Elizabeth Pain (c. 1652 – 26 November 1704) was a settler in colonial Boston whose gravestone some writers and popular tradition claim was the inspiration for the grave of character Hester Prynne in the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.[1][2]
Pain's husband was Samuel Pain. Her grave is at King's Chapel Burying Ground in Boston, Massachusetts, the same cemetery mentioned in The Scarlet Letter:
So said Hester Prynne, and glanced her sad eyes downward at the scarlet letter. And, after many, many years, a new grave was delved, near an old and sunken one, in that burial–ground beside which King’s Chapel has since been built. It was near that old and sunken grave, yet with a space between, as if the dust of the two sleepers had no right to mingle. Yet one tomb–stone served for both. All around, there were monuments carved with armorial bearings; and on this simple slab of slate—as the curious investigator may still discern, and perplex himself with the purport—there appeared the semblance of an engraved escutcheon. It bore a device, a herald’s wording of which may serve for a motto and brief description of our now concluded legend; so sombre is it, and relieved only by one ever–glowing point of light gloomier than the shadow:— “ON A FIELD, SABLE, THE LETTER A, GULES”
Pain's headstone has "an engraved escutcheon" on which enthusiasts see the letter A (for adultery): it appears in the shield to the right of two lions.[3] Scholar Laurie Rozakis has argued that an alternate or additional source for the story may be Hester Craford, a woman flogged for fornication with John Wedg. [4]