The Witch of Charlestown

It seems ironic that a group of colonists who emigrated to free themselves from tyranny promptly started holding witchcraft trials, but that’s human nature for you.  This week, we look at the woman who had the extremely dubious honor of being the first person in Massachusetts to be executed for sorcery.

Margaret Jones lived with her husband, Thomas, in Charlestown, Mass.  We know little about her other than that she was a midwife and “healer” who prescribed various homemade herbal medicines for her ailing neighbors.

Margaret’s path to the gallows began in the spring of 1648, when, for reasons unrecorded, she quarreled with several of her neighbors.  After this, “some mischief befell such Neighbors in their Creatures, or the like.”  People who took her herbal potions began reporting that the medicines only made them feel much worse.  Margaret unwisely replied to these complaints with warnings that if her customers stopped taking her “remedies,” they would die.

The Charlestown settlers continued to experience a rash of accidents and ailments among both the human residents and their livestock.  Margaret and her mysterious concoctions made for an obvious scapegoat, and she soon became extremely unpopular.  To counter her assumed “witchcraft,” some neighbors gathered together “some things supposed to be bewitched,” and burned them.  Margaret was seen looking at the fire with great concern, which was interpreted as fear of her “black arts” being countered.

Word soon spread as far as Boston that Charlestown had a dangerous witch in their midst.  The general panic reached such a level that the general court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony ordered that Margaret and her husband be put under arrest.  The couple was seized, forced into a boat, and brought to Boston for imprisonment and trial.

On May 18, 1648, the “witch test” known as “watching” was performed on Margaret.  Guards came to her jail cell with ropes, and she was hauled to the center of the room, where they had placed a stool.  She was told she had a choice: either sit on the floor with her legs crossed or be bound in that position.  Unsurprisingly, she chose the former.  For the next 24 hours, she was forced to sit in that position, without being allowed food or sleep.  There was a small opening made in the wall, where, it was assumed, her “familiar” would enter.  Then, spies settled down to peer into her cell and await events.

To everyone’s horror, the “familiar” indeed materialized.  According to colony leader John Winthrop, a little child--obviously an imp or demon of some sort--was seen in Margaret’s arms.  The apparition ran into another room, and vanished.  A subsequent search of Margaret’s body found the tell-tale “witch’s teat” in her "secret parts."

Whatever it was Margaret’s guards saw--or thought they saw--in her cell, her fate was now sealed.  However, it is good to know that at least some people stood by her.  It is recorded that a woman named Alice Stratton continued to assert her friend’s innocence.  Alice regularly visited Margaret with a Bible, where the two women could be seen sobbing over the tragedy they both knew was coming.

Margaret’s trial was held in Boston’s First Church in early June 1648.  Winthrop summarized the case presented against her:

June 15, 1648: At this court, one Margaret Jones, of Charlestown, was indicted and found guilty of witchcraft, and hanged for it. The evidence against her was:

1. 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., were taken with deafness, or vomiting, or other violent pains or sickness.

2. She practising physic, and her medicines being such things as, by her own confession, were harmless, – as anise-seed, liquors, etc., – yet had extraordinary violent effects.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

In the face of what everyone present saw as overwhelming evidence that Margaret was a witch, the “guilty” verdict was a foregone conclusion.  She was hanged on June 15.  Although many pleaded with Margaret to repent and confess her guilt, thus at least saving herself from an eternity in Hell, she refused.  One neighbor, John Hale, later recorded, “But she constantly professed herself innocent of that crime. Then one prayed her to consider if God did not bring this punishment upon her for some other crime and asked if she had not been guilty of stealing many years ago; she answered, she had stolen something, but it was long since and she had repented of it, and there was grace enough in Christ to pardon that long ago; but as for witchcraft she was wholly free from it, and so she said unto her death.”

Although Thomas Jones had been arrested along with his wife, no formal charges were ever brought against him.  After Margaret’s execution, he was released, and sensibly decided to seek a change of scene.  Upon being freed, he immediately boarded the “Welcome,” a ship riding anchor off Charlestown.  However, the minute Thomas came on to the ship, it began to founder.  The alarmed captain, knowing that his new passenger’s wife was a recently-executed witch, ordered that he be removed from the vessel.  After this little misadventure, Thomas’ subsequent fate is unknown.

As for Margaret’s friend Alice Stratton, even after the execution, she continued to insist that Margaret had “died wrongfully” and that the colony’s magistrates were nothing better than a pack of murderers.  Such talk naturally caused the authorities to suspect that she too was a witch.  However, they were unable to find any evidence of this, so evidently Alice was allowed to live in peace.  Her courage certainly deserved to be rewarded.

One can only say that some accused witches were luckier than others.