| Merideth (Daughter 3) | One of the four Merideth Children of Bristol in the county of Bristol (siblings made up of three daughters and a son, between the age of fourteen, and eight years), who are allegedly bewitched. All the children recover after medical treatment.
(167-169) | Is an Account of another passage in the same Letter, from the party aforesaid, relating the strange manner of Fits which seized the Children of Mr. Merideth of Bristol.
FRom Mr. Merideth I was informed that January last was eight years, he had a Son, and three Daughters, (all between the age of fourteen, and eight years) taken with violent Convulsive Fits, within a weeks time of each other, to the great amazement of many Physicians, and Divines, and multitudes of others that beheld them. The first symptoms they observed of their coming, was the Childrens complaining of intolerable pains in their heads, and sides, suddenly upon which their Limbs, Mouth, and Eyes would be distorted into unimaginable alterations, and their Arms and Legs, though of those tender years, extended for some time beyond the strength of the stoutest man to reduce them; during these Fits, they
would sometimes laugh, at other times cry for an hour together, then on a sudden creep about the floor, up against the Bed-posts and the Tester of the Beds, like so many Cats, as the Gentleman phrases it. (A Lady of the Neighbourhood told me they would hang about the walls, and Cieling of the Room, like Flies, or Spiders.) Sometimes they would foam at the mouth, then fall down as dead, & in a short time repeat their Actions, appearing in the room in the same strange, and stupendious postures; Towards night their fits always left them, and they slept undisturbed most part of the night, but instantly upon their awaking, their Fits returned, and tormented them more or less, with very little Intervals all the day. One of the Daughters three days following, in the height of her Fit repeated in a solemn majestick sort of manner the same form of speech; which was a praedicting her own death to be in some few days, and the happy state she was entring into, as also several things which should speedily befal her Father, and Family; but nothing of it ever came to pass. Another of them vomited pins; during their whole indisposition, they were daily attended by Ministers praying
with them, and continued in a course of Physick prepared by the advice of the Ablest Doctors in the City. In the May following they recovered, and are well ever since to this day; and (which is very admirable) when their Fits had wholly left them, they did not appear the least weakened by them. () |