(July 11, 1653 – July 19,
1692), Sarah Good was one of the first three people accused of witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials, along with
Tituba and Sarah Osborne.
Born in Salem Village, Sarah was one of the the first people that nine-year-old Betty
Parris and
eleven-year-old Abigail Williams accused of witchcraft. The accusation was not difficult to believe; Sarah was irritable and a beggar. Sarah was only 38, but she looked much older from living in the streets. She angered easily and walked away muttering when neighbors denied her food and shelter, her muttering interpreted as curses, made all the worse since she didn't go to church.
Sarah denied the charges against her, but her status as an outcast and the
histrionics displayed by the "bewitched" girls sealed her fate. Her estranged husband also bore witness against her, and their little daughter, Dorothy "
Dorcas" Good, was also frightened into testifying.
Sarah was sentenced to death, despite her pregnancy. After seven months in a dank, dirty prison she gave birth to a baby girl who died within days.
Four-year-old
Dorothy Good
testified that her mother, Sarah Good, had taught her witchcraft. Dorothy had been bullied into saying it, and she also probably did so to be with her mother in jail. Dorothy survived, but she had witnessed guards taking her mother to execution and she was traumatized for life.
Sarah Good cursed the hanging judge, Nicholas
Noyes, before she was hanged, "You're a liar! I am no more a witch than you are a wizard, and if you take away my life God will give you blood to drink!"
Noyes died twenty years later, choking on his own blood.
