05: Peece of Cake

[BACK]

A PRODUCT OF THE WHISPERFORGE: SOUND & STORY, BROUGHT TO LIFE

[[MUSIC: “Lakeside Path” by Blue Dot Sessions]]

KATE: Hello, and welcome to Remarkable Providences: the podcast about unusual subjects and usual suspects, pee and paperwork, and, of course, the Salem witch trials. I’m your tour guide, Kate Devorak.

When we last left Samuel Parris, the hapless, hopeless, hateful minister of Salem Village, he was in a bit of a pickle.

[[MUSIC: Tense]]

His oldest daughter, Betty, and niece, Abigail, had been declared bewitched by a local doctor after suffering from a slew of strange symptoms that had started in January of 1692 and had seemingly no physical cause. It was now well into February, and conditions had worsened. What do you do when your niece and daughter are afflicted by people in league with the actual devil? According to records, when you’re Samuel Parris- not much. The day after Dr. Griggs gave his diabolical diagnosis, Parris felt comfortable enough with the whole situation to attend a religious lecture in a neighboring town with his wife, leaving the afflicted Betty and Abigail at home with the family’s slaves- Tituba and John. Today is Thursday, February 25th, 1692. And it’s about to go down.

Two big things happen on the 25th that get the ball rolling towards the trials in a big way. Up until this point, Betty and Abigail’s illness/bewitchment was more or less contained, but with the official diagnosis of witchcraft, the parsonage opened itself up to outside influences. Which is how Tituba and John got their hands on the witch cake.

Following instructions given to them by the Parris’ neighbor, they baked a cake made from rye and Betty and Abigail’s urine, which they then fed to a dog. The whole thing sounds like a weird hazing ritual for a dog fraternity, but it was meant to work as a kind of counterspell to reveal who was behind the afflictions. A big misconception I’ve heard time and time again in this story is that Tituba and John came up with this on their own, which feeds into the bigger, more sinister misconception that Tituba was a quote-unquote “a voodoo priestess”, but as I mentioned, they got this recipe from Mary Sibley, an elderly woman who lived next door. You may recognize Sibley as the protagonist of the show Salem, where she was portrayed as an actual witch. It’s actually fitting given that Mary Sibley advising the baking of the witch cake is arguably the witchiest thing anyone did during these trials, but having seen the final product, I can’t give Salem’s writers that much credit. Subscribe on Patreon if you want to know what I think! But back to the point, the cake was an old English charm meant to hurt the witch tormenting the two girls.

How? Well, you’re gonna wanna buckle up for this one.

[[MUSIC: Quirky]]

So the idea here is that when a witch afflicts a person with magic, they actually send a bit of their essence to infect their victim. What the victims could then do is to extract some of that essence (in this case, as urine) and trap it in the witch cake, then feed it to the dog in order to cause the witch pain, so that they might reveal themselves. I guess the goal here was to perform this ritual, ask around town if anyone was feeling as though a bit of their energy was baked into a pee cake and eaten by a dog, and then go from there. A+ plan, Goody Sibley. It may come as a shock to you, but the cake trick didn’t do anything but make things much, much worse. Not only did it seem to freak Betty and Abigail out more than they already had been, but it also put Tituba in a very bad situation. She was already probably eyed with suspicion as an enslaved woman of color, but now she was found with the proverbial smoking, urine-encrusted gun. Sure, Samuel Parris might rationalize, Mary Sibley had suggested it and given the instructions, but Tituba was the one who had done the deed.

When Samuel Parris and his wife returned to the parsonage, they found Betty and Abigail much worse off than before. They now claimed to see the specters of people who would hit and pinch them. They could not positively identify anyone at this point, although the adults had a good few suggestions.

[[MUSIC: Somber]]

On the same day that the witch cake was baked, two more girls in the Village became afflicted: Ann Putnam, Jr., the 12-year-old daughter of Ann and Thomas Putnam, and 17-year-old Elizabeth Hubbard, Dr. William Griggs’s niece and maid. The Putnams, who were supporters of Samuel Parris, lived over a mile away from the parsonage, in the western part of the Village. The Putnams will become major players throughout the trials, so their early involvement is not surprising at all. This family is a real piece of work. In a town where everybody’s got an axe to grind, the Putnams were especially ready to settle some scores, they just needed an excuse. So, again, it’s not terribly shocking that the Putnam’s daughter fell ill so soon after word of the Parris children got out. Elizabeth Hubbard was also at ground zero for the bewitchment outbreak. She lived about two miles east of the Parris’s, but as Dr. Griggs’ servant, it follows that she would have been one of the first to hear about the girls’ diagnosis. It could even be possible that she accompanied her uncle on his visit to the parsonage and had seen the afflictions first hand. She will also go on to become one of the main accusers of the trials.

[[MUSIC: Quirky]]

The following day, February 26th, Samuel Parris invited several “esteemed” men, including out of town ministers and so-called “gentlemen” of Salem Town, to scope out his situation. The familiar was out of the bag by now, so he might as well get a second opinion and some advice that maybe didn’t include making a magic pisscake. Who exactly was invited is not recorded, but we do know for sure that John Hale, the minister of Beverly, was there because he describes the incident in his record, A Modest Inquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft. According to Hale, the visitors agreed with Griggs’ diagnosis, saying that they “feared the hand of the devil” was on the girls, and they suggested that Parris sit on the matter and pray to God for further insight rather than take legal action. But by this time, Betty and Abigail had begun to blame Tituba for their suffering, and seeing as she had baked the witch cake, the men questioned her. Now, according to Hale, Tituba confessed to baking the cake, and claimed to have learned it from, quote, “her mistress in her own country”, presumably Barbados, and that her mistress there had been a witch. Two points here. First, it sucks that Tituba seems to be the only one blamed even though her husband John had also participated in the ritual. This was most likely because she would have had more direct contact with Betty and Abigail, and also because women were assumed to be more susceptible to the devil’s wiles than men. Hm. Second, it’s odd that she does not mention Mary Sibley at all at this point, instead citing an unnamed witch mistress for the recipe. Records show that it was Mary Sibley who provided the counterspell. In fact, Samuel Parris called her out on it during a sermon on March 27th. So why didn’t Tituba just say so during this meeting? It could be that she was afraid to accuse a respected white woman who was considered one of the saved in the church. Surrounded by a group of strange men assailing her with questions and, I’m sure, a fair share of accusations, she could very well have panicked and given them an answer that they wanted to hear without implicating anyone else in the Village. Or, maybe, she didn’t say that at all. This is a suspicion I have because her assertion that her mistress in her own country was a witch is very similar to testimony given by Candy Black, an enslaved woman who was accused in July. In Candy’s testimony, she says that she was not a witch in her country (which was Barbados), but that her mistress made her a witch in Massachusetts. But in Candy’s recorded broken English, her phrasing is close enough to Tituba’s that it makes me wonder if Hale had gotten the two confused between his notes in 1692 and publishing his account in 1702. Regardless, while Tituba owned up to performing the ritual, she still denied that she was a witch.

Meanwhile, Ann Putnam Jr and Elizabeth Hubbard’s afflictions were amping up. Ann complained that she was being pinched by a figure that only she could see, and that it pressured her to sign a book, presumably to sell her soul to the devil. Elizabeth Hubbard was similarly afflicted, and further claimed that she had been stalked on her way home one night by a wolf, which she was convinced was a witch in disguise. By February 27th, Ann was able to put a name to the specter that tormented her: Sarah Good.

Sarah Good was a destitute and unfortunate woman who, because of various personal tragedies, had been reduced to wandering the Village, begging her neighbors for provisions for her family.

[[MUSIC: Reflective]]

She had been born into a fairly well off family in Wenham, but her father’s suicide when she was 17 left her penniless. Her first husband, Daniel Poole, was a poor former indentured servant who left her in substantial debt when he died in 1686. Her second husband, William Good, had to sell his farm to help pay her debts, and ended up working odd jobs around the Village. William’s a piece of work, let me tell ya, but we’ll get into him later. On top of that, Sarah apparently wasn’t the most pleasant person to be around. To be fair, neither would I, given her circumstances. She smoked, she cursed, she’d mutter to herself, she was deeply resentful of those around her, whether they helped her or not. At some point, Sarah and her two children had showed up at Samuel Parris’ doorstep. After he gave her some provisions, she muttered under her breath as she left, and soon after, Betty and Abigail’s afflictions started. Elizabeth Hubbard backed up Ann’s claims and added a witch of her own, Sarah Osborne, who, according to Elizabeth, was behind the wolf incident. Osborne would have had to send a wolf in her stead, seeing as she was bedridden and had been for some time. Sarah Osborne had been born in Watertown, MA, and had come to Salem Village when she married Robert Prince, who was related to the Putnam family by marriage. Robert died in 1674, leaving his land to his two oldest sons when they came of age. Sarah had other plans. She probably caused a bit of a scandal when, pretty soon after her first husband’s death, she bought the contract of an indentured Irish servant named Alexander Osborne, whom she eventually married. She then aimed to take control of her late husband’s land despite protests from her sons and members from the Putnam family, who were entrusted to execute Robert’s will. Add the fact that she hadn’t been to church in a good while due to that aforementioned bedridden-ness, and you can see why her respectable Puritan neighbors may not have liked her too much. At this point, the Village had four afflicted children on their hands, all crying the same three names–Tituba and the two Sarahs. Cool band name.

[[MUSIC: Quirky]]

Samuel Parris had spent a whole two days presumably praying on the matter, shockingly, to no avail. Something must be done.

[[Music continues]]

On February 29th, Ann’s father Thomas Putnam, Thomas’ brother Edward, Joseph Hutchinson, and Thomas Preston took matters into their own hands. As I’ve mentioned before, women had no legal authority on their own, so they needed to be represented by the men in their lives. The four men travelled to Salem Town to file a formal complaint with magistrates John Hathorne, great-great-grandfather of Nathaniel Hawthorne (whose book on adultery you may have read in high school) and Jonathan Corwin, because even though there were witches in their midst apparently trying to kill their children, that didn’t mean they’d get to sidestep the proper legal channels. That’s another reason I hate the term “hysteria” in reference to the Salem witch trials. Other than being outdated and pretty darn sexist, it also fails to capture the sheer amount of paperwork that was involved in this whole thing. Sure, the trials were buck wild, but they were also tied up in so much red tape it’d make your head spin. So buckle up for more warrants, petitions, public records, and complaints going forward. If the whole thing weren’t so whackadoodle, these folks would be dreadfully dull.

[[MUSIC: Reflective]]

The complaints were sworn against Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne for, quote, “much mischief done Elizabeth Parris, Abigail Williams, Ann Putnam, and Elizabeth Hubbard.” This was considered compelling enough, so Hathorne and Corwin issued arrest warrants. It’s worth mentioning here, as I will again and again later, that Hathorne and Corwin had zero legal training, they were just rich merchants and politicians. But as we learned with Samuel Parris and much of present-day society, a gross lack of training won’t stop a white man from achieving a position he was woefully unprepared for. The three women were taken into custody the next day and brought to the Ingersoll Inn to await questioning.

[[Music continues]]

The Village must have been abuzz with the news. This would be a decent break from the monotony of fighting each other. As far as local gossip was concerned, these arrests would have seemed a long time coming.

[[MUSIC: “Our Names Engraved” by Blue Dot Sessions]]

Remarkable Providences was written, researched, and performed by me, Kate Devorak. It was produced by Dan Manning, and recorded by Chad Ellis. Our music is from Blue Dot Sessions. Find us on Twitter @RemarkablePod, and everywhere else @RemarkableProvidences. For transcripts and links to everything, visit us at whisperforge.org/remarkableprovidences

Rate and review, and if you’d like to help pay my jailers’ fees, you can visit our Patreon.

Thanks for listening, and remember, the devil’s in the details.