually, he said, it was “some of the visitors” who cut a lock of the boy’s hair to boil (in order to harm the witch who sent the pain), but this made the child shriek. They next put the hair in a skillet over the fire, but as soon as their backs were turned the hair was thrown out into the empty room. So they put it to boil again, and Goody Parker appeared at the door as if drawn to the place. She had a thin story about coming to sell some chickens, but that tale unraveled over the next few days into contradictions, evasions, and lies.

  Finally, Goody Parker and her husband both went to Shattuck’s house, where she demanded to know if he had accused her of bewitching his child. “I told her I did belive She had.”

  “[Y]ow are a wicked man,” she retorted. “The lord avenge me of you. The lord bring vengance upon you for this wrong.”

  Then she stormed into the sickroom and shouted at Shattuck’s wife, Naomi, calling her “a wicked woman” for saying such things about her. “I hope I Shall See the downfall of you,” she shouted before she left “in a great anger.”

  In court, when not convulsing, Mary Warren had a great deal to say about the defendant.

  Mary Warren upon oath affirms to the Jury of Inquest that she hath seen Alice Parker afflict Mary Walcot, Elizabeth Hubbard, Ann Putnam, & Goodwife Vibber the last night by choking them & squeezing them. Said Parker has afflicted me, has brought me the book to sign to. She brought me a poppit & a needle & threatened to stab me if I would not stick the needle into the poppit. & she did run the needle a little way into me. Said Parker said she was a cause of the death of Thomas Wastgate [John Westgate’s brother] and crew that was foundered in the sea. She was also a cause of the death of Goodwife Ormes her son that was drowned before their door and was a cause of the death of John Serlese his Barbadian boy. She was the cause also of Michael Chapman’s Death in Boston Harbour. she also told me she bewiched my mother & was a caus of her death also that she bewiched my sister Eliz tht is both deaf & dumb.

  The grand jury pronounced Parker’s indictment billa vera (a true bill), a case with enough evidence to proceeded to a jury trial before the Court of Oyer and Terminer.

  Ann Pudeator, for tormenting Mary Warren on July 2, was likewise held.

  On September 8 William Procter, his father recently hanged as a witch and his mother waiting under a death sentence, faced the grand jury, charged with sending spectral torments against Elizabeth Hubbard and Mary Warren during his May 31 hearing back in Salem Village. Most of his paperwork is lost, so precisely what evidence Anthony Checkley presented to the grand jurors is a matter of guesswork, but something was different about his case, for this time the grand jury pronounced both indictments ignoramus. William would not be tried as a witch. Once he paid his jail bill—if he could—he would be free to go home.

  His mother, if she heard the news in time, would have been relieved that at least her son was spared. But the result must have shaken Mary Warren and Elizabeth Hubbard, staggered that the court doubted their testimony. If there were doubt here, what else would be called into question? If the authorities would not believe their assertions, what then? William’s specter attacked the girls afresh, they said, and would continue to do so in the ensuing days. What else could they expect from the son of two convicted witches?

  The court tried Rebecca Nurse’s sister Mary Esty and Mary Bradbury on September 9, and both, to Ann Putnam’s relief, were found guilty despite their supporters. Mary Esty and her sister Sarah Cloyce had petitioned the court to allow witnesses to testify on oath on their behalf—Reverend Joseph Capen of Topsfield for one. But the only surviving record in the sisters’ favor is a statement from prison keeper John Arnold and his wife that while the two women were jailed in Boston “thare daportmont wose varey s[o]bere and civell.”

  Sarah Cloyce was supposed to come before the grand jury on this same day, but she did not. Sarah’s widowed sister-in-law Mary Towne and her four children had been summoned to testify but tried to avoid appearing. On September 7 Mary Towne wrote,

  [W]e are in a straing Condicion and most of us can scars git [out] of our beads we are so wake and not abell to Ried at all as for my dafter Rebaka she hath straing ffits somtimes she is knoked downe of a sodin and that espachaly If hur ant Easty be but named.

  Widow Towne evidently thought better of including the remark about her daughter’s fits at the sound of Aunt Esty’s name and drew a line through that phrase—but did not obliterate it. On the following day the court issued another order for Mary and Rebecca Towne to appear against Mary Esty on September 9, and on that day the niece Rebecca seemed to be tormented by Sarah Cloyce.

  Also on September 9 Giles Corey, the litigious and cantankerous farmer whose testimony helped condemn his wife and who now stood accused of the same crime, refused to cooperate with the court. He pleaded not guilty but would not consent to the trial, to speak the phrase that would allow it, partly from principle and partly, it is assumed, in an attempt to prevent property seizures. Even if he feared his land would be lost—and, in fact, no one’s land would be confiscated—everyone knew what had happened at the Procter farm and the English mansion. For now his stubbornness postponed his trial.

  Considering the expense of jail bills and the Procter family’s losses, William Procter probably never left jail after the grand jury dismissed his case. Now, facing John Hathorne and other local magistrates on September 17, he endured a second hearing for tormenting the usual afflicted victims, but Mary Warren and Elizabeth Hubbard especially.

  He denied the charge, but when he looked at Mary Warren, his family’s former servant, she collapsed as if struck. His touch restored her, allowing her to say, “that Wm Proctor had almost murdered her to death this day by pains in all her bones and Inwards also.” His specter, she added, also afflicted the others.

  All of the afflicted fell at his glance and revived at his reluctant touch: Mary Warren, Annie Putnam and Mary Walcott (“in dreadfull fitts”), Elizabeth Hubbard, sisters Elizabeth and Alice Booth, Sarah Churchill, and a new girl, Mary Pickworth. “Elizabeth Booth said she saw him twist and pinch poppets this very day,” whereas Hubbard and Walcott claimed that he made them promise not to tell the court what he was up to.

  Yet again William Procter was held for future trial.

  Giles Corey, even with friends trying to convince him that refusing to cooperate could be suicidal, continued to stand mute. After three refusals over as many days the court turned to a technique newly available to them from English law—pressing. He would be placed on his back under boards with heavy weights stacked on top until he either relented or was crushed. Giles still would not agree, and the torture was scheduled for September 19. If Massachusetts law had to conform to English law, then they would threaten the man with pressing to force him to plea.

  Mrs. Ann Putnam, who was growing close to her time, may have depended even more on Thomas and Annie for news from the courts. It would not do to risk the babe, now that it was so truly quickened, by such proximity to the evil of the Devil’s witches. Such baleful proximity could mark an infant even before birth. Day after day the courts questioned defendants, heard witnesses relate their testimony, marshaled evidence—much of that observed right before their eyes in the convulsions and pain of the bewitched. And day after day the defendants were found guilty, thus removing, in Ann’s mind, another enemy, another source of harm.

  Mary Esty, sister to Rebecca Nurse, had been found guilty, which was no surprise to Ann, who knew the authorities had located witch-marks on the woman, and was sentenced to hang. Goody Esty submitted a second petition to the court after the guilty verdict was pronounced:

  [B]eing condemned to die . . . [the woman had written, or had someone w
rite for her, and] knowing my own Innocencye Blised be the lord for it and seeing plainly the wiles and subtility of my accusers by my selfe can not but Judg charitably of others that are going the same way of my selfe if the Lord stepps not mightily in . . . I Petition to your honours not for my own life for I know I must die and my apointed time is sett but the Lord he knowes it is that if it be possible no more Innocentt blood may be shed which undoubtidly cannot be Avoydd In the way and course you goe in I Question not but your honours does to the uttmost of your Powers in the discovery and detecting of witchcraft and witches and would not be gulty of Innocent blood for the world but by my own Innocencye I know you are in the wrong way . . . I would humbly begg of you that your honours would be plesed to examine theis Aflicted Persons strictly and keepe them apart some time and likewise to try some of these confesing wichis I being confident there is severall of them has belyed themselve[s] and others as will appeare if not in this wo[l]rd I am sure in the world to come whither I am now agoing. [T]he Lord above who is the searcher of all heart[s] knowes that as I shall answer it att the Tribunall seat that I know not the least thinge of witchcraft therfore I cannot I dare not belye my own soule

  But neither the court—nor the Putnams—changed their minds.

  Mistress Mary Bradbury, a thorn to so many of the Carr family, was likewise found guilty and condemned September 9, the same day as Esty. “I am wholly inocent of any such wickedness,” she had declared. Over one hundred of her neighbors had signed a petition attesting to her good behavior, including Ann Putnam’s kin William and Elizabeth Carr, a circumstance that could only make Ann wonder how some people could be so deceived. But, as Ann saw it, the magistrates’ perception had weighed all that against the obvious evidence unfolding before their eyes in the sufferings of the afflicted, and the woman was condemned with the rest. Even more disconcerting to Ann would be the appalling news soon after that Mrs. Bradbury had disappeared from the jail.