Mary Warren- the Crucible

At the time the Salem witchcraft trials began, Mary Warren was twenty years old and employed as a servant in the household of John Procter of Salem Village. Before her first formal examination on April 19, 1692, Warren participated mildly in the afflicted girls' accusations. Both John and Elizabeth Procter disagreed with the conduct of the trials. Therefore, when John Procter discovered that Mary Warren participated in the accusations he threatened to whip her until her senses returned. After Mary Warren stayed in town the night of Rebecca Nurse's examination, Samuel Sibley went to court and testified to Procter's opinions about the accusers and about Mary's participation in the accusations. Sibley claimed that: "Proctor replyed if they [the accusers] were let alone so we should all be Devils & witches quickly they should rather be had to the Whipping post but he would fetch his jade [Mary Warren] Home & thresh the Devil out of her & more to the like purpose crying hang them, hang them. And also added that when she [Mary Warren] was first taken with fits he kept her close to the Wheel & threatened to thresh her, & then she had no more fits till the next day he was gone forth, & then she must have her fits again firsooth" (SWP II: 683-684)..

Both of Mary Warren's parents died before this stage in her life. This situation forced Warren to become a servant and support herself since she had no funds or property to claim. Some of Mary's anxiety over the loss of her parents surfaced during the trials. The document in which John DeRich accused George Jacobs, Sr., states, "that Mary Warrens mother did appeare to this Deponent [John DeRich] this day with a white man and told him that goodwife Parker and Oliver did kill her." In her statement against Alice Parker, Mary Warren also claims that she killed her mother and afflicted her sister, Elizabeth, "she [Alice Parker] also told me she: bewiched my mother & was a caus of her death: also that: she bewiched my sister: