Alice Lake of Dorchester was Hanged in Boston in About 1650
Alice of Dorchester, wife of Henry Lake and mother of four, was tried and executed around 1650. On her execution day, Reverend William Thompson of Braintree visited her, urging confession. Though Alice maintained her innocence of witchcraft, she explained that when single, she had become pregnant and attempted to terminate the pregnancy to hide her shame. The attempt failed. Alice believed she deserved to die for this attempted abortion, considering herself a murderer. According to Nathaniel Mather, Alice had also been visited by the devil in the shape of one of her recently deceased children, during a time of great sadness over that loss. After her execution, Henry moved to Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Their four children stayed in Dorchester initially, where one died; the other three later joined their father in Rhode Island before the family settled in Plymouth Colony.
Sign the petition to exonerate those accused of witchcraft in Boston, Massachusetts
Sources:
David D. Hall, Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England: A Documentary History 1638-1693
John Demos, Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England
Paul B. Moyer, Detestable and Wicked Arts: New England and Witchcraft in the Early Modern Atlantic World