Trial and errors of Satan's consorts

On September 14, 1692, a special court convened at the town meeting house in Fairfield, Connecticut, to decide whether or not Elizabeth Clawson and Mercy Disborough were witches who had experienced "familiarity with Satan, the grand enemy of God and man". Over the course of the summer, the women had endured their neighbours' condemnation, public interrogations, invasive personal examinations in search of a "devil's mark" or "witch's teat" and several months in jail. If guilty, they faced execution and damnation.

In Escaping Salem: The Other Witch Hunt of 1692 , Richard Godbeer tells the story of a servant girl, Katherine Branch, and her fits and visions that divided the community and landed Clawson and Disborough in court. Drawing on his knowledge of 17th-century magic and witchcraft, Godbeer aims to shift our attention away from the trials in Salem that also took place over the summer of 1692 and that continue to bedevil popular perceptions of early New England because of the difficulty in comprehending how decent, educated, pious and law-abiding villagers could hang their own neighbours for an undetectable crime.

Of course, the simple truth is they did not, mostly, and herein lies Godbeer's thesis. In fact, of the 60 or so cases of witchcraft (excluding Salem) recorded in 17th-century New England, only one quarter resulted in conviction and execution. Moreover, and as a recent study has demonstrated, the events in Salem were driven by a particular constellation of local and regional crises, especially a spate of Native American attacks on frontier towns, rather than contemporary beliefs in magic and the supernatural per se.

In this respect, the less-sensational Connecticut trials were much more typical, and in tracing the responses to Branch's fits and the legal case that ensued, Godbeer does a wonderful job of capturing the blend of supernatural belief and deliberate caution that characterised New Englanders' usual response to witchcraft. In six short chapters, he narrates events from the perspective of those concerned, adding little or no commentary of his own.

This approach may not satisfy everyone. Well-informed readers will be frustrated at Godbeer's reluctance to bring analytical perspectives to bear, while the uninformed reader risks remaining so, apart from the details of the case. Unless, that is, they persist to the lengthy and indispensable afterword in which Godbeer shares something of the detective work he undertook and the challenges he faced when researching and writing the book, and which he closes with as good a summary of interpretations of New England witchcraft as one will find in academic literature.

The result is a well-informed and wonderfully readable account of a witchcraft trial that scholars, students and readers on the bus will enjoy in equal measure. As for the fates of Clawson and Disborough, I leave that for the readers to discover.

Simon Middleton is lecturer in American history, University of East Anglia.