The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World

This excellent book tells the dispiriting story of some of the pilgrims who left England for America in the early 1600s to set up new communities based on religious freedom and a simple life - but saw their hopes soured within a few years of landing. Their failure to build their nirvana is not surprising. People have believed in very strange things since the beginning of time, including hundreds of very different religions, and, their attempts to build new societies on their beliefs have not usually been successful. Worst of all were the big bids for utopian societies. The Russian, French and Chinese revolutions all started in idealism and laudable aims but ended in terror, hatred, murder, tyranny and - not least - the madness of crowds. This book follows the story of the a much more modest attempt by a small group of Christians, who saw themselves as righteous, pious and well intentioned, to build their own new world. Their dream was of simple communities based on religious freedom. But things went wrong from the outset. The winters in the new land were bitter. The tiny villages they set up were isolated and seemed threatened. They saw eerie lights in the surrounding woods, mists over the marshes and the eyes of primitive Indians watching from the behind the bushes outside the villages. The pilgrims separated into different sects, each believing their own to be right; and when unexplained tragedies started to become common, with mysterious illnesses and deaths of children, they turned against each other. They began to see evil in their neighbours, and they attributed it to idolatry, heresy, blasphemy, witchcraft - and eventually the presence in their communities of the devil. Within a few years the disenchantment and discord led to trials and executions of their fellow pilgrims. The story, much of which focuses on a young wife who meets a tragic end, is covered in extraordinary detail, based on original sources, meticulously researched. E T Laing

When I saw this book online I was immediately curious about it. I grew up next door to Massachusetts and went to college in Springfield. I also love history so it seemed just right for me. While I found the book very interesting it is also some heavy duty reading. In other words, not an easy book to get through. As a matter of fact I will be reading it again. It was a bit difficult to get into a 1650 mindset when the Springfield I know is one very busy bustling city. There were no witches to avoid, just wildly crazy traffic and people on their phones not paying attention to where they were walking. I will say one thing about this book, overall, the author did an excellent job in trying to transport you back to the 1600's time period even though it was literally hundreds of years ago. A fascinating read.

The Ruin of All Witches by Malcolm Gaskill is a great nonfictional account of a witch hunt involving Mary and Hugh Parsons in 1651 New England. It was fascinating. Mr. Gaskill has taken this specific situation taking place in 1651 in Springfield, Massachusetts as an example of the multi-faceted and complex collection of etiologies that threaded together can create a hotbed ripe for the picking in regards to the accusations and sentencing within this community. Yes he covers this specific case with the specific circumstances, but it is more than that. He also delves into the historical, societal, religious, superstitious, environmental, political, and external factors that can all together create a perfect storm that can culminate into what we would now call “scapegoat” or “witch hunt”. It was utterly fascinating to see how all these factors, while independent may not be detrimental, added to create the situation that we use as an example. I really enjoyed the research and the background that helped broaden the horizon and gave us the bigger picture…that aspect really made this book interesting and unique. I really liked digging a bit deeper. 5/5 stars

Worthwhile, informative, and accessible. Superior narrative style unlike what one encounters in most other books dealing with this subject. Highly recommended. Talk about a witch’s brew. Seems like Springfield MA had all the ingredients. Its situation on the very edge of English America likely kept everyone nervous; on the other side of the Berkshires to the West lurked enemies real and imagined. The author doesn’t mention Hawthorne’s settings, but there is a resonance. In the event, this place was spookier still, and more isolated: It was a hundred miles over a primitive trail to Boston. At least Salem, another haunt of demons, was a port with contact to the the world outside the gloomy confines of the punitive, vengeful, unloving Puritan theocracy. As for the the human capital, the author describes most of Springfield’s settlers as either refugees from persecution, poverty, or bad luck. Most were what one might call working poor. Seems like they survived year-to-year, right on the verge of starvation, that is, when they weren’t deadly ill or freezing to death. I didn’t tote up the infant mortality rate, but it seemed mighty high. The diet as graphically described by the author could discourage a modern appetite. Watery ale seems to have furnished the only relief. Much of this probably wasn’t all that different from what they’d left behind in England, but at least in the Old Country there were fewer moral enforcers policing their every move…and thought. Toss in a substantial dose of religious fanaticism, sexual repression which seems to ooze out of every pore, communal distrust and jealously, and the witch’s brew can be brought to a boil. I’d venture to say that just about anyone with the slightest neurotic tic would blossom into a robust psychotic under the circumstances. Mr. Gaskill provides a long and creepy inventory of what Springfield’s denizens had to fear. But he may have shortchanged the threat from foreign powers. The Anglo-Dutch Wars brought more than a few humiliations to the British Navy. Closer to home was a greater source of anxiety. The Dutch capture of New Sweden along the Delaware River brought to a conclusion Stockholm’s attempts at a North American colony. Here was evidence that New Netherland, with whom armed conflict had been sporadic, posed a palpable threat. The problems began years earlier when English traders evicted the Dutch from their fortified trading post at what is today Hartford CT. New Netherland considered the Connecticut River its Eastern boundary; the English begged to differ. A hundred miles to the West loomed sill more threats, these to Springfield’s commercial success.The Dutch settlement at Fort Orange, today’s Albany NY, had become a kind of boomtown. And serious competition. Contemporary accounts describe all kinds of goods going through there in every direction. This...

a most accurate historical tour de force by the author of the witches Springfield trial well developed characters takes you back to those times ;not to be missed.