Tag Archives: Sarah Good

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May 21: *** Sensitive Content*** CHAINED and PREGNANT

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.

red rose

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.

Tomorrow in Salem: Summary: Kissing the King’s ring, while stuffing the jails

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May 10: ***Sensitive Content*** DEAD: the sickly Sarah Osborne; ARRESTED: the abusive George Jacobs Sr. DISTRAUGHT: the servant Sarah Churchill

Today in Salem: The Boston jail keeper is wrestling with Sarah Osborne’s shackles and irons, trying to remove them from her motionless legs. She’s been chained for 9 weeks, and has spent most of that time lying in a pile of dirty straw, coughing day and night. This morning, though, they’d found her dead, probably of jail fever, and the only sound is the clanking of the chains as she’s finally released.

The beggar Sarah Good is also chained, and now she clutches her baby and turns away as much as she can. The baby is thin, and when she cries she sounds more like a little cat than an infant. Now she mewls when Sarah presses into her and hides her away. There are some things even a baby shouldn’t see.

“Length of Confinement: 9 weeks, 2 days,” the jail keeper later writes in his log. “Unpaid Fees: 1 pound, 3 shillings.” It’s unclear who will pay it.

Meanwhile, the extremely tall and abusive George Jacobs Sr. has stumped into the courtroom in Salem with his two walking sticks. He was arrested just this morning, and now he’s standing in front of a judge with hardly a chance to gather his wits.

The afflicted girls are there, of course, greeting him with their usual wails and torments. He’s seen through them since the start, even shouting in a crowd once that the afflicted girls were lying. And now here they are, with Sarah Churchill – his own servant – standing at the front.

Jacobs guffaws at the judges’ first words.

“Your worships, all of you, do you think this is true?” he asks. They bounce the question back to him. What does he think? “I am as innocent as the child born tonight,” he says, leaning on his sticks.

The magistrates bear down, quizzing the girls, batting away Jacobs’ protests, and asking him to answer to their accusations. Over and over Jacobs says it’s not him, that the Devil is using Jacobs’ specter as a disguise.

“The Devil can take any likeness!” he says. But the magistrates are firm in their response: While that may be true, Jacobs must give his permission for the Devil to impersonate him.

When Jacobs is unable to say the Lord’s Prayer without a mistake – and he makes plenty of them – the judges decide there’s much more to explore. They’ve run out of time, though, so they send him to jail to wait for more questioning tomorrow.

Outside the courtroom, two women find Jacobs’ servant Sarah Churchill sobbing.

“I’ve undone myself,” she cries, and looks at the floor. Just yesterday she’d confessed to witchcraft, but had found a delicate middle ground by blaming Jacobs for forcing her to. But it was a lie, she says now. She’s never signed the Devil’s book, and Jacobs has never asked her to.

The women are shocked. “Why did you confess then? Why would you condemn yourself?”

Sarah paces back and forth, crying and wringing her hands. She was afraid not to confess. And now she’ll never be able to take it back. If she told the authorities only once that she’d signed the Devil’s book, they would believe her. If she told the truth a hundred times now, they would not.

WHY is this important?

First, when most people hear about the Salem Witchcraft Trials, they think of hangings (and rightfully so). But several other people died as well, albeit less dramatically. Sarah Osborne’s death is the first one associated with the Trials, and kicks off the next tragic chapter.

Second, George Jacobs Sr.’s testimony planted a powerful question that shaped the Trials until the end. Can the Devil use someone’s specter to disguise himself? If so, then “spectral evidence,” which was used to execute 20 people, was useless. If it’s not your specter – it’s actually the Devil – you cannot be held accountable for it.

The judges’ response — The Devil needs permission to use a person’s specter — kept spectral evidence in play, and gave the judges more power. The only way to give the Devil that permission is if you are already partnering with him. Therefore you agree to the evil he’s going to inflict. You can be held accountable for that.

Finally, Sarah Churchill’s affliction, followed by her confession, shows a growing realization among the people who were accused:

  • If they confessed, their lives would be saved (or at least prolonged). The judges were trying to identify witches. Who better to recognize them than other witches? So it was useful to the judges to keep the confessors alive.
  • If they said they were innocent, they would probably be executed. The judges assumed from the start that anyone who was accused was guilty. Unless they could prove their innocence – which no one could, since it was their supposed specters committing evil – they would die.

Sarah lied because she wanted to live. To Puritans, though, dying (and therefore meeting God) with a lie in your heart was akin to eternal damnation. Sarah realized she’d condemned herself and George Jacobs Sr. at the same time, and there was no way out.

Tomorrow in Salem: CLOSING RANKS: the afflicted girls snare the shrew Alice Parker and the healer Ann Pudeator

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Apr 6: Cold and hungry: the beggar Sarah Good’s baby

baby's hands

Today in Salem: The beggar Sarah Good is snarling at the jail keeper and hugging her baby girl tightly, trying to soothe her crying. Until yesterday Sarah’s had nothing but her own thin shift to wrap around the baby for warmth.

Last night, after a month of Sarah’s demands, the jail keeper had finally pushed two small blankets through the iron bars.

“You should be grateful,” he says, jabbing his finger at her.

Grateful? She’s chained to the wall, she’s been cold and hungry for a month, and her once chubby baby is now thin. Now, finally, the jail keeper has given her two tiny, threadbare blankets, and what’s more, is charging her 10 shillings for them.

He’s the one who should be grateful.

Tomorrow in Salem: TOGETHER: John & Elizabeth Proctor

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Mar 26: 4-year-old Dorcas and her little snake

little girl

Today in Salem: The elderly jail keeper brings 4-year-old girl Dorcas Good into his kitchen, where two ministers and two magistrates are waiting. She’d been questioned at the examination with Rebecca Nurse, but the crowd was noisy and the girl intimidated. Sending her to stay with the jail keeper was the right thing to do at the time. Perhaps they can get more information from her this way.

One of the ministers is elderly, soft-spoken but eagle-eyed, and it’s he who first speaks to the little girl.

“Come here, child,” he says, “and tell me if you see things that others cannot.” Dorcas bites her lip and looks over at the cruel magistrate Hathorne, who is already leaning in and frowning. The soft-spoken minister raps the table with his knuckles, and she jumps a little, looking first at his face and then his hand.

“A little snake,” she says, and holds her own hand up. “It sucks on my hand.”

Now all four men are leaning in. Where? they ask, pointing to freckles and spots. No, no, no she says and points to her own knuckle, where the men can see a dark red spot the size of a flea bite.

The cruel magistrate Hathorne takes over from the soft-spoken minister. Did the black man give her the snake? Was it the Devil?

No no no, Dorcas says again. Her mother did.

The two magistrates exchange glances. Familiar spirits like snakes often drink nourishment from a witch’s wounds. Perhaps Dorcas is a witch, and her mother, the beggar Sarah Good, may be responsible.

Tomorrow in Salem: A door slams, and eyes open

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Mar 13: NEWLY ACCUSED: the beloved Rebecca Nurse

Today in Salem: 12-year-old Ann Putnam is caught in the crosshairs. On one side is her mother, pregnant and fearful, demanding to know what specter Ann can see. On the other side is the family’s 18-year-old servant, Mercy Lewis, who’s spent the last two weeks witnessing Ann’s torments and accusations. Who? Who is tormenting you this time?

dying flower

Her grandmother’s empty rocking chair is across the room, and now Ann says she can see a pale old woman sitting in it. But she doesn’t know who it is. Mercy and Ann’s mother lean into Ann’s face. ”Look again,” her mother says, barely breathing. “You must know,” Mercy says.

Maybe, Ann says, it’s hazy but she might remember where the old woman sits in the meeting house. Ann’s mother sits back and thinks. Maybe it’s one of the women who’ve already been accused. But Tituba is enslaved, and sits in the balcony where Ann wouldn’t see her. The beggar Sarah Good and the sickly Sarah Osborne don’t go to church, so they wouldn’t have been in the meeting house at all. That leaves the gospel woman Martha Corey, who attends church weekly without fail. It must be Martha.

“Martha Corey!” Ann’s mother says. “It must be her.” But no, Ann says. Between them, Mercy and Ann’s mother can see every person in the meeting house, with Mercy sitting in the balcony with the other servants and slaves, and the Putnam family sitting on the main floor. Now they tick off the name of each woman they’ve seen in meeting until Ann finally agrees wearily to one: the beloved Rebecca Nurse.

Ann’s mother sits back and thinks. Of course. Rebecca is beloved, even saintly. But her husband has been no end of trouble, arguing about land boundaries and recently even winning a well-known dispute in court against one of his neighbors. People say he’s been crowing about it, making sure his other neighbors know where his other boundaries lay, and daring them to push back. It’s easy to believe the Nurses have aligned themselves with the Devil.

WHO was Mercy Lewis?

A traumatized orphan and refugee of the Indian Wars in Maine. She was a servant in the powerful Putnam family. Mercy accused 9 people of witchcraft, testified in 16, and appeared with the other afflicted girls in several more.

Mercy was born and raised in Falmouth, Maine, where her village was decimated by Indian attacks that, early in her childhood, took her grandparents and cousins. Then, when she was 15 or 16, another brutal attack burned her village to the ground and killed most of its people, including Mercy’s parents.

Mercy and the few other survivors took refuge on an island, where the minister George Burroughs took her in as a servant. He was known to be verbally abusive to his wives, both of whom had died years earlier, and he may have been a harsh taskmaster. Perhaps that explains why Mercy would later accuse him of witchcraft.

Over the next few years Mercy served the Burroughs family, then an unknown home in Beverly, Massachusetts, and then finally the Putnam family in Salem Village. It was here that she befriended the 12-year-old Ann Putnam, and began suffering with fits and seizures. Today we might say Mercy had PTSD.

Once the trials were over, Mercy moved 50 miles north to Greenland, New Hampshire to live with her aunt. There she gave birth to an illegitimate child, married a man with the last name Allen, and moved away, probably to Boston. History loses track of her after that. Case files: Mercy Lewis

WHO was Rebecca Nurse?

A weak grandmother and much beloved member of the church. The accusations against her planted the first seeds of doubt in the trials.

Some historians speculate that a handful of women in the Village were suspicious of Rebecca because all eight of her children had survived to adulthood. This was unusual in a time of high infant mortality and diseases like smallpox.

It’s more likely that the animosity stemmed from years of land disputes between Rebecca’s father and then husband against other families, including the Putnams, who were the most powerful family in the Village. Most recently, the Nurse family had been part of a long and loud boundary dispute with a neighbor who claimed that some of the Nurses’ 300 acres were his. The dispute ended up in the General Court, where the neighbor lost, bitterly. The truth was more complicated, though. The Nurses didn’t own their farm; they mortgaged it. So it wasn’t the Nurses who’d won in court and insulted the neighbor: it was the farm’s owner. Still, many people believed it was the Nurse family who’d been so stubborn and argumentative. Case files: Rebecca Nurse 

Tomorrow in Salem: AFFLICTED: the refugee Mercy Lewis

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Mar 10: The bossy gospel woman Martha Corey

black cat

Today in Salem: The two Sarahs are still tightly chained to the wall of their Boston jail cell, and so are their specters. You cannot chain the Devil, though, and now he’s using the specter of the bossy Martha Corey to torture the girls’ leader Ann Putnam. The specter is furious that Ann has accused Martha’s fellow witches the slave Tituba, the beggar Sarah Good, and the sickly Sarah Osborne.

Martha’s specter is an extreme version of Martha herself, who’s always quick to say what she thinks and correct others’ mistakes. She’s always right, in her opinion, and refers to herself as a Gospel Woman; after all, she’s been a full member of the church for two years.

Martha is not without sin, though, and everyone knows it. More than 20 years ago, Martha gave birth to an illegitimate, mixed-race son. He still lives with Martha and her husband Giles, and the gossiping villagers have never stopped talking about it.

LEARN MORE: Was there racism in Salem?

Yes. When the witchcraft hysteria began, the first enslaved people had been brought to the new world 170 years earlier. So racial division and slavery were already firmly in place in New England. But when the West Indian Tituba confessed to witchcraft, it electrified the racial questions around her and other enslaved people. They had dark skin. Many of them had foreign accents and frightening folklore. And now, it seemed, at least one of them was in league with the Devil.

In addition, the colonists were terrified of Native Americans, who also had dark skin and accents. Allied with the French, with both intent on rousting England’s presence, the Native Americans were brutal in their attacks on the English colonists. Many in Salem had lost family members or friends, sometimes watching them die in horrific ways. During the trials, when witnesses said they’d had visions or nightmares about black men, it was Native Americans they were referring to.

WHO was Martha Corey?

As a young woman, Martha had an illegitimate son who was of mixed race. She named him Benoni, meaning “son of my sorrow,” a name usually reserved for babies whose mothers had died in childbirth. Martha lived with “Ben” in a boarding house for several years before she was married for the first time.

words from Martha Corey's examination
From a deposition against Martha Corey, filed during her examination

When her first husband died, Martha married Giles Corey, 80. Her mixed-race son, now 22, was living with them at the time of the trials.

Martha had joined the church two years before the trials began, and had referred to herself as a Gospel Woman ever since. She could be condescending, and was quick to state her opinions. She was respected but disliked, and her scandalous past counted against her. Case files: Martha Corey

Tomorrow in Salem: AWAY with little Betty

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Mar 9: CHAINED: Good & Osborne

ankle chains

Today in Salem: The jail keeper drops eight pounds of chains at the feet of the beggar Sarah Good. Stand back, he says, and pushes her against the wall. Sarah is spitting mad, but she can’t kick, and she won’t drop the baby. All she can do is unleash a string of curses as the jail keeper yanks the shackles tight, then locks them to a hook in the wall.

Until last night the magistrates had assumed that a jail cell would contain the witches and their specters. But after last night’s torments they know that a jail cell isn’t enough. The women may be locked in a cell, but their specters are traveling freely and inflicting great harm. So they’ve told the jail keeper to physically attach the women to the jail cell wall. That should keep their specters at bay.

The jail keeper drops another eight pounds of chains in front of the sickly Sarah Osborne, but she’s too ill to put up a fight. She slides down to sit, then leans against the wall. As weak as she is, though, the jail keeper is still rough as he pulls and locks the shackles. He’s no fool. She may be sick, but her specter is not.

The slave Tituba stands to the side. She doesn’t need to be attached to the walls; her specter didn’t torment the girls last night. Why would she? Tituba has no cause to be vengeful or angry with them. They didn’t testify against her. She’s already confessed.

LEARN MORE: Why were there babies in jail?

History doesn’t tell us why Sarah Good had her baby with her. But we do know that her baby, 5 months old, was still nursing. Puritans were strict about mothers nursing their own babies rather than using a wet nurse; in fact, Cotton Mather, a prominent minister of the time, later wrote that women who refused to suckle their infants are “dead while they live.”

Still, wet nurses were used in Puritan society during the first few days of a child’s life, until the mother was no longer producing colostrum (which the Puritans believed was poisonous, or at least impure). A wet nurse would also be required in the case of maternal death, or other extreme circumstances. But prison probably wasn’t one of them, especially for a beggar.

Tomorrow in Salem: The bossy gospel woman Martha Corey

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Mar 8: Vengeful specters attack the girls

Today in Salem: The gale-force wind continues, blustering north through the streets of Boston, out of the town, over the roiling water, and through the marshes into Salem Village. Heavy clouds hang over naked trees that moan and sway in the gusts, carrying the vengeful specters of the beggar Sarah Good and the sickly Sarah Osborne. The women are locked in the Boston jail, 20 miles away from Salem Village. But their specters are here, bent on revenge, twisting and choking the girls who dared to testify against them.

The meeting house is in disrepair, and now a board is pried loose in the wind, sailing into the air and smashing against the wall of the parsonage. Inside, little Betty jumps at the sound and nearly faints, then bursts into tears before bending backward and twisting hard toward the fireplace.

11-year-old tomboy Abigail Williams isn’t much better, grasping the table, sobbing and choking at the same time. Across the village at the Putnam home, the 12-year-old Ann is flailing her arms and yelling at the specters that she will not, will not follow them. And, at the home of Dr. Griggs, his 17-year-old servant Elizabeth Hubbard is staring at the hearth fire, wide-eyed and seemingly in a trance, unmoving, even when the wood snaps and an ember flies toward her.

LEARN MORE: Were the afflicted girls really having “fits,” or were they faking it?

Probably both, sometimes maliciously, but also because of stress, past trauma, fear, boredom, and perhaps mass hysteria.

Of the ten main accusers, at least two and probably more were traumatized refugees from the Indian Wars in Maine. These were teenage girls and young women who’d watched as their homes and towns were burned and their family members murdered brutally. The attacks were not small or isolated. In one campaign, 60 miles of Maine coastland were destroyed in five weeks, with not one English settlement left.

Today we would say these girls had PTSD. But the Puritan Church of the time believed that dreams and nightmares carried messages and prophesies. One can only imagine what kind of dreams or even hallucinations these girls were having, and what they were told they meant.

Consider, too, that at least four of the girls – some of them refugees – were orphans who’d lost their parents, and therefore their financial and emotional support, dowries, and social connections. Puritan culture required each person to be “attached” to a family unit. So the orphan was taken in, frequently by extended family, and treated as a servant. Overnight these girls had lost their prospects. They’d never be married, never have children, and never have status in the church. They would be servants forever. Some of these hopeless girls had nothing else to lose, and may have been vengeful or uncaring.

On a larger level, the entire community was suffering tremendous anxiety. They were at war with the Indians, believed that Satan was active and intent on destroying them, and had just endured a brutally cold winter. Even the youngest accuser, age 9, would have picked up on that level of turmoil.

Still, despite any compassionate context, it’s true that some fakery was at play, with staged injuries, dramatic acting, and obvious teamwork. One accuser eventually confessed that she’d lied, and two of them joked that they just wanted to have fun. It was complicated, but not, and leaves us with questions we’ll never be able to answer fully.

Tomorrow in Salem: CHAINED: Good & Osborne

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Mar 7: PAYING FOR THEIR SINS: the slave Tituba, the beggar Sarah Good, & the sickly Sarah Osbourne

Today in Salem: Three horses trot south, each one carrying a constable and a passenger. The slave Tituba, the beggar Sarah Good, and the sickly Sarah Osborne fold in on themselves for warmth as they ride through the blustery cold to a ferry, sail over the frigid bay, then continue riding to the jail in Boston, where criminals are tried and executed. These three aren’t scheduled for trial yet, but Salem is a day’s ride away, and it will save time if they’re already here when the court is ready for them.

The beggar Sarah Good snarls and holds her baby close as the jail keeper locks her into a shared cell with Tituba and Sarah Osborne. None has had anything to eat: the slave, the beggar, and the sick are hardly prosperous enough to bring food with them. Instead, the jail keeper’s wife will give them a simple supper of bread and butter and add the cost to their jail bills. Like any prisoner, each woman will pay the entire cost of her imprisonment. Even if she’s found to be innocent she’ll stay in jail – accruing even more costs – until the bill is paid.

LEARN MORE: Why did prisoners have to pay for their time in jail?

Then as now, it was expensive to keep someone in jail. Taxes were used to keep the building in repair and to support the jail keeper and his family (who usually lived upstairs). Prisoners had to buy everything else, though, including food, blankets, even their own shackles and chains. Wealthy prisoners could pay to stay in the jail keeper’s house, or go to church under guard.

Not much has changed. In fact, “pay-to-stay” is practiced in every state except Hawaii (as of Nov 2020). Depending on the state, prisoners pay for anything from toilet paper to food. In some prisons, more affluent inmates can pay for cells with bigger beds, private TVs, and sofas.

At the time of the trials, prisoners were held until their entire bill was paid. Today, prisoners are released and expected to pay their bills over time. If they default on the debt, the government may seize their savings, paychecks, inheritances, or other sources of income.

jail bill for accused witches
An expense report listing jail costs for some of the accused witches of Salem. The transcription and a large scan can be seen at http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/n171.html#n171.14

Tomorrow in Salem: Vengeful specters attack the girls

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Mar 5: CHOICES: The beggar Sarah Good

Today in Salem: The sickly Sarah Osborne will almost certainly be condemned. The only thing standing between her and the hangman’s noose is a trial, which to the magistrates is just a technicality. She’s guilty, they know she is. But they’ve given up waiting for her to admit it, and it was up to God whether to forgive her.

The magistrates have not, however, given up on the pipe-smoking beggar Sarah Good, and now they’re at the jail one last time to pull a confession from her. They know she’s guilty, of course, and just like Osborne she says she’s innocent. But where Osborne is steadfast, Good is evasive, slippery even, and the details of her story keep changing. She’s hiding something. Why does she hurt the children? they ask her. Has she signed the Devil’s book? What evil spirit is she familiar with?

woman peeking through hole

Sarah peers at them through her pipe smoke and laughs, her voice gravelly and hoarse from too many years with a pipe between her teeth. The cruel magistrate Hathorne steps forward and narrows his eyes against the sting of the smoke.

“Will you not profess your guilt?” he asks. It’s a simple choice.

If she confesses, she will live.

If she says she’s innocent, she will die.

Which will she choose?

LEARN MORE: This seems backward. If a crime leads to the death penalty, you wouldn’t confess to it, like Tituba did. You’d deny it, like the two Sarahs. Why was this reversed in Salem? Why were the judges so eager to execute an innocent like Sarah, but slow to condemn a confessor like Tituba?

At the time of the Trials, the Puritan ministers of New England were convinced that the Church had become complacent. They’d worried for weeks that God was about to punish them by allowing attacks from the Devil. Entire congregations had been fasting and praying about it, and the ministers were on high alert for any sign of evil.

When the news exploded that a group of girls could see the specters of witches, the source of the evil was revealed. But the girls weren’t the only ones who could see into the “Invisible World.” Witches could also see and identify each other to the authorities. The longer the confessed witches were alive, the more of their evil friends they could expose.

Tituba was the first of several accused “witches” to realize that she could save her life by confessing, then describing in great detail what – and who – she could see. Those who maintained their innocence either hadn’t figured it out or would rather die than tell a lie.

Tomorrow in Salem: ACCUSED: the quarrelsome Elizabeth Proctor