HERSTORY: Hanged as a witch for complaining about cowboy builders...?

“Execution of Mrs Ann Hibbins” F.T.Merrell, 1886

Spooky season is upon us ! So its time for a suitably spooky herstory, and this one is about convicted ‘witch’ Ann Hibbins, and so it’s inevitably, a tale of injustice and misogyny. 

Little is known about Ann Hibbins’ early life. She was born around 1605 in England and had been widowed once by the time she emigrated to Boston, Massachusetts with her husband William Hibbins in the 1630’s.  

Her husband William had previously been married to Hester Bellingham, and consequently his brother in law was Richard Bellingham, governor of Massachusetts. This man is significant, as he had had form in condemning witches during his tenure as Governor. He very likely influenced his successor, Humphrey Atherton, who sent Ann Hibbins to her death eventually.  William was the assistant at the Court, and held great social standing in the colony of Massachusetts. As a result, Ann was also highly respected and mingled with High Society. The couple were among the wealthiest citizens in Boston, holding over 300 acres of land. 

In 1640, the couple hired a carpenter named Crabtree to work on their house.  But he overcharged and did a poor job, or so Ann claimed. She refused to pay and slandered him publicly. William consulted an alternative carpenter to make a quote for the job, and Ann was not happy with that either. She sued Crabtree and won! Kudos to Ann. But this was 1640, in a puritanical North American colony, and despite winning her case, Ann was heavily criticised by the Church for being ‘abrasive’ and frankly, unladylike. Church officials complained that:

“…She stirs in it, as if she were able to manage it better than her husband, which is a plain breach of the rule of Christ…as a great aggravation of her sin; in so much that some do think she doth but make a wisp of her husband…”

Who was she to usurp her husband’s authority by taking tradesmen to court? She was asked to apologise to the carpenters (!) And she refused, (rightly so!)  As a result, the Church excommunicated her. How dare a woman stand up for herself! William her husband, is not mentioned in these proceedings, but his status in the community meant that Ann was protected, for now. 

Source: Medium.com (a witch in court) LOC Photograph and print archive.

But they clearly had it in for Ann, and saw her as a threat to the powers that be. Once her husband had died in 1654, she was accused of witchcraft, tried and convicted in 1655, despite no evidence whatsoever (or at least none surviving in record) aside from her having the gall to sue cowboy builders some years ago, and because, of course, her husband was dead.  It’s almost like it was her fault.  She was hanged on 19th June, 1656. But why? Even for the time, this seems a bit extreme, surely? 

A quote from Governor Hutchinson, recalling the case more than a century later, gives some more clues as to why Ann was condemned. He said:

Source: Digital Commons (University of Nebraska) "The Case of Ann Hibbins" William F Poole.

Ah now it makes sense! A bad tempered older woman who was unpopular with her neighbours! Hang her! It is clear how attitudes towards witchcraft had changed by the time of Hutchinson’s writing, with the evident disapproving tone of his summary of the case. 

Ann remains an aberration in the trend of witch hunts during this period though, both in the Old and New World. Women of high social standing like Ann weren’t usually persecuted unless someone coveted their property. I am reminded of a similar case in 1612 in Pendle, Lancashire, wherein Alice Nutter, a local wealthy woman was hanged as a witch alongside a poor family likely because the judge coveted her land AND because she was a rumoured catholic. Was Ann Hibbins worshipping a forbidden God? We don’t have enough evidence to know. But she was a member of the Church in her colony, and she was an upstanding citizen, so probably not. 

What we DO know though, is that she had a lot of money. Her will was valued at £344 at the time of her death, and she named several important, influential men of the town as her benefactors… perhaps it was a last ditch attempt to have her fortunes reversed? It didn't work though, and she still lost her life. The community ‘leaders’ she left her money to certainly did not deserve it!

Interestingly, she did initially have prominent supporters - among them a church minister. But they were forced to 'retract' their support for her (bullied? threatened?) and one Minister, John Norton, was recorded as saying later that Ann  "was hanged for a witch only for having more wit than her neighbours."  Quite telling… 

"Arresting a Witch" Howard Pyle, Harpers Magazine, 1883.

Ann may have been an innocent woman unjustly accused of being a ‘witch’, but the idea of her being in league with Satan is of course, juicy material for novelists. Thats why she was immortalised as an ACTUAL witch in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s romantic 1850 novel ‘The Scarlet Letter’. Writers should always have creative license, but I do think its unfair that Hawthorne’s re-writing of her story helped to strengthen, for many years, the narrative of her guilt. Not to mention the enduring glamour of the ‘wicked’ witch. Ann’s fate was wrong, and there is no evidence she was an occult practitioner of any kind. Essentially, she was hanged for having far too much self respect and initiative at a time where women weren't allowed to.

Ann was the third witch to be killed in Massachusetts and sadly wasn't to be the last in the New World.  Decades later came the famous trials of Salem, resulting in the deaths of 19 people and over 200 accused. 

The witch trials were a result of religious puritanism imported from England. But by the 1650s, when Ann was killed, witch trials were dying out in the homeland. The enlightenment was on the horizon. But there were occasional exceptions to the trend. A similarly baffling and tragic case happened in London in 1652, just a couple of years before Ann’s case. Again, this was a widow who was unfairly scapegoated by her community. But if you want to hear her story, you’ll have to come along to my tour! Hex and the City, my immersive witch tour is running this October over several dates. Don’t miss it!

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That's it for this month's Herstory. Enjoy spooky season, stay warm, eat pumpkins and come on a Herstorical Tour!