¶ … Salem Witch Trials
In the months of June to September 1692, nineteen men and women were hung near Salem Village, Massachusetts, for the crime of witchcraft. One man, Giles Corey, close to eighty years of age at the time of the accusations, was crushed to death under heavy stones for refusing to be tried. Hundreds of other people also faced accusations of witchcraft, and a large proportion of the accused spent many months in jail without the benefit of trial.
They hysteria that led to the Salem witchcraft trials has its roots in the strict Puritan religion of the colony of Massachusetts. However, economic conditions, personal jealousies, discontent within a congregation, and teenage boredom all played an important role in the events that swept Salem that summer.
Salem's hysteria over witchcraft sparked with the strange illness of Betty Parris, the daughter of the Salem minister. She exhibited a strange variety of symptoms, including contorting in pain, ducking under furniture, and complaints of fever.
Talk of witchcraft increased as several of Betty's playmates, including Ann Putnam and Mary Walcott began to show similar symptoms.
Salem's easy acceptance of the idea of witchcraft came partially from the ideas espoused in Cotton Mather's book, Memorable Providences. This book, popular just before the trial, described the suspected witchcraft of an Irish servant in Boston. The behavior of the woman in the book was eerily similar to that of young Betty Parris, who ultimately claimed that her afflictions were the result of witchcraft.
The Parris' slave Tituba, a West African native, soon became implicated in the growing hysteria. Her exotic origin and the tales of voodoo and omens from her folklore made her an easy scapegoat. The number of young girls who reported having the strange symptoms included to grow.
Soon, the accusations of witchcraft turned to the courts.
The slave Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborn were the first to be accused of witchcraft. All three were socially disempowered, Tituba was a slave, Good a beggar, and Osborn was old, irritable, and did not often attend church.
County magistrates Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne scheduled examinations for the three women for March 1, 1692. The afflicted girls performed their contortions when presented with the three women on trial. Villagers offered stories of cheese and butter that had turned sour, and animals that were born with deformities after a visit my one of the three women.
Tituba's testimony brought the proceeding to a fevered pitch.
She declared that she was a witch, and that she and four other witches, including the other accused women had flown through the air. Her confession helped to quiet the sceptics, and local ministers, including Parris, soon began the witch-hunt with renewed zeal.
The afflicted girls quickly named other women as witches. These included Martha Corey, Rebecca Nurse, Sarah Cloyce, and Mary Easty. The four-year-old daughter of Sarah Good, Doris soon became accused of witchcraft after the girls accused her spectre of biting them. The child spent eight months in jail, and watched her own mother be carried of to the gallows to be hanged.
Stuck in jail with the damning testimony of the afflicted girls widely accepted, suspects began to see confession as a way to avoid the gallows. Deliverance Hobbs became the second witch to confess, admitting to pinching three of the girls at the Devil's command and flying on a pole to attend a witches' Sabbath in an open field.
Jails approached capacity and the colony "teetered on the brink of chaos" when Governor Phips returned from England. Fast action, he decided, was required.
The accused witches, now stuck in jail, awaiting hanging began to confess. Imprisoned by the girl's damming testimony and the growing hysteria of the time, they saw confession as a way to escape hanging. Deliverance Hobbs was the second witch to confess, and jails began to overflow with accused witches.
A new court was created to try all the new witchcraft cases. Five judges were appointed, and they worked to extract confessions. The judges soon allowed the examination of the bodies of the accused for "witches' marks" - moles or marks that would allow the witch's familiar to suckle. Hearsay, gossip and assumptions were admitted as legal evidence. The witches had no legal counsel, and had no formal avenues of appeal.
The first woman accused of witchcraft, Bridge Bishop, was hung on June 10, 1692. The trials went...
The trial began March 1, 1692, all but Tituba pleaded innocent. Tituba confessed and claimed there were other witches within the community. This cascaded a series of accusations, people like Martha Corey, Sarah Good's 4-year-old daughter, and eventually, Bridget Bishop. Bishop was known for her gossip and promiscuity and despite her pleas of innocence, she was found guilty and on June 10th, was the first person hanged on Gallows
In this sense, the only category of convicts which were burned to death was that of the so-called "satanic Blacks" as this was considered to be the only way of destroying their 'evilness.' In Puritan New England ideology, Blacks were associated with Satan. This belief was the remnant of an old European image of Satan as a black man which dated back to long before the contact between Africans
Salem Witch Trials The event of Salem witch trials happened in the year 1692 in the Suffolk and Middlesex counties of Massachusetts. The case was highlighted due to property disagreements, hysteria and jealousy. All because of personal vendettas, a dozen or more people were hanged even though there was no evidence but only stories and assumptions by the town's women and girls. The case was stretched for more than a year
The children described, each one of them separately, seeing Sarah and the other women flying as specters through the night. The children, despite the threats they must have received from the women, they were brave and told the truth about what had happened. Other townspeople came forward with evidence I hadn't even heard of -- milk and cheese going rotten after a visit from one of the witches; animals
And their could be other, more personal reasons for the accusations. For instance, John Westgate's testimony includes a tale of how Mary Parker came to a tavern and chastised her husband for drinking. When John Westgate called her unseemly for coming to the tavern, as he himself testified, "she came up to me and called me rogue and bid me mind my owne busines…." Late 17th century men were not
As the Puritan leadership took the stand that their decisions were made directly from the scripture (indeed there was an absolute marriage of Church and State within these communities) any challenge to their processes (such as a newcomer objecting to the financial controls placed upon them) could be then perceived as evidence of a person who is not in alignment with God. Newcomers were more likely to propose challenges
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