Ann Glover and the Hanged Man

The last woman to be hanged in Boston following a witch trial was Irish woman Ann Glover, on November 16, 1688. Four years later, twenty-five kilometres away in Salem, the Puritan obsession with witchcraft led to twenty “witches” being sent to the gallows within several months; Ann’s trial setting a precedence for many of the cases in the 1692 Salem witch trials.

Ann’s date and place of birth were not documented, but what was recorded was that she and her husband were sent to Barbados to work on a sugar plantation during Oliver Cromwell’s conquest of Ireland. Her husband was executed while living there for refusing to renounce Catholicism.

Ann then moved to Boston with her daughter, where they settled in the North End in the 1680s. She got a job as a housekeeper in the home of John Goodwin, where she helped to look after his five children.

In 1688, thirteen-year-old Martha Goodwin accused Ann's daughter of stealing laundry. This led to Ann fiercely defending her daughter. Shortly afterwards, the Goodwin children became ill and began to act strangely. The local doctor was called and he declared that their malaise was caused by witchcraft because he was unable to heal the children. Most historians believe the children’s afflictions were falsehoods, but their lies had dire consequences.

The doctor discussed his diagnosis with Cotton Mather, a Puritan clergyman who following his education at Harvard College, joined his father as a minister of the Congregationalist Old North Meeting House in Boston. Following their meeting, Ann was arrested and tried for witchcraft.

In court, her answers could not be understood, and for a time her accusers thought she was speaking a language of the devil, when in fact she was speaking in the Irish language.

At her trial, she was asked to say the Lord's Prayer. She recited it in Irish and broken Latin, but was unable to say it in English. There was a belief that an inability to recite the Lord's prayer was the mark of a witch. The court officials found an interpreter who worked with Ann for the rest of the trial. Her home was searched and doll-like figures were found. When Mather was interrogating her she supposedly said that she prayed to spirits and Mather took this to mean that these spirits were demons, when more likely they were saints; the ‘dolls’ being holy statues. Cotton Mather visited Ann in prison where he said that she supposedly engaged in night-time trysts with the devil and other evil spirits. She was pronounced guilty and put to death by hanging.

On November 16, 1688, Glover was brought to the gallows. She was asked to repent and renounce her Catholic faith, but she did not and was hanged in front of a baying crowd.

In 1988, Boston City Council declared the 16th of November ‘Goody Glover Day’ as a way to recognise the injustice that Ann suffered.

The Hanged Man

The Hanged Man is arguably one of the most complex cards in the Tarot deck, one that has so much depth and significance that we could spend years studying it alone. The card can speak to making sacrifices; the times when we need to give up something in our lives in order to gain something we want. The Hanged Man card depicts the Norse God Odin, who hung from the Ydddrasil, the tree of life, for nine days to earn the secret knowledge of the Runes. However, sometimes, depending on the cards around it, it can suggest being sacrificed by others as a scapegoat, and being punished unfairly with no reward in sight. The card can denote martyrdom in the sense of receiving punishment for crimes we did not commit, as Ann Goody’s cruel and painful treatment illustrates.

Sources

Irish American Magazine issue 11, 2020

The Historical Marker Database