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

elief in the reality of witchcraft on the one hand while widening the pool of suspects with the other.
But how was this machine set in motion? When did the prior beliefs of the authorities become centered
around not simply the presence of witchcraft but a conspiracy of witches? Where did the deceptive
cycle begin? Much of the analysis so far has been based on the common incentives faced by those
being tortured for information and those confessing to avoid execution, but the origins of this deceptive
cycle lie in the use of torture on a single individual. And it would be her coerced testimony that would
begin the cycle of accusations and denunciations.
3.7. Torture, Tituba, and Slavery
If the incentives faced by later confessors were clear – name others and at worst receive a
temporary reprieve from execution, at best purchase liberty through the arrest of others – these were
not in place when Tituba confessed. It was the fact that those who maintained innocence were executed
(such as Sarah Good) while Tituba remained alive that convinced others that they too might be spared
in exchange for cooperating with the proceedings. And it was the apparent sincerity of her confession,
and the fact that this confession had not been coerced by the court, that convinced the magistrates of
the reality of the conspiracy and the truthfulness of the afflicted. But when Tituba confessed, she
would have to have believed that her confession would lead to her execution. Why then did Tituba
admit to witchcraft? And why did she do so in the peculiar language of the elites – admitting not to
maleficium for revenge, but to a covenant with Satan? What incentive did she face that made an
expected death by hanging the preferable option? To understand this puzzle, we shall have to make
recourse to the legal institution of slavery itself: for it was her slave status, and the power of Rev. Parris
as her master over her that made her confession inevitable.
As noted above, Tituba revealed to Robert Calef around 1700 that her testimony had in fact
been coerced – not by the courts, but by Parris himself. Gripped with concern over his daughter Betty
(one of the first, and apparently most sincere of the afflicted afflicted), Parris was faced with the
following dilemma: his daughter was being tortured severely, and had named Tituba, Good and
Osbourne as her persecutors; according to his Harvard-educated beliefs regarding the nature of
witchcraft, this meant that Tituba was part of a conspiracy of witches, and might know the names of
other witches in the area also responsible; and yet Tituba refused to name her confederates.
Furthermore, while judicial torture was not a part of the English system, it was an accepted means of
69