Waterbury evening Democrat., 1889-05-09
DAYS OF wITcHcRAFT.
Two Executions on GaIlows Hill. Hartford The Ducking Test.

witchcraft of those dark years Q691- etc. ), in which this shocking mania of Old World superstition burst out on this side of the Atlantic. It has even been denied that the delasion ever gained a foothold in Con- necticut; and the reports of executions in Connecticut have not only been denied, but have remained to all but close students a very doubtful matter at most. But we sus- pect, says the Hartford Times, that this is an erroneous view of the subject, and that Connecticut was really not so very much freer from the horrible superstition than her sister colony of Massachusetts bay. A good many old women were popularly ac- cused of criminal familiarity with Satar," and some of them certainly were tried for that sin-and, if the truth must be told, there was more than one execution for witchcraft in Connecticut. But the Con- necticut delusion, though it seems to have been earlier than the similar misfortune in Massachusetts, never did reach such shock ing proportions, nor go to such extremes as that There were two executions here in Hartford in or about 1868 of two women, Greensmith and Barnes, convicted of witchcraft. The former, we think, made an extraordinary confession after she had been convicted of the truth of her familiarity with the devil," as the GUS tomary charge III such cases was worded.
 
 showed at least robust and most fertile and peculiar imagination. It is one of the strange features of that witchcratt mania, here and in Massachusetts, that so many of the persons who were convicted were ready to confess the truth of the charge made against them. 1t must have been an illus tration of unconscious psychologizing, by great wave or surrounding atmosphe re of fanatical superstitious delusion which reigned for awhile in those places, and which made the accused wretches really feel that they had done the evil charged upon them, and which their excited imag- nations added to and broadened out into the widest grotesqueric of monstrous fam tasies and absurdities. The scene of the Hartford hangingS was on the commanding summit near the head of Vernon street, not far from Trinity College Con that remark able ridge or dike of trap-rock, naturally placed for geographical marveD, on top of an Infinitely newer free-stone formation-a dlke which here sweeps down through u considerable portion of Connecticut. The location was for more than a century there after known as "Gallows Hill" We do not know that any other witches were hanged there; the delusion seems to have been worse, and to have been followed by more executions, in Fairfield County-where it was raging later, simultaneously with the mania at Salem-in 1892
 In the Times of August s, 1920, are sev- eral columns of an account of Connecticut witchcraft, written by William l.. Stone III the New York Commercial Advertiser, of which he was then the editor, and from which paper the Times quoted it. It seems to be only part of Stones long account, and it was obtained when he was editor of the Connecticut Mirror, here in Hartford, from ume-stained bundle of old manu- scripts upon which he chanced to come in looking over large lot of ancient papers that had been brought to light from the old garret of the Wyllis mansion. Willis was the old Colonial Secretary, and naturally would be in the way of having charge of such old papers as these, which were in separ ate packet, labeled Witchcraft Irlals," and that was what attracted Colonel Stones attention and led him to careful study of the papers. What after ward became of them we know not; but the extracts so fully made by Stone are inn portant as throwing light on the part taken by Connecticut in the history of the witch craft delusiop. The indictments of one Mercy Disborough from the Times of 1920, Colonel Stone judged, was of the custom ary sort Tn witchcraft cases; testimony to the mysterious and supernatural character of the prosecutions and confusions wrought
 
 that neighborhood. Mercy Disborough was one of a number of witches thereabout-two of whom at least were indicted at the same tlme-in the only court of oyer and termi- ner ever organized In. Connecticut, to wit: Mercy Disborough and Elizabeth Clawson, Goody ClaWson escaped conviction, but Mercy Disborough, of Compo Gin the present town ship of Westport), was not so lucky. Both were bound, hand and foot, according to the good old English custom, and pitched head tirstinto the water. The test was that if the accused sank and drowned, it was prima facie case of innocence. If she f1oated, she was clearly witch and must be executed Mercy Disborough and Goody Clawson both f1oated-''like cork"-nor did one pious servant of the Lord succeed in pressing the former under, albeit he did dutifully and stoutly try. The Clawson woman, however, sad we believe one or two other witches, were acquitted: but Mercy DisborQugh was not so easily let off. She had sorely afHieteu divers persons by supernatural pinchings, pricklngs and still worse punishments But there was some hitch in the proceedings; there was another N'ial, and though she was again convicted, it is pretty we'll ascertained that for some occult reason she never was executed The Times says, edtorially QS2O), that one whole family, named Godfrey, in Fairfield County, wore hanged for witch craft and that one witch was burned in Hartford-but this latter statement was au error. Witchcraft, mixture of supersti- tion, organism and distorted Christianity got its definite character from the old doc Urine of Satan. In the vain ponderings on the origin of evil, the constitution of the will, and such problems, the superstition of the Middle Ages rose like foul exhalation and swept over England and Germany The world was subject not to one God, but two and ''the Devil' had power only second to that of God, and thls power, which had en- abled him to seduce Eve, qualified him to lead astray her descendants. There was one wizard to every hundred witches; so the Haen oftener escaped accusation. But what frightful time # Was-when any malicious or half-psychologized woman could accuse any other of her sex, and have her tried (and very likely convicted) of such mop- strous things It seems astonishing that convictions of wiJchcraft were reached in England as late as 1736-and executions in Germany almost as late as the beginning of this century,
 Bright Policeman.
 A policeman in a neighboring city was lately taken before the mayor on charge