Victor Hugo had once written that love was an idealistic thing, and that even in hell, love could still be found.
Sarah Osborne had been dragged from her sickbed in February. On May 10, the Boston guards carried her corpse away under the crowd's watchful eyes. No one blamed the death of this "witch" on witchcraft.
The dead witches were carried away, while the living witches were locked up again. People began calling Boston Prison "the graveyard of the living."
Though the jailers looked like decent men, they possessed the ferocity and temper of tigers. By law, prisoners were entitled to linen bedding, bread, and water, yet the guards showed them little mercy.
Andros, dismissed from office in 1689, and his attorney general had discovered while imprisoned here that when it rained, the standing water in Boston Prison was at least six inches deep. The damp, cold weather, compounded by food shortages, made imprisonment there truly miserable. Yet it offered a peace and quiet unavailable elsewhere. Besides, relatives would find ways to send in food, drink, and fresh linen, even if it cost them dearly to bribe the jailers.
It was a good business, bringing in more than the yield from the finest acre of wheat field in Britain. Wealthy people like Nathaniel Cary could afford to pay enough to make his wife, Elizabeth Cary, more comfortable in prison. Philip English simply paid the jailers 4,000 pounds, allowing him to live in a jailer's home rather than inside the prison.
Nathaniel Cary was a shipbuilding expert from Charleston, as well as a wealthy captain. Considering that Governor Phips needed money and ships to deal with French privateers, it was not difficult to guess why they had been accused.
At dawn on May 23, the couple sailed to Salem. Rather than