The following report of a trial in West Jersey for witchcraft, is preserved in an Almanac published in the year 1807. The trial took place in Burlington county, in the 1730, a little more than a century ago, and as an incident of the “good old times” of which we often hear, has some interest for the modern reader. We find it in the Mount Holly Mirror.
Were there no other reason for promoting an increase of knowledge, it would be desirable for the sake of humanity only, to give such information as exhibits the singular ignorance of former ages and the improvements of succeeding generations. The following account taken from the Pennsylvania Gazette, of October 1730, is inserted to evince not only the absurdity, but the cruelty, of a superstitious error which about that period infected not merely the common people, but the expounders of law and dispensers of justice. We may now flatter ourselves that the terror of witchcraft is no more ; and that’a poor woman may be both old and ugly without being in danger of hanging for being too light in the water, or drowning for being too heavy:
Burlington, Oct. 12, 1730
“Saturday last, at Mount Holly, about eight miles from this place, near three hundred people were gathered to see an experiment or two tried on some persons accused of witchcraft. It seems the accused had been charged with making their neighbors’ sheep dance in an uncommon manner, and causing hogs to speak and sing psalms, etc. to the great terror and amazement of the King’s good and peaceable subjects in this province ; the accusers being very positive that if the accused were weighed in scales against a Bible, that the Bible would prove too heavy for them, or if they were bound and put in the creek, they would swim the said accused, desirous to make their innocence appear, voluntarily offered to undergo the said trials, if two of the most violent of their accusers would be tried with them.
“Accordingly the time and place were agreed on and advertised about the country ; the accusers were one man and one woman ; and the accused the same. The parties being met, and the people got together, a grand consultation was held before they proceeded to trial, in which it was a greed to use the scales first ; and a committee of men were appointed to search the men, and also the women, to see if they had anything of weight about them, particularly pins.
“After the scrutiny was over, a huge great Bible, belonging to the Justice of the Peace, was provided, and a lane was made from the Justice’s to the scales, which were fixed on a gallows erected expressly for that purpose right opposite to the house, that the Justice’s wife and the rest of the ladies might see the trial, without coming amongst the mob ; and after the manner of Moorfields, a large ring was also made. Then came out of the house a grave, tall man, carrying the Holy Writ before the supposed wizard, etc. (as solemnly as the sword bearer of London before the Lord Mayor.) The wizard was first put into the scale, and over him was read a chapter out of the book of Moses, and then the Bible was put in the other scale, which being kept down before, was immediately let go ; but, to the great surprise of the spectators, flesh and bones came down plump, and out weighed that great book by abundance.
“After the same manner, others were served, and their lumps of mortality severally were too heavy for the big book plump they came down.
“This being over, the accusers and the mob, not satisfied with this experiment, would have the trial by water ; accordingly a most solemn procession was made to the mill pond, where both accused and accusers, being partially stripped of their clothing, were bound hand and foot, and each placed in the water, lengthways from the side of a barge, having for security a rope about the middle of each, which was held by a person in the barge. The accused man being thin and spare, with some difficulty began to sink at last, but the other three swam very lightly upon the water. A sailor in the barge jumped out upon the back of the man accused, thinking to drive him to the bottom; but the person bound without any help, came up some time before the other. The woman accuser being told that she did not sink, would be ducked a second time ; when she swam as light as before, upon which she declared that the accused had bewitched her to make her so light, and that she would be ducked a hundred times, but she would duck the devil out of her. The accused man being surprised at his own swimming, was not so confident of hie innocence before, but said:
” If I am a witch, it is more than I know.” The more thinking part of the spectators were of opinion that any person so bound and placed in the water, unless they were mere skin and bone, would swim till their breath was gone, and their lungs were filled with water. But it being the general opinion of the populace that the little clothing which the accused had on helped to support them, it is said they are to be tried again the next warm weather, entirely divested of it.”
Jeffersonian Republican, Stroudsburg, PA, May 16, 1850