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Hanged 1688
Salem, MA
The last woman to be hanged in Boston as a witch was Ann Glover, an Irish washerwoman who was wildly accused in 1688 of practicing witchcraft by the infamous Reverend Cotter Mather. Her Puritan accusers were caught up in a witch mania that was part of the rigid Puritanism of the time, attaching supernatural causes to things they couldn't explain, especially medical conditions.
Glover was an Irish slave sent to Barbados by Englishman Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s. Her husband died there, and by 1680 she and her daughter were living in Boston, employed as housekeepers by John Goodwin. In summer 1688 four of the five Goodwin children fell ill. The doctor concluded "nothing but a hellish Witchcraft could be the Origin of these maladies." Martha, the 13-year-old daughter, confirmed the doctor's diagnosis by claiming she became ill right after she caught Glover stealing laundry. Glover was arrested and tried as a witch. In the courtroom there was confusion over Glover's testimony, since she refused to speak English, even though she knew the language. According to Mather, "the court could have no answers from her, but in the Irish, which was her native language." The court convicted Glover of witchcraft and sentenced her to be hanged. Author James B. Cullen wrote, "she was drawn in a cart, a hated and dreaded figure, chief in importance, stared at and mocked at, through the principal streets from her prison to the gallows….The people crowded to see the end, as always; and when it was over they quietly dispersed, leaving the worn-out body hanging as a terror to evil-doers." During the trial he called Glover "a scandalous old Irishwoman, very poor, a Roman Catholic and obstinate in idolatry." A decade after Glover was hanged Mather was still preaching against "idolatrous Roman Catholicks," trying to preserve a parochial society that was quickly changing. In Boston's South End, Our Lady of Victories Eucharistic Shrine has a plaque remembering Ann Glover as the first Catholic martyr of Massachusetts. The church is located at 27 Isabella Street. |
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