The parents of Elizabeth Kelley of Hartford, Connecticut, attributed her death to witchcraft practiced on her by Goody Ayres, one of their neighbors.
Elizabeth was suddenly taken with a violent attack of coughing and choking during the evening of March 24, 1662. In her delirium she cried out: "Father, father help me, help me Goodwife [Goody] Ayres is upon me, she chokes me, she kneels on my belly, she will break my bowels, she pinches me, she will make me black and blue." Elizabeth died the next day. Following the superstition of those times, both her parents and the townspeople thought that her death was due to some preternatural cause, such as bewitchment. The General Court of Connecticut accordingly ordered a postmortem examination on Elizabeth to determine the cause of her death.
Mr. Bryan Rossiter, the prosector, described his findings in the following protocol1:
All these 6 particulars underwritten I judge preternatural: Upon the opening of John Kelley's child at the grave I observed,
1. The whole body, the musculous parts, nerves and joints were all pliable, without any stiffness or contraction, the gullet only excepted. Experience of dead bodies renders such symptoms unusual.
2. From the costal ribs to the bottom of the belly in the whole latitude of the womb, both the scarf skin and the whole skin with the enveloping or covering flesh had a deep blue tincture, when the inward part thereof was fresh, and the bowels under it in true order, without any discoverable peccancy to cause such an effect or symptom.
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