Category Archives: Death in Salem

Medical care in 1802 – Pain management

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To modern eyes, health care 200 years ago was primitive at best, lethal at worse. A recent knee replacement inspired me to consider medical care and pain management. (A friend of mine told me that a knee replacement is essentially an amputation of one’s leg.) However, it is described, it is a painful procedure.

The choices for treating pain were limited. I think we have all heard the story of the wounded man being treated with a glass of whiskey and a stick clamped between the teeth. Alcohol was used to help the patient into insensibility as well as a disinfectant.

Another choice was salicylic acid, the active ingredient in aspirin. Of course, it wasn’t aspirin. yet; the distilling of salicylic acid did not take place until late in the nineteenth center. No, it had to be used in its natural state. The leaves of the willow tree was steeped into a tea which was given to the patient as an analgesic. As a blood thinner and an anti-inflammatory, it is given to surgical patients and heart attack patients alike. It is still one of the most widely used medications in the world.

Finally, there were the opiates. The sap of the opium poppy has been used for millennia to treat pain. Of course, none of the stronger extracts had been distilled from the poppy until 1820 (morphine) and beyond.

One of the early methods of gaining the analgesic effects of the opium was to steep the straw into a tea. (I allude to this in Death in Salem with a character addicted to ‘straw tea’.) But the most common method of ingesting opium was as laudanum, a tincture of opium and alcohol. A reddish brown liquid, it was extremely bitter. By the early eighteen hundreds, laudanum was common and during the eighteen hundreds it became an ingredient in many patent medicines. It was frequently prescribed to women for menstrual cramps and various aches and pains. As might be expected, addiction was prevalent. Mary Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln’s wife, was an addict. Another fun fact: nurses would spoon feed laudanum to the infants in their care to help them sleep. And if that doesn’t make your hair curl, I don’t know what will.

Laudanum is still available by prescription.

Our world of Tylenol and Ibuprofen seems almost like paradise in comparison.

The Feral Chicken

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In the interests of accuracy, I research many many things for inclusion into my books. I’ve dyed with indigo, for example . (And what an adventure that was; it smells like rancid pee.) I’ve gone interesting places, such as Salem (for Death in Salem) and the Great Dismal Swamp of Virginia (for Death in the Great Dismal).

And I try different recipes and eat things I might not otherwise eat, such as a Shaker pie made of heavily sugared sliced fresh lemons (so sour it could not be eaten) or ployes (a kind of pancake made from buckwheat and not bad.)

My latest experiment – a free range chicken. My husband and I belong to a CSA. They have a chicken share but this offering was not from the share. It was a hen past her egg laying days. So, in the spirit of adventure – and tasting a chicken as our ancestors might have, I took a chicken.

I was warned to stew it gently which I did. I have tasted venison that was more flavorful and tenderer than this chicken. In addition, the chicken was so small it would not have fed a hungry man. The drumsticks had about an oz of meat on them. If this was an example of the chickens available back then, it is no wonder the early colonists relied on hunting.

Dame Schools

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In several of my books, Rees’s children attend dame schools. I mention them almost without a description. (Of course I mention the schooling received at the hands of the Shakers. Boys and girls were segregated: boys were taught by the men during the winter and girls by the women during the summer.)

Well, what are dame schools?

The New England Puritans believed that Satan would try to keep people from understanding the scriptures so it was decided that all children be taught to read. In fact, the first American schools arose in New England. The Boston Latin School was founded in 1635 and the Mather School in 1639 in Dorchester.In 1642 the Massachusetts Bay Colony made town schools compulsory and other New England colonies soon followed. These were for white boys only. Common schools were established in the 1700s but a tuition was charged.

If parents could not homeschool their children they went to dame schools. Considering how busy most women were I wondered how that worked out. With that said, however, there were enough educated women in the North who could function as teachers. Usually they were widows who taught in their own home. They were paid in money but also in kind – baked goods, produce, alcohol and the like. (I imagine the abilities of these untrained teachers varied widely – from essentially a day care to a real school. But I digress.)

In the beginning education focused on reading and ‘rithmetic but soon it was the four R’s; ‘riting and religion as well. Some of the dame schools offered girls embroidery, sewing and other such graces. Dame schools went up to eight grade and most girls went no farther. Boys, however, might move to a grammar school where they were taught advanced arithmetic, Latin and Greek by a male teacher.

There was also a huge divergence between the North and the South. Planters educated their children with tutors and son were frequently sent to England or Scotland for schooling. During the early part of the 1800s, it was against the law to teach slaves but schools for white children were opened in Georgia and South Carolina (1811). Segregated schools for children of all races began opening during Reconstruction and continued until 1954 when the Supreme Court declared state laws establishing segregated schools unconstitutional.

A final note: These schools went only to the eighth grade just like the dame schools. For many rural areas of the country eighth grade school was the norm until 1945.

 

Speaking Engagements

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I had a great talk at the Newburgh Library last Wednesday. I have two more coming up. On Sunday, October 23, I will be talking at the Orangeburg Library – in Rockland County, New York. The talk begins at 2.

The following Sunday, I will be speaking about witchcraft at my own library – the Goshen Public Library in Goshen, New York. Hard to believe but I have never spoken there. I felt shy pushing myself into a slot where I work.

Come and ask questions.

Malice, resentment -and witchcraft

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No doubt there were many causes of the hysteria. The summer was cool and wet, prime growing conditions for a fungus called ergot on the rye.  It releases a toxin similar to LSD. So it is possible that people were suffering hallucinations and genuinely thought they saw the devil and women flying around. If so, the climate that summer had a tremendous effect on history.

Another contributing factor: Tituba, a slave owned by Samuel Parrish.  Variously described as an Indian or a black slave, she told Samuel Parrish’s daughter and a group of girls stories which  drove much of the content of the visions. Her testimony and was a direct cause of the eventual hangings of women described as her confederates.  (Ironically, Tituba was set free.) A shadowy character, she has been also described as practicing voodoo. Her testimony. at least to me, reads more like the Christian belief in demons and the devil.

Then there are the girls themselves. To modern eyes, the easy belief in the veracity of a group of girls is incredible. Samuel Parrish believed in the truth of the accusations until the end of his life. I suspect there is another explanation. Women, and young girls especially, at this time were supposed to be quiet, meek and submissive. The claims  made by these girls and the charges against others in the village put them on center stage. I do not wonder that they kept ratcheting up their stories; anything to keep that attention.

The hysteria ended in 1693. After 1700 reparations began to be paid to the surviving victims and families of the executed. But belief in witches and the trials did not end.  In the new United States a trial and a judicial solution to perceived witch craft became unlikely (and I imagine that the uncritical acceptance of spectral evidence by Samuel Parris in Salem had a lot to do with increasing skepticism) but accusation and hanging by  mobs could still happen.

In Europe women were still attacked and in some cases executed for witchcraft: in Denmark – (1800), in Poland( 1836) and even in Britain (1863). Violence continued in France through the 1830’s. Accusations continued in  the United States as well.  In the 1830s a prosecution was begun against a man (yes) in Tennessee.

Even as recently as 1997 two Russian farmers killed a woman and injured members of her family for the use of folk magic against them.

There were two incidents of note in New York State. In 1783, Ann Lee, the spiritual heart of the new faith now commonly known as the Shakers, was arrested and charged for blasphemy One hundred years earlier she might have been hanged as a witch or devil worshipper. But she was released. Persecution of the Shakers continued however. And Lydia, my primary female character who is a former Shaker, would have been a target.

The final trial for witchcraft took place in 1816 in Nyack. Jane Kannif, the widow of a Scotch physician, lived in a small house on Germonds Road in West Nyack. An herbalist and widow of an apothecary, she treated neighbors that came to her with herbs and methods she learned from her late husband. But she was eccentric. According to the people at that time she dressed oddly, was unsociable and wandered around talking to herself. She was regarded as insane or worse yet a witch. It was decided to take her to Auert Polhemus’s grist mill and using his great flour scales weigh her against the old Holland Dutch family Bible, iron bound, with wooden covers and iron chain to carry it by. If outweighed by the Bible, she must be a witch and must suffer accordingly. She was taken to the mill, put on the scales, and weighed. Since she weighed more than the Bible, the committee released her.

So what happened in Salem? It seems as though the town lost its collective mind.

Despite the attention paid to the accusations and the trials and hangings, for me the real focus lies with the rest of the village, those who saw family and friends turn on them. Think what it must have been like living there at this time. Salem was a small community. Those accused were friends, family and neighbors of their accusers. How could you forgive the ones who hanged one of your family members as a witch and terrorized the others? Especially since the accounts make is clear that  some of the charges sprang from the worst of human nature: greed, revenge and malice. What kind of amends would be enough?  Would financial reparations ease the grief? I know this is something I could never forgive. And I would guess that, despite the end of the witch hunts, this village remained troubled for years. In fact, many of those whose family members had been accused or hanged moved away to a new village called Salem’s End. After those experiences, how could anyone ever trust again?

Although PTSD is not a term they used, I am certain those who survived their experiences in Danvers suffered from it the rest of their lives. People on both sides: the accused and the accusers, changed their names. One of the hanging judges was a Hathorne; Nathaniel Hawthorne added the w. And the Nurse family, right in the thick of the storm, moved away and became Nourses.
That brings me full circle, back to The Devil’s Cold Dish. Rees has a history with several people in his hometown and Lydia, a former Shaker, would surely be suspect. What if -?

Witches and Witchcraft

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With the release of my new book, The Devil’s Cold Dish, just over a week away, I decided to reprise some of my research and the reasons I wrote this book.

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Witches and Witchcraft – Not just Salem

While I was researching Death in Salem, I visited this city several times. Since Will Rees, my amateur detective (and traveling weaver) visits Salem in the mid 1790’s. a full one hundred years after the trials, I did not write about them. I alluded to them of course but by 1796 Salem is a wealthy and cosmopolitan city, the wealthiest in the new United States and the sixth largest.

But I couldn’t get the  witch trials out of my head. Why did it happen?  What happened to the people afterwards, especially to the people who saw their loved ones accused and, in some cases, hanged? That question formed the beginning of The Devil’s Cold Dish.

The facts of Salem’s witch trials are these. In 1692, a group of girls including the daughters of the village minister Samuel Parrish claimed that they were being tormented by witches – and the girls accused some of the women in Danvers (this did not happen in Salem but within a small village just outside).  Before the fury ended,150 people were imprisoned and 19 people – and two dogs- were hanged.

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Because the people executed as witches were not allowed to be buried in sacred ground, the cemetery in Salem has monuments bearing witness to the names. No one is sure where these people are buried. It is thought the families cut down many of the accused after they were hung and buried them in secret.

One man, Giles Corey, was pressed to death. He cursed all future Sheriffs of Salem to die of some chest (respiratory) illness. Apparently most have, but in an era without antibiotics (forget about good hygiene or healthy food) I don’t think that is surprising.

What happened? Reasons given for the explosion of belief and hangings in Salem are many.

This event occurred in Massachusetts after several centuries of the trials and burnings in Europe. Probably everyone is familiar with the Biblical injunction about not suffering a witch to live. In 1200 Pope Gregory IX authorized the killing of witches. In 1498  Pope Innocent VIII issued a declaration confirming the existence of witches and inquisition began. Thousands, mainly women, were burned at the stake during the 1500s and 1600s. (Accused witches in this country were never burned. They were hanged instead.)

This was a superstitious age and belief in magic was widespread. Girls used spells to try and see the faces of future husbands and superstitions regarding illness, birth, and harvest were rife. Harelips were caused when the mother saw a rabbit, birth marks because the mother ate strawberries, for example. One of my favorites: to protect a mother and child during birth an ear of corn was placed on the mother’s belly. But I can’t believe EVERYONE believed in the supernatural. In fact, one of the essayists of the time, Robert Calef, suggested that the trials had been engineered by Cotton Mather for personal gain. (I doubt that. Evidently fighting out different opinions in print is not a new phenomenon). And anyway, other motivations for accusing someone of witchcraft have been documented. Sometimes it was for gain: the old biddy hasn’t died and I want her little farm, for example. (No surprise there, right?) Sometimes it was to settle scores. Apparently at least part of the reason behind the accusations directed at the Nurse family had at the bottom resentment and the desire for payback.

Tituba, a slave owned by Samuel Parrish, and her stories she told the girls played a part. Variously described as an Indian or a black slave, her testimony apparently drove much of the content of the stories and was a direct cause of the eventual hangings of women described as her confederates.  (Ironically, Tituba was set free.) A shadowy character, she has been also described as practicing voodoo. Her testimony. at least to me, reads more like the Christian belief in demons and the devil. Once she was released, however, she, like the girls whose fits started the terror, faded into obscurity.

Then there are the girls themselves. To modern eyes, the easy belief in the veracity of a group of girls is incredible. Samuel Parrish believed in the truth of the accusations until the end of his life. I suspect there is another explanation. Women, and young girls especially, at this time were supposed to be quiet, meek and submissive. The claims  made by these girls and the charges against others in the village put them on center stage. I do not wonder that they kept ratcheting up their stories; anything to keep that attention.

Then there is the possibility of ergot poisoning. Ergot is a fungus that grows on rye during wet and cool summers. It releases a toxin similar to LSD. So it is possible that people were genuinely suffering hallucinations.

The hysteria ended in 1693. After 1700 reparations began to be paid to the surviving victims and families of the executed. But belief in witches and the trials did not end.  In the new United States a trial and a judicial solution to perceived witch craft became unlikely (and I imagine that the uncritical acceptance of spectral evidence by Samuel Parris in Salem had a lot to do with increasing skepticism) but accusation and hanging by  mobs could still happen.

In Europe women were still attacked and in some cases executed for witchcraft: in Denmark – (1800), in Poland( 1836) and even in Britain (1863). Violence continued in France through the 1830’s. Accusations continued in  the United States as well.  In the 1830s a prosecution was begun against a man (yes) in Tennessee.

Even as recently as 1997 two Russian farmers killed a woman and injured members of her family for the use of folk magic against them.

Goodreads Giveaway – final numbers

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I am happy and excited to report that 1382 people participated in the giveaway of Death in Salem.

death in salem

Of the 20 winners, 15 were from the US, 4 from Canada, and 1 from Great Britain. I’ve put the 15 in the mail and add the others on Monday. It always takes me a little longer to mail the ones to Canada and Great Britain because I have to fill out customs forms.

The Devil’s Cold Dish will be released in less than a month. I have my first copy and it looks beautiful.

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