Today in Salem: It’s the Sabbath, and the Rev Samuel Parris is preaching from the Song of Solomon about the love between friends, made even sweeter when they reconcile after their differences. The analogy is not lost on his congregation, but the wounds of the last few months are too deep to heal so easily.
In jail, the pregnant Elizabeth Proctor feels her baby roll and twist. Like his father, she thinks. Always moving. She imagines him as a diligent child, a strong young man, then a godly husband and father. She grieves profoundly, though. She will not live to see him as anything more than a days-old infant. How many times will she put the baby to breast before she faces the noose?
In the State House, Governor Phips is avoiding the judges, all of whom are peppering him with questions. Court is due to resume in ten days, but the judges have sniffed out his ambivalence. If he allows the Court to proceed unchecked, then he will have defied the ministers and many influential citizens. Reining in the Court, though, defies the judges. It’s simply not possible to please everyone, and whatever he does will be held against him. And so he dithers.
Today in Salem: George Jacobs Sr. isn’t the only one to write a new will. The bold John Proctor has done so as well. In his 60 years he’s managed a 700-acre farm, negotiated land deals in two towns, started a successful tavern, and raised 16 children with three wives. He is not an idle man.
He will be hanged in four days. His trial was a formality, his petition to the governor has been denied, and letters on his behalf have gone unnoticed. The sheriff has already sold or killed all his cattle and seized everything in his house, even pouring beer and broth onto the ground so he could take the barrels and pots.
Other men would feel despair. But Proctor hasn’t lost everything. His children are safe, with the littlest ones taken in by the older ones. His land cannot be seized by the Sheriff, and will be given to his children. Then there’s his wife, Elizabeth. She’s quarrelsome, and he’s too easily provoked. But, as the Proverbs say, iron sharpens iron, and they’ve built a good life together. Now she’s with child, and will be spared … for now.
Today in Salem: The harsh John Proctor and his pregnant wife Elizabeth are standing trial.
Most of the testimony against John is from the afflicted girls, especially his servant Mary Warren. She’s been accusing him for months, but today her testimony carries more weight. Until now she’s been flip-flopping, sometimes saying she’s being tormented by specters, and sometimes confessing to witchcraft herself. Now she’s saying both at the same time – that she’s afflicted and she’s a witch herself. It’s hard for the judges to argue with that.
John wills his heartbeat to slow down as he presents his last chance. A few days ago, the governor denied his request for more thought, and the ministers from Boston have declined to witness his trial. Now he hands two petitions to the judges; an affidavit signed by 32 friends and family who knew him growing up, and a letter signed by 20 other people, saying none of them has ever suspected the Proctors of witchcraft.
The opinion of 52 people doesn’t outweigh the complaints of the afflicted girls and sickly neighbors. John is declared guilty.
Elizabeth’s accusers are more numerous: the afflicted girls complain about torment and even murder, and one neighbor tells sensational stories of shrieking and fighting at the Proctor home. So it’s no surprise that Elizabeth is declared guilty.
Elizabeth puts a hand on her stomach and pleads for a delay. “I’m with child,” she says. “Please.” It doesn’t change the verdict, but the judges do postpone her execution until after she gives birth.
Today in Salem: The beggar Sarah Good is pleading with the pregnant Elizabeth Proctor for help. Sarah has always been an angry beggar, as likely to throw a stone as she is to say thank you. But today is different. She will be hanged in five days, leaving behind her four-year-old daughter Dorcas, who is also in jail. Will Elizabeth care for the little girl after Sarah is taken away? Make sure she eats? sleeps? says her prayers?
Sarah has chosen Elizabeth carefully. Being pregnant, Elizabeth is unlikely to be hanged soon. And, unlike most of the women there, she still has young children, and will know the needs of a four-year-old.
Still, Elizabeth hesitates. Dorcas hasn’t once left her mother’s side, hissing and scratching at anyone who draws near. A bite of bread, a wink, a scrap of string – nothing quiets or tempts her. What else can Elizabeth do, though? She gives a small nod. The girl will eat when she’s hungry and sleep when she’s tired. Prayers are unimaginable except on the little girl’s behalf, but Elizabeth can at least do that.
Meanwhile, a few doors down, the Governor is inhaling the aromas of roast fowl and boiled turnips, drumming his fingers on the table and bouncing his knee. He’s still giddy from yesterday’s military displays, impatient and eager to go north to fight the enemies on the frontier.
A feast extends from the head of the table, where he’s sitting, and ends at the other end, where the ponderous Chief Justice Stoughton sits, as still as the Governor is fidgety. Raucous men line each side, guffawing and drunk on rum. It’s a public thanksgiving, declared by the Governor, with gratitude to God for his recent safe return from London, recent victories over the war-mongering French and Indians, and so many other personal blessings in his life.
Today in Salem: A new, smallpox-infected specter is afflicting the girls in full force. Girls in the nearby town of Andover have been seeing and hearing the pariah Martha Carrier’s specter for a month now. No one is surprised that she’s a witch. She and her family recently brought the terrifying scourge of smallpox to their town, where 13 people died, including seven members of Martha’s own family. Her children are scarred, and the Carriers have been shunned ever since. Now the Devil himself has named her the Queen of Hell, and her furious presence is being felt in earnest.
In Boston, five new prisoners are waking to the smells of dung and wet dirt. One of them, the pious Mary Esty, has been here before and is wearing heavier irons than anyone else. Of the other new prisoners, four of them have surprised and dismayed the quarrelsome (and possibly pregnant) Elizabeth Proctor, who had no idea that her 15-year-old daughter, stepson, sister, and sister-in-law had been accused and arrested.
In the corner, as always, the beggar Sarah Good curls around her baby, who’s growing thinner by the day. The baby’s weak cry sounds more like a small cat than a baby, but there’s nothing to be done, as Sarah’s breasts are slack. Her four-year-old daughter, Dorcas, leans into her, sleeping against what softness is left in her shoulders.
In Cambridge, the shipmaster is begging the jail keeper to remove the eight pounds of irons that are shackled to his wife. Last night he’d managed to have her transferred from Boston to the jail in nearby Cambridge, close to home. But the jail keeper had immediately clapped and shackled eight pounds of irons onto her legs. She’d sobbed and convulsed so severely, all night long, that the shipmaster is afraid she’ll die if she spends just one more night there (never mind chained). But the jail keeper just goes about his business, looking away, as if the shipmaster is nothing more than a fly buzzing about.
WHO was Martha Carrier?
Martha, age 39, was from Andover, Massachusetts. Before her marriage, she moved to the nearby town of Billerica, where she lived with her sister and brother-in-law. There she met Thomas Carrier, a 7’4” Welshman who was twenty years her senior. They married when she was 21, and had their first child two months later.
Her husband was rumored to be one of the “headsmen” who executed King Charles I. Were people afraid of him, an extraordinarily tall executioner? Did their obvious premarital relations make them the subject of gossip? Was Martha’s obnoxious behavior toward her neighbors overly aggressive? It’s impossible to know why, but they were asked to leave Billerica, and soon moved back to Andover to live with Martha’s parents.
At that time, the highly contagious smallpox virus regularly swept through entire communities, leaving terror and death in its wake. Two years before the Trials, it broke out in Martha’s family, and seven of them died, including her father, both of her brothers, two nephews, one sister-in-law and one brother-in-law. Not just that, but six other people from Andover died, too. From that point on, the Carriers were outcasts, believed to be the cause of the epidemic.
Martha Carrier’s name was cleared of all charges nearly twenty years after her death. In 1999, Billerica’s Board of Selectmen unanimously voted to rescind the 1676 banishment of the Carrier family, 323 years earlier.
LEARN MORE: If people were so afraid of smallpox, why were they fighting about inoculation? What role did the media play?
A disease that’s highly contagious, with a 30% fatality rate, is terrifying in any context. Imagine: In a small family of only 3 people, it’s likely that one person will die. In the average Puritan family, two or three of the children would probably die (if not their parents). Across the community, they would lose up to a third of the ministers, the farmers, the midwives, adults in every occupation. Those who survived were almost always left with scarring, sometimes severe. Some became blind.
Wouldn’t people do anything they could to reach immunity? The answer: “Yes, but.”
In colonial days, there was no ”germ theory.“ People didn’t know exactly how smallpox spread, only that it did, sometimes through the air, and sometimes through things that had been touched by sick people. Aggressive quarantines weren’t always successful, since there was a lag between when a person was infected and when they showed symptoms. And there was no such thing as a vaccine.
There was, however, “inoculation,” where a small amount of pus or a scab from someone with smallpox would be rubbed into a small incision in a healthy person’s skin. That healthy person usually became ill with a much milder case, and then became immune. These days science tells us why that’s true, but at the time the belief was based on anecdote and experiences in other countries. And while some people fully believed in the practice, others thought it just spread smallpox even more.
Cotton Mather, one of the prominent ministers involved with the Salem Witchcraft Trials, is largely credited with introducing inoculation to the colonies, and vigorously campaigned for it during a 1721 smallpox epidemic. It engendered a fierce public debate; in fact, a small bomb was hurled through Mather’s window, with the message “Cotton Mather, you dog, dam you! I’ll inoculate you with this; with a pox to you.’’ And the doctor who was administering inoculation received so many threats that he hid in his house for two weeks.
Emotions ran high on both sides of the debate, and was fueled by the media of the time. Newspaper and pamphlet articles from both sides condemned their opponents with name-calling, sarcasm, and verbal abuse. (One anti-inoculation newspaper was headed by its 16-year-old editor, Benjamin Franklin. His own son would die of smallpox 15 years later.) Both sides had merit, and both sides claimed support from God: In the short-term, inoculation did spread smallpox, since people who were inoculated came down with a mild-case of it. But in the long term it built immunity.
The proof was in the pudding, as they say. Once the outbreak was over, the death rate in the inoculated population was 2%, as compared to the 15% death rate of the non-inoculated in that specific epidemic. After that, the procedure was used for decades until the first vaccines became available.
The last major smallpox epidemic in the United States was in Boston between 1901-1903; the last outbreak was in 1949. In 1980, the World Health Assembly declared smallpox eradicated. No cases of naturally occurring smallpox have happened since.
Today in Salem: The beggar Sarah Good is curled into a corner of the jail cell, leaning into the wall with her knees up, sound asleep. Somehow she’s still holding her baby. She’s been here for almost three months now, and has kept the baby in her arms constantly.
Sarah startles awake, though, when the jail keeper pushes his way into the cell and drops a pile of heavy irons on the floor next to her. The sickly Sarah Osborne had been in that spot until she died, just a few days ago. Now it’s the pious Mary Esty who’s being chained there.
Mary is pressing her fingers into her eyes, swollen from a night of crying and praying. Only three days ago she’d been released from prison. Then last night the Marshall had come for her again, dragging her away in the middle of the night. And now the jail keeper is here, with his chains and shackles and muttered curses.
On the other side of the jail cell, the quarrelsome Elizabeth Proctor touches her stomach and watches the jail keeper. She hasn’t bled in nearly two months, and her breasts are tender. But there’s been no quickening, and how could she not feel ill in these wretched conditions? In ordinary times she might have used the medicinal herbs in her garden to bring down her courses. She’s 42, after all, with five children already (and another four from John’s earlier marriages). And she’s feeling so ill.
Things are different now, though. If she is pregnant, and she feels a quickening before her trial, then the judges will delay her hanging. A child unborn is innocent, whether its mother is a witch or not.
LEARN MORE: Wasn’t it illegal (or at least immoral) to terminate a pregnancy? What were the Puritans’ views about abortion?
Throughout Western history, much of the debate about abortion begins with one question: When does life begin?
The Puritans believed that life begins at “quickening,” when a pregnant woman feels her baby move for the first time (about the fourth month of pregnancy). And without today’s pee-on-a-stick pregnancy tests, that was also the moment that pregnancy began.
Before quickening, abortion was legal, safe (given the medical knowledge and practices of the time), and readily available from midwives and healers using herbs from their own gardens. But it wasn’t called “abortion“ because it wasn’t seen as such. It was called “restoring the menses,” or more euphemistically “bringing down the flowers.” It was a way to balance a woman’s ill health, and to cure the “pregnancy sickness” if a woman suspected as much.
After quickening, though, abortion was homicide. By extension, if a pregnant women was convicted of a capital crime, she could “plead the belly” and delay her execution. She would be examined by a group of women, and, if she was pregnant with a “quick child,” she was reprieved until the next hanging time after her delivery.
This distinction remained true in the United States until the 1860s, more than 170 years after the Salem Witchcraft Trials. Abortion was legal before quickening, and illegal after.
All of this was different for enslaved women, from early colonial days through the Civil War. They were subject to the rules of their ”owners,” who often refused to allow them to terminate pregnancies. The slave masters had their own reasons, but since any children legally belonged to them, they had an interest in producing as many as possible.
Today in Salem: The slave John Indian is literally hanging on by his teeth, riding on the back of a horse and biting the man in front of him to keep from falling off. John’s hands are tied together, though no one knows who did it or why. And now, with the horse nearly trotting, John’s balance is precarious.
His bite is sudden, though, and hard, and when the horse’s rider shouts and elbows him, another horse pulls up. It’s the schoolmaster, who bellows and hits John Indian over and over with a stick until John, a slave, rights himself and promises it won’t happen again.
The horses and men are part of a larger group that has just left the meeting house, where the nervous Sarah Cloyce and the quarrelsome Elizabeth Proctor have been examined. In fact, John Indian had testified extensively against both women. His testimony, in addition to the afflicted girls’ usual fits and accusations, had sent both women to jail. And when Elizabeth’s husband John Proctor muttered that he’d beat the Devil out of John Indian if he could, Proctor was immediately arrested, too.
The schoolmaster is a friend of the Proctors, and between John Indian’s testimony, the arrests, and now the biting and thrashing, he’s none too patient. He’d beat the Devil out of the girls, too, if he could.
Today in Salem: Elizabeth Proctor is a large woman, and the small pillion saddle is hardly comfortable. But she is a suspected witch after all, and her comfort isn’t of great importance to the Marshall, who has arrested her and is now transporting her to jail.
He’s already arrested and delivered Sarah Cloyce, who cried when she saw her sister, the beloved Rebecca Nurse. They’re now sharing a cell with the officious gospel woman Martha Corey, and will soon be joined by Elizabeth.
The men’s cell is empty, but not for long. For the last two nights a 23-year-old farmer has been tormented by the specters of the harsh John Proctor and his wife, along with the cantankerous Giles Corey and his wife. Neither man has heard about it yet, but their specters have hurt the farmer’s foot so badly that he can’t even put his shoe on.
Tonight in Salem: Elizabeth Proctor buries her nose into her husband’s neck and inhales deeply. He smells like sweat, and dirt, and the weight of him pulls her against him. John is harsh during the day, and Elizabeth can be quarrelsome, but at night they’ve always moved together in an easy rhythm.
John and Elizabeth have heard the rumors, and they know what’s about to happen. If not tomorrow, then the next day, she will be arrested for witchcraft, then examined before the magistrates. It doesn’t matter that John says the afflicted girls are lying, or that his own servant, Mary Warren, has said the same. If anything, that could make the afflicted girls even more strident in their accusations.
Elizabeth will almost certainly be sent to jail. How long will she languish there? When will they be together again? What about the littlest children, only 3 and 6? So many questions, and so few answers. All they can do is cling together and hope.
LEARN MORE: What did the Puritans think about sex? Did they think it was a sin?
The Bible was the source of Puritan beliefs about sex. It gave them a long list of sexual activities to avoid, including self-pleasure, adultery, homosexuality, and fornication. The Puritans were not without compassion, though, and when offenses did occur, they often looked the other way. After all, men who came to America had often left their wives behind in England; but they hadn’t left their urges. Likewise indentured servants, who were frequently young men with no attachments. Women were also treated less severely, especially if they were widows or young servants with few prospects.
The Puritans fully embraced the passions of marital sex, though. The Bible says a couple owes it to one another, that they must cherish one another intimately, and solace each other with the ”signs and tokens of love and kindness” – which was often inferred to mean kissing. In fact, it’s been said that the Puritans were the founders of romance in marriage. In a time when marriage often began as a civic partnership, joyful sex helped couples bond together in an affectionate and loving relationship.
Today in Salem: The cruel magistrate Hathorne raises his quill and drops it on the table in frustration. He and the other magistrate have just finished writing two arrest warrants: one for the quarrelsome Elizabeth Proctor, and one for the angry Sarah Cloyce, who’d slammed the church door last week. He’s writing subpoenas for witnesses when it’s suddenly clear that the witchcraft problem is larger than the Village can manage locally.
Five women and one child are already in jail in Salem, at least one woman has been accused in another town, and the afflictions have spread from three young girls to several young women, three married women, and at least one man. And now two more women are to be arrested. It’s too much.
The magistrates set the papers aside and decide to consult with officials in Boston before proceeding. The arrests will have to wait.
