In the family of John Goodwin, of Boston, in 1688, four children, all
young, were simultaneously either sorely afflicted or set themselves to
playing pranks and tricks with diabolical furore. Which? An elaborate
account of what was either imposed upon them by other beings, or of what
themselves devised and enacted, was promptly written out by Cotton Mather,
who was an observer of many of the marvels while they were transpiring.
Poole, in "Genealogical and Antiquarian Register," October, 1870, says
those children were "Martha, aged 13; John, 11; Mercy, 7; Benjamin 5."
Drake, in "Annals of Witchcraft," says they were "Nathaniel, born 1672;
Martha, 1674; John, 1677; and Mercy, 1681." According to him, their ages
in 1688 were about 16, 14, 11, and 7, respectively. The two statements
agree as to Martha, John, and Mercy; but one makes the fourth, a boy of 5,
named Benjamin, while the other's fourth is a boy of 16, named Nathaniel.
We have not sought for data on which to either confirm or correct the
statement of either author. To show that they were young, is all that our
present purpose requires.
More than seventy years subsequent to the occurrences in the Goodwin
family and to the manifestations at Salem, Hutchinson said, "It seems at
this day with some people, perhaps but few, to be the question whether the
_accused_ or the _afflicted_ were under a preternatural or diabolical
possession, rather than whether the afflicted were under bodily
distempers, or altogether guilty of fraud and imposture." Poole, having
quoted the above, makes the following sensible query and comment. "Why
make an alternative? Both accusers and accused were generally possessors
of NOT _bodily distemper_, but of _peculiar susceptibilities growing
naturally from their special organisms and temperaments_, and were
probably as free from and as much addicted to fraud and imposture, as the
average of the community in which they lived."
If we read Hutchinson aright, he stated that a few people, even at his
day, were believers that there had formerly been some "preternatural or
diabolical" inflictions, but were in doubt whether such inflictions came
upon the accusers or upon the accused; while, in his opinion, all ought to
drop belief in anything preternatural or diabolical in the case, and seek
only to determine whether the strange phenomena resulted partly from
_bodily distempers_, or were exclusively frauds and impostures. We think
he made no alternative himself between accusers and accused, but exempted
both classes from supermundane influences, and queried only whether
witchcraft resulted partly from ill health or wholly from fraud. Be it so
or not, Poole's comment is appropriate, instructive, and valuable. It is
in harmony with the view which the present work is specially designed to
illustrate. We repeat and adopt his words, and say that "both accusers and
accused were generally possessors of _not_ bodily distemper, but of
peculiar susceptibilities growing naturally from their organisms and
temperaments," and in general character were on a par with their
neighbors.
Hutchinson's account of the family now under consideration is as
follows:--
"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.
Four children of the "grave man" were simultaneously and excruciatingly
racked and tortured precisely alike, and in the same parts of their
bodies, although being, some of them, in separate apartments, and
ignorant of one another's complaints. Such are the alleged and uncontested
facts. The citizens of Boston, two or three years ago, were permitted to
see, and we saw, even more than four, yes, eight or ten boys, strangers to
the operator, and mostly to each other, volunteer to go upon a stage,
where, in a few minutes, after two or three out of a dozen had been
requested to leave the stage, all the others were made to move, and act,
and suffer precisely and simultaneously alike, many of them standing often
back to back, and no one among them perceptibly looking at any other. This
was all occasioned by the mental, magnetic or psychological force of
Professor Cadwell.
If we presume (and why may we not?) that the wild Irish woman possessed
strong psychological powers; that Martha Goodwin was easily subjectible to
psychological control; that her brothers and sister were so too, and that
they were all naturally sympathetic, then we can see that nothing more
occurred, even if the whole that is told be literally true, than falls
within the scope of such psychological forces as have in recent years been
manifested by embodied, and, we may add, by disembodied minds. If in her
anger the old woman forced or found rapport between her own sphere or aura
and that of Martha Goodwin, way was opened for injection of germs of
suffering to the girl's system, and the systems of others in rapport with
her. Way was opened through which the tormentor could, though absent, send
upon the child ugly wishes that would keep torturing her so long as the
old woman kept the wishes active; as perhaps she did in many of her waking
hours. The account says, "One or two things were _very remarkable_. All
their complaints were _in the daytime_, and they slept comfortably _all
night_." When the old woman was asleep, and her resentful feelings were
dormant, the children also slept.
A passage-way so opened as to admit the entrance of one, usually admits
others of the same kind to follow. Where the old woman's subduing
will-force had entered and gained sway, that of her sympathetic, and many
other spirits, might do the same; and could make the children's outer
forms either accept or reject, at the controller's pleasure, any books or
class of literature which should be offered for perusal. Catholic spirits,
or any spirit, liking a little fun, might keenly relish the work of
astonishing Cotton Mather and his ilk, by showing preferences antagonistic
to his own righteous ones.
The case of Philip Smith, a very intelligent, efficient, and highly
respected citizen of Hadley, Mass., exhibits analogous phenomena. We shall
not go into that case in detail. It occurred 1685, and is very
instructive. Being sick, sensitive, clairvoyant, and pining away, "he
uttered a hard suspicion" that one old Mrs. Webster, _who had once been
tried for witchcraft_, and also had taken offense at some of Smith's
official acts, "had made impressions with enchantments upon him." His
"suspicion" and sufferings fired the minds of young men in the town to go
"three or four times" and give that old woman disturbance. Drake, in
Woodward's "Hist. Series," No. VIII. p. 179, presents the following
account: "It is said by a reliable historian that the young miscreants
went to her house, dragged her out, and hung her up till she was almost
dead. They then cut her down, rolled her some time in the snow, and then
buried her up in it, leaving her, as they supposed, for dead. But by a
miracle, as it were, she survived this barbarity. Still more miraculous it
was, that the sick man was greatly relieved during the time the helpless
old woman was being so beastly abused." Mather, in his account (ib. p.
177) says, "All the while they were disturbing her, he was at ease, and
slept as a weary man." This is all possible, and not improbable. The man
was obviously very susceptible to psychological influences, and could
trace felt malignant forces to their source. She, no doubt, was a
turbulent and odd old woman, for she had been tried for witchcraft, and
was probably a natural psychologist. As long as rough handling caused her
to call in, and keep at home, and concentrate all her thoughts and forces
for self-defence and protection, no emanations from her went out to the
sick man, who then consequently dropped into quiet sleep.
One of these Goodwins, says Hutchinson, "I knew many years after. She had
the character of a very sober, virtuous woman, and never made any
acknowledgment of fraud in the transaction." Probably, therefore, there
was no fraud. This sober, virtuous woman, a party concerned, years
subsequently made profession of religion, continued long to live a useful
and respected life, and never made acknowledgment of fraud. The
probability is near to certainty that she never acted any.
And how was it with the others? "They returned to their ordinary behavior,
lived to adult age, and made profession of religion." Look at the case.
Four guileless, bright little sisters and brothers, residing together
under their father's watch, in the twinkling of an eye, flash upon the
gaze of the town in which they lived, seemingly as adroit and proficient
tricksters as were ever known, and all of them alike competent to their
several parts. They remain the town's wonder for months, and then all
return to their former behavior, grow up and live Christian lives among
the witnesses of their strange doings, and never make confession of fraud.
Was there any _fraud_? Only the over-credulous in self-powers of
divination backward will believe that there was.
In the process of watching these children, and the annoyances and
sufferings they endured, it was discovered that when absent from home they
were in great measure exempt from the special evils; therefore
arrangements were made for their abode elsewhere; and probably not for all
of them together in any one family. We find that the girl Martha became a
resident in Cotton Mather's family not many weeks after the commencement
of the great consternation. And it is stated that for a time none of her
extraordinary demeanor was manifested there; yet subsequently the fits and
antics revealed themselves abundantly, even under the roof of the
devil-fighting clergyman. Some sayings and doings while she was residing
there, manifested more frolicsome and quizzical motives than prompted the
manifestations described by Hutchinson.