Speaker 1: Today's interview is with historian Maryland k. Roach. She works
Speaker 1: as a freelance writer, illustrator, researcher and presenter of talks
Speaker 1: on historical subjects, and she's written for The Boston Globe,
Speaker 1: the New York Historical Genealogical Register, and the Lizzie Board
Speaker 1: and Quarterly. She was a member of the Gallows Hill
Speaker 1: project that verified the correct site of the hangings, a
Speaker 1: discovery that was listed by Archaeology Magazine as one of
Speaker 1: the world's ten most Important discoveries of two thousand seventeen.
Speaker 1: My producers Matt Frederick and Alex Williams had a chance
Speaker 1: to sit down with Maryland this past summer and I
Speaker 1: want to share that conversation with you today. So without
Speaker 1: further delay, let's get on with the show. This is
Speaker 1: the Unobscured Interview series for season one. I'm Aaron Manky.
Speaker 1: My name is Marilyn Roach, and I've been studying the
Speaker 1: Salem Witch Trials and related material for what he is
Speaker 1: now and there's still more things turning up that I
Speaker 1: didn't know before, and more to write about the very
Speaker 1: top Nowadays, when the word which is bandied about, there
Speaker 1: are many different ideas and images that are conjured. And
Speaker 1: when you were let's say sixteen, and you're in the colonies,
Speaker 1: the image of a witch is a specific thing. Can
Speaker 1: you tell us about that? In six was a legal
Speaker 1: definition of someone who had a familiar spirit, and it
Speaker 1: was assumed you knew with them men, but they were
Speaker 1: in cahoots with an evil spirit, a little demon or
Speaker 1: imp and in order to do that, you're in at
Speaker 1: some point been in contact with the devil, knowingly or unknowingly. Uh.
Speaker 1: Because it was understood by the ministers that humans did
Speaker 1: not have the ability to perform magic. Therefore, if there
Speaker 1: is magic being done, it's not being done by the person,
Speaker 1: but by some spirit that they're in contact with. The
Speaker 1: folklore would say that the good spirits will do that too,
Speaker 1: but the ministers would tell you the angels have better
Speaker 1: things to do than that, So it has to be
Speaker 1: an evil spirit and satans behind that. Some people did
Speaker 1: practice a lot of folk magic, maybe more in England
Speaker 1: because they weren't all Puritans. Well, they weren't all Purans hereies, uh,
Speaker 1: they were white witch is a blessing. Witches so called
Speaker 1: meaning they only did they did only the good magic.
Speaker 1: But if you have the idea that the source of
Speaker 1: it is really only pretending to do good for a
Speaker 1: while until you're really thoroughly caught in the clutches. It's
Speaker 1: not something you should be fooling around with. So where
Speaker 1: does counter magic come into this, Well, that's part of folklore.
Speaker 1: It's something to repel the evil magic that comes at you.
Speaker 1: Theoretically allegedly. Uh, it's supposed to dispel it counteracted. Uh,
Speaker 1: bounce it back to the person who is casting it
Speaker 1: in the first place, which is what the witch cake
Speaker 1: John was supposed to do. Can you tell me about
Speaker 1: the witch cake? Yeah, it was English folklore and it
Speaker 1: was suggested to Tichiba and John Indian by a neighbor,
Speaker 1: Mary Sibley, who's an englishwoman her parents were anyway, and
Speaker 1: she's a member of the Church, I believe, so she's
Speaker 1: considered herself considers herself a good Christian. But this this
Speaker 1: current of folklore that's just common and this is you know,
Speaker 1: this is repelling evil magic, so it can't be harmful.
Speaker 1: It was the idea, but it got the girls more worried,
Speaker 1: so the outcome was not good. But the idea of
Speaker 1: magical spell some part of the witches being is projected
Speaker 1: out to hurt the victim. So if you take part
Speaker 1: of the victim, and in this case it could be
Speaker 1: a lack of him maybe, or in this case some
Speaker 1: of the girls urine easily taken from them. You don't
Speaker 1: have to cut off an ear like they might do
Speaker 1: with livestock, but that is tortured, you might say, by
Speaker 1: being baked into a little rough cake of the cheapest
Speaker 1: flower you've got, and you feed it to the dog
Speaker 1: once it's cooked, and the dog crunches it up and
Speaker 1: digests it, and that would should hurt the witch, because
Speaker 1: the part of the perpetrator that's in the urine, that's
Speaker 1: in the charm is being acted on, and the pain,
Speaker 1: I guess is supposed to bounce back to whoever sent it.
Speaker 1: But that would make them come around and say what's
Speaker 1: going on, or begging for relief. Well, that doesn't happen,
Speaker 1: but the girls get more upset because now, as far
Speaker 1: as I can see it, now the adults are really
Speaker 1: assuming they could be magic here, which the doctors already said.
Speaker 1: The physician go to the medical professional and one of
Speaker 1: them thought it might be bewitchment. So the adults are
Speaker 1: taking that seriously Interestingly, the Paris Is didn't immediately go
Speaker 1: to that as a solution to the girls symptoms, whatever
Speaker 1: they were. It is very interesting that the physicians are
Speaker 1: the ones who end up diagnosing some form of witchcraft
Speaker 1: taking place. Well, the fact that the assumed fact that
Speaker 1: magic was a possibility was just there on the culture
Speaker 1: and in the other cultures. It wasn't just a pure thing.
Speaker 1: It was England, Europe and Africa, the Native Americans everywhere really,
Speaker 1: But because of the trials and intentions of the times, economy,
Speaker 1: war and all that, people were on edge to begin with,
Speaker 1: along with the local corals. So it seemed like the
Speaker 1: last straw. They are under siege by real, actual in
Speaker 1: this world problems, and this seems like one more thing
Speaker 1: that could happen. So two of your works that we're
Speaker 1: really looking into, the Day by Day Chronicle and Six
Speaker 1: Women of Salem. Um, we really want to focus first
Speaker 1: on these six women. So maybe you can give me
Speaker 1: kind of like a pair of graph or two in
Speaker 1: your mind, just how you would describe each of these
Speaker 1: women as a way to baby set them up in
Speaker 1: the show later. So is it okay if I go
Speaker 1: down the list and you just okay, So let's start
Speaker 1: with Bridget Bishop. Bridget Bishop was married, so she's not
Speaker 1: alone in the world. This is her third husband. She's
Speaker 1: been suspected before, however, of witchcraft, but she has survived that.
Speaker 1: That's not as much paperwork on it as you'd like surviving.
Speaker 1: She was confrontational. Some of the neighbors thought, I'd say
Speaker 1: she stuck up for herself. She's this is her third husband.
Speaker 1: The second husband would hit her now and then, but
Speaker 1: she hit him back. How about Marry English. Marry English
Speaker 1: was the richest woman in Salem. Her father had been
Speaker 1: a merchant who was lost at sea, and she married
Speaker 1: his business partner, of Philip English, who was from the
Speaker 1: Isle of Jersey and had more of a French culture.
Speaker 1: His name was Philippe Languis something like that and mispronouncing.
Speaker 1: So they're very rich. Some people, at least according to descendants,
Speaker 1: thought she put on airs. But you know, class and
Speaker 1: status and the responsibilities of class were bigger in the
Speaker 1: big in those days, not like now. But she was
Speaker 1: accused even though she was a full member of the
Speaker 1: Salem church in town. Let's continue with Rebecca Nurse. Rebecca
Speaker 1: Nurse was older than middle age. She had a large
Speaker 1: family of grown children with grandchildren, so it's an extant
Speaker 1: family that's not a lot of death in infancy in
Speaker 1: her family. Her husband is still alive, so she's not
Speaker 1: a widow. Pretty much on her own. She has a
Speaker 1: good support network, and she's a full member of the
Speaker 1: Salem Town Church. She seems to be well respected, but
Speaker 1: she's accused and some people just didn't get along with her.
Speaker 1: I guess I think a lot of personality conflicts in this.
Speaker 1: But even though she had a family who rallied around
Speaker 1: her all through it, even though it might have been
Speaker 1: dangerous to speak up at times, she doesn't survive. And
Speaker 1: and Putnam uh and Putnam is an accuser. She's married
Speaker 1: to Thomas Putnam, who also helps to choose people, and
Speaker 1: their eldest child is and Jr. Who is one of
Speaker 1: the afflicted girls. Near the beginning, she seems to have
Speaker 1: not liked Rebecca Nurse. She's quite I think she's self
Speaker 1: convinced that there are witches after her. Rebecca Nurse and
Speaker 1: Martha Corey seemed to be particular problems with her, and
Speaker 1: she actually has convulsions too in the courtroom in the
Speaker 1: early stages. But she's also expecting like her sixth or
Speaker 1: eight child, so they could have been some physical symptoms
Speaker 1: that within misinterpreted, but she seems to be quite convinced
Speaker 1: of the neighbors guilt. How about Titchuba called Titchuba Indian,
Speaker 1: she's always referred to by her contemporaries as an Indian
Speaker 1: rather than an African. She belongs with her husband to
Speaker 1: Reverend Samuel Paris. She's from somewhere else presumable, presumably Barbados,
Speaker 1: where Paris had been a merchant before becoming a minister
Speaker 1: and moving to New England. So she's accused early on
Speaker 1: she makes the witch cake at the direction of a
Speaker 1: neighbor with an English bit of folk laurel. There's probably
Speaker 1: worldwide equivalence of this, but that's the only magic she
Speaker 1: can really be connected to. But because she's enslaved, she
Speaker 1: has even less of a support group than anybody else,
Speaker 1: and she's more or less bullied into agreeing with what
Speaker 1: the magistrates are saying. Even though she's trying to say
Speaker 1: she's a victim of witches. They convinced she's one of them,
Speaker 1: and at that point she'll say anything I think to survive.
Speaker 1: It's all she has really to protect her and she
Speaker 1: will outlive the panic because they're reserving her as a
Speaker 1: witness against the others. Although I don't think she does
Speaker 1: have to speak in cook because plenty of other people
Speaker 1: were doing that. And finally, Mary Warren. Mary Warren is
Speaker 1: about seventeen and nineteen, a hired girl. She's working for
Speaker 1: the John and Elizabeth Proctor family. Uh apparently her mother
Speaker 1: and her mother died fairly recently. It might have been smallpox.
Speaker 1: They mentioned a fever and they had been smallpox, and
Speaker 1: her little sister went deaf from it but survived. It's
Speaker 1: not certain which Warren her father was, because there's like
Speaker 1: three or four families in the area and they're all
Speaker 1: paily obscue. But she has a lot to say during
Speaker 1: the trials, and she thinks at first she's afflicted or
Speaker 1: acts that way. When her her employer, Master Proctors out
Speaker 1: of town, she she's having fits and accuses people and
Speaker 1: acts in court as a witness. And when he comes home,
Speaker 1: he he, he whips her a bit, which one could
Speaker 1: do within reason to a servant. It's called correcting them,
Speaker 1: and she changes her mind. But when she changes her mind,
Speaker 1: she's accused of selling out by the other still afflicted witnesses,
Speaker 1: and after that she'll say anything to survive. So we
Speaker 1: really want to talk about how the different social strata
Speaker 1: of the women where they existed in those places, how
Speaker 1: it affected the way they were treated once once the
Speaker 1: trials started to come around, and they're all involved in
Speaker 1: the trials in different ways. Um, but how did the
Speaker 1: social strata really affect them all? Well, your place in
Speaker 1: society was a lot more rigid then than now. Some
Speaker 1: people did go up in the world, and of course
Speaker 1: there'd be some resentment from people who hadn't. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: a quote somewhere about you. You you're excuse me. You
Speaker 1: may be Mrs so and so now, but you only
Speaker 1: good wife somebody before this the only one obviously not
Speaker 1: taking it. Well. Ah, let's see, some of the upper
Speaker 1: crust people who were named were the those accusations tended
Speaker 1: to be dismissed by some of the magistrates who knew
Speaker 1: the people and do that they would never do that,
Speaker 1: which of course they hadn't, but it did help. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, just being well off wasn't enough, because
Speaker 1: Merry English was certainly arrested. Also, some of the really
Speaker 1: poor ones like Sarah Good she was had come down
Speaker 1: in the world actually, and she was cranky because of it,
Speaker 1: and crankiness didn't help. But then I got the impression
Speaker 1: from what's recorded that Rebecca Nurse was polite enough all
Speaker 1: through and didn't help her. Let's talk about the Putnam's
Speaker 1: relationship to the Proctors and anything about the towns like
Speaker 1: those three groups that the extended Town family had wood
Speaker 1: lots in Topsfield where they lived, and the extended Putnam
Speaker 1: family had wood lots in the same area, but there
Speaker 1: were different surveys involved and boundary lines that were not accurate,
Speaker 1: which wasn't exactly their fault, but each one was going
Speaker 1: to keep the one that was more beneficial to them.
Speaker 1: So there were some court cases where they'd been fights
Speaker 1: on near fights in the woods when guys went out
Speaker 1: to collect firewood or timber. I think the whole town
Speaker 1: of tops Fields border was contended by Salem Village because
Speaker 1: of those boundary disputes, So there was some bad feeling there.
Speaker 1: A lot of it probably just didn't get written down.
Speaker 1: People who just rubbed each other the wrong way. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of documentation surviving, but not enough, not when
Speaker 1: you're a fanatic about it. How did the Putnam's like
Speaker 1: really figure into that, because the Putnams are the ones
Speaker 1: who are having the dispute a lot of the times. Yes,
Speaker 1: well as it's a big family um and Thomas Putnam,
Speaker 1: his and his wife and his daughter are some of
Speaker 1: the major accuses they're willing to suspect. I guess at
Speaker 1: least any put a lot of people in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: And also he wrote a very good hand, clear hand,
Speaker 1: so that he took a lot of the notes and depositions,
Speaker 1: so he was quite busy with it is a civic duty,
Speaker 1: and he did not want to just blend into the background.
Speaker 1: He wanted to be a civic leader, I believe, and
Speaker 1: this was unfortunately his big chance. So it seemed to
Speaker 1: be very important to prove whether or not the girls
Speaker 1: were actually possessed in some way, or if they were
Speaker 1: under the spell or or under the influence of a witch.
Speaker 1: Why was that so important? I suppose if you were
Speaker 1: possessed by demons, it could be involuntary, but you could
Speaker 1: be collaborating with them too, and then that would make
Speaker 1: you an effect at which but if you're just a
Speaker 1: poor victim of somebody else, some of the humans malice,
Speaker 1: although their pet demons is supposedly causing the pains the
Speaker 1: Iowa victim, or are you collaborating? Was the question, what
Speaker 1: was it about the convulsions themselves that made everyone just
Speaker 1: so feel so uneasy? Well, a convulsion is a scary
Speaker 1: thing to say. Um, Let's see Reverend Hale at one
Speaker 1: point and in the book he wrote later, he said,
Speaker 1: it was beyond the power of epilepsy what they were
Speaker 1: going through, and they must have seen epileptic seizures, and
Speaker 1: certainly there seemed to be a lot of fevers when
Speaker 1: they got too high. People with convults, and they knew
Speaker 1: what that meant. But there was something really different about this,
Speaker 1: or more extreme. Prior to this and prior to the
Speaker 1: Goodwin case somewhat earlier convulsions. I don't think we're common
Speaker 1: as a symptom. It would be the cow died, of
Speaker 1: the cow went dry, and the livestock died, all sorts
Speaker 1: of misfortunes. But it wasn't so much that people seemed
Speaker 1: to be repelling an attack of an invisible entity. So
Speaker 1: this was not what which trials were not an everyday
Speaker 1: occurrence even then, but it was the convulsions were particularly
Speaker 1: distressing part of this although why they were believed and
Speaker 1: not again Hales to paraphrase and me said, you had
Speaker 1: to be there. It was just really they had well
Speaker 1: it kind of least a wife, perhaps these younger women
Speaker 1: at least early on, why their stories were believed over adults. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because sure, and young women and older women, depending who's
Speaker 1: asking the questions, that their testimony didn't carry as much
Speaker 1: weight in the judges minds necessarily, although women did speak
Speaker 1: in court as witnesses, but you know, a child's testimony,
Speaker 1: do they know what they're talking about? But there must
Speaker 1: have been just something about it that does not translate
Speaker 1: in the notes, even when they're pretty seemed to be
Speaker 1: pretty slorough And I mean you read the questions and
Speaker 1: answers for the hearings. They're not the trial questions. It's
Speaker 1: the hearing that leads up to it. And it's like
Speaker 1: something with the sound turned off. You're not really hearing
Speaker 1: somebody screaming in agony or protesting or the audience reacting.
Speaker 1: It sounds not conducive to clear thinking. We mentioned Sarah
Speaker 1: Good I think earlier, and Sarah Osborne, women of that standing, Well,
Speaker 1: how do you think they were treated by they're they're
Speaker 1: the people who lived around them. Well, as I said,
Speaker 1: Sarah Goodhead come down in the world, that she came
Speaker 1: from a better off family, but stepfather kind of got
Speaker 1: things that should have come to the children. And she's
Speaker 1: married to an impecunious person who then dies and leaves
Speaker 1: her in debt, and she marries second husband who is
Speaker 1: no great provider at all, and she's begging from time
Speaker 1: to time for her children. So this she could be
Speaker 1: kind of annoying that Sarah gould come around again wanting something,
Speaker 1: and the fact that she's she feels this keenly and
Speaker 1: is cranky, not really not a humble person, so she
Speaker 1: can get on people's nerves. Perhaps coming down in the
Speaker 1: world might seem like you're you're just not trying hot enough.
Speaker 1: Although how hot can a woman try and actually gets
Speaker 1: the thing in those days? Economically, how many opportunities are there?
Speaker 1: Or if I don't know, it's some punishment from God,
Speaker 1: which is rather unfit to put on God. But you
Speaker 1: know then it's not orthodox necessarily what the neighbors might wonder.
Speaker 1: Sarah Osborne was well, she had she and her husband
Speaker 1: had a farm. But the first husband dies and she
Speaker 1: marries the bond servant, and the farm should have gone
Speaker 1: to the sons when they came of age, and she
Speaker 1: still has rights to live there at least while she's
Speaker 1: a widow. But now she's married and there's a second
Speaker 1: husband and he's kind of taking over the running of things,
Speaker 1: and the sons cannot get the farm now that they're
Speaker 1: of age away from him, so there's a lot of
Speaker 1: hard feelings with that, And the Putnams were related to
Speaker 1: the first husband. So that kind of explains a few things.
Speaker 1: You know, for the offit of our listeners, it might
Speaker 1: be good to just go over the basics of like
Speaker 1: what the rights of women were in seventeenth century New England. Well,
Speaker 1: they did say about class the better so at the
Speaker 1: team around and said the better sort at middling saw
Speaker 1: it and the lower sort. And how people were addressed
Speaker 1: is reflected in this Mr and Mrs His master and mistress.
Speaker 1: They obviously employed people people like Rebecca nurse. In the
Speaker 1: middle it would be good wife nurse, hence good eat nurse.
Speaker 1: It's not a nickname. It's like mrs only abbreviated good
Speaker 1: man and good wife, and then people below that are
Speaker 1: just addressed by their first name, the way people address
Speaker 1: each other. Now. Uh yeah. Someone was asked how she
Speaker 1: had addressed Sarah good oh her spect. She said, well,
Speaker 1: I guess I just called her Sarah. She didn't have
Speaker 1: to be good wife Sarah because they didn't own anything.
Speaker 1: And below that, she's at least free. She's married. Uh.
Speaker 1: This servants who contracted for a length of time, and
Speaker 1: then there's people who are owned in slavery and can
Speaker 1: be bought and sold. Unfortunately, slaveries legal in Massachusetts, although
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of them. They are around Indians
Speaker 1: and Africans. But women they did have rights. Uh. Some
Speaker 1: of them brought court chases, some sued for divorce, which
Speaker 1: was very difficult in England. I don't I think the
Speaker 1: only way you could get a real divorce was to
Speaker 1: go through parliament. So that's just the upper Escalon. And
Speaker 1: I don't think they could remarry legally. I'm not certain
Speaker 1: at this time. But in Massachusetts the Puritans, you could
Speaker 1: get a divorce and remarry and it would all be legal.
Speaker 1: Children would be legal, inheritances would be legal. And there
Speaker 1: were women who sued their husbands and got divorces didn't
Speaker 1: happen every day, but they did. But Uh a married woman,
Speaker 1: not just among Puritans but in England too, were uh
Speaker 1: covered by their husband. He was the head of the household,
Speaker 1: He was the spokesman. He was supposed to be running things,
Speaker 1: so that she technically did not own anything unless she
Speaker 1: was a widow who had had a good prenuptial contract.
Speaker 1: And some of the hostel exist. But if you don't
Speaker 1: own anything, not a lot to contract, which is why
Speaker 1: when they were confiscations for like jail dads and stuff.
Speaker 1: Uh Dorcas Hare who was a widow at the time,
Speaker 1: they took some of her furniture and the cow and
Speaker 1: so on, because she owed money. But when bridget Bishop
Speaker 1: was arrested and she hangs no, they didn't confiscate anything
Speaker 1: because she didn't own anything. Her husband did, even though
Speaker 1: she had owned a few things before she was married.
Speaker 1: Now was absorbed into his. But they they could speak
Speaker 1: up and and they could most m perhaps most importantly
Speaker 1: to them women like men, was supposed to search your
Speaker 1: soul to see if you was saved where you were
Speaker 1: They of joining the church and having communion and access
Speaker 1: to baptism and so on, and that was a personal journey.
Speaker 1: So that they would be members of the church equal
Speaker 1: before God. Couldn't vote but in church matters, but they
Speaker 1: sometimes made their feelings, made their feelings known. But yeah,
Speaker 1: but at least before God you were equal. So let's
Speaker 1: jump to power power within the society, because I feel
Speaker 1: like all this is very much connected. Um. The power
Speaker 1: seemed to find its roots in faith, even though you
Speaker 1: mentioned these these are not all Puritans who are that
Speaker 1: we're talking about. However, that Puritan faith, in that Puritan
Speaker 1: power structure kind of had its hold over everything. When
Speaker 1: people emigrated early on, like the sixteen thirties, a lot
Speaker 1: of people coming in. Most of them are coming over
Speaker 1: for faith reasons. But they soon became evident that they
Speaker 1: didn't all believe the same thing exactly. So in order
Speaker 1: to vote, which is men it uh you was supposed
Speaker 1: to they was supposed to be members fully communing members
Speaker 1: of one of the churches, which they're all separate entities.
Speaker 1: There isn't like bishops or anything to should that. You know,
Speaker 1: these are upstanding citizens and they're not going to rob
Speaker 1: you or something like that. But of eventually all the
Speaker 1: people moved in uh Quakers and locals who converted to
Speaker 1: Quaker him. Also the Church of England families, um, the
Speaker 1: men who are merchants, who a lot of them who
Speaker 1: came in later were Church of England. And of course
Speaker 1: there is back in England as the Civil Wars going on,
Speaker 1: and the Puritans predominate during the Commonwealth period when there's
Speaker 1: no king. Oh there are other groups when the king
Speaker 1: returns with Charles the Second comes back and the monarchy
Speaker 1: is re established. The Church of England is definitely a
Speaker 1: Biscopalian at this point and in England not nonconformists. Is
Speaker 1: all of the different sects of Puritanism are called, are
Speaker 1: excluded from the university degrees, couldn't run for parliament and
Speaker 1: so forth, and so Massachusetts tried to pretend that they
Speaker 1: just couldn't find the paperwork to get rid of the
Speaker 1: chatter and all that. But I actually they had to allow,
Speaker 1: they had to not allow the requirement that you be
Speaker 1: a church member in order to vote. But England changes
Speaker 1: it so you have to own a certain amount of property.
Speaker 1: So theoretically some for a church members maybe don't vote
Speaker 1: anymore on the local level. If you're going to choose
Speaker 1: the hall grief and the cow catcher in town and
Speaker 1: the guide amend the roads. They may not care about that,
Speaker 1: and selectmen, but the upper ranks of the government. You
Speaker 1: had to have a certain amount of property. So are
Speaker 1: you going to is it a religious requirement or a
Speaker 1: financial requirement? Yeah? How connected are those two things? You know? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean there were biscopanions who had money too. So
Speaker 1: let's let's pull back and talk about just citizens of
Speaker 1: Essex County, people living in Essex County at the time,
Speaker 1: right up into and then as the trials are occurring.
Speaker 1: How are these trials that are happening. Let's just say
Speaker 1: wherever the epicenter is, like around Salem. How is the
Speaker 1: rest of Essex County being affected just in their daily
Speaker 1: going about their lives. Well, when the panic started and
Speaker 1: the law got into it, got involved in this, this
Speaker 1: hearings and arrests. But it's Salem. Salem includes Salem Village,
Speaker 1: which is the rural end of town. But the panic
Speaker 1: is spreading and in the summer, and Over, which then
Speaker 1: bordered it, uh began to have cases and there were
Speaker 1: actually more people accused in and Over than in Salem.
Speaker 1: So the panic spread. No people in Ipswich, in Gloucester
Speaker 1: and in some of the Middlesex County towns, so that
Speaker 1: they were jails in three counties involved in this, but
Speaker 1: each of them on neighborhood quarrels, family quarrels. That's one
Speaker 1: of the most fascinating things about this entire crisis is
Speaker 1: that these are essentially neighborhood quarrels between neighbors, but there's
Speaker 1: this spiritual aspect to them that that brings in this
Speaker 1: the weight in the power of something other worldly. Um
Speaker 1: the effects seem to be magic and that involves spirits
Speaker 1: of one kind or another allegedly. Yeah, but simultaneously you
Speaker 1: have nature bearing down on all of these humans because
Speaker 1: as you're getting in closer and closer to winter at
Speaker 1: the time, there's a real physical danger that's approaching as well.
Speaker 1: The people in jail jails were not conducive to your health.
Speaker 1: They apparently had fireplaces because bills for why it would,
Speaker 1: but they're not meant to hold people for a long
Speaker 1: length of time, and they're not supposed to hold a
Speaker 1: lot of people. Once winter started to come down on
Speaker 1: the temperatures getting colder, which happened earlier than it does now. Uh,
Speaker 1: there were petitions, some of them from and over anyway,
Speaker 1: asking if the suspects could be let out until spring,
Speaker 1: we promise we'll bring them back when the trials resumed
Speaker 1: next I a few people were let out on bail.
Speaker 1: Some of the youngest ones even thought they'd been accusing people.
Speaker 1: They went home, but I don't think many of the
Speaker 1: older ones did. And some of the children that got arrested,
Speaker 1: they did go home, but not all of them. And
Speaker 1: that's one reason the trials resumed the following January. They're
Speaker 1: waiting to hear from the crown. Should be are we
Speaker 1: proceeding right? Should we do this? But it was just
Speaker 1: he was too dangerous for the people in jail, and
Speaker 1: just even if the temperature was good, it's not clean
Speaker 1: with all those people in one place. How linked are
Speaker 1: the concepts of sin and crime? Not every sin as
Speaker 1: a crime, but all crimes involves some kind of sin. Uh,
Speaker 1: drunkenness would be sinful, but if you're not. If a
Speaker 1: guy is drunk but he doesn't waste the family substance,
Speaker 1: beat the wife and the children, then it's not a crime,
Speaker 1: but it's sinful. Why was confession such an important part
Speaker 1: of the trials themselves? Well, any any capital conviction required
Speaker 1: either two competent witnesses to the same act. That's what
Speaker 1: spectral evidence gets tangled, or a credible confession from the accused,
Speaker 1: and they were aware and they say, length, it's not
Speaker 1: somebody whose mind is affected or there tortured into it
Speaker 1: or anything like that. But the people who did confess,
Speaker 1: and there were a lot of people who did confess, uh,
Speaker 1: some of them said afterwards that they really didn't know
Speaker 1: what they had said, they were so terrified by what
Speaker 1: was going on. One woman said she remembers a document
Speaker 1: being read in the name of the king and the queen,
Speaker 1: and after that she didn't know what happened. She just
Speaker 1: couldn't remember. She blanked out, and others would probably they was.
Speaker 1: It sounded like they was just agreeing to anything in
Speaker 1: order to get on the good side of the magistrate
Speaker 1: or or in the hopes that it would lengthen their life.
Speaker 1: Because the people who were who had confessed and UH
Speaker 1: were held as witnesses against the supposed collaborate atis, and
Speaker 1: that delayed things so that not all of them, but
Speaker 1: most of them survived because the panic died down until
Speaker 1: spectral evidence, which is the report of what the demons
Speaker 1: are doing, was no longer allowed in court. Describe some
Speaker 1: of those I guess the evolution of criticisms against spectral evidence. Well,
Speaker 1: at the very beginning, one of the judges who lived
Speaker 1: in Boston consulted with his pastor's caught and Mather about
Speaker 1: any information on how we should proceed, and matthe said,
Speaker 1: to be very careful of spectral evidence. It really can't
Speaker 1: be trusted. It's axiomatic. The devil is the prince of lies.
Speaker 1: He's a lie. You can't believe anything that comes from
Speaker 1: that direction, so you can't really believe it. And they
Speaker 1: said they'd be careful, but they weren't careful. And I
Speaker 1: think Matthew wasn't there at most of the trials. Just
Speaker 1: assumed that they're older than I am. They they're wise
Speaker 1: enough people. They probably know what they're doing, which they
Speaker 1: didn't really because they were carried away by it all too.
Speaker 1: It seems so real at the time, unfortunately, because the
Speaker 1: convulsions in the courtroom seemed to be the crime being
Speaker 1: committed right in front of everybody, and we can all
Speaker 1: see the effects of it, but the cause of it
Speaker 1: they could not see, and they had to depend on
Speaker 1: the reports of the proposed afflicted, and even if the
Speaker 1: afflicted people were quite convinced themselves, they can be deluded
Speaker 1: by the devil, and that's their own philosophical outlook on it,
Speaker 1: and they didn't pay enough attention to it. It's pointed
Speaker 1: out on the very first day by Sarah Osborne that
Speaker 1: the devil can take the shape of anybody, so why
Speaker 1: not me? For some reason, it was said afterwards anyway,
Speaker 1: it's for some reason Stoughton thought that you did have
Speaker 1: to give the devil permission. Is if the Prince of
Speaker 1: Lies is going to ask a permission. It really didn't
Speaker 1: make sense. So he seemed to think he knew what
Speaker 1: he was doing, and he was a very strong personality.
Speaker 1: And I think that if some of the other judges
Speaker 1: had second thoughts, they may be figet he knew what
Speaker 1: he was talking about. Oh bo. After the first execution
Speaker 1: of Bridget Bishop, one of the judges, Nathaniel Saltonstall, stepped out.
Speaker 1: He just left speaking of um. Bridget Bishop wasn't the
Speaker 1: first person to get arrested for these crds, but she
Speaker 1: was the first person to be put on trial. Was
Speaker 1: that Bridget Bishop had been suspected before of witchcraft sold
Speaker 1: it was that against her. They maybe seemed more evidence
Speaker 1: against her, or at least her reputation wasn't good in
Speaker 1: that respect, although that's really other people's reactions than anything
Speaker 1: she had actually done. She was sort of the usual suspect.
Speaker 1: You might say, why was Titchuba's testimony in particular? Why
Speaker 1: was it powerful? When she started describing things and to
Speaker 1: fulfill the expectation of the questions, it was pretty vivid
Speaker 1: story about this spirit and that spirit, and these otherwise
Speaker 1: invisible entities, and some in the shape of birds, and
Speaker 1: this hairy thing that was standing by the fire, warming
Speaker 1: its hands or pinching the girls, and a bird with
Speaker 1: a woman's head. It was pretty colorful. It's probably more
Speaker 1: thorer than that than the notes indicated, because there's a
Speaker 1: lot going on and they are using shorthand, but it's
Speaker 1: still not an absolute transcription. So that was pretty vivid.
Speaker 1: And she describes other which specters osborne and good, but
Speaker 1: then others also, but she doesn't know who they were,
Speaker 1: so people are left with wondering who are the others
Speaker 1: and who do I not trust? Who might be a suspect,
Speaker 1: And then it really blew out out of control, so
Speaker 1: almost that known unknown that there are others out there,
Speaker 1: we just don't know who they are. That's that's fascinating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But because they could be under attack from them next
Speaker 1: the way, they could be under attack from the French
Speaker 1: and Indian forces in the on the frontier and coming
Speaker 1: closer to which was a very real threat later on
Speaker 1: they get as close as and over. But yeah, it
Speaker 1: seemed like it was all too likely to happen, even
Speaker 1: something like just the wilderness, the wildlife that surrounded them,
Speaker 1: because there were wolves around still, and there's a spectral
Speaker 1: wolf presumably spectral wolf reported that chases the doctor's hired
Speaker 1: girl and she has connected and fits soon after. But
Speaker 1: there were bounties on wolves, which I'm on the side
Speaker 1: of the wolves now, but ah, but there were bounties
Speaker 1: paid at least the year before, so I think they're
Speaker 1: in the vicinity and it's winter, so yeah, that would
Speaker 1: make people nervous too. Fear really is just one of
Speaker 1: the most pervasive things. Fear is very powerful, and it
Speaker 1: still is. And if you get to the point where
Speaker 1: you're panicking, then you're not you're thinking even less clearly
Speaker 1: than otherwise. What are the main separations between the role
Speaker 1: of someone who's a servant and someone who is a slave, Well,
Speaker 1: you don't sell the servant, it's uh. They're contracted for
Speaker 1: a certain period of time, but a slave is enslaved
Speaker 1: for life. There were cases of enterprising sea captains kidnapping
Speaker 1: people on the coast of England and Ireland and bringing
Speaker 1: them over his bond servants against their will. They had
Speaker 1: a certain period of time to work out, and there
Speaker 1: was a lawsuit by a couple and they might have
Speaker 1: been brothers who had been kidnapped like that and thought
Speaker 1: that they time should be up by now, so we
Speaker 1: should be free. And they're saying that they masked, it
Speaker 1: was a bit too hot and it wasn't gonna let
Speaker 1: them go. I think they got out. So but even
Speaker 1: even though this was totally involuntary, there was a time
Speaker 1: limit on it. The new Colonial Charter, what did they
Speaker 1: promise to the colonists. The new Charter, which took years
Speaker 1: to negotiate, made the the government legal. But one thing
Speaker 1: that England says in it is that it cannot be
Speaker 1: repugnant to any of the laws of England. The repugnancy clause.
Speaker 1: It can't contradict English common law, which isn't written down,
Speaker 1: but apparently there's ways of finding out what it is. Um.
Speaker 1: Some parts of Massachusetts law did differ. I mm hmm,
Speaker 1: like the divorce thing, but I'm not sure if they
Speaker 1: even looked at that. What There were various agents of
Speaker 1: the government prowling around making surely if there were violations
Speaker 1: or not, but they seemed to be mostly interested in
Speaker 1: import export taxes that were not being paid. They didn't
Speaker 1: seem to mention the witchcraft problem at all until one
Speaker 1: of them got beaten up in foot and jail and
Speaker 1: even talk side dispute. And he didn't like being in
Speaker 1: jail with a lot of commonist burglars, negroes and witches.
Speaker 1: He said, so he did not really care what they
Speaker 1: were doing with the witch trials. But um witchcraft was
Speaker 1: illegal in both countries. And when Phipps suspended the trials
Speaker 1: in the fall in October and asked for England's advice
Speaker 1: when it came back, it said, just do what the
Speaker 1: law allows and do your best. They didn't seem to
Speaker 1: quibble over how it had gone. Speaking of Phipps and
Speaker 1: ending Charles, what do we know about lady Mary Phipps.
Speaker 1: She was well educated, She's from Maine to I guess
Speaker 1: her family was in Maine and in Massachusetts. It was
Speaker 1: said that she taught her husband how to read on
Speaker 1: a honeymoon or soon after. He but even though he
Speaker 1: couldn't read, he was able to oversee building a ship
Speaker 1: and keep all that in his head, so he had
Speaker 1: a good memory anyway. But um, she was apparently, you know,
Speaker 1: a force a forceful woman, and he was devoted to her,
Speaker 1: listened to her. It said that she was accused, and
Speaker 1: apparently the source is a good one that she was
Speaker 1: at least named, that she had helped somebody get out
Speaker 1: of jail, signed there a warrant to get them out.
Speaker 1: I thought for a while that, you know, William Phipps
Speaker 1: and Mary Phipps, William and Mary, the monarchs, that there
Speaker 1: was some confusion there, or maybe they pretended there was
Speaker 1: a confusion. But she may have done that because the
Speaker 1: source is Thomas Hutchinson, the mid eighteenth century governor of
Speaker 1: Massachusetts Road of History, and he said he was shown
Speaker 1: a paper by somebody who had been a jailer and
Speaker 1: got fired when they let them out unauthorized. But yeah,
Speaker 1: she could have been named, but nothing was done about
Speaker 1: it because at that point, Phipps decides this is not
Speaker 1: going the right way and realizes what Sarah Osborne pointed
Speaker 1: out the first day of the hearings. If somebody sees
Speaker 1: a specter that looks like you, it doesn't mean it's you.
Speaker 1: So that that tactic did seem to work. Paying if
Speaker 1: you had the means paying to be released. Well, well,
Speaker 1: not everybody thought that the trials proceeding the right way,
Speaker 1: but we don't know exactly could have been. Just they
Speaker 1: were bribable. It did help to have money, and if
Speaker 1: you were wealthy enough, like Philip and Merry English, they
Speaker 1: were put in the Boston jail. But then he had
Speaker 1: enough money and put up a bond four thousand pounds,
Speaker 1: which is huge. That they could then rent a room
Speaker 1: in the jailer's house, which had better amenities. It was
Speaker 1: a room rather than a common room with everybody in it,
Speaker 1: so it was easy to escape from that too. I
Speaker 1: think he could go. The story with them is that
Speaker 1: they could go out get some exercise as long as
Speaker 1: they paid for God to come with them. Let That
Speaker 1: led to all sorts of possibilities, And there were people
Speaker 1: who didn't like the way the trials are going, such
Speaker 1: as Reverend Samuel Willard and Reverend I think Joshua Moody
Speaker 1: who was in town, also from New Hampshire. Apparently the
Speaker 1: family story with the English is is that they helped
Speaker 1: arrange things for them and persuade them to escape. But
Speaker 1: they did escape. They went to New York. I know
Speaker 1: there are several people who had to remain in jail
Speaker 1: even after their charges. Now, yes, how did it being
Speaker 1: a debtor function within the trials when you had to
Speaker 1: pay the phase, It's like two shillings sixpence a week,
Speaker 1: I think, and that I've seen is what a woman,
Speaker 1: if she was working full time is spinning and weaving,
Speaker 1: could earn in a week. So that's that's sizeable amount
Speaker 1: of money. Their families were supposed to come up with it,
Speaker 1: and one woman who died of natural causes in jail,
Speaker 1: the jailer wouldn't release the body to the Suns until
Speaker 1: they paid her fees the rent, and then I guess
Speaker 1: they did, but they complained about it later when there
Speaker 1: were reparations. The family had to come up with it,
Speaker 1: and I think that Jacob's family had to borrow money
Speaker 1: in order to get the daughter out. And then the
Speaker 1: person who loaned. It suit them the debt and she
Speaker 1: was back. She didn't want to come back to jail again.
Speaker 1: It was it was financial difficulty. Seventeen twelve, there was
Speaker 1: some restitution and people applied to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Speaker 1: saying this is what I spent and why, and some
Speaker 1: of them were reimbursed. Philip English asked for a great deal,
Speaker 1: but he was on good financial standing, so he didn't
Speaker 1: get that much. But yeah, Massachusetts tried to make commends.
Speaker 1: It didn't bring you didn't bring back your dead grandmother,
Speaker 1: but it was something. But anyway, it gives us some
Speaker 1: paperwork to know what people had to spend. They put
Speaker 1: in the expense of hiring a horse and going down
Speaker 1: to Boston from Salem, which is a whole day's trip
Speaker 1: to tend to their mother, or there aren't or somebody
Speaker 1: bring them some fresh clothes and some decent food. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess you got bread and water, but it wasn't great.
Speaker 1: And then they do that so many times in a week,
Speaker 1: and that's that's a lot of time away from work.
Speaker 1: The crops are growing, are not growing. And yes, it
Speaker 1: was financially bad for Massachusetts as well as for the
Speaker 1: individuals who was the final accused which to actually leave
Speaker 1: the jail. It's hard to say. I really don't know
Speaker 1: was Okay, was Chichiba at least within the sand which
Speaker 1: Charles was, it was the last person because of some
Speaker 1: of these she made. She was among the last, I
Speaker 1: would say, because her she didn't come before the Jewies
Speaker 1: Child Jewlies until the following May, and then they were
Speaker 1: her fees. She'd been in jail a long time and
Speaker 1: Samuel Paris did not want her back because that whole
Speaker 1: episode is at this point very embarrassing and what if
Speaker 1: she really is a which do I want her in
Speaker 1: my house? So he wasn't going to pay it, and
Speaker 1: they have sold her to somebody we don't know to
Speaker 1: cover the fees. So she's back to being a slave
Speaker 1: somewhere else and we don't know where, but apparently locally,
Speaker 1: because it's mentioned that she was. She was not sold
Speaker 1: out of the colony at that point. She just disappeared
Speaker 1: from the records. What are the kinds of like primary source, like,
Speaker 1: what's the kind of written stuff that you actually have
Speaker 1: from from from this time? And one of the kinds
Speaker 1: of things they write about. There's a lot we don't
Speaker 1: know but there's a lot of documentation that has survived. Um,
Speaker 1: there's warrants, the original compliance uh A minimus where someone's
Speaker 1: being transferred from one jail to another, and they're not
Speaker 1: for everybody. It's not a complete set for everyone who's accused,
Speaker 1: but especially at the beginning, there's a lot of questions
Speaker 1: and answers taken down during the initial hearing, not at
Speaker 1: the trials, but at the hearings to see if there's
Speaker 1: enough he had to whold someone for trial, and surprise,
Speaker 1: knewly all of them were. But different people took notes
Speaker 1: at different times, and some are more complete than others.
Speaker 1: But you've got questions and answers, and you can see,
Speaker 1: for example, was titue but where a couple of people
Speaker 1: were taking notes on that first day, you can see
Speaker 1: whether the question was Presumably John Hawthorne is already made
Speaker 1: up his mind this has to be a guilty person,
Speaker 1: so he's he's going to keep asking the question until
Speaker 1: he gets an answer. And then she describes things. And
Speaker 1: if you put the two together, and you get this
Speaker 1: picture of all the devils in the passonage and what
Speaker 1: they look like and who else is and the suspicions
Speaker 1: and how somebody flew through the air and so on,
Speaker 1: and those are extremely helpful. And then there are statements
Speaker 1: by witnesses and accusers who say, on such and such
Speaker 1: a date, I was afflicted and so on. That's painful,
Speaker 1: and it's on a date, and maybe somebody else makes
Speaker 1: a statement saying, yes, they saw them convulsing on such
Speaker 1: and such a date. But then there's other depositions where
Speaker 1: we had an argument with someone and then the cow
Speaker 1: got sick. And then there's the confessions that some people did.
Speaker 1: And they confes us that they sold themselves to the devil,
Speaker 1: and how did he appear? And he always was came
Speaker 1: as a black dog, or he looked like a man,
Speaker 1: or he looked like a cold I think in one case,
Speaker 1: and how and we and they described being re baptized
Speaker 1: into the Devil's communion, and they're thrown into someone got
Speaker 1: thrown into a stream. They're coming up with whatever whatever
Speaker 1: comes through. They had someone's face was pushed in a
Speaker 1: bucket of water, they said. Or they wrote out a
Speaker 1: contract on a piece of birch back, or they were
Speaker 1: illiterate and they put their thumb mark on something. That's
Speaker 1: something they can get quite detailed, but you know, even
Speaker 1: though it didn't happen, it's extremely interesting. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: there are lists back in ninety three you do get
Speaker 1: the names of some of the jurors. Unfortunately, most of
Speaker 1: the jurors in sixteen ninety two we don't know who
Speaker 1: they were because that paper were didn't survive. And later
Speaker 1: on there are petitions saying this is what I went
Speaker 1: through and I want my name cleared, and the petitions
Speaker 1: for reimbursement later on, like seventeen twelve, after the reversal
Speaker 1: of attainder, and the names have been cleared if they
Speaker 1: got in the petitions, there were five. I think they
Speaker 1: didn't get cleared until two thousand one on Halloween. They
Speaker 1: weren't taking this seriously, but you know they're listing what
Speaker 1: they lost, what was confiscated, the money they had to
Speaker 1: spend to go visit a relative in jail, and so on.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of detail and a lot of
Speaker 1: those are online, which is very helpful. In the University
Speaker 1: of Virginia's website. There was a commentary at the time.
Speaker 1: Let's see that when the Panics started to wind down
Speaker 1: in October, there were a couple of letters circulated not
Speaker 1: in print at the time. There in print now uh
Speaker 1: one was by one of the Brittles, criticizing the way
Speaker 1: the trials had proceeded that too much spectral evidence. It
Speaker 1: boils down to. There's some anecdotes in that, but mostly
Speaker 1: it's an argument as to why this does not work
Speaker 1: and increase Mata, who had negotiated the charter rights up
Speaker 1: his views that he had had been discussed at a
Speaker 1: meeting of area ministers. Cases of Conscience. It's a longer
Speaker 1: title than that, as to why you cannot trust spectral evidences.
Speaker 1: And there are some letters such as from Phips to
Speaker 1: the Privy Council of the Crown, of various government officials
Speaker 1: in England saying it's not I'm stopping it. It wasn't
Speaker 1: my fault. I wasn't there. I was following your orders
Speaker 1: to keep Mane safe. But we've stopped it now and
Speaker 1: it wasn't my fault. But let's see. So when the
Speaker 1: trials start up again in January and so on, there's
Speaker 1: some paperwork from that, a cup and in October the court,
Speaker 1: I guess the government asked Corton rather to write a
Speaker 1: summary of what had been going on, and he at
Speaker 1: this point still assumes that they had been proceeding correctly
Speaker 1: and maybe he's making two thinks he needs to make
Speaker 1: more excuses for how things had gone. So it kind
Speaker 1: of supports the view that they had proceeded as best
Speaker 1: they could, and it did nothing for his reputation thereafter,
Speaker 1: and it kind of ties him with that, even though
Speaker 1: he did say at the beginning, you shouldn't really use
Speaker 1: spectral evidence, and he had a lot of other good
Speaker 1: things that he did, but that was a very unfortunate one.
Speaker 1: All over, the book is a good source of what
Speaker 1: people were saying and of the end views of the trials,
Speaker 1: and there's some anecdotes in it that aren't in the
Speaker 1: existing papers they did send the court. M m. Clerk
Speaker 1: of the Court sent him some of the paperwork which
Speaker 1: he got to see, and some of that might not
Speaker 1: exist now, but that's what he was writing from and
Speaker 1: making excuses for how the government had proceeded. Because another
Speaker 1: thing is that the government is trying to establish itself
Speaker 1: according to the new Charter, and they don't need so
Speaker 1: much public unrest that they lose it again, or you know,
Speaker 1: the populace does something to react against it. In England's
Speaker 1: is or well, forget about self roll after this, so
Speaker 1: he was trying to protect the reputation of the government
Speaker 1: too much. As strange as it is, you can view
Speaker 1: the Salem crisis as a pr nightmare for a group
Speaker 1: of people. It was the Pio yes right. And and
Speaker 1: because of that book, which was published in England and
Speaker 1: in New England. Uh Robert calf who was a merchant,
Speaker 1: and he had been a constable in Boston in that year,
Speaker 1: so he might have been helping to arrest people. We
Speaker 1: don't really know that. He was highly critical of the
Speaker 1: trials at this point. He hadn't really said anything while
Speaker 1: I was going on, but he wrote a book criticizing this,
Speaker 1: criticizing the Mathers and the government, and that has a
Speaker 1: lot a lot of really good source material because he
Speaker 1: spoke to some of the families involved and and Prince.
Speaker 1: Some of the paperwork that didn't get saved or it
Speaker 1: was a receipt from the sheriffice to what God confiscated.
Speaker 1: We know about it because it was in his book.
Speaker 1: And then there was back and forth between the Maths
Speaker 1: and ca and so debating how things had gone on.
Speaker 1: But that is a source book. And later Reverend John Hale,
Speaker 1: who had believed that it was witchcraft at first and
Speaker 1: then did change his mind. He wrote a book later
Speaker 1: as to how it seemed and how it is obviously
Speaker 1: not a good idea to accept spectral evidence, although at
Speaker 1: the time it seemed like such and such, and it
Speaker 1: is anecdotes in there that that were very helpful, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't published until after his death in but that's
Speaker 1: a good source too. At the very top, we talked
Speaker 1: about Rebecca Nurse. She had, like you said, a support
Speaker 1: structure around her her family. Talk to me about what
Speaker 1: made her family ready for this fight, because it wouldn't
Speaker 1: have been it's not an easy thing to fight for
Speaker 1: her name and for her innocence. Well, they just I'm
Speaker 1: going to protect mother. The Nurse family got statements from neighbors.
Speaker 1: They circulated a petition neighbors and lots of people signed it.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just them, so they people put their names
Speaker 1: on it. And there was never any retaliation against any
Speaker 1: of the people who did that, or the petitions for
Speaker 1: the practice or for Mary Bradbury unhappy to say, and
Speaker 1: they took that to the governor and other statements and
Speaker 1: even a statement from I believe this was at this
Speaker 1: point a statement from the jurors who misunderstood something she
Speaker 1: said because she was originally got a not guilty verdict,
Speaker 1: which scared the afflicted girls, either either because they expected
Speaker 1: the devils to do something or because they did not
Speaker 1: want to be not believed. But they screech and it
Speaker 1: seems like they're being heard, and Stowton's sends the jury
Speaker 1: out to reconsider, and they come back and ask her
Speaker 1: about a certain statement she had made when she was
Speaker 1: brought into the room. She why of the confessors had
Speaker 1: come in, and she said, why is she here? She's
Speaker 1: one of us? Did she mean one of us witches
Speaker 1: or one of us accused, which is what she meant.
Speaker 1: But she doesn't answer, and they figure, okay, she has
Speaker 1: nothing to say in her defense, and they bring back
Speaker 1: the guilty verdict and her the family tells her afterwards
Speaker 1: what had happened, and she writes, so she signs a
Speaker 1: statement that they wrote for her right or she wrote
Speaker 1: it herself, saying that she thought they meant a fellow prisoner,
Speaker 1: not a fellow which and all of this has presented
Speaker 1: to the governor and they get a reprieve, and whereupon
Speaker 1: there are even worse afflictions, and the reprieve is taken
Speaker 1: away and she hangs. But they do try, and they
Speaker 1: keep trying, and they they they never really I don't
Speaker 1: know if they never forgive the accusers, but Paris and
Speaker 1: the Putnam certainly thought that Rebecca was a witch at
Speaker 1: the height of the panic there, and they are at
Speaker 1: obvious odds for a long time thereafter, and they're part
Speaker 1: of the faction that would like to get rid of
Speaker 1: Paris and break that contract for all these reasons. You know,
Speaker 1: you look at everything that's kind of swirling around the
Speaker 1: village of Salem that's causing this to occur. In your books,
Speaker 1: specifically in the Six Women, you're really focusing on these
Speaker 1: women in their lives and getting a view from inside,
Speaker 1: trying to know you you are and and why is
Speaker 1: it important to focus on these specific women. Well, the
Speaker 1: something biographical, trying to tell what it was like to
Speaker 1: go through it, what it was like to live through
Speaker 1: it as an accused or an accuser. It's I mean,
Speaker 1: there are concepts and of what goes on in the
Speaker 1: world and these great movements of history, but how does
Speaker 1: it hit an individual depending and there are different parts
Speaker 1: of society or different parts of the disaster that's going on.
Speaker 1: I was trying to get into into their minds and
Speaker 1: see it through their eyes. But you know, that's spent
Speaker 1: three fifty years now, so I can only guess if
Speaker 1: I've done it, But I tried. Do you see any
Speaker 1: parallels in the lives of women in some people believed
Speaker 1: easier than others, and some people aren't believed even when
Speaker 1: they're telling the truth. There's there's a feeling that it
Speaker 1: is very silly in some strange way, very silly that
Speaker 1: anyone could believe that the belief in whiches was so
Speaker 1: pervasive that human beings could get hurt and actually go
Speaker 1: to court for these things there are nowadays. It's this
Speaker 1: almost like why are they believed in which is? But
Speaker 1: are are there things nowadays in contemporary times that could
Speaker 1: be considered similar to a belief in something that is
Speaker 1: just either not true or fantastic? Well, the idea of
Speaker 1: which is or evil magic was not just the Puritans,
Speaker 1: not just New England. It was general in the colonies
Speaker 1: in Europe and in other cultures in North America, Africa, Asia,
Speaker 1: all over. The fact that it could happen was just
Speaker 1: obvious to them. Uh. And if people are afraid enough,
Speaker 1: they will have physical reaction, and people can be overreacting
Speaker 1: to things nowadays that could happen, such as the it
Speaker 1: was a Satanist scare where day care as centers was
Speaker 1: supposedly being targeted. Will there are crimes against children that
Speaker 1: are horrible and they can happen, but that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that they were happening in those cases, or even that
Speaker 1: there were organizations of Satanists doing it, but they were,
Speaker 1: but people reacted really strongly to it. Obviously, there are
Speaker 1: toxic waste problems. They can poison people and big companies,
Speaker 1: and industrial waste is a very real problem. But sometimes
Speaker 1: there are physical reactions now that could logically be explained
Speaker 1: that way, but there's no evidence there is any which
Speaker 1: doesn't which means presumably that there isn't a problem with
Speaker 1: toxic poisoning with those sufferers, But that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: there's no such thing as toxic waste. So even if
Speaker 1: you continue to believe that evil magic is possible, and
Speaker 1: people do and other cultures in and this one, uh,
Speaker 1: the point then and now is is that's what happening
Speaker 1: here and now? Can you be certain don't panic yet,
Speaker 1: try to figure out exactly what's going on. And if
Speaker 1: they've done that, then without changing their views or world
Speaker 1: or anything, it wouldn't have gotten so far. But the
Speaker 1: panic really exploded, and nowadays it would explode over something
Speaker 1: else and it wouldn't be just like the Salem problem.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't have the Halloween spookiness to it and
Speaker 1: it's not recognized. I love to have a sense of
Speaker 1: what the life for Puritans living in Salem and in
Speaker 1: Essex County was like aside from the witch trial. Well,
Speaker 1: let's see most well, most of New England was a
Speaker 1: grarian and it depended on how on the weather as
Speaker 1: to how good the crops were from year to year.
Speaker 1: Ninety two was a drought year, so that was another worry.
Speaker 1: In the center of Salem, down by the harbor pat
Speaker 1: most of the people in the maritime trades and the
Speaker 1: merchants who had far flung business associations up and down
Speaker 1: to England and abroad depending I think Philip English had
Speaker 1: connections as far as Russia. It's something about the fir Trate.
Speaker 1: I think the maritime economy was threatened by the war
Speaker 1: that was going on with Canada, which is border wars,
Speaker 1: guerrilla raids, retaliations and so on. So there's pirates. There's pirates,
Speaker 1: pirates who had robbed from anybody, private privateers licensed by
Speaker 1: the French Canadian governments to prey on English shipping because
Speaker 1: neither country has a navy. Navy New England licensed privateers
Speaker 1: such as John Alden who would prey on French shipping.
Speaker 1: If you go far enough out to see you could
Speaker 1: be taken by barbary pirates and sold as a slave.
Speaker 1: In northern Africa, there's, as I say, the war at
Speaker 1: home frontier raids, and a lot of the people had
Speaker 1: evacuated from some of the more remote main settlements and
Speaker 1: come south safety's sake. A lot of the people in
Speaker 1: the Salem area had some connection or other with Maine
Speaker 1: and attacks there. Others people who were around were veterans
Speaker 1: of the King Phillips War and had had fought with
Speaker 1: the native peoples in southern New England. And some of
Speaker 1: the people were on militia duty up in may Down
Speaker 1: may excuse me, uh, protecting with the garrisons had experienced there.
Speaker 1: Some had gone in the fleet to Canada in sixty nine,
Speaker 1: I believe when New York and New England. We're going
Speaker 1: to gang up on Canada. Make sure that wasn't a
Speaker 1: military threat anymore. And it was small parks and storms
Speaker 1: ruined that idea, and some prisons were exchanged, but it
Speaker 1: made for a terrible debt in the treasury, so that's
Speaker 1: a big problem. But farming, crops, trade, fishing, they were
Speaker 1: all kind of at risk because of the weather and
Speaker 1: the economy and the war. So there were a lot
Speaker 1: of strains that way. But it's not a mechanical society.
Speaker 1: It takes time to get from one place to another.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was quicker to sail to
Speaker 1: Boston from Salem, but it took the better part of
Speaker 1: a day to get there by horseback, and you'd have
Speaker 1: to cross a couple of ferry with fairies to get across.
Speaker 1: Rivers will go way around the marshes. I mean, the
Speaker 1: railroad goes right across it now, and the roads, but
Speaker 1: you had to go around things and getting worried. They
Speaker 1: seemed to communicate rather quicker than I would have thought.
Speaker 1: With Maine, make me a couple of days to get
Speaker 1: an answer, as too, have they burned down the garrison yet? Uh?
Speaker 1: And sending a question to England, as Phipps did. Took months,
Speaker 1: but besides the trip over by ship, it had to
Speaker 1: go through channels with the Privy Council and then it
Speaker 1: didn't come back until May, which was what you think
Speaker 1: is best. So yeah, and something mechanical would be a mill,
Speaker 1: which would be quite high tech, I guess christ mill.
Speaker 1: But they also had sawmills, especially in the Maine New
Speaker 1: Hampshire area, where they'd be vertical saws going up and
Speaker 1: down because the buzz saw hadn't been advantage it, and
Speaker 1: that was high tech. But stuff is done by hand
Speaker 1: and traveling is by foota by horseback of by boat.
Speaker 1: How important was firewood? Oh? Very important? Yes, firewood would
Speaker 1: be the main fuel, if not the only one. It
Speaker 1: was important in this in the Witch trials because one
Speaker 1: of the problems with the Minister Samuel Parris is that
Speaker 1: the contract included firewood he's supply for heat cooking, and
Speaker 1: there was question as to whether it had been included.
Speaker 1: Did we really include the firewood or would did we
Speaker 1: give you something extra to cover the firewood? He doesn't
Speaker 1: have enough trees of his own. He used to buy it,
Speaker 1: and it's not deep docked impenetrable forests, is wood lots
Speaker 1: and fields more. I don't know if there's more trees
Speaker 1: now or then or then. But you don't just go
Speaker 1: cutting down a tree because it either belongs to the
Speaker 1: town or belongs to somebody else. So at one point
Speaker 1: he's really low on it and complaining about it. But
Speaker 1: that was just a bone of contention between the people
Speaker 1: who didn't support him and the people who did. But
Speaker 1: you did need it because the houses were not insulated.
Speaker 1: They might be had what they put bricks between the
Speaker 1: timber and the plaster, but that's not terribly warm. I
Speaker 1: think some houses were found to have eel grass or
Speaker 1: something in between the walls, and I don't not sure
Speaker 1: if that was later. But you had to be close
Speaker 1: to the fire. I mean, Cotton Meather lived in the
Speaker 1: city of Boston and had a good house. But he's
Speaker 1: riding in the winter and in the ink freezes in
Speaker 1: the inkwell, so it was a necessity. What was the
Speaker 1: function of the meeting house, Well, a meeting house is
Speaker 1: a pure and concept. It's and also the fact that
Speaker 1: they're out in the new Land where they have to
Speaker 1: build things from scratch in the first step, first generation,
Speaker 1: A meeting house was an all purpose building. They would
Speaker 1: meet there for civil meeting, selectman, town meetings, but they
Speaker 1: would meet there for religious meetings also, because that was
Speaker 1: the main reason a lot most of them had come
Speaker 1: over in the first place. So it depends what time
Speaker 1: of the week it is as to what you're using
Speaker 1: it for. It's town owned because they're pretty much all
Speaker 1: the same belief system. As the population expanded in various
Speaker 1: places where they were maybe Baptists Quakers, they didn't want
Speaker 1: to have to support that, and in Salem there was
Speaker 1: a Quaker meeting house they had their own. At this
Speaker 1: point in Boston that the meeting houses were owned by
Speaker 1: their congregations, not by the town. There was three congregational
Speaker 1: congregations in town plus at this point an Anglican church,
Speaker 1: Quaker meeting house, and a Baptist church too, and I
Speaker 1: think a Huguenot one, and they're all owned by their
Speaker 1: own people. So when the Royal Governor, Sir Edmond Andrews
Speaker 1: came and wanted a place for the Church of England
Speaker 1: people to worship, uh, they used the town house, which
Speaker 1: was a non meeting house, non religious meeting house, all
Speaker 1: civic meeting place and that kind of went against the
Speaker 1: grain for a lot of people who were Church of England,
Speaker 1: so he can commandeered one of the churches used it
Speaker 1: in the All South meeting House, used it in the
Speaker 1: morning and if they ran over, you just stood out
Speaker 1: in the rain and waited. That really got people's packs up.
Speaker 1: And then they built King's Chapel. But my point is
Speaker 1: the town did not. The town did not own the
Speaker 1: meet the religious structures in Boston because it was a
Speaker 1: bigger population. The individual towns generally had one because why
Speaker 1: pay for two different buildings if the same people are
Speaker 1: going to be using them for the different purposes. Salem Village,
Speaker 1: because of its geographic location, had their own meeting house finally,
Speaker 1: which took time to get permission for. And then there
Speaker 1: was the meeting house in the middle of Salem, and
Speaker 1: presumably geographically it was supported differently. But Salem was also
Speaker 1: big enough that they at this time had a town
Speaker 1: house that was up the street opposite where city Hall
Speaker 1: is now, where they had the selectment meetings and the
Speaker 1: town meetings, and the school Latin school was on the
Speaker 1: ground floor, the courtrooms upstairs. I sometimes wonder if anyone
Speaker 1: counting lessons done that summer, and they kept the firefighting
Speaker 1: equipment in the attic, which would make it rather hard
Speaker 1: to get to in case of ablaze. But it was real.
Speaker 1: But they also did occasionally to have ab civil meetings
Speaker 1: in the meeting house because it was bigger. In sixte to,
Speaker 1: one of the hearings is held there because some of
Speaker 1: the uh uh legislature is coming up to observe the
Speaker 1: crisis and they need a big space. But for the
Speaker 1: most part it was under repair. In ninety two, I
Speaker 1: guess they had religious services there, but they they had
Speaker 1: legal stuff going on in the town house up the street.
Speaker 1: What does school look like for an average kid growing
Speaker 1: up around that time, Well, it was a law after
Speaker 1: a while that he was supposed to teach your kids
Speaker 1: to read. More people. The literacy rate was good here
Speaker 1: in New England because it was seemed essential that you
Speaker 1: needed to read the Bible for yourself and see what
Speaker 1: it was and laws and stuff. More people could read
Speaker 1: than could write, because reading was taught separately, unlike together
Speaker 1: with right as now it seems logical to teach them together.
Speaker 1: But people could read who could not write, and they
Speaker 1: would sign their name with an exit. Didn't mean they
Speaker 1: were totally illiterate because they also want to read those
Speaker 1: deeds and wills too. Uh that the reading could be
Speaker 1: done at home. Sometimes someone's mother would do it. One
Speaker 1: more women who could read. In some places, that would
Speaker 1: be a dame school. Dame being the equivalent of sir,
Speaker 1: which was what school masters would called because they had
Speaker 1: a bachelor's degree and that was comparable to a night
Speaker 1: which would be called sir. It gets complicated, not that
Speaker 1: women had any degrees at all or could get into
Speaker 1: a higher university, but that's why they called dame schools.
Speaker 1: It was a more polite way to address people than
Speaker 1: like damied as Evans the actors. Who has the rank anyway? Ah,
Speaker 1: if a town had so many families in it, they
Speaker 1: were supposed to have a grammar school, which meant Latin grammar,
Speaker 1: which would be the boys learning Latin, maybe Greek. They
Speaker 1: might have already gone to a writing school. That's to
Speaker 1: prefer you for college. The Latin and the Greek sold that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it Deadham in the town records. I happened
Speaker 1: to be looking at Deadham. Uh. There was a question
Speaker 1: do we teach the girls too? But apparently they didn't
Speaker 1: think they were going to invest in that m so
Speaker 1: they might learn reading and writing. If they're lucky, they
Speaker 1: learned some arithmetic too, to keep accounts. They were private
Speaker 1: schools with a schoolmaster or somebody who would take on students.
Speaker 1: If they got the Latin and Greek the boys, then
Speaker 1: they could apply if they so inclined, to the college,
Speaker 1: which is Harvard. They tended to generally call it the college.
Speaker 1: It's actually the only one in North America at the time,
Speaker 1: so they might as well, uh, and that would be
Speaker 1: They didn't want an ignorant ministry in the future because
Speaker 1: they were so far away from Oxford and Cambridge, and
Speaker 1: that's what it was mainly for, so that the light
Speaker 1: of learning would not go out. But not everybody was
Speaker 1: going to be a minister who went there. Some of
Speaker 1: the merchants were well educated too, But some of the merchants,
Speaker 1: like Hawthorne, did not go to the college. But he
Speaker 1: he'd read things, I guess tried to know what some
Speaker 1: but his educational background was. It may be hard for
Speaker 1: some younger listeners hearing this to understand why women and girls,
Speaker 1: any females were not taught the same way that the
Speaker 1: males were. They may have a hard time understand that
Speaker 1: you just talked to us about why, what the roles were,
Speaker 1: and what the perception was. Well, women's work was mostly
Speaker 1: in the household, and it took up without mechanism. It
Speaker 1: took a long time to accomplish and keep a house
Speaker 1: running and clean. And they probably got a kitchen, garden,
Speaker 1: and the cow and stuff, which is full time work.
Speaker 1: So they didn't need, supposedly to to know these other things.
Speaker 1: The boys are probably most of them are farmers, and
Speaker 1: they're doing field work and taking care of other livestock
Speaker 1: and so on, so and not. Most people didn't need
Speaker 1: but they needed to be able to deal with deeds
Speaker 1: and wills or find someone reputable and write it down
Speaker 1: the way you wanted, so they may be needed more
Speaker 1: of it being more out in the world. But literacy
Speaker 1: was important to them because they wanted to be able
Speaker 1: to read the Bible another other good books. So there
Speaker 1: was literacy, and certainly, uh there were some well educated
Speaker 1: girls and women, but it would have been from home
Speaker 1: and learning outside of a regular school room, which was
Speaker 1: aimed at boys and boys going to higher education to colleges.
Speaker 1: It was a long time before women could get into colleges.
Speaker 1: In the United States, and when I was in college
Speaker 1: habit was still a boys school. Briefly, if you could
Speaker 1: describe what Puritan writing is like stylistically, because it is
Speaker 1: a very distinct style to me. Well, the books and
Speaker 1: the and the titles they did tended to have long
Speaker 1: titles or more a description of what the book was
Speaker 1: going to be about, and depending on the addition, the
Speaker 1: printer would highlight parts of it more than others, so
Speaker 1: it looks like it has a different title almost, But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there would be long, sometimes flowery sentences. There were a
Speaker 1: lot of biblical allusions which did give the references to
Speaker 1: what chapter and verse they would talking about. People were
Speaker 1: expected that they everybody knew what that meant or could
Speaker 1: look it up. There were also classical allusions because the
Speaker 1: university education, they had read the classical writers from ancient
Speaker 1: Greece and Rome, pre Christian stuff, which some critics said
Speaker 1: was dangerous pagan ideas being given these ministers, these like
Speaker 1: coakers and people who certainly weren't going to send their
Speaker 1: kids to college Virgil, Cicero, Caesar, I mean, what do
Speaker 1: we need that for? But they were well versed in
Speaker 1: classical literature, so there's a lot of allusions to that too,
Speaker 1: and they might give the references to it. But yeah, uh.
Speaker 1: But one of the one of the presidents of Habbit
Speaker 1: and maybe Chauncey, was advice to young ministers, if you're
Speaker 1: trying to get an idea across, don't be too high flown.
Speaker 1: He's saying, don't shoot over their heads. They're not gonna
Speaker 1: understand it, And then there's no point in saying in
Speaker 1: the first place, don't be so don't show off your learning,
Speaker 1: but be direct. What do people miss when they think
Speaker 1: about the Salem which Trials? What's the one thing that
Speaker 1: maybe people miss still I think people generally see the
Speaker 1: Salem which Trials is something so bizarre they can't really
Speaker 1: identify with it that it's something foolish people did because
Speaker 1: they didn't know any better. They didn't have computers, they
Speaker 1: didn't have this, they didn't know that, and we're smarter
Speaker 1: than there. But they were educated people and well intentioned
Speaker 1: people who, even by the lights of their own philosophy
Speaker 1: in their own time, could have figured out that things
Speaker 1: were not proceeding as they should without converting to twenty
Speaker 1: one century skepticism, for example, and people who mean well
Speaker 1: and are well educated and are generally genuinely concerned for, say,
Speaker 1: their children's welfare. Nowadays can go off in the wrong
Speaker 1: direction also, even though their motives, assuming they're not lying
Speaker 1: about it, their motives are good. I need to protect
Speaker 1: my children, I need to protect my family. But you
Speaker 1: can still go off the rails with it. And that's
Speaker 1: what happened then, I think for the most part. For
Speaker 1: the most part, people we're convinced that something awful was happening,
Speaker 1: and then they just went the down the wrong road
Speaker 1: for too long. People tend to think of it as
Speaker 1: spooky Halloween stuff, especially in October, but it was serious
Speaker 1: and deadly, and even if you didn't die, it really
Speaker 1: messed things up, and people who were just on the periphery.
Speaker 1: It messed up the economy and in society. So bad
Speaker 1: things can happen, and they happen in different costumes each time,
Speaker 1: so you don't see it coming until you're in the
Speaker 1: middle of it. Were there any lasting effects, I guess
Speaker 1: in a more general sense um of the same witch
Speaker 1: trials that specifically affected women, although certainly we're no more
Speaker 1: witch trials. People didn't want to get near that embroider again.
Speaker 1: Some people thought that it was stopped too soon. It
Speaker 1: really was something going on that it was a cover up,
Speaker 1: but generally it was one huge embarrassment to the government.
Speaker 1: There were slander suits brought by people who had had
Speaker 1: been accused, as had been done about before that, because
Speaker 1: prior to six two, I think about a third of
Speaker 1: the witchcraft which cases were slander suits where you're trying
Speaker 1: to clear your name and they generally want but I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's certainly left a lot of neighborhood and
Speaker 1: inter family resentments that lasted a couple of generations. But
Speaker 1: then you find people a couple of generations on marrying
Speaker 1: someone from the opposite camp, so it's I don't think
Speaker 1: they're angry now. It just makes a very interesting genealogy.
Speaker 1: One of the fascinating things driving through dan Verse versus
Speaker 1: driving through Salem proper is just how this period in
Speaker 1: the trials are treated just in the public street. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: because dan Versus a separate town now, it sort of
Speaker 1: was not remembered that that was with things started, and
Speaker 1: Salem it's got this history that everybody knew about one
Speaker 1: way or another. I think the tourists came before the
Speaker 1: tourist industry. They responded to people's interests from what I've
Speaker 1: been able to figure out. And when the railroad came
Speaker 1: in and it was a lot more traveling, there was
Speaker 1: more of it, even though locals didn't want to talk
Speaker 1: about it necessarily all this were more interested in discussing it.
Speaker 1: But you know, it was not it was not a
Speaker 1: shining example of community spirit. But there was a newspaper
Speaker 1: article in eighteen ninety two when it was the two anniversary,
Speaker 1: and the reporter was going through Salem and he's talking
Speaker 1: to the cab driver, which is a horse drawn cab,
Speaker 1: and the cabby says that there's two things that people
Speaker 1: who have a little time in Salem want to go see.
Speaker 1: They want to see the house where Hawthorne was born
Speaker 1: then Nathaniel, and they want to see where the witches
Speaker 1: were burned or hanged or something like that. Hey, I
Speaker 1: guess he knew they were hanged, and he probably took
Speaker 1: him to the wrong place, but that's what people asked for.
Speaker 1: And in nine eight ninety two was the year of
Speaker 1: the first souvenir silver witch logo spoon in Alum from
Speaker 1: the Daniel Lowe Company, which was quite a jeweler in
Speaker 1: town in the building that's now across from the Cement
Speaker 1: the stevensby Which statue. So things were starting up and
Speaker 1: there was there was an opportunity that people took advantage of.
Speaker 1: But when the mills and the leather industry and the
Speaker 1: textile mills went elsewhere, tourism filled a void too, But
Speaker 1: there was also more notice of Salem through TV and
Speaker 1: books and things. It kind of it was an unstoppable force.
Speaker 1: And also it's good and some of it is very
Speaker 1: inaccurate Arthur Miller's play, which is creative fiction, but definitely
Speaker 1: on the on the part about not being believed when
Speaker 1: you're telling the truth, so you lie and then they
Speaker 1: believe you. That's that hits the nail on the head
Speaker 1: that made it internationally known. So if it hadn't been before,
Speaker 1: people know about it all over the world, So that
Speaker 1: becomes Salem to them. And it's not just Salem, it's
Speaker 1: the whole area had problems. Salem was the shire town,
Speaker 1: so that's where the courts set. But well, because it's
Speaker 1: so well known, I the most I hope for is
Speaker 1: that get the facts out and hope that people listen
Speaker 1: and just satisfied with having a Halloween joke out of it.
Speaker 1: I like Halloween, but this is not that. Hey, folks,
Speaker 1: it's Aaron here. I hope that today's interview helped deepen
Speaker 1: your understanding of everything involved in the Salem Which trials.
Speaker 1: But we're not done yet. We've got more interviews to
Speaker 1: share with you, so stick around after this briefs answer
Speaker 1: break to hear a preview of next week's interview. Hi.
Speaker 1: I'm Jane Kamensky. I teach history at Harvard University and
Speaker 1: I'm also the director of the Lessinger Library on the
Speaker 1: History of Women in the United States. I'm gonna start
Speaker 1: us off with a really well, deceptively simple question, but
Speaker 1: it's pretty complex. I'm sure, what was a witch in Um?
Speaker 1: Which was somebody who made unexpected things happen. Puritans lived
Speaker 1: in a world of portents and wonders and almonds. They're
Speaker 1: always watching the sky, they're watching the earth. Um there
Speaker 1: you know, Uh, God speaks to them. And I think
Speaker 1: a which was somebody who made almonds and portents and
Speaker 1: signs happen in ways that Um seemed to reside inappropriately
Speaker 1: in a human form, which is in pure in New
Speaker 1: England were not thought to wear black pointy hats, although
Speaker 1: they sometimes did ride around on brooms UM. And they
Speaker 1: acted in a whole manner of inappropriate ways or were
Speaker 1: present at times when inexplicable things happened. UM. Small harms
Speaker 1: you know, milk curdling, sour side or going sour. UM.
Speaker 1: Big harms. Uh you know, somebody saying, oh, what a
Speaker 1: pretty child that is, and the child soon sickens and dies. UM.
Speaker 1: Women who spoke out of turn, uh you know who
Speaker 1: whose tongues went on like fishwives in ways that UM
Speaker 1: really seemed to sort of stick out of the fabric
Speaker 1: of conversation at the time. UM. People who said things
Speaker 1: that later seemed to be ominous. UM. It's a world
Speaker 1: in which, you know, science is quite primitive, and a
Speaker 1: great deal of what unfolds in any given season is inexplicable. Right,
Speaker 1: Crops fail, animals die, UM. And sometimes in the search
Speaker 1: for supernatural explanations UM, which included God and the Devil UM,
Speaker 1: which is as the handmaidens of the devil um were
Speaker 1: were faulted. It's hard to see, looking backwards whether there
Speaker 1: were individuals who cultivated that reputation UM who had sort
Speaker 1: of family businesses in curative arts that flirted with the
Speaker 1: edge of of the supernatural. You know, there there are
Speaker 1: some instances in Salem where um uh women are found
Speaker 1: with poppets that seemed to be a little little cloth
Speaker 1: dolls that seemed to be used in UM in some
Speaker 1: kind of ritual. One thing that's quite different in UH
Speaker 1: in the early New England and witchcraft cases than in
Speaker 1: a lot of more ancient witchcraft cases is that Puritans
Speaker 1: are very concerned with the idea that some which is
Speaker 1: consort with the devil. Um. You know, there's a there's
Speaker 1: a black mass that surfaces in accounts of Salem that's
Speaker 1: not typical in run of the mill witchcraft cases UM,
Speaker 1: where it's where it's really more about livestock or about
Speaker 1: what we would now think of as a nightmare. I
Speaker 1: woke up with a sensation of somebody pressing on my chest,
Speaker 1: and I thought of my neighbor, and it must have
Speaker 1: been her um bewitching me. UM. So a whole range
Speaker 1: of unexpected happenings that didn't have an easy narrative cause
Speaker 1: that could fasten on somebody who, for whatever reason um
Speaker 1: stuck out in a fabric of society that was supposed
Speaker 1: to be smooth. Very This episode of Unobscured was executive
Speaker 1: produced by Me, Matt Frederick, and Alex Williams, with music
Speaker 1: by Chad Lawson and audio engineering by Alex Williams. The
Speaker 1: Unobscured website has everything you need to get the most
Speaker 1: out of the podcast. There's a resource library of maps, charts,
Speaker 1: and links to Salem document archives online, as well as
Speaker 1: a suggested reading list and a page with all of
Speaker 1: our historian biographies. And as always, thanks for supporting this show.
Speaker 1: If you love it, head over to Apple podcasts dot
Speaker 1: com slash Unobscured and leave a written review and a
Speaker 1: star rating. It makes a huge difference for the show's growth,
Speaker 1: and as always, thanks for listening.