Madame Please I Beg Your Aid (2:06)

Joan Sullivan is played by Arielle Yoder Mrs. Turner is played by Arielle Kaplan

Joan Sullivan was an Irish indentured servant who was briefly indentured to the Turner family, but at some point before 1681, her certificate of indenture was transferred to Thomas Maule, a Quaker who lived on the Northside of Salem, on Essex St. In November of 1681, she became one of the first indentured servants to bring a civil suit of abuse against a master. Typically, certificates of indenture last for a period of 7 to 10 years, and there are several recorded cases of abuse of this system, that would often result in an indefinite period of indenture, that would leave the contractee indebted to the previous contract holder, and therefore helpless to escape a system of servitude. Joan most likely came from County Cork or County Kerry in the far southwest of Ireland. Before Joan’s certificate of indenture was sold to Thomas Maule, she worked in the household of Captain John Turner, and his wife Elizabeth Roberts Turner, and we now know this home as the House of the Seven Gables. Historians surmise that Joan was probably transferred to Maule sometime either immediately before or after the death of John Turner in 1680. Her contract was transferred for 9 pennies, the approximate price for a pound of bacon in 1660. She took her case to the tavern of Bartholomew Gedney, a wharf owner and town magistrate of Salem, who would later go on to serve on the Court of Oyer and Terminer during the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692. Joan’s case was ultimately dismissed, and Maule was only charged with breaking the Sabbath for making Joan work on Sundays. The abuse charges were dismissed, though Maule himself would have several run-ins with the court later in his life. Joan stands as a testament to the resilience of a young woman with no help in this colonized nation, who used the court system and took a stand against an instance of patriarchal abuse. Though she was discredited in court, and did not see any kind of justice, her story is a reminder of the struggles of many who built the neighborhood you now stand in, and admire.