It has been suggested, that the bearing of the executive officers of the law towards the prisoners was often quite harsh.  This resulted from the general feeling, in which these officials would have been likely to sympathize, of the peculiarly execrable nature of the crime charged upon the accused, and from the danger that might attend the manifestation of any appearance of kindly regard for them.  So far as the seizure of goods is considered, or the exaction of fees, the conduct of the officials was in conformity with usage and instructions.  The system of the administration of the law, compared with our times, was stern, severe, and barbarous.  The whole tone of society was more unfeeling.  Philanthropy had not then extended its operations, or directed its notice, to the prison.  Sheriff Corwin was quite a young man, being but twenty-six years of age at the time of his appointment.  He probably acted under the advice of his relatives and connections on the bench.  I think there is no evidence of any particular cruelty evinced by him.  The arrests, examinations, and imprisonments had taken place under his predecessor, Marshal Herrick, who continued in the service as his deputy.

That individual, indeed, had justly incurred the resentment of the sufferers and their friends, by eager zeal in urging on the prosecutions, perpetual officiousness, and unwarrantable interference against the prisoners at the preliminary examinations.  The odium originally attached to the marshal seems to have been transferred to his successor, and the whole was laid at the door of the sheriff.  Marshal Herrick does not appear to have been connected with Joseph Herrick, who lived on what is now called Cherry Hill, but was a man of an entirely different stamp.  He was thirty-four years of age, and had not been very long in the country.  John Dunton speaks of meeting him in Salem, in 1686, and describes him as a “very tall, handsome man, very regular and devout in his attendance at church, religious without bigotry, and having every man’s good word.”  His impatient activity against the victims of the witchcraft delusion wrought a great change in the condition of this popular and “handsome” man, as is seen in a petition presented by him, Dec. 8, 1692; to “His Excellency Sir William Phips, Knight, Captain-general and Governor of Their Majesties’ Territories and Dominions of Massachusetts Bay in New England; and to the Honorable William Stoughton, Esq., Deputy-Governor; and to the rest of the Honored Council.”  It begins thus:  “The petition of your poor servant, George Herrick, most humbly showeth.”  After recounting his great and various services “for the term of nine months,” as marshal or deputy-sheriff in apprehending many prisoners, and conveying them “unto prison and from prison to prison,” he complains that his whole time had been taken up so that he was incapable of getting any thing for the maintenance of his “poor family:”  he further states that he had become so impoverished