Footnote: Witch City, Jr.
Drive about 13 miles north of Salem, Massachusetts, America’s world-famous “Witch City,” and you come to the town of Ipswich, incorporated in 1634.
At one time, Ipswich Hosiery, established in 1868, was the largest stocking producer in the country, and the limb-riding “Ipswich Witch” was known throughout the land. Pointed hats off to the marketer who seized on the homophone, no doubt with an eye to the witch fancy which the bicentennial of the famous trials in nearby Salem had lately kick-started.
Socks and proximity aren’t Ipswich’s only claims to witch fame. In 1878, a lawsuit filed by Ipswich resident Lucretia Brown culminated in a second Salem Witch Trial. That’s how the newspapers spun it, anyhow. Also called the Ipswich Witchcraft Trial, the May 14 proceeding was held in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in Salem.
Brown, an invalid spinster and Christian Scientist, claimed that Daniel Spofford, a fellow adherent and one-time disciple of Mary Baker Eddy, had exercised mesmeric art “wrongfully and maliciously” to afflict her with “great suffering of body and mind.” An idea had begun circulating among Spofford’s colleagues that he was practicing “malicious animal magnetism,” one of Eddy’s stranger improvisations, later to be lumped by her into the “demonology” category. The great lady herself traveled to Salem to testify against Spofford. As it happened, the two were very much on the outs for other reasons, and some investigators believe Eddy herself was behind the lawsuit.
The judge, Horace Gray, reasoned with a wink that putting the defendant in prison wouldn’t help the plaintiff, if Spofford had the powers Brown claimed. Gray dismissed the case.
A tourist town, Ipswich today is famous for its clams.
At one time, Ipswich Hosiery, established in 1868, was the largest stocking producer in the country, and the limb-riding “Ipswich Witch” was known throughout the land. Pointed hats off to the marketer who seized on the homophone, no doubt with an eye to the witch fancy which the bicentennial of the famous trials in nearby Salem had lately kick-started.
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| Knit pick: kindly crone (1919) or leggy seductress (1929). Note the logo. |
Brown, an invalid spinster and Christian Scientist, claimed that Daniel Spofford, a fellow adherent and one-time disciple of Mary Baker Eddy, had exercised mesmeric art “wrongfully and maliciously” to afflict her with “great suffering of body and mind.” An idea had begun circulating among Spofford’s colleagues that he was practicing “malicious animal magnetism,” one of Eddy’s stranger improvisations, later to be lumped by her into the “demonology” category. The great lady herself traveled to Salem to testify against Spofford. As it happened, the two were very much on the outs for other reasons, and some investigators believe Eddy herself was behind the lawsuit.
The judge, Horace Gray, reasoned with a wink that putting the defendant in prison wouldn’t help the plaintiff, if Spofford had the powers Brown claimed. Gray dismissed the case.
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| MBE, thinking healing thoughts. |
A tourist town, Ipswich today is famous for its clams.
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