Speaker 1: If what happened in the meeting house on the first
Speaker 1: day of examinations was an explosion, the after shock echoed
Speaker 1: far and wide. In fact, a number of reverberations can
Speaker 1: still be found in the pages of history. That evening,
Speaker 1: the three women were carted off to jail where they
Speaker 1: could be held for further questioning and an actual trial.
Speaker 1: Sarah Osburne and Tituba were taken to the Salem jail,
Speaker 1: while Sarah Good was transported to the nearby Ipswich Jail,
Speaker 1: where Constable Joseph Herrick, a relative of hers, could keep
Speaker 1: an eye on her. After the magistrates and accused left
Speaker 1: the meeting house, though, that's when the shock waves began
Speaker 1: to spread. The place had been packed. Some estimates placed
Speaker 1: the crowd at nearly six d people, more than the
Speaker 1: real population of Salem Village itself. Those people left for
Speaker 1: homes and taverns, taking the news of what they had
Speaker 1: witnessed out into the world, and news, as we all know,
Speaker 1: has a way of spreading like a wildfire. Some of
Speaker 1: them stayed behind, though a small group of Salem village
Speaker 1: men remained in the meeting house to discuss the matter
Speaker 1: in a more official capacity. Among them were two Putnam's,
Speaker 1: the uncle and cousin of Thomas Jr. Father of one
Speaker 1: of the afflicted, and they decided to send these two
Speaker 1: men south to Boston for help. The most significant gathering
Speaker 1: happened over at the home of Dr William Griggs. He
Speaker 1: was the closest thing the village had to a medical doctor,
Speaker 1: and was a good friend of the Reverend Samuel Paris.
Speaker 1: He was a devout Puritan, an educated man, and a
Speaker 1: rational thinker, but he also suspected something less natural was
Speaker 1: behind the events of the past few days. He and
Speaker 1: a number of neighbors huddled together that evening inside griggs
Speaker 1: house to discuss what they had learned. They arrived at
Speaker 1: the meeting house that day believing that there might be
Speaker 1: three witches in Salem Village, and left with news that
Speaker 1: there were in fact five of them. Three were in custody, sure,
Speaker 1: but there were still two at large, hiding in plain
Speaker 1: sight and continuing their dark, dangerous attacks. Those attacks were
Speaker 1: still hitting home too, quite literally. Living in the home
Speaker 1: of William Griggs was his niece, Elizabeth Hubbard, who was
Speaker 1: one of the four girls making all of the accusations.
Speaker 1: So while the gathering was mostly a moment for everyone
Speaker 1: to process and regroup. They were also watching over her,
Speaker 1: making sure the witches left her alone. When the attacks
Speaker 1: began again, there were fresh eyes packed inside the house
Speaker 1: to witness it. This time, Elizabeth began to cry out
Speaker 1: in pain. She claimed someone invisible was pinching and stabbing
Speaker 1: at her with the sharp object. Everyone could see it too.
Speaker 1: The girl was writhing in pain and flinching away from
Speaker 1: an unseen attacker. It must have been horrifying to watch.
Speaker 1: And then the girl froze and pointed toward the table
Speaker 1: everyone had gathered around. There, she shouted, there stands Sarah Good.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth described how the invisible witch was standing naked on
Speaker 1: the table. Her feet and legs were bare, as was
Speaker 1: her chest. Oh, nasty slut, the girl cried out. If
Speaker 1: I had something, I would kill you. Samuel Sibley was
Speaker 1: seated at the table and watched it all in horror.
Speaker 1: His wife was Mary Sibley, the woman who had instructed
Speaker 1: Tituba and John Indian on how to make the witch
Speaker 1: cake just days before. Maybe he felt a need to
Speaker 1: atone for his wife's sins, or perhaps he was just
Speaker 1: so gripped with fear that he simply fell in line.
Speaker 1: Whatever the reason was, he stood up and swung his
Speaker 1: walking stick at the empty air above the table. You
Speaker 1: have hit her right across the back, Elizabeth declared, you
Speaker 1: have almost killed her. Miles away in Ipswich, unaware of
Speaker 1: what was transpiring inside the Grigs home, one of the
Speaker 1: guards standing outside Joseph Herrick's barn glanced inside the check
Speaker 1: on Sarah Good and felt the hair on the back
Speaker 1: of his neck. Stand up. She was gone, vanished into
Speaker 1: the night, as if she had magically melted into the air,
Speaker 1: and all that was left of her or her shoes
Speaker 1: and her stockings. When they found her the next morning,
Speaker 1: everyone held their breath. There was blood on her arm,
Speaker 1: as if she had been struck. This is unobscured. I'm
Speaker 1: Aaron Manky. The night of the gathering at Dr William
Speaker 1: Griggs house, that moment of reflection and panic. After a
Speaker 1: day of examinations inside the meeting house, everyone dispersed to
Speaker 1: go home. Two of those men were William Allen and
Speaker 1: John Hughes, who lived in the same direction. They bundled
Speaker 1: up against the cold and then walked off into the
Speaker 1: night down the road. After a few minutes of brisk,
Speaker 1: silent walking. Both of the men claimed they heard a
Speaker 1: noise ahead of them down the road. It wasn't the
Speaker 1: sound they could identify, and it kept repeating itself over
Speaker 1: and over, but they needed to get home, so they
Speaker 1: pressed on. That didn't mean it was easy, though. Soon
Speaker 1: a dark shape began to materialize in the darkness ahead.
Speaker 1: They slowed their pace, believing there was some sort of
Speaker 1: animal hunched over beside the road. A moment later, that
Speaker 1: shape exploded upward, and as it did, it unraveled into
Speaker 1: the forms of three people women. If the men had
Speaker 1: to guess, they vanished almost as quickly as they had appeared.
Speaker 1: But as they did, both men were certain they recognized
Speaker 1: all three of them, Sarah Good, Sarah Osburne, and Tituba.
Speaker 1: Sarah Good, however, was miles away in an Ipswich jail
Speaker 1: along with her baby. Actually that jail was the barn
Speaker 1: belonging to her relative Joseph Herrick and his brother Zachariah,
Speaker 1: and there was a bit of irony in her new situation. Remember,
Speaker 1: Sarah and William Good weren't doing so well financially. They've
Speaker 1: lost all of their land and had no way to
Speaker 1: provide for themselves. Life was hard for them, to say
Speaker 1: the least. Two years prior to the events of six two,
Speaker 1: Sarah had approached Zachariah and asked if she and her daughter,
Speaker 1: Doroth the might sleep in the barn for a few nights.
Speaker 1: Sarah's sister had married into the Herrick family many years before,
Speaker 1: and I have to imagine she felt that if anyone
Speaker 1: was going to say yes, it would be the Herrick brothers. Instead,
Speaker 1: they turned her away. That's when things got weird. Sarah,
Speaker 1: known around the village to be a grumbler and all
Speaker 1: around bitter woman, told Herrick that his heartlessness would cost
Speaker 1: him dearly. Perhaps she hinted one of his best cows
Speaker 1: might suffer. Zachariah's teenage sons escorted Sarah off their property,
Speaker 1: and a short time later two of Herrick's best cows disappeared.
Speaker 1: This night, though the Herricks had no choice. Joseph was
Speaker 1: a constable for Salem and had been instructed to bring
Speaker 1: Sarah Good and her infant back to his farm, where
Speaker 1: she would be locked in the barn overnight. As the
Speaker 1: gathering at Dr Grigg's house took place, complete with Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Hubbard's claim of an invisible Sarah Good. The Herrick settled
Speaker 1: in for what they assumed would be a calm, quiet night,
Speaker 1: but something went wrong. Sarah Good escaped. For whatever reason,
Speaker 1: she slipped out of her shoes and stockings and carried
Speaker 1: her infant out into the cold night air. Most historians
Speaker 1: think that she was out looking for a place to hide,
Speaker 1: but walking barefoot through the cold, snow and mud of
Speaker 1: early March would have been painful. The guards noticed she
Speaker 1: was gone, but by the time they summoned the courage
Speaker 1: to inform Joseph Herrick, the sun had already come up
Speaker 1: and Sarah Good had returned to her makeshift prison cell.
Speaker 1: Joseph checked on her, found her arm covered in blood,
Speaker 1: and probably wondered aloud about what the woman had done
Speaker 1: to herself, And then he began his day. That new
Speaker 1: day came with new news. Word reached Herrick about the
Speaker 1: events at Dr Grigg's house the night before, and of
Speaker 1: the appearance of Sarah Good without her shoes and stockings,
Speaker 1: and of how Samuel Sibley had struck her with his
Speaker 1: walking stick. And I realize we look back on this
Speaker 1: today with a bit of incredulity, But put yourself in
Speaker 1: the mindset of a superstitious, fearful puritan in the middle
Speaker 1: of a community at the beginning of a witch hunt.
Speaker 1: This was a red flag and a sure sign that
Speaker 1: something evil was at work. Most people probably trying to
Speaker 1: get on with their normal lives that morning. There was
Speaker 1: always a lot to do to make sure your family
Speaker 1: and livestock were taken care of, after all, but magistrates
Speaker 1: John Hawthorne and Jonathan Corwin had servants for all of that. Instead,
Speaker 1: they paid a visit to the Salem Town Jail. They
Speaker 1: had some questions for one of the prisoners. Here's Pulitzer
Speaker 1: Prize winning author Stacy Chief. The conditions in the jail
Speaker 1: were really deplorable. New England jails had not been built
Speaker 1: for long term stays. This was a culture that essentially
Speaker 1: dealt with malefactors quickly and effectively. No one was really
Speaker 1: mental to live in a jail the way these people
Speaker 1: ended up staying in these jails. The Salem jail is
Speaker 1: described as a suburb of Hell, and from the Boston
Speaker 1: jail was described as a grave for the living. So
Speaker 1: I think there you have it. Between the two, their
Speaker 1: tiny spaces unventilated. An earlier prisoner had talked about the
Speaker 1: fact that he couldn't breathe for the pestiferous stink. As
Speaker 1: he puts it, the air is fitted their armies of life.
Speaker 1: And to add insult to injury, in colonial New England,
Speaker 1: you paid for your keep in jail, So you paid
Speaker 1: for your straw, you paid for your food, and you
Speaker 1: paid for your shackles. This was the place Tituba found
Speaker 1: herself the night after her examination in the meeting house.
Speaker 1: She probably awoke the next morning full of uncertainty and fear.
Speaker 1: Would they hang her without a trial? Would they drag
Speaker 1: her back for more questions. Instead, Hawthorne and Corwin visited
Speaker 1: her and began a new interrogation behind the closed doors
Speaker 1: of the jail, But the magistrates were in for a
Speaker 1: shock when they arrived. Titsuba began to writhe and convulse
Speaker 1: in much the same way the four girls had done
Speaker 1: so in front of everyone in the meeting house the
Speaker 1: day before. When she could speak, she blamed the attacks
Speaker 1: on Good and Osbourne, which gave Hawthorne an idea they
Speaker 1: now had a direct line to the truth. They asked
Speaker 1: Tituba about how the witches were attacking her, and she
Speaker 1: described it in detail. Then, almost as an assigne, she
Speaker 1: mentioned that the tall man had urged her to write
Speaker 1: in his book, which struck a chord with the two men.
Speaker 1: What book, they asked, Was it big or small? Titsiba
Speaker 1: shook her head. He did not show it to me,
Speaker 1: she replied, but had it in his pocket. After that,
Speaker 1: the questions flowed like a river, and Titchiba did her
Speaker 1: best to keep up with the current. Did he make
Speaker 1: you sign it? No, my mistress called me from another room.
Speaker 1: What did he say you needed to do with the book?
Speaker 1: He told me to sign my name in it, she said,
Speaker 1: And did you do that? They asked, yes. One time
Speaker 1: I made a mark in the book with a red ink,
Speaker 1: red like blood. Did he take that red ink from
Speaker 1: your own body? No, but he said he would get
Speaker 1: it out of me the next time he visited. And
Speaker 1: then the magistrates dug deeper. They believe that Tituba had
Speaker 1: seen the Devil's Book, his tool for recruiting humans into
Speaker 1: his evil mission among them. So he asked about that.
Speaker 1: Did you see any other marks in this book? They asked, yes,
Speaker 1: she said, a great many, some in red, some in yellow.
Speaker 1: He held it wide open and showed me a great
Speaker 1: many marks in it? What names were in the book,
Speaker 1: they asked? Did he tell you Good and Osbourne? She answered,
Speaker 1: but they were more I couldn't read. Hawthorne and Corwin
Speaker 1: must have felt a chill run down their spines. More
Speaker 1: names meant more witches. They had already found three, which
Speaker 1: felt overwhelming as it was, But now they had learned
Speaker 1: that there were more among them. They aid, it wasn't
Speaker 1: an insurmountable number. How many marks do you think there were,
Speaker 1: they asked her. Tituba looked at them both with fear
Speaker 1: in her eyes. Perhaps she was afraid of her current circumstances,
Speaker 1: or maybe she was afraid of what her answer might mean.
Speaker 1: I imagine she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
Speaker 1: Then finally she answered them. Nine, she said, there were
Speaker 1: nine marks. Hawthorne and Corwin were stunned. They had believed
Speaker 1: all of the witches affecting the girls had been identified
Speaker 1: and captured, and yet here was a frightening new revelation.
Speaker 1: There were nine names in the book, Nine witches to
Speaker 1: torment them, Nine individuals who had signed on to help
Speaker 1: the devil destroy their great Puritan experiment in the New World.
Speaker 1: Of course, they wanted to know who those other witches were,
Speaker 1: and they asked it, but to name them she shook
Speaker 1: her head, though she claimed they had only made marks
Speaker 1: rather than writing their own names down, so she didn't
Speaker 1: know who they were. But there's something else going on
Speaker 1: here that needs to be pointed out. You see, Puritans
Speaker 1: were absolutely obsessed with books. Jane Kaminsky, Professor of American
Speaker 1: History at Harvard University. I did a piece of work
Speaker 1: at one point that I never published, about the image
Speaker 1: of the Devil's book in the Salem, which trials looking
Speaker 1: at the book trades in New England at the time.
Speaker 1: You know, what does it look like. Oh, it's small
Speaker 1: and they hide in it's red, it's not read. This
Speaker 1: is a moment in the late sixteen eighties and early
Speaker 1: sixteen nineties where small secular print materials, you know, histories, geographies, satires,
Speaker 1: joke books, playing cards are coming into the bookstores and
Speaker 1: the ports cities. So yeah, this idea of a book
Speaker 1: used by the devil to establish contracts with human helpers
Speaker 1: was a big deal. It spoke to the very nature
Speaker 1: of Puritans as book people. Reading was central to their faith,
Speaker 1: reading the Bible, reading sermon notes, reading educational books, and
Speaker 1: while most of the women in Salem were unable to write,
Speaker 1: they could certainly read. Here's Kaminski again. Women in Puritan
Speaker 1: New England have an unusually high level of reading literacy
Speaker 1: because it's thought to be so important for everybody to
Speaker 1: be able to read the Bible, and for mothers to
Speaker 1: be able to read the Bible to their children. But
Speaker 1: they have a pretty low level of what's called sign literacy.
Speaker 1: So she can sign her name. She has some rudimentary
Speaker 1: written literacy, but probably not the fluency to write an
Speaker 1: entire document. The last detail these questions about the Devil's
Speaker 1: Book revealed to us is the seriousness of the accusations
Speaker 1: to a Puritan. Membership in the church was about confession.
Speaker 1: She or the Halfway Covenant loosened those requirements a bit,
Speaker 1: But whether you were confessing your sins and story to
Speaker 1: a minister in private or while standing in front of
Speaker 1: the entire congregation, you knew the final step was to
Speaker 1: sign a covenant with your church. So the Devil's Book
Speaker 1: was meant to be a shadow of all of that,
Speaker 1: the dark opposite to the light of God. If the
Speaker 1: Puritans believe that you were a witch, it just made
Speaker 1: sense that you had also signed a covenant with the devil.
Speaker 1: You had switched sides after all. Now, one of the
Speaker 1: books that would have been familiar to Hawthorne and Corwin
Speaker 1: was a sixty seven witchcraft reference work called Guide to
Speaker 1: Grand Jury Men. It offered a lot of advice to
Speaker 1: help the authorities properly examine accused witches, and one of
Speaker 1: those pieces of advice was that someone of spiritual authority
Speaker 1: must help the accused prepare for their examination. For Tituba,
Speaker 1: that person had to have been her master, the Reverend
Speaker 1: Samuel Paris. It would be a fair guest to assume
Speaker 1: that preparing Tituba involved asking her questions and testing her
Speaker 1: knowledge of the Bible, but not for Paris. The day
Speaker 1: before her examination, he chose instead to simply beat her.
Speaker 1: It wasn't justified, of course, but I have to wonder
Speaker 1: if he did it out of anger over the witch
Speaker 1: cake incidents and a bit of urgency from her living
Speaker 1: under his roof and responsibility. So Paris beat her, Perhaps
Speaker 1: that explains her wild stories the next day in the
Speaker 1: meeting house, where she accused Sarah Good and Sarah Osburne
Speaker 1: of being in league with the Devil. It certainly explains
Speaker 1: her eagerness to please, to paint elaborate pictures full of rich,
Speaker 1: powerful detail. He had asked for her cooperation at the
Speaker 1: end of a painful switch, and Titsuba clearly delivered. I
Speaker 1: think it's safe to say that we can look back
Speaker 1: today on the interrogation and see the men essentially leading
Speaker 1: the witness. They never said did you experience anything odd
Speaker 1: the other day? Instead they asked estions out of the blue,
Speaker 1: like was there a book and why did you sign it? Tituba,
Speaker 1: female heathen slave, the lowest of the low in their society,
Speaker 1: was already in jail. So she would have done anything
Speaker 1: or said anything to prevent execution. Any of us would have.
Speaker 1: And you can see them guide her answers over time.
Speaker 1: First she never saw the book, and then the tall
Speaker 1: man showed it to her. That evolved into holding it
Speaker 1: and then reading it. It wasn't that she was slowly
Speaker 1: remembering more and more detail. It's that she was paying attention,
Speaker 1: listening to Hawthorne and Corwin as if her life depended
Speaker 1: on it, and giving them the answers they were looking for.
Speaker 1: Emerson Baker, one of our guest historians throughout this season,
Speaker 1: of Unobscured discusses this in his book A Storm of
Speaker 1: Witchcraft One wonders. He wrote, what would have happened had
Speaker 1: Paris and the judges not coerced Tituba into confessing the
Speaker 1: Salem witchcraft outbreak might conceivably have been limited to three people,
Speaker 1: a fairly typical case of no particular note, and certainly
Speaker 1: not a pivotal moment in American history. But that's not
Speaker 1: what they did. Instead, they approached a volatile situation and
Speaker 1: steered it in a different and arguably worse direction. It
Speaker 1: would be the first of many wrong turns that would
Speaker 1: get them lost in a dark forest of fear and panic.
Speaker 1: Peace it seems would be a lot more difficult to
Speaker 1: track down. At this point, It might be helpful to
Speaker 1: step back and ask the question why why did the
Speaker 1: people of Salem village believe the devil had singled them
Speaker 1: out and made them the focus of his evil mock nations?
Speaker 1: And the answer comes back to us from that vision
Speaker 1: of Salem being a city on the hill. Historian Richard Trask,
Speaker 1: the whole purpose of it was to bring down the
Speaker 1: Puritan commonwealth of Massachuset sits they looked at themselves as
Speaker 1: being the elect of God. The new Israelites of old,
Speaker 1: who were establishing a city upon the hill. The devil
Speaker 1: obviously would want to combat that type of thing, and
Speaker 1: that's why they believe that the devil was coming to
Speaker 1: Salem Village into all of mass Bay to bring God's
Speaker 1: Kingdom on Earth down. To that end, Samuel Paris called
Speaker 1: on all of Salem Village to fast and pray. He
Speaker 1: held private gatherings at his house of the most devout
Speaker 1: among them, and other neighboring ministers joined them, including John
Speaker 1: Hale from Beverly. Even Paris's daughter Betty and her cousin Abigail,
Speaker 1: the two original afflicted girls who had started everything, joined
Speaker 1: them for these prayer meetings. Not long after, though, Paris
Speaker 1: had Betty sent to Salem Town to stay at the
Speaker 1: home of a distant relative named Stephen Sewell. Betty was
Speaker 1: only nine years old, and while her affliction didn't stop
Speaker 1: right away, she does seem to vanish from the court
Speaker 1: documents after this. Some historians think it was a rare
Speaker 1: moment of sanity when the community honored the tradition of
Speaker 1: only allowing adults to testify. After Betty, Paris was moved
Speaker 1: to a safe home in Salem Town. The three accused
Speaker 1: witches were transferred to a jail in Boston, where they
Speaker 1: would await a full criminal trial. The three remaining afflicted
Speaker 1: girls seemed to become more calm, but then on March three,
Speaker 1: Annie Putnam claimed she was tormented yet again, and this
Speaker 1: time the attackers were new to her. One, she said
Speaker 1: was a woman she couldn't see clearly, but the other
Speaker 1: was clear. She claimed it was Dorothy Good, the five
Speaker 1: year old daughter of Sarah Good. The little girl, according
Speaker 1: to Annie Putnam, was holding the Devil's Book out to
Speaker 1: her and demanding she signed it. Sadly, the people around
Speaker 1: her took her seriously. A week later, she managed to
Speaker 1: put a name to that other attacker, Elizabeth Procter. Elizabeth
Speaker 1: was the forty one year old mother of five children
Speaker 1: and pregnant with her sixth. She and her husband, John
Speaker 1: Procter owned a tavern north of the village at the
Speaker 1: intersection of two busy roads. They were part of the
Speaker 1: wealthy Procter family, members of the church, and owners of
Speaker 1: a lot of land. There was a lot to respect
Speaker 1: about Elizabeth, but there were other details about her that
Speaker 1: might have made her an easy person to accuse of witchcraft.
Speaker 1: The biggest of those was that her grandmother, goody Bert's
Speaker 1: had been accused and tried for witchcraft roughly three decades earlier.
Speaker 1: The assumption was that if wealth and godliness could run
Speaker 1: in families, then so too could allegiance to the devil.
Speaker 1: Her husband, John was twenty years older than her and
Speaker 1: had inherited all of his land from his parents, who
Speaker 1: had moved to Massachusetts in the sixteen thirties. By sixteen
Speaker 1: seventy four, he'd lost two wives and a number of children.
Speaker 1: But Elizabeth seemed like the perfect balm for those wounds.
Speaker 1: She was smart, rugal, and a formidable presence, and both
Speaker 1: of them were a bit more progressive than their neighbors.
Speaker 1: They were known to allow the local Native Americans to
Speaker 1: drink in their tavern, which was a huge deal in
Speaker 1: those days. The Native Americans were seen as agents of
Speaker 1: the devil. They were the enemy who stood opposed to
Speaker 1: the Puritan mission, and yet John and Elizabeth served them beer.
Speaker 1: Hatred ran so hot that at one point someone took
Speaker 1: them to court over it. The angry man Giles Corey,
Speaker 1: had a bit of a reputation for being a hothead, though.
Speaker 1: Here's Emerson Baker. He had been accused of setting for
Speaker 1: arson on the house of his neighbor, John Proctor, and
Speaker 1: he had also been convicted really of manslaughter back in
Speaker 1: the sixteen seventies, of beating his simple minded teenage servant
Speaker 1: to within an inch of his life. And then the fellow,
Speaker 1: poor fellow dies several days later, and they say, well,
Speaker 1: it isn't murder, but you know, okay, pfine, Pfine. Proctor, however,
Speaker 1: won the case and business stayed brisk at their tavern,
Speaker 1: always busy helping patrons there. Elizabeth needed help around the house,
Speaker 1: so she hired a young local woman named Mary Warren.
Speaker 1: She had lost her entire family to tuberculosis years before,
Speaker 1: so the proctors were all she had. That said, they
Speaker 1: weren't exactly kind to her, which is why when rumors
Speaker 1: of Annie Putnam's accusations reached Mary Warren's ears, she might
Speaker 1: have seen an opportunity. On March twelve, Mary claimed to
Speaker 1: see a specter floating through the house, which eventually landed
Speaker 1: on her lap. When she could make out a face,
Speaker 1: she was shocked to see it had taken the form
Speaker 1: of her employer, John Procter, The real man, however, was
Speaker 1: not amused. He essentially told her to cut it out
Speaker 1: and if she didn't, she'd receive a severe beating for
Speaker 1: her behavior. Then she did stop for a while, but
Speaker 1: when John left town a day or so later, her
Speaker 1: nightmarish visions miraculously returned, this time in the form of
Speaker 1: a woman. It wasn't Elizabeth Proctor though. No this witch's
Speaker 1: name was new to the growing list of the accused,
Speaker 1: yet at the same time it felt like a natural fit.
Speaker 1: Mary identified her attacker as none other than Martha Corey,
Speaker 1: Giles Corey's wife. To understand exactly why the people of
Speaker 1: Salem Village might not like the Corries and Martha in particular,
Speaker 1: we have to go back to the halfway Covenant. Membership
Speaker 1: in the church in Puritan times was a huge deal.
Speaker 1: Only full fledged members could take communion and have their
Speaker 1: children baptized, two key rights for Christians. But that level
Speaker 1: of membership required standing in front of the entire congregation,
Speaker 1: confessing your whole sinful life to them and then waiting
Speaker 1: for their answer. It was strict then. As a result,
Speaker 1: many churches were shrinking rather than growing. The halfway Covenant
Speaker 1: was supposed to change all of that. Instead of a
Speaker 1: public confession, churches that adopted the more liberal Halfway Covenant
Speaker 1: allowed prospective members to simply meet with their minister privately.
Speaker 1: And here's the other important detail about membership. Once you
Speaker 1: were a full member in one church, you could visit
Speaker 1: any other and receive the same benefits you would back home,
Speaker 1: whether or not they were a halfway Covenant church. Here's
Speaker 1: Emerson Baker again, the Corries used that loophole. Giles Corey
Speaker 1: becomes a member of the Salem Town Church and even
Speaker 1: though they say, basically despite his his reprobate past, he's
Speaker 1: acknowledged his past as a center and we accept him
Speaker 1: into our fellowship, into our covenant. So then imagine, here's
Speaker 1: this fellow who people know to be who he is,
Speaker 1: and he's sitting right there and partaking of the Lord's
Speaker 1: suffer with the other members of the Salem Village Church.
Speaker 1: Because as a member of the Salem Town Church, you
Speaker 1: can attend and you have full rights really to receive communion.
Speaker 1: Oh really, isn't that interesting? This trophy hunting, social climbing
Speaker 1: wife who claims she's a gospel woman, and look how
Speaker 1: she managed to get her husband, Giles Corey, arsonist, beater
Speaker 1: of servants. We've managed to get him into the church.
Speaker 1: Something's wrong here. Obviously they had the reasons for accusing
Speaker 1: Martha Corey, but it certainly set a new precedent. This
Speaker 1: was a full fledged member of the church. She was
Speaker 1: part of the inner circle, one of their own, in
Speaker 1: a special position of respect, and by disregarding all of that,
Speaker 1: they opened the door for similar accusations to be leveled
Speaker 1: at other unlikely suspects. One of those was Rebecca Nurse.
Speaker 1: Rebecca Nurse was older than middle age. That's Marylyn k Roach,
Speaker 1: author and historian. She had a large family of grown
Speaker 1: children with grandchildren, so it's an extant family. That's not
Speaker 1: a lot of death in infancy in her family. Her
Speaker 1: husban than it's still alive, so she's not a widow.
Speaker 1: Pretty much on her own. She has a good support network,
Speaker 1: and she's a full member of the Salem Town Church.
Speaker 1: She seems to be well respected, but she's accused. Rebecca
Speaker 1: was actually a sickly, nearly deaf, seventy one year old grandmother,
Speaker 1: which sounds incredibly harmless, right, But she also had enough
Speaker 1: social baggage to at least give the accusation some level
Speaker 1: of credibility in their eye. If you think about it,
Speaker 1: one of the first people they might attack would be
Speaker 1: a woman like Rebecca Nurse who attends Salem Village But
Speaker 1: as a member of Salem Town Church, aren't we good
Speaker 1: enough for you? Why not? Could it be the fact
Speaker 1: that you and your husband a few years ago took
Speaker 1: in a Quaker orphan when his parents died and they
Speaker 1: were friends of the Nurses. Wow, we know your charitable
Speaker 1: could Puritan godly folk, but but why why a Quaker child?
Speaker 1: Why not joined Salem Village Church? Why does your husband
Speaker 1: friend sist nurs Why is he one of the leaders
Speaker 1: of the faction that is trying to get Samuel Paris
Speaker 1: thrown out his minister in Salem Village. So there with
Speaker 1: Rebecca Nurse, even though she's a god fearing Puritan, there
Speaker 1: are some questions about her orthodoxy. One more odd detail.
Speaker 1: During this new wave of accusations, when women like Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Procter and Rebecca Nurse were being swept into the flood
Speaker 1: that was washing over the community, a new unexpected accuser appeared.
Speaker 1: Up until this point, all of the afflicted were young women,
Speaker 1: girls really, ranging from nine to sixteen. But it was
Speaker 1: in the midst of this new way that twelve year
Speaker 1: old Annie Putnam's own mother and Putnam Senior, began to
Speaker 1: report her own torment at the hands of these witches.
Speaker 1: And Putnam wasn't a girl. She was a thirty year
Speaker 1: old mother, pregnant with another child, and a well respected
Speaker 1: member of the Putnam family. So, as you can imagine,
Speaker 1: the gathering that Sunday in the meeting house for a
Speaker 1: sermon by guest sister Dao Dat Lawson, was quite the
Speaker 1: tense moment. Lawson, if you remember, was one of the
Speaker 1: former ministers of Salem Village, so everyone knew him. Oh,
Speaker 1: and the Putnams were there, and so was Martha Corey.
Speaker 1: Lawson had barely managed to start his sermon before all
Speaker 1: hell broke loose. The afflicted girls fell to the floor
Speaker 1: as he was preaching, their bodies twisting and writhing as
Speaker 1: they cried out in pain. Abigail Williams pointed up into
Speaker 1: the empty air above their heads and claimed to see
Speaker 1: Martha Corey flying around the room. And while Martha Corey
Speaker 1: spoke up and denied all of it, her fate seemed
Speaker 1: to be sealed. Martha was arrested the following day, and
Speaker 1: Rebecca Nurse was brought in three days later. Their examination
Speaker 1: was much like you might expect. Hawthorne and Corwin were
Speaker 1: among the presiding magistrates, and they returned to their obsession
Speaker 1: with the Devil's Book. Martha Corey was indignant what book?
Speaker 1: She spat back at them. Where should I have seen
Speaker 1: a book? I showed these girls none, nor have none,
Speaker 1: nor brought none. But defending herself wasn't the best thing
Speaker 1: to help her case. The judges saw her as too
Speaker 1: confident and forward, and that she was stepping out of line.
Speaker 1: Immediately after the examination, she was carted off to the
Speaker 1: Salem jail to wait for her official trial. Rebecca Nurse
Speaker 1: experienced a lot of the same treatment during her examination.
Speaker 1: She professed her innocence, of course, but in the middle
Speaker 1: of it, Anne Putnam Senior started shouting at her, accusing
Speaker 1: her of doing the work of the devil. Anne said
Speaker 1: that Rebecca had tried to get her to sign the
Speaker 1: mysterious read book and had sent her spirit to attack
Speaker 1: her more than once. Then she went stiff and had
Speaker 1: to be carried from the room by her husband. Paris
Speaker 1: must have found himself in quite a difficult place. On
Speaker 1: one hand, the whole idea behind full membership in the
Speaker 1: church was that these were the elect of God, the
Speaker 1: chosen ones, the best of the best, and the truest
Speaker 1: of true. They had passed through the fire of communal
Speaker 1: judgment and reached the other side safely. And yet members
Speaker 1: of the church were in jail. Now, how could he
Speaker 1: explain that? How could his theology keep pace with the
Speaker 1: events that were unfolding? And then it struck him, even
Speaker 1: among the twelve Disciples of Jesus there had been one
Speaker 1: secret agent, Judas, who had been working with the devil.
Speaker 1: Speaking from the pulpit the following Sunday, he explained how
Speaker 1: tricky this all was to his parishioners. If it could
Speaker 1: happen to Jesus, he said, then perhaps even someone like
Speaker 1: Rebecca Nurse could be more than she appears. Have I
Speaker 1: not chosen you? Twelve Paris read aloud from the Book
Speaker 1: of John, and one of you is a devil. It
Speaker 1: wasn't just one, though, Tituba had told the magistrates that
Speaker 1: she'd seen nine marks in the devil's book Buck, so
Speaker 1: at the moment the village was a little short of suspects.
Speaker 1: The first five were now in jail, along with Sarah
Speaker 1: Goods five year old daughter Dorothy, But that had left
Speaker 1: the community on edge. How could they look at any
Speaker 1: of their neighbors without wondering are they a witch? As well?
Speaker 1: The spotlight briefly drifted over towards the two younger sisters
Speaker 1: of Rebecca Nurse. One of them, Sarah Klois, had actually
Speaker 1: been into gathering that Sunday in the meeting house for
Speaker 1: the sermon by Reverend Paris, and when he stated how
Speaker 1: possible it was for someone as devout as Rebecca to
Speaker 1: be an agent of the devil, Sarah had stormed out
Speaker 1: and discussed to the rest of those in the room,
Speaker 1: though it was difficult to not see it as the
Speaker 1: flight of a guilty woman. Another person under scrutiny was
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Procter's husband John. The day after the examination of
Speaker 1: Rebecca Nurse, John encountered Samuel Sibley, husband of the woman
Speaker 1: who had baked the witch cake in the Paris home
Speaker 1: weeks before. John casually asked Samuel how things were going
Speaker 1: in village, and Sibley replied very bad. Proctor told Sibley
Speaker 1: that he was on his way to pick up his
Speaker 1: servant Mary Warren, and used a few choice words about
Speaker 1: her in connection to the events that were unfolding. I'd
Speaker 1: rather given up money than get her involved in these examinations,
Speaker 1: he said, and then added that he should just beat
Speaker 1: the devil out of her. Sibley raised an eyebrow. First
Speaker 1: Proctor's words had been violent and in discreet, referring to
Speaker 1: the young woman as a jade, a seventeenth century term
Speaker 1: for a worn out horse, but there was also the
Speaker 1: apparent dismissal of the seriousness of the examinations. John Proctor
Speaker 1: didn't seem happy that they were taking place. Samuel Sibley
Speaker 1: couldn't help but wonder why. Proctor picked up Mary Warren
Speaker 1: a short while later and then carted her back home,
Speaker 1: where he beat her for speaking out when he wasn't
Speaker 1: physically abusing her. She convulsed and writhed under the torment
Speaker 1: of an invisible attacker, but John Procter wasn't pleased with
Speaker 1: what he perceived to be an act. He told her
Speaker 1: that if she somehow managed to roll herself into the fire,
Speaker 1: he wouldn't try to stop her. A few days later,
Speaker 1: on April second, Mary made her way back into town.
Speaker 1: Her fits had miraculously stopped, more than likely thanks to
Speaker 1: the threats of violence from John Proctor, but she chose
Speaker 1: to give credit to God. She could apparently write well
Speaker 1: enough that she'd penned a request for prayers of gratitude
Speaker 1: and then tacked it to the notice board of the
Speaker 1: meeting house. The following day, Samuel Parris stood before his
Speaker 1: congregation and read the note aloud, but rather than being thankful,
Speaker 1: he expressed doubt. The afflicted girls had told everyone that
Speaker 1: the devil promised to end their pain if they would
Speaker 1: only switch sides and join him in his mission to
Speaker 1: destroy the community. If Mary no longer suffered, he told them,
Speaker 1: it might not be cause for celebration soon enough, though
Speaker 1: there were other things for the community to talk about.
Speaker 1: Former say and village minister Daodete Lawson had been writing
Speaker 1: down his account of the past two months and then
Speaker 1: hurried to get it published. His ten page pamphlet was
Speaker 1: given the incredibly long title of A Brief and True
Speaker 1: Narrative of some remarkable passages relating to Sundry Persons afflicted
Speaker 1: by witchcraft at Salem Village. It's a mouthful, I know,
Speaker 1: but it also spread the word about what had been happening,
Speaker 1: casting the net over a wider area and snagging more
Speaker 1: and more attention for the trials. And while I'm sure
Speaker 1: the members of the Governor's Council of Assistants had heard
Speaker 1: the news of the Salem events weeks earlier, this was
Speaker 1: the nudge they needed to take action, and they committed
Speaker 1: to attend the next examination to take place. For Hawthorne
Speaker 1: and Corwin, this was the legitimacy they've been looking for.
Speaker 1: Real representatives from Boston, from the Governor himself were about
Speaker 1: to travel north and sit among them and hear for
Speaker 1: themselves what was going on. Emboldened and seeing a light
Speaker 1: at the end of the tunnel, Hawthorne issued the arrest
Speaker 1: warrants for two more suspects, Elizabeth Procter and Sarah Klois.
Speaker 1: But two more arrests weren't going to satisfy a community
Speaker 1: that was becoming more and more hungry to find all
Speaker 1: the witches in their midst. In the days leading up
Speaker 1: to the examinations of Procter and Klois, the Putnam women,
Speaker 1: both Anne Senior and her daughter Annie, claimed that John
Speaker 1: Procter's invisible form attacked them. Tituba's husband, A man that
Speaker 1: all the records simply referred to as John Indian, claimed
Speaker 1: that he was attacked as well. But it was Abigail Williams,
Speaker 1: niece of Samuel Parris, who painted the most disturbing picture
Speaker 1: of all. According to her, a group of witches invaded
Speaker 1: her uncle's parsonage and held a devil's supper, complete with
Speaker 1: wine and red bread. It was an imitation of the
Speaker 1: Christian sacrament of Communion, and it was a slap in
Speaker 1: the face of the devout Puritans who felt threatened. Worse yet, though,
Speaker 1: was the number of witches Abigail claimed to have seen
Speaker 1: in the house. According to her, it wasn't just the
Speaker 1: seven identified suspects, or even the full nine they had
Speaker 1: been told of. No, she said this gathering was much larger.
Speaker 1: There were, by her account, at least forty witches inside
Speaker 1: the Paris home that night. Thankfully, there was hope on
Speaker 1: the horizon. The highest authorities in the land had arrived
Speaker 1: in Salem Village to help. Finally there would be justice.
Speaker 1: The governor himself, Simon Bradstreet, didn't make the trip north.
Speaker 1: The man was eight years old and the travel just
Speaker 1: wasn't something he was up for, which was a shame.
Speaker 1: Brad Street had been involved in the Massachusetts Bay Colony
Speaker 1: since it was nothing more than an idea on paper,
Speaker 1: and had been on that first expedition that founded the
Speaker 1: city of Boston. He was a powerful figure and his
Speaker 1: absence would be felt. In his place, Deputy Governor Thomas
Speaker 1: Danforth was sent along with four assistants. They were important guests,
Speaker 1: so the examinations were moved to a more important location,
Speaker 1: Salem Town. But rather than sit up front and serve
Speaker 1: as judges, the five men simply took seats in the
Speaker 1: crowd and observed. Hawthorne and the others must have felt
Speaker 1: awkward about that. They began by speaking with some of
Speaker 1: the victims, including John Indian and Mary Walcott, the sixteen
Speaker 1: year old daughter of a local militia captain. She'd been
Speaker 1: living with the Putnam's, who were her cousins, and that
Speaker 1: put her in the middle of a household under fire
Speaker 1: by the evil forces that were at work. Elizabeth Hubbard
Speaker 1: and Abigail Williams, two of the original accusers, also added
Speaker 1: their own stories, tales of that red Devil's book, of
Speaker 1: invisible attackers and of painful torture. Some of the accusers
Speaker 1: actually fell to the floor in fits of pain, while
Speaker 1: others found they couldn't speak at all. It became so
Speaker 1: tense in the room that Sarah Klois actually fainted. John
Speaker 1: Indian claimed that Elizabeth Procter had come to him and
Speaker 1: asked him to sign the Devil's book. John Procter, sitting
Speaker 1: in the crowd, stood up and shouted that if he
Speaker 1: got his hands on John Indian, he would beat the
Speaker 1: devil out of the slave. John, as we've seen so far,
Speaker 1: had an anger management problem, and it was beginning to
Speaker 1: get noticed. When Elizabeth Procter finally had a chance to
Speaker 1: speak for herself, she didn't face the judges or even
Speaker 1: the visitors from Boston. Instead, she faced the small group
Speaker 1: of accusers and warned them that lying before God was
Speaker 1: much worse than lying before the court. Judgment awaited them,
Speaker 1: she said, and they should correct their behavior instead. Many
Speaker 1: of the accusers began to shout out that John Procter
Speaker 1: was attacking them. Almost immediately, John was grabbed from his
Speaker 1: seat in the crowd and dragged forward to stand before
Speaker 1: the judges. When they asked him what he had to
Speaker 1: say for himself, Procter shook his head. I know not,
Speaker 1: he replied, I am innocent. As a test, they asked
Speaker 1: him to recite the Lord's Prayer, believing that no which
Speaker 1: would ever be able to say it perfectly from memory.
Speaker 1: John was recorded as saying hollowed be thy name rather
Speaker 1: than hellowed, something that could have been a slip of
Speaker 1: the tongue or a product of a noisy room, but
Speaker 1: it was enough to draw suspicion from the magistrates. Order dissolved.
Speaker 1: In the room, Abigail Williams claimed to see John Proctor
Speaker 1: attacking a woman named Sarah Biber, and in response, Biber
Speaker 1: fell to the floor and began to convulse. Annie Putnam
Speaker 1: backed away from an invisible Elizabeth Procter, who she said
Speaker 1: was trying to hit her, and then fought back by
Speaker 1: swinging her fist at the empty air. Halfway through the punch,
Speaker 1: her arms stopped, as if someone or something had repelled
Speaker 1: the blow. Salem town Minister John Higginson shouted for silence
Speaker 1: and then uttered a loud and ominous prayer over the
Speaker 1: room full of people. When he was done, a team
Speaker 1: of constables swept in and led each of the accused
Speaker 1: out of the room and off to jail. And just
Speaker 1: like that, the madness was over. Mary Warren, that willful
Speaker 1: servant girl who suffered under the abusive reign of the Proctors,
Speaker 1: left Salem Town and headed straight back to the Procter farm.
Speaker 1: Once there, she gathered all of the children together to
Speaker 1: share the news. News that would have been horrible for
Speaker 1: them to hear, but I have to imagine she took
Speaker 1: a lot of joy in sharing with them. Your parents
Speaker 1: will not be returning home tonight, she told them, and
Speaker 1: I don't know when they will. That's it for this
Speaker 1: week's episode of Unobscured. Stick around after this short sponsor
Speaker 1: break for a preview of what's in store for next week.
Speaker 1: Next time, on Unobscured, Standing before the Magistrates, Abigail Hobbes
Speaker 1: spoke before they could ask her any questions. I will
Speaker 1: speak the truth, she said. I have seen sights and
Speaker 1: have been scared. I have been very wicked. I hope
Speaker 1: I shall be better if God will help me. What
Speaker 1: sites did you see? Hawthorne asked, I have seen dogs
Speaker 1: and many creatures. What dogs do you mean, Hawthorne asked,
Speaker 1: ordinary dogs. Abigail shook her head, I mean the devil.
Speaker 1: The magistrates pressed on where had she seen them? They asked,
Speaker 1: Abigail replied that her encounter had taken place in the
Speaker 1: woods in the middle of the day years ago, back
Speaker 1: when she lived at Casco Bay. That was where she'd
Speaker 1: put her hand on his book. When they carried her
Speaker 1: off to jail a short while later. The name Cascoe
Speaker 1: Bay still hung in the air like a neon sign,
Speaker 1: pointing at the danger that lurked the north. But Abigail
Speaker 1: had also made it clear that it was spreading health
Speaker 1: and might already be among them. She claimed that a
Speaker 1: shape shifting man had visited her at her home here
Speaker 1: in Topsfield. He had alternated between the form of a cat,
Speaker 1: a dog, and a black man with a black hat,
Speaker 1: and this man, she claimed, had offered her fine clothes
Speaker 1: and the power to harm others in town, a power
Speaker 1: that she had readily accepted. Unobscured was created and written
Speaker 1: by me Aaron Mackey and produced by Matt Frederick and
Speaker 1: Alex Williams in partnership with How Stuff Works, with research
Speaker 1: by Carl Nellis and original music by Chad Lawson. Learn
Speaker 1: more about our contributing historians further reading material, resource archive
Speaker 1: and links to our other shows at History Unobscured dot com.
Speaker 1: Until next time, Thanks for listening,