Salem Witchcraft Trials: 1692

On March 1, two magistrates, Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne opened a public hearing in the packed meeting house of the village. The examiners conducted themselves more like prosecutors than investigators. Pregnant, dressed in rags, the haggard Sarah Good stood before the magistrates and flatly denied tormenting the children. The girls fell into fits and blamed Good for their pains. Before being removed, Good shifted any possible blame onto Sarah Osburn.

Osburn, dragged from a sick bed when arrested, also denied tormenting the children. The girls again performed. Osburn said she "more like to be bewitched than that she was a witch." She reported a dream in which she was visited by something "like an Indian all black, which did pinch her in her neck" and drag her toward her door. Osburn died in jail awaiting trial. Others met the same fate.

Tituba told the magistrates what they wanted to hear. After briefly denying she had "familiarity" with the Devil, she said:

[T]here is four women and one man, they hurt the children, and then they lay all upon me; and they tell me, if I will not hurt the children, they will hurt me.

She named Good and Osburn, but claimed she could not identify the other two. Following the magistrates' lead, Tituba wove into her testimony elements of spectral evidence such as talking cats, riding on sticks, and a tall, unidentified man of Boston.

One of the next two accused, Martha Corey, was vulnerable because she had unequivocally disbelieved the girls' claims. But Rebecca Nurse, a frail, elderly, pious matriarch, had never questioned the girls' condition. Few had a harsh word to say about her, except, perhaps, those engaged in a long land dispute with her family. Her sisters were subsequently accused of witchcraft. In the course of their investigations, the magistrates unearthed and recorded many old arguments and suspicious activities. Both women had to testify amidst the girls' fits and visions. The examiners made even less pretense of impartiality than they had with Good, Osburn, and Tituba, but they could not shake the two women in their denials.