Today in Salem: 12yo Ann Putnam and 11yo Abigail Williams are rubbing the palms of their hands where yesterday pins had stabbed them and drawn blood. It was day two of George Jacobs Sr.’s examination, but it didn’t last long. The afflicted girls were convulsing as always, but when Ann and Abigail suddenly screamed and found bloody pins stuck in their hands, the judges quickly ended it and sent Jacobs to jail.
They’d spent the rest of yesterday questioning George Jacobs Sr.’s granddaughter, Margaret. She’d been afflicted for a time, then was “cured.” Now the other girls have accused her of witchcraft – just as they had two other girls. Confess, the judges had said. Confess and save your life. Did they mean her spiritual life, as some would say later? It didn’t matter. Out of pure terror, Margaret confessed. She also agreed with everything else the judges said, accusing her grandfather Jacobs and several others.
That was yesterday. Now, this morning, Ann and Abigail’s hands still itch and sting from the pins. But two more sudden arrests and examinations take up the day.
The shrew Alice Parker is known to scold her husband publicly, and to faint without warning. Now the judges hear testimony from the Proctor’s servant Mary Warren and George Jacobs’ granddaughter Margaret Jacobs. Alice denies the accusations, and says she wishes the earth would open up and swallow her if one word of it is true. The judges send her to jail instead.
The elderly healer Ann Pudeator is a well-to-do widow who’s suspiciously good at her trade. Now the servant Mary Warren accuses Ann’s specter of killing her two husbands, throwing a man from a cherry tree just by looking at him, and trying to bewitch the magistrates’ horses to prevent their reaching court in Salem Village. Ann is also sent immediately to jail.
Meanwhile, the constable can’t find former deputy John Willard anywhere. He’s been carrying Willard’s arrest warrant with him for two days now.
WHY is this important?
Right now there are two broad groups of people: those who are protesting against the witchcraft hysteria (citizens and family members), and those who are pushing back (judges and accusers). The harder one group pushes, the harder the other pushes back.
Everyone knew that George Jacobs Sr. had disrupted a town meeting and shouted that the girls were lying. Now, with him in court, the girls have pushed back. They’re not just fainting and wailing. They’re also being injured by mysteriously appearing objects like pins. Are the girls intentionally upping their game? Maybe not consciously. The girls who were stuck with pins were only 11 and 12.
The afflicted girls have also now closed ranks. Three of them have tried to leave, and each one has had the same experience:
1. She’s afflicted like the other girls.
2. She leaves the circle when she’s cured. Sometimes she says the other girls are lying.
3. Her former friends accuse her of witchcraft.
4. She confesses to witchcraft, then returns to the circle and is afflicted again.
All three girls are occupying a precarious middle ground, confessing to witchcraft and yet being afflicted at the same time. They are the Proctor’s servant Mary Warren, George Jacobs Sr.’s servant Sarah Churchill, and his granddaughter Margaret Jacobs.
Note that two of these girls were the main accusers in today’s examinations. Were they panicking?
WHO was Alice Parker?
Alice was about 60, forthright and even aggressive in her speech. She had no children of her own, though her husband had children from an earlier marriage.
Alice may have suffered from catalepsy, an ailment that causes sudden unconsciousness and rigid posture. One month before the first girls began suffering from unknown torments, Alice was found by neighbors, lying in the snow, seemingly dead. A group of men were there, but they were nervous about picking her up. One of the women assured them that Alice had lost consciousness several times before, but it still took a few minutes before one of them was brave enough to pick her up and hoist her over his shoulder. But she didn’t regain consciousness, not even when the man lost his hold and dropped her. At last they got her home and to bed, but while the men were taking off her shoes she suddenly sat up and laughed. Case files: Alice Parker
WHO was Ann Pudeator?
Ann was in her early seventies, a nurse and midwife, as well as a widow with property and means. But her neighbors were suspicious of exactly how she’d attained them. Years before the Trials, she was hired by a prosperous man to look after his wife in her last days. The wife was a drunkard, described as delirious and out-of-control. She died suddenly under what was thought to be mysterious circumstances, and both her husband and Ann were there. Could they have “helped” her die? The case went to court, but nothing came of it.
If that wasn’t enough, Ann then married the widowed husband, who was twenty years younger than she was. He died soon after they were married, and left everything to her — and it was quite a lot. Did she have something to do with his death as well? Case files: Ann Pudeator
Tomorrow in Salem: Summary: Act II Begins: the first death, pins and needles, mounting pressure