Tag: salem

Documenting the Exoneration of the Last Witch of Salem

November 17th, 2022

Documenting the Exoneration of the Last Witch of Salem – Thou Shalt Not Suffer: The Witch Trial Podcast

Presenting The Last Witch documentary filmmakers Annika Hylmo and Cassandra Roberts Hasseltine. We discuss the exoneration effort of Elizabeth Johnson Junior, who was a Salem Witch Trials convicted witch from Andover, MA. She was overlooked during previous exonerations but has now been cleared after 330 years. The Last Witch documents how the community came together for the effort, including North Andover Middle School teacher Carrie LaPierre and her students, historian Richard Hite, and MA State Senator Diana Dizoglio. We look for answers to our advocacy questions: Why do we witch hunt? How do we witch hunt? How do we stop hunting witches?The Last Witch WebsiteThe Last Witch- A documentary 330 years in the makingKelly Clarkson covers Johnson's exonerationContact The Last WitchState Senator Diana DiZoglio Facebook PageGeorge Gerbner, Media ScholarMarilynne K. Roach, The Salem Witch Trials: A Day By Day Chronicle of a Community Under SiegeRichard Hite, In the Shadow of Salem: The Andover Witch Hunt of 1692University of VA, Salem Witch Trials Documents and TranscriptionsEnd Witch Hunt ProjectsPlease sign the petition to exonerate those accused of witchcraft in ConnecticutLeo Igwe, AfAWAdvocacy Against Witch Hunts, South AfricaSupport the showJoin us on Discord to share your ideas and feedback.WebsiteTwitterFacebookInstagramLinkedInYouTubeTikTokDiscordBuzzsproutMailchimpSupport the show

Show Notes

Presenting The Last Witch documentary filmmakers Annika Hylmo and Cassandra Roberts Hasseltine. We discuss the exoneration effort of Elizabeth Johnson Junior, who was a Salem Witch Trials convicted witch from Andover, MA. She was overlooked during previous exonerations but has now been cleared after 330 years. The Last Witch documents how the community came together for the effort, including North Andover Middle School teacher Carrie LaPierre and her students, historian Richard Hite, and MA State Senator Diana Dizoglio. We look for answers to our advocacy questions: Why do we hunt witches? How do we hunt witches? How do we stop hunting witches?
The Last Witch Website
The Last Witch- A documentary 330 years in the making
Kelly Clarkson covers Johnson’s exoneration
Contact The Last Witch
State Senator Diana DiZoglio Facebook Page
George Gerbner, Media Scholar
Marilynne K. Roach, The Salem Witch Trials: A Day By Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege
Richard Hite, In the Shadow of Salem: The Andover Witch Hunt of 1692
University of VA, Salem Witch Trials Documents and Transcriptions
End Witch Hunt Projects
Please sign the petition to exonerate those accused of witchcraft in Connecticut
Leo Igwe, AfAW
Advocacy Against Witch Hunts, South Africa
Support the show
Join us on Discord to share your ideas and feedback.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Josh Hutchinson: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Exodus 22:18
[00:00:05] Welcome to another episode of Thou Shalt Not Suffer: The Witch Trial Podcast. I'm Josh Hutchinson.
[00:00:31] Sarah Jack: And I'm Sarah Jack.
[00:00:34] Josh Hutchinson: Today we're talking to Annika Hylmo and Cassandra Roberts Hesseltine. Their documentary, The Last Witch, covers the exoneration of Elizabeth Johnson Jr., the "Last Witch" of Salem to have her name cleared.
[00:00:49] Sarah Jack: Because you like the show, please share it with your friends, family, and followers.
[00:00:54] Josh Hutchinson: I'm looking forward to today's episode. I think we'll have a deep, [00:01:00] powerful conversation with Annika and Cassandra, and looking forward to diving into how and why we hunt witches with them, what they've learned from doing their documentary.
[00:01:15] Sarah Jack: Yeah, I'm really excited to get to talk to them directly. I've really enjoyed their Facebook Live updates on their work, but we're gonna get so much more tonight.
[00:01:27] Josh Hutchinson: We are, and speaking of getting more, Thanksgiving is next week.
[00:01:31] Sarah Jack: I have my turkey. It's not thawed yet, but I have it.
[00:01:36] Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, don't thaw a week ahead of time. I wouldn't wanna eat a week old Turkey.
[00:01:41] Sarah Jack: There's this movie that I watch every Thanksgiving if I can get it. It's Home for the Holidays with Holly Hunter and Dylan McDermott and Robert Downey Jr.
[00:01:54] Have you seen it?
[00:01:55] Josh Hutchinson: I think I've seen that. I don't remember it though.
[00:01:58] Sarah Jack: Love that [00:02:00] movie. And it's all about frustrating family dynamics, and the sister brings a Neutra bird.
[00:02:09] Josh Hutchinson: What is a Neutra bird?
[00:02:11] Sarah Jack: I I have no idea, but it was like a special health. They called it a Neutra bird or Neutry bird, and she ends up wearing it.
[00:02:18] Josh Hutchinson: Oh, like Joey and the turkey in Friends?
[00:02:21] Sarah Jack: Oh yeah. See that's what we should talk about is Friends.
[00:02:25] Josh Hutchinson: I wanna talk about Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. That's my favorite Thanksgiving movie.
[00:02:30] Sarah Jack: That is up there. That is up there.
[00:02:34] Josh Hutchinson: That's the classic Thanksgiving movie.
[00:02:38] Sarah Jack: Josh, let's hear some history about Elizabeth Johnson Jr.
[00:02:42] Josh Hutchinson: Elizabeth Johnson, Jr. was an unfortunate victim of the Salem Witch Trials. Elizabeth Johnson Jr. was the granddaughter of Reverend Francis Dane of Andover, but, more importantly, she was the first cousin, once removed of Martha Carrier, who Cotton Mather described [00:03:00] as the Queen of Hell and whose family were basically all arrested during the Salem Witch Trials.
[00:03:09] Elizabeth Johnson, Jr. was 22 at the time of her arrest. Her father Steven Johnson had died in 1690, due to a smallpox outbreak that was blamed on Martha Carrier. Elizabeth Johnson, Jr. was arrested shortly before August 10th, 1692, along with her second cousins, Sarah and Thomas Carrier, children of Martha.
[00:03:34] Elizabeth was examined by magistrate Dudley Bradstreet on August 10, and she did confess. She was alleged to have afflicted Sarah Phelps with the help of Sarah and Thomas Carrier. Sarah Phelps was the daughter of Samuel Phelps and the niece of recently deceased Elizabeth Phelps Ballard, the woman for [00:04:00] whom the Andover witch-hunt really started, when her husband invited afflicted girls from Salem Village to come up and detect witches. Elizabeth confessed to afflicting Sarah Phelps, Ann Putnam, Mary Walcott, Lawrence Lacey, Benjamin Abbott, a child of Ephraim Davis, two children of James Fry, the children of Abraham Foster, and Elizabeth Phelps Ballard, who died.
[00:04:28] Elizabeth stated that she had been a witch for four years. She became a witch at her cousin Martha Carrier's house, and in 1689 she was baptized by the devil by having her head dipped in Martha Carrier's well. She also scratched the devil's book with her finger to sign the covenant with him. She was present at a witch sacrament, where red bread and blood wine were served. All the witches there pledged to pull down the Kingdom of Christ and [00:05:00] set up the Devil's Kingdom.
[00:05:02] While she confessed, she also accused Martha Carrier, George Burroughs, Martha Toothaker's two children, Richard Carrier, Sarah Carrier, Mary Lacey, Sr., Mary Lacey, Jr., John Floyd, and Daniel Eames. She confessed to using puppets and she showed a place on her knuckle, where her familiar suckled her and said that there were two more places that she couldn't reveal. So women searched her body, and they found one behind her arm, but didn't mention any other.
[00:05:36] And now after 330 years, her name has finally been cleared, the last of the convicted Salem witches to have that done.
[00:05:48] Sarah Jack: Thank you for all of that information on Elizabeth Johnson, Jr.'s life and for making her experience something that we know about.
[00:05:58] Josh Hutchinson: You're [00:06:00] welcome, and I forgot one detail. She sold her soul to the Devil for one shilling, which is just a bunch of pennies, 5 cents worth, a nickel. She sold herself to the devil. And she never got paid. The devil never paid up anybody who confessed to covenanting with him during the Salem witch trials. Never once did the guy actually do what he said he would do.
[00:06:28] Sarah Jack: That sounds like him.
[00:06:30] Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, he's a rascal.
[00:06:33] Sarah Jack: Yeah, he's a liar.
[00:06:35] Josh Hutchinson: The Prince of Liars.
[00:06:36] Sarah Jack: Welcome to Annika Hylmo and Cassandra Roberts Hesseltine of The Last Witch, a documentary about the work of a middle school teacher and her students to exonerate Elizabeth Johnson Jr., the last person convicted during the Salem Witch Trials to be cleared.
[00:06:53] We would like to start out by finding out who was the last witch.
[00:06:58] Annika Hylmo: The last witch, it depends on [00:07:00] how you see it, depends on what you consider to be a witch. But the last convicted witch from the Salem Witch Trials was Elizabeth Johnson Jr., who was just exonerated on July 28th, 2022, three hundred and twenty-nine years after she was convicted. So with that, I guess you could say that she was the last witch from the Salem Witch Trials, and that kind of ended the Salem Witch Trials.
[00:07:28] Sarah Jack: When I saw how you listed that on your social media, the end of them, I thought that's really a strong statement and thought, and that's a wrap. So that's really powerful.
[00:07:41] Cassandra Roberts Hesseltine: Yeah, we felt that way too. I think Annika came up with it first, and she said that, and it was like, "wait, you're right."
[00:07:46] Oh my gosh. It's, it made history and it like closed a chapter in history. Not all the way, there's still more obviously other people that haven't been exonerated, like in Connecticut and other places around the world, but also and still the lasting effects of it. But [00:08:00] definitely that particular chapter felt like it had come to a close.
[00:08:04] Annika Hylmo: It's incredible when you start to think about it that it's been almost 330 years, right? And that for all this time that somebody could be considered to be a witch. And it raises, I think, a lot of questions about what we believe to be a witch, who is a witch, who isn't a witch, who's culpable, and how we treat people, as well as all the issues that you can trace back to the Salem Witch Trials. History and present are so intertwined, and we tend to forget that history is, it's happening now, and we're a part of all of this.
[00:08:42] So the fact that this took 330 years for simplicity to get taken care of makes me wonder sometimes what things we're dealing with now that it will take 330 years to clear and set things right.
[00:08:58] Sarah Jack: None of us are gonna allow that. [00:09:00] Are we ?
[00:09:00] Annika Hylmo: Let's hope not.
[00:09:02] Sarah Jack: Can you tell us a little bit about where she lived, how old she was, how long she was in prison, a little bit about her experience?
[00:09:10] Annika Hylmo: We don't know an awful lot about her, to be honest. We have snippets of information about her. We know that she lived in what is today, North Andover, Massachusetts, which is outside of Salem. We know that she was about 22 at the time of the witch trials, and we know that she was not married. She did not have children.
[00:09:32] And we know that she may have been a little bit different. There was talk of her being simplish. She, there was talk of her being simple-minded, and that came up on a couple of occasions in some of the documents. We also know that she was the granddaughter of Reverend Dane, of Reverend Francis Dane, who was the elder clergyman in town at the time.
[00:09:56] But as far as any other specifics, we [00:10:00] know very little. We can assume things. We can assume that she probably lived with family, for example. We do know that she was examined, and that's another word of being like really threatened, because these were very threatening circumstances. In 1692, early fall of 1692, she was then in prison, we assume, but we don't know because some of them were let out temporarily, so we don't know the exact circumstances, but until January of 1693, when her grandfather wrote a letter where he stated that she was simplish at best, but about a week after that she was convicted and sentenced to hang. At the time, the governor of Massachusetts had already pardoned everybody, so she wasn't going to actually hang, but she was imprisoned, from what we understand, a little bit longer.
[00:10:59] We do [00:11:00] have a sense that she was supposed to hang early February. That did not happen because of the pardon, but it wasn't like people let go of this thing about witch hunts and witch trials and witchcraft. It was just that the governor had said no, and there's an end to it. From there, we don't know much about her.
[00:11:16] We know that she probably owned some property. She tried to get restitution for the time that she was in prison. Basically, people had to pay their own way, and she tried to get that money back at one point. We know that she sold some property at one point and that she probably died when she was, I think, in her seventies.
[00:11:35] But we know very little about her circumstances after the trials, before the trials. She was, in many ways, one of us. Most of us, you don't know exactly who we are, what we do, even with social media, That's our modern day version of gossip, but you don't really know that much about each one of us. And for many of us, once we are gone, we're gone, as much as we'd like to think otherwise. So [00:12:00] she's somebody that could be anyone of us at the time and now, and that's what makes her so compelling. One of many reasons.
[00:12:09] Josh Hutchinson: That reputation sticks with the person through the rest of their life and well beyond.
[00:12:15] Annika Hylmo: And the interesting thing about that is that the whole connection to the witch trials is profound. When you look at people that have some kind of connection and who you are related to, there's a big difference when you talk to people who consider themselves to be related to somebody who was a witch compared to somebody who was an accuser compared to somebody who was a judge. That still is part of modern day community, and that has not let go.
[00:12:45] Cassandra Roberts Hesseltine: And, unfortunately, I'm related to all three , so I'm confused with my feelings. But yeah, it is true. When we met descendants who were descendants or relatives of people that were accused or witches that were actually executed, [00:13:00] the pain is still pretty strongly, especially with ones that grew up on the east coast, knew about their heritage their whole life.
[00:13:06] And then you have the accusers. I'm a direct descendant actually of an accuser, joseph Ballard, who actually, because of him and his wife, who was ill at the time, is why the Salem girls were brought over to Andover and why people were then accused in Andover's from my grandfather.
[00:13:21] And I'm actually a cousin through marriage of Elizabeth, as well. So I'm related, and then I'm related to a few that were executed, and I'm related to Judge John Hathorne, which he wasn't the nicest of people. And it can be confusing and also feel, wow, what a timeframe of what went through with all these people.
[00:13:39] I can't imagine being a direct descendant of someone who accused and caused more people to be accused than in Salem itself. There is a guilt that came on when I first learned about it, but I wasn't raised with this. I had to learn about it about ten years ago. Until then, it was a story that happened to someone else.
[00:13:56] But yeah, as Annika says it's interesting when we've talked to other descendants, [00:14:00] relatives of what that has carried on for them.
[00:14:03] Josh Hutchinson: Sarah and I are both descendants. Sarah's a descendant of Rebecca Nurse and her sister Mary Esty. I'm a descendant of Mary Esty and found family connections to several dozen people involved. So I have that thing of being related to judges and jury and accusers and everyone, and it brings up conflicting feelings.
[00:14:30] You try to understand what each of those people was thinking and what their experience was, and that fear of witches was so real back then that kind of understand where they were coming from, but it still doesn't make it better.
[00:14:47] Cassandra Roberts Hesseltine: Josh, when we first started our project, it was actually a narrative feature film that we were working on, a story of about Andover and what happened there. A lot of people have done stories on Salem, so we were wanting to make a movie [00:15:00] about a different version or portion of what happened. And Annika had actually brought that up, and I thought that was really lovely of seeing the humanity, cuz I had the guilt of, oh no, my grandfather, did this horrible thing.
[00:15:11] And she's, " but he was in love with his wife and she knew, and they had real fears and this was their religion and their beliefs". And that really actually helped me. So thank you, Annika. With that portion. At the time as well, when we started, I didn't realize actually I was related to so many other people at the time. I only thought it was related to the accuser. But as Annika says, they all, they all had to marry each other and everything. It was such a small town. And and so you end up, if you're related to one, you're probably related to a few.
[00:15:35] Josh Hutchinson: Does the film explain why she was overlooked?
[00:15:40] Annika Hylmo: That's one of the big questions why she was overlooked, and there's really no good answer, except that it makes for really good drama, because once we discovered this story, it came about because there was an article about school teacher Carrie LaPierre and her middle school students who were [00:16:00] working to study the case of Elizabeth Johnson Junior and to exonerate her from the witch trials and working together with Senator Dizoglio to get that.
[00:16:08] So in digging into this story and asking people who were in some way connected to Salem, in some way connected to the witch trials and go, "so why do you think that she was not cleared?" Because there were others who have been exonerated various phases as we know. The last group before her was in 2001.
[00:16:31] And so the question is, why was she left out and why is there only one? Why is she the last one? And the response that inevitably came up was that they just forgot about her, and it became an echo. They just forgot about her. They just forgot about her. They just forgot about her. And it got to be a little bit eerie.
[00:16:50] Almost there's a conspiracy theory around this, which opens up a number of questions, right? So why would you forget somebody who was a [00:17:00] member of your family? Why would you forget somebody who was convicted of witchcraft during such an important time and that's been studied so much. And there are probably a number of reasons why she was forgotten, overlooked, and ultimately considered to be unimportant, which is a critical part of this when we're gonna be going into some of this, during the story, during the documentary, and obviously dig deeper.
[00:17:29] But for our purposes today, and remembering the contemporary side of this is that she did not have kids. She was a single woman who was a little bit different in some way. We don't wanna go back and give her a diagnosis because that's not fair to her. It's not fair to history. And back in the day, people did not have psychiatrists and other people to help them out, but she was different in some way.
[00:17:58] And you take all of [00:18:00] those elements, plus the fact that this was a big, dark shadow that was cast over the communities. Nobody really wanted to talk about it. Nobody really wanted to talk about the Salem witch trials. People tried to figure out how to move on through marriage, in some cases by moving away, in some cases by running away. We have a lot of people that disappeared after the witch trials.
[00:18:24] And for Elizabeth, she probably lived with her family afterwards for a while, but she didn't have descendants. And when you don't have descendants, you're much easier to forget. It's like society is saying that you don't matter if you don't have descendants. So that's a really big and important thing for us to look at is when do you stop mattering? And if you don't have kids, do single people matter less than people who are married or people who have kids? We know that women then and now are still more likely to be struggling financially, economically, for [00:19:00] example.
[00:19:00] So some of those issues that she would've been dealing with then that would make her less important to people around her are probably the reasons for why she kept being forgotten. All the people that have been exonerated since have had family members that have been speaking for them. We know Rebecca, Nurse's family, for example, have been integral in making sure that she was never forgotten.
[00:19:26] Some of the other families tried to move on and just forget, but Elizabeth didn't have anybody speaking up for her, and to me that is one really important question and lesson to be taken away from this is who are we as individuals today when we are overlooking people, where we're not paying attention to that one person who's alone by themselves, when we walk by somebody who is not connected, who doesn't have a family, the same way, somebody who doesn't have kids, who [00:20:00] might need a little bit of support, and how often do we do that without stopping to think about it? Because that's probably what happened to Elizabeth back then.
[00:20:09] Sarah Jack: Yeah, that is very powerful. I just think about how unfortunate for her experience that the exoneration didn't happen for her and during her lifetime or even in a quick amount of time, but it's really giving us a lot of power today to do something with it for these people that are getting looked over. And also, when I saw the exoneration news popping up, it was right before the anniversary of Alice Young's hanging. And I like anything you guys put out, I pushed out and talked about Alice, and I feel like it really was important during the very beginning of the exoneration for the Connecticut witch trials, when that group was forming this [00:21:00] spring, what you guys were doing, about sharing what was happening with Elizabeth with the legislator. That's like another powerful thing. This is one of those things that it was, a grave oversight, but it's also something very powerful today.
[00:21:15] Annika Hylmo: Yeah, it's very much something that's holding up a mirror to us. And for me, that's why it's important to tell this story, because it's asking us to take a look at a lot of the same questions that were happening back then that are happening again today. Historically, we know that Massachusetts didn't have a charter at the time. We know that people were coming out of war. There was a lot of war going on at the same time. They just had a smallpox. This was a community that was settling, and so economically, there was a lot of instability and it was a community that had a lot of young people and not so many elder people, older people. So it was like a pyramid if you look at it that way, in terms of the numbers of people. [00:22:00] And again, a very unstable time when people were trying to figure things out. People were trying to build a new community, and people were trying to recover from famine, from misfortune when it came to crops and trying to find a way to create a new society. And in some ways did, and in some ways they failed.
[00:22:25] And if we look at what's going on around us right now, we're very much at that precipice again, that we can either do what people have done over and over in time, right? Which is to look around and blame somebody else, and point a finger at somebody else, and continue with this black and white thinking where whatever is wrong in the world is somebody else's fault, while we watch and we look around and we see war, we see climate change, we see all sorts of destruction going on around us, we see families being torn apart, we see death [00:23:00] and dying and pandemics taking over regardless of what you think may or may not be. We are seeing a lot of lot similar changes as we're taking place back then.
[00:23:12] And the question for us is really what can we learn from what happened in 1692 so that we don't push ourselves toward the same kind of apocalypse that happened for them at that time? And so that we can really think about what kind of world do we want to live in and create that world, as opposed to jumping on the bandwagon of the latest rumors and misfortune and catastrophe. So what do we wanna do as individuals and as our society? And I think that's a big lesson to think about, because otherwise we're gonna land in the same kind of apocalyptic underworld that they felt like they were in at the time.
[00:23:54] Sarah Jack: Were you surprised at the impact your work is [00:24:00] having, even in the stage, like your research stage and now in a new stage of the film? Has the power of your work been a surprise? Was it your hope to get things rolling in people's minds now at this point of your project?
[00:24:15] Annika Hylmo: That's part of the fun, isn't it? To shake people up a little bit and to get people to think a little bit, and obviously this story is about a story that was already in motion.
[00:24:25] Carrie LaPierre was already working on this based on the work of Richard Hite, who was the one who discovered that Elizabeth was still not exonerated and the wonderful Diana Dizoglio state senator, who pushed this through the Massachusetts Senate. And as you start to look at the story, obviously there's a reason for why we picked doing this.
[00:24:49] It's like this, there's curiosity behind this. This is crazy. There's this, how could this be? And how could this be that there is somebody that's still convicted as a witch from [00:25:00] 1692? And that became the impetus. But as you start to pull at it and things happening in real time, then you start to realize how much there is to this story.
[00:25:13] So then it becomes, how can we have fun with this and challenge people to be a part of it? Because that's, it's fun to challenge people to be a part of it and to listen to people and hear their stories. It's a lot of fun to do that. But as we went on, this, the bill, the initial bill went through this Massachusetts State Senate and then it stalled.
[00:25:37] So there are these moments that you come up against where you go, "this is crazy. Why would they not just sign up on this?" So when other people are starting to step up and saying, "yeah, we also think this is crazy, this is nuts," then you start to feel that community, and when you start having that community that's doing something good or starting to realize that there's something good about this, then [00:26:00] you go, "okay, this is fun."
[00:26:02] And filming the kids, and even seeing the kids in the classroom go from, "yeah, this sucks. We gotta do the school project," which we expected because they're eighth graders. If they weren't like that, then I'd be really worried. But they went from that to go, "yeah, I guess this kind of maybe important."
[00:26:19] And then you realize that they go, "yeah, we're doing something that adults aren't doing. This is cool." So it shifts along the way, and seeing them and seeing everybody else take on and let it grow, I think has been affirming more than anything else. This is something that matters. It's, beyond just the surface level of the story, which is great, like teacher kids exonerating, but the impact, seeing all those accounts start to pop up.
[00:26:55] This was especially in July, when we were doing a ton of social [00:27:00] media outreach, and I know you were both part of that and then responding and answering and everything like that. We did a ton of social media outreach in July, and seeing more and more accounts pop up and more and literally around the world and say, "yeah, we too." So it went from me too to we too when it came to the witches. Was incredible power, incredibly powerful, seeing the story spread, not just here in the US but literally spread around the world, which the original story had as well, when Carrie first started with the project, or when the first articles came out about it that also went around the world, but nothing like this.
[00:27:42] But it's also, I think, giving us hope that we can come together as a community and do the right thing when it comes to many of the people who were convicted back in the day, but also to move forward and really ask [00:28:00] those profound questions about what does this tell us about who we are, about what we need to do? Because we can't stop. If we stop here, we will have more tragedy. And that's what the witch trials, I think, can teach us and tell us.
[00:28:16] Josh Hutchinson: You've touched basically on the central premise of why we're doing this show and our questions that we're looking to have answered as we do this, which are how do we witch-hunt?
[00:28:31] Why do we hunt witches? And how can we possibly stop this behavior because it does continue today. So I thank you for getting into so much detail on that. That was wonder.
[00:28:44] Cassandra Roberts Hesseltine: And I think, in a way you just want everyone to look at your movie and support it, right? We wanted to be able to make the movie. We loved it. We loved the topic. We were already working on a project prior to it. When Annika had discovered what was going on, I said, "oh my gosh, let's work on this."
[00:28:56] So we absolutely were honored when people started [00:29:00] paying attention and when you, yourself, when both of you started paying attention to our project and then it connected us to other witch trials, that was such an honor. I think that's how I look at it now. And as Annika said, the community of building everybody and coming together.
[00:29:13] And I think also one more part that I wanted to mention from earlier, your question earlier was just that, and Annika's mentioned this as well. She, as the director, she points out a lot of these things, and so that's why I keep referring to her, which is great. I'm so honored to have her be able to be so intelligent about it.
[00:29:26] But the middle school news often nowadays is a school shooting. And how amazing is it that this is not that, that this is success, that this is them standing up for someone's rights? This is changing history. Even if they were bored and didn't understand it at times, they did get it at times, and especially, when the senator came to visit them and getting when they were able to do it. And one of the young girls even actually ran into the governor before he even signed off and was like, "you should do this." So it was pretty amazing, to have them fight for something like this.
[00:29:59] Sarah Jack: [00:30:00] It's definitely planting very important seeds.
[00:30:04] Annika Hylmo: And that's how you stop it.
[00:30:05] Cassandra Roberts Hesseltine: Josh is saying, "how do you stop some of this?" And it's I think we do have to start young with this. And inspiring others. Annika's talked about, that the movie being an inspiration to get you to see how can you help, how can you be part of changing history or the story or what story do we wanna write, because if it happened then, and it's echoing now and paralleling, then where are we going? Are we going to a second apocalypse? Are we going to have a situation where people are gonna be collected and told they're witches and hanged? That's seems so unimaginable, but it must have been very odd then too.
[00:30:40] Annika Hylmo: Stop to think about it a little bit, though, this whole thing about witches and witchcraft, which there's a whole question of who is a witch and who isn't a witch. And I think witches are something. We've always had witches around us in some way, whatever, because we designate, we put a label on people, and they happen to be the witches of the time. Even the Bible has [00:31:00] stories about witches, and those, the Bible is based on oral traditions. I think it's something that we've always had with us. And it's something that's morphed at that community. It's a community that's morphed in different ways, and we can go into whole conversation around the connection to theology and spirituality and religion.
[00:31:20] But it is a very interesting phenomenon to look at. Back in the day, in the 1600s, they were superstitious, just like we are superstitious today. So I think that's one place to start really considering how close are we to this? They were very superstitious. They used an almanac, which is basically astrology, and anybody that's ever read their astrological horoscope or something like that, that could have been you.
[00:31:47] They would do little rituals, they will do things and they would have sayings just like we have now. There were some stories of people dying very suddenly and nobody understanding why, and so people came up with an [00:32:00] explanation. So there's a whole range of what that might be. There were, they would sell little booklets about palmistry, about how to read somebody's hand to tell their fortune, that kind of thing.
[00:32:10] During the pandemic, I saw some statistics about Tarot cards, and apparently the sale of Tarot cards went way up during the pandemic. So I would say that anyone who's listening to this, who's got a deck of Tarot cards at home, if we consider that to be your local poppet or your local whatever it might have been back in 1692, this is how close it is. Little things that we say and do, little superstitions that we all have in different ways, like throwing salt over your shoulder for one thing what, whatever it might be, everyone's got something that we do. That could potentially mark us as a witch. Somebody that's really intuitive could be marked as a witch.
[00:32:59] It [00:33:00] happens easier than we think, so that's when it comes to the whole idea of witches, and of course people go into see a psychic, which Salem is these days, very famous for that. It's become a safe haven for people who are psychics and who are spiritually minded, and it's wonderful that it is a safe space in many ways, but it's also telling us how easily this could be potentially be repeated, if we look just at spirituality and women's spirituality in some way.
[00:33:30] And we take the same thing, and we can look at any other community that's different in some way, and how easy it is to say that's you, not me. And then we start to build those walls, and the same challenge comes up. We just had it during this entire pandemic where we had people say, "I believe there's a pandemic. I believe there's a virus." And we had people who said, "no way there is a virus, absolutely not." People are saying that, "of course I'm gonna get [00:34:00] vaccinated and it's the right thing to do." And then people are saying, "no. It's almost like it's the devil's work, right?" It's closer to us than we think, and we can take that image and place it on so many different social issues, so many different circumstances that are very close to us.
[00:34:18] So the whole idea about witch hunts, it's here. That's the thing that, witch hunts are here. Look at politics. Every single time there's an election, somebody's gonna say something and be called a witch or being called a witch hunter, or something along those lines. There's a witch-hunt on this, there's a witch-hunt on that. It happens consistently, and we're all a part of it. The question is, what are we gonna do about it? And then I think another question is, are we doomed ? For want of a better word, are we doomed to constantly repeat this? Because if we've done this for thousands and thousands of years, is this something that's just by [00:35:00] nature, a part of humanity?
[00:35:01] And that I don't know the answer to, and I don't know that I want to know the answer to it either, to be honest.
[00:35:09] Sarah Jack: We've been looking more and more at the modern witch killings that are happening in other parts of the world, and there is a very strong religious superstition tied to it. And so not every community in the world is in the same place as far as the understanding or the tools they have to start changing that next generation. So I just really hope that these powerful words that you're saying today, the power of your documentary the historical part of the documentary is so important. It's interesting cuz you brought up the safe, the safeness of Salem today for those that are practicing, and [00:36:00] it's so how does this all come together without the fear? I just, I want the fear to be. dissipated and yeah, I just really thinking, I've just been really thinking.
[00:36:13] Josh Hutchinson: We haven't in many ways changed very much, but we're hoping that somehow a way to intervene can be found, and these witch hunting behaviors can be stopped.
[00:36:27] They have been going on since basically the beginning of humanity in various forms. Labeling the other, the one you want to scapegoat for all your problems. We saw that with World War II. We've seen that so many times in our own lifetimes. I wanted to thank you for bringing that up.
[00:36:51] Annika Hylmo: It's very real. Yeah. I think we all have superstitions and I think it's it's a big part of psychology and our [00:37:00] superstitions and our fears. They're there for a reason as well. They're there to protect us, so it's not like we want to get rid of it altogether, but to learn to question it and to learn to take action. Too often do we look at something further away, as opposed to looking at what's really close at hand and even how we're talking to each other, how we're expressing things. I've been called a witch. I've been called witchy, and there's probably some truth to that. Do I identify myself as a witch? Not particularly, but depending on what the other person sees in me, then I may well be a witch.
[00:37:39] I think the question though, of how it's expressed and how we're talking to each other, how we're talking about one another, not just when we're in the room, but also when we're not in the room with one another. How do we express respect for somebody else? How do we talk about, [00:38:00] again, going back to that person who's alone, but talk about that person in a respectful way to a point where it feels like, "oh my gosh, that's somebody that I want to invite into my world," as opposed to, "poor so and so that are by themselves." So instead talking about something amazing that they're doing or great sense of humor or whatever it is that person has.
[00:38:25] It's often those little things that where it starts. And that's a personal responsibility that we have, I think each one of us. And probably should find something that really matters to us and stand for that and stand up for it, not be afraid to express an opinion. But would that also take the responsibility of learning about it? So it's not just because somebody said or because you picked it up on the news or social media or something, but really take the time to discover different sides to it. Be curious about [00:39:00] that issue, and then stand up and speak for it, and find somebody that you're going to protect when you're doing it, somebody who might not be as good at speaking about it as you are, but bring them into your fold. So it's certainly, I think, a lot about personal responsibility in this that needs to come out. What can we do as individuals? How can we talk about questions in ways that we might not feel comfortable talking about?
[00:39:26] Cassandra Roberts Hesseltine: And to speak to that, Dr. Samuel Oliner, who I was very fortunate to get to meet. He taught here locally at the university. He really helped foster and coin the phrase of altruism. And he was a teenage boy and during World War II and had to pretend to be German on a, at a ranch that he stumbled upon after his whole family was killed in a mass grave.
[00:39:48] And he, the woman he found out later had always known he really actually was Jewish and saved him and didn't turn him in. And so he studied. Instead of studying the negative [00:40:00] side, which we've been talking about, that energy of that happening, he studied the opposite, which is the answer, some of the answers, I won't say it's the answer, but what Annika was saying of us taking responsibility and caring about someone else. So he studied altruism, and he created a whole facility. He wrote a plethora of books on it. And what he found was that it was a lot of times somebody who, people had more empathy and were more altruistic the more that they were able to see outside their little world.
[00:40:29] So if they traveled, they were the person that was gonna come to a bridge. If they saw a car go over the bridge, they would be the person who would jump into the water to go save someone, versus the spectators who stood and watch. And what made that difference? How do we get more of those people who jump in the water, or who write the letter and say, "no, this is ridiculous? We're not gonna hang or burn people for playing with Tarot cards, things like that." And it basically came down to just be more worldly and be more experienced so that you would have more empathy and realize there's people that do things [00:41:00] different than you. And that's okay.
[00:41:02] They can still exist and we can still coexist and not have to feel so threatened and blame them for the things that we are confused about or don't understand. But how do you teach that to everybody? And some people don't have that, they're not in the space, the mindset, I think, as Annika said, psychology, they're going through a tough time.
[00:41:19] Annika Hylmo: It brings to mind somebody that I met when I was working on my PhD. And my PhD is in communication, which is basically storytelling. That's the simplest way of explaining it to everybody. But I met a researcher back then, his name was George Gerbner, and he studied the impact of mass media, and people who are always watching a lot of news, taking in a lot of the bad news, often feel like it's a very dangerous world of life, bad living in, and as a result, refusing to interact with other people, refusing to make contact with other people and thinking that the world is a lot worse than it actually is.
[00:41:59] [00:42:00] And it strikes me that we had another event, just 2020, and that was the Black Lives Matter movement, which came up very suddenly and not suddenly. It was interesting to talk to people who are very different. I'm very pale skinned in comparison to the vast majority of this world. I have blue eyes, I've got brown hair, and I found that I had such rich conversations with people who didn't look like me and with people who looked like me, and I learned so much about myself and about the world through those conversations. That's something that's open to anyone to have those conversations, to do that outreach.
[00:42:45] And that's also where a lot of this is going to start. It's dared to have a conversation who isn't like you, who doesn't have the same belief system as you, who might be [00:43:00] different, whether it's economically, it's spiritually, it's sexually, it's ethnically, whatever it might be. Those conversations are so powerful because they teach you something about you at the same time as it opens up to the rest of the world.
[00:43:17] So I think, just like what Cassandra was saying, it's that really that connecting and seeing how you can connect with other people. There's a lot of psychology in this and a lot of opportunity for us to step across those boundaries, to step outside of that fear zone a little bit and go, "hey, this is fun. I like hanging out with you. Let's do this."
[00:43:40] Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, that's such an excellent point about connecting with people who could alternatively be seen as the other and avoided. One thing, one big step towards getting rid of this witch hunting behavior is exactly that, embracing [00:44:00] people with different beliefs, different appearances, different backgrounds and connecting. But it's still the problem of how do we get everyone to embrace that?
[00:44:12] Annika Hylmo: I think that we need to open up to curiosity a lot more in this world compared to where we might have been. And I actually think that's a lesson, too, that we have to learn from the 1600s, because their experience was very different with the world compared to ours. Theirs was one of all the senses, and we are not using all of our senses anymore. And with that, we've lost some curiosity. And I think this is actually a really important point that we need to not just go, "oh, we don't wanna be at all like the 1600s" But there are some ways, at least for me, that I wanna be more like the 1600s and that use of all the senses, to me it's really tied to curiosity.
[00:44:54] It's like it's stepping outside, being outdoors a little bit and just check in with your senses. Being curious [00:45:00] about that. What does it feel like? Is it warm? Is it cold? Is it windy? What am I tasting? And sometimes if you're lucky enough that you come across something that you could get a bite of along the way, or that experience that you're touching something touch is so incredible. I love walking up and down the street, and sometimes I'll just grab a bit of rosemary, and I'll smell it, and I'll touch it, and it feels a little bit oily, and it smells really good, and it just pops me, wakes me up a little bit.
[00:45:27] That sense of curiosity with the natural world is something that people had back in the 1600s, because that was part of their life. They didn't have streetlights the way that we do, and so they had to be curious about the shadows at night. They had to be curious about how to grow their crops, about all of those things.
[00:45:49] And I think that kind of curiosity at a very basic level is something that we've lost. But it's a step toward connecting, [00:46:00] cuz that lets us connect with ourself and then connecting with other people as well. That, and that's something that we all have. That's something that people, you're never gonna be able to take that away from us, but as long as all we do is look at a screen all day long, then we'll forget how to do that.
[00:46:15] Cassandra Roberts Hesseltine: I think that there is that connecting, like what she said. And then there's also not labeling too, so there's a thing that we should be doing and something maybe we need to also stop doing. I had to take a whole class as part of my degree on labels and what it does to a society when we label.
[00:46:29] Besides being, through my mother's side being related to the witch trials, I'm also half Mexican through my biological father's side, but a lot of people look at me and think, You're not Mexican. Where's your accent?
[00:46:41] I've actually been told, "where's your accent? Were you born in Mexico?" And I giggle, and I'm like, "no, I read white, I appear white, but I am Mexican too." And stop having these labels and then be curious, as Annika said. Be able to wonder what's going on and inquire. And those same [00:47:00] exact elements that she was talking about with nature. We could do with people too. Find out more about them. Find out what makes them, instead of labeling them as this thing, and then that thing becomes bad.
[00:47:08] Annika Hylmo: The labeling thing is actually a really good thing to look at, and it's an opportunity to look at a little bit for each one of us as individuals, because there's a whole movement now that lets people self identify and self label, right? So do you want, what pronouns do you wanna use? And how you react to that has a lot to do with, or tells you a lot about how comfortable you are in a world that isn't so clear, so specific.
[00:47:37] Again, this is what happened in 1692, that things were not clear, crystal clear to people, something as small or big, depending on your worldview and how, what your comfort level is as having people label themselves, self-identify, and/or asking you what your pronouns are and/or getting [00:48:00] comfortable using those pronouns when you're not comfortable, you've never done it before. It's something completely new to you in a small way.
[00:48:10] That encapsulates what people were dealing with back in 1692, because there was so much ambiguity around them. And taking that opportunity to really think about that and then to act on it to say, "maybe I am gonna be making it a little bit more effort to step up and use the pronouns that someone else wants me to use and embrace." That's a really small, large step that everybody can take. And that's the kind of thing that I think we need to look for. It's what are the small things that we can do as individuals and hold ourselves personally accountable for.
[00:48:51] Sarah Jack: And when everybody goes out and does these very important things that Annika and Cassandra are [00:49:00] recommending, talk about that experience. I think that once you've had a new experience, be brave enough to talk about it with other people.
[00:49:09] Annika Hylmo: And if you feel like you wanna go to church, if you wanna go to synagogue, you wanna go to mosque, please do. If you wanna be out in nature, if that's where you find your spirituality, please do. If you find that doing something creative, artistic is your spirituality, please do. Whatever it is, talk to animals, go for a long walk, sit on the beach, yoga. Whatever it is, take the time to experience spirituality every day. That will help us a lot too.
[00:49:38] Josh Hutchinson: I personally, I just wanna say I love talking to animals. I find that to be very therapeutic, if nothing else, engaging with them and I love engaging with nature in general. So I'm glad you brought that up and the curiosity with our senses that we need to engage all five again. That's a good [00:50:00] point.
[00:50:00] I think what you're doing with the film and what you've done with the conversation so far today is just so important in so many ways. How can people support the documentary?
[00:50:14] Cassandra Roberts Hesseltine: There's a couple different ways they can. As Annika said, definitely, reach out to us, tell us their stories. It helps educate us, helps us know more of what's going on. We can't be everywhere at all times. We weren't fully aware of everything that was going on in Connecticut until you reached out to us, so helpful. That is so helpful. So that's one way. Following us on all the social medias. If people do that, obviously we hope that everyone uses it for the right reasons, but following where the project is, commenting participating. Facebook, Instagram, we do a little Twitter. And then we have a website. People can, stop and check out and see where we are with the project.
[00:50:48] And then, if inclined, we always understand this is the awkward part, but we are self-funding as of right now and the contributions and we're working on our funding for the bigger project. So [00:51:00] that's obviously a big way would be help us get it made, help us get the word out by helping contribute to actually the process of making the film.
[00:51:08] Annika Hylmo: And I would add to that, that if there are nonprofits out there that would be interested in learning more about this project and to see where there is a cause, where there might be an overlay, reach out to us because this is a community effort and there may well be a way that we could partner on this.
[00:51:27] Josh Hutchinson: Great. And we'll have links in the show notes to your website and to your contact form on there, as well.
[00:51:36] Annika Hylmo: Thank you, and a huge shout out to these kids in Massachusetts. They are incredible, amazing. Were it not for these middle school kids, two years worth of middle schoolers from North Andover Middle School.
[00:51:50] If it weren't for them and the work that they did together with our teacher, Carrie LaPierre, we would not be sitting here today. We would not be making the documentary, and we wouldn't be [00:52:00] having this conversation. So guys, thank you to North and over Middle School, cuz you guys are amazing.
[00:52:07] Josh Hutchinson: This has been such a great conversation. In many ways don't want it to end. I thank you both for your powerful insights into humanity and the things that we can be working on to improve ourselves. Thank you for that.
[00:52:24] Sarah Jack: Welcome to this episode's Witchcraft Fear Victim Advocacy Report, sponsored by End Witch Hunts News. You have been hearing Witch Hunt Happenings in Your World from me. Who has heard about these crimes from you? Have you looked up any news? Have you checked out the Africa advocacy links in our episode show notes? Who did you say you have mentioned it to?
[00:52:45] This week I attended the Colorado Podcaster's Meetup events sponsored by Podfest Expo and others at the Great Divide Brewery in Denver. I enjoyed meeting other creative conversors out here in the West who run various podcasts of their own. Check Thou [00:53:00] Shalt Not Suffer's podcast social media to see all of us.
[00:53:03] I had the chance to tell these podcasters that witch hunts are a very relevant conversation. I talked about the Connecticut Witch Trial Exoneration Project, and that Alice Young, the first accused Witch, executed in the American colonies, died in Hartford 375 years ago and is still waiting for her good name to be restored.
[00:53:23] She was not using witchcraft to harm others. Neither were the dozens of others accused in the Connecticut colony. If she and the other 10 hanged for witchcraft are exonerated by the state of Connecticut, it will be because we advocated for them. Also, those who have been cleared and memorialized by Massachusetts were not harming others with witchcraft. This week, our episode was about Elizabeth Johnson, Jr. of Andover, Massachusetts, and how she was finally advocated for after she remained overlooked in previous Salem Witch Trial exoneration efforts. Each of these exoneration efforts happened because of advocacy from humans like you. It didn't just occur [00:54:00] for Elizabeth because she was actually not a harmful Witch, but it happened because a mighty, collaborative effort from the community spanning young and old came together to make it happen. Likewise, efforts to stop the witch attacks in Asia and Africa must come from other people, people who can use their voice to talk about it and to stand against it.
[00:54:20] This month, a woman lost her life due to superstition fears in the Gaia District of Bihar in the Jarkhand state of India. She was burned alive at her home after neighbors accused her of being a witch. She was 45. You can find a news link in our episode notes.
[00:54:38] Pre-pandemic, Global Journalist reported this, "for many, witch trials may seem like a relic of early colonial America. But in fact witch-hunting is still a feature of rural life today around the world. One place where it's prevalent is India. On average, an Indian woman is killed every other day after being accused of witchcraft, according to government [00:55:00] statistics. Many are tortured or publicly humiliated before being burned, stabbed or beaten to death."
[00:55:07] I will be researching and reporting more in India. While we watch and wait, let's support the victims in India and across the world where innocent people are being targeted by superstitious fear. Support them by acknowledging and sharing their stories. Please use all your communication channels to be an intervener and stand with them.
[00:55:24] The world must stop hunting witches. Please follow our End Witch Hunts movement on Twitter @_endwitchhunts. And visit our website, endwitchhunts.org.
[00:55:35] Josh Hutchinson: Thank you, Sarah, for that moving and powerful update.
[00:55:39] Sarah Jack: You're welcome.
[00:55:41] Josh Hutchinson: And thank you for listening to Thou Shalt Not Suffer: The Witch Trial Podcast.
[00:55:45] Sarah Jack: Join us next week for our guest, Greg Houle, an author writing a book about the Salem Putnams.
[00:55:53] Josh Hutchinson: Subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:55:56] Sarah Jack: Visit thoushaltnotsuffer.com often.[00:56:00]
[00:56:00] Josh Hutchinson: And join our Discord for discussion of our episodes. Link in the show notes.
[00:56:06] Sarah Jack: Follow us on social media, links in description.
[00:56:11] Josh Hutchinson: And remember to tell your friends and family and coworkers, and shout it from a mountaintop, about Thou Shalt Not Suffer: The Witch Trial Podcast.
[00:56:22] Sarah Jack: So long for now.
[00:56:23] Josh Hutchinson: Have a great today and a beautiful tomorrow.
[00:56:27]

Witch-Hunts in Great Yarmouth and Salem with Dr. Danny Buck

November 10th, 2022

Witch-Hunts in Great Yarmouth and Salem with Dr. Danny Buck – Thou Shalt Not Suffer: The Witch Trial Podcast

Presenting Dr. Danny Buck, Norfolk research historian who examines how witch-hunting was tied to the rise and fall of Presbyterian religious and political hegemony in Great Yarmouth. Join us now as we discuss the English community of Great Yarmouth and its ties to the New England Salem Witch Trials. We discuss how the two communities show sometimes similar and other times unique witch trial dynamics. We look for answers to our advocacy questions: Why do we witch hunt? How do we witch hunt? How do we stop hunting witches?Daniel A. Gagnon, A Salem Witch: The Trial, Execution, and Exoneration of Rebecca Nurse. Yardley, PA: Westholme Publishing, 2021. Dr. Danny Buck, Presbyterianism, Urban Politics, and Division: The 1645 Great Yarmouth Witch-Hunt in Context Petition of Mary Esty and Sarah CloycePetition of Mary EstyPetition of Rebecca Nurse to the CourtAppeal of Rebecca NursePetition of Isaac Esty for Restitution for Mary EstyPetition of Samuel Nurse for Restitution of Rebecca NurseTowne Cousins, Family Association Facebook GroupRichard Hite, In the Shadow of Salem: The Andover Witch Hunt of 1692 Marilynne K. Roach, The Salem Witch Trials: A Day By Day Chronicle of a Community Under SiegeUniversity of VA, Salem Witch Trials Documents and TranscriptionsEnd Witch Hunt ProjectsPlease sign the petition to exonerate those accused of witchcraft in ConnecticutLeo Igwe, AfAWAdvocacy Against Witch Hunts, South AfricaJoin us on Discord to share your ideas and feedback.WebsiteTwitterFacebookInstagram PinterestLinkedInYouTubeSupport the show

Show Notes

Daniel A. Gagnon, A Salem Witch: The Trial, Execution, and Exoneration of Rebecca Nurse. Yardley, PA: Westholme Publishing, 2021.
Dr. Danny Buck, Presbyterianism, Urban Politics, and Division: The 1645 Great Yarmouth Witch-Hunt in Context
Petition of Mary Esty and Sarah Cloyce
Petition of Mary Esty
Petition of Rebecca Nurse to the Court
Appeal of Rebecca Nurse
Petition of Isaac Esty for Restitution for Mary Esty
Petition of Samuel Nurse for Restitution of Rebecca Nurse Towne Cousins, Family Association Facebook Group
Richard Hite, In the Shadow of Salem: The Andover Witch Hunt of 1692
Marilynne K. Roach, The Salem Witch Trials: A Day By Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege
University of VA, Salem Witch Trials Documents and Transcriptions
End Witch Hunt Projects
Please sign the petition to exonerate those accused of witchcraft in Connecticut
Leo Igwe, AfAW
Advocacy Against Witch Hunts, South Africa
Join us on Discord to share your ideas and feedback.
Website
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram
Pinterest
LinkedIn
YouTube Support the show

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Transcript

Josh Hutchinson: [00:00:00] "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Exodus 22:18.

Josh Hutchinson: Welcome to another episode of Thou Shalt Not Suffer: The Witch Trial Podcast. I'm Josh Hutchinson.
Sarah Jack: And I'm Sarah Jack.
Josh Hutchinson: Today's guest is Dr. Danny Buck. We'll be discussing a witch-hunt in Great Yarmouth, England and comparing that to the Salem Witch-hunt.
Sarah Jack: I am so excited to look at these comparisons with him.
Knowing that some of the ancestors and parents of the accused witches in Salem came from Great Yarmouth really intrigues me, [00:01:00] and I'm looking forward to finding out about its history and who was doing what over there in the mid 17th century.
Josh Hutchinson: We both have familial connections to Great Yarmouth, you through Rebecca Nurse and both of us through Mary Esty. The Towne sisters were born in Great Yarmouth.
Sarah Jack: Their parents were married there and able to start their family. Rebecca and Mary and Sarah's father was a gardener or a small farmer there.
Because of Dr. Danny Buck's area of expertise, we're getting a chance to look back at the area that Rebecca Nurse's parents started their life and their family, and that really is exciting to me.
There's an inscription on a tombstone in the cemetery at St. Nicholas Church in Great Yarmouth, England, and this is the church where Rebecca [00:02:00] Towne would've been baptized.
This life's a voyage. The world's a sea where men are strangely tossed about. Heaven's our port. Steer thou that way. Thou shall anchor safe, no doubt.
Not only is Great Yarmouth interesting because we can understand the background of William and Joanna Towne, but because of what was happening there with the Civil War and the politics and the religious strife, it gives us an insight into the people of the Salem Witch Trial history.
Having a chance to talk with Dr. Buck about Yarmouth's history and what created the environment for the witch trials is a great lens for us as we look again at the Salem Witch Trials. You come to the realization of how important looking at them [00:03:00] together is, once you learn more about both. It's not something that you have to look for common threads. They are related, and that's because of the people and the types of circumstances .
Josh Hutchinson: Today's episode will provide valuable insight into not only the witch-hunt in Great Yarmouth but into the witch-hunt later in Salem. These were the same people we're talking about, the same families coming from Great Yarmouth to New England had the same mentality, the same background, the same upbringing, and the same beliefs about witchcraft.
Especially important in our discussion are the Towne family. You all know Rebecca Nurse and probably her sister Mary Esty, and maybe their sister, Sarah Cloyce, were all [00:04:00] arrested during the Salem Witch-hunt. Rebecca and Mary were born in Great Yarmouth before their family migrated to Salem, where Sarah was born.
Ultimately, sadly, Rebecca Nurse and Mary Esty were executed, but Sarah Cloyce was fortunate to survive, though she was jailed under harsh conditions for a long period. We'll discuss them more when we get to our conversation with Danny Buck.
Sarah Jack: Dr. Danny Buck is a research historian who has identified the relationship of the Great Yarmouth Witch Trials with the religious tensions between Presbyterians and Church of England conformists in the 1620s and 30s. Also the challenge of Congregationalism, particularly in the 1640s.
Josh Hutchinson: What are the preconditions for the Great Yarmouth Witch Hunts? What was the background of the community?
Danny Buck: That is a very interesting question cause I, the good thing about getting to write a [00:05:00] PhD on topic is you can really go into detail. And I basically went back to 1625 to argue that some of the preconditions go back to just the existence of King Charles I and his reforms to the church and the tensions that caused between Puritans and particularly Presbyterian Puritans who want to create one unified Puritan church and the Anglicans who at this time are being well, not even properly Anglicans at this time, conformists to the church of England who want to see a church of England that's very pretty, that's very ceremonial, and these tensions and the desire for purity, unity that come out of that seem to me, the heart of what the witch hunt represents. The things that start in 1625, so that's 20 years before the witch hunt proper, create the tensions necessary within the community.
I feel, and I think it's something we see throughout all the witch [00:06:00] hunts, I think we've, you've probably looked at and I've looked at certainly is the sense of a community divides and fearful of something. And in the first place, I think the idea of Presbyterianism, of a Puritanism that calls for a godly unified society, really struggles with the concept and reality of division. Before the English Civil War, this division can be maintained, because it could be used as a way of rallying against that Church of England as represented by Laudianism, by this beauty and holiness and particular in Great Yarmouth the hate figure of the local minister, Matthew Brooks, is something they could all rally against. They definitely agreed they are against him. I've got a fantastic record from Matthew Brooks saying about how much he's hated, and you'll see how they all work together.
They abuse him, they abuse his assistant, they abuse his children. It's something they can work against. [00:07:00] So that's our first step. We've got this division within the community, but I don't think at that point, it's necessarily inevitable. With the outbreak of what we refer to the English Civil War, we start getting a breakdown in society comparable to other breakdowns I think you must see in North America, just before Salem, whereby government from London is getting truncated. There's a war on. Power is devolved down to the local area in terms of military government called the Eastern Association.
That means that instead of judges coming up from London, we're reliant on military figures. So this creates more power to localities, towns like Great Yarmouth. They have to sort things out themselves. Also there's a disjunction in government about deciding what religion is going to look like. There's this great calling together of ministers called the Westminister Assembly of Divines. And they spend years debating, arguing, and they agree they ought to have a Presbyterian [00:08:00] settlement, but there's enough people who think that's not a great idea for there to be tension. So this national tension over religion is then played out in Great Yarmouth in a very personal way.
Firstly, one of the members of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, a man called William Bridge is one of the leading proponents of what's called independency, a belief there's one big, national Puritan Church, you have a series of separate congregations. He is invited to Great Yarmouth by the MP and later regicide Miles Corbet. He settles there, and from 1643, we see the development of his own separate church. I find this particularly fascinating in how it plays into sort of the tensions that lay behind witch hunting, because it's both a separation, a division within the community again, one where the Puritans are beginning to fall out amongst themselves. But in particular it's growth as a separate church peaks in 1645, the same time as the witch-hunt. Is also quite [00:09:00] remarkable in this involves a large number of women joining that community. So we see on an average two to one of the local converts are women, often without their husbands.
And it's followed up by the returning Puritan Presbyterian minister, a man by the name John Brinsley, providing a fantastic sermon called A Looking Glass for Good Women. The expectations of how these women should be behaving, which is basically continue to be Puritan. Again, it does include an exclusion saying this doesn't include our congregationalists, our independent friends, but I can't help but feel there's gotta be some tension there, but he's losing members of his the unification of the Puritan community.
So this tension, the desire to return to a unified puritan community certainly feeds into a precondition for the members of the elite, the people in the town to support witch hunting. But a more vivid religious threat comes from a group of anabaptists, so these are people [00:10:00] who really are radical for the 17th century.
I think that we've got a wonderful record of this, where John Brinsley, the puritan minister, writes this long letter to Thomas Edwards, the heresiographer, the man who just collects every awful religious view out there. And at one point, he describes it as the worst heresy since time began or since Christian history, when a John Boggis this former member of the army who's come into the town, part of garrison, he rolls up and he, first of all, he over grace, he says, "who are we offering thanks to? Not to God." Another time he describes the Bible as but paper, and probably the most awful thing is he bursts into the puritan minister's dinner and decides he's gonna declare they're gonna debate. So this real separate, private churches, separate communities, creating a real sense of fear and tension that makes this fear of people within your community.[00:11:00]
Again, attempts to remove John Boggis come as 1645, just after the witch-hunt. It feels like a wider process of religious regeneration and attempt to make the community feel more cohesive. But again, this is still feeding off real fears and tensions. We've got people whose children have been languishing for the last year and a half being unwell.
We have a problem of real economic turmoil caused by the civil wars that feed into this, but I can't help but feel the religious element is striking in how it defines what's possible and how people understand their conflict within their community.
By 1690s, how settled is the Salem community? Are they feeling something unique and new? Obviously we have the idea of the American identity is something that comes more the revolution, but is there a distinct sense that this colonial community having its own sense of itself, by this [00:12:00] point?
Sarah Jack: I feel like they were still having tug of war over what that identity was gonna be.
Josh Hutchinson: Well, there was a sense in Massachusetts Bay Colony, especially involving the style of government, they very much wanted to be self govern. They really valued the original charter they had from the king. In 1684, King Charles II revoked their charter, and they didn't have one again until 1692. After the witch trials had begun, the new governor showed up with the new charter, and they were rather upset in the colony about that charter. They felt that they had lost some of their liberties as a unique government. They were forced to tolerate other religions. That was one of their big things. They didn't want to tolerate the Quakers and the Anglicans and the Baptists.
[00:13:00] And you have that sense of a diabolical conspiracy in New England. Very much. They basically thought that everybody was out to get them. Even to some extent, the English government being out to ruin their plans for covenant community Puritan church. And they're surrounded. They're in a wilderness basically, as they see it. They believe that the original inhabitants of that wilderness worship the devil They have warfare with the French constantly.
They're afraid of a papist conspiracy of the Catholics coming against them, working in league with Satan and with his other worshipers already there. So they're very much besieged in their eyes at that time of the witch trials.
Danny Buck: I think that's a really nice comparison, the sense of the siege mentality. So obviously in [00:14:00] England at this time, there's the greater siege mentality of being at war with the king and that war taking on very much that cataclysmic, end of days feel. I imagine it must be similar during King Philip's War, the sense that all these townships that were thriving are now forced on their uppers.
In Great Yarmouth, there's part of a wider trade collapse, as it's reliant on merchants, is of starving strangling. This is the evidence of an increased population of people fleeing the countryside. On top of that, they are bouts of pestilence mentioned and in particular for Great Yarmouth, the great stranglehold, the besieging comes from without, from the sea, where as you may have read there's highly reliant on the herring fleet. Herring, delicious fish, part of the North Sea, but to catch it, you often have to go all the way up to Iceland, right up the North Sea, which is fine in peacetime, but in wartime, Great Yarmouth managed to make an enemy of its nearby neighbor the town of Lowestoft, [00:15:00] and there's one man called Thomas Allen, whose ship was in Great Yarmouth.
They took it because he was involved in a royalist plot. He flees and he raises that piratical group of privateers in the king's service and almost wipes out the herring fleet. So this is what's reliant on the day-to-day living of most ordinary people in the town. That's the kind of thing where if you think of the model witch carter's charity refused as Keith Thomas argues, you can see why people Great Yarmouth would be starving.
The herring, in some ways it's the living because people go and fish it, sell it. There's supplies from that. You have the industries linked to that, so barrelmaking, ropemaking, protecting the keys. But on top of that, a certain amount of the catch was used as the funding for charitable exercises, so it's like a special tax on it levied by the corporation.
So you imagine that also collapses at the same time when everything else is going so economically wrong. On top of that, you have some really harsh winters, [00:16:00] 1644, 1645, 1646. There isn't enough money for coal. There's no coal to be found at times. So people are starving, hungry, and then we have people coming, asking for charity, for support. As part of this, people get rejected for that. Things start going wrong.
We see why some witchcraft accusations emerge, but they are seen as part of this great war against the great enemy. Certainly it's something very catastrophic about being civil war on top of that, you've had soldiers garrisoned in Great Yarmouth, because it's seen as a possible invasion coast. The very top of Norfolk, called King's Lynn, is seen as a possible entry point for the armies of the king. That is briefly held by a group of rebels, royalists supporting backed rebels for a couple of months, the summer of 1643. We know the supporters of the king on the continent. The queen Henrietta Maria is trying to raise money and mercenaries. [00:17:00] And one of those ships is blown into Great Yarmouth, becomes part of their little own protection fleet, but also there's the, this Great Yarmouth that's just the south.
Is this very flat area called Lovingland or Lovingland. I think today it's Lovingland then it was Lovingland. Contrast, but it's seems this perfect area to landing is where Lowestoft is, where they have this royalist uprising. So despite seeming in the middle, what's the most secure part of parliamentary territory in the East Association, good Puritan towns, raising large bits of armies, the Homeland of Oliver Cromwell and his Ironside.
It still seems fundamentally vulnerable. I imagine, how far is Salem from the fighting in the 1680s?
Josh Hutchinson: It's not terribly far. There's a town called Andover that's adjacent to Salem Village and then beyond Andover, there's another town called Haverhill. Haverhill and Andover ultimately get attacked [00:18:00] during King William's War in the 1690s. So they're very much out near the frontier exposed. If the enemy comes through there, they're in Salem, essentially.
Danny Buck: I think there has to be something to that. The way people rationalize this war against a papist enemy, against an enemy who's not just, the enemy of Parliament, it's the enemy of God. The fact that Henrietta Maria a Catholic is sending over mercenaries. The fact that there are allegations that some of the witches in Norfolk are sending their familiars off to help prince Rupert.
That is part of this papist, demonic conspiracy. Despite being the second line of this conflict, and being uncomfortably close to billeted soldiers who are being radicalized with this conflict, sense of real tension there.
Josh Hutchinson: One of the accused of witchcraft stated specifically that, when she ultimately confesses to [00:19:00] witchcraft, one of her reasons is that she was afraid of the Native Americans, and the Devil promised that he would protect her.
Danny Buck: That's fascinating.
I also find this devil's promise is fascinating as a whole. First of all, the Devil is the tempter, but also somehow often a failed figure. So the sense of the one case I've got a really good record of, the confession. There's a woman called Elizabeth Bradwell. She's old. She hasn't got any family. I think the records aren't sure if she's a spinster or widow. She's someone who seems to be very lonely. She's reliant on charity from the local ministers. She's asking for work or for charity, but she's refused. So she goes home. She goes, first of all, to the man of business, he says, no, the master's not here. I can't give you anything. She goes to the maid. The maid says the same thing. She goes home, she's angry, she's discontented. And this tall, black man appears in front of her and promises her [00:20:00] revenge and no more need of money. It doesn't say how much money he gets her, but it's enough. And she must sign his book in her own blood. That it's revenge and a little money. There's not very much in some ways to damn yourself with.
Josh Hutchinson: There were some cases in Salem where it was a pair of shoes, or a fashion book was all they were gonna get, versus other cases where one girl claimed that he offered her all the kingdoms that she saw from the top of Great Mountain that he took her to. So you have this whole range from basically a pittance to everything
Danny Buck: He's also interesting figure, particularly in that confession I talked of. He does seem almost like a minister himself. He's got his little book, he requires her to sign in, he's got his fancy pen dressed in black, quite an imposing figure. And again, we certainly, by the [00:21:00] 1650s, their description of the Devil was the Great Quaker in England.
What kind of shape does he take in Salem?
Josh Hutchinson: He's described often as the black man. Sometimes he's described as being tawny like a Native American. They say other times he gets those ministerial features. He's dressed in black. Sometimes he's tall. Sometimes he's short. Changes a lot, but sometimes he very much resembles Minister George Burroughs. He's a little, dark-haired man dressed in black, carrying a book, getting people to sign a covenant with him like they would entering the church but doing it in blood or in red ink.
Danny Buck: And does the tradition of the familiar cross over?
Josh Hutchinson: Very much. They have imps. They have a creature that was hairy all over, but like a man,[00:22:00] they have a monkey with a rooster's head as one of them. Lots of cats and dogs, sometimes pigs people would shift into. They had a lot of birds. Have one girl. They arrest this four year old girl. She describes having a snake that would suck between her fingers and says that her mother, who was accused before her, gave her the snake as a familiar, they had quite an imagination.
Danny Buck: It makes my reference to a Blackbird seem rather tame by comparison.
Josh Hutchinson: In some of those confessions, they get really elaborate.
Danny Buck: So obviously the process of examination is quite interesting. So in Great Yarmouth, we have just a reference to midwives who are too expensive. So need to be they need to be limited to, I think, just four of them. So we've got Elizabeth Howard who's one of the midwives. The corporation ordered 12 pence a day for their service and in the future, they will only to [00:23:00] be hiring four women, cause they were just ruinously expensive to get the evidence there.
Again, we have dark allegations about what Hopkins is doing. We know that some of the accused witches were being examined by the local ministers. So no, their bodies are being searched by the midwives. There's no evidence for some of the harsh methods. Matthew Hopkins, who was invited in by the corporation to investigate the cases was famous for.
So no swimming, no pricking. Again, suspect they'd been kept awake a while in the jail, but we've got no evidence of that. What kind of methods are being employed by those searching the witches in Salem?
Josh Hutchinson: They have the same with the midwife searching for the witches marks, or in the case of male suspects, they have a group of men search them, which sometimes is the jailer and whoever else they can enlist. The marshal, maybe the sheriff, in some cases, [00:24:00] they find these marks. They test them out. Put a pin through the mark to see if anything comes out.
If it's insensitive, the person doesn't feel it, then that's a witch's mark for sure. They have that going on. They have the magistrates doing the other examinations. Basically grilling the suspect with a lot of leading questions. Starting out with why are you a witch? When did you become a witch? How long did you volunteer to serve him for?
How did Satan appear to you? They're never asking them their side of the story. They're telling them their side of the story. There was no swimming in Salem. There was a bit in Connecticut. There was a case in Andover where they did a mass touch test. Where they believed that the person that the witch had afflicted by making contact with the witch, [00:25:00] transferred the magic back to the witch, uh, would be healed.
So they would take these afflicted girls who were having fits, they blindfold them, have them going around randomly touching people, and if they stop having a fit, that's a witch. This actually happens in and over. Where they were quite intense and belligerent in trying to get people to confess there.
No pricking. There are a couple cases though, where they tie them neck and heels until the blood comes out of their nose and they get a confession.
Danny Buck: Yeah. I think I'll probably confess at that point.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah. And they leave them like that for hours and hours until that happens.
There's some other cases where they might have done the thing of keeping them awake. There's some petitions that reference that idea that they were [00:26:00] basically out of their minds at the point that they confessed.
Danny Buck: Yeah, it is shocking, quite how close people were able to skirt the lines of what's expected of legality. Again, partly, the argument of the witch hunt is that it is cruel necessity? That this is part of the war on demonic forces. Do you think that's why these things burn out so quickly? The very fact you're having to create these emergency measures. The fact you're having to carry something out, and it's supposed to be this radical solution and it doesn't work. And also it's is just so traumatic for everyone involved. Even those making accusations.
Like in Great Yarmouth we have 15 people accused by the end of the September. So we start off with the first accusations, April 1645, last ones in September of that year, we have half of them are convicted lead to hanging in that year. And then a further five [00:27:00] the next year come to trial. None of 'em are found guilty, already the desire to carry this out all burnt out. The midwives are too expensive. Hopkins isn't invited back. It seems like it's this very sharp flame, but it can't be sustained very long.
Sarah Jack: Josh and I were talking about how quickly that turned, that he had been invited on the first incident and then was not called for the second.
Danny Buck: Again, partly it's Hopkins' own myth. He's someone who's very effective.. But for me, he is fantastic as this sort of shamanistic figure comes in. He resolves your problem. He's invited in, but that only works as long as he's effective.
Certainly with Great Yarmouth, I feel like Hopkins has already had a bit of a dry run, because he has been invited to previous other towns connected to the MP in Great Yarmouth, Miles Corbet, where he also acts as the judge. The title at the time is recorder. So we've already, [00:28:00] got Aldeburgh further down the coast in Suffolk, where he is recorder, where he's obviously been involved in trials where Hopkins has arrived, and obviously Hopkins built his reputation first of all, in Essex, where he's obviously been very successful about getting conviction after conviction. But already by the middle of 1645, I think his legend is beginning to weigh. People are criticizing his methodology. So got Thomas Scott at the same time. People are feeling he's not as effective, and they're paying him quite a lot for this.
He obviously he's a gentleman. I think it's too cynical to see him as fleecing people to do this. I think he believes he's got the methodology. I think he believes he owes certain level of respect for his status now, his self-declared Witchfinder General status, which requires people to pay for his lodging as a gentleman should be kept.
But that's still gonna put you off as a time when I've mentioned tax income is gonna be down cause of the problems of the trade collapse. The North Sea is lousy [00:29:00] with pirates. When they all know people are suffering because their herring has been collapsed, there's plague going on. Providing the support for ordinary people is now it's much bigger burden.
So you can justify bringing Hopkins as a short term response, but you can't because the English system, he doesn't get rewarded for this, the money doesn't come in from witchcraft trials, you might get somewhere like Germany where they can self sustain, but maybe a couple of years. Instead, yeah, he burns himself out.
Which doesn't help that. And on top of that, therefore that the crisis continues in these towns unabated, and it's from 1646, we see that for religious toleration, as opposed to exclusion, reduces other pressure, I think of the witch hunt, but what brings the dying down in New England?
Josh Hutchinson: In New England, I think they just reach critical mass with the number of accusations, and they're starting to target the wealthier, more influential people. [00:30:00] There's a rumor that they accuse the wife of the governor himself, but they're going through these kind of brutal methods, especially in Andover, so you're accumulating resistance that way.
A lot of petitions starting to come in saying, These people confess, but they didn't mean. They were forced into it, driven to it. You have those things. You have just the quality of the people that they're accusing very much religious people. You have Sarah's ancestor, Rebecca Nurse. She's seen as a pillar of the religious community in Salem Village, and yet she's accused.
So you get that village divided fairly early on. And other towns that it spreads to. You have similar incidents there in Salem Town. They accused the minister's daughter in Andover. They're [00:31:00] accusing dozens of people related to the minister, and you just get this cumulative effect from those types of things.
Sarah Jack: One of the comparisons between Great Yarmouth and the Salem accusations that I noticed was I believe it was in 1646, when it really mattered if they had somebody that was standing up for them, if they were attached to a male or a powerful person, but in Salem, they were gathering lots of support and signatures.
And that still was not like that. It looked like it was gonna help Rebecca, but then it wasn't enough. The governor didn't do anything with all of those signatures.
Josh Hutchinson: At one point, the governor does issue a reprieve of Rebecca Nurse, but then some people who aren't named, Salem gentlemen, show up and pressure him, and he reverses that, [00:32:00] and her sister, Mary Towne Esty, is actually released from jail. The afflicted people have basically double the fits that they were having before, and the court reverses on that.
But you have these petitions starting to gather Steve. Dozens of people signing them. It's one for a woman named Mary Bradbury. So you have a lot of support for the accused that builds as these popular people are getting accused.
Danny Buck: Yeah, I think the closest we get to that in Great Yarmouth, big case is that of the local astrologer Mark Prynn, it was a faceting character. He's someone who the local MP has a grudge against for quite some time. Cuz there's a first accusation, 1637. Then comes back again, 1645. It's the case I've really enjoyed, cause I've got to talk about it in length in a second article, because this blows up in 1645 in a really interesting way. Because obviously [00:33:00] astrology is this fine line. The astrologers themselves claim it's Christian, it's science, it's very ordered and disciplined, it's about just understanding the stars. This chap, he's doing a good enough job that people are asking him for lost hats, lost cushions, lost metal items. So he's making it as a side hustle, as I think they'd say today between his job as an actual farmer, a tenant farmer. He's interesting cause he's got links to the local conformist Church of England minister. He's one of his tenants, and later the assistant to the minister, Thomas Cheshire, comes back to defend the farmer Mr. Prynn later. But it, but what's really interesting for the case is the MP involved, the recorder Miles Corbet, he's made a few enemies, and I've got this fantastic 12 stanza poem by the water poet, John Taylor, who just hates Corbet so much. So he uses this case as a way to discredit him. And I think this is part of the reason why I [00:34:00] think it's hard to sustain that campaign when you're being mocked for it.
I think this in so much prefigures what goes on in England after the Restoration, where belief in witchcraft is used as a way to label Puritans as superstitious, as foolish in a way that I don't think quite manages to get across the colonies in quite the same way. But in short, what happens is that according to the satirical poem, Corbet looks at the collection of astrological books and believes they've referenced demons and devils, whether they're in fact star constellations, or just names of Arabic philosophers.
So again, it's trying to make Corbet look credulous and foolish in a way that puritan fears of witches are being increasingly seen as something ridiculous. You see it, the civil war, as well, and Mark Stoyle's written really convincingly on the poem about Prince Rupert's dog, Boy, being a familiar, being a royalist satire that already it's mocked the Puritan sphere of the demonic.
But in this [00:35:00] case, according to the poet, John Taylor, Prynn is just a conman. His friend, Thomas Cheshire comes up speak for him and says, no, he can't be a demonic. He's not raising spirits. He's just conning old ladies out of money. And so making the whole thing look ridiculous. And in particular making Corbet's fear of the demonic, witches, and of this suppose seemingly harmless, man, as some kind of sorceror, as something that makes them just look silly.
And I think that is also something that, that brings an end to general fears is seeing the people making these accusations, not as concerned citizens, as people desperately fearful of an enemy within, but citizens somehow laughably frightened of their aging neighbors or a strange man up the road who just reads almanacs for a living.
Yeah. I dunno. Is that something you ever see New England, some kind of mockery of how ridiculous the whole thing has become?
Josh Hutchinson: You get some mockery at the [00:36:00] very end of it. There's a man named Thomas Brattle, who's a scientist among other things, and he writes a famous letter in October, 1692. He criticizes the whole philosophy of how witchcraft is supposed to work, how they employ the touch test, why they employ it. He criticizes those things.
It criticizes the spectral evidence that they're using. Do they have spectral evidence in Great Yarmouth?
Danny Buck: The only thing I've seen mentioned is people mention raising spirits as were the crimes. But no, allegedly Elizabeth Bradwell uses a wax poppet to it buried, which is supposed to create illness, but they never find it. By the time they go and dig it up, it has either rotted away or was never there.
But spectral evidence as a whole, it's just reliant on confessions.
Josh Hutchinson: In Salem, they very much rely on spectral evidence.[00:37:00] They believe and accuse the suspects of physically being in one place while their spirit goes out to other places to afflict, and their spirit can travel any distance they want to, twenty miles or more in an instant, and afflict somebody. They even have witches show up to meetings from as far off as Connecticut.
But you have witnesses saying, "I saw them at home. They were at home with me. They couldn't have done that." But yet these afflicted, mostly young girls, are coming together and saying, "we all saw this happen," and they used that evidence.
Even though we've spoken before on the show about the Connecticut witch trials. In Connecticut, you have John Winthrop, Jr. [00:38:00] serving as governor for a long time. He's actually an alchemist, a scientist, and he disputes the spectral evidence, says you need to have at least two witnesses seeing these things happen at the same time, you can't have one witness come in and say, "I saw it this time," another witness say, "I saw this other incident." You need to corroborate. So, he gets rid of spectral evidence before Salem happens. This is in the 1650s, sixties, seventies, but then interestingly, enough his son Wait-still Winthrop is one of the judges at Salem who accepts the spectral evidence.
Danny Buck: Interesting how these old beliefs have such a hold over such a time.
Josh Hutchinson: Early on, the judges asked a group [00:39:00] of Boston area ministers for advice. They wrote what's called the return of several ministers. In it, they're cautioning against the use of spectral evidence and against some of the other aspects, but then at the very end, Cotton Mather, one of the most famous divines in New England, writes on there, but proceed vigorously against all those who have rendered themselves obnoxious.
So he's advocating for speedy trials, a quick resolution to this, because he very much believes in the diabolical conspiracy and sort of contradicts what the rest of the letter said. So the judges choose to basically ignore all of the letter except for that last bit, and they're led by William Stoughton, [00:40:00] who's the deputy governor, and he really takes a hard line, agrees that there's this conspiracy happening and they have to, get the devil out of New England before he destroys all of the churches.
Sarah Jack: When Dr. Buck asked about mockery, I was thinking Ben Franklin came to mind because there's that essay that possibly he wrote in 1730, "A Witch Trial at Mount Holly." That just popped into my mind. So I was thinking about that's that was like, 40 years after witch trials.
Danny Buck: Again, just the sort of scale of history that again, we've got Rebecca Nurse, Sarah Cloyce, both of these, and Mary Towne, they leave Yarmouth 10, 15 years before the trial in the big witch-hunt in Great Yarmouth. We've got trial happening. Then the people of that are people who know Ben Franklin and then lead onto the [00:41:00] revolution, only a couple of generations of that span. That's fascinating. Also, I think it's very interesting when you talk about Franklin's mockery, comparing that to the famous poem, which mocks a lot of the civil wars by Samuel Butler, "Hudibras." He brings in the figure of Hopkins as someone who's got the devil's book, he's secretly a witch himself, and then is hanged for it.
When in fact he died of tuberculosis a couple of years afterwards. That again, that mock of making it the past, finding a way to get past it and reject that era. I think that's quite interesting as how you get perspective past it and try and reduce the horror of it all, perhaps.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, it's an interesting point how the spread of time works there, because in Salem, the oldest victim is 81 years old at the time that he's pressed to death with stones, [00:42:00] because he refused to stand trial, so he's born in around 1611, and you have him on the one end where you have these young afflicted girls.
And you have a man named Joseph Putnam is one of the early critics of the trial. He's related to the chief accusers, the Putnam family, but his son, Israel, is a major general in Washington's army. So just one generation apart, Salem Witch Trials, Revolution. And with Ben Franklin, his aunt, Bathsheba Folger Pope, is actually one of the afflicted persons in Salem.
Danny Buck: Cause again, the whole era is this such a transformation point in global history, but particularly in the Atlantic world, I've found it [00:43:00] very interesting to read book recently on the regicides who escaped to America. And the fact that they were able to hide out there for so long and became part of this founding myth of Republican America, which, you know, how this, the two nations interlinked, but also separating at this point, in some cases for some people, the sort of Puritan communities of New England represent what England could have been become, if it didn't decide to go crawling back to the king. And that sense of those sort destinies and both the positives and negatives of that we can see of the communities riven by a godly dream of regeneration and living a better life. But also with that diabolical fear, seems such an interesting contrast.
Go back to the Puritans, the same people who are pushing for the witch hunt are the people pushing for new workhouses. It's such a contradiction at times, people who want to make the world so much better, kinder [00:44:00] a lot of ways where people are struggling, but the same people who are willing to bully a Church of England minister, threaten to throw sand and lime in his eyes to protect their community.
It's so wonderfully vivid.
Josh Hutchinson: It's a fascinating period of history. As you mentioned, there's such profound change going on, and in a lot of ways that change itself is what's driving these witch hunts. It's maybe growing pains you could describe it as, or all that conflict. They're trying to pin that conflict on Satan and his agents.
Danny Buck: Yeah. It's a real sense of a lost identity, I think, or losing identity. I think you could probably put the sort of a hundred years after reformation in England are times when people are really struggling to define themselves and their community, because it is something that's become [00:45:00] very changeable and flexible.
The classic cases, if you go back to things like the Pendle Witch Trials, where people, the magic there is allegedly a form of the sympathetic magic that comes from the Catholic medieval traditions that have survived, that is a need for folk magic. And to take that away to desacrilize the world. You leave the darkness and the danger there, but you remove a lot the ways that people can combat that. As interesting with a lot of the religious nonconformance groups that emerge, like the Quakers and others. Peter Elmer writes about this fascinatingly, that the idea that witchcraft becomes and possession becomes part of their tool.
So they seek to restore some of that magic to the world. The age of miracles, if you believe in miracles, positive miracles, like the Quakers do be able to speak in tongue, being able to form a relationship with God. That means there's still room there for the demonic, but also room to protect yourself from it, to be able to be the godly people who [00:46:00] can push out the spirits inhabiting people, but it, then it makes the identity of witchcraft so much more complex and harder for people who see themselves as orthodox to deal with, if it's something that's being taken up with, people who are a lot more radical.
Josh Hutchinson: That's an excellent point. They have a great shift there when the reformation happens and they stripped all of those Catholic rites like exorcism and other protective magic kind of elements, as the reformers see it, anyways, as magic.
And then you're left with nothing but witches. And the idea of the Satanic Pact where people are actually in league with Satan, physically meeting him and covenant.
Danny Buck: Okay. There's definitely a case. There are two options for you. If you are godly enough, if you go to church enough, the devil can't harm you. If you haven't got that, you're a small [00:47:00] child, then you're in danger and it doesn't seem, there's no kind of protection available except to get the person to confess, to get the ministers involved, to defeat the magic.
The power to defeat witchcraft seemed to move upwards in the social scale, your gentlemen like Hopkins, your witchfinders, your magistrates, the judges who can be given God's power to judge the unworthy and to deal with them, or ministers who are educated enough to know what's going on, fits in some of the, I the idea of Puritan and the focus on the words, the focus on ministry.
Sarah Jack: I'm really thinking about the Quaker thing and that piece of their power, their godliness, giving them power over evil, that progression of personal religion. That's very interesting. My mind's thinking about that now.
Danny Buck: They say also interesting because people take it the opposite way.
Elmer written fantastically on this, that the fact they can do miracles means, they seem to be angels clad in rayments of light, but are they [00:48:00] secretly of the devil's party? It's upon the 1650s where the devil is called the Great Quaker, as a belief that the miracles being done by men like George Fox are, in fact, demonic magic, or that the fact that they suddenly start spreading so quickly, they're bewitching people. There's a contemporary theory that the ribbons they were giving out were actually charms. During the 1650s, they are so controversial. Sometimes they're playing Jesus, one of them entering Bristol on a donkey, having palm leaves thrown in front of him. Sometimes seem to be linked to plots of revolution.
They're so nebulous as well that they could be seen as this underground force, but it's interesting that they, despite these fears of them, there isn't the pressure to condemn them as witches. They're called witches behind their back. You face these allegations, but they're not convicted of that.
So as the, of heresy, so this locks up for being annoying, but they never faced witchcraft accusations against them, [00:49:00] even though the popular imagination casts them as witches, which again, post that shift of that push for toleration after the civil wars.
Sarah Jack: And Josh, which executed, accused, quoted a Quaker curse?
Josh Hutchinson: Sarah Good when she said, "the devil will give you blood to drink." That was from the Bible, but it was used in a famous Quaker sermon or other publication, and that was directed to the minister Nicholas Noyes. And then he's believed to have actually died with blood in his mouth. That's famous legend associated with it. There's a couple curses.
Danny Buck: I think my favorite one of that is, is nearby King's Lynn. I mentioned before the story of a witch accused there, I think earlier than the Hopkins hunt who was being burnt. So again, popular folk story, her heart exploded out, and you can still [00:50:00] see the patch on the nearby church where her exploded heart hit it.
Josh Hutchinson: That's intense.
Danny Buck: We got the, again, the sense of wilderness sometimes, which again, we think of England is pretty tamed, but the idea of the giant demonic dog, which is seen, familiars. We also have the story of black shook, who's again, a dog that represents the devil that's supposedly lurks in East Anglia and takes the unwary.
How does that compare to the actual wildlife of New England? Like it is literally dangerous to leave your streets. Not only with the Native Americans, French, but still surrounded by wolves, and there's real sense of wilderness in a way that maybe coastal towns with their salt flats and their bleakness on a sort of North Sea wind in the winter might feel, but not gonna be the same as New England and it's majesty and harshness and cruelty.
Josh Hutchinson: Still have mountain lions, bears, wolves. They're all over the place. [00:51:00] They have bounties on wolves. You kill a wolf and pin its head to the side of the church. That sort of thing's still going on. You do get stories. There's one girl, Abigail Hobbs, who's about 15 when she's accused, but she said that years earlier when she lived on the frontier in Maine, that a black dog came to her and was the devil in the form of dog, and spoke with her and got her to agree to be a witch.
And there's a case with Sarah Good. They accuse her of, it's unclear whether they're accusing her of becoming a wolf or sending a wolf to chase one of them, but allegedly, this wolf comes from Sarah Good in some way and chases one of the afflicted persons.
Danny Buck: That's obviously the foundation myth of Matthew Hopkins in the fact he went out there and was [00:52:00] faced with this giant black dog. His dog ran away, but he stood firm, as evidence he was being pursued by these witches.
Oh there is one, there is some preventative magic used in East Anglia, which needs to come across this period with the witch bottle. Is this something we see sometimes in New England, the fact that people fill a bottle full of urine, that urine's believed to contain the magic, often soaking some iron and then put into the fire as way to break.
Josh Hutchinson: They have a variety. We just spoke with someone a few days ago about folk magic and Salem.
One of the things that they would do would be to nail a horseshoe above their door to prevent a witch from entering. They'd also bury things, enter near the hearth to prevent a witch from coming down the chimney. Still find in these old houses shoes, dead cats. Interesting artifacts. You do have some stories of the witch bottle itself.
They bake a witch cake [00:53:00] to identify a witch. They make a cake, they feed it to a dog, and it's unclear how they expected to identify the witch, but that was their practice in one case.
Danny Buck: Some of those sound all too familiar, obviously these, the same communities, the same traditions survive. There's this one dead cat I've seen for the Ipswich museum collection a couple of times now. Shoes survive that.
That's really interesting. Is there any tradition of marks above the hearth as well as a, for protection?
Josh Hutchinson: Oh, there are daisy wheels.
Sarah Jack: And hexafoil.
Josh Hutchinson: Hexafoils. That's what it is. Yeah. They have hexafoils in various locations
Danny Buck: Yeah. That's definitely something that's come directly over.
Fantastic collection. I think they're referred Germany as witch's marks, but definitely that protective magic, these interest and exit points. You think these communities, they're still keeping them going. Even that far across the [00:54:00] ocean, even these godly communities, these little things that are meant to keep you safe in a world that's so uncertain.
Josh Hutchinson: And this is in 1692. It's also a few generations removed by that point. Still have these older individuals. Rebecca and Mary Towne were born in England and raised by English parents, so they would have those traditions still. But you also have people who are grandchildren or great-grandchildren of the original settlers, and they still believe the very same folk traditions.
Danny Buck: I always find that interesting.
We're very lucky now to been living in a sort of bit of a renaissance in witchcraft studies of various certain kinds, all kinds of different interpretation approaches.
And I'm lucky that Peter Elmer, the other political witch-hunt chap has retired, so I'm not doing too badly. We live in a real era when people are exploring the [00:55:00] witch in so many different angles. So it'll keep you busy and me busy hopefully for the next few years.
Josh Hutchinson: We're very grateful that you came on the show. It's been a wonderful chat for us.
Danny Buck: I think if anything I've learned more from this than probably you and your audience. So I've, I've really enjoyed my time.
Josh Hutchinson: And now Sarah has an update on witchcraft related persecution going on now.
Sarah Jack: Welcome to this episode's Witchcraft Victim Advocacy Report, sponsored by End Witch Hunts News. Over the last several weeks, I've been bringing you witch hunt happenings in your world. I have given you an idea of some communities where witchcraft fear is claiming lives and turning fearful people into murderers of innocent neighbors and family members.
Can you remember what countries we have discussed? Nigeria and South Africa, but what other countries are living in modern witch hunt environments? Some other countries of Africa where witch [00:56:00] hunting is reality are Gambia, Ghana, Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda. But there's another world neighbor you must meet, nations of the Asia Pacific. Fiji, India, Nepal, Papua New Guinea and Saudi Arabia are also experiencing violent crimes stemming from witchcraft fear. The people of the world must take action together to grow intolerance for witch hunt behaviors and violence. Until that intolerance sets in, you'll see the headlines of the horrible suffering of innocent accused witches.
We want the tolerance of these injustices to be history, but today it is not. It is with us, a part of us. One action you can take is to support movements that are shedding light on these injustices.
For America, you can support the Connecticut Witch Trial Exoneration Project. Encourage the Connecticut state legislature to make an official acknowledgement that those tried for witchcraft in colonial Connecticut should have their good name restored. Sign the [00:57:00] change.org petition asking for the acknowledgement. When Connecticut takes the stand, it is a statement for the intolerance of witch hunt behaviors.
For Africa, go online and learn about the advocacies and what work they're doing to build an intolerance of witchcraft crimes and the nation's there.
In the upcoming weeks, we will be providing more information on more countries needing our support and collaboration. But today you can go to our episode show notes for links to these projects. Click those links, read about that nation, the victims, the advocacy. Then do more.
Join us. You can do it from your location with your technology, social media, and art. Do you write? Make a statement. Do you illustrate? Make a statement. Do you perform? Make a statement. Do you tweet? Tweet a statement. Do you meet up with friends, family, or colleagues? Start a conversation, and everyone leave and make a statement. If you see a statement, share it.
You see, this work builds on each action, and each action is [00:58:00] growing the message of how do we stop hunting witches. Stop witch fear. Until it is stopped, harm is happening to innocent humans. Listeners, let's support the countries in Africa and in the Asia Pacific. Please use all your communication channels, including your art form, to intervene, not just stand by and hope change will transpire. Change can happen as we take action together.
Josh Hutchinson: Thank you, Sarah, for shining a light on these dark events.
Sarah Jack: You're welcome.
Josh Hutchinson: Thank you all for listening to Thou Shalt Not Suffer: The Witch Trial Podcast.
Sarah Jack: I'm really looking forward to next week's topic with Cassandra Roberts Hesseltine and Dr. Annika Hylmo. We are going to discuss their documentary, The Last Witch.
The Last Witch follows the eighth grade class from North Andover Massachusetts and their teacher, [00:59:00] Carrie LaPierre, as they've worked to exonerate forgotten accused witch Elizabeth Johnson, Jr.
We will hear from them on what that journey has been, what it means to descendants and the students. And for Elizabeth Johnson, Jr.
Josh Hutchinson: Like, subscribe, or follow wherever you get your podcasts.
Sarah Jack: Goodbye.
Josh Hutchinson: Have a great today and a beautiful tomorrow. Thou shalt tune in next week.

Thou Shalt Not Suffer: The Witch Trial Podcast

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Documenting the Exoneration of the Last Witch of Salem

Documenting the Exoneration of the Last Witch of Salem – Thou Shalt Not Suffer: The Witch Trial Podcast

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Witch-Hunts in Great Yarmouth and Salem with Dr. Danny Buck

Witch-Hunts in Great Yarmouth and Salem with Dr. Danny Buck – Thou Shalt Not Suffer: The Witch Trial Podcast

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Documenting the Exoneration of the Last Witch of Salem

Documenting the Exoneration of the Last Witch of Salem – Thou Shalt Not Suffer: The Witch Trial Podcast

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Witch-Hunts in Great Yarmouth and Salem with Dr. Danny Buck

Witch-Hunts in Great Yarmouth and Salem with Dr. Danny Buck – Thou Shalt Not Suffer: The Witch Trial Podcast

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