Questions of True Witch Craft: Starring Rebecca Nurse

After Tituba’s confession to being a witch and that there were nine other names in the Devil’s book, paranoia and fear had struck the Puritans. To the Puritan’s Tituba’s confession was proof that there were others that had betrayed the godly community. Everyone was wondering who else could be a witch. It turned neighbor against neighbor, and nobody was safe from being accused. If Tituba, slave that had resided in a minister’s household, could be a malicious witch, then anybody could.

At first the accusations were made to those who were strange and poor to the Salem village, but soon the six girls who threw the fits during Good’s and Osborne’s trials, began accusing people that seemed unlikely to be witches. One of those accusations was made against Rebecca Nurse. This accusation was made by Abigail Williams.

Rebecca Nurse was an unlikely suspect to be a witch. She was baptized in February on the twenty-first in 1620, when she had still been a part of England. At the time that she was accused, she was at the old age of seventy-one. It was written that "This venerable lady, whose conversation and bearing were so truly saint-like, was an invalid of extremely delicate condition and appearance, the mother of a large family, embracing sons, daughters, grandchildren, and one or more great grandchildren. She was a woman of piety, and simplicity of heart." Knowing the life that Nurse had led, thirty-nine of the Puritans had actually signed a petition for Nurse’s innocence. On June 30^th, 1692, Nurse had a trial where she had to answer many questions asked by Mr. Harthorn, like the trials of Tituba, Good, and Osborne, in which case she denied the accusations:

Nurse: I never afflicted no child never in my life.¹⁵

            During Nurse’s trial, as she denied every accusation made against her, a person that had sided with the young Puritan girls would holler about her guilt, and one of the girls would begin to have fits. All Nurse could find to say was that God knew what was in her heart:

Harthorn: Here are these two grown persons now accuse you, w't say you? Do not you see these afflicted persons and hear them accuse you.

Nurse: The Lord knows I have not hurt them: I am an innocent person.¹⁶

Rebecca Nurse's Trial (O'Linder 2009)

 Her trial had originally come back with the verdict of not guilty. When this announcement took place, many were furious, and the girls began to once again, fall into fits. This hysterical reaction had caused the court to call for reconsideration. During, the second part of this trial Hobbs, a fellow prisoner was also brought in. As Hobbs accused Nurse for the afflictions on the young girls, Nurse asked the court, “What do you bring her? She is one of us.” Nurse was asked to explain what she meant by saying that Hobbs was “one of us,” but since she was in her old age, Nurse was hard of hearing. She missed the question, and the jury had taken her silence as indication that she was guilty. They then sentenced Nurse to death. She would later be hanged at Gallows Hill with four others on July 19, 1692.

            Nurse was only one of approximately 200 of the accused in the Salem Witch Trials. Out of the 200 accused, Nurse was one of the 24 that would actually be put to death. Out of those 24, Nurse would be one of 19 that were hanged at Gallows Hill. She was one of the first accusations that would raise questions of whether the witchcraft experienced by the six young Puritan women was true, and she would not be the last.