102 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • OCTOBER 2019
REAR VIEW
WITCH TRIALS
HEXING IN THE HAMPTONS
By ANNIE WILKINSON
Elizabeth Gardiner Howell
felt chilled, feverish. She was
delirious. Hearing unexplained
sounds rattling the room, she
feared she was losing her senses.
“A witch! A witch!” she shrieked.
“Now you are come to torture
me because I spoke two or three
words against you!”
She swore she saw “a double
tongued woman who pricks
me with pins.” Then she coughed
up a metal pin.
She insisted that the double
tongued woman was Elizabeth
Garlick, who lived down
the street — but Garlick was not
there. Howell also said, in the
language of the 1600s, that there was
“an ugly black thinge at ye feete of ye
bedd.”
Howell was a married 16 year-old who
had recently given birth to a child;
she was the daughter of Lion Gardiner,
one of the town’s most prominent
residents. But the joy of that happy
family occasion was shattered when
she fell ill.
She cried out, “Oh mother, I am
bewitched.” She died the next day,
after accusing her poor, quarrelsome
neighbor of witchcraft.
Was this some Halloween performance?
Actually, the description is
part of an official account of witchcraft
in colonial Long Island life. The
accusation led to one of the earliest
witchcraft trials in the American
colonies — and it took place in East
Hampton in 1657, 35 years before the
notorious Salem witchcraft trials of
1692 and 1693.
VILLAGER WARS
In the isolated English Puritan colony,
battles for economic dominance
pitted neighbor against neighbor.
Accusations flew, paranoia and
injustice reigned, and all vestiges of
civility unraveled.
The accused, Elizabeth Garlick, was
known as “Goody” Garlick (short for
“Goodwife;” Goody was a term of
address for working-class females).
The 50-year-old often quarreled with
neighbors who said she was a witch,
according to the town records of East
Hampton, as it was known then. She
was said to cast evil eyes and order
animal familiars to do her bidding.
She was blamed for the death of a baby
she held, and for the disappearances,
injuries, and death of livestock.
She was slandered by neighbors,
rivals scrabbling to survive in the
fishing and farming settlement. To
explain the ordeals of Puritan life,
before the dawn of scientific thinking,
villagers believed in the power
of magic, and that the quarreling and
distrust were the work of the devil.
Garlick was jailed and tried as a witch
by three judges, all men.
INNUENDO, RUMOR,
AND RYE
Witch hysteria had gone viral
throughout Europe from the 1300s
to the 1600s, when tens of thousands
of supposed witches were executed.
Women who were single, widows,
and others on the margins of society
were usually the prey in widespread
witch-hunts. Accused and declared
guilty, they were tortured to confess,
burned at the stake, or killed by
hanging.
Nearly 80,000 suspected witches
were executed in Europe between
1500 and 1660, mostly women said
to be lustful and in league with the
devil. The highest execution rate was
in Germany.
Fueling the fire and brimstone of
prejudice was the immensely popular
1486 book Malleus Maleficarum
(The Hammer of Witches), written
by two inquisitors for the
Catholic Church. The guide
labeled witchcraft as heresy
and dictated how believers
could flush out, interrogate,
and convict witches.
In the mid-1600s, bias against
women continued to flourish,
especially among Puritans.
They believed that women
would yield easily to temptations
like desire for things
of material value or sexual
promiscuity, targeting women
who were homeless, poor, or
childless.
While many practicing
Christians and those of other
religions blamed the abnormal
behavior of certain women on
the devil, there may have been
a simpler explanation: diet. The colonists
cultivated rye, wheat, and other
cereal grasses containing ergot, a
fungus. Toxicologists discovered
that ingesting foods containing ergot
can lead to muscle spasms, vomiting,
delusions and hallucinations, according
to a 1976 Science report by
psychologist Linnda Caporael.
SAVED BY SCIENCE
The Easthampton magistrates
referred Garlick’s case to a higher
court in Connecticut after
Easthampton became part of that
colony. The new sheriff, John Winthrop
Jr., was a scholar/healer who
explained nature's magical forces as
a case of community pathology, not
demonic possession. The verdict:
not guilty. Garlick was freed and
lived to be 100.
Some modern-day researchers conclude
that witchcraft accusations are
caused by patriarchal institutions
seeking to dominate matriarchal
ones. The patriarchal attitude can
be seen in attacks that target and
bully women online more often than
men. Some would say that not much
has changed, arguing that today’s
criminal justice system targets poor,
vulnerable, and unruly females, just
as it did in colonial times.
“The accusation led to one of the earliest
witchcraft trials in the American colonies
— and it took place in East Hampton in
1657, 35 years before the notorious Salem
witchcraft trials of 1692 and 1693.”
/LONGISLANDPRESS.COM
