My latest manuscript, tentatively titled, “A Place
Between,” is about the famous William and Ann Hutchinson family.
Ann Hutchinson was the mother of fifteen children, and
a skilled midwife for many of the women in early Boston. During her 1638 trial
before the Boston authorities, one of the magistrates, a William Bartholomew,
claimed that he heard a statement of Ann’s that sounded “very strange and
witchlike that she should say so.” The whisperings of witchcraft during Ann’s
trial did not take hold, lacking the requirement of hard evidence, and though
she was excommunicated and banished from Boston, she was not openly accused of
being a witch.
In her book about Ann Hutchinson, “American Jezebel,”
Eve LaPlante wrote that witch hunting did not begin in Salem in 1690, but had
been a part of English society for a long time. Statutes against witchcraft had
been passed by monarchs Queen Elizabeth, Henry VIII, and King James. Though not
considered to be heresy, witchcraft was a felony, punishable by hanging. LaPlante
offered the opinion that “men of the period tended to view midwifery, a realm
of power from which they were excluded, with suspicion. English law prohibited
midwives from using witchcraft, charms, or sorcery (169).”
While researching, I came across other midwives of
that time period that were accused of witchcraft. A woman named Jane Hawkins,
the main midwife in Boston when Ann Hutchinson arrived in 1634, was suspected
by John Winthrop of being a witch. In his journal entry in April 1638, he
wrote: “for
it was credibly reported, that, when she gave any medicines (for she practiced
physic), if she did believe, she could help her.” Jane was prohibited from
practicing as a midwife, and, along with Ann Hutchinson, Jane was expelled from
Boston in 1638.
A midwife and healer, Margaret Jones, was the first woman
to be executed in Boston for witchcraft. Her husband was also accused, and
imprisoned, but later released. Margaret was suspected of practicing witchcraft
because she had declared her patients would not recover unless they took her
medicines. When some did not recover, the accusation took hold. The
accusations against Margaret were recorded in John Winthrop’s journal:
"That she was found to have such a malignant touch, as
many persons, men, women, and children, whom she stroked or touched with any affection
or displeasure, or etc. [sic], were taken with deafness, or vomiting, or other
violent pains or sickness.
She practices physic, and her medicines being such things as, by her own
confession, were harmless, — as anise-seed, liquors, etc., — yet had
extraordinary violent effects.
She would use to tell such as would not make use of her physic, that they
would never be healed; and accordingly their diseases and hurts continued, with
relapse against the ordinary course, and beyond the apprehension of all
physicians and surgeons.
Some things which she foretold came to pass accordingly; other things she
would tell of, as secret speeches, etc., which she had no ordinary means to
come to the knowledge of.
She had, upon search, an apparent teat ... as fresh as if it had been
newly sucked; and after it had been scanned, upon a forced search, that was
withered, and another began on the opposite side.
In the prison, in the clear day-light, there was seen in her arms, she
sitting on the floor, and her clothes up, etc., a little child, which ran from
her into another room, and the officer following it, it was vanished. The like
child was seen in two other places to which she had relation; and one maid that
saw it, fell sick upon it, and was cured by the said Margaret, who used means
to be employed to that end. Her behavior at her trial was very intemperate,
lying notoriously, and railing upon the jury and witnesses, etc., and in the
like distemper she died. The same day and hour she was executed, there was a
very great tempest at Connecticut, which blew down many trees, etc."
Margaret was hung June 15, 1648 upon Gallow’s Hill on
Boston Neck.
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