Welcome to the Most Notorious Podcast. I'm Eric Rivenes.

I'm grateful to have as my guest today, Juliet Mofford. She's a professional historian

and museum educator and has been researching, writing and teaching about 17th century New

England and the Salem Witch Trials for 30 years. She's written many books, but the one

we're talking about today is The Devil Made Me Do It. Crime and Punishment in Early New

England. Thank you so much for your time.

Yeah, you're welcome. Nice to be here.

So why New England and why the 17th century?

Well, I got a degree in art history, but then we moved to Andover, Massachusetts, and I became

intrigued by the Salem Witch Trials because I learned that there were more people accused,

arrested and confessed to witchcraft from Andover, Massachusetts and from any other town.

And soon after that, I became a museum educator and director of research at the Old York Historical

Society in York, Maine, now known as the Museums of Old York. One of their eight historic sites

is it was a jail, is a jail, from 1719 using timbers and architectural elements from a 1653

prison, which made it the oldest public building still in use, not as a jail, but now as a museum

in the country. And while I was at that job, I had access to court records, primary sources,

such as the jailers, accounts, sermons, and other documents related to the history of crime

and punishment in the early New England. And also, the more that I studied this period,

17th century, I realized how puritons were so misunderstood thanks to fiction writers like

Hawthorne and Longfellow. And the more I studied the court records, the more I saw that they were,

a puritons were a bunch of lusty folk. It was the Victorians who were so uptight. So the fascination

with that period for me has continued. That's great. So your book starts with the Puritons.

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