“In 1687 or 1688 began a more alarming instance than any which preceded it. Four children of John Goodwin, a grave man, a good liver, at the north part of Boston, were generally believed to be bewitched. I have often heard persons who were of the neighborhood speak of the great consternation it occasioned. The children were all remarkable for ingenuity of temper, had been religiously educated, and were thought to be without guile. The eldest was a girl of thirteen or fourteen years. She had charged a laundress with taking away some of the family linen. The mother of the laundress was one of the wild Irish, of bad character, and gave the girl harsh language; soon after which she fell into fits, which were said to have something diabolical in them. One of her sisters and two brothers followed her example, and it is said were tormented in the same parts of their bodies at the same time, although kept in separate apartments and ignorant of one another’s complaints. One or two things were said to be very remarkable: all their complaints were in the daytime, and they slept comfortably all night: they were struck dead at the sight of the Assembly’s Catechism, Cotton’s Milk for Babes, and some other good books, but could read in Oxford’s Jests, Popish and Quaker books, and the Common Prayer without any difficulty. Is it possible that the mind of man should be capable of such strong prejudices as that a suspicion of fraud should not immediately arise? But attachments to modes and forms in religion had such force that some of these circumstances seem rather to have confirmed the credit of the children. Sometimes they would be deaf, then dumb, then blind; and sometimes all these disorders together would come upon them. Their tongues would be drawn down their throats, then pulled out upon their chins. Their jaws, necks, shoulders, elbows, and all their joints would appear to be dislocated, and they would make most piteous outcries of burnings, of being cut with knives, beat, &c., and the marks of wounds were afterward to be seen. The ministers of Boston and Charlestown kept a day of fasting and prayer at the troubled house; after which the youngest child made no more complaints. The others persevered, and the magistrates then interposed, and the old woman was apprehended; but upon examination would neither confess nor deny, and appeared to be disordered in her senses. Upon the report of physicians that she was compos mentis she was executed, declaring at her death the children should not be relieved. The eldest, after this, was taken into a minister’s family, where at first she behaved orderly, but after a time suddenly fell into her fits. The account of her affliction is in print; some things are mentioned as extraordinary which tumblers are every day taught to perform, others seem more than natural; but it was a time of great credulity. The children returned to their ordinary behavior, lived to adult age, made profession of religion, and the affliction they had been under they publicly declared to be one motive to it. One of them I knew many years after. She had the character of a very virtuous woman, and never made any acknowledgment of fraud in the transaction.”
This historian was born more than twenty years after the “great consternation” which the Goodwin case occasioned, and therefore those must have been elderly people who gave him accounts of personal remembrance of it, and rehearsed to him their mellowed recollections of the past. From such people he had probably heard many particulars, and received general impressions which were one source from whence he drew materials for his history, at least for his comments; also opinions then prevalent around him were aids to his judgment when reading Mather’s account. He omitted to express directly any doubt as to the occurrence of such facts as the records presented, but innuendoed, all through his account, that fraud, acting upon credulity, begat and brought forth that entire brood of marvels. He left us the facts, and stated that the children were “all remarkable for ingenuity of temper.” Probably his meaning is, that they were remarkably bright or quick-witted. The historian adds, that they “had been religiously educated, and were thought to be without guile.” These are points of interest both as items on which public judgment concerning the facts was based at the time of their occurrence, and also as things to be regarded by moderns when attempting to determine the probability whether such marvels were produced voluntarily by embodied actors alone, or by force exerted upon and through mortal forms by wills putting forth power from imperceptible sources.
What do the quoted statements indicate as to the constitutional endowments and acquired skill of those children for purposely acting out the feats ascribed to them? Ready wit, sprightliness, or whatever is meant by “ingenuity of temper,” was a very good basis for any kind of performances; but the character of the doings likely to proceed from that basis in a given case, will be indicated by other possessions. Religious education and freedom from guile are not very probable prompters of either egregious trickery, or prolonged and mischievous imposture. Hutchinson’s remark that “some things are mentioned as extraordinary which tumblers are every day taught to perform,” is doubtless true; but he adds that “others seem more than natural.” Yes, they do. And it is these especially that the world desires to see traced to competent performers. How did the historian account for such—for those seeming “more than natural”? Solely by the dogmatic remark that “it was a time of great credulity.” What if it was? Could credulity in the public mind enable untrained children to outact jugglers, tumblers, and most efficient dissemblers and tricksters of various kinds in their special vocations? What did the historian mean by alleging credulity in way of accounting for facts which he adduced, and left without direct controversion, or any attempt at such? Was he intimating that belief of the actual occurrence of such facts, though witnessed through many months by the physical senses of multitudes, argued credulity? If so, he put upon the word credulity an inadmissible meaning.
Did he intend to say that credulity caused the senses of our fathers to see, hear, and feel erroneously, so that they would testify less accurately than those of the generation in which he was living? Perhaps he did; and yet on what rational grounds could he? None that we perceive. Was the former generation less truthful than his own? Probably not. Had it less sagacity than his own? We can think of no evidence that it had. Were its senses less reliable? Probably not. Was its belief in the testimony of its own senses a proof of its credulity? No. Was clear statement of what its senses had witnessed evidence of its credulity? It seems to have been so to the historian, but is not to us. The fathers told of witnessing things, which, if they occurred, were seemingly “more than natural.” What then? Does that prove that the things they described did not occur, and thus prove a generation of the fathers to have been, as a whole, either dolts or liars? No. The appearance is, that the historian was obliged to admit that valid testimony to occurrence of facts around the Goodwin children, which seemed more than natural, must be conceded; and yet he could not account for the facts; he was mentally baffled, non-plussed, and could only say, “It was a time of great credulity.” That explains nothing, while it tempts us to suspect its author of such credulity in his own penetration, that he apprehended that a whole line of ancestry through successive generations had been fatuous and exaggerative, since it continuously described and swore to occurrences which conflicted with his own theoretical limits to things credible. A credulity which caused him to regard himself a better knower and judge of what actually transpired in preceding ages, than were the very persons who lived in that past, and were eye and ear witnesses of what then occurred, impelled the pen of this witchcraft historian to ascribe the marvels of other days to causes or to conditions absolutely incompetent to produce them.
We can extend much leniency to Hutchinson, because he lived and wrote when the pendulum of belief, recently wrenched from the disturbing grasp of witchcraft, and allowed to swing back toward extreme Sadduceeism, had not acquired its legitimate movements under the action of mesmerism, Spiritualism, psychology, and other regulating forces. Witchcraft’s unnatural devil had died from the blow he received at Salem Village in 1692, and for a long time afterward there was seeming non-intercourse between men and dwellers in spirit realms; partially man was forgetting that there are spirits, and doubting whether they had ever acted overtly among men. Probably Hutchinson’s thoughts were never led to inquire whether the forces and realms of nature may not extend far above, below, and around the confines of palpable matter,—extend beyond where man’s external senses take cognizance,—or where his natural science has penetrated. His thoughts, perhaps, were never led to inquire whether there exists natural provision for mesmeric and varied psychological operations, nor to inquire whether, under possible fitting conditions, unseen intelligences could possess and control certain peculiar physical human forms. Lacking not only knowledge, but also circumstances which would naturally generate any conjecture that both good spirits and bad alike might sometimes come to earth in freedom, and work wonders on its external surface and among its living inhabitants, Hutchinson, cornered and baffled in search for an adequate cause for facts which he felt called upon to state, could only credulously say, in quasi explanation of them, “It was a time of great credulity”!
His implied position that all the works were nothing more than natural acts and sufferings of children, magnified and made formidable by popular credulity, fails to yield satisfactory revealment of the nature and origin of such facts as he himself presents and leaves uncontroverted.
What was the character of the Goodwin children themselves? They were bright, religiously educated, and free from guile. The account shows that four such children, of a sudden, without previous training for it, all join at first, and three of them long unitedly continue, in a course of most distressing imposition upon their own family, upon physicians, clergymen, magistrates, and the neighborhood; also that the imposition is manifested by astounding physical feats, and simultaneous, identical signs and complaints of suffering, even though the sufferers are in separate apartments. If, possibly, by their own wills and powers they could perform the tricks, how incongruous it would be with their alleged traits and ages! How inconceivable that four such children, from the boy of sixteen down to the girl of seven, or from the girl of thirteen down to the boy of five, should conspire, and three of them co-operate thoroughly, effectively, and long, in voluntarily and purposely producing such mischief and misery as were there experienced! Suspicion of fraud no doubt arose. But the appearance is, that facts soon put the case beyond any powers of fraud which such children, or any embodied human beings, could put forth. Without previous practice and training in concert, a successful attempt by themselves at what was done through and upon them is incredible. No hint is given that they ever practiced in preparation. Had they have done so, seemingly their father, the “grave man and good liver,” must have known it, and would have been governed by his knowledge of it in judging and treating his children. Who doubts that it would be shameful to charge or suspect that man, and his friends and physicians, with such credulity, at the first coming on of the fits, that they could not judge fairly and sensibly of what nature of cause the actions and sufferings indicated?
“O, star-eyed” Fancy, “hast thou wandered there,
To waft us back the message of”—credulity?
Look still more closely at the circumstances of this case. The bright girl of “great ingenuity of temper, of religious education, and without guile,” was just out from under the infuriated lashings of a wild Irish tongue, when she commenced her—what? her frolic? her course of fraud and imposture? Was that a playful moment? Was that the time for a general mood which would start a whole family of guileless little children to unite spontaneously and instantly for a guileful and distressing imposition upon relatives and friends? When she fell in fits, from such a cause, was it a credible time for her bright brother to recklessly increase the family excitement by imitating the sufferer’s movements and tones of distress? Was that a condition of things in which the younger two would join the elder in sly additions to the distress around them? No; most surely, No.
“Is it possible,” asks the historian, “that the mind of man should be capable of such strong prejudices as that suspicion of fraud should not immediately arise?” We answer for him and say, No; emphatically, No. Such suspicion must have been felt. And we ask in turn, is it possible that an historian’s mind can be capable of such strong prejudices as that suspicion that such a family as he described, circumstanced as he made it, was absolutely incapable of practicing fraud and imposition competent to the results which he indicates were wrought out? Yes, his mind failed to receive such a suspicion, and therefore reveals its own blinding prejudices. Skepticism in one direction generated credulity in another with him, as it does with many to-day.