Victoria Foster

The Little Witch Victoria Foster • Nonfiction

“Did you ever encounter any ani als? A dog? A cat?”

Dorothy Good, only five years old, stood frightened in front of the entire town, her tiny hands clinging to the hem of her dress as the local magistrates interrogated her with the accusations of practicing witchcraft.

“There is a snake outside our house,” she said. “Who gave you that snake?”

“Momma keeps it because she said it helps keep the mice away. It bit me once,” she said, showing off a small spot on her finger.

There was murmuring amongst the gathered crowd. People glared and occasionally pointed towards the child, whispering witch. “Did you ever see, or conjure with the Devil?” “No, sir,” she said. “Did you torture Mary Walcott or Ann Putnam?”

Dorothy shook her head, her eyes downcast as she focused on her feet, a pebble on the ground, anywhere but the vulturous eyes scanning over her in the tiny church-house.

“No, sir,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

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“Then why would they say you did?” “I do not know, sir,” she said. A woman in the middle of the crowd suddenly stood.

“The child is deranged! She bit me as if she were a wild animal!” she said, pointing an accusatory finger at Dorothy. Another woman soon followed suit, yelling additional accusations towards the child, pulling up the sleeve of her dress to show the crowd a small set of teeth imprints on her forearm.

“It was not me!” Dorothy said. “Are you sure that your spirit did not torment them?” Tears rolled down Dorothy’s round cheeks.

“I do not know. . . perhaps? Could my soul do that?” she said, unsure of herself.

“So, you admit to tormenting these women! Did your mother influence you to sign the Devil’s book?” “I want my momma! Where is my momma?” she said sobbing, wiping the fat droplets on her dress sleeve.

The magistrates ignored her cries and continued with their questioning.

“Did you ever have contact with the Devil? Did you ever accept the Devil’s promise?”

Dorothy Good as accused of practicing itchcraft during the start of the Salem Witch trials in 1692, along with her mother Sarah Good. She was in custody from March 24—I can only imagine how her questioning would have transpired—and was arrested and imprisoned until she was released on bond for fifty pounds on December 10. Upon being sent to jail at the age of five, she became the youngest person accused of witchcraft during the trials.

Five. That’s about how old my best friend’s niece, Harper, is.

Harper likes to run around in the backyard picking flowers to give out to the family and play with her imaginary friends. She makes up elaborate stories to tell everyone to make us laugh and

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attempts to catch frogs that hop down the driveway but squeals in disgust when she touches one, and I can’t even begin to count the hours I’ve spent crouched down in front of her Barbie Dreamhouse playing with an Elsa doll in one hand and a Belle doll in another as she tells me exactly how to play whatever game she has concocted for them. This air of childish wonder she radiates could brighten anyone’s day.

This same sense of imagination and innocence we associate with children today is what would have been Dorothy’s downfall.

An imaginary friend would have been perceived as communication with the Devil, an overactive imagination could lead to concocting fantastical stories the magistrates could have used as testimony against her. Any animals she came into contact with would have been seen as her familiar—a witch’s spiritual servant.

“She probably never actually confessed to being a witch,” says David Houpt, a history professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. “What likely happened was they questioned her until they got what they felt was enough to make up a confession of sorts. What five-year-old wouldn’t say something they could use?”

In the official examinations and interrogation of Dorothy, Rev. Deodat Lawson stated that the “child told them there, it had a little Snake that used to Suck on the lowest Joint of her Fore-Finger.” It is likely that Dorothy had simply been bitten by a snake at some point and either the magistrate twisted the child’s words to formulate a more damning confession, or Dorothy could’ve spun an imaginative story as children tend to do.

The fact that Dorothy’s mother was also accused of witchcraft didn’t help her case.

“[The Puritans] believed witchcraft traveled through families.” says Mary Cooper, who is writing her master’s degree thesis at UNCW on the Salem Witch trials. “You know, they had to make a pact with the Devil, which is a pretty big commitment, so they believed it stayed in family units.”

The magistrate even used Dorothy’s testimony against her mother during her trial. Both mother and daughter were im

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prisoned, most likely together, in a tiny cell, without sunlight or basic human necessities.

“The cell was around 4x4 for those who could not pay for better accommodations,” says Mary. “There would have been hardly any room to move around and the conditions would have been horrible.”

Her mother later gave birth to a second child who died in the prison, likely from malnourishment, before she herself was executed on July 19, 1692.

“You want someone to really think they’re crazy? Lock them away with no sunlight for a while. Add to that seeing your younger sister die right in front of you, that’s beyond traumatizing for anyone, let alone someone that young,” says Professor Houpt.

Even though Dorothy was not executed like her mother, the trauma surrounding her examination and imprisonment left her with lasting mental scarring. Her father later sued the general court for health and mental damages and ultimately received thirty pounds of sterling, one of the largest settlements paid to the families of witchcraft victims.

“She suffered from mental issues for the rest of her life,” says Mary. “She never was able to live a normal life after her experience.”

She was only five years old. I think again of Harper and how carefree she is. How she sips imaginary tea with her Barbies and rolls around with the dog on the living-room floor. I try to imagine someone so young being put through such a horrible experience but can’t. I cannot seem to wrap my head around it, no matter how hard I try. So instead, I listen to Harper’s crazy stories and stick as many flowers she picks for me behind my ears as I can.

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