#OnThisDay in 1648, Margaret Jones is hanged in Boston for witchcraft in the first such execution for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Jones was a midwife and practiced medicine. Some of what caused her to be accused of witchcraft had to do with these practices.
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The evidence against her was:
1. "That she was found to have such a malignant touch, as many persons, men, women, and children, whom she stroked or touched with any affection or displeasure, were taken with deafness, or vomiting, or other violent pains or sickness."
1. "That she was found to have such a malignant touch, as many persons, men, women, and children, whom she stroked or touched with any affection or displeasure, were taken with deafness, or vomiting, or other violent pains or sickness."
2. "She practising physic, and her medicines being such things as, by her own confession, were harmless, — as anise-seed, liquors, etc., — yet had extraordinary violent effects."
3. "She would use to tell such as would not make use of her physic, that they would never be healed; and accordingly their diseases and hurts continued, with relapse against the ordinary course, and beyond the apprehension of all physicians and surgeons. "
4. "Some things which she foretold came to pass accordingly; other things she would tell of, as secret speeches, etc., which she had no ordinary means to come to the knowledge of."
5. "She had, upon search, an apparent teat ... as fresh as if it had been newly sucked; and after it had been scanned, upon a forced search, that was withered, and another began on the opposite side."
6. "In the prison, in the clear day-light, there was seen in her arms, she sitting on the floor, and her clothes up, etc., a little child, which ran from her into another room, and the officer following it, it was vanished...
... the like child was seen in two other places to which she had relation; and one maid that saw it, fell sick upon it, and was cured by the said Margaret, who used means to be employed to that end...
... her behavior at her trial was very intemperate, lying notoriously, and railing upon the jury and witnesses, etc., and in the like distemper she died. The same day and hour she was executed, there was a very great tempest at Connecticut, which blew down many trees."
About 80 people throughout New England were accused of practicing witchcraft during that period. Thirteen women and two men were executed.
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