How original Lynners blamed poor health on the occult
SWAMPSCOTT — Author Andrew Rapoza, who spent the last three decades researching Lynn history, delivered a presentation on colonial-era medicine and its supernatural influences at the Swampscott Historical Society’s public speaker event Thursday evening.
While a photo of a black cat with glowing yellow eyes projected on a Swampscott Public Library wall, Rapoza introduced the topic “Sickness and Evil in the original Lynn,” an exploration of how the practice of counter-witchcraft and primitive medicine intertwined in the area that now includes Lynn, Lynnfield, Swampscott, Nahant, Saugus, Marblehead, and North Reading.
“This presentation is designed to educate but not to amuse. Innocent people by the hundreds in this country, and by the tens of thousands in Europe, were wrongly accused and many of those were tortured and executed for the crime of witchcraft. Similarly, many of the people of original Lynn genuinely feared witches. With respect to all of them, I present their beliefs and mistakes seriously. I urge you to try to see all of this through their eyes,” Rapoza said.
Explaining the mindset of 17th-century settlers in original Lynn, Rapoza outlined the puritanical beliefs that Satan was real, living among the settlers, and the force responsible for witches, illness, Native Americans, death, and other unfortunate events.
Rapoza quoted a Marblehead man’s testimony from 1646, in which the man accused his neighbor Jane James of being a witch.
“He heard… that Goodwife [Jane] James was a witch and that he saw her in a boat at sea in the likeness of a cat, also that his garden frughtes (fruits) did not prosper as long as he lived near that woman,” Rapoza read.
In a study of the six oldest houses still standing in the region, Rapoza said he was able to find artifacts and markings used as protections against witchcraft, evil, and sickness. Inside the Townsend House in Lynnfield, a young boy’s shoe was found behind the fireplace, and torn-apart bible pages were found in the ceiling.
Rapoza said in the early to mid-1700s, the homeowner Daniel Townsend lost his eldest son and wife who had both died within only a few weeks. The hidden shoe, he said, was most likely used as a decoy to confuse demonic attackers trying to take his sick younger son.
“They (the bible pages) may have been a ritual protective placement, purposely destroyed so that that the bible would be full of holy power in the spirit realm… or perhaps they were torn apart by rats, doing the bidding of the witches they served,” he said.
The 1637 home of John Humphrey located at 99 Paradise Road in Swampscott, Rapoza said, was marked with a number of counter-witchcraft etchings after smallpox (deemed at that time to be the work of evil forces), the presence of Native Americans, and “unholy acts” were recorded in the area.
“Mesh marks,” or symbols resembling spiderwebs believed to capture evil spirits and witches, were found above the house’s fireplace. Additionally, a symbol known as the “hexafoil” which comprises six overlapping ovals to resemble the flower-like shape of the sun’s glare, was found in 12 separate places throughout the home.
“It’s on the second floor but on the inside of the door leading to the attic to scare away evil trying to get into the family living quarters. These marks are very intentionally placed. Okay, all of these marks are in places where evil might otherwise pass through,” Rapoza said. “This is next to a door to a room that has been built in the attic on the third floor, bringing light into the darkness to keep the witches away.”
Wrapping up the presentation, Rapoza reminded the audience that all of the information he discussed could be found in the first section of his recently-published book “Promising Cures: The Pursuit of Health in a 19th Century New England Community: Lynn, Massachusetts,” a 1,400-page history of health care in Lynn ranging from 1629 to 1929.
Rapoza also mentioned that many of the etchings or marks found in historic homes might have been produced out of tradition, and with little knowledge of their original believed purpose.
“As you go down the street, you may see a ladder, and there’s no signs and you’re likely to walk around the ladder instead of underneath the ladder. That may just be a good safety sense or maybe a superstition that you grew up with, or that your grandmother insisted ‘don’t ever go under a ladder,’ ” Rapoza said. “The rationale for anything that any of us do is very difficult to prove if we ourselves haven’t documented it.”
