The Torturer's Dilemma: Analyzing the Logic of Torture for Information

years preceding the outbreak at Salem – many more were acquitted, or sued their accusers (with
varying degrees of success), or had their convictions set aside by the royal governor. 41
As the century progressed, however, trials for witchcraft (as opposed to slander suits brought
against accusers) became less and less frequent. After a pause of about 25 years, a case of witchcraft
was recorded in which Cotton Mather (an important player in the Salem trials) was involved.
Goodwife Glover, an Irishwoman in Boston, was accused of inflicting spiritual harm on the four
children of local mason, John Goodwin – these children, normally well-behaved, had begun to exhibit
strange symptoms including “fits, beyond those that attend an epilepsy, or a catalepsy.” 42 When
Goodwin brought suit against Glover, she confessed to the court that she had made a pact with Satan,
but since he had not lived up to his end of the bargain, she was willing to reveal the whole matter.
After being found compos mentis by the court, she was condemned and hanged. Mather took an
interest in the case, and eventually brought the oldest of the four children into his own house in order to
observe, and if possible, to heal her of her affliction. That a confessed witch had been discovered in
Boston (John Winthrop’s ‘City on a Hill’) was certainly disturbing, but even though Glover had
mentioned the presence of other witches who would continue the affliction after her death, and named
names, Mather had the sense to keep those names secret: after all, the woman worshiped the Devil, the
Father of Lies, and so her statements could not be trusted. (Hansen, pp. 23-4) 43
3.3. The Crisis in Salem
The events that led up to the witch-trials are familiar enough that we may mention them but
briefly. Several young girls of the village (Abigail Williams and Elizabeth (Betty) Parris, and Mary
Warren, among others) began to ‘conjure’ using an egg and a sieve to find out what the future held for
them in the winter of 1691. 44 One of the girls saw what appeared to be a coffin in a home-made crystal
41 For a detailed history of these cases, see Hall (1999)
42 Mather described the case in detail in his publication Memorable Providences , Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions
(1689).
43 This reluctance to name those mentioned by the afflicted (and the afflictors) continued through the Salem trials: when
Mercy Short’s symptoms persisted after the conclusion of the trials in December of 1692, Mather not only visited her
often, he also enjoined the numerous gawkers at her affliction not to spread the names of those mentioned in her fits.
(Roach, p. 351, 388)
44 Mather would later argue that this was part of a general trend among the youth in those uncertain times, spurred on by
the political complications stemming from the Glorious Revolution in 1688, of using forbidden (although not malicious)
magic. (The Life of His Excellency, Sir William Phips, Knt., Late Captain General and Governor in Chief of the
Province of the Massachusetts Bay, New England. Boston, 1697).
46