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Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures
and Popular Music
Series Editors
Keith Gildart
University of Wolverhampton
Wolverhampton, UK
Anna Gough-Yates
University of Roehampton
London, UK
Sian Lincoln
Liverpool John Moores University
Liverpool, UK
Bill Osgerby
London Metropolitan University
London, UK
Lucy Robinson
University of Sussex
Brighton, UK
John Street
University of East Anglia
Norwich, UK
Peter Webb
University of the West of England
Bristol, UK
Matthew Worley
University of Reading
Reading, UK
From 1940s zoot-suiters and hepcats through 1950s rock ‘n’ rollers,
beatniks and Teddy boys; 1960s surfers, rude boys, mods, hippies and
bikers; 1970s skinheads, soul boys, rastas, glam rockers, funksters and
punks; on to the heavy metal, hip-hop, casual, goth, rave and clubber
styles of the 1980s, 90s, noughties and beyond, distinctive blends of fashion
and music have become a defining feature of the cultural landscape. The
Subcultures Network series is international in scope and designed to
explore the social and political implications of subcultural forms. Youth
and subcultures will be located in their historical, socio-economic and
cultural context; the motivations and meanings applied to the aesthetics,
actions and manifestations of youth and subculture will be assessed. The
objective is to facilitate a genuinely cross-disciplinary and transnational
outlet for a burgeoning area of academic study.
Global Dance
Cultures in the 1970s
and 1980s
Disco Heterotopias
Editors
Flora Pitrolo Marko Zubak
Department of English, Theatre and Department of Contemporary History
Creative Writing Croatian Institute of History
Birkbeck, University of London Zagreb, Croatia
London, UK
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Acknowledgements
This book has been a long time in the making and has acquired the
support of friends and allies through stratified conversations, debates,
listening sessions and parties with more people than we can thank here.
We would like to thank our colleagues from the disciplines and institu-
tions we work within, and Marko Zubak expressly wishes to thank the
Croatian Institute of History and Cost Action NEP4DISSENT for giving
him the freedom to research.
Some of the people who have helped us shape ideas related to this book
in its very early stages are Franco Fabbri, Rachel Haworth, Paul Long,
Ewa Mazierska, Goffredo Plastino and Gábor Vályi, aka DJ Shuriken. Our
gratitude goes to them for having given us both intellectual stimulus and
more public stages to begin to work on the ideas that eventually crystal-
lised in this volume.
We would like to thank Arabella Stanger, Mimi Haddon and Michael
Lawrence for giving this book a platform at the Brighton Disco! Conference
in June 2018 when we were still in the heat of working through this edito-
rial project, and to all the attendees of that conference for their generous
input, enlightened comments and enthusiasm for this book when it was
just beginning to take shape.
We wish to acknowledge generous help and input from Lucia
Udvardyova and Marysia Lewandowska; Colin Cumming’s eagle-eyed
work was invaluable in helping us move through the final throes of preparing
these texts and we want to thank him for his professionalism and interest
in our work.
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Introduction: Disco Heterotopias—Other Places, Other
Spaces, Other Lives 1
Flora Pitrolo and Marko Zubak
Montreal, Funkytown: Two Decades of Disco History 29
Will Straw
Dancin’ Days: Disco Flashes in 1970s Brazil 51
Ivan Paolo de Paris Fontanari
Japanese Disco as Pseudo-International Music101
Yusuke Wajima
Disco, Dancing, Globalization and Class in 1980s Hindi
Cinema127
Gregory D. Booth
Dancing Desire, Dancing Revolution: Sexuality and the
Politics of Disco in China Since the 1980s151
Qian Wang
vii
viii Contents
Yugoslav Disco: The Forgotten Sound of Late Socialism195
Marko Zubak
The Lebanese Music Experiment: Disco and Nightlife During
the Civil War223
Natalie Shooter and Ernesto Chahoud
Disco and Discontent in Nigeria: A Conversation251
Uchenna C. Ikonne, Flora Pitrolo, and Marko Zubak
Outer Space, Futurism, and the Quest for Disco Utopia281
Ken McLeod
Epilogue: Decolonising Disco—Counterculture, Postindustrial
Creativity, the 1970s Dance Floor and Disco303
Tim Lawrence
Index339
Notes on Contributors
ix
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
a book chapter, titled ‘The Birth of Enka’, for Made in Japan: Studies in
Popular Music (2014). His recent book, Odoru Showa Kayou (Dance
Music in the Showa Period (1926–1989), 2015), focuses on dance music in
modern Japan.
Qian Wang is Professor of Sociology at Yibin University. His research is
mainly focused on music sociology, cultural studies and gender studies in
the context of Chinese popular music. He examines the sophisticated
interaction between popular music and social transformation since the
economic reform and writes on issues such as gender and queer. He is the
author of Rock Crises: Research on Chinese Rock Music in the 1990s and the
co-author of Research on New Media and Urban Children (forthcoming).
Marko Zubak is a researcher at the Croatian Institute of History in
Zagreb, specialising in popular culture in socialist Eastern Europe. Recent
publications include the monograph The Yugoslav Youth Press (1968–1980)
(2018). He has curated the exhibitions ‘Yugoslav Youth Press as
Underground Press’ and ‘Stayin’ Alive: Socialist Disco Culture’, which
travelled across the region.holds a PhD in History from the Central
European University in Budapest. He is a research associate at the Croatian
Institute of History in Zagreb, focusing on popular, alternative and youth
cultures and media in the second half of the twentieth century in Eastern
Europe, on which he taught at several universities (Zagreb, Budapest,
Klagenfurt). He published on these topics, including a monograph The
Yugoslav Youth Press (1968–1980): Student Movements, Youth Subcultures
and Alternative Communist Media (2018). His recent interest focuses on
popular music and club cultures. He has curated two exhibitions (‘Yugoslav
Youth Press as Underground Press: 1968–1972’, ‘Stayin’ Alive: Socialist
Disco Culture’) that have travelled around the region and collaborated on
many others, most recently on ‘Restless Youth: 70 Years of Growing up in
Europe, 1945 to Now’ at the House of European History in Brussels.
Introduction: Disco Heterotopias—Other
Places, Other Spaces, Other Lives
F. Pitrolo (*)
Department of English, Theatre and Creative Writing, Birkbeck, University of
London, London, UK
M. Zubak
Department of Contemporary History, Croatian Institute of History,
Zagreb, Croatia
taken disco seriously over the past two decades, examining both its under-
ground roots and its more conventional aspects (Lawrence 2003; Flatley
and Kronengold 2008; Echols 2011; Lawrence 2016), the genre’s capac-
ity to be absorbed and remodelled across a wider geographical range has
not thus far been chartered, and disco’s other lives in local, marginal and
peripheral scenes remain mostly under-appreciated. But as it exploded,
atomised and travelled, disco served a number of different agendas: its
aesthetic rootedness in ideas of pleasure, transgression and escapism and
its formal malleability, constructed around a four-on-the-floor beat,
allowed it to permeate a number of local scenes for whom the meaning of
disco shifted, sometimes in unexpected and radical ways.
This volume seeks to go some of the way in opening up a terrain for the
global study of disco as a musical genre, as a dance culture and as a wider
cultural phenomenon. Across these chapters, our authors capture the vari-
ety of scenes, contexts and reasons for which disco took on diverse dimen-
sions in its global journey, acting as generous interpreters between
English-language scholarship and geo-political, ideological and sociologi-
cal landscapes that fall outside of its more well-trodden narratives. From
oil boom Nigeria to post-Invasion Czechoslovakia, from post-colonial
India to war-torn Lebanon, our aim here is to increase the visibility of
scenes that have hitherto been under-represented and to make some criti-
cal interventions in how to tackle the ideology of derivative musics and
‘glocal’ and ‘non-local’ music- and nightlife-related cultures. How can we
balance representation and appropriation in a globalised world? How can
we complicate the discourse between centre and periphery? How do dif-
ference and sameness play out in the complex travelling of global cultural
phenomena?
The book you hold in your hands is intended as a set of guided tours—
which may be a starting point for your own historical research and musical
discoveries, or an ulterior step of the way in debates you are already
embedded within—which can serve as tools of comparison and differen-
tiation. It contains rich historical and geo-political backgrounds, expert
analysis and much discographic detail. It is the result of deep reading, deep
listening, oral histories and personal discoveries; it is made by writers and
scholars who are also diggers, collectors, DJs, label bosses, cultural agita-
tors and people of the night, and targets the music lover as much as the
academic reader. Indeed, our curation of writers, contributions and inves-
tigative angles here seeks to establish a crucial connection between ‘scene’
and ‘field’, because there are important differences in the kinds of
INTRODUCTION: DISCO HETEROTOPIAS—OTHER PLACES, OTHER SPACES… 3
knowledge the two produce and in the ways in which that knowledge
circulates. Allowing these to overlap and cross-pollinate is crucial to enrich
our work from both sides, taking disco seriously as an object of analysis
without sacrificing its effects on lived experience.
[m]usic travels practically as long as it exists, but some routes are more fre-
quented than others. (…) In the twentieth century, music is used less in
open acts of colonisation and missionisation (not least because they were
replaced by subtler forms of dominance), yet its production and consump-
tion reflects well on the imbalances of power between different regions and
countries. (Mazierska in Gregory and Mazierska 2015, 8)
We are conscious that the terms ‘local’, ‘global’ and ‘glocal’ have to be
productively redefined at each turn, and indeed these and other terms
appear in this volume in multifarious ways which not only speak back to
ongoing debates in Anglophone scholarship but also reflect the cultural
and discursive positionalities of each author. This collection seeks to join a
protean move towards analytical differentiation in an interdisciplinary field
already marked by work such as that performed by Gregory and Mazierska
and many others (see, e.g., Mitchell 1996; Fairley 2001; Connell and
Gibson 2003; White 2012; Guerra and Quintela 2020), as well as single-
regional focus work (such as the volumes making up the Routledge
Popular Music Studies Made In series, as well as texts in the same series as
this book such as Marsh 2016, Lohman 2017, and Tosoni and Zuccalà
2020), work invested in both demolishing and rebuilding the critical and
racial palimpsests that still bury our understanding of many popular musics
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
for the said persons to come together to the meeting house in
Andover, the afflicted persons being there. After Mr. Barnard had
been at prayer, we were blindfolded, and our hands were laid upon
the afflicted persons, they being in their fits and falling into their fits
at our coming into their presence, as they said; and some led us and
laid our hands upon them, and then they said they were well, and
that we were guilty of afflicting of them; whereupon we were all
seized, as prisoners, by a warrant from the justice of the peace, and
forthwith carried to Salem. And by reason of that sudden surprisal,
we knowing ourselves altogether innocent of that crime, we were all
exceedingly astonished and amazed, and consternated and
affrighted even out of our reason; and our nearest and dearest
relations, seeing us in that dreadful condition, and knowing our
great danger, apprehending that there was no other way to save our
lives, as the case was then circumstanced, but by our confessing
ourselves to be such and such persons as the afflicted represented
us to be, they, out of tender love and pity, persuaded us to confess
what we did confess. And indeed that confession, that it is said we
made, was no other than what was suggested to us by some
gentlemen, they telling us that we were witches, and they knew it,
and we knew it, and they knew that we knew it, which made us
think that it was so; and our understanding, our reason, our faculties
almost gone, we were not capable of judging our condition; as also
the hard measures they used with us rendered us incapable of
making our defence, but said any thing and every thing which they
desired, and most of what we said was but in effect a consenting to
what they said. Some time after, when we were better composed,
they telling us of what we had confessed, we did profess that we
were innocent and ignorant of such things; and we hearing that
Samuel Wardwell had renounced his confession, and quickly after
condemned and executed, some of us were told that we were going
after Wardwell.
“Mary Osgood, Deliverance Dane, Sarah Wilson,
Mary Tiler, Abigail Barker, Hannah Tiler.”
These unhappy people were not only in the manner which has
been related, brought to confession, but also obliged to swear to the
truth of it. At the Superior Court in January they all abode by their
confessions. They could not tell what the disposition of the court and
juries would be, and the temptation was the same as at the first
examination. But there was one Margaret Jacobs, who had more
courage than the rest. She had been brought not only to accuse
herself, but Mr. Burroughs, the minister, and even her own
grandfather. Before their execution, she was struck with horror, and
begged forgiveness of Burroughs, who readily forgave her, and
prayed with her, and for her. An imposthume in her head prevented
her trial at the court of Oyer and Terminer. At the Superior Court in
January she delivered a writing in the words following:—
“The humble declaration of Margaret Jacobs unto the honoured
court now sitting at Salem, sheweth,
“That whereas your poor and humble declarant being closely
confined here in Salem jail for the crime of witchcraft, which crime,
thanks be to the Lord, I am altogether ignorant of, as will appear at
the great day of judgment. May it please the honoured court, I was
cried out upon by some of the possessed persons, as afflicting of
them; whereupon I was brought to my examination, which persons
at the sight of me fell down, which did very much startle and affright
me. The Lord above knows I knew nothing, in the least measure,
how or who afflicted them; they told me, without doubt I did, or else
they would not fall down at me; they told me if I would not confess,
I should be put down into the dungeon and would be hanged, but if
I would confess I should have my life; the which did so affright me,
with my own vile wicked heart, to save my life made me make the
confession I did, which confession, may it please the honoured
court, is altogether false and untrue. The very first night after I had
made my confession, I was in such horror of conscience that I could
not sleep, for fear the Devil should carry me away for telling such
horrid lies. I was, may it please the honoured court, sworn to my
confession, as I understand since, but then, at that time, was
ignorant of it, not knowing what an oath did mean. The Lord, I
hope, in whom I trust, out of the abundance of his mercy, will
forgive me my false forswearing myself. What I said was altogether
false, against my grandfather, and Mr. Burroughs, which I did to save
my life and to have my liberty; but the Lord, charging it to my
conscience made me in so much horror, that I could not contain
myself before I had denied my confession, which I did, though I saw
nothing but death before me, choosing rather death with a quiet
conscience, than to live in such horror, which I could not suffer.
Whereupon my denying my confession, I was committed to close
prison, where I have enjoyed more felicity in spirit a thousand times
than I did before in my enlargement.
“And now, may it please your honours, your poor and humble
declarant having, in part, given your honours a description of my
condition, do leave it to your honours pious and judicious discretions
to take pity and compassion on my young and tender years; to act
and do with me as the Lord above and your honours shall see good,
having no friend but the Lord to plead my cause for me; not being
guilty in the least measure of the crime of witchcraft, nor any other
sin that deserves death from man; and your poor and humble
declarant shall forever pray, as she is bound in duty, for your
honours’ happiness in this life, and eternal felicity in the world to
come. So prays your honours declarant.
Margaret Jacobs.”
I shall now proceed in the relation of facts. The accusers having
charged a great number in the county of Essex, I find in the
examinations frequent mention of strangers whose shapes or
specters were unknown to the afflicted, and now and then the
names of a person at Boston and other distant places. Several some
time after mention Mr. Dean, one of the ministers of Andover, but
touch him more tenderly, somewhat as Mrs. Osgood in her
confession, than they do Burroughs. Mr. Dean probably was better
known and esteemed than the other, or he would have stood a bad
chance.
Mr. Nathaniel Cary,[56] a gentleman of figure in the town of
Charlestown, hearing that some at Salem had complained of his wife
for afflicting them, they went to Salem together out of curiosity to
see whether the afflicted knew her. They happened to arrive just as
the justices were going into the meeting house, where they held the
court, to examine prisoners. All that were brought in were accused,
and the girls fell into fits as usual, but no notice was taken of Mrs.
Cary except that one or two of the afflicted came to her and asked
her name. After the examination her husband went into a tavern,
having encouragement that he should have an opportunity of
discoursing with the girl who had accused his wife. There he met
with John the afflicted Indian, who attended as a servant in the
house. He had been there but a short time before the girls came in
and tumbled about the floor, and cried out Cary, and a warrant from
the justices was immediately sent to apprehend her. Two of the girls
accused her, neither of whom she had ever heard of before, and
soon after the Indian joined them. The justices, by her husband’s
account, used her very roughly, and it was to no purpose to make
any defence or to offer any bail, but she was committed to prison in
Boston and removed from thence by habeas corpus to Cambridge
and there laid in irons. When the trials at Salem came on her
husband went there, and finding how things were managed, thought
it high time to contrive her escape. They fled to New-York, where
Gov. Fletcher received them courteously. They petitioned for a trial in
the county where they lived. If the judges supposed it necessary to
try the offence where it was committed, her body being in Middlesex
and her specter in Essex, it is probable they were under doubt.
About a week after, viz. the latter end of May, some of the afflicted
accused Capt. John Alden,[57] of Boston. He had been many years
master of a sloop in the country service employed between Boston
and the eastern country, to supply the garrisons, &c.; and the
justices allowed had always had the character of an honest man,
though one of them, Gedney, told him at his examination he then
saw cause to think otherwise. Alden, in the account he gives, says
that the accuser pointed first to another man and said nothing, but
that upon the man who held her his stooping down to her ear, she
cried out Alden, Alden, &c. All were ordered into the street and a
ring made, and then she cried out, There stands Alden, a bold fellow
with his hat on, sells powder and shot to the Indians, lies with the
squaws and has papooses. He was immediately taken into custody
of the marshal [George Herrick] and required to deliver up his
sword. A further examination was had in the meeting house, his
hands held open by the officer that he might not pinch the afflicted,
and upon their being struck down at the sight of him and making
their usual cries he was committed to the jail in Boston, where he
lay fifteen weeks, and then was prevailed on by his friends to make
his escape, and to absent himself until the consternation of the
people was a little abated, and they had recovered their senses.
By this time about one hundred persons were in the several
prisons[58] charged with witchcraft. The court of Oyer and Terminer
began at Salem the first week in June [June 2d]. Only one of the
accused, viz. Bridget Bishop,[59] alias Oliver, was brought upon trial.
She had been charged with witchcraft twenty years before, by a
person who acknowledged his guilt in accusing her upon his death-
bed; but being a fractious old woman the losses the neighbors met
with in their cattle and poultry, or by oversetting their carts, &c.,
were ascribed to her, and now given in evidence. This, together with
the hearsay from the specters sworn to in court by the afflicted and
confessing confederates, and an excrescence found some where
upon her which was called a teat, was thought by court and jury
plenary proof, and she was convicted, and on the 10th of June
executed.
The court adjourned to the 30th of June, and in the mean time
the Governor and Council desired the opinion of several ministers
upon the state of things as they then stood, which was given as
follows:—
“The return of several ministers consulted by his excellency and
the honourable council upon the present witchcraft in Salem village.
Boston, June 15th, 1692.
“1. The afflicted state of our poor neighbours, that are now
suffering by molestations from the invisible world, we apprehend so
deplorable, that we think their condition calls for the utmost help of
all persons in their several capacities.
“2. We cannot but, with all thankfulness, acknowledge the success
which the merciful God has given unto the sedulous and assiduous
endeavours of our honourable rulers, to detect the abominable
witchcrafts which have been committed in the country, humbly
praying, that the discovery of those mysterious and mischievous
wickednesses may be perfected.
“3. We judge that, in the prosecution of these and all such
witchcrafts, there is need of a very critical and exquisite caution, lest
by too much credulity for things received only upon the Devil’s
authority, there be a door opened for a long train of miserable
consequences, and Satan get an advantage over us; for we should
not be ignorant of his devices.
“4. As in complaints upon witchcrafts, there may be matters of
inquiry which do not amount unto matters of presumption, and there
may be matters of presumption which yet may not be matters of
conviction, so it is necessary, that all proceedings thereabout be
managed with an exceeding tenderness towards those that may be
complained of, especially if they have been persons formerly of an
unblemished reputation.
“5. When the first inquiry is made into the circumstances of such
as may lie under the just suspicion of witchcrafts, we could wish that
there may be admitted as little as is possible of such noise, company
and openness as may too hastily expose them that are examined,
and that there may no thing be used as a test for the trial of the
suspected, the lawfulness whereof may be doubted among the
people of God; but that the directions given by such judicious writers
as Perkins and Bernard [be consulted in such a case].
“6. Presumptions whereupon persons may be committed, and,
much more, convictions whereupon persons may be condemned as
guilty of witchcrafts, ought certainly to be more considerable than
barely the accused person’s being represented by a specter unto the
afflicted; inasmuch as it is an undoubted and notorious thing, that a
demon may, by God’s permission, appear, even to ill purposes, in the
shape of an innocent, yea, and a virtuous man. Nor can we esteem
alterations made in the sufferers, by a look or touch of the accused,
to be an infallible evidence of guilt, but frequently liable to be
abused by the Devil’s legerdemains.
“7. We know not whether some remarkable affronts given to the
Devils by our disbelieving those testimonies whose whole force and
strength is from them alone, may not put a period unto the progress
of the dreadful calamity begun upon us, in the accusations of so
many persons, whereof some, we hope, are yet clear from the great
transgression laid unto their charge.
“8. Nevertheless, we cannot but humbly recommend unto the
government, the speedy and vigorous prosecution of such as have
rendered themselves obnoxious, according to the direction given in
the laws of God, and the wholesome statutes of the English nation,
for the detection of witchcrafts.”[60]
The two first and the last sections of this advice took away the
force of all the others, and the prosecutions went on with more vigor
than before. The exquisite caution in separating the evidence upon
the Devil’s authority from the rest, in the third section, and the
disbelieving those testimonies whose whole force is from the Devil
alone in the seventh section, must have puzzled the judges, and
they had need of some further authorities to guide them than
Perkins or Bernard,[61] or any other books they were furnished with.
[62]
I was at a loss until I met with this return, by what law they
proceeded.[63] The old constitution was dissolved; no laws of the
colony were in force, witchcraft is no offence by the common law of
England. The statute of James I. was indeed more ancient than the
colony charter, but no statute had ever been adopted here. The
General Assembly had not then met, and there could have been no
provision made by a Province law, but it seems by the eighth section
that the English statutes were made the rule upon this extraordinary
occasion. But what authority the court had to change the sentence
from burning to hanging, I cannot conceive. Before the other trials
the law against witchcraft under the first charter was established
with the other Colony laws. The authority by which the court sat
may as well be called in question. No authority is given by the
Province charter to any powers short of the whole General Court to
constitute courts of justice. The Governor indeed, with the consent
of the Council, appoints judges, commissioners of Oyer and
Terminer, and all officers belonging to the courts. It is strange they
did not tarry until the Assembly met. A judge shall not be punished
for mere error of judgment, but it certainly behooves him, in a trial
for life especially, to consider well by what authority he acts.
The court was held again by adjournment at Salem, June 30. Six
[five] women were brought upon trial, Sarah Good, Rebecca Nurse,
Susannah Martin, Elizabeth Howe, and Sarah Wildes.[64] The court
and jury seemed to have had no difficulty with any but Nurse. She
was a church member, and probably her good character caused the
jury to bring in a verdict not guilty; but the accusers making a very
great clamor and the court expressing their dissatisfaction with the
verdict, the jury desired to go out again, and then brought her in
guilty. The foreman of the jury gave the following certificate to
satisfy her relations what induced an alteration of the verdict.
“July 4th, 1692.
“I Thomas Fisk, the subscriber hereof, being one of
them that were of the jury the last week at Salem court,
upon the trial of Rebekah Nurse, &c. being desired, by
some of the relations, to give a reason why the jury
brought her in guilty, after the verdict not guilty; I do
hereby give my reasons to be as follows, viz.:
“When the verdict, not guilty, was [given], the
honoured court was pleased to object against it, saying to
them, that they think they let slip the words which the
prisoner at the bar spake against herself, which were
spoken in reply to Goodwife Hobbs and her daughter, who
had been faulty in setting their hands to the Devil’s book,
as they had confessed formerly; the words were, ‘What do
these persons give in evidence against me now? they used
to come among us?’ After the honoured court had
manifested their dissatisfaction of the verdict, several of
the jury declared themselves desirous to go out again,
and thereupon the honoured court gave leave; but when
we came to consider the case, I could not tell how to take
her words as an evidence against her, till she had a further
opportunity to put her sense upon them, if she would take
it; and then going into court, I mentioned the words
aforesaid, which by one of the court were affirmed to
have been spoken by her, she being then at the bar, but
made no reply nor interpretation of them; whereupon,
these words were to me a principal evidence against her.
Thomas Fisk.”
Nurse, being informed of the use which had been made of her
words, gave in a declaration to the court, that “when she said Hobbs
and her daughter were of her company, she meant no more than
that they were prisoners as well as herself; and that, being hard of
hearing, she did not know what the foreman of the jury said.” But
her declaration had no effect.
The minister of Salem Mr. [Nicholas] Noyes was over zealous in
these prosecutions. He excommunicated this honest old woman after
her condemnation. One part of the form seems to have been
unnecessary, delivering her over to Satan. He supposed she had
delivered herself up to him long before. But her life and conversation
had been such, of which many testimonies were given, that the
remembrance of it, as soon as the people returned to the use of
their reason, must have wiped off all the reproach which had been
occasioned by the manner of her death.
Calef, who when he wrote was generally supposed to be under
unreasonable prejudice against the country, which lessened the
credit of his narrative, says that at the trial of Sarah Good, one of
the afflicted fell into a fit, and after recovery cried out that the
prisoner had stabbed her and broke the knife in doing it, and a piece
of the knife was found upon the afflicted person; but a young man
declared that the day before he broke that very knife and threw
away a piece of it, this afflicted person being then present; and adds
that the court bid her tell no more lies, but went on notwithstanding
this fraud to improve her as a witness against other prisoners.[65]
This account, if true, would give me a more unfavorable opinion
even of the integrity of the court, if I had not met with something
not unlike to it in the trials before Sir Matthew Hale. The afflicted
children in their fits upon the least touch from Rose Cullender, one of
the supposed witches, would shriek out, which they would not do
when touched by any other person. Lest there should be any fraud,
Lord Cornwallis, Sir Edmund Bacon, Sergeant Keeling and other
gentlemen attended one of the girls whilst she was in her fits at
another part of the hall, and one of the witches was brought, and an
apron put before the girl’s eyes, but instead of the witch’s hand
another person’s hand was taken to touch the girl, who thereupon
shrieked out as she used to do. The gentlemen returned and
declared to the court they believed the whole was an imposture. The
witch was found guilty notwithstanding, and the judge and all the
court were fully satisfied with the verdict and awarded sentence
accordingly.
Susannah Martin had been suspected, ever since 1669, so that a
great number of witch stories were told of her, and many of them
given in evidence. One of the other being told by the minister at the
place of execution, that he knew she was a witch, and therefore
advised her to confess, she replied that he lied, and that she was no
more a witch than he was a wizard, and if he took away her life, God
would give him blood to drink.
At one of these trials it is said that one of the accusers charged
Mr. Willard, a minister of Boston, and that she was sent out of court,
and afterwards a report spread that she was mistaken in the person.
[66] It is more probable that she intended [John] Willard, who was
then in prison, and that it was given out that the audience were
mistaken.
At the next adjournment, Aug. 5th, George Burroughs, John
Proctor and Elizabeth his wife, John Willard, George Jacobs and
Martha Carrier were all found guilty, condemned, and all executed
the 19th of August, except Elizabeth Proctor, who escaped by
pleading her belly.
Burroughs had preached some years before, but it seems not to
acceptance, at Salem village. Afterward he preached at Wells in the
Province of Maine. As a specimen of the proceedings in all the trials
we shall be a little more particular in relating his.
The indictment was as follows.
Anno Regis et Reginæ, &c. quarto.
Essex ss. The jurors for our sovereign lord and lady the king and
queen present, that George Burroughs, late of Falmouth in the
province of Massachusetts Bay, clerk, the ninth day of May, in the
fourth year of the reign of our sovereign lord and lady William and
Mary, by the grace of God of England, Scotland, France and Ireland,
king and queen, defenders of the faith, &c. and divers other days
and times, as well before as after, certain detestable arts called
witchcrafts and sorceries, wickedly and feloniously hath used,
practised and exercised, at and within the township of Salem, in the
county of Essex aforesaid, in, upon and against one Mary Walcot, of
Salem village, in the county of Essex, single woman; by which said
wicked arts, the said Mary Walcot, the ninth day of May in the fourth
year abovesaid, and divers other days and times as well before as
after, was and is tortured, afflicted, pined, consumed, wasted and
tormented, against the peace of our sovereign lord and lady the king
and queen, and against the form of the statute in that case made
and provided. Endorsed Billa vera. Three other bills were found for
the like upon other persons, to all which he pleaded not guilty, and
put himself upon trial, &c.
The afflicted and confessing witches were first examined, for
although, by the advice of the elders, this kind of evidence was not
to be deemed infallible; yet it was presumptive, and, with other
circumstances, sufficient proof. It would be tedious to recite the
whole of this evidence, especially as it was of the same sort with
what has been already related in the confessions. The most material
circumstance which distinguished him [Burroughs] from the rest,
was, that he was to be a king in Satan’s empire.
The other evidence was that being a little man he had performed
feats beyond the strength of a giant; particularly that he would take
a gun of seven feet barrel behind the lock and hold it out with one
hand; that he would take up a barrel of molasses or cider and carry
them in a disadvantageous place and posture from a canoe to the
shore; and when in his vindication he urged that an Indian which
was there held out the gun as he did, the witnesses not seeing or
not remembering any Indian, it was supposed it must be the black
man or the devil, who, the witnesses swore, looks like an Indian.
Besides this it was sworn that he had treated his wives, having
been twice married, very harshly, and would pretend, when he had
been absent from home, that he could tell what had been said to
them, and that he persuaded them to swear, and to oblige
themselves by a writing, which in the printed account of the trial is
called “a Covenant,” not to reveal his secrets, and that they had
privately complained to the neighbors that their house was haunted
by spirits. One of his wife’s brothers also swore that going out after
strawberries they rode very softly—slowly, I suppose—two or three
miles, when Burroughs went into the bushes, after which they rode
back a quick pace, and when they came near home, to their
astonishment found him on foot with them, and that he fell to
chiding his wife for talking with her brother about him, and said he
knew their thoughts, which his brother intimated was more than the
Devil knew, but Burroughs replied his god told him.
The prisoner said, in his defence, a man was with him when his
brother left him, which was also supposed to be the black man.
This was the sum of the evidence. He is said to have used many
twistings and turnings, and to have contradicted himself in making
his defence. At his execution he concluded his prayer with the Lord’s
prayer, probably to show his innocence, for it was generally received
that a witch could not say the Lord’s prayer, and it was used as a
test at the examinations when several of the old women, as children
often do, blundered at give and forgive in the fourth and fifth
petitions, and it was improved against them.
September 9th, Martha Corey, Mary Esty, Alice Parker, Ann
Pudcator, Dorcas Hoar and Mary Bradbury were tried; and Sept. 17
Margaret Scott, Wilmot Read, Samuel Wardwell, Mary Parker, Abigail
Faulkner, Rebekah Eames, Mary Lacey, Ann Foster, Abigail Hobbs,
and all received sentence of death. Those in italics were executed
September 22d.
Mary Esty, who was sister to Nurse, put into the court a petition in
which she tells them that, although she was conscious of her own
innocence, yet she did not ask her own life, but prayed them before
they condemned any more they would examine some of the
confessing witches, who she knew had belied themselves and
others, which she was sure would appear in the world to which she
was going, if it did not in this world.
Those that were not executed probably confessed their guilt. All
whose examinations remain on the files, of which there are three or
four, did so. Wardwell had confessed, but recanted and suffered. His
own wife, as well as his daughter, accused him and saved
themselves. There are a great number of instances of children and
parents accusing each other. I have met with no other than this of
husbands or wives, and surely this one ought not to have been
suffered.
Giles Corey was the only person, besides what have been named,
who suffered death. He, seeing the fate of those who had put
themselves upon trial, refused to plead to the indictment; but the
judges who were not careful enough in observing the rules of law in
favor of the prisoners, took care to do it against this unhappy man,
and he was pressed to death; the only instance I have ever heard of
in any of the English colonies.[67] History furnishes us perhaps with
as many instances of cruelty proceeding from superstition, as from
the most savage barbarous temper of mind.
Besides the irregularities which I have already mentioned in these
trials, the court admitted evidence to be given of facts, not laid in
the indictments, to prove witchcraft eight, ten or fifteen years
before; indeed, no other sort of evidence was offered to prove facts
in the indictments but the spectral evidence, which, in the opinion of
the divines, was not sufficient. It would have been well if they had
consulted lawyers[68] also, who would have told them that evidence
ought not to be admitted even against the general character of
persons charged criminally unless they offer evidence in favor of it,
much less ought their whole lives to be arraigned and no opportunity
given them of making defence.
This court of Oyer and Terminer, happily for the country, sat no
more. Nineteen persons had been executed; but the eyes of the
country in general were not yet opened. The prison at Salem was so
full that some were obliged to be removed, and many were in other
prisons reserved for trial. The General Court which sat in October,
although they had revived the old colony law which was in these
words, “If any man or woman be a witch, that is, hath or consulteth
with a familiar spirit, they shall be put to death”—yet this not being
explicit enough, they enacted another in the words of the statute of
King James, which continued in force until the trials were over, but
both were afterwards disallowed by the crown.[69] Another act was
passed, constituting a Supreme Court,[70] which was to be held at
Salem in January; but before that time many who had been forward
in these prosecutions became sensible of their error. Time for
consideration seems to be reason enough to be assigned for it; but
another reason has been given. Ordinarily persons of the lowest
rank, the dregs of the people, have had the misfortune of being
charged with witchcraft; and although this was the case in many
instances here, yet there were a number of women of as reputable
families as any in the towns where they lived, who were charged
and imprisoned, and several persons of still superior rank were
hinted at by the pretended bewitched or the confessing witches. The
latter had no other way of saving themselves. Some of the persons
were publicly named. Dudley Bradstreet, a justice of the peace, who
had been appointed one of President Dudley’s council, thought it
necessary to abscond; so did his brother John Bradstreet, sons of
the late Governor Bradstreet. Calef says it was intimated that Sir
William Phips’s lady was accused.[71] One at Boston complained of
being afflicted by the secretary of Connecticut colony.[72]
At the Superior Court held at Salem in January, the grand jury
found bills against about fifty persons, all but one or two women,
who either were in prison, or under bonds for their appearance.
They were all but three acquitted by the petty jury, and those three
were pardoned by the Governor. Divers others were brought upon
trial soon after at Charlestown in the county of Middlesex, and all
acquitted. The juries changed sooner than the judges. The opinion
which the latter had of their own superior understanding and
judgment probably made them more backward in owning or
discovering their errors. One of them, however, Mr. Sewall, who
always had the character of great integrity, at a public fast sometime
after gave in a bill, or note, to the minister, acknowledging his errors
and desiring to humble himself in the sight of God and his people,
and stood up while the note was reading.[73] It is said that the chief
justice Mr. Stoughton being informed of this act of one of his
brethren, remarked upon it, that for himself, when he sat in
judgment he had the fear of God before his eyes, and gave his
opinion according to the best of his understanding, and although it
might appear afterwards that he had been in an error, he saw no
necessity of a public acknowledgment of it. One of the ministers,
who in the time of it approved of the court’s proceeding, remarked
in his diary soon after that many were of opinion innocent blood had
been shed. The afflicted were never brought to trial for their
imposture. Many of them are said to have proved profligate,
abandoned people, and others to have passed the remainder of their
lives in a state of obscurity and contempt.[74]
Erratum.—The reference, in the text, to Note 49, should
have been placed after the word “proceeded,” at the end
of the first sentence of the paragraph.
p.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The council met on the 16th, 17th, 20th, 24th and 27th of
May, 1692. On the 27th the appointments named (of sixty-seven
justices, eight sheriffs, and two coroners) were made. The
twenty-eight councillors were also authorized to act as justices in
their own localities. This injury to the manuscript was occasioned
by its being thrown into the street during the stamp-act riot on
the evening of August 26, 1765, when Gov. Hutchinson’s house
was sacked. In his subsequent draft, as the date was missing, he
did not supply it, but said “At the first general council,” &c. This
paragraph commences on page 8 of the manuscript.
p.
[3] Johnson.
h.
[4] The name of this woman was not Mary Oliver, but Mary
Parsons. She was tried in Boston, May 13, 1651, on the charge of
witchcraft and for murdering her own child. She was convicted on
the latter charge on her own confession, and sentenced to be
hanged. She was reprieved till May 29 (Mass. Rec. iv. p. i. p. 47).
In Judd’s History of Hadley (p. 234), it appears that Mary Parsons
was again tried for witchcraft in 1661, and discharged. This is
doubtless an error in copying or printing 1661 for 1651, when the
trial already named took place; for in both instances she was
charged with bewitching the children of Mr. Moxon the minister.
Mr. Moxon returned to England in 1652.
Hugh Parsons, her husband, had previously been tried and
convicted of witchcraft; and the most damaging charges against
him had been brought by his wife. Among these were the
following:—1. Mrs. P. had an intimate friend Mrs. Smith, to whom
she freely expressed her mind. Now Mrs. Smith was a person who
went little abroad, and Mrs. P. was sure she would not speak of
the secrets committed to her trust; and yet her husband knew all
about their conversation. 2. He would be out late nights; and half
an hour before he came home, she would hear strange noises
about the house. 3. He would come home in a distempered mind,
put out the fire, pull off the bed clothes, and throw peas about
the house. 4. He would gabble in his sleep, have strange dreams,
and say he had been fighting the Devil. The jury found him guilty.
The magistrates set aside the verdict, and the case came before
the General Court at Boston, May 31, 1652, when he was
acquitted (Ibid. p. 96). The numerous and very curious
depositions in the Springfield cases may be seen in the Appendix
of Drake’s Annals of Witchcraft, 1869, pp. 219-258. Hutchinson
(in note, vol. i. p. 165) mentions the case of Hugh Parsons, but
not that of his wife. He mentions it again (vol. ii. p. 22), and does
not seem to be aware that his Mary Oliver case was that of
Parsons’s wife. My references to Hutchinson are to the edition of
1795.
p.
[8] This was the case of Mrs. Kendal, of Cambridge, who was
executed for bewitching to death a child of Goodman Genings, of
Watertown. The principal evidence was that of a Watertown
nurse, who testified that the said Kendal did make much of the
child, and then the child was well, but quickly changed in color
and died a few hours after. The court took this evidence without
calling the parents of the child. After the execution the parents
denied that their child was bewitched, and stated that it died
from imprudent exposure to cold by the nurse the night before.
The nurse soon after was put in prison for adultery, and there
died, and so the matter was not further inquired into. Hale’s
Modest Inquiry, p. 18.
Rev. Lucius R. Paige, of Cambridgeport, has recently found in
the Middlesex court records, 1660, another alleged case of
witchcraft in Cambridge, which was tried that year. Winifred
Holman, an aged widow, was accused by her neighbors, John
Gibson and wife, their son John Gibson, Jr., and their daughter
Rebecca, wife of Charles Stearns. Actions of defamation were
commenced against these parties, and on the trial, they, by way
of justification, presented their supposed proofs of witchcraft,
some details of which may be seen in Hist. and Geneal. Register,
vol. xxiv. p. 59. Probably other cases were tried in the courts of
that period, of which nothing is now known. John Dunton, in
1683, said there had been twenty cases of witchcraft recently
tried in the colony. (Letters, p. 72.)
p.
[10] See Mass. Rec., vol. iv. pt. 1, p. 269. Joshua Scottow’s
representation, dated March 7, 1655-6, that he did not intend to
oppose the proceedings of the court in the case of Ann Hibbins, is
in Mass. Archives, vol. cxxxv. fol. 1. She was executed June 19,
1656.
p.
[11] Magnalia.
h.
[12] The case of Ann Cole was fully reported in a letter by Mr.
John Whiting, minister at Hartford, under whose observation it
occurred, to Increase Mather, dated Dec. 10, 1682. The document
is one of the Mather Papers, and is printed in Mass. Hist. Soc.
Coll., vol. xxxviii. pp. 466-469. An abstract of the case is in
Increase Mather’s Remarkable Providences, chap. v. pp. 96-99,
London ed. 1856, and Cotton Mather’s Magnalia, Hartford ed.
1855, vol. ii. p. 448. Several of the incidents are not correctly
stated by Hutchinson, either in the manuscript or printed text.
Ann Cole did not live next door to a Dutch family. The name of
the woman executed, Greensmith, appears in both abstracts by
the Mathers, but not in Mr. Whiting’s original statement. The
woman and her husband were both executed.
p.
[13] This woman was one of the victims hanged for witchcraft
at Salem, in 1692. The evidence offered at her examination is in
Mather’s Wonders, pp. 70-76; Calef’s More Wonders, pp. 125-132,
and Woodward’s Records of Salem Witchcraft, vol. i. pp. 193-233.
She bore the reputation of a witch for many years, and her suits
at law frequently brought her name into the General Court
records.—Mass. Rec. iv. pt. 2, pp. 540-555; v. pp. 6, 26.
p.
[17] In the printed text Gov. Hutchinson gives but four lines to
the Morse case. Fuller details may be found in Remarkable
Providences, pp. 101-111; Magnalia, vol. ii. pp. 450-452, and
Drake’s Annals, pp. 144-150. In his Appendix (pp. 258-296), Mr.
Drake has given depositions and other papers connected with the
proceedings against Mrs. Morse. Other depositions, with a
petition of Wm. Morse in behalf of his wife, are in Mass. Archives,
vol. cxxxv. fol. 11-19.
Mrs. Morse was convicted 20 May, 1680, and sentenced to be
hanged. June 1, she was reprieved till the next session of the
court. “Nov. 3. The deputies, on perusal of the acts of the
honored court of assistants relating to the woman condemned for
witchcraft, do not understand the reason why execution of the
sentence given against her by the court is not executed, and that
her second reprieval seems to us to be beyond what the law will
allow, and do therefore judge meet to declare ourselves against
it, with reference to the concurrence of the honored magistrates
hereto.” This action was “not consented to by the magistrates.”
(MS. memoranda in Mass. Archives, vol. cxxxv. fol. 18.) The
deputies subsequently voted to give her a new trial; but the
magistrates refused. Between this disagreement of the deputies
and magistrates she escaped punishment. She was released from
prison, but never acquitted or pardoned.
p.
[19] Magnalia.
h.
[25] This date is correct. It is singular that in his final draft the
author should be in doubt, and say, “in 1687 or 1688.”
p.
[37] Amy Duny and Rose Cullender, “two wrinkled old women,”
were tried and convicted before Sir Matthew Hale at Bury St.
Edmunds, county of Suffolk, in 1664-5. The case is reported in