Cursed lives
MARION GIBSON recommends an evocative deep-dive into a witchcraft trial that rocked 17th-century New England
The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World by Malcolm Gaskill
Allen Lane, 336 pages, £20
In February 1651, in the little settler town of Springfield, Massachusetts, Jonathan Taylor woke in terror in the middle of the night. “Snakes!” he exclaimed to his perplexed wife. In a dream or vision that had seemed to Jonathan wholly real, snakes slithered towards him as he lay in bed, bit him on the forehead and spoke the word “death”. Jonathan fell into a malaria-like fever and, pretty soon, he joined a crowd of fellow townspeople accusing the brick-maker Hugh Parsons and his troubled wife, Mary, of witchcraft.
The Ruin of All Witches is the story of Hugh and Mary’s trial, their lives before being accused, the tragic breakdown of their relationship, and their eventual fate.
Malcolm Gaskill’s telling of the Parsons’ story is evocative right from the start. With the “heart-thumping panic” and “skin-prickle of being watched” on the first page the reader is drawn in and excited in both body and mind. We feel the breath-stopping heat of the Connecticut River Valley summers, and we hear the squeak and crackle of crisp snow in winter. His commentary is acute, too, on the emotional landscape of witchcraft accusation, making readers feel the tensions between fear, selfishness and guilt in allegations that colonists made against former friends and neighbours. The wretched Hugh and Mary were already suffering from their own problems of chronic poverty, overwork and mental illness; on top of these were piled claims that they had caused hallucinations, injured neighbours and even bewitched the minister’s children – accusations that could lead to their executions.
Gaskill has always been good at painting the big social picture that forms the backdrop to witchcraft trials, as well as the moments of high drama. Sometimes, I’ve wanted more information about the individuals involved in those trials, and this book provides that rich detail in bulk with house-by-house maps of the 17th-century settlement of Springfield; ample quotations from scattered manuscript sources; and careful descriptions of the interiors of homes, the processes of farming, and the smells, sights and sounds of contemporary life of that age.
It’s a feast for those who wonder what it was actually like to be a colonist living in a wooden cabin on the frontier, thousands of miles from home, surrounded by a new land and its understandably hostile indigenous peoples. We feel the Springfield settlers’ dreads and petty anxieties. The book offers the necessary compassion to its cast of characters too: people who miserably did a series of great wrongs while trying to do right.
There’s also a very readable account of the archival trail that Gaskill followed in 2015 and after in his efforts to find the story, with all its vital personal details, moving from depressing motel room to hallowed library to workaday town hall. And we learn more about the Parsons’ witchcraft case and the history of the bleak modern city of Springfield itself because of his exertions. At the end of this book, Gaskill declares his hope that his work has restored some of the city’s past to its people. Certainly, he’s given a valuable gift to every reader of history.