Witch Work of Bridget Bishop

An Attempt to Bewitch a Witch

Oct 23, 2006 Mary Trotter Kion

Bridget Bishop is suspected of bewitching a boy and clothing witch dolls. A man attempts to bewitch Bishop.

Witch Dolls

The local Salem dyer added credence to this assumption of Bridget Bishop being a witch and making witch dolls by relating that she had, at one time, brought to him several small pieces of lace which were so small they could not have been used on any human attire. He was hinting that they could have only been useful, perhaps, for clothing a witch's doll. But he had even further proof, in his opinion, of Bridget being a witch.

The Dyer's Deadly Declaration

The dyer's proof was that a few years previously his son had been ill, "nearly to death." A passing stranger told him that the boy had been bewitched. The stranger advised that the boy be taken to Bridget Bishop. Once there, the sick boy was to scratch Bishop's face. This was a well-known way of breaking a witch's spell. But the dyer went one step further.

The Dyer Proposes Some Magic of His Own

He gave the stranger some money to purchase a pot of cider from Bishop. Obtaining property from a witch and "subjecting it to occult abuse was a common technique of both white and black magic." However, his ploy was possibly his son's undoing-in witchey thought.

Bishop refused to sell the cider and ran the man off with a shovel. She also managed to scratch the child's face. Ever after, the boy was afflicted with serious fits, falling down, seemingly dead, or running "to and fro, acting so strange that I cannot judge otherwise but that he is bewitched." Doctors who examined the boy agreed that the child had been bewitched.

The Devilishly Disappearing Threepence

Another story related that Bridget had paid a man threepence but somehow, and never explained logically, the money vanished from his pocket. This, like many other Witchcraft legends, was a standard witch trick, that of paying someone with disappearing money.

Witch Work of Bridget Bishop: An Attempt to Bewitch a Witch continues with, Bridget Bishop Bewitching Men: Was She Witch, Woman, or Just Devilish, available October 23, 2006.

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