Richard Francis

Mass hysteria in Massachusetts: the 17th-century witch crisis in America

Malcolm Gaskill describes how, decades before the Salem outbreak, the town of Springfield was convulsed by rumours of witchcraft and heresy

William Pynchon conducted the prosecutions of Hugh and Mary Parsons for witchcraft while being accused of heresy himself. Credit: Getty Images 
issue 30 October 2021
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  • The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World

    Malcolm Gaskill

    Allen Lane, pp. 307, £20

One September day in 1649, in the frontier town of Springfield, Massachusetts, Anthony Dorchester returned from church to the house he and his wife shared with a couple called Hugh and Mary Parsons. He went to check on a cow’s tongue he was boiling for dinner but to his surprise it wasn’t in the pot.

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