On this day in 1656, Judith Catchpole, a young maidservant in colonial America, was tried in 1656 for witchcraft and infanticide before the earliest all-female juries in the United States. Catchpole was an indentured servant in the colony of Maryland, arriving there by boat from the Commonwealth of England in January 1656. Upon her arrival she was accused of several crimes, resulting in a trial on September 22, 1656 in the General Provincial Court in Patuxent County, Maryland (now Calvert County).
Catchpole was accused of murdering her child and of other bizarre acts, by the indentured servant of William Bramhall, a fellow passenger on the ship “Mary and Francis”. She was accused of killing her child, cutting the throat of a female passenger while the woman was asleep, and stabbing a seaman in the back.
It was decided that an all-female jury was needed because the issues of pregnancy and birth required female expertise. Composed of seven married women and four single women, the trial was ordered by the General Provincial Court at Patuxent for September 22, 1656.[3] In order to determine if Catchpole had murdered her own infant, the jury was to inspect Catchpole’s body to find evidence that she had been pregnant and given birth to a child. The jury inspected Catchpole’s body and concluded that she had not recently given birth. Other witnesses gave testimony that the man making the accusations was “not in sound mind”. Additional hearsay evidence was presented that the male accuser had spoken of witchcraft and told other bizarre stories. He had said that after slitting the woman’s throat, she sewed it back up before the woman awoke, and that she rubbed grease on the back of the fatally wounded seaman and he came back to life.
The jury gave little credence to the charges of witchcraft, and seeing no evidence of childbirth, acquitted Catchpole of all charges.
Woof!
Hmm…
No.
Empathy
Today is the birthday, in 1958, of American rock guitarist, singer, songwriter, and producer Joan Jett. She was a founding member of The Runaways and with Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, scored the 1982 US No.1 & UK No.4 single I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll. She is also known as the Godmother of Punk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMsazR6Tnf8
Comments