S1 – INTERVIEW 6: Stacy Schiff

Our interview with the Pulitzer prize winning author Stacy Schiff whose 2015 book The Witches was a source for this series. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Our guest historian today is Stacy Schiff, author of a
number of historical works. Her book Vera was a Pulitzer
Prize winner, and she was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for
her book Santa Suberie, and of course, her book The
Witches was one of the works referenced as we researched
and wrote on Obscured Season one. Her list of awards

(00:21):
of publications is enough to make any historian jealous, So
I'll point you toward her full bio on the Unobscured
website if you want to learn more. I had a
chance to sit down with Stacy Shift this past summer
and we had a fantastic conversation. So without further delay,
let's get on with the show. This is the Unobscured
Interview series for season one. I'm Aaron Mankey, I'm Stacy Schiff.

(01:17):
I'm the author of The Witches, um in narrative history
of what Happened at Salem, to which I came because
I was surprised by how little most of us really
know about what happened in Um Salem, which trials seemed
like a shorthand, but none of us really understands to
what it is a shorthand. Um. I had written a
book about Cleopatra before this, and it was the same
kind of dynamic of just a name that a name brand,

(01:38):
something that everyone recognizes without really having any grasp of
the actual history. Well, when you talk about the misunderstanding,
I think the place to start here is almost the
most obvious question, what was a witch in Salem? And
you're right, that's the question over which we stumble because
our definition, the century definition of a witch, is not
the seventeenth century definition of a itch. So so which

(02:01):
at the time witchcraft is a Biblical construct and which
at the time has a concrete reality because she's mentioned
in he or she has mentioned in the Bible, and
which is understood to be any figure male or female,
but primarily female, who is in league with the devil,
and who works his or her magic by means of
little imps or a menagerie of little animals, who can
do his or her bidding. Um. And that was something

(02:23):
that was imported to the colonies from England. It was
an extremely rampant It was extremely common concept in in
the Old World and actually throughout the Old World. Although
by two the idea of witchcraft has pretty much fallen
out UM. In Europe. The colonies are in a little
bit of a TimewARP of their own, and they haven't
quite got the message that this this the switchcraft concept

(02:45):
is a little antiquated by now, UM, but you see
it throughout the colonial record there, which is really from
the very beginning of New England. And the only difference
with two is that UM is the prosecution is that
you get this um feverish set of accusing tions and
you get a relentless prosecution. In earlier cases, UM, there
had been tremendous leniency. Often someone who brought in a

(03:07):
charge of witchcraft was accused of lying and was sent
home with a whipping. Um. Things were not necessarily taken seriously.
In obviously the opposite happens. Going back to these differences
in our perception, there's how we imagine it to be
and there's the reality of it. How do some of
the common symbols of witchcraft that we have today, like
flying on a broomstick or black cats, connect with the

(03:27):
Sandwich trials or do they? One of the one of
the most interesting to meet pieces of this is how
the flight gets into UM. The entire panic, the entire
delusion in there had not been um, there had not
been flying witches in New England before six UM, and
it would see and they were not flying, which is
an English witchcraft either. So this is really an import

(03:49):
from the continent. And it would seem that we get
that idea from a narrative that cotton Mouth, one of
the most influential ministers at the time, includes in an
earlier text of his and he writes about a Swedish
witchcraft epidemic in which a little girl UM is on
her way to a satanic meeting to two young children
in fact set off this witchcraft crisis, and a little

(04:11):
girl falls off her broomstick. He writes about all these
wonderful details which we will then see transpost to Massachusetts.
But he writes about things that had never before happened
in New England. A satanic meeting UM in a meadow
at which people sign satanic pacts into which they fly
on sticks. UM. And that is really there were French
flight French flying, which is before suct. Ninety two, there
had never really been English flying witches. So that's pretty

(04:33):
pretty much seems to be where that aspect of it
comes from. Black Cats I spent a lot of time.
I live with a black cat, so I spent a
lot of time on black cats. And they seem to
have been the devil since antiquity. They've they've had a
bad wrap all along. And if you look at the
Salem testimony, the court testimony, you see a tremendous number
of cats. They're translucent cats, there are gleaming cats, they're
black cats, they're red cats. They're all over the place.

(04:55):
And it does it does seem to be it's a
seductive creature, it's a female, mean creature many many people's minds,
and a black cat will detach itself from the darkness
without any warning, and it's a cat is unpredictable. So
there's that sense that you can caress a cat and
be rewarded with scratches, and all of those things seem
to add up to something that people are very uncertain
about and often taken aback by. So there are many

(05:18):
number of theories as to how black cats get get
wrapped up in the witchcraft. But yes, that is a
constant from day one. We talk about uncertainties and and
the unpredictability of the world around the Puritans. Um tell
Us about how they viewed the natural world around them,
and you know, in relation to to how they viewed
God and their mission of this thriving Puritan culture. You know,
you have things like the weather or um, the economy

(05:42):
or politics in the world around them, and how do
they view all of those as in relation to their
their safety or their faith. Everything you just mentioned is
in flux and essentially in so you've just you've just
given a great overview. Um. They've just a very bloody
and very tragic war with the Native Americans, with the
Indians they would have called them, has just ended. And

(06:02):
pretty much everyone UM in New England at this point
has lost a friend or a relative in that conflict
and in new war where the Indians is about to start.
So there's a sense of being um under assault certainly
and under siege, which is very Ums, very much goes
to the heart of Puritanism. I mean, these people have
come to America because precisely because they feel persecuted. Um.

(06:23):
They are at the one the one hand, watchful people,
always watching for the second coming, of always watching over
each other. There's a great sense of community and they
are in a hostile world. I mean, it's not for
nothing that they refer constantly to the howling wilderness, and
that howling wilderness is, when you begin to look at it, UM,
a pretty frightening place. We have wolves, very wolves barking

(06:43):
in the wolves howling in the distance. UM at all times.
We have obviously the Indians vanishing into the bushes at
all times with a lot of UM, with a lot
of subsequent trauma for the colonists. We have an economy
that's in tatters at this point, and I think not
um unimportantly and actually fun to mentally, there's a political
hiccup at this moment. You're in two the colonies between

(07:05):
governors UM. No one knows they've overthrown the royal governor
UM in a really sort of preview for the American
Revolution and a military coup a few years earlier, and
they don't know if they're about to be punished for this,
and they don't know what kind of government they can
expect and what kind of governor they can expect. And
it's in that little interregnum that the witchcraft breaks out.
So there is this sense of being on the precipice,

(07:26):
watching for signs. And this is a religion which gives
itself very much to watching, making meaning of any little incident,
which of course means that when you see something you
can't explain. Witchcraft is a very good explanation, um. Watching
for this new what this new government will constitute watching
each other, which of course also ends in accusations of
various kinds, um, and trying to make sense of this

(07:49):
very very hostile, difficult world. You talk about the wilderness,
and I think what I appreciate about what you brought
to your approach to the Sandwich trials is that it's
easy for a lot of people to stay in Salem
in the sale, you know, the town, in the village,
and leave the focus there. But but what you're bringing
up is that there's this there's an outer conflict going on,

(08:10):
especially to the north in the frontier of Maine on
the edges of what people feel like is they're safe space,
and that conflict is quite literally coming back into Salem village.
I mean some of these refugees right exactly, and you
have you have both that conflict beginning to approach because um,
because the border with the Indians is getting closer and closer,
and you have this influx of refugees and there are

(08:32):
any number of the accusing girls whom we know have
come from families and what is today southern Maine, um
who had known Indian attack or who had lost parents
in Indian attack. I should also just have mentioned, by
the way, the darkness, and this was something that struck
me over and over when reading the court testimony, the
prior court testimonies. These people were lived in a pitch

(08:53):
black world. And when objects move and and make sounds
in the dark, you know, we you know what that's like.
And this is a world in which really you can't
see the shapes, and shapes very often resolve themselves into
something else altogether. Um. In that sense of really being
on edge and having the inexplicable you know right before you,
and not knowing what danger you should anticipate is very raw.

(09:17):
And you see a lot of it throughout, even things
which don't concern witchcraft. You see a great deal of that.
People sneaking into basements, people not being able to make
sense of a creaking beam, people wondering, you know, how
how the roof has suddenly flown off the meetinghouse. Yeah, well,
I just keep thinking back to what you said about
black hats and how they do bleed into the blackness
of the night or a dark room and just step

(09:38):
out whenever they want, and it's kind of systematic or
symbolic of everything happening around them. My favorites were always
the court testimony. This is prior to the witchcraft years,
of women who would report that they'd come home at
night and they've crawled into bed to find another man,
not their husband's sleeping there, right, I mean, just anything
could happen because you couldn't see in the dark, right.
And also and the length of the winter was unpredictable,
so there was the additional question of do we have

(10:01):
enough firewood, do we have enough food? Are we going
to make it through the winter? This is a you know,
this is a very barren climate in many ways. Um,
some winters in the winter before sixteen ninety two was
particularly severe. Some winters were very very horrible. Um, how
are you going to make it through? Do you have
the firewood? It's going to take? Well? You know, you
talk about the darkness and the unknown and the propensities

(10:21):
who look for excuses or to play supernatural blame on things.
Colinists seemed to see the devil everywhere around them. What
was their view of the devil. Who was the devil
to them? In two? The devil is I spent a
lot of time on this. The devil is a very um.
There's a very abstract and inconsistent sense of the devil.
At this point, there's an enormous amount of devil talk,

(10:43):
both from the both from the pulpit and among the people.
There are lots of just in day to day discourse,
there are lots of mentions of the devil, and go
to the devil, and you know you are a devil,
and your wife's, especially your wife's a devil. Um. No
one really seems all that certain who the devil is.
He has, however, a very palpable presence, and the sense
that evil is lurking obviously is very close to the

(11:05):
to the mind of many of these many of the
villagers who are at the heart of a story. Ultimately,
when the witchcraft testimony, when there will be a lot
of witchcraft testimony, you begin to see that people have
a very different vision of who he is. He's sometimes
a tall man, he's sometimes a short man. He has
a club and foot, or he doesn't have a club
and foot. It's there's a very vague sense of who
this sinister creature is, but he's very palpably there. Absolutely

(11:29):
years before Salem, we have the episode with the Godwin children.
Can you tell us about how the event with the
Godwin children UM shaped the response like that initial response
when when Betty and Abigail begin to have these similar
fits in the home of a minister, it would have
been almost impossible for Samuel Paris, the father and uncle

(11:51):
of those two girls, not to have known intimately of
the Godwin case. Um. First of all, the Godwin case
is included in an earlier book of Cotton Mathers, so
many people would have read of it, and I mean
it was this was sensationalist reading. We would all have
you known of this in a way, um. And he
was friends with one of the he Paris was friends
with one of the ministers who had observed the girls

(12:11):
in their distress, with those children in their distress, and
it was his congregation which was involved in Boston, So
it would have been a story that he was on
quite close terms with the symptoms in the Paris household
and in the Godwin whole household are very similar. Um.
He's very Paris is very slow to mention the word witchcraft,

(12:31):
but the word must have been at the tip of
his tongue because they're such a correlation between the two.
So in the Godwin case, UM, you have a couple
of afflicted children who begin to um, to writhe and
to roar and to gallop around on imaginary steeds, and
who can't seem to pray and conscrub a clean table
but not a dirty table, and won't do their chores,
very similar set of symptoms. Conn mother will step in

(12:53):
and try to make a sort of clinical study of
what is happening with those children. UM. And in the
course of that, a washer woman and a laundry woman
in Boston is accused of having bit witched the girls,
and she actually will hang on Boston Common. And that's
the most recent UM prosecution for witchcraft before and one,
both in terms of the symptoms and in terms of
the fallout that would have been on many people's minds.

(13:17):
You mentioned the symptoms. One of the things that I've
noticed through my work. On my other podcast lore UM
some continental you know you you talked about the broomsticks
and the flying witches and how there were differences between
Europe and England and then and then the New World
we here, Um, the symptoms seem to be interpreted differently,

(13:39):
whether it's on the continent or in England or the
New World. You know. So we have the events of
lu Dunne in France, where a lot of nuns at
a convent went through a lot of the same symptoms
of convulsions and seizures, but that was viewed as possession.
And it seems that here in Salem, same symptoms but
viewed as they are being afflicted by a witch who's
outside somewhere. And why are the differences like that? Is

(14:00):
that an Anglican versus Catholic difference or is it something deeper?
It's not. And it's something that even in six people
had trouble passing one from the other. There's a little
confusion as to where witchcraft ends in possession begins. And
you see it even in the work of Cotton Mother,
where initially he says it's either witchcraft or possession. Um.
The bottom line, and TI meant to put it baldly,
is that in possession you are not complicit um. I mean,

(14:23):
are you are complicit in the witchcraft? You are not
complicit in what's happening, so a case of possession would
have been preferable. Um in many ways, Um, you see
increased mother cotton, mother's father also a minister grappling with this,
trying to basically differentiate the two. They sometimes they in
a way bleed into each other. The differences that with
possession you don't have a guilty party, and in witchcraft

(14:45):
you have you can point an accusing finger at the
person who is causing this distress. The similarity with with
Ludon is interesting because um, again you have a case
of women living together in a very cloistered, very sheltered environment,
very visually monotonous. I mean, there are a lot of
similarities with a winter, a very white winter in the
cold in Salem, absolutely or Samuel Willard's experienced twenty years

(15:10):
before Salem with exactly exactly who goes on to marry
a man named Samuel Scripture, which I have always pleasure
in that she's she's actually a fascinating character because she's
clearly so enjoying this attention, and I've loved reading about
her because there were so many hints anyway of what
must have been it must have felt like for the
Salem girls in the sense that you could dismiss the

(15:30):
women around your bedside but ask for the handsome men
to stay to observe you in your distress. So yeah,
there were many advantages to some of these afflictions. Let's
shift gears from witchcraft and perceptions of the world and
talk about the trial for a bit. Um in your estimation,
who were the people who are really propelling the trial forward?
What were the cultural forces who were pressing them into

(15:53):
this sequence of events. You can't have this kind of
a prosecution without an inherent belief in the existence of witchcraft.
So for starters, you have a religious base here, which
obviously encourages this kind of an examination, if not prosecution. UM.
Everyone has his reasons. In this case, you have local reasons,
and then you have larger cultural reasons, and you have
political and religious reasons. Locally, you have a minister, and

(16:16):
this would be Samuel Paris, who was it on with
his community. UM was divisive by nature, was bitter by nature.
UM had had every reason to fall out with certain families.
And in this case it's probably not. It's probably happy
to encourage something that is going to UM somewhat purge
the community of auto off some elements. UM. In a

(16:39):
larger way, however, which you really have is a set
of ministers and a set of civic authorities, UM, whoever
different reasons, are really working in lockstep, working hand in glove. UM.
Each of those groups has a tremendous amount to gain
at this very sort of precarious political moment from a
witchcraft prosecution. And you can see that most clearly, I

(17:00):
think with Cotton Mother, Um, the young Minister of the
young sort of great hope of the New England Ministry,
and William Stowton, who's the Chief Justice and the Lieutenant Governor,
who really is the driving force behind the trials and
was probably the single person who had the power to
slow them down, if not stop them, and choose and
chooses not to. And in fact when the court, when
the Witchcraft Court will be shut down in the fall

(17:21):
of two, he will throw a very public temper tantrum
because he feels that he was, as he puts it,
on his way to ridding New England of these creatures
and he's been stopped. Stoton Sorry, So Stone is really
the figure. Insofar as one is tempted to lay blame
at someone's feet, I would have alas Finger William Stowton,
who he's very little. Uh. There's very little paper record

(17:43):
for Stone, and it's it's shocking how little there is.
It's also interesting that after the trials, when he clearly
is the driving force and the most devout and most
pious of he really feels he's on a crusade against
this witchcraft. Um. He will remain in political power. That
will never be a sense of questioning him, that will
never be a sin of sidelining him. He'll remain in power. UM.
But you see it most clearly because these um, both

(18:05):
of these forces, the church and the civic authorities, are
trying together to prop up a new government. They have
William Phipps, the new governor who's arrived. They have um
not endeared themselves to the mother country, and they're trying
to prove their own a law and order campaign. They're
trying to prove um that they can adjudicate their own affairs,
that they can um, they don't need any help from

(18:26):
the old country. There is not utter chaos and disorder
in the colony as has been reported. And in Stone's case,
he's really trying to rehabilitate himself. He's a He's a
the ultimate political survivor. He's been a member of many
different governments. He had helped out the previous very prominently,
had ousted the royal governor. Um, and this is a
case where he can really prove his metal. Um Cotton
Mother will go to him just as the objections to

(18:50):
the trials begin to surface in the fall and say,
why don't I write something to flatten the fury, as
he puts it? And Um, when that book is published,
which we know as Wonders of Invisible World, it will
come out as if as if Stone had actually asked
Um Mather to write it. So you begin to see
a little bit of the of the of the game
these two are playing together in the most damning statement.

(19:11):
I guess, Um, and answer to your question, after the trials,
Um Cotton Mother will write, not not for publication, that
he felt afterward that Um, these events had really helped God.
They Christ had got more disciples, God had was more
closely embraced, This had awakened the sluggish that had filled
the pews, and the devil had got precisely nothing out
of the deal. It doesn't mention, of course, the innocent

(19:33):
lives that were lost in the process. Absolutely the cost
of all of that. Um. And a lot of that
began in the meeting house in Salem Village. Um, sort
of that pre trial examination that happened before we moved
to oil and terminer in Salem Town. But what do
you think the atmosphere was like in that meeting house especially?
You know that first and talking to Richard Trask, he

(19:55):
said that first day there there gonna be fifty people
living in Salem and they were standing out the packed house,
standing outside the windows in the cold, watching And what
do you think that was like? If there were five
people in Salem? And I think Richard's exactly right. They
were probably more than five packed into that space, which
I think is by thirty eight or some I mean,
it's tiny, it's a tiny little space. Um. And we

(20:18):
know from there too, extremely good accounts of those early examinations,
one from a man whose wife had come to try
to defend herself and the second from a from a
former minister who had come back. Um, we know it
was pandemonium. We know it was utter chaos. Um. Everyone
is packed cheek by jowa. People are sitting in the pulpit,
people are gathered together in the gallery of the places

(20:39):
is really overflowing, and everyone is very is packed in
very tightly against people whom they suddenly are wondering, Um,
whom they're wondering about, whom they're thinking maybe the guy
next to me is also guilty of the switchcraft. And
meanwhile you have these convulsive, screaming girls who are crashing
to the ground, and you know, assuming these acrobatic postures,
UM and who are stopping the trial. It's a very

(21:00):
stop and go process. Not trials stopping the examination. It's
a very it's a very slow and and you know,
plotting process, because you have to wait until the girl
has just fallen lifelessen to the trance revives herself before
you can continue. UM. And the girls, according to one
of these accounts, are allowed to prowl around the room,
so they're sort of canvassing the room, occasionally chatting with people,

(21:23):
occasionally breaking out in new convulsions, occasionally screaming that they've
just been bitten or pinched again. UM. You get a
sense that the court reporters couldn't hear a lot of
the time UM center and are having trouble keeping writing
things down because either they can't hear or events are
proceeding so quickly, and often will then resort to simply
summarizing what was heard, as opposed to trying to write

(21:43):
the actual words down. So I think that the short
answer is it's dark. There's a sense of smudge, darkness.
It's very dark in that meeting house. It's very um,
it's it's very very sort of crackling lye UM fright
frightful of the can I stopped them all of a sentence? Um,
it's crowd thing with fear. The former minister who comes
back talks about how the hair you can see the
hair is rising on the backs of next with people

(22:05):
who are just you know, they're in the presence of
the supernatural. It's terrifying. It's a charged place, completely ready,
completely Obviously. The examinations UM involved bringing people in for
the first time, especially that first day Sarah Good, Sarah Osbourne, Tituba,
and as we go along, the accused begin to make confessions.
Why were these confessions so important to the witch trials?

(22:29):
The confessions are hugely helpful because the confessions, as confessions
will UM tend to coincide, so they coalesce around UM.
A very similar and familiar story. It's not. UM. It's
very clear that when people are put into prison having
denied all charges of witchcraft, and then come out UM,
they tell a more and more grandiose story. And you

(22:50):
can see this happening with people who are examined several times.
The at first perhaps they had been in the service
of the devil for a year, and then when they
the second time they were deposed, they've been in the
service of the devil for six years, and so has
their sister in law. And then the third time they've
also been to a Satanic meeting where the bread was read,
and by the fourth time the bread is even redder.
So there's this snowballing sense of detail and of involvement

(23:10):
with people. UM. The answer to your question really is
when you when you get toward and over the sale
and witchcraft of ultimately will will migrate to and over,
and by that time all the imagery has really changed.
It's less about the enchanted hey and the Satanic cat,
and it's more about this um, this diabolical meeting to
which people have flown from all over New England, and

(23:32):
there most of the testimony is utterly on point. It's
extremely as if everyone compared notes while in prison, everyone has,
everyone talks about precisely the same sound to call the
people to the field. They talk about the same person
presiding over this, this this dark sabbath um. They mentioned,
you know, exactly the same guest list of who was there.
Every detail corroborates each detail. And that's obviously because they're

(23:54):
being told either by their friends in prison or their
family who think they're guilty, or the ministers in hard
what to say. Why weren't their doubts about spectral evidence.
It seems looking back that that should be easy to dismiss.
I think the easy answer is. I think that the
simplest answer is this cotton Mother says god Mother is
is called on several times to a pine about the

(24:16):
legitimacy of including spectral evidence in the courtroom, and he
always is a little bit ambivalent, and he's always sort
of speaking out of both sides of his mouth. But
the bottom line is this special evidence should really not
be taken at face value. However, when there are physical
manifestations of evil or physical manifestations of harm, then you
must believe the evidence. So what you have are these

(24:38):
girls who are claiming or whoever is claiming that they
have been bitten, pierced, pricked, whatever, burnt um, and who
have the wounds to show it. So in the courtroom
you have a girl who's suddenly bleeding from the mouth,
or a girl who can show the mouth mark, the
the bite marks up and down her arms. That's really
hard to deny. And moreover, you have um, really ear

(25:01):
piercing screeches. You see these girls assuming postures that I
think most of us would be would find terrifying. So
in the presence of those convulsing girls, I think it
was very hard to say witchcraft wasn't being practiced and
to fail to subscribe to the evidence you felt. I mean,
it's very much an Emperor's new close situation. Everyone else
is saying, oh, I see the moth flying around the room,

(25:23):
which is clearly as the specter of one of the accused,
and you think, I don't really see it, But I
guess everyone, I guess I must. Maybe that piece of
lint in the air, maybe that's the moth. I mean,
I think it's very hard to be the dissenting voice
and say I don't see what everyone else claims to see, um,
and what's actually interesting is that when the first three UM,
when the first three women are brought in UM, there

(25:44):
isn't a hint of spectral evidence until Tittiba starts telling
her elaborate and kaleidoscopic tail. Well, when Tittipa starts to talk,
she brings in brand new elements, a lot of it.
I think hearkens back to what we talked about earlier
with the animals. You know, there's a strong UM subtext
of birds and creatures, and you know the dark Man

(26:06):
falls into that because at some point I think he's
described as as more like a hairy beast who walks
on two legs UM as one of his many descriptions. UM.
Why why do you think for her in particular, UM,
the animalistic qualities were so important. You know, we know
so little about titte but that it's very hard to
say where that comes from. It has been hinted at.

(26:28):
It's possible that she was fed some lines. Remember that
she's the only person of those three, the only woman
of those three who's a slave, UM, which and we
probably lived in fear of what she had to of
reporting back to Samuel Parris, in whose household she lives.
She's clearly been with the family for years. She clearly
loves the children. She lives in close quarters. She probably
slept in the same beds as they. Um, she may

(26:51):
have been told a tale. She may also have been
a tale teller. I mean, there may have been a
great you know, she might have been sitting around the
kitchen showing peas and telling great story reas. We really,
we really have no idea where that comes from. Um,
we do know that she was that someone goes to
see her in prison before she is interrogated. So it's
very possible that she was, you know, that there was

(27:12):
some discussion of what she was going to say it
indeed it indeed is she who mentions the she's got
yellow birds, she's got red cats, she's got a black hog.
It's very colorful stuff. And yes, the furry creature with
the wings and the long nose who sits by the fireplace,
I mean it's and and as soon as she says this,
things take off at a gallop. I mean the very day, um,
that she testifies, men begin to see two laborers on

(27:34):
their way home see this unearthly creature by the side
of the road and the moonlight who suddenly transmogrifies into
three women, and the next day two men will have
visits from spectral balls of you know, fire in their beds.
Who turned clearly were some of the defendants. So immediately
there's this sense that everyone, um, the spectral world begins

(27:55):
to manifest for everyone. You mentioned the jails earlier, this
idea that going into the jail, a lot of them
their descriptions would magnify when they came out. What were
the conditions in the jail? What do you think that
was a motivation for them? The conditions in the jail
were really deplorable. Um. New England jails had not been
built for long term stays. Um. This was a culture

(28:16):
that essentially dealt with malefactors quickly and effectively. No one
was really meant to live in a jail the way
these people ended up staying in these jails. Um, Nor
were the jails built for this. Many people think there
were sixty people in jail by May and a hundred
and twenty or so by the fall. Um. The Salem
jail is described as a suburb of Hell, and from
the Boston jail was described as a grave for the living.

(28:38):
So I think there you have it between the two
of their tiny spaces, um unventilated. An earlier prisoner had
talked about the fact that he couldn't breathe for the
pestiferous stink, as he puts it, um, the air is
fitted their armies of life. And to add insult to injury, UM.
In colonial New England, you paid for your keep in jail.
So you paid for your straw, you paid for your food,

(29:00):
and you paid for your shackles. And in fact we
have jail keepers accountings. One of the surviving documents is
the jail keeper's accounting of how much people were in
debt to him for the shackles to which they are,
which by which they are attached to the walls. And
the shackles were important for a which because of it,
which had no use of her arms, she couldn't work
her she couldn't work her magic, she couldn't work her
her powers were limited. So UM. It seems that these

(29:21):
people were shackled fairly effectively, and Richard Traska suggested that
they were. That they were shackled in a way that
where the shackles couldn't be removed except by a blacksmith,
So these were not removable irons. One of the things
that I've noticed is that a lot of the witches
who confess in these trials are allowed to live. Why
is that when you confess, you generally confessed UM in

(29:46):
a way where you accused others, so you're very useful
to the prosecution. Also, the point of confession was that
you could then somehow UM pushed the narrative forward in
some way, so you're re entering UM. You're you're serving
the business of the court beautifully if you do that. UM.
It is unclear what was going to happen to the confessors, however,
it's not but they many of them thought they were

(30:08):
going to ultimately going ultimately to be executed. But they
were certainly being used by the prosecution for what they
could then relate. UM. There's a certain point here in
the summer, not been fairly early on, where it's very
clear that it was smarter to accuse than to let
yourself be accused. And there's a rash of confession and
an accusation at this point, which almost seems as if

(30:28):
people were trying to just get ahead of the game.
And the interesting the upsetting part I think there is
often that some of those people are pointing fingers at
their own family members and often in laws or daughters
in law. Things like that tell me about Georgie Burrows.
He seems to have such a powerful narrative arc. Burrows
is someone for whom you know when you live you

(30:49):
live in Hope, the documentation will surface one day. Burrows
is sort of the Great White Hope in that respect.
Burrows is the ex minister Um who leaves the community
on bad terms and is as much a hero in
his commune in his new community in today's southern Maine
as he had been a persona on grata in Salem.
He was clearly a very um, stubborn and difficult man,
and possibly an abusive husband with when he was in Salem.

(31:13):
Um stories of how he had mistreated his wives will
trail him even when he when he moves to Maine.
And he's a person who to whom Um, one of
the earliest Um girls will make mention as the ring
master here, as the ringleader of the entire um, of
the of the of all the witchcraft Um. He fits
the role in the sense that he's a He's clearly
a figure of some authority. He's clearly a very learned man,

(31:35):
and he's powerful, so he is the he's called a
wizard at the time, which is with two z's, which
I always find very charming. UM. But it's interesting that
in this epidemic, which is so much being um propagated
by women, a man acquires the you know, takes the
central role all the same. UM. And it's Burrows who um,
who's the one suspect for whom we really in a

(31:56):
way can't account many. In many of these cases we
can see why people were accute. We can find long
term family feuds. Many of the women who were accused
UM had been accused years earlier, so the charges just
resurface slightly um cooked slightly cooked a little bit better. UM.
With Burrows, there's this terrific um vexed history with the community.

(32:16):
There seems to be a certain amount of getting back
at him by women who may have been friends with
his ex wife, with his dead wives. In the case
of Burrows, people mentioned ghosts of the dead wives, which
no one really talks about ghosts, and no one really
differentiates specters from ghosts, so it's a little bit hard
to figure out how the two are related. UM. But
he's clearly someone whom everyone lives in fear, including the authorities.

(32:39):
Even when Cotton Mather will write up his choice cases
of witchcraft later, he will refer to the other suspects
by name, but he will refer to Burrows with only
with the initial be. It's as if he can't even
name his use the full name. So there's clearly something.
He's also a Harvard man. I mean, there's just he's
one of them. So it's an interesting case of um,

(32:59):
the ministers having to prosecute one of their own, clearly
odd man out, but someone with a very similar background
is theirs. Yet. Emerson Baker in our interview talked about
how all of the magistrates involved in the trial were.
They were men who thought that they would probably go
into ministry at some point, you know that they were.
They were all very deeply devout and and I think,

(33:23):
in his words he said, probably wrestled for the rest
of their lives with with um questions of doubt as
to why they didn't go into ministry. Here they were,
you know, forced to be wealthy businessmen and military leaders
of the community. Um, do you think that there was
something there where they viewed Burrows? I mean, he was
from what I can tell top of his class in Harvard,
or or at the near the top, and he was
a smart man UM. And do you think maybe these

(33:47):
ministerial wannabes in the magistrates viewed him with a little
bit of jealousy. It's conjectural, but I think it's something
a little bit different. I think with Burrows. Burrows goes
to Maine UM and protects his parishioners in a very
small community against a hideous and very savage Indian assault.
And he's forced to do that because the Massachusetts authorities

(34:09):
have essentially cut off UM there. They stopped protecting those
communities because they don't have the funds to do it,
and they're trying to cut back. And I feel as
if they might have been a piece of residual guilt
there for having left those communities unprotected. Um. Burrows would
have had every reason, would have had every reason to
chastise them for UM kind of cutting off those settlers

(34:33):
who are really at the very forefront of the really
at the edge of the frontier there and are getting
no protection. And he'll write. The one document we have
of his, which is really extraordinary, is an account of
an Indian raid on the community where he's um, where
he's protecting his parishioners inside a barricade, and you know,
he writes of it in biblical terms. It's an astonishing

(34:53):
document in which he proves to be a very courageous
and ingenious man. And the other interesting thing about Burrows
is that he's really he's very strong, and he's very canny,
and a lot of the testimony against him will be
testimony to about his somehow magical strength. How did he
lift that barrel? How did he fire that very long musket?

(35:14):
How is it possible that he heard that conversation from
that distance? How did he get to be two places
at once? So, in other words, the kind of things
that you might have admired in someone who was with
whom you were on good terms, um, which are suddenly
suspect when you've fallen out with that person. There's a
point in which Burrows and Martha Carrier are referred to

(35:35):
as the King and Queen of Hell. What was the
significance of that label for them? That's an expression of
Cotton Mathers. I think he kind of makes that up,
To be honest with you, I don't think there's a
king and Queen of Hell. Um, I don't know. I
think that was just, you know, Mother trying to make
the whole thing a little bit more dramatic. It's not
in the typical cosmology. I haven't foreseen that anywhere else,

(35:58):
and no one else really pick upon it. I think
it's just mad. They're trying to make a good story.
He's a really good writer. He really goes to um
great lengths to paint Martha Carrier in the most wretched terms.
And you know hen mother would have been at the trials,
and he bases his portraits there loosely on the testimony.
If you look at it, you see he's taken some

(36:19):
liberties with the testimony. He's left out a great number
of things. He's left out things that were to people's credit. Um,
he's injected things that didn't that weren't actually in the testimony,
and my senses that would for whatever reason, Martha Carrier
rubbed him the wrong way, and that's why she gets
promoted to Queen of Hell. Burrows is able to recite
the full Lord's Prayer. And this was significant, right, very significant.

(36:42):
I was understood that which could not recite the Lord's
prayer Um Burrows on the gallows is apparently a tremendously
moving and and troubling site, because he is, in fact
a man of great presence, and he clearly knows how
to speak, and he delivered he's delivered sermons that many
of these people have heard. And here he is, in
that same it sounds deep voice, um reciting the Lord's prayer.

(37:05):
So here he is um doing something that which was understood,
which would be proof in fact that you were not
a witch. And the crowd apparently at that moment, has
a moment of doubt and begins to surge toward him
as if to um somehow bring the proceeding to an end,
bringing the hanging to an end, and they're pushed back
by the authorities, which does indicate that it's the upper

(37:25):
echelon really that has that's holding the the animus for
for Burroughs in some way. Um, that's one of those
moments where you begin to see hesitation building and then
it's tamped down again and where it will remain until
the fall, isn't it? At Burrow's execution that Mather Mather's
present cotton mother and and turns and speaks to the
crowd and kind of explains how this is a good thing. Right,

(37:47):
we think it's Cotton Mother. It's a little bit unclear.
Pretty sure it's Cotton Mother, And yes he explains that
there on again that there this is God's work. Um,
con Mother's got a tremendously good argument, not at that moment,
but just general really for why UM one should let
this run its course and I one should subscribe to it,
which is that, Um, it's further proof that New Englanders

(38:08):
are the chosen people. God would not have let um
the devil. The devil would show up where he's hated
the most. So this is proof that not only that
the Second Coming is at hand, but that UM, New
England is special and it has this special mission and
that is why it's repelling these invaders. Moving to after
it's all over, UM, I think taking some of that
element with us to that idea that we have this

(38:30):
vision for the puritan New England culture that needs to
be preserved. We start to see dissent about the trial, UM,
things like Governor Phipps prohibiting the printing and the publication
of stories about it, and obviously Cotton now there is
writing about it. Afterwards, UM, what does it tell us
about the trial aftermath that these authorities are they're sort

(38:53):
of suppressing what has happened. Well, it would seem to
indicate that there was there seems to be an admission
of guilt in that doesn't there. Um, it should be
said that yes, Phipps um stops anyone from publishing anything
about Whitchcraft, unless of course his last name or Mather,
because two mother books are published after the prohibition, after
he shuts down the presses. Um, there's deafening silence all around,

(39:17):
and it's almost it's almost a conspiracy. And when you
look at when you begin to look at the record, UM,
the diaries have been purged from those years. That meant
the Congregations Book, as you know, um paris pulls out
those entries for those months, so that we don't have
those entries. The court records are missing. Even Samuel Willard,
who is one of the great Boston ministers, we have

(39:39):
his compendium of sermons, which is an enormous volume, but
missing are the sermons from that summer. UM. So there's
clearly a sense of shock to the system and a
sense that um of regret, and I think of tremendous
guilt at what has happened. There seems to be a
realization that no one really articulates until Samuel Sewell, one
of the judges, finally does. But um, there does seem

(40:02):
to be this um, you know, could we cover this
up as quickly as possible? Could we make it go away?
Feeling afterwards? And that's an attitude of the leadership and
the people involved. Do you feel like the just the
the normal everyday person echoed to that feeling of yes,
let's move on, let's not talk about it. There's a
curious um thing if you if you look at the
reparations requests, which are much later early eighteenth century. In

(40:24):
the early eighteenth century, it's it's understood that some of
the people who have lost relatives, um in this misfortunate
summer should be reimbursed for their you know, for their hardship,
and their requests for moneies often omit. They can't seem
to mention the word witchcraft. It's almost like the recent unpleasantness. UM.

(40:44):
So you even see there that there is a there's
almost an inability to grapple with the hideousness of the
entire event. Um. There's also a funny phenomenon and I'm
not sure I can explain it, but very often you
see widows of people who hanged and widowers marrying after
after people who had been families of the accused marrying,

(41:05):
and that could be that they had suffered a very
similar trauma. But it may also be that people were
not willing to go near them, that they had somehow
been marginalized in the events. Because you do know that
the belief in witchcraft continues long after six two. People
still believe in witchcraft. They just don't believe that this
prosecution was legitimate. Um So that since that those people

(41:26):
bonding together may also indicate that there was that at
every level people just didn't want to talk about this,
and that if you had somehow been involved in it,
you were part of a somewhat toxic community. Are you
there was some taboo attached. Richard trask Um allowed me
to go into the archives with him, his little room
full of amazing things, and showed me the I believe

(41:49):
it's the church's notebook, not the minister's notebook. But where
where Years later, when Reverend Green is minister of the church,
Um and Putnam, one of the four one of the
main accusers, wants to become a member. Must she must
to become a covenant member of the church, and in
a church where so many people in that community had
lost people because of her accusations. And it's a sobering

(42:13):
thing to see his transcription of her confession, and then
you know her signature underneath that. And um, I can't
remember the date on that confession. I want to say,
at see quite late. Yeah, it's quite late. And if
you look at that confession and you look back at
some of the earlier there are there are two earlier confessions.
One is from some of the jurors who who who

(42:35):
are very much regret what has happened. And the other,
of course, as soll begin to think that Ann Putnam
may be copied from their homework, there's a certain similarity
of wording. But everyone essentially, I mean, she says she
was essentially led astray, right. It's a little bit the
devil made me do it kind of excuse, But she
does indicate that she was. She doesn't address how she
came up with these spectral images. Um, she simply says

(42:57):
that she was misguided and deluded. Mm hm. When did
the last imprison which walk free? I think January I'm
actually not sure is that true. Titiba comes out in January.
Tittibo is hard because nobody wants to claim to tob
You can't leave until you've paid your jail fees, and

(43:18):
no one is willing, it seems, to pay Titibus until later.
I think she's in jail for a year altogether. Would
that have fallen to the Paris family to pay her
I don't know what the what the law would have
been for a slave. They certainly didn't want her back um,
and we have very little sense of where she could
have gone after that. By the way. I mean, it's
interesting because she's so completely at the heart of this
um and therefore would have been very much spoiled. Goods UM.

(43:43):
But I think most of the wives, most of the
people who are UM, most of the husbands will actually
petition to get their wives back late in the fall,
it's harvest season. It's really important that the wives be
there to help, you know, can the preserves and get
the house in order. And I think most of most
of those women are released knock Obra November. There's this
there's this perception that I have of Paris where he

(44:05):
you know, he we all know, he comes into town,
he's he spends almost a year negotiating his contract. I
think when he's he's really picky about all of this,
especially the firewood, and you know, he wants it delivered
to him instead of him going to pick it up,
and elements like that. To have the witchcraft begin with
symptoms in his own house and then one of the

(44:25):
chief accusers be a slave from his house, there must
have been a sense of um, shame and needing to
make up for to atone for that through through the
months that the trial took place. I would add to
that by the way that if you take that one
step further, the girls in the house or the kids
in the house, would have been under tremendous strain to
see their father being so badly treated by the community,

(44:48):
and so much it odds with the community would have
put such I mean, it would have been so difficult
and so embarrassing in so many ways. And there would
have been when you begin to see clearly they're trying
to say something, when they begin to convolve from twitch
and and complain of of fights and pinches, and you wonder,
you know, the stomping of the foots of the parishion
feet of the parishoners as they came by to complain
to their minister or other. These continued very acrid negotiations

(45:10):
that would have taken a toll on the family. Um. Yes,
Paris goes through a long period where he can't apologize
for what's happened, and the entire New England ministry essentially
bears down on him after to essentially say you need
to apologize, and he delivers those kinds of apologies which
are basically I'm sorry if I did something that you
think is subjectionable. Um. And they will it will take
years for them to get him essentially to leave the

(45:33):
to leave the parish and to issue some kind of
statement that in some way, um, is reconciliatory. Did those
come at the same time, leaving and apologizing? Um, it's
one is one is slow after the other. He's a
very difficult man, um and it. I don't think it's
any coincidence that that that these kinds of things break
out in the household. A couple of questions to wrap
things up, you know, we might tend to look back

(45:55):
at Salem and sort of sneer at them for hunting witches, right, that,
you know, believing in the like black cats and which
is on broomsticks. But are we really any different today
in other ways? You know, I feel like it takes
a different form. I feel like at the base of
this there are a couple of things which is just
constants in human behavior. I mean, first of all, there's
this deep seated sense of causality of you know, what,

(46:17):
what caused that? Why did the roof fly off the
meeting house? Why did the ox fall sick? Whatever? You know,
why did my computer just freeze? Um? There's got to
be some reason for this, and very often the reason
for that involves your neighbor or somebody you know, or
the person who who was just overly nice to you.
And a lot of these are people who actually paid

(46:37):
calls on their neighbors and then for some reason the
good wheel gets converted, gets converted to poor with ill will. UM.
So there's that constant sense for um, a victim for
you know, someone who can lay the blame upon um.
And I think there's there's an overreaching need to believe
that there's another world out there. I mean, really, there's
this sense of well, that had to be I did

(46:59):
everything the same way I did last time, So why
did the computer do this this time? You know, why
did the pothole suddenly appear in the road. Um. So
there's that searching for some explanation which is not at hand.
And sometimes religion provides that explanation and sometimes it doesn't.
And obviously in this case, one went directly to religion
for the explanation because it witchcraft more than anything, or

(47:19):
the super matchment more than anything, will explain everything. I mean,
you can explain any number of mishaps, you know, lingering, doubts, glinting,
you know, accusations, anything with with the witchcraft accusation, it
isn't enough to make sense, but you can explain it
with now. And that's the beauty. That was the beauty
of spectral evidence. It was my word versus yours. And
I've seen it and you haven't. Um, And yes, it

(47:41):
certainly doesn't have to make sense. So you've written what
I think is a beautiful retelling of of the story
of Salem. It's one that I highly recommend people read. Um,
you soaked it all in, you spent years on this.
It's almost unfair to ask you this. But if there's
one thing that you feel like you want people to
know about Salem? What is it? You know? I think

(48:04):
it makes time with what we're just talking about. Somehow,
that sense of our our ability to suspend reason and
subscribe to a delusion. I just feel as if we
are all of us at all times prone, if not tempted,
towards that behavior. And it's really important to kind of,
you know, stop yourself for just a second. There's so
much retailing here of vandwagon jumping here and retailing of

(48:28):
someone else's narrative um without any original thought. And that
is how the that is how this goes off the
rail so quickly. Really is that no one is willing
to raise his hand and say, but wait, have you considered?
Or but wait that doesn't make sense. And when finally
the first person does do that, it's under it's very dangerous.
It's Thomas Brattle, and it's extremely dangerous. He can't sign

(48:49):
his name even too that document. But it's an act
of utter courage. And I guess that would be my
my takeaway would be how important it is to be
that person who says, um, you know what, may we
should look at this through a different optic because the
reasoning here just really doesn't hold up. This episode of

(49:32):
Unobscured was executive produced by Me, Matt Frederick, and Alex Williams,
with music by Chad Lawson and audio engineering by Alex Williams.
The Unobscured website has everything you need to get the
most out of the podcast. There's a resource library of maps, charts,
and links to Salem document archives online, as well as

(49:52):
a suggested reading list and a page with all of
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If you love it, head over to Apple podcasts dot
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star rating. It makes a huge difference for the show's growth,
and as always, thanks for listening. H