MARGARET JONES.
The great endemic witchcraft at Salem Village in 1692 has been extensively ascribed to the voluntary acts of a few girls and women, who are sometimes credited with having derived much knowledge from books, traditions, weird stories, and the like, and thus obtained hints and instructions whereby they were enabled to devise, and, acting upon the credulity and infatuation of their time, to enact, and did enact, that great and thrilling performance, without supermundane aid. Was it so? An examination of several sporadic cases which preceded that famous outburst of mysterious operations, may indicate strong need to assign many witchcraft manifestations to causes and forces lying off beyond the reach of man’s ordinary faculties, for we perceive in them the operation of powers which he never acquired, nor can acquire, by reading, listening, or by any training processes.
Hutchinson says, “The great noise which the New England witchcraft made throughout the English dominions proceeded more from the general panic with which all sorts of persons were seized, and an expectation that the contagion would spread to all parts of the country, than from the number of persons who were executed; more having been put to death in a single county in England in a short space of time, than have suffered in New England from the first settlement until the present time. Fifteen years had passed before we find any mention of witchcraft among the English colonists.... The first suspicion of witchcraft among the English was about the year 1645.”
We commence now an examination of several of the earlier cases, and begin with Margaret Jones.
There is extant, in the handwriting of the judge before whom she was tried, a summary of the evidence adduced against this woman, who, in 1648, was tried, condemned, and executed in Boston for the crime of witchcraft; and who thus became, so far as we now know, the first American victim in Christendom’s carnal warfare against the devil. Unconsciously to herself surely, but yet in fact, she may have been, as we sometimes view her, America’s first martyr to Spiritualism.
The chief knowledge of this case now attainable is furnished by the Journal of Governor John Winthrop, who was both governor of the colony and chief judge of its highest court in 1648, and presided at the trial of Margaret Jones. His position on the bench gave him opportunity, and made it his duty, to know precisely what was charged, what testified, and what proved in the case. The character of that recorder is good voucher for an honest and candid statement as far as it goes. His record states that,—
“In 1648, one Margaret Jones, of Charlestown, was indicted and found guilty of witchcraft, and hanged for it. The evidence against her was, 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, &c., were taken with deafness, or vomiting, or other violent pains or sickness; that, practicing physic, and her medicines being such things as, by her own confession, were harmless, as anise-seed, liquors, &c., yet had extraordinary violent effects; that she used 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 relapses against the ordinary course, and beyond the apprehension of all physicians and surgeons; that things which she foretold came to pass accordingly; other things she could tell of, as secret speeches, &c., which she had no ordinary means to come to knowledge of; in the prison, in the clear daylight, there was seen in her arms, she sitting on the floor, and her clothes up, &c., 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.”
Thus much was recorded by Winthrop in 1648. But the quantum of information relative to Margaret Jones which historic selection deemed needful for the public in 1764 had become very small, for at the latter date Hutchinson says (vol. i. p. 150), “The first instance I find of any person executed for witchcraft, was in June, 1648. Margaret Jones, of Charlestown, was indicted for a witch, found guilty, and executed. She was charged with having such a malignant touch that if she laid her hands upon man, woman, or child in anger, they were seized presently with deafness, vomiting, or other sickness, or some violent pains.”
Those few sharp lines comprise the whole of that historian’s account of this case. He gives no hint that the woman was accused of anything but a malignant touch; therefore he falls long way short of fair presentation of the facts. He leaves entirely unnoticed the chief grounds for just inferences and conclusions. Whether that writer had access to Winthrop’s record we do not know. But the historian Upham had, and he states (vol. i. p. 453), “The only real charge proved upon Margaret Jones was, that she was a successful practitioner, using only simple remedies.” The only charge proved! What can that mean? There surely were several other and much more marvelous and significant things just as clearly charged and “proved upon” her as was her successful use of simple remedies. The only thing proved! If that thing was proved, then the same document which teaches this, also teaches with equal distinctness that five or six other things were proved upon her; and the greater part of these others were difficult of solution by the philosophies of both the historians named above. Turn back to Winthrop’s account, and see what was charged.
1. When she manipulated either man, woman, or child, some nausea, pain, or disease was forthwith engendered in the subject of her operations.